We’re about a month out from the Sept. 27 release date for Rwake‘s second album for Relapse Records, Rest. The full-length follows four years after Rwake‘s label debut, Voices of Omens, and like that record, it was produced by the ever-vigilant Sanford Parker. It is — and I say this with no exaggeration or sense of hyperbole — a beast.

Voices of Omens delved into apocalyptic metal territory, no doubt about it, but Rest personalizes that process. It makes it human. Sonically, the six tracks encompass a range of extreme genres, from doom to black and death metal to the dirge-hued bombast Rwake have come to trade on over the course of their development. The songs (with the use of a couple choice samples) hit hard enough to satisfy longtime followers of the band, and the expansive scope comes at no cost to that heaviness.

Relapse has been kind enough to let The Obelisk have a couple choice track premieres over the last several months (Hail!Hornet, Indian, the entirety of Rwake‘s reissue of 2002’s Hell is a Door to the Sun), but I don’t know if I’ve been as excited about any of them as I am about this. As you listen, understand that you’re getting a part of the whole here and that each cut on Rest offers something individual to the listener.

Please find “An Invisible Thread” on the player below — followed by an explanation of the track and lyrics from frontman CT — and enjoy.

[mp3player width=460 height=120 config=fmp_jw_widget_config.xml playlist=rwake.xml]

From CT:
“An Invisible Thread” is an anthemic song about the devil’s music, wife abuse, dreamscapes, and the ability to “out of body experience” your very own suicide. It is the “upper” on the album. Not so much uplifting, just more of an all around upper.

Lyrics:
nothing last forever un relived
when all the others give and fucking take
user suck the life to fucking live
imitate life but never recreate

if we knew there would be no fit
if you think you know then you’re fucking full of shit
look around you and embrace it
the long road to hell with no regret

now you feel it cause you’re sick at your stomach
it’s a feeling that no one can run from
it’s a haunting and the sickness is the demon
exorcise through suicide and reason

Rest is available for preorder at this location in 180 gram vinyl, CD or t-shirt bundles, and will be released Sept. 27. Special thanks to Relapse for permission to host the stream.

Even if I wasn’t legally obligated to post these tour dates owing to eternal fanboy nerdness, I’d still post them because… well, pretty much for the same reason. Fine. You got me. No word on whether or not Nick Oliveri is doing these shows.

More Kyuss Lives! dates unveiled. News. PR wire. You know the drill:

Kyuss Lives! — featuring original Kyuss members John Garcia, Brant Bjork and Nick Oliveri along with guitarist Bruno Fevery — will unleash their desert rock fury on North America for the first time in over 15 years this fall when the band launches a North American headlining tour on Sept. 16 in Toronto, ON. The eagerly anticipated near total return of the California rock pioneers follows the blanket success of the group’s recent European and Australian tours which have proven to be a feast of recognition for the legendary musicians. Due to overwhelming demand, Kyuss Lives! has announced additional North American tour dates, including shows in San Diego (Nov. 17), San Francisco (Nov. 19), Vancouver (Nov. 23), Chicago (Dec. 2) and more.

Kyuss Lives! has also made special fan VIP upgrade packages available which will allow concert goers to both connect with the band personally and collect rare Kyuss Lives! merchandise, making for a one-of-a-kind fan-to-band experience. Members of the band’s Internet Fan Community also have the opportunity to purchase concert tickets via advance pre-sale.

Kyuss Lives! North American live dates:
(** = support from The Sword, Monstro)
(++= Monstro opens, remaining support TBA)
09/16 Toronto, ON The Sound Academy ++
09/17 Guelph, ON Guelph Concert Theatre ++
09/18 Montreal, QC Olympia de Montréal ++
09/20 Worcester, MA The Palladium ** (also w/ Milligram)
09/21 Philadelphia, PA The Trocadero **
09/23 New York, NY Terminal 5 **
09/24 Washington, DC 9:30 Club **
09/25 Asheville, NC The Orange Peel ++
09/26 Atlanta, GA The Masquerade ++
09/28 New Orleans, LA House of Blues ++
09/29 Houston, TX Warehouse Live **
10/01 Austin, TX Stubb’s **
10/02 Dallas, TX South Side Music Hall **
10/04 Denver, CO The Summit Music Hall ++
10/05 Santa Fe, NM Santa Fe Brewing Company **
10/06 Tempe, AZ Marquee Theatre **
10/07 Las Vegas, NV House of Blues **
10/08 Pomona, CA The Fox Theater **
11/17 San Diego, CA House of Blues #
11/19 San Francisco, CA The Regency Ballroom #
11/21 Portland, OR Roseland Theatre #
11/22 Seattle, WA Showbox SODO #
11/23 Vancouver, BC Commodore Ballroom #
11/26 Calgary, AB Flames Central #
11/27 Edmonton, AB Edmonton Event Centre #
11/29 Winnipeg, MB Garrick Centre #
11/30 Minneapolis, MN First Avenue #
12/01 Milwaukee, WI Turner Hall Ballroom #
12/02 Chicago, IL Vic Theatre #
12/03 Pontiac, MI Crofoot Ballroom #
12/05 Greensburg, PA The Palace Theatre #
12/06 Buffalo, NY Town Ballroom #

A much-needed dinner with The Patient Mrs. meant getting to the Saint Vitus bar after both Fashion Week and Bezoar played, which left Pigs and Totimoshi still to come on the bill for my second night in Brooklyn. This time, I rolled into the place like an expert, my awkwardly large camera bag on my shoulder, and set up shop at the bar for a homebrew before Pigs went on.

My positive first impressions the night before were confirmed when the bartender, instead of pretending to have never seen me before after a moment of recognition (as is the custom in the city), asked me, “Weren’t you here last night?” I said I was and a pleasant conversation ensued. Imagine human interaction. Very cool.

When Pigs got going, I made my way past Totimoshi‘s merch — in my mind saying, “I don’t need to buy the record right now,” as if it wasn’t inevitable — through the curtain and into the back room to watch their set. The trio is made up of guitarist/vocalist Dave Curran (Unsane, Players Club), drummer Jim Paradise (Players Club) and bassist/vocalist Andrew Schneider (Slughog, also producer for The Brought Low and countless others in and around NYC and beyond); all three Brooklyn locals. The sound was probably what you’d expect if you ever heard Players Club, resting on the spectrum between that band’s riffier, somewhat melodic take and Unsane‘s flat-out noise aggression.

They’ve been around for a bit, but it was my first time seeing them (quite a weekend of firsts I had), and I was eager to do so. The occasional interplay between Curran and Schneider on vocals did a lot to offset the visceral screams from the former alone, and Paradise proved to be yet third in the line of excellent drummers I saw this weekend at Saint Vitus — I’d soon add Chris Fugitt from Totimoshi to complete the list — and though the changes in approach between the songs were subtle, I got a sense of them just from hearing the songs live once through, which makes me suspect the material comes across even more diverse on record. As all three members of Pigs (plus Unsane‘s Chris Spencer, who was also at the show) are behind Coextinction Recordings, the avenue for hearing recorded versions seems obvious.

Last time I saw Totimoshi was circa 2008 at the now-kaput basement Club Midway in Manhattan. Like Pearls and Brass the night before, they’re a band I’ve been a fan of for years on top of years who’ve been largely underappreciated by those outside a limited critical circle. Unlike Pearls and Brass, though, Totimoshi never stopped. I did wind up buying a copy of Avenger, the new album, before they went on, and regretted it not for one moment after their set got going, as it’s where most of what they played was taken from.

Set-wise, they went no further back than 2006’s Ladrón — “Viva Zapata” and “The Dance of Snakes” were highlights — and of the newer cuts, “Mainline” proved the most immediately recognizable. As a special surprise, they included a cover of the Hendrix classic “Are You Experienced?” that set the song’s original swagger against Totimoshi‘s desert-inflected tonality. Guitarist/vocalist Anthony “Tonymoshi” Aguilar (no one calls him that that I know of, but being a fan of portmanteau, I’m trying to start the trend) convincingly delivered both the lines and blissed out leads of that song and of Avenger closer “Waning Divine,” cutting the song somewhat short at the end, but still giving enough of an impression for the crowd to get a sense of what Mastodon‘s Brent Hinds contributes to the album.

Bassist Meg Castellanos and aforementioned drummer Fugitt both contributed vocals to “The Fool” — the latter through a headset microphone that made him look a little bit like a motivational speaker — which proved even catchier in person than on disc. The body of Castellanos‘ Rickenbacker was roughly the size of her own torso, but she wielded it expertly nonetheless, her tone melding with Aguilar‘s own and her stage presence complementing his sometimes frenetic or spastic energy with a kind of subdued confidence as the trio plowed through the instrumental “Calling all Curs.”

For his part, Fugitt looked like a consummate professional. The drumming gloves might have helped, but in watching him play (and as I say, I’d already had a dose of killer drumming to compare), it’s not that he lacked conviction, but that he looked like you could have put any style of music in front of him and he’d have been able to play it just as well. I don’t know his history in terms of projects he’s been involved in, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he’s done session work. His style was creative and his playing so solid that it seemed like he’d have no trouble sitting down with anyone’s song, know it front to back in five minutes and play it with the abandon of a kid in the garage who thinks no one’s around.

As the third in the three-piece with founders Aguilar and Castellanos, he was more than good company to keep. Totimoshi‘s set seemed short (they cut the title track from Ladrón from their written setlist), but was wholly satisfying anyway, and for the second night in a row, I felt happy to have made the trip into Brooklyn. I don’t know when I’ll get back to Saint Vitus — I was a little tempted to show up on Sunday, just for the hell of it — but whenever it is, I’ll be glad to be there.

A couple extra Totimoshi pics after the jump.

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This is unexpected and fascinating news. Canadian progressive metal LEGENDS Voivod have been selected to curate the 2012 installment of the Roadburn festival in Tilburg, The Netherlands. I think it’ll be really interesting to see who they select over the next couple months, and either way, with the chance to see them perform not one, but two times over the course of the 2012 fest, it’s automatically worth the trip. If you haven’t yet, no time like today to book that flight.

Here’s the news, direct from Roadburn‘s site:

Roadburn is elated to announce the curator for the 17th edition of the festival: Voivod. After the band’s widely acclaimed and artistically inspiring performances at the 2011 festival, Voivod has agreed to curate our festival on Friday, April 13, 2012.

As curator, Voivod will personally select the bands that will play during their special event at Roadburn and perform a special headline show. We had a revelation this year: namely, that Voivod and Roadburn are not only kindred spirits musically and artistically, but also on the same wavelength in other ways, too. Voivod personifies the laidback Roadburn vibe.

Respected by fans and bands that span the festival’s sonic spectrum, Voivod is the ideal pick as Roadburn’s fifth curator. The band will carry on a tradition that began in 2008 with David Tibet, followed by Neurosis in 2009, Triptykon’s Tom Gabriel Warrior in 2010 and SunnO))) at this year’s festival. After Voivod agreed to curate the Friday, we could not resist asking them to stay for a second show. It’s on! The band will appear on Saturday, April 14, 2012, too.

Away comments: “We are truly honored to curate the Roadburn Voivod day on April 13, 2012. We will make sure that the whole spectrum of experimental music influential to Voivod is represented. Thanks to the Roadburn folks for inviting us, we’re already counting the days in anticipation of the event!!”

We are truly looking forward to the new ideas and visions that Voivod will bring to the festival next year. If asked to sum up Roadburn in one word, “progressive” would be a fitting choice. Evolution is a big part of this. The festival is a tribute to the open-mindedness of its bands, curators and audience. The joy comes from expanding musical horizons and looking at familiar territory from new angles. We will definitely be in for some artistic surprises with the always-intrepid Voivod as our curator. We are excited to find out what they have in store for us!

Roadburn Festival 2012, including Voivod’s special event, will run for four days from Thursday, April 12 to Sunday, April 15 (the traditional Afterburner) at the 013 venue in Tilburg, Holland. Pre-sales will start Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011.

I think when this series of updates on the recording of Orange Goblin‘s yet-untitled new album is over, I might have to ask frontman Ben Ward to continue filling us in on both his drunken misadventures and the English football league. In this second (and massively entertaining) installment of the studio diary, Mr. Ward details his preferred hangover-curing breakfast, progress on the guitar and bass tracks, and several well-celebrated victories.

Last week’s update is here. Orange Goblin is Ward, bassist Martyn Millard, guitarist Joe Hoare and drummer Chris Turner. More to come, and in the meantime, dig it:

Orange Goblin – Album Recording – Week 2

After a very successful first three days in the studio we all went away and had four whole days off to listen to what we had recorded and decide if any changes to the drum tracks needed to be made, but I think we were all 100 percent happy with the work that Chris had done and by Friday when we arrived back at the studio, Martyn continued laying down his bass tracks, quickly adding to the good stuff he’d done last weekend as well. The break in recording also gave me a good chance to go away and listen to the songs and make sure that the lyrics and vocal melodies are going to work when it finally comes to laying them down. I’ve now got finished lyrics for seven of the 10 tracks, which leaves me with two full weeks to write words and melodies for three songs! Even by my standards, this should be easy enough! Martyn concentrated long enough Friday to get all his parts done despite the rest of us trying to put him off with the temptation of beer, cider and pizza! We all left there Friday night confident that we were well ahead of schedule so Chris and I went back to mine and celebrated this with more beer and whiskey!

Saturday morning, I was up early (and hungover!) and went for a breakfast fit for a king (steak, poached eggs, fried potatoes, onions, mushrooms and tomatoes – Thanks Tom!). This was the perfect stomach lining for a day on the ale! I didn’t actually attend the studio on Saturday as the English football season has started now and I had a ticket to see Liverpool play at Arsenal at the Emirates stadium in London and Liverpool won 2-0!! I honestly had intended to go to the studio after the game but because Liverpool won, there was much celebrating to do and the rest of the band accepted that I wouldn’t drop by! Whilst I was away Joe began laying down his guitar tracks (I’m amazed he managed this, as Martyn was running around the studio celebrating the fact that his team, QPR, had also won that afternoon!) After a while of working on different tones and sounds Joe cracked on and made some very good progress. By the time I got to the studio on Sunday he was well over half way through his basic rhythm tracks and everything was sounding awesome!!

Martyn and I spent the whole day listening to Joe plough through his rhythm tracks and deciding where we needed to multi-layer the guitars and where to keep it simple. I think Joe has a very good sense of where he needs to do stuff and where to drop out and I feel it adds a lot to the overall sound of Orange Goblin albums. Chris never made it to the studio on Sunday as he had family business to attend to but he made a point of sending us messages that his team, Wolves, had won again and were in fact top of the league!! Before we left the studio we had to load all our drums and bass gear out of the studio as they are now done with! We’ll be back again next weekend for Joe to add his leads and for me to start doing vocals on all the songs that have finished lyrics, if this all goes to plan then the following weekend should be spent finishing vocals and guitars and adding the finishing touches (keyboards, percussion and any other little bits and pieces that may need doing!). Once that is done we start the mixing!!! All in all another very productive weekend and three much-needed points for Liverpool, QPR and Wolves. I don’t think all our teams have ever won on the same weekend before………..must be a good sign!!!

Ben Ward, 23rd August 2011

Well, not exactly from them, but definitely featuring them. The video below was made with clips from the 1978 Lord of the Rings cartoon edited in with Olde Growth‘s 10-minute, three-part epic, “Cry of the Nazgul/The Second Darkness/To the Black Gate.” I’m posting it because it rules, both the video and the song, which is taken from the band’s self-titled MeteorCity debut.

And about that song: Given all the riotousness that takes place before the third and final movement of the track, you’d think the bass/drums-only duo would have a hard time coming up with sufficient payoff, but they totally nail it, cutting back on the heavy vocals at just the right time to add subdued melody — just the opposite of what you expect in listening — in a breathy delivery that practically paints the walls in groove and brain matter. It doesn’t so much hold the attention as it crushes it.

Thanks to MeteorCity for sending this along in their latest label update:

It was my first time at Saint Vitus. The bar, in Brooklyn‘s Greenpoint neighborhood — the mere fact that I didn’t have to be in Williamsburg on a Friday night was enough to make it worth driving into and through the city in the rain — is still a relatively recent advent, but it’s quickly become a hotspot for heavy shows featuring quality bands. My trip in to catch the revived Pennsylvanian trio Pearls and Brass was the first of two nights in a row I’d be spending there.

The door outside unmarked, the bar appropriately dark and the DJ spinning mostly ’80s metal when I walked in, I knew I was in the right place. The Saint Vitus homebrew ($4) is light and crisp and goes down easy. It was the kind of beer you could easily spend a night with, and doubtless they picked it as their flagship for just that purpose. I didn’t see brew-works anywhere (though they’d probably have room in the basement if it goes all the way back), and the place is split between the bar up front and the stage room separated by a thick curtain in the back.

I dug it. I dug the layout. I dug the fact that it was easy for me to get there from Jersey (if you’ve ever been to Europa, you already know how to get there), and I dug that it wasn’t peopled by assholes either of the heavy metal or hipster variety. There was some of that element — a group of people seemed to be having a photoshoot toward the end of the bar after the show — but it’s unavoidable, and if a place like Saint Vitus is going to stay in business, it’s that crowd’s disposable income that’s going to let them do it. In any case, cool room. There was a copy of the Holy Diver vinyl on display behind the bar, and that’s automatic points in my book.

The sound in back was decent as well, which I first got to experience with the avant/noise-making outfit Eleven Twenty Nine. The trio were instrumental, two guitars and a drummer, and all three members of the band seemed to be working in not only a different time signature, but a different time zone. It was the kind of noodling self-indulgence that you can either read as super-progressive or noise for noise’s sake, and either way, an odd fit for comradeship with the riffy Serpent Throne or the sweet tones of Pearls and Brass.

Serpent Throne took over following a short break and that was where the show really got on track. When last I saw them, I was getting embarrassingly drunk in their native Philadelphia and they were opening for Solace and Pentagram. That was quite an evening on multiple levels, but at Saint Vitus they proved no less engaging. Rather, with their third album — White Summer/Black Winter, which was reviewed earlier this year — behind them, they seemed relaxed and able to settle into the grooves their riffs inevitably led them.

They had several highlights to their set, but the unnamed new song they closed with hit especially hard. They’re not really doing anything that’s never been done before, but the interplay between the guitars is interesting, and as they’ve developed as a band, their songs have gradually become more intricate. They sound like they’re having a lot of fun, and they looked that way on stage as well. With stage banter that centered largely on the freeing of the West Memphis Three, a jovial atmosphere was set.

When Pearls and Brass announced their reactivation toward the end of last year, they did so with a show in the bar of a hotel (at least I seem to recall that was the situation) in their native Nazareth, PA. I tried to get advance tickets to that show, but it quickly sold out, and so I was even more eager to see them at the Saint Vitus bar. Their sunshine blues rock was three or four years ahead of the curve when they released their last album, The Indian Tower, on Drag City, and so I expected they’d pull a decent audience in Brooklyn, and they did. I don’t think there was any threat of the show selling out, but the room was crowded anyway, and the people who showed up knew what they were there for.

Myself included. I’d been a fan of Pearls and Brass since they released their self-titled on Doppelganger Records in 2003, and so the chance to see them now, eight years and one reunion later, was exciting. Guitarist Randall Huth and bassist Joel Winter, whose shared vocals came through low in the mix, played right into Sunn amps and made the most of the tones therefrom. The songs they played carried across a lighthearted Americana despite their distortion, and with drummer Josh Martin‘s punkish backbeat, there was never any energy lacking in the performance.

It was a joy to see them after so long. As I stood and watched their too-short set (though the last song they played was at least 10 minutes long and had multiple movements) progressed, I remembered hearing the Pearls and Brass record and feeling like I’d stumbled on something really special. They were tight like a band who’d never gone away, and should they decide to record new material, I can’t see them having any problem aligning themselves with Tee Pee Records or someone like that should Drag City not be able to put it out. The aesthetic having caught up to where they were half a decade ago, I’d be eager to hear where they went next on a studio album.

The Jersey-bound drive ahead of me, I left almost immediately after they finished. I’d made the drive into Brooklyn with one headlight, and decided to change the broken one before I headed back, which took a humiliating amount of time (big American hands, tiny Swedish spaces). That feat finally accomplished, I hightailed it back to the valley and caught as much sleep as possible, ready to do it all again the next night for Totimoshi.

As per usual, there are more pics after the jump.

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The hits just keep coming today with the news that my last copy of Dronolith by Blackwolfgoat sold on Saturday night! I’ve got the package here and I’ll drop it off at the post office tomorrow (it would’ve gone out this morning, but the CD was here at work), and then that’s it — no more Dronolith from me.

It’s been an absolute pleasure working with Darryl Shepard, the sole figure behind Blackwolfgoat. Dronolith turned out better than I could’ve hoped, and was hugely impressive for a one-man project, pushing drone into progressive builds and resulting in songs that felt like more than just self-indulgence. Recording live gave it a natural feel and Darryl knows what’s what when it comes to making a wall of noise. I’ve been lucky enough to see it first-hand.

Last I heard Darryl had a couple copies left, so you can get in touch with him via the Blackwolfgoat page on Bandcamp to see if that’s still the case, and Aquarius Records in San Francisco should still have some as well from the batch I sent them, but mine are gone. Thanks as always to everyone who bought a copy of the record, from the first to the last, and thanks to Darryl, Alexander von Wieding for his amazing cover art, to Scott Hamilton and Small Stone Records and to everyone who’s reviewed Dronolith or helped spread the word in any way.

Darryl will be playing with Milligram as they support Kyuss Lives! and The Sword in Worcester, Massachusetts, so if you’re up there, I’d definitely try to get tickets, as it should be pretty massive. As for The Maple Forum‘s next release, I hope to have some news from the Clamfight dudes in the next week or two, and we’ll take it from there with artwork, pressing the disc, etc. In the last couple days, I’ve also been talking to three other bands interested in working with the label, so 2012 seems to already be shaping up.

More on that as it develops, and in the meantime, if you didn’t get the chance to buy Dronolith, here’s the album stream Darryl set up. Thanks again.