Picture a sasquatch strolling up to you on a busy street, and you'll get a sense of the surprise inherent in this, an honest-to-god Loincloth LP. For nearly a decade, the band-- a burly, ultra-technical instrumental-metal outfit with members split between Raleigh, N.C. and Richmond, Va.-- lurked in the shadows like some cryptozoological beast glimpsed only in a handful of tantalizing photographs. Prior to Iron Balls of Steel, Loincloth's complete discography totaled four songs, lasting a few seconds shy of 12 minutes.
But there was magic in those tracks (first issued on a 2003 CD-R demo, with two of the selections also appearing on a Southern Lord 7" and a third on a Swami Records comp), which subjected majestic doom to merciless rhythmic dislocation. Their resolute rawness was like a stop sign held up against better-known technical-metal bands like Meshuggah, whose complexity is tempered by mechanistic coldness. In this one brief dispatch, Loincloth proved that it was possible for metal's essential caveman-ness to coexist with its burgeoning brainiac impulses. Yet for all their musical conviction, Loincloth seemed ambivalent at best about their bandhood; the quartet never emerged for even a single live gig, and for years, an ill-maintained MySpace page was all that signified their existence. It seemed reasonable to conclude that Loincloth's hibernation was permanent.
Late 2011 brought bittersweet news: A Loincloth LP was finally due, but for reasons they're keeping private, the band had completed it without guitarist Pen Rollings, a key presence on the demo and a cult-hero avant-metal artisan known for his work in the head-spinning early math-rock trio Breadwinner. Rollings had helped bolster the Loincloth legend via a hilariously outspoken Chunklet interview, in which he mocked Norwegian black metal's humorless facade (a sentiment expressed on the demo via the track title "Church Burntings") and discussed his experiences navigating the underground rock scene as an openly gay man. On paper, the loss is a bummer, but the disappointment fades once Iron Balls starts spinning; remaining guitarist Tannon Penland handles the increased load via skillful multitracking, and the band's fearsomely precise rhythm section-- bassist Cary Rowells and drummer Steve Shelton, both also of the recently reactivated Raleigh progressive-doom outfit Confessor, whose polarizing 1991 masterpiece, Condemned, planted the seed for Loincloth's insular obsessiveness-- sounds huger than ever, abetted by a crisp, full-bodied production job.
Crucially, the 16-track, 38-minute Iron Balls isn't just an entree portion of the appetizer delivered on the demo. Penland, Rowells, and Shelton seem to understand that their unwaveringly maximal math metal can be numbing, and they've found novel ways of adapting their aesthetic to the LP format without opting for obvious compromises like guest vocalists, covers, or the dreaded remix. (A few tracks do make tasteful use of ambient-style atmospherics, either as a backdrop or as interstitial material.) While some pieces here follow the zero-frills M.O. of the demo-- brutal brain-scramblers that exhaust themselves in little over a minute-- others strive for and achieve an actual emotional arc, an epic narrative sweep that places Iron Balls in the company of recent work by wordless prog-metal titans Dysrhythmia.
The best of the bite-size pieces are breathless marvels. "Hoof-Hearted", the album's shortest track at 75 seconds, juxtaposes a needling solo-guitar break with vertiginous drops into a hard-swinging, full-band groove. After the initial kick-in, the band works its way up to a series of white-water accents and quickly yanks the rug out, again leaving Penland alone. The trio recaps this sequence in various fractured forms, as though feeding their theme through a series of irregular gears; even after repeated listens, the track retains its dislocating power, but the basic motifs lodge firmly in your head. In contrast to the material on the demo, tracks like "Hoof-Hearted" and Iron Balls opener "Underwear Bomb"-- in which a swaggery, prog-blues riff lumbers forward in the face of almost comically relentless mathy digressions-- leave you feeling strangely fulfilled, not merely pummeled.
On some tracks, technicality overwhelms coherence. The dizzyingly nimble "Shark Dancer", for example, shows off Steve Shelton's trademark stuttering double-bass work (never simply a cruise-control drone) and counterintuitive use of cymbals (marked by rigorous hand-muting and oddly placed thwacks), as well as Cary Rowells' intrepid mirroring of his rhythm partner. But the piece zooms ahead without a clear thematic thread and fails to make a lasting impression. "Slow 6 Apocalypse", which exhausts itself in a fit of Morse-code turbulence, feels similarly elusive.
In contrast, several more fleshed-out pieces here transcend the stone-faced chug of the demo-- not to mention the pervasive silliness of Iron Balls' album and track titles-- and achieve an improbable pathos. "Stealing Pictures" begins as headlong midtempo math rock, fueled by cyclical riffs that churn and mutate without pause, but around the minute mark, the tempo halves and Penland picks out a poignant theme redolent of warm-blooded 1990s post-hardcore (Quicksand comes to mind). Later in the song, the band returns to this passage and lingers on it in uncharacteristically patient fashion. "Long Shadows" fixates on its own captivating motif, woozy yet crystalline, which the band uses as a launchpad for a weighty avant-doom adventure. On these pieces, as well as other highlights like the glimmeringly textural closer, "Clostfroth", Loincloth peel back their armor-plated exterior to expose the beating heart within.
By recording a full-length, offering listeners a clear 360-degree view of their previously shadowy creation, Loincloth have put their valuable, longstanding mystique on the line. Iron Balls could've easily revealed that the project worked best as a one-off lark, thriving on the strict limitations of the EP format. But it turns out that this monster looks many times more intriguing up close; without taking any easy shortcuts, Penland, Rowells, and Shelton reveal here that their beast harbors genuine beauty. The disc ought to have the proud, few Loincloth faithful weeping with joy, but more importantly, it leaves room for a broader audience to hear what the fuss was all about.
