The Sound Garden was good to me on Saturday, and the creatively-named Record and Tape Traders was a little too commercial for my tastes, but I managed to walk out with four albums anyway. The real treat, however, came as I was walking up Broadway in Fell’s Point, Baltimore, and saw a sign with a hand pointing right that said “Vintage Records” underneath.

Fucking sweet.

It could have been a trap. A patch of grass could have covered a pit with spikes like something out of Rambo and I’d have fallen for it for sure, but luckily, the sign led me to El Suprimo Records, home to the label of the same name and vinyl specialists extraordinaire. Now, I have a well-documented embargo on buying vinyl, but along the right-side wall sat a couple small racks that in the span of two shelves offered as many worthy purchases (it would have been more if I didn’t already own some of them) as did the entirety of Sound Garden. Suprimo indeed.

For a mere five bucks a pop, no less, which was cheaper than either of the other stores I visited. I walked away with the 2006 reissue of High Tide‘s self-titled (that one was $7, admittedly), Kreator‘s Enemy of God, Reino Ermita?o‘s self-titled, Wormwood‘s Requiescat, Immortal‘s Sons of Northern Darkness, Electric Magma‘s self-titled, Fooz‘s II – Space is Dark… It is so Endless, Plasmic Tears and the Invisible City by Zen Guerrilla, and for a whopping dollar, the screamy Fu Manchu/Queens of the Stone Age-style stoner 101 of Under the Drone‘s Keep it Shred. Hard to argue with that. El Suprimo himself, who runs the shop, also gave me a promo of Mopar Bloody Mopar, the new CD by his band, Mopar Mountain Daredevils. Review coming soon.

I didn’t walk away from any of the stores awash in Unorthodox and Iron Man CDs as I’d hoped I might, but if you’re ever in Baltimore, I definitely suggest that aside from the crab cake sandwich and golden ale at Kooper’s, you get your wallet over to El Suprimo and have at it, whatever size plastic disc you prefer your music to emanate from. I’ll be back there for sure.

Actually, the honest answer to that question is that although it arrived some time beforehand, the album got lost in the shuffle when my former place of employment shit the bed. That plus the fact that the artwork makes the record look like generic European black metal (or worse, US black metal trying to sound European) meant it stayed in the pile longer than it otherwise might have. I should have known better. Usually even if I don’t like it, the stuff on Profound Lore is at least interesting.

Not a review, just a simple recommendation from one friend to another: these Dutch Satanic witch rockers get down with some serious early ’70s occult imagery in the context of post-disco prog. When they talk about “wolfsbane,” “eye of newt,” and “devil’s root” in “The Heavens Cry Out,” I sense no irony. This is what they do and they’re way into it. And even if the music doesn’t get you off, the liner notes are full of “hail and “thee” and “verily,” so entertainment abounds one way or another.

The overall vibe of the record is more horror-based than any of the actual music, and if Come, Reap is retro, it’s retro of a period rarely touched in underground rock. And of course you can sample some tracks over at their MySpace page. This may just be a five-song EP, but it’s already got me looking forward to The Devil’s Blood‘s set at Roadburn. I hear tell they do it up all ritual-like and covered in blood. Hell yeah.

I’ve only been to West Virginia once in my life; I was about 12 years old. Even at that tender, pubescent age, when hormones had me thinking of little other than boobies (so much has changed), I was able to look around and notice that it was the whitest place I’d ever seen. White people, everywhere. 95.99 percent Caucasian, according to the 2005 census as quoted on Wikipedia. It was one pale-ass state.

But these aren’t the rich white motherfuckers who made a rectal dartboard of our economy and stole our retirements out from under us to give themselves multi-million dollar bonuses. These are coal miners, who’ve been screwed over by the same powers that be since the days of the robber barons. They’ve hollowed out their beautiful stretch of Appalachia and have what exactly to show for it? Bosses with cash enough to get the best PR out of each and every mine collapse.

The inherent conflict of their home state and working man’s frustration is evident in the instrumental post-doom offerings of Huntington, West Virginia trio Hyatari (all white). Originally brought to prominence with the helping hand of a 2005 reissue of their self-released 2004 album, The Light Carriers by Earache Records subsidiary Code:Breaker, the band soon found themselves in similar straits as labelmates Figure of Merit, Abandon and Zatokrev. When the label project went under, so did they. Hyatari were off the map.

With the late 2008 release of They Will Surface — sounds as much like a warning as an assurance, doesn’t it? — Hyatari reemerged through Caustic Eye Productions with six extended suns that never set; each track droning its way into and out of and back into oblivion like sheets of universe crashing into each other. It is hypnotic and disturbing.

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NOTE: Nothing went according to my evil plan. The post below is from Friday. I scheduled it to go up while I was gone (along with two others that now need to be rewritten) and nothing happened. Stupid internet, making me look like a jerk once again. This was saved as a text file, and this video rules so I figured no one would mind, even two days later.

If all (or at least some) goes according to my evil plan, by the time you read this I’ll be well on my way to spending a weekend with some family friends just outside of Baltimore, Maryland. Via recommendations I spied on StonerRock.com, I’m planning on hitting up The Sound Garden in Fell’s Point, so hopefully I’ll come back with a decent bit of buried treasure. In the meantime, to honor this most crabtacular of states, I present this live Spirit Caravan video from 2006 — and here I thought they were broken up by then.

In case you forgot, the trio is Wino on guitar and vocals, bassist Dave “Sherm” Sherman (whose band Earthride is playing Krug’s Place in Fredericksburg Saturday night with Ol’ Scratch and Admiral Browning; unfortunately I won’t be there) and drummer Gary Isom, who just did those shows with Pentagram and has been in Valkyrie and countless other bands. Cool shit. Here’s “Cosmic Artifact.” Enjoy your weekend.

They’re the modern sound of San Francisco past, with sweet folky rock born of freewheeling blues jams and vintage mentality. The Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound‘s second album for Tee Pee Records, When Sweet Sleep Returned, is hippie psych melody taken to echoing extremes. The music is springtime vibrant and organically grown and all the drugs are geared toward mind expansion rather than escape — which, I suppose, is a kind of escape in itself.

Hey man, did I just blow your mind?

If so, that’s nothing compared to the explosive potentiality packed into When Sweet Sleep Returned, which sets up a commune and gives each of its eight tracks a period of not more than three weeks to act as a sort of executive officer whose decisions must be ratified by a two-thirds majority of the others. I’m willing to wager that all five of the band’s members were born at least 12 years after 1970, but just because they weren’t there the first time doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy it now.

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I know I did it for the 50th as well, but I’d just like to take a second to point out that this is the 100th post on The Obelisk. For a site that’s been up not even two months, I don’t think that’s all that bad. In that time, interviews with Hackman, Elder, VALIS, The Bakerton Group, Alan Dubin, Kylesa, The Kings of Frog Island, Monte Conner from Roadrunner Records (that was a big one), Dozer, Bible of the Devil and more have gone up, and I’ve already reviewed more records than I care to count.

Thanks to everyone who’s been reading and all the more to anyone who’s been commenting. More to come.

There’s something about Zoroaster‘s music that, as a schmuck who sits on his ass all day and writes about metal, makes me want to talk about monsters — giant aliens attacking from the sky, buildings collapsing like smashed Legos and huge tsunamis flushing away civilization. I think that’s how you know it’s good.

On Voice of Saturn, the Atlanta trio’s second full-length released through their own Terminal Doom Records, despite choosing to work once again with engineer Ed Rawls — who produced 2007’s Dog Magic as well –?Zoroaster show some obvious points of growth throughout the seven tracks present; the piano that makes its way into “Spirit Molecule” being the most glaring but by no means the only instance. Noises and drones fill out an extended cut like “Undying,” the vocals of guitarist Will Fiore and bassist Brent Anderson throughout are more present than either on the last album or the 2005 self-titled demo (re-released in 2006 by Battle Kommand/Southern Lord), and Voice of Saturn culminates in a drum circle hidden track led by drummer Dan Scanlan. Progress is all around, but nowhere is heaviness sacrificed.

Fiore called in yesterday (Wednesday, March 18) from Dallas, Texas to talk about Voice of Saturn, his experience at Scion Rock Fest, the band’s decision to stay independent and what life on the road is like these days. Interview is after the jump.

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New school extreme death/doomers Lord Mantis are from Chicago, and I mean that as much as an analysis of their sound as I do a point of simple fact. The band features guitarist/vocalist Greg Gomer, drummer Bill Bumgardner of Indian, ex-Nachtmystium guitarist Andrew Markuszewski – who also performs as half the black metal duo Avichi; Lord Mantis vocalist/bassist Charlie Fell drums as the other half – and, of course, Sanford Parker produced their first album, Spawning the Nephilim. They couldn’t be more Chicago if they had Polish sausages lodged in the lining of their blackened hearts.

If you were to leave Lair of the Minotaur in the depths of whatever cavern Khanate existed in, they might come out sounding like Lord Mantis, whose appropriation of Morbid Angel-type mythological references (I can just hear David Vincent talking about spawning some nephilim), and a black metal-type logo, underscores the varied influences playing out in Spawning the Nephilim‘s seven tracks. Look hard at the title cut and you’ll even find a little of the Neurosis-style shouting which seems to pop up everywhere these days.

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