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Quarterly Review: Darsombra, Bottomless, The Death Wheelers, Caivano, Entropía, Ghorot, Moozoonsii, Death Wvrm, Mudness, The Space Huns

Posted in Reviews on October 5th, 2023 by JJ Koczan

the obelisk winter quarterly review

Welcome to Thursday of the Fall 202 Quarterly Review. It’s been a good run so far. three days and 30 records, about to be four and 40. I’ve got enough on my desktop and there’s enough stuff coming out this month that I could probably do a second Fall QR in November, and maybe stave off needing to do a double-one in December as I had been planning in the back of my head. Whatever, I’ll figure it out.

I hope you’ve been able to find something you dig. I definitely have, but that’s how it generally goes. These things are always a lot of work, and somehow I seem to plan them on the busiest weeks — today we’re volunteering at the grade school book fair; I think I’ll dig out my old Slayer God Hates Us All shirt from 20 years ago and see if it still fits. Sadly, I think we all know how that experiment will work out.

Anyway, busy times, good music, blah blah, let’s roll.

Quarterly Review #31-40:

Darsombra, Dumesday Book

darsombra dumesday book

Forever touring and avant garde to their very marrow, ostensibly-Baltimorean duo DarsombraAnn Everton on keys, vocals, live visuals, and who the hell knows what else, Brian Daniloski on guitar, a living-room pedal board, and engineering at the band’s home studio — unveil Dumesday Book as a 75-minute collection not only of works like “Call the Doctor” (posted here) or “Call the Doctor” (posted here), which appear as remixes, but their first proper album of this troubled decade after 2019’s Transmission (review here) saw them reach so far out into the cosmic thread to harness their bizarre stretches of bleeps and boops, manipulated vocals, drones, noise and suitably distraught collage in “Everything is Canceled” — which they answer later with “Still Canceled,” because charm — but the reassurance here is in the continuation of Daniloski and Everton‘s audio adventures, and their commitment to what should probably at this point in space-time be classified as free jazz remains unflinching. Squares need not apply, and if you’re into stuff like structure, there’s some of that, but all Darsombra ever need to get gone is a direction in which to head — literally or figuratively — so why not pick them all?

Darsombra on Instagram

Darsombra on Bandcamp

Bottomless, The Banishing

bottomless the banishing

Cavernous in its echo and with a grit of tone that is the aural equivalent of the feeling of pull in your hand when you make a doom claw, The Banishing is the second full-length from Italian doom rockers Bottomless. Working as the trio of vocalist/guitarist Giorgio Trombino (ex-Elevators to the Grateful Sky, etc.), drummer David Lucido (Assumption, among a slew of others) and bassist Sara Bianchin — the latter also of Messa and recently replaced in Bottomless by Laura Nardelli (Ponte del Diavolo, etc.) — the band follow their 2021 self-titled debut (review here) with an eight-track collection that comes across as its own vision of garage doom. It’s not about progressive flourish or elaborate production, but about digging into the raw creeper groove of “Guardians of Silence” or the righteous post-Pentagram chug-and-nod of “Let Them Burn.” It is not solely intended as worship for what’s come before. Doom-of-eld, the NWOBHM, ’70s proto splurges all abound, but in the vocal and guitar melody of “By the Sword of the Archangel” and the dramatic rolling finish of “Dark Waters” after the acoustic-led interlude “Drawn Into Yesterday,” in the gruel of “Illusion Sun,” they channel these elements through themselves and come out with an album that, for as dark and grim as it would likely sound to more than 99 percent of the general human population, is pure heart.

Bottomless on Facebook

Dying Victims Productions website

The Death Wheelers, Chaos and the Art of Motorcycle Madness

The Death Wheelers Chaos and the Art of Motorcycle Madness

Look. I don’t know The Death Wheelers personally at all. We don’t hang out on weekends. But the sample-laced (“We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by the Man — and we wanna get loaded!” etc.), motorcycle-themed Québecois instrumental outfit sound on their second LP, the 12-track/40-minute riff-pusher Chaos and the Art of Motorcycle Madness, like they’re onto something. And again, I don’t know these cats at all. I don’t know what they do for work, what their lives are like, any of it. But if The Death Wheelers want to get out and give this record the support it deserves, the place they need to be is Europe. Yeah, I know there was The Picturebooks, but they were clean-chrome and The Death Wheelers just cracked a smile and showed you the fly that got splattered on their front tooth while they were riding — sonically speaking. The dust boogie of “Lucifer’s Bend,” the duly stoned “Interquaalude” ahead of the capper duo of “Sissy Bar Strut (Nymphony 69)” and “Cycling for Satan Part II” and the blowout roll in “Ride into the Röt (Everything Lewder Than Everything Else)” — this is a band who should bypass America completely for touring and focus entirely on Europe. Because the US will come around, to be sure, but not for another three or four month-long Euro stints get the point across. I don’t know that that’ll happen or it won’t, but they sound ready.

The Death Wheelers on Facebook

RidingEasy Records store

Caivano, Caivano

Caivano Caivano

The career arc of guitarist Phil Caivano — and of course he does other stuff as well, including vocals on his self-titled solo-project’s debut, Caivano, but some people seem to have been born to hold a guitar in their hands and he’s one of those; see also Bob Balch — is both longer and broader than his quarter-century as guitarist and songwriting contributor to Monster Magnet, but the NJ heavy rock stalwarts will nonetheless be the closest comparison point to these 10 tracks and 33 minutes, a kind of signature sleazy roll in “Talk to the Dead,” the time-to-get-off-your-ass push of “Come and Get Me” at the start or the punkier “Verge of Yesterday” — touch of Motörhead there seeming well earned — a cosmic ripper on a space backbeat in “Fun & Games,” but all of this is within a tonal and production context that’s consistent across the span, malleable in style, unshakable in structure. Closer “Face the Music” is the longest cut at 5:04 and is a drumless spacey experiment with vocals and a guitar figure wrapped around a central drone, and that adds yet more character to the proceedings. I’d wonder how long some of these songs or parts have been around or if Caivano is going to put a group together — could be interesting — and make a go of it apart from his ‘main band,’ but he’s long since established himself as an exceptional player, and listening to some of this material highlights contributions of style and substance to shaping Monster Magnet as well. Phil Caivano: songwriter.

Caivano on Instagram

Entropía, Eclipses

Entropía Eclipses

Together for nearly a decade, richly informed by the progressive and space rock(s) of the 1970s, prone to headspinning feats of lead guitar like that in the back end of second cut “Dysania,” Entropía offer their second full-length in Eclipses, a five-track/40-minute excursion of organ-inclusive cosmic prog that reminds of Hypnos 69 in the warm serenity at the start of “Tarbes,” threatens the epic on seven-minute opener “Thesan” and delivers readily throughout; a work of scope that runs deep in the pairing of “Tarbes” and “Caleidoscopia” — both of which top nine minutes long — but it’s there that Entropía reveal the full spectrum of light they’re working with, whether it’s that tonal largesse that rears up in the latter or the jazzy kosmiche shove in the payoff of the former. And the drums come forward to start closer “Polaris,” which follows, as Entropía nestle into one more groovy submersion, finding heavy shuffle in the drums — hell yeah — and holding that tension until it’s time for the multi-tiered finish and only-necessary peaceful comedown. It’s inevitable that some records in a Quarterly Review get written about and I never listen to them again. I’ll be back to this one.

Entropía on Facebook

Clostridium Records store

Ghorot, Wound

Ghorot Wound

God damn, Ghorot, leave some nasty for the rest of the class. The Boise, Idaho, three-piece — vocalist/bassist Carson Russell (also Ealdor Bealu), guitarist/vocalist Chad Remains (ex-Uzala) and drummer/vocalist Brandon Walker — launch their second LP, Wound, with the gloriously screamed, righteously-coated-in-filth, choking-on-mud extreme sludge they appropriately titled “Dredge.” And fuck if it doesn’t get meaner from there as Ghorot — working with esteemed producer Andy Patterson (The Otolith, etc.) and releasing through Lay Bare Recordings and King of the Monsters Records — take the measure of your days and issue summary judgment in the negative through the mellow-harshing bite of “In Asentia,” the least brutal part of which kind of sounds like High on Fire and the death/black metal in centerpiece “Corsican Leather.” All of which is only on side A. On side B, “Canyon Lands” imagines a heavy Western meditation — shades of Ealdor Bealu in the guitar — that retains its old-wizard vocal gurgle, and capper “Neanderskull” finally pushes the entire affair off of whatever high desert cliffside from which it’s been proclaiming all this uberdeath and into a waiting abyss of willfully knuckledragging blower deconstruction. The really scary shit is these guys’ll probably do another record after this one. Yikes.

Ghorot on Facebook

Lay Bare Recordings website

King of the Monsters Records website

Moozoonsii, Outward

Moozoonsii Outward

With the self-release of Outward, heavy progressive psych instrumentalists Moozoonsii complete a duology of pandemic-constructed outings that began with last year’s (of course) Inward, and to do so, the trio based in Nantes, France, continue to foster a methodology somewhere between metal and rock, finding ground in precision riffing in the 10-minute “Nova” or in the bumps and crashes after eight minutes into the 13-minute “Far Waste,” but they’re just as prone to jazzy skronk-outs like in the midsection solo of “Lugubris,” and the entire release is informed by the unfolding psychedelic meditationscape of “Stryge” at the start, so by no, no, no means at all are they doing one thing for the duration. “Toxic Lunar Vibration,” which splits the two noted extended tracks, brings the sides together as if to emphasize this point, not so much fitting those pointed angles together as delighting in the ways in which they do and don’t fit at certain times as part of their creative expression. Pairing that impulse with the kind of heavy-as-your-face-if-your-face-had-a-big-boulder-on-it fuzz in “Tauredunum” is a hell of a place to wind up. The unpredictable character of the material that surrounds only makes that ending sweeter and more satisfying.

Moozoonsii on Facebook

Moozoonsii on Bandcamp

Death Wvrm, Enter / The Endless

Death Wvrm enter

An initial two tracks from UK trio Death Wvrm, both instrumental, surfaced earlier this year, one in Spring around the time of their appearance at Desertfest London — quiet a coup for a seemingly nascent band; but listening to them I get it — and after. “Enter” was first, “The Endless” second, and the two of them tell a story unto themselves; narrative seeming to be part of the group’s mission from this point of outset, as each single comes with a few sentences of accompanying scene-setting. Certainly not going to complain about the story, and the band have some other surprises in store in these initial cuts, be it the bright, mid-period Beatles-y tone in the guitar for “The Endless” (it’s actually only about four and a half minutes) or the driving fuzz that takes hold after the snap of snare at 2:59, or the complementary layer of guitar in “Enter” that speaks to broader ambitions sound-wise almost immediately on the part of the band. “Enter” and “The Endless” both start quiet and get louder — the scorch in “Enter” isn’t to be discounted — but they do so in differing ways, and so while one listens to the first two cuts a band is putting out and expects growth in complexity and method, that’s actually just fine, because it’s exactly also what one is left wanting after the two songs are done: more. I’m not saying show up at their house or anything, but maybe give a follow on Bandcamp and keep an eye.

Death Wvrm on Instagram

Death Wvrm on Bandcamp

Mudness, Mudness

Mudness Mudness

Safe to assume some level of self-awareness on the part of Brazilian trio Mudness who, after unveiling their first single “R.I.P.” in 2020 make their self-titled full-length debut with seven songs of hard-burned wizard riffing, the plod of “Gone” (also an advance single, if not by three years) and guitarist Renan Casarin‘s Obornian moans underscoring the disaffected stoner idolatry. Joined by Fernando Dal Bó, whose bass work is crucial to the success of the entire release — can’t roll it if it ain’t heavy — and drummer Pedro Silvano, who adds malevolent swing to the slow march forward of “This End Body,” the centerpiece of the seven-song/35-minute long player. There’s an interlude, “Lamuria,” that could probably have shown up earlier, but one should keep in mind that the sense of onslaught between the likes of “Evil Roots” and “Yellow Imp” is part of the point, and likewise that they’re saving an extra layer of aural grime for “Final Breeze,” where they answer the more individual take of “This End Body” with a reach into melodicism and mark their appeal both in what they might bring to their sound moving forward and the planet-sucked-anyhow despondent crush of this collection. Putting it on the list for the best debuts of 2023. It’s not innovative, or trying to be, but that doesn’t stop it from accomplishing its aims in slow, mostly miserable stride.

Mudness on Facebook

Mudness on Bandcamp

The Space Huns, Legends of the Ancient Tribes

The Space Huns Legends of the Ancient Tribes

I’m not generally one to tell you how to spend your money, but if you take a look over at The Space Huns‘ Bandcamp page (linked below), you’ll see that the Hungarian psych jammers’ entire digital discography is €3.50. Again, not trying to tell you how to live your life, but Legends of the Ancient Tribes, the Szeged-based trio’s new hour-long album, has a song on it called “Goats on a Discount Private Space Shuttle Voyage,” and from where I sit that entitles the three-piece of guitarist Csaba Szőke, bassist Tamás Tikvicki and drummer Mátyás Mozsár to that cash and perhaps more. I could just as easily note “Sgt. Taurus on Coke” at the start of the outing or “The Melancholic Stag Beetle Who Got Inspired by Corporate Motivational Coaches” — or the essential fact that in addition to the best song titles I’ve seen all year (again, and perhaps more), the jams are ace. Chemistry to spare, patience when it’s called for but malleable enough to boogie or nod and sound no less natural doing either, while keeping an exploratory if not improvisational — and it might be that too — character to the material. It’s not a minor undertaking at 59 minutes, but between the added charm of the track names and the grin-inducing nod of “Cosmic Cities of the Giant Snail Kingdom,” they make it easy.

The Space Huns on Facebook

The Space Huns on Bandcamp

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Quarterly Review: Spidergawd, Eight Bells, Blue Rumble, The Mountain King, Sheev, Elk Witch, KYOTY, Red Eye, The Stoned Horses, Gnome

Posted in Reviews on April 4th, 2022 by JJ Koczan

THE-OBELISK-FALL-2020-QUARTERLY-REVIEW

Here we are in the Spring 2022 Quarterly Review. I have to hope and believe you know what this means by now. It’s been like eight years. To reiterate, 10 reviews a day for this week. I’ve also added next Monday to the mix because there’s just so, so, so much out there right now, so this Quarterly Review will total 60 albums covered. It could easily be more. And more. And more. You get the point.

So while we’re on the edge of this particular volcano, looking down into the molten center of the Quarterly Review itself, I’ll say thanks for reading if you do at any point, and I hope you find something to make doing so worth the effort.

Here we go.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

Spidergawd, VI

Spidergawd VI

Like clockwork, Spidergawd released V (review here), in 2019, and amid the chaos of 2020, they announced they’d have a new record out in 2021 — already the longest pause between LPs of their career — for which they’d be touring. The Norwegian outfit — who aren’t so much saviors of rock as a reminder of why it doesn’t need saving in the first place — at last offer the nine songs and 41 minute straight-ahead drive of VI with their usual aplomb, energizing a classic heavy rock sound and reveling in the glorious hooks of “Prototype Design” and “Running Man” at the outset, throwing shoulders with the sheer swag of “Black Moon Rising,” and keeping the rush going all the way until “Morning Star” hints toward some of their prior psych-prog impulses. They’ve stripped those back here, and on the strength of their songwriting and the shining lights that seem to accompany their performance even on a studio recording, they remain incomparable in working to the high standard of their own setting.

Spidergawd on Facebook

Stickman Records website

Crispin Glover Records website

 

Eight Bells, Legacy of Ruin

eight bells legacy of ruin

The first Eight Bells full-length for Prophecy Productions, Legacy of Ruin comes six years after their second LP, Landless (review here), and finds founding guitarist/vocalist Melynda Marie Jackson, bassist/guitarist/vocalist Matt Solis, drummer Brian Burke, a host of guests and producer Billy Anderson complicating perceptions of Pacific Northwestern US black metal. Across the six songs and in extended cuts like “The Well” and closer “Premonition,” Eight Bells remind of their readiness to put melodies where others fear tread, and to execute individualized cross-genre breadth that even in the shorter “Torpid Dreamer” remains extreme, whatever else one might call it in terms of style. “The Crone” and other moments remind of Enslaved, but seem to be writing a folklore all their own in that.

Eight Bells on Facebook

Prophecy Productions on Bandcamp

 

Blue Rumble, Blue Rumble

Blue Rumble Blue Rumble

Swiss four-piece Blue Rumble bring organically-produced, not-quite-vintage-but-retro-informed heavy psych blues boogie on their self-titled debut full-length, impressing with the sharp edges around which the grooves curve, the channel-spanning, shred-ready solo of the guitars, and the organ that add so much to where vocals might otherwise be. The five-minute stretch alone of second cut “Cosmopolitan Landscape,” which follows the garage urgency of opener “God Knows I Shoulda Been Gone,” runs from a mellow-blues exploration into a psych hypnosis and at last into a classic-prog freakout before, miraculously, returning, and that is by no means the total scope of the album, whether it’s the winding progressions in “Cup o’ Rosie (Just Another Groovy Thing),” the laid back midsection of “Sunset Fire Opal” or the hey-is-that-flute on the shorter pastoral interlude “Linda,” as if naming the song before that “Think for Yourself” wasn’t enough of a Beatles invocation. The strut continues unabated in “The Snake” and the grittier “Hangman,” and closer “Occhio e Croce” (‘eye and cross,” in Italian) shimmers with Mellotron fluidity atop its central build, leaving the raw vitality of the drums to lead into a big rock finish well earned. Heads up, heavy rock and rollers. This is hot shit.

Blue Rumble on Instagram

Blue Rumble on Bandcamp

 

The Mountain King, WolloW

the mountain king wollow

It’s palindrome time on Mainz, Germany’s The Mountain King‘s WolloW. Once the solo-project of guitarist/vocalist/programmer Eric McQueen, the experimentalist band here includes guitarist Frank Grimbarth and guest bassist Jack Cradock — you can really hear that bass on “II In Grium Imus Noctem Aram et Consumimur Igni” (hope you practiced your conjugations) and through five songs, they cross genres from the atmospheric heavygaze-meets-Warning of “I Bongnob” through the blackened crunch of the above-noted second cut to a gloriously dreamy and still morose title-track, and the driving expanse of “V DNA Sand.” Then they do it backwards, as “V DNA Sand” seems to flip halfway through. But they’re also doing it backwards at the same time as forward, so as The Mountain King work back toward album finale “bongnoB I,” what was reversed and what wasn’t has switched and the listener isn’t really sure what’s up or down, where they are or why. This, of course, is exactly the point. Take that, form and structure! Open your mind and let doom in!

The Mountain King on Facebook

Cursed Monk Records website

 

Sheev, Mind Conductor

Sheev Mind Conductor

Berlin trio Sheev prove adept at skirting the line of outright aggression, and in fact crossing it, while maintaining control over their direction and execution. Mind Conductor is their debut album, and it works well to send signals of its complexity, samples and obscure sounds on “The Workshop” giving over the riffs of immediate impact on “Well Whined.” The channel-spanning guitar pulls on “Saltshifter,” the harmonies in the midsection of “All I Can,” the going-for-it-DannyCarey-style drums on the penultimate “Baby Huey” (and bonus points for that reference) — all of these and so much more in the nine-song/53-minute span come together fluidly to create a portrait of the band’s depth of approach and the obvious consideration they put into what they do. Closer “Snakegosh” may offer assurance they don’t take themselves too seriously, but even that song’s initial rolling progression can’t help but wind its way through later angularities. It will be interesting to hear the direction they ultimately take over the course of multiple albums, but don’t let that draw focus from what they accomplish on this first one.

Sheev on Facebook

Sheev on Bandcamp

 

Elk Witch, Beyond the Mountain

elk witch beyond the mountain

Dudes got riffs. From Medford, Oregon, Elk Witch draw more from the sphere of modern heavy rockers like earlier The Sword or Freedom Hawk than the uptempo post-Red Fang party jams for which much of the Pacific Northwest is known, but the groove is a good time just the same. The six tracks of Beyond the Mountain are born out of the trio’s 2021 debut EP — wait for it — The Mountain, but the four songs shared between the two offerings have been re-recorded here, repositioned and sandwiched between opener “Cape Foulweather” and closer “The Plight of Valus,” so the reworking feels consistent from front to back. And anyway, it’s only been a year, so ease up. Some light burl throughout, but the vocals on “Coyote and the Wind’s Daughters” remind me of Chritus in Goatess, so there’s some outright doom at work too, though “Greybeard Arsenal” might take the prize for its shimmering back-half slowdown either way, and “The Plight of Valus” starts out with a seeming wink at Kyuss‘ “El Rodeo,” so nothing is quite so simply traced. Raw, but they’ll continue to figure out where they’re headed, and the converted will nod knowingly. For what it’s worth, I dig it.

Elk Witch on Facebook

StoneFly Records store

 

KYOTY, Isolation

kyoty isolation

If “evocative” is what New Hampshire post-metallic mostly-instrumentalists KYOTY were going for with their third full-length, could they possibly have picked something better to call it than Isolation? It’d be a challenge. And with opener “Quarantine,” songs like “Ventilate,” “Languish,” “Faith,” and “Rift,” “Respite” and closer “A Fog, A Future Like a Place Imagined,” the richly progressive unit working as the two-piece of Nick Filth and Nathaniel Parker Raymond weave poetic aural tapestries crushing and spacious in kind with the existential dread and vague flashes of hope in pandemic reality of the 2020s thus far. Still, they work in impressionist fashion, so that the rumbling crackle of “Onus” and the near-industrial slog of “Respite” represent place and idea while also standing apart as a not-quite-objective observer, the lighter float of the guitar in “Faith” becoming a wash before its resonant drone draws it to a close. At 70 minutes, there’s a lot to say for a band who doesn’t have lyrics, but spoken lines further the sense of verse, and remind of the humanity behind the programming of “Holter” or the especially pummeling “Rift.” An album deep enough you could listen to it for years and hear something new.

KYOTY on Facebook

Deafening Assembly on Bandcamp

 

Red Eye, The Cycle

red eye the cycle

Andalusian storytellers Red Eye make it plain from the outset that their ambitions are significant, and the seven songs of their third full-length play out those ambitions across ultra-flowing shifts between serenity and heft, working as more than just volume trades and bringing an atmospheric sprawl that is intended to convey time as well as place. In 46 minutes, they do for doom and various other microgenres — post-metal, some more extreme moments in “Beorg” and the morse-code-inclusive closer “Æsce” — what earlier Opeth did for death metal, adding shifts into unbridled folk melody and sometimes minimalist reach. Clearly meant to be taken in its entirety, The Cycle functions beautifully across its stretch, and the four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Antonio Campos (also lyrics), guitarist/vocalist Pablo Terol, bassist Antonio Muriel and drummer Ángel Arcas, bear weight of tone and history in kind, self-aware that the chants in “Tempel” brim with purpose, but expressive in the before and after such that they wherever they will and make it a joy to follow.

Red Eye on Facebook

Alone Records store

 

Stoned Horses, Stoned Horses

The Stoned Horses Self-titled

Originally recorded to come out in 2013, what would’ve been/is the Stoned Horses‘ self-titled debut full-length runs 12 tracks and swaps methodologies between instrumentalism and more verse/chorus-minded sludge rock. Riffs lead, in either case, and there’s a sense of worship that goes beyond Black Sabbath as the later “Scorpions Vitus” handily confirms. The semi-eponymous “A Stoned Horse” is memorable for its readiness to shout the hook at you repeatedly, and lest a band called Stoned Horses ever be accused of taking themselves too seriously, “My Horse is Faster Than Your Bike” is a sub-two-minute riffer that recalls late-’90s/early-’00s stoner rock fuckery, before everyone started getting progressive. Not short on charm, there’s plenty of substance behind it in “Le Calumet” like a northern Alabama Thunderpussy or the last cut, “The Legend of the Blue Pig,” which dares a bit more metal. Not groundbreaking, not trying to be, it’s a celebration of the tropes of genre given its own personality. I have nothing more to ask of it except what happened that it sat for nearly a decade without being released.

Stoned Horses on Facebook

From the Urn on Bandcamp

 

Gnome, King

Gnome King

Antwerpen’s Gnome make it a hell of a lot of fun to trace their path across King, their second full-length, bringing in The Vintage Caravan‘s Óskar Logi early for “Your Empire” and finding a line between energetic, on-the-beat delivery and outright aggression, letting “Ambrosius” set the tone for what follows as they careen though cuts like the instrumental “Antibeast,” the swinging and catchy “Wencelas” and the crunching “Bulls of Bravik.” How do they do it? With the magic of shenanigans! As King (which “Wencelas” was) plays out, the suitably hatted trio get up to high grade nonsense on “Kraken Wanker” before “Stinth Thy Clep” and the 11-minute we-can-do-whatever-we-want-so-let’s-do-that-yes closer “Platypus Platoon” buries its later march amid a stream of ideas that, frankly, kind of sounds like it could just keep going. They are adventurous throughout the eight songs and 42 minutes, but have a solid foundation nonetheless of tone and consciousness, which are what save King from being a mess. It’s a hard balance to strike that they make sound easy.

Gnome on Facebook

Polderrecords website

 

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Sandveiss Premiere Live-in-Studio Cover of Kyuss’ “Green Machine”

Posted in Bootleg Theater on March 28th, 2022 by JJ Koczan

sandveiss

Like so many pretty flowers at your feet, cool breeze, clean air — hospitality — the opening riff of Kyuss‘ uber-classic track “Green Machine” is a familiar clarion to the converted. In the hands of Quebecois heavy rockers Sandveiss, it is wielded as if to tell you you’re among friends. In 2020, the band based in la ville de Québec — in Woodland Studio as well as their respective home studios, set themselves to the task of recording a Black Sabbath covers LP that was released this past December under the banner of Sandveiss Bloody Sandveiss as the follow-up to their 2019 sophomore full-length, Saboteur. I guess when they were done with those covers, there must’ve been a collective shrug as to what to do next before someone said, “Uh, ‘Green Machine?'” and about four minutes later they’d nailed it, recorded audio and video and were ready to pack up for the day.

That’s certainly how it seems in the clip, anyhow. Immediate kudos to Sandveiss guitarist/vocalist Luc Bourgeois for carrying the John Garcia vocal part paying homage to the original while adding his own personality to the mix. That’s a hard balance to walk, especially with something so landmark as this song, which it’s kind of reasonable to expect the viewing/listening audience to be able to hear in their heads before they even press play, while he and guitarist Shawn Rice, bassist Maxime Moisan and drummer Dominic Gaumond likewise nail the swinging punk-born groove of Brant Bjork‘s riff-that-launched-a-thousand-ships. There’s no pretense here as to where they’re coming from. Dudes are Kyuss fans. This is very clearly not the first time they’ve attempted to do play “Green Machine,” and they seem wholly comfortable with it, even in a studio setting, running through it live with the cameras rolling.

Sandveiss, according to Sandveiss, have a third long-player in progress now. I don’t know what the recording circumstances are — presumably the reason half of Sandveiss Bloody Sandveiss was made at home was lockdown-related, but they’re back in-person now — or when it’ll be out, but consider this a fun stopgap along the way to that, and go into the video expecting a casual, come-as-you-are-style (the ethic, not the Nirvana track) welcome, because that’s exactly what you get.

Enjoy:

Sandveiss, “Green Machine” live video premiere

Sandveiss is a four-piece rock band from Quebec City, Canada. Here they are covering Kyuss’s Green Machine. Recorded during the Sandveiss Bloody Sandveiss (tribute to Black Sabbath) sessions from 2020 by Broil. After releasing Scream Queen (2013) and Saboteur (2019), Sandveiss are recording their 3rd full length album as we speak.

Sandveiss’ live session of Kyuss’ Green Machine. Recorded at Woodland Studio.

Video
Director: Paul Di Giacomo
Cameraman: Paul Di Giacomo
Editing: Paul Di Giacomo

Music
Produced by Sandveiss
Recorded by Raphaël Malenfant (Broil)
Mixed and mastered by Raphaël Malenfant

SANDVEISS is:
Luc Bourgeois: Vocals, Guitar
Dominic Gaumond: Drums
Maxime Moisan: Bass
Shawn Rice: Guitar

Sandveiss, Saboteur (2019)

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Review & Full Album Stream: WhiteNails, First Trip

Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on May 24th, 2017 by JJ Koczan

whitenails first trip

[Click play above to stream First Trip by WhiteNails in its entirety. Album is out Friday, May 26, via Magnetic Eye Records.]

Quebecois six-piece WhiteNails make a resoundingly cohesive impression with First Trip, which telegraphs its self-awareness even unto its title. Delivered through Magnetic Eye Records, it is the debut release from the Canadian outfit, not just their first full-length, and as an opening argument it speaks to the band having come together last year with some clear idea of what they wanted to do sonically, in form and maybe general style if not the direct specifics of cuts like “Dead in Time” or “Damn Judas.” A mission to make catchy, uptempo, soulful heavy rock, perhaps, and First Trip is the result of that from the first-name-only lineup of vocalist Darcy, guitarists Danahé and Taylor, bassist JP, keyboardist Vince and drummer Maxx, who for all the personnel — they also bring in guest vocalist Gab Shonk on the aforementioned “Dead in Time” — don’t come across as overblown in the slightest.

Throughout the eight-track/41-minute offering, they endeavor to hone a foundation of songwriting to underscore the boogie in cuts like “In My Blood” and the thrust of opener “Shanghaied,” and though their arrangements are full, it’s perhaps in part thanks to the vocal command of Darcy that the record remains grounded, as from the leadoff onward, his presence as a frontman comes through in verses and chorus alike, whether he’s surfing the riff of “Shanghaied” reminding somewhat of Black Thai‘s Jim Healey or calling to mind Gozu‘s Marc Gaffney in “In My Blood” and the layered harmonies of “Silver Linings.” Gozu, in some of their harder-edged post-Queens of the Stone Age swagger, would seem to be an influence across the board.

Still, those vocals are well-balanced in the mix, and the aesthetic remains modern throughout, with a full and willfully distortion driving Danahé and Taylor‘s guitars that finds its most-doom moment in the penultimate “Brazen Bull” after a variety of executions playing around the central heavy rock theme in terms of pace, push and the structure of the riffs that lead, be it the all-forward movement of “Shanghaied” welcoming the listener to First Trip by pulling them through an open doorway of accessibility, or the ultra-catchy companionship that track finds as “Damn Judas” leads off side B. Some of the titles convey a sense of darkness, whether it’s the chugging “Done and Gone” or “Dead in Time,” which come back to back after the opener, or “In My Blood” and “Damn Judas” later — even closer “The Crooked Lake” seems to have some measure of threat in the use of “crooked” — but it’s not until “Silver Linings” that one finds that darkness beginning to come to fruition.

whitenails (Photo Caroline Perron)

And though their cover art might lead one to go into the album immediately searching for an Uncle Acid influence, the amount of strain required to hear it in the riff of “Damn Judas” is enough to make me think it simply isn’t there at all. Okay then. Basically, the crux of First Trip sets itself toward pursuing a solid execution of varied heavy rock songcraft, and it most certainly gets there, building in momentum through the first five songs — if one is listening on CD/DL, the linear momentum flows notably well; I haven’t heard a vinyl edition but the track structure is definitely two-sided — before shifting into that darker terrain on “Silver Linings” and “Brazen Bull” and airing out a bit of psychedelia on “The Crooked Lake,” which marks the most patient stretch of the record and a departure from the preceding ground covered.

Particularly for a debut, it would likely be enough for WhiteNails to acknowledge the need for aural diversity, let alone actually bring it to fruition in the manner they do, but they find a balance between consistency of tone and changes in structure and mood that hints either at prior experience among the members in bands together or at an especially quick-in-developing chemistry at work. One way or the other, the reward is palpable throughout First Trip, up to and including the closer, which with its more prominent keys and fluid guitar lines nods at Vangelis-style atmospherics early and drifts into a markedly satisfying linear build in its second half to pay off the album as a whole. It’s a long way from the party vibe of “Dead in Time” or “In My Blood,” which would seem to be the most motion-minded cuts along with “Damn Judas,” which is a highlight overall, but it serves as an encouraging last-minute defiance of the expectation WhiteNails have already put in effort to establish.

That is to say, they’ve set forth their rules and then almost immediately, gleefully broken them. Again, this is something a penchant one generally expects a group to develop over time — and WhiteNails may yet have more anti-conventionalism up their collective sleeve; I wouldn’t speculate after only one release — but it serves notice to anyone willing to hear it that the band are not at all finished growing. So be it. While the destination where that growth might take them ultimately in terms of style feels open to a range of possibilities, it seems safer to bet that the underlying quality of songwriting will be a continuing factor from WhiteNails as they move forward, as it proves to be the essential statement made by their impressive and cogent first offering.

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