You know the scene in Clerks, right? Maybe it’s just because I grew up in New Jersey and was a teenager in the ’90s, but there was no getting away from it. Silent Bob’s Russian cousin, Olaf. Jay egging him on, “Come on, Olaf. Girl think sexy,” and then Olaf singing the lines of his band’s song, “Berserker” to some stranger outside a convenience store: “My love for you is like a truck, berserker/Would you like some making fuck, berserker.”

Perhaps that scene isn’t burned into the consciousness of those whose rearing took place outside my beloved Garden State, but one way or another, it clearly made an impression on Salt Lake City outfit Making Fuck, whose debut album, A Harrowing End, is set for a March 11 arrival via Gypsy Blood Records and Exigent Records. And the vulgarity in their moniker — referential though it is — is not without purpose. Salt Lake City’s strong affiliations with the Mormon church play heavily into the thematic of A Harrowing End, the eight songs of which are defined as much by their militant atheism and social critique as by the atmospheric noise rock through which those are delivered.

To wit, “Jesus Christ Inc.,” which starts with the lines, “Jesus Christ is the most lucrative marketing scheme since conception,” atop a dense churn that reminds of an angrier, earlier Isis, or “Mormon Guilt,” which offers a sample from the 1998 movie SLC Punk! as its central thesis before unfolding one of A Harrowing End‘s most aggressive thrusts. These and others like “Memento Mori,” “Rats Get Fat,” and the scathing closer “Rich Man’s Son” assure there’s no doubt as to the band’s perspective or the drive behind their intensity.

Recorded by Andy Patterson — who also plays drums in the band, as well as in SubRosa and Dwellers — the album features guitarist/vocalist Kory Quist in a forward position alongside drummer Anson Bishoff and cellist/vocalist Jessica Bundy. The 10-minute title-track also boasts a guest appearance from Kim Pack of SubRosa on violin, and the additional strings only help to bolster the atmosphere of that song and the album as a whole. Presented as two LPs, each half of the outing arrives with a heavy and atmospheric intro — “Scenes of Blood” and “Scenes of Sorrow,” respectively — and the other six cuts trade between brooding aggro-doom and spitting rage. If you’re wondering who might be coming to “A Harrowing End,” it’s the human race.

After the relatively brief bite of “Jesus Christ Inc.,” which is the shortest non-intro inclusion on A Harrowing End at an angular 4:32 that hits its peak with the imploring “Don’t go to church!” line repeated, Making Fuck careen into the closing duo of “Memento Mori” and “Rich Man’s Son,” both over nine minutes and one feeding into the next as a final onslaught and slog through the rhythmic oppression that’s held sway since “Mormon Guilt.” With Levi Hanna now on bass and Scott Wasilewski on cello, it doesn’t necessarily seem safe to say that whatever Making Fuck do next, it’ll sound exactly the same as this debut, but the clarity of the band’s purpose and the vehemence in their execution of these tracks doesn’t seem like a whim waiting to be abandoned. Some anger fades. Some, clearly, does not.

On the player below, you’ll find the track premiere for Making Fuck‘s “Rats Get Fat” from A Harrowing End. The band is on tour starting on release day, March 11, and those dates follow as well. Enjoy:

Kory Quist ponders on all things lost in translation, mostly his writing. His response to a cultural dichotomy continues through expressive music. In 2005, he moves to Salt Lake City. He plays in Nine worlds in 2008 and starts Making Fuck as a side project with original drummer, Jeff Wells. In 2012, Jessica Bundy joins with her cello, pushing the band into unique territory. Her eerie string droned melodies create a soothing dark tension. The demand for more writing and appearances grows.

With an encouraging response to their music, they record and self release a 7” EP in 2013 and play regional tours to support it. Eventually, rhythmic perpetrator Anson Bischoff joins as drummer and they complete their debut full length. Kim Pack, violinist of SubRosa, guests on “A Harrowing End.” This album, entitled “A Harrowing End,” will be co-released by Gypsy Blood Records and Exigent Records in the Spring of 2016. Joined by other impassioned friends, they project their vehement attack on conformity and religious dogma with plans to tour actively in 2016. Look forward to seeing Utah’s Making Fuck in a city near you.

Making Fuck on tour:
March 11th Salt Lake City, Ut @ Diablocial Records Record Release show
March 12th Denver, Co 7th Circel Music Collective
March 13th Vernal, Ut Horseshoe Tattoo Co
March 15th Boise, Id The Shredder
March 17th Eugene, Or Wandering Goat
March 18th Seattle, Wa Darrell’s Tavern
March 19th Portland, Or Panic Room

Kory Quist -Guitar/Vocals
Levi Hanna -Bass
Andy Patterson -Drums
Scott Wasilewski -Cello

Making Fuck on Thee Facebooks

Making Fuck on Bandcamp

Gypsyblood Records

Exigent Records

Click Here to Download

[mp3player width=480 height=150 config=fmp_jw_widget_config.xml playlist=aot40.xml]

This one’s beamed in from a universe of all good times. I don’t want to walk around tooting my own horn like I actually did anything, but you’ll pardon me if I say that once you get on board here, you might not want to jump back off. The flow is up and down, alternately drawn out and rushing, and right up to the last song which is a bit of a return to earth, the second hour is the most spaced out it’s ever been around these parts. I’m way into it. I hope you’re way into it.

Like last time, I tried to get a mix of excellent stuff upcoming with other recent items you might’ve missed. One of these days I’m gonna do another one of these where I talk, but this is straight-up track into track the whole way through and I think it moves really well that way. Please feel free to grab a download or hit the stream and dig in and enjoy.

First Hour:
The Melvins, “Sesame Street Meat” from Hold it In (2014)
Fever Dog, “One Thousand Centuries” from Second Wind (2014)
Lo-Pan, “Eastern Seas” from Colossus (2014)
Witchrider, “Black” from Unmountable Stairs (2014)
Alunah, “Awakening the Forest” from Awakening the Forest (2014)
Craang, “Magnolia” from To the Estimated Size of the Universe (2014)
Slow Season, “Shake” from Mountains (2014)
Lucifer in the Sky with Diamonds, “Guillotine” from The Shining One (2014)
The Proselyte, “Irish Goodbye” from Our Vessel’s in Need (2014)
Flood, “Lake Nyos” from Oak (2014)
Lord, “Golgotha” from Alive in Golgotha (2014)

Second Hour:
My Brother the Wind, “Garden of Delights” from Once There was a Time When Time and Space were One (2014)
Spidergawd, “Empty Rooms” from Spidergawd (2014)
The Myrrors, “Whirling Mountain Blues” from Solar Collector (2014)
Witch Mountain, “Your Corrupt Ways (Sour the Hymn)” from Mobile of Angels (2014)

Total running time: 1:54:28

Thank you for listening.

Download audiObelisk Transmission 040

Recorded in early 2013 as a blizzard pummeled the East Coast, The Proselyte‘s Our Vessel’s in Need EP hardly conveys any of the snowed-in claustrophobia or manic feel one might expect. Its five songs move, and have tones thick enough to fortify the walls of New Alliance Audio against the storm, but there’s little in the sound that seems to be trying to get away from itself. Maybe they finished tracking early on, or maybe that’s just a testament to the Cambridge, MA, outfit’s songwriting, which is all the more a highlight component of the new EP — released by Gypsyblood Records, an imprint helmed by Stavros Giannopoulos of Chicago’s The Atlas Moth — even than it was on The Proselyte‘s prior 2011 sophomore full-length, Sunshine (discussed here). In the interim, aside from completing several tours, The Proselyte have cut their lineup by one, leaving drummer/vocalist Alec Rodriguez (who also produced), guitarist/vocalist Nicholas Wolf (also of Phantom Glue) and bassist Brad Macomber (also “circuitry”) as a tight-knit power trio with a sound that confidently stands on either side of the border between heavy rock and metal and still focuses on blending melodic and growling vocal arrangements and keeping a sense of atmosphere. About a decade ago, Boston’s Cave In were picked up by RCA using similar elements, but while that band may or may not have had an influence on the rushing churn of Our Vessel’s in Need opener “End Regions,” The Proselyte are by and large a more bruising, heavier group, and even when they dip into upbeat, driving sounds, as on “End Regions” or the irresistibly catchy “Irish Goodbye,” and seem like they might be channeling some of Red Fang‘s crowdpleasing heaviness, they do so with the born-in intensity of the Seaboard they call home.

Our Vessel’s in Need is in and out in a brief 23 minutes, the time feeling that much shorter for the push in the songs themselves, and as with the prior full-length, Rodriguez‘s recording job is clean and professional. The sound overall, however, is bigger on these five tracks than the prior outing, and The Proselyte fill it with likewise sizable riffs and rhythmic movement. Each has a factor distinguishing it from the others, whether it’s “End Regions” with its stomping drumline and harmonized bridge, “Log Computer” with the catchiest chorus of the release — the lines, “Caveman committee/Prehistoric and sitting pretty/Unpolished stone/Built this city,” becoming a landmark hook — “Existential Risk” which seems to deconstruct as it hypnotically follows the guitar into oblivion, “Irish Goodbye,” which touches on classic Queens of the Stone Age-style thrust, or the slower, more open finale of “A Stubborn Hem,” but all manage to flow together smoothly as well, and while Our Vessel’s in Need is definitely an EP in the sense of not trying to come across as a single work but a collection of individual pieces, there’s no ignoring the tact with which The Proselyte execute their material. That’s particularly evident in the vocals, and the timing of the harsh/clean tradeoffs in “End Regions” and “Log Computer” and the times when both come together — “Log Computer” is about as close as they come to falling in the modern metal trap of the growled-verse/sung-chorus, but they avoid it successfully precisely because the arrangement is more complex — but no less true ultimately of the guitar, bass or drums. On the most general level, they sound more focused, but how that specifically manifests in the EP is with the impact each cut seems to have on its landing, even “Existential Risk,” which is the longer than all but the closer here at 4:44 and the moment at which they most depart from their structural base and build a near-abrasive wash of noise.

Though, to be fair, that wash comes more or less after the song itself is done, and thinking in terms of the flow between one song and the next, feels as much about launching “Irish Goodbye” as closing “Existential Risk.” All the more, then, it’s a point at which The Proselyte branch out sonically but maintain their focus on the task at hand. “Irish Goodbye” has a compressed runthrough of the riff before Rodriguez kicks in on the drums and is soon joined by Wolf and Macomber for the progression that most rivals the memorability of “Log Computer,” a Songs for the Deaf vibe and dual-clean vocal interplay/layering taking hold in stark contrast to “Existential Risk” prior, which in terms of the vocals is as rough as Our Vessel’s in Need gets. Fitting that the two tracks should be next to each other and placed such that the latter slams into the feedback beginning of “A Stubborn Hem,” which rounds out the EP with its most doomed moment but shows off some of the progressive tendencies that had appeared on Sunshine in its second half, albeit only en route to the dual-vocal, slow-marching apex of the release which also serves as its leadout. At 6:36, it’s easily the longest track present — “End Regions,” “Log Computer” and “Irish Goodbye” hover at just under four minutes apiece — but its time is efficiently spent, and ultimately, the stylistic branching out it does in relation to the surrounding tracks makes Our Vessel’s in Need a much richer release. I wouldn’t speculate about how the band may have grown or come more into their own as a three-piece in the year and a half since the EP was recorded, but their progression since Sunshine is evident in every second of these songs and the force with which they’re delivered, and if Our Vessel’s in Need is a step en route to someplace even more definitive of where The Proselyte are as a band, it will be well worth seeing this potential further realized. Bring on the next blizzard.

The Proselyte, Our Vessel’s in Need teaser

The Proselyte on Thee Facebooks

The Proselyte on Bandcamp

Our Vessel’s in Need at Gypsyblood Records

Boston trio The Proselyte have been looking for a home for their Our Vessel’s in Need EP for a hot minute or two — there was word of it last April — but the good news is they’ve landed on Chicago-based Gypsyblood Records, the imprint helmed by Stavros Giannopoulos of The Atlas Moth. Not sure on the exact release date, but The Proselyte‘s 2011 outing, Sunshine (discussed here) was a good time, so it’ll be one to keep an eye on.

The three-piece are also braving the cold in order to spread the aforementioned good news. They’ll be hitting the road starting tonight in Allston and heading south and west into the very heart this “polar vortex” I keep hearing so much about but know nothing of because I never leave the house.

Wisdom off the PR wire:

THE PROSELYTE Align With Gypsyblood Records, Announce Winter Tour

The noisy, sludgy, genre-baiting miscreants behind Boston, Massachusetts’ The Proselyte have returned with their most cohesive and menacing effort yet. Ungodly screams and melodic harmonies square off as The Proselyte weave a web anger and beauty inspired in part by the sonic dichotomies of The Melvins and Torche, concocting a heady rush of stoner doom, Seattle grunge, and canny melodicism.

Now a trio, this Boston band have toured the states numerous times and are gearing up for a busy 2014 with a new EP entitled Our Vessel’s In Need. They are pleased to announce that upstart Chicago label Gypsyblood Records will handle the limited vinyl pressing & digital version while artwork will come from Billy Crisafi. The record was engineered by their own Alec Rodriguez at New Alliance Audio and mastered by Nick Zampiello and Rob Gonnella at New Alliance East.

The EP was recorded during the February 2013 blizzard that pummeled the northeast, leaving them and a team of videographers literally trapped inside New Alliance Audio. The result is a balance of solidarity and frightful cabin fever. Now, as the United States grapples with yet another wintery hellscape, The Proselyte rides again.

The band will embark on a short Northeastern run in advance of their Gypsyblood debut, beginning at O’Brien’s Pub on January 9th (dates below!).

THE PROSELYTE JANUARY TOUR 2014
January 9th Boston MA @ O’Brien’s Pub*
January 10th Long Branch NJ @ The Brighton Bar*
January 11th Pittsburgh PA @ Howler’s*
January 12th Columbus OH @ Carabar*
January 13th Chicago IL @ The Empty Bottle*
January 14th Lexington KY @ Al’s Sidecar
January 15th – Cincinnati OH @ The Rakes End
January 16th Philadelphia PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
January 17th Brooklyn NY @ Acheron
January 18th New London CT @ The Orphanage#
*with Jar’d Loose
# with Sea of Bones

THE PROSELYTE is:
Nicholas Wolf-vocals, guitar
Alec Rodriguez-vocals, drums
Brad Macomber-bass

LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/Theproselyte
http://theproselyte.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/gypsybloodrecords
http://www.gypsybloodrecords.bigcartel.com/

The Proselyte, Sunshine (2011)