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Gral Brothers Premiere “383”; Dawson Cemetery Out on Halloween

Posted in audiObelisk, Whathaveyou on October 21st, 2021 by JJ Koczan

I’m not going to be the one to tell you that it doesn’t matter that Albuquerque, New Mexico, duo Gral Brothers — also stylized as GRAL Brothers in honor of combining the first names of component members Greg Williams and Alex McMahon — recorded Dawson Cemetery at least partially in the real-world locale the name of which it bears as its title. Obviously they thought it mattered enough to drag gear into the place and do the thing, and that in itself is value. What I will say is that as you listen to the premiere of “383” below ahead of the download-and-limited-tape-only release’s Halloween arrival, if you’re not actually leaning on some gravestone smoking a clove cigarette like you were when you were 16, it still works.

Ambient experimentalist drone is never going to be everybody’s bag. Nor should it be. It’s not meant to be. If you can put yourself in the right headspace for this, though, the rewards are right there in the listening experience. Like the prior-streamed opener “Underbridge,” “383” is evocative and desolate. The song takes its title from the number of people killed in mine explosions between 1913 and 1923 who are buried there, and what was an actual town surrounding has been gone since the middle of the last century, so yes, with just the cemetery remaining, desolation should be the thematic base from which Gral Brothers are drawing. The site is listed among New Mexico’s “most haunted” — Pennsylvania imprint Perpetual Doom, which is co-releasing Dawson Cemetery with Desert Records, issues a warning that the tapes are as well — and that feel certainly carries over to the wistfulness of the music itself.

But the point here is to go exploring with it and see where it takes you. So do that.

Copious background follows, courtesy of Desert Records.

Enjoy:

Gral Brothers, “383” track premiere

GRAL brothers dawson cemetery

GRAL Brothers ‘Dawson Cemetery’

This is a co-release with Perpetual Doom.

Only available on Bandcamp – digital and cassette tape only.

No streaming services. No distribution.

If you have found your way here, you are on the right path as a true music fan.

https://thegralbrothers.bandcamp.com/album/dawson-cemetery

https://perpetualdoom.bandcamp.com/album/dawson-cemetery

HOW COOL IS THIS?!

The brand new GRAL Brothers album is the true spirit of Desert Records.

Greg (GR) and Alex (AL) took their instruments, microphones, and handheld recording devices to Dawson, NM to record this album in a cemetery.

Dawson Cemetery, in fact.

Then, they took all their recordings and tracks home to Albuquerque, NM and mixed it together with the eerie field recordings they captured.

They got more than just music…listen and hear for yourself.

Side A is the “above” ground side.

Side B is the “below” ground side.

What is it about a cemetery that’s so unsettling?  Silk flowers fading in the sun, cracked weathered granite, stillness and goatheads. Quietness quickly disrupted by creaking gates and birdsong. Moment fading into moment, listening to the metronome of your temple as you consider your mortal fate more and more centered. Feeling small and vulnerable on a timeline that has already seen more seasons than you ever will, and allowing that feeling to oscillate and sustain.

A heavy sadness radiates from Dawson. A lead blanket of wildflowers and stooping bluffs. A small occasional river like the veins of a blue-blood carrying ancient coal dust. A ghost town that’s survived by photos and occasional visitations to swap out silk flowers and offer a moment of solace, realizing you’re standing on top of waves of death and loss that tell a story of a state in which you’d feel alien, even though this place was home to so many. But that’s what this is, listening to a story that you’re provisionally a part of, tangibly apart from. Wondering if in another hundred years people will make this trip out of morbid curiosity and retell this story over a newer, stranger timeline.

We respond to the heaviness, the unknown, the happenchance beauty of bird calls and wrought iron gate squeals. With geophones and field recorders we amplify the voices of this place, we offer a platform to share a story that will continue to be told. Dawson comes to life again, not to descend again into the Stag Canyon Mine but instead to be in the spotlight. One place that holds so much while being so securely out of the way. Five miles north of Highway 64, through Spring Canyon where every season puts on its cyclical display of birth, death and rebirth.

A portable generator gives my amplifier life in a tunnel under the road. A tunnel with names carved in it, dating back to the 1930’s. A tunnel that served as another conduit, offering overtones and reflections from beyond life, echoing the canyon winds and elk calls. The sounds here could never be credited as just our own, instead we’re having a conversation with those who still call Dawson home. In fact, we are really the conduit, responding immediately to what this place makes us feel and following those instincts as far as they’d take us. Transporting us across timelines, relishing temporality and life while honoring death’s certainty and depth. Like stone slowly being worn away by wind and water, we’ve unearthed stories from the Northern New Mexico relic that can now be retold.

-GRAL

Dawson Cemetary

Side A/”Above”
Underbridge
Rail Canyon
Vermijo River
Rork, JD & Trujillo

Side B/”Below”
383
Phelps Dodge
Opera House
Stag Canyon Mine

Album Credits:

All compositions made by Alex McMahon and Greg Williams of GRAL Brothers.

Recorded remotely in Dawson NM at Dawson Cemetery.

Processed, edited and overdubbed in Albuquerque NM by GRAL.

Mastered by Chris Leva.

https://facebook.com/gralbrothersmusic/
https://www.instagram.com/gralbrothersmusic/
https://thegralbrothers.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/desertrecordslabel/
https://desertrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://desertrecords.bigcartel.com/
https://www.instagram.com/perpetualdoom/
https://perpetualdoom.bandcamp.com/
http://www.perpetualdoom.com/

Gral Brothers, Dawson Cemetery tape teaser

Gral Brothers, Dawson Cemetery (2021)

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Quarterly Review: Katatonia, Marmalade Knives, King Witch, Glass Parallels, Thems That Wait, Sojourner, Udyat, Bismarck, Gral Brothers, Astral Glide

Posted in Reviews on July 9th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

the-obelisk-qr-summer-2020

Welcome to the penultimate day of the Summer 2020 Quarterly Review. I can only speak for myself, but I know it’s been a crazy couple months on this end, and I imagine whatever end you’re on — unless and probably even if you have a lot of money — it’s been the same there as well. Yet, it was no problem compiling 50 records to review this week, so if there’s a lesson to be taken from it all, it would seem to be that art persists. We may still be painting on cave walls when it comes to the arc of human evolution, but at least that’s something.

Have a great day and listen to great music.

Quarterly Review #31-40:

Katatonia, City Burials

katatonia city burials

Like their contemporaries in My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost, the latter-day period of work from Sweden’s Katatonia veers back toward some measure of direct heaviness, as City Burials showcases in cuts like “Rein,” “Heart Set to Divide” and “Behind the Blood,” but more than either of those others mentioned, the Stockholm outfit refuse to forsake the melody and progressivism they’ve undertaken with their sound in the name of doing so. By the time they get to “Untrodden” at the end of the album’s 50-minute/11-song run, they’ve run a gamut from dark electronica to progressive-styled doom and back again, and with the founding duo of guitarist Anders Nyström and vocalist Jonas Renkse at the helm of the songwriting, they are definitive in their approach and richly emotive; a melancholy that is as identifiable in their songs as it is in the bands working under their influence. Their first work in four years, City Burials is an assurance that Katatonia are in firm ownership and command of all aspects of their sound. As they approach their 30th year, they continue to move forward. That’s a special band.

Katatonia on Thee Facebooks

Peaceville Records website

 

Marmalade Knives, Amnesia

marmalade knives amnesia

Boasting production, mixing and percussion from The Golden GrassAdam Kriney, Marmalade Knives‘ debut album, Amnesia, is a delight of freaky-but-not-overblown heavy psychedelia. Oh, it’s headed far, far out, but as the opening narration and the later drones of second cut “Rivuleting” make plain, they might push, but they’re not trying to shove, if you know what I mean. The buzz in “Best-Laid Plans” doesn’t undercut the warmth of the improvised-seeming solo, and likewise, “Rebel Coryell” is a mellow drifter that caps side A with a graceful sense of wandering the soundscape of its own making. The vibe gets spacey on “Xayante,” and “Ez-Ra” touches on a funkier swing before seeming to evolve into light as one does, and the 10-minute “Astrology Domine” caps with noise and a jammed out feel that underscores the outbound mood of the proceedings as a whole. Some of the pieces feel like snippets cut from longer jams, and they may or may not be just that, but though it was recorded in three separate locations, Amnesia draws together well and flows easily, inviting the listener to do the same.

Marmalade Knives on Thee Facebooks

Electric Valley Records webstore

 

King Witch, Body of Light

king witch body of light

Edinburgh’s King Witch toe the line between classic metal and doom, but whatever you want to call them, just make sure you don’t leave out the word “epic.” The sweeping solo and soaring vocals on the opening title-track set the stage on their second LP, the hour-long Body of Light, and as much mastery as the band showed on their 2018 debut, Under the Mountain (review here), vocalist Laura Donnelly, guitarist Jamie Gilchrist, bassist Rory Lee and drummer Lyle Brown lay righteous waste to lofty expectations and bask in grandiosity on “Of Rock and Stone” and the linear-moving “Solstice I – She Burns,” the payoff of which is a high point of the album in its layered shred. Pieces like “Witches Mark” and “Order From Chaos” act as confirmation of their Euro-fest-ready fist-pumpery, and closer “Beyond the Black Gate” brings some atmosphere before its own headbang-worthy crescendo. Body of Light is a reminder of why you wanted to be metal in the first place.

King Witch on Thee Facebooks

Listenable Records on Bandcamp

 

Glass Parallels, Aisle of Light

Glass Parallels Aisle of Light

Eminently listenable and repeat-worthy, Glass Parallels‘ debut LP, Aisle of Light, nonetheless maintains an experimentalist flair. The solo-project of Justin Pinkerton (Golden Void, Futuropaco), covers a swath of ground from acid folk to psych-funk to soul vibes, at times bordering on shoegaze but seeming to find more expressive energy in centerpiece “Asphyxiate” and the airy capper “Blood and Battlegrounds” than any sonic portrayal of apathy would warrant. United by keys, pervasive guitar weirdness and Pinkerton‘s at-times-falsetto vocals, usually coated in reverb as they are, Aisle of Light brings deceptive depth for being a one-man production. Its production is spacious but still raw enough to give the drums an earthy sound as they anchor the synth-laden “March and April,” which is probably fortunate since otherwise the song would be liable to float off and not return. One way or another, the songs stand out too much to really be hypnotic, but they’re certainly fun to follow.

Glass Parallels on Thee Facebooks

Glass Parallels on Bandcamp

 

Thems That Wait, Stonework

thems that wait stonework

Stonework is the self-aware debut full-length from Portland, Maine, trio Thems That Wait, and it shoulders itself between clenched-teeth metallic aggression and heavier fuzz rock. They’re not the first to tread such ground and they know it, but “Sidekick” effectively captures Scissorfight-style groove, and “Kick Out” is brash enough in its 1:56 to cover an entire record’s worth of burl. Interludes “Digout” and “Vastcular” provide a moment to catch your breath, which is appreciated, but when what they come back with is the sure-fisted “Paragon” or a song like “Shitrograde,” it really is just a moment. They close with “Xmortis,” which seems to reference Evil Dead II in its lyrics, which is as good as anything else, but from “Sleepie Hollow” onward, guitarist/vocalist Craig Garland, bassist Mat Patterson and drummer Branden Clements find their place in the dudely swing-and-strike of riffs, crash and snarl, and they do so with a purely Northeastern attitude. This is the kind of show you might get kicked at.

Thems That Wait on Thee Facebooks

Thems That Wait on Bandcamp

 

Sojourner, Premonitions

sojourner premonitions

Complexity extends to all levels of Sojourner‘s third album and Napalm Records debut, Premonitions, in that not only does the band present eight tracks and 56 minutes of progressive and sprawling progressive black metal, varied in craft and given a folkish undercurrent by Chloe Bray‘s vocals and tin whistle, but also the sheer fact that the five-piece outfit made the album in at least five different countries. Recording remotely in Sweden, New Zealand, Scotland and Italy, they mixed/mastered in Norway, and though one cringes at the thought of the logistical nightmare that might’ve presented, Sojourner‘s resultant material is lush and encompassing, a tapestry of blackened sounds peppered with clean and harsh singing — Emilio Crespo handles the screams — keyboards, and intricate rhythms behind sprawling progressions of guitar. At the center of the record, “Talas” and “Fatal Frame” (the shortest song and the longest) make an especially effective pair one into the other, varied in their method but brought together by viciously heavy apexes. The greatest weight, though, might be reserved for closer “The Event Horizon,” which plods where it might otherwise charge and brings a due sense of largesse to the finale.

Sojourner on Thee Facebooks

Napalm Records website

 

Udyat, Oro

udyat oro

The order of the day is sprawl on Udyat‘s recorded-live sophomore LP, Oro, as the Argentinian outfit cast a wide berth over heavy rock and terrestrial psych, the 13-minute “Sangre de Oro” following shorter opener “Los Picos de Luz Eterna” (practically an intro at a bit over six minutes) with a gritty flourish to contrast the tonal warmth that returns with the melodic trance-induction at the start of “Los últimos.” That song — the centerpiece of the five-track outing — tops 15 minutes and makes its way into a swell of fuzz with according patience, proceeding through a second stage of lumbering plod before a stretch of noise wash leads pack to the stomp. The subsequent “Después de los Pasos, el Camino Muere” is more ferocious by its end and works in some similar ground, and closer “Nacimiento” seems to loose itself in a faster midsection before returning to its midtempo roll. Oro borders on cosmic doom with its psychedelic underpinnings and quiet stretches, but its movement feels ultimately more like walking than floating, if that makes any sense.

Udyat on Thee Facebooks

Udyat on Bandcamp

 

Bismarck, Oneiromancer

Bismarck Oneiromancer

To anyone who might suggest that extreme metal cannot also be forward-thinking, Bismarck submit the thoughtful bludgeon of Oneiromancer, a five-song/35-minute aesthetic blend that draws from doom, death, hardcore and sundry other metals, while keeping its identity in check through taut rhythm and atmospheric departures. Following the chants of opening intro “Tahaghghogh Resalat,” the Chris Fielding-produced follow-up to Bismarck‘s 2018 debut, Urkraft (review here), showcases an approach likewise pummeling and dynamic, weighted in ambience and thud alike. “Oneiromancer” itself starts with blastbeats and a plundering intensity before breaking into a more open midsection, but “The Seer” is absolutely massive. Despite being shorter than either the title-track or “Hara,” both of which top nine minutes, and closer “Khthon” underscores the blood-boiling tension cast throughout with one last consuming plod. Fucking raging. Fucking awesome. Pure sonic catharsis. Salvation through obliteration. If these are dreams being divined as the title hints, the mind is a limitless and terrifying place. Which, yes.

Bismarck on Thee Facebooks

Bismarck on Bandcamp

 

The Gral Brothers, Caravan East

gral brothers caravan east

I won’t say it’s seamless or intended to be, but as Albuquerque, New Mexico, two-piece The Gral Brothers make their initial move on Caravan East between cinematic Americana and industrial brood, samples of dialogue on “Cactus Man” and violin in the seven-minute soundscaper “In Die Pizzeria” seem to draw together both a wistfulness and a paranoia of the landlocked. Too odd to fall in line with the Morricone-worship of Cali’s Spindrift, “Crowbar” brings Spaghetti West and desert dub together with a confidence that makes it seem like a given pairing despite the outwardly eerie vibes and highly individualized take, and “Santa Sleeves” is beautiful to its last, even if the lone bell jingle is a bit much, while “Silva Lanes” pushes even further than did “Circuit City” into mechanized experimental noisemaking. They end with the birdsong-inclusive “Ode to Marge,” leaving one to wonder whether it’s sentiment or cynicism being expressed. Either way, it’s being expressed in a way not quite like anything else, which is an accomplishment all on its own.

The Gral Brothers on Thee Facebooks

Desert Records on Bandcamp

 

Astral Glide, Flamingo Graphics

astral glide flamingo graphics

When you’re at the show and the set ends, Flamingo Graphics is the CD you go buy at the merch table. It’s as simple as that. Recorded this past March over the course of two days, the debut album from Floridian foursome Astral Glide is raw to the point of being barebones, bootleg room-mic style, but the songwriting and straightforward purposes of the group shine through. They’re able to shift structures and mood enough to keep things from being too staid, but they’re never far off from the next heavy landing, as “Devastation” and the closer “Forever” show in their respective payoffs, that latter going all out with a scream at the end, answering back to the several others that show up periodically. While their greatest strength is in the mid-paced shove of rockers like “Space Machine” and “Scarlett” and the speedier “Workhorse,” there are hints of broader intentions on Flamingo Graphics, though they too are raw at this point. Very much a debut, but still one you pick up when the band finishes playing. You might not even wait until the end of the show. Meet them back at the table, and so on.

Astral Glide on Thee Facebooks

Astral Glide on Bandcamp

 

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The Obelisk Show on Gimme Radio Playlist: Episode 36

Posted in Radio on June 12th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

the obelisk show banner

This one gets heavy, and mean. A lot of both. The opening is kind of spaced out and rocking, and the end is all the way gone, but there’s that middle part where it’s just fucking nasty. Vile Creature through Bismarck — one after the other after the other. I was trying to make it abrasive, and then I snuck in Gral Brothers to let anyone listening catch their breath before Come to Grief just impales the eardrums.

So yeah, it was kind of a rough week, though honestly, things kind of turned around after I put this together. Catharsis? Probably not, but it’s a nifty idea. Either way, it was all hunky-dory by the time I went and recorded the voice tracks for the show, this time in the car while taking The Pecan to go look at construction equipment. Little dude is hitting the truck phase with everything he’s got. If you listen, you’ll hear him talk about dump trucks. Maybe excavators? I can’t remember. Something. Always something.

But you know, thanks for listening if you do.

The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmeradio.com

Full playlist:

The Obelisk Show – 06.12.20

ORGÖNE Mothership Egypt MOS/FET*
All Them Witches Saturnine & Iron Jaw Nothing as the Ideal*
Worshipper Lonesome Boredom Overdrive Lonesome Boredom Overdrive*
BREAK
Vile Creature When the Path is Unclear Glory! Glory! Apathy Took Helm!*
Bible Basher So Samson Sang Loud Wailing*
Earthbong Weedcult Today Bong Rites*
Gral Brothers In Die Pizzeria Caravan East*
Come to Grief March of the Maggots Pray for the End*
Bismarck Oneironmancer Oneironmancer*
BREAK
Centre El Muusa Turkeyfish Centre El Muusa
Tia Carrera Tried and True Tried and True*
Kamni A.T.O.M. A.T.O.M.*

The Obelisk Show on Gimme Radio airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is June 25 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.

Gimme Radio website

The Obelisk on Thee Facebooks

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