On the record, the melancholic build of “Critical Mass” follows guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Caroline Cawley‘s short story recitation “She From Up the Drombán Hill,” and with a switch from third to first-person point of view, “Critical Mass” takes on the voice of its central character, a young woman — a “…comfortable learned woman, a competent speller” — who gets pregnant out of wedlock in very-Catholic Ireland and is sent away to a common shame and death not actually of her own making, though naturally the blame would’ve been hers. Cawley, responsible for the craft at root in Dystopian Future Movies and the emotive performance that drives the band’s 2022 album, War of the Ether (review here), explores this theme with sadness, an unflinching eye, due judgment and depth of perspective. Like the title-track and others surrounding, “Critical Mass” is heavy well before it actually gets loud.
What allows for that is atmosphere, of course. As might be hinted by an album that builds up its introduction around nine minutes of spoken storytelling, words are important on War of the Ether, and that holds for “Critical Mass” as well, but Dystopian Future Movies set that narrative to a sound that has grown capable across now-three-LPs to encompass aspects of downer heavy indie and goth-ish melodic pull — if you can take Crippled Black Phoenix‘s oppressive-sky modus, the mood here resonates similarly — as well as noise rock, atmospheric sludge metal and in the later reaches of “No Matter,” a flourish of guitar float that is more clear-eyed than heavygaze but brings some ethereal sense to War of the Ether just the same. As noted when it was being released, Cawley took inspiration from the scandal surrounding Tuam Mother and Baby Home in Ireland, where nearly 800 dead bodies were discovered of the pregnant women who went and the children they birthed there. Perhaps with this frame it’s inevitable War of the Ether would hit hard, but again, its impact is in more than just its volatile pieces.
Dystopian Future Movies — in which Cawley is joined by Bill Fisher, Marty Fisher and Rafe Dunn — played this past weekend at Masters of the Riff III in Hackney, performing alongside Elephant Tree, The Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell, and scores of others. Two more UK fests are locked in for this Spring in Leeds and Bradford, about which you can see more in the info that follows the clip below. One last note to mention that the lyrics to “Critical Mass” also appear under the video player. I don’t always post lyrics with whatever might be streaming on a given day, but I think the relevance in this instance makes it appropriate. If it throws you off visually or whatever, I apologize. I assure you it made sense to me at the time, which is right now, as it happens.
Please enjoy:
Dystopian Future Movies, “Critical Mass” official video
From the album ‘War of the Ether’ out on Septaphonic Records
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Video by Zorad Music by Dystopian Future Movies Recorded by Bill Fisher at XII Chambers Nottingham England Produced by Dystopian Future Movies Mastered by Lira Wish at Film-Maker Studios ‘War of the Ether’ Art & Design by Rafe & Zorad
Dystopian Future Movies live: StrangeForms Festival – Brudenell, Leeds 6th – 7th April Ruination Festival 2024 – Underground, Bradford 11th May
“Critical Mass” lyrics: Looking back it’s clear to know I should have lied So ashamed to admit that now, I didn’t even try In a land that is so drenched in weeping, I know that I’m alone When a hand that should heal is tormented to steal and corrupting your mind
Where is love, where is love and I should go Where is love, where is love and I could go
Only in retrospect can we blame the time And that seems but a weakened stance when it mars entire lives When we wait on unforthcoming promises from a state content with lies When we wait for the order of things to change, while we die
Where is love, where is love and I should go Where is love, where is love and I could go
Your dissent Your descent, I know Your dissent Your descent, I know I’ll await for you
And you hide behind robes And you hide behind robes Despite how we strove Despite how we fought
Where is love, where is love and I should go Where is love, where is love and I could go
Where is love, where is love and I should go Where is love, where is love and I could go
Your dissent Your descent, I know Your dissent Your descent, I know I…
Dystopian Future Movies are: Caroline Cawley – Guitar & Vocals Bill Fisher – Drums Rafe Dunn – Guitar Marty Fisher: Bass Guitar
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 20th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
This is a good bill, and it just got better with these 11 acts added, but I’ll note I’m particularly glad to see Elephant Tree playing, never mind headlining, after the London-based melodic heavy rockers had to cancel their show plans for this Fall owing to frontman Jack Townley‘s ongoing medical complications from an accident earlier this year. Warms the heart and makes me hope they can keep momentum on their side; they’re about due for a new record and I get a little sad thinking it might be 2025 before one arrives, though certainly extenuating circumstances apply.
Gurt, always mad. Dunes, making a new record. Dead Witches, nasty. Margarita Witch Cult, put out a strong record this year, seem to be turning heads. Dystopian Future Movies, no, I’m still not over War of the Ether (review here) from late last year, and if the worst thing that happens is you see this list of bands and check any of them or any of the others below out — Hang the Bastard, Bodach, Black Orchids, Godless Suns — then that’s a win in my mind. A rigorous and often applied standard, that.
Info for the three-dayer follows here. I don’t know if you’ll be able to make it or not, but if you wanted a hard-immersion in the UK underground, well, here’s the poster:
Masters of the Riff festival is back for its third year, running from Friday 1st March to Sunday 3rd March.
Taking place at Oslo, Hackney, Masters of the Riff III is a celebration of some of the finest riff merchants from the Doom, Stoner and Sludge scene.
This year’s event is set to be even more exciting than ever as we welcome the magnificent ELEPHANT TREE as one of the three headline acts set to grace the Oslo stage. With a supporting cast featuring DEAD WITCHES, HANG THE BASTARD, GRAVE LINES, DYSTOPIAN FUTURE MOVIES, GURT, DUNES, MARGARITA WITCH CULT, BODACH, BLACK ORCHIDS and GODLESS SUNS, plus more to be announced across the weekend.
Posted in Questionnaire on March 1st, 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: Caroline Cawley of Dystopian Future Movies & Church of the Cosmic Skull
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
Musician: After decades as an avid music obsessive, and stints DJing and as a concert promoter in my native Ireland in my 20s – It took me til the age of 31 to truly begin to write music. I was a bit lost, working in a bar, disillusioned with the education system in my newly adopted country (UK) when, after writing a few songs I was vaguely proud of, I met Bill. He was playing in a blues band with his brother Marty and, as a massive Jellyfish fan – early ’90s San Fran beat-combo led by singing drummer Andy Sturmer – Bill’s combined singing and drumming skills caught my eye.
I’m looking for a drummer to jam with, I said, passing him his free bottle of beer after their set. We exchanged details. It was a few months later, after bumping into him again outside a favoured late night establishment that we’d more often stand outside than within, that I noted his Taint T-shirt and how his beard was so long that it looked like part of the design. We began to jam a few weeks later and those early songs ended up on our first DFM self-titled EP. COTCS came a few years later and we’ve been a couple for almost ten years.
My day job is as a Primary School Music Specialist teaching 5 to 11 year olds. I’ve always wanted to be a teacher since I taught my little brother and a row of teddy bears in the front room at the age of 5. After almost 20 years as a regular class teacher, I recently began retraining as a music specialist. I’m now a year and a half in and beginning to see some positive changes. Namely marginalised kids who struggle with school writing Bessie Smith inspired 12 bar blues songs about their own lives. Incredibly rewarding stuff.
Describe your first musical memory.
My Dad is arguably more of a music anorak than myself and we had a constant and varied soundtrack growing up. My parents have told stories of me sleeping between two speakers as an infant, Led Zeppelin blaring, or dancing around the kitchen to Nik Kershaw classic ‘Wouldn’t It Be Good’ circa ‘84. But I guess one of my first musical memories is at the age of 5 or 6 listening to my then favourite album, Heart’s self-titled 1985 offering in the car parked outside our childminder’s house and wondering what ‘if looks could kill’ meant.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Writing songs and beginning to record them with Bill in the early days of DFM was a revelation. Something that seemed so outside of the realms of possibility was within reach and almost a bit bizarre – hearing your own ideas played back to you. But our first gig was something else entirely. We booked it in a nearby city – almost everyone I knew was a seasoned musician in a great band so it was entirely too intimidating to think I could perform in front of any of them. This was the first time I would attempt to lead a performance in front of anyone since a frozen brain malfunction meant a humiliated walk off stage at a piano competition 20 years earlier.
Performing those songs and managing a pedal board in front of a very kind and accommodating crowd of 15 in Sheffield enabled my first experience of that ball of emotion rising in the chest, a release like no other as it rose and rose and tumbled out over those 4 or 5 songs. I burst into tears in the kebab shop afterwards. It was adrenalin, of course, but it was also something more. Some chemical composition changed within me and that was that. I’m a pretty heart-on-sleeve sort of person but there was an honesty and laid-bare quality to performance that I hadn’t expected.
The first airing of ‘She From Up The Drombán Hill’ – the spoken word track from our latest album ‘War of the Ether’ on a Leeds stage recently threw me right back to that feeling.
Telling that story in a crowded, silent room – an exposure like no other – voicing a story lived and endured by so many over decades back in Ireland. Those chorus breaks, those wide screen stabs have never sounded so enormous or so visceral. It’s a dream to be part of something like that.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Dystopian Future Movies’ third album ‘War of the Ether’ is written about one recently uncovered instance of large scale abuse in Ireland centred around the Mother and Baby Homes – where pregnant, unwed women and teens were deposited by family or local clergy to hide what was deemed sinful. Growing up in a Catholic country, where church and state were firmly intertwined it was only later as abuses made the national press – abuses of power, child-sex abuse, cover ups – that what was often hiding in plain sight, behind a thin vale, was foisted into the public domain. And many simply did not want to believe it.
I’m not sure I ever had a firmly held religious belief, perhaps as a child where a romantised idea of unconditional love, forgiveness and the church as safe space permeated our classrooms and religion books in the form of bible stories. But when the idea of priest as counsellor, as listener, as pillar of community broke down, Catholic Ireland never recovered and is ironically a more accepting place now than it arguably ever was before with the recent passing of progressive legislation around abortion and same sex marriage.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Progression is an interesting one. In education we are constantly being asked if our curricula or teaching approach can demonstrate progression of knowledge and skills across a child’s time at school. So we make sure that our kids are embedding and deepening their knowledge and understanding of concepts over time – so that some aspects become second nature to reduce cognitive load. Like playing guitar for example, if you are spending all of your time considering the fretting of a chord, it will take over all of your cognitive space leaving little for creativity. So, get better at the little things so you then have more head space for innovation.
Where does it lead? Well progressing within a band with a group of collaborators can only lead to more of those magic moments – the beauty of a super tight performance, moving like a ballet troupe between sections seamlessly. Anticipating or feeling changes in a jam, innately knowing or feeling what needs to happen next during the construction of a piece of music. To my mind, there’s nothing like the joy of a group of musicians inhabiting a piece of music.
How do you define success?
Humans are never content and always striving, as a general rule. So what accounts for success, even personally, seems to be always shifting. That can be good – being ambitious for yourself etc. But real success, I’ve come to learn more recently, is in the enjoyment of each step of the way. No matter what we achieve, we’ll be looking to the next thing, and that can be exhausting and mean that you aren’t really that focussed or present for what’s happening right now. It’s hard to enjoy or recognise the stressful parts of the journey but they are just as valid and necessary to an extent.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
That’s a really difficult one – I actually can’t think of anything. I guess even very difficult things go on to teach us something or change us for the better in the end.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I’d like to complete a collection of short stories. Making a short film and or working on a soundtrack/ audio accompaniment would be a really interesting project. In many ways, DFM feels like it would lead there some day.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
To evoke emotion and thus bring humanity closer through shared experience with a greater understanding of our similarities and differences.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Having some sort of non-band related holiday with Bill at some point. They are few and far between!
Posted in Reviews on January 4th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
In many ways, this is my favorite kind of Quarterly Review day. I always place things more or less as I get them, and let the days fill up randomly, but there are different types that come out of that. Some are heavier on riffs, some (looking at you, Monday) are more about atmosphere, and some are all over the place. That’s this. There’s no getting in a word rut — “what’s another way to say ‘loud and fuzzy?'” — when the releases in question don’t sound like each other.
As we move past the halfway point of the first week of this double-wide Quarterly Review, 100 total acts/offerings to be covered, that kind of thing is much appreciated on my end. Keeps the mind limber, as it were. Let’s roll.
Winter 2023 Quarterly Review #21-30:
White Hills, The Revenge of Heads on Fire
The narrative — blessings and peace upon it — goes that White Hills stumbled on an old hard drive with 2007’s Heads on Fire‘s recording files on it, recovered them, and decided it was time to flesh out the original album some 15 years after the fact, releasing The Revenge of Heads on Fire through their own Heads on Fire Records imprint in fashion truer to the record’s original concept. Who would argue? Long-established freaks as they are, can’t White Hills basically do whatever the hell they want and it’ll be at the very least interesting? Sure enough, the 11-song starburster they’ve summoned out of the ether of memory is lysergic and druggy and sprawling through Dave W. and Ego Sensation‘s particular corner of heavy psychedelia and space rocks, “Visions of the Past, Present and Future” sounding no less vital for the passing of years as they’re still on a high temporal shift, riding a cosmic ribbon that puts “Speed Toilet” where “Revenge of Speed Toilet” once was in reverse sequeling and is satisfyingly head-spinning whether or not you ever heard the original. That is to say, context is nifty, but having your brain melted is better, and White Hills might screw around an awful lot, but they’re definitely not screwing around. You heard me.
Weaving into and out of spoken word storytelling and lumbering riffy largesse, nine-minute opener and longest track (immediate points) “She Up From the Drombán Hill” has a richly atmospheric impact on what follows throughout Dystopian Future Movies‘ self-issued third album, War of the Ether, the residual feedback cutting to silence ahead of a soft beginning for “Critical Mass” as guitarist/vocalist Caroline Cawley pairs foreboding ambience with noise rocking payoffs, joined by her Church of the Cosmic Skull bandmate Bill Fisher on bass/drums and Rafe Dunn on guitar for eight songs that owe some of their root to ’90s-era alt heavy but have grown into something of their own, as demonstrated in the willfully overwhelming apex of “The Walls of Filth and Toil” or the dare-a-hook ending of the probably-about-social-media “The Veneer” just prior. The LP runs deeper as it unfurls, each song setting forth on its own quiet start save for the more direct “License of Their Lies” and offering grim but thoughtful craft for a vision of dark heavy rock true both to the band’s mission and the album’s troubled spirit. Closer “A Decent Class of Girl” rolls through volume swells in what feels like a complement to “She Up From the Drombán Hill,” but its bookending wash only highlights the distance the audience has traveled alongside Cawley and company. Engrossing.
Though in part defined by the tectonic megasludge of “In the Dirt’s Embrace,” Filipino four-piece Basalt Shrine are no more beholden to that on From Fiery Tongues than they are the prior opening drone “Thawed Slag Blood,” the post-metallic soundscaping of the title-track, the open-spaced minimalism of closer “The Barren Aftermath” or the angular chug at the finish of centerpiece “Adorned for Loathing Pigs.” Through these five songs, the Manila-based outfit plunge into the darker, denser and more extreme regions of sludgy stylizations, and as they’ve apparently drawn the notice of US-based Electric Talon Records and sundry Euro imprints, safe to say the secret is out. Fair enough. The band guide “From Fiery Tongues,” song and album, with an entrancing churn that is as much about expression as impact, and the care they take in doing so — even at their heaviest and nastiest — isn’t to be understated, and especially as their debut, their ambition manifests itself in varied ways nearly all of which bode well for coming together as the crux of an innovative style. Not predicting anything, but while From Fiery Tongues doesn’t necessarily ring out with a hopeful viewpoint for the world at large, one can only listen to it and be optimistic about the prospects for the band themselves.
Post-metallic in its atmosphere, there’s no discounting the intensity Belgium trio Psychonaut radiate on their second album, Violate Consensus Reality (on Pelagic). The prog-metal noodling of “All Your Gods Have Gone” and the singing-turns-to-screaming methodology on the prior opener “A Storm Approaching” begin the 52-minute eight-tracker with a fervency that affects everything that comes after, and as “Age of Separation” builds into its full push ahead of the title-track, which holds tension in its first half and shows why in its second, a halfway-there culmination before the ambient and melodic “Hope” turns momentarily from some of the harsher insistence before it, a summary/epilogue for the first platter of the 2LP release. The subsequent “Interbeing” is black metal reimagined as modern prog — flashes of Enslaved or Amorphis more than The Ocean or Mastodon, and no complaints — and the procession from “Hope” through “Interbeing” means that the onslaught of “A Pacifist’s Guide to Violence,” all slam and controlled plunder, is an apex of its own before the more sprawling, 12-minute capper “Towards the Edge,” which brings guest appearances from Brutus‘ Stefanie Mannaerts and the most esteemed frontman in European post-metal, Colin H. van Eeckhout of Amenra, whose band Psychonaut admirably avoid sounding just like. That’s not often the case these days.
If you’re making your way through this post, skimming for something that looks interesting, don’t discount Sydney, Australia’s Robot God on account of their kinda-generic moniker. After solidifying — moltenifying? — their approach to longform-fuzz on their 2020 debut, Silver Buddha Dreaming, the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Raff Iacurto, bassist/vocalist Matt Allen and drummer Tim Pritchard offer the four tracks of their sophomore LP, Worlds Collide, through Kozmik Artifactz in an apparent spirit of resonance, drawing familiar aspects of desert-style heavy rock out over songs that feel exploratory even as they’re born of recognizable elements. “Sleepwalking” (11:25) sets a broad landscape and the melody over the chugger riff in the second half of “Ready to Launch” (the shortest inclusion at 7:03) floats above it smoothly, while “Boogie Man” (11:24) pushes over the edge of the world and proceeds to (purposefully) tumble loosely downward in tempo from there, and the closing title-track (11:00) departs from its early verses along a jammier course, still plotted, but clearly open to the odd bit of happy-accidentalism. It’s a niche that seems difficult to occupy, and a difficult balance to strike between hooking the listener with a riff and spacing out, but Robot God mostly avoid the one-or-the-other trap and create something of their own from both sides; reminiscent of… wait for it… worlds colliding. Don’t skip it.
Released in June 2022 and given a late-in-the-year vinyl issue seemingly on the strength of popular demand alone, AAWKS‘ debut full-length, Heavy on the Cosmic sets itself forth with the immersive, densely-fuzzed nodder riff and stoned vocal of longest track (immediate points) “Beyond the Sun,” which finds start-with-longest-song complement on side B’s “Electric Traveller” (rare double points). Indeed there’s plenty to dig about the eight-song outing, from the boogie in “Sunshine Apparitions,” the abiding vibe of languid grunge and effects-laced chicanery that pervade the crashouts of “The Woods” to the memorable, slow hook-craft of “All is Fine.” Over on side B, the momentum early in “Electric Traveller” rams headfirst into its own slowdown, while “Space City” reinforces the no-joke tonality and Elephant Tree-style heavy/melodic blend before the penultimate mostly-instrumental “Star Collider” resolves itself like Floor at half-speed and closer “Peeling Away” lives up to its title with a departure of psychedelic soloing and final off-we-go loops. The word-of-mouth hype around AAWKS was and is significant, and the Ontario-based four-piece tender three-dimensional sound to justify it, the record too brief at 39 minutes to actually let the listener get lost while providing multiple opportunities for headphone escapism. A significant first LP.
The core methodology of Polish trio Smokes of Krakatau across their self-titled debut seems to be to entrance their audience and then blindside them with a riffy punch upside the head. Can’t argue if it works, which it does, right from the gradual unfurling of 10-minute instrumental opener “Absence of Light” before the chunky-style riff of “GrassHopper” lumbers into the album’s first vocals, delivered with a burl that reminds of earlier Clutch. There are two more extended tracks tucked away at the end — “Septic” (10:07) and “Kombajn Bizon” (11:37) — but before they get there, “GrassHopper” begins a movement across four songs that brings the band to arguably their most straightforward piece of all, the four-minute “Carousel,” as though the ambient side of their persona was being drained out only to return amid the monolithic lumber that pays off the build in “Septic.” It’s a fascinating whole-album progression, but it works and it flows right unto the bluesy reach of “Kombajn Bizon,” which coalesces around a duly massive lurch in its last minutes. It’s a simplification to call them ‘stoner doom,’ but that’s what they are nonetheless, though the manner in which they present their material is as distinguishing a factor as that material itself in the listening experience. The band are not done growing, but if you let their songs carry you, you won’t regret going where they lead.
Is it the riff-filled land that awaits, or the outer arms of the galaxy itself? Maybe a bit of both on Bellingham, Washington-based trio Carrier Wave‘s four-song self-titled debut, which operates with a reverence for the heft of its own making that reminds of early YOB without trying to ape either Mike Scheidt‘s vocal or riffing style. That works greatly to the benefit of three-piece — guitarist/vocalist James Myers, bassist/vocalist Taber Wilmot, drummer Joe Rude — who allow some raucousness to transfuse in “Skyhammer” (shortest song at 6:53) while surrounding that still-consuming breadth with opener “Cosmic Man” (14:01), “Monolithic Memories” (11:19) and the subsequent finale “Evening Star” (10:38), a quiet guitar start to the lead-and-longest track (immediate points) barely hinting at the deep tonal dive about to take place. Tempo? Mostly slow. Space? Mostly dark and vast. Ritual? Vital, loud and awaiting your attendance. There’s crush and presence and open space, surges, ebbs, flows and ties between earth and ether that not every band can or would be willing to make, and much to Carrier Wave‘s credit, at 42 minutes, they engage a kind of worldmaking through sound that’s psychedelic even as it builds solid walls of repetitive riffing. Not nasty. Welcoming, and welcome in itself accordingly.
With mixing/mastering by Chris Fielding (Conan, etc.), the self-released first full-length from Tel Aviv’s Stash wants nothing for a hard-landing thud of a sound across its nine songs/45 minutes. Through Rose Coloured Glasses has a kind of inherent cynicism about it, thanks to the title and corresponding David Paul Seymour cover art, and its burl — which goes over the top in centerpiece “No Real” — is palpable to a defining degree. There’s a sense of what might’ve happened if C.O.C. had come from metal instead of punk rock, but one way or the other, Stash‘s grooves remain mostly throttled save for the early going of the penultimate “Rebirth.” The shove is marked and physical, and the tonal purpose isn’t so much to engulf the listener with weight as to act as the force pushing through from one song to the next, each one — “Suits and Ties,” “Lie” and certainly the opener “Invite the Devil for a Drink” — inciting a sense of movement, speaking to American Southern heavy without becoming entirely adherent to it, finding its own expression through roiling, chugging brashness. But there’s little happenstance in it — another byproduct of a metallic foundation — and Stash stay almost wholly clearheaded while they crash through your wall and proceed to break all the shit in your house, sonically speaking.
Though it opens serene enough with birdsong and acoustic guitar on “Intro(vert,” the bulk of Lightsucker‘s second LP, Stonemoon is more given to a tumult of heavy motion, drawing together elements of atmospheric sludge and doom with shifts between heavy rock groove and harder-landing heft. And in “Pick Your God,” a little bit of death metal. An amalgam, then. So be it. The current that unites the Finnish four-piece’s material across Stonemoon is unhinged sludge rock that, in “Lie,” “Land of the Dead” and the swinging “Mob Psychosis” reminds of some of Church of Misery‘s shotgun-blues chaos, but as the careening “Guayota” and the deceptively steady push of “Justify” behind the madman vocals demonstrate, Lightsucker‘s ambitions aren’t so simply encapsulated. So much the better for the listening experience of the 35-minute/eight-song entirety, as from “Intro(vert)” through the suitably pointy snare hits of instrumental closer “Stalagmites,” Lightsucker remain notably unpredictable as they throw elbows and wreak havoc from one song to the next, the ruined debris of genre strewn about behind as if to leave a trail for you to follow after, which, if you can actually keep up with their changes, you might just do.
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 22nd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
As an American watching rights be stripped away from my fellow citizens (and non-citizens) on a weekly if not daily basis in a country doing more than a casual lean into theologically-driven fascism, I can’t argue relevance with the stated theme of Dystopian Future Movies‘ next record, War of the Ether. The UK band led by Caroline Cawley, also of Church of the Cosmic Skull, released their Inviolate LP (review here) in 2020 and despite the involvement of COTCS bandmate Bill Fisher in what was then a four-piece, the darker, crunchier turn was a marked departure from the other outfit’s harmony-happy blinding cult shimmer. Two sides to everything.
There are headlining UK tour dates incoming sooner or later, and if you’ve forgotten, Church of the Cosmic Skull will be at Psycho Las Vegas and do other dates on their first US run this August, and having had the pleasure of seeing that band half a decade ago, they’re argument enough in favor of the fest to go. No word on whether Dystopian Future Movies will likewise head abroad at any point, but certainly a domestic run is a start, and something they were unable to do around Inviolate two years ago owing to that little global pandemic thing you probably heard about.
Dystopian Future Movies – War of the Ether – Oct. 7
Dystopian Future Movies announce a new album and a run of UK headline shows in October.
The third studio album, ‘War of the Ether’ will be released worldwide via Septaphonic Records on Friday, 7th October 2022.
Featuring Caroline Cawley and Bill Fisher (Church of the Cosmic Skull) and Rafe Dunn (Amusement Parks on Fire, JCDX), the group combines Cawley’s distinctive songwriting with layers of discordant guitars, atmospheric swells and colossal heaviness.
Following the critically lauded 2020 album ‘Inviolate’, the new release is also a completely self-produced work, recorded at their studio in Nottingham UK, and explores a wide range of genres from prog and shoegaze to doom-metal, noise-rock and folk.
Lyrically, the album dives deep into a recent scandal surrounding 796 skeletons found on the grounds of the former Catholic-run Tuam Mother & Baby Home in songwriter Cawley’s native Ireland. To hide the shame of pregnancy outside of wedlock, women were sent to homes like this all over the country – forcibly separated from their mothers, many of the children died in infancy due to neglect, and some were trafficked for adoption to the US. The country is still dealing with the fallout from these discoveries.
Limited edition vinyl preorders and tour dates will be announced soon.
An exclusive pre-listen of ‘War of the Ether’ will be available to the DFM Community in the run-up to the release – you can sign up here: http://dystopianfuturemovies.com/sign-up
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 23rd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Wit a lineup that brooks no argument, Riffolution Festival 2022 is set for mid-September in Sheffield, UK. Note the likes of Truckfighters (whose Spring tour dates are waiting on rescheduling) and Godflesh up at the top, and a broad spectrum of subsequent heavies, from Spaceslug, Slomatics and Boss Keloid the first day to Raging Speedhorn, Slabdragger and Mastiff the second. All told it’s 37 bands on three stages — which says to me the schedule is going to be tight, but doable — over the two days, and jeez, if you happen to find yourself in South Yorkshire early this Fall, one is hard-pressed to think of heavier way to spend that time. Hell, Stubb are playing. And King Witch. Right on
This is a lineup where bands will know each other, be familiar, be friendly, be drinking. You should go, join the party. And by you I mean me. Get out into the world again. It’s time, right?
As seen on the internet:
Riffolution Festival 2022 Lineup
Riffolution Festival 2022 full line-up is here, feast your eyes on our biggest event to date!
37 bands over 3 stages, at our new venue Network in Sheffield.
Big thanks to Scarlet Dagger Design for the amazing work on the poster.
Weekend + day tickets, as well as t-shirt bundles are available through the Riffolution Promotions website, and they’re already flying out.
If you wish to play next years show, we’re happy to listen to suggestions. Submit your details on the website or even show your support by grabbing a ticket and attending.
See you in September! https://www.riffolutionpromotions.com/festival
SATURDAY: Truckfighters / Naxatras / Spaceslug / Witchrider / Ten Foot Wizard / Swedish Death Candy / AWOOGA / Slomatics / Boss Keloid / KING WITCH / Dystopian Future Movies / Hair of the Dog / Mountain Caller / Trippy Wicked and the Cosmic Children of the Knight / Stubb / Psychlona / Suns of Thunder / The Lunar Effect / Elder Druid / Regulus
SUNDAY: GODFLESH / Raging Speedhorn / God Damn / Palm Reader / Svalbard / blanket / Slabdragger / Mastiff / Dog Tired / PIST / GURT / VIDEO NASTIES / Grave Lines / BEGGAR / Battalions / Gozer / Gandalf the Green
Posted in Bootleg Theater on December 8th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
UK-based heavy post-rockers Dystopian Future Movies issued their sophomore full-length, Inviolate, earlier this year as the follow-up to 2017’s Time and last year’s Beholden to the Flame EP. Situated in Nottingham, the band boasts recognizable presences in guitarist/vocalist Caroline Cawley and drummer Bill Fisher (also ex-Mammothwing), both of whom feature in Church of the Cosmic Skull. Each is a founding member of that band as well as this one, and with Cawley‘s well-proven-by-now vocals at the center and a solidified-sounding lineup around Cawley and Fisher that brings Oisín O’Doherty to bass and Rafe Dunn to full-time membership on guitar, the group explore emotive and progressive textures from subdued drift to weighted crush to all-out cacophony across the seven-song/36-minute outing, often within a single song.
That happens not just in linear builds as so much post-anything might, but in ebbs and flows, undulations of tonal force rising from subtle tension on a song like “Rules” or filling the wide spaces of the penultimate “Black-Cloaked,” the final, surging churn of which offers one of Inviolate‘s most fervent payoffs; there’s plenty of competition in that regard from “Wreckage” and others. From the outset with the initial bursts of opener “Countenance,” there’s an experimentalist edge to Dystopian Future Movies that holds sway throughout, that leadoff track bookended at the finish by “Ten Years,” which is the only other track over six minutes long (though others come close). The centerpiece “All the Light,” for example, starts off with a post-hardcore crash that, for a literal two seconds, seems to hint toward an angular assault about to take place, but instead, Cawley cuts immediately to a crooning vocal over soft guitar, drums and harder thudding bass and chug-guitar adding tension gradually across the 5:40 span, and when the levee finally breaks, the subsequent push is more than just an explosion and end, but an exploration of the next stage of the song, no less dynamic than the prior stretch.
The brazen end of “All the Light” is preceded by the soulful expanse of “Rules” and followed by the two-minute “Kathleen,” which is as close to minimalism as Inviolate gets — that’s fairly close — and as Dystopian Future Movies push further into side B with “Black-Cloaked” and “Ten Years,” it becomes that much clearer just how little the album wants to do with genre. The style here is an amalgam. A melting pot of influences that, even compared to the debut just a few years ago, is given a personal spin by Cawley in more than just the lyrics. In its atmosphere, yeah, one might tag it with something like “heavy post-rock” as I did in the first sentence, but the truth of Inviolate is no less deep or wide-ranging than the mix of the audio itself (see also the deep focus of Cawley‘s photo on the album cover).
With consistency of vocals and tones and songwriting, Dystopian Future Movies never go so far as to become unhinged, even in the light-in-your-eyes burst of “Black-Cloaked” or the patient and memorable crashes and nod-out of “Ten Years,” the bassline of which speaks to doom without becoming it more than anything else, Cawley‘s guitar finishing with a winding echo like water swirling down a drain. But neither does the band veer into predictability as one song gives way to the next. It may be manageable in terms of runtime, but Inviolate is no less a journey for that.
And even that journey feels multifaceted; inward as much as outward. To wit, “Wreckage” — for which a video premieres below — engages its narrative instrumentally as well as lyrically, and the visuals come to match. There’s more about the track beneath the player, and of course the link to the vinyl, CD, etc.
Please enjoy:
Dystopian Future Movies, “Wreckage” official video
‘Wreckage’ is the second single from Dystopian Future Movies’ second album ‘Inviolate’ which was released via Lasairfhíona Records in March 2020.
The video was produced by Caroline from the band and the mysterious artist known as Zorad.
The song is about a character struggling with their mental health: over-thinking, self-analysis and confusion. The video goes on to symbolise these struggles – the character is battered between narrowing, constricting walls.
The repeating guitar drone brings to mind the way our thinking minds can tread on old ground over and over – like a patient pacing the ward, awaiting healing or some release after withstanding pain.
The escalating combination of urgent bass line, echoed vocal parts with those dissonant high notes, and the final crescendo all conjure up the idea of crossing the boundary between physical ailment and health, or a mental illness and breakthrough.
Dystopian Future Movies are: Caroline Cawley – Guitar & Vox Bill Fisher – Drums Oisin O’Doherty – Bass Rafe Dunn – Guitar
Good show. As of this writing, I haven’t cut the voice tracks yet for the breaks, but there’s really only so much I can do to screw it up, though I’m sure one way or the other I’ll try. My head’s been pretty deep in longer-form stuff lately — really pushing for that mental-escape aspect of listening — so there’s not a lot here that departs from that, new cuts from The Atomic Bitchwax and All Souls notwithstanding, as they were both too killer not to include.
But last time around I played “Dopesmoker,” so I guess I don’t need to tell you my head’s into longer songs. Still, with the doomly start this one gets from Dopelord, Malsten and Pale Divine, and the sheer out-there vibe of OZO after the heavy post-rock of Dystopian Future Movies, and the culmination from the shape-of-metal-to-come brought to bear by Forlesen and the gloriously shapeless psychedelia of Temple Fang right after, I dig this one. I dig all of them, yeah, but this one too.
And as per usual, I hope you do as well.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmeradio.com
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 07.10.20
Dopelord
Doom Bastards
Sign of the Devil
Malsten
Torsion
The Haunting of Silvåkra Mill
Pale Divine
Consequence of Time
Consequence of Time
BREAK
The Atomic Bitchwax
Scorpio
Scorpio
Familiars
Barn Burning
All in Good Time
Dystopian Future Movies
Ten Years
Inviolate
OZO
Pluto
Pluto
Spiral Galaxy
Machine D
Spiral Galaxy
All Souls
Death Becomes Us
Songs for the End of the World
BREAK
Forlesen
Nightbridge
Hierophant Violent
Temple Fang
Gemini/Silky Servants
Live at Merleyn
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is July 24 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
