[Click play above to stream Somnuri’s Nefarious Wave in its entirety. Album is out Friday on Blues Funeral Recordings.]

The dive into pummeling intensity isn’t quite immediate on Somnuri‘s Nefarious Wave. They give it about three seconds. And though the Brooklynite trio will showcase a number of different looks on their second album and Blues Funeral Recordings debut — their first LP, 2017’s self-titled (review here, also discussed here), came out through Magnetic Eye, and they’ve since taken part in that label’s ‘Redux’ series twice, on tribute releases for Pink Floyd (discussed here) and Alice in Chains (review here) in 2018 and 2020, respectively, and issued a split LP with fellow NYC noisebringers Godmaker (review here) in 2018 through The Company — Nefarious Wave remains defined at least in part by its volatility, by the notion that at any moment the band can and might kick their sludge until it becomes mad enough to be the thrash and grind it is as they unleash “Tied to Stone” (3:54) and “Tooth and Nail” (2:26) at the outset.

Those two songs comprise just over six of Nefarious Wave‘s total 36-minute run, and the rest of the seven-track outing moves from shortest to longest as it makes its way toward the seven-minute titular cut, and though there’s some letup in tempo and further fleshing out of melody in that process, beginning with third song “Desire Lines” and its blend of weighted crash and airier singing — vocals handled by guitarist Justin Sherrell (ex-Blackout, etc.), who also handles bass here, and bassist Philippe Arman, while drummer Phil SanGiacomo (ex-Family) supplies the crash and mixed — and culmination in a build into angular riffing and throaty shouts worthy of comparison to Swarm of the Lotus. Perhaps it’s because they so very much nailed “Dirt” on the Alice in Chains tribute that one can’t help but hear an edge of grunge in their layered and harmonized vocals, but the context is different as Somnuri make these elements their own, and “Desire Lines” ultimately answers the unmitigated rush of “Tooth and Nail” with a massive lumber that opens wide enough to devour that false sense of security whole. What rough beast, its hour come at last, slouches toward Brooklyn to be born?

They’re not tricky about it. Somnuri aren’t trying to be clever for cleverness’ sake and the prog-noise-metal-sludge they choose at any given moment to inhabit is way more Lifesblood than even Remission, if one has to draw a line to Mastodon as the gallop in the beginning of centerpiece “Beyond Your Last Breath” would seem to warrant. But they wear brutality well, and just because it’s part of the plan rather than the entirety of it doesn’t make their proceedings any less brutal. As it moves into its midsection, a throaty bellow echoes out over a stomping procession, and soon the three-piece are twisting between one riff and the next as SanGiacomo gracefully handles change upon change, a quick stretch of melodic vocals giving way to a comedown before the chug surges forth again to round out. “Beyond Your Last Breath” is transitional no matter the format on which one listens.

It not only finishes side A of the vinyl, but taking Nefarious Wave as a linear entirety — CD/DL — it functions as a lead-in to the three longer pieces that comprise the remaining circa 20 minutes of the release. The longer half, as it were, made up of fewer tracks. Particularly, it’s easy to pair “Beyond Your Last Breath” and “Watch the Lights Go Out,” which follows, in terms of theme. The latter track trades cleaner verses for a harsher pre-chorus before the soaring hook, and feels not quite patient in its execution, but not far off. Its apex, which arrives around 4:40 into its 6:09, is as furious as it is restrained, lurching back and forth on drawn out lines of guitar topped with hard growls, where the beginning of the song, with its ride cymbal and engaging bludgeonry, seemed to recall the impulses that drove “Tied to Stone” and “Tooth and Nail” in we-like-to-start-fast fashion. Can’t blame them, given how well it works.

But “Watch the Lights Go Out,” whatever it carries over from side A and however malevolent its crescendo proves to be, moves Nefarious Wave into its next stage, bringing on the at-first-hypnotic-then-destructive-then-righteously-melodic-then-everything-all-together-then-breakdown-elbow-to-your-face “In the Grey,” the penultimate inclusion on the album and by no means its first tour de force. It’s true that Somnuri save actual patience for the title-track that finishes, but already coming from “Watch the Lights Go Out,” there’s a sense of the reach going wider that sets that up, so that the melodies that top “Nefarious Wave” aren’t out of place and the echoing solo in its first half is no more random than the are-those-keyboards-or-guitar-effects? layer that accompanies the last crashes before the title-track gives over its last minute to noise. One might be tempted to think of that as time to process, but it’s hardly enough for the head-spinnery Nefarious Wave has had on offer throughout.

What carries the album, however, is the sense of control with which the band deliver the material. The songs certainly are not without an element of danger — there’s a feeling at times like they’re pushing themselves physically as well as creatively — and of course a certain amount of confrontationalism is a regional delicacy of NYC, but Somnuri find a niche for themselves amid that tempest, and they’re able to create both a purpose in the album’s structure and a flow within and between the songs to enact that purpose. It would be easy to have Nefarious Wave unfold as base chaos, an extreme-sludge onslaught running the length of an LP, in and out and done. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but the mission here is different and one finds the richness of melody that ensues leaving no less an impression in the end than did the outright violence of the first two songs. You can hear as much in Nefarious Wave as you want to put into hearing it, and any such effort on the part of the listener is given due reward.

Somnuri, “Beyond Your Last Breath” official video

Somnuri on Facebook

Somnuri on Instagram

Somnuri on Bandcamp

Blues Funeral Recordings on Bandcamp

Blues Funeral Recordings on Facebook

Blues Funeral Recordings website

The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Christopher Skowronski of Kings Destroy & Killing Time

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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

I think it’s easiest and most accurate to say that I am simply a musician. Music has been the single most important thing in my life since I was a young kid, it’s what I think about most of the time, it’s what I spend the majority of my free time on. Beside playing and writing songs for the bands I play in now (and many others in the past), I have also produced, engineered, and mixed records with/for other bands. If a good song comes on the radio when I’m driving, I inadvertently play drums on the steering wheel and make my wife crazy. I suppose you could say in the broader sense that I am an “artist” and my medium is music, but that sounds a bit pretentious. So yeah, I’d define myself as a musician and what I do as just creating music. Pretty straight forward.

In terms of how I came to it, that is directly due to my family, particularly my older brother, Steven. I am the youngest of six children, and there was always a lot of old rock music playing in my house when I was a kid. My brother is ten years older than I am, and he was/is a musician. When I was very young—in the early to mid ’70s—he was a teenager listening to mostly classic rock. Sabbath, Kiss, Cheap Trick, etc. So that’s what I was listening to as a kid. He and his friends had a band, and they would play in my basement and do shows in our little backyard. (There is an old photo floating around of me sitting in on bongos during one of these backyard gigs!) In the later ’70s, he got into the first wave of punk, so then I got to listen to The Ramones, The Clash, the Sex Pistols, and then later lots of New Wave, like The Cars, Joe Jackson, etc. He kept playing in bands and started doing club gigs at places like the old Rising Sun in Yonkers and the Left Bank in Mount Vernon. By this time, there were drums and amps in the basement and guitars in his room. So, when he wasn’t around, I would sneak into his room and take out the guitar. (Sorry, Steve!) I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew it was cool! This was probably around the time I was 10, so, like, 1980.

As I moved into my young teens, he started getting heavily into The Replacements, Hüsker Dü, and that kind of stuff. So then I got an education in all of those types of bands. At this point, I had also moved into discovering the New Wave of British Heavy Metal on my own, and became a massive Iron Maiden fan (Up the Irons!). That was kind of my first foray into music that hadn’t come to me directly from him. The punk stuff he had hipped me to also led to me discovering more of the hardcore punk stuff on my own. West Coast stuff like Black Flag and Suicidal Tendencies, some early New York and D.C. stuff. Most of it was music I discovered on my own through friends, though I have a distinct memory of the two of us in his car, driving my mom somewhere. We dropped her off, and as soon as she was out of the car, he said, “Time for some Misfits!” and cranked Walk Among Us. That was definitely the first time I’d heard them.

Anyway, when I was about 12 or 13, I saved up money from a paper route (remember those?) and bought my first guitar: a Harmony Flying V copy from the Montgomery Ward catalog. I was really into the Scorpions at the time, so the V was a no-brainer. I fucked around with it, having no real idea what I was doing. One day, I kept spinning Maiden’s “Flight of Icarus,” trying to figure out how to play it, but having no real clue what I was supposed to do. After picking up the needle about twenty times and making some god-awful random noise with my guitar, he came into my room, a little exasperated, and was like, “Let me just show you something.” He then taught me exactly one thing: How to play a barre chord. It was basically, “This is kind of all you need for now— figure out the rest on your own.” So I just kind of took it from there. I know this story makes it sound like he wasn’t super supportive of me playing, but my read on it was, I was the little brother, and he wanted to see if I was just fucking around with all of this or whether I was serious about it. Eventually, as I got better on my own, he would show me more things here and there, and I think he finally accepted that I was serious about it and was very supportive. To this day, I still send him demos of new songs I write, and he gives me feedback on them. So very long story short, my brother is the primary reason I became a musician. Eventually after playing in a bunch of garage bands, then I met the guys that I still play with now in Killing Time and KD, and became part of that second wave, late ’80s NYHC scene. Started playing in bands and playing shows. That was around 1988/89. Still best friends and playing with all of them today.

Describe your first musical memory.

Playing my oldest sister’s collection of Beatles 45’s. I’m a massive Beatles fan, and it can probably be traced back to that. I think that and the power pop that my brother turned me on to in the ’80s is why I still love really strong vocal melodies and harmonies, even in heavier music.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

I was just talking about this with a couple friends last night. In 1988, I saw AC/DC at the Nassau Coliseum. It was general admission for the floor, and I went with a good friend who was a serious AC/DC fan. The plan was, “We’re getting there early, we’re getting to the front of the line, and when they open, we are getting right up to the front of the stage.” So that’s what we did. Back then, when they opened general admission, you had to run full speed and kind of fight off all the others who had the same plan as you, but we pulled it off. All this is to say that I got to see AC/DC at their prime, pressed right up to the stage, directly in front of Angus’s Marshall stacks for nearly two hours. I was just getting absolutely blasted right in the face by his cranked rig. It was like a religious experience. Probably my fist taste of tinnitus too!

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

I’ve had a couple friends who have had pretty serious struggles with drugs, and have seen them do some really awful shit to me and others in the process. I think my test was learning that really loving and caring about someone isn’t quite enough in those situations. That lifelong friendship doesn’t mean shit to someone in the throes of serious addiction. You just have to learn to to let go to a certain extent. I do think love and support are still essential in a situation like that, but I learned that they aren’t enough, at least in my experience. So I guess that belief was tested and changed as a result.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

For me, it leads to just being fulfilled as a person and feeling like you are continuing to live and grow. That sounds like some self-help book bullshit, but life is a real beatdown most of the time. Just having something you love to do, that you continue learning things about, continue practicing, continue improving upon, is a great way to feel like you are doing something worthwhile with your time on the planet instead of just working to pay bills until you go toes up.

How do you define success?

Making something you are happy with and proud of. That’s it. Probably sounds kind of corny, but it’s true. Everything else good that might happen from what you do after that is just a bonus.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

I saw a woman commit suicide by jumping from the roof of a 12-floor apartment building. Wish I hadn’t seen that.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

An instrumental metal record. I did a little side-project over the last couple of years and put out an instrumental song, but it was more on the jamming, boogie-rock side. I’ve always wanted to write and record a really epic all-instrumental metal record. I actually started working on one near the start of the pandemic, but it turned into me just using some of the material for new Kings Destroy songs.

I’ve also done some visual stuff, like the video I made for “Fantasma Nera” last year. I am by no means a visual artist, and don’t claim to have any real talent for it, but I really enjoyed it, and would love to do more.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

To make you feel like there is something that separates you from the (other) animals. I think that works in terms of both for creating art and experiencing it.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

The New York Knicks finally being in the NBA playoffs again!

https://www.facebook.com/KingsDestroy/
https://www.instagram.com/kingsdestroy_band/
http://www.kingsdestroy.com/
https://kingsdestroy.bandcamp.com/
www.svartrecords.com
www.facebook.com/svartrecords

Kings Destroy, Fantasma Nera (2019)

So during the pandemic, Colin Marston and Ryan Lipynsky teamed up on a project. Am I the only one thinking it’s about damn time? The former is probably as much known as a producer as a musician at this point, but I’ll always remember seeing Marston wailing away on Warr guitar at CBGB’s in 2005 as Behold… the Arctopus! supported the Nano-Nucleonic Cyborg Summoning EP. I think Psyopus was also on that bill? It was quite a day to be alive.

Anyhoozle, dude has gone on to participate in Gorguts, Krallice, the underrated drone outfit Byla, which collaborated with Jarboe, and so on. Lipynsky, meanwhile, has diligently served as frontman of Unearthly Trance since the turn of the century and taken part in an entire spectrum of acts besides, including The Howling Wind, Serpentine Path, Green Dragon, and a ton of others. Both based in Brooklyn, both wildly creative, it seems inevitable that they’d eventually work together.

Oh, hello Arelseum. The new outfit has already issued a bunch of harsh noisy noise noise-type stuff on Bandcamp and Sleeping Giant Glossolalia will present their new album, Arelseum III, on tape, along with their prior, to-date-digital-only works.

The PR wire tells it like this:

ARELSEUM: members of Krallice and Unearthly Trance to release new album “Arelseum III” via Sleeping Giant Glossolalia; new track streaming

Sleeping Giant Glossolalia presents the June 18th release of Arelseum III, the new album by Arelseum.

Arelseum is the new project of Colin Marston (Krallice, Gorguts, Dysrhythmia) and Ryan Lipynsky (Unearthly Trance, The Howling Wind, Reeking Aura).

In addition to a digital release, Sleeping Giant Glossolalia will release the album on cassette as part of a trilogy of cassettes: Arelseum, Arelseum II, Arelseum III.

Stream new track “Woods,” from Arelseum III, here:
https://sleepinggiantglossolalia.bandcamp.com/album/arelseum-iii

Through their many respective projects, Marston and Lipynsky have spent the past two decades prowling the extreme and experimental depths of metal, and have helped move the genre forward. Acquainted since the early 2000s as prolific members of the New York scene, Marston and Lipynsky began Arelseum in 2020 during the pandemic. Arelseum sees the duo combine their talents in an entirely new way: cinematic synth-scapes, for fans of ’70s sci-fi epics, ’80s slasher flicks, and dungeon synth. From suffocating tension to placid tranquility, Arelseum paints vivid scenes using deliciously retro sounds.

Marston, working from his famed Queens, NY studio, Menegroth The Thousand Caves (where he has engineered, mixed and mastered music by all of his own projects as well as such artists as Agalloch, Liturgy, Prurient, and Kelly Moran), states: “It was born out of the remoteness of the pandemic. Ryan starts all the songs and sends me the multitrack with the title. I overdub keys and drums, then edit, arrange and mix. So it’s almost like he’s the singer-songwriter who hands the nice, simple and effective song over to the producer, and I just over-produce the f*ck out of it and accidentally make it LESS commercial. Haha!”

Rather than pinning down any specific musical influences, Lipynsky makes this statement: “The concepts at play are the ideas that go through your head when you are between being barely awake and asleep. Inspiration through exhaustion. The ideas reveal themselves in a unique way that only makes sense when it is complete. This band is about instinctual creativity and the art form of collaboration.”

Arelseum III and the Arelseum cassette trilogy mark another high point for Sleeping Giant Glossolalia, the Brooklyn-based label responsible for an expertly curated slew of releases by artists spanning metal, rock, noise, and electronic genres – Shit and Shine, Couch Slut, Growing, Gnaw, Nastie Band, and Urwelt, to name a few.

Arelseum III tracklist:
1) Owl
2) Below
3) Crux
4) Woods
5) Eleven
6) Meteor

Ryan Lipynsky: contact mics, keyboards, stylophone
Colin Marston: feedback noise, simmons electronic drums, finger drums, keyboards

https://arelseum.bandcamp.com/
http://www.sleepinggiantglossolalia.com/
https://sleepinggiantglossolalia.bandcamp.com/

Arelseum, Arelseum III (2021)

Arseleum, “Swamps”

New York’s Thinning the Herd are moving toward releasing a new album later this year. That’s cool. What’s cooler though is they’ve got a new video to prove it. “Wolves Close In” heralds the first Thinning the Herd long-player since 2013’s Freedom From the Known, and in its instrumental sound and kind of mellow groove, one might be tempted to liken it to “Gaikatt Mountain,” for which the band premiered a video here last year, sort of as a way of announcing their return. The difference, of course, is this song is new and that one was from the album already seven years old, but if further enticement is required, a guest solo by Geezer‘s Pat Harrington certainly doesn’t hurt. More fuzz, you say? That’ll do just fine.

I don’t know in what direction founding guitarist/vocalist Gavin Spielman will ultimately be taking Thinning the Herd as they push through the making of this next record, but with “Wolves Close In,” the intent toward engagement with the natural world is clear. Watch it in the highest definition you can, and bask in the video’s green leaves, flowers in bloom, running water, smooth stones, tall grasses and drone footage of treetops. It’s lush and gorgeous and a reminder that summer means going outside. I would not expect the single track to speak for the entirety of the full-length to come, whenever it might show up, but it is hypnotically engaging just the same and bodes well in its overall flow. You know I’m a sucker for a video in the woods.

And while we’re on the subject, kudos to Thinning the Herd on having a video, in the woods, with a lady in it, and not having that lady be chased and/or killed in that video. Seems like a pretty basic thing, right? You’d be amazed. Lot of misogynist cult murder happening in clips these days. A break from that is refreshing.

Enjoy:

Thinning the Herd, “Wolves Close In” (feat. Pat Harrington) video premiere

The song was recorded by Gavin remotely during the pandemic in the summer of 2020. Written by G Spielman – this is a stripped down instrumental production focused on a more psychedelic bluesy sound. Garth on Drums, Gavin on Guitars, Wes On Bass, this tune features added lead guitar Pat Harrington of Geezer. The song can be found on TTH’s next self-titled drop slated this fall.

Thinning the Herd on Facebook

Thinning the Herd website

Gosh, you know, with four singles released over the better part of the past year, it’s starting to seem an awful lot like Swarm of Flies are heading toward a full-length release. Crazy I know for what started as a social-distancing-era remote project, guitarist Ken Wohlrob (whose brother apparently lives down the road from me, because really, everyone in the universe has ties to Morris County, New Jersey, it’s just a question of whether or not they admit it) of End of Hope and Eternal Black reaching out to New York and seemingly beyond in order to conjure various incarnations of atmospheric heavy and other dirgey sounds. To wit, amid slide guitar from Pat Harrington of Geezer adding an almost Yawning Man-style effect of overarching melody, “Writhe” has a kind of Om-ish meditative aspect with Matt McAlpin‘s vocals and still manages to culminate in abrasive fashion at its peak before the drums tom out.

I missed the release of “Wendigo” in January, but you can stream all four of the Swarm of Flies songs to-date at the bottom of this post. Tell me if you don’t think that’s an album in the works.

Dig:

Pandemic-project Swarm of Flies joined by members of Geezer, Matte Black, and Raw Milk on new single “Writhe.” Song available via streaming services and Bandcamp on March 30, 2021.

SWARM OF FLIES — a new collaborative musical project created by Ken Wohlrob of New York City’s Eternal Black and End of Hope — will be releasing its fourth single, “Writhe,” on March 30, 2021. The song features Matt McAlpin of Matte Black and Dead Satellites on vocals, Pat Harrington of Geezer on slide guitar, and Adam Dausch of Raw Milk on drums. “Writhe” will be available on the project’s Bandcamp page (swarmofflies.bandcamp.com) and also available on streaming services including Spotify and Apple Music.

As with the three previous Swarm of Flies tracks – “Mine All Along,” “The Jaunt,” and “Wendigo” – “Writhe” is a collaboration between all the musicians involved. Wohlrob sent initial track layers to McAlpin, Harrington, Dausch, and frequent collaborator Davis Schlachter (End of Hope, Reign of Zaius), who then responded back with their own contributions.

According to Wohlrob, “Originally, Matt was going to play guitar, but he decided to sing instead and sent back those cool, moody vocal layers.” McAlpin’s contributions helped to take the track in a new, unexpected direction. “That is the fun of Swarm of Flies,” Wohlrob says, “Suddenly the song had this distinct Pink Floyd vibe, which made me think, ‘This needs slide guitar.’ Pat from Geezer is one of my favorite guitarists and a hell of a slide player. He put so much emotion in those ghostly lines.”

“Writhe” was mixed and mastered by Kol Marshall (“Mine All Along,” “Wendigo”) of Suburban Elvis Studios, who along with his production partner Joe Kelly, has also produced albums for Eternal Black and End of Hope. In addition, Marshall has a long list of production credits including King Diamond, Mercyful Fate, Ministry, Usurper, and Absu.

“WRITHE” TRACK CREDITS
– Ken Wohlrob (Eternal Black, End of Hope): guitar, Moog, dub fx, producer
– Matt McAlpin (Matte Black, Dead Satellites): vocals
– Pat Harrington (Geezer): slide guitar
– Davis Schlachter (End of Hope, Reign of Zaius): bass, keyboards
– Adam Dausch (Raw Milk, Metropolly): drums
– Kol Marshall (Suburban Elvis Studios): mixing, mastering

About SWARM OF FLIES:
SWARM OF FLIES is a collaborative musical group created by Ken Wohlrob of New York City’s Eternal Black and End of Hope. The project’s goal is to continue to release new music during the coronavirus pandemic while the members’ other bands are on hiatus. More than just a stopgap, SWARM OF FLIES main focus is creating original music, rather than cover songs, and getting it out into the world as quickly as possible. Instead of crafting an album, Swarm of Flies will release new tracks as they are created. Each song will feature a different lineup of musicians from the heavy music/punk rock community. As of this writing, members of Eternal Black, Rollins Band, Shadow Witch, Fire Party, End of Hope, Witch Taint, Pigface, St. Bastard, Foetus, Reign of Zaius, Thunderbird Divine, Clamfight, Geezer, Matte Black, Dead Satellites, and Raw Milk have joined the project.

https://swarmofflies.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/swarmoffliesband

Swarm of Flies, “Writhe”

Swarm of Flies, “Wendigo”

Swarm of Flies, “The Jaunt”

Swarm of Flies, “Mine All Along”

Friday morning and the Spring 2021 Quarterly Review draws to a close. It’s been a good one, and though there are probably enough albums on my desktop to make it go another few days, better to quit while I’m ahead in terms of not-being-so-tired-I’m-angry-at-everything-I’m-hearing. In any case, as always, I hope you found something here you enjoy. I have been pleasantly surprised on more than a few occasions, especially by debuts.

We wrap with more cool stuff today and since I’m on borrowed time as it is, let me not delay.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

Sonic Flower, Rides Again

Like Church of Misery‘s groove but feel kind of icky with all those songs about serial killers? Legit. Say hello to Tatsu Mikami‘s Sonic Flower. Once upon a 2003, the band brought all the boogie and none of the slaughter of Tatsu‘s now-legendary Sabbathian doom rock outfit to a self-titled debut (reissue review here), and Rides Again is the lost follow-up from 2005, unearthed like so many of the early ’70s forsaken classics that clearly inspired it. With covers of The Meters and Graham Central Station, Sonic Flower makes their funky intentions plain as day, and the blowout drums and full-on fuzz they bring to those cuts as well as the five originals on the short-but-satisfying 28-minute offering is a win academically and for casual fans alike. You ain’t gonna hear “Jungle Cruise” or their take on “Earthquake” and come out complaining, is what I’m saying. This is the kind of record that makes you buy more records.

Sonic Flower on Thee Facebooks

Heavy Psych Sounds on Bandcamp

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Demon Head, Viscera

With Viscera, Copenhagen’s Demon Head make their debut on Metal Blade Records. It is their fourth album overall, the follow-up to 2019’s Hellfire Ocean Void (review here), and it continues the five-piece’s enduring exploration of darker places. Dramatic vocals recount grim narratives over backing instrumentals that are less doom at the outset with “Tooth and Nail” and “The Feline Smile” than goth, and atmospheric pieces like “Arrows” and “The Lupine Choir” and “A Long, Groaning Descent” and “Wreath” and certainly the closer “The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony” further the impression that Viscera, though its title conjures raw guts, is instead an elaborate entirety — if perhaps one of raw guts — and meant to be taken in its 36-minute whole. Demon Head make that LP-friendly runtime a progression down into reaches they’d not until this point gone, tapping sadness for its inherent beauty.

Demon Head on Thee Facebooks

Metal Blade Records website

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Rakta & Deafkids, Live at Sesc Pompeia

Next time someone asks you what the future sounds like, you’ll have a good answer for them. Combined into a six-piece band, Brazilian outfits Rakta and Deafkids harness ambience and space-punk thrust into a sound that is born of a past that hasn’t yet happened. Their Live at Sesc Pompeia LP follows on from a 2019 two-songer, but it’s in the live performance that the spirit of this unity really shines through, and from opener/longest track (immediate points) “Miragem” through the semi-industrialized effects swirl of “Templo do Caos,” into the blower-noise dance party “Sigilo,” the weirdo-chug-jam of “Forma” and the space rock breakout “Flor de Pele” and the percussed buzz and echoing howls of “Espirais,” they are equal parts encompassing and singular. It is not to be ignored, and though there are moments that border on unlistenable, you can hear from the wailing crowd at the end that to be in that room was to witness something special. As a document of that, Live at Sesc Pompeia feels like history in the making.

Rakta on Thee Facebooks

Deafkids on Thee Facebooks

Rapid Eye Records website

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Timo Ellis, Death is Everywhere

A madcap, weighted-but-anti-genre sensibility comes to life in supernova-experimentalist fashion throughout the four songs of Timo Ellis‘ Death is Everywhere. The lockdown-era EP from Ellis (Netherlands, Yoko Ono, Cibo Matto, on and on) makes post-modern shenanigans out of apocalypses inner and outer, and from lines like “this bridal shower is bumming me out” in the unabashedly hooky “Vampire Rodeo” to “the earth will still breathe fire without you!” in “Left Without an Answer,” the stakes are high despite the flittering-in-appreciation-of-the-absurd mood of the tracks themselves. The title-track and “Evolve or Die” blend sonic heft and the experimental pop movement that “Vampire Rodeo” sets forth — the third cut is positively manic and maniacally positive — while “Left Without an Answer” almost can’t help but be consuming as it rolls into a long fade leaving intertwining vocals lines as the last to go, telling the listener to “learn to say goodbye” without making it easy. Won’t be for everyone, doesn’t want to be. Is expression for itself. Feels genuine in that, and admirable.

Timo Ellis on Thee Facebooks

Timo Ellis on Bandcamp

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Heavy Feather, Mountain of Sugar

With not-at-all-subtle nods to Humble Pie and Ennio Morricone in its opening tracks, Heavy Feather‘s second LP, Mountain of Sugar, has boogie to spare. No time is wasted on the 38-minute/11-track follow-up to 2019’s Débris & Rubble (review here), and true to the record’s title, it’s pretty sweet. The collection pits retro mindset against modern fullness in its harmonica-laced, duly-fuzzed title-track, and goes full-Fleetwood on “Come We Can Go” heading into a side B that brings a highlight in the soft-touch-stomp of “Rubble and Debris” and an earned bit of Southern-styled turn in “Sometimes I Feel” that makes a fitting companion to all the bluesy vibes throughout, particularly those of the mellow “Let it Shine” earlier. The Stockholm outfit knew what they were doing last time out too, but you can hear their process being refined throughout Mountain of Sugar, and even its most purposefully familiar aspects come across with a sense of will and playfulness.

Heavy Feather on Thee Facebooks

The Sign Records on Thee Facebooks

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Slow Draw, Yellow & Gray

Don’t tell him I told you so, but Slow Draw is starting to sound an awful lot like a band. What began as a drone/soundscaping project from Stone Machine Electric drummer/noisemaker Mark Kitchens has sprouted percussive roots of its own on Yellow & Gray, and as Kitchens explores textures of psychedelic funk, mellow heavy and even a bit of ’70s proggy homage in “Sylvia” ahead of the readily Beck-ian jam “Turntable” and acousti-drone closer “A Slow Move,” the band-vibe is rampant. I’m going to call Yellow & Gray a full-length despite the fact that it’s 24 minutes long because its eight songs inhabit so many different spaces between them, but however you want to tag it, it demonstrates the burgeoning depth of Kitchens‘ project and how it’s grown in perhaps unanticipated ways. If this is what he’s been doing in isolation — as much as Texas ever shuttered for the pandemic — his time has not been wasted.

Slow Draw on Thee Facebooks

Slow Draw on Bandcamp

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Pilot Voyager, Nuclear Candy Bar

Freak! Out! The 66-minute Nuclear Candy Bar from Hungarian psychedelicists Pilot Voyager might end mostly drifting with the 27-minute “23:61,” but much of the four tracks prior to that finale are fuzz-on-go-go-go-out-out-out heavy jams, full in tone and improv spirit however planned their course may or may not actually be. To say the least, “Fuzziness” lives up to its name, as guitarist/founder Ákos Karancz — joined by bassist Bence Ambrus (who also mastered) and drummers Krisztián Megyeri and István Baumgartner (the latter only on the closer) — uses a relatively earthbound chug as a launchpad for further space/krautrocking bliss, culminating in a scorching cacophony that’s the shortest piece on the record at just under seven minutes. If you make it past the molten heat of the penultimate title-track, there’s no turning away from “23:61,” as the first minute of that next day pulls you in from the outset, a full-length flow all unto itself. More more more, yes yes yes. Alright you get the point.

Pilot Voyager on Thee Facebooks

Psychedelic Source Records on Bandcamp

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The Ginger Faye Bakers, Camaro

Sit with The Ginger Faye Bakers‘ Camaro EP for a little bit. Don’t just listen to the first track, or even the second, third or fourth, on their own, but take a few minutes to put it all together. Won’t take long, the thing’s only 17 minutes long, and in so doing you’ll emerge with a more complex picture of who they are as a band. Yeah, you hear the opening title-cut and think early-Queens of the Stone Age-style desert riffing, maybe with a touch of we’re-actually-from-the-Northeast tonal thickness, but the garage-heavy of “The Creeps” feels self-aware in its Uncle Acid-style swing, and as the trio move through the swinging “The Master” and “Satan’s Helpers,” the last song drawing effectively from all sides, the totality of the release becomes all the more sinister for the relatively straight-ahead beginning just a short time earlier. Might be a listen or two before it sinks in, but they’ve found a niche for themselves here and one hopes they continue to follow where their impulses lead them.

The Ginger Faye Bakers on Thee Facebooks

The Ginger Faye Bakers on Bandcamp

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Neromega, Nero Omega

If you’re not yet keeping an eye on Regain Records offshoot Helter Skelter Productions, Rome’s Neromega are a fervent argument for doing so. The initials-only cultish five-piece are Italian as much in their style of doom as they are in geography, and across their four-song Nero Omega debut EP, they run horror organ and classic heavy rock grooves alongside each other while nodding subtly at more extreme fare like the death ‘n’ roll rumble in closer “Un Posto” or the dirt-coated low end that caps “Pugnale Ardore,” the drifting psych only moments ago quickly forgotten in favor of renewed shuffle. Eight-minute opener “Solitudine,” might be the highlight as well as the longest inclusion on the 24-minute first-showing, but it’s by no means the sum total of what the band have on offer, as they saunter through giallo, psychedelia, doom, heavy riffs and who knows what else to come, they strike an immediately individual atmospheric presence even while actively toying with familiar sounds. The EP is cohesive enough to make me wonder what their initials are.

Neromega on Thee Facebooks

Helter Skelter Productions website

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Tung, Bleak

Some of the made-even-bigger-by-echo vocals from guitarist Craig Kasamis might remind of Maurice Bryan Giles from Red Fang, but Ventura, California’s Tung are up chasing down a different kind of party on 2020’s Bleak, though Kasamis, guitarist David Briceno (since replaced by Bill Bensen), bassist Nick Minasian and drummer Rob Dean have a strong current of West Coast noise rock in what they’re doing as well in “Runaway,” a lurcher like “Spit” later on or the run-till-it-crashes finisher “Fallen Crown,” which the only song apart from the bookending opener “Succession Hand” to have a title longer than a single word. Still, Tung have their own, less pop-minded take on brashness, and this debut album leaves the bruises behind to demonstrate its born-from-hardcore lineage. Their according lack of frills makes Bleak all the more effective at getting its point across, and while they’d probably tell you their sound is nothing fancy, it’s fancy enough to stomp all over your ears for about half an hour, and that’s as fancy as it needs to be. Easy to dig even in its more aggressive moments.

Tung on Thee Facebooks

Plain Disguise Records website

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Oh, hello there. Don’t mind me. I’m just here, reviewing another 10 records today. I did it yesterday too. I’ll do it again tomorrow. No big deal. It’s Quarterly Review time. You know how it goes.

Crazy day yesterday, crazy day today, but I’m in that mode where I kind of feel like I can make this go as long as I want. Next Monday? Why not? Other than the fact that I have something else slated, I can’t think of a reason. Fortunately, having something else slated is enough of one. Ha. Let’s go.

Quarterly Review #31-40:

DVNE, Etemen Ænka

It’s like Scotland’s DVNE threw all of modern heavy metal into a blender and hit “cohesive.” Etemen Ænka‘s lofty ambitions are matched indeed by the cohesion of the band’s craft, the professionalism of their presentation, and the scope of their second album’s 10 component tracks, whether that’s in the use of synth throughout “Towers” or the dreamy post-rock aside in “Omega Severer,” the massive riffing used as a tool not a crutch in “Court of the Matriarch,” closer “Satuya” and elsewhere, and even the interlude-y pieces “Weighing of the Heart,” “Adraeden” and the folkish “Asphodel” that leads into the finale. DVNE have made themselves into the band you wish Isis became. Also the band you wish Mastodon became. And probably six or seven others. And while Etemen Ænka is certainly not without prog-styled indulgence, there is no taking away from the significant accomplishment these songs represent for them as a group putting out their first release on Metal Blade. It’ll be too clean for some ears, but the tradeoff for that is the abiding sense of poise with which DVNE deliver the songs. This will be on my year-end list, and I won’t be the only one.

DVNE on Thee Facebooks

Metal Blade Records website

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Wowod, Yarost’ I Proshchenie

Beginning with its longest track (immediate points) in the 11-minute “Rekviem,” Yarost’ I Proshchenie is the third full-length from St. Petersburg’s Wowod, and its sudden surge from ‘unfold’ to ‘onslaught’ is a legitimate blindside. They hypnotize you then push you down a flight of stairs as death growls, echoing guitar lines and steady post-metallic drum and bass hold the line rhythmically. This sense of disconnect, ultimately, leads to a place of soaring melody and wash, but that feeling of moving from one place to another is very much the core of what Wowod do throughout the rest of the album that follows. “Tanec Yarosti” is a sub-three-minute blaster, while “Proshschenie” lumbers and crashes through its first half en route to a lush soundscape in its second, rounding out side A. I don’t care what genre “Zhazhda” is, it rules, and launches side B with rampaging momentum, leading to the slow, semi-industrial drag of “Chornaya Zemlya,” the harsh thrust of “Zov Tysyachi Nozhey” and, finally, dizzyingly, the six-minute closer “Top’,” which echoes cavernous and could just as easily have been called “Bottom.” Beautiful brutality.

Wowod on Thee Facebooks

Church Road Records on Bandcamp

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Trace Amount, Endless Render

The chaos of last year is writ large in the late-2020 Endless Render EP from Brooklyn-based solo industrial outfit Trace Amount. The project headed by Brandon Gallagher (ex-Old Wounds) engages with harsh noise and heavy beatmaking, injecting short pieces like “Pop Up Morgues” with a duly dystopian atmosphere. Billy Rymer (The Dillinger Escape Plan, etc.) guests on drums for opener “Processed Violence (in 480P)” and the mminute-long “Seance Stimulant,” but it’s in the procession of the final three tracks — the aforementioned “Pop Up Morgues,” as well as “S.U.R.V.I.V.A.L.” and “Easter Sunday” — that Gallagher makes his most vivid portrayals. His work is evocative and resonant in its isolated feel, opaque like staring into an uncertain future but not without some semblance of hope in its resolution. Or maybe that’s the dream and the dance-party decay of “Dreaming in Displacement” is the reality. One way or the other, I’m looking forward to what Trace Amount does when it comes to a debut album.

Trace Amount on Thee Facebooks

Trace Amount on Bandcamp

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Fuzzcrafter, C-D

French instrumentalists Fuzzcrafter issued C-D in October 2020 as a clear answer/complement to 2016’s A-B, even unto its Jo Riou cover art, which replaces the desert-and-fuzz-pedal of the first offering with a forest-and-pedal here. The six works that make up the 41-minute affair are likewise grown, able to affect a sense of lushness around the leading-the-way riffage in extended cuts “C2” (13:13) and the psychedelic back half of “D2” (13:18), working in funk-via-prog basslines (see also the wah guitar starting “D1” for more funk) over solid drums without getting any more lost than they want to be in any particular movement. In those songs and elsewhere, Fuzzcrafter make no attempt to hide the fact that they’re a riff-based band, but the acoustic side-finales in “C3” (which also features Rhodes piano) and “D3,” though shorter, reinforce both the structural symmetry of the mirrored sides as a whole and a feeling of breadth that is injected elsewhere in likewise organic fashion. They’re not changing the world and they’re not trying to, but there’s a mark being left here sound-wise and it’s enough to wonder what might be in store for the inevitable E-F.

Fuzzcrafter on Thee Facebooks

Fuzzcrafter on Bandcamp

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Pine Ridge, Can’t Deny

Pine Ridge‘s second album, Can’t Deny, finds the Russian four/five-piece working in textures of keys and organ for a bluesier feel to tracks like the post-intro opening title-cut and the classic feeling later “Genesis.” Songwriting is straightforward, vocals gritty but well attended with backing arrangements, and the take on “Wayfaring Stranger” that ends the record’s first half conjures enough of a revivalist spirit to add to the atmosphere overall. The four tracks that follow — “Genesis,” “Runaway,” “Sons of Nothing” and “Those Days” — featured as well on 2019’s Sons of Nothing EP, but are consistent in groove and “Sons of Nothing” proves well placed to serve as an energetic apex of Can’t Deny ahead of “Those Days,” which starts quiet before bursting to life with last-minute electricity. A clear production emphasizes hooks and craft, and though I’ll grant I don’t know much about Siberia’s heavy rock scene, Pine Ridge ably work within the tenets of style while offering marked quality of songwriting and performance. That’s enough to ask from anywhere.

Pine Ridge on Thee Facebooks

Karma Conspiracy website

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Watchman, Behold a Pale Horse

Plain in its love for Sabbath-minded riffing and heavy Americana roll, “Bowls of Wrath” opens the three-song Dec. 2020 debut EP, Behold a Pale Horse, from Indiana-based solo-project Watchman, and the impression is immediate. With well-mixed cascades of organ and steadily nodding guitar, bass, drums and distorted, howling vocals, there is both a lack of pretense and an individualized take on genre happening at once. The EP works longest to shortest, with “Wormwood” building up from sparse guitar to far-back groove using negative space in the sound to bolster “Planet Caravan”-ish watery verses and emphasize the relative largesse of the track preceding as well as “The Second Death,” which follows. That closer is a quick four minutes that’s slow in tempo, but the lead-line cast overtop the mega-fuzzed central riff is effective in creating a current to carry the listener from one bank of the lake of fire to the other. In 15 minutes, multi-instrumentalist/vocalist/producer Roy Waterford serves notice of intention for a forthcoming debut LP to be titled Doom of Babylon, and it is notice worth heeding.

Watchman on Instagram

Watchman on Bandcamp

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Bomg, Peregrination

Bomg‘s Peregrination isn’t necessarily extreme the way one thinks of death or black metal as extreme styles of heavy metal, but is extreme just the same in terms of pushing to the outer limits of the aesthetics involved. The album’s four track, “Electron” (38:12), “Perpetuum” (39:10), “Paradigm” (37:17) and “Emanation” (37:49), could each consume a full 12″ LP on their own, and presented digitally one into the next, they are a tremendous, willfully unmanageable two-and-a-half-hour deep-dive into raw blowout dark psychedelic doom. The harsh rumble and noise in “Perpetuum” some 28 minutes on sounds as though the Ukrainian outfit have climbed the mountains of madness, and there is precious little clarity to be found in “Paradigm” or “Emanation” subsequent as they continue to hammer the spike of their manifestations deeper into the consciousness of the listener. From “Electron” onward, the self-recording Kyiv trio embark on this overwhelming journey into the unknown, and they don’t so much invite you along as unveil the devastating consequences of having made the trip. Righteously off-putting.

Bomg on Thee Facebooks

Robustfellow Productions on Bandcamp

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White Void, Anti

As much as something can fly under the radar and be a Nuclear Blast release, I’m more surprised by the hype I haven’t heard surrounding White Void‘s debut album, Anti. Pulling together influences from progressive European-style heavy rock, classic metal, cult organ, New Wave melodies and a generally against-grain individualism, it is striking in its execution and the clear purpose behind what it’s doing. It’s metal and it’s not. It’s rock and it’s pop and it’s heavy and it’s light and floating. And its songs have substance as well as style. With Borknagar‘s Lars Nedland as the founding principal of the project, the potential in Anti‘s eight component tracks is huge, and if one winds up thinking of this as post-black metal, it’s a staggeringly complex iteration of it to which this and any other description I’ve seen does little justice. It’s going to get called “prog” a lot because of the considered nature of its composition, but that’s barely scratching the surface of what’s happening here.

White Void on Thee Facebooks

Nuclear Blast Records store

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Day of the Jackal, Day Zero

Leeds, UK, four-piece Day of the Jackal bring straight-ahead hard rock songwriting and performance with an edge of classic heavy. There’s a Guns ‘n’ Roses reference in “Belief in a Lie” if you’re up for catching it, and later cuts like “Riskin’ it All” and “‘Til the Devil” have like-minded dudes-just-hit-on-your-girlfriend-and-you’re-standing-right-there vibes. They’re a rock band and they know it, and while I was a little bummed out “Rotten to the Core” wasn’t an Overkill cover, the 10 songs of love and death that pervade this debut long-player are notably hooky from “On Your Own” to “Deadfall” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll Deathride,” which casually inhabits biker riffing with no less ease of movement than the band would seem to do anything else. Production by James “Atko” Atkinson of Gentlemans Pistols highlights the clarity of the performance rather than giving a rawer glimpse at who Day of the Jackal might be on stage, but there’s plenty of vitality to go around in any case, and it’s headed your way from the moment you start the record.

Day of the Jackal on Thee Facebooks

Day of the Jackal on Bandcamp

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Green Druid, At the Maw of Ruin

Following their 2018 debut, Ashen Blood (review here), Denver heavy lifters Green Druid give due breadth to their closing take on Portishead‘s “Threads,” but the truth is that cover is set up by the prior five tracks of huge-sounding riffery, basking in the varying glories of stoner doom throughout opener “The Forest Dark” while keeping an eye toward atmospheric reach all the while. It is not just nod and crush, in other words, in Green Druid‘s arsenal throughout At the Maw of Ruin, and indeed, “End of Men” and “Haunted Memories” bridge sludge and black metal screaming as “A Throne Abandoned” offers surprising emotional urgency over its ready plod, and the long spoken section in “Desert of Fury/Ocean of Despair” eventually gives way not only to the most weighted slamming on offer, but a stretch of noise to lead into the closer. All along the way, Green Druid mark themselves out as a more complex outfit than their first record showed them to be, and their reach shows no sign of stopping here either.

Green Druid on Thee Facebooks

Earache Records website

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Proto-metal with tendencies toward Bowie up front and Bonham in back, Space Amazon by Pandora is another in the long line of lost private pressings of elder days being given due with a proper vinyl release. With a bonus 7″ and 16-page booklet with pics and the story of the band, if you’re wondering who Pandora are now, chances are you won’t be by the time you’re through the thing. Supreme Echo Records is the party responsible for… well, the party… and they have preorders up now and a couple tracks streaming through Bandcamp. You’ll note the production by Joe Battaglia of Granicus, and while I’m not even going to try to register these dudes on the scale of the politics in their lyrics — songs like “King Queen” and “Only Seventeen,” etc. — they are, to say the very least, of their era.

You can hear the Who and Zeppelin comparisons alike in the tracks below, and further, I think you can hear that New York has been a coke town forever.

Enjoy:

PANDORA – “Space Amazon” LP + 7” EP (1974) ORDER NOW — IT IS HERE!!

Release date April 16

Preorder: https://supremeecho.bandcamp.com/album/pandora

“majestic Who-like power chords, Zeppelinesque panache, plaster-cracking castrato vocals and poetic Spiders from Mars lyrics” – Doug Sheppard / Ugly Things.

New York City’s mysterious lost & found hard rock / protopunk-metal masterpiece from 1974 — Pandora echoed of stardom with dynamic rhythms, fuzz-drenched guitar dexterity, and flamboyant, vigorous rockstar vocals. A world class group with members of Plum Nelly, Black Widow, David Johansen, Twisted Sister, and The Demons. 10 songs engineered by Joe Battaglia (Granicus) meticulously remastered by Audu Obaje. Detailed 16pg booklet with bio / photos.

“solid, spangled raunch far truer to the spirit of the era than the Kiss reunion tour was, with a garage spunk that’s more white-punks-on-hope than 8-track flashback” – David Fricke / Rolling Stone Magazine. Fully authorized and on vinyl for the first time. LP + EP. 700 copies.

SE36 + SE37

https://www.facebook.com/supremeecholabel/
https://supremeecho.bandcamp.com/
https://supremeecho.bigcartel.com/

Pandora, Space Amazon (1974/2021)