I thought we’d start the week off with something upbeat, and since German retro rockers Kadavar posted this video the other day for “All Our Thoughts” from their self-titled 2012 debut, the fit was too good to ignore. So too is the track itself, which was the most memorable from the album, setting the tone for much of it with a distinct snare sound and ultra-natural tonality.

The video follows stylized suit, filmed on what looks like Super 8 but was actually an iPhone on cliffs in Sardinia, presumably while Kadavar was there last year playing Duna Jam. As you can see with the cliffs and the beach, the setting is gorgeous. A distinct lack of mics would seem to indicate this clip wasn’t actually filmed during their set, but the audio from Kadavar‘s performance at Duna Jam is also available for streaming if you want to check it out:

Lots of stuff coming up this week. I’m about to post some Deville tour news in a bit, and then it’s time to dig in on a review of the Enslaved/Pallbearer/Royal Thunder/Ancient VVisdom show last Friday. Tomorrow I’ll have a writeup and pics from Acid King/Kings Destroy/Blackout in Brooklyn, and before this week is over, I’ll have a review of the new Clutch album, so much to keep an eye open for. I’m also slated to interview Paul Major from Endless Boogie tomorrow about their new album, Long Island (review here), so that should hopefully be up this week or next.

Also hoping to get a Buried Treasure post about up about Serpentine Path and talk about Rabbits‘ innovative package for their latest single, so yeah, lots and lots to come. If my head doesn’t explode before then, I’m also going to Samothrace on Friday in Brooklyn, so yeah, one thing leads to the next to the next. You know how it is.

I hope your week is off to an excellent start and that the kickassery remains for the duration. If you’re bored at work, I might suggest the Mystery Science Theater 3000 thread on the forum as a way to destroy productivity, and I don’t know if you’ve checked in, but The Obelisk Radio is up and running smoothly since we switched hosts. Think of it like Pandora that doesn’t just play the same 10 songs. Awesome.

Have a great week. Time to get to it.

It’s a bleak psychedelic dronefest and nobody’s invited when you press play on Blut‘s Drop Out and Kill tape. The UK duo of N.B. and S.M. have released pretty much everything they’ve done on cassette, and listening to the Major Destroyer Records release of this album, which was originally reviewed  on CD, I can hear why. The band’s unremittingly extreme tin-can gnarl comes across even nastier through the analog compression, finding the Dorset-based outfit even more straddling the line between blackened lo-fi and stone-drone sludge, like Electric Wizard‘s misanthropy played at half speed somewhere down the block. Sometimes all you get it low-end rumble and malevolent echoing.

On headphones, with the volume up, the effect is even more grating. Blut‘s underlying drum groove is there — straightforward and slow — somehow managing to cut through a mountain of tonal lurch on opener “Aeon Long Death/Alcoholic on Cloven Hoof,” their anti-you-and-everything-else stance apparent from the very first second of the song. I said when I reviewed the CD that the band were probably unfit for just about any human ears, and I stand by that, since they push extreme sludge to what I consider new heights of fuckall. Whether or not one puts on Blut as the soundtrack to their sunny-day barbecue is irrelevant — they’re genuinely pushing the boundaries of what’s come before them and I consider Drop Out and Kill laudable just for that. That Blut have developed a clear sense of purpose over the last couple of years and releases like Grief and Incurable Pain (review here) and Ritual and Ceremony (review here) and turned spite into aesthetic is where I think they have most succeeded. The farther out they go, the less listenable they get, the better they become. They’re getting closer to (at least what I see as) their goals for the band.

If I’m overthinking it, well, I’m supposed to overthink it. Still, the foreboding drone of “Murder Hallucination” and “Skulls.Coffins.Nails” isn’t happening in a vacuum, and as much as Blut are casting off elements of traditional songwriting — verses, choruses, etc. — they are working in an established sonic sphere of extreme drone doom. Noise aficionados would probably hear Drop Out and Kill and call it straightforward because it has guitar and bass, but when I put on this tape, I hear the roots laid down by SunnO))) and Sleep’s Dopesmoker taken to vicious, dark, new places. That Blut include a side-two cover of Boston outfit Nightstick‘s “Ultimatum” — they call it “Ultimatum (Yog-Sothoth)” — only demonstrates their awareness of their own lineage. It also evens up the sides and gives Drop Out and Kill even more horrifying audio, but yeah, the other thing too.

Fact is, whatever level you want to approach them at, Blut aren’t about to make it easy for you. What they’re going to do — on tape or any other format — is crash and drone and scream and emit some of the most fucked up noise I’ve ever heard. That’s their thing, and whether you hear it on CD or on cassette, if you consider yourself a fan of the sonically abrasive, you should probably hear it. Tapes have the advantage of being cheaper and sounding fucked up. That suits Blut well.

Blut’s Blogspot

Major Destroyer Records

Within the first five of its total 79 minutes, Insider’s Vibrations from the Tapes has let you know what it’s all about. The Italian instrumental trio – founded by brothers Marco Ranalli (guitar) and Piero Ranalli (bass) in 1991, though in a much different musical form – are all about the jams. The Phonosphera limited-to-200 jewel case CD pressing is comprised of five tracks, and apart from the second, “Killing Boredom” (3:08), none of them are under 12 minutes long. The penultimate “First Steps” solos and echoes its way past the 27-minute mark, and before opener “Your Brainticket” (22:33) is over, Insider have made direct musical references to Black Sabbath and Jimi Hendrix – probably others as well – so really, it’s not like the band are shooting for subtlety in letting listeners know what they’re up to. It’s the jam, and Insider – rounded out by drummer Stefano Di Rito and mastered by Void Generator’s Gianmarco Iantaffi – hone in on it pretty well. Or at least they did, since Vibrations from the Tapes was put to its titular tape in 2007.

The band tracked these songs live in their rehearsal space and if you told me they were making a decent portion of the music up on the spot, I’d believe you, since even if some of the parts are plotted out beforehand, there’s a natural spontaneity that arises from Marco’s range of effects and Stefano’s drum changes that shines through each of these tracks. That leaves Piero as the anchoring element, and he proves more than capable in the role, sticking more or less in the vicinity of a single bassline for most of “Your Brainticket” and all of the aforementioned shortest jam “Killing Boredom” while Marco and Stefano enact and punctuate, respectively, a heavy psychedelic swirl around him. Since a portion of the European scene has been centered around this kind of jamming – if not as the actual substance of their releases (apart from Electric Moon and a handful of others), then at least as the foundation from which songs are then built – one might say Insider were ahead of the game six years ago when they dealt out these Vibrations, but rehearsal space jamming is ultimately nothing new and as hypnotic as these tracks are once the band really gets going, they never seems to be making any claim at groundbreaking originality, as the nods to “War Pigs” and “Voodoo Child” toward the end of “Your Brainticket” would seem to indicate.

Rather, what Insider seem intent on capturing with Vibrations from the Tapes is simply what the title tells you: The vibes, presented as organically as possible. If you want to put a grander sensibility to it, you might say they’re attempting to capture the natural spirit of creation in process, the very roots of where music, pop-structured or otherwise, comes from, but while on some level that’s true, it also seems a bit lofty for the presentation through which Insider hold forth this material. Even with the let’s-go-further-out centerpiece “Raga in the Sky,” on which Marco’s guitar takes to suitable Eastern scales for leads echoing atop consistent bass from Piero, Insider don’t seem to be wrapped up in themselves so much as they’re wrapped up in the music. Not that this kind of project isn’t inherently self-indulgent – because it is, and make no mistake – it’s just that with Piero running a simple thread under Marco’s lines while Stefano’s drums thud out far back on the two mics the band used to record themselves, it hardly seems like they’re trying to put on a clinic or be showy in any way. It is utterly structureless – though builds rise up and fall down periodically, as on “Raga in the Sky” – and its modus seems to wander as presented throughout even the shortest of these cuts, Insider did right in going raw with the recording, and ultimately, Vibrations from the Tapes has a much easier time living up to what the band decided to call it because they don’t spend any time pretending it’s something more than that. You get, like mom used to say, what you get.

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True, if you read the recent interview with Arthur Seay, you already knew that House of Broken Promises would be playing Desertfest this year, but it’s nice to have confirmation, anyway. Official announcements have dropped from both the London and Berlin Desertfest camps, and it seems like every time I stop and think the lineups can’t get any stronger, they go ahead and do precisely that. I think we might be looking at a landmark in the making.

Here’s word from the Desertfest folks:

London

What’s better than having one of the all-time grand masters of desert rock, head-honchos of stoner-metal, chief cactus-cultivators of the underground, Unida playing live on our humble little island as part of

DesertFest 2013? Well, how’s about three quarters of them playing AGAIN as part of their ‘other’ band in House of Broken Promises for a start!!

Formed during Unida’s many years of inactivity, HOBP are simply the urban coyotes very own guitarist Arthur Seay, bassist/vocalist Eddie Plascencia and drummer Mike Cancino, and collectively they kick more ass with their crunching, metallic hard rock than Chuck Norris surrounded by a strikeforce of ninja donkeys. Although igniting their flame as far back as 2004, the band’s debut album Using the Useless didn’t rupture out of the outer-Californian consciousness until 2009 via (who else!) Small Stone Records. Although not as widely celebrated as their peers in COC, Fu Manchu, Clutch and Monster Magnet, HOBP blaze their own trail whilst at the same time encapsulating the best of desert rock, sledgehammer blues, swaggering hard rock and grooving biker-punk into their offer of purist, unadulterated, riffed-up fury. With Arthur’s E-string-butchering chops and solos hot enough to cause a mirage, Mike’s metronomic tub-thumping and Eddie’s cap-down, foot-on-monitor frontman approach, there are few power trios who could match this tour-de-force of heavy metal thunder.

When it comes to the sounds of the sand, it’s the guys who made it happen in the first place back at Sky Valley HQ who still play it harder and louder than anyone else on earth, and HOBP are no exception to The Law. So don’t just write them off as “just another side-project”, get down the front, soak your shirt in beer and party like you’re on Dave Wyndorf’s stag-do on Jupiter in 1995. And if nothing else, just go check them out simply as a way to get a second glimpse of Arthur’s beard! Seriously, have you seen that beard?!! It’s fucking righteous!

Words courtesy Pete Green

Berlin

Formed from the ashes of Unida, desert trio HOUSE OF BROKEN PROMISES composed of righteously-bearded guitarist Arthur Seay, bassist/vocalist Eddie Plasciencia and drummer Mike Cancino will play at DesertFest 2013 !!

HOUSE OF BROKEN PROMISES is no-holds-barred double shot of classic, pure and hot desert rock whose songs are clearly based around the riffs. The rhythm section mounts a considerable presence with downright huge guitar sounds, equally massive bass and drumming, and catchy refrains that move along in a very dynamic way due to several tempo changes.

After their “Death in Pretty Wrapping” four-song demo and their split with Duster 69, both in 2007, Small Stone Records released their full-length debut “Using the Useless” in 2009, which should have been followed by an European Tour in 2010… but an Icelandic volcano decided it differently, and the tour was cancelled !!.

But this year, working on a new album, they will be in Europe to play at DesertFest !!

House of Broken Promises, “Obey the Snake” Official Video

The rightful position when it comes to a disc like Jimi Hendrix‘s People, Hell and Angels (they used to call them “catalog releases,” but there’s probably a new word for it now because I’m old and there’s a new word for everything) is almost invariably one of disdain. As much albums as this, or Sony Legacy/Experience Hendrix‘s previous mining operation, 2010’s Valleys of Neptune, are so often predicated on the idea of “new material,” and so often that’s a load of bunk, the cynicism on the part of a certain segment of the fanbase is invariable. The Jimi Hendrix Experience put out three records. Since Hendrix‘s death in Sept. 1970, more than 40 studio, live and compilation albums have appeared, and that’s not counting bootlegs, official and otherwise. It’s easy to see a release like People, Hell and Angels as part of an ongoing effort to take advantage of fan loyalty and squeeze people for their hard-earned cash by recycling the same old “previously unreleased” songs and jams.

I’m not going to argue with that position. At all. I get it completely and I won’t even say I disagree. Nonetheless, let me offer an opposing view just for fun: People, Hell and Angels presents very, very little that hasn’t been heard before, either in the form of these exact recordings or others like them, but as a fan and as someone passionate about Hendrix‘s work, doesn’t a new collection present an exciting opportunity to explore the material, even if it’s been heard before? This could be a new mix, or a new master, or hell, even a new track order makes a difference in the listening experience, so while “Hear My Train a Comin'” is so very, very familiar, can’t a fan also just enjoy the way it leads into the funky jam “Baby Let Me Move You?,” fronted by Lonnie Youngblood, with whom Hendrix had worked prior to getting big with the Experience? If we take away the idea of “previously unreleased,” couldn’t it possibly be okay to dig on People, Hell and Angels for being a shiny new Hendrix collection?

And I do mean “shiny.” Literally, the digipak reflects light. Metallic ink or foil paper may not be any newer than these recordings, but between that and the 24-page booklet packed with recording information and photos for each and every track, no one can say that effort wasn’t put into the package and the design. And while I’m on board with bootleg purists in eschewing overly clean remastered releases, listening to “Earth Blues” open People, Hell and Angels or the later cool jam “Hey Gypsy Boy” — recorded March 18, 1969, according to the liner — these songs do sound damn good. The thing of it is, there comes a point where the righteous anger of the superfan has to meet with the realization that not everyone in the world has the time, the interest or the passion to dedicate themselves to the project of hunting down and memorizing the entire recorded output of an artist. I’d love to be able to afford to chase down every Hendrix bootleg ever pressed, but I can’t do that or my wife will leave me. She’s all but said so.

So while we all know the implication of “newly unearthed recordings” or the image of some hapless studio employee finding this stuff in a basement and dusting it off to read the label and see “Jimi H. session, 6/11/68″  on there isn’t how it happened, I’ll take the rehashed blues jam of unfinished closer “Villanova Junction,” a different version of which was included in 1996’s Burning Desire for what it is. Tell me, even if you’re a diehard Hendrix fan, is there something you’d rather be hearing? I don’t think Sony Legacy is sitting on a pile of unreleased finished, mastered, never-heard songs going, “No, these are mine! Give them the same shit over again!” Pretty sure if they could sell that stuff, they’d do it, and even if it’s one or two songs on here that’s never seen light in this form, how much more can you really expect after 43 years of posthumous albums? If releases like this are for super-nerds and those who don’t know any better, I guess what I’m having a hard time with is seeing the problem in that if they enjoy listening to it.

And hell, if there’s some kid out there who picks up People, Hell and Angels as the first Hendrix album they own, can’t we just be glad that someone under the age of 25 knows who Jimi Hendrix is and assume that kid will use the internet research skills seemingly endemic to their generation to figure out that he or she probably should’ve started with Are You Experienced instead? Yeah, I know People, Hell and Angels has its downsides. It’s not short on them, but really, I’ve enjoyed listening to it so much while I sat here to write this and I’ve had so much fun reading about each of the songs in the liner notes, that I guess I’m limited in how much I can really tear it apart in a review. If that makes me a sucker, then I’m a sucker. We all are, to one extent or another. If you need me, I’ll be the sucker fuzz-rocking “Crash Landing” on repeat while he compiles a list of bootlegs to chase down.

Credit where it’s due, Antiquiet put together a great piece last year on where this material has been heard before. Commendable effort and excellent for the curious.

Following up on the recent unveiling the cover art for their forthcoming full-length label debut on Tee Pee Records, L.A. heavy psych rockers Blaak Heat Shujaa have announced even more details about The Edge of an Era. The PR wire a moment ago sent over the tracklisting and confirmed the album for an April 9 release.

Behold:

Los Angeles Space Psych Trio BLAAK HEAT SHUJAA to Release New Album “The Edge of an Era” April 9

“Heavy Mental” psych rock band BLAAK HEAT SHUJAA will release their sophomore LP The Edge of an Era, on April 9. The follow up to the Los Angeles trio’s critically acclaimed Tee Pee debut, The Storm Generation, The Edge of an Era sees the über-talented group’s enticing blend of genres combine to shape a sound unlike anything you’ve likely heard before; one that has been called “a dissonant symphony unveiling visions of great natural expanses”. Produced by desert session legend Scott Reeder (Sunn O))), The Obsessed) and mastered at Ventura, CA’s Golden Mastering (Primus, Sonic Youth, Calexico),The Edge of an Era boasts guest appearances by both Nobel Prize-nominated gonzo poet Ron Whitehead and desert rock pioneer Mario Lalli (Yawning Man, Fatso Jetson) adding even more color to BLAAK HEAT’s signature psych.

BLAAK HEAT SHUJAA’s transcendental tension between its heavy rock roots and an organic inclination to drift towards psychedelia pays homage to the vast collection of mind-expanding sounds the trio grew up on: neo-psychedelia, surf rock, spaghetti westerns, Middle Eastern scales and even Far Eastern melodies! Striking, imaginative cover art courtesy of Paris-based Arrache toi un oeil! collective (Brian Jonestown Massacre, TV on the Radio, Acid Mothers Temple) and inspired by the album title adds to the kaleidoscopic lean of the record from the band who boasts a cinematic sound that has been called “Heavy Spaghedelia” and “Kyussian”, featuring “psychedelic, meditative, trance-inducing” and “spacey atmospheres”. Prepare to take a windswept magic carpet ride over vast plains of astral soundtrack psychedelia!!

Track listing:

1.) Closing Time, Last Exit (0:57)
2.) The Obscurantist Fiend (The Beast Part I) (10:21)
3.) Shadows (The Beast Part II) (8:11)
4.) Society of Barricades (8:20)
5.) Pelham Blue (5:19)
6.) Land of the Freaks, Home of the Brave (8:22)

I remember when YOB‘s 2000 demo got re-released in 2009, I held off buying it. My thinking was that sooner or later the thing would show up on CD and I didn’t need to shell out for the vinyl, which, well, wasn’t a format I wanted to deal with anyway. Sure, YOB occupy a slot on my ever-rotating list of favoritist favorite bands, but what was the point in buying a copy of their demo on vinyl and feeling stupid later when I finally got it on the CD I wanted in the first place?

Well, the point turned out to be that there was no CD coming. Probably I could’ve asked someone and found that out, or done even the most cursory level of research and found out that Raven’s Eye Records, the label run by the artist Sean Schock (also of Geistus and H.C. Minds), wasn’t doing a CD pressing and that once the vinyl run was gone, that was it. That the label, like the band, was based in Eugene, Oregon, and that even in this day of interwebular immediacy, it might not be so easy to come by. But yeah, I didn’t do that research or ask anyone if a CD was coming. Hey, it was 2009. I was busy not having a job.

YOB‘s demo retreated to that place in my mind that holds the list of music I should pick up at some point. I guess half of me was still holding out hope that a compact disc release would come along sooner or later, and it just took that long for me to finally resign myself to the fact that one wasn’t, but at long last, I snagged a copy of the 12″ version on eBay late last year. It was my Xmas present to myself, a little something to get me through the cold months. Calling it a treat in such a manner didn’t really take away from the fact that I was a stubborn dumbass for not buying it in the first place, but it did give that all-too-familiar feeling of dumbassery a nicer frame than it usually gets.

The package showed up a couple weeks back. Not exactly timely for the holidays, but whatever. I was still happy to see it, except for the fact that at this point, I own two turntables and neither of them works. So yeah, after three-plus years, I decided to buy YOB‘s very first demo — three tracks, “Silence,” “Revolution” and “Dogma,” coupled with a live recording of a song called “White Doom” recorded in 2005 at CD World in Eugene, pressed up with artwork by Brian Mercer — and I don’t have a way to play it.

One of these days, I’m gonna hear this fuckin’ thing. “Revolution” is up on the YouTubes, so that’s easy enough to check out, but hearing how different it is from the version that appeared two years later on YOB‘s 2002 12th Records debut full-length, Elaborations of Carbon, does little more than tantalize and make me want to listen to the other tracks. I’m sure it’s up for download somewhere, but screw that. I’ve waited this long, I can keep on staring at the LP sleeve until one of the two turntables — which are stacked one on top of the other with posters on top, for that extra touch of class — is repaired or a third is acquired. Patience has always been one of my stronger qualities.

YOB, “Revolution” Demo

Darkened atmospheric sludge metallers Cultura Tres are once more hitting the road in Europe, this time to herald the arrival of a new album, Rezando al Miedo, which is set for release on May 15. The vigorously anti-Christian/anti-imperialist Venezuelan four-piece will issue the collection through the UK’s Devouter Records, who also handled a reissue last year of their sophomore outing, El Mal del Bien (review here).

Details follow, fresh off the PR wire:

CULTURA TRES Unveil New Album Details And Artwork. Announce European Tour Dates.

The Venezuelan psychedelic sludge act Cultura Tres will release their new album entitled “Rezando Al Miedo” on May 15th 2013. The cover artwork for the band’s third full-length is taken from the painting “Day of Judgment” by the remarkably talented artist Damian Michaels.

“Rezando Al Miedo” doesn’t walk away from the mood their previous record “El Mal Del Bien” had, yet the songs tell a different story. Darkness exhausts itself into depression; the album is a journey inside the collective subconsciousness, a walk on the edges of sanity, between the illusive religious relief and acceptance of death as a clear end. Music explores the extremes of the artistic expression, more dynamic than ever, from the harshness of the thrashing roots of the band to the polyphonic movie soundtrack approach that characterizes Cultura Tres. The band has never been afraid to take chances and this album proves it. The brooding cocktail of classic psychedelic rock, 90’s death metal and gloomy grunge makes their South American Sludge a unique recipe.

The eight songs orchestrate to the detail the emotions of every word sang, yet this isn’t a record that comes to tell a full story. Instrumental parts often let the thoughts of the listener ask their own questions, give their own answers, explore their own fears…..

The album was produced, mixed and mastered by Alejandro Londono and recorded in Cultura Tres studios by Juan De Ferrari and Alejandro Londono. ”Rezando Al Miedo”, will be released on CD in UK by Devouter Records (http://www.devouterrecords.co.uk) and in South America by the Argentinean label Cumpa Records. The digital version of the record will be available on the same date as well.

The dates for the Cultura Tres’ first European performances for 2013 can be seen below. Stay tuned for further updates as more shows get confirmed!

20.03 – The Netherlands, Amsterdam @ The Cave
22.03 – Germany, Cologne @ MTC Cologne
23.03 – Czech Republic, Cheb @ Jazzrock Café
28.03 – Austria, Vienna @ EKH
30.03 – Luxemburg, Dudelange @ Why not?
31.03 – France, Paris @ Les Combustibles
09.04 – France, Saint-Etienne @ Thunderbird Lounge 42
13.04 – Spain, Barcelona @ Be Good

Cultura Tres, “Propiedad de Dios”