I’ll find out for sure in a bit, but I think this might be one of those supremely weird Quarterly Review days where it’s a total mash of styles and it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever from one release to the next so that by the time the batch of 10 records is done we’ve ended up covering a pretty significant swath of heavy music’s spectrum. I ain’t out here trying to be comprehensive, you understand. I’m just doing my best to keep up. And in that, sometimes you hit a weird day.

In fact, I think “weird” might be the operative word for the Quarterly Review so far. I think about this music, who it’s for, why, and it’s weird and it’s for weirdos in my head. Both of those things are meant in a spirit of reverence for weirdness. Weird is interesting. Weird stands out. Weird is… also how I feel basically any time I’m out of the house among other adults unless I’m at a show. Weird is that beautiful thing that unites those people who don’t seem to fit anywhere else but in this.

So yeah, today’s weird. Strap in, kids.

Quarterly Review #31-40:

Church of the Sea, Odalisque

Electronic beats, live guitar, and a resonant human voice make for a fascinating blend on Church of the Sea‘s richly atmospheric Odalisque. The Athenian trio of vocalist Irene, guitarist Vangelis (a different Vangelis) and synthesist/sampler Alex conjure a deep sense of mood in songs like “Mirror” and the closer “Me as the Water, Me as a Tree,” operating from the weighted beginning of opener “No One Deserves” onward in a slow-moving, open-spaced take on heavy post-rock that staves off the shimmering guitar in favor of adding the rumble of distortion often as a backing drone to fill out the sound alongside the synth behind Irene‘s voice. There are shades of Author & Punisher‘s latest — but Odalisque is less about slamming impact than spreading out the landscape of its title-track and the personal examinations of its lyrics, though “Raindrops” doesn’t seem fully ready to commit to one or the other and it’s easy to appreciate that. A striking debut from a band whose individualized purpose sets them apart even within Greece’s crowded and wildly creative underground.

Church of the Sea on Facebook

Church of the Sea links

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Gu Vo, Gu Vo

Drummer Edu Escobar, bassist Raúl Burrueco and vocalist/synthesist Alejandro Ruiz are Gu Vo, and given their lack of guitar, it should come as little surprise that their Sentencia Records self-titled debut is a markedly rhythmic experience. Taking some example perhaps from Slift‘s uptempo space/krautrockism, the Spanish three-piece bring an avant garde vibe even to the ultra-smooth build of “Crab Ball Gate,” hypnotizing through repetition in the low end and drums while the keys weave in and out of prominence, “Little Lizard” arriving with storybook fanfare before toying with willful-sounding low- and high-end frequency imbalance — you go this way and I’ll go that, etc. — and vocals that are duly spaced. The nine-song/49-minute outing is ambitious, droning large in “USG Ishimura” and actually maybe-actually-sampling Altered Beast for the chiptunery of “Rise From Your Grave.” “TuunBaq” brings some of these impulses together at the end, but Gu Vo‘s Gu Vo is more about the trip you take than where you end up, and that’s much to its advantage.

Gu Vo on Facebook

Sentencia Records on Bandcamp

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Witchfinder, Endless Garden

Watch out for the slowdown in about the last minute and a half of “The Maze” (6:28) which is the first of two songs on Witchfinder‘s Endless Garden EP. Things are rolling along, some Acid King nod in that main riff, and then, wham, screams and meaner sludge pushes into the proceedings without so much as a s’il vous plaît from the Clermont-Ferrand-based four-piece. The keyboard later in the subsequent “Eternal Sunset” (10:41) running alongside the slower movement there calls to mind Type O Negative — though I understand it’s Hangman’s Chair holding down such vibes in France these days, so maybe or maybe not an influence — plays a similar function in distinguishing the ending from what’s come before, but it’s the overarching heft of Endless Garden that makes it such a fulfilling answer to 2019’s Hazy Rites (review here), the band perhaps pushing back against some of the more cultish tendencies of current heavy in favor of a more individual statement of fuzz and psych-doomer spaciousness. It’s been a hell of a three years since the album. A reminder of Witchfinder‘s growth in progress is welcome.

Witchfinder on Facebook

Mrs Red Sound on Bandcamp

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Centre El Muusa, Purple Stones

Imagine yourself having a dream about surfing and you might be on your way to Centre El Muusa‘s sound. The Estonian instrumentalist four-piece debuted on Sulatron with their 2020 self-titled (review here), and they cohesively explore various realms here, dream-beach among them, but also some twangy slide guitar in opener “Pony Road” and “Desert Song,” the band using the titles seemingly to drop hints of the vibes being captured. Sure enough, the dirty fuzz in “Boomerang” comes back around, “Keila Train” — it’s about a 15-mile trip from Talinn, where the band are from, to Keila — has a distracted line of keys over mellow jazz drumming and meandering guitar, and “Pilot on Board” brings a subtle kosmiche push with an undulating waveform drone that’s like the wind passing under and over the wings of an airplane. Each of these moments of (assisted) evocation can be experienced or not depending on how far in a given listener wants to plunge — or how high they want to float, in the case of “Pilot on Board” — but the abiding sense of exploration in sound remains vital just the same. Wherever it may want to take you at a given moment, it wants to take you. Let it.

Centre El Muusa on Facebook

Sulatron Records webstore

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0N0, Unwavering Resonance

I’ll admit that Unwavering Resonance is my first exposure to Slovakia’s 0N0, but it won’t be the last. Their third full-length following 2016’s Reconstruction and Synthesis with an EP and a split between, the new outing collects four cuts across a manageable 36 minutes and begins with its longest track (immediate points) in the 12-minute declaration of purpose “Clay Weight.” Though reputed for more industrialized fare in the past — and still definitely utilizing programming for the ‘drums’ and other synthy sounds — one cannot ignore the chug that rises to prominence in the leadoff, or the malevolence of purpose in the deathly use to which it’s put. Post-metal and death-doom come together fluidly enough in “Clay Weight” and the subsequent “Shattering” (5:12) with a balance tipped to one side or another — the second track, shortest, blasts furiously — and one wouldn’t call what happens in the nine-minutes-each pair of “Unwavering Resonance” and closer “Wander the Vacant Twilight” an evening out, since they continue to lean to particular aspects of their crushing sound in a given stretch, but hell’s bells it’s heavy, and its catharsis is less about making your skin crawl than turning bones into powder. Methodical, not chaotic, but ready to bask in the chaos surrounding. More brutalism than brutal.

0N0 on Facebook

0N0 on Bandcamp

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Faeries, Faeries

Shit, that’s heavy. Released on cassette and download, the 2021 self-titled debut long-player from Savannah, Georgia’s Faeries is a beast working under suitably beastly traditions. Tapping into a tonal density and an and-yet-it-moves crush of riff that reminds of the earliest days of fellow Peach Staters Mastodon, there’s a more straight-ahead, heads-down, push-through-with-the-shoulder sensibility to David Rapp‘s solo outfit, an underlying sense of riff worship in “March March,” “Megadrone,” and the rest of the nine-song/45-minute outing that — much to Rapp‘s credit — are set for destructive purposes rather than self-indulgent progressivism. That’s not to say Faeries, the album, is dumbed down. It’s not, and even in the vocal gruel of “Fresh Laces” and “The Pain of Days” or the chug-‘n’-swing instrumental “The Volcano,” that can be heard in the structure of the songs — “Slurricane” deviates to somewhat lighter tone and also-instrumental closer “Traces” echoes that — but Rapp‘s clear intention here is to base his songwriting around the heaviest sounds possible, and while it’s exciting to think maybe he got there on this first outing, it’s even more exciting to think maybe he didn’t and is going to try again sometime soon. Either way, happy bludgeoning/being bludgeoned.

Faeries on Instagram

The Silver Box on Bandcamp

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The Cult of Dom Keller, Raiders of the Lost Archives: Demos & Rarities 2007-2020

Somewhat inevitable that a 100-minute collection of lost tracks, demos, alternate versions and live takes from UK psych adventurers Cult of Dom Keller would be something of a fan-piece. Still, as Raiders of the Lost Archives: Demos & Rarities 2007-2020 spans its 20-song run and multiple lineups of the band, its moving between years and methodologies has plenty of flow if you’re willing to open yourself to the essential fact that the band can do whatever. the. fuck. they. want. To wit, “Monarch” with its relatively forward verses and choruses and the lo-fi howling feedback of “QWERTYUIOP,” or 2020’s creep-into-wash “Dead Don’t Dream” and the garage-psych urgency of 2007’s “We Left This World Behind for a Place in the Sun.” Those who’ve followed Cult of Dom Keller on their merry path will dig the (again, relatively) efficient look at how far they’ve come and in how many different directions, while those unfamiliar with the band might want to find something less inherently uneven to dig on (start with 2020’s Ascend! (review here), then work back), but cuts like “Broken Arm of God” and “Jupiter’s Beard” are ready to catch ears either way, and if it takes time to digest, well heck, you’ll have all the time in the world if you quit your day job, so why not just go ahead and do that?

Cult of Dom Keller on Facebook

Cult of Dom Keller on Bandcamp

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Supplemental Pills, Volume 1

The narrative — blessings and peace upon it — holds that Supplemental Pills got together at the behest of vocalist/guitarist Ezra Meredith when his main outfit, Hearts of Oak stepped back for pandemic lockdown. Fair enough. With Joel Meredith on guitar, bassist/synthesist Aron Christensen (also Hearts of Oak) and drummer/vocalist Mark Folkrod, these seven songs feel carved out of jams as the reportedly were, with “Feel It” blinking momentarily into Endless Boogie-sounding improv preach while mellower and more spacious pieces like opener “Run On,” the nine-minute drone-drawler “Floating Mountains Over Rivers” and the 11-minute fuzz-go repetitions of “Gonna Be Alright” — a decent mantra if e’er there was one — ooze deeper into vibe rock far-outreach. “Freedom March” is fairly active, with Ezra‘s vocals there and in “Run On” seeming to nod at the departed Mark Lanegan, and “The Wizard Was Right” has a sense of movement as well that suits its overlaid verses. If it feels right, it is right. Drone what thou wilt. And if this is what they’re coming up with essentially by accident, one shudders to think what might happen if they actually tried to write a song. It’s just crazy enough to work.

Supplemental Pills on Facebook

In Music We Trust Records on Bandcamp

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Green Hog Band, Crypt of Doom

Some sonic coincidence brings Amorphis‘ “Forever More” to mind in hearing the winding guitar figure featured in Green Hog Band‘s instrumental-but-for-the-sample “Iron Horses,” but that’s not a direct influence. The Brooklynite trio’s third full-length, Crypt of Doom, follows last year’s Devil’s Luck (review here) and sees the self-recording trio of vocalist/bassist Ivan Antipov, guitarist Mike Vivisector (also lyrics) and drummer Ronan Berry weaving into and out of Russian-language lyrics on top of their thick-toned sludge rock, which they shove resolutely on “Sweet Tea, Banana Bread” and even give a little shuffle on the penultimate “New Year Massacre,” but which is invariably more suited to the doomly lurch of opener “Dragon” or its later giant-lizard-thing counterpart “Leviathan.” Still, that these guys can make that bubbling cauldron of sludge and are even vaguely interested in doing anything else is admirable, and as raw as Crypt of Doom is, even the air seems to be stale, never mind the bare walls of rock and dirt surrounding. Dig a hole, reside therein, riff.

Green Hog Band on Facebook

The Swamp Records on Bandcamp

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Circle of Sighs, Alabaster

Most of all, one has to give kudos to Los Angeles experimentalist outfit for daring to cross the line between hard industrial music and the hip-hop it’s been summarily ripping off for the last quarter-century-plus. Alabaster is the third full-length from the unit not-so-secretly led by bassmaster/programmer/etc.-ist Collyn McCoy (also Night City, Aboleth, a bunch of others), and in addition to guest rappers A-F-R-O, Zombae and Kayee on cuts like “Anatomy Autonomy” (relevant) and the becomes-a-black-metal-onslaught “Copy Planet,” the nine-song/32-minute outing regurgitates genre expectations in a spew so willfully individual it can’t help but make its own kind of sense even unto the sound collage of “Segue-08” or “ec63294e-0dcf-4947-bb7c-965769967dbd,” which answers the freak-dance of “A Magical Journey of Love” with sentient-AI-knows-where-you-live moodsetting, which of course is an excellent precursor to the organ-laced cult extremity of “FLESHSELF: Abandon the Altars.” This is never going to be for everyone, but Alabaster‘s willingness to play with risk in sound makes just about everything that ‘fits in’ feel ridiculous. You think you’ve heard it all? Think you’re bored? Check this shit out and see how wrong you are.

Circle of Sighs on Facebook

Circle of Sighs on Bandcamp

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You have your coffee yet? I’ve got mine. Today’s Friday, which means day five of this six-day Spring 2022 Quarterly Review, and it’s been a hell of a week. Yesterday was particularly insane, and today offers not much letup in that regard. If you’d have it another way, I’m sorry, but there’s too much cool shit out there to write about stuff that all sounds the same, so I don’t. I’ve had a good time over this stretch and I hope you have too if you’ve been keeping up. We’ll have one more on Monday and that’s it until late June or early July, so please enjoy.

And thanks as always for reading.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

Pike vs. the Automaton, Pike vs. The Automaton

Matt Pike acoustic? It happened, and YOU were there! Truth is, the strumming foundation on which “Land” is built is just one example of Pike vs. The Automaton‘s singular get-weirdness, and followers of his career arc through Sleep and High on Fire from playing basements to winning a Grammy will recognize pieces of cuts like “Abusive” and “Trapped in a Midcave,” the all-out rager “Alien Slut Mom” (which of course was the lead single), the bombastic expanse of “Apollyon,” the even-more-all-out-rager “Acid Test Zone” and the dug-in get-weirdness of “Latin American Geological Formation” as one of heavy music’s most influential auteurs welcomes (?) listeners into a world of swirling chaos, monsters, conspiracies and, of course, riffs. The album saves its greatest accomplishment for last in the 11-minute “Leaving the Wars of Woe,” but if you’re old enough to remember when Rob Zombie did those off-the-wall cartoons for White Zombie videos and the Beavis and Butt-Head movie, listening to Pike vs. the Automaton is kind of like living in that for a while. So yeah, awesome.

Pike vs. The Automaton website

MNRK Heavy website

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End Boss, They Seek My Head

Maybe the heaviest sans-bass low end since Floor? That’s not a minor claim, but at very least Wellington, New Zealand’s End Boss put themselves in the running with They Seek My Head, their debut album. The guitars of Greg Broadmore and Christian Pearce are the crushing foundation on which the band is built, and with Beastwars‘ own Nathan Hickey on drums, there’s a reliable base of groove to coincide as all that weight becomes the backdrop for E.J. Thorpe‘s vocals to soar over top on cuts like “Heart of the Sickle” and “Punished.” It’s a wide breadth throughout the eight songs and 33 minutes, allowing “Becomes the Gold” to show some emotive urgency while “Nail and Tooth” seems only to be sharpening knives at the outset of side B, while “The Crawl” just about has to be named after its riff and fair enough. “Lorded Over” hints at an atmospheric focus that may or may not further manifest in the future, but the closing title-track is what it’s all about, and it’s big nod, big melody, big hooks. You can’t lose. Onto the ‘best debuts of 2022’ it goes.

End Boss on Facebook

Rough Peel Records website

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Artifacts & Uranium, Pancosmology

Fred Laird (Earthling Society, Taras Bulba) and Mike Vest (Bong, Blown Out, etc.) released their self-titled debut as Artifacts & Uranium in 2021 as a collection of three massive dronescapes. Their follow-up, Pancosmology, telegraphs being more compositionally-focused even before you put it on, running eight songs instead of three, and indeed, that’s how it turns out. There are still massive waves of exploratory drones, guitar, electric piano, drums programmed and real — Nick Raybould plays on half the tracks, so a potential third in the duo — synth, bass, whatever a Gakken Generator is, it all comes together with an understated splendor and a sense of reaching into the unknown. Witness the guitar and synth lines of “Silent Plains,” and are those vocals buried so deep in that mix? I can’t even tell. It doesn’t matter. The point is that for 37 minutes, Laird and Vest (and Raybould) take you on a psych-as-spirituality trip into, around and through the universe, and by the time they get to “The Inmost Light” noisewashing at the finish, the feeling is like being baptised in a cold river of acid. If this is the birth of the gods, I’m in.

Taras Bulba on Facebook

Echodelick Records website

Weird Beard Records webstore

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Night City, Kuang Xi

After the slower rolling opener “Broken Dick,” Night City‘s debut cassette EP, Kuang Xi, works at a pretty intense clip, taking the Godflesh vibe of that lead track, keeping the abiding tonal thickness, and imbuing it with an also-’90s-era Ministry-ish sense of chaos and push. The four-song outing works from its longest track to shortest and effectively melds heavy industrial with brutal chug and extreme metal, and one should expect no less from Collyn McCoy, whose plumbing of the dark recesses of the mind in Circle of Sighs is a bit more purely experimentalist. That said, if “Encryptor/Decryptor” showed up as a Circle of Sighs track, I wouldn’t have argued, but the use of samples here throughout and the explicitly sociopolitical lyrics make for coherent themes separate from McCoy‘s other project. “Steppin’ Razor” uses its guitar solo like a skronky bagpipe while calling out Proud Boy bullshit, and in fewer than three minutes, “Molly Million$” finds another gear of thrust before devolving into so much caustic noise. The version I got also featured the dancier “Tomorrow’s World,” but I’m not sure if that’s on the tape. Either way, a brutalist beginning.

Night City on Facebook

Dune Altar website

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Friends of Hell, Friends of Hell

Rise Above Records signing a band that might even loosely be called doom is immediately noteworthy because it means the band in question has impressed label owner Lee Dorrian, formerly of Cathedral, who — let’s be honest — has some of the best taste in music the world over. Thus Friends of Hell unleash 40 minutes of dirt-coated earliest-NWOBHM-meets-Celtic–Frost chugging groove, with former Electric Wizard bassist Tasos Danazoglou (currently Mirror) on drums and Sami “Albert Witchfinder” Hynninen (Spiritus Mortis, Reverend Bizarre, Opium Warlords) on vocals, biting through catchy classic-sounding cuts like “Into My Coffin” and side B’s “Gateless Gate” and “Orion’s Beast.” Unremittingly dark, the nine-song collection ends with “Wallachia,” a somewhat grander take that still keeps its rawness of tone and general purpose with a more spacious vibe. It is not a coincidence Friends of Hell take their name from a Witchfinder General record; their sound seems like prime fodder for patch-on-denim worship.

Friends of Hell on Instagram

Rise Above Records website

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Delco Detention, What Lies Beneath

The second full-length keeping on a literally-underground theme from 2021’s From the Basement (review here), the 10-song/35-minute What Lies Beneath finds founding Delco Detention guitarist Tyler Pomerantz once again getting by with a little help from his friends, up to and including members of Hippie Death Cult — Eddie Brnabic shreds over instrumental closer “FUMOFO” — The Age of Truth, Kingsnake and others. Angelique Zuppo makes a highlight of early cut “Rock Paper Scissors,” and Dave Wessell of Ickarus Gin brings a performance that well suits the strut-fuzz of “War is Mine,” while instrumentals “What Lies Beneath” and “Velcro Shoes” find Tyler (on bass and guitar) and drummer Adam Pomerantz digging into grooves just fine on their own. The shifts between singers give a compilation-style feel continued on from the first record, but a unifying current of songwriting brings it all together fluidly, and as “A Slow Burn” and “Study Hall Blues” readily demonstrate, Delco Detention know how to take a riff out for a walk. Right on (again).

Delco Detention on YouTube

Delco Detention on Bandcamp

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Room 101, Sightless

Put Lansing, Michigan’s Room 101 up there with Primitive Man, Indian and any other extreme-sludge touchstone you want and their debut long-player, Sightless, will hold its own in terms of sheer, concrete-tone crushing force. In answering the potential of 2019’s The Burden EP (review here), the album offsets its sheer bludgeoning with stretches of quiet-tense atmospherics, “Boarded Window” offering a momentary respite before the onslaught begins anew. This balance is further fleshed out on longer tracks like “Dead End,” with a more extended break and the title-cut with its ending guitar lead, but neither the sub-five-minute “Windowlicker” nor “Boarded Window” earlier want for mood, and even the finale “The Innocent, the Ignorant and the Insecure” brings a feeling of cohesion to its violence. This shit is lethal, to be sure, but it’s also immersive. Watch out you don’t drown in it.

Room 101 on Facebook

Room 101 on Bandcamp

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Hydra, Beyond Life and Death

Heralded by the prior single “With the Devil Hand in Hand” (posted here), which is positioned as the closer of the 41-minute five-tracker, Hydra‘s second full-length, Beyond Life and Death, finds the Polish four-piece pushing deeper into doomed traditionalism. Where their 2020 debut, From Light to the Abyss (review here), had a garage-ist edge, and if you work hard, you can still hear some of that just before the organ kicks in near the end of “On the Edge of Time” (if that’s a “Children of the Sea” reference we can be friends), but after the more gallop-prone opener “Prophetic Dreams” and the penultimate “Path of the Dark”‘s whoa-oh backing vocals, the crux of what they’re doing is more NWOBHM-influenced, and blending with the cult horror lyrical themes of centerpiece “The Unholy Ceremony” or the aforementioned closer, it gives Hydra a more confident sound and a more poised approach to doom than they had just two years ago. The adjusted balance of elements in their sound suits them, and they seem quickly to be carving out a place for themselves in Poland’s crowded scene.

Hydra on Facebook

Piranha Music on Bandcamp

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E-L-R, Vexier

The two 12-minute tracks “Opiate the Sun” and “Foret” bookend Swiss trio E-L-R‘s second LP for Prophecy Productions, Vexier, and the intention would seem to be plain in hooking and immersing the listener in the experience and flow of the album. Like their wildly impressive 2019 debut, Mænad (review here), this collection has plenty of post-metallic elements, and there’s specifically a post-black metal bent to “Three Winds” in its earliest going — by the midsection it’s come apart into broad, open spaces, but the rush comes back — and the centerpiece and shortest track, “Seeds,” which seems to shine even brighter in its melody than the opener, as the vocals are once more presented on a level plane with the rest of the atmospheric elements, far back in the mix but not at all lacking resonance for being vague. “Seeds” is a fitting summary, but “Fleurs of Decay” leans into the expectation of something harsher and “Foret” boasts a more complex linear build, stretches of drone and a broader vocal arrangement before bringing the record to its gentle finish. I liked the first record a lot. I like this one more. E-L-R are doing something with sound that no one else quite has the same kind of handle on, however familiar the elements making it up might be. They are a better band than people yet know.

E-L-R on Facebook

Prophecy Productions store

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Buffalo Tombs, III

Titled Three or III, depending where you look, the third long-player from Denver instrumental heavy rockers Buffalo Tombs follows relatively hot on the heels of the second, Two (review here), which came out last October. Spearheaded by guitarist/bassist Eric Stuart, who also recorded the instrumentation sans Patrick Haga‘s own self-recorded drums (lockdown? depends on when it was) and mixed and mastered — Joshua Lafferty also adds bass to “Ancestors” and “Monument,” which are just two of the six contemplations here as Buffalo Tombs explores an inward-looking vision of heavy sounds and styles, not afraid to shove or chug a bit on “Swarm” or “Gnostics/Haint,” but more consistently mellow in mood and dug into its own procession. “Familiars” hints at aspects of heavy Americana, but the root expression on III comes across as more personal and that feeling of intimacy suits well the mood of the songs.

Buffalo Tombs on Facebook

Buffalo Tombs on Bandcamp

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For some people, the words ‘Polish doom riffs’ will likely be enough to go on here. Hydra got started in 2019, released their debut album, From Light to the Abyss (review here), in 2020, followed that later in the year with a recorded live session (review here), and are now ready to announce their second full-length to come sometime this year on Piranha Music. Call me crazy, and I’ve looked for it a few times, but I’m not seeing an album title in the below announcement, though certainly if they wanted to roll with the name of the first single “With the Devil Hand in Hand,” that’d work just fine. And they’ve already got the cover art by Dopelord‘s Paweł Mioduchowski, but I’ve been bitten too many times by saying something not 100 percent confirmed, so whether or not Hydra have that set in stone(r), I just don’t know.

Time to figure it out, I suppose. For now, I’ll take the streaming audio of the aforementioned first single, which you can find at the bottom of this pose, and dig on the likewise aforementioned ‘Polish doom riffs’ merrily, thank you very much. At 10 minutes long, there are plenty of them.

DOOM:

Doom metal band HYDRA to release new album this winter! Listen to first single

Oldschool doom metal act HYDRA have just announced that they will release their second album soon!

“From Light To The Abyss”, which was the band’s debut LP, was released in 2020 and was really highly appreciated in the stoner / doom metal underground scene.

Polish trad doomers HYDRA have just released a new single from their upcoming album! “With the Devil Hand in Hand” is the 10-minutes-long track full of groovy riffs, catchy melodies and – of course – the Devil worship.

They started up in 2019, inspired by early Black Sabbath albums. After releasing their first single, “When the Devil’s Coming Down”, they signed to Piranha Music, an independent label from Toruń (PL), to release their full-length debut album. “From Light to the Abyss” came into being on 21 August 2020 (and then released on vinyl at the end of 2021). The album artwork was designed by Paweł Mioduchowski (of almighty Dopelord).

Hydra are:
Dąbek – voc, git
Mieszko – git
Vanat – bass, voc
Yahoo – drums

https://www.facebook.com/Hydraband666/
https://www.instagram.com/hydra666official/
https://hydra666.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/piranhamusicpl/
https://www.instagram.com/piranha.music/
https://piranhamusicpl.bandcamp.com/

Hydra, “With the Devil Hand in Hand”

Kind of a spur of the moment thing, this Quarterly Review. I’ve been adding releases all the while, of course, but my thought was to do this after my year-end list went up, and I realized, hey, if I’ve got like 70 records I haven’t reviewed yet, maybe there’s some of that stuff worth considering. So here we are. I’ve pushed back my best-of-2020 stuff and basically swapped it with the Quarterly Review. Does it matter to you? I seriously, seriously doubt it, but I believe in transparency and that’s what’s up. Thought I’d let you know. And yeah, this is going to go into next week, take us through the X-mas holiday this Friday, so whatever. You celebrate your way and I’ll celebrate mine. Let’s roll.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

Boris, No

As a general project, reviewing Boris is damn near pointless. One might as well review the moon: “uh, it’s big and out there most of the time?” The only reason to do it is either to exercise one’s own need to hyperbolize or help the band sell records. Well, Boris doesn’t need my push and I don’t need to tell them how great they are. No is 40 minutes of the widely and wildly lauded Japanese heavy rock(s) experimentalists trying to riff away existing in 2020, delving high speed into hardcore here and there and playing off that with grueling sludge, punk, garage-metal and the penultimate “Loveless,” which is kind of Boris being their own genre. Much respect to the band, and I suppose one might critique Boris for, what?, being so Boris-y?, but there really isn’t a ton that hasn’t been said about them because such a ton has. I’m not trying to disparage their work at all — No is just what you’d expect as regards defying expectation — but after 20-plus years, there’s only so many ways one wants to call a band genius.

Boris on Thee Facebooks

Boris on Bandcamp

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DVNE, Omega Severer

Kind of a soft-opening for Edinburgh’s DVNE as an act on Metal Blade Records, unless of course one counts the two songs on the Omega Severer EP itself, which are post-metallic beasts of the sort that would and should make The Ocean blush. Progressive, heavy, and remarkably ‘next-wave’ feeling, DVNE‘s awaited follow-up to 2017’s Asheran may only be about 17 and a half minutes long, but it bodes remarkably well as the band master a torrent of intensity on the 10-minute opening title-cut and answer that with the immediately galloping “Of Blade and Carapace,” smashing battle-axe riffing and progressive shimmer against each other and finding it to be an alchemy of their own. Album? One suspects not until they can tour for it, but if Omega Severer is DVNE serving notice, consider the message received loud, clear, dynamic, crushing, spacious, and so on. Already veterans of Psycho Las Vegas, they sound like a band bent on capturing a broader audience in the metallic sphere.

DVNE on Thee Facebooks

Metal Blade Records website

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Hydra, From Light to the Abyss

There’s no questioning where Hydra‘s heart is at on their debut full-length, From Light to the Abyss. It belongs to the devil and it belongs to Black Sabbath. The Polish four-piece riff hard and straightforward throughout most of the five-track offering (released by Piranha Music), and samples set the kind of atmosphere that should be familiar enough to the converted — “No One Loves Like Satan” reminds of Uncle Acid in its initial channel-changing and swaggering riff alike — but doomly centerpiece “Creatures of the Woods” and the layered vocal melodies late in closer “Magical Mind” perhaps offer a glimpse at the direction the band could take from here. What matters though is where Hydra are at today, and that’s bringing riffs and nod to the converted among the masses, and From Light to the Abyss offers no pretense otherwise. It is doom rock for doom rockers, grooves to be grooved to. They’re not void of ambition by any means — their songwriting makes that clear — but their traditionalism is sleeve-worn, which if you’re going to have it, is right where it should be.

Hydra on Thee Facebooks

Piranha Music on Bandcamp

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Jason Simon, A Venerable Wreck

Dead Meadow guitarist/vocalist Jason Simon follows 2016’s Familiar Haunts (review here) with the genre-spanning A Venerable Wreck, finding folk roots in obscure beats and backwards this-and-that, country in fuzz, ramble in space, and no shortage of experimentalism besides. A Venerable Wreck consists of 12 songs and though there are times where it can feel disjointed, that becomes part of the ride. It’s not all supposed to make sense. Yet what happens by the time you get around to “No Entrance No Exit” is that Simon (and a host of cohorts) has set his own context broad enough so that the drone reach of “Hollow Lands” and sleek, organ-laced indie of closer “Without Reason or Right” can coexist without any real interruption of flow between them. The question with A Venerable Wreck isn’t so much whether the substance is there, it’s whether the listener is open to it. Welcome to psychedelic America. Please inject this snake venom and turn in your keys when you leave.

Jason Simon on Bandcamp

BYM Records website

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Cherry Choke, Raising Salzburg Rockhouse

You won’t hear me take away from the opening psych-scorch hook of “Mindbreaker” or the fuzzed-on, boogie-down, -up, and -sideways of “Black Annis” which follows, but there’s something extra fun about hearing Frog Island’s Cherry Choke jam out a 13-minute, drum-solo-inclusive version of “6ix and 7even” that makes Raising Salzburg Rockhouse even more of a reminder of how underrated both they are as a band and Mat Bethancourt is as a player. Look no further than “Domino” if you want absolute proof. The whole band rips it up at the Austrian gig, which was recorded in 2015 as they supported their third and still-most-recent full-length, Raising the Waters (review here), but Bethancourt puts on a Hendrixian clinic in the nine-minute cut from 2011’s A Night in the Arms of Venus (review here), which is actually less of a clinic than it is pure distorted swagger followed by a mellow “cheers, thanks” before diving into “Used to Call You Friend.” A 38-minute set would be perfect for an vinyl release, and anytime Cherry Choke want to get around to putting together a fourth studio album, well, that’ll be just fine too.

Cherry Choke on Thee Facebooks

Cherry Choke on Bandcamp

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Pariiah, Swallowed by Fog

It’s a special breed of aggro that emerges as a result of living in the most densely populated state in the union, and New Jersey’s Pariiah have it to spare. Bringing together sludge tonality with elder-style New York hardcore lumbering riffs on their Trip Machine Laboratories tape, Swallowed by Fog, they exude a thickened brand of pissed off that’s outright going to be too confrontation for many who take it on. But if you want a middle finger to the face, this is what it sounds like, and the six songs (compiled into four on the digital version of the release) come and go entirely without pretense and leave little behind except bruises and the promise of more to come. They’re a new band, started in this most wretched of years, but there’s no learning curve whatsoever among the members of Devoid of Faith, The Nolan Gate, Kill Your Idols, Changeörder and others. I’d go to Maplewood to see these cats. I’m just saying. Maybe even Elizabeth.

Pariiah on Bandcamp

Trip Machine Laboratories website

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Saavik, Saavik

So you’ve got both members of Holly Hunt in a four-piece sludging out with spacey synth and the band is named after a Star Trek character? Not to get too personal, but that’s going to pique my interest one way or the other. Saavik — and they clearly prefer the Kirstie Alley version, rather than Robin Curtis, going by drummer Beatriz Monteavaro‘s artwork — are damn near playing space rock by the end of “He’s Dead Jim,” the opener of their self-titled debut EP, but even that’s affected by a significant tonal weight in Didi Aragon‘s bass and the guitar of Gavin Perry, however much Ryan Rivas‘ synth and effects-laced vocals might seem to float overhead, but “Meld” rolls along at a steadier nod, and “Horizon” puts the synth more in the lead without becoming any less heavy for doing so. Likewise, “Red Sun” calls to mind Godflesh in its proto-machine metal stomp, but there’s more concern in Saavik‘s sound with expanse than just pure crush, and that shows up in fascinating ways in these songs.

Saavik on Thee Facebooks

Other Electricities on Bandcamp

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Mountain Tamer, Psychosis Ritual

There’s been a dark vibe all along nestled into Mountain Tamer‘s sound, and that’s certainly the case on Psychosis Ritual, with which the Los Angeles-based trio make their debut on Heavy Psych Sounds. It’s their third full-length overall behind 2018’s Godfortune // Dark Matters (review here) and 2016’s self-titled debut (review here), and it finds their untamed-feeling psychedelia rife with that same threat of violence, not necessarily thematically as much as sonically, like the songs themselves are the weapon about to be turned on the listener. Maybe the buzz of “Warlock” or the fuckall echo of the prior-issued single “Death in the Woods” (posted here) aren’t out there trying to be “Hammer Smashed Face” or anything, but neither is this the hey-bruh-good-times heavy jams for which Southern California is known these days. Consider the severity of “Turoc Maximus Antonis” or the finally-released screams in closer “Black Noise,” which bookends Psychosis Ritual with the title-track and seems at last to be the point where whatever grim vibe these guys are riding finally consumes them. Mountain Tamer continue to be unexpected and righteous in kind.

Mountain Tamer on Thee Facebooks

Heavy Psych Sounds on Bandcamp

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Centre El Muusa, Centre El Muusa

Hypnotic Estonian psychedelic krautrock instrumentals not your thing? Well that sounds like a personal problem Centre El Muusa are ready to solve. The evolved-from-duo four-piece get spaced out amid the semi-motorik repetitions of their self-titled debut (on Sulatron), and that seems to suit them quite well, thanksabunch. Drone trips and essential swirl brim with solar-powered pulsations and you can set your deflectors on maximum and route all the secondaries to reinforce if you want, there’s still a decent chance 9:53 opener an longest track “Turkeyfish” (immediate points, double for the appropriately absurd title) is going to sweep you off what you used to call your feet when that organ line hits at about six minutes in. That’s to say nothing of the cosmic collision later in “Burning Lawa” or the just-waiting-for-a-Carl-Sagan-voiceover “Mia” that follows. Even the 3:46 “Ain’t Got Enough Mojo” lives long enough to prove itself wrong. Interstellar tape transmissions fostered by obvious weirdos in the great out-there in “Szolnok,” named for a city in Hungary that, among other things, hosts the goulash festival. Right fucking on.

Centre El Muusa on Thee Facebooks

Sulatron Records webstore

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Population II, À La Ô Terre

The first Population II album, a 2017 self-titled, was comprised of two tracks, each long enough to consume a 12″ side. Somehow it’s fitting with the Montreal-based singing-drummer trio’s aesthetic that their second long-player, À la Ô Terre, would take a completely different tack, employing shorter freakouts like “L’Offrande” and “La Nuit” and the garage-rocking “La Danse” and what-if-Jefferson–Airplane-but-on-Canadian-mushrooms “À la Porte de Demain” and still-more-drifting finisher “Je Laisse le Soleil Briller” amid the more stretched out “Attaction,” the space-buzzer “Ce n’est Réve” while cutting a middle ground in the greaked-out (I was gonna type “freaked out” and hit a typo and I’m keeping it) “Il eut un Silence dans le Ciel,” which also betrays the jazzy underpinnings that somehow make all of À la Ô Terre come across as progressive instead of haphazard. From the start to the close, you don’t know what’s coming next, and just because that’s by design doesn’t make it less effective. If anything, it makes Population II all the more impressive.

Population II on Thee Facebooks

Castle Face Records website

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At this point in the pandemic, I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this you’ve watched a ‘live stream’ of one sort or another, whether that’s actually a band playing live as it goes out or a special airing of a prior-recorded performance or set. And I feel safe making that assumption because it’s been 10 months, we’ve all had a lot of time at home, and my social media feed has been filled with people increasingly wistful in their “I miss live shows” posts. Myself included.

Well, Hydra, from Pleszew, Poland, released their first album, From Light to the Abyss, through Piranha Music this past August. Only together for about a year before issuing the five-tracker, the band quickly prove with it that they’ve got their heads together when it comes to knowing what they want to do in doom rock and classic, darker-tinged rolling riffage. Wearing their Iommi on their collective sleeve, the band’s songs move between the catchy, almost Uncle Acid-ic “No One Loves Like Satan” to the more oldschool doom of “Secrets of the Undead,” with guitarist Dabek (there’s an ogonek on the ‘a’ his name I can’t get to show up in WordPress, and for that I apologize) and bassist Vanat sharing vocal duties atop the steady progression filled out by guitarist Mieszko and drummer Yahoo. They ask little of the listener in terms of indulgences, riff righteously and very clearly came into their debut knowing what they wanted to accomplish in terms of sound. If you can’t respect that, I’ve got nothing for you.

In addition to the five cuts from From Light to the Abyss itself, the live session premiering in its 47-minute entirety below also includes the new song “The Unholy Ceremony,” which finds the four-piece ranging into including keys for the first time, already showing a propensity for growth and moving forward from the album, which again, has been out for about three months. The video and audio were recorded at their own Acoustic Studio, which might well be named for the tiles of the drop ceiling situated directly above the band as they play. There are three or four cameras working throughout, the audio is pro-shop, and the band are situated with their amps isolated and Yahoo positioned somewhere that I can’t even tell if he’s facing the other three or somewhere else entirely. He gets his own camera and earns it through his play.

So you’ve seen live steams. Fine. Probably you’ve seen one for a band you already know, maybe that you miss seeing on stage. Here’s a chance to do that other great thing that live music lets you do, and that’s discover something cool you might not have encountered before. I’m not about to tell you Hydra are a genre revolution — they’re not — but they’re a band who wanted to make a racket and they’re doing exactly that here. If that doesn’t get you through to the killer nod at the outset of “Magical Mind” in the video below, chances are it’s your own loss.

Because the songs of From Light to the Abyss are presented out of order, and because it’s a cool record, I’ve included the full album stream from Bandcamp at the bottom of this post as well. Some comment from Vanat and more background follows the clip itself.

Please enjoy:

Hydra, From Light to the Abyss live session at Acoustic Studio premiere

Vanat (bass) on From Light to the Abyss live session:

“During the past few months many of our shows have been cancelled. We really missed playing live and so we got inspired to record a live stream. We had many ideas on how to present our material on the web but we finally settled on recording a full show in our studio (Acoustic Studio) where we have also recorded our first album. We wanted it to sound properly which would be hard to achieve without professional support. The space in the studio was quite small but with the help of our friend Szymon we managed to create a nice video.

“Even though we cannot play many concerts right now, we keep on working. We have recently came up with a new single “The Unholy Ceremony” which will probably appear on the next album, but you can already hear this one on the live stream. In this track we maintain our classic style but we also used a synthesizer for the first time to give it a different vibe.”

Recorded at Acoustic Studio by Marcel Kraszkiewicz
https://www.acousticstudio.pl/
Pictures & VFX by Szymon Szpunt
https://www.instagram.com/szpuntoo/

Setlist:
00:00 – Creatures of the Woods
08:10 – No One Loves Like Satan
15:03 – Secrets of the Undead
21:52 – The Unholy Ceremony (NEW!)
30:06 – When the Devil’s Coming Down
38:15 – Magical Mind

HYDRA was formed in 2019 in Pleszew, the hometown of the beautiful stoner doom RED SMOKE FESTIVAL. The band consists of Vanat (bass), Yahoo (drums), Mieszko (guitar) and Dabek (guitar & vocal), who is also well known from another Polish act – Red Scalp.

Piranha Music, an independent label from Toru?, released their full-length debut, “From Light to the Abyss,” on 21 August 2020. The amazing album artwork was designed by Pawel Mioduchowski (of almighty Dopelord).

Hydra is:
Dabek – voc, git
Mieszko – git
Vanat – bass, voc
Yahoo – drums

Hydra, From Light to the Abyss (2020)

Hydra on Facebook

Hydra on Bandcamp

Piranha Music on Facebook

Piranha Music on Bandcamp

Piranha Music on Instagram

Following up on a Heavy Psych Sounds reissue of their 2007 Come Heavy Sleep debut, Swedish heavy rockers Deville have a new video for the song “The Knife.” The track comes from the Malmö four-piece’s 2013 full-length, Hydra (review here), which was also their first release on Small Stone Records. As timing would have it, Deville head out on a European tour this week, having finalized the dates at the start of April, and “The Knife” makes a solid argument for showing up to see them if you happen to be in that part of the world. One doubts they’ll be playing on top of a giant guitar or that there will be huge spinning blades — probably for the best — but as Deville stand in a fine tradition of their country’s heavy rock without bowing to the retro pressures of the current scene, they only make themselves more individualized for their efforts.

Between that conceptual appeal and the actual fruit of Deville‘s songwriting, it doesn’t seem like a way to lose out. “The Knife” was among the most memorable cuts on Hydra, so whether you caught wind of the album or not last year, it’ll be worth either the refresher or the initial exposure to check it out. Rock and roll:

Deville, “The Knife” official video

Music video by Deville performing The Knife.
Taken from the album “Hydra” Small Stone Records 2013.
Directed by: Henrik Christoffersson
Filmed by: Henrik Christoffersson & Peter Tarpgaard
Edited by: Henrik Christoffersson

Europe spring tour is up! New dates added!

25/4 GER Duesseldorf-Pitcher
26/04 CH Lugano TI/STREET/ART Festival
27/04 IT Pescara-Orange Rock Cafè
28/04 IT Roma-Sinister Noise
29/04 IT Santa Croce Sull’ Arno-Rock City
30/04 IT Montecchio Maggiore-E20
01/05 IT Piacenza-Cuncertass Festival
01/05 IT Seregno-Sala Malasangre
02/05 CH St Gallen-Rumpeltum
03/05 IT Torino-Cafè Liber
04/05 FRA Lyon-Le Moko
05/05 FRA Draguignan-Bucephale
06/05 IT Padova-Sotterranei
07/05 FRA Besanqon-Les passagers du Zinc
08/05 BEL Hasselt-Carpe Diem
09/05 GER Munster-Rare Guitar
10/05 GER Berlin-Jaegerklause

Deville on Thee Facebooks

Small Stone Records

Heavy Psych Sounds’ Bandcamp

Even before Hydra is a heavy rock album, it’s a rock album. The third full-length from Malmö, Sweden’s Deville and first for their new label, Small Stone Records, has its roots in Foo Fighters as much as, if not more than Kyuss, and it’s a difference of presentation and method that runs deeper than one might initially think. A lot of the trad stoner tonality that showed up on Deville‘s first two studio offerings, 2007’s Come Heavy Sleep and 2009’s Hail the Black Sky, has dissipated, but if you listen to those two albums in line with the 11 tracks of Hydra, the latest still seems a logical extension of their methods, if one driven in a more straightforward, less fuzz-reliant direction. The band recorded themselves, with drummer Markus Nilsson handling the engineering, so one imagines they knew what they were doing and that the clean, crisp, professional sound they wound up with on these songs wasn’t an accident. Even in terms of the songs themselves, one can see a difference. Not troubling itself with intros, outros or interludes, Hydra also finds Deville tightening the structures of their material, so that in its varied array of moods, there’s only one song reaching over five minutes long — the penultimate “Imperial,” at 6:31 — where each of the prior two offerings has had four. That’s probably not a conscious decision on the band’s part, that is, they likely didn’t sit down and say, “Okay guys, time to write shorter parts,” but it’s another example of Deville departing their stonerly beginnings in favor of a more straightforward take, skirting the lines between hard and heavy rock an an almost track-by-track basis.

Clocking in at a vinyl-ready 44:35, Hydra makes a strong opening statement in its first three tracks, “Lava,” “Iron Fed” and “In Vein.” Each is opened by Nilsson‘s drums and finds vocalist/guitarist Andreas Bengtsson leading the band with guitarist Martin Hambitzer and bassist Markus Åkesson contributing to the momentum. Right away, the band carries across their sonic shift — again, not so drastic that if you heard Deville before you wouldn’t guess you were listening to them again, but still a marked change from the first two records — but if Hydra‘s first volley proves anything, it’s that the tradeoff comes in the band being tighter performance-wise and clearer in their intent. “Iron Fed” chugs through its verse en route to one of the album’s finest hooks, something mid-period Dozer would’ve been proud to hang their hats on, and keeps motion central even in its lead break, which hits right where it should at the end of the second third of the track, right before the chorus comes back in, once and then again with more feeling. Hardly a slowdown, “In Vain”  sees Åkesson come forward in the mix, joined by a guitar swell in the chorus, as Bengtsson pulls back on the vocal thrust to ride the groove kept active by Nilsson‘s upbeat snare. It’s in line structurally with most of the rest of Hydra, but “In Vain” also serves as the first signal that Deville have more to offer in terms of mood than the driving rock they’ve so far presented.

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Leading to a performance at this year’s Desertfest in London, Swedish heavy rockers Deville have announced a run of shows that will take them around Western Europe in support of their new album, Hydra. Their debut on Small Stone (third album overall), Hydra also reportedly has a vinyl issue coming from the Detroit imprint, which sent over the dates and info below:

Sweden’s Deville will be hitting the road starting April 9th in Berlin Germany @ White Trash. The three week tour will also include stops in Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, The Netherlands, and a UK date at Desertfest London on April 26th. In the meantime, do yourself a favor an go get their brand new album Hydra, It is rather fantastic. And yes, there will also be 180g ltd vinyl version available in a few months, but the cd and digital download versions are now available.

Deville on tour
04/09 Berlin, Germany White Trash
04/10 Vienna, Austria The Shelter
04/11 Hohenems, Austria ProKonTra
04/12 Sull’arno, Italy Santa Croce Rock City
04/13 Vercelli, Italy Officine Meccaniche
04/14 Treviso, Italy Punkyreggae pub
04/15 Torino, Italy United Club
04/16 Bologna, Italy Distilleria
04/17 Pescara, Italy Qube
04/18 Milano, Italy Ligera
04/19 Lyon, France Trokson
04/20 Aix-en-Provence, France Le Korigan
04/21 Barcelona, Spain Rock Sound
04/22 Madrid, Spain Sala Barracudas
04/23 Iluntz Taberna Guipuzcoa, Spain
04/24 Paris, France Le KLub
04/25 La Louviere, Belgium La Taverne du Theatre
04/26 London, UK Desertfest UK
04/27 Den Helder, The Netherlands De Engel