Posted in Whathaveyou on April 30th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I’m never going to claim to be an expert on the visual arts, whether it’s a question of aesthetic or technique. But I know when I see something awesome, and the three-eyed ribbitdragon adorning the poster below for Trieste, Italy’s StonerKras Fest 2024 this July for sure qualifies. The art is by Mirkow Gastow, who’s done other posters and graphics in and around the operating sphere of Heavy Psych Sounds, whose flagship outfit Black Rainbows feature in the third edition of StonerKras‘ lineup, assuring the all-dayer’s cosmic-party quotient will be met before German heavy psychedelic forebears Colour Haze headline as part of their ongoing 30th anniversary celebration in 2024.
Last July’s StonerKras had seven bands on the bill — among them 1000mods and Nick Oliveri‘s Mondo Generator — and Black Mamba Rock Explosion, Savanah and Britof round out the stated-as-full lineup of five for this year, but I wouldn’t be surprised if maybe part of that is to allow for longer set times or changeovers, or just to let the crowd take in some of the merch stands or, you know, get a massage. I can’t remember ever seeing a massage therapist on-grounds at a festival before, but speaking as a human living in a body that’s not getting any younger, I get it. Not all considerations are as timeless or ethereally rad as a three-eyed ribbitdragon. Sometimes your back hurts.
Cool to see this one growing and finding its niche over the last few years. Here’s the announcement:
STONERKRAS FEST 2024 – III edition
– 13.07.2024 – Prosek-Prosecco (Trieste, ITA) –
FULL LINEUP + TICKETS PRESALE ANNOUNCEMENT
StonerKras is a psychedelic music gathering based on stoner, doom and heavy psych music. The festival has an international footprint but with the aim of enhancing the local heavy scene (both Slovenian and Italian) while attracting spectators from the region but also from neighboring countries. Youth aggregation and cultural exchange accompanied by good music.
The festival will be taking place on Saturday, July 13th in the gorgeous village Prosek-Prosecco near Trieste (Italy).
Today Rocket Panda Management in collaboration with Never In has announced the FULL LINEUP and TICKETS PRESALE for the StonerKras Fest III edition !!!
COLOUR HAZE (psychedelic heavy rock, DE) BLACK RAINBOWS (heavy psych/fuzz rock, ITA – exclusive show for north Italy/Slovenia/Croatia in 2024) BLACK MAMBA ROCK EXPLOSION (hard rock’n’roll, ITA) SAVANAH (progressive stoner, AT) BRITOF (doom/sludge, SLO) + AFTERPARTY DJ SET
** FOOD & DRINKS ** ** MARKET STANDS ** ** RELAX/MASSAGE AREA ** ** PSYCHEDELIC LIGHT SHOW ** ** FREE AFTERPARTY DJ-SET *** *** CHILDREN FRIENDLY ***
Posted in Whathaveyou on April 30th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
As casual as the arrival of Herba Mate‘s new two-tracker 7″, Boogie Mouse/Sì è Lei, and the accompanying video for its A-side has been, one might almost think it wasn’t the Italian trio’s most substantive outing in a decade. They dropped a single in 2016 as well, but the Faenza-based rockers shared their Early Shapes (review here) split LP with Fatso Jetson in 2014, and, well, that was 10 years ago. Welcome back, Herba Mate.
“Boogie Mouse” brings a willfully choppy garage rock groove and leaves room for the sax at the end, while the organ-laced “Sì è Lei” fuzzes up a 1966 original by Italy’s The Blackmen, reminiscent of its era in its chorus while not diverging from the fullness of its production. As heralds of a new full-length, Bolide, reportedly in the works for later this year, I find both cuts to be a fitting reminder of why they were such an easy band to dig to start with.
It’s probably a no-brainer if you remember their debut, 2009’s The Jellyfish is Dead and the Hurricane is Coming (review here), and something of a re-introduction for the rest, plus righteous, attention-grabbing artwork for the platter and video. So maybe a no-brainer across the board, then. Fair enough.
Full stream from Bandcamp at the bottom, this from the PR wire:
We have released for Record Store Day Italia a 7″ printed in 300 numbered copies (lim.edt.), published by EDIG, a beat label born in 1960, together with Casa Del Disco, a long-time running record store based in Faenza (RA).
The 7″ features 2 songs: the hit single Boogie Mouse which will be included in the upcoming album “Bolide” (planned for autumn/winter) and “Sì è Lei”, a song written by the cult beat band The Blackmen and released in 1966 by Edig.
“Boogie Mouse”, on side A, is an uplifting rock song, “that could have been released by an imaginary band with member of Queens of the Stone Age, Black Keys and Royal Blood.”
“Sì è Lei” (reading “C.L.A”, “Yes, She is”) on side B, is Herba Mate version of a song by the cult band The Blackmen, published by the Italian beat label EDIG in 1966. Here you can get the energy of MC5, feel a psychedelic atmosphere like Tame Impala, reminding of Procol Harum thanks to the keyboards Farfisa and Hammond played by the well-known Nicola Peruch.
The songs were recorded at the studio “L’Amore Mio Non Muore” in Forlì with sound engineer Franco Naddei, and were mastered by Giovanni Versari “La Maestà”.
Posted in Reviews on April 29th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Albums like Marten happen neither every year nor for every band. For Brume, it is their third full-length behind 2019’s Billy Anderson-produced Rabbits (review here) and 2017’s Rooster (review here), their second release through Magnetic Eye Records, and their first outing since the three-piece of vocalist/bassist/keyboardist Susie McMullan, guitarist/vocalist Jamie McCathie (ex-Gurt) and drummer Jordan Perkins Lewis welcomed cellist/vocalist Jackie Perez Gratz (Grayceon, Giant Squid, Amber Asylum, etc.) to an expanded lineup. Gratz had appeared on Rabbitsas well, doing a cello guest spot (as will happen) for that record’s centerpiece, “Blue Jay,” which was both shorter than everything that surrounded it, but able to breathe in its own way with the melodic textures of its arrangement, also including keys and harmonized vocals.
It’s not impossible to read “Blue Jay” as the model Brume are following on Marten, which takes its name from the small, weasel-ish animal taxidermied on the fancy chair of its cover, and which finds the band working with producer Sonny DiPerri (Mizmor, Emma Ruth Rundle, Lord Huron, etc.) and directed in sound more toward atmosphere and breadth than directness of impact, though there’s plenty of that too. Fluid in its storytelling lyric, opening track “Jimmy” unfolds mournfully with soft guitar and cello at its start before the bass and drums join, McMullan immediately putting the listener in the narrative’s place, time and mental state with the lines, “Jimmy rise from the basement/Jimmy rise from the grave,” at the start of the first verse while Lewis slowly cycles through tom thuds and punctuating snare, giving some hint of the sweeping chorus to come, McCathie and Gratz joining on vocals as the corresponding wall of tone and crash-laden roll takes hold, “You raise your glass to freedom/You raise your glass to family/Now you’re fast, too fast, to leave us/My wrath will not be well contained.”
This all takes place before the first three minutes of the first song on a 48-minute eight-tracker LP are done, and not one second of what follows is less graceful or purposeful in its delivery, arrangement and performance, less cognizant of mood, or dynamic. Marten in some ways redefines the course of Brume‘s growth as it builds on what the band has accomplished up to now, but there’s also an engagement with pop in the lyrical voices throughout “New Sadder You,” “Faux Savior” and “How Rude,” taking on subjects like grief, joining a cult and the climate crisis, respectively, in language that feels pointedly not-inflated, conversational and modern. Where another given outfit might get lost in grandiosity, particularly to accompany the melancholic drift of later pieces like “Run Your Mouth” or “The Yearn,” which comprise the closing salvo, Brume resonate all the more for the humanity and specifically at times for the femininity of this perspective. And so the forlorn love poetry of “The Yearn” is presented not as quotes from Greek philosophy or whatever, but in clear, efficient and down-to-earth lines like, “Drowning here/Heart is for real.”
One might say the same of how “New Sadder You” is framed. The chorus, “I invite you to greet new sadder you/Because you take pain with you/With you till the end/When your memories are through/Mix joy and despair, anger fast on the move,” is a standout among songs that, while varied enough in structure and atmosphere to not all be about their choruses, have nonetheless been thoughtfully crafted, and as one of Marten‘s most soaring moments, the conversation is grounded and the same point of view that borders on sarcasm in “Faux Savior” as it namedrops a celebrity spiritual advisor and pines for “A proper fraud with fortitude and frost” — the alliteration’s burn in the direction of toxic YouTube-guru influencer masculinity — uses the melody to sweeten the threat on male ego fragility in “Run Your Mouth”: “Words won’t save you/I’ve got all night,” and gives Mother Earth the name Drucilla on “How Rude” as Laurie Sue Shanaman (Ludicra, Ails) adds raw-throated backing screams to the apex-bound build, feeling worlds away from three gentler-but-not-entirely-undoomed nod and bright three-part vocal harmonies of “Otto’s Song,” ending side A with a lullaby just a track prior.
Shanaman returns on the subsequent “Heed Me” as well, lending aural claw to the lines “Can you hear my memories?” and “What can you do for me?” at the ends of the last verses in harsh complement to the melody, but well positioned at the start of side B, which is on average less voluminous than “Jimmy,” “New Sadder You” or the gospel-spiritual plod of “Faux Savior” earlier, and enough of a surprise when they kick in with the first-stage surge of “How Rude” at 4:16 — the second stage hits at 4:44 with “We scream, the earth cracks” — that the listener has less of an idea of what’s coming as they move into “Heed Me,” “Run Your Mouth” and “The Yearn,” the last of which completes Marten on a flowing roll of crash and airy post-metallic lead guitar taking off from the last chorus, in which the cello plays rhythm the bass, gradually moving into its echoing fade. Not that one imagines throatrippers arising from that last gorgeous wash of tone and swaying motion, but you never know and shifting expectation is part of the point, along with emotive expression no less weighted than whichever of the most lumbering riffs you might want to set it beside.
And that heft of emotion extends to the ambience of pieces like “Run Your Mouth” or “New Sadder You” as well, whether it’s McMullan or McCathie doing lead vocals or trading as they do between the final verse and chorus of “New Sadder You,” Gratz lending her significant reach to the ending of “How Rude,” or the lush safe-space created in “Otto’s Song” even after the bass and drums join in to nudge it into a forward march. Across the span of Marten, Brume declare themselves as many things in terms of sound, most but not all of them leaning toward a darkness or somberness of mood, but they’re more assured than ever of who they are as a band working in new sonic dimensions of length, width, height and depth, and ‘The Yearn” indeed makes you believe the heart behind it all is for real. That’s an achievement in itself, but still only a fraction of what puts Marten so much on its own level, both for Brume and in whichever microgenre tag might ultimately fail to encapsulate their work here.
Posted in Whathaveyou on April 29th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Greek traditionalist heavy outfit Bus — aka Bus the Unknown Secretary — have signed to Sound Effect Records for the June 21 release of their third full-length, We Are the Night. It’s the band’s first LP since 2019’s Never Decide (review here), which came out through RidingEasy, and while it keeps the semi-retro spirit that the band have proffered since their 2016 Twin Earth debut, The Unknown Secretary (review here), lead single “Under My Skin” pulls back on the boogie and garage aspect of that in favor of a rawer, more Motörheaded charge.
If you found yourself swept up in the fist-in-the-air NWOBHM-gone-raw force of Danava‘s Nothing but Nothing in 2023, “Under My Skin” should have little trouble getting where the title says it’s headed. With punches of bass behind its proto-thrash solo, a hooky chorus and infectious physical shove, it accounts for some of the darker mood Bus presented on their 2022 EP, Black Magic Bus, and couples that with an urgency that speaks to its having been recorded live in the studio.
As to whether or not “Under My Skin” represents everything Bus are doing on We Are the Night, I’d suspect not based on their past work, but frankly, the lead single already indicates a clear pivot from that foundation, so the door is open wide enough that it’s not worth speculating. It is worth looking forward to finding out, though, so I’m rolling with that.
Sound Effect sent the following down the PR wire:
BUS – “We Are the Night”
Bus the Unknown Secretary, collectively known as BUS, sign with Sound Effect Records and announce third album “We Are the Night”! Recorded live in the studio in just 3 days, “We Are the Night” is a solid rock/metal album, an “all killer, no filler” proposition and a must for all metal devotees across the globe. “We Are the Night” is due out on June 21st on vinyl and CD! Pre-sale shall be announced soon.
Posted in Whathaveyou on April 29th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
A couple raw stats here to start. Greenleaf‘s ninth LP, The Head and the Habit, is out June 21 on Magnetic Eye. Slomosa‘s second album, the title of which I don’t think is public yet, is scheduled to arrive later this year (presumably before this tour) through Stickman Records. And Psychlona, who also signed to Magnetic Eye at the end of 2023, reportedly just finished tracking their own upcoming album this past week.
Three killer bands touring with new music, is the upshot. It’s emblematic of the continued ascent of Norwegian four-piece Slomosa to the forefront of the European heavy underground that they’re co-headlining with a band who’ve been around for about 25 years, but as the single “Cabin Fever” (video premiered here) makes plain, their intent is to continue the significant momentum behind them at this point, and no doubt this Fall tour — hitting Into the Void in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, Up in Smoke in Switzerland, and Keep it Low in Germany on the Sound of Liberation October festival circuit — will help them do that.
For Greenleaf, the tour announcement comes coupled with the unveiling of “Avalanche,” the duly-tumbling-of-groove second single from The Head and the Habit, which seems nestled into its hook for the duration until… well, I won’t spoil it. But if you think maybe they named the song after the riff, I’ll agree that it’s a definite possibility. At very least, they’d have been well justified in doing so.
Who’s first on the poster depends on whose poster you’re seeing — note the two below — but ‘Habit of the Tundra’ starts Sept. 30 either way. The below is from multiple PR wire sources, so maybe reads a bit choppy, but if you find the dates and the music, you’ll get the idea anyhow. Have at it:
Swedish heavy rockers GREENLEAF reveal a sparkling lyric video for the groovy ten-ton track ‘Avalanche’ as the next single from their forthcoming full-length “The Head & The Habit”, which is scheduled for release on June 21, 2024 via Magnetic Eye Records! In support of “The Head & The Habit”, GREENLEAF have just announced European live dates of the “Habit of the Tundra Tour” with Norwegian desert rockers SLOMOSA and support from PSYCHLONA for autumn 2024.
Following first, previously-released new singles, “Cabin Fever” as well as “Rice”, taken off their forthcoming studio album, Norwegian desert rock upstarters SLOMOSA have confirmed a European Tour with Swedish heavy groove rockers GREENLEAF, who are currently gearing up for the release of their new album “The Head & The Habit” (June 21st via Magnetic Eye Records)! Make sure to catch this killer tour package live at the dates below:
GREENLEAF & SLOMOSA w/ PSYCHLONA 30 SEP 2024 Leipzig (DE) Werk2 01 OCT 2024 Berlin (DE) Lido 02 OCT 2024 (DE) Hamburg (DE) Gruenspan 03 OCT 2024 Köln (DE) Club Volta 04 OCT 2024 Bielefeld (DE) Forum 05 OCT 2024 Leeuwarden (NL) Into the Void 06 OCT 2024 Pratteln (CH) Up in Smoke 07 OCT 2024 Innsbruck (AT) PMK 09 OCT 2024 Wien (AT) Arena 10 OCT 2024 Zagreb (HR) Vintage Industrial Bar 11 OCT 2024 Graz (AT) PPC 12 OCT 2024 München (DE) Keep It Low
GREENLEAF is: Arvid Hällagård – vocals Tommi Holappa – guitars Sebastian Olsson – drums Hans Fröhlich – bass
SLOMOSA are: Benjamin Berdous – Vocals/guitar Marie Moe – Vocals/bass Tor Erik Bye – Guitar Jard Hole – Drums
The earliest hours of 2024 found Japanese heavy psych heads Blasting Rod traveling from their hometown of Nagoya to make their North American live debut on Jan. 6 in Los Angeles. I don’t know how long the trip ultimately was, but I’m assuming that the recordings for their new album — the forthcoming Mojave Green out June 21 on Low&Slow.Disk — were done as part of the same flyover, with Dan Joeright (Yawning Man, Big Scenic Nowhere, the Live in the Mojave Desertseries, etc.) at the helm in Gatos Trail Studio. At very least, if that were the case it would save the cost/hassle of traveling back.
Blasting Rod will celebrate and feature the release at Tokyo Doom Fest on May 11, playing alongside Hebi Katana, a solo set by Okazaki Yukito of the esteemed Eternal Elysium and others, and Mojave Green follows 2022’s Of Wild Hazel (review here) with suitably desert-hued vibing, its almost-10-minute title-track (edited for the video at the bottom of this post) veering between loose, hypnotic jamming and fuzzier, riffier push, as opener “YEA 24M (Cosmic Bash)” resolves with Sabbathian groove before the cymbal-wash finish, “Bowl of Shala” brings a more meditative aspect and “Grandon the Stone Cutter (OG Version)” closes with a funky groove led by the guitar that feels specifically in conversation with Brant Bjork.
Is it then desert rock homage made in the desert? There’s definitely that side to it, but Blasting Rod dig further into experimental noisemaking in the extended “Yao Tsu (Infinity Landing)” and are not so single-minded and are more immersive than such a supposition might imply. Perhaps homage in the sense of taking past ideas and reshaping them to suit their own exploratory purposes.
Info follows, video’s at the bottom. Deep breath before you dive in:
BLASTING ROD – ‘Mojave Green’
Releases June 21, 2024, on Low&Slow.Disk cassette tape, CD, and a limited edition of 100 on black Japanese audiophile vinyl at fine independent record dealers near you in Europe, from Dutch-based Shiny Beast mail-order, via the Blasting Rod Bandcamp site from Japan and the US, and streaming worldwide on every digital platform known to man. Some editions will include hand-printed blacklight artwork.
Recorded by Daniel Joeright at Gatos Trail Studio, Yucca Valley, California Assisted by Aaron Farinelli Mixed and Mastered by S. Shah at The Nest, Nagoya, Japan Vinyl and other editions mastered by Dave Polster at Well Made Music
‘Mojave Green’ tracklisting 1. YEA 24M (Cosmic Bash) 05:13 2. Yao Tsu (Infinity Landing) 16:24 3. Mojave Green 09:54 4. Bowl of Shala 06:05 5. Grandon the Stone Cutter (OG ver.) 07:33
S. Shah also played guitar, made other funny noises, visual art and additional recordings, conjured riffs, and scribbled words and voiced them.
Chihiro played drums and other percussion, and generally called the shots as executive producer.
Yoshihiro Yasui played whatever he wanted on bass guitar, and inspired with cause for pause.
Special thanks to Yukito Okazaki at Studio Zen, Japan・Zoe Joeright・Buddy Donner・Tom Frankot・and most importantly to our intrepid road manager, Nancy Bukowski
Video Director: Chihiro Second Unit: Yohei Yamamoto
Iron Man‘s fourth album, I Have Returned (review here), was released 15 years ago this week, on April 25, 2009. It came out through Shadow Kingdom Records, which over the next couple years would also stand behind reissues of the quintessential Maryland doomers’ LP catalog up to that point — namely 1993’s Black Night (discussed here; reissue review here), 1994’s The Passage (discussed here) and 1999’s Generation Void (reissue review here) — and its arrival was all the more ceremonious with the decade’s split between records.
Of course the truth is more complex than Iron Man returning and putting out a record called I Have Returned to mark the occasion — founding guitarist and principle songwriter “Iron” Alfred Morris III had brought the band back in the mid-aughts and released two live albums (both recorded in Cincinnati) and an EP, Submission, in 2007 — and though 10 years from one record to the next should be well long enough to build anticipation among fans, they were never a ‘hype’ kind of band.
I was about 12 at the time and can’t claim to have been aware/on board when their first two records landed through the venerable German label Hellhound Records, which dug into the Maryland doomsphere in the ’90s to unearth outfits like Unorthodox, The Obsessed, Iron Man, Wretched, Revelation, Internal Void and Vortex of Insanity — along with Count Raven, Pigmy Love Circus, Lost Breed, Saint Vitus and plenty of others from elsewhere; their catalog is a lost trove of doomers’ doom dying for loyalist reissue — but for me and I think a generation of underground-heavy heads who would come up in the next few years, I Have Returned marked a new beginning.
Perhaps it was less that for Morris. When I asked him in a 2009 interview here how things were different after 10 years, doing a new record and bringing out a revamped lineup with vocalist Joe Donnelly, bassist Louis Strachan (Life Beyond, Wretched, now Spiral Grave), and drummer Dex Dexter (who had played in Force with Morris, pre-Iron Man), he said simply: “Nothing has changed much.”
Fair enough, and on a few levels that was almost certainly true. Morris had started Force, from which Iron Man sprang initially as a Black Sabbath tribute act, in 1976, and he would continue with Iron Man for the rest of his life until his passing in 2018 at the age of 60, after a long decline in health that had left him legally blind and largely unable to tour. For him, maybe, it was so much a part of himself that it wasn’t a big deal, wasn’t a “comeback,” because as long as he existed so did the band, even if they hadn’t done an album in however long. To an extent, he was Iron Man.
And while I won’t discount the punch of Strachan‘s bass as “Burn the Sky” starts I Have Returned at a decent clip with Donnelly — a more technical Ozzy-style singer who had done Sabbath tributes as well, and something of a comedian on stage — riding the coursing groove in the verse, the coordinating efforts of their manager Michael Lindenauer (who gets an Executive Producer credit), or anyone else’s work throughout, Iron Man was forever rooted in the riffs. And in this regard, in his riffs, Morris was a poet. The production of Frank “The Punisher” Marchand (so many, from Unorthodox and Sixty Watt Shaman to Foghound and Borracho) gives each instrument its space, and while the ethic the band always followed was light on flourish in a way that became a tenet of ‘Maryland doom’ as a style, hooky second cut “Run From the Light” was damn near stately in its dense distortion as Morris‘ guitar set the pattern for the lyrics that turned Trouble on their head, and whether it’s the march of the memorable title-track or “Curse the Ages (Curse Me),” the speedier chug of “Blind-Sighted Forward Spiral” and the shredding finale “Among the Filth and Slime,” the dug-in lumber of “Sodden With Sin” or the standalone acoustic strum-and-pluck of the interlude “Days of Olde,” in tone, tempo and delivery, Morris‘ work distinguished Iron Man as ever sure of their purpose, never having forgotten where they were coming from.
It’s not a perfect record, even before you take on the sleazy lyrics of “Gomorrah Gold” — recommend you don’t, actually — but its love of classic metal and of course doom still resonate in the hard-hitting tension of “Among the Filth and Slime” as well as the more atmospheric nod of “Fallen Angel” just before it, and in “Run From the Light” and “I Have Returned,” “Burn the Sky” and “Curse the Ages (Curse Me),” etc., Iron Man declared themselves within and beyond the bounds of the fertile Maryland underground. Further, it was the point at which they started to get a modicum of the respect they’d long since deserved.
Strachan held the bassist position for the remainder of Iron Man‘s career, but Donnelly was out of the band and replaced by “Screaming Mad” Dee Calhoun (now Spiral Grave, solo, etc.) on vocals before 2011’s self-released 2011’s Dominance EP (review here), and Jason “Mot” Waldmann (also now Spiral Grave) would take over on drums circa 2012, in time to be part of the final Iron Man long-player, 2013’s South of the Earth (review here), also helmed by Marchand and issued via Rise Above Records in an era that saw Lee Dorrian (Cathedral, With the Dead, etc.) standing behind landmark albums from the likes of Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, Ghost, Blood Ceremony and others.
When Iron Man got picked up by Rise Above, it brought them to another level entirely. They would travel abroad to play a Rise Above anniversary party and other shows like the Castle of Doom Festival in Italy where the 2021 live album Hail to the Riff (on Argonauta) was recorded, and while they’ll probably always be undervalued to some degree, that it turned out to be their final run is bittersweet in hindsight because at least Morris had the chance to experience some of the impact of his work in and on the doom genre. I Have Returned set that in motion.
And in a move that remains both duly respectful and respectfully classy, after Morris‘ death, Calhoun, Strachan and Waldmann put the band to rest as well, moving on to Spiral Grave and carrying the legacy forward in new ways while telling their own story as well.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
—
Most of this week was dedicated in my head to returning from, processing and thinking through the trip to Roadburn last week and weekend, and that’s how it played out. Thanks to the unending kindness of The Patient Mrs., coming home wasn’t nearly as overwhelming as it might’ve been, and while I wouldn’t say The Pecan took it easy on me — she had darted in the parking lot of the airport and had to be picked up and put in the car to leave, at which point comes the hitting and biting; she wanted to keep riding the people-mover after however many laps back and forth; transitions are always her hardest moments — we’ve done a lot of good reading this week, both about Zelda and not, and I think maybe she missed me a little bit. Not that such a thing would ever be said outright, mind you.
Specifically in terms of The Obelisk, it was a catchup week in which I didn’t get caught up, so maybe not the most successful, but neither was it the most ambitious, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t drop the ball on anything I was actually on the hook to post. A couple album announcements — Lord Buffalo spring to mind first — and tours for Greenleaf/Slomosa and Dopelord/Red Sun should’ve gone up and didn’t, but hopefully I’ll get there. I’m surviving, in the meantime, and the world continues to spin.
Where I’ve really been lacking is in email. I’ve got a backlog from the contact form of things to check out in addition to relevant press releases and contacts about this and that. Messenger has been a bit better but I’m behind on that too (also less comes in). But I’ve found that with the limited time and brainpower I have in a given morning/early afternoon, I need to be writing if I want to get done what I want to get done. Not saying interpersonal communication isn’t part of that — I’m not on a total blackout or anything, just not keeping up the way I should — but if I have the time to write, then I’m going to do all I can to put myself in a position where I’m writing.
This thankfully also leaves me little time for questions like, “Is this crazy?” or “Does this matter to anyone but me?” or “Is this how I should be spending my days?,” which I’m not sure are any help in the asking. Being someone who writes about music, a reviewer or, in my loftiest of self-assessments, a critic, I’m used to a certain amount of condescension, generally from other creative-types based on their own insecurities. How much I want to feed into that cycle, I’ve never been sure. With the proliferation of other blogs and here-listen-to-this algorithms, what do I really add to anything by stressing out about news posts?
I’m not ready to hang up the site, emotionally or practically. I don’t have another outlet, for example. Nowhere to go at this point. But “I just want to write” has become only one of the processes involved in The Obelisk, and I need to look at that. I am not a content-provider. I do not want to pose out for social media, or do reaction videos instead of reviews. Does that make the work I do here out of date and/or irrelevant? Maybe.
These are vague thoughts presented in vague terms, so I’ll be concrete and say this: someday this will end. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. I’m 42 years old, and when The Obelisk started I wasn’t yet 30. I’ve dedicated 15 of the years of a life that in the best of cases is probably more than halfway over to this thing, and I’m comfortable thinking of it as my life’s work in terms of writing and reaching an audience. I’m happy with what it’s become, the generally respectful tone in which it’s spoken about, and that it’s spoken about at all. Every now and then, someone on the internet says something very nice about my work. I feel fortunate to have that as my situation. It is not something I take for granted. Thank you for reading, in other words. I’ll leave the discussion at that, which is what I most want to say anyhow.
This weekend we’re headed to Legoland, which I expect will be a total shitshow, but one of a familiar sort, and probably that will be the big event. I have two liner notes projects coming due at the same time, so my big plans to review Brume and DVNE and do three track/album premieres besides next week might prove too much, but I’ll do my best to dig into as much as I can, same as ever. Whatever you’re up to, I hope you enjoy the time. Have fun, be safe, hydrate and all that. It’s a hard world to live in, but there’s music too.
Posted in Whathaveyou on April 26th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
The most recent album from Boston’s Fórn, 2018’s Rites of Despair, saw them reaching deeper into death-doom with low growls and morose atmospheres, but the from-whence-it-came roots of that are there in their soon-to-be-reissued 2014 debut, The Departure of Consciousness. Originally issued through the reliably-genre-mashing Gilead Media and Vendetta Records, the LP’s anniversary edition is up for preorder now through Persistent Vision Records and boasts reworked art to go along with all the sludgier-leaning devastation of the original recording.
Shows are booked — nice to see Saint Vitus Bar on a list of dates; hope they’re open by then — and the PR wire has more background on the album and the band. Interested to read their first show was with Floor, which if it was 2014 would’ve been around the time of that band’s reunion run supporting their Oblation record. Hell of a start, but you can hear on the Bandcamp stream (also below) that the weight Fórn were bringing was well capable of holding up.
To wit:
FÓRN: funeral sludge masters reissue debut album “The Departure of Consciousness” via Persistent Vision Records; new album in the works
Celebrating the tenth anniversary of Fórn’s debut album, The Departure of Consciousness, Persistent Vision Records announces its official reissue of the funeral sludge masterpiece.
Originally released in 2014 via Vendetta Recorda and Gilead Media, The Departure of Consciousness is an auspicious debut that documents this remarkable band in its earliest state.
Out June 14th, Persistent Vision’s 12” vinyl release will include expanded artwork, by tattoo artist Bryan Proteau, and limited color variants.
In the band’s own words, Fórn was formed in 2012 in “a particularly dismal and harsh winter in Boston, Massachusetts” and found its initial inspiration in the sounds of Grief, Burning Witch, and Asunder. With instruments tracked by Alec Rodriguez at New Alliance, vocals tracked by Greg Wilkinson at Earhammer, and mastering handled by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege, debut album The Departure of Consciousness captures the raw greatness of those early days. A mix of cavernous atmosphere and gargantuan riffs, the six-track full-length plumbs the lowest depths of human misery, yet buzzes with a relentless energy that keeps the momentum flowing ever forward and holds the listener’s attention with a suffocating grip.
Reflecting on the TDOC era, vocalist Chris Pinto states: “Our first show ever was with the mighty Floor. It was also Joey’s first show playing guitar in a band. What I remember most is that we had way, way, way too many amps, but that was kind of the point. From there, things came very quickly. I remember getting to play with Thou, Windhand, Noothgrush, Brainoil, Bell Witch and The Body around when TDOC came out and those were all highlights.”
The band also famously played in a cave (located in the ruins of the historic Sutro Baths in San Francisco) in 2014, the week of the album’s original release.
Pinto reveals this about the concepts at play behind the album: “The title was inspired by some pseudo research paper I came across when I was studying cognitive psychology in college. A lot of concepts for Fórn songs relate to psychology and occult philosophy. A reoccurring theme on TDOC is facing your shadow self and the negative feelings and experiences that surround that, and how it’s even worse if you don’t confront your shadow self.”
In the years since TDOC, Fórn has released two more albums and a split with Yautja, and has established itself as a stalwart of the scene. With members spread now between Boston, LA, Portland and Berlin, the band confirms that a new album is in the works, to be released on Persistent Vision Records later in the year. Guitarist Joey Gonzalez gives the following statement on the upcoming new album: “It’s very much a test to see what I could do with this band and how I could push our art into uncharted territories, while still feeling like we’ve maintained the identity of the band. We’re very excited to share new music with the world. In many ways it feels like a homecoming, though certain aspects of the new record are definitely going to feel otherworldly compared to our past releases.”
In the meantime, the band will play select dates across the US and Canada, including stops at festivals such as Toronto’s Prepare the Ground Festival (with Orchid, Liturgy, Body Void) and Cascadian Midsummer Festival (with Wolves in The Throne Room, Steve Von Till, Earth).
Tracklist: 1) Emergence 2) Dweller on the Threshold 3) Gates of the Astral Plane 4) Alexithymia 5) Suffering in the Eternal Void 6) Cerebral Intermission
Tour: May 29 – Cambridge, MA @ Middle East May 30 – Brooklyn, NY @ Saint Vitus Jun 1 – Toronto, ON @ Prepare The Ground Festival Jun 2 – Montreal, QC @ Casa Del Popolo Jun 20 – Los Angeles, CA @ Knucklehead Jun 21 – Bakersfield, CA @ Death Over Bakersfield Jun 23 – Pe Ell, WA @ Cascadian Midsummer Festival
The Departure of Consciousness lineup: Chris Pinto – vocals Joey Gonzalez – guitar Brandon Terzakis – guitars Brian Barbaruolo – bass Chris Donaldson – drums
2024 live lineup: Chris Pinto – vocals Joey Gonzalez – guitar, electronics Danny Boyd – guitar Brian Barbaruolo – bass Lane Shi – vocals, synth Andrew Nault – drums, electronics
