The advent of a new Neurosis album is noteworthy even in concept. If you count 2003’s collaboration with Jarboe, there have been four in the last decade – which is a better average than some – and yet each new release seems to arrive with more anticipation behind it, the band members’ prolific side-projects and solo outings only feeding the fire that burns its way back to the root act. The 10th studio full-length from Neurosis (that’s not counting the aforementioned collaboration) is called Honor Found in Decay. It features seven tracks and clocks in at an hour even, making it the shortest since 1990’s sophomore LP, The Word as Law, though the difference between it and much of the band’s post-Souls at Zero (1992) discography, time-wise, is only five to 10 minutes. Still worth noting. More pivotal, however, is the emotional and musical progression of the band. It’s been more than five years since Given to the Rising was issued in May 2007, and of course the work in individual members of Neurosis have done outside the band since then – guitarist/vocalist Steve Von Till in Harvestman and with his solo project, guitarist/vocalist Scott Kelly with Shrinebuilder and his solo projects, keyboardist Noah Landis’ outside collaborations with Kelly, drummer Jason Roeder with Sleep and even visual artist Josh Graham with A Storm of Light – has fed into that progression, but Neurosis at this point is like the temple to which these players – as well as bassist Dave Edwardson, whose work here and throughout the band’s discography is both overshadowed and essential – sojourn every few years, coming together for periodic shows from their various geographic locales in the western part of the country, California, Oregon, Idaho, and writing either via the internet, or individually, or some combination of that, or some mysterious other process. Perhaps distance is part of the reason it’s taken Honor Found in Decay (which, like everything Neurosis does at this point, is released on their own Neurot Recordings imprint) five years to materialize – engineer Steve Albini’s schedule might also have something to do with it – but even if so, the new full-length works quickly to justify the wait. Among the many hyperbolic things it is, it is the work of a group of artists unmatched in their relentless pursuit.

What exactly they’re pursuing could probably be the subject of a master’s thesis, but in the case of Honor Found in Decay, one need not look much farther than the album cover for some clue. Since 1993’s landmark Enemy of the Sun, but especially since 2001’s A Sun that Never Sets (the art for which came from the venerable Seldon Hunt), the visual presentation of Neurosis releases has been an especially apt statement of the mood of the album. Thanks to Graham, 2004’s more ambient, brooding The Eye of Every Storm came dressed in cloud-greys as though descended from some snowy mountain, weathered and tired, and Given to the Rising made its bleak, angrier perspective clear in its foreboding but still textural blacks. To look at Honor Found in Decay, then, Graham (who, judging by this and his cover for the forthcoming Soundgarden album, seems to have entered his “put stuff in a pile and take a picture of it” period; no complaints) brilliantly maintains the realistic aspects of Given to the Rising – a photograph, not a painting – while also feeding into a sense of ritual with candles and what looks like tribal-design covered armaments and keeping a connection to the land via the dirt and ash at the bottom. The lighting is natural, but there’s a human sensibility there too. You’re clearly in a room, looking at a wall behind, covered with pictures or who knows what, and there’s a workbench or some other shelving, covered in the chaos of a working life. It could very well be Graham’s studio space, I don’t know, but it gives that kind of impression, mirroring some of Honor Found in Decay’s more chaotic musical moments, like those of “All is Found… in Time”’s early stretches or the masterfully churning culmination of “Bleeding the Pigs.” So there is the earth, the bones, the ritual, the chaos, the humanity, and we can’t ignore the three spear or arrow points below the logo and title, so there’s violence as well, or at very least the aftermath thereof. It’s a scope no less encompassing than the songs themselves – all the more fitting for that – and the melding of browns and yellows with the black char underscores the central mood of the album, which is not as outwardly raging as was Given to the Rising, and still dark, but wizened, older seeming.

Interpretations will of course vary, but it’s important to keep in mind that Neurosis themselves are not that calculating or cerebral in their processes. Even if Graham was playing off the atmospheres in the songs in his creation of the cover art, there’s no doubt he had something completely different in mind than what I’ve stated above; the work’s success is in being evocative. In this as well the art stands in line with the audio density of Honor Found in Decay, the album’s atmosphere allowing the imagination to foster a host of visual landscapes and scenes – “Bleeding the Pig” being particularly vivid – while nonetheless crushing everything in its expansive sights with tonal and ambient weight and lyrics concerning time, kin, penance, nature and the passage from one to the next that the titular “decay” hints at. The progression between the songs is markedly fluid – Kelly discusses his feelings on structuring albums in the recent interview for his latest solo album – but because the personalities of the tracks are nonetheless distinct and representing individual ideas, it seems appropriate to engage them one at a time in a track-by-track analysis. I was back and forth on the idea, because I didn’t want to take away from how well Honor Found in Decay works taken as a whole – it should be taken as a whole, it’s not like Neurosis are writing 12 three-minute radio singles – but hopefully a better look at the pieces will lead to a more engaged understanding of the whole. We’ll begin with the opener, “We all Rage in Gold.”

1. We all Rage in Gold (6:36)

Shortly before the five-minute mark into late album cut “Water is Not Enough” from Given to the Rising, the song hit its peak in furious riffing topped with a kind of high-pitched swirl – presumably from Landis, but I wouldn’t count out the possibility of that being either Kelly or Von Till’s guitars, either – and that same kind of noise begins Honor Found in Decay. Here it is repurposed into a lonely, spiritual kind of digital smoke that winds its way up from silence to precede the opening guitar figure that becomes the basis tempo-wise for what follows. Edwardson joins with subtle rumble, and it’s all unassuming until at 54 seconds, “We all Rage in Gold” bursts to life, Roeder signaling the launch with a crash that brings the full version of the initial progression, surprisingly upbeat in its kick and higher-end while the bass underscores with runs that will stand out as some of the album’s best. The first vocal lines of the album are, “I walk into the water/To wash the blood from my feet,” and they resound the interplay between Kelly and Von Till that will ensue. The duo’s deliveries have grown so much in tandem with each other that it’s hard at times to pick out where the one or the other is singing when the themes are as consistent as they are on Honor Found in Decay – one always wants to credit Kelly with a harsher, angrier growl and Von Till with reverence to the land, but that’s no more a metric than anything – but they’re most effective and most serving the dynamic when they come together, as they do on the subsequent “At the Well” or the later “Casting of the Ages,” as well as elsewhere throughout. With “We all Rage in Gold,” it’s the encompassing whole that carries you with it, rather this or that element, though Kelly’s vocal readily displays the range of emotion he’s come to convey as a singer over time. Following an elongated verse, the song breaks at 2:41 to a quieter stretch – once again Edwardson’s bass shines from beneath the guitar – and when Roeder breaks on the drums, Landis chimes in to fill out the soundscape with foreboding keywork. A soft vocal line turns guttural at 4:05 and the instruments offer likewise explosion, rounding out the last two minutes-plus of the track with a slower push topped at first by throaty vocal lines, and then marches out instrumentally, strings arriving at 4:52 – I don’t want to assume it’s Jackie Perez Gratz on the cello, though she’s contributed to Neurosis before; if you told me Landis’ keys or a tape loop, I’d believe you; the noise is obscure but melodic – and rumbling to a close that feeds into the quiet opening of “At the Well.”

2. At the Well (10:05)

The core of “At the Well” is a linear build. It’s one of Honor Found in Decay’s most effective – going from near silence to raging cacophony in its 10-minute span – and made all the more so by various fluctuations between. A soft guitar strum and breathy Von Till vocal offer initial minimalism torn through at the one-minute mark by Roeder’s tribal drumming and distorted guitar and bass. They seem at first to plateau here, Von Till raging out a verse over Roeder’s precision thumping – presented, as ever, cleanly and naturally by Albini’s recording – and sustained, feedback guitars openly riffed, but even here there are changes taking place to signal movement in the overarching build. Flourishes of (what sounds like) slide guitar add to the tension being created, the stomach tightening for a release that comes 3:24, when Roeder adds cymbals to roughly the same rhythm, no less driving, and Kelly joins on in on vocals. The apex of “At the Well” is still a long way off, but that’s something of a preview, breaking to synth swirls, ambient guitar and backwards cymbal washes at 4:19, either sampled or real bagpipes bringing up a mournful feel that persists even as the instruments resume their lumbering trail, the slide guitar resuming, echoing behind the revived vocal line and fuller distortion. The line “Smoke from a gaping wound,” is a standout and should be telling in terms of the track’s overall impression at this point. They break again to quiet circa six minutes, Landis’ synth taking the fore once again, though a quiet guitar remains, and a likewise subdued spoken word recitation begins, culminating with the line, “Prophecy flows in whispers” before at seven minutes in, “At the Well” meets its payoff. It’s important to remember for the longer track that this is still relatively early into the context of the whole album, and though there’s no shortage of back and forth playing out, the line Neurosis draw is still very much moving forward. Nonetheless, it is with their own and so often imitated feeling of apocalyptic claustrophobia that they culminate “At the Well.” As has been the case thus far into Honor Found in Decay, there’s tension but no gradual swell. The song explodes. Its action is tornado violent. Eight repetitions of the lyric “In a shadow world” only make the churn more visceral before two guitar leads take hold, the first a wavering, plotted course and the second a buzzsaw that cuts through everything in its path – including Roeder’s increasingly manic tom runs – and threatens to derail the song entirely with the force of its plunder. Any other band and it might have, but the “In a shadow world” incantation resumes, this time for a course of 16 that acts as a foundation for additional vocals built on top of it, bringing in Edwardson to excellent effect alongside Von Till and Kelly, the first two blocks of four lines marking the changes and the last eight acting as the apex prior to the finishing crash and feedback hum at 9:41. Neurosis have arranged three-part vocals before – the prior instance that comes to mind most immediately is “Falling Unknown” from A Sun that Never Sets – but they employ it well here, and at the point “At the Well” crashes, it legitimately feels like there’s nowhere else the song could have gone. Like they pushed it to the very edge and then off the side of a cliff.

Read more »

Today I’m happy to present the next batch of Roadburn 2012 audio streams. Along with Bongripper (above), you’ll find sets below from Coroner, Devil, Dragged into Sunlight, Hammers of Misfortune, Solstafir and Tombs. Thanks as always to Walter and the Roadburn crew for allowing me to host these streams (it is my extreme pleasure to do so) and to Marcel van de Vondervoort for helming the recordings.

Please enjoy:

Bongripper (Het Patronaat – Saturday, April 14th, 2012)

Coroner

Devil

Dragged into Sunlight

Hammers of Misfortune

Solstafir

Tombs

Read The Obelisk’s coverage of Roadburn 2012 here.

It’s fucking awesome to see Orange Goblin go for it like this. After years of slogging it out and being thoroughly under-appreciated in the general metal consciousness while releasing album after kickass album, the British four-piece will slam into five different continents next year, covering North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia in support of this year’s excellent A Eulogy for the Damned (review here).

No doubt heads will be collected, bottles broken, and livers destroyed. Here’s the news and a fancy new press shot, courtesy of their Thee Facebooks:

ORANGE GOBLIN TO TOUR THE WORLD IN 2013!

BAND ANNOUNCED FOR SOUNDWAVE FESTIVAL in AUSTRALIA!

2013 will see Orange Goblin embark on their biggest touring schedule EVER as they continue to promote the critically acclaimed ‘A EULOGY FOR THE DAMNED’ album, released in February 2012 on Candlelight Records and hotly tipped to be a contender for the album of the year polls.

Ohioan anti-supergroup Morbid Wizard return with an EP to back up the vicious onslaught they brought with their first album. Even the name of the release, Necrosis of the Eyeball, should be some hint as to the sonic extremity on tap, and though the four-piece (down a guitarist in the missing Bahb Branca) have solidified their approach somewhat over the course of the last year since they issued their 2011 Lord of the Rats debut (review here), there’s still a very real, very palpable threat of violence in what they do. At any moment, they might put their instruments down and cut you. No shit. You might not think so, but that works to the favor of the five-track, half-hour-long Necrosis of the Eyeball, the guitar of Scott Stearns keeping consistent nastiness throughout varied pace while drummer Corey Bing and bassist Mike Duncan underscore already low-end psychopathy with vomitous churn. Recorded separately, vocalist Jesse Kling’s screams are no less caustic than they were last time around or on his work with The Disease Concept on their own Liquor Bottles and Broken Steel EP (review here), lyrics vaguely discernible in the barrage of abrasive tonality. Bing also took part in The Disease Concept, and that’s only the most basic of connections that draws these players together. Over time in acts like Fistula, Rue, Sollubi, Ultralord, King Travolta and Son of Jor-El, they’ve helped typify their own brand of Ohio sludge, but Morbid Wizard might be the most cohesive showing they’ve had of that style, and likewise, Necrosis of the Eyeball brings these elements together with a fluidity and creativity that doesn’t necessarily work against the loose, dangerous atmosphere – only more vivid for the roughness of production – but instead giving an all-too-real sense of conscious choice. The difference between being hit with a hammer in broad daylight and being stalked and subsequently stabbed in the dark, let’s say. The results may be roughly the same bloody mess, but how you got there is the whole story.

Like its predecessor, Necrosis of the Eyeball arrives in a DVD-style case with artwork from Stearns, and though that and the short span between releases – not to mention members’ participation in other projects – might lead one to think there hasn’t been much development between the two, that’s just not the case. The recordings may sound roughly similar and the ethic may be along the same lines, but the execution has grown some, and so as the EP gets started with its slowest, perhaps meanest track, “Grave Chyld,” and Stearns tears through shredding leads and painfully slow riffing, there persists a sense of songwriting at work. A few of these tracks are – seems almost impossible to say it, and yet – catchy. Not so much the 9:29 “Grave Chyld” (the longest track on the release; points for the opener), which begins with a sample invoking Lucifer and is working more on bludgeon and killer soloing than on the memorability of its hook, the three songs that ensue – “Necrosis of the Eyeball,” “Chemical Fog” and the Cinderella cover “Night Songs” – each have a strong chorus, however caked in filth and fucked up that chorus might be. After the plodding, doomed mournfulness in the ending of “Grave Chyld,” the faster push of the title-track is both a surprise and seemingly a respite, though ultimately Morbid Wizard offer no quarter. Kling, who handles the samples, uses another at the beginning of “Necrosis of the Eyeball,” and when the riff is introduced, its metallic progression (punctuated by tom thuds from Bing), if played somewhat faster, wouldn’t be out of place on any number of death metal records, and that might very well be the intent, though when they break and Duncan’s low end rumble leads them to a chugging, lurching repetitive section, it’s all sludge. Extreme sludge, but sludge all the same. More excellent guitar solos persist through the slowdown, and though I was left wondering if they’d bring the pace back up to finish, they just sort of let the song fall apart instead. I guess even working with structures has its limits.

Read more »

Talk about unappreciated. Not even under-appreciated — which a lot of bands are — but almost completely passed over in the discussion. Yawning Man never had the PR campaign to prove it, but they formed in 1986 and were part of the very beginning of what we now know as desert rock. Led by guitarist Gary Arce, the band wouldn’t release a studio album until 19 years later, when the full-length Rock Formations and the EP Pot Head surfaced, but by then their desert-party jams were long since legendary, and their praises sung by everyone from Fatso Jetson, whose Mario Lalli has been a member of Yawning Man from the beginning, to Kyuss, who famously cited their influence and covered the song “Catamaran” on their final album in 1995.

Over the course of their 26 years, Arce has remained the constant figure behind the band. His signature tone — derived from surf, but thicker and more expansive — leads Yawning Man‘s sprawling instrumental works, and in his time doing so, he’s incorporated a host of luminaries from the California desert. Lalli, of course, has been present for the most part and still plays a large role in the band, but also the likes of Bill Stinson — who’s also worked with Chuck Dukowski (Black Flag) and has been a part of Arce‘s Dark Tooth Encounter and Ten East side-projects — Alfredo Hernandez (Kyuss), Mario‘s cousin and Fatso Jetson bandmate Larry Lalli and Billy Cordell (Unida, Kyuss Lives!) have been through the ranks, and Arce seems to relish the possibilities each new player brings.

In 2010, Yawning Man released their most solidified album to date in the form of Nomadic Pursuits (review here) on Cobraside Distribution. Then the trio of Arce, Lalli and Hernandez, the band seemed poised to collect the respect long overdue to them. Songs both resided in the realm of a “desert rock” sound and provided a reminder that it was Yawning Man who helped shape those ideas in the first place, and the album as a whole had a flow that was remarkably consistent and evocative (a recent summer revisit found it no less so) while also boasting an organic, spontaneously jammed style. The band toured Europe to support it sans Lalli (he tells the story here), and actually had some momentum working in their favor if they could make the best of it quickly.

It’s a quick interview and details are vague at best, so I’ll keep it brief, but the upshot is it didn’t pan out. Hernandez is out of the band, Lalli‘s aboard part-time. Arce, however, is almost defiant in his push to make Yawning Man work. With Cordell and drummers Stinson and Greg Saenz (The Dwarves), it’s the guitarist’s intent that the next Yawning Man release will be a double album, titled Gravity is Good for You after the Raymond Pettibon artwork they’ve secured for the cover (included below; click to enlarge), and featuring half with Lalli and half with Cordell. A pretty wild idea, but it wouldn’t be the band’s first in that regard — I think probably the first was, “I’m going to plug into this echo and see what happens” — and if anyone could pull it off and make it work, it’s Arce. The rest of us will just have to wait and keep our fingers crossed.

Please find the complete email Q&A with Gary Arce after the jump, and please enjoy.

Read more »

A couple weeks ago, I asked the question above: “What are the 10 greatest stoner rock records?” It was kind of just something I was throwing out there to see what came back. Nothing scientific, pretty vague on what “stoner rock” actually meant as a genre designation. Basically just trying to get a spur-of-the-moment response, like an inkblot test for riffs. First thing that comes to mind.

The response was awesome, so before anything else, thank you to everyone who contributed a list to the original post. I was taken aback by the number of replies that came in — a total 73 comments — and the resultant breadth of records named reads like a wishlist of the damned. Some people were pretty orthodox in their definition of the genre, and some more open in the bands they included, but working from everyone’s lists, I tallied up the votes, and while I don’t necessarily agree with all the choices personally (I added my own list as a comment to the initial post, so I won’t bother reprinting it), it was a blast to see what emerged on top. The people have spoken.

I tried to be as fair as I could in the tallying. There were some comments left that were individual songs and not albums, and those I didn’t count, but everything else went in, even if it was only mentioned once, and when someone said, for example, “Melvins – all,” I actually added a tally to everything by the Melvins that everyone else had said. Again, it’s not really a scientific thing polling demographic data, but it was a lot of fun.

Okay, here’s the list:

The Top 10 Greatest Stoner Rock Records Poll Results:

1. Kyuss, Welcome to Sky Valley (41 votes)
2. Sleep, Sleep’s Holy Mountain (27 votes)
3. Black Sabbath, Master of Reality (19 votes)
4. Kyuss, Blues for the Red Sun (18 votes)
5. Monster Magnet, Spine of God (15 votes)
5. Sleep, Dopesmoker (15 votes)
7. Electric Wizard, Dopethrone (14 votes)
7. Fu Manchu, In Search Of… (14 votes)
9. Queens of the Stone Age, Queens of the Stone Age (12 votes)
10. Fu Manchu, The Action is Go (10 votes)

As you can see, some real classics in there, and Welcome to Sky Valley was far and away the winner, picked by 41 out of the 73 people (myself included), with Sleep and Black Sabbath behind. There were two ties at numbers five and seven, but beyond that, it’s a pretty clear picture of where people are at with their favorites.

What about everything else? Well, it was all counted. I broke all the entries down by number of votes and listed them by artist with albums in chronological order.

You’ll find the complete list after the jump.

Read more »

If you haven’t yet, head over to Doommantia and donate some cash to help Ed Barnard, the owner of that site, get back on his feet. Anyone who’s ever spoken to him, myself included, will tell you Ed‘s a great dude, and a huge supporter of this weird underground community, and it’s times like this that the community needs to come together for one of its own.

Back at the end of July, Ed suffered a heart attack and as a result of not being able to pay the ensuing nightmarish medical bills, is homeless and living in a tent. It’s pretty bleak times, and as an admirer of Ed‘s work and his dedication, I encourage you to please, please take a couple seconds and throw a couple bucks his way. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he’s apparently also giving away Wizardrone CDs to anyone who donates $20 or more.

But seriously, don’t do it for the free CD. Do it because this is a small community as compared to the outside world, and if we don’t take care of each other when we need to, we suck just as much as everyone else.

On Oct. 13, at Lallo’s in Knoxville, Maryland, they’ll be throwing a Doommantia Bash to help out Ed‘s cause. Bands are still being confirmed, but so far on the bill are War Injun, Against Nature, When the Deadbolt Breaks, Fire Faithful, Foghound, Ghutt, Akris, and Balam, with more to come.

You can keep up with the show’s lineup at the Thee Facebooks event page, and don’t forget to donate to Ed through Doommantia’s Paypal link.

I don’t know about you, but every now and again, I like to indulge in something a little weird. A little off the riffy path, if you know what I’m saying. I kind of stumbled on a link to Chicago-by-way-of-Minneapolis abstract rockers Guzzlemug‘s new EP, Nervously Counting Rosary Beads, and it’s been meeting my strangeness quota ever since with its varied movements of choral melodies, instrumental math-metal rhythms, Melvinsian creepy chug, and finally, a grandiose trip into the bizarre no less psychedelic for the weight with which it crushes. Tech-type prog is a factor, but even the trio’s showiest stretches serve an overarching purpose that feeds into the song as a whole. It’s a pretty impressive piece of work, well arranged, tightly performed, and residing in a kind of clenched-stomach atmosphere that’s alternately unsettling and engaging. Once I press play, I can’t seem to stop it.

Nervously Counting Rosary Beads is — if their Bandcamp page is anything to go by — far from Guzzlemug‘s first release, but they’ve pressed it to 180 gram vinyl in an initial gatefold run of 200, so they’re obviously willing to stand behind it as well, and rightly so. By 15 minutes into the 29-minute lone title-track, the band starts to fill some of the space Sleepytime Gorilla Museum‘s King–Crimson-on-a-bad-trip style used to occupy in my waking nightmares, all vague ambient threats, mechanized-sounding churn and yet-unquenched thirst for violence. This reportedly isn’t the only EP they’ll have out before the end of 2012, but it’s worth a listen if you’re in one of those “everything sounds like everything else” moods, because if there’s anything Guzzlemug sound like, it’s not everything else.

They’ve got more details about the release on their Thee Facebooks, but if you do decide to take a listen to the track, take special note of the fact that no matter how far they go rhythmically, they never completely let go of the melody, or if they do, it’s never for too long. Even after the wild never-gonna-end tornado of turns, they bring it back to a weird soulful “sun will rise!” melodic vocal line. Right on. You could spend a while digging through this one: