NEW OWL MAG FEATURE STORY:

THE SERMON: GOOD EVENING, ROCK ‘N’ ROLL
They are a killer’s sort. Cool black and with ‘60s ingenuity, The Sermon hit you hard with the rock ‘n’ roll you’ve been dying for. There’s no time and need for contracts, attitudes, or hoards of groupies. After much consideration, this is a different genre. It’s not neglected and it’s not meant for the masses. We fans are the insiders and we keep it because we are deep into it. And now, with their latest release Articles of War, there’s much to know and be wild for.

I struggle with The Sermon (industry wise and in writing a piece on them). Wanting to give the band due respects and not just literarily blow them, I find it hard to prescribe a band that should already have your attention. Front man Mick and I hash it up—often. You don’t win, let alone profit, in a mainstream that has sucked for so long. A mainstream of American Idol (which makes sense, it’s got to be generic if it’s going to appeal to so many. The music isn’t really that bad, but most people are absentee listening) and buzz bands (who would fare much better if MySpace and other music press outlets weren’t oversaturated with them. Too much competition and the quick evolution of knockoffs on style and sound don’t give these bands a chance).

But let’s play the buzz game anyway, let The Sermon be to the garage/blues cult what The Horrors were for a quick sensation to Tim Burton-garage/punk (I jumped on that train so quick. Still on it). The Sermon is movie cool, like walking into a pool hall in the bad part of town too late at night, or getting the inside tip on a basement show in the woods of nowhere—everything with a dirty filter, shadows, and tempting. Talking to Mick (and in trying to do a relevant interview), we hardly talk directly about the band and its music; it’s always ghost stories, film, and strange memories. And so, these are what make The Sermon engaging and real. Their music bleeds dark excitement and appealing risk because it’s a reflection of what they like, and it just happens to be a fulfilling rock product. Mick admits that whatever he’s reading or preoccupied with manages to come in lyrically. None of it’s forced; it comes through in the live show too.

The Sermon live show is rock the way it ought to be. It’s present and with danger, not like a cheap mosh pit or trying performer, but that danger of feeling aggressive and inspired, the urge to ignite. There’s not much that does that to me these days, and shit, I’m thankful. I check in and out of going to shows, but I don’t miss Sermon shows. Imagery or moods, something is there when you listen. The oddity and heart translate into the music. The Sermon have it, once you’ve heard them, you don’t forget it.

–Mari Tanaka/The Owl Mag

107.7, THE BONE, ARTICLES OF WAR REVIEW:
"Doctor what does it mean?/Who will be the one to lower me down?/Who will be the one to lower me into the ground?" Never before have I ever been so ready to accept my mortality. I have a good feeling about who’s going to be laying me down, but after hearing these questions from the song “Sickbed,” I might be asking The Sermon to bury me instead.

Articles of War, The Sermon’s sophomore effort, captures a good deal of darkness. Song’s like “Sickbed” and “Pilot to Gunner” aren’t exactly Raffi tunes. Mixing bites of garage and punk with the larger meal of rock and roll, The Sermon allows themselves to explore all kinds of sounds with their Biblical and war tainted lyrics. It’s a tad ironic that they open the album with a song called “A Choice of Weapons”, not because of the meaning of the lyrics but because The Sermon has so many different ways that they come at the music. The opener makes one think about The Stooges more that The Rolling Stones and track two, “Time Zone Blues” (which is a great song, by the way) will make one think more of The Stones than The Stooges. “Invitations” which is a duet between lead singer Mike Gabriel and guest Penelope Houston (lead singer for the legendary punk group The Avengers) sounds like Nirvana could have written the verses.

And “Sickbed,” well, let’s just say it runs pretty close to even with Bob Dylan’s “Love Sick”. It is important to note that I don’t invoke the name of Dylan all willy-nilly, understood? Unlike many of the harder rock/punk bands in the Bay Area, The Sermon is able to change their dynamics and sound at will without losing their identity. Even throwing some honky-tonk piano in on a few tracks doesn’t make you say, “What the hell?” It makes you say, “Pass me a sasparilla...and The Sermon’s second album!”

I shouldn’t be making light of Articles of War because it’s an album that really doesn’t make light of anything. To hear this kind of heavy material done so well from a local band is almost unheard of. They are strong, versatile, lyrically sound, and hard to escape. Go get the album physically, electronically, anyway you can! But if you’re held up in your sickbed and only have the energy to flip on your FM radio, then give yourself a chance to hear The Sermon as Joe Rock hosts Local Licks on 107.7, the Bone!

–Shannon Koehler/107.7, the Bone

LIVE SHOW REVIEWS, click here

SLEAZEGRINDER INTERVIEW, click here

'VOLUME' REVIEWS (Alternative Tentacles Records):

Alt.Culture.Guide
Inspired by the relative success of bands like the Strokes, the Hives and the White Stripes, everybody and their brother wants to be in a garage band these days. San Francisco's the Sermon comes by its credentials honestly, the band boasting former members of the Fells, the Mount McKinleys and the Dukes Of Hamburg among its ranks. Veteran rockers genuflecting before the twin altars of the late-60s Detroit sound and the British invasion bands, the Sermon kicks out brimstone-scented jams with Volume, the band's erstwhile debut. A rattletrap collection of songs that roar like a Harley's red-hot tailpipe and buzz at the frequency of a nuclear meltdown, Volume offers up R&B drenched, feedback-ridden tales of death and degradation with a Bo Diddley heartbeat and the reckless soul of the Yardbirds. With appropriately murky production and fuzzy, effects-laden guitars, songs like the semi-psychedelic "Surprise" or the powerful "Tender Sin" – which hums like an electrical storm across a trailer park – lay waste to all but the heartiest of garage rock competitors. "Time Has Come" sounds like the result of some time transference experiment gone awry, echoed vocals chanted over a reverberating guitar riff while some crazed timekeeper pounds away at a drum set deep in the mix. The nightmarish "No Beast So Fierce" sounds like a mutant Muddy Waters, distorted blues guitars layered beneath a sordid lyrical tale while a manic mouth harp punctuates the words with tortured wails. "Exterminator" hits like vintage Velvet Underground, or maybe like Lou Reed cramming a copy of Metal Machine Music down Lester Bangs' throat while the soulful "Get Over, Again" resurrects the long-dead spirit of the MC5 for one more dance through the graveyard. Forget about all those major label-manufactured-and-marketed "garage rock" bands that they're trying to sell you on MTV and in music magazines. As the new gods of garage punk, the Sermon takes its rightful place among rock & roll royalty like the Riverboat Gamblers, the Dirtbombs, the Detroit Cobras and the New Bomb Turks. If you like your rock hard, loud and sweaty, then look no further than the Sermon's Volume. Tell 'em that the Reverend sent you....
–Keith A. Gordon

Sleazegrinder
San Francisco hooligans The Sermon aren’t exactly reinventing the garage rock wheel on their debut long-player, Volume, for Alternative Tentacles. The five-piece, which counts ex-members of The Fells and Mt. McKinleys in its ranks, slings Nuggets-style retro rockers with heavy dollops of R&B and psych feedback like any number of black Levi-clad basement punkers, but their X factor is spelled out in the album’s title: plenty of volume, Jackson. The Sermon wrap a sonic straitjacket of buzzsaw rock around their creepy-crawly tales of futility, roadside murder and working class rage and set the whole thing to burning in a white-hot fury with a twin-guitar-and-theremin blitz. Funny thing is, the damn thing’s got a groove running through every tune that you could almost dance to – if you had, say, 10,000 volts running through you. If that’s the kind of charge you need, here’s the place to plug in.
–Paul Gaita

East Bay Express
The menacing, crime-ridden garage rock of the Sermon is a break from the usual hippie-dippy fare. This SF gang of five sticks to its themes of murder and revenge, firing off cathartic, violent blasts of guitar at those they hate and desire to extinguish. It's not the '60s of flower power and shiny harmonies that the Sermon conjures up, but the era of Charles Manson, blood-splattered walls, and hippies gone homicidal. One guitarist works in the San Francisco police crime lab, while screamer Mike Gabriel, who also plays the theremin, is responsible for the twisted lyrics. The subject matter is thus pretty fucked up, as on "No Beast So Fierce": I'll cut you down where you stand/And locks don't mean nothin'/And I know how to wait/by your back door/your garden gate/If you're asleep now/if you're awake/And there's no/No beast so fierce. Pissed and unhinged, the enraged howling and jagged guitar recall Black Flag at its meanest. "Luzerne County," meanwhile, is a pleasant ditty about a man who's stuffed in a trunk as he pleads for his life and family, and is then smashed over the head with a rock and dumped in coal near the county line. A song about inner torments, "The Other Side of the Mirror," concerns an insane person living in a house with two sets of curtains to keep the light out, who eventually travels to the other side of that mirror, Twilight Zone-style. An upside-down leafless tree on Volume's cover is likely to attract unsuspecting death metalers, who may or may not dig the Sermon's raw garage sound. But really, it's aspiring serial killers and smalltime scumbags (as well as fans of scuzzy punk) who should find inspiration in the Sermon's unrepentant sickness.
–Adam Bregman

Razorcake
Stop me if you’ve heard this one in the last twenty years or so, but I think the hottest rockin’ album of the month is on... Alternative Tentacles? Straight-up garage a la the Makers or Cynics (minus the tambourine as an instrument of male pleasure), with the operative difference being that they actually print the lyrics–and they’re not about how the singer’s penis is actually that of a large, fearsome, stylish wolf or anything of that nature, either. Wacky! What can I say? A garage album that would sound not at all out of place taped on the back of the same cassette as you have your Knockout Pills album taped on the front. What I find most amusing is how the songs with outright sociopolitical content– “No Beast So Fierce”, “Luzerne County”, “Hand to Hand”– are smirkfully reminiscent of the two-“worship”-songs-minimum that I understand performers are required to commit to before obtaining gigs at Christian coffeehouses. All the same, I can’t say as I saw this ‘un coming. Keen. BEST SONG: “Tender Sin”, but I also really like the psychedelic “Surprise”, although it kind of pissed me off that I spent so much time trying to figure out who originally did it before I saw that it was written by the drummer. BEST SONG TITLE: “491”–what can I say? Prime numbers command respect! FANTASTIC AMAZING TRIVIA FACT: If the song “Exterminator” is, as it appears, to be about the William S. Burroughs book of the same name, my understanding is that it should end with an exclamation point.
–Rev. Norb

Horizontal Action
Damn dude. This could be the best thing I’ve ever gotten to review. These guys would fit nicely on a bill with The Catholic Boys. Just a little more straight forward than the CB’s spasmodics, with more East Bay Ray-style hooks. A lot of jerks get on myspace.com and befriend me (and Horizontal Action) thinking little ol’ us are their ticket to booze, chix and their big showbiz dream: a slot in the next Blackout [*Chicago Rock ‘n Roll Festival]. Sorry fellas, but I’m small tatters in the Horizontal Action hierarchy, but more importantly, your bands ain’t shit compared to this, and unlike The Sermon, you’re just rehashing the same ol’ safe-and-tired tricks like some washed-up Van Nuys stripper. The lead singer even plays a theremin in the middle of this craziness. McThrobb is throbbin’ over this one ladies, so come on over and join me in the hottub.
–Cozz McThrobb

Splendidezine.com
There’s something about the garage-soul combination that kicks the doors down. Think about it–BellRays, Dirtbombs, Delta 72, John Wilkes Booze Explosion, Spencer, et al–the genre has an unusually high incidence of excellence. The Sermon, out of San Francisco, continues in this very fine tradition, drawing on ex-members of The Fells, Mount McKinleys and The Revelers to make its beer-stained magic. On Volume the band’s debut, these four retro hard rockers churn out high energy rock-and-soul built on simple, repetitive riffs and riding the rocket of speed, intensity and effort. “Tender Sin”’s buzzing bass and drums intro tells you everything you need to know about The Sermon–it’s a muscular tease that builds and builds until the singer crashes through it with a rock and roll yell. “Luzerne County” is less of a vamp and more of an attack, its fast, fist-pumping riff leading into an echoplexed breakdown, its sweaty, full-on vocals charged with MC5-ish passion. Volume’s hardest hitting tracks are clustered toward the front end. The band’s softer, psychier side gets a turn with “Surprise”, a jangling, Nuggets-ready power ballad. “Miss A”, too, leans melodically toward power pop, but without sacrificing the thick, garage-rock guitar riffs that give the album structure. The Sermon recalls People Get Ready-era Mooney Suzuki, retro, hard-rocking, tinged with psyche and soul and powered by monolithic riffs. They're probably a monster live, too. If you like ‘60s-referencing garage at all, you’ll have no problem sitting through The Sermon.
–Jennifer Kelly

Xclaim
Any serious music fan should be willing to do some dirty things to get their hands on this. The Sermon’s debut is one of the most exciting things to happen to home stereos. With a current line-up that includes ex-members of the Fells, Mount McKinleys and the Dukes of Hamburg, this San Francisco band has created a perfectly damaging sound. This is one of the best bands creating ‘60s-inspired garage rock. The Sermon carries a well-blended mix of the Yardbirds and the legendary Detroit scene brought on by wonders like the Stooges and the MC5. The results are formidable, as the band flies through “No Beast So Fierce” with impressive fury and slides into the mellower “Surprise.” Weaving together guitar-laden tales of desperation and destitution, this is the soundtrack to hard living.
–Liz Worth

Impact Press
Punk rock is supposed to be unrelenting and angry, so it’s a real bonus when it also happens to be good. “Volume” is a hard-hitting, dirty album–making punk rock sound fresh and not at all formulaic. The drums are punishing–the vocals, wailing, and even with all the distortion on the fuzzy guitars, “Volume” sounds innovative and new. An album this enthusiastic, this raw and furious, makes you feel optimistic about rock–sort of like the White Stripes did before “Elephant”. While “Volume” is uncompromisingly punk rock, its sensibilities transcend genres. The tracks would sound just as relevant blaring out of a honky tonk as they would in your living room. I hope they’re as good live as they are in the studio. This album rocks.

Better Propaganda
First off, getting on yer knees won’t help ward off The Sermon. They don’t ask you to get on your knees, just to testify, to bear witness to the apocalyptic swarm of bees pouring from their over heated amps. “Luzerne County” sounds like the band is in a 10,000 foot freefall, strapped to the roof of a ‘72 Ford Galaxie 500 with it’s engine screaming... for mercy or more fuel, it’s hard to tell. The Sermon, on the other hand, sound like Atombombpocketknife and The Icarus Line thrown into a blender with a Kansas tornado of African bees... and the blender is never, ever shut off.
–Alan Williamson

MP3.com
Garage rock’s a peculiar place. Its fairly strict parameters don’t allow for a great deal of experimentation...but of course, every band wants to have its own thing. So it is that The Sermon energizes its already-breakneck garage R&B on occasion with the civilized world’s most enigmatic instrument, the theremin. While the inclusion of spacey whirs and buzzes may reek of shtick, a debut as fierce as Volume more than supercedes any charges of gimmickry leveled at the band–the quintet’s economic, ear-shattering performances blow through every roadblock in sight on their own stomping accord. Subtle as a train wreck and about as cacophonous, the first skull-whack arrives about eight seconds in on the opener, “Time Has Come.” Muffled vocals, punch-up choruses running on maximum RPMs, and the band’s British Invasion-on-speed-meets-Detroit sound all see the 37-minute sonic beatdown through to the end. Best bits: "Luzerne County"; “491”; “Hand to Hand” (4 out of 5 stars)
–Charles Hodgkins

Full Frontal Records U.K.
For lovers of MC5, The Stooges and early Punk (‘76-‘77) then you are going to love this album. With tracks like “Time Has Come”, “No Beast So Fierce” and “Miss A” you aren’t going to want to turn this cd off. So many bands have tried to play Stooges and MC5 influenced music and often failed but these guys have it just right and one wonders whether they listen to bands such as The Libertines and The Mutts, too?!! What I think makes this band stand out from all the other bands that have based their sound around MC5 and The Stooges is most try and capture the feeling from back in the ‘70s but in reality they can’t as they weren’t there but The Sermon are no fools! They add a modern day feel to the music and that’s what makes them stand out and I’m surprised these guys aren’t huge?!! And I mean that. They deserve to be huge. Alternative Tentacles have put a blinder out here and one could imagine the likes of Lydon, Wayne Kramer and Iggy Pop sneeking off to their bedrooms and pogoing to this. It’s brilliant so let’s noise up the neighbours! 9.5/10

Skratch Magazine
The Sermon is playing a The Yardbirds’ chaos meets The Stooges’ muscle version of garage rock. VOLUME is a serious example of why the rock wouldn’t die: it’s emotional and dirty and fun beyond belief. Jeff Glave and Matt Gabriel make up one hell of a guitar attack. The tones are fuzzed-out and violent. The rhythm section plays like angry weather on an enormous beat. Some of my favorite cuts include “Tender Sin”, “491”, and the 12th and final cut, “Hand to Hand”. What a noisefest stomp ‘n’ roll. VOLUME is a disc that should be played loud. The Sermon is delivering essential rock ‘n’ roll.
–H. Barry Zimmerman

Origivation Magazine
Here it is...some low-fi punk garage rock. Sounds like someone crossed the Who of “My Generation” with some early Black Flag. Raucous, sloppy, and rude; everything a good punk album should be. There’s not much to be said for albums of this nature, since the music speaks for itself. As lame as that last statement was, it’s basically true. Instead of vesting any interest in bands like the Hives, track this album down. (4.5 out of 5 stars)

SH Zine
Ok, so I don’t really like the White Stripes too much, and all of these other modern garage bands that everyone was so excited about never caught my attention either. That’s why I wasn’t expecting much from The Sermon. However, this band, for lack of a better phrase, KICKS OUT THE JAMS! This is in no way watered down, nor is it trying to gain attention from the mainstream. This is relentless, blistering rock and roll at its finest. From the beginning of this release, The Sermon deliver song after song of straight up, badass, bluesy rock and roll. I implore you to check this out.
–Josiah

All Music Guide
The latest garage punk bruisers to enter the ring are San Francisco's The Sermon and as the name would suggest, they have a gospelized R&B edge to their particular rock & roll brew. What's channeled is more R&B than gospel, but no matter what you mix it with the source is the same and on Volume it's doing a boot heel shimmy down the aisle with a snake in one hand and brass knuckles in the other. The music is meat and potatoes garage punk à la Shadows of Knight, The Fleshtones, Oblivians -- take your pick from any generation -- but just like each of those groups brought their own energy to the table, so do The Sermon. Volume survives on energy, whether it's Rob Alper's endless Keith Moon channeling fills, singer Mike Gabriel's whelps and theremin squeals, or Jeff Glave and Matt Gabriel's MC5 vs. The Yardbirds twin guitar attack. There is a brief reprieve from action with a bubblegum psych ballad, "Surprise," but otherwise Volume is an all-out attack on the ears that begs to be seen live.
–Wade Kergan

Utter Trash
This is a solid, above average disc of retro garage rock with a bit of soul. Don’t let the name of the band fool you. The only religion these guys preach is rock ‘n’ roll. Of course, there’s plenty of other bands doing very similar stuff. All the expected influences are here: The Stones, The Who, “Nuggets” style garage psyche, The MC5, etc. What saves this from being just another trip through sixties nostalgia is the quality of the songwriting, and the fact that the band is smart enough to vary the intensity of their attack from song to song. The lyrics are mostly dark tales of crime and people living on the fringes of society, and it feels like the band actually has some understanding of the material as opposed to just appropriating it for a “dangerous” image. “Time Has Come”, “No Beast So Fierce”, “Surprise”, “Exterminator”, and “Miss A” are the songs that stood out the most to my ears. The rest of the disc isn’t bad, either. This ain’t on the level of The Mummies or The Sonics by any means (what is?), but if you like raw lo-fi garage rock this is one sermon you’ll wanna listen to.
–Bob Ignizio

San Francisco Bay Guardian
My introduction to the Sermon was through an e-mail I received from a friend this June asking if I wanted to see "San Francisco's rockingest band" at the Hemlock Tavern. I, always down for rockin', said, "Hell yeah!," and fortunately for me, my friend was right on. The band? They were rockin'. The crowd? Rockin'. The bar's furniture? Rockin'! My eardrums at the end of the night? RRRRrockin'! That said, it's no surprise Volume, the band's full-length debut is, well, rockin' too. You might think, on listening to Volume, that you've discovered some vintage band from the Stooges era. They've got the same high-amplified, hard-hitting, in-your-face, overenergetic guitar riffs in two-chord parts. And the Sermon's garage rock is dead-on tinkering in the shed with little distortion, no samples, and no chainsaws to place their sound anywhere near post-'80s rock. The five-piece San Francisco band – featuring past members of the Fells, Mount McKinleys, and the Dukes of Hamburg – formed in 2000, but their music most relates to the '60s Detroit rock circuit, stripped of any blues affiliation, and remains a flashback to a time when rock music was simple, loud, and fun.
–Stephanie Laemoa