A friendly note from the PR wire reminds that Philly mongrels Javelina release their full-length, Beasts among Sheep today, Sept. 29, on Translation Loss. Haven’t heard it yet, but if it’s anything like their self-titled was, should be a winner. Behold the press release and tour dates:

Javelina posted the new tracks ?You?re Going to Hate This? and ?Black Blizzard? from their Translation Loss Records debut release titled Beasts among Sheep due out? September 29th, 2009, here.

Javelina?s new record Beasts among Sheep was recorded at Volume Studios in Chicago, IL, by Sanford Parker Parker (Minsk, Pelican, Nachtmystium), mastered by Collin Jordan at The Boiler Room, and features artwork by Philadelphia?s very own Old City Tattoo stalwart artist Jason Goldberg.

Beasts among Sheep is now available for with exclusive CD/T-shirt package deals only available on the Translation Loss Records webstore!

10/03/2009 Oade?s Hidden Camel – Lansing, MI w/ The Plague Years
10/04/2009 The Melody Inn – Indianapolis, IN
10/05/2009 Ronny’s – Chicago, IL w/ Lord Mantis
10/06/2009 Red Raven– Fargo, ND w/ Nux Vomica
10/07/2009 The Bar – Missoula, MT w/ Nux Vomica
10/08/2009 The Morgue – Georgetown, WA w/ Nux Vomica
10/09/2009 The Rendezvous – Seattle, WA w/ Nux Vomica, Slave Traitor
10/10/2009 Plan B – Portland, OR w/ Nux Vomica
10/11/2009 *TBA
10/12/2009 Elbo Room – San Francisco, CA
10/13/2009 Alterknit Lounge @ The Knitting Factory – Los Angeles, CA
10/14/2009 Jug Heads – Phoenix, AZ w/ The Accused
10/16/2009 The Phoenix Project – Dallas, TX w/ Vorvadoss, Kill the Client, Maleveller
10/17/2009 Red 7 – Austin, TX w/ Pasadena Napalm Divison (members of DRI, Deadhorse)
10/18/2009 The Rats Nest – Houston, TX w/ Pretty Little Flower, Skruge, Termination Force
10/19/2009 Checkpoint Charlie’s – New Orleans, LA w/ Holy Dirt, Raum
10/20/2009 Transitions Arts Gallery @ Tampa Skate Park – Tampa, FL w/ Six Dead Horses
10/21/2009 Will?s Pub – Orlando, FL w/ Six Dead Horses
10/22/2009 Drunken Unicorn – Atlanta, GA w/ Music Hates You, Sons of Tonatiuth, Fluff
10/23/2009 Slim?s – Raleigh, NC w/ Man Will Destroy Himself
10/24/2009 Barclay House – Baltimore, MD w/ Man Will Destroy Himself
11/11/2009 941 Theater – Philadelphia, PA w/ The Atlas Moth, Wetnurse, Woe

There?s little doubt everything about San Francisco freak rockers SubArachnoid Space?s ninth full-length, Eight Bells (Crucial Blast) is meant to provoke a reaction. The Stephen Kasner cover art is at once horrific and beautiful — we see a severed arm but also several other phantom limbs from the figure in Venus-like repose and the image is undoubtedly bleak in nature but still somehow triumphant — and the music that spreads across the five tracks that comprise the album follow a similar course of leading listeners in with engulfing sounds before repelling them again with complex changes and other sonic experiments.

It?s a battle of accessibility, and maybe that?s the intent all along. If so, then it?s most fully realized on the second of the five pieces, ?Akathesia.? The title a reference to the inner restlessness keeping one from standing still, this is almost certainly evoked in the music, which follows a gradually building structure across its 13-plus minutes to an insistent and pulsating start-stop conclusion that is not only the most aggressive moment on Eight Bells, but also the most satisfying. It does what closing duo ?Haruspex? and ?Bird Signs? try to do all on its own.

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StonerRock.com, which has been following the story of one Tariq Ali, one of its board members who went missing Sept. 13, has posted an update that his body has been found in a forest near his home, dead in an apparent suicide. Again, I didn’t know him at all, we’d never spoken, but the scene around this music is small enough that there’s a genuine sense of community and to lose someone under these circumstances hits us all pretty hard. The Obelisk sends condolences to his family and friends.

Here’s a local newspaper story.

Today is my fifth wedding anniversary, so don’t expect much in the way of updates. The Patient Mrs. is well deserving of her name, but I’m not about to push it with, “Just a second, baby, I’ve gotta finish reviewing this record then we can spend time together.” Not today, anyway. In my absence, I decided to throw down enough media to hopefully last the afternoon and for everyone to enjoy. Even though I haven’t been updating as much as I was, say, in July, the daily hits for this site are on the up and that is much, much appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Nod Scene

Death is this Communion

Keefmaster

Of all the Obelisk-relevant news that’s come in on the PR wire this week, this is the only bit that made me want to get in an airplane. Tee Pee Records has put together a festival for November called Fog Rising, set to take place in San Francisco at Broadway Studios. Here’s the info, edited from its original press release for form and content:

Tee Pee Records and Secret Serpents present Fog Rising.

Among the bands performing are Witch featuring Mario Rubalcaba of Earthless on drums, this will be Witch‘s only west coast performance of 2009. Saviours, who release their brand new album, Accelerated Living, on October 26th, Ancestors, who have a highly anticipated release of their own coming out October 6th titled Of Sound Mind, Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound and many more.

Advance tickets will go on sale Monday, September 27th, via the Secret Serpents website.

2PM, November 7
Broadway Studios – 435 Broadway
San Francisco, CA

Bands:
Witch
Saviours
Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound
Night Horse
Ancestors
Black Math Horseman
Imaad Wasif with Two Part Beast
Lecherous Gaze
Citadelle

Artists:
Alan Forbes
David D’Andrea
Alan Hynes
Marq Spusta

Seriously, this whole afternoon, and to be perfectly honest, I’m not even sure it’s done right.

What you’ll find enclosed in the following two YouTube clips is the interview I conducted this past weekend at the Planet Caravan Festival with UK doom lords Orange Goblin. It was with the whole band and we all sat in the backstage area at The Orange Peel while Taddy Porter‘s set came through the walls. Sorry about the background noise. You can kick me in the jimmy when next we meet and hopefully that’ll make up for it.

My initial plan for today was to sit down with the recorded interview (actually it was the plan for Tuesday, but that’s a different story entirely) and transcribe it all out, but I’m sure once you listen to 30 seconds of the first half of the interview and then stop it out of impatience you’ll understand why that didn’t work out. Not the best quality ever. Mostly I blame Taddy Porter. Then myself. In that order.

But it was my goal to have a beer with Orange Goblin, and I accomplished that. Planet Caravan being their only US show this year and their new album not due until 2010 — which is the future! — basically we just shot the shit for a little while about what it’s like to be in Orange Goblin, what they’ve got in store going forward and how Planet Caravan compares to Roadburn and the dearly-missed Emissions from the Monolith.

Enjoy. Oh, and any Solace fans might want to start with pt. 2, wherein Ben Ward calls them fucking scumbags. Classic.

Whereas the title could once be applied to the more tech-happy Atheist or later-era Death, for the better part of this century, the ?progressive death metal? genre tag has been subsumed almost entirely by one band: Opeth. As such, when I say that Gwynbleidd?s epic debut LP, Nostalgia fits well into the prog-death genre, I?m basically saying it sounds like the seminal Swedes. I?m sorry, but it?s unavoidable.

Almost so much so that it?s a distraction in listening. Nostalgia is not my first experience with Gwynbleidd — that would be their self-released 2006 EP, Amaranthine — but the Brooklyn-by-way-of-Poland four-piece have upped their ?Peth levels and it goes beyond mere aesthetic into the very fabric of the music itself. The hauntingly sustained notes, the acoustic/classic guitar interludes, the reverbed deathly growls and the back and forth interplay between heavy and melodic: all elements that should be immediately identifiable to anyone who?s sat with Blackwater Park and/or Deliverance on more than one occasion (note also that Gwynbleidd formed in 2002, between the release of those two records).

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Woke up not half an hour ago realizing I never said a word about the shops I hit while in Asheville last weekend. An egregious error to be immediately remedied. It was 10:30AM, probably time to get up anyway, but surely I wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep again without this task completed. Maybe I’ll take a nap this afternoon.

There were three shops amidst the list of important addresses The Patient Mrs. compiled for me before I left the valley, and they were, in order, those of Static Age Records, Harvest Records and Voltage Records. Both Static Age and Voltage were on N. Lexington — about three doors down from each other; which should say something about the town itself — so I figured I’d hit them simultaneously.

Nice thought, and one complicated by the overarching hippieness of Asheville. Static Age‘s listed opening time of 11:00AM was more like 1:30PM. Since they were the shop with a Caltrop show listed on their website, they’d been the one I was most looking forward to checking out, but I hit Voltage first instead. No Holy Grails there, but I’d have probably been more into it if I was buying vinyl, since that’s mostly what they had to offer. Some cool Beatles records, “imports,” but nothing I could afford given my liquor budget.

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