This news was kicking around the forum and Thee Facebooks yesterday, but the official release came in on the PR wire last night, so it seemed only appropriate to post it here. Congratulations to Eugene, Oregon, space doomers YOB, who just happened to release my favorite album of 2011, on landing an opening spot for Tool‘s upcoming North American dates. I’m not sure how I actually feel about it, as I hadn’t really planned on seeing Tool (ever) again but don’t think I can let a YOB gig pass unattended, but whether or not I show up, it’s well-deserved on the band’s part. No argument from me there.

Here’s the press release:

Oh, what a year it has been for the mighty doom metallers YOB! First they release one of the most highly respected albums in recent memory with Atma via Profound Lore. Now the band is happy to announce that they will be direct support to TOOL on the progressive titans’ upcoming Jan/Feb North American tour. With two behemoths such as this, fans can expect one of the most impressive tours of the year!

The following dates have been announced with more to be unveiled in the coming days.

01/28 TD Garden Boston, MA
01/29 Susquehanna Bank Center Camden, NJ
01/31 Mohegan Sun Arena Uncasville, CT
02/01 Izod Center East Rutherford, NJ
02/03 TBA
02/04 Bojangles’ Coliseum Charlotte, NC
02/06 Bank Atlantic Center Sunrise, FL
02/07 UCF Arena Orlando, FL
02/08 Gwinnett Center Arena Duluth, GA

Included at the bottom of this post is a live clip of German stonerly trio Wight performing in their native Darmsdadt. Taken from the band’s upcoming DVD Wight Home Weedio (get it?) and the same audio source as their split 10″ with Stone Axe, the song is the title-track from their 2011 Wight Weedy Wight debut (review here), which was self-released through Fat and Holy Records and among the most sincere executions of unabashed stoner groove I heard all year. If you watch the video, you’ll notice the band has trails.

Now, that could be an effect put on in editing, but I prefer to think that wherever Wight go, they have those trails with them. They’re just that stoner rock. So, if Wight goes to the cash machine? Trails. Wight orders a sandwich for lunch? Trails. Wight lets loose some awesome languid riffing and heady jams? Trails. In fact, even if that’s not the case, don’t tell me. I’d rather live with my fantasy, however contradicted by the fire and sundry psychedelic visuals that come up later on as the song progresses.

Wight Weedy Wight followed a simple and familiar enough formula for crafting cool and natural sounding heavy psych, and though it was still obviously a first album and pretty rudimentary in terms of style, it rocked and showed potential for righteous jams to come. Having already previewed the follow-up sophomore outing — to be titled Through the Woods into Deep Water — with a free download of a new demo called “You!” (streaming here), Wight look to already be developing the classically spaced-out side of their sound and balancing it with their organically jammed mentality. Right on.

Before Through the Woods into Deep Water hits this coming spring, I wanted to bug the three-piece with Six Dumb Questions just to get some basic idea of what they’re all about and what went into making Wight Weedy Wight, and caught them just as they were hitting the road with Bushfire on their “Malakas of the Universe” tour.

Wight is guitarist/vocalist Rene Hofmann, bassist Peter-Philipp Schierhorn (also of black metal outfit Fallen Tyrant) and drummer Michael Kluck. Please enjoy the following Six Dumb Questions:

1. Tell me about how the band got together. What was it that first sparked the idea for Wight, and how did the three of you join up?

Rene: When I came to Darmstadt, I wanted to found a new band because I had a lot of ideas. In all of my previous bands, I was only the vocalist, and this time I wanted to play guitar too in order to combine my ideas for vocal and guitar melodies.

Peter and I met in late 2007, and after some months of searching we found a drummer in April 2008. We started with some of my ideas, and with the input of the other two band members we developed a heavy, doomy style. On our first demo and a lot of unreleased material you can hear that. We played a couple of gigs in 2009 before we parted ways with our old drummer. Michael and I knew each other from working in a record store. Michael joined the band in February 2010, and we really started all over from there. We developed a really awesome workflow and wrote, arranged and recorded Wight Weedy Wight within a couple of months.

2. How much of Wight’s songwriting comes from jamming out on the riffs? How are the riffs pieced together, and if that’s the way it goes, how are the songs kind of carved out of those jams?

Peter: Rene usually comes up with the riffs, we start jamming on them in the practice room and Michael and I develop our parts. Usually, Rene also has some rough ideas for the structure, and we refine them together. On one or two occasions, we also started from a drumbeat or a bass line, but usually Rene‘s guitar riffs are the base for our compositions.

3. Tell me about recording Wight Weedy Wight. How much of the album was recorded live, and as your debut, how much does it show what you want the sound of Wight to be?

Rene: We recorded the album live, together in a 200sqm studio. It was a cool experience recording that way. Our engineer Jorge [Medina] also helped a lot with that. I recorded some guitar overdubs afterwards, as well as all of the vocals.

It is important to know that we recorded Wight Weedy Wight after only about half a year together as a band. So the songs have a kind of impulsive vibe to them, which really forms the sound. It’s always that way when we write new songs, and you will hear that on future recordings.

4. How did the split with Stone Axe come about? When were those jams recorded, and will any of that material make it onto Through the Woods into Deep Water? Do you know yet when the next record will be out?

Michael: Yeah, man, ask Tony.

Rene: Michael and I saw Stone Axe at Roadburn 2011 and were blown away by the performance. I took out my camera, filmed two songs and sent the videos to Tony [Reed] later. I told him about Fat & Holy Records. Together, we had the idea to release a split because I told him we had recorded a jam session during the Wight Weedy Wight sessions – the “Cosmic Rhythm #2.” He said he was about to record three jams in the studio with his band for the B-side. The other Wight track on the split LP is a live version of “Wight Weedy Wight” which was recorded in Darmstadt early this year.

Peter: The tracks are exclusively released on the split, they will not be included on the new album. We will release Through the Woods Into Deep Water in March or April, but we do not have a fixed date yet.

Rene: It all depends on how soon the mixing and the layout are done.

5. You guys have signed on to play the Berlin Desertfest. Will you tour around that, or do other strings of dates in Europe for the new album? Any chance you’d hook up with Wiht from the UK and do a “Wight on Wiht” tour?

Rene: We don’t have any tour dates confirmed for the new album. We will play a couple of gigs in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands in February and March together with our friends from Bushfire, though. We hope to play some more gigs around or after Desertfest. The Wiht guys seem to be nice, I hope to see them live or even play with them some day. Like they said, a “Missing G Tour” … ;-)

6. Any other plans or closing words you want to mention?

If you ask something like that, we go Darkthrone on you and just drop a bunch of names of bands and friends you should check out: Bushfire, Fallen Tyrant, Black Lizard, Godless Funk of Bonanza, The Wolves, Manges, Burden, The Gasoline Disaster, Okta Logue, 1000mods, Sun of Nothing, Cherry Choke, Coogans Bluff, Hyne, Toner Low, Broken Spirits, Negativvm, Robotnik.

Wight’s website

Wight on Thee Facebooks

I thought to honor the gorgeousness of the recently-unveiled packaging of the Wino/Conny Ochs collaboration — click the photo below to make it massive — we’d do some acoustic stuff this week. The clip at the bottom of this post of the Weinrich-original “I Don’t Care” and the Townes Van Zandt cover “Nothin'” was filmed at the Volcom (you might know them as the people who released the Premonition 13 album) store in Los Angeles way back in January.

This was just a couple weeks before Wino hit the road alongside Shrinebuilder bandmate Scott Kelly on an acoustic tour in support of Adrift and a split 7″ single between them, but I’d hardly call the performance rough. He nails the restless angst of “I Don’t Care” and manages to elicit whoops and yells from the crowd during “Nothin'” in the solo at the end. The energy is there, is what I’m trying to say.

And given the odd setting near a shirt rack and the clarity of sound and video for this clip, it was an easy choice. Enjoy “I Don’t Care” and “Nothin'” and the rest of your Wino Wednesday:

Admittedly, I didn’t see this one coming. After releasing 2010’s Snakes for the Divine, which had its blistering moments but ultimately seemed to be working to clean up High on Fire‘s now-trademarked dirty thrash sound, the seminal Oakland outfit have announced teaming with Converge‘s Kurt Ballou for the recording of their next studio outing. One thing about Ballou: Damn near everything out of his studio sounds heavy as fuck. The prospect of a new High on Fire record just got much more interesting.

Fresh off the PR wire:

Oakland, CA, hard rock band High on Fire has entered Salem, Massachusetts‘ GodCity Studios to begin tracking their as-yet-untitled new album. The world renowned group featuring drummer Des Kensel, bassist Jeff Matz and guitarist / vocalist Matt Pike (also of legendary stoner metal trio Sleep) is collaborating with producer and Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou on the new effort; the band’s sixth studio recording and follow up to 2010’s Snakes for the Divine. A mid-2012 release date is expected via eOne Music.

“We are really stoked about recording this album,” said Jeff Matz when asked for comment. “The new songs are turning out absolutely punishing; there are some seriously sledgehammer riffs on this one! Working with Kurt has been awesome as well. He’s super easy to work with and is full of good ideas. The sounds that the guy gets are ridiculous and raw as f*ck but also clear and HUGE. I think this album will capture the essence of the band really well. It’s still early in the process, but so far it’s sounding amazing.”

Tentative song titles from the new High on Fire LP include “Serums of Liao,” “Madness of an Architect,” “De Vermis Mysteriis,” “Spiritual Rites” and “Warhorn.” Early reports mark the new record as “direct, eye-opening and powerfully supernatural.” More details on the album will be made available in the coming weeks.

If the Eastlake, Ohio, duo Bibilic Blood have proven anything about themselves over the last two-plus years since the self-release of their Z’Ha’Doom debut, it’s that they’re totally fucked. Drummer/guitarist/graphic artist Scott “Wizard” Stearns and bassist/vocalist Suzy Psycho have donned capital-d Deranged as their aesthetic, and on their third album, Blood Butterfly (also self-released), they give their most “refined” take on that process yet – with “refined” in quotes because Bibilic Blood’s primal riffing and wailing is so lo-fi that in parts it seems to barely be there. Though that’s proven to be on purpose throughout this and last year’s Pale Face Destroyer (review here), they carry the feel so convincingly as to be genuinely unsettling. The main difference between Blood Butterfly and its preceding installments is in a more distilled feel. Here the songs are shorter, Stearns and Psycho working in two more tracks into a runtime still a minute shorter than that of Pale Face Destroyer, and though I’d hardly thought it possible, Bibilic Blood seem to be becoming even more rudimentary as they develop creatively. As much of their energy here seems to be in deconstructing song structures, they’re simultaneously building creative patterns in which they work. Still, the primary element at work in Blood Butterfly is how completely fucked up it sounds.

More even than on their last outing, however, Bibilic Blood turn that fucked-upness into a wash of malevolent psychedelia, accomplishing through different means what Midwestern black metal has done for its genre. The production on Blood Butterfly is beyond demo raw, but over the course of their to-date trilogy, that’s become almost as much a part of the style as Stearns’ riffs and Psycho’s deep-mixed wails. Were she screaming, Bibilic Blood might veer into sludge territory, and given Stearns’ past or ongoing tenure in Sollubi, Fistula, Ultralord, Morbid Wizard and others, that influence is bound to be present, but Blood Butterfly is geared toward something more definitively horror-based, and the 13 tracks are beginning to expand the formula. Psycho’s vocals are layered on “Black Star,” and later cut “Spider Guts” (the longest on the album at 5:02) devolves into noise before a guitar-led solo jam that’s Blood Butterfly’s most outwardly psychedelic stretch, perhaps rivaled by the earlier 2:19 instrumental “Acid Eyes.” The growth is subtle, and you have to wade through the intended muck of the recording to get to it, but it’s there. “Black Star” displays some burgeoning complexity in its interweaving layers of guitar and bass (I don’t mention the solo section at the beginning of that song only because it sounds like it might be sampled; if not, it also certainly supports the argument in favor of development on the part of the band). As Bibilic Blood becoming increasingly aware of the sonic field they’re working in, they can only progress further within it.

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Heavy Bostonian foursome Riff Cannon announced last night that they’ve changed their name and will be known as Summoner going forward. As Riff Cannon, they released the excellent Mercury Mountain in 2009 and recorded the forthcoming Phoenix, which will be Summoner‘s first release, out in 2012 on a to-be-determined label. We’d been talking about doing it on The Maple Forum, and may yet, but the band is rightly taking the opportunity to shop the album around with the band’s new moniker. Whoever gets behind it, the record is a monster, so hopefully it’s released soon.

In the meantime, Summoner sent this down the PR wire:

Hey all,

Just wanted to let everyone know that we will be changing our name.  After much deliberation and discussion between the guys in the band, we have decided to move forward with this.  The new name will be SUMMONER.  The old name will be missed, and yes we understand that a lot of people really like it, but we also found that just as may people don’t like it…. including ourselves. 

I’ll spare you the long drawn out explanation of when and why we have decided to do this.  Just know that we are the exact same band… SAME DUDES, SAME MUSIC, DIFFERENT NAME.

Please follow the link to the new Facebook page and “LIKE” us so we can keep you all updated on news, shows, and most importantly, when we will be releasing the new album Phoenix!!!  The record is mixed, mastered and we have some amazing cover art (courtesy of Alyssa Maucere).  We’re going to take some time to shop the record around while we settle in as SUMMONER.

Thanks to everyone who has supported us over these last few years… now it’s time to move forward!!!
—
Summoner
(formerly Riff Cannon)

More often than not, the rule with sludge is if it’s slow and screamy, you compare it to EyeHateGod. If the band is from the UK, as is the Northern Irish four-piece War Iron, you might throw Iron Monkey into the mix, largely for the same reasons. War Iron’s nautically-themed, self-released two-song full-length, The Faceless Sea, has more in common with The Slomatics and Conan (at least tonally), however, than the influential sludge of yore, tapping into ultra-low end heaviness with two basses in place of guitar and cutting through the rumbling morass with vicious, frothing screams. Throughout “Inch Cape” (12:09) and “Face the Sea” (20:50), images come to mind of a more metal-minded Weedeater or even Bongzilla, but War Iron’s perspective seems more hellish than weedian, and the atmosphere they create is murky enough to earn its sea-based thematic. They’re certainly not the first band to write heavy songs about the ocean or dying therein or sailing thereupon, but for nearly every second of The Faceless Sea, War Iron make it apparent that nothing else would work quite as well in solidifying the execution of the record. Even in the  breaks one might call respite if there was actually any letup in the density of the atmosphere – even their air is heavy – War Iron remain consistent in the dreary lumbering of these two songs.

About three and a half minutes into its 12, “Inch Cape” does ignite the pace somewhat, but even then, the thickness of Ross and Dave’s two basses and Baggy’s layered screams and death growls make it seem like there’s no escape. Drummer Marty has his work cut out for him in basically anchoring these songs on his own, since it’s not like one bass is part of the rhythm section and the other is filling the role of a lead guitar. As “Inch Cape” reemerges at its relative crawl, the basses are wide open, holding chords and leaving it solely to the drums to fulfill the life-raft role. Light rumbling under sampled speech takes the place of a verse, but even though at about eight minutes in, the song is effectively over, the perpetual amp noise/droning and sea noises that take hold prove oppressive as well as they lead into the all-at-once slam of “Face the Sea”’s opening. The second of the two cuts on The Faceless Sea is more diverse sonically – at more than eight minutes longer than its predecessor, it has room to be – though Baggy’s screaming offers no let up amid the mega-heavy bass, which, by the time the song is two minutes in, sounds like it’s just trying to blow whatever speakers it’s coming from. Some call and response shouts/screams ensue, and the basses and Marty’s drums line up for an overarching groove, but I’m not sure even that’s as striking as how heavy the whole affect is. That is to say, even when War Iron lays into a killer doom plod, it’s less the groove itself that hits you than the heaviness of it, the thickened tones from Ross and Dave. God damn it, that’s heavy.

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Agape is the third album from the German/French collaboration Lantlôs, which unites Markus “Herbst” Siegenhort of Herbst and Stéphane “Neige” Paut of Alcest in an emotional torrent of atmospheric post-black metal. Joined by session drummer Felix Wylezik, Lantlôs is more a band than ever on Agape, which follows 2010’s .Neon and has already seen its European release through Prophecy Productions, weaving swiftly through searing black metal and contemplative, evocative ambience.

Today I’m fortunate enough to be able to premiere the song “Bliss” from Agape — which you can stream on the player above — and on it you’ll find Herbst and Neige working in tandem to express a singular but complex emotional ideology. Herbst in the multi-instrumentalist role on guitar and bass, Wyleszik providing drums and Neige contributing distant but still prominent screams, the song begins with guitar before launching into its blasted-out aggression, which in turn gives way toward the midpoint (listen to the bass there; it’s in the background, but not to be missed) to soft piano and a jazzy drum beat.

The build and climax that ensues from there is befitting the journey on which Lantlôs take the listener throughout the course of Agape, which like other Prophecy releases over the last couple years by bands like Alcest, Arctic Plateau, Les Discrets and others, pushes the boundaries of musical darkness and melancholy while also remembering that the core of a lasting song is its melody. Lantlôs does this and holds firm to its heaviness and abrasion as well, making it all the more impressive.

North American release is set for Jan. 7, 2012. For more info on Lantlôs, check out the band’s website. Prophecy Productions‘ catalog is available for viewing at this location.