Posted in audiObelisk on January 22nd, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Chico, California-based atmospheric sludgers Shadow Limb will release their second album, Reclaim, on March 29 through Seeing Red Records. The four-piece of guitarist/vocalists Adam Scarborough and Chris Roberts, Mike Crew on bass VI and the programmed drums, and Dan Elsen on the I guess organic drums debuted in 2017 with their The King is Dead three-songer EP, and they followed that with Reclaim‘s predecessor, the 2019 long-player debut Burn Scar with its thoughtful, rawer post-metallic approach from which one might hear “To Reclaim” (premiering below) as an outgrowth. I don’t think that’s coincidence.
Reclaim is Shadow Limb‘s second album (they also had the “Soon” single out this past Fall), but Roberts, Scarborough, Crew and Elsen mark a decade together in this incarnation despite their history going further back to La Fin Du Monde, who got their start in 2006 and released three albums and an EP, the last, Embers, arriving in 2012 after 2009’s Monolith (review here), their debut having been 2007’s Life as it Should Be.
That tongue-in-cheek sneer has been a common thread across both bands — La Fin du Monde had “Nascar Santa Claus,” “Accidentally About Sharks” and “Castle Greyskull,” and with “Snake Mountain” and the Conan-referential title “Ridde of Steel,” as well as an apparent title-track for the debut at its finish, Reclaim positions Shadow Limb in a present informed by their past but not aping it. It’s been five years since Burn Scar, so fair enough to move forward. Maturity? Maybe. I haven’t heard the full album, so can’t really comment either way.
“To Reclaim” will lead off the LP that shares most of its name, and it begins with a tense build around a central drone before the undulations of hard-distorted riffing and the gutturalisms begin. The sense of churn is almost immediate, and the sphere Shadow Limb are (mostly) in is heavy in its influence from Neurosis and Isis, the latter showing itself particularly in the drop and sudden change to melodic singing from Scarborough and Roberts, though there’s a folkish spin on the guitar there that’s metal-rooted but reaching toward an almost Celtic vibe. It’s a brief break and the onslaught resumes, claustrophobic in a familiar-feeling manner but presented with its own expressive intent.
They crunch toward the finish with due intensity, bringing back the guitar solo near the finish to tie it all together with a subtlety that fills out underneath the outward crash and bash of aggro, barebones atmospheric sludge. The guitar steps back for a bit to give the vocals more room near the end, and the surge in the last minute is no less satisfying because you see (hear) it coming. Think of it as laying on the tracks. You know a train will be by eventually.
I don’t know that “To Reclaim” speaks to everything Reclaim has to offer sound-wise in its six tracks (though if it was, that’d probably work), but if you imagine yourself in the unknowable future that is the Spring to come, taking on the duly-mud-coated record amid the gorgeous rebirth of life that of course comes also mostly from mud, “To Reclaim” will at very least be the point at which your immersion begins. I hope you enjoy it on that level and in the spirit of more-to-follow.
Info under the player below. Dig:
Mike Crew on “To Reclaim”:
“To Reclaim” is one of those songs that came together pretty organically from a riff our guitarist/vocalist, Adam, just started playing out of nowhere at practice. It can be refreshing when an idea comes up like that and you leave with a good song skeleton at the end of the night. Lyrically, the song addresses the rebuilding of our hometown Paradise, CA, after the devastating Camp Fire in 2018. Our last album was called Burn Scar, but none of the songs were actually about the fire. This album has two songs that address it pretty directly. Chris Roberts (guitar/vocals) and I have been working as carpenters in the area for several years and it’s been nice to be a small part of the rebuilding process. So far over 2,000 homes have been rebuilt.
Stoked to share the album art for our upcoming album “Reclaim”! Huge thanks to our very talented friend @davesurrealneal for these rad paintings!!! And our other very talented friend @loomsville for the lettering!!! “Reclaim” will be released on March 29th on digital and vinyl by @seeing_red_records
Tracklisting: 1. To Reclaim 2. Snake Mountain 3. Destitute 4. The Maneuver 5. Riddle of Steel 6. Burn Scar
Shadow Limb are: Mike Crew – Bass VI and drum programming Dan Elsen – Drums Chris Roberts – Guitar and vocals Adam Scarborough – Guitar and vocals
Posted in Questionnaire on May 25th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
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: Daniel Taylor of Cold Blue Mountain
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I’m the drummer in the band Cold Blue Mountain, but I’ve also been fortunate enough to be able to contribute by playing keyboards on the records we’ve made. And for the newest stuff we’ve been working on and will be recording soon, I even got to help out on a couple guitar parts, so maybe now I’ve risen to the level of Drummer+.
Growing up, I never played drums, never owned drums, never really even thought about drums. I took piano when I was a young kid and picked up guitar when I was a teenager, and my bands in high school were me playing guitar or piano; even the first real band I played with in college I played guitar. But I quickly realized that finding a drummer was the hardest part of starting a band and being 19 and wanting to be in cool bands I figured I should probably learn how to play drums. So I started playing drums in a punk band which was definitely a good starting point, and once you become A Guy with Drums in a college town like Chico, you are automatically a drummer no matter your skill level. So from then on I’ve always been a “drummer” who occasionally dabbles in other stuff when I can, and thankfully Cold Blue Mountain is a band where there is a lot of opportunity to add some fun layers with organ, piano, and synths, which really make up some of my favorite parts of some of our recordings.
Describe your first musical memory.
It’s not technically my “first” musical memory, but I really feel like it was my first musical “a-ha” moment. My dad had an old nylon string guitar laying around the house but coming from the piano it seemed like a pretty daunting thing to even pick up, like with the strings and the frets and all of that. One day I was just sort of fucking around with the open strings and I realized that you could play the opening riff to “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica–which was still sort of a new song at that point–just with the open strings and it was like a light bulb went off: “Holy shit the music on the radio is just this?” It was the first time I had really considered that the rock bands I was listening to weren’t necessarily creating these extremely challenging, master-level works of art, and it made me instantly dive into guitar by learning the first position chords and trying to figure out any song that came on the radio.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Cold Blue Mountain organized and mostly pulled off a full US tour in the first part of 2015 following the release of our second album on Halo of Flies that sort of felt like the payoff for a lot of years of sort of putting all the pieces of the puzzle together slowly. We had really lucked out with getting our first record pressed on vinyl by Gogmagogical Records and getting some decent press here and there and had been touring up and down the West Coast as much as we could fit in one -or two-week stints. We recorded the second record without really knowing what we were going to do with it but it worked out that Cory at Halo of Flies said that he would put it out on vinyl so we wanted to do something a little bigger to really get the most mileage out of what was, to us, a pretty rad situation getting our new record out on a really badass record label. So we booked a pretty bonkers tour that went all the way from California to New England and back down and around, sort of a big circle across the majority of the country.
Of course, January and February in a lot of places is absolute shitting snow so we had a lot of hairy drives and ended up breaking down once or twice and not making a hand full of the shows. But so many of my favorite shows ever were on that tour. We got to play Saint Vitus in Brooklyn, we played an awesome in Milwaukee with Cory from Halo of Flies’ band Protestant that was packed to the absolute rafters; we played a show on Super Bowl Sunday in Des Moines Iowa during an absolute Blizzard and there was actually not a single person there except for us and the people working and it was such a bizarro-world type of feeling. And for me personally, I had semi-quit my job and ended up quitting it completely by the end of the tour so a month in a van freezing and stinking and eating way too much truckstop dried fruit was incredibly conducive to the sort of transitional state I was occupying.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
There were several times on that tour, I mentioned above, where the whole idea of trying to play shows or present your music to the world in the classic DIY fashion by driving around in a van and showing up to some house or some warehouse and having zero idea what you were going to find seemed like maybe not something that was really worth doing. I mean the good shows were good, and some of the bad shows were good too, in their own way. But for me being 34 years old at the time and loading in gear in freezing snow to play for a handful of people at some guy’s house and sleeping on a wood floor you ask yourself “how much do I really want to do this?” But it’s been a lot of years since then and we are still doing it, to a lesser extent, so the answer to that question must have been more yes than no.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
I think it leads to more or less the same place as artistic regression leads: a realization that the process of change, either for better or for worse, is always ongoing. I don’t know if that’s just the answer of someone who has regressed or at least never progressed far enough to realize some sort of artistic epiphany, but it seems like even most of the people who are making art at the highest level are either strangely unconvinced of their own greatness or are striving to be whatever it is that they feel like is better than what they are doing.
How do you define success?
Success for me would be an ability to accept the outcome of something forever. There is a famous list of rules for living that Jack Kerouac wrote out at some point that I have, for whatever reason, reproduced using single letter ink stamps on the front head of my bass drum. And there are a lot of very beat writer nuggets in there like “blow as deep as you want to blow” but one of my favorites is “accept loss forever.” And I think that the idea of being able to just accept something that happened good or bad in its final form forever is probably one of the most beneficial things you can do, in any circumstance, including when taking an honest look at whatever you have done on an artistic level.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
So far, I have managed to watch every episode of all 10 seasons of the television show The Curse of Oak Island and it is honestly one of the most painful things I do on a regular basis.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I have an idea for an extremely quiet band that plays very subdued, rigorously melodic instrumental post-rock, with no build-ups, no distorted guitars, nothing like that. There is a band called The Six Parts Seven who used to do the sort of thing I’m talking about and it’s really something I would like to do before I’m too old to play in bands anymore.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Art is the great equalizer. Anyone anywhere can make and appreciate art out of whatever is around. In that sense art is the most universal language, even more so than math, at least in my opinion, because it takes the principles of math, ratios, shapes, etc., and makes them into something that even a child can understand has meaning.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
I’m hopeful that during my lifetime there is some disclosure about the true nature of UFOs, UAP, whatever people want to call them. Maybe not a complete explanation, because maybe that’s not even possible, but at least a fuller sharing of existing knowledge about what maybe these things are not. Much to my own dismay, I have never personally experienced ANYTHING mysterious or paranormal, although I’m certainly open to the idea. If the guy who owns Skinwalker Ranch is reading this, I’m ready to come visit any time.
You know what’s disheartening? When someone goes ‘thanks dudes.’ You know, I share a review or something, the band reposts and goes ‘thanks to the crew at The Obelisk blah blah.’ What fucking crew? If I had a crew, I’d put up 10 reviews every single day of the year. “Crew.” Shit. I am the crew. In the description of this site, the very first thing it says is “One-man operation.” It’s a fucking solo-project. That’s the whole point of it. It’s like me looking at your bass and going, “Sweet guitar, thanks for the solos brah.” I’m happy people want to share links and this and that, but really? It’s been nine years. Give me a break.
Oh yeah, that’s right. Nobody gives a shit. Now I remember. Thanks for reading.
And while we’re here, please remember the numbers for these posts don’t mean anything. This isn’t a countdown. Or a countup. It’s just me keeping track of how much shit I’m reviewing. The answer is “a lot.”
Grump grump grump.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Lucifer, Lucifer II
Recorded as the trio of vocalist Johanna Sardonis (ex-The Oath), guitarist Robin Tidebrink (Saturn) and guitarist/drummer Nicke Andersson (Death Breath, ex-Entombed, ex-TheHellacopters), Lucifer’s second album, Lucifer II (on Rise Above), follows three years after its numerical predecessor, Lucifer I (review here), and marks its personnel changes with a remarkable consistency of mission. Like Mercyful Fate gone disco, the formerly-Berlin/London-now-Stockholm group bring stage-ready atmospheres to songs like “Phoenix” and the riff-led “Before the Sun,” while unleashing a largesse of hooks in “Dreamer” and the boogie-pushing “Eyes in the Sky.” “Dancing with Mr. D” brings nod to a Rolling Stones cover, and “Before the Sun” reaffirms a heavy ‘70s root in their sound. I can’t help but wonder if the doomier “Faux Pharaoh” is a sequel to “Purple Pyramid,” but either way, its thicker, darker tonality is welcome ahead of the bonus track Scorpions cover “Evening Wind,” which again demonstrates the ease with which Lucifer make established sounds their own. That’s pretty much the message of the whole album. Lucifer are a big band. Lucifer II makes the case for their being a household name.
Lifa is the audio taken from the live video that brought Denmark’s Heilung to prominence. Captured at Castlefest in The Netherlands in last year, the impression the expansive Viking folk group made was all the more powerful with elaborate costuming, bone percussive instruments, antlers, animal-skin drums, and so on. Their debut studio album, Ofnir, came out in 2015 and like LIFA has been issued by Season of Mist, but the attention to detail and A/V experience only adds to the hypnotic tension and experimentalist edge in the material. Does it work with just the audio? Yes. The 12-minute “In Maijan” and somehow-black-metal “Krigsgaldr” maintain their trance-out-of-history aspect, and the 75-minute set blends multi-tiered melodies and goblin-voiced declarations for an impression unlike even that which Wardruna bring to bear. Whether it’s the drones of “Fylgija Futhorck” or the chants and thuds of “Hakkerskaldyr,” LIFA is striking from front to back and a cohesive, visionary work that should be heard as well as seen. But definitely seen.
Eight years after their founding, an EP and several splits, Chico, California, atmosludge extremists Amarok make their full-length debut with Devoured on Translation Loss. If it’s been a while in the making, it’s easy enough to understand why. The album is rife with brutalist and grueling sensibilities. Comprised of just four tracks, it runs upwards of 70 minutes and brings a visceral churn to each cut, not forgetting the importance of atmosphere along the way, but definitely focused on the aural bludgeoning they’re dealing out. Tempos, duh, are excruciating, and between the screams and growls of bassist Brandon Squyres (also Cold Blue Mountain) and guitarist Kenny Ruggles – the band completed by guitarist Nathan Collins and drummer Colby Byrne – Amarok make their bid for Buried at Sea levels of heft and rumble their way across a desolate landscape of their own making. Eight years to conjure this kind of punishment? Yeah, that seems about right. See you in 2026.
Here’s a curious case: T.G. Olson, founding guitarist and vocalist of Across Tundras, is a prolific experimental singer-songwriter. His material ranges from psychedelic country to fuller-toned weirdo Americana and well beyond. He’s wildly prolific, and everything goes up on Bandcamp for a name-your-price download, mostly unannounced. It’s not there, then it is. Olson’s latest singe, Ode to Lieutenant Henry, was there, and now it’s gone. With the march of its title-track and a complementary cover of Townes van Zandt’s “Silver Ships of Andilar,” I can’t help but be curious as to where the tracks went and if they’ll be back, perhaps in some other form or as part of a different release. Both are plugged-in and coated in fuzzy tones, with Olson’s echoing vocals providing a human presence in the wide soundscape of his own making. The original is shorter than the cover, but both songs boast a signature sense of ramble that, frankly, is worth being out there. Hopefully they’re reposted at some point, either on their own as they initially were or otherwise.
If space is the place, Sun Dial feel right at home in it. The long-running UK psychedelic adventurers collect two decades’ worth of soundtrack material on Science Fiction, their new release for Sulatron Records. Made with interwoven keyboard lines and a propensity to periodically boogie on “Mind Machine,” “Airlock,” “Infra Red,” etc., the experimentalist aspect of Science Fiction is all the more remarkable considering the album is compiled from different sources. One supposes the overarching cosmos is probably what brings it together, but with the samples and synth of “Saturn Return” and the lower end space-bass of pre-bonus-track closer “Starwatchers” – that bonus track, by the way, is a 15-minute version of opener “Hangar 13” – and though the vast majority of the Science Fiction relies on synth and keys to make its impression, it’s still only fair to call the proceedings natural, as the root of each one seems to be exploration. It’s okay to experiment. Nobody’s getting hurt.
There are three songs on Lucid Grave’s first outing, the aptly-titled Demo 2018, and the first of them is also the longest (immediate points), “Star.” It presents a curious and hard to place interpretation of psychedelic sludge rock. It is raw as a demo worthy of its name should be, and finds vocalist Malene Pedersen (also Lewd Flesh) echoing out to near-indecipherable reaches atop the feedback-addled riffing. Quite an introduction, to say the least. The subsequent “Desert Boys” is more subdued at the start but gets furious at the end, vocals spanning channels in an apparent call and response atop increasingly intense instrumental thrust. And as for “Ride the Hyena?” If I didn’t know better – and rest assured, I don’t – I’d call it doom. I’m not sure what the hell the København five-piece are shooting for in terms of style, but I damn sure want to hear what they come up with next so I can find out. Consider me enticed. And accordingly, one can’t really accuse Demo 2018 of anything other than doing precisely what it’s supposed to do.
Comprised of four-tracks of heavy psychedelic vibes led by the scorch-prone guitar of Belwil, Domadora’s third album, Lacuna, follows behind 2016’s The Violent Mystical Sukuma (discussed here) and taps quickly into a post-Earthless league of instrumentalism on opener “Lacuna Jam.” That should be taken as a compliment, especially as regards the bass and drums of Gui Omm and Karim Bouazza, respectively, who hold down uptempo grooves there and roll along with the more structured 14-minute cut “Genghis Khan” that follows. Each of the album’s two sides is comprised of a shorter track and a longer one, and there’s plenty of reach throughout, but more than expanse, even side B’s “Vacuum Density” and “Tierra Last Homage” are more about the chemistry between the band members – Angel Hidalgo Paterna rounds out on organ – than about crafting a landscape. Fortunately for anyone who’d take it on, the Parisian unit have plenty to offer when it comes to that chemistry.
That’s a big “fuck yes, thank you very much” for the debut album from Indonesian stoner metallers Klandestin. Green Acid of the Last Century arrives courtesy of Hellas Records and is THC-heavy enough that if they wanted to, they could probably add “Bong” to the band’s name and it would be well earned. Eight tracks, prime riffs, watery vocals, dense fuzz, stomp, plod, lumber, shuffle – it’s all right there in homegrown dosage, and for the converted, Green Acid of the Last Century is nothing short of a worship ceremony, for the band itself as well as for anyone taking it on. With the march of “Doomsday,” the unmitigated rollout of “Black Smoke,” and the swirling green aurora of “The Green Aurora,” Klandestin wear their holding-back-a-cough riffage as a badge of honor, and couldn’t be any less pretentious about it if they tried. From the hooded weedian on the cover art to the Sleepy nod of closer “Last Century,” Green Acid of Last Century telegraphs its intent front-to-back, and is all the more right on for it.
You get what you pay for with “Rock’n’Roller,” which leads off the self-titled debut EP from Bern, Switzerland-based Poor Little Things. Around the core duo of vocalist Tina Jackson and multi-instrumentalist Dave “Talon” Jackson (also of Australia’s Rollerball) on guitar, bass, synth and percussion is Talon’s The Marlboro Men bandmate Fernando Marlboro on drums, and together the band presents five tracks of remember-when-rock-rocked-style groove. Fueled by ‘70s accessibility and a mentality that seems to be saying it’s okay to play big rooms, like arenas, cuts like “Drive” seem prime for audience participation, and “Break Another Heart” gives a highlight performance from Tina while “About Love” showcases a more laid back take. They close with the 6:37 “Street Cheetah,” which struts appropriately, and end with a percussive finish on a fadeout repeating the title line. As a showcase of their style and songwriting chops, Poor Little Things shows significant promise, sure, but it’s also pretty much already got everything it needs for a full-length album.
Every now and then you put on a record and it’s way better than you expect. Hello, Motorowl’s Atlas. The German troupe’s second for Century Media, it takes the classic stylizations of their 2016 debut, Om Generator, and pushes them outward into a vast sea of organ-laced progressive heavy, soaring in vocal melodies and still modern despite drawing from an array of decades past. The chug in “The Man Who Rules the World” would be metal for most bands, but on Atlas, it becomes part of a broader milieu, and sits easily next to the expansive title-track, as given to post-rocking airiness in the guitar as to synth-laden prog. That mixture of influences and aesthetics would be enough to give the five-piece an identity of their own, but Atlas is further characterized by Motorowl’s ambitious songwriting and benefits greatly from the melodic arrangements and the clear intention toward creative development at work here. Those who take on its seven-track/45-minute journey will find it dynamic, spacious and heavy in kind.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on November 5th, 2013 by JJ Koczan
Having recently relocated myself, I’ve been paying closer attention than I otherwise might (that is to say, “any”) to how people choose to decorate their homes, what’s on the walls, etc. I think an understated inclusion to any living room might be a heavy-as-hell NorCal five-piece. You know, to add a little bludgeon to the decor. It’s like feng shui, only crushing.
Though not for nothing, but that’s actually a pretty nice house that Chico, California’s Cold Blue Mountain are working so hard to raze to the ground in their new video for “Branch Davidian Compound.” It’s got a back yard, a French press for coffee, even an elliptical machine, not to mention the nifty ceiling fan that vocalist Brandon Squyres is in danger of getting his hair caught in as he headbangs. I’m sure whoever the owner is will be sorry to see it go, since I’m sure there’s no way the foundation could withstand Cold Blue Mountain‘s tonality and still hope to be up to code. You’re never gonna pass inspection after that big slowdown, no matter how much smoking tai chi you do in the yard.
I’m all for a video with a sense of humor, and obviously Cold Blue Mountain — Squyres, guitarists Will McGahan and Sesar Sanchez, bassist Adrian Hammons and drummer Daniel Taylor — have that working in their favor. “Branch Davidian Compound” was the opener and among the most striking impressions left by their 2012 self-titled (review here), which was released on Gogmagogical Records, and as a way to get acquainted with their specific brand of pummel — somewhere between post-metal brutality and the rawer-throatedness of sludge, but all dissatisfied with itself and probably blaming you for it — the clip makes a rousing introduction to the violence that ensued on the album.
“Branch Davidian Compound” was directed by Michelle Camy. Please enjoy:
Cold Blue Mountain, “Branch Davidian Compound” official video
Posted in On the Radar on August 26th, 2013 by JJ Koczan
Though it could’ve come just easily from the side of a can of cheapshit beer, the moniker Cold Blue Mountain nonetheless evokes a sense of something big, covered in snow and unconquerable. It’s as though the members of the NorCal fivesome were boozing it up while trying to think of a name for the band and had an epiphany moment. Whether or not that’s how it went down ultimately matters little when it comes to taking on their 2012 self-titled debut, released on Gogmagogical Records, because the impression you go into it carrying is the same either way. Expect largesse and bludgeonry and you’ve got at least a beginning understanding of where the Chico-based group are coming from, although that’s by no means the limits of what the lineup of screamer Brandon Squyres, guitarists Will McGahan and Sesar Sanchez, bassist Adrian Hammons and drummer Daniel Taylor have to offer.
Hammons and Squyres were formerly to be found in Seventh Rule Recordings hardcore-infused crushers The Makai, but Cold Blue Mountain are coming from somewhere much sludgier in terms of the overall base of influence. The self-titled, which comes on blue and white vinyl, on tape or in disembodied mp3s, begins with “Branch Davidian Compound,” and the oppressive tonality of the guitars is immediate. A dense recording by Scott Barwick at Origami Lounge in Chico gives a kind of claustrophobic feeling as Squyres switches between lower growls and higher-pitched screaming, gradually layering the two over a slowdown for extremity’s sake, but the low end is where the heaviness resides, and Taylor‘s drumming does a well in complementing. At 4:01, “Branch Davidian Compound” is the longest song on the album (immediate points), but it’s hardly a summary of everything Cold Blue Mountain get up to stylistically, as “Time Flies Like an Arrow” quickly shows with a brooding but tense guitar intro, hinting at not only post-metal ambience, but also some of the terra-worship that has become an essential part of the genre these last few years. They’re not country twanging by any stretch, and sure enough, the song takes off brutally around the halfway mark — the toms fill a break with a sound no less thick than any of the other tones presented — but it’s there underlying and it shows up again later in the piano of the finale, “MK Outro.”
Perhaps the most post-metallic of all in terms of its basic riff and structure is “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” which measures out a jagged rhythm in starts and stops for its verse progression and builds on them with post-rock noodling in a more open-feeling chorus, Squyres topping both with searing screams. There aren’t verses and chorus as such, but the parts fit together well one to the next, and lighter flourish in the guitar during a brief break stands as precursor to some of what’s to come on later cuts like “Lone Pine” and “Comatose,” though the subsequent “White North” does an even better job at that, making me wonder if perhaps multiple songwriters are at work in Cold Blue Mountain — the band’s interplay of the sonically dark and light being contrasting enough between tracks, despite the band having positioned songs well throughout. “White North” is short at 2:36, but though they don’t waste time in the material there or really anywhere else throughout the record, Cold Blue Mountain‘s tracks are in no way lacking presence, “MK Ultra” taking hold from “White North” with an ambient pulse that you could almost call psychedelic were it not so vehemently grounded. A build brings on more post-rock guitar and growling over a slow, nodding groove and a sudden switch to quiet noodling interplay between McGahan and Sanchez, soon to be accompanied as well by Squyres. The return to full-brunt is well announced, but still satisfies, and though “Dark Secret” tosses in some more upbeat metallized riffing in its midsection, the momentum of the songs is set by then.
That riffing in particular should stand out as something Cold Blue Mountain haven’t done before on the album when it arrives, and it’s a sequence that — though contrasted in the same song by a stretch of ambient echoing guitar and bass-driven groove — continues to be developed over the remainder of the album. “Dark Secret” also boasts one of Cold Blue Mountain‘s most satisfying payoffs; an undulating riff played out patiently and at a tempo so fitting its largesse as to border on the masterful. There are those who immediately shun screamed vocals. Off you go. I think they add to a track like “Dark Secret” a level of expression that clean singing couldn’t, and that, like everything else, a good scream has its place. Whether or not that place is over an upbeat, major-key bopper like “Lone Pine,” I don’t know, but it’s genuinely a take on Torche‘s style that I’ve yet to hear and for that alone I’m inclined to go with it. A slowdown offsets the initial bounce and once more Cold Blue Mountain‘s wall of riff nestles into a patient chug as Squyres meets it head on with noduled vocal cords. The subsequent “Comatose” — which is really the proper closer since the reprise “MK Outro” is just that — continues the lighter feel (though there’s still plenty of weight in the low end) the lead lines in the guitars reminding of the time Slow Horse took on Chris Isaak‘s “Wicked Game,” though at 2:31, the entire thing is shortlived, however satisfying its stomp may have been. Piano makes an already noted appearance on “MK Outro” with lines echoing out into suitably chilled atmospheres and Cold Blue Mountain finish by giving a sense of just how little of their overall breadth they may have shown their first time out.
Or hell, maybe that’s everything they’ve got, who knows? Somehow though, I doubt it. Cold Blue Mountain have plenty of familiar aspects in their sludge, post-metal and ambient take, but there’s a personality underlying that emerges on cuts like “Lone Pine,” “Comatose” and even “White North” that taken in combination with the rest provides a sense of individuality that hopefully the band will continue to refine as they move forward. Until then, their debut effectively blends atmospherics and tonal push so as to not necessarily rely on big riffs to get its point across, but certainly be able to capitalize on them when it so chooses.
Posted in Reviews on February 23rd, 2010 by JJ Koczan
I put on Monolith, the new full-length from Chico, California, progressive instrumetallers La Fin du Monde, while a riding New Jersey Transit train for the first time in over a year. This wouldn’t be significant but for the fact of its former daily routine and the stout refusal I’ve made to board this or that numbered car since my “daily routine” earned its preceding “former.” A mental block, an associative trauma; there are numerous ways to frame it with varying levels of drama between them, but the point is it was something I wasn’t comfortable doing, and all I had to carry me through was La Fin du Monde.
Fitting, somehow, that their name (also that of a microbrew ale) should translate from French into “The End of the World.” Their intricate strains of technicality — five in total on the self-released Monolith — coupled with my lack of comfort at the time seemed to put me in a state of acute awareness as to the slips in and out of guitar-led passages and sundry other progressions. This is a brand of music that, as yet, has no genre tag. It blends post-metal musical thinky-thinkydom with heavy/ambient switches and rarely relies on traditional structures. Instrumental post-prog? I don’t know. The “post-” thing is thrown around a lot these days as a catch all. “Cherish rock,” maybe, since there’s something sweet about the ringing guitar tones that culminate “Dismal Tide.”
“To Reclaim” will lead off the LP that shares most of its name, and it begins with a tense build around a central drone before the undulations of hard-distorted riffing and the gutturalisms begin. The sense of churn is almost immediate, and the sphere Shadow Limb are (mostly) in is heavy in its influence from Neurosis and Isis, the latter showing itself particularly in the drop and sudden change to melodic singing from Scarborough and Roberts, though there’s a folkish spin on the guitar there that’s metal-rooted but reaching toward an almost Celtic vibe. It’s a brief break and the onslaught resumes, claustrophobic in a familiar-feeling manner but presented with its own expressive intent.
I put on Monolith, the new full-length from Chico, California, progressive instrumetallers La Fin du Monde, while a riding New Jersey Transit train for the first time in over a year. This wouldn’t be significant but for the fact of its former daily routine and the stout refusal I’ve made to board this or that numbered car since my “daily routine” earned its preceding “former.” A mental block, an associative trauma; there are numerous ways to frame it with varying levels of drama between them, but the point is it was something I wasn’t comfortable doing, and all I had to carry me through was La Fin du Monde.
