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The Obelisk Questionnaire: Alex Hölzinger of TOOMS

Posted in Questionnaire on May 5th, 2023 by JJ Koczan

Alex Hölzinger of TOOMS

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

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

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Alex Hölzinger of TOOMS

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

The short answer is Slippery Metal. That phrase kinda started as a joke, but I guess over time it became true. We find it hard to pin down exactly what genre we play. We have such varied taste in music, and not just in metal. I would like to think that that eclectic taste an be heard in the music. We all met about 10 years ago while studying fine art and we jammed here and there over the years. Played a couple shows at house parties and some small venues. Even recorded an EP. But we never really took it too seriously. When we re-branded as TOOMS about 4 or 5 years ago, we got more focused, began writing more songs. We set goals for ourselves as a band. Got better at our instruments. Began making merch etc. It is in constant development, and I love where it is and where it’s going. That said, we are still not taking it too seriously haha.

Describe your first musical memory.

As a kid, maybe 3 or 4, I had a tennis racket that I would play as a guitar while running around the apartment listening to Die Toten Hosen’s – Ein Kleines Bisschen Horrorschau. Definitely my first introduction to guitar music. Where it all started to go wrong I suppose haha.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

As a band, I’m sure I can speak for all three of us when I say getting to close out the Jagger Stage at Bloodstock 2022. That definitely felt good. So cool to bring our weird sounding band to a bigger stage and get a positive reaction. The first time we where invited to play The Siege of Limerick was also a milestone for us. Maybe recording our first full-length too. We unfortunately released it during global lockdown, and never got to do an album launch or anything, but the experience of being in a studio and everything that goes along with that was great. We learned A LOT while making T.O.O.M.S.

As a personal memory, I would have to say seeing Soundgarden followed by Black Sabbath in 2012, to this day, crowd surfing the length and breadth of that enormous crowd during Paranoid, highlight of my life. Seeing Sleep for the first time was a spiritual thing too. That band has some of the most amazing lore. Dopesmoker to this day remains the Mac Daddy of stoner doom.

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

Wow, that is a great question. I could get real dark on this one (#128517#)

But I guess I’ll just say this, no matter how hard things get, they always get easier. Pressure forms diamonds folks.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

Better art, or rather more refined art. You learn how say more with less.

How do you define success?

Success to me is being happy and content, and being proud of what you do and how you do it. Leading a simple life without any unnecessary stress.

Also driving a sports car and owning a huge house with gold toilets and marble floors, filled with lots of expensive vases and a jet ski. Oh and various exotic pattés in the double door fridges you have in each room of your 16 room mansion. Hmmm, maybe being buried in one of those limited edition KISS coffins, that is pretty fuckin’ successful.

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

I saw GZA preforming Liquid Swords in its entirety. That was once one of my favorite hip-hop albums. Haven’t been able to listen to it since.

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

Music that sells (#128517#) I joke I joke.

I have been meaning to make this lamp/sculpture from a log and LEDs. I have been drying it for a number of years, and I think it’s about ready to go. More music with TOOMS obviously too, we have enough material for a second album, pretty much ready to go.
I’d love to get into making short films too, and score them myself. I have made a couple music videos and really enjoyed the process. From filming to editing. Imagine a spaghetti western meets an art house ambient kind of thing. Beyond the Black Rainbow meets the Dollars Trilogy, something like that.

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

To make the viewer/listener think, feel or question. And to allow the creator to express and share freely. Sometimes it’s a pure cathartic release, other times it’s an idea manifest and shared. Abstract or more on the nose, doesn’t matter, subconsciously, it’s a release. At least if it’s made with passion and integrity. I also believe that once art is created, it’s left into the world, and will survive longer than its maker, so you get to leave a part of yourself behind. Always thought that was pretty cool.

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

Dinner.

https://www.facebook.com/TOOMSband/
https://www.instagram.com/tooms_uta/
https://tooms.bandcamp.com/

https://www.cursedmonk.com/
https://cursedmonk.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/cursedmonk/
https://www.instagram.com/cursedmonkrecords/

TOOMS, The Schmeckoning (2023)

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TOOMS Premiere “One Ton Soup”; The Orb Offers Massive Signals out Friday

Posted in audiObelisk on July 14th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

tooms

Limerick, Ireland’s TOOMS will release their debut album, The Orb Offers Massive Signals, this Friday, July 17, through Cursed Monk Records. The acronym-monikered three-piece have already unveiled a couple tracks from the offering, as one will, but as the (I assume) last piece to a densely-weighted riffy puzzle, they offer the fitting summary “One Ton Soup,” and as you’ll probably expect given the context of the band’s name, the song’s title, the label putting it out and just about everything else up to the looks on their faces in their press photo, it’s rather heavy. They call it “thicc” and I’m not inclined to argue.

Something else “One Ton Soup” does, though is blend styles in some unexpected ways. The angularity of the opening progression, for example, and the manner in which it gives way to lurching extremity, the overarching weight seeming to rumble in the high end as well as the low, the whole thing sounding fierce and lurching with samples behind, obscured by the next round of pummeling that soon begins. The song runs seven minutes total, so it’s not a minor sampling by any means of the 10 track offering — though I’ll admit to no small amount of curiosity to hear tooms the orb offers massive signals“Megalobong,” especially given their stated affinity for earlier Mastodon — and as “One Ton Soup” breaks at its halfway point to crashes and snare march (and samples), the procession feels all the more extreme-sludge for its sense of militarism; the song almost sounds like it’s beating itself with itself. Like if you were to self-flagellate by slapping your own face, but with the riff.

Is it massive? Well it’s frickin’ called “One Ton Soup,” so yes thank you very much it is. A quiet line of Fender Rhodes comes in to finish, kind of out of nowhere, but the distorted underpinning remains, and the landscape over which TOOMS just marched for the last three and a half minutes of the track is duly flattened. I don’t know what happens when “Krokodil Den” takes hold as the next track on The Orb Offers Massive Signals, but I know listening to “One Ton Soup” makes me curious to find out, so I suppose that’s one reason to roll out the ol’ ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner, if you needed one.

Preorders are up now through Cursed Monk‘s Bandcamp, from which the following player also comes, bringing the premiere of “One Ton Soup.”

Before I turn you over to the music, I’d like to extend thanks to the band for the thought and detail and personality they put into the quote about it. Sometimes you ask a band for a quote about a song and they give you a half-sentence that equates to “duh we wrote it dude.” Fair enough, but it’s clear TOOMS took the time to really give some background — right down to the lyrics and the gear they used — and it is appreciated.

Enjoy the track:

TOOMS on “One Ton Soup”:

With “One Ton Soup” we basically tried to write the nastiest, heaviest choon possible at that time.

The intro was 100% inspired by High On Fire’s “Hung Drawn and Quartered.” The rest of the song? Not sure exactly where it came from, just carved itself out of the stratosphere by jamming, and we managed to stumble upon these riffs.

There is a chord in the slowed down part that we call the Lamb of God chord, and the main part of the song, in hindsight, was probably inspired by “Mother Puncher”-era Mastodon. There is also that black metal tremolo part before the thicc crushing S L O W outro, so we were certainly drawing from many different influences.

We actually recorded the drums for this way before we did guitars, and did this strange slow-down-speed-up thing with the drums during the bridge between main riff sections with vocals. It was super hard to recreate on guitar, and just didn’t seem right, so we chopped the drums a little for that part to make it feel less stumbling, and because of that it gives it a little feel of industrial/electronic music, which was totally a happy accident.

The guitars are layered much on the whole album with many many pedals, from wah-pedals cocked all the way down and drowned in distortion, to filter pedals mangled with custom built fuzz pedals,(“The Sodomizer” being a aptly named one) But on this particular song, the guitar tone is mostly just coming from overdriven amp distortion. Used a modded Bugera head that’s basically a Fender Bassman, and a Jch50 on the overdrive channel. Layered em both, used a 2×12 cab with celestions in it, and boom, TONE.

Our sound engineer and recording genius Chris also came up with some great ideas, one of which being to vari-speed the guitars; which is basically, play the riff twice as fast, record that, then slow it back to its written speed and pitch correct it. It gives a dragging, lumbering feel (have probably got that way wrong, but that is the jist). Chris also played all the nasty bubbling sounds that you can hear beneath the riffs during the bridge. He also followed the guitar’s melody line during the outro and played the Fender Rhodes that fades in and takes the song to a whole new level, which was a collective idea that stemmed from many hours together in little rooms making guitars sound horrible.

The sample just before the outro kicks into full gear is taken from Black Dynamite, just to remind us all that metal can be heavy as fuck, but doesn’t need to be super serious all the time (Looking at you death metal).

Vocal and lyrical wise, it’s a song basically about soup that drinks you and follows the description of you (the listener) becoming used as an ingredient in the Devil’s broth, and describes in detail all the gross ways in which you are dismantled and turned into a human crouton.

It had originally just been the first couple of lines repeated over and over. But on the day of tracking the vocals, it didn’t seem right or do the music justice, so the vocals were written as they were being tracked. As far as the vocal delivery is concerned, it was very much “vocals as an instrument” kind of approach. We thought about putting more vocals on the outro, but felt like it just didn’t need any there, it felt complete and once the Rhodes melody was added, we knew it was done.

Lyrics:
One. One tone. One. Tone soup burns you.
Burns. Boils teeth. Melts. Gums and scalds lips.
You. You chose. The. Special of the day.
Death. Death broth. Death. Death broth drinks you.
Wake. Wake up. Wake. Wake up in wok.
Now. Now your. Now. Now you’re sautéed.
Shaved. And skinned. Hung. You been bleed dry.
Blow. It’s hot. Blow. Or tongue get sore.
Death. Death broth. Death. Death broth bubbles.
One. One tone. One. Tone soup drank you.
Your. Your blood. Your. Blood and guts gone.
Hot. Hot oils. Skin. Crispy garnish.
Taste. Taste good. Hu. Hu-man hot pot.
Devil. Devil chef. Serve. You soup on plate.
Death. Death broth. Death. Death rules world

TOOMS are:
Drums, gong – Kieran ‘Slippy Fingers’ AKA ‘Chodo Baggins’ AKA ‘The Wobbler’ Grace
Bass – Anto ‘The Wizard’ AKA ‘Farmer Arms’ AKA ‘Old Man’ AKA ‘Coldplay’ Donnellan
Guitar, vocals – Alex ‘The Riffsmiff AKA Big Slim(e) AKA The Vanilla Gorilla’ AKA ‘Half-Bar’ Hölzinger

TOOMS on Thee Facebooks

TOOMS on Bandcamp

Cursed Monk Records website

Cursed Monk Records on Bandcamp

Cursed Monk Records on Thee Facebooks

Cursed Monk Records on Instagram

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