To know Slough Feg‘s music is to love Slough Feg‘s music, and though it’s not always easy to penetrate the heady sounds the San Francisco unit produces, those who’ve done so happily consider themselves part of a growing gnostic cult. 2009’s Ape Uprising! was a joy to ears tired of banal rock (I’m looking and can’t find a review; doubtless I decided the album was beyond my capacity for understanding), and with the announcement that their next record will be released through Profound Lore this Fall, one can only imagine the badassery to follow.

This might be old news to some of you, but it was new to me, so here goes:

The mighty Slough Feg will release their next album in North America through Profound Lore Records and we couldn’t be more psyched to work with one of our favourite heavy metal bands ever. Mastermind Mike Scalzi has been pounding away in the studio over the last while crafting what we could only imagine to be one of the best heavy metal releases you’ll hear this year. Slough Feg’s next full-length album should be released early fall. Expect more album updates to surface sometime soon.

In the meantime, Scalzi and Co. are gearing up for another tour, this time a West Coast run alongside none other than Profound Lore alumni The Gates of Slumber. Dates are as follows:

May
05/28 – Seattle, WA @ Comet Tavern (w/ The Gates of Slumber)
05/29 – Vancouver, BC/Canada @ Red Room (w/ The Gates of Slumber)
05/30 – Portland, OR @ East End (w/ The Gates of Slumber)

June
06/01 – San Francisco, CA @ Thee Parkside (w/ The Gates of Slumber, Black Cobra)
06/02 – Boyle Heights, CA @ The Blvd (w/ The Gates of Slumber)
06/04 – Ramona, CA @ Ramona Mainstage (w/ The Gates of Slumber)
06/05 – Las Vegas, NV @ Cheyenne Saloon (Doom in June fest)

Clutch have a new and recently reviewed DVD out called Live at the 9:30, which means I have two of my very favorite things in the world: a new Clutch release and an excuse to interview the band. This will be the third Clutch-related feature The Obelisk has done in its 15 months of existence counting the Bakerton Group chat with bassist Dan Maines last February, and though that might seem like a lot (it is), they keep kicking ass, so I feel fully justified.

On Live at the 9:30, which was filmed at the club of the same name in Washington D.C. as part of Clutch‘s New Years string of shows this past December, the venerable four-piece play their entire 1995 Clutch album, making it a treat for the fans beyond the normal gig. Encompassing that set, which also includes a few tracks from their latest, Strange Cousins from the West, and a couple closers, the DVD set also contains a second disc titled Fortune Tellers Make a Killing Nowadays that documents Clutch on the road in Fall 2009.

Especially after watching the scene in that documentary wherein he describes the ins and outs of his kit and how using different drums can affect the outcome of an entire song, I wanted to chat with drummer Jean-Paul Gaster (also of Scott “Wino” Weinrich‘s Wino solo band) about the shows and the opposition between looking back on everything Clutch has accomplished and looking forward to what’s still to come.

Incidentally, what’s to come includes an unsurprisingly hefty load of touring throughout the summer and autumn, followed by the recording of a new album. In June, Clutch perform an acoustic set at the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee, and they’ve got reissues planned for the three albums released via DRT Records this past decade — Blast Tyrant, Robot Hive/Exodus and From Beale Street to Oblivion. So yeah, lots to look forward to.

Q&A with J.P. Gaster is after the jump. Please enjoy.

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While you and I are sitting on our lazy asses, ostensibly “remembering” the contributions of the veterans who’ve made our empire so very great and laid the foundations for the evil which our leaders have wrought, Savannah, Georgia‘s Kylesa will be in the studio, working hard on their new album. It’s going to be their first record for Season of Mist, and especially coming off the oh-so-badass Static Tensions, I’m stoked to hear what they come up with. Best of luck to the band. I’ll keep them in my thoughts while grilling and/or grabbing a beer from the cooler.

Sayeth the PR wire:

Between extensive tours of Europe, Kylesa will enter the studio on May 31 to begin recording the follow-up to the critically-acclaimed album Static Tensions. The new album is the band’s debut for Season of Mist Records. The sessions will take place over the month of June at the legendary Jam Room in Columbia, SC with Phillip Cope at the helm as producer. The band is very excited about the new material, with writing ongoing since January of this year. After the completion of the recording the band will return to Europe supporting Converge through August, with US touring plans to be announced shortly.

Everything I’ve seen, heard or read about French stoner rockers Wheelfall compares them to Slo Burn (fair since “Wheel Fall” was the name of a track on the latter’s 1996 demo), so in the interest of comparison and a refresher, I took out the Amusing the Amazing EP and put it next to Wheelfall’s self-released debut extended player, From the Blazing Sky at Dusk. What did I find out, you ask? Well, I found out John Garcia is awesome and the kid from Wheelfall is no John Garcia, but I don’t suppose that does much for a review.

Yeah, I guess a Slo Burn comparison works, but there are at least 100 other desert rock acts who would fit just as well, most notably Kyuss, whose Blues for the Red Sun could easily be seen as the blueprint for From the Blazing Sky at Dusk. The double-guitar Lorraine four-piece do a job of balancing groove and aggression, and their tones are pretty well what you’d expect from desert fuzz. According to their bio, they will, “beat you down with an [sic] heavy atmosphere and a fuzzy distortion up your ass.” I can say from several listening experiences, From the Blazing Sky at Dusk sounds much more pleasant than that.

Vocals come courtesy of guitarist Wayne Furter, whose gruff delivery is a bit of a put-on and could stand some development (in which this EP will doubtless aid), but is a decent match with these five-plus tracks anyway. There are three interludes on From the Blazing Sky at Dusk – titled “From the…” “…Blazing Sky… (Nasa)” and “…At Dusk…” – that seem to recount some alien capture and subsequent rectal probing (perhaps with a fuzzy distortion), but five genuine songs, which is why I make the distinction “five-plus.” The interludes, apart from “…Blazing Sky… (Nasa),” which jams a bit, don’t really feature any music from Wheelfall, so although I’ve dedicated a paragraph to them at this point, I’d just as soon not count them, as by my estimation they don’t really add anything to the release. It’s not like the desert atmosphere was lacking before they came along.

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Dutch witch rockers The Devil’s Blood issue a sprawling invitation to buy in with their first Ván Records full-length, The Time of No Time Evermore. Based out of Eindhoven and thoroughly in league with Satan, the as-many-as-six-piece play high-energy classic occult prog with sonic references to Jefferson Airplane, Heart, Coven and Black Widow, most notably showing up in the form of the powerful female vocals that front the band. They’re on a no-name basis, so all you get with The Devil’s Blood is The Devil’s Blood, but we do know that Erik Danielsson of Swedish black metallers Watain co-wrote “The Yonder Beckons” with the band, and that that dude knows the Devil personally, so at most there’s one degree of separation there.

In listening to The Time of No Time Evermore, I was surprised in comparing it to the prior Come, Reap EP that Profound Lore put out last year at how relatively metal it is. The guitars don’t shy away from carrying across an ‘80s metal vibe, as heard in songs like “Christ or Cocaine,” the stomping “Queen of My Burning Heart” and even the soloing on “The Yonder Beckons.” Think Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Vivian Campbell’s work on Dio’s The Last in Line and so on, both tonally and in terms of the riffs, The Devil’s Blood seem to have superimposed ‘70s acid prog and classic metal on top of each other in an offering to their (and, they hope, everyone’s) dark lord.

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Right at the end of August, when the whole world feels like that episode of The Twilight Zone where the earth is moving closer to the sun, when the haze of humidity covers the eastern half of the US like a blanket from Hell — is there any better time to reissue one of the most intense albums of all time? Neurosis‘ 1993 full-length, Enemy of the Sun — originally released on Alternative Tentacles, then reissued in 1999 on Neurot Recordings — will once again see new life through Neurot on August 30.

The tracklisting is the same as the 1999 reissue, but the album will feature newly-interpreted artwork from Neurosis‘ resident visual artist, Josh Graham. As per the PR wire:

Neurot Recordings is proud to announce the reissue of one of the most groundbreaking releases in the ever-expanding lineage of icons Neurosis, Enemy of the Sun.

With Neurosis’ earlier releases — 1987’s Pain of Mind, and even 1990’s The Word as Law — the band’s jagged and eerie blend of metallic, hypnotic, post-gutter punk was instantly recognized as wholly unique, yet it took multiple releases for the then Bay Area unit to infinitely define their sound, forcing the world to listen, then run for cover. Their 1992 full-length Souls at Zero showcased the band branching off into much more expanded songwriting, giving birth to much longer hymns, infusing them with tribal rhythms and slow-building post-doom bastardization, then breaking massive new ground for the metal world.

But it was their follow-up in 1993, the crushing Enemy of the Sun LP, that would be the album to take the pulsing, hypnotizing monoliths Neurosis was crafting down to much darker, and much, much heavier territory for the rest of the band’s still-growing roster of masterpieces. Still to this day, critics and fans of heavy and experimental metal hold this release to be one of the harshest, spine-chilling, mind-warping releases in history, and countless acts have cited Enemy of the Sun as “the one that changed everything” for them.

The eight tracks on the release was one of the most massively cavernous, crushing records the world had experienced. A mesmerizing, pressurizing, dirge-driven display of brutal riffing, thick with haunting samples, layered, anguished vocal tracks, raging multiple-member percussion contributions, and some of the most mammoth buildups ever, Enemy of the Sun was an album that left a sense of anguish in your soul long after the record was over.

Neurot Recordings are exceptionally proud to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Neurosis, and once again issue this classic album to the masses. 2010’s reissue of Enemy of the Sun bears a fully redesigned package by visionary artist, Neurosis live visual master Josh Graham, and will be released worldwide on August 30th, 2010.

A little while back, former Hackman guitarist Darryl Shepard filled us in on some of his upcoming projects, and first among them was Blackwolfgoat. An entirely solo venture, Blackwolfgoat is just Shepard and his guitar running through ambient pieces that range from the more active to the eerily still. Blackwolfgoat‘s first album, Dragonwizardsleeve (I guess he’s got a thing for putting words together; who doesn’t?) is self-released and Shepard has just put some if not all of it up for streaming on MySpace.

What’s interesting in listening to a track like “Death of a Lifer” is the layering. It’s subtle, but Shepard is working with multiple tracks of guitar, the dip and pull of the notes he’s playing seems to undercut that, but it’s there, and like a lot of drone/ambient material, it does develop, albeit subtly. The cuts range from the 10-minute “Hotel Anhedonia” (anhedonia being a loss of the ability to experience pleasure), the basic riff of which could easily have been worked into a structured song, to the 2:46 arrhythmia of “Aspirin Forever,” which has an almost drum and bass feel to it, though one obviously still in development.

There’s a range of emotions and moods clearly on display here, which is refreshing given how much drone seems just an exercise for its own sake or a tryout of equipment. The distorted “Tinnitus the Night” is on the shorter end at 4:17, but nonetheless creates an unsettled atmosphere of worry, and the sweeter “Risk and Return” plays with light mathematics that seem to be trying to air positivity on top of light percussion. Shepard being a proven-capable guitarist and no stranger to working in instrumental settings, Blackwolfgoat can be engaged either on the level of audio wallpaper or active listening. Of course I’d recommend the second option, but either way you approach Dragonwizardsleeve, definitely be sure to keep Blackwolfgoat‘s MySpace page on your radar.

Quit your day job and sacrifice a lemur, Ramesses have a new album! And a brutal, disgusting slab of doomed madness it is. Titled Take the Curse and released through the band’s own Ritual Productions, the second Ramesses full-length follows 2007’s Misanthropic Alchemy, splits with Unearthly Trance (2009) and Negative Reaction (2004), and two EPs, 2005’s We Will Lead You to Glorious Times and 2009’s Baptism of the Walking Dead, all three tracks from which appear here as well. The Dorset band play the kind of doom your mother warned you about, the kind of doom that you lose friends over, the kind of doom where your woman leaves you because you refuse to trim your beard.

The kind of doom where one backpatch just doesn’t seem to cut it.

You get the point.

Originally an offshoot of Electric Wizard, from which guitarist Tim Bagshaw and drummer Mark Greening split following the 2002 Let us Prey album, Ramesses definitely have elements of droning riffery in common with Jus Oborn’s influential outfit, but theirs is a dirtier, grittier, nastier sound. The death metal growling of bassist/vocalist Adam Richardson (who was also in Electric Wizard predecessor Thy Grief Eternal with Oborn), layered with cleaner sub-melodic shouting, gives Ramesses songs a different atmosphere entirely. A sense of ritual is maintained, but it’s more like the ceremony is taking place out back behind the pub than on some altar out of an early-‘70s horror flick. “Black Hash Mass” backs me up on this, with Greening working in blastbeats amid Satanic sampling and horrific wails from Richardson.

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