This is out today. It is Clamfight’s fourth full-length and very much a self-titled in the tradition of a band declaring themselves as a group. It’s self-released, and it comes seven years after their last record, III. I reviewed that album. I could probably review this one too, and talk about the tones in Sean McKee’s and Joel Harris’ guitars or the former’s e’er vigilant shred, the punch Louis Koble brings to “Dragonhead,” drummer/vocalist Andy Martin’s duet with Oldest Sea’s Samantha Marandola in “Brodgar,” or the fact that across seven songs and 43 minutes the band manage to turn riffy burl-rock into a platform for a mostly-not-toxic expression of masculine love — that is, their love for each other — with an emotional honesty that resonates even beyond the heartstring-pull of the eponymous “Clamfight”‘s guest vocal spot from Steve Murphy of Kings Destroy.

I’m also on that track, on “Clamfight,” screaming like a jerk, but even more than that — I was fortunate enough to meet engineer Steve Poponi, who recorded this and helmed everything else Clamfight has released to-date, before he passed away in 2023 — it’s the emotional honesty of the thing I want to highlight. Why on earth, in talking about an album that so much wears its heart on its sleeve, would I pretend that, say, I haven’t known Clamfight for two decades, or pretend that I don’t consider them friends, that I wasn’t honored to be included in not only what’s their best album (and I say that as somebody who helped release one of them) but in what’s so clearly intended as an all-in culmination of their time together, made in the precious knowledge that all is fleeting. It’s been seven real years since their last record and the spirit of Clamfight, the urgency from the sprawl of 11-minute opener “The Oar” onward, comes in part from that. Love, loss, growth, life, death — Clamfight are celebrating as much as they’re mourning here, but the point is they’re doing it all together and realizing how lucky they are to have the chance to do that as part of their lives for so long. They’re right, and it’s a beautiful, if very adult, realization to witness.

It comes with a corresponding sincerity of form. Don’t tell this to “Drinking Tooth” on here, but Clamfight are not a stoner band and they never were, however large their tones may grow or how weighted their grooves can get or how informed they may be by things like fishing and obscure historical lore. Okay, maybe a little. But they’ve never been about chasing fuzz, or about playing to ideas of genre, and part of the honesty throughout Clamfight is in just how much they push against that. It’s ’90s thrash and hardcore gang shouts. It’s the acoustics and string sounds on “FRH.” The unrepentantly epic ground-scorch before “Redtail” is even halfway over (also after), setting up a punch-drunk roll as the band ride their own groove into the sunset, aware that any time could be the last time. It’s not social media content. It’s not trying to get on the cool playlist. It’s its own thing because they made it true to who they are as people and who they’ve grown to be as they’ve come into adulthood together. “Clamfight” itself is very much about that, but it’s all over the rest of the songs as well, and if you’d tell me you can’t understand how outwardly aggressive or loud or harsh music can be used to express love or gratitude, the only reply I really have for you is I’m sorry.

The line is right there in the galloping part of “Clamfight” — “Same four dudes/All this time” — and the song itself asks how long it can last. I don’t have an answer for that, but the band does. The answer is in cherishing what you have, whether that’s a band, a family, your life, a dumpy blog or some other outlet, for the time you have it. That’s what makes Clamfight a mature Clamfight album, and I don’t think I have to say that these aren’t the kinds of self-manifestations one would generally get from dudes in their 20s — not to disparage the songs Clamfight were writing at the time; I still love 2010’s Volume I (review here) and remember nostalgically seeing them on stage before then as well — but accepting being grown up and knowing a little more about who you are is a part of moving into middle age. There’s no attempt to hide that in these songs. No attempt to hide the fun. It’s as open a record as Clamfight could ever have hoped to make, and I love it for that. You can hear each one of them putting everything they have into it. Not every band gets to make an album like that, let alone to realize they’re doing it at the time and value it accordingly.

So they’re lucky to have each other and they know it. In uncertain times and facing an unknowable future ahead where little seems bright, that warmth is a saving grace. If the lesson of the pandemic was to teach the value of being together by keeping us apart, Clamfight embrace this as sweeping personal growth and depth of craft. These songs, this album taken as a whole, is a ready example of why you would be in a band for 20 years without care for ‘making it big’ or financial profit. It’s because you love it and you love the people you do it with. Such a simple answer and in no small part because men are raised to be emotional cripples it’s such a rare thing to see outside of violent and/or misogynist contexts. That is to say, it’s socially acceptable for men to bond so long as they’re hating women or killing somebody. But sounds so heavy with love so clearly at their foundation are rare and special and that’s exactly what Clamfight’s Clamfight is. The declaration it makes is no less than the band bearing their heart in portraying the family they’ve become over the last two decades. It’s brash and gorgeous and special and I’m very, very happy for my friends.

Also, Andy got married last week and Sean’s family recently welcomed a new member, so congrats all around.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

—

Why not bold the proper names above? I don’t know. It didn’t feel right. Too review-y, maybe. I’m still just finishing my coffee at 9AM, so bear with me.

My alarm was set for 6:30 but the kid was pounding on the wall before that. We had a late night. The Patient Mrs. was out and The Pecan and I were on our own for the evening, which was fine. Bedtime started after nine and went until a bit before 10PM, which is already long, and she was out her bedroom door before I was downstairs long enough to take a sip of water. Back up like four more times before I made it to bed, then she came down two more times, finally decided she needed to poop, and did that I guess around an hour after she first came down, making it about 11PM. I took her back upstairs and fell asleep in her bed, where thankfully she also fell asleep at long last, and made it back downstairs sometime shortly after midnight. The Patient Mrs. was home by then, so I got to say goodnight in my barely-conscious ‘you wanna watch a Star Trek?’ state. TOS it is.

The kid had had a rough day at school, missing behavior targets and such, and The Patient Mrs. didn’t want to risk derailing recent forward progress — because this week has been better until yesterday, and three incident-free days, one of them a field trip, isn’t nothing to us at this point — so we’re keeping her home today. I’ll take her to the arcade or something since the weather sucks. I asked for and received the time to write this while they watch videos in the living room, and I am grateful for it.

Getting home from Oslo on Sunday was fine. It was a typical landing in Newark, which means the plane was tossed from side to side like a Micro Machines in a vortex and the line at customs took 40 minutes. My bad was out when I got out, so I didn’t wait there. In Europe, you wait for the bag. In the US, you wait to find out if you’re going to be let in the country.

I could go on about that or the Lord Buffalo thing this week with the drummer being detained and then it comes out he’s got warrants or somesuch. Like that makes it better. People being perfectly happy to miss the point is precisely why I said I was worried the US will learn nothing from the dark moment in history it’s inhabiting. We dismantled education. On purpose. First you need a cultural recommitment, and that also means money. Then you need to raise a generation of teachers. Then you need to raise a generation of educated kids. If you say it’s been since Nixon the right wing has been trying to privatize schooling, then the damage that’s been done to-date will need at least that long to undo, again, if the commitment to undo it was made, which given the track the country is on now there’s about zero chance of happening. I wonder if public schooling will exist by the time my daughter is my age. They want to privatize garbage collection in my town. There’s 50,000 people here. How fucking stupid do you need to be?

As noted, I could go on.

Next week I’ve got premieres for Electric Citizen, The Lotus Matter, and Entheomorphosis, and I’m going to review the new Turtle Skull, which will feel like exorcising a demon as I finally get all the laudatory blah blah blah out of my brain that I’ve been writing there for the last however-many weeks. Like a top-three of the year for me, that one.

I wish you a great and safe weekend. Drink water. Watch your head. Tell someone you love them. Listen to good music. I’m back Monday.

FRM.

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“Full Moon Fever” appeared on The Gates of Slumber‘s 2024 comebacker self-titled (review here), issued through Svart. On the album, it’s one of the speedier songs if you’re talking average tempo, though “At Dawn,” “The Plague,” and so on are prone to faster parts as well, if not beholden to them in quite the same way the Indianapolis three-piece revel in the grueling nod elsewhere. Led by guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon, who revamped the lineup now six years ago (that’s a GTFO realization for me) with original drummer Chuck Brown and newcomer bassist Steve Janiak, both of whom also handle guitar and vocals in Apostle of Solitude.

So, doom band makes video a while after record is out. That’s only a good thing, and if you follow Apostle, you already know that Janiak has had a hand in a number of clips for that band. That’s not what’s happening here though. “Full Moon Fever” was directed by Tad Leger, who has drummed for Toxik, Blood Farmers, Lucertola and a host of others, and who has done layout work in horror cinema for I don’t even know how long as a graphic designer. Don’t be surprised when you see the wolfman show up, is what I’m saying, and the classic-horror that pervades does so with a firm grip on whence it comes.

It had been a while, so I decided to bother Leger for some comment about making the clip, and he was kind enough to indulge. You’ll find that below, followed by more from the PR wire. I don’t think The Gates of Slumber are really plugging anything other than the existence of the record or the band as they stand, and that’s plenty as far as I’m concerned. If you believe in doom, you believe in The Gates of Slumber.

From the PR wire:

The Gates of Slumber, “Full Moon Fever” video

Tad Leger on “Full Moon Fever”:

“I felt like ‘Full Moon Fever’ was a very cinematic feel. It filled my mind with images from classic films by Hammer and German expressionist filmmakers who used a monochromatic color palette. My friend Cliff Peck and I put in serious hours to craft something worthy of Gates of Slumber. Big thanks to Karl Simon for giving us such a challenging experience.”

“I was talking with our buddy Tad and he expressed an interest in doing the lyric video,” explains guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon. “Tad’s a massive fan of classic horror and he was into the song…. One thing led to another and he and his buddy Cliff came up with what I think is a pretty killer video clip! Hope you enjoy.”

THE GATES OF SLUMBER was formed by Karl Simon in 1998. Various people were in and out of the group between 1998 and 2001, when the Blood Encrusted Deth Axe demo was recorded with Jamie Walters aka Dr. Phibes/Athenar (Boulder, Midnight) on drums and bass. In 2003 Jason McCash took over the bass duties and was a long-time member of the band until his untimely demise in 2014, after which Simon decided it was time to call it quits. That was until 2019 when the renowned metal festival Hell Over Hammaburg wanted to bring the band back on stage to perform at the festival’s 2020 edition. Simon reformed the band with its original member Chuck Brown on drums and Steve Janiak on bass and got back to work.

The Gates of Slumber is available on Svart-exclusive black/white marble vinyl, limited transparent blue vinyl, black vinyl, CD, and all major digital platforms.

The Gates of Slumber, The Gates of Slumber (2024)

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Five years after providing the harsh solace of Mothers Weavers Vultures (review here) in the midst of a hellish plague winter, San Francisco’s Grayceon  will move forward July 25 with Then the Darkness, their sixth full-length. To be released through Translation Loss on vinyl and their own imprint, We Can Records (DL), I swear to you I’m not going to review the album in this post — I’m not ready and it’s stupid early — but what I’ll tell you is that its 11-song/81-minute run is absolutely all-in.

Whether you’re dug into the 20-minute “Mahsa” or the 13-minute “Forever Teeth,” which as a parent I definitely read as a song about lying to your kids for your own convenience/quality of life and feeling horrible about it — been there — the melodic roll and bite of “One Third” or the stately cello blastthrash and big-riff nod of “Song of the Snake,” Then the Darkness does not shy from being a tour de force of elements that have made this band so special all along. Cellist Jackie Perez Gratz has never sounded more soulful on vocals than in “Forever Teeth,” and the unabashedly sweet, folkish tinge brought to the penultimate “Untitled” feels like an adjustment to the balance of extremity and atmosphere that Grayceon have always managed to strike.

Of course, rhythms are fluid and change on a dime, with guitarist Max Doyle and drummer Zack Farwell as taut as ever whether a part is galloping at a sprint or subdued, ambient and gorgeous as many are. This would be expected of a Grayceon record by now, as the band marks 20 years since their inception as a group, but their intricate, individual and moving craft satisfies and is encompassing on a level all its own. It’s not a minor undertaking and it’s not supposed to be.

“Thousand Year Storm,” with the video by Gratz‘s bandmate in Brume, Jordan Perkins-Lewis, premiering below, is the opening track, and by no means does it speak for the entirety of the record, but it will give you a basic idea of some of the sounds they’re going for this time around in addition to making an enticing first impression for songs like “3 Points of Light” or the instrumental title-track that separates “Mahsa” and “Forever Teeth.” As a fan of the band, I appreciate the chance to host it.

Album info follows the quotes and cover below. Please enjoy:

Grayceon, “Thousand Year Storm” video premiere

“Thousand Year Storm is about breaking — crying out first in pain, then slowly coming to terms, and finally letting go. Like the rest of Then The Darkness, these songs sit in the aftermath — after the damage is done, when all you can do is try to make sense of what’s left and figure out how to keep going.” – Jackie Perez Gratz

“Death is always hard to deal with, but there can also be a comfort to it. The end is often a release of pain and struggle.” – Zack Farwell

Translation Loss Records is proud to announce Then the Darkness, the sprawling and gorgeous sixth full length from Bay-area progressive rockers, Grayceon.

Release date: July 25, 2025

Pre-order link: translationloss.com

Having meticulously plied their brand of expansive, progressive post metal since 2005, Grayceon have established themselves as a singular entity in the Bay Area scene and beyond. On full length album number six, Grayceon continue to mutate their unique sound and delve even further into the sonic abyss, creating a record of immense vision and gripping emotional peaks and valleys, one that’ll undoubtedly prove to be a cornerstone in their rich, storied history.

Then the Darkness presents Grayceon at their most haunting and visceral. On its eleven tracks, the non-traditional ‘power-trio’ composed of cellist/vocalist Jackie Perez Gratz (Giant Squid, Amber Asylum, etc.), guitarist Max Doyle and drummer Zack Farwell, create labyrinthine yet extremely memorable metallic compositions. Cello and guitar interplay and weave seamlessly to create boundless riffs and rhythms that bore into your psyche, leaving you humming its off-kilter melodies for the rest of the day. Perez Gratz’s vocals act as a guide through the maze of grief and other emotions; anguished shouts and screams give way to folkish singing and are capped off by moments of soaring vocal power. Then the Darkness was masterfully engineered, mixed and mastered by Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, etc.), whose natural and roomy production truly brings this powerful album to life.

Album Details:
Engineered, mixed and mastered at The Atomic Garden by Jack Shirley from December 2023 to June 2024.
Album art/design/photography: General LLC
Band photo: Jackie Perez Gratz
Video by Jordan Perkins-Lewis, San Francisco, CA.

Tracklist:
1. Thousand Year Storm
2. One Third
3. Velvet ‘79
4. 3 Points of Light
5. Mahsa
6. Then the Darkness
7. Forever Teeth
8. Song of the Snake
9. Holding Lines
10. Untitled
11. Come to the End

GRACEYON is:
Max Doyle (he/him) – guitar
Jackie Perez Gratz (she/her) – cello, voice
Zack Farwell (he/him) – drums

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Austrian heavy rockers Grey Czar released their third album, Euarthropodia, last month through Octopus Rising/Argonauta Records. Running nine tightly-composed songs and 38-minutes, it’s a versatile collection themed around the well-earned fall of homo sapiens and the ascent of a new insectoid primacy. Then you get into “Ballad of Propellerheads” and “Queens of the New World” and there’s more going on than that, but suffice it to say: people out, bugs in. It’s like exactly what happened with the bees in my dining room when I went on vacation last summer. They had an entire civilization going.

But whatever it’s about, the record moves. Each track is somewhere between a little under four and a little under five minutes long — this is roughly consistent with their prior two LPs, though their second, 2018’s Boondoggle, ranged a bit around that — and the Salzburg four-piece revel in the ability to execute different moods and ideas around structural shifts. “Eschaton” starts off with reminding of earlier Kadavar in its roll and proto-metallic urging, while introducing the pointedly garage-y guitar tone, a thinner fuzz than one is used to — that sounds like a criticism; it isn’t; it sounds cool, just different than the heavy rock norm — that the band will build around. In a welcoming hook, they purposefully lay out what they want to do and how they’ll do it, and you’ll never guess what happens next but yes then they go ahead and do the thing.

“Withered World” is an immediate shift in atmosphere after the finish of the sweeping opener, but still resolves in a heavy-enough push to carry momentum into the piano-inclusive start of “Insects Took Over” (video premiere below). Like “Withered World,” “Insects Took Over” takes a minute or so to get going, but it boogies once it’s there, with a modern-sounding take on Heavy ’10s nod that gives over to “Trooping for Euarthropodia,” where things continue to get weirder. At 4:51, “Trooping for Euarthropodia” is one of the longest songs, and it’s inarguably progressive in how it’s built up around the central chug and flow into the chorus, Spidergawd-esque or maybe that’s a Motorpsycho influence, but it’s catchy either way and moves through its big finish into the quieter start of “Ballad of Propellerheads,” a harmony-over-strum centerpiece that becomes a fuller-buzz-toned push and winding proggy twists.

Wolfgang Brunauer‘s bass holds it together, but Grey Czar — with drummer Wolfgang Ruppitsch (also other percussion), vocalist/guitarist Roland Hickmann and keyboardist/vocalist Florian Primavesi — have already proven by the time the album’s halfway over that there’s no real danger of derailing. Like the guitar tone, the songwriting is sharp throughout Euarthropodia, and that aids the transition in vibe as “Queens of the New World” injects ’80s keyboard-inclusive metal vibes — think Ozzy circa ’83, plus buzz and some more of that Kadavarian roll — breaking into oddball nuance in the solo, suitably circus-like and otherworldly, nigh on theatrical.

The acoustic beginning of “Nutritional Protocol” brings Sweden’s Asteroid to mind, which is an impression bolstered by the vocal melody, but the sense of something strange remains, held over from “Queens of the New World,” so while the plucked strings tap almost wistful emotionality, the fluid riffing that ensues, breaks for the verse, and resumes, there’s still the story being told and a suitable instrumental backdrop for it. The grounded chorus finishes out before “Arthrobotic Liberty” brings electric organ forward to complement the shuffle in the guitar, bass and drums, threatening to rest in the midsection ultimately not giving up the energetic charge as it comes out of its solo into the last crashout ahead of the closing cut “Aeon.”

For the scope of the plot they’re conveying, Grey Czar don’t do much throughout Euarthropodia that one would really call self-indulgent on a musical level. Their parts aren’t held down by needless flourish, and though they can give a feeling of expanse when they want to, they’re always doing so in service to the song itself and its place in the succession of the whole. That applies to “Aeon” as well, but I’d be surprised if the last cut on the record wasn’t put together specifically to be the closer. It brings keyboards to the forefront to add more drama and once again finds movement and noteworthy melody in the proceedings. They finish with a bit of shove but never ‘break character’ in terms of the character of the album itself and the methods employed, and that cohesion makes Euarthropodia‘s world all the more vivid.

And after all that? The video premiere. You’ll find the clip, which was directed by Brunauer, in the embed below, followed by some words from the band about it, some PR wire background, the audio for the album (again, it’s out, so have at it), and the lyric video for “Withered World,” in case you’d like to search out the easter egg noted in the band quote.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

Grey Czar, “Insects Took Over” video premiere

Grey Czar on “Insects Took Over”:

“Insects Took Over” is the third track on our new album Euarthropodia. It describes the uprising new species, soundscapes of myriads of creatures forming shifting landscapes and floating clouds, leaving the fallen world in fear and faint. On the album we tried to sketch this horror scenario in a concrete way but open it up to give space for interpretation and a critical view on us human beings and our ruthlessness in relation to our base of needs and environment.

The video takes on this main idea and shows the transformed beings got stuck in the same patterns. The idea for the screenplay is leaned to David Lynches “The Rabbits” and sets a counterpart to the serious and heavy approach of the music, in a slightly humoristic way. We all are existing, each and everyone of us in his surrounding, doing things. Like cutting a cucumber, hoovering, caressing the tablet, watching TV … essential things.

Our bassist Wolfgang shot the film, and he build the “Living room scene” in his garage, got all the props, like the couch, the carpet floor, the lamps and self-designed wallpaper and we shot the scene in a one take. After that we transferred the whole setting to our rehearsal room for the performance video part and Wolfi assembled the video. We also placed an easter egg, for those who watched our lyrics video for “Withered World”.

Hailing from Salzburg, Austria, GREY CZAR is a four-piece heavy rock outfit featuring two guitars, keys, bass, drums and up to three vocals. Their music is melodic and riff-driven, oscillating between heavier and mellow sounds, while having a flair for progressive elements.

The band was founded in 2010 when its four members came together to share their mutual passion for music. Taken by the idea to play stoner rock the band quickly discovered new grounds and as the group’s personalities evolved so did the music, which continues its natural development.

Since their self-titled debut LP in 2012, GREY CZAR has released an EP „The Men Who Harvest the Sea” in 2014, and their session-recorded sophomore long player „Boondoggle“ in 2018, which was well received in the scene.

Grey Czar are:
Roland Hickmann – vocals/guitar/percussion
Florian Primavesi – vocals/guitar/keys
Wolfgang Brunauer – vocals/bass
Wolfgang Ruppitsch – drums/percussion

Grey Czar, “Withered World” lyric video

Grey Czar, Euarthropodia (2025)

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“Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time,
For y’all have knocked her up.
I have tasted the maggot in the mind of the universe.
I was not offended, for I knew I had to rise above it all
Or drown in my own shit.” – “Maggot Brain”

No, I don’t honestly think I’m going to present any new or remarkable insight on one of the most opined-about guitar solos of all time — that being Eddie Hazel‘s melancholic soul-tear on the title-track — but honestly, it was the hook of the subsequent “Can You Get to That” that brought the album to mind, one of those things where you hear, say, think of a phrase and it associates to the song in your head. I’ve come to understand in recent years that’s an ADHD thing. For me it’s always been a lifestyle (therefore determining ‘my deathstyle’; see how this works?).

The emotional labor involved in its title-track notwithstanding — and I’m not taking anything away from it; it’s one of the best performances of rock guitar ever captured on tape and I’d sooner listen to it one thousand times than hear anything by the likes of Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page or whichever ’60s/’70s guitar hero you want to name who isn’t Tony Iommi — the bulk of Maggot Brain is much breezier, starting with “Can You Get to That” and moving into “Hit it and Quit It” and “You and Your Folks and Me and My Folks” before “Super Stupid” and “Back in Our Minds” ignite the party-rock vibe and “Wars of Armageddon,” though dark in its voice and mood, builds on the title-cut from Funkadelic’s second album, 1970’s Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow, and helps lay the foundation for Funkadelic excursions into longform instrumental dance music that would become part of the bedrock beats beneath hip-hop. That’s an influence inarguably still felt today, and something the George Clinton-led troupe would refine as they moved closer over the course of the 1970s to uniting the two projects Funkadelic and Parliament into the p-funk they’d become, out of the psychedelic comedown, through the disco years and into the arrival of keyboard-driven dance music, less emphasis on guitar and more on movement.

Of course, “Maggot Brain” remains the album’s defining moment as well as its longest track, and it’s right there at the front (immediate points), disorienting the listener with its slow tempo but this-needs-to-be-first creative urgency and human expression. Opening a funk record with a drifting improv navelgaze epic instrumental is counterintuitive — which is not to say brave — but this was Funkadelic‘s third album and they were no strangers by then to shirking expectations or genre boundaries. Preceded in 1970 by their self-titled debut (discussed here) and the aforementioned Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow, Maggot Brain follows the folk-funk-blues patterns of the first Parliament LP or some of the more easy-swinging material on Funkadelic, lysergic as that record was on balance. You can’t really argue that Maggot Brain is straightforward with the title-track up front pushing the limits of where pop can go and what it can do, but once you’re past that, the acoustic twang on “Can You Get to That” feels like a willful redirect, ditto the vocal arrangement, and it’s casual vibes and/or sing-alongs from there on until “Wars of Armageddon.”

Some of the psychedelia is still there, in “Maggot Brain” and the instrumental “Super Stupid,” but the latter is so much more about the swagger and shred in Eddie Hazel‘s guitar, the ringout of the organ and the gauntlet being thrown down by that solo, and after the gloriously riffy “Hit it and Quit It” and the centerpiece shuffle of “You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks,” which brings in a little Stevie Wonder-type piano and dares toward advocating for social justice, which perhaps feels more like a risk now than it might have in 1971. “You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks” ties in with “Can You Get to That,” and “Super Stupid” gives space between the middle cut and the sillier “Back in Our Minds” again, a bouncy jam with the title-line repeated, “We are back in our minds again” before they move into a verse. It’s under three minutes long and kind of goofy with what I think is a triangle, but well within this era of Funkadelic‘s weirdo wheelhouse, and after the freakout in “Super Stupid,” it’s another effective reorientation of the listener before “Wars of Armageddon” starts its strange litany of noises, samples, spoken parts, shouts and such over a dancey backbeat and instrumental jam.

And one could go on at length about the development of dance music from out of something like “Wars of Armageddon” being performed in a Washington D.C. club in the early 1970s to somehow it being reasonable to watch a person stand in front of a laptop and a couple turntables and mix live, but frankly that’s fodder for an entirely different discussion. Funkadelic‘s early period, from 1970-1975, is largely untouchable. In that span of five years and amid touring and lineup changes, legendary partying, etc., Funkadelic put out seven records and Parliament put out four, the last of which is the ultra-seminal Mothership Connection, so as runs go, there are few in pop or rock music that can compare, and that’s before you get into bringing the two sides together as Parliament-Funkadelic and affecting music such that here we are five decades later and the party is still going. Parliament-Funkadelic is on tour this month, going coast-to-coast before hitting Australia in September. Train doesn’t stop.

So maybe Maggot Brain is willfully uneven. In its title-track, it stands on the strength of Hazel‘s performance — which, again, is plenty — and for the rest takes on a brighter persona. The fact of the matter is Funkadelic were a good enough band at this point in time not only to make that leap from the opener to the rest of the LP, but to carry it off like it’s no big deal, with a super-easy, we-do-this-all-the-time-usually-on-Tuesdays groove. To acknowledge it as one of the best LPs ever made feels like calling the sky blue.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

—

Did you catch the Funkadelic reference in that Quasars of Destiny review that went up this morning? I said something in that post about “if you can get to…” whatever it was and my head immediately went to Maggot Brain. I wasn’t actually going to close the week with anything. I started writing that Quasars review yesterday and didn’t get to finish before I ran out of time in the day so I figured I’d wrap it this (Friday) morning and then just not close out the week, maybe put up a little post in case anyone came looking. Once I checked and saw I hadn’t already closed a week with Maggot Brain, it was a no-brainer.

There’s a lesson in there for me about rigidity though. I generally work a day ahead precisely so that when something like a day where I don’t have as much time comes up, I can still have some flexibility. I just so rarely use that flexibility that it took me a bit to recognize it for what it was this morning. Don’t get so stuck in a way of doing a thing that you miss out on something cool. In my case, that’s spending a morning listening to Funkadelic, which I can assure you has only had a positive impact on my mood broadly, even more so now that I’ve finished writing about it.

Limited time was kind of the theme this week, if you couldn’t tell by a few lighter-on-posts days. Three posts a day isn’t nothing. Four is kind of my standard these days — today was five — but I’m not willing to either half-ass some filler news post so there can be ‘content’ to feel some imaginary need for it or break my brain to the point where I don’t want to be on the laptop anymore. I’m working with what I’ve got in terms of faculties, and with The Pecan having trouble in school these past weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of early pickups and juggling various therapy appointments — she got kicked out on Monday for hitting a para who touched her and had to be evaluated before they’d let her back in the building, today is the psychiatrist virtual appointment that I’ll have to drag her off the playground after school to go to, I’ve been going in at noon to give her a bumper dose of ritalin to get through the afternoon (which helped the other day, it seemed), and so on — and it’s generally been hands-on-deck really since before I left for Roadburn. Which let me appreciate all the more being able to go.

Speaking of travel, this coming week is Desertfest Oslo, and I’m going to that. So Friday and Saturday look out for coverage. Before that, I’ve got streams and such lined up. Tuesday is a full premiere for the new Madmess record, Wednesday is a Northern Heretic track premiere (they’re playing with Paradise Lost and Trouble in NYC, you know) and Thursday is a fully for Cavern Deep.

I wouldn’t mind reviewing Clamfight, Witchcraft or Turtle Skull before I go, but it’s probably pick-one-and-make-it-happen with the rest of the schedule booked and, again, limited time. I’ll do my best, even if my best kind of sucks.

Zelda update: I still like The Wind Waker. I have the un-upgraded Master Sword and will enter the Earth Temple next time I play. In the meantime though, The Patient Mrs. both rented Super Smash Bros. Ultimate from the library — I destroyed The Pecan yesterday; we were told to stop letting her win games so she can get used to it with peers — and bought me a copy of Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, which I’ve been sweating since I played the original game on NES as a kid. It will come with me to Norway, for sure, as will The Wind Waker, since it’s on my laptop with the mods and such.

Oh, and I’ve been trying to build the habit since I got back from Roadburn of doing yoga every day. If you have a killer video you know of, drop the link. The more sympathetic, the better. Yoga for sore back, sore knees, etc., or “Hey I’m really sorry to hear about your ongoing existential crisis. Let’s do some cat-cows.” I like the comforting aspect before I get my ass kicked by stretching.

Thanks for reading and have a great and safe weekend. I’m gonna go change over the laundry, empty the dishwasher, and maybe peel an orange before I need to run to the school. The weather’s good, so have fun.

FRM. There’s no merch up right now, but if Brooklyn Dave’s got something up, support his ass anyway just to support it.

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Last heard from with the 2023 EP Get Your Head Right (review here), Denver, Colorado, now-two-piece Burning Sister are getting ready to unveil the band’s second full-length, Ghosts. The follow-up to 2022’s Mile High Downer Rock (review here) answers some of the ‘gazier aspects of Oct. 2023’s Get Your Head Right EP (review here) while invariably presenting a shift in dynamic as a result of the change to their construction. At some point between Fall ’23 and now, bassist/synthesist/vocalist Steve Miller and drummer Alison Salutz parted ways with guitarist Nathan Rorabaugh (Alamo Black), and instead of an immediate replacement, they’ve opted to continue on as a bass/drum heavy psych rocking duo.

Not the least-bold decision they could make, considering the historical reliance of psychedelia on guitar and the gluttonous amount of wankery one can pull off with it when so inclined/talented. Burning Sister‘s approach in the face of this brings in synth from Miller and highlights the tonal reach of the bass, not just conjuring a meditative feel, but fuzzing it out a bit and giving a hint of something otherworldly from an instrument one tends to think of as being pointedly grounded. Floaty bass? Yeah, a bit, but it’s part of a whole molten thing throughout “Lethe//Oblivion” that retains the post-grunge spirit of Burning Sister‘s first LP in such a way as to make me think the album has more tricks up its sleeve than low-end dynamics. And as I’m curious to find out what that might be, as well as to find out whether the band are looking for another guitar player, the single has apparently done its job, so there you go.

Ghosts is coming soon — I don’t have an exact date; keep eyes on socials — and I’ll hope to have more on it as we get there. Enjoy the video in the meantime:

Burning Sister, “Lethe//Oblivion” video premiere

“Lethe//Oblivion” is the debut single from Burning Sister’s sophomore full-length, “Ghosts.”

Steve Miller – bass/synth/vox
Alison Salutz – drums

Tracked and mixed by Jamie Hillyer at Module Overload
Mastered by Tad Doyle at Witch Ape Studio – Skyway Audio

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Twenty years ago this month, Corrosion of Conformity issued this 64-minute beast of a seventh album. It was an unexpected tour de force, released through Sanctuary Records, which had made its name picking up major label and bigger metal refugee acts either whose contracts had ended or whose companies had moved on. C.O.C. had done a run of three full-lengths and countless CD singles (it was the era of ‘let’s make $10 off three songs’; things other than weed used to be worth money sometimes instead of just costing a lot) through Columbia Records and before this 2005 wallop, their prior release was 2000’s America’s Volume Dealer, also on Sanctuary.

Now, among C.O.C. fans, America’s Volume Dealer kind of gets crapped on unfairly for the smoothness of its production and the accessibility of its sound. And to be fair, it’s a long, long, long way from the hardcore punk of 1985’s Animosity and/or the Southern-heavy epic that was 1994’s Deliverance — arguably their two pillars by which to measure — but I’ll go to bat for America’s Volume Dealer on the song level every time. “Double-Wide,” “Over Me,” “Congratulations Song,” “Take What You Want,” etc. These are killer tunes, and so when In the Arms of God was coming out, I was looking forward to it as a fan more than perhaps some others.

Two decades later, apparently I’m still patting myself on the back for it because In the Arms of God kicks unmitigated ass. But by the time they had toured for America’s Volume Dealer, drummer Reed Mullin (R.I.P. 2020) was no longer in the band — Jimmy Bower (Eyehategod) plays drums on 2001’s Live Volume — and they needed to find somebody. Not only this, but guitarist/vocalist Pepper Keenan had reignited the mid-’90s Southern heavy supergroup Down, with Bower and Kirk Windstein from Crowbar and others, which continues to this day, and so would be splitting his time between projects, one of which was very definitely at this point in history making more money than the other. So between a prior album that got early-internet panned and a distracted frontman, expectations weren’t high going into In the Arms of God.

But from “Stone Breaker” and “Paranoid Opioid” through the acoustic “Crown of Thorns” and the seven-minute jam-inclusive finale title-track, In the Arms of God is all-go and the band sound duly charged. Hooks abound through “It Is That Way” and “Dirty Hands Empty Pockets (Already Gone)” — one of the best breakouts in this band’s entire history in its later reaches — carrying its momentum into the Zeppelin-unplugged strum of “Rise River Rise” and the expansive-but-cohesive “Never Turns to More” dividing the first and second halves with an eight-minute runtime not at all shy about it’s we’re-off-a-major-label-now-so-here’s-a-jam ethic. Founding bassist/vocalist Mike Dean would take this further as Keenan went off with down to front an updated version of the oldschool trio incarnation of the band for two LPs and an EP between 2010 and 2014.

As with their Deliverance-lineup 2018 comeback, No Cross No Crown (review here) — still their most recent LP — the structure of the album is essential to the listening process. In the Arms of God essentially resets after “Never Turns to More,” with guitarist Woodroe Weatherman and Dean contributing vocals alongside Keenan in “Infinite War,” which remains unfortunately relevant. But while the first six songs are on-the-beat bangers, there’s an effort to space out in the Soundgardeny “So Much Left Behind” that works well before “The Backslider” regrounds between burl and sleek effects, and “World on Fire” declares itself in a nodding groove and one more hook before “Crown of Thorns” and “In the Arms of God” — the later of which should be taught as an example of how to do Southern metal without sounding like a cartoon character — round out.

It was the very tail end of the CD era, and the rock radio success that C.O.C. found in the ’90s had been capitalismed into oblivion. Keenan, Weatherman and Dean, in the absence of Mullin, turned to drummer Stanton Moore of the New Orleans jam band Galactic to fill the role, and with no disrespect to the memory of Mullin or what he contributed to C.O.C. up to and through No Cross No Crown, the drums on In the Arms of God are just of a different kind of character. On some level, it’s the difference between punk and heavy jazz, but Moore not only made the position his own, he owned it. However, he also had his own successful group he was part of, so couldn’t really be the full-time drummer C.O.C. wanted.

I don’t know if that’s changed or not, but Corrosion of Conformity have been in the studio — John Custer producing, as always; I didn’t mention it before now because it’s a given — throughout the last couple months, piecing together their next full-length. They’ve been doing so without Dean, who announced last Fall he was leaving the band — their new bassist is Bobby Landgraf, known for his work in Honky and for sharing guitar duties with Keenan in Down — for the first time since 1991’s Blind (discussed here), and with Stanton Moore once again stepping into the drummer position, 20 years later.

As to what the Keenan/Weatherman/Landgraf/Moore incarnation of Corrosion of Conformity might conjure in terms of craft, Keenan‘s songwriting is a long-since proven consideration, though as a fan, one worries about not having Dean‘s punk-rooted voice as part of the craft. But the underlying message they gave 20 years ago was that C.O.C. were going to find a way forward, and through Dean‘s version of the band to bringing back the four-piece for No Cross No Crown — the major complaint with which that I heard was that it was too long; eight years and zero records later, I don’t mind the “extra” — and the years of touring they’ve done since, I don’t doubt they’ll still find a way forward. “It is that way because it is,” and such. I have to think if C.O.C. could be undone as a concept, an entity, etc., the band would have been put to rest a long time ago. I think it’s too much in their blood for that.

And I’m glad.

In a spirit of looking forward to new things and new ideas while treasuring what the past has already brought us, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

What did I learn at this year’s Roadburn? That I’m unpleasant. I learned that people don’t really like talking to me, even some of my friends, and that when I walk away, it’s a relief. So I tried to walk away quickly and at least not obligate people to, I don’t know, look at me or have some kind of conversation. I also have basically nothing to say that isn’t “hi I’m terrified of life,” so I’ll 100 percent cop to my own role in making myself unbearable to be around. Anybody want to hear my middle-aged ass complain? No. Indeed not.

It’s a good thing I have a blog. Ha.

It felt good to come home this past Monday. I got a big hug from The Pecan, who very quickly remembered she doesn’t care for me all that much either and really only wants to talk to me when she needs something or her mom isn’t around. It do be like that, I’m told. My wife being legit wonderful, I try not to take the constant outright rejection personally, but as you may have guessed, fail outright just about every time. I go to bed most nights feeling like garbage. She’s been having a hard time at school — I will be genuinely surprised if I get through today without a call to come pick her up; it would be the second of this week and she didn’t go yesterday — and doesn’t have a lot of friends because she loses it and yells and wants to control everything and is autistic as fuck but hell no I’m not getting her diagnosed when some moron is out there talking about how people on the spectrum don’t pay taxes so maybe we just put them in these camps over here or whatever wacky horrifying bullshit came out of his bloated face last week while I was in the Netherlands. Fuck that.

But it’s a hard time, mostly for her, but definitely also for everyone around her. She’s got a couple dickhead boys in her class who’re gonna be giving her shit through high school. You can already see which kids it is. Normal-little-fucker whiteboys. I refuse to tell my kid not to defend herself. She’s going to need to.

Up and down week, I guess. Feel good but tired coming home from Roadburn and the energy-comedown is always a shift to make. But this isn’t my first time at the dance either and I set up this week purposefully so that it was the Buzzard video, the Dead Shrine premiere and today’s Conan review in a row basically as a favor to myself — those are all projects I enjoy and am interested in writing about, and in the case of the latter two, there’s a back catalog for context and I enjoy exploring that as well, if you couldn’t tell in the part about In the Arms of God above.

Zelda update: I just last night finished the Tower of Gods and let The Pecan pull the Master Sword from sunken Hyrule Castle in The Wind Waker. I never played it when it came out because I didn’t have a GameCube and thought it looked stupid, but it’s a pretty great game and my head was up my drunk ass in my 20s in just about everything except getting married and listening to stoner rock. I’m running an emulator on my computer with a couple quality of life mods and it’s been great.

Hope you have a great and safe weekend. Thanks for reading, for giving me space to vent without getting shit for it. I value that more than I can say. Next week is full. There’s news to catch up on (always) and premieres slated for Slow Draw (full album, Monday) and Burning Sister (video, Tuesday), as well as a review of the new Hippie Death Cult live LP and so on. It’ll be a good time, and thanks if you tune in for it.

Don’t forget to hydrate. It’s getting hot out there. And watch your head as you go. Listen to the new Turtle Skull.

PS – Thanks to everyone who bought merch in this round. It’s down now, but I appreciate the support and got about $450 in off of that that goes to paying bills and buying coffee. Helps keep me afloat and feel like I’ve contributed to the house this month, so yes, thank you.

FRM.

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This is the second premiere from Buzzard‘s new album, Mean Bone (review here), to be posted on this site, and it comes with some context. I know. The c-word. Sigh. Just bear with me.

If you click that link, you’ll see that in the review, I said the record ends with a song called “Sorrow, Terror and Evil,” a heavy and lumbering culmination of the statement in doom that Buzzard‘s lone denizen, Christopher Thomas Elliott (also of the folk duo Austin and Elliott and various other solo works), was making throughout the songs prior. Cool way to end a declarative second full-length from Elliott‘s project, the only trouble is that’s not how the record actually ends.

Oops.

To be fair, that song is real and was on the version of Mean Bone that I got to review, it just got crossed up between the album being done and the other premiere being slated, hearing the thing, etc. As clerical errors go, it could be far worse. But once I heard it, I did want to write about “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century,” because it changes on the level of persona the way Mean Bone finishes. It’s not at all an apex of the heavy riffage that rolls out in other songs. It’s a decidedly quieter, more contemplative finish.

Like a lot of Elliott‘s work to-date as Buzzard and elsewhere, it tells a story. Folk balladry, as a form, is crucial to how the material is framed — think of songs like “Murder in the White Barn,” which tells a troubling tale of its own through dialogue, and “Flies, Mosquitos, Rats and Sparrows,” which recounts a Chinese famine resulting from Great Leap Forward-era ecosystem tampering — and “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century” isn’t his first foray into incorporating science-fiction as part of that.

To story, put succinctly below, is that far-future archeologists discover a mall and attempt to figure out what it’s for. Good luck. Hearing the song for the first time, I couldn’t help think of the sentient insects who evolve on Elliott‘s earlier-2025 Satiricus Doomicus Americus (review here), which I’ve been largely unable to put down, in the closing track “Cockroaches and Weed.” But it doesn’t seem like we know ultimately who these future entities are, only that they’re looking back and seeing how we lived through our savage age.

Elliott was kind enough to put together the lyric video premiering below for “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century,” and especially as Mean Bone has been out for a couple weeks now and attention spans go the way of attention spans, I appreciate the chance to give the album review an addendum and let the song stand on its own as well, since that’s how I’ve experienced it.

If you’ve never heard Buzzard, Elliott or any of it, this might not actually be a terrible place to start. Just a thought.

Congrats. You made it through the context. I hope you enjoy:

Buzzard, “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century” lyric video premiere

“Writing this song I imagined alien or human archeologists in the distant future excavating the remains of a shopping mall.” – Christopher Thomas Elliott

from Mean Bone by Buzzard: https://buzzarddoomfolk.bandcamp.com/album/mean-bone

Written, performed, and produced by Christopher Thomas Elliott

Buzzard, Mean Bone (2025)

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