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Friday Full-Length: Elvis Deluxe, Lazy

Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 10th, 2023 by JJ Koczan

I always thought these guys had another album in them. Elvis Deluxe formed in 2002, concurrent to acts like Sweden’s Dozer from whose earliest work they took some notable influence, and while they by no means were the first Polish heavy rock band, their 2007 debut album, Lazy (review here) was in conversation with desert-style rock in a way that was an early arriver to the shifts in international creativity that the internet provided. In the era of bands flourishing by finding friends on MySpace — the quaint notion of a social media company actually allowing streams on a page — Elvis Deluxe were fuzzy and classic-swinging and, yeah, maybe more than a little stoned; a precursor to some extent of the modern Polish heavy rock scene, which is among Europe’s most vital in line with Greece, the UK, Germany, and so on.

During their time, which was relatively short, they offered up three albums — Lazy, 2011’s brilliant-yes-I-mean-that Favourite State of Mind, and 2013’s The Story So Far (review here), which was a mix of songs recorded live in the studio in 2012, demos from 2003, and a Stooges cover compiled — and seemed to be fading out from the vanguard just as Polish heavy began to flourish with the rise of bands like Belzebong, Satellite Beaver (who’d become Sunnata) and Dopelord, among others.

The band for Lazy‘s 10-song/40-minute run was the four-piece of bassist/vocalist Wojciech Ziemba, guitarists Tomasz “Bolek” Sierajewski and Marcin “Mechu” Hejak and drummer Mikołaj “Miko” Malanowski, and the work of the latter is particularly crucial. Not devaluing any performance here — how could I as “27” imagines Fredrik Nordin fronting Fu Manchu and “Money to Burn” rolls its second-half jam to a finish like a lost Kyuss B-side? — but as most of the album’s tracks run in the three-to-four-minute range, there’s an abiding sense of casual cool, and it’s rooted in the swing of Malanowski‘s drums before it can be built on with the deceptively light fuzz in the guitars as bolstered by the bass and the laid-back delivery of Ziemba‘s vocals.

From the loud-then-quiet noise that introduces opening track “Superorfeo,” which is among the speedier of the pieces included, through the breaking-apart wash that is the culmination of Lazy in closer “Between Heaven and Hell,” the band does nothing so much as toss off one memorable song after another like it’s no big deal, the second track “Extraterrestrial Hideout Seeker” emblematic of their ability to take garage rock push and desert tonality with more than an edge of swagger and build songs that, while largely traditional in their verse-chorus structures, nonetheless felt open and languid regardless of tempo, resulting in a vibe that was all Elvis Deluxe‘s own and that few bands I’ve come across from Poland or otherwise have been able to capture in quite the same way. If it needs to be said — and over 15 years later, maybe it does — the album was not lazy. In fact it was rife with movement.

elvis deluxe lazyTo wit, the count-in-and-go of “Perfect Ride,” which sets its ambition in its title, is one of the more punkish cuts, maybe a bit of Demon Cleaner or Lowrider in there, as it definitely sounds aware of what stoner rock was at this point, but turned toward its own purposes, and off at a solid clip to do so. After the start-stop-and-roll of “27,” the outright nod of “Sleep Brings No Relief” taps …And the Circus Leaves Town-style bounce, but is given hints of psychedelia by the vocals, which sweetly contrast some of the rougher fuzz in the guitar and the buzzsaw wah solo (actually solos, since there are two lead layers there) that follows while the drums hold down the central progression they started with as though waiting for everyone else to rally around the verse again, which of course they do before a full-on distortion-wall push into a final chorus.

The subsequent “For the Soul” blends thrust and a tension-release bridge that’s not quite a chorus but not quite not, the mellow vocals pulling back from the harder delivery of the verse, the riff of which is delightfully twisty boogie rock, before it opens up again, resolidifying for its final stretch, topped with either synth or effects for good measure. Perhaps unsurprisingly, “Ready to Rage” goes even faster, and underscores its urgency with Little Richard piano strikes in its culmination, crashing out ahead of “Money to Burn” which starts with the bass and drums and is the longest track at a still-manageable 6:49, using that time to showcase nearly every strength that has worked to Lazy‘s benefit thus far, including a bit of weirdo jamming skillfully brought around to a righteous but not overblown finish.

Placed between that jam and the closer, “The Mountain” feels somewhat like an afterthought, but isn’t, as the second half of the song reveals another highlight melody in the layered vocals to go along with its engaging hook before giving over directly to “Between Heaven and Hell” as it might have done on stage. And “Between Heaven and Hell” is blown out even before its blowout, rising to a crescendo of noise that borders on the caustic before it fades out to cap the record. Even in that moment, Elvis Deluxe maintain their complete lack of pretense and easygoing mentality — like, “Oh the universe is collapsing on itself now? yeah that’s fine” — to the very last, letting it be a defining aspect of a debut that demonstrates nothing if not a purposeful declaration of who they were as a band.

And again, they’d build on that with Favourite State of Mind before the kind-of half-album that was The Story So Far, and to me, their second record always seemed to call for more of a follow-up than it got. Everybody is still alive and active musically, so never say never. Ziemba currently plays in The Heavy CloudsMalanowski is in Wij, and Wojciech “Bert Trust” Trusewicz, who took over on guitar for Hejak in 2010, is in the Warsaw Afrobeat Orchestra, while Sierajewski started the hardcore punk outfit Czerwone Świnie in 2019. It’s not impossible they could come back together at some point — certainly there are many from their time doing so now, be it Mammoth VolumeJosiah or the aforementioned Lowrider and Dozer — and if they did, it would be a welcome return to be sure, and one would hope they’d get a bit of the respect at last that this record and the rest of their studio work diligently earned.

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

Good morning. Everybody’s up. I got up at 4 with the alarm, The Pecan got up at 5:30, The Patient Mrs. about 15 minutes after that. It’s about 6:10 now and I’m just happy I managed to get the above done. These mornings I take what I can get.

Yesterday was a trip. I woke up at 2:30AM to go to the bathroom like the old man that I am — at least I woke up — and never got back to sleep. The kid took a Tae Kwon Do lesson yesterday afternoon — which he fucking loved — and it was a trip to be sure. Fun fact: I also did Tae Kwon Do for a few years as a kid, and unbeknownst to me, The Patient Mrs. booked him at the same school I went to when I was young. So I’m sitting there while the master is teaching The Pecan how to do a high block and I’m having flashbacks to when I was a little older than him doing the same thing. Different teacher, obviously. But yeah, weird. He wants to take classes. They’re expensive. We’ll see what happens.

This weekend is The Patient Mrs.’ birthday. I bought her present shortly after Xmas and it’s been nice to have that taken care of rather than hanging over my god damned head like it otherwise would be. We’re having my family over, as we will, while her sister and her sister’s family will come down from Connecticut next weekend. Gonna be a lot, but a hoot, which is pretty much how it goes with the loved ones. My entire family gets high now, which I think is hilarious. If you’d told my 18-year-old, just-got-busted-for-possession ass that someday I’d be asking my mom if she needs any edibles, well, I might believe it but I’d certainly be more pissed about having gotten arrested in the first place back then. But anyway, the slowdown of anxiety and general brain intensity is good for all of us, I think. I’ll gladly slough deeper into middle age with a goofy grin rather than my generally wretched, cruelly lucid state of self-loathing. Largely to myself, I’ve been thinking of it as a brain break, and in that regard, it both feels better and is more effective than xanax.

Next week is packed. I’m triple-booked for Tuesday, which is Valentine’s Day. Lot of love to go around, apparently. The rest of the week is full too, which is daunting but barring disaster I should be able to get through it alright. Does not allow for much fuckoff time, though, which is like mana to me. Also a Gimme Metal show next Friday, so I need to turn that in, and the PostWax liner notes for the REZN/Vinnum Sabbathi collaboration are coming due this weekend. I’ve only been talking about needing to bang those out for, oh, four months or so, so yes, it’s probably time to do so. I’ve also just been asked to finish an interview I started a while back that goes pretty deep into some of the back end work involved in this site and my personal history, so yeah. Busy, I guess, is the bottom line. Apparently that’s how I like it. Who doesn’t want to feel completely overwhelmed like all the time? Certainly no one I know.

Did you listen to that Westing track? Did you listen to Polymoon? Bastard Sword earlier today? I’ve resolved to dedicate more of my time to albums I choose rather than what comes across in premiere pitches and things like that, so that’s how you get Polymoon and Mathew’s Hidden Museum at the start of this week. I’ve been feeling a bit like I’m shouting into the void about records like that, but I’m enjoying writing about them, and in the next few weeks as we move into March, I’ve locked in album streams for the aforementioned REZN, Sandrider and Stoned Jesus, among others, and those are three of the best records I’ve heard so far this year, so I’m stoked on the alignment there. This coming week, I’ll also premiere a video from The Machine’s new LP, which is a gem. That’s one of the three slated for Tuesday. Indeed, lovely.

I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Have fun, hydrate, watch your head, get laid if you can and the vibe is right. I’ll be back on Monday with a L’Ira del Baccano video premiere and more besides. Good stuff to come. Thanks again for reading.

FRM.

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Friday Full-Length: Dopelord, Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult

Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 3rd, 2023 by JJ Koczan

If one considers the cover art’s pipe-organ bongs emitting purple smoke, stoner pinup, Satanskull on keys — and of course he has a beard — a red sky far back and all the pot leaves, then yeah, you could probably say Dopelord‘s Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of record. The sophomore full-length from the Warsaw-based four-piece was self-released on April 24, 2014, which one assumes is as close as they could get to 4/20 that year, and fair enough.

Comprised of five tracks and running a tidy 40 minutes, withdopelord Black Arts Riff Worship and weed cult vinyl a sample about a sabbath at the start of the hooky “Addicted to Black Magick,” some standalone horror piano at the end of “Preacher Electrick,” a languid slog even behind the buzzsaw solo in the second half of “Acid Trippin'” that calls back to Black Sabbath‘s “Snowblind” before the tempo finally kicks up to its winding finish, the sense that “Green Plague” is falling apart even as it runs at a gallop reminiscent specifically of “Into the Void,” or the way the 11-and-a-half-minute finale “Pass the Bong” seems to lay it all on the line in its combination of Electric Wizard and Sleep influences, pulling together a Jus Oborn-style vocal over tonality that rests nicely alongside Sleep‘s “The Clarity,” which was released in July of the same year.

Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult — which certainly could be the name of a catalog I’d look forward to getting in the mail every month — codifies the ultra-stoner foundation Dopelord put forth on 2012’s Magick Rites (review here) and is a crucial moment for the band, coming at a time when the next generation of meme-ready weedian heavy was really just taking shape. Part of the record’s brilliance is in speaking to the subculture from within the subculture, as believe it or not, not everyone in the world is going to look at a bong pipe organ and understand that translates to the thick walls of fuzz distortion wrought by guitarist/lead vocalist Paweł Mioduchowski, guitarist Grzegorz Pawłowski, bassist/vocalist Piotr Zin and drummer Grzesiek “Xerxes” Wilpiszewski (currently in Black Tundra) or know immediately what planet that red sky is on.

Stoner doom is not the only subgenre under the heavy metal umbrella that preaches to the converted — see all, yes all, thrash metal since about 1989 — but the sense of Dopelord being fans of the style as well as players, rather than distancing themselves from it to pretend toward some kind of artistic objectivity, which is a fantasy at best in 99 percent of cases, is palpable throughout, and their revelry of nod becomes all the more accessible to the listener for the fact that the band is actually enjoying what they do.

And from the still-goes-where-you-think-it’s-going-but-twists-on-the-road-to-get-there changes in “Addicted to Black Magick” through the subversive critique buried in the lumber of “Preacher Electrick” — I saw Dopelord in October and before they played “Hail Satan” from 2020’s Sign of the Devil (review here), Mioduchowski noted from the stage that they could get arrested for playing that kind of song in a church in their home country; “Preacher Electrick” feels like the prototype on which that’s built — as the record moves into that three-song mega-dig of doomed riffs and hazy vibes, in “Preacher Electrick” (8:52), “Acid Trippin'” (7:39) and “Green Plague” (7:29), the roll they conjure coming out of the album’s opener is deepened, stretched out, beat up and chugged into oblivion across this span of tracks, listenable and melodic but never failing to speak to the style, is the heart of Dopelord‘s righteous in self-awareness.

That is to say, they know what they’re doing as they enjoy it, and whether it’s the black arts, the riff worship, or the weed cult, the vibe in the album is celebratory even as the riffing that leads the way through so much of it is downer-doomed and baked to the nines. It’s not so much “drop out of life with bong in hand” as it is, “we already dropped out of life with bong in hand, we recommend you do the same immediately, in fact, here’s an extra bong we have lying around, why don’t you take it and come party with dopelord Black Arts Riff Worship and weed cultus for a bit?” As invitations go, one could do far, far worse.

Whether or not you get the VHS-horror references tucked into the lyrics of “Addicted to Black Magick” — Riding with the Devil, anyone? — or get swept up in the is-that-an-extra-layer-of-drums headfuckery of noise in “Green Plague,” Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult remains brazen in its adherence to the tenets of genre, breaking the fourth wall a bit with a knowing wink directed toward its listenership, but clearly executed with a love of the heft it makes even in that chaotic wah-swirl as “Green Plague” moves toward its residual feedback culmination and “Pass the Bong” slams its massive initial crashes as if to announce you’ve arrived at the gates of the Riff-Filled Land with Al Cisneros as St. Peter, the consuming spirit of fun is reaffirmed in gloriously voluminous fashion.

Yes, fun. Among the greatest innovations of the generation of stoner heavy to which Dopelord belongs is to remember that for both those playing it and those hearing, this kind of music can be a good time, celebrating the legacy of the style and inherently adding something new to it in tone, method and construction of its own songs. Coming off their debut, Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult was a moment of realization for Dopelord, and for all its overbearing plod, there are flourishes and details throughout, be it vocal patterning, a run on bass, or what seems to be an extra layer of snare drum, or even just the way “Pass the Bong” seems to decide to swing on a whim in its final couple minutes on the way to the inevitably noisy ending, the is-as-does weedism of Dopelord is no less infectious than their catchiest chorus, and nine years after its initial release — there have been other reissues and pressings along the way — Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult speaks to a time of heavy resurgence not just for its native Polish underground, but for the heavier realms of fuzz as a whole. If it isn’t yet, it’s the kind of thing that those who were there will at some point be nostalgic about.

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

On Sesame Street this morning, they’re using science to make a rainbow. There are human beings who would find such a thing threatening, and I don’t mind telling you those people are fucking idiots. No, that’s not a hot take, but it’s true just the same.

The Pecan got up at 5:15 this morning, made his way downstairs, and believe it or not was more interested in watching tv on my laptop than letting me finish writing the above. And as I was in the bathroom moments ago, number one, I could hear him in the living room yelling, “Daddy, yogurt!” as though I’d either forgotten or not told him I was hitting the can first. At least I didn’t get punched when I “finally” got back to the couch with the coveted Siggi’s vanilla. In a bit of a tyrant phase, we are.

The Patient Mrs., meanwhile, sleeps, and where I might otherwise get her up so I can go swimming, I’ll let her get whatever rest she can since she was out last night having dinner with a friend in Jersey City. I’ll go later, or tomorrow, it doesn’t matter. I do need to buy more yogurt at the Wegmans by the gym though, so that’s gonna weigh on my brain until it gets done, as that kind of thing does. Also, I missed taking out the garbage yesterday and I’m a little furious at myself for it.

My neurologist put me on Adderall, for ADHD, presumably. I started on 5mg last month, which was nothing, and moved up to 10mg this month, which by the way is also not a magic bullet for shutting up an apparently persistent sense of panic in my brain. This and 150mg of Wellbutrin for depression, along with a slew of vitamins, are the current morning regimen. I don’t like Wellbutrin and don’t think it helps, but I take it because I’m told to, and without my support whatever would become of those poor pharmaceutical companies? They should have a Bandcamp Friday for pills.

Speaking of, it’s Bandcamp Friday. I got a bit of cash from merch sales so have been enjoying that. Thanks if you bought a shirt or anything: http://mibk.bigcartel.com/products.

While I’m dropping plugs, new Gimme show at 5PM Eastern. Playlist will be posted before this is, and go here to stream it: http://gimmemetal.com.

Before I go make toast for the next stage of The Pecan’s breakfast, I’d like to thank you for the love this week as regards The Obelisk’s 14th anniversary. It doesn’t feel like all that long, but we’re heading toward 16,000 posts, so I guess my perspective on that is a bit warped. I’m pretty sure I’ve still missed more good stuff than I’ve caught, but I’m doing my best, gonna continue with that. In any case, the response was appreciated. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one getting something out of this.

Up and down week. Most are. Last weekend was crazy busy and I’m hoping this one will be less so. You know, once the sun finally comes up today.

Whatever you’re up to, have a great and safe time. Have fun, hydrate, watch your head. Next week I’m reviewing Polymoon and there’s a bunch of other stuff going on that I need to organize, so I’m gonna go do that. Okay. Thanks again.

FRM.

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Quarterly Review: Spirit Adrift, Northless, Lightrain, 1965, Blacklab, Sun King Ba, Kenodromia, Mezzoa, Stone Nomads, Blind Mess

Posted in Reviews on September 27th, 2022 by JJ Koczan

THE-OBELISK-FALL-2020-QUARTERLY-REVIEW

Here we go again as we get closer to 100 records covered in this expanded Fall 2022 Quarterly Review. It’s been a pretty interesting ride so far, and as I’ve dug in I know for sure I’ve added a few names (and titles) to my year-end lists for albums, debuts, and so on. Today keeps the thread going with a good spread of styles and some very, very heavy stuff. If you haven’t found anything in the bunch yet — first I’d tell you to go back and check again, because, really? nothing in 60 records? — but after that, hey, maybe today’s your day.

Here’s hoping.

Quarterly Review #61-70:

Spirit Adrift, 20 Centuries Gone

Spirit Adrift 20 Centuries Gone

The second short release in two years from trad metal forerunners Spirit Adrift, 20 Centuries Gone pairs two new originals in “Sorcerer’s Fate” and “Mass Formation Psychosis” — songs for our times written as fantasy narrative — with six covers, of Type O Negative‘s “Everything Dies,” Pantera‘s “Hollow,” Metallica‘s “Escape,” Thin Lizzy‘s “Waiting for an Alibi,” ZZ Top‘s “Nasty Dogs and Funky Kings” and Lynyrd Skynyrd‘s “Poison Whiskey.” The covers find them demonstrating a bit of malleability — founding guitarist/vocalist does well with Phil Lynott‘s and Peter Steele‘s inflections while still sounding like himself — and it’s always a novelty to hear a band purposefully showcase their influences like this, but “Sorcerer’s Fate” and “Mass Formation Psychosis” are the real draw. The former nods atop a Candlemassian chug and sweeping chorus before spending much of its second half instrumental, and “Mass Formation Psychosis” resolves in burly riffing, but only after a poised rollout of classic doom, slower, sleeker in its groove, with acoustic strum layered in amid the distortion and keyboard. Two quick reaffirmations of the band’s metallic flourishing and, indeed, a greater movement happening partially in their wake. And then the covers, which are admirably more than filler in terms of arrangement. Something of a holdover, maybe, but by no means lacking substance.

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Northless, A Path Beyond Grief

northless a path beyond grief

Just because it’s so bludgeoning doesn’t necessarily mean that’s all it is. The melodic stretch of “Forbidden World of Light” and delve into progressive black metal after the nakedly Crowbarian sludge of “A Path Beyond Grief,” the clean vocal-topped atmospheric heft of “What Must Be Done” and the choral feel of centerpiece “Carried,” even the way “Of Shadow and Sanguine” seems to purposefully thrash (also some more black metal there) amid its bouts of deathcore and sludge lumbering — all of these come together to make Northless‘ fourth long-player, A Path Beyond Grief, an experience that’s still perhaps defined by its intensity and concrete tonality, its aggression, but that is not necessarily beholden to those. Even the quiet intro “Nihil Sanctum Vitae” — a seeming complement to the nine-minute bring-it-all-together closer “Nothing That Lives Will Last” — seems intended to tell the listener there’s more happening here than it might at first seem. As someone who still misses Swarm of the Lotus, some of the culmination in that finale is enough to move the blood in my wretched body, but while born in part of hardcore, Northless are deep into their own style throughout these seven songs, and the resultant smashy smashy is able to adjust its own elemental balance while remaining ferociously executed. Except, you know, when it’s not. Because it’s not just one thing.

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Lightrain, AER

lightrain aer

Comprised of five songs running a tidy 20 minutes, each brought together through ambience as well as the fact that their titles are all three letters long — “Aer,” “Hyd,” “Orb,” “Wiz,” “Rue” — AER is the debut EP from German instrumentalists Lightrain, who would seek entry into the contemplative and evocative sphere of acts like Toundra or We Lost the Sea as they offer headed-out post-rock float and heavy psychedelic vibe. “Hyd” is a focal point, both for its eight-minute runtime (nothing else is half that long) and the general spaciousness, plus a bit of riffy shove in the middle, with which it fills that, but the ultra-mellow “Aer” and drumless wash of “Wiz” feed into an overarching flow that speaks to greater intentions on the part of the band vis a vis a first album. “Rue” is progressive without being overthought, and “Orb” feels born of a jam without necessarily being that jam, finding sure footing on ground that for many would be uncertain. If this is the beginning point of a longer-term evolution on the part of the band, so much the better, but even taken as a standalone, without consideration for the potential of what it might lead to, the LP-style fluidity that takes hold across AER puts the lie to its 20 minutes being somehow minor.

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1965, Panther

1965 Panther

Cleanly produced and leaning toward sleaze at times in a way that feels purposefully drawn from ’80s glam metal, the second offering from Poland’s 1965 — they might as well have called themselves 1542 for as much as they have to do sound-wise with what was going on that year — is the 12-song/52-minute Panther, which wants your nuclear love on “Nuclear Love,” wants to rock on “Let’s Rock,” and would be more than happy to do whatever it wants on “Anything We Want.” Okay, so maybe guitarist, vocalist and principal songwriter Michał Rogalski isn’t going to take home gold at the Subtlety Olympics, but the Warsaw-based outfit — him plus Marco Caponi on bass/backing vocals and Tomasz Rudnicki on drums/backing vocals, as well as an array of lead guitarists guesting — know the rock they want to make, and they make it. Songs are tight and well performed, heavy enough in tone to have a presence but fleet-footed in their turns from verse to chorus and the many trad-metal-derived leads. Given the lyrics of the title-track, I’m not sure positioning oneself as an actual predatory creature as a metaphor for seduction has been fully thought through, but you don’t see me out here writing lyrics in Polish either, so take it with that grain of salt if you feel the need or it helps. For my money I’ll take the still-over-the-top “So Many Times” and the sharp start-stops of “All My Heroes Are Dead,” but there’s certainly no lack of others to choose from.

1965 on Facebook

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Blacklab, In a Bizarre Dream

Blacklab In a Bizarre Dream

Blacklab — also stylized BlackLab — are the Osaka, Japan-based duo of guitarist/vocalist Yuko Morino and drummer Chia Shiraishi, but if you’d enter into their second full-length, In a Bizarre Dream, expecting some rawness or lacking heft on account of their sans-bass configuration, you’re more likely to be bowled over by the sludgy tonality on display. “Cold Rain” — opener and longest track (immediate points) at 6:13 — and “Abyss Woods” are largely screamers, righteously harsh with riffs no less biting, and “Dark Clouds” does the job in half the time with a punkier onslaught leading to “Evil 1,” but “Evil 2” mellows out a bit, adjusts the balance toward clean singing and brooding in a way that the oh-hi-there guest vocal contribution from Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab (after whom Blacklab are partially named) on “Crows, Sparrows and Cats” shifts into a grungier modus. “Lost” and “In a Bizarre Dream,” the latter more of an interlude, keep the momentum going on the rock side, but somehow you just know they’re going to turn it around again, and they absolutely do, easing their way in with the largesse of “Monochrome Rainbow” before “Collapse” caps with a full-on onslaught that brings into full emphasis how much reach they have as a two-piece and just how successfully they make it all heavy.

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Sun King Ba, Writhing Mass

Sun King Ba Writhing Mass

I guess the only problem that might arise from recording your first two-songer with Steve Albini is that you’ve set an awfully high standard for, well, every subsequent offering your band ever makes in terms of production. There are traces of Karma to Burn-style chug on “Ectotherm,” the A-side accompanied by “Writhing Mass” on the two-songer that shares the same name, but Chicago imstrumental trio Sun King Ba are digging into more progressively-minded, less-stripped-down fare on both of these initial tracks. Still, impact and the vitality of the end result are loosely reminiscent, but the life on that guitar, bass and drums speaks volumes, and not just in favor of the recording itself. “Writhing Mass” crashes into tempo changes and resolves itself in being both big and loud, and the space in the cymbals alone as it comes to its noisy finish hints at future incursions to be made. Lest we forget that Chicago birthed Pelican and Bongripper, among others, for the benefit of instrumental heavy worldwide. Sun King Ba have a ways to go before they’re added to that list, but there is intention being signaled here for those with ears to hear it.

Sun King Ba on Instagram

Sun King Ba on Bandcamp

 

Kenodromia, Kenodromia

Kenodromia Kenodromia EP

Despite the somewhat grim imagery on the cover art for Kenodromia‘s self-titled debut EP — a three-cut outing that marks a return to the band of vocalist Hilde Chruicshank after some stretch of absence during which they were known as Hideout — the Oslo, Norway, four-piece play heavy rock through and through on “Slandered,” “Corrupted” and “Bound,” with the bluesy fuzzer riffs and subtle psych flourishes of Eigil Nicolaisen‘s guitar backing Chruicshank‘s lyrics as bassist Michael Sindhu and drummer Trond Buvik underscore the “break free” moment in “Corrupted,” which feels well within its rights in terms of sociopolitical commentary ahead of the airier start of “Bound” after the relatively straightforward beginning that was “Slandered.” With the songs arranged shortest to longest, “Bound” is also the darkest in terms of atmosphere and features a more open verse, but the nod that defines the second half is huge, welcome and consuming even as it veers into a swaggering kind of guitar solo before coming back to finish. These players have been together one way or another for over 10 years, and knowing that, Kenodromia‘s overarching cohesion makes sense. Hopefully it’s not long before they turn attentions toward a first LP. They’re clearly ready.

Kenodromia on Facebook

Kenodromia on Bandcamp

 

Mezzoa, Dunes of Mars

Mezzoa Dunes of Mars

Mezzoa are the San Diego three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Ignacio “El Falcone” Maldonado, bassist Q “Dust Devil” Pena (who according to their bio was created in the ‘Cholo Goth Universe,’ so yes, charm is a factor), and drummer Roy “Bam Bam” Belarmino, and the 13-track/45-minute Dunes of Mars is their second album behind 2017’s Astral Travel. They sound like a band who’ve been around for a bit, and indeed they have, playing in other bands and so on, but they’ve got their approach on lockdown and I don’t mean for the plague. The material here, whether it’s the Helmet-plus-melody riffing of “Tattoos and Halos” or the more languid roll of the seven-minute “Dunes of Mars” earlier on, is crisp and mature without sounding flat or staid creatively, and though they’re likened most to desert rock and one can hear that in the penultimate “Seized Up” a bit, there’s more density in the guitar and bass, and the immediacy of “Hyde” speaks of more urgent influences at work. That said, the nodding chill-and-chug of “Moya” is heavy whatever landscape you want to say birthed it, and with the movement into and out of psychedelic vibes, the land is something you’re just as likely to leave behind anyway. Hit me as a surprise. Don’t be shocked if you end up going back to check out the first record after.

Mezzoa on Facebook

Iron Head Records website

 

Stone Nomads, Fields of Doom

stone nomads fields of doom

Released through emergent Texas-based imprint Gravitoyd Heavy Music, Stone NomadsFields of Doom comprises six songs, five originals, and is accordingly somewhere between a debut full-length and an EP at half an hour long. The cover is a take on Saint Vitus‘ “Dragon Time,” and it rests well here as the closer behind the prior-released single “Soul Stealer,” as bassist Jude Sisk and guitarist Jon Cosky trade lead vocal duties while Dwayne Crosby furthers the underlying metallic impression on drums, pushing some double-kick gallop under the solo of “Fiery Sabbath” early on after the leadoff title-track lumbers and chugs and bell-tolls to its ending, heavy enough for heavy heads, aggro enough to suit your sneer, with maybe a bit of Type O Negative influence in the vocal. Huffing oldschool gasoline, Fields of Doom might prove too burled-out for some listeners, but the interlude “Winds of Barren Lands” and the vocal swaps mean that you’re never quite sure where they’re going to hit you next, even if you know the hit is coming, and even as “Soul Stealer” goes grandiose before giving way to the already-noted Vitus cover. And if you’re wondering, they nail the noise of the solo in that song, leaving no doubt that they know what they’re doing, with their own material or otherwise.

Stone Nomads on Facebook

Gravitoyd Heavy Music on Bandcamp

 

Blind Mess, After the Storm

Blind Mess After the Storm

Drawing from various corners of punk, noise rock and heavy rock’s accessibility, Munich trio Blind Mess offer their third full-length in After the Storm, which is aptly-enough titled, considering. “Fight Fire with Fire” isn’t a cover, but the closing “What’s the Matter Man?” is, of Rollins Band, no less, and they arrive there after careening though a swath of tunes like “Twilight Zone,” “At the Gates” and “Save a Bullet,” which are as likely to be hardcore-born shove or desert-riffed melody, and in the last of those listed there, a little bit of both. To make matters more complicated, “Killing My Idols” leans into classic metal in its underlying riff as the vocals bark and its swing is heavy ’70s through and through. This aesthetic amalgam holds together in the toughguy march of “Sirens” as much as the garage-QOTSA rush of “Left to Do” and the dares-to-thrash finish of “Fight Fire with Fire” since the songs themselves are well composed and at 38 minutes they’re in no danger of overstaying their welcome. And when they get there, “What’s the Matter Man?” makes a friendly-ish-but-still-confrontational complemement to “Left to Do” back at the outset, as though to remind us that wherever they’ve gone over the course of the album between, it’s all been about rock and roll the whole time. So be it.

Blind Mess on Facebook

Deadclockwork Records website

 

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Quarterly Review: Endless Boogie, Sula Bassana, Redscale, Seven Rivers of Fire, Cult Burial, Duster 69, Tankograd, Mother Iron Horse, Ouzo Bazooka, Pilot Voyager

Posted in Reviews on October 5th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

the-obelisk-fall-2016-quarterly-review

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

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

 

Sula Bassana, Loop Station Drones

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

 

Redscale, The Old Colossus

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

 

Seven Rivers of Fire, Hail Star of the Sea!

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

 

Cult Burial, Oblivion EP

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

 

Duster 69, 2021

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

 

Tankograd, Klęska

tankograd kleska

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

 

Mother Iron Horse, Under the Blood Moon

Mother Iron Horse - Under The Blood Moon artwork

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

 

Ouzo Bazooka, Dalya

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

 

Pilot Voyager, Roadtrip to Fantazery

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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Quarterly Review: Thief, Rise to the Sky, Birth, Old Horn Tooth, Solemn Lament, Terminus, Lunar Ark, Taxi Caveman, Droneroom, Aiwass

Posted in Reviews on September 29th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

the-obelisk-fall-2016-quarterly-review

According to my notes, today is Day Three of the Fall 2021 Quarterly Review. Are you impressed to have made it this far? I kind of am, but, you know, I would be. I hope you’ve managed to find something you dig over the course of the first 20 records, and if not, why not? I’ve certainly added to a few year-end lists between debut albums, regular-old albums and short releases. Today’s no different. Without giving away any secrets ahead of time, this is a pretty wacky stylistic spread from the start and that’s how I like it. Maybe by next Tuesday it’ll all make a kind of sense, and maybe it won’t. In any case, this is apparently my idea of fun, so let’s have fun.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

Thief, The 16 Deaths of My Master

Thief The 16 Deaths of My Master

Someone used the phrase “techno for metalheads” in an email to me the other day (about something else) and I can’t get it out of my head concerning Thief‘s The 16 Deaths of My Master. From the swelling distortion of opener “Underking” to the odd bit of harpsicord that shows up in “Scorpion Mother” to the bassy rumble underscoring “Fire in the Land of Endless Rain,” the post-everything “Lover Boy,” droning “Life Clipper,” lazyman’s hip-hop on “Gorelord” and “Crestfaller” and Beck-on-acid finale in “Seance for Eight Oscillators,” there’s certainly plenty of variety to go around, but in the dance-dream “Apple Eaters” and goth-with-’90s-beatmaking “Bootleg Blood” and pretend-your-car-ride-is-a-movie-soundtrack “Wing Clipper,” the metallic underpinning of Dylan Neal (also Botanist) is still there, and the lyrical highlight “Teenage Satanist” rings true. Still, songs like the consuming washer “Night Spikes and subsequent drum’n’bass-vibing “Victim Exit Stage Left” are inventive, fascinating, short and almost poppy in themselves but part of a 16-track entirety that is head-spinning. If that’s techno for metalheads, so be it. Horns up for dat bass.

Thief on Facebook

Prophecy Productions website

 

Rise to the Sky, Per Aspera Ad Astra

rise to the sky per aspera ad astra

The album’s title is kind of another interpretation of the band’s name, the idea behind the Latin phrase Per Aspera Ad Astra being moving through challenges to the stars and the Santiago, Chile, one-man death-doom outfit being Rise to the Sky. Multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Sergio González Catalán reportedly wrote and arranged the title-track in the days following his father’s funeral, and the grand, flowing string sounds and engrossing heft that ensues feel genuinely mournful, capping with a progression of solo piano before “End My Night” seems to pick up where “The Loss of Hope” left off. The lyrics to closer “Only Our Past Remains” derive from a poem by Catalán‘s father, and the sense of tribute is palpable across the album’s 46 minutes. I’m not sure how the Russian folk melody bonus instrumental “Horse” might tie in, but neither is it out of place among “Deep Lament” and “Bleeding Heart,” the latter of which dares some clean vocals alongside the gutturalism, and in context, the rest of the album seems to answer with loss what opener “Life in Suspense” is waiting for.

Rise to the Sky on Facebook

GS Productions website

 

Birth, Demo

birth birth

Those familiar with Brian Ellis and Conor Riley‘s work in Astra should not be surprised to find them exploring ’70s-style progressive rock in Birth, and anybody who heard Psicomagia already knows that bassist Trevor Mast and drummer Paul Marrone (also Radio Moscow) are a rhythm section well up to whatever task you might want to set before them. Thus Birth‘s Demo arrives some four years after its recording, with “Descending Us” (posted here) leading off in dramatic Deep Purple-y fashion backed by the jammier but gloriously mellotroned and Rhodes’ed “Cosmic Wind” and “Long Way Down,” which digs itself into a righteous King Crimson payoff with due class even as it revels in its rough edges. Marrone‘s since left the band and whoever replaces him has big shoes to fill, but god damn, just put out a record already, would you?

Birth on Facebook

Bad Omen Records website

 

Old Horn Tooth, True Death

old horn tooth true death

Wielding mighty tonality and meeting Monolordian lurch with an aural space wide enough to contain it, Old Horn Tooth follow their 2019 debut LP, From the Ghost Grey Depths, with the single-song EP True Death, proffering a largesse rarely heard even from London’s ultra-populated heavy underground and working their way into, out of, back into, out of and through a nod that the converted among riff-heads likely find irresistible and hypnotic in kind. To say the trio of guitarist/vocalist Chris, bassist/keyboardist Ollie and drummer Mark ride out the groove is perhaps underselling it, but as my first exposure to the band, I’m only sorry to have missed out on both the orange tapes and the limited flash drives they were selling. So it goes. Slow riffs, fast sales. I’ll catch them next time and drown my sorrows in the interim in this immersive, probably-gonna-get-picked-up-by-some-label-for-a-vinyl-release offering. And hey, maybe if you and I both email them, they’ll press a few more cassettes.

Old Horn Tooth on Facebook

Old Horn Tooth on Bandcamp

 

Solemn Lament, Solemn Lament

Solemn Lament Solemn Lament

Pro-shop-level doom from an initial public offering by Solemn Lament, bringing together the significant likes of vocalist Phil Swanson (ex-Hour of 13, Vestal Claret, countless others), drummer Justin DeTore (Magic Circle and more recently Dream Unending) as well as Blind Dead‘s Drew Wardlaw on bass and Adam Jacino on lead guitar, and Eric Wenstrom on rhythm guitar. These personages cross coastlines to three tracks and intro of grand and immersive doom metal, willfully diving into the Peaceville-three legacy on “Stricken” to find the beauty in darkness after the lumber and chug of the nine-minute “Celeste” resolves with patient grace and “Old Crow” furthers the Paradise Lost spirit in its central riff. Geography is an obvious challenge, but if Solemn Lament can build on the potential they show in this debut EP, they could be onto something really special.

Solemn Lament on Facebook

Solemn Lament on Bandcamp

 

Terminus, The Silent Bell Toll

Terminus The Silent Bell Toll

A stunning third full-length from Fayetteville, Arkansas, trio Terminus, The Silent Bell Toll bridges doomed heft and roll, progressive melodicism and thoughtful heavy rock construction into a potent combination of hooks and sheer impact. It’s worth noting that the 10-minute closer of the nine-song/40-minute outing, “Oh Madrigal,” soars vocally, but hell, so does the 3:18 “Black Swan” earlier. Guitarist Sebastian Thomas (also cover art) and bassist Julian Thomas share vocal duties gorgeously throughout while drummer Scott Wood rolls songs like “The Lion’s Den” and “The Silent Bell Toll” — that nod under the solo; goodness gracious — in such a way as to highlight the epic feel even as the structure beneath is reinforced. With three instrumentals peppered throughout to break up the chapters as intro, centerpiece and penultimate, there’s all the more evidence that Terminus are considered in their approach and that the level of realization across The Silent Bell Toll is not happenstance.

Terminus on Facebook

Terminus on Bandcamp

 

Lunar Ark, Recurring Nightmare

Lunar Ark Recurring Nightmare

Clearly named in honor of its defining intent, Recurring Nightmare is the three-song/48-minute debut full-length from Boston-based charred sludge outfit, who take the noisy heft of ultra-disaffected purveyors like Indian or Primitive Man and push it into a blackened metallic sphere further distinguished by harshly ambient drones. One can dig Neurosis-style riffing out of the 19:30 closer “Guillotine” or opener “Torch and Spear,” but the question is how much one’s hand is going to be sliced open in that process. And the answer is plenty. Their tones don’t so much rumble as crumble, vocals are willfully indecipherable throat-clenching screams, and the drums duly glacial. There is little kindness to be had in 16:43 centerpiece “Freedom Fever Dream” — originally broken into two parts as a demo in 2019 — which resolves itself lyrically in mourning a lost ideal over a dense lurch that’s met with still-atmospheric churning. Their established goal, if that’s what it is, has been met with all appropriate viciousness and extremity.

Lunar Ark on Facebook

Trepanation Recordings on Bandcamp

Lunar Seas Records on Bandcamp

Realm and Ritual on Bandcamp

 

Taxi Caveman, Taxi Caveman

taxi caveman self titled

An ethic toward straight-ahead riff rock is writ large throughout Taxi Caveman‘s self-titled debut full-length, the Warsaw trio offering a face-first dive into fuzz of varying sizes and shaping their material around the sleek groove of “Prisoner” or the more aggressively bent vinyl-side-launchers “Building With Fire” and “Asteroid.” There’s a highlight hook in “I, the Witch” and the instrumental “426” leads into the Dozer-esque initial verse of 10-minute closer “Empire of the Sun,” but the three-piece find their own way through ultimately, loosening some of the verse/chorus reins in order to affect more of a jammed feel. It’s a departure from the crunch of “Asteroid” or “Prisoner” and the big, big, big sound that starts “Building With Fire,” but I’m certainly not about to hold some nascent sonic diversity against them. They’re playing to genre across these 33 minutes, but they do so without pretense and with a mind toward kicking as much ass as possible. Not changing the world, but it’s not trying to and it’s fun enough in listening that it doesn’t need to.

Taxi Caveman on Facebook

Piranha Music on Bandcamp

 

Droneroom, Negative Libra

Droneroom Negative Libra

“Negative Libra” runs 36:36 and is the lone track on the album that bears its name from Las Vegas-based solo-project Droneroom. The flowing work of Blake Conley develops in slow, meditative form and gradually introduces lap steel to shimmer along with its post-landscape etherealities, evocative of cinema as they are without exactly playing to one or the other film-genre tropes. That is to say, Conley isn’t strictly horror soundtracking or Western soundtracking, and so on. Perhaps in part because of that, “Negative Libra” is allowed to discover its path and flourish as it goes — I’m not sure as to the layering process of making it vis-à-vis what was tracked live and put on top after — but the sense of exploration-of-moment that comes through is palpable and serene even as the guitar comes forward just before hitting the 27-minute mark to begin the transition into the song’s noisier payoff and final, concluding hum.

Droneroom on Facebook

Somewherecold Records website

 

Aiwass, Wayward Gods

Aiwass Wayward Gods

Blown-out vocals add an otherworldly tinge to Arizona-based one-man-band Aiwass‘ debut full-length, Wayward Gods, giving the already gargantuan tones a sense of space to match. Opener “Titan” and closer “Mythos” seem to push even further in this regard than, say, the centerpiece “Man as God” — the last track feeling particularly Monolordly in its lumbering — but by the time “Titan” and the subsequent, 10-minute inclusion “From Chains,” which ends cold with a guest solo by Vinny Tauber of Ohio’s Taubnernaut and shifts into the cawing blackbird at the outset of “Man as God” with a purposefully jarring intent. Despite the cringe-ready cartoon-boobs cover art, the newcomer project finds a heavy niche that subverts expectation as much as it meets it and sets broad ground to explore on future outings. As an idea, “gonna start a heavy, huge-sounding band during the pandemic,” is pretty straightforward. What results from that in Aiwass runs deeper.

Aiwass on Facebook

Aiwass on Bandcamp

 

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Sunnata Announce Summer Live Dates in Poland

Posted in Whathaveyou on June 2nd, 2021 by JJ Koczan

Those of you who might be seeing this in Poland, good news in that Sunnata will be hitting up a few cities later this summer to support their Feb. 2021 release, Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth (review here). It’s shows more than a tour for the by-now veteran progressive/ritualistic heavy rockers, scheduled around festival shows at Egodrop and Soundrive, and of course they’re giving the caveat that like anything, they might not happen, but a return to playing at all is noteworthy at this point, so here’s me noting it.

Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth is, to say the very least of it, an album that deserves to be played live. I was fortunate enough to see Sunnata play in Oslo at Høstsabbat 2019 (review here) — which feels simultaneously like yesterday and forever ago; the photo with the live dates is from that show as well — and after years of following their studio work, they were a thrill to behold, no less immersive than they are on record and no less entranced by the music than their audience. While we’re doing understatement, they’re a band I’d be happy to watch again if the opportunity presented itself. Not this run, but you know, universe of infinite possibility and all that.

Their social media announcement went thusly:

sunnata poland dates

IT LOOKS LIKE WE’RE GONNA PLAY A COUPLE OF LIVE SHOWS THIS SUMMER*. Mostly in major polish cities. Wanna hear “Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth” live? Then come & visit the following events:

16.07 Egodrop Festival 2021
30.07 Lato w Plenerze | SUNNATA / Plener P23, Katowice
31.07 Lato w Plenerze | SUNNATA / Rejs, Warszawa
10.08 Soundrive Festival 2021
12.08 Road To Soulstone Gathering: Sunnata + ARRM, Inverted Mind / 12 VIII / Kraków
21.08 Lato w Plenerze | SUNNATA / Dziedziniec Tama, Pozna?

We missed it a lot.

*) Hopefully.

SUNNATA ARE:
Szymon Ewertowski – guitar, vocals
Adrian Gadomski – guitar, vocals
Michal Dobrzanski – bass guitar
Robert Ruszczyk – drums, percussion

https://www.facebook.com/sunnataofficial
https://twitter.com/followsunnata
http://sunnataofficial.bandcamp.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/sunnataofficial/videos

Sunnata, Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth (2021)

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Quarterly Review: Dopelord, Scorched Oak, Kings of the Fucking Sea, Mantarraya, Häxmästaren, Shiva the Destructor, Amammoth, Nineteen Thirteen, Ikitan, Smote

Posted in Reviews on March 31st, 2021 by JJ Koczan

quarterly-review-spring-2019

Third day, and you know what that means. Today we hit and pass the halfway mark of this Quarterly Review. I won’t say it hasn’t been work, but it seems like every time I do one of these lately I continue to be astounded by how much easier writing about good stuff makes it. I must’ve done a real clunker like two years ago or something. Can’t think of one, but wow, it’s way more fun when the tunes are killer.

To that end we start with Dopelord today, haha. Have fun digging through if you do.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

Dopelord, Reality Dagger

Dopelord Reality Dagger

They put it in a 12″, and that’s cool, but in addition to the fact that it’s about 22 minutes long, something about Reality Dagger, the latest EP from Poland’s Dopelord, strikes me as being really 10″ worthy. I know 10″ is the bastard son of vinyl pressings — doesn’t fit with your LPs and doesn’t fit with your 7″s. They’re a nuisance. Do they get their own shelf? Mixed in throughout? Well, however you organize them, I think a limited 10″ of Reality Dagger would be perfect, because from the melodies strewn throughout “Dark Coils” and the wildly catchy “Your Blood” — maybe the most complex vocal arrangement I’ve yet heard from the band — to the ultra-sludge interplay with screams on the 10-minute closing title-track, it sounds to me like standing out from the crowd is exactly what Dopelord want to do. They want to be that band that doesn’t fit your preconceptions of stoner-doom, or sludge, or modern heavy largesse in the post-Monolord vein. Why not match that admirable drive in format? Oh hell, you know what? I’ll just by the CD and have done with it. One of the best EPs I’ve heard this year.

Dopelord on Facebook

Dopelord on Bandcamp

 

Scorched Oak, Withering Earth

Scorched Oak Withering Earth

Don’t be surprised when you see Kozmik Artifactz, Nasoni Records, or some other respected probably-European purveyor of heavy coming through with an announcement they’ve picked up Scorched Oak. The Dortmund, Germany, trio seem to have taken the last few years to figure out where they were headed — they pared down from a five-piece, for example — and their rolling tides of fuzz on late-2020’s debut LP Withering Earth bears the fruit of those efforts. Aesthetically and structurally sound, it’s able to touch on heavy blues, metal and drifting psychedelia all within the span of a seven-minute track like “Swamp,” and in its five-songs running shortest to longest, it effectively draws the listener deeper into the world the band are creating through dual vocals, patient craft and spacious production. If I was a label, I’d sign them for the bass tone on 14-minute closer “Desert” alone, never mind any of the other natural phenomena they portray throughout the record, which is perhaps grim in theme but nonetheless brimming with potential. Some cool riffs on this dying planet.

Scorched Oak on Facebook

Scorched Oak on Bandcamp

 

Kings of the Fucking Sea, In Concert

Kings of the Fucking Sea In Concert

A scorching set culled from two nights of performances in their native Nashville, what’s essentially serving as Kings of the Fucking Sea‘s debut long-player, In Concert, is a paean to raw psychedelic power trio worship. High order ripper groove pervades “Witch Mountain” and the wasn’t-yet-named “Hiding No More” — which was introduced tentatively as “Death Dealer,” which the following track is actually titled. Disorienting? Shit yeah it is. And shove all the poignancy of making a live album in Feb. 2020 ahead of the pandemic blah blah. That’s not what’s happening here. This is all about blow-the-door-so-we-can-escape psychedelic pull and thrust. One gets the sense that Kings of the Fucking Sea are more in control than they let on, but they play it fast and loose and slow and loose throughout In Concert and by the time the mellower jam in “I Walk Alone” opens up to the garage-style wash of crash cymbal ahead of closer “The Nile Song,” the swirling fuckall that ensues is rampant with noise-coated fire. A show that might make you look up from your phone. So cool it might be jazz. I gotta think about it.

Kings of the Fucking Sea on Facebook

Agitated Records on Bandcamp

 

Mantarraya, Mantarraya

mantarraya mantarraya

They bill themselves as ‘Mantarraya – power trío,’ and guitarist/vocalist Herman Robles Montero, drummer/maybe-harmonica-ist Kelvin Sifuentes Pérez and bassist/vocalist Enzo Silva Agurto certainly live up to that standard on their late-2020 self-titled debut full-length. The vibe is classic heavy ’70s through and through, and the Peruvian three-piece roll and boogie through the 11 assembled tracks with fervent bluesy swing on “En el Fondo” and no shortage of shuffle throughout the nine-minute “120 Años (Color),” which comes paired with the trippier “Almendrados” in what seems like a purposeful nod to the more out-there among the out there, bringing things back around to finish swinging and bouncing on the eponymous closer. I’ll take the classic boogie as it comes, and Mantarraya do it well, basking in a natural but not too purposefully so sense of underproduction while getting their point across in encouraging-first-record fashion. At over an hour long, it’s too much for a single LP, but plenty of time for them to get their bearings as they begin their creative journey.

Mantarraya on Facebook

Mantarraya on Bandcamp

 

Häxmästaren, Sol i Exil

Häxmästaren sol i exil

At the risk of repeating myself, someone’s gonna sign Häxmästaren. You can just tell. The Swedish five-piece’s second album, Sol i Exil (“sun in exile,” in English), is a mélange of heavy rock and classic doom influences, blurring the lines between microgenres en route to an individual approach that’s still accessible enough in a riffer like “Millennium Phenomenon” or “Dödskult Ritual” to be immediately familiar and telegraph to the converted where the band are coming from. Vocalist Niklas Ekwall — any relation to Magnus from The Quill? — mixes in some screams and growls to his melodic style, further broadening the palette and adding an edge of extremity to “Children of the Mountain,” while “Growing Horns” and the capper title-track vibe out with with a more classic feel, whatever gutturalisms happen along the way, the latter feeling like a bonus for being in Swedish. In the ever-fertile creative ground that is Gothenburg, it should be no surprise to find a band like this flourishing, but fortunately Sol i Exil doesn’t have to be a surprise to kick ass.

Häxmästaren on Facebook

Häxmästaren on Bandcamp

 

Shiva the Destructor, Find the Others

SHIVA THE DESTRUCTOR FIND THE OTHERS

Launching with the nine-minute instrumental “Benares” is a telling way for Kyiv’s Shiva the Destructor to begin their debut LP, since it immediately sets listener immersion as their priority. The five-track/44-minute album isn’t short on it, either, and with the band’s progressive, meditative psychedelic style, each song unfolds in its own way and in its own time, drawn together through warmth of tone and periods of heft and spaciousness on “Hydronaut” and a bit of playful bounce on “Summer of Love” (someone in this band likes reggae) and a Middle Eastern turn on “Ishtar” before “Nirvana Beach” seems to use the lyrics to describe what’s happening in the music itself before cutting off suddenly at the end. Vocals stand alone or in harmony and the double-guitar four-piece bask in a sunshine-coated sound that’s inviting and hypnotic in kind, offering turns enough to keep their audience following along and undulations that are duly a clarion to the ‘others’ referenced in the title. It’s like a call to prayer for weirdo psych heads. I’ll take that and hope for more to come.

Shiva the Destructor on Facebook

Robustfellow Productions on Bandcamp

 

Amammoth, The Fire Above

amammoth the fire above

The first and only lyric in “Heal” — the opening track of Sydney, Australia, trio Amammoth‘s debut album, The Fire Above — is the word “marijuana.” It doesn’t get any less stoned from there. Riffs come in massive waves, and even as “The Sun” digs into a bit of sludge, the largesse and crash remains thoroughly weedian, with the lumbering “Shadows” closing out the first half of the LP with particularly Sleep-y nod. Rawer shouted vocals also recall earlier Sleep, but something in Amammoth‘s sound hints toward a more metallic background than just pure Sabbath worship, and “Rise” brings that forward even as it pushes into slow-wah psychedelics, letting “Blade Runner” mirror “The Sun” in its sludgy push before closer “Walk Towards What Blinds You (Blood Bong)” introduces some backing vocals that fit surprisingly well even they kind of feel like a goof on the part of the band. Amammoth, as a word, would seem to be something not-mammoth. In sound, Amammoth are the opposite.

Amammoth on Facebook

Electric Valley Records website

 

Nineteen Thirteen, MCMXIII

nineteen thirteen mcmxiii

With emotional stakes sufficiently high throughout, MCMXIII is urgent enough to be post-hardcore, but there’s an underpinning of progressive heavy rock even in the mellower stretch of the eight-minute “Dogfight” that complements the noisier and more angular aspects on display elsewhere. Opener “Post Blue Collar Blues” sets the plotline for the newcomer Dayton, Ohio, four-piece, with thoughtful lyrics and a cerebral-but-not-dead-of-spirit instrumental style made full and spacious through the production. Melodies flesh out in “Cripple John” and “Old Face on the Wall,” brooding and surging in children-of-the-’90s fashion, but I hear a bit of Wovenhand in that finale as well — though maybe the one doesn’t exclude the other — so clearly Nineteen Thirteen are just beginning this obviously-passion-fueled exploration of sound aesthetic with these songs, but the debut EP they comprise cuts a wide swath with marked confidence and deceptive memorability. A new turn on Rust Belt heavy.

Nineteen Thirteen on Facebook

Nineteen Thirteen on Bandcamp

 

Ikitan, Twenty-Twenty

ikitan twenty-twenty

Hey, you process trauma from living through the last year your way and Genova, Italy’s Ikitan will process it theirs. In their case, that means the writing, recording and self-release of their 20-minute single-song EP, Twenty-Twenty, a sprawling work of instrumentalist heavy post-rock rife with spacious, airy lead guitar and a solid rhythmic foundation. Movements occur in waves and layers, but there is a definite thread being woven throughout the outing from one part to the next, held together alternately by the bass or drums or even guitar, though it’s the latter that seems to be leading those changes as well. The shifts are fluid in any case, and Ikitan grow Twenty-Twenty‘s lone, titular piece to a satisfyingly heft as they move through, harnessing atmosphere as well as weight even before they lower volume for stretches in the second half. There’s a quick surge at the end, but “Twenty-Twenty” is more about journey than destination, and Ikitan make the voyage enticing.

Ikitan on Facebook

Ikitan on Bandcamp

 

Smote, Bodkin

smote bodkin

Loops, far-out spaces and a generally experimentalist feel ooze outward like Icelandic lava from Bodkin, the five-song debut LP from UK-based solo-outfit Smote. The gentleman behind the flow is Newcastle upon Tyne’s Daniel Foggin, and this is one of three releases he has out so far in 2021, along with a prior drone collaboration tape with Forest Mourning and a subsequent EP made of two tracks at around 15 minutes each. Clearly a project that can be done indoors during pandemic lockdown, Smote‘s material is wide-ranging just the same, bringing Eastern multi-instrumentalism and traditionalist UK psych together on “Fohrt” and “Moninna,” which would border on folk but for all that buzz in the background. The 11-minute “Motte” is a highlight of acid ritualizing, but the droning title-track that rounds out makes each crash count all the more for the spaces that separate them. I dig this a lot, between you and me. I get vibes like Lamp of the Universe here in terms of sonic ambition and resultant presence. That’s not a comparison I make lightly, and this is a project I will be following.

Smote on Bandcamp

Weird Beard Records store

 

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Album Review: Sunnata, Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth

Posted in Reviews on March 16th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

sunnata burning in heaven melting on earth

Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth is the fourth full-length from Warsaw-based post-heavy rockers Sunnata. Comprised of six songs, it runs a substantial-but-manageable 49 minutes and culls influences from a broad range of spheres, perhaps none more so than its own. The band began its journey circa 2008 under a different, less-prone-to-sonic-enlightenment moniker, and has gradually been engaging self-realization since, more effectively so each time out. Between their 2014 debut, Climbing the Colossus, 2016’s Zorya (review here), and 2018’s crucial Outlands (review here), they have marched a path forward of exciting sonic progression and individuality, finding a space where the crush of Neurosis, the melodic downerism of Alice in Chains and the tantric repetitions of Om can coexist in flowing, coherent form. Their material has never been so complex or so well composed as it is on Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth, and the songs come across as a multifaceted intellectual experience. It’s an album, to be sure, but it also feels in listening like the start of a conversation.

The stated purpose on the part of the band was to examine “different angles on the theme of religious fanaticism… [the] general sense of trusting your life to a crystal ethereal being represented by humans of flesh, bones and sins, and discusses consequences of doing so,” and fair enough. Their native Poland has, like many nations including my own, witnessed a swing to far-right populism and conservative demagoguery, and that’s before one actually takes the idea literally as a theme based on religious dogma. Any angle of approach, then, there’s plenty subject matter for Sunnata to work with, and in cuts like “A Million Lives,” “Black Serpent” and the closing “Way Out” — American listeners should be aware that this is the equivalent in British English to “exit” — they translate ideological depiction into deep-mix heavy immersion. They are writing about rituals and a ritual mindset, and the songs themselves feel ritualistic, from the beginning in “Crows” as the lyrics set listeners before a field of dead bodies, the first but not last reference to Rome falling made.

“Crows” is the shortest track on Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth at 5:57, and something of a stage-setting through its linear build, but effective in drawing the listener into the midst. Brooding voices and tense rhythms find guitarist/vocalists Szymon Ewertowski and Adrian Gadomski, bassist Michal Dobrzanski and drummer Robert Ruszczyk moving toward the solo-topped payoff that arrives in the second half of the song, a cascading turn that leads to a final chorus with both singers telling the audience something else it needs to know about the record that follows, which is that while Sunnata are working on a theme and the lyrics and mindset of the composition is geared toward that, they are not forsaking songcraft for the sake of narrative. I don’t know that this is the case, but I would not be surprised if the instrumental foundation of the record was set before the lyrics came together — each song has its own structure and is built toward the overarching flow, the assemblage front-to-back just happens to work exceptionally well enough to be tied together through the fanaticism theme.

sunnata

As the shortest song, “Crows” is followed immediately by the longest, “God Emperor of Dune,” at 8:47, which is the basis of any Om comparison one might want to make, though here too the vocals distinguish Sunnata through call and response chants over soft toms, cymbals and tambourine, gradually moving toward a proggy rush and wash alike that swirls like the fog over a follower’s eyes. That is ably drawn back to a comparatively minimal and droning finish, but the patience and clear intent with which “God Emperor of Dune” is executed pushes the atmosphere laid out by the opener deeper, such that the push of the subsequent “A Million Lives” is like the constant barrage of living in a post-truth world. One never completely has footing in a world with no ground. The difference with Sunnata‘s portrayal, however, is that the songs themselves are structured and their movement tells this push-pull in shifts of tempo, rhythm and melody. For all the scope and purpose, again, they are songwriters. “A Million Lives” is catchy as all hell.

It would be the landmark hook of Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth were it not for the side B opener “Black Serpent,” with its more aggressive crux and gang-shout call and response chorus. In the back and forth pairings of shorter songs with longer ones, “A Million Lives” and “Black Serpent” are the centerpieces, but they do not give ground atmospherically, and the mood of the album is maintained, even if perhaps taken to a more severe place. “Black Serpent” seems to crash to its finish, a winding line of effects echoing out when the vocals recede, but “Völva (The Seeress)” — and while we’re here, let’s note that “serpent” and “völva” (which in Germanic mythology is a woman shaman) seem purposefully paired to subtly nod to male and female genitalia; sex is a big part of any dogma — arrives and sets itself to willfully repetitive invocations of its titular mystic, blurring the line that felt so stark only a few songs ago between “God Emperor of Dune” and “Crows” or “A Million Lives” on either side of it. Growing blurry is the intent, of course.

The title line of “Way Out” arrives as, yes, a way out of this fog, and it brings the album’s title line with it for further clarity, giving an encapsulation over its first two and a half minutes before dropping back to near-silence and rebuilding. This time, when it goes, it doesn’t come back. They end ethereal in vocals, but grounded in groove, and the feeling is very much that of an arrival from just before the five-minute mark when everything but the bass drops out to the rest of the song’s total 8:37. It’s closure, not epilogue, and duly exciting, underscoring the layered purposes to which Sunnata have set themselves on this fourth long-player. It is the work of a mature band — we’ve come a long way since Satellite Beaver — who refuse to stop growing, and whose refining of processes seems based not so much on retreading what they’ve done before, but deriving new modes of expression as they continue to explore who they are as a group. There are bands who base entire careers off less depth than any single track offers on Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth, and whatever else Sunnata do throughout, they make the entire project feel like the beginning of a conversation waiting to be had.

Sunnata, Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth (2021)

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Sunnata on Instagram

Sunnata on Twitter

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Sunnata on YouTube

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