Today marks the release of Idolize, the sophomore full-length from French noisemakers Sofy Major. The album is out on Solar Flare Records in Europe and No List Records in the US, and it finds the Clermont-Ferrand three-piece beating out a stirring blend of crunchy noise rock and heavier fuzz riffing, somewhere between Kyuss Big Muff fuzz (see “Comment”) and modern Unsane‘s sense of churning chaos, with — and why not? — a touch of Melvins tossed in for good measure on the jagged, frenetically-drummed “Coffee Hammam” and some melodies peaking through in the punkish back half of “Bbbbreak,” the swaying verses of “UMPKK Pt. 2″ and the lead guitar finale of closer “Golden Curtain.” Comprised of bassist/vocalist Mathieu Moulin, drummer/backing vocalist Mathieu Desternes and guitarist Sébastien Fournet, the band is more ambitious even than it might first appear in listening to the album’s 11 tracks.

For example, after having the venerable Andrew Schneider mix their 2010 debut, Permission to Engage, the trio decided it was worth their time and effort to travel from France to Brooklyn and actually record Idolize with Schneider at his Translator Audio studio. A tour was booked for afterwards and the trek was made. Only snag was that Sofy Major came through New York the same time as Hurricane Sandy, which unfortunately claimed Translator Audio as one of its victims, and with little warning, Fournet, Moulin and Desternes had to find a new place to record, and quickly.

Who should step up but Dave Curran of Unsane and Pigs. Curran not only gave Sofy Major a spot to record, but even donated guest vocals to “Steven the Slow,” one of the highlights of the tracklist. But while Curran may be the hero of Idolize, he’s hardly the star of the show, and in their moments of manic assault — the beginning of “Golden Curtain” comes to mind — Sofy Major hit like a stripped-down, ultra-immediate High on Fire, talking heavy elements from a variety of spheres, thrash, stoner, hardcore, and effectively turning them into something of their own.

Check out Idolize in its entirety (even including the Euro and US bonus tracks) on the player below and feed your need for information with the fruits of the PR wire that follow:

Sofy Major, Idolize (2013)

Out of the bowels of the post-industrial badlands of Clermont-Ferrand, France comes SOFY MAJOR, a metallic noiserock trio highly motivated in intoxicating the listener with their energetic and off-kilter attack, than kick your liver in while your hangover is at its worst.

With barely-harnessed off-kilter riffery and white-knuckled percussion, the members of SOFY MAJOR have battered audiences since their 2007 manifestation, having released their debut album Permission To Engage in the fall of 2010. The band has shared the stage with Jello Biafra & The Guantanamo School of Medicine, Baroness, Electric Wizard, Boris, Shrinebuilder, These Arms Are Snakes, Kylesa and countless others. In the past two years alone the band racked up over one hundred fifty gigs in twenty countries across two continents, all part of the diabolical construction of their sophomore LP, Idolize.

In the Autumn of 2012 SOFY MAJOR transports to the Northeastern North American quadrant, bent on hammering out their new opus at renowned Brooklyn-based studio Translator Audio with producer Andrew Schneider (Unsane, Keelhaul, Cave In, etc.) as well as to embark on their first US tour. As luck would have it, they arrived in town at the same time Hurricane Sandy moved in. The loss is 100% — the entire studio flooded beyond repair, and all equipment in the studio including the band’s gear left swimming. The trio bummed around the borough for a few days, hooking up with cohort and labelmate Dave Curran (Unsane, Pigs), who helped set up the sessions they crossed the globe to carry out. The band eventually recorded with Schneider at Brooklyn-based Seaside Lounge and Spaceman Sound studios, and had it mastered by Carl Saff at Saff Mastering, the band then immediately taking to the road on a delayed but steadfast American tour.

Like a demented mesh of the Melvins slamming into High On Fire with undeniable noise/metal influences instigated by the likes of Unsane, Quicksand and Deadguy, Idolize encapsulates SOFY MAJOR’s intoxicating concoction of sludge riffage, stale beer, shattered dreams and perseverance. The album is set for worldwide release on May 31st via Solar Flare Records in Europe (Pigs, American Heritage) and No List Records in North America (Ken Mode, The Great Sabatini), the album to be delivered as a limited vinyl boxset, (three 12” LPs in three colors), digipack CD, cassette and digital download.

Sofy Major on Thee Facebooks

Sofy Major on Bandcamp

No List Records

Solar Flare Records

Somewhat contrary to the monstrous and somehow still nipple-inclusive design of the album’s cover, the self-titled debut from London-based trio Bright Curse is a thoroughly human and natural-sounding affair. The three-piece, who arrived in London by way of France, offer four extended tracks and an intro that run a heavy psych gamut from the sweet jamming of Colour Haze all the way to the open-spaced vibing of earliest Witchcraft, and while the stylistic shifts they make are interesting enough, what works best about the album is the smoothness with which the lineup of Romain (guitar/vocals), Sammy (bass) and Zach (drums) transition between stretches of bare sonic minimalism to effective fuzzy propulsion, making the most of tradeoffs between loud and quiet in a manner usually reserved for post-metallers while still keeping a focus on the heavy and grooving straightforward aspects of their songwriting. Following opener “A Sonic Wave,” which sure enough is a minute-plus of a single undulating riff, “The Hermit” sets a structural pattern that “Unknown Mistress,” “What’s Beyond the Sun” and closer “Mind Traveller” will all follow to one degree or another that departs from verse/chorus interplay to an instrument-driven build that gives each track both its length and its sense of dynamic apex. What keeps Bright Curse‘s Bright Curse from sounding redundant as a result of this structural similarity is the stylistic shifts between the songs, so that though patterns may repeat, the context for those patterns comes across as fluid and malleable, and the band, which recorded the songs at Rock of London Studio with JB Pilon, who’s since taken over bass duties in place of Sammy.

The element of contrasting loud and quiet stretches is immediate almost from the start, as “A Sonic Wave” gives over its established rolling groove to the subdued low-end beginnings of “The Hermit,” which Sammy opens in ambient rumbles while Romain adds punctuation on the guitar for the first minute until the vocals kick in and the stage is set for Zach‘s entry a short while later and a push not far off from some of what Elder has managed to hone commences, though it moves more into a modern European heavy psych jam, Romain taking a rising solo that the bass follows as Zach holds the flow together. There’s only really been one verse so far, but the song has come a long way, and the instrumental build winds up providing the crux of the motion as it continues to play out, rising to full-toned heights before locking into a sizable riffy groove before the five-minute mark and from there crashing into the from-the-ground-up build that will comprise its last couple minutes, Romain repeating the takeaway line “In my head…” that also appeared earlier in the song as the first lines as setup for another run through the verse and the heavier part of the song. “Unknown Mistress” works in more of a shuffling vein with an effective chorus and delivery from Romain of the title line and a more immediate groove. Here too, Bright Curse take their time in letting the track unfold, but the clearer divisions between verse and chorus — though less ambitious stylistically — suit them well and showcase a knack for the straightforward as well as the less predictable that adds depth to the album. Around the halfway point of the song’s 7:27, they break into a still-moving just jazzier atmospheric stretch that carries past the six-minute mark before a Tool-style return finds Zach adding palpable stomp. They pick up the pace to end somewhat raucous, but a final nod to the chorus gives a last-second sense of symmetry to the whole affair, which never came off as that out of control to start with.

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French fuzz rockers Mars Red Sky will start a five-day run of gigs tonight in Dijon with White Fence before meeting up with Glowsun for a couple nights and playing on the 30th with Dinosaur Jr., which sounds like a cool way to spend an evening in Bordeaux should you happen to be out that way. This run kicks off the trio’s summer of shows in support of the new Be My Guide EP (review here), the rest of the dates for which you can find below, joined by the excellent news that Mars Red Sky will be recording a new full-length in the coming months and that they’re hoping to return to the US for a few West Coast dates later this fall, as well as hit South America for the first time.

As I don’t live in any of those places (perhaps most regrettably Bordeaux), the new record is what has my interest piqued, but take a look at the update the band sent down the PR wire and see where you’re at:

MARS RED SKY – News

Please find some infos about MRS !

- Next Shows :
05.22 DIJON (21) Le Deep Inside with White Fence
05.23 STUTTGART (D) Keller Club with Glowsun
05.24 ST GALLEN (CH) Rümpelturm with Glowsun
05.25 GRIES AM BRENNER (A) Floiten Jam with Glowsun
05.26 GRENOBLE (38) Drak-Art
05.30 BORDEAUX (33) Le Krakatoa with Dinosaur Jr
07.07 AUBANGE (Bel) Festival Wave
07.18 LILLE (59) La Péniche
07.20 WARSAW (PL) Day of Ceremony Festival
08.02 OR 03 STAMSRIED (D) Void Fest
08.10 GEEL (Bel) Yellowstock Festival
08.23 SANTA MARIA DEL PARAMO (SP) Taberna Belfast
08.24 MOLEDO (Pt) Sonic Blast

http://www.facebook.com/marsredskyband

- We’ll record the new album in a few months and do some shows this next fall in Europe.

- We also working on a tour project in South America and West Coast of the US for end of sept/beg of october.
Feel free to propose / share some cities / clubs / contacts….

- EP Vinyl still available here : http://marsredsky.bigcartel.com/

Mars Red Sky, Be My Guide EP (2013)

Some harsher vocals from guitarist Jeff Maurer add a darker, metallic edge to the proceedings, but at its heart, French trio Surtr‘s second album, Pulvis et Umbra, is traditional doom all the way. Whether you run it back to Saint Vitus and The Obsessed or Count Raven and Reverend Bizarre, it rounds out to the same downward spiral of riffs and misery. That seems just fine by the Lorraine outfit, who release the album on Altsphere Production as the follow-up to 2011′s World of Doom debut, as the material shows no real ambition to transcend beyond the occasional flash of early Viking metal (read: Bathory) influence on a song like “Three Winters of War” in its reaching past genre, and the band are decently suited to their style. Production throughout is clear but largely flat and shifts in tempo offer little change from the mood, which is as dreary as one might expect across the seven-track/42-minute full-length, and while perhaps unremarkable in offering a groundbreaking take on doom, Pulvis et Umbra — the title translating from the Latin to “Ashes and Dust” — stands as an able execution of genre and a cohesive release nonetheless. It ain’t gonna change the world, but as doom for doomers, one could probably find bands with much less to offer than Surtr, depending on how deep into the mire one wanted to look.

The album begins with “Rise Again,” organ holding a melody line under Maurer‘s guitar, Julien Kuhn‘s bass and Régis Beck‘s drums initially but seeming to fade away once the slow crawl of the track’s central progression is introduced. Straightforward through and through, Maurer has a traditional metal inflection to his cleaner singing that’s instantly familiar as “Rise Again” plays out, Kuhn offering a few engaging fills in the open spaces left by the guitar. Gradually, they solidify to a forward thrust, but it’s not until the final minute that they really pick up the pace and Maurer reveals a screaming approach that’s soon layered with growls underneath to varying success, capping with barks of “Rise! Rise!” to act as an apex before the Viking-style drum thud of “Three Winters of War” sets the tone for the riff before dropping out to make way for it. This time it’s the verse that’s more active and the chorus that slows down. Fine. Maurer‘s voice reminds a bit of Slough Feg‘s latter day incantations, but without the Celt-folk idiosyncrasies, keeping the melody in line with Kuhn‘s able basslines, which actually wind up providing most of the character the band shows throughout. That’s not to take anything away from Beck or Maurer‘s performances, they’re just more straightforward, and even when “Three Winters of War” shifts into its Cathedral-style ending progression, there’s no sense of flourish to be found from either of them.

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Quite possibly my favorite part about doing Wino Wednesday each week — apart from all the money and ladies I get from it — is that it’s never too long before something new comes along. To wit, Saint Vitus are currently on a European run alongside Mos Generator – let’s not forget it was Mos guitarist/vocalist Tony Reed who produced Vitus‘ 2012 triumph, Lillie: F-65 – and video has started to surface from the shows. This is invariably a good thing, however blown out that video might sometimes sound.

Before starting off “The Bleeding Ground” from Lillie: F-65 (review here) — this version recorded March 9 in Paris at La Maroquinerie — guitarist Dave Chandler gets on mic (as he often does between songs) to inform the crowd that, “This is a true story, about a bitch named Katrina.” As we discussed when I interviewed him last year for the record, Chandler has been living in New Orleans since a couple months before Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005, and while the mere mention of the name at this point serves as a reminder to American ears, I’m not sure it would have the same effect on a Parisian audience.

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter, because once Vitus start into “The Bleeding Ground,” the song absolutely crushes. Vitus have a new official-bootleg-type live album out vinyl-only called Marbles in the Moshpit that I should probably pick up, of a show recorded in 1984 with the original lineup. As you can see in the clip below, even 29 years later, the band still kills it with the new material. Awesome to think of them at this point as having made the transition past the “reunion band” thing and just putting in the work of a touring act. Any way you take it, they’re one of the best doom bands in the world.

Enjoy and have a great Wino Wednesday:

Saint Vitus, “The Bleeding Ground” Live in Paris, March 9, 2013

Mars Red Sky showed with last year’s split/collaboration EP with French countrymen Year of No Light that although their prior self-titled debut was typified by sweet melodies, memorable progressions, and a dense low end presented with a warm, laid back feel, that was by no means the extent of the trio’s breadth. That album (review here) was among 2011’s most pleasant surprises, and even though the aforementioned Green Rune White Totem split (more on it here) inevitably expanded the band’s reach, that expansion never seemed to come at the sacrifice of the elements that gave the full-length its lasting appeal. Admittedly, it’s a record I still put on, so when it comes to Mars Red Sky’s proper follow-up, the new Be My Guide EP, I’m glad to find the case is much the same as with the split – there’s growth evident, but neither have they abandoned what worked so well about their first outing. The EP, released vinyl-only as the first catalog number for the band’s own Mars Red Sound imprint, is four tracks of gorgeous, fuzzed-out heavy psychedelia that clock in just under 27 minutes.

The LP is presented with due symmetry, each of the two sides featuring two tracks, the first a new cut with the lineup of Julien Pras (guitar/vocals), Jimmy Kinast (bass) and Matgaz (drums) and the second a departure from the form and process. On side A, that comes in the shape of the seven-minute “Seen a Ghost,” which was recorded with previous drummer Benoît Busser in a separate session from the other three cuts on Be My Guide, and closing out side B, it’s “Stranger” a cover of 17 Hippies‘ “Ton Étrangère” with lyrics translated into English. Both “Seen a Ghost” — which it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume was put to tape earlier than the other three, since it was obviously done before Busser was no longer in the band — and “Stranger” mark a musical shift, not so much away from the bliss-through-simplicity fuzzy bounce of “Be My Guide” or the wah swirl that takes hold in side B opener “Clean White Hands,” but definitely moving with those pieces to someplace they haven’t gone before.

That’s not to say “Be My Guide” and “Clean White Hands” don’t also show growth in Mars Red Sky‘s songwriting methods or the general atmosphere those methods create. Far from it. In “Be My Guide,” a quick drum fill opens to immediate mid-paced fuzz engagement, thickening and moving smoothly into a verse the cadence of which proves no less a hook than the fluid chorus. Thick, wah’ed out and topped by Pras‘ ambience-ready vocals, the simple lines, “Amber, anger, be my guide,” leave a lasting impression even as the tone behind them comes forward thicker and slower leading to a resuming of pace in an instrumental break with a wah solo from Pras backed by the rolling groove fostered by Kinast and Matgaz. The latter, as the newest member of the band, seems to have had no trouble fitting in, if “Be My Guide” is anything to judge by, and similar to their carry-you-with-it flow between “Strong Reflection” and “Curse” leading off the self-titled, the opening title-track of Be My Guide makes an inviting impression that’s hard to ignore and all but impossible to refuse.

It’s worth noting though that Be My Guide isn’t a full-length, despite its everybody-come-along tendencies, and that the goals it’s working toward are different. You could probably listen to “Be My Guide,” the song, right into “Seen a Ghost” without thinking twice about it, but once the full stomp of the second track takes hold after the circular groove of the introduction, it’s apparent that the band aren’t just nestling themselves into a formula. Pras echoes deep in the mix behind his guitar and Kinast‘s bass, but after about a minute and a half, they jump into a sudden start-stop cadence that meets with overlaying psychedelic layers of vocals, the stark rhythmic chug of the verse standing in striking contrast to the fullness of “Be My Guide” before it and “Clean White Hands” to follow on the EP’s second side. What the songs have in common — and why it still works — is tone and groove, so that when “Seen a Ghost” moves into its dreamy midsection, although more than just the drummer has changed, the track never stops making sense.

Once again the verse picks up, and Mars Red Sky seem to enjoy toying with the stomp and meeting that with a likewise shift in lyrical approach, filling the space that the music occupies elsewhere with words. Where a verse to the opener looked like “See her/In a field of plaster/Early morning ride,” in “Seen a Ghost,” one hears, “Attack my brain, release my mind/Enhance the screaming of bleeding heart/For everyone to hear wherever they are.” Longer and more compact lines, still sweetly-delivered, mean more prominent vocals. The instruments still find room to breathe, however, in the post-verse break. With no chorus to speak of — those starts and stops are plenty catchy — it’s that instrumental psych part offering the answer back to the rhythmic march, and it’s longer the second time around, leading to a final reprise of the verse in the last minute that satisfies all the more for how Kinast reintroduces the progression and Pras’ layered singing.

Starting side B, “Clean White Hands” comes on with a bluesier riff and more open progression in its riff, backing off some of the insistence of “Seen a Ghost” and building a wash of gorgeous lead guitar tone over an initial bassline not wholly dissimilar from “Way to Rome” from the self-titled. Not arguing with it. Matgaz meets the languid groove head on, and punctuates a quieter verse with hard-hit snare while Pras‘ vocals echo behind, keeping a consistent beat as Pras and Kinast click on a fuller sound for the chorus. Here, Mars Red Sky seem wholly in their element, and “Clean White Hands,” which is longer than “Be My Guide” by nearly two full minutes, has room for jammier instrumental exploration that the trio puts to good use, Pras‘ guitar ringing out ethereal lines as Kinast and Matgaz hold down the beat before quieting even further for return to the verse in the second half that makes the chorus seem all the louder by comparison. Its appeal isn’t as immediate as “Be My Guide,” but “Clean White Hands” proves  to be no dip in quality and it’s a prime example of the band developing their songwriting style for its balance of familiar structures and weighted grooves with a feeling of purposeful meandering.

“Ton Étrangère” opened the Berlin collective 17 Hippies‘ 2011 album, Phantom Songs, though with considerably fewer hippies on board, Mars Red Sky give it a considerable rearrangement. Not only more viscous, thicker and slower, than the original, “Stranger” as it appears on Be My Guide also translates the lyrics to English from French and takes the prior folkish sensibilities, banjo, zither, etc., to someplace far more vague. The rumble below Pras‘ vocals and the lullaby guitar line that marks the verse’s sway are darker in their mood and the chorus “Let me be your stranger/From the heart to the page” has a kind of unsettling feel at the ultra-sleepy pace. A wah solo leads to a quieter verse with less low end similar to post-break “Clean White Hands,” but the context is different, even if the methods are similar. They end big, but still solemn — a wash of wah metered out with bass and drum culmination — Kinast keeping the line consistent while Matgaz signals the final movement and Pras seems to bask in the glow his guitar has created.

If “Seen a Ghost” and “Stranger” are testing the waters for an expansion of Mars Red Sky‘s sound, then I’d call them successful, each for its own reasons. Where “Be My Guide” and “Clean White Hands” affirm the modus the trio established on their debut and assure that a creative evolution of that is underway as well, “Seen a Ghost” and “Stranger” speak to a bolder will on the part of the band to foray to unknown grounds. Even if “Seen a Ghost” is older, it’s where and how the track is presented that allows it to demonstrate these properties, and with “Stranger,” Mars Red Sky show that on an atmospheric level they’re not limited to open desert vibing. Because they manage to strike this balance in under half an hour and because they maintain the sun-baked warmth of tone, Be My Guide is a fitting response to the establishing facets of Mars Red Sky‘s previous full-length (have I mentioned it yet?) and I find after repeat listening that I’m all the more hopeful for how these experiments and developments might play out over the course of their next LP.

Mars Red Sky on Thee Facebooks

Mars Red Sky’s BigCartel store

I was just about to put up a post (partially) concerning France’s foremost fuzzers Mars Red Sky, when lo, the trio unveiled a new video trailer for their forthcoming Be My Guide EP. Timing is everything. The three-piece will issue Be My Guide on April 8, 2013, through their own Mars Red Sounds imprint in a vinyl edition of 100 numbered and signed colored vinyls, and the release will feature four tracks, as listed below:

Side A :
Be My Guide
Seen A Ghost

Side B :
Clean White Hands
Stranger

Mars Red Sky, Be My Guide EP Trailer

Pre Order : http://marsredsky.bigcartel.com/

French desert rockers Wheelfall made a splash with their first EP in 2010. The three-track release, From the Blazing Sky at Dusk (review here) announced the foursome as pro-sounding purveyors of genre, taking more influence than just their name from Slo Burn and others from the Californian post-Kyuss desert sphere. The inevitable full-length follow-up, Interzone (or Wheelfall’s Interzone, as it says on the cover), dropped late 2012 via Sunruin Records to similar hyperbole, and fairly enough earned. The presentation of the record’s six tracks, including the monstrous 22-minute closer “[INTERZONE]” is beefier, the vocals of guitarist Wayne Furter more forward in the mix, and the grooves no less potent than they were three years ago. In keeping with their purported loyalty to a science fiction thematic, Interzone features tracks like “The Parasite Ravages” and “It Comes from the Mist,” as the album gradually develops from shorter tracks on a build to its grandiose, if overly meandering, final statement. Immediately the tracklisting strikes as more ambitious than that of the preceding debut, even as the shortest cut, “Howling,” which arrives after a two-minute opening prelude, tops five minutes and “Holy Sky,” which follows, is 8:38. If Wheelfall – the lineup of Furter on guitar/vocals, “Cactus” Florian Rambour on guitar, and the double-Niko rhythm section of Niko El Moche on bass and Nico Elbow Giraud on drums – are growing, so too is the reach of their songwriting, and not just in terms of track length. Rather than give in to some of the jamming that’s currently so prevalent in the European heavy psych sphere, their parts feel constructed even at their most expansive, as in the stretches of “[INTERZONE],” and Wheelfall never go so far out as to prohibit Furter from dropping a verse where he will, though with the full sound of the album, the lumbering riff of “It Comes from the Mist,” the 56-minute runtime and the general sprawl, there’s clearly an attempt at something epic, so I suppose one might be able to relate that to psychedelia if so inclined. To my ears, Interzone sounds more grounded, and that’s much to its benefit, since Wheelfall seem to work best when locked into a heads-down groove driving on all cylinders, their fuzzy pummel at its most forward.

How then does one reconcile that with Interzone, on which they do so much more? Well, Niko El Moche’s bass tone helps, for one. Though the album starts out relatively straightforward with “Howling” after the aforementioned intro of samples, rumble and droning amp noise, it soon becomes apparent that Wheelfall are looking to expand their formula, departing from traditional verse/chorus-isms in favor of a more progressive take, à la Truckfighters’ brilliant 2009 offering, Mania. The results are somewhat mixed. “Howling” plays to the band’s strengths – choice riffing, vocals somewhere between John Garcia guttural melody and more metallic growling (if you listen on the following “Holy Sky,” Furter sounds almost like Nergal from Behemoth on the opening lines) and well-executed and familiar stoner grooves – and though “Holy Sky” retains a structure, its departure from “Howling” is abrupt and not as easy a leap for the listener as it seems for the band to have made. Appropriately enough, at 4:20, the song shifts to a circular riff reminiscent of that which made Valley of the Sun’s “Mariner’s Tale” so memorable on their The Sayings of the Seers EP, and the riff rules here as it did there, but it’s the jump from one to the other that’s jarring, and it’s no less so when Furter and Rambour reintroduce the initial central riff of the song just over a minute later. If there had been some way to tie the two together, maybe it would seem less awkward, some melding of rhythm, but as it is, that riff from the midsection never reemerges, the initial progression slows down and dooms out (not an ending tactic I’m about to take anything away from) and it’s just kind of there, as though Wheelfall wanted to check and make sure you were still awake listening, which frankly, they shouldn’t have to do on what’s essentially the second track on their album. Perhaps the issue is one of placement. The 8:02 “The Parasite Ravages” follows “Holy Sky,” and with El Moche’s bass playing off the guitars, a more immediate verse atop what in another context might be an Isis-style chug and a stronger hook in the chorus, it seems a stronger backup despite the cut in pace from “Howling” that might have worked to set up the reaches of “Holy Sky.” It’s moot at this point – the album’s made and released – but it shows there’s still room for growth in Wheelfall’s approach, professional though it already is.

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Earlier this week, Small Stone Records announced the latest in a string of European pickups: French four-piece The Socks, from Lyon. The Socks follow in a line of bands that includes their countrymen Abrahma and Mother of God, as well as Deville, Isaak and Asteroid as part of Small Stone‘s Euro expansion, and as it happens, they needed a bio. Well, I’ve done a couple in my day and with a bit of info to work from, I actually kind of like the process, so when I was asked, I was happy to oblige with one for The Socks.

They’re a band about whom I didn’t know much leading into it, but after checking out their two posted EPs — this year’s Bedrock (which you’ll find below courtesy of their Bandcamp) and Side A from 2011 — they seem like a solid addition to a rapidly growing roster. In case you’re not familiar, here’s the bio I wrote:

The Socks – Bio

Julien – Lead Guitar & Vocals
Jess – Drums & Percussions
Nico – Guitar, Keyboards & Vocals
Vincent – Bass

Some dudes just sound like they were born to do it, and listening to the classic heavy rock groove of The Socks, there can be no doubt it’s what they’re made for. They’re naturals. The double-guitar French foursome formed in Lyon in 2009 and started surprising audiences almost immediately, eventually settling down to pump out their debut EP the following year.

2010’s Side A was five songs well concentrated from a band still feeling out where they wanted to go. You had your Sabbath, your Zeppelin, and The Socks supported the release by playing with an array of national and international acts, busting out energetic, intense gigs while continuing to develop their style. The next two years drove the band to write darker songs, hit harder, become thicker, more powerful, more calculating and less frenetic.

The resulting 2012 EP, Bedrock, soon caught Small Stone Records’ eye, with strong instrumental performances from Jess (drums), Vincent (bass), Nico (guitar/keys/vocals) and Julien (vocals/guitar), the latter also serving as the frontman and delivering a guttural but memorable vocal performance throughout the tracks, psychedelic in some places and elsewhere delving into a neo-grunge moodiness that was a change from the first release. During Fall 2012, The Socks completed their first European tour, drawing on experience garnered from festivals and gigs alongside Karma to Burn, Red Fang, Truckfighters, Horisont, Mars Red Sky, Black Rainbows and many others with whom they share some elements while still maintaining a personality of their own.

Simply put, they were a hit. Small Stone picked up the band and is set to issue their first full-length in 2013, as the band continue to thrust themselves into Europe’s next generation of heavy rock and roll alongside acts like Abrahma, Deville, Asteroid, Isaak, Black Rainbows and Mother of God. Look for The Socks to continue their momentum into 2013 and beyond, in the studio and on the road, and expect nothing less than some of the finest riffs the continent has to offer. That’s how it goes when you deal with naturals.

More big things to come from desert-by-way-of-Paris (which is the way to go if you’re gonna go) rockers Blaak Heat Shujaa. The band have announced that their Tee Pee label debut full-length will be preceded by an EP titled The Storm Generation that’s due out early next month. Waste no time. No doubt their youthful impatience will prove to the benefit of all parties involved.

The PR wire sounds the alert:

Heavy Psychedelic Rock Band BLAAK HEAT SHUJAA to Release New EP “The Storm Generation” on December 11

Los Angeles Trio Completes Work on “Mind Expanding” Sophomore LP

“Heavy Mental” psych rockers BLAAK HEAT SHUJAA will release The Storm Generation, their debut EP for Tee Pee Records on December 11. On The Storm Generation, thick, colorful bass lines coexist with flying reverb guitars, ethereal chants and loud, tribal drums. Produced by Scott Reeder (Kyuss, The Obsessed) in the Mojave desert, the EP features a guest appearance by Nobel Prize-nominated gonzo poet Ron Whitehead, adding even more color to BLAAK HEAT’s signature psychedelia. The EP is a precursor to the band’s new full length The Edge of an Era, which is set for a March 26, 2013 release.

BLAAK HEAT SHUJAA’s enticing blend of genres has been called “a dissonant symphony unveiling visions of great natural expanses” and is unlike anything you’ve likely heard before. The band’s transcendental tension between its heavy rock roots and an organic inclination to drift towards psychedelia pays homage to the vast collection of mind-expanding sounds the trio grew up on: neo-psychedelia, surf rock, spaghetti westerns, Middle Eastern scales and Far Eastern melodies!

“We spent all summer at our LA studio working on the new record,” comments BLAAK HEAT SHUJAA guitarist / vocalist Thomas Bellier. “The creative vibe was unbelievable, and the music just kept flowing. Soon we had way more than needed for a full-length record, so we talked to Tee Pee Records about doing an EP before the album, which they agreed to. The EP has something for everyone: hints of surf rock, massive basses, psych solos, shades of metal…it unleashes the uniqueness of the Blaak Heat sound.”

The Storm Generation track listing:

1.) The Revenge Of The Feathered Pheasant
2.) Incident At Stinson Beach
3.) Helios
4.) The Manifesto
5.) The Storm / We Are The Fucking Storm
6.) Fusil Contra Fusil

Well, we missed last week on account of the storm, so for this week’s Wino Wednesday, I wanted to make sure we came back strong, and the reunited The Obsessed kicking through “Streetside” at this year’s Hellfest in France certainly qualifies. The three-piece of Wino, bassist Guy Pinhas and drummer Greg Rogers also killed it at this year’s Roadburn, but the quality of this footage was too good to resist. And the song, well, it’s a classic Wino stomp that his present tone more than does justice.

On the corner is where it starts. The track comes from 1994′s The Church Within, and though The Obsessed‘s history is tumultuous — between the album they put to tape for Metal Blade in 1985 that never came out, lineup changes, signing to Columbia and suffering for it, breaking up and getting back together, etc. — if this clip shows anything it’s that nearly 20 years later, the material still resonates. I don’t know if this The Obsessed reunion is going to lead to a new record or if they’ll do periodic shows and then Wino, Pinhas and Rogers will go their separate ways (Pinhas has joined Pentagram/Place of Skulls‘ own Victor Griffin in his new In~Graved endeavor), but the fact that songs like “Streetside” have stood the test of time lets you know that The Obsessed were and still are something special in doom.

Check out “Streetside” below all decked out in high definition and have a happy Wino Wednesday:

French trio Mars Red Sky will begin their next round of tour dates tonight. The band did a few shows in September, mostly in France, but as of tonight, they’ll be hooking up with the likes of Samsara Blues Experiment and Kadavar and playing gigs in advance of their next recording, about which they’ve let slip some more info. The plan seems to be to lay down some songs in November for an EP that’ll come to light early next year. Something to look forward to for sure.

Hopefully I’ll have more on that when the time comes. Until then, the band sent the following news down the PR wire:

We’ll be in studio in november to record a couple of new song for a new EP early 2013 !!!

We end this week off with French stoner rockers Wheelfall, whose new album, Interzone, is out next month via their own Sunruin Records imprint. They made a decent introductory impression with their 2010 EP, From the Blazing Sky at Dusk (review here) and if the bevvy of press quotes they’ve included on their Bandcamp page are anything to go by, the new record’s already been pretty well received. Good for the band. Listening through now, so far I dig the extreme elements vocally on “Holy Sky,” and as I’ve said too many times to count, unpretentious riffing is always welcome by me. Same applies almost universally to desert fuzz.

Today was my birthday. I celebrated with The Patient Mrs. this evening by eating popcorn, drinking wine, and watching season three of Arrested Development, which — outside of the opportunity to stay up late blogging about stoner rock on a Friday night — is about all I can ask for out of life. The day was tiring, and I kind of rushed my way through the live review of the Heavy Planet CMJ show, but if you skimmed through and thought it looked like a good time, you got the point. Next week offers no letup in shows. Thursday, Elder hit Brooklyn with Reign of Zaius and Thinning the Herd and Pants Exploder (about whom I hear good things) and Friday, Hour of 13 play the St. Vitus bar, and I don’t want to miss that. I hear Fistula are coming through on Tuesday as well, and that could be fun. I haven’t seen a really abrasive show in a while, and if Fistula are going to provide anything, it’s that.

I also failed to get that Neurosis interview up this week. I tried, but just didn’t have time to transcribe it. Wednesday, there was a Clutch thing that I took 2,000-plus pictures at (five or six of which I’ll hopefully be allowed to post here at some point), and then Thursday was that show, and today I left the office early to sit in three and a half hours of traffic on I-95 up to Connecticut, where I’ll be for the weekend. It’s supposed to be warm, but we’ll see. This place isn’t insulated, so when it’s cold, you know it. Right now, the rain on the roof is louder than Wheelfall, but other than that, no complaints.

So anyway. Look for that Neurosis this week. I’ll also have an interview with Ice Dragon in which they reveal their five favorite cult horror flicks — note to self: Ask Ron from Ice Dragon if he wants to start a horror column — and that’ll come packaged with two brand new, never-before-heard tracks from a new single they’ve put together that I think are really going to surprise a lot of people. Very ethereal stuff, in a different vein even from what they did on the Dream Dragon full-length. It’s very cool and I’m already stoked to be able to bring it to you. That’ll be Tuesday with the Steve Von Till piece to follow later in the week. Any of the aforementioned shows I go to, I’ll be reviewing, and I have a couple other things in the works there as well.

As always, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. If you’re around, I’ll be checking in on the forum, and maybe at some point tomorrow or Sunday with a news story or two I didn’t get the chance to put up today. In any case, thanks as always for reading.

I guess sometimes it’s a fine line betwixt “paying homage to” and “hijacking footage from,” but French stoner rockers Los Disidentes del Sucio Motel nonetheless show an affection for Night of the Living Dead in their new video for the song “Z.” The band recently released a split long-player called East Side Story that they shared with countrymen outfit Flashfalcon as a follow-up to their debut, Soundtrack from the Motion Picture (review here), and indeed, “Z” isn’t on it. And there you go.

Also, I’m not sure if you’re a crazy rocking rock and roll band that starting off your video with three solid minutes of a dude watching an old movie on tv is the way to convey it. I understand they’re making a George A. Romero connection, but still. Anyway, like I said in that review above, thinking about it can only detract from the enjoyment.

Here’s “Z”:

Neither band is British, and I tend to think tour posters are their own excuse for being, but if you need a connection to the UK special going on this week, French heavy psych rockers Abrahma and Swedish grunge enthusiasts Mother of God will begin their European tour Oct. 25 in London. From there, they’ll hit France, Germany, Austria and Italy in a round of dates you can find below.

This poster was just too cool not to put up:

Abrahma & Mother of God European Tour 2012

25.10.2012 – LONDON (UK) – WINDMILL
26.10.2012 – T.B.A (UK) – T.B.A
27.10.2012 – KOBLENZ (GER) – SK2
28.10.2012 – FREIBURG (GER) – T.B.A
29.10.2012 – BERLIN (GER) – JÄGERKLAUSE
30.10.2012 – WIEN/GÜRTEL (AUT) – ESCAPE (METAL CORNER)
31.10.2012 – STUTTGART (GER) – BEAT BARACKE
01.11.2012 – PARIS (FR) – LES COMBUSTIBLES
02.11.2012 – NANCY (FR) – T.B.A
03.11.2012 – T.B.A – T.B.A
04.11.2012 – DARMSTADT (GER) – OETINGER VILLA
05.11.2012 – T.B.A – T.B.A
06.11.2012 – TOULON – LA VALETTE s/ VAR (FR) – LE VOX
07.11.2012 – TORINO (IT) – UNITED CLUB
08.11.2012 – SAVIGNANO (IT) – SIDRO CLUB
09.11.2012 – ROSA VICENZA (IT) – VINILE CLUB (w/ OJM)
10.11.2012 – MILANO (IT) – COX 18
11.11.2012 – T.B.A (FR) – T.B.A