The German four-piece also announced some new jackets, but the album seemed the most headline-worthy inclusion. My Sleeping Karma, whose third full-length, Tri, was a 2010 highlight, sent over word today that they’ve begun the writing process for the follow-up, due out sometime before the end of this year. 2012 wasn’t exactly lacking for killer album prospects, but I won’t complain about the chance to hear new stuff from these guys, and they’ll also be playing a slew of European summer fests, on which you can find more info at their website.

Straight from the PR wire to your very eyes:

We hope that all of you had a peaceful start into the New Year.

Here is the latest news from The MSK Camp.

New Record 2012:
We are busy writing on new material for our 4th studio album. The release is planned for summer/fall this year. We don’t know the exact date yet, but it will happen in 2012, promised!

New Merchandise:
Our new zip jackets (colour: chocolate/gold) were sold out during the last tour. You will find them back in our shop during the next week as well as some other new shirts and items… do yourself something good during these cold days.

http://www.mysleepingkarma.com

With their signature crushing emotional weight in tow, French post-black metal forerunners Alcest return in 2012 with their third album, Les Voyages de l’Âme. The eight-track record, the title of which translates to “the journeys of the soul,” keeps its focus musically on Alcest’s well-developed melodic wash, toying with blastbeats, screams and other black metal genre conventions in the interest of exploring the kind of head-down melancholy that brought such notoriety to past efforts Écailles de Lune (2010; half-review here) and Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde (2007) and placed Alcest multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Stéphane “Neige” Paut at the head of a melodic movement championed by the label Prophecy Productions and acts like Les Discrets, Arctic Plateau and Lantlôs, of which Paut is also a member. Along with drummer Winterhalter (also of Les Discrets), who joined in 2009, Paut has long since established the sonic course of Alcest as a band. Indeed, even on the two extended tracks of 2005’s Le Secret EP, it seemed a specific aesthetic was driving Neige’s songwriting, and that has remained true and consistent across the ensuing releases – in conjunction with a steady touring schedule, that consistency is part of what has allowed Alcest to attain the profile they have. At times, it has felt like that adherence to aesthetic has trumped the actual songwriting in the creative process – songs have been more about the mood they generate or add to – and where that might also be the case given the overall affect of Les Voyages de l’Âme, there’s no question that the third full-length has Alcest’s most directly memorable material to date.

As compares to the relatively jagged guitar sound of Écailles de Lune, Les Voyages de l’Âme seems to have more in common with Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde in terms of its production. Neige’s guitar, bass and keys come through clearly and smooth, and right away on opener “Autre Temps,” it’s apparent that Alcest had definite structural ideas going into this album. “Autre Temps” was chosen as the lead-off single/video cut, and rightly so with its balance of catchy wistfulness and gracefully unfolding melody. The vocals are prominent without being overbearing, and play a considerable role in making the chorus so ethereal. Guitars are layered in acoustics and electrics, and Winterhalter’s drumming maintains a metallic percussive edge without sounding out of place amid the song’s gradual build. As ever for Alcest, “Autre Temps” evokes a feeling of longing and a contemplative kind of classical sadness. “Là Où Naissent les Couleurs Nouvelles” follows and revives the black metal screams that “Percées De Lumière” from Écailles de Lune explored, in this context using them to complement the melody in the chorus and eventually take the fore. Winterhalter adds blasts, and were the guitars not so unabashedly gorgeous and the melody not still so prominent, “Là Où Naissent les Couleurs Nouvelles” would essentially be traditional black metal. It’s not, and the song’s later minutes emphasize a propulsive post-rock feel, capping the nine minutes with fading guitar that brings on the title-track’s headphone-worthy density. Squiggly guitars serve as a chorus amid more subdued, lower-register verse vocals, and the initial sway breaks after three minutes to embark on Les Voyages de l’Âme’s most effective musical and vocal build, on which both Neige and Winterhalter contribute to a vast, stirring sprawl. Side A wraps with the winding verses of “Nous Sommes l’Emeraude,” a fitting (if short addition) to Alcest’s worship of nature and the passage of time within it.

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As guitarist/vocalist Scott Hill said the band would in our interview this past November, Fu Manchu have announced a slew of tour dates playing their 1997 classic The Action is Go front to back. One can only assume/hope that American dates will follow the European ones that have been made public, and look forward to staring into the “Evil Eye.” If the tour they did playing all of In Search Of… was anything to go by, this should be a blast.

Here’s the poster. Click to enlargify if you don’t like looking at tiny dates:

Red Fang‘s building up an awful lot of pressure to keep making hilarious videos. “Hank is Dead” is their third in a row, and what starts with awkward junk-glances in the shower ends with a PBR-fueled (PBR being the thread that unites the to-date trilogy of Red Fang clips) rager/air guitar championship. Spandex is had, blood is spilled, invisible necks are licked — in short, Red Fang‘s specific brand chaos ensues, and as always, it looks like a blast to have put it all together.

Enjoy “Hank is Dead,” followed by some PR wire info and European tour dates:

Portland, Oregon’s Red Fang are premiering their new video today on YouTube for “Hank is Dead”, which is taken from their critically acclaimed release Murder the Mountains. Red Fang worked with director extraordinaire, Whitey McConnaughy on the video.

Drummer John Sherman spoke about the “Hank is Dead” video:

“Another great concept from the brilliant mind of Whitey McConnaughy. This one came together super quick with the help of some insane Portland locals and their sick air guitar skills. We basically just threw a big party and had a blast while a bunch of cameras ran. That is my shower Aaron and Bryan and Bobcat are in at the intro, btw. It still has a weird ring around it…”

Red Fang are currently on tour in Europe with Mastodon. The tour runs through Feb. 11 in London and includes Red Fang headline dates in addition to the shows with Mastodon.

Red Fang European tour with Mastodon
01/27 GER, Stuttgart Juha West*
01/28 SWI, Zurich Xtra
01/29 GER, Frankfurt Batschkapp
01/30 GER, Munich Backstage Halle
01/31 GER, Berlin C-Club
02/01 GER, Osnabruck Bastard Club*
02/02 GER, Cologne Essigfabrik
02/03 HOL, Tilburg 013
02/04 FRA, Le Havre Le Mate L’Eau*
02/05 ENG, Bristol Academy
02/06 ENG, Manchester Academy
02/07 SCO, Glasgow Barrowland
02/09 Norwich, UEA
02/10 ENG, Birmingham Institute
02/11 ENG, London Brixton Academy

*Denotes headlining dates

Just a brief pause to mark this as post number 2,500 on this site. I was kind of hoping it would line up with doing the numbers at the end of the month — sort of kill two birds with one bit of self-aggrandizing, but apparently I’ve posted more the last couple weeks than I anticipated. Big change. Anyway, it’s only been six months since I marked post #2,000, so I guess the last half-year has been pretty busy. I hope that time was good to you.

We march on. Thanks for checking out The Obelisk, whenever, however, whyever you got here. If I could plot my own course, I would, but I’m pretty sure I’d fail miserably. I’d rather take that energy and put it into the next post, which will be up shortly. Until then, I know it’s kind of weird because chances are if you’re reading this, we don’t know each other, but take my word for it, I’m a real person, and I really appreciate your reading this site. Thank you and thank you again.

Admittedly, it’s a cruel, heartless question to ask, and yet, can there be any doubt as to the answer? Could anything ever top Master of Reality? I ask the question mostly because I want to see if anyone sticks up for Vol. 4, which, apart from “Changes,” is about as flawless as an album can get. With the recent terrible news of Tony Iommi‘s lymphoma diagnosis, I think we’re due for a good time. So let’s have some fun.

Earliest Black Sabbath was nothing if not a coalescing of various elements into a cohesive whole. A kind of cultural distillation, ground down and remade into the singular most formative basis of doom — the album Black Sabbath. Only months later in 1970, they released Paranoid and refined the darkness of the first record, adding range and sonic breadth. While the title-track became the band’s signature piece, “Electric Funeral” and “Fairies Wear Boots” grew into the anthems of a subculture within a subculture, and they remain so to this day.

However, every time I put on Master of Reality and listen to it straight through, with each successive track, I say to myself, “This is the heaviest shit ever made.” And each song proves the prior assessment wrong — yes, even “Solitude” — until finally, “Into the Void” offers clear and indisputable truth of riff. It is pure in its muck, and as perfect as stoner rock has ever gotten. The standard by which the genre is and should be measured: the heaviest shit ever made.

But what about Vol. 4? It seems to have an answer for every challenge Master of Reality throws at it. A “Snowblind” for “Sweet Leaf,” “Supernaut” for “Into the Void,” “Under the Sun/Every Day Comes and Goes” for “Lord of this World.” 1972 found Black Sabbath a more realized beast with a perfected heavy rock that seemed to already know the tropes of the metal genre it was shaping.

I could go on. I won’t. Is “Changes” enough to hold back Vol. 4 from standing up to Master of Reality? There are people who consider “Solitude” a misstep of similar magnitude. I leave it to you to decide in the comments.

You know the scenario. You can only pick one, so which is it?

Well, this is about the best kind of news one can get. Or at least the second best. Word came in last night from guitarist JJ Bonar that recording of the new Bloodcow album has begun. This prompted further investigating on my part of the Omaha, Nebraska, band’s Thee Facebooks page, where indeed, confirmation was had. Dig the following informativeness:

Recording of the next Bloodcow album has begun.

That settles it. Also, this:

They have a video series going that documents the recording process, but of course I couldn’t get it to work — Facebook wants me to upgrade my Flash so they can come to my house and steal my manly essence in the night — or something — but that’s fine, because it gives me an excuse to post a live clip instead. For example:

No word on a release date or whether or not the new one will be released on Crustacean Records like its most righteous predecessor, Bloodcow III: Hail Xenu. Stay tuned for more as this situation develops. In the meantime, Bloodcow will be opening for thrash legends Testament on Feb. 13. More info on that here.

Near as I can tell, the plot in the lyrics of Evil Cosmonaut’s “Boris Yeltsin vs. Giant Ants” is that huge bugs come and attack the world. Buildings fall, people die, and then Boris Yeltsin shows up, does an evil dance, and saves the planet. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that’s fucking awesome. Much of the Moscow three-piece’s R.A.I.G. debut, We Have Landed, follows that kind of course – not always to such heights of badassery, but nonetheless with a notable degree of charm. “My Moustache” calls its titular subject, “My present from God,” and “Armageddon” playfully name-checks the stars of the 1998 blockbuster, even going so far as to mention Steve Buscemi. That, in combination with the clay artwork, the crunchy tone of guitarist/vocalist Alex “Kaza” Kazachev and the bluesy groove of “The Song We Will Never Play Again,” seems to make We Have Landed a record that gets by more on personality than innovation, but whatever does it does it. The album’s nine tracks and 42 minutes feel quick, songs vary enough to hold interest, and periodic bursts of punkish energy keep the pace from being mired by sleepy stonerisms. A mostly dry production keeps Evil Cosmonaut grounded from where some of the space-program thematics might otherwise take them, giving the album a garage-esque feel at times, but between Kazachev and bassist Denis “Memphis Dead” Petrov, the tones are thicker than most of what passes these days for that aesthetic. It’s all rock.

And if anything, it’s hard to pick a highlight from among We Have Landed’s fare. “Armageddon” certainly makes a case for itself, with its rudimentary chugging riff and live feel, as well as its lyrics, but “Old Guy Neil,” which recalls the moon landing and Neil Armstrong’s first steps out of the craft, starts the album off with a crisp (if somewhat misleading) aggressive bent and foretells a lot of the perspective to come. Drummer Konstantin Sosnin, the only member of Evil Cosmonaut without a nickname, is straightforward in his approach and well-suited to Kazachev’s riffs, which for the most part lead the way. The upbeat shuffle of “Marvin” – either an inside joke or a reference I don’t get to an old man who lives in a cave – features some of We Have Landed’s best fuzz, to be later complemented by closer “The Golden Apples of the Sun,” and maintains the forward motion of the opener, leading to the even more rocking “Big Super Mega Monsters,” which earns its chorus shout of the title line late in the track. The song can’t help but be memorable with a name like that, but the music stands up to it with a marked simplicity of approach and a cheeky self-awareness that matches Kazachev’s vocal. However simple the album might seem, Evil Cosmonaut have a clear mindfulness of structure, as “The Song We Will Never Play Again” shows by slowing down the momentum of “Big Super Mega Monsters” and giving way in turn to the middle-pacing of “Armageddon.” Given the tongue-in-cheek nature of most of the lyrics – here a drunken alien abduction is recounted – I’d doubt the veracity of the title “The Song We Will Never Play Again,” or at least hope it’s not true, since the song’s relatively lumbering groove is among the album’s most fascinating assets.

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