The drums play like a lightning storm: mighty, singular cracks with long, tense spaces between them. The bass is overdosed on distortion and sounds like rumbling concrete, the notes stretching on longer than they have any right to. The vocals are what you'd expect to hear upon finding a man at the bottom of a canyon with two broken legs, howling for help for hours before the wolves arrive. The guitar is the mindless responding wolves.
They're the heaviest band I've ever heard, surpassing Boris, sunn O))), Earth, and Melvins in the art of generating subterranean rumbles and hemorrhage-inducing groans. And on top of that, the actual music is fascinating. It's intelligent, but presents itself without a shred of pretension, or even pride. That's not to say sunn O)))'s music isn't thoughtfully composed; Monoliths & Dimensions is proof of that. With Harvey Milk though, it appears when you least expected it, right in the middle of what you assumed was yet another mindless stoner jam from the South, with the usual downtuned guitars and bulldozer tempos. Not so.
Harvey Milk is a sludge/doom metal band from Athens, Georgia. Genre tells you little. Harvey Milk sounds like that day you were sitting in a meeting while construction was going on in the street right outside, and the entire building trembled for a week straight. And no one could hear anyone speak. But then there are the silences: cold, long, and awkward voids that make some of their songs seem minimalistic.
These were the trademarks of the early days of Harvey Milk, days that saw albums like the 1994 debut My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be, and then their second album, Courtesy and Good Will Toward Men. These two releases were epic, potent lessons in pain, depression, and the limits of human tolerance. Both are over an hour long, with two songs each that extend past the 10 minute mark. They could be called avant-garde, or noise, but those are just different ways of saying that when first played, these albums are not easy to listen to. The songs melt into each other, and it's easy to lose track of time. Harvey Milk demonstrates that it's possible to fit half an hour into five minutes as long as you're being subjected to music that is sprawling, bleak, and confusing enough.
After it became evident from record sales and concert turnouts that the world was less than appreciative about Harvey Milk's music, the band released The Pleaser, by far their most uninteresting release. It's chock-full of sleazy midtempo barnburners, turning the band into something like ZZ Top or Motorhead. It sounds good, as if this style had been the main destination rather than a diversion, but ultimately that's what it proved to be. The band, not getting the recognition they needed in order to continue playing, broke up soon after. The next studio album would come nine years later, in 2006, and with that Harvey Milk would return to a new musical landscape.
It's obvious that the majority of listeners were not quite ready for Harvey Milk when they formed in 1992, but by 2006 there were hundreds of bands doing those ultra-slow doom metal jams. Bongripper's Great Barrier Reefer and Hate Ashbury are two such albums, combining the wavy motion of post-rock with Melvinsish crunch and crashing. With Special Wishes, Harvey Milk was like a rightful king returning to the throne after a violent revolution. Granted, Special Wishes was something of a compromise between the two kinds of albums they'd already released. The album after, Life... The Best Game In Town, would be even closer to a perfect hybrid of Pleaser and Courtesy.
It seems they had found their niche, and began to tour fairly extensively, even making it up to Canada for the first time in 2009 and returning the next year on their A Small Turn Of Human Kindness tour. That last album is a perfect balance of everything Harvey Milk has done well so far, and may eventually be seen as their best work. I saw them play on both those tours, and afterwards I couldn't believe I had ever thought their albums were heavy. Their live shows are amazing. Each band member can navigate those wide pauses perfectly, and I'm fairly sure the concert venue Lee's Palace wasn't scheduled to be demolished that night but that's almost what happened.
The band's current lineup features Creston Spiers as vocals, guitar, and the occasional sledgehammer and anvil (used for percussion in the song All The Live Long Day). Harvey Milk is one of the heaviest bands I've ever heard, but Spiers' hoarse, mournful howls really make their music what it is. Stephen Tanner is on bass, ably following Creston's lead during the slow bits and then taking the wheel during any of the frequent depraved, scumbag guitar solos. Drummer Kyle Spence is the one with the hardest job, trying to keep time to these songs and navigating silences that seem louder than the instruments themselves. Paul Trudeau has also drummed for Harvey Milk, during both phases. In addition, Joe Preston (better known as a bassist) filled in as a second guitarist during the Life... recording sessions and subsequent tour.
It would seem that Harvey Milk is here to stay this time. Their recent shows have been packed full, even when touring outside of the country, and the music they're currently putting out is netting high praise from major music publications. There's no doubt they've earned it all, and it's great to see, for once, a happy ending for something that the world wasn't ready for.
Studio Albums:
My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be (1994)
Courtesy and Good Will Toward Men (1996)
The Pleaser (1997)
Special Wishes (2006)
Life... The Best Game in Town (2008)
A Small Turn of Human Kindness (2010)
Live Albums:
Live Pleaser (1997)
Live at TT the Bear's (1999)
Live at Supersonic July 12 2008 (2009)
Compilations/Rereleased material:
The Singles (2003)
The Kelly Sessions (2004)
Harvey Milk (2009)