Posted in Whathaveyou on October 31st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
It’s a big ‘un. And if you’re like me, there are a couple names that stick out from the poster below, particularly Earthride and The Skull. Both are tribute sets, of course. The Skull frontman Eric Wagner passed away in 2021 after complications from a covid-19 infection and the loss of Earthride‘s Dave Sherman just a couple months ago continues to be keenly felt in and beyond the confines of the scene he called home. Karl Agell (ex-C.O.C.) will step in for The Skull, while Scott Angelacos of Hollow Leg is set to front a rotating cast of players for Earthride. You would be hard-pressed to find a more fitting occasion for honoring one’s own, except perhaps this gig in a couple weeks.
Plenty of familiar, returning acts as well as newcomers. Hippie Death Cult and will travel from the Pacific Northwest, Switchblade Jesus and Doomstress make an appearance (not the first for either) from Texas, and Red Mesa come straight out of the capital-‘desert’ Desert. Meanwhile, Faith in Jane, Black Lung, Bloodshot, Mangog, Mythosphere, Thonian Horde, Spiral Grave and plenty of others represent the Maryland home team, High Leaf and Thunderbird Divine trip down from Philly, Curse the Son (CT) and Guhts (NY) come from farther north, Hollow Leg make the trip out from Florida, and Lo-Pan, Doctor Smoke and Brimstone Coven head over from the Midwest. That’s just off the top of my head. I’m not sure there’s ever been a MDDF pulling so many bands from different parts of the country, though of course international bands have featured in the past as well.
There are always some shakeup between the first announcement and the final lineup, but so far so good here. Any way it works out, Maryland Doom Fest has nothing to prove at this point. Guaranteed banger.
Here’s the poster (oy) and the lineup, the latter in alphabetical order:
Maryland Doom Fest 2023
June 22-25 – Frederick, MD
We are proud to present to you The Maryland DooM Fest 2023 lineup roster and 2023 promotional art!!!!
We showcase over 50 kickass bands bringing you heavy riffs over these #4daysofdoom!!
The centerpiece art was created by Joshua Adam Hart (Earthride, Unorthodox, Revelation, Chowder, Stout, to name a few).
Josh is a career tattoo artist and is currently scheduling appointments at Triple Crown Towson Tattoo. Schedule to get ink from him at info@triplecrowntowson.com
The incredible flyer layout, coloring, and design is by our very talented Bill Kole (make sure to check out his band Ol’ Time Moonshine)!!
Above the Treachery, Akris, Black Lung, Bloodshot, Bonded by Darkness, Borracho, Brimstone Coven, Cobra Whip, Conclave, Crowhunter, Curse the Son, DeathCAVE, Doctor Smoke, Doomstress, Double Planet, Dust Prophet, Earthride, Faith in Jane, False Gods, Flummox, Fox 45, Future Projektor, Gallowglas, Grim Reefer, Guhts, Helgamite, High Leaf, Hippie Death Cult, Hog, Hollow Leg, Hot Ram, Las Cruces, Leather Lung, Lo-Pan, Mangog, Mythosphere, Orodruin, Red Mesa, Severed Satellites, Shadow Witch, Smoke the Light, Spiral Grave, Switchblade Jesus, The Skull, Thonian Horde, Thousand Vision Mist, Thunderbird Divine, Unity Reggae, VRSA, Weed Coughin, Wizzerd
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 31st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
When Destroyer of Light are done — and hopefully that’s not for a long time and many more riffs from now — there’s gonna be a whole lot of people who will be sorry they never got to see them in-person, and there’s going to be a whole lot of people who will be really glad they did. Now, I’ve been on both ends of that equation, and I firmly believe the former is a bummer and the latter is the stuff of glorious revelry, but you can go ahead and figure out which said of this particular fence you want to be on. Me, I’m glad as hell to have seen this band. I wouldn’t mind doing so again at some point.
The band’s new album, Panic, will be released on Nov. 11, and they’ve got the single “Contagion” streaming now, putting the sorrowful chug of Pallbearer to their own apocalyptic and atmospheric use. It hasn’t been that long in actual-time since their Spring 2019 LP, Mors Aeterna (review here), even if it seems like it, but it seems their sound is particularly suited to uncertain times, and one need not look far to apply the metaphor to “Contagion,” even as guitarist/vocalist Steve Colca informs it was written before covid happened.
They’ll be out doing shows when the album is issued, playing in Dallas that night. I would expect more dates to follow as well, but here’s these in the meantime, from social media with a quote from Colca about “Contagion” hoisted off the PR wire:
To celebrate the release of Panic in November, we have some shows lined up. Mark it in your calendar and come hang with us. Artwork by Samantha Muljat.
Nov. 9th – Tulsa OK @ Whittier Bar Nov. 10th – Fayetteville AR @ Nomad’s Nov. 11th – Dallas TX @ Cheapsteaks Nov. 12th – San Antonio TX @ Faust
“Thematically, the ‘PANIC’ album deals with natural disasters and people losing their minds as a result,” Steve Colca tells us. “They become selfish in panicked situations. This song, ‘Contagion,’ is about a virus that is causing people to go crazy and turn on each other. End-of-the-world type paranoia and chaos-type mania. Ironically, I wrote this song — the music and lyrics — prior to the pandemic. There’s some moments of calm in the song, but ultimately it becomes heavingly heavy.”
Destroyer of Light on ‘Panic’: Steve Colca – vocals, guitars, and synth Keegan Kjeldsen – Guitars, Acoustic, Piano, Backing screams and vocals on Darkshimmer, Contagion, and The Midnight Sun.
Destroyer of Light: Steve Colca – Vocals/Guitars Keegan Kjeldsen – Guitars Nick Coffman – Bass Kelly Turner – Drums
New York-based longform instrumentalists Clouds Taste Satanic announced this past Spring that they’d signed to Majestic Mountain Records, and the then-promised vinyl, Tales of Demonic Possession, will be released on Feb. 3, 2023 as a four-song 2LP with each of its component sides consumed by a single track. The band — guitarists Steve Scavuzzo and Brian Bauhs, bassist Rob Halstead and drummer Greg Acampora — don’t make you go looking for the epic, but they’ve operated under this methodology across seven full-lengths to-date, so they’re well at home in the doing.
In general sound and feel, one is reminded in listening to the raw prog-doom riff-succession in “Flames and Demon Drummers” and “Sun Death Ritual” of later Revelation, though obviously the structures are different. But the atmosphere of weight implied even beyond the actual listening experience is there, and that holds in the later crashes and continual unfolding of “Sun Death Ritual” as well. Ebow or some similar magic trick makes an appearance in “Spirits of the Green Desert,” adding texture to the record’s heaviest roll — still just part of what that 21-minute track accomplishes — and the triumph in “Conjuring the Dark Side” is evident from the opening lead guitar onward, the acoustic layered in later on presumably conveying that, indeed, the dark side showed up.
That Clouds Taste Satanic get that point across without falling into the trappings of cultism is both a credit to the band and their instrumental configuration, since the music is broad and open enough to be interpreted as a given listener will. There’s a long time between now and Feb. 3, but to go with the confirmation of the release date, the band are premiering the video for an edited stretch of “Flames and Demon Drummers,” and you’ll find below, followed by PR wire info. Preorders start Friday.
Enjoy:
Clouds Taste Satanic, “Flames and Demon Drummers” video premiere
CLOUDS TASTE SATANIC – Tales of Demonic Possession
Happy Halloween Majestic folk! Your MMR Newswire is here with musical treats and the news of another killer new album release coming at you from the Majestic roster.
It is with great pleasure we can finally announce that ‘Tales of Demonic Possession’ by New York based instrumental riff masters Clouds Taste Satanic is on its way!
In celebration, we also bring forth a premiere of the first single off the album and its accompanying video. In its entirety, ‘Flames and Demon Drummers’ is an entrancing, 18 minute and 28 second trip to the dark side of the instrumental moon and with this preview of the third movement of the track, we stumble through an expansive, thick, and fuzzy prog fog oozing mega heavy atmosphere.
The listener takes a heroic dose with Clouds Taste Satanic, and we charge through the rabbit hole right into the furthest reaches of dark, dank and deep space where screaming riffs and Pink Floyd-esque grandeur reign supreme. The track is a tense and pensive journey which never quite lets us feel at ease, it’s a monolithic free-fall into a progressive, fully instrumental doom abyss. Exceptional musicianship and composition is unmistakable and even without vocals we are made to feel like we’re being led into some unknown yet impending peril and ultimate sacrifice awaiting just around the corner of the next refrain. Clouds quite simply kick us all right into the deepest pit of torturously good, proggy doom of the highest order.
‘Tales of Demonic Possession’ is an instrumental epic of magnificent proportions and the gents of Clouds Taste Satanic share with us the following about the impetus behind their new album:
“‘Tales of Demonic Possession’ is Prog-Doom born of and inspired by the pandemic and Yes’s Tales From Topographic Oceans. We wanted to make a record that felt different, dark, heavy and challenging. With time to write and create, we wanted to make music that reflected the ambitions of the past, the oppressiveness of the present and the cautious optimism for what comes next.
Yes’s Tales came at a time when bigger meant better. Creating works of art that challenged listeners to come along on their journey. The casual listener was put off by the lack of instant gratification. Lazy critics who longed for a simpler time used it as a scape goat rather than appreciating it for the masterpiece it was. Those willing to go along for the ride were rewarded with music that gained depth and beauty with each listen.
Fast forward to 2020. New year, new decade, and the creeping feeling that possession was around every corner. What would that possession feel like if it ever took hold? Would possession today be the same as demonic possession from years gone by but with a fancy new title? Bigger would not necessarily be better but it seemed to make more sense. Why not use the opportunity to reach farther. The one thing everyone seemed to have was time. Time to create, time to listen.
So here we are. Everyone has their own possession story. Ours is four sides of vinyl that tell the tale of where we came from, where we are now and the direction we are heading. We wanted to make a triple album but reality set in so we decided to leave that for another day. If you have some time, come along for the ride. Don’t fear… it has plenty of riffs.”
MMR is stoked on getting ‘Tales of Demonic Possession’ out to the world, it’s an expansive, diabolically monstrous, four-headed beast and will be coming to you on deluxe double vinyl. Four tracks of up to 20 plus minutes each, one epic song per side. As we’re continually striving to bring you the best in riffs and top shelf wax, to match the epic nature of this fantastic release, we’ve spared no expense or detail on this extra premium release for you.
Now is the time to get psyched, pre-order opens November 4th at Clouds Taste Satanic’s Bandcamp and Majestic Mountain Record’s BigCartel.
Official release comes to you on CD and digital on the 04 February 2023.
More info to come, stay tuned!
CLOUDS TASTE SATANIC: Steve Scavuzzo – Guitar Rob Halstead – Bass Greg Acampora – Drums Brian Bauhs – Guitar
UK heavy psychedelic rockers Longheads release their new EP, Mars Doesn’t Feel Like Home Anymore, on Nov. 2 through their own Longreel Records label, and with it present 31 minutes of space-faring lysergic adventures, immersive enough to ensnare tired, older acid freaks and fresh and progressive enough in its delivery to draw next-generation let’s-go-hiking-in-the-cosmos types as well. In the New Dawn of Weirdo Psych, propelled into the stratosphere by the likes of King Gizzard, Slift, even Earthless to a point, Longheads‘ five-songer is a left turn enough to not sound directly like any of them — though shred is a common factor, and well accounted for here in the guitar work of Al Bishop and Benjamin Reeve — with the declarative vocals of “Glossolalia” coming through like a mellow Hawkwindian ritual, too cool to be stoned, too stoned to care.
The narrative (blessings and peace upon it) is that the five-piece of Reeve (also vocals) and Bishop, bassist/lead vocalist Sam Mitchell, drummer Nick Oakes and synthesist Mitchell Corrigan recorded in an old theatre in South London, in which they lived at the time, having set themselves up under the ‘Guardianship scheme,’ which in my limited understanding I think is like what would happen if ‘squatters rights’ both actually existed and went legit. When you get evicted under guardianship of a property? You have a month to leave. In the US, they just run your ass over with a steamroller. Must be nice to be civil in that way.
Maybe that’s true, though if you’re thinking it’s going to make the drums sound cavernous, that’s not really the case. There’s plenty of room in the sound, to be sure, but Longheads‘ sound is more concentrated on blending the dreamy and the drifting, groove and trip. They begin with “One Step Further,” on which the synth demonstrates that just because the guitars are doing frenetic runs over the jazzy drums and bass that doesn’t mean it’s going to get lost in the mix. A bit of organ there for good measure as well. “Glossolalia” is a little more on solid ground, structurally, and makes a focal point of its bright-toned solo, with fair reason, and ends in a push of low-key multilayer madness.
That is to say, there’s more going on in the track than the overarching flow makes it appear, and it should be no surprise that the same applies to the manner in which “Longheads” takes a classic stoner rock riff, strips it down to its rhythmic strum, and uses it as the foundation of an eight-minute, going-and-not-coming-back exploration, some highlight dual-vocals and ’70s-epic synth dropped along the way like they just happened to bump into krautrock on their way to Pluto. You or the music: who digs whom?
If you catch it, “Longherder” has a break at about 4:50 where it basically stops and starts its finishing build from near-silence. That’s enough to make me wonder if the piece wasn’t born out of two song ideas put together, and if so, it’s all the more a credit to the band for following that particular whim. By the time they’re done, they’ve left scorch marks on the edge of the universe, and come on, guys — you know you can’t just buff that out. Check the bass though. Still kind of rumbling out that initial riff? Yeah, there’s a plan at work here. Thinky-thinky. Clever. Not as all-the-way-gone as it might seem on first blush, and there’s nothing wrong with that so long as you don’t mind when somebody steers the spaceship.
A twist arrives with the acoustic/synth interplay of the penultimate “In the Beginning,” a shorter turn at 3:13, with a vague hint of Britfolk via Zeppelin, that’s probably mostly intended as an interlude to put some distance between “Longherder” and the finale title-track, which tops nine minutes, but on a record that’s so much about vibe and atmosphere anyway, it’s not at all unwelcome as it leads directly into the closer, which leans harder into classic space rock as it emerges from its gradual beginning into more fervent thrust, not quite motorik, but maybe what motorik would be if it cared less about the rules. If you’re waiting for the part where I tell you about the big finish, yeah, there is one, but I dig the stretch before, with the two guitars having a chat over some tense let’s-go-already drums and steady bass, the kind of noodly calm before the ion storm.
It shows Longheads are thinking about live performance at least in the recording if not the actual writing process — I also don’t know how much of parts like this were made up on the spot, but I suspect some — and makes the payoff all the more satisfying when they get there in their own time. I wouldn’t call it patient, but it’s not trying to be. They’re establishing both ends of a dynamic that was nascent on last year’s Higher Than Bacteria, which also had a nine-minute capper, and feeling their way into planetary alignment, and that’s where they should be. But if you can’t hear the potential in these tracks for developing a vital space boogie, I can’t help you, because it’s all right there in the songs themselves. If this band tours hard, you’re going to want to watch out.
All of which is to say I hope you enjoy the stream. PR wire info follows, as well as a live set the band played at Longreel Studios, the aforementioned theatre space they had while the getting was good.
Mars Doesn’t Feel Like Home Anymore follows the release of 2021’s debut EP Higher Than Bacteria. The new EP has seen the band take a much looser approach when it came to both writing and recording, incorporating improvised jam sections and capturing the band’s incredible live energy to the songs on record.
“When gigs started happening again last year we found ourselves in a position where we needed to write songs to fill up the space in our set. Because of this we started playing the new songs live as soon as they were finished and we continued to change and refine them based on how they went down.” Comments guitarist Al Bishop.
Originally hailing from Norfolk the band who are completed by Sam Mitchell (lead vocals & bass), Nick Oakes (drums), Benjamin Reeve (guitar & vocals) and Mitchell Corrigan (synths) are now based in South London where a few of the members live in the Guardianship scheme occupying various sites and spaces across London. This is where they recorded the EP at their very own ‘Longreel Studios’ in October last year, which was a space the boys had set up in an old theatre opposite the oval cricket ground.
Here the space of their surroundings allowed them to dive deep in writing with no limits and a week after they had finished all the live tracks they were handed their one month notice and had to dismantle the studio.
Now to celebrate the release of the forthcoming EP, they will be headlining the Black Heart on November 24th with tickets available here:https://linktr.ee/longheads
Tracklisting: 1. One Step Further 2. Longherder 3. In The Beginning 4. Mars Doesn’t Feel Like Home Anymore 5. Glossolalia
Longheads are: Sam Mitchell (lead vocals & bass) Al Bishop (guitar) Benjamin Reeve (guitar & vocals) Mitchell Corrigan (synths) Nick Oakes (drums)
Posted in Questionnaire on October 31st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Obiat
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
Neil Dawson: I try and convince people I can hit things in a musical fashion and hang out with musicians. I initially tried to take up guitar under my dad’s influence but I didn’t have the patience for it. I remember being in a music lesson at school, at 13 years old, hearing some drums from another room. I asked the teacher (Mr. Root – RIP) what was going on, who said it was drum lessons and they were free. Would I be interested? (worth noting, you also got 15mins out of class to do it) so it was a no brainer, I signed myself straight up and never looked back. I joined as many bands as possible whether it be punk rock, indie or just random covers and we would practice in the music rooms after school every night. Our deputy head (Mr. Dooley) found out that I played drums and asked me to join his dance band, doing blues and jazz songs, so I did that on Saturdays too.
Raf Reutt: For me, it was 90’s death metal that made me want to play riffs in a band. I then discovered Danzig and Soundgarden, Mudhoney and AIC. The idea of Obiat started shaping up. I went through Noise (Amphetamine Reptile Records) but it wasn’t until I was blown away with the sound of Kyuss, early Sleep and dub that Obiat’s path became clear. Our 1st album was basically my interpretation of Kyuss and Sleep riffs. My appreciation of 70’s classic rock came later and it was The Doors before Black Sabbath. Obiat’s sound nowadays is the outcome of all members’ input and influences. We’ve progressed to a harder hitting more immediate band with improved production, although we still love to go hypnotic and mellow in places.
Alex Nervo: An endless river of creativity fuelled by all the musical data collected through the years. I used to draw a lot when I was a kid but when I discovered my dad’s electric guitar I settled for music.
Describe your first musical memory?
ND: I have a few memories in different settings… early on it was listening to things like Madonna/Gloria Estafan tapes in my mum’s car coming home from primary school. At home, I remember singing along with my dad and sisters around while he played his guitar (there’s some embarrassing video footage somewhere). I remember taking ‘Survivor – Eye of the tiger’ on tape up to my room when I was about 8/9, and playing it over and over, trying to write the words down. As for live experiences, Green Day was my first gig in Leeds (aside from seeing bands at school) when I was 14. I felt sick at the end from crowd surfing so much.
RR: Growing up in Eastern Europe, before CDs and cassettes, we had cheap Bulgarian and Russian vinyls which were my mum’s. Kim Wilde, Kids in America, Rolling Stones and a Hungarian band, Omega.
AN: Listening to ’70s funk on the radio while riding my bike in the backyard.
Describe your best musical memory to date?
ND: Writing and recording ‘EyeTreePi’ was pretty epic. Recording at a studio owned by Dave Anderson of Hawkwind and working with Chris Fielding and Billy Anderson. The follow up tours were great experiences, especially ‘Stoner Hands of Doom’ in Erfurt, Germany. That was a gooooood gig/night. We ended up staying in this hostel which was an ex-police station, complete with cells.
RR: A collaboration I witnessed live of Neurosis & Jarboe and all the Slayer gigs I went to. As for Obiat, I’d echo what Neil mentioned and add the journey that our new album has taken us on, including the ups & downs, now that it’s finished and we can reflect on it.
AN: Same as ND, that night in Erfurt was pretty special.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
ND: When we started writing ‘Indian Ocean’ and were like “this is cool, we’ll have this finished and out in no time at all…..”.
RR: When Trump won a presidency. I always believed peoples sanity would prevail… I was wrong. Also the pandemic period. As a social worker, I suffered burn out and compassion fatigue, which I didn’t believe I could pull through from. I did :-).
AN: Never really as I don’t hold on firmly to any belief, I just look at the facts and make my own mind up.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
ND: If I interpret this right, as in getting better on your instruments and better at working with your bandmates… Well I guess, exactly that – it leads to a more well rounded band and satisfaction that you’re all getting closer to a complete collaboration where everyone is as involved as the next member, pulling their weight so to speak. I think it opens up more opportunities to be creative and think outside the box which we do like to do. I think we’ve cracked that on ‘Indian Ocean’. If not, we will have by the time our next album is ready… or the next one after that… actually will we ever crack it… Who knows haha.
RR: It leads wherever we want it to, as long as we remain open minded and have freedom of expression….and funds haha. I believe it is always good to return to basics. Don’t overdo it.
AN: It could lead to many places depending on the circumstances, for many famous act that means complacency and self indulgence, for the hungry and starving musician it’s a free expression of that state of mind.
How do you define success?
ND: As a band, we are all happy with what we produced in the past and we’re really happy with our upcoming album ‘Indian Ocean’, so I guess that is success. There’s always that excitable idea that people will like what you do as a band and as an individual part in that band, however many people that may be, so that would be a bonus success. I think we know that we’ll never be able to rely on our music as our sole income in life and retire comfortably as it’s not mainstream enough and doesn’t appeal to the masses (I mean what’s wrong with the world haha) so we’re not chasing financial success, just like minded people as fans. That said, some money wouldn’t hurt to help us continue to write and record without being bankrupt. It does stretch you trying to pay for recording, mixing, mastering, pressing of physical releases and any equipment that needs replacing, servicing or maintaining but hey, it’s our hobby.
RR: When you feel an urge to express yourself through art and you have the courage and a platform to do it and you find likeminded people who appreciate it. Knowing someone’s there on the other side of the world, who you’ve never met, has your band’s album on the shelf because they like it… thats success and all
the satisfaction we need. We never made any money out of music anyway, so our expectations shifted from dreams we may once have had in our teens/early years as musicians.
AN: It’s gaining the desired outcome from a task or performance. For most of us it’s mainly money, for me it’s some economical gratification but mostly sharing something special through our music with like minded people, something that withstand the test of time.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
ND: The world struggle with Covid 19 and now Ukraine struggling to defend themselves alone. Lots of upsetting scenes across the globe to be honest… I wish we could all just get along and look out for each other but that’s the human race.
RR: Some of the social media posts of people I know ;-). Everything we experience helps to shape our personalities. There are a few things I struggle to get out of my mind. A body of a woman under a bendy bus, when I was a boy in primary school. As an adult, I saw a screaming mother on her knees holding her dead teenage son following a gang-style execution, which happened outside a place I used to live in London. I didn’t see the killer but heard the shots fired.
AN: Nothing, everything we have seen and experienced makes us who we are, knowledge is pain but still better than the fake reality of ignorance. Seeing some of my old friends disintegrate and fading away was hard though.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create?
ND: Our fifth album or a split LP. Include some more synth soundscapes. We watched Naxatras recently live and it was very cool.
RR: Dark minimal ambient electronic music…..and more albums with heavy riffs :-).
AN: Our best album. Some solo stuff I’ve been working on for decades now but it still is unfinished.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
ND: To offer ourselves and other people something familiar but different, to make us think, smile and carry on passionately with what we’ve always loved doing.
RR: As someone once said ‘Earth without art is just Eh’. It’s the best alternative to religion there is in my opinion.
AN: it’s the splash of colours onto the gray canvas of life. it brings out the Chaos in us in a more understandable form, art is basically a language. A song, a painting or a book can tell many tales if you’re careful enough to listen.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
ND: Hanging out as a full band again one day, even just for a coffee or beer and laugh altogether again and hopefully seeing my kids make good decisions and do something I can be proud of.
RR: Seeing my daughter growing up healthy and happy. A new Don Winslow book :-)
AN: Comedy shows, I like how comedians can say something utterly meaningful and true while making you laugh your arse off. Visiting the old world again, where history was made, Europe is my homeland, I don’t care for individual countries, I think that concept has been made redundant now. Seeing the bandmates and some good ol’ friends would be a blast.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on October 28th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Some records are just ingrained in you. As I remember it, I first encountered Primus‘ 1991 second album and major label debut, Sailing the Seas of Cheese, at about 10 years old in my sister’s CD collection. This would’ve been when it was more or less new, before the follow-up EP, 1992’s Miscellaneous Debris, because I remember when that came out. I swiped the disc and it was like my soon-to-be-pubescent, soon-to-meet-Beavis-and-Butt-Head goofball ass found a home. I’ve lived with it basically since that time, revisiting periodically, and it’s been a bit, so here I am. This album changed my life as a kid, and it still satisfies listening as an adult for more than nostalgic purposes. I count it as one among very, very few.
What a collection of songs. Into a 45-minute span, Primus — bassist/vocalist Les Claypool, guitarist Larry LaLonde, drummer Tim Alexander, plus a bunch of their friends peppered throughout — cram banger after banger. You’ve got the intro, and even that has a hook, then you get into “Here Come the Bastards,” “Sgt. Baker,” “American Life” and “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver” in succession. Holy shit. And even more insane, they’re all so short. “Here Come the Bastards” is under three minutes. In less than three minutes, Primus build and launch that groove, establish and execute that chorus, and roll out a weighted tonality that still carries its heft while dancing in circles doing high-knees.
Across its span, Sailing the Seas of Cheeseis a tighter record than 1990’s Frizzle Fry (discussed here), and the tradeoff it makes between atmosphere and impact serves cuts like “Sgt. Baker” — recall the first Gulf War was on when the album was being made — and the later “Tommy the Cat,” the frenetic jazz showoff “Is it Luck,” on which LaLonde shreds guitar and Alexander shreds drums no less than Claypool does bass, or the band as a whole does a number on ‘what makes a radio hit.’
Even the side B pairing of “Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers” and “Fish On (Fisherman Chronicles, Ch. II),” where they do branch out more than a little, is more delightfully odd, more weirdo psychedelic in the case of the latter — though as far out as they go into InterscopeRecords-backed avant garde heavy funk rock, they bring it back to the chorus before they’re done, because songwriting — and the manner in which the concluding “Los Bastardos” reprises the central progression of “Here Come the Bastards” with samples from The Young Ones laced over top is emblematic of the jam band Primus would become after reuniting in the aughts.
Consider “Eleven” — too offbeat to be a single, brilliantly drummed, catchy, something about salsa — and tucked in between “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver” and “Is it Luck?” in arguably one of the least enviable positions a song from the ’90s could be in if it wanted to stand out, but it does. It’s got vibe and chorus both. It’s heavy, it’s undeniably their own, and it legitimately works in concert with the rest of the material here to do something in rock and roll that had never been done before. Not just decentralizing the guitar — because if you listen to this, Frizzle Fry, 1993’s Pork Soda, 1995’s Tales From the Punchbowl, etc., and there’s no shortage of guitar — but in songwriting and personality. This was a new kind of fun at the time, and resonates 31 years later not only because the level of craft is so high — that is, each of its three main players is brilliant — but because no one else in the last three-plus decades has managed to come along and outdo it at its own game.
The back and forth between faster and slower songs on side A, with “Here Come the Bastards” into “Sgt. Baker,” is mirrored by the dizzying “Is it Luck?” moving into the interlude “Grandad’s Little Ditty” before the “Tommy the Cat” — which, yes, has guest vocals from Tom Waits; nobody’s perfect — takes hold and builds an entire world in its 4:15, the sharp turns and razor wit of the lyrics one more reason to fully immerse. Side B’s personality is a little different, as it should be, with the banjo-inclusive “Sathington Waltz” feeling (purposefully) thrown together as if to signal that the rest of the proceedings are going to push even further into the reaches of peculiarity, which of course they do, however memorable “Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers” proves to be nonetheless.
And yes, “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver” was a smash. Unavoidable for a bit there, and undeniable. As their career has played out, “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver” has followed Primus all the while, and I can’t even fathom how many times Claypool has chuckled and said, “Dog will hunt” into a microphone at this point. Thousands, surely. Doesn’t matter, the end of that track crushes, taking all that we’re-gonna-do-bass low end and pushing it alongside harder hitting drums and fuller guitar distortion to create a sound that Pork Soda and later records like 1997’s Brown Album and 1999’s Antipop would continue to explore, the band flirting with the idea that maybe they were a heavy metal band before pulling the plug on the whole endeavor for a few years and sending Claypool into a wilderness of side-projects, many of them righteous — you won’t hear me say a bad word about the Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, dammit; “who wants to go to D’s Diner?” — but all of them a signifier that there would only ever be one Primus.
They’ve been on tour this year covering Rush, which tracks. I’ve made the argument a few times over the years for Primus as a heavy rock band, and I still wonder how the late ’90s and early ’00s would have played out for them if that language existed at the time, because they’ve never been about the aggressive side of metal even as they more than flirted with tonal weight. Whatever they were going to be classified as, they’d always be themselves, surely, and Queens of the Stone Age did Ozzfest too that time, so I don’t know that being heavy rock would’ve prevented the hiatus that stopped the band for a long few years in 2000, but in hindsight, it’s an easier fit as a kind of creative ecosystem than either metal or hard rock, which is where they were most commonly lumped. I’ll gladly go to bat for them having more in common with Kyuss than Powerman 5000, or any other ’90s commercial hard rock entity you want to substitute.
But what is, is, and Sailing the Seas of Cheese remains a singular work of genius songwriting and performance, one of the best records of its decade, for me, one of the best records of all time, and as always, I hope you enjoy it.
Thanks for reading.
—
I needed this, I don’t mind telling you. This week has been long, hard and largely miserable. My knee is starting to get better — still hurts to straighten it out, but I can move it more — and this morning I go for the results of the MRI that I had done Wednesday evening, so that should be interesting [update: I need surgery], but everything has been a drag. Everything. It was my kid’s birthday — the only time in my life I’m going to get to see my child turn five — and I could barely stay in the room. It just sucked. Wretched, down. I’ve felt isolated in my marriage, utterly adrift as a parent, and completely inconsequential creatively. I keep fucking up like 10 different things at one time and even little things — I knocked over an open bottle of seltzer yesterday opening my laptop on one of the tables in back of Wegman’s; a beer bottle fell out of my cart in the liquor department as I was buying booze for The Pecan’s birthday party tomorrow; I dropped his ice cream cake the other night (fortunately it was okay) — make my brains fucking boil. I feel like I don’t have the capacity to handle as much is coming at me, and that’s before you get to the anxiety of a collapsing political order happening in real-time, my wife learning Hungarian as though I might do so through osmosis and somehow thereby be able to chase down EU citizenship through my family lineage. I feel like I should be granted a duel passport just by virtue of having to tell everyone I’ve ever met in my entire life how to pronounce my last name.
Anyway, Primus, some new Star Trek last night, good music throughout the week, a steady intake of THC and cheese, an unexpected gift that I’ll keep for the rest of my life, and I’m not sure I have any right to complain, but I do. It’s been a slaughter. I get up and want to fast-forward through the entire day and just go to bed. Just be done with it.
But that’s my shit and mine to deal with. In addition to the orthopaedist this morning, this afternoon is a parent-teacher conference — pretty light fare in pre-K, and we try to keep a close eye on how he’s doing anyway, so I don’t expect too many revelations, but still, you go — and then tomorrow is the big birthday party for the kid. Bounce house, pigs in blankets, The Patient Mrs.’ mom’s ziti; all the classics. We’re expecting about 40 people at various points in the afternoon, so if you want to come by, PM for the address.
New Gimme show today. 5pm. I know you don’t care or listen, but I’m lucky to do that stuff so I’m gonna keep plugging it anyhow. Thanks if you do check it out. It’s a good way for me to dig into more of the records that come in for review.
Next week, I don’t know, a bunch of stuff. Couple full streams, announcements, and so on. If I tell you it’ll be cool, will it matter? If you’re reading this now, will you come back because of the vague promise of something good? Probably not, I think. Maybe I’m getting too old for this shit; like a half-assed, lily white Danny Glover of the stoner rock blogosphere.
Have a great and safe weekend. Rest up, watch your head, enjoy. Thanks again for reading.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on October 28th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
At this point, Nashville’s All Them Witches have unveiled well more than an album’s worth of material with their ‘Baker’s Dozen’ singles project, releasing one new song (plus a bonus at some point, I guess) on the last Friday of every month, and as today brings the mellow psych-blues poetry reading and fuzz leads, loops and righteous meander of “Holding Your Breath Across the River,” it brings into relief just how broadly scoped their sound is. Some bands never put out the same record twice. Throughout 2022, All Them Witches have extended that ethic to the songs themselves.
They’ve spent much of October touring Europe, killing it on a bunch of sold out dates by all accounts I’ve seen on social media, and proceed with textured ambience in “Holding Your Breath Across the River” like it’s no big thing, guitar and synth drone that in most contexts would be enough to qualify as experimental here still just part of the backdrop for the telephone-effect mostly-spoken-word vocals that remind just how dug-in this band can be when they want.
I don’t know where they’re headed next, but I feel comfortable predicting that whatever Nov. brings from them, it, again, will be something different. Ergo, enjoy this one while it’s fresh.
Have to wonder by now if the band are planning some larger release for all these songs — you can stream the entire project so far below — even if it’s just putting them up as a collection on Bandcamp. I’ve bought one or two on Amazon over the course of the year to-date — and I don’t know if you’ve ever purchased digital music from that particular outlet, but it’s a terrible experience — but I wouldn’t mind giving it all a front-to-back listen I guess sometime early in 2023, perhaps. If I’m lucky.
In any case, peace out, October:
All Them Witches, “Holding Your Breath Across the River”
All Them Witches is: Charles Michael Parks, Jr – bass, vocals, acoustic guitar Ben McLeod – guitar, vocals Robby Staebler – drums, vocals Allan Van Cleave – Rhodes piano, keys, violin
All Them Witches, “Tour Death Song”
All Them Witches, “Tiger’s Pit”
All Them Witches, “6969 WXL The Cage”
All Them Witches, “L’Hotel Serein” official video
All Them Witches, “Acid Face” official video
All Them Witches, “Blacksnake Blues”
All Them Witches, “Fall Into Place” official video
Posted in Reviews on October 28th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
There’s just so much happening. It’s like life. From the tolling bell, crow calls and subtle bass-led progression — almost dance — soon joined by a tense chugging guitar line, peppered ambient notes of who knows what, and emergent violin in the first two minutes of “Sing No Coda” to the ultra-melancholic wash in the end of closer “Dispirit,” with its weaving lines of rhythmic static, sad, slow strings, and noise on an eventual fade, yes, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. The first lines of the Folium Limina arrive with Utah-ready puritanical severity behind them, vocalists Sarah Pendleton and Kim Cordray, both of whom also play violin, finding their way into and around harmony while they, guitarist/vocalist Levi Hanna, bassist/vocalist Matt Brotherton and drummer/percussionist Andy Patterson — who engineered, mixed and mastered the recording, as he will — begin to unfurl the bleak majesty that is the backdrop before which their debut album takes place.
The this-is-mostly-slow-but-all-urgent sensibility that persists throughout the six pieces/63 minutes and the outright elephantine tonal heft of their heaviest chapters, as well as basic elements like the vocal harmonies, violins, immersive post-metallic claustrophobia, longer-form songwriting, etc., are The Otolith‘s chief inheritances from SubRosa, and if the argument being made in Folium Limina is that the prior band had more to say — that they weren’t done when they were done — it’s one that prompts easy agreement with the songs making that point.
Pendleton (also of Asphodel Wine) steps into a lead vocalist role and Hanna swaps bass for guitar in the new outfit, and he and/or Brotherton are perhaps more prominent as male/harsh vocalists (pardon me if I don’t break out percentages) as demonstrated at the and-go!-surging-lurch beginning of “Andromeda’s Wing” and the sweeping midsection of the aforementioned “Dispirit,” which at 11:08 bookends Folium Limina with “Sing No Coda” (which opens with its longest track, thereby earning ever-coveted ‘immediate points,’ at 13:29; everything else is between nine and 10 minutes), but aesthetically, there’s little question that The Otolith are moving outward from what SubRosa became across their four full-lengths, even as they begin to lay claim to a path of their own apart from the songwriting contributions of Rebecca Vernon (now of The Keening), whose departure from SubRosa effectively ended the band, and fair enough.
Narrative, blessings and peace upon it, has its contextual role to play, but knowing SubRosa‘s work is not a barrier to engaging The Otolith in the slightest. That is, it’s not too late before you’ve begun to listen. Their songwriting happens in waves, with “Sing No Coda” establishing the movement-based methodology that persists through much of the outing and seems to bring each individual part to a certain place of ceremony, whether it’s the winding and pushing of “Andromeda’s Wing” or the offsetting of massive plod in the highlight-among-highlights “Ekpyrotic” (if you’re looking for a “Stones From the Sky” moment; it’s there), which seems to howl into an abyss of American expanse: “Great birds once human gather to drink in the high desert night” setting the stage for the culminating lyric “We are the light,” which even the growls in Latin that follow somehow don’t outdo for heft, general aural gorgeousness or listener consumption. It is the sound of porcelain created with care, crushed to powder, and remade, over and over.
The Latin phrase at the end of “Ekpyrotic,” ‘amor vincit omnia,’ translates as ‘love conquers all’ (‘truth’ is similarly exalted earlier in the track; again, fair enough) and that seems to be the core message of the album in general — unless you count the creativity of the snare in “Andromeda’s Wing” and the toms in “Dispirit” as their own kind of message in their signifying the attention paid to every note and measure of this work; the layer of whispers in the short break in “Hubris” before the next wave of volume brings the hook in its own time, and countless other examples of critical minutiae that help give Folium Limina such impossible but inevitable depth — but it serves especially well as a lead-in for “Hubris,” “Bone Dust” and “Dispirit,” which follow on the second half of the tracklist and play through a legible storyline of perseverance in the face of “hubris like smoke in your mane” and the reminder that, “Each of us holds a seed of power/That cannot be thieved.”
“Bone Dust” places this more directly in the context of preserving the US experiment as a multicultural democratic nation — mixed results, to-date, to say the least — against encroaching authoritarianism, both through its own battle cries amid the full-breadth tones that awaken from the subdued opening stretch of violin and soft bass and guitar, and through the soliloquy sampled from Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 film, The Great Dictator, in which a leader clearly intended to be a nazi casts off repressing the populace in favor of encouraging freedom and democracy. It is strikingly, tragically relevant, presented over a chugging, purposefully repetitive riff and crash intended to give it space. Chaplin urges, “do not despair” since so long as men die, freedom will never perish, and pledges to fight for a new, better, more just world.
It’s hard to know if it’s wishful thinking or mourning for the fact that our reality bears so little resemblance to that one, but “Disprit” gets final say. Made tense through ambience and strings initially, it conveys the exhaustion of good souls being steamrolled as it builds toward its eventual payoff — that tom part; yes — and hits into full volume at the 4:30 mark, though that burst is by no means as far as The Otolith are willing to push it. One more time before Folium Limina is done, the five-piece offer years’ worth of depth and hear-something-new fodder as textures of violin, the driving shove of the guitar, bass, drums, shouted vocals, whatever else is happening there in those troubled reaches, all coalesce around the singular idea of loss of cause through dismay, a kind of nod from within to the apocalypse-fatigue that may well cost the United States its political system — and to the detriment of everybody, there’s no fully-automated luxury gay space communism this time; it’s christian nationalism and radical capitalist exploitation for all; sure hope nobody beats your kid to death for being trans, but if they do, hey, thoughts and prayers, right? all part of white American god’s plan, like mass shootings! — raging for the next three minutes before subsiding into a humming drone, piano and violin, with the already-noted static and noise behind, outlasting like some vague notion of justice and rightness the existence of which, sadly, isn’t enough to make it real. This is a hard, mean, world. Among its few saving graces: records like this one that go through it with you.
The story of the album is unavoidably the shift from SubRosa to The Otolith, and it may be another record or two — touring, obviously, if that’s a thing that might happen — before The Otolith are more distinguished from the majority of its members’ prior group, but clearly part of what’s being accomplished here is to continue that creative growth as a unit and the aesthetic statement that made SubRosa‘s swansong, 2016’s For This We Fought the Battle of Ages (review here), a landmark for them as well as for post-metal across the board, while exploring new expressive avenues. They succeed in that, readily.
And that they’re doing that work at all is one of Folium Limina‘s greatest strengths as a debut album — it’s almost unfair to call it one; four-fifths of this band isn’t a new band — but it’s the clear sense of purpose, of creating meaning in a time when even the definition of what’s real around us has become a partisan void, when as a species we’re beaten by disease and dismay both and the only ones who seem to have any strength left are the villains, that ultimately positions it as such a thing of beauty. An idea planted in troubled, near-poisonous ground, that has blossomed into something sad but beautiful.
In the interest of complete disclosure, Folium Limina was issued first as an exclusive for Blues Funeral‘s PostWax vinyl subscription service, for which I do the liner notes and am (theoretically, if I ever get to send Jadd my Paypal) compensated. This review was written after discussions with the band, and if you have that version and have read those notes — first, thanks — and second, the story of the album there is somewhat different than here. I’ll put that up to living with Folium Limina longer, hearing it differently, and the fact that listening to great records isn’t a thing that happens and then you put them away; they’re art you experience, and your impressions and an album’s realizations can both change with time and context. In any case, I’m not just repeating the liner notes here because that was their tale to tell about the songs and this is mine — on a procedural level, no one else is approving drafts of a review before it’s published, as evidenced by all the likely typos, half-thoughts and grammatical errors — even if I’m the wordy bastard whose name is on both. Still, compelled to mention it by some in-the-end-meaningless notion of integrity, so it’s been mentioned now. Diligence done.
Given that, and given that The Otolith took on the challenge of writing an album that’s (at least in part) about being absolutely battered by the world around you while waking up to face another day of it and still managed to make it sound not like a drag is emblematic of the roots they’re expanding from and the expansion itself; the effort and the work, then and now. Folium Limina is by no means an easy listen, but these are not easy times, and while it feels like the very gravity of the planet is working to rip the air out of your lungs and take your breath from you, let it be art for salvation. Sing no coda. This is no end.
