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Insect Ark Announce June 7 Release for Raw Blood Singing LP; New Song Streaming

Posted in Whathaveyou on March 26th, 2024 by JJ Koczan

Insect Ark (Photo by Lupus Lindemann)

Shit yeah, new Insect Ark. Admittedly, such a level of insight is hardly befitting for the band founded and spearheaded by the experimentalist craft of Dana Schechter that has come to incorporate no less than Tim Wyskida of Khanate on drums, but I’m just telling you how I honestly feel. And as the former’s vocals guide through the dark reaches of advance-track “Youth Body Swayed” with the punctuating roll of the latter cast amid spaces alternately open and full, the June 7 release of Raw Blood Singing can hardly get here fast enough. This will be the first Insect Ark LP with the Schechter/Wyskida lineup, first for Debemur Morti after releasing 2020’s The Vanishing (review here) on Profound Lore, and I haven’t heard it yet so I’m not going to sit here and pretend I know anything about it.

Accordingly, “shit yeah” is where I land on the subject. Truth be told, I had a whole paragraph here going on about the air eating itself and the world being made across the seven minutes of “Youth Body Swayed,” but it just felt fucking dumb and off-base for where the song actually goes. Maybe by the time the record arrives I’ll have half a coherent thought to share, but, you know, don’t hold your breath.

The PR wire as life preserver:

insect ark raw blood singing

INSECT ARK, FEATURING DANA SCHECTER OF SWANS AND TIM WYSKIDA OF KHANATE, RELEASE RAW BLOOD SINGING ON JUNE 7 VIA DEBEMUR MORTI PRODUCTIONS

Album preorder: https://bfan.link/raw-blood-singing

Insect Ark, featuring Dana Schechter (Swans) and Tim Wyskida (Khanate), release their new album, Raw Blood Singing, on June 7 via Debemur Morti Productions.

The pair, who deconstructed and re-imagined Insect Ark in the lead-up to the new album, released a preview of Raw Blood Singing this morning, with the arrival of “Youth Body Swayed.” A notable shift for the band is the decision to add Schechter’s vocals to their music, with previous Insect Ark releases having been instrumental.

“Embracing evolution and fearless exploration are the core instincts of Insect Ark,” Schechter shares. “Writing the album ignited an awakening. It was in this inspired environment that I tried singing again, after a 10-year break. Encouraged by Tim, and after recording vocals on Swans ‘The Beggar’ – to my surprise, it felt great to sing again. I felt like I was creeping out of a deep cave after hibernation, blinking awkwardly into the bright and uncomfortable light of springtime.”

Wyskida explains how he came to join Schechter, permanently, in Insect Ark: “Shortly after Dana asked me to play shows with Insect Ark in 2022, she asked if I’d like to play on the new album. I expected to mostly replicate pre-existing ideas. We started digging in and it turned into a full on collaboration, with most of the original ideas and arrangements being completely reworked. We spent the better part of a year working on the music, daily. To my ear, the result is incredibly potent.”

Over the eight-songs, Insect Ark weaves a lush, bleak, vast and expansive landscape as they move from whispers of synth to a monstrous wall-of-sound via Schechter’s blistering lap steel playing, diabolical bass-work and the mammoth, searing power of Wyskida’s drums.

Raw Blood Singing is available for pre-order (https://bfan.link/raw-blood-singing), with the collection available on multiple limited-edition vinyl variants, as well as CD and digitally.

Raw Blood Singing track list:
1. Birth of a Black Diamond
2. The Frozen Lake
3. Youth Body Swayed
4. Cleaven Hearted
5. The Hands
6. Psychological Jackal
7. Inverted Whirlpool
8. Ascension

http://www.insectark.com
http://www.insectark.bandcamp.com
http://www.facebook.com/InsectArk
http://www.instagram.com/insectark

https://www.facebook.com/debemurmorti
https://www.instagram.com/debemurmorti/
https://dmp666.bandcamp.com/
https://www.debemur-morti.com/en/

Insect Ark, Raw Blood Singing (2024)

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Colour Haze Celebrate 30 Years with In Her Garden Remix and More

Posted in Features on March 26th, 2024 by JJ Koczan

The studio adventures of German heavy psychedelia progenitors Colour Haze are manifold and occasionally more than their share of tragic, but as the band celebrate their 30th anniversary throughout 2024, they’re an essential part of the story. Guitarist and vocalist Stefan Koglek, who is the remaining founding member, has been a part of studio builds and teardowns, recorded in basements and bunkers, and been driven enough toward the band determining their own destiny to end up creating the space itself in which he’d long wished to create. You might recall that around the time of 2012’s She Said (review here), Koglek talked about some of the years’ worth of challenges behind that record alone. As it turns out, that circumstance — while particularly gruesome — was not necessarily an isolated incident.

In addition to a CD sale through his mostly-dormant imprint Elektrohasch Schallplatten and sundry live dates — including SonicBlast Fest in Portugal and Bear Stone in Croatia — that will culminate in an anniversary festival of their own at Feierwerk in Munich this Dec. 28 (further details TBA), Koglek has begun overseeing revisits to past Colour Haze albums at a home studio that, at least for now, he’s willing to call ‘done.’ One might think of the 2021 remix of 2003’s Los Sounds de Krauts (reissue review here) as a precursor to this undertaking, but in terms of the place where the work happens, the already-streaming upcoming 2LP remix and remaster of 2017’s In Her Garden (review here) presents an evolved ideology in its approach to volume, and takes ownership of the material in a way that lets it realize new ideas without actually being all that different.

I’ll just say flat out that if you cherish the original as I do — I hope always to remember dancing with my then-baby daughter to the la-la-las later in “Lotus” — there’s nothing on the 2024 In Her Garden that wants to take that away from you. If the notion of an artist going back over prior output makes you nervous, I understand that. I’m pretty sure there are still folks pissed off Star Wars did a second trilogy at the turn of the century, and I’m not out here to try and belittle or discount anyone’s point of view. Particularly for records toward which one might feel a deep connection, that change can be scary. With the original In Her Garden, Colour Haze united the expanse of the aforementioned She Said with the intentional pushback, go-to-ground organic performance-capture of 2015’s To the Highest Gods We Know (review here), found peace and a place in-between those sides that was memorable unto itself in the listening experience, and cast sun-coated evocations which have continued to resonate in the now-seven years since it came out. Their two-to-date LPs since, 2019/2020’s We Are (review here) and 2022’s Sacred (review here), would not have taken shape as they did without In Her Garden‘s progressive foundation.

Below, you’ll find Koglek detailing the process of going back into the recordings of In Her Garden with a perspective less about volume and more about dynamic. Some pieces have been (partially) rearranged, as with the vocals on “Black Lilly” after the intro “Into Her Garden,” or Jan Faszbender‘s solo in “Lavatera,” but the overarching impression of the music remains serene in its varied movements, and the songs come across with more space, more live energy, and as you can hear in the 11-minute “Islands” and across the span, an underlying tonal crunch that proves well worth highlighting. He calls its sound as “brighter” and “more ‘open,'” and these are assessments with which I can only agree as he, then-bassist Philipp Rasthofer, drummer Manfred Merwald, as well as Faszbender and a host of guest contributors including Mario Oberpucher — who’d take over for Rasthofer on bass in 2021 — present this fresh and refreshing take on the original.

This isn’t an interview, and it’s not an in-studio, but Koglek goes deep in terms of laying out the ideas behind 2024’s In Her Garden and what actually went into making a record that was already so teeming with vitality feel even more alive. Keep your eyes on their website, as they’ll reportedly roll out more background on other albums as the occasion arises. I did some light editing on the text below, but in parallel to the record’s new mix itself, no actual meaning has been changed.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy:

colour haze in her garden

Revisiting ‘In Her Garden’ with Stefan Koglek

…In the summer of 2015, my new control room was ready to work. Now I had a luxurious home studio. While I couldn’t foresee the dynamics starting from the choice of a 2” tape machine as a basic recorder, I have to admit I got intrigued by the reemergence of analogue audio gear. A fascinating world I dived into with passion. Would you stick with drawing watercolor on paper just for economic reasons if it’s your dream to make big oil paintings on canvas?

I think the experiences of your life are more precious than any money you could probably save. I wanted to have gear that I really liked, not just what was doing the job. Even if it was just for the reason that you couldn’t blame the gear for making a poor-sounding record.

I was reasonable enough not to buy overpriced classics, instead choosing esoteric stuff with good value for the money. And with an analogue studio you need a lot of stuff.

Also in my new home studio, I was still missing some tools, equalizer channels, etc., to really do everything necessary or that I wanted. It was still not grown up. And though the room was good now, the monitoring still was far from perfect. Though I wasn’t too happy with the performance of my monitor speakers in the room, my attempts to change this didn’t get much going. But it was much better than before, so I tried to get used to it. I couldn’t improve the situation for another five years.

In 2016, we had enough music for a new album but the garage below my control room still wasn’t converted into the recording space it was initially intended to be.

For the ‘In Her Garden’ recordings, we booked a great sounding, huge 1960s studio room in Munich, which was now mainly used as a rehearsal for a symphonic orchestra. We would have brought all our own recording gear. One week before our sessions, the booking was cancelled by the studio owner.

Though I thought it was clear from the beginning we would rent the empty room during the orchestra’s holiday in a lockout deal, he was shocked to find out we wouldn’t just work from nine to five like the orchestra musicians. First he wanted to double the already whopping 800 Euro per-day price for an empty room, then he cancelled the whole deal.

There we stood, holiday already taken. We tried to find a different studio but in the end had to go down again in our rehearsal room. A new place that was formerly a beer cellar for Oktoberfest. It was four floors below ground, 40 sqm, concrete, low ceiling. The lift had just enough room to squeeze in the Telefunken.

We tried to swiftly treat the room acoustically with what was around, and just as everything was set up and ready for soundcheck, the tape machine stopped working. It turned out that a huge surge hit the poor electric system of the building while we were setting up mics (maybe from a crane being shut off from the build of the nearby Oktoberfest).

The Logic-platines of the tape machine were destroyed – and so was the lift. The latter never got repaired again, and in the end we had to carry the 250 kg Telefunken in pieces up four floors on small stairs. We spent the week that was meant for recording on fixing the recorder. But we got ‘In Her Garden’ in the end, despite the difficult circumstance. And the recordings sounded better than what we got from the previous place.

The Remixes:

In 2020, I had to change to a different press for LPs. For some years, the company I was working with since founding Elektrohasch had trouble with quality and when they raised prices three times within two weeks in the 2020 vinyl rush, it was time to go.

The pressing-tools were mine, since I always had my vinyls cut at a different cutting studio. I expected they could simply be sent to the new factory and I could work there. But surprise: most tools arrived damaged at Optimal Media. A part of the stock of work we’d built up over 20 years was gone overnight. I had to deliver new cuts. That meant I had to deliver the master recordings again.

Sometimes this was impossible.

For ‘Los Sounds de Krauts,’ the original digital masters were in poor 16bit 44.1 kHz on CD-R – you wouldn’t use a 15-year-old CD-R as a master! I also thought the mixes could be improved with hindsight and better gear. At least for that I had the original (digital) multitrack recordings, but it took two years to get all the digital files running again. Mind that – just 15 years and your digital memory might be lost already or only retrieved with great effort or cost, even within the very same system: ProTools on a Mac. Meanwhile, I just put the tapes from ‘To The Highest Gods We Know’ on the machine and simply work with them.

Other records are still in stock, some won’t be reprinted anyway.

But when possible I will take the opportunity to remix the rest of our catalogue step by step. Because the sound could be better. It is a lot of work (and actually not paid) but it’s simply a thing I want to do.

With the home studio, I have the possibility and occasion to work on them again. And there are reasons why I think I can get to better results now:

– Over the years, I’ve learned more about mixing. I have a better idea what I’m hearing and how to achieve things.

– My studio finally has proper monitoring. For the first time since ‘All,’ I can really hear what is going on.

– The studio is complete. I do not miss another Equalizer-Channel if I need one. I’m happy with it, got used to what I have and don’t want different or new stuff. I have a tendency to collect things, but thankfully this always ends at some point. I can complete a collection.

– I have no pressure. I can work relaxed at home on the recordings whenever I’m up to it.

– Foremost, it is now finally fun to work in that place.

‘In Her Garden’ is the first record I mixed and mastered with this new situation. The actual changes in the mixing are not that big – it is still the same recordings and the same person working with the same setup on them. But little changes make quite some difference for my ears:

– First of all I learned to take much more care with levels. In the individual tracks, differences in gain settings are subtle to hear, but the dedicated control over all levels throughout the signal chain leads to a less “choked,” more open-sounding result. Though my console has headroom forever I had to learn how different it sounds depending on how you drive it.

– Where for quite some time I kept the ideal of mixing very “dry” without any additional reverberation on the basic tracks, I’m a bit less dogmatic about such things now and I learned to utilize reverberation better.

– I learned how to take greater care of mixing keyboards and vocals…

– Another benefit for the remix was I didn’t feel the pressure to present a new album and also had more distance to the music and therefore maybe a clearer view – remixing ‘In Her Garden’ was pretty relaxed and happened over the course of seven months.

For my ears all this results in a more “open,” pleasant and relaxed sound. The record is more dynamic and sounds brighter and fuller, even though the equalizer settings actually haven’t changed much. It’s just a bit more on-spot here and there, so the individual signals integrate better.

What was changed on the material? Not much, just in:

– “Black Lilly”: I was never satisfied with how the vocals worked. I had this melody, an idea of the vocal line, but had trouble performing it. That’s part of why we don’t play this song live; I simply can’t sing it well enough in the original key. But the basic track was the best I could achieve. I mixed it much better now so it is not rolling up my toenails anymore. And I added a new lower background voice to help the basic track. I actually like the vocals in this song pretty much now.

– “Lavatera“ – for ‘In Her Garden,’ I had originally hired Jan as a session musician, which led to expanding Colour Haze to a quartet later. The original organ tracks were a swift improvisation. As “Lavatera” was part of the live set for a couple of years, Jan developed a synthesizer solo that fit the song better. I wanted to integrate this solo also, to create a bridge within the record to Jan being a member of the band now.

Another difference is the mastering.

I’m first generation home-computer, and with all the changes since the ‘80s, I’ve experienced digital memory as shortlived and ever-changing. If you’re reading this and you record anything, ever, mind the trouble we had recreating the ‘Los Sounds de Krauts’ data. From an artistic point of view, a physical copy is still the form that should present the results of our efforts.

We got accustomed to so many things, and until ‘In Her Garden’, I had the idea that the digital master was better with a certain amount of loudness. This by far was not as gruesome as during the early 2000s, but as close as possible to the technical limits of digital audio.

Well, one could imagine it simply is not good to drive anything as far as possible to the technical limits. And though mastering engineers might tell you otherwise, my notion is that limiters (tools that cut off signal peaks so the program can be shifted closer to the limit) never do nice things to audio. They limit.

For [remixing] ‘In Her Garden,’ I forgot all considerations of making it loud. It doesn’t matter for the actual result on vinyl anyway. For or me it sounds less “choked” than everything we did before. Only time will tell if this is a better way.

The recording and mix are analogue. I mixdown to 1/4” stereo tape. From there, mastering is basically the translation to digital, but the tools for it are still analogue – a Hi-End valve equalizer to shape the frequency and a Hi-End valve compressor for some dynamic shaping, to “open up” the dynamics rather than to “squeeze” them together. From there it is converted to digital.

This time I didn’t try anymore to get as loud as possible into the digital domain. I accepted the sonically ideal point of the electronics of my mastering converter (if you need to know, I use a Forssell Mada 2a). And the result after mastering 13 songs every now and then over the course of six weeks with all the songs fitting together in loudness and appearance tells me I’m not totally wrong.

For the vinyl cut I changed from DMM to “half-speed lacquer cut”. The digital files are only half as loud now, but I think it sounds better. You have the volume control – use it! :)

Colour Haze, In Her Garden (2024 remix/remaster)

Colour Haze website

Colour Haze on Facebook

Colour Haze on Instagram

Elektrohasch Schallplatten website

Elektrohasch Schallplatten on Facebook

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Greenleaf to Release The Head and the Habit June 26; New Video Posted

Posted in Whathaveyou on March 26th, 2024 by JJ Koczan

Greenleaf (photo by Mats Ek)

Well, the album was the missing piece to Greenleaf spending much of the rest of 2024 on tour supporting a new album, so this little bit of paperwork takes care of that. The announcement just came through and brings the first single “Breathe, Breathe Out” from the record in question, titled The Head and the Habit and due June 26 through Magnetic Eye Records, which I haven’t even had time yet to hear owing to the domestic whathaveyou of a given morning. I’ll get there as soon as possible, to be sure. [EDIT: Got there. The video is charming and the song feels right on. Duh, I’m stoked for the record.]

Expect summer and autumn tours around the fest appearances listed below, more to come on the album, and, well, probably a lot of me nerding out about Greenleaf coinciding with all of it. I’ve been lucky enough to see the band a couple times in the last few years, and in addition to being gentlemen of the highest order, they’re brilliant on stage. Catch them if you can.

More later. This now:

Greenleaf the head and the Habit

GREENLEAF release first video single ‘Breathe, Breathe Out’ and details of new album “The Head & The Habit”!

Swedish heavy rockers GREENLEAF release the tongue-in-cheek video clip and super catchy tune ‘Breathe, Breathe Out’ as the first driving single taken from their forthcoming full-length “The Head & The Habit”, which is slated for release on June 26, 2024 via Magnetic Eye Records!

The album pre-sale has just started at http://lnk.spkr.media/greenleaf-head-habit

The video ‘Breathe, Breathe Out’ combines the struggles of great parenting with social commentary on the generational gap and film directing.

“The first single ‘Breathe, Breathe Out’ conveys a message of self-reflection and resilience”, explains vocalist Arvid Hällagård. “The repetition of the chorus emphasizes the importance of taking a moment to relax and let go of negative emotions. The overall theme encourages embracing one’s current state, appreciating what you have, and navigating through life with a sense of control and acceptance. I’ve had to teach these things to myself during the last couple of years. This is also the overall theme of the album, the head and its habits.”

With their ninth full-length “The Head & The Habit”, GREENLEAF have reached the pinnacle of a long evolution. The musical handwriting and well-honed mastery of guitarist Tommi Holappa, who has been a pioneer and pillar of the European stoner rock scene for more than 25 years, shines clearly through. This is perfectly complemented by the soulfulness, intuitive sense of melody, and depth of character that the vocals of classically-trained singer Arvid Hällagård brings to the sound of GREENLEAF.

Apart from world-class vocal lines and massive riffs with electric fuzz-power, GREENLEAF have put extra thought into the themes of “The Head & The Habit”, which lift its lyrics far above much of the often cliché-ridden genre. As the album title implies, the new songs resemble symbolic short stories that revolve around emotional struggles and even mental illness. Written by the vocalist, the lyrics reflect real life experience as Hällagård works with people who suffer from problems with drug abuse and psychological health.

Tracklist:
1. Breathe, Breathe Out
2. Avalanche
3. Different Horses
4. A Wolfe in My Mind
5. That Obsidian Grin
6. The Sirens Sound
7. Oh Dandelion
8. The Tricking Tree
9. An Alabastrine Smile

GREENLEAF Live:
2 APR 2024 Barcelona (ES) BCN @ Sala Upload
3 APR 2024 Bilbao (ES) Bullitt Groove Club
04 APR 2024 Avilés (ES) Factoria Sound
05 APR 2024 Porto (PT) Hard Club
06 APR 2024 Madrid (ES) Wurlitzer Ballroom
05 JUN 2024 London (UK) Stoomfest
12 June 2024 Erfurt (DE) Stoned from the Underground
31 AUG 2024 Aarschot (BE) Down the Hill
12 OCT 2024 München (DE) Keep It Low

Recording with Karl Daniel Lidén at Studio Gröndahl, Stockholm (SE)
Additional vocals recorded by Arvid Hällagård at Studio Baking Cabin
Mix by Karl Daniel Lidén in Tri-lamb Studios, Stockholm (SE)
Mastering by Karl Daniel Lidén in Tri-lamb Studios, Stockholm (SE)

Artwork by Arvid Hällagård
Layout by Arvid Hällagård & Lili Krischke

GREENLEAF is:
Arvid Hällagård – vocals
Tommi Holappa – guitars
Sebastian Olsson – drums
Hans Fröhlich – bass

Greenleaf, “Breathe, Breathe Out” official video

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Under the Sun Premiere “The Shot” Video; The Bell of Doom Out April 5

Posted in Bootleg Theater, Reviews on March 26th, 2024 by JJ Koczan

under the sun the bell of doom

Athens-based five-piece Under the Sun are set to issue their debut LP, The Bell of Doom, on April 5 through the e’er-reliable Sound Effect Records. And man, some albums just manage to sound loud no matter at what volume you’re actually playing them. Starting with a hearty “Oh yeah!” and diving almost immediately into a celebration of riff and drive with “Smoking Angels,” the shove is inviting through the slowdown and into the dual guitars assuring no dip in the heavy as they shred the solo into the fade. The initial impression is a party and they back that for sure in the burly swagger of “Cry Out,” the more rolling “One Reason” and side B’s pairing of “The Shot” (video premiering below) and “Pony Ride,” with classic-style hooks and careening riffs offered with no pretense in their impulse toward audience engagement. Sounds like a good time? Hell yes it does.

But if you’re looking at the cover art with its graveyard and kraken-church, red sky and vertigo-style swirl, dark hues and creeper logo treatments wondering if I’ve posted the wrong image or some such based on the above description, there’s another side to Under the Sun that manifests throughout the eight-song/38-minute LP. In the video for “The Shot,” they’re getting ready for the show, getting to the show, playing the show, and that focus on on-stage energy is an obvious priority. If they showed up at your front door and started rocking out (after knocking politely, of course), they could hardly make it easier to get on board with the groove. What’s not accounted for in that are cuts like the title-track, which trades “Oh yeah!” for a tolling bell ahead of its crashes and redirects the momentum built across “Smoking Angels” and “Cry Out” toward a post-Cathedral lurch that even when they seem to break out of their own trance later on with a last-minute tempo kick, continues to define “The Bell of Doom” as a marked turn fromunder the sun whence they set forth minutes earlier.

Side B leadoff “Going Down” subs in Sabbathian swing for its own second-half pickup, and they find some middle ground in brash closer “My Name” — which is the longest inclusion at 6:34 but departs to a residual drone around the 4:45 mark — but in that finale the vibe likewise feels grimmer. The vocals are throatier, and the on-beat forwardness that brought the double-time hi-hat, strutting riff and Southern-style soloing of “Pony Ride” has shifted its urgency to act as a setup for the quick drop to bass that precedes a markedly sludged-out nod, which serves as their mostly-instrumental outro before the aforementioned drone takes hold, pausing again to get even slower before it’s through and thereby hammering its teardown all the more into your brain. This dual-faceted ethic isn’t always so stark in presentation, which “One Reason” also demonstrates in sticking to its bigger-feeling lumber, and one has to acknowledge that the lines being drawn are between microniches under the umbrella of ‘heavy.’

It’s the sense of purpose with which Under the Sun toll their bell — aesthetically and literally speaking — when they do that is striking, ultimately, and it may be that as they press forward from The Bell of Doom, they’ll draw the various sides of their persona closer together and end up somewhere in the middle. The opposite feels no less likely; that the lines between their rocker and doomer sides will become more prevalent. As their first record, The Bell of Doom sets out on a path that’s unknowable as yet — though it’s almost always fun to guess, even when I say it isn’t — but what allows it to do so is a strength of performance and songwriting that communes with genre and audience even as the band begin to search for their place, their sound. Or maybe I should take a cue from “The Shot” below, let tomorrow worry about tomorrow, and bask in the revelry of the moment captured and offered, whatever form it might take.

Yeah, let’s roll with it.

Enjoy the video. PR wire info and links of course follow after:

Under the Sun, “The Shot” video premiere

Under the Sun, one of Athens, Greece’s best-kept secrets, announce their debut album “The Bell of Doom”, due out on vinyl and CD on April 5, 2024 on Sound Effect Records. A thunderous stoner-sludge album shaking the foundations of all-things-heavy with its combination of amp-splitting power and red-eyed psychedelics.

Under The Sun is a sludgerotic stoner band that emerged from the depths of heavy riffing and jamming, back in 2015. Inspired by historic ’70s bands like Black Sabbath and embracing the sound of newer bands, like Orange Goblin, Kyuss, and C.O.C., Under the Sun forge their own sound that appeals to both fans of 70s heavy rock and stoner / doom music lovers.

Passionate about creating music driven by fuzz-drenched guitars and groovy bass lines, Under the Sun operate on the event horizon between heavy-doom and sunbaked stoner-rock. Armed with tough riffing, powerful vocals and traveling drums, Under the Sun merge a punk-attitude (the album was recorded live and required a maximum of two takes for each song) with the “sweet surrender” of their more laid-back, psych-blues escapism, resulting in a classic r’n’r record!

From the pure r’n’r of “Smoking Angels” to the seemingly-occult aura of “The Bell of Doom” (in essence an allegorical song about the distortion of human relationships), Under the Sun revisit their childhood dreams (“Shot”), or embark on some… psychedelic ones (“Pony Ride”), pay tribute to choices turned sour and wrong paths (“One Reason”, “Going Down”), though, after all, they do not forget to praise Friday night in the city (“Looking for some dirt, 20 euros in my pocket, welcome to my world”, from “Know My Name”), or make a tender gesture to all those who have a hard time and need to take life in their own hands (“Cry Out”)…cause, as the band insists on, we are all equal under the sun.

Video credits:
Artist: Under The Sun
Song Title: The Shot
Album: The Bell Of Doom
Label: Sound Effect Records (www.soundeffect-records.gr)
Director: Spyros Kourkoulas

Tracklisting:
1. Smoking Angels
2. Cry Out
3. The Bell of Doom
4. One Reason
5. Going Down
6. The Shot
7. Pony Ride
8. My Name

Album credits:
Recorded at Unreal Studios
Engineered by Nick Dimitrakakos
Mixed and mastered by Alex Ketenjian
Artwork by CLLK

Under the Sun, The Bell of Doom (2024)

Under the Sun on Facebook

Under the Sun on Instagram

Under the Sun on Bandcamp

Sound Effect Records on Facebook

Sound Effect Records on Bandcamp

Sound Effect Records website

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The Obelisk Questionnaire: Matt Harvey of Exhumed, Gruesome, Pounder, Etc.

Posted in Questionnaire on March 25th, 2024 by JJ Koczan

Matt-Harvey (Photo by Jehn W.A.)

The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Matt Harvey of Exhumed, Gruesome, Pounder, etc.

How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

I guess I define what I do as making shit – or taking things from my mind and working them into something other people can also check out – whether that’s a piece of music, writing, drawing or whatever it might be. So yeah, making shit.

Describe your first musical memory.

That’s a tough one. My earliest musical memories are tangled up in other stuff – I remember the theme song and all of the musical score pieces for the Spider-Man cartoon from the late 60s very vividly from my childhood, but there was also music from Star Wars, Chariots of Fire, Raiders of the Lost Ark and tons of stuff from my Dad’s record collection – stuff I love like Hendrix, Cream, the Beatles, the Allman Brothers, the Kinks, the Who, the soundtrack to The Big Chill, which had a ton of old Motown tracks on it – and stuff that kinda bugs me like Janis Joplin, Emerson Lake and Palmer and stuff like that. That was all of the stuff floating around my house circa 1979-1981, which are really the first memories I can sort of conjure in the corner of my eye. When I try to really wrap my perception around them or see them clearly, they recede, but they’re definitely there. I remember humming all the time as a kid while I drew – I loved to draw as a little kid, mostly comic book stuff – and my mom asking me what I was humming and I had no idea, it was just whatever little tune was running through my head, so I guess that’s always been there. I feel very lucky that little tune has never stopped, it’s just mutated and spiraled and branched into a tangle of streams and floods and tributaries of consciousness.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

As an audience member, I think my favorite moment came while watching S&M II in San Francisco where Metallica played with the symphony. There was a fantastic contrabass player who did an incredible arrangement of Anesthesia – Pulling Teeth that was incredibly moving. Knowing what that might have meant to Cliff had he lived to see it just filled me with an unexpected surge of emotion that brought me to the brink of tears. As a songwriter or a player, I don’t know that there’s a “best moment” really. I love the feeling of each tiny, incremental epiphany that comes from finally making sense of some aspect of music theory or coming up with a sick riff or seeing your idea work in ways you didn’t even anticipate. Every time is amazing, and it happens all the time. That’s what keeps me interested (okay, maybe obsessed) with writing music pretty much all the time.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

Over the years, I’ve come to be more objective about my own perspectives, or at least I’ve tried to become more objective. One shift that was significant to me was that I realized that I grew up thinking that the most important things in my music were the music itself and (most importantly) why I was making that music. In learning from / working with others, I’ve come to realize that the presentation and execution of the idea is as important (sometimes more important) than the idea itself. I always saw that as secondary, and shied away from it by trying to call it vanity or pretension, but I realize now spending time on the presentation and execution (whether it be the instruments and gear used to execute the idea or the production values, etc) enriches the idea itself and helps people understand the “why” behind it. That’s a truth that took far too long for me to consider, and even longer for me to admit and subsequently embrace.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

It can lead pretty much anywhere – which is what’s so exciting about it. But for me, I try to make sure it’s not a linear path. I don’t want to progress into a “final form,” because that implies that the journey has an endpoint. I know it’s cliché, but the point is the journey itself, following each tangent into something new and interesting – even if it leads to frustration or “failure,” there’s value in the journey and in the seeking of something. It’s like knowing yourself – a thing that’s never fully possible, but it’s 100% valuable to pursue. I’d say progression leads away from stagnation, away from ideological death and towards something vital and something real.

How do you define success?

Satisfaction with your work – fulfillment from your work, both artistically (the first priority) and materially. Also muscle cars, hookers and cocaine. Kidding (sort of).

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

I remember being really intoxicated in San Francisco years and years ago and somehow my girlfriend and I were hanging out with someone that worked in the morgue of a hospital. As we continued to imbibe, we left the bar and they ended up taking us on a walkthrough which was really interesting. They offered to show me the corpse of a Jane Doe that had washed up out of the bay and clearly they thought it would be cool if I wanted to check it out. I agreed, but upon seeing the body, bloated and discolored from being in the water, I instantly regretted it. I felt like I was intruding on something personal and sad and it wasn’t my business to see that. Whoever that person was, they deserved better than to be leered out by some drunk coked-out Death Metal guy.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

A full-length, epic motion-picture soundtrack.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

Communication – it’s a way of communicating things that you may not even understand about what you’re feeling to people who then not only connect with you and your feelings, but internalize that art and connect it to their own experiences and emotions. That’s a wonderful, wondrous thing to attempt.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

Summer, also known as the best season!

https://mattharveymustbedestroyed.bandcamp.com/

Matt Harvey, Toward the Cold Light (2024)

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Rope Trick Announce Spring Northeast Touring; Red Tide EP Out Now

Posted in Whathaveyou on March 25th, 2024 by JJ Koczan

Philadelphia-based heavy transcendentalists Rope Trick released their two-songer Red Tide EP at the start of February. Recorded live, it’s their first output since 2017’s Red Tape EP (discussed here), which was also their debut, and with Indy Shome and Nate Totushek from Queen Elephantine (yes, both) comprising the lineup, it should be little surprise that they dig in as deeply as they do across “Crescent” (12:28) and “Neptune” (8:39), the former of which is well broiled in its tense rhythm before the vocals even start circa five minutes in, and the latter of which dares more melody in its culmination and feels more straightforward perhaps for the fuzz in Shome‘s guitar, but on closer inspection is no less exploratory than the cut before it.

It’s not what you’d call a lush production — and Queen Elephantine have never been really about that either, so it makes sense — but there’s plenty enough clarity for Red Tide to establish a meditative vibe and argue in favor of following where the music flows, whether that’s the crashes and raw vocal plead of “Crescent,” which is somehow still also mathy-jazzy in its comedown tumult, or the chunk-chug in the outset of “Neptune” building up like an extrapolation of Melvins in their oddball heyday. Yeah, it’s been seven years. Time is imaginary.

Except, maybe, for marking shows on your calendar. Those you’ll find below as Rope Trick head out to support Red Tide live as they also did for its ruby-hued predecessor, courtesy of the PR wire:

rope trick

ROPE TRICK release RED TIDE and announce Northeast US shows

ROPE TRICK is an experimental heavy psych rock duo from Philadelphia, consisting of Indy Shome on guitar and vocals and Nate Totushek on drums (also of Queen Elephantine). Listeners have compared them to Neil Young, Soundgarden, Jandek, Fela Kuti, and Black Midi.

RED TIDE was released digitally on February 1st. The artwork was done by Josh Yelle and it was recorded by Bruce Howze at Red Planet Studios.

ROPE TRICK is supporting it with a series of shows this Spring 2024 through the Northeast US, ranging from Virginia to New Hampshire.

TOUR
Spring 2024 ▼ East Coast

3/29 – Clinton CT, Scottish Dave’s Pub
3/30 – Southbridge MA, Starlite Gallery
4/12 – Somerville MA, The Rockwell
4/13 – Providence RI, AS220
4/21 – Queens NY, Trans-Pecos
4/27 – Dover NH. Flight
5/04 – Philadelphia PA, Haus of Yarga
5/10 – Baltimore MD, The Crown
5/11 – Richmond VA, Fuzzy Cactus

Rope Trick are:
Guitar + Vocals by Indy Shome
Drums by Nate Totushek

https://www.instagram.com/ropetrickband/
https://www.facebook.com/ropetrickband
ropetrickband.bandcamp.com
http://ropetrickband.com

Rope Trick, Red Tide (2024)

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All Are to Return Set April 26 Release for III; New Song Streaming

Posted in Whathaveyou on March 25th, 2024 by JJ Koczan

Well, the last couple years don’t seem to have made All Are to Return any less caustic. Fair enough. The still-mostly-anonymous-I-think industrial doom two-piece based in the Netherlands were last heard from with their 2022 single “A State in Fear,” and April 26 will mark the arrival of III, which they’ll issue through Tartarus Records in an edition of 50 tapes at a release show that’s also a label showcase about which you can read more below. The first aural peek at III, which of course follows late-2021’s II (review here), arrives in the form of “Drift,” which just might be the harshest three minutes you spend today. At least I’d hope so.

In “Drift,” even the backing drones that spread out through the atmospheres of All Are to Return‘s software-led churn feel nastier, and the way some of the vocals are obscured speaks to the band working with an ideology toward a three-dimensional mix. The rest of III bears that out like an existential burden, and as relates to its surroundings, “Drift” turns out to be one of the more accessible tracks on the record. For example, it’s got a beat, even if that beat is blown out and being used to collapse your rib cage.

Album’s out April 26, as per the PR wire:

All Are To Return III

All Are To Return announce new album AATR III // Single premiere

All Are To Return Single Premiere ‘Drift’

The ecological dark of our existence is pulsating with the presence of loss. Shifts occur on the periphery of awareness. Fundamental ruptures only inferred from apparent disappearance. Something felt before it is known. From here on, there are no stones that mark the path. -AATR

The two-man formation All Are To Return presents extreme, experimental music with an urgent sense of dread. The duo’s new album III will be released on April 26 via Tartarus Records.

We have entered a new age of extinction – of poisoned lands, habitat destruction and encompassing climate catastrophe. AATR III reflects the harshness of life laid bare to the vagaries of capital, of uncaring generations heaping misery on their successors and the life-forms with which they share a fragile biosphere.

The album’s unmitigated brutality of sound and expression are mediation of these concurrent events. Colossal noise-scapes are shaped with pulsing synth patterns, shredding percussion and vocals that are screams from the void. As a whole, the many-layered compositions carry massive assaults on the senses and a rage unhuman.

Manmade disasters borne from decades of unfettered greed, of carbon capital plundering the earth and choking its habitants – capital unleashed through self-interested short-sightedness, decades of corruption and denial of clear fact.

Our habitats swallowed by rising seas, engulfed in flames. As we drown, burn, or slowly parch and wither, we remember. Oceans heat and corals die as pale sludge in bright blue waters – thousands of years of unfathomable complexity undone in decades. Forests burn and ancient trees that were young when the pharaohs build their monuments perish in the flames. Poisons have spread through all ecosystems. The product of profit-maximizing agriculture at war with life. As insects disappear they signal extinction on a massive scale.

What is lost, is lost forever.

We will remember you through your shattered bones, your battered skulls turned fossil. We will remember you through your plastic deposits, your carbon waste, your radio-active poisons still leaking into our bodies. We will remember your bright and brief existence – and the inevitability of your demise.

Pressing info: 50x Cassettes

AATR III drops April 26th during their debut performance at the Tartarus showcase at Vera, Groningen in the Netherlands with label friends Ultha, Oud Zeer (Throwing Bricks & Ontaard), and Ortega. Event & Tickets: https://www.vera-groningen.nl/events/tartarus-records-presents-2024/

All Are To Return is:
F: Bass, Drums, Guitars, Vocals, FXs
N: Synths, FXs

https://allaretoreturn.bandcamp.com
https://soundcloud.com/allaretoreturn
https://allaretoreturn.tumblr.com/

https://www.facebook.com/TartarusRecords
https://www.instagram.com/tartarustapes
https://tartarusrecords.com

All Are to Return, “Drift”

All Are to Return, “A State in Fear” (2022)

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Skraeckoedlan Premiere Vermillion Sky LP in Full; Out Wednesday

Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on March 25th, 2024 by JJ Koczan

Skraeckoedlan Vermillion Sky

This Wednesday, March 27, Swedish heavy and progressive rockers Skraeckoedlan return with their fourth full-length, Vermillion Sky. It is their second LP through Fuzzorama Records behind the sprawling realization of 2019’s Eorþe (review here), with the years between finding the Borlänge/Norrköping four-piece reissuing their 2011 debut, Äppelträdet (review here) and its 2015 follow-up, Sagor (review here), through The Sign Records, and its arrival has been anticipated since the band unveiled “The Vermillion Sky” as a standalone single over half a year ago.

Vermillion Sky is a multifaceted project even before one gets to the rhythmic twists and melodic reaches, the grandiosities and quiet moments offered in its component eight tracks and 47 minutes, and if part of either that span of months or the not-accounted-for-by-plague portion of the five years it’s been since Eorþe comes from lining up logistics on either the video game or English-language novel intended to be released to complement the music, fair enough, though it was four between Sagor and that record as well, so it’s not an outlandish dearth of activity by any means. The novelization of Vermillion Sky, reportedly broken into chapters around each song, will perhaps be of particular interest to that non-Swedish-speaking contingent of their listenership who’ve maybe not been curious enough to run their lyrics through a translation matrix to get a semblance of the themes out of science-fiction, daikaiju, and so on.

To wit, “The Vermillion Sky,” caps an expansive A-side that begins with the drone-backed staticky dialogue in the two-minute intro “Cosmic Dawn” from whence a Devin Townsendy prog flow emerges with the anchoring fuzz on Erik Berggren‘s bass and fluid drumming of Martin Larsson‘s drums complemented by shimmer of synth and the guitars of Robert Lamu and Henrik Grüttner in a showcase of maturity and (condensed) patience that serves as preface to the stately composition of the title-track and others here. That obscured speech, mixed low enough that you genuinely might not hear it the first time through, ties into the escape-from-earth — and no, it’s not lost on me that their last record was ‘earth’ in translation — narrative of “The Vermillion Sky,” and while they seem to work in as well as around this thematic and it might at first be unclear how the hooky repetitions of the in-English title lyric to second single “Night Satan” fit in, the concept remains present for the lines, “Så lägg din hand i min och visa mig bland stjärnorna/Jag la min hand i din och du visa mig oändlighet” (“So put your hand in mine and show me the stars/I put my hand in yours and you show me infinity,” according to the internet), so those connections are there if not always obvious. One assumes the same applies for the likes of “Starsquatch,” “Metagalactic Void Honcho,” who sounds as burly as one might expect given the title, “Meteorb” or “Astronautilus” as well.

But even if you as the listener don’t take Vermillion Sky on for its storyline at all or if scrolling shooter games aren’t your thing, the songs are enough to carry you through. “Starsquatch” enters with a burst, resets in an open expanse of keyboard and sweeps in the first of a vast collection of massive grooves, characteristic in its adherence to fuzzier tonality and arrangement depth evident even just in the space between the guitar and drums, never mind the e-bow or whatever effect it is or the arrangement of lead and backing vocals in the rolling chorus. Hitting a stop at 4:40 into its 7:58, they break to echoing vocals and standalone guitar before surging forward again in a pointed wash of distortion that turns out to be a misdirect as they cut to clearer-sounding dual-guitar leads and a faster tempo verse ahead of the actual solo. Of course the riff comes back, bigger and more consuming, and the pattern of side A is set when “Mysteria” takes its turn riff-punching through the wall with dense low end and purposeful shove — the first half of the album trading shorter-to-longer pieces starting with “Cosmic Dawn” and the second half switching that to its own two longer tracks bookending the relative brevity of “Night Satan” and “Meteorb.”

skraeckoedlan

So Skraeckoedlan are playing with time as well as space on Vermillion Sky, and the level of composition and nuance with which they do so shouldn’t be understated. Lamu‘s vocal melodies — and I’m sorry, I don’t know every detail on who’s doing what vocally here, but there are voice-swaps enough to make me think it’s multiple singers — go beyond following the riffs, which are occasionally busy enough that that would be a challenge anyway, and feel like part of the atmosphere along with the Mellotron and Rhodes (or some such) that further distinguish “Mysteria” after the push through its first half has already brought intense strikes of piano as part of its culminating build just before the two-and-a-half-minute mark.

That holds true in rougher-delivered or shoutier stretches like the end of “Mysteria,” or the gutted-out verses of “Metagalactic Void Honcho” surrounded by what sounds like duly gravitational destruction that dares some hope in its lead-topped final nod before it cuts to far-back guitar echoes and thud to end, or the galloping midsection of “Meteorb,” wherein even the air-tight structure and quick 3:38 runtime are enough for the band to use vocals as an instrument corresponding to the mood of a given part. The scorch of keyboard in that song’s charge, the way the drums open up the groove in the last hook, the details and nuance of the keys, synth, guitar, effects, whatever, in the mix — it all comes together as a complete representation of craft from Skraeckoedlan that feels deeper and more dug into its own processes than they’ve been before, but at the same time is more engaging and outward-reaching for that. If that’s a mature Skraeckoedlan self-producing and wielding their own sound, cognizant of their dynamic and the physicality of the material they’re writing, I’ll take it happily. They always feel like they’re ready to break out and run. That catch-up-to-this energy is always there, pulling the audience forward.

At the same time, their sense of control is palpable, whether it’s the look-what-we-can-do-with-a-stoner-riff mid-tempo chug in the verses of “Night Satan” — lest we forget their tonal and recording tutelage under Truckfighters (who also run Fuzzorama Records) — or the furies manifest in dramatic style on “Metagalactic Void Honcho” just before, but detracts neither from the energy in their delivery or their willingness to go all-in on an arrangement like “Astronautilus,” mellowing after its verse for a moment of proggy, key-topped exploration as it circles around and builds tension for its flowing, deceptively graceful emergence, leading into a solo and chorus that reinforce notions of structure even as they adrenaline-boost Vermillion Sky out of the atmosphere and into the resonant float of its comedown, some staticky layer there calling back to the opening of “Cosmic Dawn” as that structural cohesion finds its own meta level on which to operate.

Each album Skraeckoedlan have released has been an incremental step forward creatively from the one before it, and that applies to Vermillion Sky even as the band further define and distinguish an idea of their individual sound. That they recorded and mixed it themselves (Magnus Lindberg mastered) is also a crucial consideration — not because of any kind of down-scaling in production value; there isn’t one — but as another way to continue to grow as a unit and a means of more directly bringing their music to life. And whatever else is happening around them in various media, whatever apocalypses they’re conveying in the world they’ve conjured, these songs feel utterly alive.

The album streams in full below. Please enjoy:

Skraeckoedlan, Vermillion Sky album premiere

Order link: https://eu.fuzzoramastore.com/en/skraeckoedlan.html

In short, this is a sci-fi themed concept piece that screams DIY, having been entirely written, recorded, produced and mixed by the band themselves. A huge undertaking, especially considering one of the first steps in the process was basically to google: “how to properly mic a snare drum”. Mastering however has been beautifully done by Magnus Lindberg (Cult of Luna), which as always has yielded fantastic results.

Speaking of DIY and huge undertakings, Vermillion Sky will also be available as a novel (date to come), where each chapter corresponds to a track on the album. The story has been written by the band and is for those that want to take a real deep dive into the concept and join the crew of the Vermillion Sky as they unravel a mystery with galactic consequences. Contrary to the signature Swedish lyrics of the songs, the novel is in English.

An even more active way to interact with the release is to play the Vermillion Sky computer game the band has helped create. It’s an 8-bit style point chaser, where you travel through the Void as the ship, collecting upgrades to survive the multitude of enemies trying to put an end to your journey. If you want the absolute best experience of the game, make sure to come to one of the release tour shows, where Skraeckoedlan’s very own Vermillion Sky-arcade machine will be featured.

Live long and prosper!

Vermillion Sky tracklist
1. Cosmic Dawn (2:42)
2. Starsquatch (7:58)
3. Mysteria (5:21)
4. The Vermillion Sky (7:10)
5. Metagalactic Void Honcho (8:07)
6. Night Satan (4:53)
7. Meteorb (3:38)
8. Astronautilus (7:50)

Skraeckoedlan:
Robert Lamu – Vocals, Guitar
Henrik Grüttner – Guitar, Vocals
Erik Berggren – Bass, Vocals
Martin Larsson – Drums, Vocals

Skraeckoedlan, Vermillion Sky game preview

Skraeckoedlan’s website

Skraeckoedlan on Instagram

Skraeckoedlan on Facebook

Fuzzorama Records website

Fuzzorama Records on Facebook

Fuzzorama Records on Instagram

Fuzzorama Records on Bandcamp

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