Posted in audiObelisk on November 23rd, 2020 by JJ Koczan
French trio Appalooza will make their debut on Ripple Music early next year with their second full-length, The Holy of Holies. The Brest-based troupe were recently announced as one of a set of four pickups for groups with releases to come in 2021, and with the unveiling of “Conquest” and the striking cover art for The Holy of Holies — suitably enough by Wild Horse Artworks, working in the style of John Dyer Baizley — a fuller picture begins to emerge of things to come.
Certainly, Appalooza‘s first, self-titled long-player gave some clues as to what they were about when it came out in 2018, but in listening to “Conquest,” you’ll want to pay particular attention to the fullness of the tones and the spaciousness of the mix. The band, who seem to take a smidge-plus of influence from the Wovenhand school of neo-Americana and treat it to a due roughing up and thickening of low end — make it heavy, in other words — exhibit a marked scope on the song in question, from the weighted roll that takes hold initially, tipping chapeau in some ways to the progressive heft of Parisian countrymen Abrahma while ultimately taking their own direction. The first turn is aggro, but the build smooths into a longer, acoustic-driven break, and the end-result impression is that The Holy of Holies won’t be so willing to be pigeonholed.
What does that mean for the entirety of the record? I don’t know, I haven’t heard it yet. But if you, like me, are so, so, so very done with 2020, you might consider digging into the song below as a glimpse at an optimistic future on the horizon, if one that’s still rooted in the sounds of the past.
The band very kindly offers some comment below on the album to come, and if you’re the type to keep an eye out for preorders, Ripple‘s Bandcamp is certainly a good place to start. It’s linked below.
Enjoy:
Appalooza, “Conquest” official track premiere
Appalooza on The Holy of Holies:
“‘The Holy Of Holies’ is an ironic comment on religion. A storm is coming and ready to send mankind to a certain death. They are deprived and punished for their individualism, appearing already dead. They accept it and seek a new being to venerate, then send a scapegoat to the desert with all their sins, to find the demon Azazael, the Holy of Holies. This fallen angel takes possession of mankind. He reincarnates them into a half-man half-beast species by transplanting a horse skull, symbol of a lost freedom. Our lyrics deal with subjects such as the lie of religion, the failure to assist a person in distress, the exploitation of man by man, the disappointment that one may have in general towards people, the eternal questioning about our existence and the universe.”
APPALOOZA released their first two demos “Squamata” and “Chameleon” respectively in 2013 and 2014, further to which they embarked across the pond for their first ever US tour, taking them to Colorado, Nevada and California. Fired up by a brand new energy ensuing from this successful experience, the band officially released their eponymous debut in 2018, quickly followed by a second North American taking them from the Midwest lands to the Pacific Coast.
Some hundred shows later, APPALOOZA signed to Californian powerhouse Ripple Music for the release of their sophomore album “The Holy Of Holies” in early 2021. The beginning of a new era driven by an album that perfectly embodies the trio’s musical and visual reincarnation, through an intense sonic escape and ultimately, freedom.
Appalooza is : Sylvain – Vocal/Guitar Vincent – Drum Tony – Bass The Horse – Arrangements
Posted in Bootleg Theater on November 23rd, 2020 by JJ Koczan
At this point in the pandemic, I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this you’ve watched a ‘live stream’ of one sort or another, whether that’s actually a band playing live as it goes out or a special airing of a prior-recorded performance or set. And I feel safe making that assumption because it’s been 10 months, we’ve all had a lot of time at home, and my social media feed has been filled with people increasingly wistful in their “I miss live shows” posts. Myself included.
Well, Hydra, from Pleszew, Poland, released their first album, From Light to the Abyss, through Piranha Music this past August. Only together for about a year before issuing the five-tracker, the band quickly prove with it that they’ve got their heads together when it comes to knowing what they want to do in doom rock and classic, darker-tinged rolling riffage. Wearing their Iommi on their collective sleeve, the band’s songs move between the catchy, almost Uncle Acid-ic “No One Loves Like Satan” to the more oldschool doom of “Secrets of the Undead,” with guitarist Dabek (there’s an ogonek on the ‘a’ his name I can’t get to show up in WordPress, and for that I apologize) and bassist Vanat sharing vocal duties atop the steady progression filled out by guitarist Mieszko and drummer Yahoo. They ask little of the listener in terms of indulgences, riff righteously and very clearly came into their debut knowing what they wanted to accomplish in terms of sound. If you can’t respect that, I’ve got nothing for you.
In addition to the five cuts from From Light to the Abyss itself, the live session premiering in its 47-minute entirety below also includes the new song “The Unholy Ceremony,” which finds the four-piece ranging into including keys for the first time, already showing a propensity for growth and moving forward from the album, which again, has been out for about three months. The video and audio were recorded at their own Acoustic Studio, which might well be named for the tiles of the drop ceiling situated directly above the band as they play. There are three or four cameras working throughout, the audio is pro-shop, and the band are situated with their amps isolated and Yahoo positioned somewhere that I can’t even tell if he’s facing the other three or somewhere else entirely. He gets his own camera and earns it through his play.
So you’ve seen live steams. Fine. Probably you’ve seen one for a band you already know, maybe that you miss seeing on stage. Here’s a chance to do that other great thing that live music lets you do, and that’s discover something cool you might not have encountered before. I’m not about to tell you Hydra are a genre revolution — they’re not — but they’re a band who wanted to make a racket and they’re doing exactly that here. If that doesn’t get you through to the killer nod at the outset of “Magical Mind” in the video below, chances are it’s your own loss.
Because the songs of From Light to the Abyss are presented out of order, and because it’s a cool record, I’ve included the full album stream from Bandcamp at the bottom of this post as well. Some comment from Vanat and more background follows the clip itself.
Please enjoy:
Hydra, From Light to the Abyss live session at Acoustic Studio premiere
Vanat (bass) on From Light to the Abyss live session:
“During the past few months many of our shows have been cancelled. We really missed playing live and so we got inspired to record a live stream. We had many ideas on how to present our material on the web but we finally settled on recording a full show in our studio (Acoustic Studio) where we have also recorded our first album. We wanted it to sound properly which would be hard to achieve without professional support. The space in the studio was quite small but with the help of our friend Szymon we managed to create a nice video.
“Even though we cannot play many concerts right now, we keep on working. We have recently came up with a new single “The Unholy Ceremony” which will probably appear on the next album, but you can already hear this one on the live stream. In this track we maintain our classic style but we also used a synthesizer for the first time to give it a different vibe.”
Setlist: 00:00 – Creatures of the Woods 08:10 – No One Loves Like Satan 15:03 – Secrets of the Undead 21:52 – The Unholy Ceremony (NEW!) 30:06 – When the Devil’s Coming Down 38:15 – Magical Mind
HYDRA was formed in 2019 in Pleszew, the hometown of the beautiful stoner doom RED SMOKE FESTIVAL. The band consists of Vanat (bass), Yahoo (drums), Mieszko (guitar) and Dabek (guitar & vocal), who is also well known from another Polish act – Red Scalp.
Piranha Music, an independent label from Toru?, released their full-length debut, “From Light to the Abyss,” on 21 August 2020. The amazing album artwork was designed by Pawel Mioduchowski (of almighty Dopelord).
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 23rd, 2020 by JJ Koczan
I’ll be honest, a new Swedish duo releasing their first two-songer as a seven-inch probably is news around here most days, and I won’t pretend it’s not, but when that duo consists of guitarist/vocalist John Hoyles and drummer Axel Sjöberg, it’s worth taking a little extra note. The band is called The Population, and between the two players involved, it’s a pedigree that includes Spiders, Big Kizz, Witchcraft and Graveyard. So yes, in other words, significant. That was my point in the first place.
The two tracks, “Sacrifice” and “Anthropocene/Anthropocide,” both hover right around three minutes long, and you can decide for yourself which one is the victor as they duke it out for catchy supremacy. Neither of these cats is a stranger to boogie, of course, but there’s a Detroit-style (Stooges, MC5) thrust here especially in the second cut that speaks volumes of what they might do with a full-length. First of all, probably make it about 28 minutes long. Ha. We’d be lucky to have it.
No socials yet, just Bandcamp. That’s linked below, along with the stream of the song:
Come on and dig The Population!
The Population is John Hoyles and Axel Sjöberg. Two, by now, almost veterans in everything called rock’n’roll. They’ve always enjoyed each other’s friend- and musicianship throughout the years of touring together with different bands (Witchcraft and Graveyard) and also playing together in the early days of Spiders and John’s solo records.
They’ve chosen to present their new band with a brand new 7”, released by themselves. It’s pressed in an edition of 200, with a cover by Karin Lindgren. The two songs Sacrifice backed with Anthropocene/Anthropocide. Sacrifice is a classic classic heavy rock song, it has swinging guitar riffs, heavy drums, wild guitar solos and a slide that sounds like all the whales in the oceans were summoned to sing backing vocals. Anthropocene/Anthropocide is a faster, more energetic and punky song. It deals with the disgust you can feel for yourself and contemporary society.
The songs were recorded and mixed by Oskar Lindberg at Svenska Grammofonstudion. Expect more songs to be released from that session and live shows when the pandemic has come to an end. When the edition of 200 is sold out, the songs will be made available on the standard electronic platforms.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on November 20th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
By no means has Jesu been dormant, it’s just been seven years since the last time there was an album out. 2013’s Every Day I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came occurred even as project founder, spearhead and sometimes-sole-member Justin K. Broadrick had already begun to revive and push forward with his other band, Godflesh. That wildly influential UK act would release a live album recorded at Roadburn playing the groundbreaking 1989 Streetcleaner LP in its entirety, the 2014 Decline and Fall EP (review here), and two full-lengths, 2014’s A World Lit Only by Fire (review here) and 2017’s Post-Self (review here), as well as sundry other short offerings/one-offs, in the intervening years. As Godflesh ascended to priority, the two-piece also played numerous festivals around the world — they’d eventually do 1991’s Pure in full as well — and thereby further cement their legacy with a new generation of fans.
But again, Jesu — also stylized all-lowercase: jesu, and pronounced “yay-zoo” — weren’t entirely gone. There were collaborations with Dirk Serries and Sun Kill Moon in 2016 and 2017, and a redux collaboration based on the track “Christmas” with Yang Li in 2018. An EP, Never, landed in July 2020, and the awaited full-length return of Jesu comes in the somewhat forebodingly titled Terminus, an eight-track/51-minute outing that speaks of endings and beginnings, delves into personal introspection, and ultimately finds its place emotionally and sonically drifting, floating away atop a gentle sea of heavy post-rock. Terminus brings its share of lumbering riffs in its opener “When I Was Small” and its title-track, “Sleeping In” and the later “Disintegrating Wings,” and a churning rhythm is nothing less than a sonic signature for Broadrick. But on a creative level, he’s no more held to that here than he is the barking shouts and harsh beats one might find on a Godflesh release. Jesu is simply and has (mostly) been since its 2004 Heart Ache EP and self-titled full-length a different incarnation of Broadrick‘s creative process — and it should be noted that neither is that process so delineated in terms of two manifestations. See also: JKFlesh, production and remixing work done under his own name, and various others through the years, Final, Techno Animal, and so on.
And given that is has been more than half a decade since the prior LP, Terminus‘ arrival comes with due welcome. Tracked mostly by Broadrick himself on guitar, synth, vocals and who-kn0ws-what-else with Ted Parsons on drums for “When I Was Small,” “Terminus” and “Don’t Wake Me Up,” its general atmosphere is familiar ground for Jesu in emotive explorations of past and present, lyrics looking to moments of regret, wistfulness and sometimes self-critique. At one point in “Alone,” Broadrick asks, “Am I your sight?/Or just a slight?,” even as “Disintegrating Wings” seems to make a more outward-looking assessment, “Lies are your truth/Truth is your lies,” that, as with any discussion of too-fragile objective veracity, is easy enough to place within the sphere of modern social discourse. Whether that’s Broadrick‘s intent or not, I don’t know — I’d be glad to ask; it’s been nearly a decade since I last interviewed him — as the lyrics are purposefully impressionistic in keeping with the vague outlines of the cover art and indeed the blurring between styles in the music itself, evoking the same questions the title-cut engages as to where an ending ends and a beginning begins. Maybe we’re not supposed to know, and indeed the album does close with the hypnotic instrumental “Give Up,” shoving off on a steadily fading beat that seems consumed by a wash of looped guitar and synthesized melody.
That sort of wandering course, a build up perhaps from an initial experiment or melody that pans out in a direction as it goes, is a crucial foundation for Jesu‘s work, and that holds even in “When I Was Small,” which is arguably the most straightforward of inclusions here. It’s all the more fitting, then, that the leadoff track comes immediately accompanied by “Alone,” the shortest piece at 4:19 and a near-immediate surge of melodicism and hook-making that in other hands would simply be summer-ready pop, but here has a metal-on-metal clang of a beat keeping time to Broadrick‘s dreamy vocals and winding synth. Lyrics toy with rhymes — “well, tell, hell” and “bright, light, sight, slight” in the two verses — and though clearly the song is intended to engage with pop and Britpop in particular, there is an element of twist in terms of aesthetic and it holds to the depth of mix that the opener established.
“Terminus” (9:30) and “Sleeping In” (8:39) feel paired for immersion. Once Terminus has gotten its throw-you-for-a-loop first 10 minutes out of the way in “When I Was Small” and “Alone,” it digs into its own atmospheric heart in the title-track, not departing entirely from the weight of “When I Was Small” or even the shimmer of “Alone,” but using both as elements in its own linear structure, capping with a gentle letting go and stretch of silence ahead of “Sleeping In,” which unfolds gradually, beautifully and with a patience that shifts smoothly into the cinematic post-rock of “Consciousness” with a masterful touch. That sets up the final stretch of Terminus in the relatively subdued, minimal-feeling-but-not-actually-minimal “Disintegrating Wings,” and the leaving-here last pair of “Don’t Wake Me Up” and “Give Up,” the former of which dedicates its second half to a brighter-sounding freedom, and the latter which is all the more ethereal for its lack of component verses even as it holds its beat for much of the duration.
Put together in a period between 2016 and this year, Jesu released Terminus last week. I didn’t know it was coming, but I bought it and wanted to write about it and somehow this seemed like the appropriate way to do that. I don’t know what if anything it foretells about a direction for Broadrick — if Terminus is his way of putting Godflesh to rest for the time being and shifting back toward Jesu as a primary outlet — or if that’s something that really could be known at this point, if it matters one way or the other.
What matters, of course, is the music. As always, I hope you enjoy that.
Thanks for reading.
—
Yesterday I was feeling in need of an outside reminder of why I do this. I was busy chasing down The Pecan, who for the last several weeks since it started to get colder and we haven’t been outside as much, has been furiously butting heads and increasingly rigid in his demands for things to be a certain way, and I saw some email or message whatever it was come in nagging about some low-stakes shit and I very nearly texted a friend and asked what the fuck I need this for in my life at this point. I didn’t, mind you, but the fact that I even came close to doing so is out of character for me.
I’m not fishing for compliments. I’m not. I get notes from people who say thanks for doing this and that means a tremendous amount. It was just kind of a rut week, watching COVID-19 case levels rise, putting the house back on lockdown as we have, kid not napping in the afternoon anymore, my fucking body, etc. On Wednesday I took a whole xanax and fell asleep watching Daniel Tiger on the couch with The Patient Mrs. and The Pecan before the latter went to bed. Actually got some decent snuggles. It was probably the highlight of my week. That and the Grayceon record, anyhow.
I don’t know what’s going on today. I was gonna take The Pecan and do a pre-weekend grocery run to Shop-Rite, which is apparently the only store on the planet that has the right granola bars — Amy’s Organics Oatmeal Raisin, in the red box — but I don’t know about dealing with other humans, especially as it’ll be circa lunchtime when The Pecan’s bus drops him off, and that place fills up because of prepared foods, etc. There’s really no right answer at this point for leaving the house, except maybe 7 in the morning or 9 at night and I’m hopefully asleep by then.
Ah hell, kid just got up. I can hear him thumping around upstairs and he ran in his closet, which means dirty diaper coming soon into my future. Better punch out here.
Great and safe weekend. I’m gonna try and take a few minutes tomorrow to get my head together. We’ll see how it goes. Hydrate, wear a mask and all that. Much love.
Posted in Reviews on November 20th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
The opening verse narrative of Vessel of Light‘s third long-player in as many years, Last Ride, begins with frontman Nathan Opposition (né Nathan Jochum, also of Ancient VVisdom) saying “For as long as I can remember, you’ve always been hard to forget…” and ends with “Now your body is mangled and your skull belongs to me.” This has been part and parcel for the Ohio/New Jersey-based outfit since they released their self-titled debut EP (review here) through Argonauta Records in 2017, and subsequently followed with the first album, Woodshed (review here), and second, Thy Serpent Rise (review here), in 2018 and 2019. Murder fantasy. Kidnapping, dismemberment, murder. Usually it’s implied if not explicitly stated that the victim is a woman and that the speaker in the lyrics feels as though they’ve been somehow done wrong, lied to, betrayed, etc.
It was an especially sexualized turn taken on Thy Serpent Rise, and in answering back to that, Last Ride (released through Nomad Eel Records) brings 10 tracks and 41 minutes of likewise death-obsessed fare, suitably brooding in mood and dark in a tone somewhere between straightforward heavy metal and doom. Last Ride is unquestionably the most realized version of Vessel of Light‘s sound they’ve yet offered. With founding parties Opposition and guitarist Dan Lorenzo (Hades) having introduced bassist Jimmy Schulman (Hades, Dan Lorenzo‘s solo band) and drummer Ron Lipnicki (ex-Overkill) last time around, Vessel of Light‘s complete-lineup incarnation benefits from both the familiarity of the players involved — none of the Jersey-based trio behind Opposition were strangers to each other before this grouping — and from the personality and playing styles of each. Instrumentally and in terms of production, the songs on Last Ride are varied in tempo and aggression while keeping in mind the overarching mood and progression of the record as a whole. Despite the geographic disparity, they come across as though written in a room with Opposition working out the lyrics as they went.
That in itself is a triumph for a band working with the full, oh-my-god-how-are-we-still-driving-across-this-state mass of Pennsylvania between them, but the real growth of Vessel of Light is in Opposition‘s performance here. In layered vocals that weave into and out of harmony, he recalls Dirt-era Alice in Chains in songs like “Torture King” and the side-B opener “Web of Death,” a speedier, swinging complement to Last Ride‘s nod of a leadoff title-track. Subtle shifts of arrangement in the verses of “There’s No Escape” and a burst of melody that accompanies the instrumental surge of “Voices of the Dead” feel worked on, harnessed over a period greater than the time since the last record came out, and demonstrate plainly the evolution of Vessel of Light beyond “project” and into “band.” Opposition comes across as a more patient and more dynamic vocalist, and his performance throughout turns horror-show depictions into sing-along-ready hooks.
The question is really how much one wants to sing along with these lyrics.
It is a testament to Vessel of Light‘s sense of craft just how little of a question it is when it comes to Last Ride. Their songwriting has grown progressively sharper as they’ve moved quickly between one batch of material and the next, mostly without a focus on live shows, but having done a few along the way, and whether it’s a roller like “Disappearing Pact” or the shout-laced closer “The Death of Innocence,” they balance atmosphere and rhythmic purpose fluidly across the record’s span. To wit, the lead-in the finale gets with “In the Silence,” which is inarguably the most spacious single piece the band has yet done; it feels like an experiment that worked. As Opposition spends much of side B periodically engaging growls and shouts — “Voices of the Dead,” “In the Silence,” “The Death of Innocence” — there’s little if any sacrifice of melody, and it comes across less like a crutch being leaned on than another tool in the singer’s malevolent arsenal being used to these bleak, unremittingly dark tales.
And I guess that’s what it ultimately comes down to with Vessel of Light. In construction and performance, they’ve done nothing but evolve, and Last Ride is the largest step forward they’ve taken in that regard. There is not a misplaced riff, an incoherent groove or a lost-seeming opportunity for melody in these songs. The band are in command of what they do, Lorenzo and Opposition come across as working together more deeply as songwriters than they yet have, and the full-lineup only brings more chances for dynamic in actually executing the material in the studio. They’ve grown in everything but the themes around which their songs are based.
A function of art, and particularly of good art, is to challenge convention, and in many instances that involves exploring the darker elements the human psyche, the more dangerous places one’s mind can go. I’m not saying Opposition is making an invalid artistic statement with his lyrics, but for an album that so much shows the band in question moving forward and challenging itself to offer a richer, more complex product to its listeners — especially, it should be noted, in the vocal department and Opposition‘s own performance — the monochromatic nature of death, death, murder, death, going from “Torture King” to “Carving Station” to “There’s No Escape” to “Web of Death,” and so on, feels almost stubborn in its refusal to branch into other ideas. Among genre fare in literature and pop culture, horror is singularly able to discomfort those who take it on, and there’s no doubt Vessel of Light are good at it at this point.
I’ll willingly confess to not being the world’s biggest horror fan or having an abiding fascination with murder, so there are questions I’m left with at the end that I don’t have easy answers for. With the point of view of the speaker in the lyrics as the perpetrator, where does the sense of the listener as complicit come in? Where’s the challenge other than in the sheer engagement with gruesome or otherwise objectionable notions? Is it really just about making the audience squirm? Perhaps, instead of overthinking it thusly, the way to go with Last Ride is just indeed to take the ride through the songs themselves and engage them for the evident progression they represent in the band’s approach on the whole. Last Ride is the best work Vessel of Light have done to-date. It is a firm statement of identity on the part of the band and an aesthetic dive into the grim, violent reaches of consciousness. There is nothing it seeks to accomplish that it does not accomplish.
Last month, desert rock progenitors Yawning Man issued the audio version of Live at Giant Rock through Heavy Psych Sounds, and on Nov. 20, they’ll follow-up with the video from which that soundtrack was taken. Filmed in the Coachella Valley in front of — you guessed it — a very big rock, the project helmed by Ryan Jones (see also: Stoned & Dusted) and the band is clearly intended to highlight the ties between the desert scenery and the music itself. Shots are fluid and languid, but like the graffiti on the rocks, there’s a sense of life throughout that goes beyond the trio of guitarist Gary Arce, bassist Mario Lalli and drummer Bill Stinson playing in the foreground.
Yawning Man‘s decades-spanning legacy and influence need not be recounted here. Suffice it to say that desert rock as it exists now would not without them. The three-piece were to have had a busy 2020 as they continued to support their 2019 studio album, Macedonian Lines (review here). In addition to having been booked for the Californian editions of the Heavy Psych Sounds Fest, they were set to appear at Monolith on the Mesa, Stoned & Dusted, they did manage to tour in Australia and New Zealand, but were to appear at Keep it Low in Munich, Germany, which no doubt would’ve been part of a European tour and coincided with other festivals.
As an answer to that, Live at Giant Rock finds Yawning Man doing what many other acts have done in trying to make the most of what they’ve got. In the interview that follows, Lalli talks of course about this strange year, the process of making this unorthodox concert film, the creative process for Yawning Man in particular, his work in this band and Fatso Jetson, and more.
Thanks for reading and watching if you do.
Yawning Man, Live at Giant Rock Interview with Mario Lalli, Nov. 19, 2020
Yawning Man‘s Live at Giant Rock video is out Nov. 20. The audio is available now and streaming below.
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 20th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Hey there, Star Wars fans. I haven’t seen The Mandalorian at all, but my understanding is it’s a good time to be on board with what’s unquestionably the coolest of the major science-fiction franchises — unless we’re counting Alien, and then there’s no question that’s the coolest — and though each installment of the last trilogy and those side movies seemed to have its share of detractors, the fandom itself persists unabated and across generations. My nephews and their father watch Star Wars together, play the video games and so on. It’s a thing they share. That’s nice.
Set to be added to the non-canon mythology of that particular Galaxy Far, Far Away is the debut album from Polish instrumentalists Bantha Rider. Titled Binary SunsetMassacre, it’s pretty clearly referencing the planet Tatooine with its iconic twin suns, and the title of the new single “De Wanna Wanga,” is what Bib Fortuna says to Luke Skywalker when the latter shows up at Jabba’s palace. You may recall the Bib Fortuna action figure came with the playset. I do.
I wonder if writing an instrumental album about Star Wars counts as fan-fic. I wonder what the message boards would say if they saw this album cover. I wonder if the whole record sounds as cool as the track below.
So many questions:
BANTHA RIDER – Binary Sunset Massacre
Polish trio Bantha Rider’s debut album will be out 4th of December, via independent label Piranha Music. “Binary Sunset Massacre” is an instrumental stoner doom trip across the desert planet with riffs heavy as Jabba the Hutt and rhythm section “too accurate for sand people”.
Band’ve just released their first single called “De Wanna Wanga”.
Tracklisting: 1. Binary Sunset Massacre 2. De Wanna Wanga 3. The Gamorrean 4. Boonta Eve 5. Sagittarius 6. Rancor’s Delight 7. March of the Banthas 8. Pazuzu
Bantha Rider is: Art – Drums Chris – Guitar Bart – Bass
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 19th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
More background than details in the below, but take it to heart one way or the other that there will be a new Apostle of Solitude record out next year. The Indianapolis doomers join an increasingly crowded field of those with post-2020 plans, but you’ll note there’s no real mention of concrete touring notions or anything like that. We don’t even have a name for a record or confirmation that it’s done/mixed/mastered, so there’s a ways to go one assumes before things like cover art and songs start showing up.
But if you needed something today to be stoked about, this should qualify, and if it doesn’t, the band’s 2018 LP, From Gold to Ash (review here), is streaming at the bottom of the post, and once you revisit that, you’ll be stoked anyway, so there you go.
That record, incidentally, has been on my phone since I first heard it. I change shit on my phone all the time depending on what I need to be hearing in a given week. Very few albums last there for anything close to a stretch. It’s one more sign among many that it was a special record that I remain basically unwilling to part with it even as I look forward to what they’ve got coming next.
From the PR wire:
Apostle of Solitude – Spring 2021!
Formed in 2004 by vocalist-guitarist Chuck Brown (The Gates of Slumber) with heavy hitter Corey Webb on drums, Apostle of Solitude released their debut ‘Sincerest Misery’(via Eyes Like Snow) in 2008 and the follow-up ‘Last Sunrise’ in 2010 (via Profound Lore as well as Eyes Like Snow) before adding vocalist-guitarist Steve Janiak (Devil to Pay) in 2011 and then Mike Naish (Shroud of Vulture, Astral Mass) in 2015. The band released their epic third album ‘Of Woe and Wounds’ for Cruz Del Sur Music in 2014, followed by multiple tours across the US and triumphant 2016 European tour.
Apostle of Solitude’s most recent album, 2018’s “From Gold To Ash”, was widely heralded by fans and critics alike as both the band’s best work to date, and a defining moment in American doom metal. Largely defined by the heartfelt and emotive dual vocals of Brown and Janiak, ‘From Gold To Ash’ covers a wide spectrum of heavy, from raging instrumentals to introspective guitar duos, monolithic doom riffs and reflective, melodic heartache. In support of that album, the band embarked on a southern US tour (with labelmates Pale Divine), their second European tour (including the Hammer of Doom festival at the revered Posthalle Wurzburg in Germany, and headlining the Doom Over Vienna festival in Austria), a special performance at the Maryland Doom festival, and a handful of Midwest US dates.
While 2020 saw a worldwide pandemic that dramatically altered many aspects of life around the globe, the band waited, and then implemented appropriate safety measures in order to continue writing their next album. This, the band’s fifth full length (and yet to be titled) album, is set to be released spring of 2021, again on Italy’s Cruz Del Sur Music, and available on CD, vinyl LP, and digital formats. As a nod to the tradition set by the band’s prior works, the album is set to be recorded at Russian Recording in Bloomington, IN with studio mastermind Mike Bridavsky behind the board. Following the release of the album, and once the world is safe to do so, Apostle of Solitude plans to tour again domestically and abroad in support of the new album.
APOSTLE OF SOLITUDE is: Corey Webb – drums Chuck Brown – guitars, vocals Steve Janiak – guitars, vocals Mike Naish – bass
