Posted in Whathaveyou on March 28th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
London-based groove-conjurors Stonus will return to Cyprus, where they originally formed in 2015, to support Sweden’s Truckfighters in the coastal city of Larnaca. Don’t be surprised if they end up putting some new material in the set, since as of at least a few weeks ago, they were planning to record this summer and make a follow-up to their debut LP, Aphasia, which was released in 2020 and followed the next year by their Séance EP (review here). In the presumed interim time between now and the arrival of that yet-unrecorded full-length, Stonus will offer Live in Zen, for which you can see a brief teaser below.
Zen Production Studios is also located in Cyprus, and honestly I don’t know how much of the band lives there versus in the UK, etc., but you can see in the clip it looks like a classy establishment to showcase Stonus‘ riffery. Details are short at this point as regards things like a tracklisting — possible there could be new material on Live in Zen too, depending on when it was recorded and apparently filmed — and a release date, artwork, and so on, but if the repeating undulations of heavy rock and doom have taught anything in the last five decades-plus, it’s patience. So be patient.
And yes, I’m talking to myself there.
The following was cobbled together from social media:
Stonus – Live in Zen (TEASER)
“We have been waiting for a while for this one and we are super-excited to finally start sharing it with you all!”
Out soon on youtube and on vinyl via Electric Valley Records and Ouga Booga and the Mighty Oug!!
We are currently working on our sophomore album which we are aiming to record this summer!
Couldn’t be more excited and we are eager to share with you some of our new material but till then we got work to do.
Recorded at Zen Production Studios in Nicosia, Cyprus Filmed by SevenSouled Photography Recorded & Engineered by Alexis Yiangoullis Mastered by Billy Anderson Lights by Nikolas Karatzas Artwork by Seven souled Photography & Rafael Marquetto
Cancervo will release their new album, III, this Friday, March 29, through Electric Valley Records (US distro through Glory or Death Records). And it’s by far the darkest, bleakest affair the first-names-only Lombardy, Italy, three-piece of bassist/vocalist Luka, guitarist Francesco and drummer Sam have yet manifest, as an ongoing incremental evolution of their take on cult doom over the last three years has seen them grow from the instrumentalist beginnings of 2021’s I (review here) and Luka‘s emergent metal-of-eld declarations across most of early-2023’s II (review here) to the 32 minutes and five tracks — four plus the sans-vocals church organ mood-setter “Intro” — of III, each numerical outing presenting a deeper plunge into their lurching and abyssal nod.
And III goes fairly deep into its own inky atmosphere, even before “Burn Your Child” wraps side A with its repetitions of “Burn your child/Burn your child,” with the band having already underscored their malevolence as the organ “Intro” gave over to the riff-forward march of “Sacrilegious Mass,” which in its sub-six minutes quickly establishes the vocals not only as an element of the band’s sound of increasing prominence, but as a defining feature. Luka, working in a low register not-quite-monotone that speaks to influences far and wide while carrying a distinctly Celtic Frostian poise, follows the pattern of the riff in the song’s midsection hook, letting the listener know “You’re gonna suffer” as a central line that feels by the time it comes around again like he’s as much in the trance as he is a part of making it. Meanwhile, Sam‘s drums keep a steady swing beneath a noisy ripper of a solo from Francesco, filled out in the bottom end by Luka‘s bass. The difference is confidence.
I wouldn’t call II or even I tentative in their approach, but what the band has wanted to accomplish has grown along with their sound, and in “Burn Your Child,” “St. Barnabas” and “Red Pig” — two near-eight-minute tracks bookending the nine-minute “St. Barnabas” — their ambitions resonate in kind with the drear, reaching into more extreme fare for a d-beat stretch in “Burn Your Child” that admirably holds to the same riff that led into it before going back to the second of three choruses, the last of which swaps “wife” for “child” in the lyrics and leads to another furious solo and speedy drum breakout to finish. Momentum on their side, the trio feel willful in the contrasting quiet open to “St. Barnabas,” which builds up around the guitar over its first minute before ultimately slamming into its grueling procession. As noted below, Cancervo take their lyrical inspiration from regional folklore, and while the connection between a saint who lived in Cyprus isn’t immediate, in nearby Milan, there’s a sect called the Barnabites that was founded in the 1500s, so yeah, it fits, and yeah, I had to look all that up. You’re welcome.
“St. Barnabas” lumbers to its close and brings about the final immersion of “Red Pig,” with a looser-feeling chant and a resumption of the overarching nod that has been at the core all along and remains even as the finale shifts after three-plus minutes into more ambient sounds, either actual bells or evocations thereof soon enough transitioning back into the riff as Cancervo drop hints as to where their continued explorations of style and craft might lead without giving up the for-the-converted worship of slow-delivered distortion until the solo builds on “Sacrilegious Mass” and “Burn Your Child” and “St. Barnabas” with a more brazen overall freakout. But that they know who they are is never in doubt across III, and sure enough, “Red Pig” turns back to a few measures of riff to end, the message of structural priority consistent and welcome.
Because of the thread of progression across their work thus far, I’m not at all willing to say Cancervo are done growing or that they’ve realized everything they could ever hope to do musically here. They follow patterns well, and that helps give III a defined shape where much cult-leaning doom feels content to disappear in its own murk, and it’s easy to imagine that intention as a way for them to keep pushing themselves as songwriters and performers. As it stands, III comes across as sure of what it wants to be and casts Cancervo as increasingly individual within their genre, finding their niche and taking it as far into the depths as they can go, candles lit for thanatos behind them. Until they next arise, then.
PR wire background follows the full stream of III on the player below.
Please enjoy:
Cancervo, III album premiere
Cancervo derive their name from an iconic mountain near Bergamo, Italy, nestled in a valley steeped in rich traditions and folklore. Charmed by the tale of a mythical creature, part dog and part deer, that roamed on Cancervo, three local heavy riff enthusiasts from San Giovanni Bianco formed the band as a homage to their cherished valley and its mystical legends.
Their 2021 debut, simply titled I, represents local places and myths. A complete instrumental outing, the album dabbles in sedating psych, deserted stoner/doom, and preternatural prog.
II, the sophomore album, released in 2023, continues Cancervo’s occult narratives of their land. In search of doom roots, the album takes more and more motivating forces from the early ’70s and passably abandons the psych moments of the first album. Unlike the first full-length, I, which was entirely instrumental, this record incorporates vocals on most tracks.
The forthcoming full-length, III, heralds a darker and more introspective phase for the band. Each track on the last album evolved from concert to concert, paving the way for this transformative phase. A distinct vocal presence emerges as the guiding force, alongside the inevitable and recognizable doomy riffs that have always been the trio’s trademark. This tale promises to immerse listeners in the timeless struggle between the sacred and the profane — a theme deeply ingrained in the folklore of the valley beneath the shadow of Mount Cancervo.
Track Listing: 1. Intro (1:52) 2. Sacrilegious Mass (5:50) 3. Burn Your Child (7:52) 4. St. Barnabas (9:02) 5. The Red Pig (7:55)
Album Credits: All songs written and played by Cancervo. (“Intro” written and played by Fido) Recorded, mixed and mastered by Alessandro “Otto” Galli at the Otto Engineering Mobile Studio 2029. Band Photo by Christian Riva. Graphics by EVR Studio.
Band Lineup: Luka – Bass & Vocals Francesco – Guitars Sam – Drums
Posted in Reviews on February 26th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Admittedly, there’s some ambition in my mind calling this the ‘Spring 2024 Quarterly Review.’ I’m done with winter and March starts on Friday, so yeah, it’s kind of a reach as regards the traditional seasonal patterns of Northern New Jersey where I live, but hell, these things actually get decided here by pissing off a rodent. Maybe it doesn’t need to be so rigidly defined after all.
After doing QRs for I guess about nine years now, I finally made myself a template for the back-end layout. It’s not a huge leap, but will mean about five more minutes I can dedicate to listening, and when you’re trying to touch on 50 records in the span of a work week and attempt some semblance of representing what they’re about, five minutes can help. Still, it’s a new thing, and if you see ‘ARTIST’ listed where a band’s name should be or LINK where ‘So and So on Facebook’ goes, a friendly comment letting me know would be helpful.
Thanks in advance and I hope you find something in all of this to come that speaks to you. I’ll try to come up for air at some point.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
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Slift, Ilion
One of the few non-billionaire groups of people who might be able to say they had a good year in 2020, Toulouse, France, spaceblasters Slift signed to Sub Pop on the strength of that wretched year’s Ummon (review here) and the spectacle-laced live shows with which they present their material. Their ideology is cosmic, their delivery markedly epic, and Ilion pushes the blinding light and the rhythmic force directly at you, creating a sweeping momentum contrasted by ambient stretches like that tucked at the end of 12-minute hypnotic planetmaker “The Words That Have Never Been Heard,” the drone finale “Enter the Loop” or any number of spots between along the record’s repetition-churning, willfully-overblown 79-minute course of builds and surging payoffs. A cynic might tell you it’s not anything Hawkwind didn’t do in 1974 offered with modern effects and beefier tones, but, uh, is that really something to complain about? The hype around Ilion hasn’t been as fervent as was for Ummon — it’s a different moment — but Slift have set themselves on a progressive course and in the years to come, this may indeed become their most influential work. For that alone it’s among 2024’s most essential heavy albums, never mind the actual journey of listening. Bands like this don’t happen every day.
The only thing keeping Grin from being punk rock is the fact that they don’t play punk. Otherwise, the self-recording, self-releasing (on The Lasting Dose Records) Berlin metal-sludge slingers tick no shortage of boxes as regards ethic, commitment to an uncompromised vision of their sound, and on Hush, their fourth long-player which features tracks from 2023’s Black Nothingness (review here), they sharpen their attack to a point that reminds of dug-in Swedish death metal on “Pyramid” with a winding lead line threaded across, find post-metallic ambience in “Neon Skies,” steamroll with the groove of the penultimate “The Tempest of Time,” and manage to make even the crushing “Midnight Blue Sorrow” — which arrives after the powerful opening statement of “Hush” “Calice” and “Gatekeeper” — have a sense of creative reach. With Sabine Oberg on bass and Jan Oberg handling drums, guitar, vocals, noise and production, they’ve become flexible enough in their craft to harness raw charge or atmospheric sprawl at will, and through 16 songs and 40 minutes (“Portal” is the longest track at 3:45), their intensity is multifaceted, multi-angular, and downright ripping. Aggression suits this project, but that’s never all that’s happening in Grin, and they’re stronger for that.
A debut solo-band outing from guitarist, bassist, vocalist and songwriter Dave Cotton, also of Seven Nines and Tens, Pontiac‘s Hard Knox lands on strictly limited tape through Coup Sur Coup Records and is only 16 minutes long, but that’s time enough for its six songs to find connections in harmony to Beach Boys and The Beatles while sometimes dropping to a singular, semi-spoken verse in opener/longest track (immediate points, even though four minutes isn’t that long) “Glory Ragged,” which moves in one direction, stops, reorients, and shifts between genres with pastoralism and purpose. Cotton handles six-string and 12-string, but isn’t alone in Pontiac, as his Seven Nines and Tens bandmate Drew Thomas Christie handles drums, Adam Vee adds guitar, drums, a Coke bottle and a Brita filter, and CJ Wallis contributes piano to the drifty textures of “Road High” before “Exotic Tattoos of the Millennias” answers the pre-christofascism country influence shown on “Counterculture Millionaire” with an oldies swing ramble-rolling to a catchy finish. For fun I’ll dare a wild guess that Cotton‘s dad played that stuff when he was a kid, as it feels learned through osmosis, but I have no confirmation of that. It is its own kind of interpretation of progressive music, and as the beginning of a new exploration, Cotton opens doors to a swath of styles that cross genres in ways few are able to do and remain so coherent. Quick listen, and it dares you to keep up with its changes and patterns, but among its principal accomplishments is to make itself organic in scope, with Cotton cast as the weirdo mastermind in the center. They’ll reportedly play live, so heads up.
Already fluid as they open with the rocker “Into the Space,” exclamatory Chilean five-piece The Polvos! delve into more psychedelic reaches in “Fire Dance” and the jammy and (appropriately) floaty midsection of “Going Down,” the centerpiece of their 35-minute sophomore LP, Floating. That song bursts to life a short time later and isn’t quite as immediate as the charge of “Into the Space,” but serves as a landmark just the same as “Acid Waterfall” and “The Anubis Death” hold their tension in the drums and let the guitars go adventuring as they will. There’s maybe some aspect of Earthless influence happening, but The Polvos! meld that make-it-bigger mentality with traditional verse/chorus structures and are more grounded for it even as the spaces created in the songs give listeners an opportunity for immersion. It may not be a revolution in terms of style, but there is a conversation happening here with modern heavy psych from Europe as well that adds intrigue, and the band never go so far into their own ether so as to actually disappear. Even after the shreddy finish of “The Anubis Death,” it kind of feels like they might come back out for an encore, and you know, that’d be just fine.
The Cosmic Gospel, Cosmic Songs for Reptiles in Love
With a current of buzz-fuzz drawn across its eight component tracks that allow seemingly disparate moves like the Blondie disco keys in “Hot Car Song” to emerge from the acoustic “Core Memory Unlocked” before giving over to the weirdo Casio-beat bounce of “Psychrolutes Marcidus Man,” a kind of ’60s character reimagined as heavy bedroom indie, The Cosmic Gospel‘s Cosmic Songs for Reptiles in Love isn’t without its resentments, but the almost-entirely-solo-project of Mercata, Italy-based multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Medina is more defined by its sweetness of melody and gentle delivery on the whole. An experiment like the penultimate “Wrath and Gods” carries some “Revolution 9” feel, but Medina does well earlier to set a broad context amid the hook of opener “It’s Forever Midnight” and the subsequent, lightly dub beat and keyboard focus on “The Richest Guy on the Planet is My Best Friend,” such that when closer “I Sew Your Eyes So You Don’t See How I Eat Your Heart” pairs the malevolent intent of its title with light fuzzy soloing atop an easy flowing, summery flow, the album has come to make its own kind of sense and define its path. This is exactly what one would most hope for it, and as reptiles are cold-blooded, they should be used to shifts in temperature like those presented throughout. Most humans won’t get it, but you’ve never been ‘most humans,’ have you?
Massachusetts garage doomers Grave Speaker‘s self-titled debut was issued digitally by the band this past Fall and was snagged by Electric Valley Records for a vinyl release. The Mellotron melancholia that pervades the midsection of the eponymous “Grave Speaker” justifies the wax, but the cult-leaning-in-sound-if-not-theme outfit that marks a new beginning for ex-High n’ Heavy guitarist John Steele unfurl a righteously dirty fuzz over the march of “Blood of Old” at the outset and then immediately up themselves in the riffy stoner delve of “Earth and Mud.” The blown-out vocals on the latter, as well as the far-off-mic rawness of “The Bard’s Theme” that surrounds its Hendrixian solo, remind of a time when Ice Dragon roamed New England’s troubled woods, and if Grave Speaker will look to take on a similar trajectory of scope, they do more than drop hints of psychedelia here, in “Grave Speaker” and elsewhere, but they’re no more beholden to that than the Sabbathism of capper “Make Me Crawl” or the cavernous echo of “Earthbound.” It’s an initial collection, so one expects they’ll range some either way with time, but the way the production becomes part of the character of the songs speaks to a strong idea of aesthetic coming through, and the songwriting holds up to that.
While at the same time proffering his most expansive vision yet of a progressive psychedelia weighted in tone, emotionally expressive and able to move its focus fluidly between its layers of keyboard, synth and guitar such that the mix feels all the more dynamic and the material all the more alive (there’s an entire sub-plot here about the growth in self-production; a discussion for another time), Surya Kris Peters‘ 10-song/46-minute There’s Light in the Distance also brings the former Samsara Blues Experiment guitarist/vocalist closer to uniting his current projects than he’s yet been, the distant light here blurring the line where Surya Kris Peters ends and the emergently-rocking Fuzz Sagrado begins. This process has been going on for the last few years following the end of his former outfit and a relocation from Germany to Brazil, but in its spacious second half as well as the push of its first, a song like “Mode Azul” feels like there’s nothing stopping it from being played on stage beyond personnel. Coinciding with that are arrangement details like the piano at the start of “Life is Just a Dream” or the synth that gives so much movement under the echoing lead in “Let’s Wait Out the Storm,” as Peters seems to find new avenues even as he works his way home to his own vision of what heavy rock can be.
Unilateralis is the four-song follow-up EP to Polish heavydelvers Gozd‘s late-2023 debut album, This is Not the End, and its 20-plus minutes find a place for themselves in a doom that feels both traditional and forward thinking across eight-minute opener and longest track (immediate points, even for an EP) “Somewhere in Between” before the charge of “Rotten Humanity” answers with brasher thrust and aggressive-undercurrent stoner rock with an airy post-metallic break in the middle and rolling ending. From there, “Thanatophobia” picks up the energy from its ambient intro and explodes into its for-the-converted nod, setting up a linear build after its initial verses and seeing it through with due diligence in noise, and closer “Tentative Minds” purposefully hypnotizes with its vague-speech in the intro and casual bassline and drum swing before the riff kicks in for the finale. The largesse of its loudest moments bolster the overarching atmosphere no less than the softest standalone guitar parts, and Gozd seem wholly comfortable in the spaces between microgenres. A niche among niches, but that’s also how individuality happens, and it’s happening here.
You wouldn’t accuse Austria’s Sativa Root of thematic subtlety on their third album, Kings of the Weed Age, which broadcasts a stoner worship in offerings like “Megalobong” and “Weedotaur” and probably whatever “F.A.T.” stands for, but that’s not what they’re going for anyway. With its titular intro starting off, spoken voices vague in the ambience, “Weedotaur”‘s 11 minutes lumber with all due bong-metallian slog, and the crush becomes central to the proceedings if not necessarily unipolar in terms of the band’s approach. That is to say, amid the onslaught of volume and tonal density in “Green Smegma” and the spin-your-head soloing in “Assassins Weed” (think Assassins Creed), the instrumentalist course undertaken may be willfully monolithic, but they’re not playing the same song five times on six tracks and calling it new. “F.A.T.” begins on a quiet stretch of guitar that recalls some of YOB‘s epics, complementing both the intro and “Weedotaur,” before bringing its full weight down on the listener again as if to underscore the message of its stoned instrumental catharsis on its way out the door. They sound like they could do this all day. It can be overwhelming at times, but that’s not really a complaint.
Comprised of guitarist/vocalist Mateusz, bassist Michał and drummer Tomek, Polish riffcrafters Volt Ritual are appealingly light on pretense as they offer Return to Jupiter‘s four tracks, and though as a Star Trek fan I can’t get behind their lyrical impugning of Starfleet as they imagine what Earth colonialism would look like to a somehow-populated Jupiter, they’re not short on reasons to be cynical, if in fact that’s what’s happening in the song. “Ghostpolis” follows the sample-laced instrumental opener “Heavy Metal is Good for You” and rolls loose but accessible even in its later shouts before the more uptempo “Gwiazdolot” swaps English lyrics for Polish (casting off another cultural colonialization, arguably) and providing a break ahead of the closing title-track, which is longer at 7:37 and a clear focal point for more than just bearing the name of the EP, summarizing as it does the course of the cuts before it and even bringing a last scream as if to say “Ghostpolis” wasn’t a fluke. Their 2022 debut album began with “Approaching Jupiter,” and this Return feels organically built off that while trying some new ideas in its effects and general structure. One hopes the plot continues in some way next time along this course.
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 5th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Set to release on Jan. 26 and up for preorder now is the vinyl edition of Grave Speaker‘s self-titled debut EP. The Massachusetts-based outfit came together last year around guitarist John Steele, known for his work in High n’ Heavy — who were cool, don’t get me wrong, but I never knew where to put that apostrophe — and self-released the delightfully raw, 30-ish-minute, could-be-an-album-could-be-an-EP six-songer in October, which you’ll find streaming below in its semi-garage and stoner-cult swagger. Dig that Geezer Butler-style twisting bass in “Earth and Mud.” There are a lot of details like that to dig on for those who’d hear them.
I didn’t hear the EP when Grave Speaker — which I assume is a specialty outdoor bluetooth thing, and yes, I want one for when I die — put it up, but I’m glad I heard it now, and as a beginning of a new progression built off one that was already in progress, Grave Speaker are distinct from High n’ Heavy while benefitting from Steele‘s experience as a songwriter. I don’t have a lot of info here in terms of lineup and the recording, if you need it, but it was something that caught my ear and wanted to note since I’d missed it the first time around. Maybe you also missed it and now you can check it out, or maybe you didn’t and you can be glad for Grave Speaker for getting signed and putting out some vinyl. It’s a win either way.
Grave Speaker is a doom project from Massachusetts. Risen from the ashes of High n’ Heavy, it continues the journey of 70s heavy rock inspirado. Influenced by fellow doomers Acid King, Windhand, and Electric Wizard. Grave Speaker is based off the mantra “follow the vibes, not the rules.” Formed in the summer of 2023 by former HnH guitarist/songwriter John Steele, Grave Speaker is very excited to join the EVR family with its self-titled debut.
Posted in Reviews on November 29th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Day three of the Quarterly Review is always a good time. Passing the halfway point for the week isn’t nothing, and I take comfort in knowing there’s another 25 to come after the first 25 are down. Sometimes it’s the little things.
But let’s not waste the few moments we have. I hope you find something you dig.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
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Melody Fields, 1901
Though it starts out firmly entrenched in ’60s psychedelia in “Going Back,” Melody Fields‘ 1901 is less genre-adherent and/or retroist than one might expect. “Jesus” borrows from ’70s soul, but is languid in its rollout with horn-esque sounds for a Morricone-ish vibe, while “Rave On” makes a hook of its folkish and noodly bridge. Keyboards bring a krautrock spirit to “Mellanväsen,” which is fair as “Transatlantic” blisses out ’90s electro-rock, and “Home at Last” prog-shuffles in its own swirl — a masterclass in whatever kind of psych you want to call it — as “Indian MC” has an acoustic strum that reminds of some of Lamp of the Universe‘s recent urgings, and “Void” offers 53 seconds of drone before the stomp of the catchy “In Love” and the keyboard-dreamy “Mayday” ends side B with a departure to match “Transatlantic” capping side A. Unexpectedly, 1901, which is the Swedish outfit’s second LP behind their 2018 self-titled debut (review here), is one of two albums they have for Fall 2023, with 1991 a seeming companion piece. Here’s looking forward.
La Chinga don’t have time for bullshit. They’re going right to the source. Black Sabbath. Motörhead. Enough Judas Priest in “Electric Eliminator” for the whole class and a riffy swagger, loosely Southern in “Stars Fall From the Sky,” and elsewhere, that reminds of Dixie Witch or Halfway to Gone, and that aughts era of heavy generally. “Backs to the Wall” careens with such a love of ’80s metal it reminds of Bible of the Devil — while cuts like “Bolt of Lightning,” “Rings of Power” and smash-then-run opener “Light it Up” immediately positions the trio between ’70s heavy rock and the more aggressive fare it helped produce. Throughout, La Chinga are poised but not so much so as to take away from the energy of their songs, which are impeccably written, varied in energy, and drawn together through the vitality of their delivery. Here’s a kickass rock band, kicking ass. It might be a little too over-the-top for some listeners, but over-the-top is a target unto itself. La Chinga hit it like oldschool masters.
Best known for their work together in Mammothwing and now also both members of Church of the Cosmic Skull as well, brothers Bill Fisher and Marty Fisher make a point of stripping back as much as possible with Massive Hassle, scaling down the complex arrangements of what’s now their main outfit but leaving room for harmonies, on-sleeve Thin Lizzy love and massive fuzz in cuts like “Lane,” “Drifter,” the speedier penultimate “Drink” and the slow-nod payoff of “Fibber,” which closes. That attitude — which one might see developing in response to years spend plugging away in a group with seven people and everyone wears matching suits — assures a song like “Kneel” fits, with its restless twists feeling born organically out of teenage frustrations, but many of Number One‘s strongest moments are in its quieter, bluesy explorations. The guitar holds a note, just long enough that it feels like it might miss the beat on the turnaround, then there’s the snare. With soul in the vocals to spare and a tension you go for every time, if Massive Hassle keep this up they’re going to have to be a real band, and ugh, what a pain in the ass that is.
One of the best albums of 2023, and not near the bottom of the list. Italy’s Sherpa demonstrated their adventurous side with 2018’s Tigris & Euphrates (review here), but the six-song/39-minute Land of Corals is in a class of its own as regards their work. Breaking down genre barriers between industrial/dance, psychedelia, doom, and prog, Sherpa keep a special level of tonal heft in reserve that’s revealed near the end of opener “Silt” and is worthy — yes I mean this — of countrymen Ufomammut in its cosmic impact. “High Walls” is more of a techno throb with a languid melodic vocal, but the two-part, eight-minute “Priest of Corals” begins a thread of Ulverian atmospherics that continues not so much in the second half of the song itself, which brings back the heavy from “Silt” and rolls back and forth over the skull, but in the subsequent “Arousal,” which has an experimental edge in its later reaches and backs its beat with a resonant sprawl of drone. This is so much setup for the apex in “Coward/Pilgrimage to the Sun,” which is the kind of wash that will make you wonder if we’re all just chemicals, and closer “Path/Mud/Barn,” which feels well within its rights to take its central piano line for a walk. I haven’t seen a ton of hype for it, which tracks, but this feels like a record that’s getting to know you while you’re getting to know it.
A sludge metal of marked ferocity and brand-name largesse, Acid Throne‘s debut album, Kingdom’s Death sets out with destructive and atmospheric purpose alike, and while it’s vocals are largely grunts in “River (Bare My Bones)” and the straight-up deathly “Hallowed Ground,” if there’s primitivism at work in the 43-minute six-songer, it’s neither in the character of their tones or what they’re playing. Like a rockslide in a cavern, “Death is Not the End” is the beginning, with melodic flourish in the lead guitar as it passes the halfway point and enough crush generally to force your blood through your pores. It moves slower than “River (Bare My Bones),” but the Norwich, UK, trio are dug in regardless of tempo, with “King Slayer” unfolding like Entombed before revealing itself as more in line with a doomed take on Nile or Morbid Angel. Both it and “War Torn” grow huge by their finish, and the same is true of “Hallowed Ground,” though if you go from after the intro it also started out that way, and the 11-minute closer “Last Will & Testament” is engrossing enough that its last drones give seamlessly over to falling rain almost before you know it. There are days like this. Believe it.
The Holy Nothing, Vol. 1: A Profound and Nameless Fear
With an intensity thrust forth from decades of Midwestern post-hardcore disaffection, Indiana trio The Holy Nothing make their presence felt with Vol. 1: A Profound and Nameless Fear, a five-song/17-minute EP that’s weighted and barking in its onslaught and pivots almost frenetically from part to part, but that nonetheless has an overarching groove that’s pure Sabbath boogie in centerpiece “Unending Death,” and opener “Bathe Me” sets the pummeling course with noise rock and nu metal chicanery, while “Bliss Trench” raw-throats its punkish first half en route to a slowdown that knows it’s hot shit. Bass leads the way into “Mondegreen,” with a threatening chug and post-hardcore boogie, just an edge of grunge to its later hook to go with the last screams, and feedback as it inevitably would, leads the way into “Doom Church,” with a more melodic and spacious echoing vocal and a riff that seems to kind of eat the rest of the song surrounding. I’ll be curious how the quirk extrapolates over a full-length’s runtime, but they sound like they’re ready to get weird and they’re from Fort Wayne, which is where Charlton Heston was from in Planet of the Apes, and I’m sorry, but that’s just too on-the-nose to be a coincidence.
Runway may be making their self-titled debut with this eight-song/31-minute blowout LP delivered through Cardinal Fuzz, Echodelick and We, Here & Now as a triumvirate of lysergic righteousness, but the band is made up of five former members of Saskatoon instrumentalists Shooting Guns so it’s not exactly their first time at the dance of wavy lines and chambered echo that make even the two-minute “No Witnesses” feel broad, and the crunch-fuzz of “Attempted Mordor,” the double-time hi-hat on “Franchy Cordero” that vibes with all the casual saunter of Endless Boogie but in a shorter package as the song’s only four minutes long. “Banderas” follows a chugging tack and doesn’t seem to release its tension even in the payoff, but “Crosshairs” is all freedom-rock, baby, with a riff like they put the good version of America in can, and the seven-minute capper “Mailman” reminds that our destination was the cosmos all along. Jam on, you glorious Canadian freaks. By this moniker or any other, your repetitive excavations are always welcome on these shores.
Spanish heavy rockers Wet Cactus look to position themselves at the forefront of a regional blossoming with their third album, the 12-track Magma Tres. Issued through Electric Valley Records, the 45-minute long-player follows 2018’s Dust, Hunger and Gloom (review here) and sees the band tying together straightforward, desert-style heavy rock with a bit of grunge sway in “Profound Dream” before it twists around to heavy-footed QOTSA start-stops ahead of the fuzzy trash-boogie of “Mirage” and the duly headspinning guitar work of “My Gaze is Fixed Ahead.” The second half of the LP has interludes between sets of two tracks — the album begins with “I. The Long Escape…” as the first of them — but the careening “Self Bitten Snake” and the tense toms under the psych guitar before that big last hook in “Solar Prominence” want nothing for immediacy, and even “IV. …Of His Musical Ashes!,” which closes, becomes a charge with the band’s collective force behind it. There’s more to what they do than people know, but you could easily say the same thing about the entire Iberian Peninsula’s heavy underground.
All-caps Icelandic troupe MC MYASNOI telegraph their experimentalism early in the drone of “Liquid Lung [Nucomp]” and let some of the noise around the electronic nod in “Antenula [OEBT]” grow caustic in the first half before first bliss then horror build around a progression of drums, ending with sax and feedback and noise and where were the lines between them anyway. The delve into the unknown threads more feedback through “Slug Paradox,” which has a vocal line somewhere not terribly far off from shoegaze, but is itself nothing so pedestrian, while “Kuroki” sounds like it could’ve been recorded at rehearsal, possibly on the other side of the wall. The go-wherever-you-end-up penchant holds in “Bleach in Eye,” and when “Xcomputer must dieX” clicks on, it brings about the rumble MC MYASNOI seem to have been threatening all along without giving up the abidingly oddball stance, what with the keyboard and sax and noise, noise, noise, plus whispers at the end. I’m sure that in the vast multiverse there’s a plenet that’s ready for the kind of off-kilter-everythingism wrought by MC MYASNOI, but you can bet your ass this ain’t it. And if you’re too weird for earth, you’re alright by me.
The 2020 album from transient folk singer-songwriter Cinder Well, No Summer (review here), landed with palpable empathy in a troubled July, and Cadence has a similar minimalist place to dwell in “Overgrown” or finale “I Will Close in the Moonlight,” but by and large the arrangements are more lush throughout the nine songs of Cadence. Naturally, Amelia Baker‘s voice remains a focal point for the material, but organ, viola and fiddle, drums and bass, etc., bring variety to the gentle delivery of “Gone the Holding,” the later reaches of “Crow” and allow for the build of elements in “A Scorched Lament” that make that song’s swaying crescendo such a high point. And having high points is somewhat striking, in context, but Cinder Well‘s range as shown throughout Cadence is beholden to no single emotional or even stylistic expression. If you’d read this and gripe that the record isn’t heavy — shit. Listen again.
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 6th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Hey, that’s what it’s all about, right? Getting out there, seeing new things, playing fuzz rock as loud as you can for as many people as there are in whatever place. That’s the dream, right? And then you stay somewhere for the night and get breakfast in the morning, take a few pics for the socials maybe if it isn’t too awkward the next day, and roll out to the next one. Good on yas, Stonus.
Weekenders, man. I wholly support that model of touring. There is precious little that says ‘I do this because I love it’ as much as someone taking an entire weekend of their life — which invariably has any number of other facets to it besides a given band — and going to play shows. Think about it for a minute. What are you willing to do for an entire weekend?
Because you go on tour for like four weeks, well, that’s not a tour anymore, it’s a lifestyle. Probably a smelly one. But to do shows like Stonus are next month, hitting new ground in France and Belgium for the first time, and then just turning around and going home, that takes heart. Commitment. Thanatos. I could go on here. Better perhaps I don’t.
They’re calling it a mini-tour of the EU, which I also love. It’s been a minute, but if you recall their 2021 LP, Séance (review here), they certainly weren’t short on charm then. Some things do not change:
STONUS – Mini EU tour Announcement️
“We are super excited to share with you our upcoming European tour dates for this fall and we can’t wait to make some new awesome experiences with you all!!!
Lets get fuzzed up!!!(#127988#)☠️(#127988#)☠️(#127988#)☠️”
15.11 Open Slot 16.11 Kinky Star – Ghent (BE)* 17.11 L’International – Paris (FR)** 19.11 Westill – Nantes (FR)
with: *High Trail (FREE ENTRANCE) **Last Quarter, Oda
Rocky’s Pride and Joy will release their debut album, All the Colours of Darkness, Sept. 29 through Electric Valley Records. And it is miserable. So miserable. 39 miserable, slogging, miserable, miserable minutes. The acoustic song too.
But hey, a miserable acoustic song can still go a long way on a record like All The Colours of Darkness, which finds the relatively-nascent, formed-in-2020 trio of guitarist/vocalist Brenton Wilson, bassist Dominic Ventra and drummer Jessi Tilbrook doubled-down on hard on dark and druggy riffing, most of the eight songs working under a strong influence from Electric Wizard with some of the clarity that earliest Monolord brought to that style of willfully primitive lurch. And whether it’s the nodding lumber of opener “Red Altar,” the similarly-riffed penultimate cut “Your Hell” (premiering below), a somewhat faster charmer like “So Said the Roach” or the large-sounding dog barking at the start of “Crawl,” or the sonic manipulations throughout, be it the grim swirl at the start of “So Said the Roach” or the complementary noise in closer “Pure Evil,” the above-noted misery is never far from the center.
They know of what they speak, and their abiding moroseness becomes the totem through which All The Colours of Darkness unfurls, “Red Altar” riffing one measure on standalone guitar before hitting its mark on the first of the roller grooves. Volume worship, riff worship, filth worship, Sabbath, drugs, satan and squalor — these are the stuff of life in the world of Rocky’s Pride and Joy‘s making. The thick shuffle of “Revenge,” coated in dirty fuzz, sneering in Wilson‘s layered-in-the-chorus vocal, a bit of metal chug in the verse, remains doomed as it offers one of the album’s most vital hooks, rivaled by “Your Hell” to come and directly backed by the harshly acidic — like call poison control if you accidentally ingest any — blowout impact of “So Said the Roach.”
At the same time, “Crawl” dares harmony in its later guitar solo, the wailing “Your Hell” has flashes of Uncle Acid-type garagery, and though it’s basically devil-worshiping bedroom folk, “Lucifer’s Lullaby” is also an unexpected divergence from the by-then established norm of addled tonal dredge, so Rocky’s Pride & Joy aren’t entirely unipolar, but their hearts are clearly in the muck and rot. They have the wretched atmosphere to prove it.
As “Your Hell” and “Pure Evil” pick up from “Lucifer’s Lullaby” for the final salvo, the band seem like they’re digging even further into that part of their approach, reinforcing the message that “Red Altar” began to deliver at least four therapy sessions ago with capstone riffing introduced at 4:38 into the 6:08 by a sample maybe from Detroit Rock City of a woman talking about seeing the devil in the flesh, seeing pure evil, and that’s when they hit it. The underlying message there is that Rocky’s Pride & Joy are conscious in their stylistic choices; they know what they’re doing, and as much as they seem bent to convince their audience that the material has simply bubbled up from some steaming primordial mud, it has in fact been crafted on its own, raw, somehow-punk-in-its-ethic level.
Marching that last riff to a cold finish, the three-piece carve a place for themselves in the drear, and their doom will sit well with misanthropes, cave trolls, increasingly middle-aged blogger types and other suitably disenchanted entities. If any of those might apply to you, and/or if you think you’re at risk of becoming someone capable of looking outside on a sunny day and not thinking about how the world is fast ending in fire, flood, plague and mass extinction, driven faster and faster through greed and capitalist exploitation — because what the fuck else can you really do but try to firebomb your mind with drugs and volume? — All The Colours of Darkness has your back. The sound of today, tomorrow, righteously dead.
“Your Hell” premieres below, followed by some brief word from the band and more background from the PR wire.
Please enjoy:
Rocky’s Pride & Joy, “Your Hell” track premiere
Rocky’s Pride & Joy on “Your Hell”:
“This song offers a warning. ‘Your Hell’ is coming, and its arrival is inevitable.”
Rocky’s Pride & Joy began in a cursed railway cottage in the western suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia in mid 2020. Unexplained appearances of handprints, falling candles, disquieting sounds in the night, and vivid dreams of a tortured previous tenant haunted the residence for 12 months while the band wrote their first collection of songs including “Crawl” and “Time’s Up”. With a friendship formed between vocalist/guitarist Brenton Wilson, drummer Jessi Tilbrook and bassist Dominic Ventra at Jessi’s rock n roll club night, the trio’s unbridled love for doom and fuzz led them to explore their collective vision and bring their first live performance to life at the end of 2020.
Now in 2023, after a slew of live shows, the release of ‘Time’s Up’ and ‘Future Self’ and months of writing and recording, the band have signed their debut album ‘All The Colours Of Darkness’ to International label, Electric Valley Records, set for release in late 2023. Recorded at Adelaide’s Twin Earth Studio, the band have continued their exploration of the dark side of life on this 8 track LP. Occult rituals, parasites, paranormal encounters and cold hard revenge are just a few themes covered on the album. Through nasty fuzz saturated riffs, heavy pounding drums and window rattling bass, Rocky’s Pride & Joy are putting their stamp on doom.
Tracklisting: 1. Red Altar 2. Revenge 3. So Said The Roach 4. Crawl 5. Tunnel Vision 6. Lucifer’s Lullaby 7. Your Hell 8. Pure Evil
Rocky’s Pride & Joy are: Brenton Wilson – vocalist/guitarist Dominic Ventra – bass Jessi Tilbrook – drums
Caligari heavy blues rockers King Howl will release their third album, Homecoming, on June 9 through Electric Valley Records. With a liberal dose of harmonica at the outset and an uptempo kick to match, hints of Grinderman in its second half, the 11-track/40-minute LP begins at a burn with “The Rooster,” the slide-guitar-inclusive “From the Cradle” and the fuzzier shove and Hendrixian lead flourish of “The Train,” a salvo of three songs none of which hits three minutes in length, and only really the last of which speaks to the band’s foundation in heavy rock. In this way, the Sardinian four-piece of vocalist Diego Pani (also harmonica), guitarist Marco Antagonista, and the dual-Alessandro rhythm section of bassist Alessandro Cau and drummer Alessandro Sedda hone momentum and seem immediately to bring their listener along with them as they move through, not recklessly or haphazard, but with vitality enough to match their bluesy aesthetic.
“John Henry Days” is longer at 4:25, broader, more patient and fuzzier, like Five Horse Johnson in the old days and a raucous rollout in its back half, though it ends with the acoustic guitar peppered throughout. “Motorsound” and “Slowly Coming Down” put further emphasis on the variety in King Howl‘s sound, swapping out the high-energy swing of the former — like a retro take on ’10s retroism — for a mellower unfolding, languid in its melody and semi-psych echoing solo and filled out by fuzz-coated bass notes, closing side A with a hint toward further expansion to come even as “Tempted” (2:50) arrives to revitalize the thrust that began the album on “The Rooster,” slide guitar and all, before “Jupiter” plays back and forth in loud/quiet trades and build-and-runs, fuzzed enough to evoke both very large planets and ancient deities, if somewhat understated in its finish.
The organ that sweeps in on “The Great Blue Heron” and the buzzsaw lead that cuts through its back half likewise speak to classic heavy rock influences, but it’s all tied to blues rock either way and King Howl offer an example of that root in the mid-tempo piece before giving over to “Gimme Shelter,” a cover of the Rolling Stones‘ iconic single. I’ll admit that personally I’m not a fan of the song — I saw the band once in the ’90s, so I’ve got that going for me — but it makes sense in light of the purported on-the-road-in-the-1960s-narrative the album follows even if it’s somewhat sonically superfluous, and I’ve been arguing back and forth with myself whether or not it makes the album stronger. I’m not sure it does, though King Howl deserve credit for taking something that just about everyone on the planet has likely heard whether they know/like it or not and making it their own. That’s not a minor achievement. If you’re the type to skip, maybe you skip it. If not, maybe you have that song stuck in your head for the rest of the day. As with all things: Choose Your Adventure.
But if the record is going to be called Homecoming, then the place to end it is “Home,” and that’s exactly what King Howl do. The closer (premiering below) is the longest inclusion at 5:43 and pulls together a lot of what works best throughout Homecoming in terms of groove, melody and the balance of elements in the mix; the vocals are in focus but not overbearing, the jabs of rhythm guitar are bright but not blinding, the rhythm is fluid and steady but not boring, the organ adds to each build into the hook, and so on. There’s a break after the midpoint with quiet standalone vocals, but to King Howl‘s credit, they finish by bringing it all the way back to an apex and then fading it out long, whether that’s the heavy blues train departing the station, seeming not so much like the song or story is ending but that we’re the ones leaving it behind. Fair enoough.
King Howl revel in their rougher-edged moments — “Tempted,” “The Train,” etc. — and offer diversity in their approach enough to hold fickle modern attentions, but the highlight of Homecoming, the finale aside, is the fact that they have a heavy blues sound, harmonica, organ and all, that comes across as organic when so much heavy blues is an absolute put-on on the part of those making it. Yes, they’re engaging with a folk tradition outside of their own — i.e., the African-American folk roots out from which blues music grew over a century ago — but they don’t sound like they’re pretending to be something they’re not in terms of style, and a big credit for that goes to Pani‘s vocals, which feel natural and developed over the course of the band’s three full-lengths to-date.
There’s a lot to dig into and a lot to dig, but King Howl are engaging throughout Homecoming and sound comfortable in their skin and like they didn’t have to sacrifice their edge to get there, setting stage-ready vibrancy to the cause of good-time classic heavy blues, and then some. Six years after their second long-player, Rougarou (they covered Canned Heat there, having already done Skip James and Blind Willie Johnson on 2014’s debut King Howl Quartet), this return speaks of the living done in the interim and benefits from the care put into its crafting.
“Home” premieres below, followed by more info from the PR wire.
Please enjoy:
King Howl, “Home” track premiere
King Howl on “Home”:
“Home” is the last track of our new album, ‘Homecoming.’ An angry but hopeful homecoming that concludes an epic in music, a round trip of growth and change, of damnation, redemption, and rebirth. A classic rock song with a blues feeling and the guts of stoner rock, empowered by the Hammond organ.
KING HOWL from Cagliari, Sardinia, play HEAVY BLUES: the raw sounds of the blues are filtered by a multitude of different musical influences coming from stoner rock, 70’s classic rock, funk, and punk in a crossover labored with spontaneity and naturalness, a flow of sounds that never stops.
King Howl attracted conspicuous attention with their first full-length “King Howl Quartet” (2012, Talk About Records/Go Down Records), which imposed a personal sound, pushed by singles like “Morning” and “Drunk.”
In 2014, the 4-track “Truck Stop Ep” (Talk About Records) brought new nuances to King Howl’s trademark, developing a more mature songwriting exposed in songs like “Kerouac” or “Time to say Goodbye.” In July 2017, King Howl released their last full length called “Rougarou.” 10 tracks of blues fueled – booze-soaked Rock’n’Roll, another proof of the band’s peculiar sound defined through years on the road, represented by bangers such as “Gone,” “Screaming” and “Demons.” The band toured all of Italy and central Europe several times, often included in the bills of international festivals such as Pietrasonica Festival, Time in Jazz, Duna Jam, Maximum Festival, Crumble Fight Fest, Freiburg Fuzz Fest, Swanflight Festival, Narcao Blues, Aglientu Summer Blues and opening (among others) for Mud Morganfield, Fatso Jetson, Yawning Man, Greenleaf, My Sleeping Karma, Siena Root, Bob Margolin.
King Howl’s new album, titled “Homecoming” will be released by Electric Valley Records on June 16, 2023. The work represents a new chapter in the band’s stylistic universe, spurring King Howl’s trademark sound while mixing it with new compositional and sound influences. A mix of blues, stoner, psychedelia, and classic rock that paints the soundscape of an on-the-road story set in 1960s America. The album was recorded in Sardinia by Roberto Macis and Willy Cuccu and mixed by Nene Baratto and Richard Behrens at Big Snuff Studio in Berlin, a key production hub for international heavy Psych (Kadavar, Samsara Blues Experiment, Elder, Wucan). Artwork by Elena Cabitza.
Tracklisting: 1. The Rooster 2. From the Cradle 3. The Train 4. John Henry Days 5. Motorsound 6. Slowly Coming Down 7. Tempted 8. Jupiter 9. The Great Blue Heron 10. Gimme Shelter (Rolling Stones cover) 11. Home
King Howl: Diego Pani – Voce, Armonica Marco Antagonista – Chitarra Alessandro Cau – Basso Alessandro Sedda – Batteria
