Cameron Winter – ‘Heavy Metal’ album review: a fantastical first solo outing
THE SKINNY: It’s quite a daring feat to plump for releasing a solo record only two albums into your band’s career, but Geese are far from being an ordinary band. Having released their debut album Projector when they were only teenagers, the New York group presented themselves as a scrappy but slightly off-kilter variant on the booming post-punk scene. With their second album, 2023’s 3D Country, they reinvented themselves completely as a freewheeling art rock powerhouse, fusing together elements of country and gospel while throwing psychedelic meltdowns aplenty into the mix.
Given how much of a collective effort writing material for Geese appears to be, this leads us to frontman Cameron Winter’s solo debut, Heavy Metal. Compelled to write and record some of his own material while on a tour of gruelling proportions with his band, his first effort under his own name is a far more personal affair than either of the Geese records, although the storytelling on the record and the circumstances it was alleged to have been created under are far from straightforward.
Grappling with so many emotions throughout its ten songs, the feelings of loneliness, existentialism and hopelessness all begin to entangle, creating a haziness that causes some of these classic reference points to become fantastical and clouded by unexpected diversions into the surreal. There’s an overarching theme on Heavy Metal of searching for a higher power, but this religious fervour results in apocryphal tales where it’s hard to tell where reality ends and fiction begins.
The stories presented for the album seem just as hard to believe, with the record having supposedly been written “in abandoned basements, taxi back seats, and in impromptu jam sessions in public spaces”, although Winter’s proclivity for being an unreliable narrator would suggest that the album was not pieced together in such an abnormal fashion. There’s a definite madness to the record, but it all feels so wonderfully connected by lyrical callouts to other songs on the album and a musical coherence that it could only have been created with an intentional touch.
The dreamlike imagery and bizarre turns of phrase echo the style of artists like Captain Beefheart, while the mournful nature of the songs feel more akin to Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen at their forlorn best, with bleakness often being punctuated by moments of hilarity.
Whatever project he is working on, Winter is seemingly always out to surprise, and while the album title might suggest that there’s going to be a lot of crunching riffs and Satanic worship, the madness is presented in a far more raw and emotionally arresting fashion, with deft arrangements shining underneath his captivating and often histrionic performance.
For fans of: Separating from your gaggle of friends, hysterical evangelising, osmium.
A concluding comment from a confused Black Sabbath fan: “What is this that stands before me?”
Heavy Metal track by track:
Release Date: December 6th | Producer: Loren Humphrey & Cameron Winter | Label: Partisan Records
‘The Rolling Stones’: A gentle and lilting opener that welcomes the listener into the mysterious world of the record, with Winter starting as he means to go on with surreal lyrics about conga lines of chickens and Brian Jones being “born to swim”. Much like the album title, this song bears little resemblance to its namesake other than the aforementioned reference. [4.5/5]
‘Nausicaä (Love Will Be Revealed): A relatively straightforward soft rock cut that has a warm Hammond organ running throughout and some pretty flourishes of violin and piano. Winter flexes his stunning range in places, bringing some of the same vocal acrobatics and shapeshifting as he does on Geese records. [3.5/5]
‘Love Takes Miles’: The closest there is to a feel-good pop song on the record, with a bouncing chorus and jaunty piano riff. There’s a longing for a greater love on this track, and the existentialism begins to creep in while everything around Winter tries its best to remain positive. [4/5]
‘Drinking Age’: Bringing the mood down and becoming much more dour than the songs that precede it, this maudlin piano ballad sees the singer dive further into his own psyche and discover some uncomfortable truths about himself that he wishes he could change. [4/5]
‘Cancer of the Skull’: Full to the brim with strange imagery, the mid-point of the album takes the themes of ‘Drinking Age’ and sees Winter try and rectify his flaws in very extreme ways, almost as though going through a psychotic exorcism. [4.5/5]
‘Try as I May’: A disappointing comedown from the previous track, that doesn’t seem to go anywhere except for wallowing in the same state of confusion and hopelessness. [3/5]
‘We’re Thinking the Same Thing’: The shortest track on the album continues the lull, and Winter’s deeper register makes it hard to parse some of the lyrics and grab any meaning from the song. The bowed bass and flickers of electronics hint towards the outright mania that is about to arrive, but doesn’t really deliver to its fullest potential. [3/5]
‘Nina + Field of Cops’: Erupting with drama from the outset, this frenetic song feels like a sudden outburst of all the pent-up emotions that the rest of the album has been restraining. The lyrics ramble from one line into another in a true stream of consciousness, but as off-the-wall and frenzied as it feels, it’s the most arresting and captivating moment that Heavy Metal offers. [4.5/5]
‘$0’: The lead single is the eureka moment of the album, and despite initially giving the impression that it will be a slow-burning and minimalist piano lamentation, it becomes another chaotic moment of self-reflection, epiphany and discovery. God is real. [4.5/5]
‘Can’t Keep Anything’: After the turbulence of the previous two songs, the closer sees Winter reflect on the entirety of the album, weigh up the losses he has been through, and ultimately find peace within himself in order to establish his path from now on. [4/5]
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