German three-piece Mills of God released their first and only full-length, Call of the Eastern Moon, in 2008. I still have the CD, and they were how I learned the Longfellow poem — “Though the mills of God grind slowly,/Yet they grind exceeding small;/Though with patience he stands waiting,/With exactness grinds he all.” — that I quoted when I reviewed the album less than two months after starting this site.

Let us not mince words. I was all about this record. All about it. Comprised of two 21-minute, vinyl-side-consuming (not that that mattered as much in the late aughts, but it was starting to) extended pieces in the opening title-track (21:22) and “Monolith” (21:49), which follows. I don’t actually know if the album ever received a vinyl release, but it certainly deserved one. The Saarbrücken-based trio of guitarist Moritz Czarny, bassist/guitarist Kai Peifer and drummer Christoph Salzmann — who recorded this but was soon replaced by Patrick Alt — were taking the lumbering sensibilities of Earth and Sleep and blasting them into a raw vision of space that I thought was right up there in formative cosmic doom with what YOB and Ufomammut were doing. Not to harp on that comparison, but I can hear a little bit of what YOB would do a few years later on Atma in “Call of the Eastern Moon.” Maybe Mills of God were a few years ahead of their time.

Bob Weston from Shellac mastered it, Tom Denney did the cover art, and even now when I listen to the combination of spaciousness and crush, all I hear is potential in what Mills of God were doing the better part of a decade and a half ago. The CD version also included the earlier track “The Seed” and so was about an hour long and wholly immersive. You put it on and got lost in it. Or I did, anyhow. A lot. This was one of those records that I went back to plenty of times and still obviously think about every now and then.

The lesson I learned from it though is that sometimes things don’t happen the way you think they will or should. To wit, I thought Mills of God were going to be huge — looking back on that, they’re a band with 20-minute-long instrumental tracks, so maybe “huge” is relative anyway — and I heard in their music a genuinely interesting take on what had been done before and what was happening around them. On their first long-player, they’d succeeded in finding a niche and capturing the listener across a span of time that cast its atmosphere in tones that were encompassing without losing their natural sound — the rumble of bass beneath the pulled lead guitar of “Call of the Eastern Moon” is nothing if not organic in its push of air — and all I could think of was their potential. Man, when people heard this, they were going to lose their minds. How could they not?

Here’s a good one. When I interviewed Peifer in April 2009, I actually said in the intro, “…it’s abundantly clear that this trip is just beginning.”

You see where this is going. The band never did anything else.

In hindsight, I’m all the more glad they put “The Seed” on the CD for archival purposes, because it means Call of the Eastern Moon is essentially a discography release for Mills of God. Whatever abundance of clarity I might’ve perceived was dead wrong. The lesson I learned from Mills of God and Call of the Eastern Moon is that sometimes, for whatever reason, it just doesn’t happen the way you think it will or should. And I’ve seen it tons of times since, with bands who I think are awesome who don’t catch on with an audience the way they do with me, or others that do and leave me cold, or who do something great and then either have the rug pulled out from under them or do the pulling themselves.

There are any number of reasons a band might put out just one album and call it quits — I should know — but the work Mills of God did on Call of the Eastern Moon still holds up. If it hit my inbox today, I probably wouldn’t hail it as revolutionary these years later, but that certainly wouldn’t be any fault of the band’s own. In its tone, plod and atmospheric reach, they had a lot to offer a listener, and I think maybe even more in “Monolith” than the title-track, as the second cut unfolded with such a patient twist, holding back its guitar solo for the first few minutes while setting up the central march that would make Dopethrone-era Electric Wizard proud.

Another lost classic of pre-mobile social media? Maybe. They still have a MySpace page sort of up — their label, Modus Operandi Records, is in their top eight — and they’re on Facebook, though there’s been no activity there for nearly a decade since, presumably, they put Call of the Eastern Moon on Bandcamp.

In the aforementioned interview with Peifer, he said they had new stuff in the works — with vocals — for as early as 2010, but that, “There is no specific plan for the band. We want to play as much shows as possible, to do as much recording as possible and to have as much fun as possible! Though we get a lot of positive feedback for our recent record from all over the world, it’s still difficult for us to find opportunities for performing live. But well… what can I say… since there are no plans for becoming famous anyway we don’t care too much about that, ha ha!”

Whether or not the band ever actually hit the studio for a follow-up to Call of the Eastern Moon, I don’t know. And that’s another lesson from Mills of God. Say the things you don’t know. I try and do it all the time. Question assumptions, check facts, and so on, but I still make mistakes every day. Sometimes all day. It’s hard to hiccup before you say something you think you know and go, “wait, do I really know this?” but worth the effort to get it right. I wish Mills of God had done more, and who knows, maybe someday they will, but it’s ‘abundantly clear’ that, to this point, it wasn’t to be.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

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Someone said a nice thing about me on the internet yesterday. Actually, it wasn’t someone, and it wasn’t just one person. Todd Severin of Ripple Music put up a post of very kind words about me and particularly about this site and that launched something of a love-fest for The Obelisk that, since I’m emotionally unable to separate myself from it, had me blushing all day. I think I can embed it? Here it is if you’re interested.

I guess you have to click it to read? Whatever. It was awfully sweet, and it came at a moment when it was just about appreciated as much as it could be. I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say about why, but I got news yesterday and it looks like I’m not going to be able to go to Roadburn this year, and since by all current status lights it seems to be a go for the festival to happen, it will be the first one I’m missing since 2009. That’s a hard bummer to swallow and yesterday sucked accordingly. I knew it was coming. But still.

My son said the other day he wished he didn’t have a father. I died a little. Tried not to react on the surface but he could obviously tell he bummed me out because I’ve zero poker face ever and he’s since followed up with “I don’t like you” and “I don’t love you” on regular rotation. I haven’t gotten “I hate you” yet, but he’s been throwing around “hating” various things — school, wearing shirts, etc. — and I’m just kind of waiting for it. There is no doubt in my mind we’ll get there. Just as there was never a doubt in my mind I’d hear these things. I guess perhaps I just didn’t think it would come when he was four years old.

Parents of teenagers be like, “Oh you think it’s bad now, just wait.” Fine.

He doesn’t like that I can pick him up and put him where he needs to be. I try not to do it, but sometimes it’s time to go and he’s still ADHD dicking around and the extra time you’ve accommodated is gone and you need to do the thing. He bites, he kicks. Yesterday, I spent eight earth minutes trying to wrestle him into a diaper while he kept kicking and pulling his feet out. Meanwhile, he refuses to have anything to do with a toilet and insists on diapers, which, fine. But let me put them on. I finally threw the pack of diapers in the next room, closed the door, locked it and told him I was never going to put another diaper on him. He lost his fucking mind. He’s terrified of the potty. We read a couple books and I asked him if he wanted to try again when he was calm but told him that if he fought me again on it like that that we were done with diapers. Which we should be anyway.

When he tells me “I don’t like you,” I tell him “That’s too bad. I like you a lot.” It’s true most of the time. One time I said, “That’s alright, kid. I didn’t like my dad either.”

I hope he invites me to his wedding.

Mixed bag of a week, then. He had Monday off from school because of MLK and yesterday was a delayed opening for weather. I thank my mother for babysitting and The Patient Mrs. for taking him yesterday so I could work on Quarterly Review stuff. I don’t deserve the people in my life. The Pecan included.

We went for a run around the block this morning. Him, me and The Patient Mrs. The school swapped his bus schedule (comes later now, because fucking of course), so we had time. It’d be nice to build that habit. I’m too crazy for that shit though. Thinking about exercise, my body, all that stuff. I need to write that book about being a dude with an eating disorder. It’s like the only relevant thing I’ve ever had to say about anything and I’m not saying it. Feels like a missed opportunity.

Hours in the day. Cells in the brain.

Gonna punch out. I have another post to put together and if I can, I’d like to shower. So, great and safe weekend. Have fun, hydrate, all that stuff. New Gimme show today at 5PM Eastern. You won’t listen, I’m pretty sure nobody does, but I still feel like I need to plug it just in case.

Thanks for reading.

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Listening to monstrous German psyche-doomers Mills of God‘s Modus Operandi debut, Call of the Eastern Moon (reviewed here), the trenchant pace with which its two tracks unfold is as much a part of the music as the notes that comprise it. The instrumental trio of bassist Kai Peifer, guitarist Moritz Czerny and drummer Patrick Alt induces a Yob/Ufomammut-style hypnosis without ever copycatting and over the course of the two new tracks on the record exercise a sonic lethargy that grooves on arterial doom and pulled strings.

It’s as though they asked Max Ludwig, who recorded Call of the Eastern Moon, “How much tape do you have?” and then without waiting for the answer, said, “We’ll take it.” It’s a rare band that works with a format as distinct as “20-minute doom epics only,” but Mills of God present an encompassing crush that draws you in for a listen and dismisses you only after the marrow is gone.

They first appeared with “The Seed,” in 2005. The song makes an appearance as track three of three on the CD version (the vinyl is just the two new songs) and is less set in its mission than its companion cuts — perhaps replacing then-drummer Christoph Salzmann with Alt had something to do with that — but the growth is nonetheless evident in even the most superficial listen. A Bob Weston (Shellac) mastering job makes Call of the Eastern Moon sound sharp and mean and loud, and it’s abundantly clear that this trip is just beginning.

After the jump, Peifer checks in with the band’s ambitions and processes, including how they got started, whether or not they’d ever add a vocalist to the mix, how slow is too slow, and when we might expect another installment of their thickly riffed madness.

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Though the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting,
With exactness grinds he all.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Longfellow was right; Mills of God grind really fucking slowly. The German instrumental trio’s first full-length, Call of the Eastern Moon (Modus Operandi), is like a dopesmoking Jerusalem-bound pilgrimmage led by Yob and Ufomammut marching to the beat of half-speed Earthless, and with bonus cut “The Seed” included on the CD version — the vinyl only has the title track and the aptly-named “Monolith” — there’s over an hour’s worth of riffed out psychedelic doom to expand (and blow) your mind.

Just to reiterate the math in that last sentence: three tracks, an hour-plus. “Call of the Eastern Moon” clocks in at 21:25 (hell, it’s barely begun until seven minutes in!), “Monolith” is 21:51 and “The Seed” is a measly 19:57. If you’ve ever gotten down with some long-format doom, I highly suggest you start paying attention to these dudes right now.

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