Although they’ve gone through a number of lineup changes over the years, the NYC-based quartet The Giraffes have a long-held reputation for a brutally intense live show since their formation back in 1996. And as a result, the quartet have shared stages with Local H, Eagles of Death Metal, Vacation, Skeleton Key, Interpol, Fishbone, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Strokes and played sets at Amsterjam, Voodoofest, Monolith, SXSW and Bonnaroo Festivals — all of which expanded the quartet’s profile nationally.
The band split up in 2011 but last year, saw a number of reunion shows in Brooklyn and Denver featuring three of the band’s founding members, Aaron Lazar (vocals), Damien Paris (guitar), Andrew Totolos (drums), along with the band’s newest recruit, Josh Taggart (bass) –and the response was so positive that the members of the band wrote and then recorded new material, which wound up being their recently released sixth full-length effort, Usury.
Now if you’ve been frequenting JOVM over the past few months, you may recall that I wrote about Usury‘s first single “Product Placement Song” a primal and forceful song comprised of bluesy, stoner rock-leaning power chords, thundering drumming paired with Lazar’s ironic lyrics as a withering critique on consumerism. The album’s latest single, album opener “Blood Will Run” is as the band mentioned to the folks at Revolver, a throwback metal song — in the veins of Badmotorfinger and Superunknown-era Soundgarden, Dirt-era Alice in Chains, Queens of the Stone Age and others. Structurally, the song begins as a slow-burning, brooding dirge before building up speed with stoner metal/heavy metal power chords, thundering drumming, howled lyrics and weird time signature changes; the song is comprised of three or four major sections held together by a tight rhythm section that propels the song towards its sudden conclusion.
As the band explained to the folks at Revolver, the band has gained some incredibly loyal fans, including videographer Peter Demas. During the Usury recording and mixing sessions, Demas was allowed unprecedented access, capturing both the mundane and exciting process of creating and recording an album. Apparently, Demas loved “Blood Will Run” and the members of the quartet asked Demas if they could put a video together using some of the footage he had shot during the recording process. So in many ways, the official video for “Blood Will Run” is more of a behind- the-scenes look at the making of Usury.
