Posted in Whathaveyou on September 26th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
A few different tours coming together here, right? Stoned Jesus, Greenleaf and Somali Yacht Club on the road together. Elder, Pallbearer and Irist. Hippie Death Cult out there on their own now that their would’ve-been-tourmates High Reeper dropped off. Naxatras making the rounds. Sasquatch doing like they do on a stretch with Orange Goblin before continuing a longer European run (you should always stretch first; ain’t nobody getting younger). Electric Citizen out with Fu Manchu. All of this is organized, mapped out ahead of time, and a lot of it is starting this weekend at Up in Smoke 2022 in Pratteln, Switzerland, as though to save you the time, money and effort necessary to hit up all these individual tours, which may or may not be routed everywhere to start with.
You can see the final lineup below with Fu Manchu, Orange Goblin and Elder getting top billing, and as the first of Sound of Liberation‘s Fall festivals in Europe — Keep it Low in Munich and Desertfest Belgium will follow in the coming weeks, and there’s a bunch of others besides — Up in Smoke is distinguished by vibe even more than timing. I’ve always been curious what it would feel like to sleep in the venue after a show. Indoor camping. Are there showers? Could be a pretty smelly affair by the third day; Up in Stink Lines, if you will. But more about the mindset. Are you so locked into the experience at that point that you wake up, find breakfast and are ready to roll as a part of the thing? I’m not sure I’d ever actually be brave enough to do it — not exactly the camping type in any context — but it could be interesting. Sound of Liberation has also posted the time-table, if you’d like to know more about what time to wake up.
The lineup below is final final final, and the day splits make it look like one hell of a festival. If you’re going to be there, I hope it’s a blast. I’d love to hear about it:
UP IN SMOKE 2022 – DAY SPLIT & DAY TICKETS – UP IN SMOKE FESTIVAL Z7 Pratteln 2022
Posted in Bootleg Theater on September 23rd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Just for reference, this isn’t actually the first time I’ve closed out a week with an unofficial release, aka a bootleg. I normally wouldn’t — obviously, or it’d’ve happened more often by now — but the category has only been called ‘Bootleg Theater’ for the last 13 years, so you can think of it as periodically living up to the premise if that helps. In any case, Type O Negative never actually put out an honest-to-goodness live album — you’ll recall 1992’s The Origin of the Feces was sub-titled ‘Not Live at Brighton Beach,’ and indeed, it wasn’t really live. If nothing else, I’d offer Blood Melting Extremity as a candidate or substitute for that.
Actually, if this show, recorded from the soundboard at the Gino in Stockholm, Sweden, on Oct. 2, 1994 (the set ends in the video above at 55:30; there’s a demo of “Summer Breeze/Set Me on Fire,” a track by Laibach and other stuff tacked on here but I went with what I could find), was to finally see a proper mixdown, master and release, it would only be earned. The sound quality is incredible enough to justify that — also the many, many subsequent incarnations the bootleg has received, including titles like Even Snow Dies and Bloody Stockholm, etc.; if you’re interested, I chose Blood Melting Extremity over those because it’s the CD of the show I first bought — and the performance, stage banter and setlist encapsulate everything that worked so well about the quintessential Brooklyn four-piece at that point in their history. Touring for their landmark 1993 third album, Bloody Kisses, the band were at an early pinnacle, embracing goth metal in their over-the-top Sabbath-meets-Beatles fashion with frontman Peter Steele, a prototype of the metal icon he’d become throughout the rest of the 1990s, leading the four-piece on bass with Kenny Hickey on guitar/vocals, Josh Silver on keys and Sal Abruscato (I think; he was also in Life of Agony at the time; if it wasn’t him it would’ve been Johnny Kelly of course) on drums.
I’ll gladly put the version of “Gravitational Constant: G = 6.67 x 10^-8 Cm^-3 Gm^-1 Sec^-2” on Blood Melting Extremity forward as one of the best things the band ever did. For that alone, this disc. But “Too Late: Frozen,” the Black Sabbath cover “Paranoid,” and especially “Christian Woman” shine here, tinted bright-but-muted green and the latter introduced in trademark deadpan by Steele as, “A song about a girl who loved god just a little bit too much,” ahead of “Bloody Kisses (A Death in the Family)” and “Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All),” the latter of which would’ve already been a hit for them by the time they got abroad on this tour. Given the audience also singing along to “Christian Woman” earlier, gloriously audible, that would’ve been true of that song as well. And closing out, played just a little bit faster than on the album, the keyboard line in “Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All)” is all the more clearly a send-up of goth culture, heavy metal, everything.
As the vocal warble in “Too Late: Frozen” demonstrates early, one of the things that distinguishes Blood Melting Extremity from various other Type O Negative bootlegs out there — and many other even soundboard bootlegs that I’ve encountered at various points; Black Sabbath‘s Asbury Park 1975 (discussed here) comes to mind as one of the few of its caliber — is that the quality of the recording allows both the nuance and the power in the band’s sound to shine through at this point. The chug of “Christian Woman” in the verse threatens to swallow Steele‘s voice, yet in the second half of the song when he slips into sexualized rhythmic breathing — gleefully homoerotic and goth-theatrical as ever — it comes through clearly, as do the chime sounds there, keys as their take on “Paranoid” slips into Seals and Crofts, and the surging instrumental melody along with the utterly doomed march of “Bloody Kisses (A Death in the Family)” as it moves toward its eighth minute before the declining mourning bell tones back the final push.
It’s not just a novelty release of a band playing songs; their dynamic is captured. I was fortunate enough to see Type O Negative multiple times prior to Steele‘s death in 2010, and Blood Melting Extremity is who they were on stage. I don’t know if you’d call them “hungry” — thirsty perhaps, in the parlance of our times — in the sense of cloyingly going for audience approval, but they make it not at all counterintuitive to think of a band playing slow as nonetheless being urgent. That is to say, they sound young, but also like the emergent masters of their sound that they were. The hook in “Black No. 1” alone is ready proof, waiting to be heard. And when Steele shouts the line, “it was like fucking the dead,” there’s melody there too, which along with the “I don’t know…” added to the first verse of “Christian Woman” speaks to the band’s open approach to their own material. They were confident, arrogant, enough to change it up at this point, and they’d continue to be throughout their career, but locked in as a group in terms of chemistry and each member of the band knowing where the other was headed. As far as shows go, this is superlative, and I mean that.
There are arguments to be made that Bloody Kisses was the peak of the band. I don’t think it was — and if you want to have a friendly debate on the point, golly, that sounds like a good time — but there’s no question this era was a special time for them and the beginning of an ascent that would go even further, commercially and aesthetically, on 1996’s October Rust (discussed here). They’d built on what they’d done across 1991’s Slow Deep and Hard and The Origin of the Feces, come into their own as performers and songwriters (Steele is largely credited with the latter, but I won’t downplay the contributions of the others in making Type O Negative who they were), and however dumb they may have called themselves, they were clearly intelligent and self-aware enough to know they had a good thing going.
But to bottom-line it for you, I could’ve closed out this week with Bloody Kisses (and I will close a week with it eventually). I’ve had it on my desktop for the better part of a month, just waiting for its turn. But I went with Blood Melting Extremity instead.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thank you for reading.
—
So, Quarterly Review, huh?
You should know that after writing that sentence I stopped for 25 minutes and tried desperately to get caught up on email. It didn’t work. I’m still at 182, down from 191 new. Most of that is Questionnaires from May, June, July, this week. I just suck at everything, but please understand I’m doing my best.
I had a (telehealth) appointment yesterday with a neurologist. Given my family history and the fact that I continue to feel like I’m from a different planet than, say, everybody else, I wanted to try to understand what’s going on with my brain. Am I on the spectrum? Apparently, probably not. But I do have ADHD and some kind of autonomic brain dysfunction, which was oddly reassuring to hear. I was offered ADHD meds but I was like, “No way lady, I’m in the middle of a Quarterly Review! I’ve got 50 records to write up next week and need all the hyper-focus I can get!”
But it was fascinating to be so nailed. The doctor ran through an array of symptoms/manifestations in my personality and, even more, physicality, that I’ve dealt with throughout my entire life, and for someone I’ve never actually met to have that much of a sense of at least that part of who I am, well, yeah. Read me like a book. She even went so far as to prescribe orthotics for my fucked up feet. She told me to go swimming more. So I guess I’m doing that this morning.
I need to have blood work done — blood tests are a running gag for me going back over half a decade to all the fertility treatments before The Pecan was born; she said it and I rolled my eyes because of course blood work — and have a neuropsychological evaluation to schedule for like two months from now. A big questionnaire to fill out that I’m sure will be daunting emotionally. I don’t know what I’m looking to find out other than maybe to give a name to why I seem to myself to operate and to feel so differently from other people — understand, this is not me calling myself “special” unless you mean “special” in the sense of “unable to function like everyone else” — and maybe give a little bit of context and future understanding to my son.
Because he’s the one who’s going to reap all my bullshit, and I know that precisely because I did the same. But my father never sought treatment of any kind, never even tried to take meds (I’m still testing waters being off Citalopram after about five years; it’s going as you might expect), just spent his whole life wanting to die and then eventually dying alone, not even cognizant it was happening at the time. I don’t want to be remembered like that. At least Joe — that’s his name — will be able to say I tried to understand what was happening and why I was the wreck I was when I’m gone. I’m trying.
Anyway, life takes you to interesting places.
More Quarterly Review next week, also a full stream and probably not as much of a review as I’d like to write for Sonic Flower on Thursday, and Abronia video premiere (already reviewed the album so that’ll be easier) on Tuesday and other odds and ends throughout the week as they come up.
I hope you have a great and safe weekend. We’re coming into Fall now, which is my favorite season, because it’s beautiful and you can wear flannel without getting overheated. I hope you enjoy it as well.
Posted in Reviews on September 23rd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
See you back here Monday, huh? Yeah. If onslaughts of new music are your thing and you’ve been following along throughout this week — first, thank you — and second, we’ll pick up after the weekend with another 50 albums in this double-wide Fall 2022 Quarterly Review. This was a good week though. Yesterday had some genuine killers, and I’ve added a few to my best-of lists for the end-of-year stuff to come. There’ll be another Quarterly Review then too. Never any trouble filling slots with new releases. I’ve already started, in fact.
Madness. Didn’t I say something yesterday about one thing at a time? Ha.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
Crippled Black Phoenix, Banefyre
There are times where I wonder if Crippled Black Phoenix aren’t just making fun of other bands, their audience, themselves, and everything, and then there are times when I’m pretty sure they are. To wit, their latest outing for Season of Mist, Banefyre, is nearly an hour into its 90-plus-minute runtime before they offer up the 10-minute “Down the Rabbit Hole,” and, well, if we’re not down it by then, where the hell are we? See also “Wyches and Basterdz” near the outset. Whatever else they may be, the long-running, dynamic, progressive, dark heavy rock troupe surrounding founding songwriter and guitarist Justin Greaves are like nothing else. They offer shades of influences, discernable elements from this or that style, this or that band — “The Reckoning” has a bit of The Cure, “Blackout77” filters that through Katatonia, etc. — but are never working to be anyone but themselves. Accordingly, the thoroughly British depressive triumphs throughout Banefyre — looking at you, “I’m OK, Just Not Alright” — are part of an ongoing narrative of creative development that will hit its 20th year in 2024 and has offered listeners an arc of emotive and stylistic depth that, in whatever genre you want to try to confine it, is only ever going to escape. The only real tragedy of Banefyre is that they’ll probably have another record out before this one can be properly digested. That’ll take a few years at least.
An Oklahoma hardcore-born circus of sludge-toned tragedies personal, cultural and socioeconomic played out across nine songs/42 minutes held together at times seemingly most of all by their disenchantment, Chat Pile‘s debut album, God’s Country is arthouse angularity, raw aggression and omnidirectional intensity. As the UK’s post-industrial waste once birth’d Godflesh, so now come vocalist Raygun Busch, guitarist Luther Manhole, bassist Stin and electronic-drummer Cap’n Ron with brilliantly constructed tales of drugs, murder, suicide, loss, violence, misery, and general wretchedness of spirit, presented instrumentally with quick turns that draw from hardcore as noted, but also death metal, sludge, industrial doom, and so on. The lyrics are masterful drug poetry and delivered as such, semi-spoken, shouted, some singing, some acting out, such that you never know from what direction the next punch is coming. “Why” tackles homelessness, “Pamela” demonstrates the impossibility of coping with loss, “Slaughterhouse” is what it says, and closer “Grimace_Smoking_Weed.jpeg” resolves its nine minutes in long-held feedback and crashes as Busch frantically screams with decreasing intelligibility until it’s even words anymore. A perfect finish to a stunning, terrifying, moving first album. Don’t go into it expecting listenability. Even as “I Don’t Care if I Burn” offers some respite, it does so while describing a murder fantasy. It’s not the only one.
Fuck yes Gen-Z doom. Yes. Yes. Yes. Show the old men how it’s done. Please. Not a gray hair in the bunch, or a bullshit riff, or a lazy groove. Early Moods got their influences in line with their 2020 debut EP, Spellbound (review here), and you can still hear some Candlemass in “Broken,” but their self-titled debut LP stamps its foot to mark their arrival as something new and a fresh take on classic ideas. Vocalist Alberto Alcaraz is a distinct presence atop the hard-distorted guitars of Eddie Andrade and Oscar Hernandez, while Elix Feliciano‘s bass fuzz-rumbles through the interlude “Memento Mori” and Chris Flores‘ big-room-ready kick counts in the Trouble‘d early highlight “Live to Suffer.” Later on, “Curse of the Light” leans into the metal end of classic doom metal ahead of the chugging roll of “Damnation” and the finisher “Funeral Macabre,” but Early Moods have already put these things in play by then, as demonstrated with the eponymous title-track. Songs are tight, crisply produced, and executed to style with a promise of more growth to come. It’s an easy record to get excited about, and one of 2022’s best albums. I might just buy the tape and the CD.
Less than a year after a return born of celebrating the project’s 10th anniversary with the Ink fo’ Blood (review here) full-length, prolific visual artist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and singer Alexander von Wieding returns with Larman Clamor‘s latest, With a Deadly Hiss. As ever, formalities are dispensed with in favor of deceptively intricate arrangements of slide acoustic and electric guitar, whatever’s-around-style percussion and von Wieding‘s telltale throaty vocals, which on “Swamp Jive” and even a bit of the six-minute finale “Eleventh Spell to Cast” draw back the throaty grit in favor of a more melodic, somewhat less performative delivery that suits the material well. Songs are mostly short — there are 11 of them and the aforementioned closer is the longest by about three minutes — but each is a blinking glimpse into the humid, climbing-vine world of von Wieding‘s creation, and in instrumentals like the manic percussion of “Monkey and the Trash Goblins” and the distortion-backed algae-delica of “Iguana at the Fountain,” the brashness of “Tortuga” and the playful falsetto of the leadoff title-track are expanded in such a way as to hint of future paths to be explored. One way or the other, Larman Clamor remains an entity unto itself in concept, craft and delivery, and if With a Deadly Hiss is just another forward step en route to the next stop on down the road, even better.
Recorded in 2021, The Necromancers‘ third album would seem to have a mind toward picking up where the Poitiers, France-based four-piece left off pre-pandemic with 2018’s Of Blood and Wine (review here). Can hardly blame them, frankly. Now self-releasing (their first two albums were on Ripple), the semi-cult heavy rockers bring an air of classic metal to the proceedings but are remarkably cohesive in their craft, with guitarist/vocalist Basile Chevalier-Coudrain fronting the band even in the studio as demonstrated on the ’80s metal roller “The Needle,” which follows the eight-minute doom-adjacent unfolding of “Crimson Hour” — and that “adjacent” is a compliment, by the way; The Necromancers are less concerned with playing to genre than with it — wherein guitarist Robin Genais adds a short but classy solo to underscore the willful grandiosity. Bassist Simon Evariste and drummer Benjamin Rousseau underscore the grooves, prominent in the verse of the title-track, and while it’s guitars up front in traditionalist fashion, the truth is all four players are critical here, and it’s the overarching affect of the whole that makes When the Void Rose such an engaging listen, rather than the individual parts. That is to say, listen front to back for best results.
Though instrumental across its vast stretches, Les Lekin‘s Limbus — their first full-length since 2017’s Died with Fear, also on Tonzonen, and third overall — begins with a verbal message of hope, lyrics in German, in the beginning intro “Licht.” That gives a specifically covid-era context to the proceedings, but as the subsequent three massive sans-vocal pieces “Ascent” (14:14), “Unknown” (8:18) and closer “Return” (22:00), unfold, they do so with a decidedly otherworldly, deeply-weighted psychedelic verve. The narrative writes itself in the titles, so I’ll spare you the pretense of insight (on my part there), but note that if it was escapism through music being sought on the part of the meditative Salzburg three-piece, the richness of what’s on offer throughout Limbus is generous enough to share that experience with the audience as well. “Ascent” swells and builds as it moves duly upward, and in “Unknown,” the trio explores post-metallic atmospherics in a crunching midsection without ever losing sight of the ambience so central to what they’re doing, while it would be hard for “Return” not to be the highlight, drums and initial bass rumble giving way to a huge sounding, engrossing procession of atmospheric density. Les Lekin have been a critical favorite for a while now, and it’s easy to hear why, but their work here holds far more than academic appeal or to-genre conformity. They embody the release they would seem to have sought and still carry an exploratory spirit despite the clearly charted course of their songs.
LightShower is the fourth session from Hungarian jammers Highbay to see release in the last year-plus, and it arrives with the immediately noteworthy backing of Psychedelic Source Records. In the vein of many of that collective’s offerings, it is live recorded, probably improvised, and wholly instrumental, the trio vibing their way into a groove early on “Walking on Bubbles” and holding gently to that locked-in, entranced feel across the following five jams. The shimmering guitar tone, particuly as “Miracle Under Water” moves into the more extended “Spaceship” and the pleasantly funky “FunKing Dragons Above Fissure Mountains,” is a highlight, but the intention here is a full set, and I won’t take away from the fuzzier, riffier emergence later on in “FunKing Dragons” either, or, for that matter, the ready-to-wander post-rock float of closer “3D(ays) Trippin’.” It’s a big universe, and Highbay have their work cut out for them if they want to feel their way through all of it, but “Spaceship” mellows its way off into a greater beyond, and even “Hungover Sadness (’90s Romance)” manages to not be a drag as filtered through the trio’s chemistry. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t be the last time Highbay are heard from this year, but they’re yet another name to add to the list of Psychedelic Source-associated acts whose jammy sensibilities are helping manifest a new generation of Eastern European lysergic rock and roll.
Think of this as less of a review and more of a general reminder to throw a follow in the direction of Berkeley, California’s dug-in-as-hell Sound Animal, or at very least let your ears pay a visit every now and again to soak up some of the weirdo drone, dance, psych electronics and whatever else might be had on any given afternoon from the prolific solo-project. “Yes, Yes, You” is the latest single, but likely not for long, and it plays out across 3:33 of keyboardian ambience and recitations of the titular reassurance that would be soul-pop were they not so definitively experimental and part of such an ongoing creative splurge. Tucked away in a corner of the Bandcamp dimension, Sound Animal comes across as an outlet for ideas as much as sonics, and with the persistent thud of a beat beneath, one, two, three, four, the melodic serenity of the wash feels like direct conversation, with the listener, the self, or, more likely, both. It is beautiful and brief, as I’m told life also is, and it may just be the thing that came after one thing and before the next, but if you stop for a minute or three and let it sink in, you just might find a more substantial place to reside. Not gonna be for everyone, but the fact that “Yes, Yes, You” is so vague and yet so clearly encouraging rather than accusatory speaks to the artistic purpose writ large throughout Sound Animal‘s e’er expanding catalog. Wouldn’t be surprised or sad to find a subsequent single going somewhere else entirely, but again, just a reminder that it’s worth finding that out.
Somewhere between classic metal and doom, heavy rock’s riff-led impulses and cultish atmospheres there resides the Pesaro, Italy, trio Warcoe and their debut album, The Giant’s Dream. Led by guitarist/vocalist Stefano — who also plays bass on some of the later tracks — with bassist Carlo and drummer Francesco proffering thickened roll and punctuating rhythm all the while save for the early acoustic interlude “Omega Sunrise,” the band nestle smoothly into a modern-via-not-at-all-modern sphere, yet neither are they retro or aping ’70s methodologies. Maybe that moment has passed and it’s the ascent of the ’80s metal and doom we’re seeing here — or maybe I just slated Warcoe and Early Moods the same day and both bands dig Trouble and Death Row/Pentagram, I won’t pretend to know — but the bass in “Fire and Snow” is more of a presence than bass was pretty much ever 40 years ago, so to call The Giant’s Dream anything but ‘now’ is inaccurate. They lean into rock on “Thieves, Heretics and Whores” and manifest grim but stately lurch before the fade of the penultimate “Scars Will Remain,” but wherever each piece might end up, the impression is abidingly dark and offers a reminder that Italy’s history of cult doom goes farther back than most. Paul Chain, Steve Sylvester, your legacy is in good hands.
Hard to find info on the Boston or Boston-adjacent extreme-metal-inflected, sludge-toned dark hardcore outfit DONE — and that may just as well be anti-social-media mystique creation as the fact that their name is ungooglable — but the tape slays. Aged and Untreated hammers 15 scathing tracks into its 28 minutes, and dies on a hill of wintry black metal and barking hardcore mostly but not completely summarized in the turns of “Soulsplitter.” The fun part is when they bounce back and forth, throw in some grind on “To Curt on Waverly,” scratch your eyes out with “Dance for Them” — the second cut behind says-it-all-in-a-minute opener “Nah” — and willfully crash into a wall on the comparatively sprawling 2:35 “I Fucking Hate Thinking About You.” Haven’t seen a lyric sheet and probably won’t if my success rate in tracking down relevant factoids is anything to go by, but shit, I lived on the South Shore for seven years, including the record-breaking winter of 2014, and it sure felt a lot like this. Maybe they’re from Arizona, and if they are, I’m sure some hack would say the same thing, but hell’s bells Aged and Untreated is an intense listen, and its wreck-your-shit violence is meted out such that even the slightly-slower punch in the first half of “Hope Trickle” makes the song feel sarcastic. I wouldn’t put it on every day, but yeah. Righteously pissed.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 23rd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Gozu have finished recording their new album. Their sixth full-length, the yet untitled outing continues the Boston-based heavy rockers’ collaboration with producer Dean Baltulonis at Wild Arctic Studio in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who also helmed 2018’s Equilibrium (review here) and 2016’s Revival (review here), released on Metal Blade Records imprint Blacklight Media and Ripple Music, respectively.
As of now, the next LP is reportedly slated for a May 2023 release, also on Blacklight Media, and will also mark the first on-record appearance of drummer Seth Botos, who joined last fall. And I’m not saying I’ve heard any of the unmastered tracks or anything like that, but if you’ve been on board with the aggressive turn the last couple albums have taken, bringing metallic shove to coincide with the heavy rock groove and soul-bent melodicism. Dudes have only been on a tear for, I don’t know, a decade. No big deal. Also, there’s a song called “Joe Don Baker,” so anyone who’s ever watched the ‘Mitchell’ episode of MST3K should be immediately pleased.
More news to come on the album, of course, but in the meantime, Gozu‘s October tour is coming up, with more dates added since it was first announced in August. Have riffs, will travel. Find those show dates below, including stops at Desertfest Belgium and Heavy Psych Sounds Fest:
Our Euro tour kicks off in 3 weeks!! Couple of open dates on here so reach out to @heavypsychsounds_records if interested!! Giddy Up!! Poster by @hellespont_alhambra
Says Gaff: “We are extremely excited to get back over to Europe after this sensitive hiatus. New songs, new outlook and new attitude! What’s that delicious sound you hear? Sounds like more. Giddy up!”
FRI 14.10 2022 ANTWERPEN-DESERTFEST SA 15.10.2022 SAARBRUCKEN- HORST SU 16.10.2022 OPEN SLOT MO 17.10.2022. LJUBLJANA CHANNEL ZERO TU 18.10.2022 VIENNA ARENA BEISL WE 19.10.2022 OLDENBURG MTS RECORDS W/ NICK OLIVERI TH 20.10.2022 KIEL-SCHAUBUDE FR 21.10.2022 BERLIN-HPS FEST SA 22.10.2022 DRESDEN-HPS FEST SU 23.10.2022 SALZBURG ROCKHOUSE MO 24.10.2022 OPEN SLOT TU 25.10.2022 OPEN SLOT WE 26.10.2022 BASEL IRRSINN BAR TH 27.10.2022 ZURICH-SAFARI BAR FR 28.10.2022 FONTANAFREDDA-ASTRA SA 29.10.2022 ZEROBRANCO SIDRO
GOZU is: Marc Gaffney – guitar and vocals Joe Grotto – bass Doug Sherman – lead guitar Seth Botos – drums
Posted in Reviews on September 22nd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
On occasion, throughout the last eight years or so that I’ve been doing this kind of Quarterly Review roundup thing, I’ve been asked how I do it. The answer is appallingly straightforward. I do it one record at a time, listening to as much music as possible and writing as much as I can. If you were curious, there you go.
If, more likely, you weren’t curious, now you know anyway. Shall we?
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Russian Circles, Gnosis
You wanna know how big a deal Russian Circles are? I didn’t even get a promo of this record. Granted, I’m nobody, but still. So anyway, here I am like a fucking sucker, about to tell you Gnosis is the heaviest and most intense thing Russian Circles — with whose catalog I’m just going to assume you’re familiar because they’re that big a deal and you’re pretty hip; bet you got a download to review, or at least an early stream — have ever done and it means literally nothing. Just makes me feel stupid and lame. I really want to like this album. That chug in “Conduit?” Fuck yeah. That wash in “Betrayal?” Even that little minimalist stretch of “Ó Braonáin.” The way “Tupilak” rumbles to life at the outset. That’s my shit right there. Chug chug crush crush, pretty part. So anyway, instead of sweating it forever, I’ll probably shut Gnosis off when I’m done here and never listen to it again. Thanks. Who gives a shit? Exactly. Means nothing to anyone. Tell me why I do this? Why even give it the space? Because they’re that big a deal and I’m the nerdy fat kid forever. Total fucking stooge. Fuck it and fuck you too.
Are not all gods mere substitutes for the power of human voices united in song? And why not tonight for finding the grace within us? As Brother Bill, Sister Caroline and their all-colours Septaphonic congregation of siblings tell us, we’re only one step away. I know you’ve been dragged down, wrung out, you’ve seen the valleys and hills, but now’s the time. Church of the Cosmic Skull come forward again with the message of galactic inner peace and confronting the unreality of reality through choral harmonies and progressive heavy rock and roll, and even the Cosmic Mother herself must give ear. Come, let us bask in the light of pure illumination and revolutionary suicide. Let us find what we lost somewhere. All gods die, but you and I can live forever and spread ourselves across the universe like so much dust from the Big Bang. We’ll feel the texture of the paper. We’ll be part of the team. Oh, fellow goers into the great Far Out, there’s reverence being sung from the hills with such spirit behind it. Can you hear? Will you? There’s nothing to fear here, nothing sinister. Nothing to be lost except that which has held you back all along. Let it all move, and go. Open your eyes to feel all seven rays, and stand peeled like an onion, naked, before the truth being told. Do this. Today.
Saarbrücken duo Pretty Lightning follow 2020’s stellar Jangle Bowls (review here) with a collection of 14 instrumental passages that, for all their willful meandering, never find themselves lost. Heady, Dead Meadowy vibes persist on ramblers like “Sediment Swing” and “Splinter Bowl,” but through spacious drone and the set-the-mood-for-whatever “Glide Gently (Into the Chasm),” which is both opener and the longest track (immediate points) at just over five minutes, the clear focus is on ambience. I wouldn’t be the first to liken some of Dust Moves to Morricone, and sure, “Powdermill” has some of that Dollars-style reverb and “The Secret is Locked Inside” lays out a subtle nighttime threat in its rattlesnake shaker, but these ideas are bent and shaped to Pretty Lightning‘s overarching purpose, and even with 14 songs, the fact that the album only runs 43 minutes should tell you that even as they seem to head right into the great unknown wilderness of intent, they never dwell in any single position for too long, and are in no danger of overstaying their welcome. Extra kudos for the weirdness of “Crystal Waltz” tucked right into the middle of the album next to “The Slow Grinder.” Sometimes experiments work.
Combining burly modern heavy riffage, progressive flourish and a liberal dose of chicanery, Montana’s Wizzerd end up in the realm of Howling Giant and a more structurally-straightforward Elder without sounding directly like either of them. Their Fuzzorama Records label debut, the quizzically punctuated Space‽: Issue No. 001 echoes its title’s obvious nods to comic book culture with a rush of energy in songs like “Super Nova” and “Attack of the Gargantuan Moon Spiders,” the swinging “Don’t Zorp ‘n’ Warp” space-progging out in its second half as though to emphasize the sheer delight on the part of the band doing something unexpected. So much the better if they’re having fun too. The back half of the outing after the duly careening “Space Chase” is blocked off by the noisy “Transmission” and the bleep-bloop “End Transmission” — which, if we’re being honest is a little long at just under five minutes — but finds the band establishing a firm presence of purpose in “Doom Machine Smoke Break” and the building “Diosa del Sol” ahead of the record’s true finishing moment, “Final Departure Part 1: The Intergalactic Keep of the Illustrious Cosmic Woman,” which is both an adventure in outer space and a melodic highlight. This one’s a party and you’re invited.
Desert 9 is one of several projects founded by synthesist Peter Bell through a collective/studio called Mutaform in the Brindisi region of Southern Italy (heel of the boot), and the seven-song/63-minute Explora II follows quickly behind June’s Explora I and works on a similar theme of songs named for different deserts around the world, be it “Dasht-e Margo,” “Mojave,” “Gobi” or “Arctic.” What unfolds in these pieces is mostly long-ish-form instrumental krautrock and psychedelic exploration — “Arctic” is an exception at a somewhat ironically scorching three and a half minutes; opener “Namib” is shorter, and jazzier, as well — likewise immersive and far-outbound, with Bell‘s own synth accompanied on its journeys by guitar, bass and drums, the former two with effects to spare. I won’t take away from the sunburn of “Sonoran” at the finish, but the clazzic-cool swing of “Chihuahuan” is a welcome respite from some of the more thrust-minded fare, at least until the next solo starts and eats the second half of the release. The mix is raw, but I think that’s part of the idea here, and however much of Explora II was improvised and/or recorded live, it sounds like the four-piece just rolled up, hit record and went for it. Not revolutionary in aesthetic terms, but inarguable in vitality.
Originally pressed to tape in 2019 through Fuzz Ink and brought to vinyl through Sound Effect Records, Greek sludgers Gagulta begin their self-titled debut with an evocation of the Old Ones before unfurling the 13-minute assault of “Dead Fiend/Devil’s Lettuce,” the second part of which is even slower than the first. Nods and screams, screams and nods, riffs and kicks and scratches. “Late Beer Cult” is no less brash or disaffected, the Galatsi-based trio of ‘vokillist’ Johny Oldboy, baritone bassist Xen and drummer Jason — no need for last names; we’re all friends here — likewise scathing and covered in crust. Side B wraps with the 10-minute eponymous “Gagulta” — circle pit into slowdown into even noisier fuckall — but not before “Long Live the Undead” has dirty-steamrolled through its four minutes and the penultimate “War” blasts off from its snare count-in on a punk-roots-revealing surge that plays back and forth with tortured, scream-topped slow-riff madness. I don’t know if the Old Ones would be pleased, but if at any point you see a Gagulta backpatch out in the wild, that person isn’t fucking around and neither is this band. Two years after its first release, it remains monstrous.
Some 20 years removed from their debut album, Accidentally Making Enemies, and 13 past their most recent, 2009’s Eye Tree Pi (review here), London’s Obiat return at the behest of guitarist/keyboardist Raf Reutt and drummer Neil Dawson with the duly massive Indian Ocean, an eight-song collection spanning an hour’s listening time that brings together metallic chug and heavy post-rock atmospherics, largesse of tone and melody central to the proceedings from opener “Ulysses” onward. Like its long-ago predecessor, Alex Nervo‘s bass (he also adds keys and guitar) is a major presence, and in addition to vocalist Sean Cooper, who shines emotively and in the force of his delivery throughout, there are an assortment of guests on “Eyes and Soul,” “Nothing Above,” “Sea Burial” and subdued closer “Lightness of Existence,” adding horns, vocals, flute, and so on to the wash of volume from the guitar, bass, drums, keys, and though parts were recorded in Wales, England, Australia, Sweden, Norway and Hungary, Indian Ocean is a cohesive, consuming totality of a record that does justice to the long wait for its arrival while also earning as much volume as you can give it through its immersive atmospherics and sheer aural heft that leads to the ambient finish. It is not a minor undertaking, but it walks the line between metal and post-metal and has a current of heavy rock beneath it in a way that is very much Obiat‘s, and if they’re really back to being a band again — that is, if it’s not another 13 years before their next record — watch out.
Vienna five-piece Maunra enter the fray of the harsher side of post-metal with Monarch, their self-released-for-now debut full-length. With throaty growling vocals at the forefront atop subtly nuanced double-guitars and bouts of all-out chugga-breakdown riffing like that in “Wuthering Seas,” they’re managing to dare to bring a bit of life and energy to the generally hyper-cerebral style, and that rule-breaking continues to suit them in the careening “Embers” and the lumbering stomp-mosh of the title-track such that even when the penultimate “Lightbreather” shifts into its whispery/wispy midsection — toms still thudding behind — there’s never any doubt of their bringing the shove back around. I haven’t seen a lyric sheet, so can’t say definitively whether or not opener “Between the Realms” is autobiographical in terms of the band describing their own aesthetic, but their blend of progressivism and raw impact is striking in that song and onward, and it’s interesting to hear an early ’00s metal influence creep into the interplay of lead and rhythm guitar on that opener and elsewhere. At seven tracks/41 minutes, Monarch proffers tonal weight and rhythmic force, hints toward more melodic development to come, and underscores its focus on movement by capping with the especially rousing “Windborne.” Reportedly the album was five years in the making. Time not wasted.
Still mostly instrumental, formerly just-Ohio-based progressive heavy rockers Brujas del Sol answer the steps they took in a vocalized direction on 2019’s II (review here) with the voice-as-part-of-the-atmosphere verses of “To Die on Planet Earth” and “Myrrors” on their third album, Deculter, but more importantly to the actual listening experience of the record is the fact that they’ve never sounded quite this heavy. Sure, guitarist Adrian Zambrano (also vocals) and bassist Derrick White still provide plenty of synth to fill out those instrumentalist spaces and up the general proggitude, and that’s a signal sent clearly with the outset “Intro,” but Joshua Oswald (drums/vocals) pounds his snare as “To Live and Die on Planet Earth” moves toward its midsection, and the aggression wrought there is answered in both the guitar and bass tones as 12-minute finishing move “Arcadia” stretches into its crescendo, more about impact than the rush of “Divided Divinity” earlier on, rawer emotionally than the keyboardier reaches of “Lenticular,” but no less thoughtful in its construction. Each piece (even that intro) has an identity of its own, and each one makes Deculter a stronger offering.
A definite 2LP at nine songs and 68 minutes, Sergeant Thunderhoof‘s fifth full-length, This Sceptred Veil, is indeed two albums’ worth of album, and the songs bear that out in their complexity and sense of purpose as well. Not to harp, but even the concluding two-parter “Avon/Avalon” is a lot to take in after what’s come before it, but what Bath, UK, troupe vary their songwriting and bring a genuine sense of presence to the material that even goes beyond the soaring vocals to the depth of the mix more generally. There’s heavy rock grit to “Devil’s Daughter” (lil eyeroll there) and progressive reach to the subsequent “Foreigner,” a lushness to “King Beyond the Gates” and twisting riffs that should earn pleased nods from anyone who’s been swept up in Green Lung‘s hooky pageantry, and opener “You’ve Stolen the Words” sets an expectation for atmosphere and a standard for directness of craft — as well as stellar production — that This Sceptred Veil seems only too happy to meet. A given listener’s reaction to the ’80s metal goofery of “Show Don’t Tell” will depend on said listener’s general tolerance for fun, but don’t let me spoil that for them or you. Yeah, it’s a substantial undertaking. Five records in, Sergeant Thunderhoof knew that when they made it, and if you’ve got the time, they’ve got the tunes. Album rocks front to back.
The underlying experimentalism of Venetian Veil‘s new single “The Lamb” is there in the foundation of the song’s dying-light ambience. A 15-years-running collaboration from Sacramento, California — Susan Hunt and Jim Willig, hi — they put atmosphere ahead of traditionalism throughout the impending The Lands of the Living and the Dead, which is more substantive in flow and makeup than an EP but perhaps less in runtime than one commonly expects a full album to be; though perhaps we can just call it a “release” and chalk up one more convention being thoughtfully thwarted.
Mood is the defining current in “The Lamb,” but there is percussive movement in a kind of linear build as well, peppered through with wistfully cinematic keyboard and a purposefully understated figure of electric guitar. There’s a lift to the end some of Hunt‘s lines that reminds of Patrick Walker on the last 40 Watt Sun, but that’s more likely sonic coincidence than any influence either way, the two parties operating in largely different spheres.
But “The Lamb” doesn’t necessarily speak for the entirety of The Lands of the Living and the Dead — out Nov. 11 on Dune Altar with vinyl to follow — as “Quiver” just before rests on electronic pulsations and finds Willig on lead vocals, opener “Asleep in the Land of the Living” starts the release with a threat of feedback and exploratory but not necessarily harsh guitar noise, and the later “Awake in the Land of the Dead” drones pastoral ahead of the soundtracky “Treeline” and the Badalamenti-style brood-gaze “Phantom,” a subsequent remix of which closes. Still, life is short and the dictates of promotion are such that (most of the time) one doesn’t actually put out an entire offering while announcing it, so here we are. “The Lamb” offers intrigue and mystique, and in that and its patience certainly represents the rest of what surrounds.
I’d advise finding out for your sweet self on the player below which is followed by the aforementioned release announcement.
Enjoy:
VENETIAN VEIL is a creative duo from Sacramento, California, who, over the course of the last decade, have released a string of EPs and albums exploring a vast array of dark and ethereal sounds.
Having already started playing together in 2007 in the experimental post-metal band (Waning), Jim Willig (Lament Cityscape, Audioemetic) and Susan Hunt began releasing music as Venetian Veil in 2010. From the gothic kosmische instrumentals of their Conjurings audio cassette series and live film scores, to their more song-oriented albums fusing ambient, goth, and shoegaze sounds, the band has actualized their own virtual world of sound: the sounds of sleep transmissions from the minds of another world.
With their upcoming mini-album THE LANDS OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD, Venetian Veil weaves a tapestry of sound that could be described as minimilist-Morricone meets post-goth folk with the patience of Steve Von Till and the melancholic worldly beauty of Dead Can Dance. The album will enter the land of the living on 11.11.2022. Make a wish.
Posted in Reviews on September 21st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Day three, passing the quarter mark of the Quarterly Review, halfway through the week. This is usually the point where my brain locks itself into this mode and I find that even in any other posts where I’m doing actual writing I need to think about I default to this kind of trying-to-encapsulate-a-thing-in-not-a-million-words mindset, for better or worse. Usually a bit of both, I guess. Today’s also all over the place, so if you’re feeling brave, today’s the day to really dig in. As always, I hope you enjoy. If not, more coming tomorrow. And the day after. And then again on Monday. And so on.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Nadja, Labyrinthine
The second full-length of 2022 from the now-Berlin-based experimental two-piece Nadja — as ever, Leah Buckareff and Aidan Baker — is a four-song collaborative work on which each piece features a different vocalist. In guesting roles are Alan Dubin, formerly of Khantate/currently of Gnaw, Esben and the Witch‘s Rachel Davies, Lane Shi Otayonii of Elizabeth Colour Wheel and Full of Hell‘s Dylan Walker. Given these players and their respective pedigrees, it should not be hard to guess that Labyrinthine begins and ends ferocious, but Nadja by no means reserve the harshness of noise solely for the dudely contingent. The 17-minute “Blurred,” with Otayonii crooning overtop, unfurls a consuming wash of noise that, true, eventually fades toward a more definitive droner of a riff, but sure enough returns as a crescendo later on. Dubin is unmistakable on the opening title-track, and while Davies‘ “Rue” runs only 12 minutes and is the most conventionally listenable of the inclusions on the whole, even its ending section is a voluminous blowout of abrasive speaker destruction. Hey, you get what you get. As for Nadja, they should get one of those genius grants I keep hearing so much about.
El Paraiso Records alert! London Odense Ensemble features Jonas Munk (guitar, production), Jakob Skøtt (drums, art) and Martin Rude (sometimes bass) of Danish psych masters Causa Sui — they’re the Odense part — and London-based saxophonist/flutist Tamar Osborn and keyboardist/synthesist Al MacSween, and if they ever do a follow-up to Jaiyede Sessions Vol. 1, humanity will have to mark itself lucky, because the psych-jazz explorations here are something truly special. On side A they present the two-part “Jaiyede Suite” with lush krautrock rising to the level of improv-sounding astro-freakout before the ambient-but-still-active “Sojourner” swells and recedes gracefully, and side B brings the 15-minute “Enter Momentum,” which is as locked in as the title might lead one to believe and then some and twice as free, guitar and sax conversing fluidly throughout the second half, and the concluding “Celestial Navigation,” opening like a sunrise and unfolding with a playful balance of sax and guitar and synth over the drums, the players trusting each other to ultimately hold it all together as of course they do. Not for everybody, but peaceful even in its most active moments, Jaiyede Sessions Vol. 1 is yet another instrumental triumph for the El Paraiso camp. Thankfully, they haven’t gotten bored of them yet.
True, most of these songs have been around for a few years. All eight of the tracks on Omen Stones‘ 33-minute self-titled full-length save for “Skin” featured on the band’s 2019 untitled outing (an incomplete version of which was reviewed here in 2018), but they’re freshly recorded, and the message of Omen Stones being intended as a debut album comes through clearly in the production and the presentation of the material generally, and from ragers like “Fertile Blight” and the aforementioned “Skin,” which is particularly High on Fire-esque, to the brash distorted punk (until it isn’t) of “Fresh Hell” and the culminating nod and melody dare of “Black Cloud,” the key is movement. The three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Tommy Hamilton (Druglord), bassist Ed Fierro (Tel) and drummer Erik Larson (Avail, Alabama Thunderpussy, etc. ad infinitum) are somewhere between riff-based rock and metal, but carry more than an edge of sludge-nasty in their tones and Hamilton‘s sometimes sneering vocals such that Omen Stones ends up like the hardest-hitting, stoner-metal-informed grunge record that ever got lost from 1994. Then you get into “Secrete,” and have to throw the word ‘Southern’ into the mix because of that guitar lick, and, well, maybe it’s better to put stylistic designations to the side for the time being. A ripper with pedigree is a ripper nonetheless.
Proggy, synth-driven instrumentalist space rock is the core of what Italy’s Jalayan bring forward on the 45-minute Floating Islands, with guitar periodically veering into metallic-style riffing but ultimately pushed down in the mix to let the keyboard work of band founder Alessio Malatesta (who also recorded) breathe as it does. That balance is malleable throughout, as the band shows early between “Tilmun” and “Nemesis,” and if you’re still on board the ship by the time you get to the outer reaches of “Stars Stair” — still side A, mind you — then the second full-length from the Lesmo outfit will continue to offer thrills as “Fire of Lanka” twists and runs ambience and intensity side by side and “Colliding Orbits” dabbles in space-jazz with New Age’d keyboards, answering some of what featured earlier on “Edination.” The penultimate “Narayanastra” has a steadier rock beat behind it and so feels more straightforward, but don’t be fooled, and at just under seven minutes, “Shem Temple” closes the proceedings with a clear underscoring the dug-in prog vibe, similar spacey meeting with keys-as-sitar in the intro as the band finds a middle ground between spirit and space. There are worlds being made here, as Malatesta leads the band through these composed, considered-feeling pieces united by an overarching cosmic impulse.
Following 12 years on the heels and hells of 2010’s Dusk (review here), San Antonio, Texas, doomers Las Cruces return with the classic-style doom metal of Cosmic Tears, and if you think a hour-long album is unmanageable in the day and age of 35-minute-range vinyl attention spans, you’re right, but that’s not the vibe Las Cruces are playing to, and it’s been over a decade, so calm down. Founding guitarist George Trevino marks the final recorded performance of drummer Paul DeLeon, who passed away last year, and welcomes vocalist Jason Kane to the fold with a showcase worthy of comparison to Tony Martin on songs like “Stay” and the lumbering “Holy Hell,” with Mando Tovar‘s guitar and Jimmy Bell‘s bass resulting in riffs that much thicker. Peer to acts like Penance and others working in the post-Hellhound Records sphere, Las Cruces are more grounded than Candlemass but reach similar heights on “Relentless” and “Egyptian Winter,” with classic metal as the thread that runs throughout the whole offering. A welcome return.
Kind of a sneaky album. Like, shh, don’t tell anybody. As I understand it, the bulk of The Freeks‘ nine-tracker Miles of Blues is collected odds and ends — the first four songs reportedly going to be used for a split at some point — and the two-minute riff-and-synth funk-jam “Maybe It’s Time” bears that out in feeling somewhat like half a song, but with the barroom-brawler-gone-to-space “Jaqueline,” the willfully kosmiche “Wag the Fuzz,” which does what “Maybe It’s Time” does, but feels more complete in it, and the 11-minute interstellar grandiosity of “Star Stream,” the 41-minute release sure sounds like a full-length to me. Ruben Romano (formerly Nebula and Fu Manchu) and Ed Mundell (ex-Monster Magnet) are headlining names, but at this point The Freeks have established a particular brand of bluesy desert psych weirdness, and that’s all over “Real Gone” — which, yes, goes — and the rougher garage push of “Played for Keeps,” which should offer thrills to anyone who got down with Josiah‘s latest. Self-released, pressed to CD, probably not a ton made, Miles of Blues is there waiting for you now so that you don’t regret missing it later. So don’t miss it, whether it’s an album or not.
South Africa-based self-recording folk guitarist Duncan Park answers his earlier-2022 release, Invoking the Flood (review here), with the four pieces of In the Floodplain of Dreams, bringing together textures of experimentalist guitar with a foundation of hillside acoustic on opener and longest track (immediate points) “In the Mountains of Sour Grass,” calling to mind some of Six Organs of Admittance‘s exploratory layering, while “Howling at the Moon” boasts more discernable vocals (thankfully not howls) and “Ballad for the Soft Green Moss” highlights the self-awareness of the evocations throughout — it is green, organic, understated, flowing — and the closing title-track reminisces about that time Alice in Chains put out “Don’t Follow” and runs a current of drone behind its central guitar figure to effectively flesh out the this-world-as-otherworld vibe, devolving into (first) shred and (then) noise as the titular dream seems to give way to a harsher reality. So be it. Honestly, if Park wants to go ahead and put out a collection like this every six months or so into perpetuity, that’d be just fine. The vocals here are a natural development from the prior release, and an element that one hopes continue to manifest on the next one.
Crushing and atmospheric in kind, Poland’s MuN released Presomnia through Piranha Music in 2020 as their third full-length. I’m not entirely sure why it’s here, but it’s in my notes and the album’s heavy like Eastern European sadness, so screw it. Comprised of seven songs running 43 minutes, it centers around that place between waking and sleep, where all the fun lucid dreaming happens and you can fly and screw and do whatever else you want in your own brain, all expressed through post-metallic lumber and volume trades, shifting and building in tension as it goes, vocals trading between cleaner sung stretches and gut-punch growls. The layered guitar solo on “Arthur” sounds straight out of the Tool playbook, but near everything else around is otherwise directed and decidedly more pummeling. At least when it wants to be. Not a complaint, either way. The heft of chug in “Deceit” is of a rare caliber, and the culmination in the 13-minute “Decree” seems to use every bit of space the record has made prior in order to flesh out its melancholic, contemplative course. Much to their credit, after destroying in the midsection of that extended piece, MuN make you think they’re bringing it back around again at the end, and then don’t. Because up yours for expecting things. Still the “Stones From the Sky” riff as they come out of that midsection, though. Guess you could do that two years ago.
I’ve never had the fortune of seeing long-running Dallas trio Elliott’s Keep live, but if ever I did and if at least one of the members of the band — bassist/vocalist Kenneth Greene, guitarist Jonathan Bates, drummer Joel Bates — wasn’t wearing a studded armband, I think I might be a little disappointed. They know their metal and they play their metal, exclusively. Comprised of seven songs, Vulnerant Omnes is purposefully dark, able to shift smoothly between doom and straight-up classic heavy metal, and continuing a number of ongoing themes for the band: it’s produced by J.T. Longoria, titled in Latin (true now of all five of their LPs), and made in homage to Glenn Riley Elliott, who passed away in 2004 but features here on the closer “White Wolf,” a cover of the members’ former outfit, Marauder, that thrashes righteously before dooming out as though they knew someday they’d need it to tie together an entire album for a future band. Elsewhere, “Laughter of the Gods” and the Candlemassian “Every Hour” bleed their doom like they’ve cut their hand to swear an oath of fealty, and the pre-closer two-parter “Omnis Pretium (Fortress I)” and “Et Sanguinum (Fortress II)” speaks to an age when heavy metal was for fantasy-obsessed miscreants and perceived devil worshipers. May we all live long enough to see that particular sun rise again. Until then, an eternal “fucking a” to Elliott’s Keep.
Sometime between their 2017 debut, Jungla (review here), and the all-fire-even-the-slow-parts boogie and comprises the eight-song/35-minute follow-up Ambos Mundos, Barcelona trio Cachemira parted ways with bassist Pol Ventura and brought in Claudia González Díaz of The Mothercrow to handle low end and lead vocals alongside guitarist/now-backing vocalist Gaston Lainé (Brain Pyramid) and drummer Alejandro Carmona Blanco (Prisma Circus), reaffirming the band’s status as a legit powerhouse while also being something of a reinvention. Joined by guest organist Camille Goellaen on a bunch of the songs and others on guitar, Spanish guitar and congas, Ambos Mundos scorches softshoe and ’70s vibes with a modern confidence and thickness of tone that put to use amid the melodies of “Dirty Roads” are sweeping and pulse-raising all at once. The name of the record translates to ‘both worlds,’ and the closing title-track indeed brings together heavy fuzz shuffle and handclap-laced Spanish folk (and guitar) that is like pulling back the curtain on what’s been making you dance this whole time. It soars and spins heads until everybody falls down dizzy. If they were faking, it’d fall flat. It doesn’t. At all. More please.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 21st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Couple different angles from which to approach Mythosphere, whether you take them as three-fourths of the current lineup of Cruz Del Sur Music labelmates Pale Divine or half of the band that was Beelzefuzz coming together with guitarist Victor Arduini of Arduini/Balich and Entierro, among others. Any way you go, the trad metal clarity of purpose in the songwriting and guitar and folkish mystique in Dana Ortt‘s vocals makes for a fascinating and immediately individualized blend. The band previously premiered their video for “King’s Call to Arms” here when they announced they’d signed with Cruz Del Sur, and preorders have now launched for their debut full-length, Pathological, ahead of a Nov. 18 release date.
Cool record. Works from familiar pieces but thankfully avoids both “true metal” posturing and sounding like everything else. I assume another song or two will be unveiled before the album itself, but if you missed that “King’s Call to Arms” video, it’s under the PR wire info below, along with a new teaser that’s handy-dandy shareable on the old-style social medias.
Check it out:
Mythosphere – “Pathological” to be released on Nov 18
Past and present members of Beezlefuzz, Fates Warning and Pale Divine team up in new band that marries pure metal with rich, progressive rock flourishes!
On their Pathological debut album, Mythosphere e re-ignites the flame of classic, emotional metal with eight songs of depth, introspection and harmony.
Pathological track listing: 1. Ashen Throne 2. King’s Call to Arms 3. For No Other Eye 4. Pathological 5. Walk in Darkness 6. Star Crossed 7. No Halo 8. Through the Night
MYTHOSPHERE’s origins began in 2020 when Ortt and McCloskey started working on material intended to be the continuation of BEELZEFUZZ. Their songs came to fruition in 2021 once the pandemic subsided, prompting Ortt to reach out to Arduini to lend his identifiable brand of lead guitar playing. McGinnis was the natural choice for bass, thus completing MYTHOSPHERE, an outfit steeped in traditional metal and doom history that promises to live up to its lofty billing.
Recorded & Mixed by Noel Mueller at: Tiny Sound Studios Mastered by Arthur Risk Produced by Noel Mueller & Mythosphere
Logo by Shane Rice Front & Back Cover Design by Bill Kole Photos by Shane Gardner Layout by Tamara Abarzua-Valencia
Mythosphere lineup: Dana Ortt: Vocals/guitar Victor Arduini – Guitar Ron McGinnis – Bass Darin McCloskey – Drums
