Here’s the deal — last week or somewhere thereabouts, someone on Twitter was bitching about rock music being dead and blah blah the usual good music doesn’t come to me in the ways it did when I was 12 and therefore I think it’s irrelevant. The usual. Gimme Metal was mentioned as an outlet delivering good heavy to those who care enough to invest the minimal effort of clicking ‘listen.’ Dude was all “well if they played Trouble I’d listen” and Gimme rightly responded with a list of DJs who might be on board for such a thing. I was one of them.
Brought into the conversation I said hell yes I’d play Trouble. And as it happens I’ve gone ahead to play them twice, at the start of the show, and then follow it up with a bunch of other killer doom, old, newer and newer still, before circling back on the mother of them all, Black Fucking Sabbath, because when my name is brought into a random Twitter conversation and a challenge is issued, you bet your ass I’m going overboard. So pretty much the first hour of the show is doomed as all get-out. Trouble even through The Quill, who I thought were a good match for Dehumanizer-era Sabbath with that track from their new record.
Sometimes you gotta step up. Or something. I don’t know. I was just happen to have something to talk about in the voice breaks other than my kid or “thanks for listening.”
By the way, thanks for listening and/or reading. As always, I hope you enjoy.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmemetal.com
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 04.16.21
Trouble
The Tempter
Psalm 9
Trouble
R.I.P.
Trouble
Saint Vitus
Burial at Sea
Saint Vitus
Place of Skulls
Last Hit
With Vision
VT
The Gates of Slumber
The Awakening (Interpolating the Wrath of the Undead)
…The Awakening
Apostle of Solitude
Grey Farewell
From Gold to Ash
The Obsessed
Neatz Brigade
The Church Within
Black Sabbath
After All (The Dead)
Dehumanizer
The Quill
Evil Omen
Earthrise
VT
Boss Keloid
Gentle Clovis
Family the Smiling Thrush
Hippie Death Cult
Hornet Party
Circle of Days
NOÊTA
Elm
Elm
Kosmodemonic
Morai
Liminal Light
Hellish Form
Shadows with Teeth
Remains
VT
Darsombra
Call the Doctor (Sun Side)
Call the Doctor / Nightgarden
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is April 30 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
Portland, Oregon’s We are Writing A Literature Review Help that appreciate our clients and give you best writers depending on your topic and discipline. Your paper will be highly Hippie Death Cult will release their second album, With our Quality Custom Essay, you can be confident that your papers are flawless: from essay writing to crafting admission papers. Click here for more. Circle of Days, May 21 through The following guide will take you through some of the key issues when it comes to enter for Masters and PhD students. Although it is Australian Heavy Psych Sounds. Comprised of five songs, it runs a tidy 37 minutes and uses its time to unfold a melting pot of an aesthetic, bringing together ideas born of classic heavy rock and roll, psychedelia, cult rock and outlying elements like post-rock drift (in the bass of the title-track, of all places) and organic-ized Our objective is to make certain that each paper is contacted a high degree of criterion. Get essay from our regulation experts and remain completely satisfied. http://www.programmemed.eu/?citing-a-research-paper-mla. Our service allows you to select the specialist that will certainly be performing your order. We ll match you with an expert as well as manage your cooperation, from starting to end. Ministry-style gallop/echo vocals — quick but there — on “Hornet Party” (premiering below), and a creeping Americana paranoia in closer “Eye in the Sky.” After the four-piece’s impressive 2019 debut, Essay On The Yellow Wallpaper - Hire top writers to do your homework for you. confide your dissertation to professional writers employed in the company 111 (review here), they push past genre lines and are more atmospheric, dynamic and, from the opening organ-style keys of “Red Meat Tricks,” able to pursue dramatic ideas and vibes without falling into a trap of sounding like a silly put-on. Guitarist Seeking for Research Paper For? That's great! Check out the most reliable essay writing service EssayOnTime You can decide which writer will create Eddie Brnabic, vocalist/keyboardist http://www.autoteile-saarpfalz.de/?high-school-research-paper-help is the UAEs top notch and exceptional dissertation writing services. As a student of Dubai,Abu Dhabi, Al Ain, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and GCC; youll be provided with topclass educational writing help because our writers are there to assist you with each and every type of topic.With us youll get all the benefits that are possessed by the Ben Jackson (also Register with us and send a "http://ballyshannondrama.com/retirement-plan-options-for-small-business/" writing request now. You can select a thesis style from our menu or chat to one of our helpful advisors. You can view your checkout summary before purchase, so you know exactly how much we charge, and what for. Once your happy with your order press 'confirm' and your request will be processed. You are free and welcome to check on the progress of Hundred Eyes, ex-Lisias Essays On Love free, - how to find out if a paper is plagiarized for free. In terms of the latter free grade essays online. It is 56 what you find Sioux), bassist Decided Customs Essays Services to get your dissertation done online? Cheap christmas wrapping paper uk You have found it! A thesis or dissertation is a Laura Phillips and drummer Buy Student Nursing Homework Help at professional essay writing service. Order custom research academic papers from the best trusted company. Just find a great help for Ryan Moore (ex- Hello again! I Continue Reading for ten pages this time. Jim. Urgent essay writing for college, outlines are available in attached pdf. I would like to use your editing service for my research paper in University, I already filled the order form so you can see my request in inbox. Assistance required to write papers as quick as two weeks. Nether Regions), riding solid grooves into esoteric territories varied of spirit but unified by the fullness of the underlying performance. These songs still sound like there are humans playing them, in other words.
What comes through clearest, however, is that the humans in question are pushing themselves on the level of craft. “Red Meat Tricks,” “Hornet Party” and “Walk Within” are the first half of the LP, and the latter seems to hint toward see here now - Dissertations and resumes at most affordable prices. leave behind those sleepless nights writing your report with our custom Annie Lennox‘s “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” in its opening guitar line but follows its own course led by piano and a duel vocal from kite runner comparison essay Do My Book Report For Me gender pay gap thesis miranda vs arizona essay Jackson and phd thesis china http://www.stix-office.at/?should-animals-be-used-for-research-essay diversity literature review in higher education the next research agenda dissertation on financial services Phillips. Despite the clearly intentional breaking of Circle of Days into vinyl-ready form, putting the just-under-10-minute title-track and closer “Eye in the Sky” together in semi-monolithic fashion on side B, “Walk Within” makes a telling centerpiece in terms of the band’s priority toward melody and a move past some of the more pointedly grunge-derived aspects of their debut. In literal terms of the tracklisting, they are putting their progression at the center of the record for all to behold, following the assuring fuzzy roll of “Red Meat Tricks” and the outbound melding and toying with tempo of “Hornet Party” — not to mention the shred later — with something that pushes them to places in sound they haven’t yet been while also setting up the final pair of songs with its soft lead-out.
“Circle of Days” starts out relatively straightforward, but at 9:55 there’s plenty of room to flesh out and it takes advantage. Patient in its execution and solid in its construction, the immediate impression is that Hippie Death Cult have a plan, and they do. A scream and some muted crashes lead toward a pre-chorus making subtle use of janga-janga-janga stoner riffing before the title-line is finally delivered, giving the album its signature hook before rolling back to the verse. After cycling through again, they slow it down to back a guitar solo with organ flourish, and that’s how they end it, with the guitar reaching past the song and cutting before the fade-in ambience of “Eye in the Sky.” Like “Hornet Party,” the feel in its lyrics is a chronicle of our times, and as heavy rock overcomes its stigma against social critique — or at least acknowledgement in more than monster-laced metaphor — Jackson‘s vocals are a worthy method of delivery for the band’s ideas. “Eye in the Sky” is less readily verse/chorus than the song before it, but complements “Walk Within” in its atmosphere — even with drums — and in its build over most of its first half, it helps draw the diverse notions on which the album is based into a unified focus. Riffs are still there, and might be the foundation from which the song is based, but like the bulk of Circle of Days, “Eye in the Sky” spreads out in multiple directions, capping with matched-note leads from the keys and guitar and the residual echoes of a final crash.
Among its accomplishments of songwriting and style, Circle of Days establishes Hippie Death Cult as a more complex band on the whole. The melodic breadth they demonstrate, the periodic intensity of rhythm and the manner in which that’s offset by the overarching flow of the pieces that make up the entirety of the album speaks to their engaging with their material at its conceptual heart, thinking not only about what they’re saying in the bigger picture, but the instrumental and verbal language alike with which they’re saying it. For anyone who dug 111 or who might be encountering them for the first time with these tracks, this is invariably good news. They have added to, rather than subtracted from, their approach.
Circle of Days is up for preorder now ahead of the already-noted May 21 release. You’ll find those links under the player below, where you can hear “Hornet Party” premiering, and read some comment from Brnabic about the song.
Please enjoy:
Hippie Death Cult, “Hornet Party” official track premiere
Eddie Brnabic on “Hornet Party”:
“Choosing singles to premiere for this new album has been a bit of a challenge for us. Each song (as well as each song on the Doom Sessions split) feels really unique from one another and its tough to say that one really defines the album more than another. I kind of view us as more of an album band rather than a singles band. That being said, “Hornet Party” is the second song on the record following “Red Meat Tricks” so we are going chronologically for this one. I think it might be the shortest song on the album and it’s a total rager both musically and lyrically. It’s probably the most physically demanding song for each of us to perform on the album, but it’s our way of kind of holding up some sort of artistic mirror to the current climate that we live in. Extreme times call for extreme art, so…”
HORNET PARTY is the second single taken from the Hippie Death Cult brand new album Circle Of Days. The release will see the light May 21st via Heavy Psych Sounds.
Posted in audiObelisk on April 9th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Swedish psychedelic post-rock explorers Den Der Hale release their debut album Harsyra through Sound Effect Records on June 11. Even if the endorsement from the Greek imprint isn’t enough to immediately pique your interest — and it probably should be — the Malmö-based five-piece won’t take long to immerse you in their melodic wash, speaking here and there to post-punk or proto-New Wave (is there a difference?) or sundry other microgenres and eternal niches-within-niches they simply dub “post-psych.” Points for being concise, but much as the LP’s accessible runtime of five tracks/35 minutes unfolds sonic spaces greater than the sum of their time, so too does their chosen designation only begin to explain where they’re coming from on Harsyra, from the airy, harmony-culminating come-with-us downer-dirge of “Carcassonne,” string break included, to the surging wash of bliss that caps the concluding title-track.
Perhaps their path to creating such a striking first full-length makes more sense when one learns of band members’ past in Insaunas, whose dreamy svenskfolk found itself combining bedroom-psych intimacy and experimentalism on 2019’s We Brought Some Days Back, released through the Malmö label Nytt Arkiv. Knowing that isn’t going to account for all of the ritual-style standalone vocals at the end of second cut and side A closer “Ant Mill” — a 13-minute journey of spaces lush and minimal, fuzzed-out, weirded up and moving into your neighborhood, and, in that finish, more or less still; it is a beautiful thing that feels reckless without being so — but it’s a foundation to work from, and as much as Den Der Hale have their own mission throughout Harsyra, finding a place for themselves between that which is essentially human and that which is formless ether and grooving in and on that divide, melody is melody. Fortunately.
Side B is about a minute shorter than A when all put together — which is how I got the album, by the way; two files, one for each side and a time sheet from Magnus Lindberg Mastering that showed where one track ended and another began; pioneer spirit! — but it spends its time digging further into the post-heavy vibe set forth in the first two tracks. To wit, the droning line of guitar/maybe-keys/who-knows-what underscoring “Armoured,” which arrives as the first half-ish of the eight-minute “Armoured/Endurance,” the latter half of the track picking up immediately and letting the guitar come more forward to create Harsyra‘s most fervent wash (it’s no wonder they didn’t want to give it away by premiering the whole thing), vital and weighted and engulfing in its distortion and broad in its aftermath of noise and feedback. This builds on what Den Der Hale were doing previously, takes it someplace new, and there’s still enough context so that when the far-back programmed beat behind the guitar of the two-minute “Tinktur” comes in, it’s not at all out of place.
“Tinktur,” while short, is more than an interlude. Its soothing vocal calls back to “Carcassonne” at the outset and while it provides a convenient basis for contrast when the immediately motorik guitar chug begins at the start of “Harsyra” itself, it’s not without a presence of its own either. Still, once the Hawkwindian launch sequence begins, Den Der Hale make it clear they’ll not be returning to ground anytime soon. The melody remains fluid as the finale finds its grandness, guitars and drums leading an outward procession that’s loyal to the core rhythm while teasing the payoff to come and still giving the vocals room when necessary. It is tense, exciting. And then they’re off again. God knows what the lyrics are about — the title refers to a wood-sorrel, a three-leaf clover, which blooms from Spring to Midsummer, so maybe there’s some alignment with the June release — but the echoing voices provide a reassurance just the same. You’re not on this trip alone, and that becomes comforting as “Harsyra” is brought to its end. It’s not as cacophonous a blaster as “Armoured/Endurance” becomes, but it sure is fascinating that they put both those songs on side B to set up the contrast between them. Almost enough to make you think there’s been a plan underway the whole time.
And maybe there has, but Den Der Hale aren’t telling, and though Harsyra‘s accomplishments across this first 12″ are significant, they’re all the more so for the potential they hold. I’m no arbiter of cool and I never have been, but this one speaks to me and so I wanted to cover it. It’s as simple as that. I hope you find it speaks to you too. If you check out “Armoured” on the player below, it’s not going to tell you everything you need to know about the album. Don’t expect it to. It’s a teaser. Half a track. But it’s what I could get, and no one pays attention to anything that isn’t a premiere anymore and I thought this was worth someone paying attention to it, so here we are. I’ve put this record on my list of 2021’s best debuts, and I look forward to hearing what Den Der Hale do next.
That and preorder links is all I got, friends. PR wire info follows the song below.
After forming in late 2019, Den Der Hale quickly wrote and put out a number of singles, straddling the genres of post-rock and psych. ‘Harsyra’ is their debut album, a 5-track output which crystallizes their particular brand of post-psych. Tracks range from anthem-like and earthy, to fast paced and grimy, all while keeping an ethereal atmosphere throughout. “Harsyra” is out, on limited edition black and bone color vinyl, on June 11th via Sound Effect Records.
Born in Oljehamnen, the industrial harbour of Malmö, Den Der Hale rose from the remnants of former neo-folk project Insaunas. The addition of new members saw the sound evolve in a heavier and more complex direction, drawing on a wide array of influences. After putting out two singles during 2020, and polishing their sound through a number of live shows, guitarist Max Bredberg dubbed their new brand of music ‘post-psych’. The continued lockdown in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, has led to a sharp decrease in opportunities to play live shows. For Den Der Hale, this meant that the creative energy had to find some other form of outlet.
That outlet is what would eventually become the debut album Harsyra. Recorded and produced by the band itself in a studio located in the old railway roundhouses of Malmö, the album features five tracks, ranging in tone from earthy, grimy and ethereal to heavy hitting and fast-paced. Until the day comes when we can again enjoy music performed in the flesh, this post-psych oeuvre can best be experienced on vinyl, put out by Sound-Effect Records.
Posted in audiObelisk on April 7th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
A record at least three years in the making, Finland’s Gangrened will release their full-length debut, Deadly Algorithm, this Friday through a host of labels including Kohina Records, Domestic System, Noizeland Records, Odio Sonoro, Quebranta Records, Trepanation Recordings, Burial Records and Violence in the Veins. A follow-up to their 2014 We Are Nothing EP (review here), it is a five-song/42-minute run that paints a dark picture of the time and place we’ve come to inhabit. Not so much post- as simply apocalyptic, though plenty dystopian either way in its multifaceted atmospheric sludge onslaught. Pick your societal teardown, I guess, but know that Deadly Algorithm feels more like that teardown happening than its aftermath.
It is a challenging album, and feels purposeful in that. It is not haphazard, but in its spaciousness there is room for the unplanned and the unexpected, the turns it makes throughout its two sides are not as telegraphed as, say, Amenra, and being born out of Finnish noise rock somewhere along the path of its roots, the scope is different, but there’s calculation happening just the same, and even the four-minute “Intro” that leads into “Triptaani” (9:21) and “Hologrammi” (6:45) serves a pointed function in establishing the world in which Deadly Algorithm is taking place. That world should be plenty recognizable, from the anxiousness of decay to capitalist infiltration of social structures to becoming the Orwellian product via social media false celebrity.
These issues are addressed in the lyrics one way or the other, and if you happen to speak Finnish, you’re one up on me, but amid the urgent chug that takes hold quickly in “Triptaani” and the shouts that break through the morass of tone surrounding, the point gets across. The range is broad, however, and as Gangrened embark on this wanton delivery of heft, the ambience set by “Intro” never entirely dissipates. The spaciousness of the mix is such that when “Triptaani” breaks in its second half to set up its lurching conclusion, it feels natural rather than shoehorned in for dynamic effect, and the post-metallic squibbly lead guitar over top of the massive ending is like a melodic lifeline in the chaos.
“Hologrammi” offers little letup. Its rhythm is more of a march, but the shorter runtime carries with it a more forward attack, and the song’s abiding pummel becomes a defining characteristic. There’s tension between parts, shouts interwoven with obscure spoken passages, but the roll is steady until a wash of synth or sample or something else takes hold at around five and a half minutes in, fading gradually but consuming the song just the same and leaving its final crashes to play out with an especially desolate feel, wrapping side A with a rumble en route to the closing duo of “Kungingatar” (11:43) and “Triangeli” (10:23).
True, the second side of Deadly Algorithm is two songs instead of three. True, it’s about two minutes longer than side A. But it feels like Gangrened are pushing well beyond a point of no return even as the integrated intro of “Kuningatar” leads the way into the unfolding of the song itself, building up over its first three minutes to an eventual breakout. Its title translating to “queen” in English, “Kuningatar” is both intense and spacious, its tempo thrust insistent but with echoes reaching out as it heads toward a momentary bass-led midsection break. Airy lead guitar seems to top the bulk of the second half of the track in various forms, but the underlying pummel and drive is never really lost, even as the band crash out at the end and let the drums start “Triangeli” in a way that comes across as purposefully direct, one into the next. That is, whether they were or not, these two songs sound made to be positioned together, such is the ease of the transition between them. Side B is all the more of a monolith for that.
As to what horrors Gangrened unleash in the final statement of their immersive debut, those are noisier, more feedback-laced, slower unraveling and ultimately more unhinged. Again, purposefully. If “Trangeli” (“triangle”) is somehow the culmination of where Deadly Algorithm has been leading all along, its brutality feels earned, to say the least, but like the album from which it results, there is more depth to the finale than simple bludgeoning. It might seem silly to call Gangrened “mindful” on an aesthetic level, with the sort of new-new-agey connotation of the word, but the band is to be commended for not losing sight of their expressive goal even when that goal seems to be ripping the album apart at the end. The final minute-plus of “Trangeli” is dedicated to some final shouts and then residual noise on a long fade, and the atmospheric point that began to be made in “Intro” is highlighted in the album’s last moments — a sense of completion resonant in more than just the gut-wrenching lumber the band have been throwing around all the while.
There is plenty of that, to be sure, but Deadly Algorithm portrays the insidiousness of the age in which we live through its mood and overarching disaffection as well. Even in its critique, it is of its era. One could go on about the forces that would be required for a worldwide shift to, well, anything, but frankly, to do so is overwhelming and sad. That the impulse is there at all should be taken as testament to the thought-provoking nature of Gangrened‘s work across the record’s still-accessible, still-fluid 42-minute span, and though they present their arguments forcefully, they are doing more than screaming into the abyss. As a debut, their doing so is especially notable.
Full album is streaming below ahead of the release Friday.
Good luck, and enjoy:
“Deadly Algorithm” title, cover and concept verses about a subject that was used in the previous release “We are nothing”. how the world economic elites manipulate mass population. In this case, sneaking up, orienting the development of new technologies like algorithms of artificial intelligence for massive data and attention extraction. Persuasive technology to keep users as long as possible connected. Unfortunately, in the rising attention extraction digital economy, and data extraction also, that the new technologies are at the right moment immersed in, a human is worth more when we are depressed, outraged, polarized, and addicted. Parallel to this, is growing a massive surveillance by governments and big companies with the purpose of basically implement what seemed a dystopia till a little while ago: Living in the “1984” novel of George Orwell, or even worse. . . “If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product”.
Deadly Algorithm has been recorded in different sessions between June 2018 and February 2019 by Sami Nortunen at Ylistaro (Finland) and also at Tonehaven studio by Tom Brooke in June/July 2020. Deadly Algorithm has been mixed and mastered during July-September 2020 at Tonehaven studio by Tom Brooke.
Players: Jon Imbernon – Guitars and effects Joakim Udd – Electric bass and bass synth Lassi Männikkö – Drums Mikko Mannistö – Vocals and effects.
Posted in audiObelisk on April 2nd, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Richmond, Virginia, boogie doomers Book of Wyrms release their third long-player and Desert Records label debut, Occult New Age, on May 7. The announcement of the album first came down nearly a year ago, but like everybody’s everything, the four-piece’s recording plans were subject to the ravages of global pandemic. No shock that social distancing can make something like getting together to record a little bit harder.
Occult New Age surfaces now as a clean eight-song/41-minute album in the classic vinyl-minded structure of same. Four songs on each side, and the longest of them, “Hollergoblin,” rounds out side A instead of side B, perhaps in some measure of capitulation to modern attention spans. Or maybe just to give the classic metal that ensues on Occult New Age‘s back half — following the slower rolling “Keinehora,” anyhow — its due. Fair enough, in any case. As with 2019’s Remythologizer (review here) and 2017’s debut, Sci-Fi/Fantasy (review here), the band showcase a range of psychedelic and doomly shifts. Unlike their prior two LPs, however, this one was made as a four-piece, with guitarist Kyle Lewis on board for the recording process for the first time alongside vocalist/synthesist Sarah Moore Lindsey, bassist/synthesist Jay “Jake” Lindsey and drummer Chris DeHaven.
Lewis has been listed as a band member all along, so maybe he just didn’t take part in the recordings for whatever reason, but his presence certainly does nothing to hurt the fullness of tone the band present. Opener “Meteoric Dagger” starts off warm and sleek in its boogie with Sarah‘s vocals working easy in third-record realization over the guitar, drums casual but not lazy in their swing behind. Call it classic if you want because it’s ’70s-derived, but there’s nothing all that retro about it, and the spacey shred that leads to a tempo rollback, if anything, is more ’00s stoner than it is ’70s heavy.
It’s a winner in any case, and a stirring reminder that it was fuzz aficionados Twin Earth Records who first brought the band to daylight. The Sabbath-circa-’74 vibe in Lewis‘ tone on “Colossal Yield” is likewise righteous, and it leads to the quiet, folky interlude “Aubrionlilly” ahead of the aforementioned “Hollergoblin,” a hypnotic two minutes that fades to the silence from whence the side A closer emerges, rumbling, receding, surging and finally running as all-out as the band gets — a satisfying push that in any number of other instances would and could close an album, right unto the synth swapout in the last second. Obviously, it serves its purpose here with nothing more to be desired.
Cymbal wash from DeHaven and a far-back vocal start “Keinehora,” its title derived from the Yiddish words for “no evil eye.” If we’re warding off foul spells and the like, the aura Book of Wyrms set is suitable for doing so, and they unfurl the track en route to flashes of double-kick with patience befitting a group who’ve made the most of opportunities to grow in just the four years since their debut. The riff that launches “Speedball Sorcerer” and the layered interplay that follows is a clarion for what follows there and in the subsequent two tracks — it classic metal of doom.
Flourish of organ adds distinction, but it’s the largesse of the chorus — cymbal crash and churning riff — that make it even more of a standout, at least until about three minutes in when the organ takes the lead. Four minutes well spent (I hope you’ll agree), and it does serve as an entry to the closing salvo, with “Weatherworker” chugging its way into a later melodic ether and the low-end fuzz of “Dracula Prectice” ceding command only when the guitars have swelled to encompass it and the vocals.
The hits at the end and groove they ride out feels organic in purpose, and they don’t overdo it either, jamming their way through into a smoother section of organ and maybe-slide (?) undulations, some more double-kick for emphasis, and a final comedown, purposefully understating the finish after the apex. Legit for a band who’ve clearly focused on bringing more ambience and mood to their approach over time, and after the explorations of Sci-Fi/Fantasy and Remythologizer, they demonstrate a melodic and atmospheric scope that is aware of aesthetic tenets and plays to them well while succeeding in marking out its own stakes of songcraft and performance. Were you to see the band on stage, you might say, “Hey, cool riffs,” but that really wouldn’t begin to cover it. Though yeah, that too, for sure.
You can check out “Speedball Sorcerer” premiering on the player below, followed by some brief comment from the band, preorder link, etc.
Please enjoy:
Book of Wyrms on “Speedball Sorcerer”:
“We are stoked to let everyone hear the fuzzed out boogie of Speedball Sorcerer! This features our friend LJ Rafalko on organ and is about bees. Hope y’all dig.”
Book of Wyrms are back with more out of this world psychedelic metal! The band is set to release their 3rd full-length album, “Occult New Age”, May 7, 2021. With a foundation built on groovy riffs, memorable hooks, and ethereal vocals, the new album contains 8 tracks of energetic and classically catchy metal.
Occult New Age really does mark a new age for the band. Recording for the first time as a four-piece gave the band space to stretch out a little bit and fill the spectrum with big textures and proggy riffs, but their years playing together gives them focus to keep things tight and scatter hooks among the chaos.
Formed in 2014, Book of Wyrms came together to forage strange ingredients for their sonic pot, balancing airy vocals over heavy sludge, cloaking progressive melodies in fuzz, and dropping surprise boogies under retrofuturist synths (people always ask if it’s a theremin). Whenever they could, the band packed into their shiny starcraft to play dive bars and doom fests from New England to Chicago to Texas, leaving a trail of freaked-out squares and demolished tacos in their wake.
Book of Wyrms are: Chris DeHaven – Drums and Percussion Sarah Moore Lindsey – Vocals/ Synthesizer Jay “Jake” Lindsey – Bass/ Synthesizer Kyle Lewis – Guitar
Good stuff, almost entirely new. Hell, three of these records came out on the same day last Friday, so yeah, it’s fresh stuff one way or the other, even if I think I’ve played Genghis Tron three times now since they announced the release of their Dream Weaponalbum. And Yawning Sons definitely more than once too. Whatever. Call me repetitive. I like doom. “Repetitive” is a compliment to me.
The show opens and closes north of 10 minutes, but only hits that mark one other time, which is in “Fawn” by Body Void. Fair enough for the ultra-sludge charred-black morass that track elicits. With new King Buffalo, Somnuri and Domkraft singles and that hidden gem by Alastor tucked in ahead of Acid Mothers Temple-offshoot Mainliner’s massive jam at the end, this is a good god damn show. If I’d heard the new Heavy Temple in time to include that, I probably would have. Note to self for the next one.
Thanks for listening and/or reading. As always I hope you enjoy.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmemetal.com
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 04.02.21
Chamán
Concreto
Maleza
VT
Lammping
Other Shoe
New Jaws EP
Domkraft
Seeds
Seeds
King Buffalo
Hebetation
The Burden of Restlessness
DVNE
Court of the Matriarch
Etemen AEnka
Jess and the Ancient Ones
Summer Tripping Man
Vertigo
Greenleaf
Bury Me My Son
Echoes From a Mass
VT
Yawning Sons
Gravity Underwater
Sky Island
Genghis Tron
Great Mother
Dream Weapon
Arepo
Nonmaterial
Arepo
Body Void
Fawn
Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth
Somnuri
Beyond Your Last Breath
Nefarious Wave
Alastor
Death Cult
Onwards and Downwards
VT
Mainliner
Hibernator’s Dream
Dual Myths
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is April 16 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
Posted in audiObelisk on April 1st, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Norwegian trio Jointhugger release their new single-song EP, Reaper Season, tomorrow, April 2, as their first offering through Majestic Mountain Records. Too substantial with its 17:55 lone titular inclusion to be merely a placeholder, it acts nonetheless as a precursor to their second full-length to come and a bridge from 2020’s I Am No One (review here) to that next LP, yet untitled. And in foreshadowing that, it might be at its most telling in terms of the stylistic growth taking place in the band’s sound.
It is guitarist/vocalist Nico Munkvold and bassist Tore Pedersen and drummer Daniel Theobald on the recording, though the latter is since out of the band — they have a replacement, also to be announced — and from its ambient-droning first minute and into the guitar-as-piano-for-emphasis-on-the-notes buildup that ensues thereafter, it culls richer proceedings than the kinda-goofy stonerliness of their moniker might lead one who didn’t hear I Am No One to believe. Sure, there’s plenty of stoner-doom riffing on display here — it bursts out from those opening minutes in viscerally tidal fashion — but even there the vocal melodies that accompany are in spirit with more complex fare.
A short, classically bluesy solo takes hold over steady roll and “Reaper Season” flows readily toward a more weighted push that itself recedes into a transitional section of noise from which the drums pick up the tempo for a surprisingly boogie-fied shuffle. The guitar and bass tones are not to be overlooked here, since essentially they’re the same — as rumbling and deeply-weighted as ever — but Jointhugger make them move. Make them dance, and that feels particularly daring on this kind of release, where the expectation going in might be that it’s a simple onslaught of riff after riff, or maybe even just one riff played willfully ad nauseam.
As it is, Munkvold, Pedersen and Theobald stay long enough in each of Reaper Season‘s component movements to get their point across, but they’re by no means overstying their welcome, especially in that shuffle. With call and response shouts, it’s a party somehow but still thoroughly doomed, and with an abiding theme conjuring Lucifer as an embodiment of personal and expressive freedom, they would seem to have taken the message to heart in terms of blurring and transcending the lines of microgenre. I’ll take a bit of thick boogie anytime, and they wah it out to an organic-feeling conclusion as they approach the 11th minute and pull out a fuller-sounding thrust.
This too is transitional, and leading to a crash that could just a well be constructed of the two prior parts put together, thudding and lumbering but still keeping some of the airier feel of the preceding stretch, if having let go of the boogie in the process. Nothing lasts forever. They are, as it turns out, in the closing section of the song for about the last three minutes, but that stomp that finishes is affecting just the same, agonizingly slow as they tear the audio apart. Is that societal decay? The death of higher consciousness? The frickin’ plague? I don’t know, but the waves of noise that conclude Jointhugger‘s trip feel well apart from the unassuming ambience that started it. Did anyone else just hear that vulture call?
Not taking away from the forward potential Reaper Season portrays in Jointhugger‘s stylistic development, the realization of the thing itself is still what’s most striking about it. Though by no means insubstantial as a 17-plus-minute single track, it offers a depth and space that goes beyond the novel runtime and casts the band (presumably new drummer and all) as a significant presence with creative agency driving toward an identity all the more their own.
Bringer of light, you say? Works for me.
Thrilled to host the premiere of “Reaper Season” ahead of the release tomorrow. Stream it on the player below and please enjoy:
Nico Munkvold on “Reaper Season”:
Even with the coming album, Reaper Season is a stand-alone release. The track is about death, dying and Lucifer. Not necessarily literal death but maybe an ego death, death of an era, death to the concept of reckless capitalism and consumerism. We also know that most people aren’t aware that Lucifer comes from Greek Mythology and is connected with the light bringer, not wholly as ‘evil’ as was made convenient to the general religious narrative. Satan/Lucifer/The Devil acts as our inner animal or ‘beast’ as ‘they’ call it. Satan is a metaphor for the most natural part of us unhindered by what’s taught to us by society, the patriarchy and religion. Inner light, true freedom and self-reliance.
These intrinsic human traits seem to have been vilified, kept in check by a system run by fear mongers, warlords and stuffed suits on the top floor whose power is threatened by free thought and real altruism, which is why the concept of sin and moral law has been created to dumb down the populace and keep the people in herded groups to divide and conquer. The lyrics detail giving yourself over to the other side and seeing that most of what we are doing in this society is ‘wrong’ according to nature, and the Reaper is used (again) as a metaphor for the devil, Satan, the ‘dark’ side, which is actually nature, real, true freedom, not this blind ‘me, me, me’ society bullshit which sells you freedom in the form of patriarchy and consumerism. The song is written as a commentary of struggling to fit into the machine of a world and humanity that has lost its way and seems to be crumbling in front of our very eyes right now.
Posted in audiObelisk on March 25th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Virginia Beach heavy rockers Freedom Hawk will release their new single ‘Liftoff’ on April 2. At nine minutes long, reportedly completely improvised and captured on the first take, it’s about as raw as the four-piece have ever presented themselves. Their reputation, at least as far as I’m concerned, is for being a songwriting-minded band. They’re never too flashy on a technical level, and even when they jam out, they do so in a structural context. Well, like so many of the rules by which the world has previously been governed, all that goes out the window here. Do I think Freedom Hawk are turning into a heavy jam band and that their next album is going to be just like this? Nope. But as a one-off, it’s a pretty killer look at the basic dynamic of what happens when these guys get together and just let sound flow.
You might recall last summer when Freedom Hawk — guitarist/vocalist T.R. Morton, guitarist Brendan O’Neill, bassist Mark Cave and drummer Lenny Hines — got together and did a rehearsal-space livestream (review here) that, among other tunes culled from their catalog, featured a few new songs. “Liftoff” might have been born in the same room, but it’s a different intent, and in terms of sound it goes more to showing how the band start sculpting their material rather than how they refine it once the structure is set. In another context, in another time, parts of “Liftoff” might become something else — they still might for all I know — or end up on the backburner like any number of other jams any number of other bands tool around with along the way in their respective practice spots.
What makes “Liftoff” different? Well, it works well on its own terms, but frankly, if it didn’t the band probably wouldn’t bother to put it out at all. The airy, lead-soaked progression is mellow but held together by the drums such that when it bursts out it doesn’t do so out of nowhere, and I mean, not for nothing, but Freedom Hawk do this kind of spaciousness pretty well. I know their thing is usually more locked down, but they’ve had psychedelia in their playbook for a long time. “Liftoff” proves they’re able to pull it off in a way to which they haven’t treated their listeners before.
The video below is found footage that seems largely geared toward enhancing the atmosphere and giving you something to watch while you float along with the band. It does what it needs to do in that regard, and as always, I hope you enjoy.
Info on the single release follows, as well as confirmation of Freedom Hawk‘s next LP’s hopeful arrival in August.
Dig:
Freedom Hawk, “Liftoff” official track premiere
April 2nd – Single Release – “Liftoff”
Despite the pandemic wave cancelling our tour mid-run and cancelled future tours we channeled all our creative energy into setting up our own recording/rehearsal space and writing a new 9 song album. We are right now recording these 9 songs for an Aug release via Ripple Music!
Part of this journey allowed us to record every rehearsal and spontaneous jam. This is one of them – a 9-minute spontaneous live jam single. This is a first take. This jam was captured on Sept, 30, 2020.
This will be a digital only release through our 2008 imprint Magic Lady Records in partnership with Ripple Music.
Killer cover artwork from the aerosol master – Mark Fussell
If you sign up on our email list atwww.freedomhawk.net you can get it early.
Lyrics: You tell us…. we can’t remember.
Live Recording from Freedom Hawk’s Rehearsal Space
Mixing Engineer: Ian Watts The Magic Closet South, Portland, OR
Mastering Engineer: Chris Goosman Baseline Audio Labs, Ann Arbor, MI www.baselineaudio.com
