Birds Of Maya

Birds Of Maya

Valdez

Drag City

***A long era of dull ringing and nothing else in our ears is over. Once again, winds of warm guitar and humid thunderheads of bass and toms rumble all around. With Valdez, Birds of Maya are back in flight. And like the first song title explicitly states, this latest is a soaring blast of riffers, rife with punk rock abandon, sludge, treble, distortion, neck-throttling rock n roll solos, pummeling drums and bass and half-shouted/half-gargled vocals, all of it half on and half off the mic. For the good times as always, these Birds! That’s how they’ve done it: fast and heavy, hard, live and loose, amid accumulating piles of empties, in appropriately informal environments since 2004-ish, with their three LPs (on Holy Mountain, Richie and Little Big Chief) ripping us up whenever they drop. With each release, our thirst has increased, but to our horror, we haven’t found any fresh feathers from their tree in the new release bins since 2013. In the past five years or so, there’s been a couple gigs here and there, but intensities in cities other than Philly has always been a rare thing. And with no Ready to Howl 2 on the schedule, you MUSTA wondered... were these an extinct Birds? Nah! Somewhere in Philadelphia, Jason Killinger, Ben Leaphart and Mike Polizze played on—preferably outside—but wherever, really. Still making it happen as always: taping everything they play—with bass, drums, guitar and vocals fighting for space in the condensing mics of cheap recorders—then tossing the...

Birds Of Maya

Ready To Howl

Agitated

For the past few years, dropouts all over the world have been nodding out to the amped-up riffing of Purling Hiss and the economical chug-a-lug zen of Spacin’. But only the most committed seekers have been privy to the roaring big bang that started it all: Birds of Maya, the finest meat ’n’ potatoes neanderthal hard rock group operating in the world today. At the strike of the first note, their locked-in dynamo gets real, real gone. It must be seen to be believed—though since the Birds rarely (very, very rarely) perform outside of their North Philadelphia neighborhood, Ready to Howl will have to suffice. Ready to Howl is the soundtrack to an upcoming feature-length film of the same name about one dude’s struggles inside (and outside) of polite society. According to the producer, the plotline roughly follows “getting off of work, partying, a parking lot bottle fight with a marine, driving drunk, the purchase of a deadly snake for purposes of revenge, hitchhiking, off-road driving, car accident, the folly of vindictiveness, and finally a physical and metaphorical ascent to the highest point of the mountain.” The soundtrack’s three songs cover Friday, Saturday and Sunday. While astute listeners might notice nods to Split-era Groundhogs power rock and the relentless garage mayhem of High Rise under a claustrophobic sub-Funhouse decadence, anyone with ears will pick up on the fried Hendrixisms all over this thing. The double-disc vinyl version of Ready to Howl has been out of print for a while, and...

Birds Of Maya

Vol. 1

Holy Mountain

It's been said that "Volume One" is possibly the best rock release to come out of Philadelphia ever. While low on recording budget, attitude and pretension, Birds of Maya is high on stolen riffs and an energetic execution seldom seen outside of a Sunday ruling by Seamus McCaffery. Whether they are mangling riffs or stepping way out for  fried boogie solos Birds of Maya oozes a dark chunky sludge with elements from all the colors of the classic rock rainbow. Do they really sound like "a GG Allin demo played through a megaphone?" It's a fair description and it's certainly colorful, but it leaves out an  awful lot. They are loud and they are chaotic, but they have way more groove than GG Allin could have ever imagined.  "Birds of Maya did what countless garage rock geeks try and fail at: dust off 1968 and bring it back to life without making it look like museum piece. Bringing on the best of 60s power trios like Hendrix and Cream, a whiff of Blue Cheer's bongwater, Black Sabbath's bass  heavy paranoia, and Stooges bum-out, they were sloppy in all the right places. The jamming never got tired and held everyone's raptattention." -phawker.com