U.S. Christmas – Run Thick In The Night (2010)

All the way from the Appalachian Mountains today we get the deeply enigmatic U.S. Christmas and their super trippy Psychedelic Rock/Blues/something else. Our first encounter with this awesome band was on the Hawkwind tribute split album, where the band completely owned Hawkwind’s songs and provided an amazing rendition of them.

Signed to Neurot Recordings, the band delivers their fifth full-length release “Run Thick In the Night” (RTITN for short) which clocks at almost 80 minutes. With such a long album you would expect to have a bunch of wasted time, but with RTITN this is not the case. Every single sample, riff, etc, is creatively masterminded to be part of the whole experience created for this album, and before you know it the CD ends and you will want to keep listening to it for hours.

The overall mixture of spacey sounds (achieved by using old synthesizers), Theremin use and Blues/Southern Rock vocals make RTITN a very fresh sounding album and completely different to the stuff we usually get for review here at Infernal Masquerade. U.S. Christmas is definitely one of the most original and interesting sounding bands we’ve heard in quite a quite. And the freshness does not stop in the band’s music since their lyrics are also very interesting.

Starting off with the 13 minute epic “In the Night”, the band goes all out in showing what they are all about. Powerful percussions, gripping riffs, layering of diverse vocals and an overall depressive but powerful feeling is what makes this song one of the best of the album and almost fully summarizes the experience the listener will encounter with this release.

In songs like “Fire is Sleeping” and “Ephraim in the Stars” the band shows their Southern colors to perfection. Crafting slow-paced Rock tracks with Blues influences the band achieves a very intoxicating and attention grabbing sound. While some people might be turned of or confused by such tracks presented in this order, we actually think that they nicely break the flow of the album allowing it to be more diverse. The use of the violin in the song “Fire is Sleeping” is very hypnotic and depressive in nature, sending chills through our spines every time we listen to this song.

The overall guitar work is very solid, and while not ‘ground breaking’ or ‘super fast’ it crafts a very powerful atmosphere. Paired with the droning elements, the band’s core sound is very hypnotic and while repetitive, is effective enough to take the listener away into the band’s own little world. The drumming and percussions are top notch as well. However, the thing that we also liked is the use of violins to greatly enhance the atmosphere.

In general, U.S. Christmas has release a monolithic album that will surely get praised by some and probably called boring by other. For us, this release is one of the best of 2010 since it features great musicianship, a powerful sound, and on top of everything: Originality. If you are looking for something different and want to take a chance, be sure to get this impressive release when it comes out.

Release: September 20th, 2010

Country: USA