[Click play above to stream Soma Holiday by Trevor’s Head in its entirety. Album is out today, April 30, on APF Records.]

Breathing and lush synth begins Soma Holiday by UK trio Trevor’s Head, and from the dug-in post-Kyuss thrust-into-richer-psychedelic-hypnosis of “Sleepstate” through the secret track about fucking chickens — way to take Alabama down a peg, guys — the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Roger Atkins, bassist/vocalist Aaron Strachan and drummer/vocalist/keyboardist/flutist Matt Ainsworth (all also contribute percussion) — I wouldn’t exactly call the record progressive front to back, but it has those tendencies and is definitely varied and thoughtful in its way, in addition to being most definitely the product of children of the 1990s.

Discernible influences tell the tale from the aforementioned Kyuss, to Orange Goblin on “I Can’t Believe it’s Not Better,” Tool and System of a Down on “Bomb,” and more mellow grunge in the verses of centerpiece “Clerical Error” that meet with quirky starts and stops maybe derived from Queens of the Stone Age or maybe just the result of meshing all the rest with a bit of the UK’s modern heavy boom. Swapping out vocalists adds to the sonic diversity as Trevor’s Head, for whom Soma Holiday marks their third album and debut on APF Records, but even punker cuts like “Billion $ Fart” and the 38-second “Writer’s Block” bear the hallmarks of a ’90s stylization, especially when paired next to the inventive basslines and proggy melody of “Ghost” in the case of the former or the riff-forward motion of the aforementioned “Clerical Error” in the case of the latter.

Ultimately though, if Soma Holiday is progressive at all amid the occasional fart joke and “Verbal Hygiene,” which seems to take a stance on political correctness one way or the other, it’s progressive in a metallic sense. Recorded at Foel Studios by Mike Bew, Gazz Rogers and Tom Wild (the latter of whom also mixed and mastered), the guitar tone of Atkins has more crunch than fuzz, which leaves room for Strachan‘s low end to shine throughout — as behind the guitar solo on “Verbal Hygiene,” just for one example — and as “Harvest Ritual” moves from Primus-style storytelling its quick intro into more straight-ahead desert sprinting, the thickness of the riffing remains a tie to both the punkish cuts and broader-reaching atmospheric pieces like “Ghost” just before and the acoustic, percussion-laced “Departed” later on, though admittedly that track is a standout either way in its surroundings near the end of the record, with “Boomeranxiety,” “Bomb” and closer “Welcome (The Unburdening)” behind it offering some of Soma Holiday‘s proggiest stretches, though again, those are more than a little undercut by that secret track.

“Boomeranxiety” asks the very British question, “Chips or crisps?” amid a suitably frenetic riff and drum progression and willfully weird vocal approach before turning into bass-led semi-ska bounce and finishing out with a return to its central riff, and “Bomb” references Slayer in the lyrics while building a memorable hook before a scream-laced bridge that turns to the post-Helmet start-stopping “Welcome (The Unburdening),” which ties together much of the album almost in spite of itself — that is, I don’t think it was written or placed in order to do so specifically, but there’s something about closing the album with “Welcome” and starting it with “Sleepstate” that seems to be purposefully backwards in a way Trevor’s Head might very much enjoy on a conceptual level.

A word of warning to those who’d take it on: Soma Holiday most definitely has its tongue-in-cheek moments, and some of those might lead one to think that even its more serious side is facetious on some level. I’m not sure in the end if it is or if the whole thing is one big joke to the band, but either way, that concern should be secondary to the actual scope Trevor’s Head bring to the album’s 53-minute span. There are jarring moments among all the changes, but these don’t feel like accidents either, and it seems more like Ainsworth, Atkins and Strachan want the listener to meet them on their own level rather than have the band make overtures to accessibility in order to engage as many people as possible.

That lack of compromise ends up being a strength, and as Soma Holiday is Trevor’s Head‘s second album as a three-piece behind 2016’s Tricolossus, it’s easy to hear in the growth from one record to the next that they’re in the process of becoming the band they want to be and have set about refining and expanding the parameters of their sound to make it happen. Not everyone’s going to get it. Not everyone’s going to want to get it. But for a select few, Soma Holiday is going to feel oddly like home in its attitude and style, and in accomplishing that, it would seem to meet precisely the band’s goals in its making.

Trevor’s Head on Thee Facebooks

Trevor’s Head on Twitter

Trevor’s Head on Bandcamp

APF Records on Thee Facebooks

APF Records webstore

Loop, Heaven’s End (1987)

Among the great many other things 2017 will do, it’ll mark 30 years since Loop issued Heaven’s End. It remains an album ahead of its time, our time, the entire concept of time, etc. One has to wonder if the Surrey, UK, trio — then comprised of guitarist/vocalist Robert Hampson, bassist Neil MacKay and drummer John Wills — had any idea the ritualized sensibility that would be read into the blown-out repetitions of “Forever” three decades after the fact of its initial release on Head Records, or that the reverb overdose that “Too Real to Feel” elicits would continue to churn innards over such an expanse of years. Long before Heaven’s End and its two original-era follow-ups, Fade Out (1988) and A Gilded Eternity (1990), were reissued on Reactor Records in 2008, and long before they got back on stage in 2014 for appearances at All Tomorrow’s Parties, Roadburn (review here) and elsewhere, Loop thrived on word of mouth — an organic reputation worthy of the buzzsaw leads on “Straight to Your Heart.” There was never any marketing push, never any major press (until the reissues and reunion, anyway) and for a long time, Hampson — who was the sole remaining founder by the time they were done — was on to other projects, among them Main, and for a brief while, Godflesh.

But it’s perhaps by virtue of being so out of step with their era, their place, this dimension, and so on, Loop have proven to be so haunting. The samples of HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey peppered throughout the title-track of Heaven’s End and closer “Carry Me” — the record finishes with the spoken line “my mind is going,” when in fact it sounds like the mind and everything else has long since melted away — seem almost quaint now, but the take-acid-worship-cosmos context was entirely different. Consider Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan (consider, for that matter, Theresa May and Donald Trump; could be time for a new Loop full-length in 2017) and the dawning of neo-conservatism. Where culture all around them was looking backward and trying to recapture a period it felt sentimental for that never actually existed, Loop turned the impulse on its head and looked back in an attempt to capture the most resonant freakouts of the original psychedelic years circa 1967 to 1971, bringing that swirl and drive to opener “Soundhead” as a clarion to those already on their wavelength and a strong argument for conversion of the otherwise willing. In a time when alternative rock was getting its feet wet in the underground as it prepared for a commercial takeover in the next decade, Loop stepped outside even those bounds and brazenly revitalized dripping-wet psych in what, 30 years later, still sounds like a reminder of how often our universe exists in boxes of its own making.

They weren’t the only band playing psychedelic rock at the time, or garage rock, proto-gaze, or whatever else you might want to tag Heaven’s End as being — multiple tags apply, none of them fully — but their influence continues to expand to a new generation of lysergic jammers in Europe and beyond. In 2015, Hampson joined forces with Hugo Morgan and Wayne Maskell of The Heads and guitarist Dan Boyd as a new incarnation of Loop and released the Array 1 12″ and toured the US before stepping back into the murk of inactivity. As recently as Oct. 2016, Hampson — who’s also been playing solo shows under the moniker Low — has hinted at Loop doings for 2017, and indeed the band is booked alongside Swans, The Fall and Royal Trux at a festival dubbed Transformer this coming May in Manchester, UK. As he put it, “Basically, things went south all at once and it was not the right time to simply deal with everything at once and it hit us financially a great deal too… A rest was needed and even tho’ ill-timed (Loop Law) it was unavoidable. I’m glad to be able to tell you that there are chinks of light and we do plan to resurface next year in 2017. I hope that the unfinished Array project will also see its fruition in some form. But… it’s early days yet to say too much and make promises that might not be able to keep. We haven’t gone, we just sat down and took stock.”

Fair enough. Whatever Loop wind up bringing to bear this year or don’t, their mark on heavy psychedelia remains indelible, and Heaven’s End, as the first step in the pivotal trio of offerings, is a crucial piece of understanding the impact of which is still fleshing out. Call it acid philosophy.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

—

I went back to work this week after having vacation between Xmas and New Year’s. It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t fun, but it happened and the week is almost over, so I suppose I survived. Not always by choice. By Wednesday afternoon I was praying to Apollo — god of pianos, among other things — to drop one on my head. As usual, silence in return.

The good news. What’s the good news? Hell if I know.

Well, I guess the good news is the All That is Heavy sponsorship deal (detailed here) got an encouraging response. If you haven’t yet, you should take advantage of that whole 15-percent-off thing, as it’s pretty sweet. For what it’s worth, I’m planning on filling a cart as well. There’s always something I want to pick up.

So there. That’s some positivity.

Also got confirmation that I’ll be at Roadburn again this year, working on the Weirdo Canyon Dispatch for the fourth year in a row, which is amazing and humbling and was pretty much what made all that time otherwise spent piano-wishing on Wednesday worthwhile.

And I’m looking forward to a recuperation weekend of sitting on ass with The Patient Mrs. as we continue to make our way through Final Fantasy XV together, and I got a fancy new coffeemaker from my family for Xmas that seems to specialize in pure caffeinated joy, so yeah, okay, not so bad.

Pep talk accomplished. Thanks for being a witness.

Next week also looks pretty sweet. Here’s what’s lined up as of now (subject to change, of course):

Mon.: Radio Adds (it’s been so long!), Elephant Tree tour news and a Pater Nembrot video premiere.
Tue.: Lo-Pan track premiere and review of their new EP, In Tensions.
Wed.: Premiere of Kings Destroy‘s new single-song EP, None More.
Thu.: Full-album stream of the new Aathma.
Fri.: Long-overdue Sergio Ch. review and a Funeral Horse video premiere.

There’s more to come, of course, but that’s the basic sketch I’m going from for now. I hope whatever you’re up to over the next couple days, you have a great and safe weekend. Back here on Monday, and please don’t forget to check out the forum and the radio stream.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio