Some might recall the name Nick Sewell from the more garage-hued rock outfit The Illuminati, who released two albums through Century Media offshoot before they and the label both disbanded. If you don’t recall Sewell from that group or those albums, though, it’s probably alright (though they decent), because as the bassist/vocalist has reemerged in the also-Toronto-based Biblical, the context probably wouldn’t do you much good anyhow. A double-guitar, sometimes-organ-infused four-piece, Biblical seem to be on a completely different wavelength.

Or if not completely different, certainly different enough. Biblical‘s swagger is definitely their own. The foursome of Sewell, guitarist/vocalist Matt Mclaren, guitarist/organist Andrew Scott and drummer Jay Anderson got together in 2010 and last year self-released their debut EP, a four-track self-titled 10″ vinyl that’s as stylish as it is brash, given some sense of foreboding by Scott‘s organ playing and rife with blues-revival furor. Like you took your favorite retro rock band and threw them in an echo chamber in places, and in other spots purposefully calling out The Bad Seeds as an influence to anyone who’ll be willing to listen. Biblical is faster, and a song like “Under Duress” way ballsier, but I get it.

Where things really open up, though is with the finale “Oubliette,” where the guitars start to get all proggy and the melody lines feel cleaner. The organ makes a big difference on “Oubliette,” as it does throughout the EP, but the more relaxed guitar really ups the level of ambience, however re-grounded the song becomes in the chorus, Sewell‘s shouts topping jagged finesse with what sounds an awful lot like ease, especially following the Misfits-meets-Graveyard chicanery of the shorter “Eyes of Lies,” which preceded. It’s a cool release that’s farther away from stoner rock than garage, but still has a couple heavy underpinnings. As it’s 18 minutes long and as Biblical (whose website is here) are streaming it on their Bandcamp page, I figured no harm in posting it in case anyone else wanted to check it out too. Here goes:

Of all the Wino-type excellence 2012 has so far wrought — be that in the form of the collaboration with Conny Ochs or the reunion of The Obsessed at Roadburn — news on the Shrinebuilder front has been curiously sparse. I guess the dudes involved are busy with their main projects, whether it’s Wino with Saint Vitus and his sundry other outfits, Scott Kelly with Neurosis, Al Cisneros with Om and Sleep, or Dale Crover with the Melvins, but I had thought the follow up to their 2009 self-titled would be along this year, and it seems like there would’ve been some word by now if that was going to be the case.

Maybe it’s for the best, since I don’t know if I’d trade the output and shows of all those bands for the prospect of new Shrinebuilder anyway, but whenever the second album from this underground megagroup arrives, it’ll be interesting to hear how or if they build at all on the direction they seemed to be taking with the debut. They were playing new material as early as their European tour in 2010, delayed as much of life was that spring by volcanic activity in Iceland. That tour resulted in the Live in Europe 2010 live album last year, but for a band of this magnitude, it’s hard not to want a new studio offering as soon as possible.

Lurking my way around the TubesofYou, I stumbled on this pro-shot, multi-angle clip of the new songs “Nagas 1 & 2″ coupled with “Pyramid of the Moon,” filmed in Belgium at De Kreun in Kortrijk. Credit where it’s due, apparently the crew behind the cameras was 4×4 TV. My only regret is that it wasn’t uploaded in HD, but I don’t even remember if you could do that two years ago. One more reason Shrinebuilder needs to get out there again.

So yeah, here’s 21 minutes solid of ritualistic psych groove. Happy Wino Wednesday:

London-based Crystal Head was a band I knew literally nothing about before watching their set at Desertfest. That was half the fun, in fact, and it made it all the better when they kicked my ass with both the professionalism of their approach and the obvious strength of their hooks. They’d turn out to be a highlight of the weekend, and I was even more stoked after listening to their self-titled debut (review here) and finding that the album confirmed what the live set seemed to indicate: that the heavy rocking trio were more than just the sum of their influences.

As regards those influences, though, you really can’t go wrong blending Queens of the Stone Age‘s wooing pop anthems and the distorted crunch of Helmet with progressive structures and a nearly per-track variety of mood, and Crystal Head‘s Crystal Head did just that. Songs like “Perfect Weirdo” and “Mad Dog” nodded in the direction of heavy, but also had some underlying malevolence about them, a subtle darkness, that hinted well at a classically dangerous element the loss of which is often mourned in rock by those whose heads have long since drowned in the barrel of commercial cynicism. Crystal Head, the album, was crisp, and professional, and accessible, but somehow your lip still ended up bloody by the time it was done.

Being that guitarist/vocalist Tom Cameron and the cousinly rhythm section of bassist/vocalist Jon Deal and drummer Dean Deal made such a strong impression live and followed-up with another on the album, it only seemed right to hit them up for more info on their origins and subsequent doings. Their choice to record Crystal Head at Sawmills Studio in Cornwall — essentially a 17th Century water mill converted to a modern studio that’s only accessible by boat at high tide — made for even more curiosity on my end, and I’m glad to report that Cameron was forthcoming on that situation as well as Crystal Head‘s songwriting processes and what went into making the record the beast it is.

Please enjoy the following Six Dumb Questions:

1. Tell me about how the band got together. I know you went through a name or two before you arrived at Crystal Head. What did it take for you to get to the point where you felt like you were ready to put out the self-titled album?

Jon and Dean are cousins. Dean and I met at school and Jon literally just knocked on my door one day and I let him in. We had a mutual friend so I knew of him, but it was still a bit weird…

We all grew up in the same small area just north of London called Welwyn Garden City. It’s quite a dead town, built around a Shredded Wheat factory with very little to do. Jon and I moved down to London five years ago.

We basically started the group from scratch, out of boredom and a shared love of music and rock bands. Dean learned to play the drums. Jon moved from six-string (which we would jam on together) and started playing bass. I was classically trained piano when I was young and had been messing about with guitar for a couple of years before we began putting songs together.

Jon and I originally played some acoustic shows before Dean began drumming and we still perform like this from time to time.

The album for us was well overdue. We’d produced numerous demos and EPs in our previous guises but never a full-length effort. And with the change to Crystal Head it felt like a suitable time to draw a line in the sand and move forward.

2. When were the songs for the record written? The material sounds fresh, but it’s all really well structured as well. Did it take much time for those tracks to come together, and did you know when you were making the album how you wanted to order the songs?

Songwriting has never been a short process for us. Any songs that make it to a live performance would have been formed over many hours of meticulous rehearsal and change. One song that didn’t make it on the album had four different choruses before we ditched it from our live set.

“Mad Dog” is the oldest song on the album and has been in existence for a few years. “Truth Hurts,” on the other hand, we wrote during the first album session at the studio. Most of our songs, like other artists, evolve and mutate over time until they become the finished recorded article. Then in turn they tend to change again when played live. Areas loosen up and spaces are sometimes filled.

The running order of the album was something very important to us. Without trying to sound cliché, we wanted to make the album as much of a journey as possible without being conceptual. Once all the songs were recorded the tracklisting decisions were like brain surgery that we stewed over for a number of weeks.

3. What was it like recording in Cornwall? From what I’ve seen about Sawmills Studio, it looks gorgeous. How did you find that place and decide to do the album there?

The Mill is one of the most beautiful places we’ve all visited. It’s set within a small tidal creek, which is only accessible via boat at high tide. Basically other than between 7AM-10AM and 6PM-8PM, you are stricken on this remote island in this huge mansion surrounded by woodland.

There’s no mobile phone reception or connectivity so you are literally cut-off from the world. A great place to be (in our opinion) if you want to make a record. Add to that the amazing Tom Joyce who engineered and mixed it with us, you’ve really got something very special. We’d recorded a couple of EPs there prior so knew when we decided to record the album that it was the place for us.

4. The songs sound way more modern than a 17th Century water mill might initially indicate. Did you know what you wanted out of the production going into the recording process?

We benefited from having many of the songs in the bank for a long time so were aware of how they could sound from previous demos. Our main challenge was making the album sound “like an album.” So trying to achieve a comprehensive sound for the record in its entirety without each track losing too much of its individuality. Again a very intense process of working day and night listening to every sound over and over until we reached where we wanted to be.

We also were intent on making a “studio” record, which for me means utilizing anything available in the studio, be it other instruments, effects, layers to create a sound that sets the bar for our live performances. Obviously, being a three-piece, this can be difficult to achieve, but as much as we can we’ll play out the tracks as hard and incisively as the album recordings.

5. How was Desertfest for you guys? It seemed like a really strong gathering of bands and fans across the three venues, and being on the outside of London’s scene, I thought it was a cool opportunity to see bands I might otherwise never be able to catch. What was it like for you playing, and how did you feel overall about the fest itself?

DesertFest was just such a positive experience. I think anyone who was involved or came to watch the bands will say the same. It’s like we took over a little corner of London for the weekend and just had a big party. We had two sets, one acoustic and one plugged in and the response from the crowds was really overwhelming. Have to say a big thank you to everyone who came to our performances and shared those moments. We really appreciate it.

We’re good friends with Reece, Dan and the whole Steak crew and what they are doing is an absolute right. We’ll continue to assist them (as they do us) with anything they need to keep momentum going. We played the very first Desertscene show a couple of years ago now and it’s phenomenal to see the way it’s grown so rapidly and successfully. You can expect some big things in the future from the team there I’m sure.

6. Any other plans or closing words you want to mention?

We’ve just been added to BGA Management Groups, who are based out in Europe. Funnily enough they found us at our DesertFest show at The Underworld. They’ve promised us world domination so we’re going to hold them to that!

You’ll see a revamped online presence and tour dates very soon via crystalhead.co.uk and we’ll be looking to get back in the studio to start work on a second album this winter.

Crystal Head on Thee Facebooks

Sawmills Studio website

The debut album from Houston, Texas’ Sanctus Bellum, Return to Dust (review here) was rife with references, mostly to the work of H.P. Lovecraft. It was also a tour-de-force of classic metal influences, from the given Sabbath leanings to NWOBHM as represented by Iron Maiden to the dirtier death rock of Danzig, taking darkened atmospherics and setting them against a backdrop of crusty riffing. I haven’t yet heard the whole of the follow-up, The Shining Path, but from what I can tell listening to eight-minute closer “Ephaniah” — which I’m fortunate enough to be able to host for streaming on the player below — the key elements are still there, if a bit more refined.

As one might expect, Sanctus Bellum seem to have more of an idea of their own style the second time out, blending the classic metal guitar of Jan Kimmel and Maurice Eggenschwiler (the latter previously only involved in the live incarnation of the band) with the doomly groove seemingly inherent in Cory Cousins‘ drumming and the wildly diverse bass work of Ben Yaker — one minute, he’s in the pocket with Cousins, but by the middle of the song, he’s leading the charge Steve Harris-style through a faster stretch. Add in some Slayer-type riffing and lead work and the post-grunge vocals of Justin Waggoner (ex-Mr. Plow), who on “Ephaniah” shifts smoothly from shouts to deceptively complex melody lines, and Sanctus Bellum come off as more assured and confident without sacrificing their edge.

I dug the first Sanctus Bellum and I’m looking forward to hearing the second — particularly if the interplay on the rest of the tracks between Kimmel and Eggenschwiler stands up to what I’ve so far heard — and I thought that if you like metal with a flair for the doomed that doesn’t necessarily feel the need to commit to one genre or another, you might also be into it. Check it out and feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts:

The Shining Path is set for release on June 12 — just in time for Sanctus Bellum to head to Wisconsin to play at Days of the Doomed II. You can preorder it here. If you dig “Ephaniah,” the band has also made the tracks “Spiral Jacobs” and “The Shining Path” available for listening. You can hear them and check out more release info here, and tell the band you dig their stuff at their Thee Facebooks page.

The second album from New Zealand heavy rock trio Arc of Ascent, dubbed The Higher Key, could easily be considered the third in a progression. Okay, maybe not easily, since it’s their sophomore outing and there’s no immediate third record to consider, but The Higher Key fits into a line of development that also includes the last album from bassist/vocalist Craig Williamson’s prior outfit, the one-man operation Lamp of the Universe. The final (to date) Lamp of the Universe record, 2009’s Acid Mantra (review here), was beginning to push away from some of that band’s most indulgent psychedelia. It had drums, for one, and the atmosphere of the album overall was more active than the prior few Lamp installments, perhaps harkening back to Williamson’s days playing with underappreciated psych heavies Datura, but not quite there yet. Going from Acid Mantra to Arc of Ascent’s 2010 Circle of the Sun debut (review here) in the space of one year was a big jump for Williamson – who was the only member of one band and remains the lone songwriter in the other – but just as Acid Mantra had some more rock-based ideas present in its songs, so too did Circle of the Sun also find Williamson incorporating sitar and Indian-derived scales into the more straightforward, heavy rocking material. It was a naturalizing and easing effect for anyone who’d followed Williamson’s progression with Lamp of the Universe and welcome flourish to those who perhaps hadn’t encountered him before Arc of Ascent. While The Higher Key still bleeds heavy psychedelia from its very core – one finds Williamson’s vocals on the two side-ending tracks “Search for Liberation” and “Through the Rays of Infinity” to be particularly reminiscent of past ethereal chanting, however different the surrounding context might be – it’s still one more step further along the shifting line of progression that began with Acid Mantra (actually, it probably began well before that, but it began to palpably manifest itself there, anyway). There isn’t a sitar anywhere on it.

And I’ve looked!

Moreover, the whole of The Higher Key, despite being just three minutes shorter than its predecessor at 43, feels more straightforward and stripped down in terms of arrangement. Williamson is more confident vocally than he’s ever sounded, and so is less presented less drenched in echo and more forward in the mix, and there’s a heady crunch in the guitars of Sandy Schaare – come in as replacement for Matt Cole-Baker while drummer John Strange returns to round out the trio. All this, again, is put into a heavy psychedelic context. I’ve no desire to give the impression that Williamson, who also helms the release on Astral Projection and produced these cuts (they were recorded across a few different studios with a few different engineers, but Kenny MacDonald also mixed and mastered) as well as singing on them, playing bass and adding percussion, keys, tanpura and singing bowl, is suddenly writing songs about motorcycle rallies or anything like that, unless he’s cloaking those ideas in lines like, “Solstice of ageless rising, regains delight,” from opener “Celestial Altar.” A fun idea, but not likely. The lyrics seem to be where Williamson has most continued his cosmic-spiritualistic exploration on The Higher Key, and the cadence with which he delivers his lines backs up that idea. He pushes his vocal range some backing himself on side B’s “Redemption” and “Elemental Kingdom,” which is probably the heaviest cut here, tonally speaking, and on in the verse of “Search for Liberation,” he manages to work in a layer on top where he’s almost singing along with himself – I wouldn’t be surprised if the parts were recorded using exactly that method – all the while maintaining a consistency in his rhythmic delivery that feels naturally born out of what he was doing on Circle of the Sun. Fans and followers of Al Cisneros’ work in Om will find Williamson familiar, if less purposefully monotone.

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Not to get all New England about it or anything, but the lineup for this year’s Stoner Hands of Doom is wicked pissah. Having moved from its home in Frederick, Maryland, to the unfamiliar climes of the El ‘n’ Gee in New London, Connecticut, SHoD XII has grown into a massive four-day event featuring some of the best in doom, sludge and stoner that the Eastern Seaboard and beyond has to offer.

I was looking through the lineup yesterday, basically killing time while fantasizing about being somewhere other than at work, and looky looky what I saw on the SHoD site as well — an Obelisk logo! Turns out I’m kinda, sorta, a little bit helping maybe almost present the fest in some small way — apparently enough to get my logo on the page — and I’ll be having much more about it as we get closer, of course leading up to notes and pics from the fest when it takes place over Labor Day weekend.

Check out the day-by-day breakdown on the poster below:

This is a monster fucking fest. From SHoD veterans like Negative Reaction, Akris, Iron Man and Earthride, but though I know I’ve said it before, what really excites me about SHoD XII is how it branches out from it’s Maryland and Doom Capitol roots to bring in outsiders like Roadsaw, Elder, Black Pyramid. Both Connecticut acts, Curse the Son and Stone Titan were a thrill at the CT Fuzz Fest last summer, and When the Deadbolt Breaks have a new bassist and I hear they’re at their most crushing yet, so it’ll be great to catch them alongside bands like Borracho, Fire Faithful, and way-out-of-towners like Kin of Ettins, The Skull, Pilgrim and Gypsy Chief Goliath.

Way stoked all around, and I’ll have much more as we get closer to Labor Day. Can’t wait.

This came in the other day, and if I had half a brain in my head, I probably would’ve posted it as the Frydee video, but whatever. Once you take a look at the video below and listen to the killer version of “Hard Hearted Woman” Stubb do in this, reportedly the first in a series of “Superhot Sessions” from Superhot Records, I doubt you’ll hold it against me. Check out the clip, followed by some PR wire-type info from the label, and enjoy having it stuck in your head for the rest of the day. The song, not the info, though I guess that’s kind of catchy too, in its way.

Whatever. Here:

In March 2012 Superhot Records invited resolvefilm (http://resolvefilm.co.uk/) to come and film Stubb performing a live and slightly reworked take of “Hard Hearted Woman.” This is the first of the Superhot Sessions.

Every now and then we’re going to invite one of our bands or a just a band we really dig to come and perform live for us. We’ll film it, record it and throw it out there so anyone, no matter what corner of the planet they’re on, can see what that band is really about. So here it is, Superhot Sessions 001: Stubb – “Hard Hearted Woman.”

Stubb’s self-titled debut is available on CD, LP and digital in the Superhot Records store.

The day before the show, which was Friday, I’d left work early and gone with The Patient Mrs. to Connecticut to see her grandmother, who’d cracked her sternum in a car accident. Grandma was sore but okay, so we went up, did chores, did some grocery shopping, ultimately had a nice dinner out at a place that has Palm on tap — which is about the only condition ever needed to meet my approval — and crashed up that way for the night. Still, even with the drive back to Jersey beforehand, I got to the St. Vitus Bar in Brooklyn earlier than I needed to be there to catch Pallbearer and Loss, and much standing around ensued.

Fundamentally, I am an awkward person. I speak like I write (actually, I think it was the speaking that came first, but why quibble on timing?), and I flat-out suck at meeting people I haven’t already met four times over. This can make things like standing around or, say, existing, kind of rough. Nonetheless, I flopped myself here and there until a few friends showed up and I didn’t have to feel anymore like the whole world was in on a joke I just didn’t get. I ran out for a bit but came back in time for the place, which normally divides its front and back rooms but for this show was open the whole way, to be totally packed out up. I elbowed my way up front to get some pictures as Pallbearer got going and once again wondered what happened that this kind of music draws people now.

Pallbearer — whose Profound Lore debut, Sorrow and Extinction (review here), will undoubtedly be one of 2012′s doomed highlights when the year is over — were the band I was there to see. A noise act called Sewer Goddess had opened, and Loss was playing after, which was probably a mistake considering the bands’ respective pulls, but I wanted to see if Pallbearer could capture the same sense of underlying melody live that they brought to the record, play out the same kind of emotionally wrought atmosphere while still pummeling with volume and tonal heft, building hope and crushing it almost simultaneously.

In short, the Arkansas foursome did precisely that, their Emperor cabinets vibrating from the punishment they were charged to convey on the crowded room. They were less outright emotional than, say, 40 Watt Sun at Roadburn, but running a more modern American vibe along a similar wavelength — the tone, as on Sorrow and Extinction — as prevalent as the mood, though no less voluminous. Their songs, extended and excruciating, were surprisingly engaging and immediately recognizable, and kept grounded by drummer Chuck Schaaf (also of Deadbird) and bassist Joseph D. Rowland (interview here), the riffs had all the room to breath — at least sonically; that room was pretty crowded — they could ever ask for.

Awash in downtrodden melody and the beer that I’d been carrying that spilled directly in my beard after I took an unseen elbow up front toward the stage, I made my way to the back bar, to replenish and get a change of vantage. I was talking to Steve Murphy from Kings Destroy about I don’t even remember what and the dude standing behind him, whose name wound up being Bill asked if I was the guy who ran this site. Whether it was the camera bag, my gut, sandals or the fact that I was bitching about being surrounded by humanity that tipped him off, I don’t know, but I said I was me (which I was) and he asked me, “Do you know Gina Brooks?”

I’ve talked about Rock and Roll Gina a couple times in this space, mostly in the context of awesome music she recommended I check out. She had lung cancer and died this past December. It was hard to take. I’ve missed seeing her out at shows. I’d been thinking of her at this one only moments earlier, and here was someone asking me “Do I know her” and not even, “Did I know her.” He didn’t know she had died. So I told him. Pallbearer were still playing, and that was pretty heavy, but this was heavier.

We shot the shit for a couple minutes about Gina, and he said he’d been trying to get in touch with her but hadn’t heard back in a long time and feared the worst. The language of death is always the same. I missed her right then more than I missed her at her memorial service, and though I’d heard Pallbearer were doing a secret show later at The Acheron and I would’ve relished the chance to see them in front of what would almost certainly be fewer people, I pretty much knew then and there my night was over and it was time to sound my retreat back to Jersey, stew in it for a while, and crash out.

So that’s what I did. I stayed through the end of Pallbearer and waited while Loss set up their gear and got going. I went up front, took a few quick pictures of them — the room had thinned out a bunch, so moving through was easier, but there were still plenty of heads around — but honestly, I wasn’t even hearing the music at that point. My head was somewhere else entirely, and when I left, they were maybe two songs into their set. I just couldn’t do it anymore, and moreover, I didn’t see any need to try. Brooklyn is Brooklyn whether I’m there or not. I’m sure Pallbearer killed at The Acheron. Even though I knew it was the exact opposite of anything Gina would want, I couldn’t stay. There’s a reason we admire the people we admire. They’re better than we are.

I cried most of the 90 minutes  home, turned off the radio and just started shouting at nothing, at myself, I guess, for being alive and whatever else. A long string of impotent curses. I was half-drunk. I’d collect myself, feel like I had it together and then bust out again, tears and yelling. I pulled into my office, which is on the way from the Lincoln Tunnel, and went in and sat for a while, ate the last of the antacids in my desk, drank some water, thought about sleeping here, thought about writing, tried to call The Patient Mrs. to ask her to come pick me up but couldn’t get through.

After a while, I got back in my car and drove home, tried to eat, but ended up just going to bed. Sunday was better.

Extra pics after the jump. The lighting at St. Vitus Bar was less than optimal, as always, so I made the pictures black and white just because I thought they worked better that way this time around. Thanks for reading.

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Yeah, that’s right, Megadeth. Part of the first “Vodun” on the Abrahma record was reminding me of this all day, and it’s the most honest ending to this week I could think of. Plus, as much of a hackneyed “I’m gonna replace my drug addiction with my addiction to god” piece of shit as Dave Mustaine has become over the last several years, and as deplorable and reactionary as his too-loudly-presented views are on any number of issues, there’s no denying that early Megadeth was visceral in ways few bands have ever been. I said in a Judas Priest live review a while back that classic metal belonged to doomers anyway, so if I want to dig into some of this stuff every now and again, I feel like it’s fair game. We’ll get to Dark Angel yet.

It was a wild kind of week. I’ve been trying for the last two weeks to start the “The Canon of Heavy” series with a post about Master of Reality, but I just haven’t had the time to do it yet. Hopefully this coming week I’ll get there. And I know it took me being super late on one interview and waking up at 6:30 this morning on another to make it happen, but it’s awesome to have two interviews on the frontpage of this site at the same time. I feel like it’s been since before I started working again full-time that that happened, and it’s more of a personal thing, but I think those are two pretty good interviews, and I hope they were as interesting to read as they were for me to conduct. Next week I hope to add Bible of the Devil to that mix. I got in a good phoner with Candlemass bassist Leif Edling yesterday as well, so that’ll be up shortly.

I’ve also decided to — not this week coming, but the one after — to dedicate an entire week’s worth of reviews to friends’ bands. Acts like Mos Generator, Trippy Wicked, Mighty High all have albums out, and while it’s kind of a gray area otherwise, if I’m up front about it, I think it can be a really fun thing to dedicate some time to bands and artists I’ve become close with over the last couple years. So that’s coming up, but there’s a bunch of stuff I need to get to next week before I do that, so I’ll take care of business first.

Also, I’m in Connecticut tonight owing to a familial obligation (minor incident, all thing considered, nothing to worry about long-term, but enough to get The Patient Mrs. and I to sit for four-plus hours on what’s normally a two-hour drive to get here), but tomorrow, I’m headed to Brooklyn come the proverbial hell or high water to see Pallbearer at the St. Vitus Bar, and that’ll be fun. I have to drive back to Jersey to get it, but the plan is to grab the camera and make that happen live review-style. It’s been since Roadburn and I’m itching at this point to make that happen, even if it calls for some road time. Fuck it, at this point that just makes it better.

Some other stuff next week too. Columns are a little up in the air — okay, more than a little — but I hope to get all that sorted out over the next week as well as a few personal issues. Fair warning, I may put up a Kickstarter in the coming weeks to help fund a personal project (I might be trying to buy a bar in Newark). It’s all pretty up in the air right now, but if I start using NPR-style guilt tactics to get pledges, don’t be surprised. Just advance notice that it may come to that, but there’s still a lot that needs to happen before we get there.

In the meantime, enjoy Megadeth and have a fantastic, safe weekend. See you on the forum, at Pallbearer tomorrow and back here Monday for yet another bunch of riffy shenanigans.

It could be posited that Parisian heavy rocking four-piece Abrahma (formerly known as Alcohsonic) take their name either from the notion of something negating the Hindu god Brahma, the creator of humankind. In this instance, they’d be undoing of humankind, presumably more aligned to Shiva, the destroyer – though that may be a gross simplification of the complexities of Hinduism, and if it offends, I apologize – or otherwise atheistic. Fair enough. The word “abrahma” also appears in the work of 19th Century British historian Godfrey Higgins, who put forth the idea of Pandeism, that all modern religions Eastern and Western had a common root. Higgins uses “abrahma” as a bridge between Brahma, in Hinduism, and the Judeo-Christian figure Abraham. Whether or not the members of Abrahma are students of obscure 19th Century religious theorizing, I don’t know – stranger things have certainly happened – but in either case, their moniker is a roundabout way to express a very specific, if abstract and ethereal, idea. One might say the same thing about their Small Stone Records debut, Through the Dusty Paths of Our Lives. At just over 70 minutes long and comprised of 15 individual tracks, the album develops from relatively straightforward heavy rock – tonally thick and incorporating some elements of psychedelia, but never at the sacrifice of structure – into a more expansive feel, so that by the time closer “Omega” comes around with its techno-style bass groove and keyboards, it’s hardly out of place at all following the 10-minute ranging exploration of “The Maze.” I don’t know if the cuts between “Omega” and opener “Alpha” (the dichotomy furthering the vague religiosity of their name) follow an overarching narrative or not, but with a slew of guest appearances from the likes of the recently-interviewed Ed Mundell of The Ultra Electric Mega Galactic, Thomas Bellier of fellow Parisians Blaak Heat Shujaa and Ehécatl, and cover artist Alexander Von Wieding, who composed and performs “Oceans of Sand…” a welcome change of pace late into the record.

Through the Dusty Paths of Our Lives is almost like two albums put together – or perhaps more appropriately, an album and an EP. It even has two separate introductions. The first 21 minutes, preceded by the ringing tones of “Alpha,” find Abrahma tangling with memorable choruses and heavy, large-sounding riffage. “Neptune of Sorrow” begins a string of four songs – the others being “Tears of the Sun” (guest vocal by Pascal Mascheroni of Marseille trio Rescue Rangers), “Dandelion Dust” and “Honkin’ Water Roof” – that stick largely to the same catchy modus. Vocalist/guitarist Sebastian Bismuth keeps a John Garcia-esque lyrical cadence to “Honkin’ Water Roof,” but it’s more Hermano than Kyuss, and his riffing, complemented by fellow six-stringer Nicolas Heller, leaves little to be desired in tone, “Tears of the Sun” culminating in decidedly modern Eurostoner progressions that feel intricately composed despite their familiarity. The momentum shows its first signs of shifting with “Dandelion Dust.” Drummer Benjamin Colin – the band is rounded out by his brother, Guillaume Colin, on bass – moves to the cowbell for the verse and continues the push on the kick for the chorus, but the mood is darker than “Neptune of Sorrow” or “Tears of the Sun,” and the guitars begin in the second half to show some of the spaciousness they’ll maximize later on, Guillaume taking the fore in holding down the groove. Expectedly given it’s countrified title, “Honkin’ Water Roof” offers some Southern inflection in its guitar figure, made insistent by start-stop bass and drums – a slide also shows up in the chorus – and aligning Abrahma sonically a bit to their labelmates Dwellers, whose Good Morning Harakiri was released earlier this year. A killer solo toward the middle precedes another round of the chorus, and the ending of the track – the longest yet at 6:49 and the longest of the rest of Through the Dusty Paths of Our Lives but for “The Maze” – tosses in amp and effects noise against the backdrop of the still maintained central progression, which is a pretty decent example of how the album as a whole works. It keeps itself aligned to the straightforward, accessible ideas it presents even as it adds more and more varied elements on top.

That said, Abrahma change their methods when it comes to track six and everything after. A subtle build on “Loa’s Awakening (Prelude)” begins a widely diverse 48-minute run that incorporates some of the best material that Through the Dusty Paths of Our Lives has to offer, but can also confuse first-time listeners because of its shifts from the initial movement of the record. To offset this potentiality, Bismuth, Heller and the brothers Colin put the best song right in what is effectively the beginning of this second movement, “Vodun Pt. 1: Samedi’s Awakening” having both the funkiest verse and the most memorable chorus of the record’s 70-minute entirety. The theme is so strong, in fact, that Abrahma reference it either musically or lyrically in both “Vodun Pt. 2: I, Zombie” and “Vodun Pt. 3: Final Asagwe,” but the trio of “Vodun” tracks is broken up by two in between each part, and two more follow the final installment, so they’re by no means all the band has on offer in the second, lengthier piece of Through the Dusty Paths of Our Lives. Still, the thread exists and its prevalence clearly is no accident. And though it’s tactics are different, more spacious and spiritually minded, particularly in a bass-rumbling midpoint break, “Vodun Pt. 1: Samedi’s Awakening” (both Samedi and Loa are references to voodoo, or vodun, mythology, though “Samedi” is also French for “Saturday”), Abrahma hold fast to the verse/chorus framework they’ve built, which helps them as they switch between the “Vodun” pieces and the other tracks. Mundell’s appearance on “Big Black Cloud” – a joy to anyone who appreciates psychedelic heavy rock soloing – helps recovery from the punch of “Vodun Pt. 1: Samedi’s Awakening”’s chorus, the rhythm guitar tone behind recalling the sound of “Neptune of Sorrow” without directly repeating it, and “Headless Horse” delves further into heavy atmospherics, soft guitar lines getting buried under a mass of tone and Guillaume’s increasingly prevalent bass. There’s any number of heavy psych comparisons one could make, but the one foremost in my mind is Arc of Ascent, and Benjamin’s echoing drums only add to the likeness, although the later guitar solo maintains a gloomy feel that’s more reminiscent of mid-period Amorphis (if we’re going to stick with ‘A’ bands) than anything specifically psych. If this is how Abrahma will carve their identity, so be it.

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A Grifter chorus is a hard thing to ignore, and if you have any love at your heart at all for classic or heavy rock and roll, I can’t imagine why you’d bother to try. The Southern UK trio have been together nearly a decade, but following a demo and the increasingly solid High Unholy Mighty Rollin’ (2008) and The Simplicity of the Riff is Key EPs, they made a substantial impact with the 2011 full-length debut, Grifter, on Ripple Music — an album of impeccable catchiness and near-immediate familiarity that was nonetheless fresh and vibrant-sounding, like an old friend you didn’t know you had.

The band also appeared on Ripple Music‘s Heavy Ripples four-way split, but the album would prove to be one of 2011′s best, and I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Subsequent acclaim and momentum led Grifter to be forerunners of a particular side of the formidable and growing British scene that as guitarist/vocalist Ollie Stygall — joined in the band by bassist Phil and drummer Foz — points out was neither given to sludge, nor doom, nor fuzz-drenched stoner rock (not that there’s anything wrong with any of those), but straight up heavy in a classic tradition. Our paths crossed last month at the second day of Desertfest London, as the band headlined at The Black Heart, and they proved to be one of the highlights of the weekend.

I don’t mind saying this interview was a long time coming. Pretty much since before the album was reviewed, Stygall and I were back and forth trying to figure out a way to conduct a phoner without a phone. Where I used to be able to record from Skype on my home desktop, that computer shit the bed and my laptop was more of a prick about it. Finally, though, I gave in and purchased a program allowing me to record directly from an audio call and Stygall and I finally were able to connect after he and the rest of Grifter wrapped their tour with Orange Goblin, of which Desertfest was the start.

And though he and I were both sick at the time — the recording is a tradeoff of his coughs and my sniffles as well as his answers and my questions — he was still a good sport in talking about Grifter‘s next album, for which the writing has begun, the response they got to the self-titled and how that translated to the round of shows he’d just finished, a then-upcoming string of dates in Belgium that’s now begun and includes a performance at the Freak Valley festival on May 19, Desertfest and the strength of the UK scene in general, post-tour blues, and a lot more. The Skype connection started to feedback toward the end (as everything should), by the time our conversation was finished, I felt like it was worth the wait, and as you commence to read through, I hope you agree.

Complete 3,000-word Q&A is after the jump. Please enjoy.

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We’re fortunate enough, you and I, to live in a futuristic age of heavy metal expansion that has resulted in all kinds of genre blends. Some successful, some not, but when it comes to a band like Portland, Oregon’s semi-stonerly Axxicorn — who are genuinely less classifiable than 90 percent of the groups I’ve heard in the last 12 months — I definitely consider it a success. You can say for sure they like Sabbath, and you can look at them and know they were conscious of what was happening around them during the ’90s, but I think that’s about as far as I get in terms of nailing down a classification for their self-released War of the Giants debut.

The bass on the title-track is particularly Sabbathian, but the riffing as well on songs like “Hades” has some allegiance to doomly roots. By and large, though, Axxicorn ally themselves neither to modern classic doom — the easiest port in the storm of Sabbath-inspired fare — nor retro stylization. The production on War of the Giants is rough, but it doesn’t sound like they’re trying to pretend it’s 1973, whatever the Graveyard-y intro of closer “Typheous” might argue to the contrary. There’s also something sharp in the guitar that seems like any minute it’s going to start ripping into black metal, but it never does, instead keeping some thrash-derived edge that emerges later in the tracklist on “Revolt of the Titans/Wasteland,” which sounds tailor made for a cassette tape more than a Bandcamp stream.

A Bandcamp stream is what we have, however — at least until I get the boombox add-on for my office iMac (god damn it, I wish my real life was as awesome as my pretend life) — and it’s certainly enough to get a sense of what the trio are going for with War of the Giants. As I had the chance today to check out some new stuff from the band on the sly, I thought it was definitely worth having some mention of them on here before I came out with a smattering of hyperbolic language for the next album. You know, something to link back to later and at least be able to say you were warned beforehand.

Check out War of the Giants below, courtesy of the aforementioned Bandcamp, and hit up Axxicorn on Thee Facebooks to tell them hi and that you’re also looking forward to their next record.

Heartfelt kudos and congratulations to The Maple Forum alumnus Darryl Shepard on the limited vinyl release of Dronolith, the second album from his one-man drone project, Blackwolfgoat. Bilocation Records handled the pressing, but he’s got copies for sale through the Blackwolfgoat Bandcamp page for people in the States, and if you didn’t check out the album when it was released on CD through this site’s in-house label last year, now’s definitely the time. That Alexander von Wieding cover must be gorgeous in a glossy gatefold.

Shepard and his cohorts in Black Pyramid will be playing this year’s four-day, all-ages SHoD festival in Connecticut, so stay tuned for more on that, and in the meantime, here’s the details on the Dronolith vinyl release, straight from the man himself:

Two months after they were shipped, the Blackwolfgoat, Dronolith, vinyl has finally arrived and I have them in my hands. I’ll be selling these, shipping to the US only. Rest of the world can order directly from Kozmik Artifactz, it’ll be cheaper and easier that way. Thanks to Bilocation Records for everything. I have 35 copies and once they’re gone, they’re gone.

Blackwolfgoat, Dronolith on vinyl, splatter or clear, gatefold cover. Released on Bilocation Records, limited to 350 copies. 46 minutes of blissed-out guitar drone. Order it directly off of Bandcamp.

Vinyl facts:
– limited to 350 copies only: 250 clear 180g vinyl / 100 clear green white splatter 150g vinyl
– special vinyl mastering
– 300gsm glossy gatefold cover
– handnumbered
– high quality vinyl, pressed in Germany
– artwork and layout by Alexander von Wieding

Named either for a town with which it would seem to have little to do musically but from which they hailed at one point or another, or an animal with which it shares many commonalities, Buffalo is the second full-length from The Midnight Ghost Train. Recorded just days after the Topeka, Kansas, trio got off the road from their 2011 tour with Truckfighters (see here and here) – and mostly recorded live, from the sound of it – Buffalo (released on Karate Body Records) is a half-hour set that commences almost immediately with zero-bullshit American-style stoner blues rock and offers little let-up for the duration. Their 2009 self-titled (review here) was a stylistic jaunt into such territories, and boasted several guest appearances from friends of the band, but Buffalo is more straightforward and outclasses its predecessor on every level in much the same way that album was a step up from earlier 2009’s The Johnny Boy EP (review here). Fronted by gruff-throated guitarist/vocalist Steve Moss, the mission behind Buffalo was clearly to bring the energy and flow of the band’s live set to a recording, and aided by the production of David Barbe (Bob Mould, Drive-by Truckers), they come about as close as one imagines being able to; tracks flow one into the next with ultra-natural smoothness, and there are moments in the album’s core midsection where it seems like Moss, bassist David Kimmell and drummer Brandon Burghart are going to lose control of the jams entirely and the whole record is going to come to a halt, but of course that never happens and The Midnight Ghost Train, however wild or tonally entrenched they might become, never actually lose control here when they don’t want to do so. Buffalo’s eight tracks are memorable individually, but work best taken as a whole – which of course is easy given the fact that the album is only a half-hour long – where the ebbs and flows and Moss’ bluesy growling can be carried across with the full complement of the next shifts about to come.

At their core, The Midnight Ghost Train are a stoner rock band. It’s Moss’ riffing leading the way with thick, rich, gloriously fuzzy tone for the heavy blues rhythms of Kimmell and Burghart, who hold their own behind him even at his most frantic. Vocally, Moss takes on a raving blues persona. Like he’s the one who most took Neil Fallon’s vocals on “I Have the Body of John Wilkes Booth” to heart. His delivery is likewise gruff as “Henry” takes hold following upbeat instrumental opener “A Passing Moment of Madness,” which introduces the band’s penchant for riff-fronted grooves and foreshadows instrumental focus to come. Maybe it’s a style derived from heavier roots, but Moss plays it all bluesy on “Henry,” and his solos are likewise unbridled. Most importantly, he’s well mixed, so as not to be completely dominant or out in front of the guitars, bass and drums when it’s so obviously supposed to be the whole song that’s the focus and not one individual or another. Still, he’s striking as he drives home the rolling groove of “Foxhole,” with Burghart adding tom flourishes behind, and is obviously going to be a central presence throughout Buffalo. The reason it’s not out of balance is because, as I said, he’s well mixed, and also because Kimmell’s bass gives a formidable showing of its own, not to mention Burghart’s deft and varied drumming. I know Moss has been through several lineups of the band at this point, but they sound better here than they ever have, and having seen some of these songs live, “Foxhole” among them, I think they came as close as they could have to honing in on that live feel without actually having Moss walk in the room and start yelling at you.

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Looking back at past Wino Wednesday posts, it’s been an egregiously long time since the last time The Hidden Hand was featured. I guess between new projects, collaborations, that new Saint Vitus album, Roadburn performances, etc., the post-Spirit Caravan trio fell by the wayside for a bit, but no more. I never got to see Spirit Caravan live (to date; one never knows), but I did catch The Hidden Hand a bunch of times, and I’ve noticed one consistent thing about their clips on the YousTube that I’d like to share with you before presenting this video of “Sunblood” from 2006.

Namely, it’s the fact that the videos — with a few rare exceptions — blow. Part of that is timing. The Hidden Hand began before streaming media took off as a mundane part of everyday life — their first album, Desensitized, came out in 2003 — and ended before it really took off, their third and final album being 2007′s The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote. There is quality live footage of them out there, mostly from the Emissions from the Monolith festival, so it’s not like it doesn’t exist at all, but they never quite hit the level where people went out and documented every move they made, and it was before the time where every move a band made was documented and uploaded for all to see. If this band was touring today, we’d have clips of Bruce Falkinburg farting in HD. There isn’t a doubt in my mind.

By my estimation, that makes The Hidden Hand something special both in the Wino catalog and in general. Living as we do in an age of increasingly prevalent and pervasive media of a variety of forms and delivered across a range of platforms, I like the thought of a band like this, led by an artist who’s by no means obscure at this point in his career despite never having broken fully into the commercial mainstream end of the music industry, being relatively obscure.

Something to keep in mind, or not, as you watch the clip of “Sunblood.” Of course, part of the reasoning behind there only being a handful of The Hidden Hand videos uploaded could also be that the band was so fucking loud they blew out everyone’s mics. That could be the issue as well.

Here’s “Sunblood,” which appeared on Divine Propaganda, filmed at the Black Cat in Washington D.C. on Dec. 29, 2006. Happy Wino Wednesday: