After a series of buzz-inducing home-recorded CD-R and 7” releases, Los Angeles based rock band Stephen Brower & the Silent Majority have announced the September 13th release of their proper full-length debut LP, sb/sm, produced by Toshi Kasai (Melvins, Tweak Bird, Helmet). The band will mark the release with several area appearances, including an album release in-store performance at Vacation Vinyl (9/16), their third appearance at Camper Van Beethoven’s annual Campout Festival in Pioneertown (9/17), and a headlining LP release show at Silverlake Lounge (9/29). More dates will soon be announced.

While a search for “Stephen Brower & the Silent Majority” in iTunes will return a few results, sb/sm is effectively the debut album from the band. What started in 2004 as a bedroom folk recording project for Brower alone has, after nearly five years of playing as a full band with guitarist Tarik Soliman, bassist Ryan Chaffee, and drummer Charlie Dresser, morphed into a full blown stoner-punk-folk-metal assault. Recorded over just three furious days at North Hollywood’s Entourage Studios, sb/sm’s ten tracks present a focused distillation of that particular and unique aesthetic.

The band’s influences are wildly disparate, a fact on full display throughout sb/sm. Album opener ‘”This City” plays as blistering horror-punk a la the Misfits, while “Ajax Mountain” recalls burned out 1970’s country rock, fitting as the song takes as its subject (and protagonist) none other than Hank Williams, Jr. Elsewhere on the record, “You’d Better Come On” rides the slack rhythms of grunge, “The Ballad of Eagle” (about indie film cult hero Eagle Pennell) taps into Sunset strip sleaze, and side 2 opener “White Suburbs of London” is a just-south-of-metal romp inspired by, of all things, an incorrect answer to a trivia question about Hello Kitty. (Brower, Soliman, and 4x Jeopardy champion Chaffee are all competitive trivia players).

Producer Toshi Kasai’s deep and diverse resume as a producer, engineer, and mixer (which ranges literally from Jello Biafra to Rickie Lee Jones), contributes to the project greatly and delivers alternately moments of punishing heft and woozy, laid-back warmth.

The album will be released in a deluxe, multi-colored vinyl edition limited to 100 copies. Standard vinyl and digital versions will also be released on 9/13.