Happy 2023 from Roadburn. The renowned Dutch festival has a slew of new additions for its lineup this April 20-23, including a collaboration between Elizabeth Colour Wheel and Ethan McCarthy of Primitive Man, a label showcase from the delightful weirdos of Rocket Recordings, DeWolff jamming as they did turning so many heads during Roadburn Redux, Birth, Iron Jinn doing a release show for their debut, Body Void, Portrayal of Guilt, and so on and so forth. It’s a big one, and as the poster grows increasingly crowded (see it below), you’ll note that as ever, Roadburn remains a fest of all things and an opportunity to choose your own adventure across a weekend that, if you’ve never been, will change your life for the better no matter whose sets you actually decide to stand there and watch. I mean that.

This is the modus operandi of Roadburn. As Creative Director Walter Hoeijmakers says below, it’s about giving these artists a platform and building a community. Those two words, platform and community, are at the heart of what this thing has become. It’s not the stoner rock and psych fest it used to be, no. But Roadburn‘s commitment to the underground is unflinching, ever inspiring, and broadens the conversation about what ‘heavy’ means in ways that are only to that definition’s benefit.

That’s my two cents. I don’t anticipate being there this year, but a piece of my heart always lives at Roadburn Festival. I mean that too.

From the PR wire:

Roadburn adds 29 new names – including two commissioned projects, a second artist in residence, and a label showcase

Roadburn has today announced a further 29 names to the 2023 line up of the festival which will take place between April 20-23. Among them is a residency from Oiseaux-Tempête, a label showcase from the UK’s Rocket Recordings, and two commissioned collaborations – the first between Duma and Deafkids, the second between Elizabeth Colour Wheel and Ethan Lee McCarthy.

Roadburn’s artistic director, Walter Hoeijmakers comments:

“We are beyond happy to bring you the final commissioned music projects for Roadburn 2023 as well as our second artist-in-residence among others. With this announcement, it becomes clear that Roadburn 2023 is focusing on forward-thinking bands and those who’ve made waves in the last couple years, as we want Roadburn to reflect the underground – now and in the future. We are elated and honoured to give a platform for these incredible artists, and we are sure this year’s Roadburn will be something to remember for music, art, and community.”

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NEW LINE UP ADDITIONS:

COMMISSIONED: DUMA & DEAFKIDS

After whipping up a storm at Roadburn 2022, Duma will return to the festival – this time in collaboration with Deafkids. With one band in Kenya and the other in Brazil, this is a collaboration that transcends boundaries – both geographical and genre. Additionally, Deafkids will perform their own stand alone set at the festival.

COMMISSIONED: ELIZABETH COLOUR WHEEL & ETHAN LEE MCCARTHY

A union forged on mutual respect and a penchant for experimentation will see these two entities join forces at Roadburn 2023. In addition to the collaborative commissioned piece, Roadburn will host performances by Elizabeth Colour Wheel, Spiritual Poison, and Otay:onii.

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

Oiseaux-Tempête will perform three sets across the Roadburn weekend as the festival’s second Artist In Residence; spanning the breadth of their back catalogue and joined by a variety of musicians to embellish their live performances.

ROCKET RECORDINGS 25TH ANNIVERSARY SHOWCASE

Roadburn is celebrating this milestone with one of the most adventurous and forward thinking labels out there – appropriate given that this showcase highlights the best of the future of Rocket Recordings!

Teeth of the Sea will return to Roadburn after a decade-long absence to deliver their eerie sci-fi psychedelia.

Del Aire – the 2022 album by J. Zunz – was in heavy rotation at Roadburn HQ, and she will now make her Roadburn debut in 2023.

Holy Scum is the ungodly merging of members of Gnod, Dälek and Action Beat – creating a (very) noisy cacophony of delirium.

Alison Cotton will perform a solo show of her ethereal, experimental folk, and later combine forces with Dawn Terry (of Bong) for a collaborative set that’s heavy on the drone.

Utilising field recordings and electronics alongside her beautiful voice, Marlene Ribeiro will perform as part of this special showcase.

The Shits are a brand new signing to Rocket – and they’ll be making their presence felt at the Wednesday night pre-festival party.

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DeWolff will reprise their Roadburn Redux set with another performance promising grit and swagger in equal measure.

Bo Ningen will be celebrating all that is weird and heavy about their sound with a special set titled Far East Electric Psychedelic.

Birth are heading to Tilburg to soak us in their psychedelic sounds and take Roadburn to another interplanetary plane.

Iron Jinn can trace their roots back to Roadburn – the 2018 edition to be precise – and they’ll be throwing a release party for their debut album at Roadburn this April, bringing things full circle.

Carefully balancing elements of black metal, ambient, post-rock, noise and drone, Yrre crafted an alternate soundtrack to the 2015 film The Witch by Robert Eggers, which will form the bedrock of their Roadburn performance.

High Vis are riding high off the back of their 2022 album Blending, and they’ll make their way to Tilburg for their Roadburn debut this coming April.

Portrayal of Guilt were another casualty of the 2020 edition, but will bring their hardcore/punk/fighting spirit to Roadburn 2023.

Right off the back of recording a new album, Body Void will head to Europe and deliver their distinctively crushing doom to the Roadburn community.

Featuring members of Amenra, Oathbreaker, Aborted, Cross Bringer and more, Predatory Void have Roadburn written all over them – and they’ll present their debut album in full at the 2023 edition of the festival.

Third time’s a charm for Bad Breeding as they’ll finally darken the doors of Roadburn with their visceral punk sound.

Lukas Frank’s Storefront Church will make their Roadburn debut with a performance of blissful, brooding songs, perfectly suited for after dark.

Antichrist Siege Machine are the musical equivalent to a sledgehammer, making their points with aggressive, anti-Christian songs that exude the joys of violent ritual butchery.

Portland’s Spirit Possession play an authentic form of black metal that is as refreshing in its erratic nature as it is triumphant in its old-school roots.

Poison Ruïn’s anarchic take on post-punk is infused with eerie dungeon synth style elements; an unlikely pairing perhaps but one that is perfectly suited to Roadburn.

OvO’s sludgy drone overlaid with eerie vocals and imbued with seriously haunting vibes will descend upon Roadburn this April.

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More information on these artists can be found HERE. They join previously announced artists including Deafheaven, Boy Harsher, Cave In, Julie Christmas, Wolves In The Throne Room, Giles Corey, Chat Pile and more.

Tickets for Roadburn 2023 are already on sale; Saturday tickets are sold out, but weekend tickets, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday tickets remain. 4-day tickets will be priced at €244, 3-day tickets at €214, and single day tickets at €79 (all costs inclusive of fees and service charges). Accommodation options are also available to purchase. All information can be found on Roadburn.com

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I don’t even know how much oh-my-stars-style hyperbole has been foisted upon San Diego’s Birth for their debut album, Born (review here), which was released last month, but I’m fairly sure the point has gotten across. Melodies and mellotrons, mellow vibes and melancholia, the four-piece of vocalist/keyboardist Conor Riley, guitarist/keyboardist Brian Ellis, bassist Trevor Mast and drummer Paul Marrone — since replaced by Thomas Dibenedetto — make a home for themselves on the dusty fairgrounds of classic progadelia, too thoughtful to be lost in the cosmos but far too ready to fly to be held to ground.

So be it. A first album is always a convenient starting point, unless it sucks — not applicable here — but the context behind Born goes well beyond a nine-month gestation. Riley and Ellis previously worked together in Astra, whose two albums pioneered a lush progressive style that would inform what the San Diego heavy underground became in its well-populated 2010s boom, and Mast and Marrone are a dream team of rhythmic fluidity — the same could be said with Dibenedetto‘s name switched in; his work in Sacri Monti, Joy, Ellis/Munk Ensemble, etc. has never had any trouble keeping up with even the most winding of motions — and whether or not it becomes such, Birth‘s first full-length feels like the beginning of a longer collaboration between these players. Maybe that’s “me want more”-style wishful thinking, but listening to “For Yesterday” right now as I write this sentence and knowing from talking to Riley that it was the last song put together for the album makes me remarkably excited both for what this band is doing and what they might continue to do, probably in a few years, on their next offering.

My schedule is a mess these days, so before you jump into the video, please understand that this wasn’t necessarily easy to make happen, but I very much appreciate Riley‘s patience in coordinating with my pain in the ass self and my odd hours, especially as he’s on the West Coast and I very much am not. If you haven’t heard the record yet, it’s streaming in full below the interview, and yes, by all means, dig in and muck around in the world they create for a while. I sincerely doubt you’ll regret doing so.

Please enjoy:

Birth, Video Interview with Conor Riley

Birth’s Born is out now on Bad Omen Records. More info and updates at the links below.

Birth, Born (2022)

Birth on Facebook

Birth on Instagram

Birth on Bandcamp

Bad Omen Records website

Bad Omen Records on Facebook

Bad Omen Records on Instagram

Bad Omen Records on Bandcamp

Whoever sent the text, or — if they were feeling old-fashioned as they might’ve been in the spirit of the classic prog sought in the music, placed the land-line call from a bright orange rotary phone made of BPA-loaded plastic — to actually start the band, the members of Birth are not strangers to each other. The San Diego four-piece’s debut album, Born, follows after a well-received 2017 three-songer picked up for issue through Bad Omen Records in 2021 titled simply, Demo (review here) — should be noted that it sounded better than many acts’ albums — and the connections between the players involved go back more than a decade to the evolution of Astra from keyboardist/vocalist Conor Riley‘s Silver Sunshine, as he and Brian Ellis (also of Brian Ellis Group, Ellis/Munk Ensemble, Psicomagia and any number of other jazz-informed fusioneers), renew a collaboration put to rest in 2013/2014 following two albums, 2009’s The Weirding (review here; discussed here) and 2012’s The Black Chord (review here), both of which are landmarks for San Diego’s particular vision of prog rock as informed by heavy psychedelia.

Riley (who also contributes acoustic guitar to Birth) and Ellis (guitar, percussion, more keys) are joined on Born by bassist Trevor Mast, who featured on Joy‘s first LP and was in Psicomagia with Ellis, and drummer Paul Marrone, who also played in Psicomagia and has a pedigree that includes Radio Moscow, Joy (second album), Brian Ellis Group, Cosmic Wheels, and so on. Marrone has left the band since Born was recorded, replaced by Thomas Dibenedetto, also of Ellis/Munk Ensemble, Joy (third album), Sacri Monti, Monarch, and so on — one does not worry about their being left in capable hands — deepening the connections even further on the extended family tree that is the deeply creative San Diego scene, mature now compared to a decade ago and a constantly changing sphere of bands, different players collaborating, solo-projects, etc. If Birth was born, the place where it happened is likewise relevant to the output on the album itself as the players’ familiarity with each other is to the music.

Even putting aside Birth‘s aesthetic, which finds them jamming through the instrumental, titular opener “Born,” offering headphone-ready depth of sound en route to direct-feeling references for Deep Purple‘s “Child in Time” in “Descending Us” and King Crimson‘s “Epitaph” in the subsequent “For Yesterday,” they in no way sound like a new band. They didn’t on the demo either, where “Descending Us” also appeared, and the chemistry throughout Born benefits from the obvious familiarity of the players with each other — something that one would expect to continue as Dibenedetto takes the reins on drums from Marrone, who of course shines here despite not being in the band anymore — and in that way it’s almost unfair to think of Born as a debut.

This is a new project, sure, but drawing on a backlog of experience such that, as side A pushes toward the standout hook spread across the nine minutes of “For Yesterday,” careening, twisting, masterful, but with just a bit of harder edge in “Born” and “Descending Us” to coincide with all that melodic wash from the keys, guitar and vocals, the solo-laced grandeur of the latter particularly sets up the dramatic feel of “For Yesterday.” Getting there is no less important than being there, but “For Yesterday” feels very much like a landing point for the first three songs and the album as a whole, conjuring an atmosphere of quiet contemplation despite not coming close to being minimalist with organ and various other vintage-sounding keyboards — maybe some Mellotron sounds; there certainly seems to be some of that going on in the title-track, though you’ll pardon my limited background in analog synth instrumentation — coinciding with the guitar, bass, drums, languid pace and fluid ending via one last chorus, letting side B pick up essentially by starting all over again.

It does, but Birth aren’t the kind of outfit to repeat themselves however much they might develop and explore themes in their work. The structure of side B’s three songs in some ways mirrors side A. The opener, “Cosmic Tears,” is instrumental, as was “Born,” but it’s longer, funkier in the bassline from Mast, and works into some deceptively complex chugging in its midsection that unfolds like jazz improv and may or may not be precisely that before turning quiet again, going to ground before its final, surge and eventual organ-and-drum bounce into a stretch of silence before “Another Time” takes hold as the shortest vocalized inclusion, still finding plenty of room in its five and a half minutes for melo-prog splendour, an especially dreamy break seeming to follow a similar pattern as “Cosmic Tears” but capping with its crescendo rather than allowing the full comedown.

That difference allows the energy as well as the trance to hold over into album-closer “Long Way Down,” with its ride-cymbal-and-noodling verse and chorus swells, a shove that again feels parented by the earliest days of King Crimson et al, and a shift into thrilling lead work from various keys and Ellis‘ gonna-just-hang-here-and-shred-for-a-bit-like-it’s-no-big-deal guitar, the 4:17 mark finding vocals and that guitar coming together as a point of apex leading into a brief instrumental chase in what sounds like multiple dimensions before a last linear verse and guitar solo cap, not quite unceremoniously but well aware that the point has already been made and too classy to want to blow it out as an overstatement.

Perhaps the highest compliment one might pay Birth‘s Born is that it adds to the respective legacies of the players involved — Riley, Ellis, Mast, Marrone — but it also begins to stake out a new path of exploration for them together (Marrone aside) and an avenue through which they already are and can continue to develop their songwriting as a unit and bask in the multi-tiered dynamic of their material, which only seems to have more room for whatever they want to put to it. Born sounds recent but has an older soul, and like any new arrival leads one to wonder what future explorations might produce, but in an unpredictable future and concerning a band whose members have no shortage of other projects going, it might be best to appreciate the work they’re doing here rather than lose oneself to daydreams of glories to come. There’s plenty of fodder for that, sure, but to engage Birth on a conscious level is to understand that much more the artistry, skill and scope of its songs.

Birth, Born (2022)

Birth on Facebook

Birth on Instagram

Birth on Bandcamp

Bad Omen Records website

Bad Omen Records on Facebook

Bad Omen Records on Instagram

Bad Omen Records on Bandcamp

It’s a very specific and kind of confusing brand of fun to trace the full lineage of Birth and who’s played in what with whom, whether it’s Conor Riley and Brian Ellis jamming together in the Ellis/Munk Ensemble or the still-missed Astra, Thomas DiBenedetto drumming for Sacri Monti or Monarch, Trevor Mast having been in Psicomagia with Paul Marrone, also of Radio Moscow, and so on. Certainly anything Ellis and Riley do together at this point is going to immediately and rightfully catch some ears, and from the time when Birth‘s “Descending Us” (posted here) showed up in 2017 to last year when the band signed to Bad Omen and streamed their three-song self-titled demo (review here), the murmuring anticipation for this record has been set. Of course they called it Born.

July 15 is the release date, and I’m somewhat curious as to the situation, since the press release below confirms that Bad Omen will be handling it while at the same time having come down the PR wire via Metal Blade Records. Does that mean that Bad Omen is now a Metal Blade imprint? Or that Metal Blade will handle the US release and Bad Omen the UK? I have no idea, but it’s something to be curious about while I listen to “For Yesterday,” the first streaming track from the record, which you’ll find at the bottom of this post.

Enjoy:

Progressive-Psych outfit Birth to Release Debut LP, ‘Born’, July 15

San Diego Stunners Set Summer Date for Stargazing Full-length Album; Hear Celestial New Track “For Yesterday”

Southern California psychedelic/progressive rock unit, Birth, will release its full-length debut LP, ‘Born’, on July 15 via UK rock label Bad Omen Records (Wytch Hazel, Spell, Satan’s Satyrs). Featuring members of San Diego’s revered retro rockers Astra, along with current or former members of Joy, Radio Moscow, and Sacri Monti, Birth owns a cavernous cache of credibility rarely found in developing musical groups. Described as “a magic-eye journey into kaleidoscopic sound”, and “a dystopian take on the here and now”, ‘Born’ is available for pre-order purchase at: birthprog.bandcamp.com

A first listen to what Birth’s ‘Born’ holds in store can be experienced now as the band is streaming its new song “For Yesterday”. Hear it now at: birthprog.bandcamp.com

Featuring guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Conor Riley and lead guitarist Brian Ellis, musicians who burst onto the prog-psych scene in the late aughts with Astra, a formidable, foundational group who would shape the sound of things to come alongside co-conspirators such as Earthless, Diagonal and Dungen, and whose albums ‘The Weirding’ (2009) and ‘The Black Chord’ (2012) stand proud as two of the greatest progressive achievements of this century thus far, there is a palatable excitement surrounding Birth and the group has been pegged as one to watch in underground circles, an excitement which kicked into a new gear once a now-deleted demo ep was unleashed, on a pay-what-you-will basis, on the Bandcamp platform in 2021, which marked the spark of creation for the Birth universe and delivered a blast of vibrant progressive rock rich in cinematic scope and psychedelic intensity and laid the groundwork for what was to come.

“Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world” . So wrote Mary Shelley in Frankenstein, arguably the first science fiction tale. A full 204 years later, the quest remains – how best to elucidate our daily lives with some form of inspiration that moves the spirit beyond its earthly shackles?

On ‘Born’, Birth musically and creatively constructs a science-fiction-inspired sound-world in which bleak tumult and skybound rapture co-exist. The result is an intoxicating album haunted by earthly concerns while its sonics aim simultaneously for the stars. “I’m a scientist by trade and I read a lot of dystopian sci-fi, which I believe is relevant to many of the events that have been occurring lately,” notes Riley. “These views feed a dark, spiritual and mystical relationship that I have with scientific thought”.

Track listing:
01. Born
02. Descending Us
03. For Yesterday
04. Cosmic Tears
05. Another Time
06. Long Way Down

Birth features Conor Riley (vocals, keyboards, acoustic guitar), Brian Ellis (lead guitar, keyboards), Trevor Mast (bass), and Thomas DiBenedetto (drums). Drums on ‘Born’ performed by Paul Marrone.

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https://birthprog.bandcamp.com/

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https://www.facebook.com/BadOmenRecords/
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https://badomenrecords.bandcamp.com/

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Birth, Born (2022)

Birth, Birth (Demo) (2021)

According to my notes, today is Day Three of the Fall 2021 Quarterly Review. Are you impressed to have made it this far? I kind of am, but, you know, I would be. I hope you’ve managed to find something you dig over the course of the first 20 records, and if not, why not? I’ve certainly added to a few year-end lists between debut albums, regular-old albums and short releases. Today’s no different. Without giving away any secrets ahead of time, this is a pretty wacky stylistic spread from the start and that’s how I like it. Maybe by next Tuesday it’ll all make a kind of sense, and maybe it won’t. In any case, this is apparently my idea of fun, so let’s have fun.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

Thief, The 16 Deaths of My Master

Someone used the phrase “techno for metalheads” in an email to me the other day (about something else) and I can’t get it out of my head concerning Thief‘s The 16 Deaths of My Master. From the swelling distortion of opener “Underking” to the odd bit of harpsicord that shows up in “Scorpion Mother” to the bassy rumble underscoring “Fire in the Land of Endless Rain,” the post-everything “Lover Boy,” droning “Life Clipper,” lazyman’s hip-hop on “Gorelord” and “Crestfaller” and Beck-on-acid finale in “Seance for Eight Oscillators,” there’s certainly plenty of variety to go around, but in the dance-dream “Apple Eaters” and goth-with-’90s-beatmaking “Bootleg Blood” and pretend-your-car-ride-is-a-movie-soundtrack “Wing Clipper,” the metallic underpinning of Dylan Neal (also Botanist) is still there, and the lyrical highlight “Teenage Satanist” rings true. Still, songs like the consuming washer “Night Spikes and subsequent drum’n’bass-vibing “Victim Exit Stage Left” are inventive, fascinating, short and almost poppy in themselves but part of a 16-track entirety that is head-spinning. If that’s techno for metalheads, so be it. Horns up for dat bass.

Thief on Facebook

Prophecy Productions website

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Rise to the Sky, Per Aspera Ad Astra

The album’s title is kind of another interpretation of the band’s name, the idea behind the Latin phrase Per Aspera Ad Astra being moving through challenges to the stars and the Santiago, Chile, one-man death-doom outfit being Rise to the Sky. Multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Sergio González Catalán reportedly wrote and arranged the title-track in the days following his father’s funeral, and the grand, flowing string sounds and engrossing heft that ensues feel genuinely mournful, capping with a progression of solo piano before “End My Night” seems to pick up where “The Loss of Hope” left off. The lyrics to closer “Only Our Past Remains” derive from a poem by Catalán‘s father, and the sense of tribute is palpable across the album’s 46 minutes. I’m not sure how the Russian folk melody bonus instrumental “Horse” might tie in, but neither is it out of place among “Deep Lament” and “Bleeding Heart,” the latter of which dares some clean vocals alongside the gutturalism, and in context, the rest of the album seems to answer with loss what opener “Life in Suspense” is waiting for.

Rise to the Sky on Facebook

GS Productions website

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Birth, Demo

Those familiar with Brian Ellis and Conor Riley‘s work in Astra should not be surprised to find them exploring ’70s-style progressive rock in Birth, and anybody who heard Psicomagia already knows that bassist Trevor Mast and drummer Paul Marrone (also Radio Moscow) are a rhythm section well up to whatever task you might want to set before them. Thus Birth‘s Demo arrives some four years after its recording, with “Descending Us” (posted here) leading off in dramatic Deep Purple-y fashion backed by the jammier but gloriously mellotroned and Rhodes’ed “Cosmic Wind” and “Long Way Down,” which digs itself into a righteous King Crimson payoff with due class even as it revels in its rough edges. Marrone‘s since left the band and whoever replaces him has big shoes to fill, but god damn, just put out a record already, would you?

Birth on Facebook

Bad Omen Records website

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Old Horn Tooth, True Death

Wielding mighty tonality and meeting Monolordian lurch with an aural space wide enough to contain it, Old Horn Tooth follow their 2019 debut LP, From the Ghost Grey Depths, with the single-song EP True Death, proffering a largesse rarely heard even from London’s ultra-populated heavy underground and working their way into, out of, back into, out of and through a nod that the converted among riff-heads likely find irresistible and hypnotic in kind. To say the trio of guitarist/vocalist Chris, bassist/keyboardist Ollie and drummer Mark ride out the groove is perhaps underselling it, but as my first exposure to the band, I’m only sorry to have missed out on both the orange tapes and the limited flash drives they were selling. So it goes. Slow riffs, fast sales. I’ll catch them next time and drown my sorrows in the interim in this immersive, probably-gonna-get-picked-up-by-some-label-for-a-vinyl-release offering. And hey, maybe if you and I both email them, they’ll press a few more cassettes.

Old Horn Tooth on Facebook

Old Horn Tooth on Bandcamp

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Solemn Lament, Solemn Lament

Pro-shop-level doom from an initial public offering by Solemn Lament, bringing together the significant likes of vocalist Phil Swanson (ex-Hour of 13, Vestal Claret, countless others), drummer Justin DeTore (Magic Circle and more recently Dream Unending) as well as Blind Dead‘s Drew Wardlaw on bass and Adam Jacino on lead guitar, and Eric Wenstrom on rhythm guitar. These personages cross coastlines to three tracks and intro of grand and immersive doom metal, willfully diving into the Peaceville-three legacy on “Stricken” to find the beauty in darkness after the lumber and chug of the nine-minute “Celeste” resolves with patient grace and “Old Crow” furthers the Paradise Lost spirit in its central riff. Geography is an obvious challenge, but if Solemn Lament can build on the potential they show in this debut EP, they could be onto something really special.

Solemn Lament on Facebook

Solemn Lament on Bandcamp

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Terminus, The Silent Bell Toll

A stunning third full-length from Fayetteville, Arkansas, trio Terminus, The Silent Bell Toll bridges doomed heft and roll, progressive melodicism and thoughtful heavy rock construction into a potent combination of hooks and sheer impact. It’s worth noting that the 10-minute closer of the nine-song/40-minute outing, “Oh Madrigal,” soars vocally, but hell, so does the 3:18 “Black Swan” earlier. Guitarist Sebastian Thomas (also cover art) and bassist Julian Thomas share vocal duties gorgeously throughout while drummer Scott Wood rolls songs like “The Lion’s Den” and “The Silent Bell Toll” — that nod under the solo; goodness gracious — in such a way as to highlight the epic feel even as the structure beneath is reinforced. With three instrumentals peppered throughout to break up the chapters as intro, centerpiece and penultimate, there’s all the more evidence that Terminus are considered in their approach and that the level of realization across The Silent Bell Toll is not happenstance.

Terminus on Facebook

Terminus on Bandcamp

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Lunar Ark, Recurring Nightmare

Clearly named in honor of its defining intent, Recurring Nightmare is the three-song/48-minute debut full-length from Boston-based charred sludge outfit, who take the noisy heft of ultra-disaffected purveyors like Indian or Primitive Man and push it into a blackened metallic sphere further distinguished by harshly ambient drones. One can dig Neurosis-style riffing out of the 19:30 closer “Guillotine” or opener “Torch and Spear,” but the question is how much one’s hand is going to be sliced open in that process. And the answer is plenty. Their tones don’t so much rumble as crumble, vocals are willfully indecipherable throat-clenching screams, and the drums duly glacial. There is little kindness to be had in 16:43 centerpiece “Freedom Fever Dream” — originally broken into two parts as a demo in 2019 — which resolves itself lyrically in mourning a lost ideal over a dense lurch that’s met with still-atmospheric churning. Their established goal, if that’s what it is, has been met with all appropriate viciousness and extremity.

Lunar Ark on Facebook

Trepanation Recordings on Bandcamp

Lunar Seas Records on Bandcamp

Realm and Ritual on Bandcamp

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Taxi Caveman, Taxi Caveman

An ethic toward straight-ahead riff rock is writ large throughout Taxi Caveman‘s self-titled debut full-length, the Warsaw trio offering a face-first dive into fuzz of varying sizes and shaping their material around the sleek groove of “Prisoner” or the more aggressively bent vinyl-side-launchers “Building With Fire” and “Asteroid.” There’s a highlight hook in “I, the Witch” and the instrumental “426” leads into the Dozer-esque initial verse of 10-minute closer “Empire of the Sun,” but the three-piece find their own way through ultimately, loosening some of the verse/chorus reins in order to affect more of a jammed feel. It’s a departure from the crunch of “Asteroid” or “Prisoner” and the big, big, big sound that starts “Building With Fire,” but I’m certainly not about to hold some nascent sonic diversity against them. They’re playing to genre across these 33 minutes, but they do so without pretense and with a mind toward kicking as much ass as possible. Not changing the world, but it’s not trying to and it’s fun enough in listening that it doesn’t need to.

Taxi Caveman on Facebook

Piranha Music on Bandcamp

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Droneroom, Negative Libra

“Negative Libra” runs 36:36 and is the lone track on the album that bears its name from Las Vegas-based solo-project Droneroom. The flowing work of Blake Conley develops in slow, meditative form and gradually introduces lap steel to shimmer along with its post-landscape etherealities, evocative of cinema as they are without exactly playing to one or the other film-genre tropes. That is to say, Conley isn’t strictly horror soundtracking or Western soundtracking, and so on. Perhaps in part because of that, “Negative Libra” is allowed to discover its path and flourish as it goes — I’m not sure as to the layering process of making it vis-à-vis what was tracked live and put on top after — but the sense of exploration-of-moment that comes through is palpable and serene even as the guitar comes forward just before hitting the 27-minute mark to begin the transition into the song’s noisier payoff and final, concluding hum.

Droneroom on Facebook

Somewherecold Records website

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Aiwass, Wayward Gods

Blown-out vocals add an otherworldly tinge to Arizona-based one-man-band Aiwass‘ debut full-length, Wayward Gods, giving the already gargantuan tones a sense of space to match. Opener “Titan” and closer “Mythos” seem to push even further in this regard than, say, the centerpiece “Man as God” — the last track feeling particularly Monolordly in its lumbering — but by the time “Titan” and the subsequent, 10-minute inclusion “From Chains,” which ends cold with a guest solo by Vinny Tauber of Ohio’s Taubnernaut and shifts into the cawing blackbird at the outset of “Man as God” with a purposefully jarring intent. Despite the cringe-ready cartoon-boobs cover art, the newcomer project finds a heavy niche that subverts expectation as much as it meets it and sets broad ground to explore on future outings. As an idea, “gonna start a heavy, huge-sounding band during the pandemic,” is pretty straightforward. What results from that in Aiwass runs deeper.

Aiwass on Facebook

Aiwass on Bandcamp

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San Diego’s Birth will make their full-length debut in 2022 through Bad Omen Records. In conjunction with Tee Pee‘s digital annex, the band bringing together former members of Astra and, on the demo, Radio Moscow, have made their first three-songer demo available as a get-introduced name-your-price download. This material has been kicking around a while — “Descending Us” was posted here in 2017 — and I don’t know who might be playing drums on the impending record, if in fact anybody will, but the demo’s righteous classic prog and one hopes and expects the album will follow suit, given the personnel and Mellotrons involved.

This’ll be good. It’s an easy bet. Grab the demo while you can and keep an eye out for more about the album.

Here’s PR wire info:

San Diego Prog-Psych Stunners Birth Sign with Bad Omen Records

Ascending Underground Rock Band Featuring Members of Astra Begins Work on Debut Full Length; Offers Three Song Digital Demo for Free Download

Southern California psychedelic/progressive rock unit, Birth, has signed with respected rock label Bad Omen Records (Wytch Hazel, Spell, Satan’s Satyrs). Featuring members of San Diego’s revered retro rockers Astra, along with current or former members of Joy and Radio Moscow, Birth owns a cavernous cache of credibility rarely found in newly-formed musical groups. Birth is currently in the studio, assembling its debut full length LP which is slated for release in early 2022.

In celebration of the signing, Birth has made its self-titled debut/demo EP available for free download via its Bandcamp page. Visit birthprog.bandcamp.com (powered by our friends at NYC’s Tee Pee Records) to absorb this band’s first three formative forays; soaring songs which mark the spark of creation for the Birth universe and deliver a blast of vibrant progressive rock rich in cinematic scope and psychedelic intensity.

Featuring guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Conor Riley (keyboards, vocals, acoustic guitar) and guitarist Brian Ellis, musicians who burst onto the prog-psych scene in the late aughts with Astra, a formidable, foundational group who would shape the sound of things to come alongside co-conspirators Earthless, Diagonal and Dungen, and whose albums ‘The Weirding’ (2009) and ‘The Black Chord’ (2012) stand proud as two of the greatest progressive achievements of this century thus far, there is a palatable excitement surrounding Birth and the group has been pegged as one to watch in underground circles.

Joining forces as Birth with bassist Trevor Mast and drummer Paul Marrone (for the recording of the demo), the fledgling foursome have created a soundtrack for an epic sci-fi saga on an imaginary timeline which may well lead some listeners back to the wide-eyed days of the early 70’s, offering shades of ‘The Yes Album’, the wayward serenades of Van Der Graaf Generator, the demented potency of King Crimson and even the stellar travelogue of Far East Family Band. On ‘Birth’, elegiac mellotron-assisted songcraft and richly melodious solo passages melt together into kosmische melancholia; a thrilling celestial collision of delirious fantasy, lysergic sonic adventure and thundering jam-room chemistry.

Birth are:
Conor Riley – Keyboards / Acoustic Guitar / Vocals
Brian Ellis – Lead Guitar / Keyboards
Trevor Mast – Bass
Drums on [demo] recording: Paul Marrone

https://www.facebook.com/Birth.prog
https://www.instagram.com/birth_prog/
https://birthprog.bandcamp.com/
http://www.bad-omen-records.com/
https://www.facebook.com/BadOmenRecords/
http://www.instagram.com/badomenrecords
https://badomenrecords.bandcamp.com/

Birth, Birth (Demo) (2021)

Timing is everything. Wasn’t it just the end of last week that I was calling humanity poorer for the apparent dissolution of San Diego progressive heavy psych rockers Astra? Yes, it was. And wasn’t it just yesterday that band was talking about putting out a third record? Again, yuppers. Well, as it turns out, guitarist/keyboardist Brian Ellis and keyboardist/vocalist Conor Riley from that group have also teamed with drummer Paul Marrone from Radio Moscow and Psicomagia and Psicomagia bassist Trevor Mast to form the new outfit Birth, and their first demo track — a song called “Descending Us” that would seem to account for the general direction of who we are as a species — has been newly unveiled.

The pedigree of the lineup is significant, of course. San Diego’s well-discussed boom in heavy psych wouldn’t have the shape it does without the likes of Astra or Radio Moscow, and if you didn’t hear the El Paraiso-released 2014 self-titled debut from Psicomagia (review here), the arguments in its favor were numerous and convincing. Of the various strains of its lineage, “Descending Us” seems most immediately to have the most in common with Astra, however, and one can hear that in its focus on synth and vocal melody, which offer a restful, similarly post-Crimson vibe that finds still-fluid contrast with the dramatic rhythm drawn from Deep Purple‘s “Child in Time” and the later-emerging shred from Ellis‘ guitar, which at the apex of the track calls to mind Rush as much as SoCal scene kingpins Earthless without owing itself entirely to either of them.

An encouraging start, to say the least, and one that wouldn’t find Birth out of place on labels ranging from Rise Above (which brought Astra‘s two records to light) to Tee Pee to El Paraiso or Heavy Psych Sounds, let alone the broader distributive reach of an outlet like Century Media, which recently picked up Radio Moscow. Wherever they end up, they’ve made a resounding first impression, and one looks forward to what explorations and sonic discoveries may lay ahead.

Enjoy “Descending Us” in the video embed below, followed by the relevant social links:

Birth, “Descending Us” demo

Formed in 2016 in San Diego, Birth is drummer Paul Marrone (Radio Moscow, Psicomagia), bassist Trevor Mast (Psicomagia), guitarist/keyboardist Brian Ellis (Astra, Psicomagia) and keyboardist/vocalist Conor Riley (Astra).

Birth on Thee Facebooks

Birth on Instagram

Birth on YouTube