This is one of the best records I’ve heard this year. Period. Tony Reed‘s Funeral Suit pushes well beyond the dude-and-guitar expectation of a rock frontman’s “solo acoustic debut” and unfolds a new breadth of his well established songcraft. I was fortunate enough to write the bio for it that you’ll see below, and I mean every single word I say in that thing. It’s time to start thinking of Tony Reed on a different level. Like, I hope I get to, but I probably shouldn’t be cool enough to do a premiere from the album, that kind of thing. It could not be more fitting in my mind that Reed is following Wino in Ripple‘s ‘Blood and Strings’ series. That’s the kind of level on which his work should be considered at this point.

Album info, preorder links, the bio I wrote and streaming single follow here, all via the PR wire. More to come:

TONY REED to release solo acoustic album ‘Funeral Suit’ on Ripple Music; first single streaming!

TONY REED New solo album ‘Funeral Suit’ Out November 6th on Ripple Music

US Preorder: https://ripplemusic.bigcartel.com/products?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=funeral+suit
EU Preorder: https://en.ripple.spkr.media/artists/tony-reed/tony-reed-funeral-suit.html

Ripple Music announce the signing of Seattle heavyweight, multi-instrumentalist and respected producer TONY REED (also frontman of Mos Generator) for the release of his debut solo acoustic album ‘Funeral Suit’, as part of the ‘Blood And Strings: The Ripple Acoustic’ series. Stream the first single and preorder the album now!

With ‘Funeral Suit’, TONY REED delivers his most up-close and personal work to date. Known for being the driving force behind heavy rock stalwarts Mos Generator since 2000, the prolific songwriter made his solo debut with ‘The Lost Chronicles Of Heavy Rock Vol. 1’ tribute record in 2018, yet never had he found the right occasion to sit down, grab a guitar and lay himself bare as freely and soulfully as he does on ‘Funeral Suit’.

“A large percentage of the compositions on this album where the first or second takes of the music and vocals for songs that had been written and arranged only minutes earlier”, he says. Whether it’s the delicate arrangements, Reed’s velvet-smooth vocal harmonies or stirring piano-based moments, ‘Funeral Suit’ conveys a life-wide array of emotions that resonate in a universal way, regardless of the listener’s music inclinations. The debut single and title track showcases perfectly this multi-faceted aspect: a beautiful lament progressively turning into a ray of hope.

About the album themes, Tony Reed explains: “The album is titled ‘Funeral Suit’ because my father passed on August 16th 2019, and I went out and bought a nice suit for the funeral. The song is about how I felt and the wonder of how his passing may change me in the future. It’s also about the ones who are the closest to you in this life. Many of the songs are about guilt and regret. Insecurity, selfishness, and ego are matched by integrity, compassion and confidence.”

‘Funeral Suit’ comes as the second chapter of Ripple Music’s ‘Blood And Strings: The Ripple Acoustic’ series, in which some of the most admired names in rock and metal unplug to record albums of acoustic heaviness. It was recorded and mixed by Tony Reed at HeavyHead Recording Co., and will be issued on November 6th, 2020 and available now to preorder on deluxe edition vinyl, CD and digital edition via Ripple Music.

TRACK LISTING:
1. Waterbirth
2. Moonlighting
3. Funeral Suit
4. Along The Way
5. Lonely One
6. Wicked Willow
7. Might Just…
8. Who Goes There

BIO:

TONY REED belongs to a rare echelon of relentless creativity. A rock and roll lifer since his days self-recording tape demos as a teenager, he has spent the last three decades in an increasingly progressive pursuit of his art. In bands like Treepeople, Twelve-Thirty Dreamtime, Constance Tomb, Stone Axe, and his steadiest and most influential, Mos Generator, he has refined a songwriting, performance and recording process that is unmatched, and amassed a lifetime discography broad enough to make the rest of the universe seem outright lazy.

Tony Reed has toured on multiple continents and especially since revitalizing Mos Generator as a stage act in the early 2010s, earned a reputation for bringing the same ferocity to the stage as to the studio. As a frontman, Reed harnesses a classic rocker’s energy, but is only ever forward-thinking in his execution and engagement with his audience. At dive bars or huge festivals, his name is synonymous with a level of mastery that is no less his own than the songs he writes.

Headquartered in Port Orchard, Washington, his HeavyHead Studio is home to a fully-stocked production facility, and though Reed most often uses it for his own ends, the words “Mixed and Mastered by Tony Reed” have become a staple of heavy underground releases. His collaborations with artists, whether through split releases or actually sitting in with other bands, are rousing endorsements for listeners in the know, and his exploration continues unabated.

Whether it’s incorporating new elements of space and prog into Mos Generator, reviving the goth-tinged Constance Tomb, or beginning the entirely new pursuit of an acoustic/piano-based solo incarnation under his own name, TONY REED is a treasure of American rock and roll and someone whose soul bleeds into everything he crafts. It is time to start including his name among rock’s truest ambassadors.

https://tonyreed.bandcamp.com/
http://www.facebook.com/MosGenerator
http://www.instagram.com/mos_generator
https://mosgenerator.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/theripplemusic/
https://www.instagram.com/ripplemusic/
https://ripplemusic.bandcamp.com/
http://www.ripple-music.com/

Alright, I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I’ve watched the complete five-and-a-half-hour, two-part span of the Mutants of the Monster 2020 Virtual Festival. That’s just not where my life is at. It was the Hull reunion that brought me to the Arkansas-based fest’s digital incarnation, and even conducted in separate spaces via Zoom, it was great to see that band again — guitarist/vocalist Nick Palmirotto splurged for the green-screen-style Zoom backgrounds and made the most of it in the clip of “Viking Funeral,” but the whole five-piece ripped in a way that only made me wish all the more they had done a third record before calling it quits in 2015.

But though Hull were the hook, once I was in, it was easy to stay that way. Two nights’ worth of viewing, with L.A. aggro-sludgemasters -(16)- headlining one evening and The Body unleashing their apocalyptic destruction the next, sets from Windhand‘s Dorthia Cottrell (joined by bandmate Parker Chandler), Philly’s Heavy Temple, as well as the likes of Memphis’ Dirty Streets — who played in someone’s very nice living room (I noted the Edison turntable, with speaker horn, behind bassist Thomas Storz), the joy-to-behold Little Rock hometown team Deadbird, hardcore pushers SixKillsNine, the noise crush of Eye Flys — who advocated at the outset for dismantling and defunding the police — as well as ex-Kylesa guitarist Phillip Cope‘s new project Oakskin, who were an atmospheric sludge highlight, spoken introductions, between-band videos, and a ton more. Put together by Christopher Farris Terry — of Rwake, Iron Tongue, Deadbird and the Slow Southern Steel documentary — it not only raised funds for worthy causes, but celebrated a diverse range of sounds and styles and creativity that, while it could never be the same as being in a place and witnessing it all in-person for two nights, utilized the visual medium in an intelligent and exciting way that a lot of live streams simply haven’t been able to do. It had a flow, and for all the geography it drew upon — aesthetically and literally — it was not clumsy in its shifts or nonsensical in its progressions from one set to the next.

Some performed with masks on, some didn’t — even in the same band, as seen with Wvrm — and Heavy Temple played en rouge. I don’t think any of it happened live as it was airing, but the sense of it as a premiere and a presented-live event came through fine. While we’re talking about things I don’t know — there’s so much — I also don’t know how long these streams are going to stay up, and it’s entirely possible that by the time this is posted they’ll be taken down in order to emphasize the ephemeral, it’s-over-now nature of the virtual festival. I hope that’s not the case, and not just because I’d feel dumb posting empty YouTube embeds. Wouldn’t be the first time.

But the bottom line is that while you can you should check out what you can. I’m not gonna try and claim five and a half hours outright from your busy day and your busy life, but, well, maybe I am. Even if it takes you more than two days to get through as you peruse one brief set into the next, the reward is easy justification for the effort.

And maybe next year, in person.

Enjoy:

Mutants of the Monster 2020 Part I

Mutants of the Monster, a Central Arkansas festival helmed by Chris Terry (Rwake, Deadbird, Iron Tongue) that has championed heavy sounds for years, is going virtual in 2020.

We are also raising funds and awareness for two local organizations that support transgender rights and immigrants here in Arkansas. Please take some time to learn about their stories and support the good cause,

Intransitive’s Brayla Stone microgrants
https://www.intransitive.org/brayla-stone-microgrants

El Zocalo Immigrant Resource Center
http://www.zocalocenter.com/

Lineup for Part I:
Dorthia Cottrell
Heavy Temple
Barishi
Redbait
Rebelmatic
Hull
Wvrm
– (16) –

Speakers:
Laina Dawes (Music Journalist/ “What Are You Doing Here?”), Michael Alago (Music Producer/ “Who The F**k Is That Guy”), Chris Terry (Rwake, Deadbird, Iron Tongue).

Mutants of the Monster 2020 Part II

Lineup for Part II:
Dirty Streets
SixKillsNine
Oakskin
Eye Flys
Deadbird
Terminal Nation
The Body

Speakers:
Jason McMaster (Dangerous Toys), Madeline/Rebecca (Redbait), Nate Garrett (Spirit Adrift), Matt Besser (Actor/Comedian), Elliott Fullam (Little Punk People), Ashlie Atkinson (“BlacKkKlansman,” “Mr. Robot”).

Mutants of the Monster 2020 Event Page

Christopher Farris Terry on Thee Facebooks

Uffe Lorenzen, otherwise known as Lorenzo Woodrose of long-running Kobenhavn psych-rock leaders Baby Woodrose, is set to release his third solo album, Magisk Realisme, on Sept. 11 through Bad Afro Records. I’m not going to even pretend to know the date, but I know that’s pretty soon. The follow-up to last year’s Triprapport (review here) and 2017’s Galmandsværk (review here) sees Lorenzen doing more work that bridges the gap between some of the acid-folk fare he’s delved in over the last couple years (and records) and Baby Woodrose‘s more garage-rocking side. Perhaps that’s a result of the man himself — who plays just about everything on the LP but for the odd bit of pedal steel, trumpet, cello and/or backing vocals — becoming more comfortable in this context, feeling freer to explore his own past as well as current leanings. Or maybe quarantine restlessness manifests itself in a variety of ways. You’d have to ask him. I’d love to.

Speaking of quarantine, I’m going to guess that longtime associate Palle Demant‘s video for “Caminoen” was filmed prior to it? There are an awful lot of short-sleeves around for it being early in the year in Scandinavia, so maybe Denmark is out of social distancing. I see hugs and not-masks and high fives and people sitting together and the song is sweet and melodic with the pedal steel playing off Lorenzen‘s verses and on my first watch, I found myself thinking, “Holy shit it would be amazing to get a walking tour of Copenhagen from Uffe Lorenzen and write about it afterwards,” since that’s basically what the clip is — I think of these writing projects all the time and they almost never come to fruition because time and also money. But I had to stop myself because as Lorenzen goes around basically from bar to bar, saying hi to people — pretty sure Demant makes a cameo in a Fuzz Cake Film t-shirt — I remembered that I don’t even know if this kind of thing would happen now, let alone if I, as an American, would be able to enter Denmark to experience it. And that was a pretty sad realization. Gave that pedal steel a weepy edge, to be honest.

But that’s one read, and of course not really what the song is probably looking to evoke. In any case, it’s an appreciated early taste of Magisk Realisme, and should we one day enter a reality in which a walking tour of Copenhagen with Lorenzen as the guide might be possible, I’ll be right there at the head of the line.

Enjoy:

Uffe Lorenzen, “Caminoen” official video

Today I’m releasing the second single from Magical Realism and here’s Palle Demant’s video for the track CAMINOEN, probably the funniest video I’ve ever made – for obvious reasons. It’s myself on all the instruments, with beautiful pedal steel help from Henrik Lysgaard Madsen.

The album will be released on September 11th and can be pre-ordered here: https://badafrorecords.bandcamp.com/album/magisk-realisme

The song is also out on all kinds of digital things: https://badafro.lnk.to/Caminoen

And can be downloaded here: https://badafrorecords.bandcamp.com/track/caminoen-2

Uffe Lorenzen on Thee Facebooks

Baby Woodrose on Thee Facebooks

Baby Woodrose on Bandcamp

Baby Woodrose website

Bad Afro Records on Bandcamp

Bad Afro Records on Thee Facebooks

Bad Afro Records website

You’re going to hear some shades of Truckfighters in Enigma Experience, which feels somewhat inevitable given that it’s Niklas “Dango” Källgren on guitar (and bass), but despite that recognizable tone, it’s also fair enough for Question Mark to be the work of another, new band. For one thing, it’s a different band, and as much as Källgren contributes to the songwriting of his main outfit, he seems very much to be in the lead here creatively, playing guitar, bass, doing backing vocals and handling everything on the production side. While offering plenty of fuzz — enough that Fuzzorama‘s putting it out, which I guess is to be expected — the record unfolds in a few unexpected ways, from the grand flow of the 10:56 opener/longest track “Realityline” through the jammy closing pair “The Z” and “The Zone” finish with both an open sensibility and a worthy payoff.

One might recognize Oskar “Pezo” Johansson from his own tenure in Truckfighters — he was in the documentary, making him all the more recognizable, and since leaving the band did a stint with Witchcraft as well — and the trio is completed by Norwegian vocalist Maurice Adams.

Release date is Nov. 13, preorders are up, and you’ll find the stream of second track “Lonewolf” on the player at the bottom of this post, via the PR wire:

ENIGMA EXPERIENCE ANNOUNCES DEBUT ALBUM QUESTION MARK

Truckfighters guitarist Niklas Mr. Dango Källgren has teamed up with ex-Truckfighters/Witchcraft drummer Oskar Pezo Johansson and Maurice Adams from Breed/Motorfinger on vocals!

PRE-ORDER – http://www.fuzzoramastore.com/

The Enigma Experience have announced the release of their debut album, Question Mark, which is coming out November 13th via Fuzzorama Records.

The band have also unveiled the brand-new single ‘Lonewolf’, which opens with a funky and psychedelically charged Primus-esque melody before dropping into a driving groove amid crunching riffs with soaring vocal melodies.

https://songwhip.com/enigmaexperience/lonewolf

The track is one of few on the album that has a ‘normal’ structure when it comes to ‘verse – chorus – verse’ thinking. It’s a song that has a raw energy and groove that immediately takes control and want you to move your head in rhythm with the music. Heavy rock at its best!

On the track, guitarist Niklas ‘Mr. Dango’ Källgren comments, ”The lyrics are about suffering from and handling the pressure of the world, and the expectations from society that push you into a corner when feel different. It’s about daring you to be yourself, to let your creativity loose and to live like you want to live – it’s your life”

The band sees Sweden and Norway joins forces, as Truckfighters guitarist Niklas ‘Mr.Dango’ Källgren has teamed up with ex-Truckfighters/Witchcraft drummer Oskar ‘Pezo’ Johansson and Maurice Adams from Breed/Motorfinger on vocals.
The brainchild of Källgren, he also produced, engineered, mixed and mastered the album as well as playing bass and singing backing vocals.

The album comes on LP, CD and will also be available on a limited-edition vinyl in a very exclusive boxset with double vinyls with silkscreen printing, double gatefold, double posters and of course a nice box.

Question Mark is a very diverse rock record that opens with the ten-minute odyssey ‘Realityline,’ with vocal harmonies reminiscent of early 90s grunge heroes such as Soundgarden and Alice In Chains whilst elevating guitar lines weave over a pulsating backdrop of rhythm.

Elsewhere ‘In My Mind My Secret Place’ sees them slow things up with an ethereal acoustic atmosphere building into a hypnotically heavy and devastating end, whilst album closer ‘The Zone’ is a furiously catchy anthem with Kallgren’s trademark fuzz-fuelled sound piercing through.

Tracklisting
1. Realityline
2. Lonewolf
3. Mighty Mind
4. Corruption
5. Equilibrium
6. In my mind my secret place
7. The Z
8. The Zone

https://www.enigma-experience.com/
https://www.facebook.com/EnigmaExperienceBand/
https://twitter.com/enigmaexperien1
https://www.instagram.com/EnigmaExperienceBand/
http://www.fuzzoramarecords.com/
http://www.facebook.com/Fuzzorama

Enigma Experience, “Lonewolf”

There are many who swear by the 2005 second album from Berlin-based mostly-instrumentalists Rotor, and one can hardly argue. The German outfit got their start in 1998 — you might also see their name stylized as RotoR — and released their 2001 self-titled debut LP through Monster Zero Records, the same imprint that was home to concurrent offerings from the likes of Colour Haze, Astroqueen and Zerocharisma. By the time 2 showed up four years later, the then-three-piece had found a home on Elektrohasch Schallplatten, the label helmed by Colour Haze‘s Stefan Koglek, and they seemed at the same time to have found their niche in establishing a place for themselves between desert rock, classic progressive heavy, and an underlying touch of exploratory jamming. Their songs could crunch out along a riffy groove or dig into proggier vibes as they willed it, and though they released a split with Stonedudes and Drive by Shooting the same year through Nasoni Records that featured the track “V’Ger,” 2 remains an essential piece of their ongoing catalog and a look at how German heavy rock developed coming out of the post-Kyuss desert fixations of the late ’90s and ultimately found its own identity, which it did in no small part thanks to bands like Rotor.

They’ve never been big on lineup details, but at one point or another, the band was Marco Baale, Milan Pfützenreuter and Tim Mentzel. Today, they list their membership as “4,” which I guess is fair enough; their album 4 (review here) came out in 2010. In any case, compared to what they’d go on to do stylistically, perhaps the fare throughout 2 is a bit less complex, certainly less mature, but the tradeoff there is the kind of vibe that can only come from a band excited to be discovering who they are as players and as a group. Comprised of eight songs and running 43 minutes, Rotor‘s 2 is deceptive in both its immersion and its patience, and the band cleverly engage their audience with fuzzy tones and a sense of songcraft that builds off the no-nonsense approach of Karma to Burn but is decidedly their own. They’re an instrumental band, have always been known for being an instrumental band, and have not veered from that course, so naturally the first song on 2 has vocals. It’s one of two tracks to feature them, actually, with Samavayo‘s Behrang Alavi stepping in on lead cut “On the Run” and singing in Persian on the side B leadoff “Endlicht.”

This gives each half of the record not only a definitive starting point — i.e. “Endlicht” serving as a landmark to keep listeners from getting too lost in the proceedings as can sometimes happen in all-instrumental releases; sorry, the human brain is a simple thing and has evolved to hear words when they’re spoken — and seems to allow the band more space to play as they will in the subsequent three songs on each side. The energy of “On the Run” bleeds into the clever starts and stops and surges and pullbacks of “Auf Der Lauer,” which refuses for the better part of its five and a half minutes to resolve its mischievous bumps and bounces before finally doing so in a nodding roll and last crash, giving way to the interplay between jazz and thrust on “Supernovo” — a serene midsection offering a delightfully false sense of security — and side A closer “Nuhig Blut,” which begins with a warmth of tone to remind one that, indeed, Rotor were contemporaries of Colour Haze, and a winding progression of wah and rumbly bass that shoves forward at will into a roll that feels built off that in “Auf Der Lauer” but has even more nuance to offer as it goes, being part of the journey more than the destination as it is in the earlier cut.

As the side B launch and “On the Run” complement, “Endlicht” — the title translating to English as “Last Light” — features a return from Alavi and the aforementioned Persian lyrics. The guitar takes a Middle Eastern inflection to suit during the verses but opens to broader fuzz during the chorus, a flourish of psychedelia resulting that sets up some of the more ranging material still to come. “Endlicht” builds up, cuts out, builds again and recedes, in a quick barrage of changes, but the central energy remains, and turns over to the semi-acoustic, minute-long “Zeistau,” which I suppose is fair to call an interlude but rests well ahead of “Hellway”‘s more spacious course. It’s the penultimate piece, and its near-seven-minute runtime feels purposefully paired with the 7:31 closer “Kraftfeld” as the two seem to range more broadly from fuzz riffs to atmospherics. A more languid pace in the finale is welcome as well, as it shows Rotor working in a more patient sphere than they had up to that point with their songwriting. Following an improvised-feeling (if not actually improvised) midsection, there’s an uptick in tempo that drives into a quick, somewhat understated peak, and then finishes quietly enough to underscore the class of the performance on the whole.

Rotor‘s tenure on Elektrohasch resulted in two more studio albums, 2007’s 3 and the already-noted 4, as well as the 2011 live record, Festsaal Kreuzberg (review here), that was captured in their hometown. The five-year break between 4 and 2015’s Fünf (review here) was the longest of the band’s career, and it marked the beginning of their alliance with Noisolution that continued with 2018’s Sechs (review here) — both albums showcasing the progressive leanings that were very much present in Rotor‘s earlier work, as 2 shows across its span, but which were brought more into focus over time. With that album marking the 20th anniversary of the band, they set about stopping through various festivals and club shows to support, and of course had plans likewise for 2020 that includes Sonic Whip in the Netherlands, and Krach am Bach in Germany, both of which were called off. They’re set to appear at Esbjerg Fuzztival in Denmark next week, however, which as of now is still happening and has posted significantly detailed rules for social distancing. Whatever it takes, I guess.

I can only imagine seeing this band live during this time and engaging the deeply creative spirit of their work in-person. No doubt one would end up swearing by 2 as well as a representation of that time. As it stands these 15 years later, the prescience of Rotor is a prophecy self-fulfilled by the influence they’ve had on European heavy psych and instrumentalism — you can point to Truckfighters or Papir and I don’t think you’d be wrong in either case — and 2 not only holds up as a document of its era, but of the ability of the band to cast vivid images in the theater of the mind.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

This week sucked. Oh, it sucked. It sucked, it sucked, it sucked. The Pecan had a cold and was miserable — he’s still stuffy but has been better the last couple days, if you count periodically having epic breakdowns like your favorite early ’00s metalcore band and hauling off and smacking you as “better,” which actually, yes, I do — and The Patient Mrs.’ new semester started, all online so far, though they’re apparently going to reassess that in a couple weeks? And the dog. Ugh, the dog. The dog is fucking wretched. We were actually doing fine for a bit yesterday and I brought her out of the kitchen to play fetch in the living room. First thing she did was piss on the floor. Pretty much ruined my whole fucking day. Was on par with taking The Pecan to the zoo on Tuesday and watching him bite another kid on the playground (through his mask, but it was still enough to make the other kid cry). Oh, it sucked. All of it. Just awful. It was a shitty, shitty fucking week and the sooner it’s forgotten the better. I hope that by the next time I write about Rotor and inevitably come back to look at this post, I can’t even remember what I’m talking about here. “When was that?” and so on.

And so the dog chews my foot. Stop. So the dog chews the 200-year-old rocking chair my mother gave us when we had The Pecan. Stop. The dog chews a rug. Fine. She has bones. She has a kong. She has rawhide. She is awful. Fucking awful. And every time I try to talk to The Patient Mrs. about it it becomes an argument like she’s on team dog and I get to be my father the asshole (still dead, not yet buried for some fucking reason) who hates everything. Meanwhile, the dog bites. She chews. She pisses on the floor. She has a bark like a dying seal that is like sandpaper on my brain. I grew up with dogs. I have loved dogs my whole life. This is the dog we got our son so they could grow up together and it’s been five weeks and they can’t even be in the same room. It’s not working. The little voice in my head is telling me, “Punch out, Maverick.” Try again later.

And there’s nothing worse than not being heard.

I should go. I can hear The Pecan in the other room talking about hitting his trains, which means he’s frustrated about something and that’s not gonna stop. Yeah, now he’s biting himself and hitting himself.

Apparently we’re closing on the sale of this house (to us, from my mother) today? Never believe anything in real estate until a week after it’s happened, so I guess I’ll check in next Friday about that.

Great and safe weekend. No Gimme show today. Next week. Don’t forget to hydrate. So important.

FRM.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

Lest they be accused of taking the rest of the year off after putting out May’s Earhammer Sessions (review here) live-in-studio affair, Oakland heavy metal rockers War Cloud have a new two-song EP out next month called Chain Gang. The release, once again through Ripple Music, brings together a track written immediately following their European tour — which would seem to have been a transformative experience for them as a band, considering they recorded Earhammer Sessions as a means of building off the energy of that tour as well — and a track tracked by Steve “Thee Slayer Hippy” Hanford, whose posthumous tribute to Blue Öyster Cult is also seeing release soon through Ripple and in which War Cloud are also talking part. Presumably the two were recorded at the same time, but I guess one never knows.

The PR wire brought art and details about Chain Gang thusly:

Prolific Rapid-Fire Metallers WAR CLOUD Drop Energized “Chain Gang” EP

Searing 2-song blast channels the band’s furious power ahead of expected new album in 2021

Quickly becoming one of Ripple Music’s most prolific bands, War Cloud returns just a few months behind their high-octane Earhammer Sessions with the two-song Chain Gang EP.

The title track was written in Vigone, Italy during a few days off after their last European tour while staying at a recording/rehearsal space called Positive Music. Says singer/guitarist Alex Wein:

“Positive Music is a secluded spot. No distractions. This was the first time we actually got to write as an entire band, with the current lineup, so there’s a lot of energy between all the members. We kept sharing riffs, lyrics, and bands we were vibe’n on the entire tour. You could feel a song shaping through all our conversations. After playing a show one night in Vigone, we went to the town’s local hangout bar and started coming up with a melody for the tune. We wanted this song to express how we’ve grown as a band: Dirty, raw, and heavy. Bad boys who don’t care. The opening line is a tribute to one of the bands favorite songwriters, Lemmy Kilmister. “Judge says I’m guilty of being born / the only thing I did was what I want” That’s our way of way of saying fuck it.”

The second song is a cover of a Rock Goddess song. Recorded in the summer of 2019 in an old empty house in the woods outside of Portland, Oregon by Thee Slayer Hippy, Steve Hanford, and mixed/mastered by Nocturnal Media in Louisville, Kentucky, this burst of metal godliness features guest vocals by Janiece Gonzalez of San Francisco’s Wild Eyes.

Chain Gang will be released on digital formats from Ripple Music on September 25th.

WAR CLOUD:
Alex Wein – Vocals/Guitar
Nick Burks – Guitar
Joaquin Ridgell – Drums
Sam Harman – Bass

http://facebook.com/WarCloudisComing
http://warcloudiscoming.bandcamp.com/
http://warcloud.bigcartel.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ripple-Music/369610860064
https://ripplemusic.bandcamp.com/
http://www.ripple-music.com/

War Cloud, Earhammer Sessions (2020)

The very first thing that The Wholly Other has to offer is tension. A chugging guitar begins the second album from London four-piece Black Helium — and the introduction of drummer Diogo Gomez to the fold — and it’s soon joined by a militaristic snare as the aggressively-titled “Hippie on a Slab” begins to unfurl. Offered up through Riot Season Records, The Wholly Other, both the name of the album and its execution, would seem to be deriving from Black Helium‘s drive toward individuality in heavy psychedelia and beyond.

The band — here guitarist/vocalists Stuart Gray and Davey Mulka and bassist/vocalist/graphic artist Beck Harvey alongside Gomez — made their debut in 2018 with the likewise ambitious and confrontational Primitive Fuck (review here, and it wouldn’t necessarily be correct to call The Wholly Other classier in its delivery, but it is obvious in listening to its six-track/41-minute run that Black Helium learned a few crucial lessons from their time in the studio and were able to translate those into this batch of material.

They didn’t lack confidence before — one does not call a record Primitive Fuck in a timid spirit — but there’s an element of direction to The Wholly Other that comes through likewise in its individual pieces and in the front-to-back listening experience. Tonally and melodically rich, they are brazen enough stylistically to require their audience’s attention and grab it without asking, and the effect of “Hippie on a Slab” is to do precisely that, with the already noted tension of its rhythm as well as its deceptively memorable chorus. It is a clever opener, with a short intro of birdsong before the guitar and hi-hat kick in — there’s a floor tom thud that starts off as well — and the ensuing energy buildup that seems headed toward release over the song’s first 90 seconds before… it stops. Dead.

It’s just for a few seconds, but it’s a really important few seconds. In the first minute and a half of The Wholly Other, Black Helium are telling their audience to broaden their expectations, and maybe even to raise them somewhat. This isn’t going to be simple genre fare, a runthrough of well trod clichés and familiar elements. In subsequent side A tracks “Two Masters” and the 10-minute “Death Station of the Goddess,” respectively, they directly reference Nirvana‘s “Drain You” in another build and make the likewise pivotal choice of keeping the established vocal chant mellow even as the track hits into one of the album’s most consuming washes of tone. In making choices like these, Black Helium simply put themselves on another level of songcraft, and whether this is done in calculated fashion — a kind of progressive decisiveness behind each nuance throughout — or in the raw spirit of what comes out of the jam room by collaborative instinct, the same holds true.

There are, of course, holdover aspects from Primitive Fuck that carry into The Wholly Other. “Hippie on a Slab”‘s later reaches play cacophony over atmospheric spaciousness, and even the Britgrunge of “Two Masters” rampages through a dense fuzz as it makes its way back toward its central riff to close. “Death Station of the Goddess” is an inevitable focal point in its graceful procession and ensuing mania, which is something that its 10:34 side B counterpart “Pink Bolt” — positioned as the centerpiece of that side’s three tracks rather than as the album’s finale; another clever move to contradict genre convention — doesn’t try to match, instead playing out in less linear fashion as it moves from heavy post-rock airiness into a wandering jam and resolving in a lumbering plod that tops the Electric Wizard-style horrormaking of the sample-topped roller “One Way Trip” just before and rumbles beneath its own noisy crescendo.

Shit is massive. Tell your friends or someone else will.

Can it be that after all this, Black Helium find some kind of collective resolution? “Teetering on the Edge,” which rounds out The Wholly Other feels like a peace offering in following “Pink Bolt.” As though the four-piece were scooping up the melted remnants of their audience’s psyche and saying, “Sorry about that, here’s this now, everybody take a breath.” Assuming the purposeful nature of how the two sides of The Wholly Other play out, with the first two tracks leading into “Death Station of the Goddess” and “Pink Bolt” surrounded on either side — these two more extended pieces playing off the shorter cuts around them — the flow with which Black Helium cap off, as though harnessing the ethereal presence of an ultra-mellow Dead Meadow, isn’t to be understated. They’ve already blown out the airlock. It’s time to explore the vacuum.

So they do, with no less aplomb than they brought to The Wholly Other at its noisiest and most sonically forceful. They never quite return to the tension of “Hippie on a Slab,” even in “Two Masters,” which has its own chug, but the album remains informed by it nonetheless, and the sense of not knowing what to expect at any given turn throughout is something they use masterfully to their advantage when it comes to carving out their sonic persona in the manner they seem to have set as their goal. That too is an outgrowth of the work they did on the debut, marking out a range of avenues they might traverse and, here, forging a modus that fluidly or strikingly draws from among them as best serves the songs. This is harder than it sounds, rarer than it sounds, and certainly ‘other’ enough to be noteworthy.

And when considering the attention to detail Black Helium bring to their second album, one shouldn’t ignore Harvey‘s cover art either, the freaked-out freneticism of it and the geometric shape beneath. The font and positioning of the band’s name would seem to be important as well, and at least to my eyes it recalls the staging of the Now That’s What I Call Music series of top 40 pop compilations. If that is the standard to which Black Helium have set themselves against and what they’re reacting to, their second LP could not be better named. Perhaps most exciting of all, though, is that even after this collection of songs is over, it’s hard to guess how the band might continue their forward creative growth, but whatever manifestations may lay ahead, The Wholly Other is a beast unto itself.

Black Helium, The Wholly Other (2020)

Black Helium on Thee Facebooks

Black Helium on Bandcamp

Black Helium on Instagram

Riot Season Records website

Riot Season Records on Bandcamp

Riot Season Records on Thee Facebooks

Here’s one I genuinely didn’t expect to see. Dutch doomers-turned-heavy-rockers-apparently-turned-doomers-again Celestial Season will release their first full-length in two decades on Oct. 23 through Burning World Records. They were a pretty significant presence in the Netherlands heavy underground, first as a death-doom band and then later on as rockers — think Cathedral‘s career arc — and their return is being positioned right alongside their heavier-crunching first two records, with Burning World going so far as to bundle the new album, The Secret Teachings, with reissues of 1995’s Solar Lovers and 1993’s Forever Scarlet Passion in a 3LP Box set. I am fascinated, and a little taken aback by what might be in store.

Consider this year has already seen releases from Katatonia, Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride. To throw Celestial Season into that mix is substantial, to say the least. I look forward to hearing what they’ve come up with after all this time.

Preorders up next week. Announcement came down the PR wire:

Celestial Season – Dutch Cult Doom-Metal Group Announce Their Return With New Album “The Secret Teachings”

Nearly twenty years after their last studio effort, Dutch cult doom-metal group Celestial Season announce their return with a new album titled “The Secret Teachings”, due out on October 23rd via Burning World Records.

Formed in the early nineties, the Dutch group attained international acclaim with their first two full-length albums, “Forever Scarlet Passion” from 1993 and “Solar Lovers” from 1995, both still regarded as seminal doom-metal releases right next to Anathema’s “Serenades”, Paradise Lost’s “Gothic” and My Dying Bride’s “Turn Loose the Swans”.

A mix of the “Forever Scarlet Passion” and “Solar Lovers” line-ups re-grouped to create what they labelled as the ‘Doom Era’ line up; with Stefan Ruiters back on vocals, Lucas van Slegtenhorst on bass, Olly Smit and Pim van Zanen on guitars, Jason Köhnen on drums and Jiska Ter Bals back on violin and Elianne Anemaat on cello.

Together, they’ve created and recorded an hour-long musical journey that not only recaptures the magic and splendor of their early years but also shows a masterful and well-balanced collaboration between seven talented and experienced musicians.

“The seeds of this new album have been growing and cultivated for many years, and there were many reasons to complete the full cycle, initiated so many years ago. It is a personal album but also a big thank you to those dedicated fans that have supported us all these years.” Says the band about this new album.

Burning World Records will proudly release the new album along with the re-release of the previous two classic ‘Doom Era’ LPs : “Forever Scarlet Passion” and “Solar Lovers”, both albums remastered from the original tapes by James Plotkin. Pre-orders for the two re-issues and a box set containing these albums and the new album “The Secret Teachings” will go live next Friday, September 4th, to coincide with Bandcamp Friday.

https://www.facebook.com/CelestialSeason
https://www.burningworldrecords.com
https://burningworldrecords.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/burningworldrecords

Celestial Season, Solar Lovers (1995)