Posted in Whathaveyou on May 28th, 2013 by JJ Koczan
There hasn’t been much word out of the camp of Athens rockers The Dive since they released their impressive self-titled debut in 2011 (review here), but it seems the band, which formed all the way back in 2000, have been active all the same. This weekend, they sent over notice of a limited vinyl issue of their first album through The Lab Records and nonprofit Greek collective Spinalonga Records and a mini-tour supporting the concurrent release of their sophomore outing, Zo’e, on the latter label. I guess sometimes a band can be busier than they appear.
News came down the PR wire, and you can find it and their current dates below, as well as the self-titled in full, in case anyone needs a refresher:
THE DIVE – ZO’E (new album out now!! + mini tour!!)
Primal, organic, instinctive playing. The Dive release their second full length album named Zo’e. Detecting the flow rather than defining it. Roaming rather than wandering. Out now on spinalonga records!
At the end of May the band is hitting the road for a mini tour including stops in Germany, Netherlands Turkey and Greece.
Somewhat contrary to the monstrous and somehow still nipple-inclusive design of the album’s cover, the self-titled debut from London-based trio Bright Curse is a thoroughly human and natural-sounding affair. The three-piece, who arrived in London by way of France, offer four extended tracks and an intro that run a heavy psych gamut from the sweet jamming of Colour Haze all the way to the open-spaced vibing of earliest Witchcraft, and while the stylistic shifts they make are interesting enough, what works best about the album is the smoothness with which the lineup of Romain (guitar/vocals), Sammy (bass) and Zach (drums) transition between stretches of bare sonic minimalism to effective fuzzy propulsion, making the most of tradeoffs between loud and quiet in a manner usually reserved for post-metallers while still keeping a focus on the heavy and grooving straightforward aspects of their songwriting. Following opener “A Sonic Wave,” which sure enough is a minute-plus of a single undulating riff, “The Hermit” sets a structural pattern that “Unknown Mistress,” “What’s Beyond the Sun” and closer “Mind Traveller” will all follow to one degree or another that departs from verse/chorus interplay to an instrument-driven build that gives each track both its length and its sense of dynamic apex. What keeps Bright Curse‘s Bright Cursefrom sounding redundant as a result of this structural similarity is the stylistic shifts between the songs, so that though patterns may repeat, the context for those patterns comes across as fluid and malleable, and the band, which recorded the songs at Rock of London Studio with JB Pilon, who’s since taken over bass duties in place of Sammy.
The element of contrasting loud and quiet stretches is immediate almost from the start, as “A Sonic Wave” gives over its established rolling groove to the subdued low-end beginnings of “The Hermit,” which Sammy opens in ambient rumbles while Romain adds punctuation on the guitar for the first minute until the vocals kick in and the stage is set for Zach‘s entry a short while later and a push not far off from some of what Elder has managed to hone commences, though it moves more into a modern European heavy psych jam, Romain taking a rising solo that the bass follows as Zach holds the flow together. There’s only really been one verse so far, but the song has come a long way, and the instrumental build winds up providing the crux of the motion as it continues to play out, rising to full-toned heights before locking into a sizable riffy groove before the five-minute mark and from there crashing into the from-the-ground-up build that will comprise its last couple minutes, Romain repeating the takeaway line “In my head…” that also appeared earlier in the song as the first lines as setup for another run through the verse and the heavier part of the song. “Unknown Mistress” works in more of a shuffling vein with an effective chorus and delivery from Romain of the title line and a more immediate groove. Here too, Bright Curse take their time in letting the track unfold, but the clearer divisions between verse and chorus — though less ambitious stylistically — suit them well and showcase a knack for the straightforward as well as the less predictable that adds depth to the album. Around the halfway point of the song’s 7:27, they break into a still-moving just jazzier atmospheric stretch that carries past the six-minute mark before a Tool-style return finds Zach adding palpable stomp. They pick up the pace to end somewhat raucous, but a final nod to the chorus gives a last-second sense of symmetry to the whole affair, which never came off as that out of control to start with.
Posted in audiObelisk on May 28th, 2013 by JJ Koczan
The second batch of Roadburn 2013 audio streams has been loosed, and if nothing else, it’s a grouping that shows just how far out the reach of the Netherlands-based annual festival has grown. From the ultra-British doom of Black Magician (above) to the American cultistry of Castle, riff rock of Candybar Planet and ambient experimentalism of Dirk Serries (aka Vidna Obmana), Roadburn 2013 cast a wide net, and though I didn’t get to actually see all of these acts, it’s reassuring to know each year that even the stuff I missed is accounted for and recorded for posterity.
Consider the rest of the afternoon spoken for:
Black Magician – Live at Roadburn 2013
Candybar Planet – Live at Roadburn 2013
Castle – Live at Roadburn 2013
Crown – Live at Roadburn 2013
Maserati – Live at Roadburn 2013
Dirk Serries: Microphonics – Live at Roadburn 2013
Thanks as always to Walter and the Roadburn crew for allowing me to host these streams and to Marcel van de Vondervoort and his team for recording them in the first place. Hope you enjoy.
When Conan finished their Desertfest set at The Underworld in Camden, I asked guitarist/vocalist Jon Davis what the names of the new songs they played were. “The first was ‘Foehammer,'” he said, “and the second was ‘Gravity Chasm.'” Both titles provoked roughly the same reaction in me: Well that’s fucking awesome. Watching the footage filmed by Monster Riffage (on YouTube here) of the song “Foehammer,” which will reportedly be included on Conan‘s new album, to be recorded this coming summer, my reaction is the same.
If you want to look for it — and probably if you don’t — you can see the back of my big goofball head in front of Davis in this clip, taking pictures on my camera. Someone else had their phone, and there was a pretty considerable crowd press. My memories of it are already good though, and I’m glad to have seen Conan the twice that I have. Whenever their next record arrives, it’s one I’m looking forward to hearing.
Speaking of things I’m looking forward to — this long weekend. This was kind of a nutty week and I won’t miss it when it’s gone. Tomorrow I’m going to make every effort to do as absolutely little as possible, apart from laundry and reheating curry, and Sunday’s more or less booked for a marathon-style viewing. Likely Monday too. And you know, until they make any more. If you haven’t checked it out, the Arrested Development thread on the forum has some anticipatory nerding out that you’re welcome to join in on should you be so inclined.
Next week, that Black Black Black interview and reviews of Bright Curse, Kingsnake and hopefully Naam. Time was short this week on account of both personal/family stuff on my end and work, which as I’m sure you know very well in your own experience, is wont to provide the periodic kick in the junk. So it goes. If I was rich, maybe I’d spend my days blogging about shows around the world and record shopping and maybe I’d have time to transcribe interviews. Or maybe I’d just fuck off and go live in the mountains. Not something really worth considering since it’s not the way it’s turned out. I do the best I can with the limited time and even-more-limited brain power I have.
And I appreciate it that you check in on this site whenever you do and take the time to share links or comment or retweet or whatever. It’s all awesome, and I thank you. If you’re in Maryland this weekend for Maryland Deathfest, I admitted earlier to The Patient Mrs. that I was jealous that people would get to see Sleep this weekend on the East Coast and I wouldn’t be one of them, but if you’re down there, be careful and have a great time. I hope it’s awesome. I’ll get to MDF one of these years.
One last thing before I call it a Friday night, put on more Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and crash out — I don’t know if you’ve had occasion to listen, but I’ve tuned into The Obelisk Radio over the last couple days and it’s been fucking awesome. Yesterday I heard live Clutch into Sungrazer, and today it was Sleep into Ice Dragon. I’m a dork for that stuff, and if you’re looking for something to listen to perhaps on your Memorial Day or just to kill time while you’re doing something else, it’s been filling that gap for me lately and I’d recommend it.
Alright, that should do it for me. I hope you have a great and safe weekend. See you on the forum and back here Monday for more of this to go with these:
To be honest, I don’t know how limited the new tape from NY/NJ-based basement psych duo Purple Knights and NJ trio The Green Dragon is. I know my copy is marked “Batch 1 — 5/5,” so I’m guessing that when all is said and done, there won’t be a lot of them floating around, but I’d think that if you were up for getting in touch with the bands and acquiring one for yourself, they wouldn’t tell you no.
I’ve posted a couple videos from Purple Knights before. The twosome is comprised of Ben Smith and Zack Kurland, both of Sweet Diesel, the former also of The Brought Low, the latter pulling double-duty in The Green Dragon, and to the best of my knowledge, the tape Purple Knights and the Green Dragonis their first physical output behind a self-titled Purple Knights digital-only EP. I won’t take any credit, but the first time I heard the band’s gritty, underproduced but still warm approach, I immediately thought they should get on putting out a series of super-limited tapes, and I told Kurland as much. No doubt in my mind he’d already had the thought, but it’s nice to be proven right by the sound of Purple Knights and the Green Dragon, which even though it takes a few surprisingly rocking turns throughout the 27-minute duration, is remarkably suited to the inherent compression of the format.
As to those surprising turns: The tape is split (obviously) into two sides, the first dubbed “Purple Knights” and the second “The Green Dragon” with an emblem sticker on each side to indicate which is which. Not to read too much into the atmospheres, but Purple Knights find room for a surprising breadth in a short span of time, also keeping a considerable flow between the four songs on each side, proffering blown-out buzzsaw riffs — seriously, put some screams on it and you’ve got black metal — that nonetheless hearken directly to Judas Priest traditionalism on the first half of the release while The Green Dragon — comprised of Kurland on guitar, Jennifer Klein on bass and Nathan Wilson on drums — kicking into a bassy classic rock groove on the latter, finding a niche in a space somewhere between crusty classic psychedelic rock and more driving demo-type energies on “Johnnie’s Spider” before offering final shelter on the Lamp of the Universe-esque “Acadia” to close out.
But what’s really most shocking about Purple Knights and the Green Dragonare its straightforward aspects, whether it’s Green Dragon‘s “Johnnie’s Spider” or the classic metal of Purple Knights‘ “Heathen Realms” opening side one with some showoff guitar soloing and garage-metal chugging set to drawling, echoing vocals for a malevolent feel. Played directly off the spacey explorations of “Whiteout,” it’s a side of Purple Knights that Kurland and Smith haven’t really shown yet, and while the production on the tape is rough to the point of harshness as the minimalism of “Whiteout” gives way to the ultra-aggressive “Touching Stone,” the duo find a way to work that to their sonic advantage, masking the full expanse of their reach in the overarching rudimentary feel.
I have to wonder at this point how Purple Knights or Green Dragon might sound in a real, out-of-the-basement studio, but if either outfit were to put out a couple more of these kinds of releases before getting there, I don’t think they’d be doing themselves a disservice in allowing some of the ideas presented on Purple Knights and the Green Dragonto further solidify across a series of recording sessions. Whatever their intent, they complement each other well on this split but are still working in different enough realms to be distinct. Particularly for a first pressing from either band, I wouldn’t ask anything more than that and I’m looking forward to what the next batch holds.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 24th, 2013 by JJ Koczan
Up and coming German imprint Electric Magic Records has unveiled a new digital sampler touting its wares. The 10-track comp features output from recent releases by House of Aquarius and Heat and Samsara Blues Experiment — whose guitarist/vocalist, Christian Peters, also heads the label — among forthcoming acts like Suns of Thyme, whose desert sweetness immediately piqued my interest, and familiar names like Pater Nembrot, who aren’t signed to Electric Magic, but were nonetheless compelled to donate some boogie to the cause. Right on.
Free music is the name of the game. Those so inclined can get out Electric Magic Volume Eight via the link below. Here’s art and info:
FREE SAMPLER: Electric Magic – Volume Eight
This includes highlights of our label´s very recent outputs by House Of Aquarius, Heat and This Is Ghost Country as well as the soon to be released lysergic gems of Soulitude and the Suns Of Thyme. Further we included some very rare demo-versions and amazing contributions by friends of the label like Pater Nembrot, Dunst and others. Not to forget the free version of SBE´s “Midnight Boogie”. All together these 10 bands will (hopefully) deliver you a 66 minute instant high. Oh and this time we also included a full CD-artwork, beautifully drawn by Lori at ParadiseParasite Artworks.
Tracklisting: 1. Suns of Thyme, “Soma (God for Gods)” 2. Heat, “Warhead” 3. The Harvest, “Celebrating Wild Horses” (Excerpt) 4. Samsara Blues Experiment, “Midnight Boogie” 5. House of Aquarius, “Unholy” 6. Soulitude, “Awakening” 7. Pater Nembrot, “Exile” 8. Dunst, “Dhaimahi Prachodayat” 9. This is Ghost Country, “Black Trekker” 10. Juicy Mother, “Mole in the Fry”
Whatever else you might want to say about Cathedral‘s catalog as it’s developed over the course of their massively influential more than 20-year run, the band has always made the album they wanted to make. Even during the British doom legends’ mid- and late-’90s period of wandering through the stoner rock wilderness — see 1996’s Supernatural Birth Machineand 1998’s Caravan Beyond Redemption— they didn’t wind up there by happenstance. Still, their legacy will always be for morose, stomping, thoroughly British doom, and it’s that side of their approach that their fans have most clamored for over the years. Their last studio outing, 2010’s The Guessing Game(review here), offered two discs of classic prog-influenced songs that asked much of their audience but offered much in return. Where the prior full-length, 2005’s The Garden of Unearthly Delights, had sought to marry some of the rock and doom sides together, The Guessing Gamemarked the band’s 20th anniversary with a bold and uncompromising progression of their sound. The results were never going to be as heralded as the band’s earliest works on landmark albums like 1991’s Forest of Equilibriumdebut (presented in its entirety on the Anniversarylive album; review here) or the subsequent offerings The Ethereal Mirror(1993) and The Carnival Bizarre (1995), but again, it was the album Cathedral felt compelled to write, and that was what mattered at the time.
Now Cathedral have called it quits, played their last live show, made their last video and the somewhat cleverly titled The Last Spire (released through Rise Above/Metal Blade) is reportedly to be their final album. One never knows for sure — surely over their time together the band must have amassed suitable fodder for rarities collections, live albums, greatest hits, cover records and so forth — but if it actually is the end of their run, The Last Spire is also the point at which the album Cathedral wants to make meets with the album that fans want to hear. It is an 56-minute victory lap that — far from actually sounding like one — presents eight songs of the dark, dreary doom that has come to be thought of as traditional in no small part because of Cathedral‘s crafting of it. The band’s lineup of vocalist Lee Dorrian, guitarist Gary “Gaz” Jennings, bassist Scott Carlson and drummer Brian Dixon present some progressive moments reminiscent of or at very least nodding toward The Guessing Game— the synth interlude that interrupts the sluggish lumber of “An Observation” comes to mind; David Moore‘s contributions of Hammond, Moog, synth and mellotron aren’t to be understated in establishing The Last Spire‘s murky atmosphere — but in their structure and in their intent, cuts like the early “Pallbearer,” “Cathedral of the Damned” and “Tower of Silence” underline the doomed feel for which Cathedral have become so known both in their home country and abroad. They are Cathedral at their most Cathedral. And rightly so. One couldn’t possibly hope for more of them than that.
The aforementioned trio occur sequentially following the intro “Entrance to Hell,” which finds Dorrian repeating the phrase “Bring out your dead” — which in my mind always goes right back to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but he sells it well — over suitably plague-addled atmospheres, with “Pallbearer” as the longest track on The Last Spireat 11:39 and marked aside from its strong hook by the backing vocals of Rosalie Cunningham behind Dorrian‘s signature semi-spoken delivery and the chorus of “War, famine, drought, disease” repeated to memorable effect. There’s a mournful acoustic break in the middle, but by and large, Jennings, Carlson and Dixon sound big, thick and threatening, and when the acoustics (backed by organ) give way to the resurgent groove and faster push of the song’s peak movement, the effect is fluid and entirely metal. They end slow and offer a more mid-paced distortion on “Cathedral of the Damned,” which is marked out by the spoken guest vocal by Chris Reifert of Autopsy and the line “Living in the shadow of a damned cathedral,” which may or may not be Dorrian dealing with his own legacy and the prospect of moving on after ending the band. Either way, it’s the riff and the buzzsaw guitar tone that stands out most as the band meet their longest track with the shortest full song (that is, non-interlude or intro), slamming head-on into the chorus as they do with no diminished returns on the subsequent “Tower of Silence,” the pair affirming Cathedral‘s potency on all levels as they round out The Last Spire‘s first half, whether it’s the vocals, Jennings‘ righteous solo, the heavy nod of the bass and drums, or the overarching catchiness of the chorus itself: “A tower of silence/Is waiting for me/Looming before/An astral sea.”
Among the least regrettable purchases I’ve made this year is Toner Low, III — the Dutch trio’s heaviest and stonedest album yet. The three-piece occupy a region of low end that few can claim to know. Conan, Ufomammut sometimes, and that’s pretty much it. III is the firstnew Toner Low album since 2008’s II, and I was fortunate enough to be able to grab a CD copy at this year’s Roadburn. It’s been caving my skull in ever since.
It doesn’t happen very often, but every now and again I encounter a record for which the volume — whatever it might currently be — never seems like enough. Toner Low‘s IIIisn’t without its droning moments, harkening back to what the second album brought in terms of development from the more straightforwardly Sleep-derived 2006 self-titled debut, but one needs only to look at the bright, vivid, weedian imagery of the artwork (awash in secret, intricate hieroglyphs and containing the sound advice, “listen to Ween“) to get a beginning semblance of where the band is coming from. The four extended tracks — titled as “Phase Six” through “Phase Nine” — are no less stoned.
Mostly instrumental throughout their course, Toner Low nonetheless work in a few shouts on the opening “Phase Six” from guitarist Daan, before his voice like the rest of the universe gets swallowed in the seemingly unstoppable churn of low end. They keep a solid clip in the 10-minute opener (also the shortest track on III) but ride an ultra-slow lurch for most of the first half of “Phase Seven” before devolving the piece from its rumbling crash to minimal bass malevolence from Miranda and sporadic guitar notes while drummer Jack takes a break until just before the seven-minute mark, at which point he marches in the thick swirl of one of III‘s most righteous grooves, which they continue to push until well past 11 minutes in, at which point the swarming noise and effects take over and become abrasive at points, only to be drowned out by the re-emergent riff. Once again, like the rest of the universe.
Even at their slowest, most plodding point, Toner Low aren’t lacking movement, and that remains true in the subdued opening of “Phase Eight,” which begins with the guitar and drums before the bass returns to hint at some of the massiveness to come. Both Toner Low and II had their quiet moments, but here the trio uses the atmospheric take as the beginning point for an effective build, a wash of static gradually mounting with the rumble, airy guitar and steady drum beat, before at 3:45, the bass claims the lead position as the guitars wander off, and even Jack and Miranda come to an eventual halt before bringing the song to full impact just past five minutes into its total 13. The tonal brunt unveiled, the only thing left to build is the pace, and the trio sets to it almost immediately, winding up in a gear similar to that of the opener, but sounding more unhinged as the track shakes itself apart back to the initial guitar line and (relatively) peaceful feel.
Fall for it at your peril. Closer “Phase Nine” clocks in at 17:47 and is practically an album unto itself, with psychedelic effects, more of Miranda‘s ultra-low bass and the distinct impression that the only reason Toner Low didn’t decide to play this riff for an hour solid was they got bored and decided to get a snack instead. To call it Dopesmoker-worthy doesn’t feel like overstating it, though after the vibrations doled out by III‘s first three tracks, the last one might get lost on already-dazed listeners. If you need to break the record up into multiple sessions, it’s worth it. At 4:27, the band shifts into fuller motion, guitars spacing out over the consistent, hypnotic repetitions, and with a slowdown, drone-out and open-sounding section with vocals, they set the stage for a payoff riff that carries them past 12 minutes, at which point the songcommences its own destruction, pushed past whatever sonic event horizon, into a surprising final few minutes of piano that are the finishing point.
A simple rule for life is anytime you run into a Toner Low record, you should buy it. In the case of III — which is out through an allegiance between the band’s own Roadkill Rekordz, Kozmik Artifactz and Freebird Records — it was one I knew I wanted even before I heard the first note, and I continue to be astounded that the three-piece can both be that heavy and manage to make the songs move at all. One listen to their tones and it just seems like something so mammoth a human being shouldn’t be able to make it go. But they do, when they choose to, and IIIwinds up a listen that satisfies as much as it pummels. And that’s saying something, because this shit is seriously pummeling. Not to be missed.
