We press on, until the end, though tired and long since out of adjectival alternatives to ‘heavy.’ The only way out is through, or so I’m told. Therefore, we go through.

Morale? Low. Brain, exhausted. The shit? Hit the fan like three days ago. The walls, existentially speaking, are a mess. Still, we go through.

Two more days to go. Thanks for reading.

Winter 2023 Quarterly Review #81-90:

Farflung, Like Drones in Honey

No question Farflung are space rock. It’s not up for debate. They are who they are and on their 10th full-length, Like Drones in Honey (on Sulatron, which suits both them and label), they remain Farflung. But whether it’s the sweet ending of the “Baile an Doire” or the fuzz riffing beneath the sneer of “King Fright” and the careening garage strum of “Earthmen Look Alike to Me,” the album offers a slew of reminders that as far out as Farflung get — and oh my goodness, they go — the long-running Los Angeles outfit were also there in the mid and late ’90s as heavy rock and, in California particularly, desert rock took shape. Of course, opener “Acid Drain” weaves itself into the fabric of the universe via effects blowout and impulse-engine chug, and after that finish in “Baile an Doire,” they keep the experimentalism going on the backwards/forwards piano/violin of “Touch of the Lemmings Kiss” and the whispers and underwater rhythm of closer “A Year in Japan,” but even in the middle of the pastoral “Tiny Cities Made of Broken Teeth” or in the second half of the drifting “Dludgemasterpoede,” they’re space and rock, and it’s worth not forgetting about the latter even as you blast off with weirdo rocket fuel. Like their genre overall, like Sulatron, Farflung are underrated. It is lucky that doesn’t slow their outbound trip in the slightest.

Farflung on Facebook

Sulatron Records webstore

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Neptunian Maximalism, Finis Gloriae Mundi

Whether you want to namedrop one or another Coltrane or the likes of Amon Düül or Magma or whoever else, the point is the same: Neptunian Maximalism are not making conventional music. Yeah, there’s rhythm, meter, even some melody, but the 66-minute run of the recorded-on-stage Finis Gloriae Mundi isn’t defined by songs so much as the pieces that make up its consuming entirety. As a group, the Belgians’ project isn’t to write songs to much as to manifest an expression of an idea; in this case, apparently, the end of the world. A given stretch might drone or shred, meditate in avant-jazz or move-move-move-baby in heavy kosmiche push, but as they make their way to the two-part culmination “The Conference of the Stars,” the sense of bringing-it-all-down is palpable, and so fair enough for their staying on theme and offering “Neptunian’s Raga Marwa” as a hint toward the cycle of ending and new beginnings, bright sitar rising out of low, droning, presented-as-empty space. For most, their extreme take on prog and psych will simply be too dug in, too far from the norm, and that’s okay. Neptunian Maximalism aren’t so much trying to be universal as to try to commune with the universe itself, wherever that might exist if it does at all. End of the world? Fine. Let it go. Another one will come along eventually.

Neptunian Maximalism on Facebook

I, Voidhanger Records on Bandcamp

Utech Records store

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Near Dusk, Through the Cosmic Fog

Four years after their 2018 self-titled debut (review here), Denver heavy rock and rollers Near Dusk gather eight songs across and smooth-rolling, vinyl-minded 37 minutes for Through the Cosmic Fog, which takes its title from the seven-and-a-half-minute penultimate instrumental “Cosmic Fog,” a languid but not inactive jam that feels especially vital for the character it adds among the more straightforward songs earlier in the record — the rockers, as it were — that comprise side A: “The Way it Goes,” “Spliff ’em All,” and so on. “Cosmic Fog” isn’t side B’s only moment of departure, as the drumless guitar-exploration-into-acoustic “Roses of Durban” and the slower rolling finisher “Slab City” fill out the expansion set forth with the bluesy solo in the back end of “EMFD,” but the strength of craft they show on the first four songs isn’t to be discounted either for the fullness or the competence of their approach. The three-piece of Matthew Orloff, Jon Orloff and Kellen McInerney know where they’re coming from in West Coast-style heavy, not-quite-party, rock, and it’s the strength of the foundation they build early in the opening duo and “The Damned” and “Blood for Money,” that lets them reach outward late, allowing Through the Cosmic Fog to claim its space as a classically structured, immediately welcome heavy rock LP.

Near Dusk on Facebook

Near Dusk on Bandcamp

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Simple Forms, Simple Forms EP

The 2023 self-titled debut EP from Portland, Oregon’s Simple Forms collects four prior singles issued over the course of 2021 and 2022 into one convenient package, and even if you’ve been keeping up with the trickle of material from the band that boasts members of YOB, (now) Hot Victory, Dark Castle and Norska, hearing the tracks right next to each other does change the context somewhat, as with the darker turn of “From Weathered Hand” after “Reaching for the Shadow” or the way that leadoff and “Together We Will Rest” seem to complement each other in the brightness of the forward guitar, a kind of Euro-style proggy noodling that reminds of The Devil’s Blood or something more goth, transposed onto a forward-pushing Pacific Northwestern crunch. The hints of black metal in the riffing of “The Void Beneath” highlight the point that this is just the start for guitarists Rob Shaffer and Dustin Rieseberg, bassist Aaron Rieseberg and grunge-informed frontman Jason Oswald (who also played drums and synth here), but already their sprawl is nuanced and directed toward individualism. I don’t know what their plans might be moving forward, but if the single releases didn’t highlight their potential, certainly the four songs all together does. A 19-minute sampler of what might be, if it will be.

Simple Forms on Facebook

Simple Forms on Bandcamp

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Lybica, Lybica

Probably safe to call Lybica a side-project for Justin Foley, since it seems unlikely to start taking priority over his position as drummer in metalcore mainstays Killswitch Engage anytime soon, but the band’s self-titled debut offers a glimpse of some other influences at work. Instrumental in its entirety, it comes together with Foley leading on guitar joined by bassist Doug French and guitarist Joey Johnson (both of Gravel Kings) and drummer Chris Lane (A Brilliant Lie), and sure, there’s some pretty flourish of guitar, and some heavier, more direct chugging crunch — “Palatial” in another context might have a breakdown riff, and the subsequent “Oktavist” is more directly instru-metal — but even in the weighted stretch at the culmination of “Ferment,” and in the tense impression at the beginning of seven-minute closer “Charyou,” the vibe is more in line with Russian Circles than Foley‘s main outfit, and clearly that’s the point. “Ascend” and “Resonance” open the album with pointedly non-metallic atmospheres, and they, along with the harder-hitting cuts and “Manifest,” “Voltaic” and “Charyou,” which bring the two sides together, set up a dynamic that, while familiar in this initial stage, is both satisfying in impact and more aggressive moments while immersive in scope.

Lybica on Facebook

Lybica on Bandcamp

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Bird, Walpurgis

Just as their moniker might belong to some lost-classic heavy band from 1972 one happens upon in a record store, buys for the cover, and subsequently loves, so too does Naples four-piece Bird tap into proto-metal vibes on their latest single Walpurgis. And that’s not happenstance. While their production isn’t quite tipped over into pure vintage-ism, it’s definitely organic, and they’ve covered the likes of Rainbow, Uriah Heep and Deep Purple, so while “Walpurgis” itself leans toward doom in its catchy and utterly reasonable three-plus minutes, there’s no doubt Bird know where their nest is, stylistically speaking. Given a boost through release by Olde Magick Records, the single-songer follows 2021’s The Great Beast From the Sea EP, which proffered a bit more burl and modern style in its overarching sound, so it could be that as they continue to grow they’re learning a bit more patience in their approach, as “Walpurgis” is nestled right into a tempo that, while active enough to still swing, is languid just the same in its flow, with maybe a bit more rawness in the separation of the guitar, bass, drums and organ. Most importantly, it suits the song, and piques curiosity as to where Bird go next, as any decent single should.

Bird on Facebook

Olde Magick Records on Bandcamp

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Pseudo Mind Hive, Eclectica

Without getting into which of them does what where — because they switch, and it’s complicated, and there’s only so much room — the core of the sound for Melbourne-based four-piece Pseudo Mind Hive is in has-chops boogie rock, but that’s a beginning descriptor, not an end. It doesn’t account for the psych-surf-fuzz in two-minute instrumental opener “Hot Tooth” on their Eclectica EP, for example, or the what-if-Queens–of–the–Stone–Age-kept-going-like-the-self-titled “Moon Boots” that follows on the five-song offering. “You Can Run” has a fuzzy shuffle and up-strummed chug that earns the accompanying handclaps like Joan Jett, while “This Old Tree” dares past the four-minute mark with its scorching jive, born out of a smoother start-stop fuzz verse with its own sort of guitar antics, and “Coming Down,” well, doesn’t at first, but does give way soon enough to a dreamier psychedelic cast and some highlight vocal melody before it finds itself awake again and already running, tense in its builds and overlaid high-register noises, which stand out even in the long fade. Blink and you’ll miss it as it dashes by, all momentum and high-grade songcraft, but that’s alright. It does fine on repeat listens as well, which obviously is no coincidence.

Pseudo Mind Hive on Facebook

Copper Feast Records website

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Oktas, The Finite and the Infinite

On. Slaught. Call it atmospheric sludge, call it post-metal; I sincerely doubt Philadelphia’s Oktas give a shit. Across the four songs and 36 minutes of the two-bass-no-guitar band’s utterly bludgeoning debut album, The Finite and the Infinite, the band — bassist/vocalist Bob Stokes, cellist Agnes Kline, bassist Carl Whitlock and drummer Ron Macauley — capture a severity of tone and a range that goes beyond loud/quiet tradeoffs into the making of songs that are memorable while not necessarily delivering hooks in the traditional verse/chorus manner. It’s the cello that stands out as opener “Collateral Damage” plods to its finish — though Macauley‘s drum fills deserve special mention — and even as “Epicyon” introduces the first of the record’s softer breaks, it is contrasted in doing so by a section of outright death metal onslaught so that the two play back and forth before eventually joining forces in another dynamic and crushing finish. Tempo kick is what’s missing thus far and “Light in the Suffering” hits that mark immediately, finding blackened tremolo on the other side of its own extended cello-led subdued stretch, coming to a head just before the ending so that finale “A Long, Dreamless Sleep” can start with its Carl Sagan sample about how horrible humans are (correct), and build gracefully over the next few minutes before saying screw it and diving headfirst into cyclical chug and sprinting extremity. Somebody sign this band and press this shit up already.

Oktas on Facebook

Oktas on Bandcamp

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Scream of the Butterfly, The Grand Stadium

This is a rock and roll band, make no mistake. Berlin’s Scream of the Butterfly draw across decades of influence, from ’60s pop and ’70s heavy to ’90s grunge, ’00s garage and whatever the hell’s been going on the last 10-plus years to craft an amalgamated sound that is cohesive thanks largely to the tightness of their performances — energetic, sure, but they make it sound easy — the overarching gotta-get-up urgency of their push and groove, and the current of craft that draws it all together. They’ve got 10 songs on The Grand Stadium, which is their third album, and they all seem to be trying to outdo each other in terms of hooks, electricity, vibe, and so on. Even the acoustic-led atmosphere-piece “Now, Then and Nowhere” leaves a mark, to say nothing of the much, much heavier “Sweet Adeleine” or the sunshine in “Dead End Land” or the bluesy shove of “Ain’t No Living.” Imagine time as a malleable thing and some understanding of how the two-minute “Say Your Name to Me” can exist in different styles simultaneously, be classic and forward thinking, spare and spacious. And I don’t know what’s going on with all the people talking in “Hallway of a Thousand Eyes,” but Scream of the Butterfly make it easy to dig anyway and remind throughout of the power that can be realized when a band is both genuinely multifaceted and talented songwriters. Scary stuff, that.

Scream of the Butterfly on Facebook

Scream of the Butterfly on Bandcamp

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Holz, Holz

Based in Kassel with lyrics in their native German, Holz are vocalist/guitarist Leonard Riegel, bassist Maik Blümke and drummer Martin Nickel, and on their self-titled debut (released by Tonzonen), they tear with vigor into a style that’s somewhere between noise rock, stoner heavy and rawer punk, finding a niche for themselves that feels barebones with the dry — that is, little to no effects — vocal treatment and a drum sound that cuts through the fuzz that surrounds on early highlight “Bitte” and the later, more noisily swaying “Nichts.” The eight-minute “Garten” is a departure from its surroundings with a lengthy fuzz jam in its midsection — not as mellow as you’re thinking; the drums remain restless and hint toward the resurgence to come — while “Zerstören” reignites desert rock riffing to its own in-the-rehearsal-room-feeling purposes. Intensity is an asset there and at various other points throughout, but there’s more to Holz than ‘go’ as the rolling “50 Meilen Geradeaus” and the swing-happy, bit-o’-melody-and-all “Dämon” showcase, but when they want to, they’re ready and willing to stomp into heavier tones, impatient thrust, or as in the penultimate “Warten,” a little bit of both. Not everybody goes on a rampage their first time out, but it definitely suits Holz to wreck shit in such a fashion.

Holz on Facebook

Tonzonen Records store

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Oh hello. I didn’t see you there. What, this? Oh, this is just me hanging out about to review 100 records in 10 days’ time. Yup, it’s another double-wide Quarterly Review, and I’m telling myself that no, this isn’t just how life is now, that two full weeks of 10 reviews per day isn’t business as usual, but there’s an exceptional amount of music out there right now, and no, this isn’t even close to all of it. But I’m doing my best to keep up and this is what that looks like.

The bottom line is the same as always and I’ll give it to you up front and waste no more time: I hope you enjoy the music here and find something to love.

So let’s go.

Quarterly Review #01-10:

Yatra, Born into Chaos

The partnership between Chesapeake extremists Yatra and producer Noel Mueller continues to bear fruit on the band’s fourth album and first for Prosthetic Records. Their descent from thick, nasty sludge into death metal is complete, and songs like “Terminate by the Sword” and “Terrorizer” have enough force behind them to become signature pieces. The trio of Dana Helmuth (guitar/vocals), Maria Geisbert (bass) and Sean Lafferty (drums, also Grave Bathers) have yet to sound so utterly ferocious, and as each of their offerings has pushed further into the tearing-flesh-like-paper and rot-stenched realms of metal, Born into Chaos brings the maddening intensity of “Wrath of the Warmaster” and the Incantation-worthy chug of closer “Tormentation,” with massive chug, twisting angularity and brain-melting blasts amid the unipolar throatripper screams from Helmuth (reminds at times of Grutle Kjellson from Enslaved), by now a familiar rasp that underscores the various violences taking place within the eight included tracks. I bet they get even meaner next time,. That’s just how Yatra do. But it’ll be a challenge.

Yatra on Facebook

Prosthetic Records store

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Sula Bassana, Nostalgia

Part of the fun of a new Sula Bassana release is not knowing what you’re going to get, and Nostalgia, which is built from material recorded between 2013-’18 and finished between 2019-’21, is full of surprises. The heavy space grunge of lead cut “Real Life,” which along with its side A companion “We Will Make It” actually features vocals from Dave “Sula Bassana” Schmidt himself (!), is the first here but not the last. That song beefs up early Radiohead drudgery, and “We Will Make It” is like what happens when space rock actually gets to space, dark in a way but expansive and gorgeous. Side B is instrumental, but the mellotron in “Nostalgia” — how could a track called “Nostalgia” not have mellotron? — goes a long way in terms of atmosphere, and the 10-minute “Wurmloch” puts its well-schooled krautrockism to use amid melodic drone before the one-man-jam turns into a freakout rager (again: !), and the outright beautiful finisher “Mellotraum” turns modern heavy post-rock on its head, stays cohesive despite all the noise and haze and underscores the mastery Schmidt has developed in his last two decades of aural exploration. One wonders to what this sonic turn might lead timed so close to his departure from Electric Moon and building a Sula live band, but either way, more of this, please. Please.

Sula Bassana on Facebook

Sulatron Records store

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Garden of Worm, Endless Garden

Continuing a streak of working with highly-respected imprints, Finland’s Garden of Worm release their third album, the eight-song/43-minute Endless Garden, through Nasoni Records after two prior LPs through Shadow Kingdom and Svart, respectively. There have been lineup changes since 2015’s Idle Stones (review here), but the band’s classically progressive aspects have never shone through more. The patient unfolding of “White Ship” alone is evidence for this, never mind everything else that surrounds, and though the earlier “Name of Lost Love” and the closer “In the Absence of Memory” nod to vintage doom and the nine-minute penultimate “Sleepy Trees” basks in a raw, mellow Floydian melody, the core of the Tampere outfit remains their unpredictability and the fact that you never quite know where you’re going until you’re there. Looking at you, “Autumn Song,” with that extended flute-or-what-ever-it-is intro before the multi-layered folk-doom vocal kicks in. For over a decade now, Garden of Worm have been a well kept secret, and honestly, that kind of works for the vibe they cast here; like you were walking through the forest and stumbled into another world. Good luck getting back.

Garden of Worm on Facebook

Nasoni Records site

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Orthodox, Proceed

Untethered by genre and as unorthodox as ever, Sevilla, Spain, weirdo doom heroes Orthodox return with Proceed after four years in the ether, and the output is duly dug into its own reality of ritualism born more of creation than horror-worship across the six included songs. “Arendrot” carries some shade from past dronings, and certainly the opener before it is oddball enough, with its angular riffing and later, Iberian-folk-derived solo, but there’s a straigter-forward aspect to Proceed as well, the vocals lending a character of noise rock and less outwardly experimentalist fare. “Rabid God” brings that forward with due intensity before the hi-hat-shimmy-meets-cave-lumber-doom “Starve” and the lurching/ambient doomjazz “The Son, the Sword, the Bread” set up the 10-minute closer “The Long Defeat,” which assures the discomforted that at least at some point when they were kids Orthodox listened to metal. Righteously individual, their work isn’t for everyone, and it’s by no means free of indulgence, but in 42 minutes, Orthodox once again stretch the limits of what doom means in a way that most bands wouldn’t dare even if they wanted to, and if you can’t respect that, then I’ve got nothing for you.

Orthodox on Facebook

Alone Records store

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Matus, Espejismos II

Fifty years from now, some brave archivalist soul is going to reissue the entire catalog of Lima, Peru’s Matus and blow minds far and wide. A follow-up to 2013’s Espejismos (review here), Espejismos II brings theremin-laced vintage Sabbath rock vibes across its early movements, going so far as to present “Umbral / Niebla de Neón” in mono, while the minute-and-a-half-long “Los Ojos de Vermargar (Early Version)” is pure fuzz and the organ-laced “Hada Morgana (Early Instrumental Mix)” — that and “Umbra; / Niebla de Neón” appeared in ‘finished versions on 2015’s Claroscuro (review here); “Summerland” dates back to 2010’s M​á​s Allá Del Sol Poniente (review here), so yes, time has lost all meaning — moves into the handclap-and-maybe-farfisa-organ “Canción para Nuada,” one of several remixes with rerecorded drums. “Rocky Black” is an experiment in sound collage, and “Misquamacus” blends acoustic intricacy and distorted threat, while capper “Adiós Afallenau (Version)” returns the theremin for a two-minute walk before letting go to a long stretch of silence and some secret-track-style closing cymbals. The best thing you can do with Matus is just listen. It’s its own thing, it always has been, and the experimental edge brought to classic heavy rock is best taken on with as open a mind as possible. Let it go where it wants to go and the rewards will be plenty. And maybe in another five decades everyone will get it.

Matus on Facebook

Espíritus Inmundos on Facebook

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Shrooms Circle, The Constant Descent

Offset by interludes like the classical-minded “Aversion” or the bass-led “Reprobation,” or even the build-up intro “S.Z.,” the ritual doom nod of Swiss five-piece Shrooms Circle‘s The Constant Descent is made all the more vital through the various keys at work across its span, whether it’s organ or mellotron amid the lumbering weight of the riffs. “Perpetual Decay” and its companion interlude “Amorphous” dare a bit of beauty, and that goes far in adding context and scope to the already massive sounding “The Unreachable Spiral” and the subtle vocal layering in “The Constant Descent.” Someone in this band likes early Type O Negative, and that’s just fine. Perhaps most of all, the 11-song/48-minute The Constant Descent is dynamic enough so that no matter where a given song starts, the listener doesn’t immediately know where it’s going to end up, and taking that in combination with the command shown throughout “Demotion,” “Perpetual Decay,” the eight-minute “Core Breakdown” and the another-step-huger finale “Stagnant Tide,” Shrooms Circle‘s second album offers atmosphere and craft not geared toward hooking the audience with catchy songwriting so much as immersing them in the mood and murk in which the band seem to reside. If Coven happened for the first time today, they might sound like this.

Shrooms Circle on Facebook

DHU Records store

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Goatriders, Traveler

I’m gonna tell you straight out: Don’t write this shit off because Goatriders is a goofy band name or because the cover art for their second album, Traveler, is #vanlife carrot gnomes listening to a tape player on a hillside (which is awesome, by the way). There’s more going on with the Linköping four-piece than the superficialities make it seem. “Unscathed” imagines what might have happened if Stubb and Hexvssel crossed paths on that same hill, and the album careens back and forth smoothly between longer and shorter pieces across 50 engrossing minutes; nature-worshiping, low-key dooming and subtly genre-melding all the while. Then they go garage on “The Garden,” the album seeming to get rawer in tone as it proceeds toward “Witches Walk” and the a capella finish in “Coven,” which even that they can’t resist blowing out at the end. With the hypnotic tom work and repeat riffing of the instrumental “Elephant Bird” at its center and the shouted culminations of “Goat Head Nebula” and “Unscathed,” the urgent ritualizing of “Snakemother” and the deceptive poise at the outset with “Atomic Sunlight,” Traveler finds truth in its off-kilter presentation. You don’t get Ozium, Majestic Mountain and Evil Noise on board by accident. Familiar as it is and drawing from multiple sides, I’m hard-pressed to think of someone doing exactly what Goatriders do, and that should be taken as a compliment.

Goatriders on Facebook

Majestic Mountain Records store

Evil Noise Recordings store

Ozium Records store

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Arthur Brown, Long Long Road

At the tender age of 80, bizarrist legend Arthur Brown — the god of hellfire, as the cover art immediately reminds — presents Long Long Road to a new generation of listeners. His first album under his own name in a decade — The Crazy World of Arthur Brown released Gypsy Voodoo (can you still say that?) in 2019 — and written and performed in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Rik Patten, songs like “Going Down” revisit classic pageantry in organ and horns and the righteous lyrical proclamations of the man himself, while “I Like Games” toys with blues vibes in slide acoustic, kick drum thud and harmonica sleazenanigans, while the organ-and-electric “The Blues and Messing Round” studs with class and “Long Long Road” reminds that “The future’s open/The past is due/In this moment/Where everything that comes is new,” a hopeful message before “Once I Had Illusions (Part 2)” picks up where its earlier companion-piece left off in a manner that’s both lush and contemplative, more than a showpiece for Brown‘s storytelling and still somehow that. His legacy will forever be tied to The Crazy World of Arthur Brown‘s late-1960s freakery, but Long Long Road is the work of an undimmed creative spirit and still bolder than 90 percent of rock bands will ever dare to be.

Arthur Brown on Facebook

Magnetic Eye Records store

Prophecy Productions store

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Green Sky Accident, Daytime TV

Ultimately, whether one ends up calling Green Sky Accident‘s Daytime TV progressive psychedelia, heavier post-rock or some other carved-out microgenre, the reality of the 10-song/50-minute Apollon Records release is intricate enough to justify the designation. Richly melodic and unafraid to shimmer brightly, cuts like “Point of No Return” and the later dancer “Finding Failure” are sweet in mood and free largely of the pretense of indie rock, though “Insert Coin” and the penultimate piano interlude “Lid” are certainly well dug-in, but “Sensible Scenes,” opener “Faded Memories,” closer “While We Lasted” and the ending of “Screams at Night” aren’t lacking either for movement or tonal presence, and that results in an impression more about range underscored by songwriting and melody than any kind of tonal or stylistic showcase. The Bergen, Norway, four-piece are, in other words, on their own trip. And as much float as they bring forth, “In Vain” reimagines heavy metal as a brightly expressive terrestrial entity, a thing to be made and remade according to the band’s own purpose for it, and the title-track similarly balances intensity with a soothing affect. I guess this is what alt rock sounds like in 2022. Could be far worse, and indeed, it presents an ‘other’ vision from the bulk of what surrounds it even in an underground milieu. On a personal level, I can’t decide if I like it, and I kind of like that about it.

Green Sky Accident on Facebook

Apollon Records store

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Pure Land Stars, Trembling Under the Spectral Bodies

With members of Cali psych-of-all explorers White Manna at their core, Pure Land Stars begin a series called ‘Altered States’ that’s a collaboration between Centripetal Force and Cardinal Fuzz Records, and if you’re thinking that that’s going to mean it’s way far out there, you’re probably not thinking far enough. Kosmiche drones and ambient foreboding in “Flotsam” and “3rd Grace” make the acoustic strum of “Mountains are Mountains” seem like a terrestrial touch-down, while “Chime the Kettle” portrays a semi-industrial nature-worship jazz, and “Jetsam” unfolds like a sunrise but if the sun suddenly came up one day and was blue. “Lavendar Crowd” (sic) turns the experimentalism percussive, but it’s that experimentalism at the project’s core, whether that’s manifest in the nigh-on-cinematic “Dr. Hillarious” (sic) or the engulf-you-now eight-minute closer “Eyes Like a Green Ceiling,” which is about as far from the keyboardy kratrock of “Flotsam” as the guitar effects and improvised sounding soloing of “Jetsam” a few tracks earlier. Cohesive? Sure. But in its own dimension. I don’t know if Pure Land Stars is a ‘band’ or a one-off, but they give ‘Altered States’ a rousing start that more than lives up to the name. Take a breath first. Maybe a drink of water. Then dive in.

Pure Land Stars on Bandcamp

Centripetal Force Records store

Cardinal Fuzz Records store

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Today’s Friday, and in most but a decreasing number of circumstances, that means a Quarterly Review is over. Not this one. Remember, doublewide means it goes to 100 albums. The really crazy part? It could go longer. I could add another day. It could go to 11! Have I done that before?

Probably. That Spinal Tap reference is too obvious for me to have never made it. In any case, I’ve got something booked for Monday after next already, so I won’t be adding another day, but I could just on the releases that came in over the last couple days. Onto the list for next time. Late September/early October, I think.

If you’re hurting for Quarterly Review in the meantime? Yeah, stick around. There’s a whole other week coming up. That’s what I’ve been saying. Have a great weekend and we’ll pick back up on Monday with another 10 records.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

The John Denver Airport Conspiracy, Something’s Gotta Give

Hail Toronto psych. The John Denver Airport Conspiracy released Something’s Gotta Give as a 16-tracker name-your-price Bandcamp download nearly a year ago, and vinyl delays give squares like yours truly who missed it at the time another opportunity to get on board. The 14-song LP edition runs 42 minutes, and it’s time well spent in being out of its own time, a pedal steel Americana-fying the ’60s drift of “Comin’ Through” while “Jeff Bezos Actually Works for Me” pairs garage strum-and-strut with a cavernous echo for an effect like shoegaze that looked up. “2000 November” and closer “The Lab” dares proto-punk shimmy and “Green Chair” has that B3 organ sound and lazy jangle that one can’t help but associate with 1967, “Ya, I Wonder” perhaps a few years before that, but “The Big Greaser” works in less directly temporal spaces, and the whole album is united by an overarching mellow spirit, not totally in a fog because actually the structures on some of these songs are pretty tight — as they were in the 1960s — but they’ve definitely and purposefully kept a few screws loose. Their sound may solidify over time and it may not, but as a debut album, Something’s Gotta Give is deceptively rich in its purpose and engaging in its craft and style alike. I wish I’d heard it earlier, I’m glad to have heard it now.

The John Denver Airport Conspiracy on Instagram

Cardinal Fuzz Records webstore

Little Cloud Records website

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Clara Engel, Their Invisible Hands

Clara Engel‘s experimentalist folk songwriting moves into and across and over and through various traditions and methods, but their voice is as resonant, human and unifying as ever, and that’s true from “O Human Child” through the softly echoing guitar pieces “Golden Egg” and “High Alien Priest,” the more ethereal “Glass Mountain,” and so on, while excursions like “I Drink the Rain,” “Cryptid Bop” and “Dead Tree March” earlier add not only instrumental flourish but an avant garde sensibility consistent with Engel‘s past work, even if as songs they remain resoundingly cohesive. That is to say, while founded on experimentalist principles, they are built into songs rather than presented in their rawest form. The inclusion of organ in finale “The Devils are Snoring” is striking and complements the minimalist vocals and backing drone, but by then Engel has long established their ability to put the listener where they wants, with the image of “Rowing Home Through a Sea of Golden Leaves” duly poetic to suit the music as demonstration. Gorgeous, impassioned, hurt but striving and ever moving forward creatively. Engel‘s work remains a treasure for those with ears to hear it. “I Drink the Rain” is an album unto itself.

Clara Engel on Facebook

Clara Engel on Bandcamp

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Cormano, Weird Tales

Though the initial push of doomer riffing and melodic vocals in the post-intro title-track “Weird Tales” reminds a bit of Apostle of Solitude, the hooky brand of heavy wrought by Chilean three-piece Cormano — vocalist/guitarist Aaron Saavedra, bassist/backing vocalist Claudio Bobadilla, drummer/backing vocalist Rodrigo Jiménez — on their debut full-length is more about rock than such morose proceedings, and in fact it’s the prior intro “La Marcha del Desierto” that makes that plain. They’ll delve into psychedelic airiness in “El Caleuche” — the bassline underneath a highlight on its own — and if you read “Bury Me With My Money” as a capitalist critique, it’s almost fun instead of tragic, but their swing in “Urknall” and the roll of “Rise From Your Grave” (second Altered Beast reference of this Quarterly Review; pure coincidence) act as precursor to the thickened unfurling of “Futuere” and “A Boy and His Dog,” a closing pair that reinforce Cormano‘s ultimate direction as anything but settled, the latter featuring a pointedly heavy crash before a surprisingly gentle finish. Will be curious to see where their impulses lead them, but Weird Tales is that much stronger for the variety currently in their influences.

Cormano on Facebook

Cormano on Bandcamp

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Black Lung, Dark Waves

Like the rest of reality, Baltimorean heavy psychedelic blues rockers Black Lung have undergone a few significant changes in the last three years. Guitarist/vocalist Dave Cavalier (also Mellotron) and drummer/synthesist Elias Schutzman (also Revvnant, ex-The Flying Eyes) bid farewell to fellow founding member Adam Bufano (guitar, also ex-The Flying Eyes) and brought in Dave Fullerton to fill the role, while also, for the first time, adding a bassist in Charles Braese. Thus, their first record for Heavy Psych Sounds, the J. Robbins-produced/Kurt Ballou-mixed Dark Waves is a notable departure in form from 2019’s Ancients (review here), even if the band’s core methodology and aesthetic are the same. The sound is fuller, richer, and more able to hold the various Mellotrons and other flourishes, as well as the cello in “Hollow Dreams” and guest vocals on “Death Grip” and guest keys on “The Cog” and “The Path.” Taking inspiration from modern global uncertainties sociopolitical, medical and otherwise, the band put you in a mind of living through the current moment, thankfully without inducing the level of anxiety that seems to define it. Small favors amid big riffs. With shades of All Them Witches and further psychedelic exploring transposed onto their already-a-given level of songwriting, Black Lung sound like they’re making a second debut.

Black Lung on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Slowenya, Meadow

Make a big space and fill it with righteousness. Finland’s Slowenya are born out of an experimentalist hotbed in Turku, and the three-piece do justice to an expectation of far-out tendencies across the nonetheless-concise 31 minutes and six songs of Meadow, their second long-player in as many years. There’s an undercurrent of metal as “Synchronized” holds forth with a resilient, earthy chug, but the melodicism that typifies the vocals running alongside is lighter, born of a proggy mindset and able to keep any overarching aggression in check. With synths, samples, and ambient sounds filling out the mix — not that the massive tonality of the guitar and bass itself doesn’t do the job — a breadth is cast from “Intro” onward through “Nákàn” and the gone-full-YOB swell of “Irrevocable,” which is yet another of the tracks on Meadow one might hear and expect to be 20 minutes long and instead is under seven. The penultimate “Transients” pushes deeper into drone, and “Resonate and Relate” (7:53) caps Slowenya‘s impressive second LP with a due blend of melodic wash and lurching rhythmic physicality, the screams into a sudden stop effectively carrying the threat of more to come. You want to hear this.

Slowenya linktr.ee

Karhuvaltio Records on Facebook

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Superlynx, Solstice EP

As their growing fanbase immediately set about waiting for their third full-length after 2021’s Electric Temple, Norwegian heavy-broodgaze trio Superlynx issued at the very end of the year the Solstice EP, combining covers from Saint Vitus, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Nat King Cole (because obviously he’d be third on that list) and Nirvana with two originals in “Reorbit” and “Cosmic Wave.” As bassist/vocalist Pia Isaksen has already put out a solo release in 2022, drummer Ole Teigen has a blues band on the side among other projects, and one assumes guitarist Daniel Bakken is up to something else as well, Solstice serves as a welcome holdover of momentum after the album. It’s worth the price of admission (eight Euro) for the take on Nirvana‘s “Something in the Way” alone, but the so-slow-it-sounds-like-it’s-about-to-fall-apart “Reorbit” and the leadoff adaptation of “Born Too Late” enforces that song’s message with a modernized and made-even-more slogging sense of defeat. Maybe we were all born too late. Maybe that’s humanity’s fucking problem. Anyway, after you get this, get Isaksen‘s solo record as Pia Isa. You won’t regret that either, especially with the subdued vibe in some of the material on this one.

Superlynx on Facebook

Dark Essence Records website

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Øresund Space Collective, Oily Echoes of the Soul

The always-hit-record ethic of multinational conglomerate jammers Øresund Space Collective pays dividends once again as Oily Echoes of the Soul emerges publicly — it was previously released in a different form to Bandcamp subscribers — as carved from a session all the way back in 2010. At the time I’m pretty certain all members of the band actually lived in Denmark, but sitarist K.G. Westman, who appeared here while still a member of Siena Root, is from Sweden, so whatever. Ultimately the affair is less about where they’re from than where you’re going while hearing it, which is off to a laid-back, anything goes psychedelic improvisation, beginning with the funky and suitably explorational, half-hour-long opener “Bump and Grind ØSC Style” before moving into the sitar-led “Peace of Mynd” (13:27) and the 24-minute title-track’s organic surges and recessions of volume; proggy, ’70s, and unforced as they are. Before twang-happy and much shorter closer “Shit Kickin'” (4:10), the 15-minute “Deep Breath for the EARTH” offers affirmation of the project’s reliably expansive sound. I’ve made no secret that I listen to this band in no small part for the emotionally and/or existentially soothing facets of their sound. Those are on ready display here, and I’ll be returning to this 12-year-old session accordingly.

Øresund Space Collective on Bandcamp

Space Rock Productions website

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Zone Six, Beautiful EP

Recorded in Dec. 1997 at Zone Six‘s practice space, the two-song Beautiful EP portrays a much different band than Zone Six ultimately became, with Australian-born vocalist Jodi Barry and then-Liquid Visions members Dave “Sula Bassana” Schmidt (bass, effects), Hans-Peter Ringholz (guitar, noise) and drummer/recording specialist Claus Bühler as well as keyboardist/etc.-ist Rusty and bringing two longform, molten works of pioneering-at-the-time heavy psychedelia. I mean, we’re talking 20 years ahead of their time, at least, here. It’s still forward-thinking. The guitars and breathy vocals in “Something’s Missing” are a joy and “Beautiful” plays off drone-style atmospherics with intermittently jazzy verses and a more active rhythm, winding guitar and pervasively spaced mindbending. Imagining what could’ve been if this record had been finished, one could repaint the scope of 2010s-era European heavy psychedelia as a whole, but on their own, the two extended inclusions on the 23-minute EP are a gorgeous glimpse at this fleeting moment in time. It is what it says it is.

LINK

TO THE PAST

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The Cimmerian, Thrice Majestic

Thrice Majestic and four-times barbarous comes this debut EP release from Los Angeles’ The Cimmerian, a new trio featuring Massachusetts expat David Gein (ex-bass, The Scimitar, etc.) on guitar, and the brand of heavy that ensues readily crosses the line between metal and doom, as the galloping “Emerald Scripture” reinforces directly after the eight-minute highlight and longest groover “Silver and Gold.” Drummer David Morales isn’t shy with the double-kick and neither should he be, and bassist/vocalist Nicolas Rocha has a bark that reminds of Entombed‘s L.G. Petrov, and that is not a compliment I’m ever going to hand out lightly. Lead cut “Howls of Lust and Fury” promises High on Fire-ist thrash in its opening, but The Cimmerian‘s form of pummel goes beyond any single point of inspiration, even on this presumably formative suckerpunch of an EP, which balances intensity and nod in the finishing move “Neck Breaker,” a last growl perhaps the most brutal of all. Fucking a. More of this.

The Cimmerian on Facebook

The Cimmerian on Bandcamp

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Ultracombo, Season II

You could probably sit and parse out where Ultracombo are coming from — geographically, it’s Vincenza, Italy — in terms of sound on the sequentially titled follow-up to 2019’s Season I (review here), but to do so denies the double-guitar five-piece credit for the obvious efforts they’ve put into making this material their own. Those efforts pay off in the listening experience of the five-tracker, which runs 25 minutes and so offers plenty enough to make an impression. Witness the slowdown in centerpiece “Umanotest” or the keyboard-or-keyboard-esque lead in the back half of the prior “Follia,” the added jammy feel in “Specchio,” the this-is-the-difference-the-right-drummer-makes “12345” or the return of the synth and an added bit of playfulness before the big ending in — what else? — “La Fine.” That this EP manages to careen and pull such hairpin turns of rhythm is a triumph unto itself. That it manages to do so without sounding like Queens of the Stone Age feels like a fucking miracle. “Dear Ultracombo, Hope you’re well. Time to make an album. Put in an interlude or two depending on space. Sincerely, some dude on the internet.”

Ultracombo on Facebook

Ultracombo on Instagram

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

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

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

Quarterly Review #31-40:

Church of the Sea, Odalisque

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

Church of the Sea on Facebook

Church of the Sea links

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Gu Vo, Gu Vo

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

Gu Vo on Facebook

Sentencia Records on Bandcamp

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Witchfinder, Endless Garden

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

Witchfinder on Facebook

Mrs Red Sound on Bandcamp

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Centre El Muusa, Purple Stones

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

Centre El Muusa on Facebook

Sulatron Records webstore

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0N0, Unwavering Resonance

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

0N0 on Facebook

0N0 on Bandcamp

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Faeries, Faeries

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

Faeries on Instagram

The Silver Box on Bandcamp

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

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

Cult of Dom Keller on Facebook

Cult of Dom Keller on Bandcamp

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Supplemental Pills, Volume 1

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

Supplemental Pills on Facebook

In Music We Trust Records on Bandcamp

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Green Hog Band, Crypt of Doom

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

Green Hog Band on Facebook

The Swamp Records on Bandcamp

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Circle of Sighs, Alabaster

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

Circle of Sighs on Facebook

Circle of Sighs on Bandcamp

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Let us now dig lysergic vibes.

Originally issued by the Berlin-based psychedelic explorers in 2004, Psychedelic Scripture is the third full-length from Zone Six behind their 1998 self-titled debut (reissue review here) and 2003’s Any Noise is Intended, the latter of which, like Psychedelic Scripture, came out through Sunhair Records. The version above is a reissue put out by Acid Test Recordings (UK) and Little Cloud Records (US) late in 2021, and the original three extended tracks — “Extremadura” (14:07), “The Pipe Dream” (21:38) and “The Sacred Toad” (14:30) — are joined by two bonus cuts, “Chill In” (6:33) and “Room of No Escape” (17:04), both of which were recorded during the self-titled era, one live on stage in Berlin, the latter at an earlier rehearsal, also in Berlin. Any way you go, it is an immersive, mellow trip made all the more resonant through the expansive atmospheres conjured by keys, guitar, synth, effects, and sundry other cosmic conjurations.

The band at this point was bassist/noisemaker Dave “Sula Bassana” Schmidt, guitarist/sitarist Hans-Peter Ringholz, keyboardist/intermittent-vocalist Rusty Viltz, synthesist Martin “Modulfix” Schorn, and drummer Claus Bühler, and they recorded the three main tracks at the turn of the century. Why and how they might’ve languished for those four subsequent years, I don’t know — you’d have to ask Sula, I guess; and maybe I will — but these many years later, it matters little in the end. And while we’re talking about time and a release that came out some 18 years ago, it’s amazing to me how tempting it is to listen to what Zone Six were doing back then and think of it as somehow future-looking.

Maybe it was. I mean, certainly in the aesthetic context, listening to “Extremadura” feels predictive of places psychedelia would go, tapping Eastern vibes and drawn-out ambience, drums coming and going and coming again, the focus so clearly on flow and exploration and the sheer adventure of creation itself. It is lush and beautiful but at the same time relatively minimal in terms of volume — that is, at no point does Psychedelic Scripture attempt to overpower the listener or beat them over the head with trippy shenanigans or some such — and if it showed up in my inbox today, I’d call it modern for the production value and the patience of its execution. A remastering job by John McBain doesn’t hurt that I’m sure, but listening to the sparse guitar ringing out about seven minutes into the album opener — reminds me of something that came later I can’t put my finger on; is it Mühr?; in my head I hear soft vocals over it; aha! it’s Uzala‘s “Tenement of the Lost!” whew — the manner in which Zone Six seem to be letting the piece become what it will strikes as nothing if not forward-thinking. Not every band can let go like this, and they continue to do it in “The Pipe Dream” and “The Sacred Toad” as well, each piece taking its own course and giving the listener a world in which to inhabit for its run.

On the other hand, if one thinks about Psychedelic Scripture, and particularly the connotations of the word “scripture” in the title, perhaps these songs were intended as a kind of reading of the tenets of sonic ethereality themselves. An enactment. And drawing on krautrock and improvisational acid jams, one can fit Zone Six into a broad context of what psych rock was and would become. They were not necessarily the first outfit to pursue the cosmos with such methodology — Europe at the time, as now, was awash in ace-level psych; see Nasoni Records, Elektrohasch, and Sula Bassana‘s own Sulatron Records, which started up around 2004 as well — and indeed the bassy pulsations of “The Pipe Dream,” peppered as they are with synthesizer swirls, punctuated eventually by drums, building gradually toward some yet-unknown destination, converse in a language largely unknown to the history of ambient drone and kraut experimentation, the later consuming wash, tempo kick and final reversion to the central figure, be it bass or keys who the hell knows, less a return trip than a final element through the wormhole. V-I-B-E, as in “vibrations of your mind on an plane of universal energies.”

Headphones advised if you’ve got ’em handy, as the depths and reaches of “The Sacred Toad,” the chiming and coursing sounds like flowing water and animal chirrups take hold with a meditative mystique worthy of whatever fullness of attention can be provided. The original Psychedelic Scripture doesn’t so much resolve itself as it does simply end, and from that one can interpret an underlying message as well, of humility perhaps or of one’s recognition of minutia in the face of the unfathomable vastness that surrounds. That is to say, space big, album small. Maybe that’s the point of the scripture in the first place — a means by which to manifest the grandeur outside of time and place, something that is nowhere and everywhere, songs that are nothing and everything, structures that hold up via chemical bond rather than some forced progression of parts. It is beautiful, somehow biological, outsider art.

Though they offered a veritable infinity of live releases between, Psychedelic Scripture was the last Zone Six studio work until 2015’s Love Monster (review here) found them returned as a four-piece with Schmidt and Schorn joined by “Komet Lulu” Neudeck and Rainer Neeff, on bass and guitar, respectively. Both were also members of other bands in the Sulatron sphere, Electric Moon and/or Krautzone, and in addition to playing shows resulting in more live offerings, the band would go on to issue a split with New Zealand’s Arc of Ascent (review here) in late 2018 and the Kozmik Koon LP (review here) in 2019, the latter standing as their latest output. And it’s still vital psych. If you missed it, there’s yet time.

I guess if you’re looking for some lesson from the scripture here, maybe it doesn’t need to be overthought or hyperbolic. Maybe the lesson is this was just what Zone Six were getting up to at the time, and that’s enough. The thing is what you make it and they made it this this time, then they stopped for a while, then they started again. The galaxy spins on, and us with it.

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

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Next week is PACKED. I’m already overwhelmed and I haven’t even started putting the posts together yet, though I’m headed that way next. It never really stops, you understand.

Thanks if you checked out my appearance on the Heavy Hops podcast for the episode that went live yesterday, and thanks to Alexi D. Front for having me on and Esben Willems for editing, mixing, mastering.

Link is here if you care to listen and thanks if you do: https://scorchedtundra.com/heavy-hops-ep-085-critique-is-an-act-of-storytelling-jj-koczan-the-obelisk/

Parent-teacher conference today. For my pre-K’er. Should be interesting. Last time they were like, “Yo, your kid’s a wreck.” This time I hope for a little bit less of that. That kind of thing can really color a weekend. Shit-brown.

I’m in a rush if you couldn’t tell, but today’s also a new Gimme show if you’re not sick of my ass yet. 5PM Eastern. http://gimmemetal.com.

Sign up for the Vault too so you can listen to old ones and other shows and blastbeats and metal and radio and so on.

And while I’m spending your money, don’t forget today’s Bandcamp Friday. I’ve gotten well over 100 emails this morning reminding me of that fact, and I imagine you have as well, so yeah, go spend money. What’re you saving it for? A new camera lens? Me too. Spend it anyway.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for supporting this site, buying merch from Made in Brooklyn, all that stuff. I’m so appreciative and I value the support so much. It is the encouragement that gets me through the day some days. Yesterday, for example.

I’ll leave it there. Great and safe weekend. Have fun, watch your head. Hydrate. We’re back and forth as ever, but I’ll be around if you need me for anything. You know where to find me.

FRM.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

 

Two separate updates here, one from Electric Moon and one from Sula Bassana, aka Dave Schmidt, himself. The first is the rather surprising news that Schmidt has left Electric Moon, which he’s been part of for more than a decade as a founding member, and the second — markedly less surprising, but welcome — is word of a new solo album by Schmidt under the Sula Bassana banner. Cool beans on that, but if you’d asked, I would’ve listed him as essential personnel along with “Komet Lulu” Neudeck as a founder of Electric Moon. One assumes that the band will continue under her guidance as spearhead all the more for being the lone remaining founder who’s been there the whole time.

Though, it’s worth noting that situations and music are both fluid and it looks like they’re leaving the door open to doing more in the future, so who knows. Never say never until everyone’s dead, then just say holograms. Maybe some day we’ll all be beams of light in the corporate metaverse. Until then, enjoy your vinyl.

Speaking of, here’s news about some:

Dear friends,

Since 2009, Electric Moon’s core were always Lulu and Dave (Sula), so we can imagine, that this announcement seems surreal to y’all.

It’s also surreal for all of us, but sometimes, life happens and makes certain decisions necessary.

Unfortunately, we have to announce, that Electric Moon will go on again as a trio from now on. Dave is leaving the band and so we’ll play all yet confirmed markedly less concerts already without Dave.

Sometimes ways part and new opportunities are given. Dave will go on with Zone Six, Interkosmos and of course solo, and certainly will always be a part of Electric Moon’s journey. Such a close bond cannot be cut and that’s also not intended.

Electric Moon will continue to exist as what it has always been: a formation to celebrate the love of sound and music, and build a symbiosis between audience and band.

Nonetheless, we are looking forward to meeting you at concerts and on and off the road.

Love and peace,
Lulu, Sula, Pablo, Joe

Sula Bassana – Nostalgia

Good news:

The mastering for my new solo album is done and I’m super satisfied and super excited and look forward to get the finished copies! sadly we must wait until later this year (maybe september, october?) for the release. it will contain 5 songs, 2 with vocals and again in a band-style, not so much electronic like my latest ones. the fantastic artwork is taken from a painting Hervé Scott Flament did and I’m so happy I can use it! thanks so much! mastering is done by Eroc! everything was recorded again only by myself (guitars, basses, drums, synthesizer, organ, electric sitar, mellotron, vocals…). recordings started in 2013 or so, some very old songs in the meantime. :) latest one started in 2017. but it needed the right feeling to finish them, but now all is done and I’m so relieved!

LP will come in gatefold cover with stunning art, 2 different vinylcolours (lim. to 500 on 2-colour corona vinyl and 500 on black, both 180 gr. vinyl), and on CD.

www.electricmoon.de
https://electric-moon.bandcamp.com/
www.facebook.com/ElectricMoonOfficial

https://sulabassana.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/sulabassana
http://www.sulabassana.de/

https://fb.com/worstbassistrecords
https://worstbassistrecords.bandcamp.com/

www.sulatron.com

Sula Bassana, Loop Station Drones (2021)

Electric Moon, Phase (2021)

Somewhere just before I started this Quarterly Review, the contact form on this website was fixed. This, obviously, was a mistake. On my desktop that have come in over the last week and a day are more than enough releases to have continued the Fall 2021 QR for at least two more days, if not longer. That’s just not happening. The music’s been good, but I’ve had both of our family cars break down in the last two days, I’ve been fighting to get a bus to pick my kid up for school in the morning, and waking up at 4:30 to write only seems to result in nodding off while brushing my teeth. Not to mention, as The Patient Mrs. very gracefully doesn’t tell me during these times, I’m a total bitch when I do this. Again, she doesn’t say it. The message though is pretty clear.

So best to quit while I’m… already behind again…

Thanks for reading.

Quarterly Review #61-70:

Endless Boogie, Admonitions

Let’s not talk about how Paul Major has cool hair. Or how he’s well known in record-trader circles or whatever else. Let’s talk about Endless Boogie‘s largely-insurmountable 80-plus minutes of jams on Admonitions and how reliable the band have become when one seeks sleek-grooved expanses, not reliant on effects wash and synthesized swirl, but just the rawer guitar, bass, drums, periodic-but-don’t-go-expecting-them vocals. You put on Endless Boogie, you’re gonna get some groove. Pick a favorite between the sides-A-and-C-consuming 22-minute tracks “The Offender” and “Jim Tully” if you want, I’ll take both, and the minimal drone of “The Conversation” and “The Incompetent Villains of 1968” for a bonus. At 5:12 and with vocals, “Bad Call” is about as close as they come to a ‘single’ in the traditional sense — it’s the centerpiece of side B, with “Disposable Thumbs” before and the cool-built funk of “Counterfeiter” after — but if you’re looking for singles you’re missing the point here. The point is to put it on and go. So go, god damn it.

Endless Boogie on Bandcamp

No Quarter website

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Sula Bassana, Loop Station Drones

A collection of various pieces — aren’t we all? — by Dave “Sula Bassana” Schmidt (Electric Moon, Zone Six, etc.), Loop Station Drones may be aptly named in terms of the basic process of creation, but that hardly covers the scope of the release’s 78-minute span, whether that’s the meditative undercurrent in opener “Roadburn Haze,” slightly edited from Schmidt‘s Roadburn Redux appearance earlier in 2021, the 16-bit cosmic soundtracking of “Rolling in Outer Space” (I’d play the shit out whatever game that is on SNES), the moodier breadth of “Die Karawane der Unsterblichen” and “Wastelandgarden” or the motorik pulse of the 17-minute “Dopeshuttle.” Especially pivotal is the closing duo of “Stargate” (14:06) and “One Way” (6:04), which offer serenity and wistfulness, respectively, that bridge a rare emotionality for what according to its title is a simple ‘drone.’ Anytime Schmidt wants to turn this into an ongoing series, that’ll be fine.

Sula Bassana on Facebook

Sulatron Records webstore

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Redscale, The Old Colossus

Rock for rockers. Berlin four-piece Redscale roll out a scenario in which Clutch and Kyuss and Soundgarden and Truckfighters and probably six or seven other of your favorite heavy rock live acts got together and decided to put down a batch of kickass songs. That’s what’s up. The Old Colossus is the band’s fourth LP, first for Majestic Mountain, and if they spent their first two albums figuring out how to get shit done, well, they sound like it. Things get duly big-sounding on “Hard to Believe” and they go acoustic on “At the End” ahead of the closer “The Lathe of Heaven,” but basically what Redscale do here is identify the boxes needing ticking and then tick the crap out of them. They’re not reshaping the genre, but they’re definitely doing righteous work within it. The rockers will know the rock when they hear it. Everyone else can get bent.

Redscale on Facebook

Majestic Mountain Records webstore

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Seven Rivers of Fire, Hail Star of the Sea!

A solo-project of William Randles, also of Durban, South Africa’s Rise Up, Dead Man, the acoustic-led Seven Rivers of Fire brings a sense of outbound ritualism to drone-folk and organic psychedelia with this second self-released offering, Hail Star of the Sea!. I’m not sure if he’s handling all the instruments himself or not, but one is reminded of Om-split-era Six Organs of Admittance throughout the 20-minute “Crossing the Abyss / The Magician’s Journey,” and instrumental pieces like “I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightning” and “Ghost Dance / Sign of the Goddess” and “Ha-Sulam / Drawing Down the Moon” have a current of tension running alongside their largely-unplugged peacefulness. The 76-minute entirety of the outing is best enjoyed in the sun, outside, but whatever the context in which one might visit it in part or whole, the material is evocative of warmth and its swells and recessions effectively call out to the water. Not a minor undertaking, but neither should it be.

Seven Rivers of Fire on Facebook

Seven Rivers of Fire on Bandcamp

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Cult Burial, Oblivion EP

What to call it? Wrench metal, because it feels like it’s systemically pulling you apart? Cement metal because of all that crushing? Post-death metal because all that sludge and doom mixed in sure sounds like decay and that’s what comes after? I don’t know. None of my names for anything ever stick anyway — the tragedy of being irrelevant — but London extremity-purveyors Cult Burial offer three-tracks of doom-laced death in Oblivion, with the short outing following-up on their well-received 2020 self-titled debut in an impressively seamless melding of genres, technical leads searing through lumbering riffs, harsh vocals, various barks and screams, populating this dense and pummeling sampler from the nine-minute opening title-slab through “Parasite” and “Paralysed,” and I’d say they save the heaviest for last, but they hammer-smashed the scale to bits because who the hell cares anyway? All this and atmosphere too. Whatever big-timey metal label ends up snagging this band is gonna have a beast on their hands.

Cult Burial on Facebook

Cult Burial website

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Duster 69, 2021

German heavy rockers Duster 69 — or Duster69, if you prefer — seem to be testing the waters with their first release in 13 years. Called 2021, the two-songer brings just nine minutes of music in a kind of see-how-it-goes spirit. During their initial run, the outfit with Daredevil Records honcho Jochen Böllath (also of Grand Massive) on guitar released three full-length and splits alongside the likes of Calamus, Rickshaw, The Awesome Machine and House of Broken Promises, and though there’s something unassuming about thinking of “Oppose” and “Remember” as a comeback, it seems more about the band internally figuring out if they still work together as a unit. The answer, of course, is yes, or presumably 2021 wouldn’t see release. The production is rough, but if this is Duster 69 heralding a return in “soft opening” fashion, then something grand may yet be to come.

Duster 69 on Facebook

Daredevil Records website

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Tankograd, Klęska

With Tomasz “Herr Feldgrau” Walczak, now also drumming in Weedpecker on vocals and guitar, Warsaw’s Tankograd present a Soviet-aftermath through a meld of styles that pulls together heavy rock, sludge, death and black metal. Second album Klęska is as likely to find Walczak — joined by drummer Jakub “Herr Stoß” Kaźmierski, guitarist Grzegorz “Herr Berg” Góra and bassist Herr “I Can’t Find His Real Name” Schnitt — harmonizing as engaging guttural growls over blastbeats, nodding riffs, and so on. “Niech Liczą Trupy” seems to willfully take on Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, but this is only after “Za Ofiarną Służbę” and “Nie Dać Się Zarżnąć” have blown genre convention out of the water. Tankograd continue in this fashion through the blues-into-blasts “Hańba” and the mostly-more-doomed “SLAM,” with “Nostalgia” closing out in a manner one can only call progressive for its clearsighted execution of vision. Bonus track “Polska” is anthemic and to translate the lyrics is a lesson in perspective waiting to happen. I’ve heard 70 albums for this Quarterly Review, and plenty of them have mixed styles. I haven’t heard anything else like this in that process.

Tankograd on Facebook

Piranha Music on Bandcamp

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Mother Iron Horse, Under the Blood Moon

Something something Salem, Massachusetts, something something witches. Fine. Cheers to Mother Iron Horse, who indeed hail from that storied Halloween tourist destination, on having more in common sound-wise with Doomriders than any tryhard-pagan retro-style novelty acts, and on not pretending to worship the devil despite the theme they’re working with throughout this sophomore LP and Ripple Music debut, Under the Blood Moon. A 37-minute, vinyl-ready-but-is-vinyl-ready-for-it affair that moves between sludge and uptempo heavy rock, there’s little pretense to be found across the eight tracks, even as side B moves through the title-track and into the chuggery of “Samhain Dawn” and the atmospheric-but-for-all-that-screaming-oh-wait-that’s-atmosphere-too “Samhain Night” before the rolling capper “Mass at Dungeon Rock” puts the nail in the proverbial coffin. Cult-themed riffy post-hardcore sludge, anyone? Yeah, probably. Can’t imagine there isn’t a market out there for “Old Man Satan.”

Mother Iron Horse on Facebook

Ripple Music website

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Ouzo Bazooka, Dalya

You know that episode of Star Trek where Captain Kirk & Co. end up carting around this bunch of troublemaking space hippies? And they play songs like “Hey brother let’s get together and have some fun?” Of course you do. One of them was Chekhov’s ex-girlfriend from Starfleet Academy. Anyway, if you’re ever out warping from planet to planet wherever and you encounter space hippies and the songs they play don’t sound like Tel Aviv’s Ouzo Bazooka, you should drop their asses at the nearest starbase. Across the six songs and 34 minutes of Dalya, the Freak Valley veterans plant a garden of cosmic weirdness that’s as much retro spacefunk as it is Middle Eastern psychedelic jam rock, and I don’t care what decade you want to trace it to, if “Kruv” isn’t the sound of the 2260s happening right fucking now, then the future is going to be no less a disappointment than the present. Krautrock would’ve been better off if this is what it had become, and yes, I mean that.

Ouzo Bazooka on Facebook

Stolen Body Records website

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Pilot Voyager, Roadtrip to Fantazery

Those who’ve engaged with The Obelisk’s Quarterly Review at some point in the last seven-plus years that I’ve been doing them might understand that when it comes to finishing out, I like to do myself a favor and close with something awesome. Thus it is that the last record here is Pilot Voyager‘s Roadtrip to Fantazery, with four extended heavy psychedelic jams recorded by the Hungarian outfit in July at the Fantazery festival in Ukraine. It’s a full-on spacey blowout, with the trio of guitarist Ákos Karancz, bassist Ádám Kalamár and drummer Anton Ostrometskiy pushing interstellar vibes along an uptempo course charted by the likes of Earthless or Slift on “Dog Bitten Blues” (10:20) before “Dark Flood” (14:55) slows down and gets really vibed out. “Polite Screams and Electrolytes Between Me, Myself and My Pickups” (13:37) evens things out a bit, contrary to what its title might lead you to believe, and offers a highlight bassline late, and “Rare Wolfs of Yasinya” (13:29) builds to something of an apex before letting go, but the truth is if you’re not on board from the outset with Pilot Voyager‘s roadtrip — emphasis on ‘trip’ — it’s only going to be your loss. One way or the other, they’re gone.

Pilot Voyager on Facebook

Psychedelic Source Records on Bandcamp

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Second week, locked in and ready to roll. The message of today is that the Quarterly Review goes where it wants when it wants. If I’m steering this ship at all, it’s in only the most passive of ways. I hope you had a good weekend. I hope you spent it listening to killer music. I hope you managed to get all your reviews done. Ha.

So much good stuff to come this week. I’m looking forward to diving into it. And you know what? I did end up adding the extra day, so the Summer 2021 QR will go 11 days instead of 10, bringing it to 110 releases covered. Pretty sure that’s the longest I’ve ever gone.

Better get to it.

Quarterly Review #51-60:

Elara Sunstreak Band, Vostok I

True, Elara Sunstreak Band‘s second album and first for Sulatron Records, dubbed Vostok 1, is not a minor ask at four songs and 72 minutes. But by the time you’re through the 19:44 opener/longest track (immediate points) “Nexus,” the three-piece of bassist/vocalist Daniel Wieland, drummer Martin Wieland and guitarist/sitarist/synthesist Felix Schmidt have set their course outward and they continue to surprise along the way, from the shimmering Elder-style progressive guitar work in the title-track to the guest vocals of Felix Seyboth nodding at Blind Melon in the crescendo of sitar-laced closer “Orange October.” Even “On a Drink With Jim” manages to thrill with its blend of the terrestrial with the spacious, let alone its Doors homage as hinted in its title. These nuances meld with an overarching hypnosis to create a satisfying depth of presentation on the part of Elara Sunstreak Band, and it becomes all the more a far out journey worth taking.

Elara Sunstreak Band on Facebook

Sulatron Records webstore

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Lost Breed, Speak No Evil

Classic doom metal from experienced practicioners of the art. Speak No Evil is kind of a curious release. Vinyl only as yet, and self-released by the band, it answers back to the group’s initial Hellhound Records run in the 1990s and also their 1989 Wino Daze demo that featured Scott “Wino” Weinrich on vocals around the same time he left Saint Vitus and restarted The Obsessed. Weinrich appears on vocals and lead guitar throughout the first half of Speak No Evil, fronting the catchy opener “My Way Out” as well as “Thrift Store Girl,” “Cradle to the Grave” and the double-kick-laced “Doom,” which is nothing if not aptly-titled, while guitarist Pat Lydon sings on “Snakebite,” the less outwardly political “Wake the Dead,” “Siren Song” and “Stalker,” the pairing of which feels intentional. One might think the two sides/two-frontmen thing would make the release uneven, or the fact that it was recorded across two coasts, but nah, it’s doom either way and these guys know what they’re doing. Don’t sweat it. Do hope it gets a wider release.

Lost Breed on Facebook

Pat Lydon on YouTube

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T.G. Olson, T.G. Olson

Though it’s been a minute as he’s reprioritized Across Tundras, embarked on other projects, relocated to Iowa, farmed, and so on, T.G. Olson has still put out enough records under his own name that to have one arrive as a self-titled is significant in itself. Sure enough and somewhat ironically for someone who’s done so much him-and-guitar work in the past, the nonetheless-unassuming 35-minute eight-tracker features more personnel and broader arrangements than one might expect. That’s hardly a detriment, as even the layers of voice on “Steal a Day” come through as benefitting from the attention to detail, and the harmonica-inclusive twang of “Scythe” has its blues all the more emphasized for the clarity of its strum, while closer “Downer Town” invites a singalong. Personnel varies throughout, but the contibutions of Abigail Lily O’Hara (vocals), Ben Schriever (guitar, bass) and Caleb R.K. Williams (synth, guitar, banjo) — all of whom feature in the latest incarnation of Across Tundras as well — aren’t to be understated, as identifiable as Olson‘s songcraft is at the core of this material.

Across Tundras/T.G. Olson on Bandcamp

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Acid Reich, Mistress of the Perpetual Harvest

John McBain, Tim Cronin and Dave Wyndorf — in Dog of Mystery together at the time — would go on to form Monster Magnet a short time after, seemingly on a whim, Acid Reich‘s freakout Mistress of the Perpetual Harvest was put to tape in their rehearsal space as one of a number of “fake” weirdo projects. Listening to these five tracks, including likewise irreverent takes on “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” and “Amazing Grace,” the feel here is like an acid psych treasure trove of Jersey Shore fuckery. Joining the trio were Ripping Corpse‘s Shaune Kelley and Joe Paone of hellSausage, and by their own admission, the audio’s a mess. It’s an archival tape dug up from 1989 — if you’re thinking you’re getting high fidelity, you’re missing at least one of the points of putting it out in the first place. Laced with acid culture samples that may or may not have been added after the fact, this is the first official release this material has ever gotten, and it’s nasty, raw, demo fare that, if it wasn’t so blown into the cosmos you’d call it punk rock. If that doesn’t sound right on to you, it’s probably your loss.

Guerssen Records on Bandcamp

Guerssen Records website

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White Powder, Blue Dream

Based in Austin, Texas, and operatin as the four-piece of guitarist Jason Morales (also Tia Carrera), bassist Win Wallace, keyboardist Ezra Reynolds and drummer Jeff Swanson, White Powder recorded their whoa-this-shit-is-awesome mostly-instrumentalist debut LP, Blue Dream in 2014 and only now is it being at last pressed to vinyl. Given their chosen moniker, the 46-minute/nine-song session is perhaps surprisingly laid back, with the keys/synth and guitar coming together in mellow-prog style atop not-entirely-languid-but-not-overly-insistent grooves; all parties seeming geared toward immersion as much of self as for their listenership, be it in the piano of “Connemara” or the later fuzzer “Rula Jabreal,” where ripplng organ lines top the popping-snare rhythmic tension until the guitar pushes it over the edge of volume swell and wash. Some classic heavy for good measure in “Alice Walker,” but Blue Dream works best taken in its entirety, and listening to it that way, one only hopes they manage to do another in seven years or so. Or seven months. That’d work too. Extra points for the sleek-as-hell soul vocals in the Steely Dan cover “Dirty Work” on side B.

White Powder on Spotify

White Powder on Bandcamp

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Hellish Form, Remains

Quarantine-era cross-country duo Hellish Form earn a Khanate comparison on their debut release, Remains, for their sheer unwillingness to pull back from the grueling, punishing tension they create in the slowly unfolding opener/longest track (immediate points) “Your Grave Becomes a Garden.” The dirge is so much forward that it makes the post-Bell Witch lead guitar mourning feel like an afterthought, and the screaming, echoing vocals shared between multi-instrumentalists Willow Ryan (Body Void) and Jacob Lee — who both recorded their parts at home — are a harsh reminder of the existential chaos serving as the background to these songs’ making. “Ache” is shorter and puts synth more forward, and “Shadows with Teeth” thicker and nastier if that’s possible, but through them and the 10-minute finale “Another World,” the feeling of dread, fear, and loss is palpable, and Remains is a fitting name for a record that feels so much like an aftermath.

Hellish Form on Facebook

Translation Loss Records website

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Mosara, Mosara

Mosara emerge from Phoenix, Arizona, with a sound that just as easily could’ve come down from the mountains as out of the desert, and that’s by no means a complaint. Big riffs promulgate their eight-song self-titled debut LP, and they bring forth aggro sludge undertones alongside lumbering rollout, rawly-captured in the recording but not lacking presence for that, as the mounted chug of “Cypher” demonstrates. Is it heavy enough to crash your hard drive? I’m not trying to lay blame on Mosara‘s riffs or anyone else’s, but apparently there’s only so much assault modern technology can take before falling victim. We’ll call that computer a sacrifice to the eight-minute “Earth God,” its crashing drums and deceptively spacious mix creating a cavernous largesse in spite of the barebones vibe that persists across the span, “Clay and Iron” and “Majestik XII” establishing the atmosphere early but not the full sonic reach of the band, whose plunge is made all the deeper by the High on Fire-style drive of “Oumuamua.” Doesn’t have to be a revolution to fuck you up.

Mosara on Facebook

Transylvanian Tapes on Bandcamp

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Tombstunner, Call to the Void

I don’t know if Grand Rapids, Michigan, yet has an officially designated “scourge,” but I’d be happy to see Tombstunner end up with the title. The band’s debut album, Call to the Void, reminds at once of fellow sneering Midwestern chicanery-bringers Bloodcow and also of early ’90s, Blind-era C.O.C., their tones refusing to give themselves over to one side or the other of the argument between metal and heavy rock. Marked out by considered and sometimes willfully clever lyrics, the record strikes with plenty of groove — plenty of “strike,” for that matter — and not an ounce of pretense on pieces like “ASH” or the later “Contempt’s Concrete,” which touches on harsher fare, but again, isn’t really keen to leave its rock foundation behind. They probably make the right choice in that. Eight-minute capper “The Last Ride” is catchy and weighted in kind, seeming to pack as much as possible into its finale as though to let there be no uncertainty the band has more to say. Fair enough. There’s growing to be done, but Call to the Void‘s untamed sensibility is ultimately a strength, not a weakness.

Tombstunner on Facebook

Tombstunner on Bandcamp

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Moanhand, Present Serpent

Sometimes there’s nothing like a good scream. Moscow-based Roman Filatov has one. The lone figure behind Moanhand can growl, and unlike many harsher metal vocalists, he can also sing, and does so readily across his band’s first album, Present Serpent, but god damn, that’s a good scream. Enviable. Comprised of six tracks, Present Serpent is as progressive as it is extreme, as doom as it is any number of other microgenres, and despite the formidable and varied nature of his performances throught — second track “The Charmthrower” has more scope than many bands do in an entire career arc — he does not fail to put songwriting first ahead of either technique or impact. Present Serpent will not hit a nerve with everyone, but the lumbering “Raw Blessings” and the atmosludge metal of finisher “The Boomering of Serpents,” calling back to opener “Serpent Soul (A Tale of Angels’ Slaughter)” in semi-blackened throb, just leaves me wondering why the hell not. On the level of Moanhand‘s forward potential alone — never mind any of the actual songs — it is a staggering debut.

Moanhand on Facebook

Moanhand on Bandcamp

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Appalooza, The Holy of Holies

The percussion nuance and guitar lick nodding at Morricone in opener “Storm” amid all the post-Alice in Chains vocal arrangements should be a signal of the reach France’s Appalooza bring to their second LP and Ripple debut, The Holy of Holies. To wit, the subsequent “Snake Charmer” is off and careening almost immediately on its own path, and it’s commendable on the band’s part that where they go on the burlier “Reincarnation” and the more spacious “Nazareth” and the centerpiece “Conquest” — which starts out particularly hard-hitting and by the time it’s done is given over to standalone acoustic guitar without sounding disjointed in getting there — remains so seemingly even-handed in its delivery. Their material is considered, then. It proves no less so through the brash/tense “Azazael,” the desert-but-not “Distress” and “Thousand Years After,” which is a melodic highlight even among the many other surrounding. Tasked with summarizing, closer “Canis Majoris” answers “Conquest” with melancholy and heft, its ending satisfying in an emotional context in additing to being a well earned sonic payoff.

Appalooza on Thee Facebooks

Ripple Music website

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