My appreciation for long-running Italian fanzine Vincebus Eruptum is well documented at this point, but I feel compelled to reiterate the admirable nature both of the work they do and the manner in which they do it. If saying that every time they put out an issue takes away from the impact of the statement, at least know it doesn’t take away from my actual enjoyment of reading the thing. As ever with issue No. 19, Editor Davide “Davidew” Pansolin and his crew have combed the heavy psychedelic and stoner underground to bring forth another quality collection of reviews and interviews in support of the genre(s) at large and their own efforts as the associazione culturale that they are and of course, the Vincebus Eruptum Recordings end of the operation, which continues to expand via releases from Sendelica, Lords of Bastard, and The Linus Pauling Quartet.

Wouldn’t you know it? It just so happens that an interview with The Linus Pauling Quartet leads off the issue! You’d almost think these things were planned out beforehand. But if there’s one thing that makes a ‘zine special, it’s the passion of the individual at its heart — Pansolin has a staff but still does a good portion of the writing himself — and Vincebus Eruptum is very obviously the labor of his love, in this case of the Texas five-piece, who in the course of the five-page leadoff feature lead him on a trip down memory lane of Houston’s psychedelic and noise scene in the post-Butthole Surfers ’90s. Very interesting stuff, and there’s even a chart at the end showing the different members who played in various bands, all the same people sharing music with each other in the way that city-wide scenes always become incestuous over time. The historical angle might make the Linus Pauling piece my favorite of the issue, but My Sleeping Karma also gave a fascinating talk about their new album, Moksha (review here), and it’s always cool to hear what the guys in Orange Goblin have to say, especially now that they’ve spent the last few years really kicked into gear as a full-time touring band.

Chats with Victor Griffin (Pentagram, Place of Skulls, etc.), Fantasyy Factoryy, Ides of Gemini and a talk with Gabriele Fiori (Heavy Psych Sounds, Black Rainbows) about the 2015 debut from his side-project Killer Boogie, Detroit (review here), all provide further points of interest, and then it moves into the review section, which brings looks at the latest from Pyrior, Acid King, Pombagira, Black Rainbows, Madre de Dios, Osso, Wild Eyes, Spidergawd, Sendelica, Child, Black Capricorn, Colour Haze and many others. They pack so much in that there isn’t always room to delve into the deepest details of a release — these are the things you have to do when you can only fit so many words on a page — but Vincebus Eruptum never fails to give an impression of what a band is going for, and of course their expertise is long since established when it comes to heavy rock. I trust their judgment as I do few other sources.

Unlike most issues that I’m fortunate enough to receive, I read No. 19 cover to cover in a single sitting. Usually I’ll jump around a bit, read something in the middle — My Sleeping Karma have the gatefold honor, right on the staple, this time around — then go back to the start, but from Pansolin‘s editorial at the beginning to the closing, packed-tight bit of news from Vincebus Eruptum Recordings after the reviews, I went front to back, and it flowed well in a way that, bouncing here to there, I hadn’t previously appreciated. Particularly so in light of Pansolin‘s editorial, which displayed a kind of wariness of the new school of heavy psychedelia. A quote: “What’s important is that these bands do not pretend to have found the Mecca feeling like having definitely made it for good just because they ended up on a label jam-packed with metal outfits because that does not mean to mechanically achieve greater exposure and instant success!” He also refers to it as “‘our’ heavy-psych scene,” which, as ever for that kind of statement, made me wonder who “we” are, and warned bands off from forgetting their underground roots just because more people are listening to the style of music now.

Striking, candid thoughts from someone who’s spent at this point more than a decade and a half in the European heavy underground, but if Pansolin sounds jaded up front, that’s gone almost immediately as soon as the interview with The Linus Pauling Quartet arrives, and Vincebus Eruptum, like always, is a party heralding some of the best heavy psychedelics the world has to offer. I’ll look forward to going front-to-back on the next issue.

Vincebus Eruptum at Heavy Ripples Distro

Vincebus Eruptum website

Vincebus Eruptum store

Vincebus Eruptum on Thee Facebooks

The Linus Pauling Quartet, “Cole Porter”

Apparently-umlauted Italian heavy psych rockers Giöbia have announced a Sept. 9 release for their new album. Titled Magnifier, it will be their second through Sulatron Records after 2013’s Introducing Night Sound (review here) and their fourth overall. It’s been a bit since we heard from the Milano foursome, but they’ve been busy playing shows, including the Copenhagen Psych Fest this year alongside Causa Sui and Vibravoid.

They’ll also take part in the Psych-Out Festival on Oct. 3 as part of a bill centered around ’60s retroism and a couple different kinds of weirdness. The LP will be out by then, and one imagines preorders will be made available at some point before too for those who like to forget they bought things and then have them show up in the mail. It has a certain appeal, I won’t lie.

The band recently unveiled the cover art, tracklisting and other album details for Magnifier, and you’ll find the whole bunch and a new teaser clip below:

Giöbia’s new album “Magnifier” out on September

Giöbia’s new album “Magnifier” is ready to suck you into a lysergic vortex of exotic mantras and Sabbathian rituals on September 9th

The sound of the new album will be heavier and darker than the past records, but always unique, and at some moments will reveal the intimate bond that we’ve always had with the 70’s Italian progressive.

The artist Laura Giardino, by scratching the twilight zone out your grandma’s wallpaper, made the album cover, and giving magic mushrooms to Alice Liddell and Roderick Usher then listening to their bed trip paranoia, wrote down some lyrics.

The track listing is:
1 This world was being watched closely
2 The Pond
3 The Stain
4 Lentamente la luce svanirà
5 Devil’s Howl
6 Sun Spectre
7 The Magnifier

Ciao
Saffo, Bazu, Detrji & Planetgong (Giöbia)

https://www.facebook.com/giobiaband
http://www.giobia.com/
http://www.sulatron.com/

Giobia, Magnifier promo teaser

It will not take too long into the seven minutes of “When all You’ve Got is a Hammer” before the progress in Bedroom Rehab Corporation‘s style, songwriting and performance shows itself. The Connecticut two-piece were last heard from on their 2013 debut long-player, Red over Red (review here), and having seen them only get better on stage over numerous shows the last two years or so, I’ve been somewhat anxious to get my ears on some new audio, to see if they’d be able to translate their development into a studio setting. Recorded by Justin Pizzoferrato (Elder, Black Pyramid) and finished in the cold winter hours of early 2015, the new Fortunate Some EP will be released Oct. 3 (preorders are available as of this premiere) and if “When all You’ve Got is a Hammer” is anything to go by, it will find them doing precisely that: bringing the tight heaviness and aggression of their stage show to completed studio tracks.

Bassist/vocalist Adam Wujtewicz and drummer Meghan Killimade are each well in command of their modus throughout the song’s semi-extended course. The verses showcase an increased capacity for melody and the chorus is more aggro, but still catchy in its shout and stomp. As the first audio to be made public from Fortunate Some it bodes well in its captured energy and also its spaciousness, the middle of “When all You’ve Got is a Hammer” moving into an effects-laden instrumental section so fluidly you almost don’t know until you’re already in it working your way back, but of course they slam through with full tonal and percussive brunt to finish out. Directed by Peter Huoppi, the video takes the titular imagery head on. We see a blacksmith and a guy hammering rocks toward some unknown end out in the woods — that’s a job, right? — and both come to discard their hammers and hit the bar where Killimade and Wujtewicz happen to be playing. Somehow at the end, after a trek through the same rocky woods and what looks like the train tracks by Cherry St. Station in Wallingford, CT (actually they’re in Norwich, about an hour’s can’t-get-there-from-here New England drive away), the duo pick up both castaway hammers and make their way down the line.

There’s a lot to enjoy here for those who heard Red over Red, but even if “When all You’ve Got is a Hammer” is your introduction to Bedroom Rehab Corporation, it’s a good time to be introduced, as they’ve just brought their approach to an entirely new level to emerge as a more confident, sonically powerful band.

Video and info follow. Please enjoy:

Bedroom Rehab Corporation, “When all You’ve Got is a Hammer” official video

Bedroom Rehab Corporation – “When All You’ve Got is a Hammer” from the new EP ‘Fortunate Some’ available on LP/Digital October 3, 2015.

Pre-order ‘Fortunate Some’ from BandCamp (you will receive immediate download of “When All You’ve Got is a Hammer”): https://bedroomrehabcorporation.bandcamp.com/album/fortunate-some

Director: Peter Huoppi
Featuring: Chris Holdridge, Clint Wright & Rich Huoppi
Live footage filmed on location at 33 Golden Street, New London, CT

Featured in live footage:
Marko Fontaine, Stephanie Johnson, Pete Egner, Ben LaRose, Bobby Crash, Tim “Grim” Riley, Suz Manning, Corina Malbaurn, Kim Zajehowski Case, Tracy Tremblay, Paul Brockett, Tracey Hollins, Sean Beirne, Greg Gates, Jim Villano, Courtney Cole, Jerrica Cole

Bedroom Rehab Corporation on Thee Facebooks

Preorder Fortunate Some on Bandcamp

Bedroom Rehab Corporation on Twitter

Bedroom Rehab Corporation on Instagram

Release Show Info

After two EPs in 2012 and 2013 and a split earlier this year with Deathkings that also marked their debut on Midnite Collective (review here), Boston extreme sludge/thrash trio Rozamov have entered the studio to begin recording their debut LP. If it feels like it’s been a long time coming, that’s only because the three-piece have had their shit on lockdown on stage for a while now, having moved from a four-piece to a trio following 2013’s Of Gods and Flesh and subsequently nailed a visceral attack both scathing and weighted, moving fast while sounding slow at the same time. Also sometimes moving slow. They do that too.

One can only wonder what the context of a full-length album will allow the veterans of this year’s Psycho CA fest to bring to their sound atmospherically, but as they’ve just started on it, seems likely it’ll be 2016 before we find out. In the meantime, they’ve got dates booked this fall with Destroy Judas and Trapped within Burning Machinery, as the following update affirms:

ROZAMOV Begins Work on Debut LP, Touring With Destroy Judas

Boston, MA doom trio Rozamov have begun tracking new material at New Alliance Audio in Cambridge, MA. Once again working with Jon Taft (Morne, Horrible Earth), Rozamov have set their sights on their first LP following the release of their split 7″ with Deathkings available now via Midnite Collective. The album, yet untitled, will boast lengthy tracks containing the heaviest material the band have created to date.

Additionally, the band will embark on a short tour with Destroy Judas and Trapped Within Burning Machinery this October.
Rozamov live appearances:

8/19 – Allston, MA at Great Scott+
10/1 – Richmond, VA at TBD*
10/2 – Philadelphia, PA at Kung Fu Necktie*
10/3 – Brooklyn, NY at Acheron*
10/4 – Baltimore, MD at TBD*
10/5 – Pittsburgh, PA at Mr. Roboto Project*
10/6 – Chicago, IL at Fizz*
+ w/ Ringworm, White Widows Pact
* w/ Destroy Judas, Trapped Within Burning Machinery

The recording session follows up spring live activity that included appearances at Psycho California and Converse Rubber Tracks Live where the band performed with such notable acts as Slayer, Doomriders, Sleep, Earth and Pallbearer amongst others.

http://Facebook.com/Rozamov
http://Rozamov.bandcamp.com
http://midniteclv.storenvy.com/

Rozamov, Live at Psycho CA, May 2015

Of the various kinds of stories I might post on this site any given day — band announces tour, band announces album, band farts in a cup and makes you smell it, etc. — my favorite is quite possibly “cool band signs to cool label.” Nobody loses when parties like Santa Cruz trio Mountain Tamer — whose MTN TMR Demo (review here) recently impressed — and Italian imprint Argonauta Records join forces. Band gets wider exposure, label gets a good band. A heartwarming tale for all times and a classic win-win scenario.

Kudos to Mountain Tamer on the signing, and I’ll look forward to the release impending of their self-titled full-length, which I think we can officially list as “coming soon.”

Dig it:

MOUNTAIN TAMER signed to ARGONAUTA Records!

Today a new great band is in the Argonauta Records family: MOUNTAIN TAMER, a heavy psych trio, emerged from the forests of Santa Cruz, CA in 2010. The three have refused to set a limit on psychedelic experimentation, demonstrated by their immersive recordings and their one of a kind, hypnotic live performances. The mind-expanding sounds and heavy riffs Mountain Tamer creates can be traced from an influence of 60’s and 70’s classic/psych rock delivered with an in-your-face punk rock attitude. Melodic hooks, omnipresent bass riffs and complex rhythms pull you into Mountain Tamer’s dark, kaleidoscopic world, transporting you to a realm that transcends both time and space.

About working Argonauta, the band says: “We’re excited to be working with Argonauta, an awesome label with some great musical talents. We are looking forward to release our new, self titled album through Argonauta, as it is our most focused and accessible effort to date. We can’t wait to show the world what we have been working on and enjoy our musical future with Argonauta”.

https://www.facebook.com/MTNTMR
https://mtntmr.bandcamp.com/
http://mtntmr.com/
http://www.argonautarecords.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ArgonautaRecords

Mountain Tamer, MTN TMR Demo (2015)

Just what the hell is Dee Calhoun talking about in the new Iron Man song “Eulogy for Queen City?” I have no idea, but man that guy can wail. And “Iron” Al Morris can riff, and bassist Louis Strachan and drummer Jason “Mot” Waldmann groove like madmen, so here we are. Iron Man‘s got a new track out. The rest can be sorted later.

“Eulogy for Queen City” marks the first new song Iron Man have made public since the release of their 2013 full-length and Rise Above Records label debut, South of the Earth (review here). The band have had quite a ride since that album came out, playing the UK for the first time and getting at least a fraction of their due as their tenure moved further beyond the quarter-century mark, but I guess it’s reasonable to have them working on new stuff at this point — been a quick two years since that album showed up.

The clip below — prepare yourself for some cymbals early on — was filmed at the first annual Maryland Doom Fest last month in Frederick, MD, which also featured the likes of Spirit Caravan and The Skull. As much as Iron Man have done in their time, it’s hard to imagine them being at home anywhere more than at a Maryland Doom Fest. Their career is more or less an analog for the entire MD doom scene at this point: Quality over profile, vastly underrated. They certainly seem to be in their element in the video, which was filmed by Michael “Lucifer Burns” Lindenauer.

Enjoy:

Iron Man, “Eulogy for Queen City” live at Maryland Doom Fest

Upcoming Iron Man shows:
August 15- Tennessean Sludge Fest (Murfreesboro)
August 28 – All That Is Heavy, Ottawa, ON Canada
August 29 – Toronto (benefit)
Sept 3 – Shadow Kingdom Records Riot (Cleveland)
Sept 26 – Shadow Woods Metal Fest (White Hall, MD)
Oct 2 – Sidebar Baltimore

Iron Man on Thee Facebooks

Iron Man on Twitter

Rise Above Records

Los Angeles heavyweights Behold! the Monolith are taking orders now for their third album, Architects of the Void, which is set to release Sept. 29. The band have a bunch of different bundle deals set up for those who’d like a shirt to go along with their CD or vinyl (or both), and it’s their first outing since the death in a car accident of vocalist Kevin McDade in 2013, which is about as heavy as context gets, quite frankly.

The album was recorded and mixed by the one and only Billy Anderson, and the striking cover art is by Dusty Peterson. For more, we turn to the PR wire:

BEHOLD! THE MONOLITH to Release ‘Architects of the Void’ on September 29

Los Angeles stoner/doom metal band BEHOLD! THE MONOLITH will release new album Architects of the Void September 29 on CD, digital, and vinyl formats. The album can be pre-ordered at this location.

Legendary producer Billy Anderson has expertly harnessed the band’s smoke-belching locomotive style, while the songwriting is the most captivating of the quartet’s career. Guitarist Matt Price had this to say about the results:”It’s a relatively dark album, which is probably fitting. A few of the riffs and ideas had pretty much coagulated right before Kevin’s accident, and most of the others were colored by it, so yeah it feels kinda heavy and dark to me. I hope I don’t sound like a high falootin’ artisté, but it felt personal for me and Chase, so it wound up being more than just stringing riffs together, ya know? That being said Cas and Jordan came in and kicked ass and brought their own stamp to the sound. So it’s a bit different, but I think it captures the essence what Behold! The Monolith is all about!”

Architects of the Void follows critically acclaimed 2012 release Defender, Redeemist and marks the debut of vocalist Jordan Nalley who took the reigns following the tragic 2013 death of Kevin McDade in a car accident. The album will also be the first for new bassist Jason “Cas” Casanova (SASQUATCH). The album artwork was created by Dusty Peterson (Bloodbath, Six Feet Under, Oceano).

Jordan Nalley – Vocals
Matt Price – Guitar
Jason “Cas” Casanova – Bass
Chase Manhattan – Rhythm and Lead Drums

Produced by Billy Anderson and Behold! The Monolith

https://beholdthemonolith.bandcamp.com/album/architects-of-the-void
https://www.facebook.com/beholdthemonolith
http://www.beholdthemonolith.com/
https://twitter.com/btmband

Behold! The Monolith, Live in Los Angeles, March 18, 2015

Italian drone ritualists Shabda release their third album, Pharmakon / Pharmakos, on Sept. 7 through Argonauta Records. Comprised entirely of two tracks each on the north side of 20 minutes long, it is a two-sided full-length of gripping texture and atmospheric impressionism informed by Eastern-style scale work and instrumentation — sitar, tabla, etc. — and vocalized in similar fashion where and when it is at all. Both “Pharmakon” and “Pharmakos,” the two extended pieces that make the album up and from which it derives its title, function in this general methodology, and yet there are differences between them as well, Shabda uniting them with a sense of overall fluidity of motion, and an exploratory honesty that makes on think even if they got lost along the way — they don’t — they’d still put that on the record because it’s the journey they as a band and the listener both take that matters, not how it all ends up. Richly evocative, peaceful in its early going and tumultuous at its finish, one could just as easily say there’s a linear course throughout the two tracks/41 minutes, but that’s an oversimplification, and along with the stylistic boldness displayed by Anna Airoldi (sitar, vocals, synths), Marco Castagnetto (laptop, percussion, vocals) and Riccardo Fassone (guitar, bass, vocals), there’s very little about Pharmakon / Pharmakos one would be right in calling simple.

“Pharmakon” unfolds gracefully amid drones, subtle percussion, sinewy sitar and an obscure, vaguely religious chant, and it’s not until about the 12-minute mark that the first distorted guitar rises to prominence. This changes the course and focus gradually, but about two minutes later, the sitar drops out, there’s a fade and a thick riff takes hold complemented by drums and other percussion — cymbals, bowls — and “Pharmakon” takes on a surprising lurch, like a heavier early Earth or something deep in the recesses of Queen Elephantine‘s subconscious. A march is underway, and the track shifts patiently, always patiently, toward an experimentalist’s apex that seems to boil over just as it tops out, devolving quickly into fading noise. Of the two, “Pharmakos” is the more… grounded? I’m not sure if that’s the right word, because it’s all pretty earthy. Either way, a low-end drone opens the first two minutes and rises backed by deep-mixed swirling echo vocals and a sense of foreboding. The volume swell continues and gains a rhythm almost deceptively, the ritual happening before the listener’s ears, and right at the moment where this wash of drone turns abrasive, Shabda add vicious one-off crashes. One after another. A plod. A lumber. If a riff could be a temple — and I think we all know it can — then “Pharmakos” constructs a pyramid out of these crashes, this nodding repetition. Vocals arrive, chants and incantations either in conversation with each other or not, and it becomes clear that this grueling pilgrimage is the course to be held for the duration. Gone are the pastoral sitarisms of “Pharmakon,” and arrived is a consuming, unsettling swell in their places. A lead is added to the charge as the 15-minute mark of “Pharmakos” is passed, and it becomes one more layer of an engrossing, massive wall of noise that cuts out in minute 19 but keeps the same rhythm in long-fading percussion, a shaker maybe and a bowl of some sort, the shaker being the last noise, ending cold at about 20:20.

And even those with that for vision will likely take a time or two through Pharmakon / Pharmakos before its breadth has really sunk in. Shabda released their debut, The Electric Bodhisattva in early 2013 and their sophomore outing, Tummo, in early 2014, but each of their full-lengths seems to be pushing toward a more realized take on their avant approach, and whatever they might be seeking, Pharmakon / Pharmakos would seem to be the closest they’ve come yet. The farther out they go, the closer they come.

Today I have the deep pleasure of hosting “Pharmakos” as a track premiere to herald the album’s arrival in Sept. — which will be here sooner than you think. Thanks to Argonauta and to Shabda for the permission. If you have headphones handy, you’ll want them.

Go ahead and wrap your head around this:

Pharmakon / Pharmakos is the third album by Shabda, a year after the highly acclaimed psychic journey of Tummo. Voluntary hermits established in the rural countryside of Canavese, Piedmont, they fulfill, with this work, a rite of foundation, emanating their blanket of dense droning sound to link distant yet compatible musical mythologies. The two suites forming the album shape time, space and repetition building a sound that drives West and East to confront in the field of pure sound: it’s not doom, nor folk, nor drone in strict sense, but the heavy golden thread that structures the homogeneity of compositions draws a monolithic identity, simultaneously saturnine and solar.

Stylistically, Pharmakon is based on Raga Kafi, tinging it in Middle Eastern shades before crashing on the obsessively guitar oriented drift of its climax. Pharmakos gives off its textural essentiality on the vocal and rhythmic cells of Tibetan mantric music, pushing tension towards the void: then its features are stripped to the bones of an overloaded metal behemoth to investigate pre-existence, life, death and continuity.

Also, Shabda in partnership with Argonauta Records will actively support Nepal populations affected by the earthquake by donating 10% for each copy sold of Pharmakon/Pharmakos album to Nepalese children through Save the Children.

Preorders: http://shop.pe/U2z9B – http://shop.pe/pfWzY

Shabda on Thee Facebooks

Shabda on Bandcamp

Argonauta Records

Argonauta Records on Thee Facebooks