Earthless don't leave room for misinterpretation or error concerning their mission: They are a long-winded guitar trio, hell-bent on riding six electric strings directly out of this atmosphere. No sooner than the drums unload their initial heavy hit on the band’s first album in six years—the ridiculous ripper From the Ages—Isaiah Mitchell takes his first solo, his squealing lead slashing cleanly through a vacant gaze of cymbal wash. The band soon digs back in, with drummer Mario Rubalcaba and bassist Mike Eginton instantly stitching a sturdy pocket. But it’s Mitchell that almost always edges out front in Earthless. He rides through a riff and races off into tangents for minutes on end. After that lead burst during album opener “Violence of the Red Sea,” he bends a theme a half-dozen different ways, whether retracing his lead with a wah-wah moan here or a whammy bar battle with himself there. Rubalcaba and Eginton don’t pull Mitchell back toward earth; they instead follow his ecstatic lead everywhere, fellow travelers on his odyssey of enthusiasms.
Since Earthless’ last album, 2007’s Rhythms from a Cosmic Sky, its members have been busy: Rubacalba has been behind the throne for new old punks OFF! and out front for San Diego pounders Spider Fever. Mitchell joined Howlin Rain for its Rick Rubin-helmed catastrophe The Russian Wilds and started the blustery, concise psych group Golden Void with some high school buddies and his wife. Mitchell actually presaged Golden Void at the end of Rhythms with the swiveling Groundhogs cover “Cherry Red”, the shortest bit of Earthless’ oeuvre by a quarter-hour.
The experience of getting back into bands playing discrete tunes serves From the Ages well, as Earthless breaks the album’s hour-plus runtime into four digestible tracks. “Violence of the Red Sea” syncs well with “Uluru Rock”, a smoldering tune that’s steadily fanned until it leaps into flames. By trek’s end, the rhythm section’s beating back hard against Mitchell, his fingers bouncing between notes as though his hands are the levers and posts of a pinball machine. “Equus October” indulges a cosmic drift, with the bass leading the Om-like way for circular drums and a twilit haze of electrostatic ambiance. It’s an uncharacteristically subdued side of Earthless. As such, it only last five minutes.
The closing title track, however, burns on for more than half an hour. It’s the sum of everything before it, not only in length but also in the establishment of a structure and dynamic that allow the span to be an epic, not just another tedious bro jam. The trio roars at the start, drums and bass thrashing behind Mitchell’s lead. They shift into a viscous blues bounce and then into a great astral smear, eventually riding an Arabian riff into a meditative rumble. The guitar lines waft like smoke across an empty field. Earthless sit still a bit too long here; remarkably, this is the one moment of From the Ages where the band’s patience might test your own. But they come roaring back, driving into a coda that’s heavier than anything they’ve ever done. All the solos and sidetracks collapse into one brilliant exit. A journey meant for getting lost suddenly makes good on the destination.
In 2013, the place and purpose of acts like Earthless or Endless Boogie elicit some interesting questions about genre and intent. These are essentially roadhouse bands, capable of stretching a rock'n'roll theme from here to infinity. But when so many of us can’t pay attention enough to engage with an entire album, is there a need for an hour of three dudes tracing and retracing a melody? Does this digressive stuff work only on stage, where a few beers and a few puffs have softened everyone’s focus enough to sink into solo after solo after solo? Is this the jurisdiction of jam bands, in the most cynical and checked-out sense? To an extent, yes: Earthless’ music—not unlike that of Sleep or Bardo Pond or Eternal Tapestry or, you know, The Grateful Dead—requires a certain suspension of now, a commitment to and comfort with being ferried away for however long they please. But From the Ages is more a reminder of the fun that can be had with the most basic elements of rock, too. This is the atavistic magic of three people locked in a room only with their instruments and each other, eyes closed, and mouths open. Earthless are incredibly indulgent, sometimes to a fault, but they’re much too excitable to be called selfish or masturbatory. The dudes are once again just riffing here. It’s a trip worth taking, at least a few times.
