Metal Monday: Which Bassist Was On This American Heritage Song Again?

posted in: Reviews & Playlists • Rock

If you’re in a band and you part ways with your bassist, what do you do? Well, some bands might replace their bassist or hire a studio musician, but not American Heritage. They enlisted an all-star cast of bassists to put in guest spots on their latest album, Sedentary. Bill Kelliher (of Mastodon) laid down some bass and even a guitar solo on the album, Rafa Martinez (of Black Cobra) lent his bass talents on the album, as well as Eric Bocek (of Joan of Arc, Ghosts And Vodka), who would become the band’s full-time bassits after the recording of Sedentary, among others.

If you’ve heard much music from Mastodon, Black Cobra or any of the other bands that lent a member to the recording of Sedentary, then it’s rather easy to hear the distinct influence from the different bassists. It’s especially easy to tell on the Bill Kelliher track since the guitarists in American Heritage use guitar tones similar those used by their friends in Mastodon for Remission and Leviathan. Bill’s signature bass style shines through on “Fetal Attraction.” The slight variance in style from song to song is one of the best parts about Sedentary, as each song is noticeably fresh and different, but still very much cohesive.

Before Sedentary was the band’s 2006 album Millenarian, which took a very similar style approach. It was dirty, fast, raucous, gritty, sludgy and all those other clichéd adjectives for American Heritage’s brand of music. In a March 1 interview with The Bone Reader Scott talked about the inspiration for Sedentary: “musically it came from evaluating what we were doing in general. Trying to figure out what had worked and what had failed in the past and trying to address those issues. I’m still pretty happy with most of Millenarian, but I also saw its weaknesses and tried to write towards a record that would fix some of what I thought was missing.”

And that’s exactly what they did. They took the formula from the critically-acclaimed Millenarian and made a better record. Even the artwork is incredible this time around”it was so good that it won first place for March 1 on ReignInArt.com, a site devoted to showcasing great album art in hard rock and metal.

Sedentary was released March 1 on Translation Loss Records, and you can pick up a copy from Translation Loss’ online store (along with a bunch of other great merch) or you can get it on iTunes.