Darsombra released their plague-chronicle 2LP Dumesday Book (review here) last August — Crucial Blast has a double-tape out as of March — and, well, maybe it’s time to start thinking of the go-forth-from-Maryland two-piece as more of a longform art project than a band. If they were more pretentious, less inclined to roam and had more money, they’d probably be able to cast themselves as ‘arthouse,’ but the fact is their work isn’t really meant for gallery walls or any other kind. It’s too open in itself to be so contained. Free-drone.

From the sirens of “Call the Doctor (Pandemonium Mix)” and the chants of “Everything is Canceled,” from the drumless guitar prog and oddball vocals repeating the title of “Gibbet Lore” as it comes to a head to the serene reaches where the near-18 minutes of “Azimuth” end up, there’s not much that feels off limits to the duo of Ann Everton and Brian Daniloski. Synthesized, organic, programmed or pulsed, the material is defined in part by the whims it chooses to follow, and while that can at times lead to a kind of willful disjointedness — because not everything connects and not everything is supposed to; you’re not in an ’80s sitcom — Dumesday Book is an encompassing memoir of a time that at least many would rather forget than learn from. They’re not much for percussion and never have been, but neither do pieces like the empty-space strum and blown-out preach of “Plague Times” or the foreboding reprise “Still Canceled” lack movement. As they do, Darsombra are just tracing the patterns of their own math.

I won’t lie to you and say it isn’t helpful having a stated and discernible theme to latch onto in listening to Dumesday Book — the tracks themselves more ‘of the time’ than ‘about’ it — but their keys-and-guitar-based explorations have rarely been unwelcoming in the past, at least to those able to let go of expecting things like verses and choruses in their music. As regards the video premiering below for opening track “Shelter in Place,” the visual fluidity of movement of wind through the dark fabric that becomes ghostly, cosmic, colorized, and so on, is somewhat ironic given the title’s inherent stillness, but I’m not sure that isn’t the idea or that the spectral figure reminiscent of Death itself isn’t the story of the covid pandemic arriving at the shores of humanity’s collective helplessness at the outset of this downhill decade. And you know what? It’s Darsombra, so it’s also okay to not be sure. Not like they’re judging.

Everton and Daniloski begin their next European tour at Roadburn 2024 this Friday, and they’ll hook up with Stinking Lizaveta for the UK portion of the run to hit Desertfest London after playing the anniversary party for Exile on Mainstream in Germany. They’re abroad through the end of May and into June, and it likely won’t be long before they announce the next month-plus tour after this one because that’s how it goes with Darsombra‘s have-noise-will-travel nomadic tendencies. No coincidence that comes paired with such a resonant sense of sonic adventurousness.

“Shelter in Place,” at just three minutes, is the opening to the world portrayed throughout Dumesday Book. On its own, it provides a sample of Darsombra‘s aural dimensionality without necessarily encapsulating the whole. It leads you in, in other words.

Please enjoy:

Darsombra, “Shelter in Place” video premiere

Music by Darsombra
Video directed and edited by Ann Everton
Camera work by Brian Daniloski

“Shelter In Place” is the first track on Darsombra’s 2023 double album, “Dumesday Book”, available at darsombra.com.

Shot on location at Assateague Island, USA. No ponies were harmed in the making of this film.

The latest video from Dumesday Book arrives with “Shelter In Place,” the album’s opening track. “Shelter In Place” is an ominous, majestic introduction to the album’s uncertain journey of the deep range of human emotions characteristic during plague times. The track is quaking, vast, and full of portent; the video, filmed and edited by Everton, gives the tsunami of precarious fear a doleful, baleful visage. Welcome to the trip.

Dumesday Book is available on CD, 2xLP, and digitally on DARSOMBRA’s Pnictogen Records. Physical formats include a twelve-page booklet, a sticker, and a download code with access to bonus material.

Place orders at the band’s webshop HERE: https://www.darsombra.com/

Bandcamp orders HERE: https://darsombra.bandcamp.com/album/dumesday-book

Additionally, Crucial Blast just released the record in a limited double-cassette box set, available HERE: https://crucialblast.bandcamp.com/album/dumesday-book

This week, DARSOMBRA will make their return to the Roadburn Festival alongside The Jesus And Mary Chain, Chelsea Wolfe, Khanate, Blood Incantation, and dozens more. Roadburn is followed by shows across Germany, Poland, Holland, and Belgium, on their way to play Exile On Mainstream 25 Festival dates in both Berlin and Leipzig – the 25th anniversary of the diverse label for which DARSOMBRA is an alumni act – with Ostinato, A Whisper In The Noise, Caspar Brötzmann Massaker, Conny Ochs, and many others also on the four-day/two-city bill.

In the wake of EOM25, they’ll join up with their allies Stinking Lizaveta for shows across the UK, including Desertfest London with Godflesh, Suicidal Tendencies, Ufomammut, Bongripper, Acid King, Monolord, and many more. DARSOMBRA will then make their live debut in Ireland, playing three shows across the country. See all confirmed dates below and watch for additional tour dates for the Summer and Fall months to be announced.

DARSOMBRA Tour Dates:
4/19/2024 Roadburn Festival – Tilburg, NL
4/24/2024 Kunstverein Hintere Cramergasse e.V – Nuremberg, DE
4/25/2024 Kalambur – Wroclaw, PL
4/26/2024 Lot Chmiela – Poznan, PL
4/27/2024 Awaria – Krakow, PL
4/28/2024 Mlodsza Siostra – Warsaw, PL
5/03/2024 Het Alternatief – Nijmegen, NL
5/05/2024 De Loft – Herent, BE
5/09/2024 Exile On Mainstream 25 Fest – Berlin, DE
5/10/2024 Exile On Mainstream 25 Fest – Leipzig, DE
5/14/2024 The Gryphon – Bristol, UK w/ Stinking Lizaveta
5/16/2024 Puzzle Hall Inn – Sowerby Bridge, UK w/ Stinking Lizaveta
5/17/2024 The Cellar – Cardigan, UK w/ Stinking Lizaveta
5/19/2024 Desertfest – London, UK w/ Stinking Lizaveta
5/22/2024 The Lubber Fiend – Newcastle, UK w/ Stinking Lizaveta
5/23/2024 BLOC – Glasgow, UK w/ Stinking Lizaveta
5/24/2024 St. Vincent’s Chapel – Edinburgh, UK w/ Stinking Lizaveta
5/25/2024 Tooth & Claw – Inverness, UK w/ Stinking Lizaveta
5/30/2024 Coughlan’s – Cork, IE
5/31/2024 Kasbah/Dolan’s – Limerick, IE
6/01/2024 Saturday Anseo – Dublin, IE

Darsombra, Dumesday Book (2023)

Darsombra on Facebook

Darsombra on Instagram

Darsombra on Bandcamp

Darsombra website

Pnictogen Records on Instagram

Crucial Blast on Facebook

Crucial Blast on Instagram

Crucial Blast website

The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions inteded 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: Tim Otis of High Noon Kahuna

—

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

Make sounds with the intention of accentuating, enhancing, or supporting other sounds around me. It all happened very organically. In high school I played guitar… a lot. Then I became very interested in drumming and started jamming on drums about 5 years later. It was a very organic transition from drumming by myself, to free-form jamming (mostly with Matt LeGrow and our brothers), then those free-form jams evolved into Admiral Browning.

About nine years ago I got back into guitar big time. Revisiting old riffs I had, learning new stuff. Exploring tones, pedals, amps, different pickups and stuff like that. Started jamming on guitar with a neighbor who drummed, shortly Paul joined us on Wednesday nights to jam. It was also very organic, we never “constructed” a song as much as we honed free-form jams into songs.

Describe your first musical memory.

My zeroth musical memory is piano lessons as a young kid, I remember not liking my piano teacher at all. Hahah! Beyond that, mom and dad played guitar, bass, banjo, piano and sang at church, so I had early access to instruments, PA systems and microphones. I have several memories of playing with this stuff, learning about it, and singing in musicals as a young person in church. However my favorite thing to do in those days was to hear Rick Dees weekly top forty. I would rush to the radio on Sunday nights when it
aired. It was the highlight of my week as a young kid. Not only tracking where my favorite artists were on the charts (Duran Duran) but I was equally fascinated by some of the side stories Rick would share when introducing a song or band.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

This is a recent one! Our latest High Noon Kahuna recording with Kevin Bernstein at Developing Nations! We went in with about 80% of the songs fully-baked, done, and dusted. We had sketches and rough drafts of the other 20 percent with enough time booked to fully explore and experiment in the studio. It was liberating and wonderful! Out of this freedom we created what I think is one of the coolest tracks on the new album, “Tumbleweed Nightmare.”

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

Drumming showed me my limits were mental. When I was at my physical limit, the riffs and music drove me to push past those limits. I can run or workout with weights or kickbox or kayak or ride uphill on a bike, but nothing on earth pushes me to my limit and enables me to break past my limits like drumming and more importantly, being a collaborator in the musical sounds of the band.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

Betterment! With any form of art, it starts small, and sometimes it starts bad. As we learn and grow while practicing, our art becomes better. Every time we practice our art is a chance to improve.

How do you define success?

Success, to me, is being happy with yourself, your surroundings, the people in your life, and your work. Society always dangles the carrot in front of us, there will always be something we don’t have. Being motivated and driven enough to keep working hard every single day and on days when the motivation isn’t there, having resiliency to push through the items that need doing, that’s how I’m able to feel successful at the end of the day.

As far as a band setting goes, there are thousands of micro-to-macro successes. Celebrating each one of those can manifest more. Things like, inventing a new part for a song, having a good practice jam, playing a fun show, a successful recording session. Each of these are rewarding and should be seen as successes.

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

The bathroom at the Springwater Supper Club & Lounge in Nashville Tennessee. Love that place, many of my good friends have worked there and booked shows there. Have played several amazing shows there and attended some awesome parties and shows there. But, wow that bathroom was bad! All the things you’d expect from a punk-rock bathroom. Few rival it, however the bathroom at the Meatlocker in Montclair New Jersey and the bathroom at the Milestone in Charlotte North Carolina were contenders.

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

I think everyone who is a true music fan/nerd has developing tastes. I’m thankful that I’ve never reached the end of my musical journey as a fan of music. I’m also thankful for my friends over the years who have showed me new music. As my tastes and preferences evolve I’m thankful that new ideas emerge regularly that challenge my own musical abilities and push me beyond my limits.

As far as non-musical creations, I’ve been getting back into drawing, lettering and calligraphy. There are a few ideas here that I’m working on creating.

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

Expression. Art allows us to convey our attitudes and emotions on different levels. Art can be beautiful, art can be brutal, art can be beautifully brutal or brutally beautiful. I’m thankful for the ability to express these emotions in ways that resonate in ways beyond just talking about them.

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

I’ve been watching every werewolf movie I can find since last Halloween, there are roughly 70 on my list. I look forward to seeing them all. (Suggestions and recommendations welcome!) Some upcoming tattoo work I’m getting. Spending some fun summer time with my wife, hounds, and mother nature.

https://linktr.ee/highnoonkahuna
https://highnoonkahuna.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/highnoonkahuna/
https://www.facebook.com/HighNoonKahuna/

https://linktr.ee/crucial_blast
http://www.crucialblast.bandcamp.com
http://www.crucialblast.net
http://www.facebook.com/CrucialBlast
https://www.instagram.com/crucial_blast/

High Noon Kahuna, This Place is Haunted (2024)

Please know that I’m sincere when I tell you High Noon Kahuna signing to Crucial Blast for their now-announced second long-player, This Place is Haunted, is heartwarming. The label has been supporting the weirder end of underground weird for 25 years now, and in their snagging High Noon Kahuna — whose 2022 debut, Killing Spree (review here), drew together seemingly disparate ends within heavy rock, black metal, surf, jazz and doom — I’m reminded of their long history with noisy bands who didn’t quite fit a mold otherwise, be it Jumbo’s Killcrane or Totimoshi around the turn of the century, Across Tundras, Weedeater, the split between Floor and their offshoot Dove, etc., or bands like Cultic and Gnaw Their Tongues in more recent years. Not every imprint, new or old, has a broad enough background to get what a band like High Noon Kahuna are going for.

Based in Frederick, Maryland, High Noon Kahuna will indeed be at Maryland Doom Fest 2024 this June (info here) for their first appearance, and a May 17 release means This Place is Haunted will be out before they even get there. They’re playing live in the meantime, of course. The other night they were in Martinsburg, West Virginia, for a set that was filmed (credit to Phebography, I think?) that you can watch in its entirety at the bottom of this post.

I’ll hope to have more to come closer to the release, but here’s what’s out there now from socials:

HIGH NOON KAHUNA This Place Is Haunted CD / CS / DL (VINYL TBA) – OUT MAY 17, 2024

Crucial Blast is stoked to announce that we are joining forces with longtime friends HIGH NOON KAHUNA on the release of their second album, This Place Is Haunted.

Harder, darker, but also brimming with haunting melody, the Maryland band features former members of Internal Void, Vox Populi and Admiral Browning, executing an incredibly infectious mix of classic noise rock and psychedelic crunch. The twelve songs on Haunted are on a whole new level from the band; this rumbling riff-beast brilliantly evokes everything from pummeling Am Rep abrasion, soaring Hawkwindian space rock, haunting post-punk, Dick Dale-on-acid licks, doses of massive doom-laden crush, and even wisps of classic Morricone moodiness and some hammering QOTSA-esque groove.

Easily one of the most unique bands ever to emerge from the DC/MD area, KAHUNA is weirder, heavier, and catchier than ever before, and C-BLAST is incredibly excited to bring this banger to your ears.

This Place Is Haunted will be released May 17th, 2024.

Stay tuned for the first single from the album, coming in early March!

High Noon Kahuna is:
Tim Otis: guitar (Admiral Browning)
Brian Goad: Drums (Internal Void / The Larrys)
Paul Cogle: Bass VI and Vocals (Black Blizzard)

https://linktr.ee/highnoonkahuna
https://highnoonkahuna.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/highnoonkahuna/
https://www.facebook.com/HighNoonKahuna/

https://linktr.ee/crucial_blast
http://www.crucialblast.bandcamp.com
http://www.crucialblast.net
http://www.facebook.com/CrucialBlast
https://www.instagram.com/crucial_blast/

High Noon Kahuna, Live in Martinsburg, WV, March 2, 2024

Legion of Andromeda are less of a band and more of a litmus test for your psyche. The Tokyo-based death-doom duo issued their full-length debut, Iron Scorn (review here), earlier this year, and if it tells you anything about the deranged noise quotient in what they do, the record has been picked up for a CD issue via Crucial Blast next month. While one can only marvel at the boldness of one who would undertake bringing Iron Scorn into the physical realm — it’s like that scene in the original Hellraiser; you know the one I mean — Crucial Blast has plenty of experience dealing with audio atrocities of various devastation, so I can only call it a good fit that they’re working together.

Shit is insane:

LEGION OF ANDROMEDA: Crucial Blast To Issue CD Version Of Iron Scorn Album From Tokyo-Based Death/Doom Duo In August

This August, Maryland-based destruction deploying label Crucial Blast will issue a CD version of the recently released Iron Scorn album by Japanese death/doom duo, LEGION OF ANDROMEDA.

Diabolical in its minimalist approach, unleashing a grinding nightmare of violent, industrial doom/death rooted in a barbaric simplicity, moving in endlessly cyclical percussive patterns, the new album from Tokyo-based LEGION OF ANDROMEDA wormed its way deep into the Crucial Blast depot upon first hearing it. The label now prepares to reissue Iron Scorn on a four-panel gatefold jacket digipak CD with a printed inner sleeve, to further the blast radius of this immense debut album, following its vinyl release on vinyl in North America by Unholy Anarchy and At War With False Noise in Europe.

Iron Scorn has a strange effect upon certain listeners; as opener “Transuranic Ejaculation” bellows across the first moments of the record, LEGION OF ANDROMEDA’s combination of primitive bone-crushing riffage and minimal, mechanical tempo seems overly simplistic, even tedious. Each song centers itself around little more than a pair of interchanging riffs that circle endlessly over a non-fluctuating mid-paced drumbeat that rarely deviates from a simple combination of metronomic crash cymbal and rumbling double bass. Keep listening, though, and the band’s seemingly atavistic heaviness begins to reveal a perversely hypnotic quality, the brutal repetition and savage cyclical flow of these seven tracks turning into surprisingly infectious blasts of ravenous, concussive doom/death. And it’s topped off with repulsively bestial vocals that frequently devolve into psychotic gibberish or rabid snarling vocalizations, all of which lend an added unhinged vibe to this rigid, skull-flattened drone-death assault.

LEGION OF ANDROMEDA has hacked out a uniquely vicious sound, and shares as much disgusting DNA with the grinding industrial metal of bands like Dead World, Skin Chamber and Streetcleaner-era Godflesh as it does with the putrescent doom/death of Autopsy, Cianide and Asphyx, brilliantly fusing the devastating down-tuned chug of the latter to the repetitive, belt-driven clangor of the former, each monstrous track churning through the black cosmos like a mechanical warbeast comprised of gnashing teeth and interlocking gears, terrifying and trance-inducing, with equal nods to the heaviest strains of industrial metal and the most primitive depths of black/death violence.

Crucial Blast will disburse Iron Scorn on CD on August 21st. The album is rupturing the planet, streaming in its entirety and available for purchase, at THIS LOCATION.

Iron Scorn Track Listing:
1. Transuranic Ejaculation
2. Cosmo Hammer
3. Overlord Of Thunder
4. Scourge Of Pestilence
5. Sociopathic Infestation
6. Aim At The Starless Sky
7. Fist Of Hammurabi

http://www.facebook.com/legionofandromedaofficial
http://www.legionofandromeda.bandcamp.com
http://www.twitter.com/ovandromeda
http://www.crucialblast.net
http://www.facebook.com/CrucialBlast
http://www.crucialblast.bandcamp.com

Legion of Andromeda, Iron Scorn (2015)

There?s little doubt everything about San Francisco freak rockers SubArachnoid Space?s ninth full-length, Eight Bells (Crucial Blast) is meant to provoke a reaction. The Stephen Kasner cover art is at once horrific and beautiful — we see a severed arm but also several other phantom limbs from the figure in Venus-like repose and the image is undoubtedly bleak in nature but still somehow triumphant — and the music that spreads across the five tracks that comprise the album follow a similar course of leading listeners in with engulfing sounds before repelling them again with complex changes and other sonic experiments.

It?s a battle of accessibility, and maybe that?s the intent all along. If so, then it?s most fully realized on the second of the five pieces, ?Akathesia.? The title a reference to the inner restlessness keeping one from standing still, this is almost certainly evoked in the music, which follows a gradually building structure across its 13-plus minutes to an insistent and pulsating start-stop conclusion that is not only the most aggressive moment on Eight Bells, but also the most satisfying. It does what closing duo ?Haruspex? and ?Bird Signs? try to do all on its own.

Read more »

Trafficking in pure audio oppression, French post-doom outfit Overmars are the heavy?s heavy. Their second full-length, Born Again, follows a path of bleak sludge, painting an atmosphere of horror and violence and inner turmoil with multiple vocals, male and female, screamed and clean, and a sonic reach that goes well beyond the usual smartypants would-be artistry. Into somewhere that hurts.

Born Again, manifesting aurally all the pains of the process as it happens the first time in its natural state, was originally released in 2007 by Appease Me Records, the label founded by avant black metallers Blut Aus Nord. There isn?t much sound-wise to link the two bands, but Overmars? capacity for unnervingly doomed ambience is clear from the outset, and as the different movements of the album?s lone, 39-minute track come and go, the crush they provide is obviously hewn from a variety of styles, from industrial to death to post-metal and so on. They mostly play slow, though, so for lack of a better word, we?ll call it ?doom.?

Read more »

Set your calendars for the heart of the sun, because blissful Oregonian psych trippers SubArachnoid Space (MySpace here) have a new album due out Sept. 22 on Crucial Blast. Here’s the news from the ol’ PR wire:

SubArachnoid Space shall return with Eight Bells on September 22, 2009, via Crucial Blast. The band’s first new release since 2005’s The Red Veil,? Eight Bells is the newest chapter in their continually evolving vision of music as ecstatic ritual. The recording features a new lineup of Daniel Barone, Melynda Jackson, Lauren K. Newman and Daniel Osborne and was produced by Steven Wray Lobdell who also performs on the album. Eight Bells continues in a similar heavy lysergic vein as their last couple of post-Relapse albums, fusing wicked metallic crunch with celebratory sky-streaking guitar freak-outs and some of the band’s most narcotized jamming yet. The album features five songs and bears stunning new artwork from Stephen Kasner.

A full US tour is currently being locked down and will be announced shortly!