Good show. As of this writing, I haven’t cut the voice tracks yet for the breaks, but there’s really only so much I can do to screw it up, though I’m sure one way or the other I’ll try. My head’s been pretty deep in longer-form stuff lately — really pushing for that mental-escape aspect of listening — so there’s not a lot here that departs from that, new cuts from  Looking for an academic service that can answer your 'Starting Up A Gym Business Plan' cry for help? Our writers are experts in writing application papers. The Atomic Bitchwax and  Buy Reflective Essay. We have a highly professional and qualified writing staff. Our writers have great writing experience and always do their All Souls notwithstanding, as they were both too killer not to include.

But last time around I played “Dopesmoker,” so I guess I don’t need to tell you my head’s into longer songs. Still, with the doomly start this one gets from  We offer wide gamut of custom go to link online with 24*7 assistance by the high qualified professionals instantly. We are here to better Dopelord,  The Ultimate Argumentatif Essay Trick. Each day, many custom made writings are made. The dissertation has to be written with suitable word Malsten and  Essay for Sale from UK Experts — 5 Undeniable Pros. Before you continue reading on the five pros of Example Of Dissertation Literature Review in the UK, you have to get a couple Pale Divine, and the sheer out-there vibe of  english essay outline 2 Grade Math Homework dissertation book manuscript how to write an assignment proposal OZO after the heavy post-rock of  Homework-desk.com provides professional http://diakonus.gorogkatolikus.hu/?help-writing-rhymes for any accounting course, at any academic level. Use 20% discount! Dystopian Future Movies, and the culmination from the shape-of-metal-to-come brought to bear by  Online Graduate Homework Help - High-Quality Assignment Writing Website - We Can Write You Reliable Assignments Plagiarism Free Quality Homework Forlesen and the gloriously shapeless psychedelia of  7 Dollar Essay is a relatively cheap Competition Analysis Business Plan. Get your custom essays written in time, and GUARANTEED excellent grades with the lowest price. Temple Fang right after, I dig this one. I dig all of them, yeah, but this one too.

And as per usual, I hope you do as well.

The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmeradio.com

Full playlist:

The Obelisk Show – 07.10.20

Dopelord	Doom Bastards	Sign of the Devil
Malsten	Torsion	The Haunting of Silvåkra Mill
Pale Divine	Consequence of Time	Consequence of Time
BREAK
The Atomic Bitchwax	Scorpio	Scorpio
Familiars	Barn Burning	All in Good Time
Dystopian Future Movies	Ten Years	Inviolate
OZO	Pluto	Pluto
Spiral Galaxy	Machine D	Spiral Galaxy
All Souls	Death Becomes Us	Songs for the End of the World
BREAK
Forlesen	Nightbridge	Hierophant Violent
Temple Fang	Gemini/Silky Servants	Live at Merleyn

The Obelisk Show on Professional term paper lab for self-published writers Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is July 24 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.

Gimme Metal website

The Obelisk on Thee Facebooks

Swedish trio ap biology lab homework help - Students that attend college should not get paid for [tags: fans support, college teams, college athletes] 963 words (2 10,000 Years will release their self-titled debut EP through business plan for writer like it essay philosophy of life breaking barriers essay Death Valley Records on July 10. Two-thirds of the band were formerly tenured in the hard-hitting Pay Me To Write Your Paper UK Offering Cheap Dissertation Writing Services. Get Cheap Dissertation Writing Services To Ensure Distinction Grades Guaranteed. Pike, and with Short Story Essay Writing. We have a highly professional and qualified writing staff. Our writers have great writing experience and always do their best to meet 10,000 Years — true to the early To get 100% plagiarism free and original assignment hire the assignment writers from Singapore Best Resume Writing Services 2014 Toronto. You can get best assistance in any of the High on Fire track for which the band is named — they take on brasher and meaner-edged sounds. Their EP runs five songs and 20 minutes, so the investment on the part of the listener is just about minimal, but what’s delivered is an encouraging start for a new trio as bassist/vocalist Alex Risberg and guitarist Erik Palm (the ex-Pike contingent) group with drummer Espen Karlsen to undertake the project. With Risberg‘s shouts overtop, 10,000 Years not only take on the meatier side of heavier riffing, they do so with a particular nuance that stems from their national underground heritage.

When one hears the phrase “Swedish death metal,” very often what that’s referring to is a cadre of bands who made landmark recordings at Sunlight Studio in Stockholm with producer Tomas Skogsberg at the helm circa 1989-1992. Entombed, Grave, Dismember, even At the Gates worked with Skogsberg during this time, and in addition to the aesthetic elements they shared between them, the ‘Sunlight Sound’ (which I’ve spoken about here before) is a massive piece of what defined those acts and that era that still has relevance today, both because those groups are still active — some in more than one incarnation — and because a band like 10,000 Years is able to take the ‘Sunlight Sound’ and bring it to a new and exciting context as they do on this first EP.

Bookended in quiet passages between the delayed launch of opener “‘Albatross’ Landing” and the final subdued stretch of “From Suns Beyond,” 10,000 Years‘ 10,000 Years boasts a sharp efficiency of craft and winds up someplace between sludge metal and heavy rock at its root, but the rumble of Risberg‘s bass at the low end and the grit that seems to extend even unto Karlsen‘s crash cymbals lends an overarching rawness that helps immediately define the band’s personality. “Master of Oblivion” is downright sinister in its aggressive filth, and the three-minute centerpiece “Lee Van Cleef” echoes out its nasty thrust, but at its heart it’s essentially building off a Kyuss-style riff. It’s how 10,000 Years make it their own that makes all the difference.

That continues to be the case as the penultimate “Into the Jaws of the Green King” digs into the muck about as far as 10,000 Years seem willing to go at this point, and mud-shuffles into the creeper “From Suns Beyond,” which bursts out its instrumental moment of rage before receding back into the Sabbath “Hand of Doom”-esque quiet bounce.

For a 20-minute outing, there’s a lot to take in on 10,000 Years‘ five inclusions, and whatever the band does next, they’ll have an interesting task before them in expanding on what this first outing presents while (hopefully) maintaining the ferocity that drives them here. As they’ve got the established chemistry between the guitar and bass at their disposal and a clear idea of what they’re going for in terms of style, I have no trouble thinking there’s a masterplan at work here somewhere. It just may be one that involves a good deal of slaughter.

EP is streaming in its entirety below, and Risberg offers some background on the group beneath that.

Please enjoy:

Alex Risberg on 10,000 Years:

Me and Erik (Palm, guitars) previously played together in the original lineup of Pike. But we’d kinda drifted apart a bit during the years since he left the band even though we kept in touch and everything, but we hadn’t played together in a very long time.

Then one day he sent me a text like “I got a bunch of riffs, you wanna do something?” and that was it really. We jammed a couple of times, just me and him, and the riffs were amazing. We had to do something with them, so we decided to start a new band and just blast the heaviest, most uncompromising stoner metal we could.

We thought finding a drummer would be a challenge, since they are usually few and far between if you don’t wanna settle. And we never settle. But the first guy we tried out just clicked. We jelled immediately and that guy was Espen (Karlsen, drums) and we decided then and there that he was a part of the band and we set about writing more and more stuff.

When we had five finished songs we decided to record them and release an EP and that’s what we’re releasing now on July 10th. So from that first rehearsal to the release it’s been about four months, I think. So everything has gone very fast. But it’s just been such a smooth ride, very easy work, so we just keep going and see where we end up.

As far as influences it’s the same as it ever was. Black Sabbath is the foundation for everything we’ve ever done, regardless of which band we’ve done it in. We see our music as stonermetal and the bands I think of when I hear that term is stuff like High On Fire and Black Tusk so there you go. The inspiration is all the same bands we’ve always loved ever since long before we started Pike in 2008. Kyuss (without whom etc), Mastodon, Kylesa, Fu Manchu, El Gordo, Sleep, I mean the list goes on and on, haha.

The music and songs we’ve been writing and playing is all based in some sort of weird scifi-concept inspired by stuff like HP Lovecraft, Planet Of The Apes and other cool shit like that. It’s all about a team of astronauts who venture into space to find a future home for humanity. But obviously there’s problems and they crash through a wormhole or something, a rift in the space-time, and end up on a strange planet in neighbouring dimension that’s inhabited by ancient gods and strange creatures and this EP is about the journey there and what happens on this weird planet. The last song, “From Suns Beyond”, is when they finally get out of there and travel back to earth, but that’s a story for another record!

Recorded during one weekend in June 2020 in Studio Sunlight in Norrtälje, Sweden
Produced and Mixed by Tomas Skogberg
Mastered by Magnus Andersson in Endarker Studios in Norrköping, Sweden
Artwork and design by Francesco Bauso, Negative Crypt
Logo by Dominic Sohor

10,000 Years are:
Erik Palm – Guitars
Alex Risberg – Bass/vocals
Espen Karlsen – Drums

10,000 Years on Thee Facebooks

10,000 Years on Bandcamp

10,000 Years on Instagram

Death Valley Records on Thee Facebooks

Svärd — or Svaerd, if you’re not up for typing the accent, make their debut tomorrow through Argonauta Records with The Rift. The five-track/25-minute offering is a legitimate jump in style for founding guitarist/vocalists Tim NedergÃ¥rd and Björn Pettersson, both also of In Mourning. That act over its 20 years has developed into a progressive melodic death band from its more morose beginnings, but with Svärd, the two axe-handlers start fresh and explore a more heavy-rocking mentality. While their foundation is still in a crisp, decidedly metal sound that comes through beneath the weighted riffs on The Rift — thinking particularly in the post-intro trio of cuts “A Rift in the Green,” “Palaeocene Flames” and “The Burning Asylum” — NedergÃ¥rd, Pettersson, bassist/vocalist Pierre Stam and drummer Cornelius Althammer (also of Germany’s Ahab) make nods toward classic metal in the twin leads and heavy rock in the driving push of their groove. There’s aggression in the barking vocals of “A Rift in the Green,” and maybe even in the careening riff that starts “Palaeocene Flames” — certainly in the verse chug that follows — but it meets with a purpose distinctly separate from the guitarists’ other unit.

First and foremost, that purpose seems to be to have a good time. I’m sure playing In Mourning is plenty satisfying on any number of levels — a band doesn’t last 20 years if it isn’t — but listening to the lines of “Palaeocene Flames,” one can almost hear the smiles on Svärd‘s faces as they deliver the lyrics. The same goes for the twisting “The Burning Asylum,” which touches on sludge metal but boasts gang shouts and a straightened-out hook that’s part hardcore in its origin. It’s fun. They’re having fun. That’s not to say the songs are a goof, because they’re not — “The Burning Asylum” also has clean vocals bordering on harmonies in its chorus and a deeper sense of arrangement than either of the two cuts before it — but the band are clearly enjoying the recording process as they’re taking part in it, and that comes through The Rift as crisply as Althammer‘s snare or any guitar lead that might accompany.

That’s not the extent of Svärd‘s ambitions, however, as the band finish out The Rift with the nine-minute “The Portal” which is a more consuming and atmospheric undertaking that begins with ambient guitar noise and cymbal washes before its quiet and spacious unfolding of guitar, bass and drums takes hold. It’s a different vibe, of course, than anything the band has presented up to that point, but seems also to connect somehow to the obscure and ethereal intro “Hallowed Grounds” at the outset of the release, at least in apparent narrative, if not the direct audio. As it rolls through, it has its moments of fury and expanse, to be sure, but there’s a heavy progressive edge that is carried alongside that, so that even the swirl winding around the apex riff seems to be intentionally placed as the four-piece work their way toward the inevitable final thud. They cap with a spiral of guitar noise and break the trance that those last repetitions induced, snapping the listener back to reality in a fashion that highlights just how far out “The Portal” has gone.

With members in other concurrent bands, it’s hard to know how Svärd will ultimately fit into the bigger picture — one expects it depends in no small part on the response to the EP and unavoidable first full-length — but there’s charm here in addition to impact, and The Rift‘s coming from a metallic place brings a rare sense of character even as it obscures genre lines. It is refreshing both in its energy and aesthetic, so whatever comes next, if anything, will have a standard to meet.

At that, I’ll turn you over to the full stream of the EP, which you’ll find on the player below. PR wire info follows.

Please enjoy:

Svärd, The Rift EP official stream

It’s been a longtime and common, creative dream of both members in AHAB and IN MOURNING, when they got together in 2017 to start a new band project. Tim NedergÃ¥rd and Björn Pettersson (both in IN MOURNING, SWE) teamed up with their former bandmate Pierre Stam, when drummer Cornelius Althammer of German doomsters AHAB, who has been connected to the Swedish guys in a 10 years friendship, joined this new and heavy music adventure that is SVÄRD. The Rift, a tasty appetizer for a first full-length album to come in the not so distant future, is slated for a release on July 3rd in digital formats, while a Vinyl edition will follow via Argonauta Records as well.

SVÄRD is:
Tim Nedergård – Guitars, Vocals
Björn Pettersson – Guitars, Vocals
Pierre Stam – Bass, Vocals
Cornelius Althammer – Drums

Svärd, Making The Rift (Pt. 4)

Svärd on Thee Facebooks

Svärd on Instagram

Svärd on Bandcamp

Argonauta Records website

Argonauta Records on Thee Facebooks

Here’s what you need to know: On Sept. 18, Heavy Psych Sounds will release Doom Sessions Vol. 2, bringing together Italy’s 1782 and Greece’s Acid Mammoth. Yeah, I know, Doom Sessions Vol. 1, with Conan and Deadsmoke isn’t even out until July 17, but I guess the label is trying to stay ahead of the game. What it rounds out to is more riffs, and I know damn well you’ve got room in your life for more riffs, so quit yer yappin’ and dig into 1782‘s “Bloody Ritual” on the streaming doodad below in all its premiere-y goodness. It runs five minutes and it’s got like a whole day’s worth of Vitamin Nod. Take your pills, man.

How on earth did Heavy Psych Sounds get the notion to pair up these Roman and Greek titans? Well, both bands released records through the imprint last year. For the duo 1782 — which also features in its lineup Marco Nieddu, who runs Electric Valley Records — it was their self-titled debut (review here), rife with willful primitivism of its approach, drawing from VHS horror grain and a post-EWiz groove that remains well intact on “Bloody Ritual.” Acid Mammoth‘s second album, Under Acid Hoof (review here), arrived later in the year and shared some genre-on-genre aesthetic with their labelmates, both bands favoring a rawness of approach and themes centered around ritualism, darkness, the devil and all that other spooky fun stuff.

I haven’t been graced with the full release as yet, so I can’t speak to what Acid Mammoth are doing this time — please don’t go prog; sometimes I feel like everybody’s going prog — but if it’s up to 1782 to set the tone with “Bloody Ritual,” they’re setting it for all the fuzzy decay you can handle. Like body odor and liquor breath put to tape. Full on scuzz.

Dig:

Bloody Ritual is the first single taken from the upcoming split album DOOM SESSIONS VOL.2 – 1782 // ACID MAMMOTH. This first single is from 1782.

The release will see the light September 18th via Heavy Psych Sounds.

ALBUM PRESALE:
https://heavypsychsoundsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/doom-sessions-vol-2-1782-acid-mammoth

TRACKLIST

SIDE A – 1782
Bloody Ritual
Hey Satan
Witch Death Cult

SIDE B – Acid Mammoth
Black Wedding
Sleepless Malice
Cosmic Pyres

Say 1782:
“A song that goes straight to the point, the emotions of the last moments of a ritual, fuzzy and heavy riffs, the battery like a boulder that enters your mind! Bloody Ritual is the track that opens Doom Sessions vol.2, 1782 & Acid Mammoth split album!”

1782 on Thee Facebooks

1782 on Instagram

Acid Mammoth on Thee Facebooks

Acid Mammoth on Bandcamp

Heavy Psych Sounds on Thee Facebooks

Heavy Psych Sounds website

Heavy Psych Sounds on Bandcamp

So I guess this is the episode where I play Sleep‘s Dopesmoker in its entirety. I’ve wanted to play a full record for a while now, mostly because that’s how I like listening to stuff at home, so I figured if I’m going to do a thing, I might as well go completely over the top with it, which I’m pretty sure is also what Sleep said when they recorded that album in the first place. Works for me.

Some good new stuff in there too. I like Orsak:Oslo‘s new EP a lot, and that Empress track that premiered here kind of stuck with me. The Kairon: IRSE! is weird and I find that delightful, especially coming out of Slift and Rrrags, both of which have gotten far less coverage around here than they deserve. Kind of a fucked Spring/early Summer. Sorry. Doing my best. And I figured new-ish Goatsnake and new Brimstone Coven were good to lead off. Can’t really miss, right?

But anyway, “Dopesmoker.” It’s fucking “Dopesmoker.” I don’t know if I’ll play other full albums, make it a thing I do on the show, but it was fun this time and that’s good enough for one episode.

The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmeradio.com

Full playlist:

The Obelisk Show – 06.26.20

Goatsnake	Breakfast with the King	Breakfast with the King b/w Deathwish*	0:04:57
Brimstone Coven	The Inferno	The Woes of a Mortal World*	0:04:29
Orsak:Oslo	057 Passage	Skimmer EP*	0:05:16
Empress	Lion’s Blood	Premonition*	0:09:39
VOICE TRACK
Rrrags	Dark is the Day	High Protein*	0:08:01
Slift	Lions, Tigers & Bears	Ummon*	0:13:18
Kairon: IRSE!	An Bat None	Polysomn*	0:06:04
VOICE TRACK
Sleep	Dopesmoker	Dopesmoker	1:03:31

The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is July 9 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.

Gimme Metal website

The Obelisk on Thee Facebooks

[Click play above to stream Wino’s Forever Gone in full. Album is out Friday on Ripple Music with preorders here for US and here for EU.]

It is overwhelming to consider the tumult of the decade between Scott “Wino” Weinrich‘s 2010 debut solo album, Adrift (review here), and this follow-up, Forever Gone. The dissolution of Shrinebuilder, the acoustic collaboration with German singer-songwriter Conny Ochs, the tenure fronting Saint Vitus that ended in an arrest in Norway for amphetamine possession and subsequent ban from Schengan Area countries in Europe — which was a five-year sentence, but still resulted in his being unable to tour there last year — as well as reunions first with The Obsessed, then Spirit Caravan, then Spirit Caravan becoming The Obsessed and changing its lineup before putting out their first album in two decades. Through all of this and the inevitable whatever-it-was I left out, Weinrich continued to perform solo acoustic shows, and so the notion of a second album was never completely absent, but apparently it took some doing to make it happen.

But if it was Weinrich‘s goal to channel living through those years into the craft and performance of Forever Gone — released through Ripple Music where Adrift was on Exile on Mainstream — it comes through as a palpable emotional and atmospheric weight in songs like the opening title-track, “No Wrong” and “Lavender and Sage,” and the penultimate “Was, Is and Shall Be,” the latter two of which feature guest vocals. Thinking of arrangements as compared to the 2010 offering, Forever Gone feels much less restricted to a guy-and-guitar aesthetic. There’s the slide in “You’re So Fine,” drums and electrics on “Dark Ravine,” an electric solo woven into early highlight “Taken” and vocal layering used sporadically throughout. The effect this has is to make minimalist moments like “The Song’s at the Bottom of the Bottle” and “Dead Yesterday” — which if nothing else certainly feels like a thematic answer to “Forever Gone” itself — stand out all the more, conveying the loneliness, regret and contemplation at root in some of the material while still leaving room for hope in more expansive pieces like “Dark Ravine” or the closing Joy Division cover “Isolation,” which comes through almost as a full-band, with drums, electric and acoustic guitars, and multiple layers of voice.

That finale should be readily enough familiar to those who’ve kept up with Wino‘s solo work live in the last eight or so years, and it’s also one of several of the pieces throughout Forever Gone that draws from the Wino & Conny Ochs collaborations. “Isolation” appeared on their Labour of Love 2012 Latitudes session (discussed here), while “Dead Yesterday” and “Dark Ravine” appeared on that same year’s full-length debut (also on Exile on Mainstream), Heavy Kingdom (review here), and “Crystal Madonna” and “Forever Gone” itself featured on Freedom Conspiracy (review here) in 2015. As Forever Gone is serving double-duty as the beginning of a series of acoustic-based Ripple releases called ‘Blood and Strings,’ it’s not like anyone’s trying to pass these off as brand new — Wino isn’t “getting one over” or anything like that — but the familiarity of some of the material and the refresh on the arrangements gives them new life and while obviously Weinrich is at the center of all the material, the work of producer Frank “The Punisher” Marchand isn’t to be ignored when it comes to the finished product of Forever Gone.

Whether it’s intertwining electrics and acoustics at the start of “Taken” or giving a sense of space through subtle vocal echo thereafter, or highlighting the classic blues rock feel of “You’re So Fine” to bring a moment of joy between the more melancholic “Dead Yesterday” and “Crystal Madonna,” each strum is as crisp as it wants to be, and Wino‘s voice comes through with no less instrumental detail, the product of decades of living and singing hard manifest in making the languid melody of “Lavender and Sage” feel like something earned rather than simply adopted as a stylistic choice. Part of that of course stems from the narrative of Wino‘s career itself, but if ever there was a place for such context and for his personality to come through as sharply as it does, Forever Gone would seem to be it, and Marchand is due much credit in making that happen.

Weinrich‘s in-genre legacy is well established through his work in The Obsessed, Saint Vitus, The Hidden Hand, etc., and doesn’t need to be recounted here anymore than it already has. What comes through most on Forever Gone is that, rather than seeing an artist resting on his laurels and self-indulgently pushing through 11 songs and 45 minutes of assembled material, Wino here brings the unmistakable character of songwriting and passion of performance that has made him the figurehead he is. It is an indelible mark of his work and whether it’s in the relatively uptempo version here of “Dark Ravine” or in “Crystal Madonna” — which was a highlight of Freedom Conspiracy and is one on Forever Gone as well — it is the foundation on which these songs, new and old alike, are built. With the variety in arrangements and guests in and out adding to Weinrich‘s vocals and guitar, there is a sense of completeness about Forever Gone that feels progressed forward from Adrift even as it stays loyal to the form.

It is impossible to know where the next decade might take Wino as a performer or a human being, but with this collection, his place as America’s Godfather of Doom is reaffirmed even as he breaks the confines of doom itself; though anyone who tells you Forever Gone isn’t heavy needs to recheck their definition of the word. As vibrant as this material is, and as much as it brims with the passion and creative intensity that brought it to bear in the studio, there continues to be a heft that is either underlying or at the fore, moving no less dynamically than the arrangements of the songs throughout, and no less crucial to the understanding of what this record is. I’ve said before, on plenty of occasions, there’s only one Wino. That’s where the count remains. And if Forever Gone is his way of marking the passage of the last 10 years, it is of due substance to be up to that task.

Wino on Thee Facebooks

Wino website

Ripple Music on Thee Facebooks

Ripple Music on Instagram

Ripple Music on Bandcamp

Ripple Music website

Seeing its first official release since it was recorded some 50 years ago, Ice‘s first and only full-length, The Ice Age, will be released by RidingEasy Records on July 10. It was originally supposed to come out in April, but frankly after half a century do a few more months really matter? By now, the narrative of the-great-heavy-’70s-lost-classic is well enough familiar. How many times has that story been told? Hundreds? Thousands maybe? RidingEasy are certainly no strangers to the era, between their Brown Acid archival compilation series and their Randy Holden reissue, not to mention supporting those who likewise worship that moment in time like Dunbarrow, BUS, Svvamp and so on. Ice‘s The Ice Age is different though.

Think of it this way: Yeah, there are thousands of those records out there, from Atomic Rooster and Cactus to Spooky Tooth and Rare Earth. The heavy ’70s are a treasure trove, and an entire universe of formative heavy rock and roll and proto-metal exists waiting to be discovered by anyone who might want to take the time. Fine. How many of those bands have unreleased recordings? At this point? Far fewer. And how many entirely lost albums are there? Far fewer, let alone those that are as complete and as righteous front to back as The Ice Age, which digs into burly hooks on “Copper Penny” and rocks hard on opener “Gypsy,” but reminds of some of Bang‘s balladeering on the six-minute penultimate (and longest) cut “He Rides Among the Clouds,” pulling back on the brash swagger of “Running High” which is no doubt written in homage to how tight these dudes wore their bell-bottom jeans. One way or the other, they manage to make an impression as the five-piece that was, the prominent organ work of Barry Crawford (als0 vocals) sounding ahead of its time owing perhaps in some measure to the modern ears that mixed it here, but still engaging alongside John Schaffer‘s lead guitar on the mellower “3 O’Clock in the Morning,” which follows the initial push of “Gypsy” and “Satisfy” at The Ice Age‘s outset — or dawning, as it were.

Crawford, rhythm guitarist Richard Strange and bassist Jim Lee handle vocals throughout — the latter in the lead position — while Mike Saligoe rounds out on drums, and the interaction between different singers bolsters the songwriting even unto a later cut like “Run to Me,” which is an upbeat but still laid back straightforward heavy rocker, Lee‘s voice gruff in the verse giving way to a more melodic chorus. This along with the semi-early-prog instrumental climbing of “Copper Penny,” the post-McCartney bounce in the second half of “3 O’Clock in the Morning” and the sweeter and more accessible take of “I Can See Her Flying” help assure that the 10-song/37-minute LP brings enough dynamic to sustain itself, and it does to a striking measure, closing out with “Song of the East,” the early organeering of which gives way to lockstep guitar and organ leads in a rhythmic march that seems like it’s going to carry The Ice Age to its finish before the band sharply brings the song back to its central progression.

So what the hell was it, right? Isn’t that the question? What stopped Ice from releasing The Ice Age in the first place? Was there no one around in their native Indianapolis who’d get behind the album for even a private press edition that collectors now could fawn over like so many others? How did The Ice Age end up languishing for 50 — five-zero — years while countless other records have been heralded to a point of revising the history of rock and metal to see to their inclusion in it? Hey Ice, where you been all my life?

I don’t have the answer to any of that — sorry to disappoint. Band recorded, band broke up. Zukus!, who were featured on a Brown Acid release noted below, were the same band as Ice, but the bulk of this material never came out before. Rest assured, it’s been treated lovingly and with due reverence for this release; it’s hard to imagine those tapes sounding this clean when they came off the shelf or out of whatever cardboard box or closet they lived in for all that time. But if The Ice Age didn’t warrant that, it wouldn’t have been chased down in the first place. So here we are.

Will The Ice Age rewrite rock history? No. It never came out, so it’s not like it had some massive but undervalued influence.  But it is a curio among curios, and it is of a quality that deserves to be heard, and frankly to have been heard all this while. Better late than never? Yeah, that too.

You can dig into the premiere of “Gypsy” on the player below and find more background from the PR wire beneath that.

Please enjoy:

As RidingEasy Records’ highly successful Brown Acid series (now at 10 volumes and counting) proves, there is a massive amount of incredible heavy psych and proto-metal music that has been lost to the sands of time. Case in point, the astoundingly great 50-year-old album The Ice Age by Indianapolis quintet ICE was never even released upon its completion.

In the late 1960’s five young men formed a rock & roll band on the west side of Indianapolis, Indiana. They chose the coolest name possible: ICE. The group consisted of vocalist/keyboardist Barry Crawford, lead vocalist/ bassist Jim Lee, drummer Mike Saligoe, lead guitarist John Schaffer and rhythm guitarist/vocalist Richard Strange. They was among the first bands to perform an all original set throughout the Midwest at high schools, colleges & concert venues. They opened for national acts like Three Dog Night, SRC, Kenny Rogers & the First Edition, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and others in arenas and theaters.

In 1970, the band recorded 10 original songs at 8-Track Studios in Chicago Illinois, only to break up shortly thereafter. Two of the tracks were eventually released as a 45 in 1972, but confusingly under a different band name, Zukus! The A-side of that single was featured on Brown Acid: The Ninth Trip, which led RidingEasy Records to discover when licensing the track that an entire album had been languishing in obscurity all of this time. The 2-inch master tapes had been shelved and forgotten until recently when The Ice Age tracks were converted to digital and remixed, preserving the sounds of the original vocals & instruments. Finally, half a century later, this 10-song album of radio-ready rock will finally see light of day.

The Ice Age will be available on LP, CD and download on July 10th, 2020 via RidingEasy Records.

RidingEasy Records on Thee Facebooks

RidingEasy Records on Bandcamp

RidingEasy Records website

This Saturday, June 27, Amsterdam’s Temple Fang will release their debut long-player, Live at Merleyn on vinyl. Whether you know or not, you’ve been waiting for it. It is the first release of any kind from the four-piece spacious psych resonators, and the decision for it to be a live outing comes as a marked signal of aesthetic intent.

Regardless of the de rigeur nostalgia that has taken hold in the first half of 2020 for live shows owing to a season-plus of limited social gathering due to a global pandemic, a concert recording is a notion inherently defined by — and in some ways, working in defiance of — ephemera. It is a fleeting moment. True, some live albums draw from an entire tour or even a span of years, but for an offering like Live at Merleyn — which arrives as a bootleg-style stamped LP cover and three or four tracks (depending on what counts) consuming two sides of a 40-minute set — it’s one night. They took the stage, played on the stage, and left the stage. Maybe had some beers or something afterward, I don’t know.

But the point of Live at Merleyn isn’t that Temple Fang isn’t just that the band recorded a show, it’s that they’re using this particular show as a first statement of who they are as a band. That whole thing about first impressions? Well, consider that Temple Fang are not arriving as an entirely unknown entity. I was lucky enough to see them twice at Roadburn last year (review here and here) and I can definitely confirm I wasn’t alone in either room. They also played Desertfest Belgium last Fall and a swath of others, and this Spring alone they would’ve been at Freak Valley and Desertfest Berlin in Germany, and no doubt more. No doubt a pedigree that includes Dennis Duijnhouwer‘s tenure on bass in Death Alley doesn’t hurt, but if he, guitarist/vocalist Jevin de Groot, guitarist Ivy van der Veer and drummer Jasper van den Broeke couldn’t meet the demand of establishing their own presence, the entire project would fall flat. And as Live at Merleyn proves in raw fashion, Temple Fang do anything but.

De Groot and Duijnhouwer are both members of the much-underappreciated cosmic doom outfit Mühr, so to find them exploring such vast sonic reaches throughout “Gemini/Silky Servants” on side A and the two-part “Not the Skull” on side B of Live at Merleyn isn’t necessarily such a surprise, and de Groot and van der Veer offer a distinct chemistry as well on guitar, pushing into a sound that’s as progressive as it is organic. There are verses and parts plotted out, but Temple Fang don’t sound restricted as the show plays out by form. Maybe on another night “Gemini/Silky Servants” would sound different. Maybe it would lean on different progressions, tip its balance one way or the other. Not knowing is part of what makes it an adventure in the listening. There are soundscapes being created that are unquestionably formative, and more likely than not that’s precisely Temple Fang‘s intention. As much as the atmosphere of both sides of the long-player brims with psychedelic shimmer, the two guitars winding into and out of harmonized leads over a languid rolling rhythm in side B as de Groot‘s vocals come and go like so much consciousness itself, more than that, what Live at Merleyn captures is the spirit of creativity at work beneath, driving each of the changes in the linear build of “Not the Skull Pt. 1” and its coinciding second installment, which picks up after 12 minutes in with a heavy kraut riff and points itself in the direction of FAR OUT at a steady churn and gallop.

You can mourn for what’s been lost in live music. Over these last several months. Or what will continue to be lost for however long it is. You’re not wrong to do so, and in some ways, Live at Merleyn is a reminder of that too. But as van der Veer, de Groot, van den Broeke and Duijnhouwer all seem to align in the final thrust of “Not the Skull Pt. 2,” it’s not so much the nebulousness of Temple Fang‘s creativity that comes across as it is the progressive intention; the idea that not every night will be the same because the band will learn, adapt and grow as players and as a unit in conversation with itself. Live at Merleyn, a show from last October in the Netherlands — just another night in Nijmegen — is something special precisely for that. It’s one night, of many, preserved. It calls the listener to realize that Temple Fang were not this thing before and may not be this thing again, but right then, they were. Whatever comes next, this has been said, upfront and without pretense. It can’t and won’t be denied. Reality audio.

Below you’ll find the full stream of Temple Fang‘s Live at Merleyn. They’ll be taking orders through Bandcamp while the pressing lasts. The band tells their story under the player here:

In February of 2018, at the request of Tee Pee Records owner Kenny Sehgal, ex-Death Alley bassist Dennis Duijnhouwer put together a band for a one-off show at Little Devil in Tilburg, a day before the kickoff of Roadburn Festival in that same town.

He recruited his former Mühr bandmate Jevin de Groot to join him on guitar and vocals and pulled in two brand new friends, guitarist Ivy van der Veer and drummer Jasper van den Broeke. And thus Temple Fang was born. After this show the band was asked to open two shows for Coven and after doing those, the band decided to be just that, a band.

A long string of shows followed, that took the band to Roadburn, Sonic Whip, Desertfest Antwerp, Void Fest, Stick and Stone and many other heavy psych fest. All based on word of mouth, since the band hadn’t released any music.

As the band pondered their future and considered offer from various labels, they weren’t quite sure if they were ready to enter the music-biz game of album cycles and thus decided to focus on being a live-band and made no plans on releasing anything for a while, if ever.

But their roadcrew decided otherwise and hatched a plan of their own to secretly start recording the live shows and release them as bootlegs, with or without permission of the band.

The first show they clandestinely recorded was on Oct. 24th at Merleyn, Nijmegen (NL), a sold out night in a small club where the the bill was shared with their good friends of Ecstatic Vision.

When the band heard the result, they decided it to put it out, warts-and-all, with minimal artwork and no promo, only to be available at shows.

And then corona happened…

So here it is, a vinyl document of a Temple Fang show on their first run, an honest representation of what this band was at that moment in time.

Temple Fang on Thee Facebooks

Temple Fang on Bandcamp