If your band is ever struggling for a name, and the music that you play is even remotely heavy, I recommend looking to large land mammals for inspiration.

There's no shortage of large game out there to tap into, and band names like Black Elk and Mastodon have got to be some of the coolest monikers in recent

history. The American Bison is the largest land mammal in North America, it's a pretty formidible looking animal, and the name just kinda rolls off yer

tongue - so it kinda surprised me that noone had claimed the name before now. It certainly fits this buncha Canuck crushers though. Bison is a new band out

of Vancouver, Canada that was formed by James "Gnarwell" Fallwell, who had previously been a member of S.T.R.E.E.T.S. (which stood for Skateboarding Totally

Rules Everything Else Totally Sucks), a Vancouver thrash punk band that channeled Suicidal Tendencies style skatethrash and Thin Lizzy inspired guitar

heroics, professed their love of 70's krautrock and Hawkwind, and put their records in beautifully crude psychedelic album covers. S.T.R.E.E.T.S. broke up

not too long ago after generating a small buzz in the underground, but Fallwell couldn't keep quiet for long. Bison came together and this half-hour debut

shows a band that is already quickly reaching mastery of the riff, dropping huge, galloping Sabbath-on-crack riffage on a pounding rhythm section and

sounding like a punkier High On Fire with sweet twin guitar harmonies a la Thin Lizzy. Mystical beer-soaked lyrics evoke white wizards, aliens, revolution in

the streets and the "Stokasaurus", and songs like "The Curse" sound like what Queens Of The Stone Age might sound like if Matt Pike was at the helm. Total

thunder. The disc comes in a bright yellow digipack with rad lysergic artwork.