"... local avant-garde doom-metal quartet Rabid Rabbit revisit the approach to their 2009 project Gloomy Sunday with a heavy take on Wagner's Gotterdammerung.
...they'll be tackling the third act of Richard Wagner's Gotterdammerung opera. I know next to nothing about opera, but I can tell you this much: the third act is where everyone starts murdering each other, culminating in a climactic, all-consuming funeral pyre. Pretty heavy. Rabid Rabbit will be covering the movement that features Siegfried's death and funeral march. The earth-moving band's rendition is not to be missed, especially after seeing how excellent Gloomy Sunday turned out."
Luca Cimarusti /Chicago Reader/The Bleader
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"This inventive local quartet's music incorporates elements of titanium-heavy doom metal, exploratory jazz and swirling psychedelic rock...(and) recently released its second album, the massive, midnight black "Czarny Sen" (BloodLust! Records)."
andy downing Chicago Red Eye
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RABID RABBIT
"Suicide Song" b/w "Gnos Edicius"
In
1936 a shoemaker in Budapest named Joseph Keller killed himself. In
his suicide note he reportedly quoted the lyrics to a 1933 song called
"Szomoru Vasarnap" (usually translated as "Gloomy Sunday") by pianist
Rezso Seress and poet Laszlo Javor. Within the year another 17 suicides
were rumored to be linked to the song, and soon wild stories spread
that put the worldwide "Gloomy Sunday" death toll in the hundreds. In
1968 Seress jumped from his apartment window to his death.
If this sounds a bit like an urban legend, well, I won't argue—the folks at Snopes.com are skeptical—but you have to admit it's also totally metal. Rabid Rabbit
thought so too, and the local doom-metal quartet's new cassette
single is a very loose cover of the song, performed by an expanded
lineup that features guests Michael Zerang on percussion, Dave Rempis
on saxophone, Mark Solotroff on vocals, and Bruce Lamont on sax and
vocals.
Many
of the first recordings of the song sound better suited for a
serenade scene in an early talkie than for a long bath with a razor,
but in RR's hands "Gloomy Sunday" is definitely miserable enough to
push a potential suicide over the edge. Nearly 12 minutes long, it
moves from sludge rock to an everything-is-melting psychedelic
interlude and then into a vocal part where Lamont, Solotroff, and RR
bassist and singer Andrea Jablonski sound like a gang of cenobites
performing some sort of macabre musical theater. On the flip side the
entire thing plays backward (the tape is actually a continuous loop),
which is needless to say even creepier. It's the best artifact yet to
come out of the increasingly intimate and somewhat mystifying
relationship between Chicago's metal scene and its improvised-music
community.
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“...Suffocating left-field stoner sludge and noise. Filthy feedback drenched raw ambiance from deepest Chicago...Not afraid to take on an avant edge, touch on dark psychedelic freekouts with their cerebral bottom end soothing. They weave around doom and stoner sludge, they take it in to prog-jazz, they do it all with a subtle touch, a clever twist and turn, you can either sink right in to it, or just float on �� their surface and bang your head...”
www.organart.org ( resonance radio London 104.4fm )
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“...crackling riffs ring out against backdrop of forceful rhythms all glued together by the twin bass drones with onl���«y minimal vocals to rise out of the tunnel of sludge...subtle nuances that become more apparent with each subsequent listen and a clear and genuine dynamic between the musicians is much in evidence. ��
A solid debut album.
Dean Pedley www.seaoftranquility.org
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“...Chicago’s Rabid Rabbit, an impromptu doom and noise rock quartet that’s extraordinarily unordinary... a never ending mass of rolling, psychedelic grooves.���±..”
Review by Nick DeMarino (StonerRock.com)
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"Local outfit Rabid Rabbit recalls avante-garde sludgecore and drone bands like I�� sis and Earth, but the quartet is far more focused than both of these groups combined. Plus, RRs members know that just because their instruments are tuned down to C doesn't mean they can't toss in an unexpected insttrumental freakout or unrelenting drum assault..." The Onion +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“With two bassists holding down the thick low end, Rabid Rabbit splits the difference between suffocating sludge and freaky rock n' roll madness, offering a hungover head trip for fans of everything from Sonic Youth���A to St. Vitus... The focus remains on hazy, enveloping atmosphere�� !... be content with Rabid Rabbit's live shows, which from the recorded evidence are no doubt wonderfully, thunderously filthy affairs."
Jeff Pizek Chicago Daily Herald
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“... an extra dose of brutal bowel-massaging bot��
tom end. The album’s seven tracks display a nice variety of moods, from avant-jazzy badass to posthardcore badass to dreamy doom badass. (Badass is so a mood!)... “
Monica Kendrick Chicago Reader *********************************************************************** ���
î“...has the feel of unbridled experimentalism, where the musicians simply took the dropped tunings, distortion and aggression of metal/extreme music and used them as raw materials for their own unusual and occasionally unexpected constructs...”
8 out of 10
Eden Tepedelen DECIBEL
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RABID RABBIT
C Section
(self-released)
In certain corners of the metal world, slow drone and minimalism are as popular as they've ever been outside of contemporary classical music, and local four-piece Rabid Rabbit is pushing that aesthetic as far as anyone in town. The band's new "single," C Section—so named because the guitar and both basses are tuned down to C—is a 16-minute instrumental track cut into one side of a vinyl 12-inch. It takes about a minute to fade in after you drop the needle on its outer edge, and for its entire length it sticks to a droning riff that alternates between just two notes—the drums don't even kick in till halfway through. But the band manages to inject this drawn-out sludgefest with some ferocious groove, and the wild-man sax solo from Yakuza front man Bruce Lamont sets it on fire. The band's only pressing 250 copies, so it's a good idea to pick one up now—otherwise you might have to wait till Halloween, when a self-titled Rabid Rabbit full-length comes out.
Miles Raymer
