Posted in Whathaveyou on March 31st, 2016 by JJ Koczan
Iron Man frontman Dee Calhoun has a June 6 release date set for his solo debut, Rotgut, via Argonauta Records. A teaser for the album, which also features a guest spot from Dee‘s son, Rob Calhoun, has been posted, and the cover art and tracklisting have been unveiled. The former is crafted by noted Maryland doom supporter and photographer Jaki Cunha, whose black and white style has been a staple of that region’s scene for I don’t even know how many years. You’ve seen her photos. I’m sure you have.
I haven’t heard the full record yet, but I’m willing to believe the teaser below tells it like it is when it starts out with Calhoun ripping into some of his trademark powerful vocals over touch-o’-twang guitars, finding a space between classic metal, singer-songwriterism and country. Interested to hear how that balance plays out across the album, but June’s a ways off, so here’s some info from the PR wire in the interim:
IRON MAN SINGER COMPLETES SOLO DEBUT; ALBUM TEASER, TRACK LISTING AND COVER ART REVEALED
“Screaming Mad” Dee Calhoun, the voice of doom legends Iron Man, has completed production of his debut solo released, entitled Rotgut. The album is scheduled for June 6th via Argonauta Records on CD/DD.
Rotgut was recorded at Dee’s home studio, The Dustbuster, in Frederick Maryland. Mastering was done in nearby Thurmont Maryland, by Doug Benson at Commodore Recording Studio.
The track listing for Rotgut is as follows:
Unapologetic Rotgut Not Everyone Wins a Prize Little ‘Houn, Daddy ‘Houn (featuring Rob Calhoun) Babelkowa Backstabbed in Backwater The Train Back Home Sincerely Yours Deifendör Cast Out the Crow Winter: A Dirge At Long Day’s End
The album’s cover is based upon a concept by Dee Calhoun, and photographed by Jaki Cunha.
[picture by Angela Beth Greenberg / Polyester Bride Photography]
Posted in Features on March 31st, 2016 by JJ Koczan
Next weekend, April 9, the first Desert Generator festival will be held. Put together by Rolling Heavy magazine, Allnight Allnight and Brant Bjork himself, it brings groups from the desert and beyond to Pappy and Harriet’s Saloon in Pioneertown, California, to play on an outdoor stage in the tradition of the parties held in the middle of nowhere (also the center of everywhere) of yore that helped shape the Palm Desert scene and thus American heavy rock as a whole. In addition to a van show and camp-out, the lineup is Red Fang, Brant Bjork and the Low Desert Punk Band, Acid King, Golden Void and Ecstatic Vision.
Sounds like weirdo heaven? Yeah, it just might be. For Bjork, it’s another manifestation of the commitment to a desert art scene that has seen him become one of its most recognizable ambassadors. As the drummer for Kyuss, he played those parties alongside the likes of Yawning Man and Fatso Jetson, and across his solo material and even up to Black Power Flower (review here), the 2014 debut from Brant Bjork and the Low Desert Punk Band, he’s remained a defining feature of what the rest of the world has come to think of as the sound of that place, of that desert. His work is inseparable from that.
It makes sense in that way that Desert Generator should both exist and should take its name from the by-now-legendary parties that gave Bjork and many others their start, since in its very concept, the one-day fest feeds into and expands on that tradition much as Bjork‘s work has done with desert rock as a whole. From his years in Kyuss and Fu Manchu and his earliest solo work with the Jalamanta album on Man’s Ruin, through time with Brant Bjork and the Bros. on tour in the US and abroad and continuing through the forthcoming Tao of the Devil LP that will complete his current contract with Napalm Records, he’s been far more relentless than the laid back vibe of so much of his output might suggest.
But of course, that’s part of the atmosphere Bjork and his compatriots are hoping will play into the goings down at Desert Generator. In the interview that follows, the godfather of desert groove talks about the origins of this perhaps-inaugural festival, how it all came together with the bands involved and the legacy it’s working from. He also looks forward, not only to the Tao of the Devil release and potential European touring, but to revisiting his substantial back catalog and other projects in the offing.
Texas two-piece Stone Machine Electric are getting ready to release their new full-length album, Sollicitus es Veritatem, in May. The release show is set for May 27 at The Grotto in Fort Worth, where Stone Machine Electric will be joined by Texas outfits FTW, Thinman Conspiracy and Fogg.
If the album artwork (posted here) and the translated title “nightmares are reality” are anything to go by, it seems more and more like Stone Machine Electric are commenting on the times in which we live. If that’s so, then all the better have their jam-prone bizarro rock as the soundtrack, since if our ultra-self-aware-yet-utterly-blind post-post-modernism has taught anyone anything at all, it’s that it’s not like we’re going to turn a corner and have existence suddenly make sense. We, as a species, might as well get down with some heavy exploratory grooves and vibe out while we wait for that comet to hit.
Guitarist William “Dub” Irvin and drummer/thereminist Mark Kitchens offered a glimpse at the record to come in late-2015’s The Awesome Terror (review here), and they’ll release Sollicitus es Veritatem officially on May 17 as nearly an hour of forward-thinking output captured by Kent Stump of Texas fuzz forerunners Wo Fat. Fogg, who offered up their self-titled debut (review here) last year on Tee Pee Records, have a new improv jam EP out called Pinko, and between that and the burly rock of FTW and Thinman Conspiracy‘s progressive methods, it should be a night worthy of ringing in the arrival of Stone Machine Electric‘s latest opus. I’m proud to be involved and thank the band for letting me be a part of it in the small way I am.
Show particulars and links follow:
Live at The Grotto: The Obelisk Presents – Stone Machine Electric Album Release Party featuring FTW, FOGG & Thinman Conspiracy
The Grotto 517 University Dr. Fort Worth, TX 76107
However loud you have the volume, you’re going to want it to be louder. UK post-sludge crushers Wren demand nothing less than a hyperbole assult. If it’s not doing physical, possibly irreversible damage, then you’re not quite there yet. Keep going.
You get the point.
Wren will release their second standalone EP, Host (review here), via Holy Roar Records on April 29. It is their second four-tracker behind a 2014 self-titled (review here) and also follows a 2015 split with Irk (review here) as the latest installment documenting the band’s solidification of lineup and aesthetic. As “No Seance,” the track from Host for which you can view the new video below, demonstrates, they’ve clearly done a lot of hammering out at this point.
And by that I mean the rhythm of the song feels like it’s hammering your skull. Or it should, when played at the proper volume.
But as “No Seance” also shows, Wren are not a creature of lurch and crush. Maddeningly catchy in its hook, “No Seance” is also representative of Host in its commitment to establishing an atmosphere and mood, building tension as it moves through its five-minute course. If nothing else, I take this as a sign that, should they continue on in this form — and hey, who knows, right? — Wren are decidedly ready to take on the task of a debut full-length. They pretty much beat the doors down on one, actually. They have some shows coming up in the UK over the next month-plus, heading into and following the release, and I don’t know if they’ll do any wider touring or go back to writing or both or neither, but not only do they show there’s still life and room to progress in something that might be called post-metallic, but they do so while sounding like genre isn’t a consideration in the slightest. Awesome.
Enjoy the creepy weirdo vibes of “No Seance” below, followed by the aforementioned live dates:
Wren, “No Seance” official video
‘No Seance’ in the visual realm.
Video by: gardenback
Taken from the EP ‘Host’ out on Holy Roar Records on April 29th.
Wren live: Mon 11 Apr 2016 The Alexandra Beer Emporium Southampton, UK Fri 29 Apr 2016 JT Soar Nottingham, UK Fri 20 May 2016 Unicorn Camden London, UK
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 31st, 2016 by JJ Koczan
Virginian doomers Cough return after six years with their new album, Still They Pray, which is due out June 3 via Relapse Records and was produced by Jus Oborn of Electric Wizard and recorded by Oborn and Garrett Morris of Windhand. As the Richmond troupe — now past a decade of existence — share bassist/vocalist Parker Chander with Windhand and draw a primary influence from Electric Wizard, these seem like especially reasonable choices to make. Their sophomore outing, Ritual Abuse (review here), served as their Relapse debut and was hugely received. It’s been a while, but it should be interesting to see how Still They Pray is met upon its arrival in June.
If you’d like a preview, the song “The Wounding Hours” is streaming below, and if you’re hyper-organized, there are preorder links as well.
Just off the PR wire:
COUGH Announces New Album Still They Pray; New Track “The Wounding Hours” Now Playing
After a five-year break, Richmond’s COUGH has returned with their newest opus, Still They Pray. Produced by Electric Wizard’s Jus Oborn and recorded by Oborn and Windhand’s Garrett Morris, Still They Pray is the kind of monolithic, cosmic doom that will take the listener to the heights of despair and the bottom of the abyss. With this release, COUGH summons psychedelic, feedback-driven melodies just to deconstruct them to their core. Still They Pray is easily COUGH at their most focused: pessimistic riffs and tortured grooves collide in melodic agony alongside a hallucinogenic blend of harsh and clean incantations, crushing and cathartic yet utterly mesmerizing. Step through the gates of madness and stare into the void.
Still They Pray is set for release via Relapse Records on CD/2xLP/Digital this coming June 3rd. Physical preorders and bundle deals are available via Relapse.com HERE, and digital copies can be preordered through COUGH’s Bandcamp page at THIS LOCATION.
Still They Pray Track Listing: 1. Haunter Of The Dark 2. Possession 3. Dead Among The Roses 4. Masters Of Torture 5. Let It Bleed 6. Shadow Of The Torturer 7. The Wounding Hours 8. Still They Pray
Posted in Reviews on March 31st, 2016 by JJ Koczan
It seems like a day doesn’t go by that I don’t find something in one of these piles (metaphorical, sometimes literal) of records that keeps me coming back. Today is once again spread across a pretty wide stylistic swath, and that’s by design to keep my brain from going numb, but if there’s a unifying theme across all of it, let it be a sense of scope and bands and artists who are trying to take what’s been done before and push it forward or in some new direction. That’s not universal — nothing is — but today might be the most adventurous of the days included this quarter, so I hope you’ll keep open ears and an open mind as you make your way though.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Beastmaker, Lusus Naturae
Expectations are high for Fresno trio Beastmaker in no small part because their first album, Lusus Naturae, arrives through Rise Above Records. Whether they’ll take their place among the venerable UK imprint’s genre-shapers of the last half-decade, Uncle Acid, Ghost, etc., remains to be seen, but there can be little question Lusus Naturae lives up to the standard of offering something individual even as it plays off familiar conceptions. Beastmaker’s doom is classic without sounding like much of anything else, and as they unfold “Arachne” and catchy pieces like “Mask of Satan” and “You Must Sin,” they arrive aesthetically cohesive and demonstrating accomplished songwriting finding a space of its own surrounding Sabbathian and Cathedral-driven ideals with semi-psych, semi-cultish tendencies, not wanting to be put in one place or the other but successfully engaging a melting pot of modern doom in “Burnt Offering” and the plodding “It.” Whatever the wider response winds up being, Lusus Naturae will without a doubt stand as one of 2016’s best debuts.
If you’re hand-picking dream rhythm sections, getting Trevor Dunn to play bass while Dale Crover drums would probably be the picks of any number of players, but initials-only core duo EHA and AAL of Los Angeles’ Low Flying Hawks actually went out and got the Mr. Bungle and Melvins personnel to play on their Toshi Kasai-produced Magnetic Eye Records debut LP, Kofuku. Aside from keeping good company, the album’s 10 tracks/53 minutes are marked by a spaciousness that not even the tonal heft of early cut “Now, Apocalypse” seems to fill as EHA and AAL balance post-rock, doomed lurch and darker psychedelics with blackened screams and fervent rhythmic push – see “White Temple” and “Wolves Within Wolves.” They round out with the lumbering 11-minute “Destruction Complete,” a heavy rock march topped by airborne, dissonant leads that keeps its head even as it plods onward into oblivion. Not as unipolar as it might first appear in terms of sound, but the mood of Kofuku points consistently downward.
The crux of CHVE’s Rasa is in resonance. Amenra frontman Colin H. van Eeckhout (his solo-project’s name derived from his initials) constructs a flowing half-hour of fluid drone, intermittent percussion – first tribal, then a straightforward kind of march, slow but not still – and atmospheric vocal on the single track that comprises the work, seeming to take influence from calls to prayer as much as atmospheric noise. At higher volumes, the piece is consuming, his voice surrounds with the almost constant wash of tone, but even at more reasonable levels, the sense of purpose and ritual remains. Of course, Amenra are noted for the use of the word “mass” in their album titles, and while Rasa departs from the direct tonal heft of much of what van Eeckhout does in his main outfit, there is a sense of mass here in terms both of presence and in terms of the worship being enacted.
How do you fit an 11-minute track onto a 7” release? Easy, you break it in half. Such is the method of Ohio instrumentalists Brujas del Sol, who follow their Moonliner EP trilogy with the late-2015 single Starquake, presented on the limited H42 Records platter as “Starquake Pt. I” and “Starquake Pt. II” but comprising nonetheless a single piece that backs airy, post-rock-tinged guitar with a decided forward rhythmic motion, resulting in an overarching build that, while there’s a natural moment for the split, is hypnotic front to back, a swirl of effects calling it mind space rock improvisation even as the plotted momentum of drums and bass resumes. Starquake is enough to make one imagine what kind of variety and spontaneity Brujas del Sol would bring to a debut full-length, so in that it very much does its job, but it makes a good case for standing on its own as well as it hits its second apex and finishes in a residual wash of cosmic noise.
Offered through New Heavy Sounds, Noeth Ac Anoeth is the debut full-length from Welsh cosmic doom four-piece Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard. It is comprised of three songs and incorporates the half-hour-long “Nachthexen,” which was also the title-track of the band’s prior 2015 EP (review here), their rumble brought to bear through the capable knob-turning of Conan’s Chris Fielding at Skyhammer Studio. The vocals of Jessica Ball manage to cut through the ensuing tonal murk of her bass and the guitars of Paul Michael Davies and Wez Leon, and James Carrington’s drums live up to the near-impossible task of making “Les Paradis Artificiels,” “Slave Moon” and “Nachthexen” go, each developing its own plodding momentum amid the purposeful thickness overdose and atmospheric sensibility enhanced both by Davies’ work on keys and Ball’s vocals. “Slave Moon” winds up at a gallop and almost operatic, but there’s no way the highlight wasn’t going to be “Nachthexen,” which offers chug dense enough and spaces wide open enough to easily get lost in. Time well spent, all around.
Spanish heavy rock four-piece The Shooters present their third album, Dead Wilderness (on Red Sun Records/Nooirax Producciones), as two sides even on the CD pressing, each half of the record ending with an extended cut over the 10-minute mark. All told it’s six songs/49 minutes of solidified, mostly straightforward Euro-style riff-led heavy grooves, tapping into some Dozer influence on “War on You” but offering more spacious burl on “Lucifer’s Word,” which starts side B after the push of “Roots” rounds out side A. There’s little by way of letup, but moments like the quiet start and bridge of “Black Mountain” do a lot of work in adding complexity to The Shooters’ hook-minded approach, and 11-minute finale “Candelabrum” builds on that with a patient linear unfolding that casts off some tonal heft in favor of a more atmospheric take. That ultimately lets Dead Wilderness bring an individual edge to established stylistic parameters, from which it greatly benefits.
Granted, a title playing off Curb Your Enthusiasm and, well, herb, might make you think the band is just goofing around, but UK riffers Boss Keloid offer more substance with their second album, Herb Your Enthusiasm, than they do wackiness. The sound – captured by Chris Fielding at Skyhammer Studio – is positively massive, bolstered by guest appearances from Fielding himself and his Conan bandmate, Jon Davis, who also owns Skyhammer and Black Bow Records, the imprint releasing the LP, and given to swells of largesse and huge rolling grooves that still remain righteously fuzzed, as on “Escapegoat” or “Lung Valley” the quieter complement to opener “Lung Mountain.” Vocalist Alex Hurst assures any quota of burl is met, but has more to his approach melodically than riff-following chestbeating, and guitarist Paul Swarbrick, bassist Adam Swarbrick and drummer Stephen Arands present instrumental flow and turns behind that give the record a sense of personality beyond its weedian play. Not a minor undertaking at an hour long, but satisfying in tone and execution.
I guess it’s fair to call late 2015’s Nous N’y Trouvons que le Doute the debut full-length from Toulouse-based one-man outfit Hors Sujet, though multi-instrumentalist/atmosphere-conjurer Florent Paris has done a variety of soundtrack work and released numerous other textures in EPs and a variety of other offerings, so take that for what it’s worth. More important is the rich sense of ambience Paris brings to Hors Sujet in the seven included songs, from the dystopian doom of “Au Plus Loin, la Mer / L’hiver Peureux” to the wistful drone wash of “Le Souffle, Peu à Peu (Pt. 2),” which has its companion piece earlier in the album. Of special note should be 27-minute closer “Et Maintenant, le Ombres,” acting as a summary of the proceedings as much as expansion thereupon, concluding an often quiet outing with a stark cacophony that gorgeously builds from the minimalism before it to a raucous finish worth of the breadth Paris shows in his work throughout.
Initially released by the band in summer 2015, the self-titled debut from Finnish progressive heavy rockers Warchief sees vinyl issue through Phonosphera Records, its two sides consumed by organic execution across four tracks moving beyond traditional structure in favor of a more varied approach, from the rumbling heft that emerges in opener “Give” through the goes-anywhere near-psychedelia of 21-minute closer “For Heavy Damage.” Warchief, the Jyväskylä-based four-piece of Teemu Pellonpää, Juho Saarikoski, Esa Pirttimäki and Tommi Rintala, feel right at home working in longer-form material, whether it’s that closer or the nine-minute “Life Went On” preceding, and given their breadth I wouldn’t be surprised if they would up with a single-song album sometime in the future. With that in mind, perhaps most encouraging about their self-titled is the fact that it seems so exploratory, very much like the beginning of creative growth rather than a finished product on display. One hopes they continue to flesh out stylistically and build on the foundation they’ve set here.
Riffing their way into the post-Electric Wizard league of rumble purveyors, Minneapolis newcomers Seedship avoid any cultish trappings on last fall’s Demo 2015, their first release. A marked tonal thickness is nearly immediate, but along with the slow-motion nod and overarching density, melodic vocals cut through the morass to give a human aspect to the groove. Of the three tracks, “The Edge of Expiry,” “The Condemned Adrift” and “The Desperate Odyssey,” not a one is under eight minutes long, and as they plod their way through the opener (also the longest track; immediate points), Seedship enact a sci-fi theme that carries through the release as a whole, which scuffs up the approach some in the closer, but always keeps its spacier elements intact, even as it kicks the pace in the ass at around six minutes in and lets loose a release for all the tension built up prior before a final slowdown ends out. They seem to have a lot already worked out sound-wise, so should be interesting to hear where they go with it.
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 31st, 2016 by JJ Koczan
Hell’s bells that’s a good show! Here I’ve been considering getting a crowdfunding page going in order to bring Elephant Tree over from their home base in the UK specifically to pair them up with Bordeaux, France, heavy psych masters Mars Red Sky at The Obelisk All-Dayer in August, and Snuff Lane has gone and beat me to making the match. It’s a five-show run through the UK, and they’ll meet up with Black Lung along the way and play Riff Conspiracy III in Manchester, but for however long these two are getting together, it’s a fit that works so well, it’s hard to imagine this will be the only time it happens.
If you haven’t heard it yet, Mars Red Sky‘s recently-issued third LP, Apex III (Praise for the Burning Soul) (review here), is currently holding my top spot for album of the year. Yeah, I know there’s a lot of year to go, but woof, that’s a good record. Elephant Tree‘s self-titled debut (review here), which is due out at the end of April through Magnetic Eye, is currently holding my top spot for debut of the year. Take that as an indication of how highly I regard these two bands at this point. These gigs are going to be killer. If you get to go, consider yourself lucky.
Dates from the PR wire:
MARS RED SKY’s will be touring the UK in May in support of their brand new album ‘Apex III (Praise for the Burning Soul)’, pushing boundaries further into a colossal heavy sound like never before.
Produced by Gabriel Zander (from Brasil who also engineered ‘Stranded in Arcadia’) and Jacob Dennis in Studio Cryogene in Bègles in France – The band has forged grandiose and hypnotizing thickly produced songs rooted through a wider range of musical influences stretching from Robert Wyatt, The Beatles, Nick Drake, Neil young to bands like Electric Wizard, Acid King and obviously Black Sabbath.
French revered psych-pop doom fuzzers are set to grace the United Kingdom in May for 5 special events, with tour support will be provided by sitar welding, London based Elephant Tree, who are due to release their new album self-titled album through Magnetic Eye Records.
‘Prise for the Burning Soul’ May UK Tour: 12/05 – The Exchange, Bristol Alongside: Black Lung (ft. members of The Flying Eyes), Indica Blues, The Brackish, Raptor 13/05 – The Phoenix, Coventry 14/05 – Birthdays, London Support TBC 15/05 – Rebellion, Manchester Part of Riff Conspiracy III (Noiz) 16/05 – Audio, Glasgow
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 30th, 2016 by JJ Koczan
Cape Fear sludge upstarts Toke will spend a decent portion of April on the road, heading north from their homebase in North Carolina and back south again on a run supporting their recently-issued split tape with Green Fiend. The band have also been confirmed as taking part in the Denver Electric FuneralFest and Maryland Doom Fest, so it seems likely there are more dates to be announced for the summer as well.
What makes that seem even more likely is that Toke share the bill on Denver Electric Funeral Fest with Sourvein (among others, of course). As the two bands are based in Cape Fear, it doesn’t strike me as particularly crazy to think they might travel together, and Sourvein rarely go anywhere without touring. Toke would fit well on a bill alongside them, but of course nothing’s been confirmed so far as I know. That’s just me speculating.
In the meantime, Toke will share stages with a host of East Coast luminaries, including Heavy Temple and Wizard Eye in Philly, Foghound in Baltimore, Reign of Zaius and River Cult in Brooklyn, and Dutchguts in my former (but still beloved) Garden State, so if a name below seems unfamiliar for some reason, there’s a lot of good company being kept here.
Dates follow:
We hit the road soon check it also we are on Instagram @toke_nc
4/2/16 Charlotte NC @ snug harbor w/ the seduction 4/15/16 Richmond VA Wonderland bar w/ Book of Wyrms & Melt 4/16/16 Philladelphia PA @ shred shed w/ Heavy Temple & Wizard Eye 4/17/16 Allentown PA @ Alternative Gallery w/ Heavy Temple, Under the Clothesline & Goatwizard 4/18/16 Asbury Park NJ @ wonder bar w/ Hand of Weed 4/19/16 Lucky 13 Saloon Brooklyn NYC w/ Reign of Zaius & River Cult 4/20/16 Montclair NJ @ Meatlocker w/ Dutchguts 4/21/16 Baltimore MD @ Windup Gallery w/ Gateway to Hell & Foghound 4/22/16 Frederick MD @ Guidos Speakeasy 4/23/16 Hagerstown MD @ R&K Pub w/ Fortress 4/24/16 Greensboro @ NYP w/ Dirac, Dogs Eyes and mini guns 4/29/16 Reggies 42nd street tavern 6/4-6/5 Denver Colorado electric funeral fest 6/26/16 Maryland Doom Fest Frederick MD
