Everybody come through day one intact? I know it got pretty weird there for a minute, but I felt like sense was ultimately made. Maybe not in all cases, but definitely most. Today also gets fairly wild, and some of this stuff has been covered before in some fashion and some of it not so much, but hell, you’ve been through this before, as have I, so you know what to expect when you’re expecting. Blood might be spilled. Bruises left. Or bliss. Or both sometimes. Hell’s bells. Let’s go already.

Quarterly Review #11-20:

Kal-El, Dark Majesty

With their fifth full-length, Dark Majesty, Norwegian heavy rockers and sci-fi-themed cleavage aficionados Kal-El make a willful play toward the epic. Their first 2LP and their first album for Majestic Mountain Records, the eight-song offering tops 65 minutes and splits into four two-song sides, each one seeming to grow bigger until the last of them, with the closing duo “Kala Mishaa” and “Vimana,” draws the proceedings to a massive close. Along the way, Kal-El not only offer their most melodically rich and spacious fare to-date — opening with their longest track in the 11:39 “Temple” (immediate points) — but blast Kyuss into the cosmos on the four-minute “Spiral,” and give Dozer a run for their money on “Comêta.” Gargantuan fuzz shines through on “Hyperion” in a near-maddening cacophony, but it might be the title-track that’s the greatest highlight in the end, marking the band’s accomplishment in heft, blending riffs and atmosphere to a broad and engaging degree. It is a triumph and it sounds like one.

Kal-El on Facebook

Majestic Mountain Records webstore

—

 

The Ugly Kings, Strange, Strange Times

One would not accuse Melbourne’s The Ugly Kings of inaccuracy in titling their second album Strange, Strange Times, and though they launch with the post-Queens of the Stone Age title-track and the now-tinged cynicism of “Technodrone” and “Do You Feel Like You’re Paranoid?,” it’s in even moodier stretches like “Last Man Left Alive” they cast their lot toward individualism. Songs vary in intention but remain consistent in the quality of their construction and look-at-the-world-around-you theme, with “Lawman” leaning toward darker country blues, “Mr. Hyde” asking what would happen if Clutch and Ruff Majik ever crossed paths and the finale “Another Fucking Day” offering a deceptively immersive unfurling. I can’t help but wonder if The Ugly Kings feel surrounded in their home city by much, much druggier neo-psych acts in the heavy underground scene, but the clarity of purpose they bring to their songwriting would make them a standout one way or the other.

The Ugly Kings on Facebook

Napalm Records website

—

 

Guhts, Blood Feather

Atmospheric and seething in kind, Guhts brings together members of New Yorkers Witchkiss and North Carolina’s Black Mountain Hunger for a pandemic-era debut release that in style explores the restlessness and the overwhelming nature of the age. With Amber Burns (interview here) on vocals, the drums programmed behind Scott Prater and Dan Shaneyfelt guitars/synths and the bass of Jesse Van Note, and a purpose wrought in immersion, the band distinguishes itself in its apropos grimness and in the potential for future exploration of the ideas laid out here, bordering in “The Mirror” on goth only after “Handless Maiden” offers raging, post-metallic lumber. One wonders how Blood Feather will sound five years from now, but more to the point, one wonders what Guhts might conjure in the meantime when/if they press forward. Either way, expect to see this on the list of 2021’s best short releases.

Guhts on Facebook

Guhts on Bandcamp

—

 

Anunnaki, Martyr of Alexandria

Hey there, psych fans and experts on tragedies of the classic world, British Columbia two-piece Anunnaki have the psychedelic instrumental blowout themed around the murder of Hypatia you’ve been waiting for! Never heard of Hypatia? It doesn’t matter. Samples will provide some context and if they said the whole thing was about going shoe shopping, it wouldn’t be any less righteously far out. With “Golden Gate of the Sun” at the outset, the duo of Dave Read (guitar/bass) and Arlen Thompson (drums/synth) prime a bit of space-boogie, but the subsequent “Cyril, the Fanatic” shoves the freakery to the fore with wailing guitar and drones and seemingly whatever else they thought might work and does. The 15-minute finale, “The Cries of Hypatia,” dives deeper into drone, holding back the drums for about seven minutes while obscure speech and the titular cries unfold. Read and Thompson build it to a full, suitably deathly wash, and take the time to end minimal. Literary, arthouse, but not at all stale for that.

Anunnaki on Facebook

Cardinal Fuzz webstore

NoiseAgonyMayhem website

—

 

Bill Fisher, Hallucinations of a Higher Truth

A departure even from his departure, Church of the Cosmic Skull bandleader Bill Fisher‘s second solo offering, Hallucinations of a Higher Truth, follows the darker progressive rock of 2020’s Mass Hypnosis and the Dark Triad (review here) with 40-plus minutes of piano-led singer-songwriter fare, taking a stated influence from the lyrics-as-everyday-musings of Randy Newman on songs like “Better Than You” and “Off to Work,” while revamping his main outfit’s “Answers in Your Soul” and “Evil in Your Eye” to suit the arrangement theme. As Fisher has engaged plenty with classic forms in his work, Hallucinations of a Higher Truth feels by no means beyond his creative reach, and he’s an accomplished enough songwriter and performer to pull it off, thereby demonstrating that if you can craft a song you can make it do whatever the hell you want, and that “you” in this case is him. This isn’t going to be everybody’s thing, but Fisher carries it ably.

Bill Fisher webstore

Church of the Cosmic Skull website

—

 

Seum, Live From the Seum-Cave

Montreal low-end filthmongers Seum return to follow-up earlier 2021’s Winterized EP (review here) with Live From the Seum-Cave, basking in an even rawer incarnation of their guitars-need-not-apply drum/bass/vocals attack. “Sea Sick Six” is even nastier here than it was on the last EP, and the eponymous opener “Seum” is an anthem of disaffection that finds its lyrical answer in “Life Grinder” and “Blueberry Cash” alike — the why-do-I-even-have-this-shit-job point of view as unmistakable as the throat-singing that pops up in the aforementioned “Sea Sick Six.” The trio are beastly on “Winter of Seum,” and they make a special highlight of “Super Tanker” from 2020’s Summer of Seum EP, working tempo shifts into the punishing march that are less than predictable and yet totally over the top in their extremity. This is a good band who genuinely sound like they don’t give a fuck. That’s a hard thing to make believable. I hope they never put out a record and do EPs forever.

Seum on Facebook

Seum on Bandcamp

—

 

Spirit Adrift, Forge Your Future

Spirit Adrift have broken out from the doomly mire to proffer clear-headed, soaring traditional heavy metal. The unit, led as ever by guitarist/bassist/vocalist Nate Garrett with Marcus Bryant on drums, offer three new tracks on Forge Your Future in the title-track, “Wake Up” and “Invisible Enemy,” channeling Randy Rhoads even through more denser tonality and the nodding groove of the last. Echo behind Garrett‘s vocals reminds here and there of Brian “Butch” Balich of Penance/Argus, but Spirit Adrift‘s path across four full-lengths and companion short releases like this one over the last six years has been its own, and the emergence of Garrett as a singer has been a crucial part of making these songs the concise epics they are. Crisp in craft and confident in delivery, Spirit Adrift only sound like masters of their domain here, and so they are. Heavy metal that loves heavy metal.

Spirit Adrift on Facebook

Century Media Records website

—

 

Mutha Trucka, Mutha Trucka

The Chicago-based three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Eric Ervin, bassist/vocalist Dana “Erv” Ervin and drummer/backing vocalist Ted Sciaky plunge deep with their self-titled debut into the ’90s era of heavy rock, with vibes running between C.O.C., Monster Magnet, Clutch and Kyuss, among others, but there’s a might-throw-elbows spirit that comes through even in willfully spacious pieces like “I’m Free” (some Lemmy influence there too) and “Wizards & Gods” that adds aggro spirit to the bulk of the nine-song/39-minute affair, a piece like “D.B. Blues” — which stands for “Dirty Bitch Blues” — as unpretentious in its overarching style as it is politically incorrect. “Fogginess” hits near eight minutes and moves toward the trippier end of grunge, with one of the outing’s many layered solos playing out amid the solid groove beneath, the band refusing to compromise their abiding lack of pretense even in the face of that which would otherwise be psychedelic. Not much time for that nonsense — there’s crunch to be had.

Mutha Trucka on Facebook

Mutha Trucka on Bandcamp

—

 

3rd Ear Experience, Danny Frankel’s 3rd Ear Experience

Who’s Danny Frankel? Long story short, he was Lou Reed‘s drummer, but in fact he’s got a session-player career that’s found him performing with a staggering array of artists and bands. He puts his stamp on his very own 3rd Ear Experience alongside the group’s founding guitarist Robbi Robb as well as a host of others including fellow founder AmritaKripa, synthesist Scott “Dr. Space” Heller and more besides. The resulting journey is six tracks and 63 minutes of psychedelic gloryscaping, desert-born but galaxy-bred, with longform works like “What Are Their Names” (18:18), “Weep No More, My Friend” (14:49) and closer “Timelessness Pt. 2” (12:03) expanding across exploratory and fluid movements offset by shorter stretches like the suitably percussive “Cosmos Glazed Elephant.” In opener “A Beautiful Questions,” the drums hardly feature, but the lead-in for “What Are Their Names” feels no less intentional than when the penultimate “Timelessness Pt. 1” gives way to silence ahead of the beginning of the finale. I’d say more, but I seem to have lost my train of hyperbole-laden praise. Wonderfully so.

3rd Ear Experience on Facebook

Space Rock Productions website

—

 

Solarius, Universal Trial

Originally recorded in 2006, Solarius‘s heretofore unreleased four-song EP, Universal Trial, is notable for predating the self-titled Graveyard album, as guitarist/vocalist Jonatan Ramm would end up joining that band in 2008, seeming after Solarius dissolved. The 21-minute release arrives now with the considerable backing of Heavy Psych Sounds in no small part because of that nifty bit of context, and the classic-style boogie wrought in “Sky of Mine” is enough to make it a prescient-feeling footnote in the storied history of Swedish retroism, let alone the brooding-into-surging, organ-laced “Into the Sun,” which if it was issued by a new band this week would be an excuse unto itself for Bandcamp Friday. Wrapped in the shuffling title-track at the start and the harmonized, patiently-drawn “Mother Nature Mind” at the end, Universal Trial feels like a lesson in the essential role of producer Don Alsterberg (Graveyard, Blues Pills, Spiders, etc.) in defining the style as well as in what might’ve been if Solarius had put this out at the time.

Heavy Psych Sounds on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds website

—

 

[Click play above to stream ‘The Dark Triad’ from Bill Fisher’s Mass Hypnosis and the Dark Triad. Album is out Aug. 21 on Septaphonic Records.]

Church of the Cosmic Skull founder and frontman Bill Fisher is set to release his first solo album, Mass Hypnosis and the Dark Triad, on Aug. 21. It is a complex and multifaceted release for one that boasts a relatively unassuming 31-minute runtime, and its eight songs quickly distinguish themselves from Church of the Cosmic Skull with the crunch of the opening riff to “All Through the Night” at the outset. In tone and progressive twist, it stands apart from Fisher‘s main outfit, and as his LP liner notes explain, there are some snippets that go back to his time in Mammothwing (whose lone full-length came out in 2015) and before that. In terms of philosophy, the album centers around its two titular concepts.

The former being more straightforward, the latter is the ‘dark triad,’ which is comprised of three personality traits Fisher, as he notes, is bringing to light in hopes that we — humans — might see them in ourselves and swear them off. They are psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism, and Fisher — via an in-album graphic — presents a Venn diagram wherein these ideas intersect along with factors like money, power, status, the past, present and future. Mass hypnosis itself is represented by an all-seeing eye, and perhaps missing is a discussion of capitalism as a driving force behind said psychopathy and status-craving greed, but it’s not hard to look around in 2020 and understand where his point of view is coming from. In the UK and in many other countries, including my own, a rise of nationalist populism and open disdain for intellectualism, science and the like, has acted not so much as a wrench halting the gears of progress but one systemically undoing the bolts holding those gears together. Perhaps, at the least, it is fair to say Mass Hypnosis and the Dark Triad is an album that wants context, lines like “And the empty voices fill the brain/To guide the hands in such a way” from the penultimate “Message in the Sky” not at all pretending to occur in a vacuum.

At the same time Fisher has put these ideas to work across Mass Hypnosis and the Dark Triad, he’s also made an utterly accessible collection of songs. It’s not the spirited, harmony-laced pop of his main outfit, or the heavier post-rock of Dystopian Future Movies — which is led by Church of the Cosmic Skull‘s Caroline Cawley and in which Fisher features; the drums were reportedly recorded while making that band’s latest album — but the material he presents is deeply melodic and that acts to ground some of the proggier twists, as can be heard in “Psychopathy” at the outset of side B, or again, in the mathy stops and turns of “All Through the Night.” Affecting a full-group style while playing all the instruments himself, Fisher crafts an impression that stands beyond decreed genre boundaries, toying with the balance between heavy rock, progressive metal, progressive rock and touches of psychedelia.

“Mirror of Tomorrow,” which follows the opener, complements its crunch and impact with melody of layered vocals as well as fuzzy lead guitar, rolling through a crisp 2:47 before “Celador” — the title of course being derived from the sounds said to be the most pleasing to the human ear — dives into the realm of metaphor and storytelling, a tense chug like a ticking clock behind an initial verse pushing into an eventual unveiling of the hook that finally explodes in the final minute of the song, Fisher having expertly swapped one structure for another ahead of the crashing roll that begins the side-A-ending semi-title-track “The Dark Triad.” The two together, “Celador” and “The Dark Triad,” are the longest songs on Mass Hypnosis and the Dark Triad at 4:44 and 4:35, respectively, but neither could rightly be accused of any more indulgence than the rest of what surrounds, Fisher discussing ideas on his own terms, certainly, but keeping his audience engaged in that conversation through craft and touches like the harmonized soloing and vocals, let alone the underlying bassline, of “The Dark Triad” as it moves into its gracefully flowing second half, something of an aural wash, but one effectively grounded by the drums as it enters its fadeout.

“Psychopathy” picks up on side B and boasts enough Rush and King Crimson-style chase to satisfy any quota Fisher might have imagined, and accordingly, it’s only fair that its bounce and quick-cut style should be complemented by the ensuing “Days of Old,” a quiet, folky beginning manifesting the sentimentality of the title. It is as close as Fisher comes to Church of the Cosmic Skull as more layers of vocals enter, but the song stays softer, and even the guitar solo that arrives later on feels subdued and contemplative as it fills out overtop of the central figure. These outward-directed reaches aren’t placed by accident, as Fisher is well acquainted with a classic LP structure, and it should accordingly be little surprise that the subsequent closing duo, “Message from the Sky” and “Mass Hypnosis,” bring the proceedings back to their hooky center, much as an individual song might branch outward with a bridge before turning back to end on its chorus. “Mass Hypnosis” of course serves double-duty as the finisher and a complement to “The Dark Triad,” and its central question, “How many more/How many more to make it?” echoes the “I wanna know” repetitions of the earlier track.

These touches make Mass Hypnosis and the Dark Triad no less sonically fluid than it is thematically so. The production is a surprisingly organic presence in the recording for something so progressive in its makeup, but that only feeds the atmosphere of the entire piece as a solo work, lending an air of intimacy to what might otherwise come across as cold or lacking personality. Despite the variety of ideas being presented in the material, though, what remains at the core is Fisher‘s own take on songwriting, and it is the songs as much as the overarching statement of the LP as a whole that make an impression. Fisher has set himself up for a new creative exploration alongside that of Church of the Cosmic Skull. The possibilities for how he might bring that to bear are another exciting factor emerging from his work here.

Bill Fisher website

Bill Fisher on Thee Facebooks

Church of the Cosmic Skull website

Church of the Cosmic Skull on Thee Facebooks

Church of the Cosmic Skull on Soundcloud

Church of the Cosmic Skull on Bandcamp

Church of the Cosmic Skull on YouTube

Church of the Cosmic Skull on Instagram

Today, Church of the Cosmic Skull founder Bill Fisher announces the release of his first solo album under his own name. Set to arrive on Aug. 21, the title isn’t being revealed yet, though presumably that will come with subsequent announcements of things like the tracklisting, preorders and so on. In the interim, Fisher is offering a link where one can sign up for updates and details on all of the above. He calls it the “Billuminati,” which is adorable and you know it.

Though a solo record in name, it is very much a rock album in the main, and those curious as to just how much of Church of the Cosmic Skull bears the hallmark of Fisher‘s songwriting — he’s also a former member of Mammothwing — will find the answer to be plenty, but while there are melodies a-plenty, the upcoming collection is a marked turn from, say, Church of the Cosmic Skull‘s most recent offering, late-2019’s Everybody’s Going to Die (review here). Let’s hope the solo album is less prescient.

Here’s his announcement:

billfisher.net/join

Church of the Cosmic Skull Founder Bill Fisher to Release Solo Album

Album Release Date: Friday 21st August 2020

As an aside to the musical works realised by Church of the Cosmic Skull, I have decided to release some other material under my own name via Septaphonic Records and a new website: billfisher.net

Rest assured that the Church has never been stronger, and will continue to spread the light of the Cosmic Rainbow with full and unstoppable force, with new songs and other announcements soon to follow.

The works to be sent forth from this new platform will be myriad and multiform, varied in genre but of high standard and rich with heart.

The first will take the form of a full studio album, an exploration into heavier realms but still very much melody driven; prog with elements of proto-metal and stoner rock.

Super-deluxe limited edition vinyl, CD, and other merch will on preorder soon via Septaphonic Records and billfisher.net

Listeners can get an exclusive pre-listen of the whole album before public release via a sequence of emails and secret web pages about the concepts behind the album and how we can stop sociopathy taking over the universe.

To get access to this and avoid missing out on the other mind-blowing surprises to come, you are invited to join the suitably-titled ‘Billuminati’ here: billfisher.net/join

Yours in peace and harmony,

BF

billfisher.net
churchofthecosmicskull.com
cosmicskull.org
facebook.com/churchofthecosmicskull
churchofthecosmicskull.bandcamp.com
instagram.com/churchofthecosmicskull

Church of the Cosmic Skull, Everybody’s Going to Die (2019)