They’re a new band with some classic influences, and on their debut demo tape, Thirst for Misery, Lansing, Michigan, five-piece The Swill blend heavy ’70s rock, garage thrash and early metal into a stew that’s sonically their own and almost surprisingly vital. The five-songs on Thirst for Misery — a play on Black Flag/Saint Vitus‘ “Thirsty and Miserable” — were recorded and mixed by Kevin Kitchell and Matt Preston, and the band boasts within its ranks vocalist Matt “War” Watrous (Wastelander), bassist Rob Hultz (ex-Solace and currently in Trouble), guitarist “Postman Dan” McCormick (ex-The Fallopian Dudes and one of the best people you could ever hope to meet), Preston (Borrowed Time) also on guitar/keys, and drummer Rael Andrews (Bert). With everyone having been involved in an assortment of other bands over the years and being kind of a mash of different elements, The Swill is probably as self-effacing a moniker as one could ask.

Hultz is based in Chicago, so Derek Kasperlik (Mountain Goat) plays live. Thirst for Misery is pro-pressed and hand-numbered to 50 copies (I got number five) with a four-panel J-card and Brad Moore artwork. For their first release, The Swill probably could’ve just thrown together a dubbed demo in a line-drawn cover, but take it as a sign of the players’ experience they didn’t. Likewise, the songs themselves give off a similar mature feel. It’s a raw recording, but opener “You are Alone,” which shared side 1 with “Demons and Rust,” has a classic heavy rock stomp to its verse before taking off on a NWOBHM gallop in the second verse, Watrous‘ vocals at the fore until the guitars take hold for a quick, metallic solo. They nestle into a swaying groove with Preston adding some keys, though it could be Andrews as he’s credited with them as well, but they draw back to the central and more upbeat progression for a last run through the chorus before a sample from the 1982 documentary Another State of Mind.

Listening digitally, you know that’s at the end of “You are Alone” and not the beginning of “Demons and Rust,” but on the tape it’s harder to tell where one ends and the other begins. Once “Demons and Rust” gets going though, it’s slower, groovier, a fatter riff at its core with plenty of leads around it, almost a waltz if it isn’t one, and Watrous is more restrained vocally. The whole first part of the track is a build, and the second half pays it off, so side 1 gets a suitable finale, but when you turn the tape over, “Deeper Dungeons” is off in a rush of sleazy metal, a winding guitar line given further intensity by blastbeats and over-the-top metal vocalizing that rounds out with a fervent Tom G. Warrior grunt just before the guitar solo kicks in. “Deeper Dungeons” goes more or less apeshit and the delay-soaked interlude “Analysis Paralysis” offers a momentary breather before closer “The Void and the Vision” takes hold to finish out Thirst for Misery on The Swill‘s most realized note yet. The band moves fluidly through tempo shifts and hit into the tape’s catchiest chorus, the winding lead guitar line being no less of a hook. They go big, get loud and end off in a suitable burst of energy, dropping to silence immediately after the last hit.

With that kind of precision and a more swaggering heavy rock influence working in tandem, I’ll be interested to hear how The Swill grow into their sound, but for now, the demo’s worth a listen either way and on tape, it sounds like something you’d be happy you traded for when it showed up in the mail. If pay-what-you-will downloads are more your thing, they’ve got that going too at their Bandcamp.

The Swill, Thirst for Misery (2013)

The Swill on Thee Facebooks

The Swill on Bandcamp

I’m not going to lie. Shortly after receiving Qosmic Qey‘s Doorway tape, I set about trying to synch up its two-song (one per side), hour-long drone sprawl with various episodes of Carl Sagan‘s Cosmos. It didn’t really work, but was kind of a fun endeavor all the same, and that I’d even try should probably give you some idea of where the one-man project from Ice Dragon vocalist Ron Rochondo fits sonically. There are a couple samples — I think more in “Part II” than “Part I,” both songs clocking in at precisely 31:31 — but the crux is synth experimentation, textures and drones weaving in and out of prominence, some pleasant, some abrasive, all expansive in one way or another. I know the noise scene — that’s actual noise, not noise rock — has been into tapes for some time even before the current and alleged revival of the medium — but that’s not really what Qosmic Qey sounds like. The two pieces are more like isolated tracks off a space rock record, and when they pierce, they do so in the context of other parts that are soothing and hypnotic.

The tape itself is purple, the inset is a hand-painted watercolor, the case is neon yellow, and the audio is no less colorful. Things get particularly calm a little before halfway through “Part I,” but a headphone listen reveals patterns shifting and sounds jumping from one channel to the other, notes arriving in a deceptively fast swirl and moving fluidly around and through each other. When it comes to drones and long-form ambience, something I always enjoy is the impression that every wave of sound is audible, that you can actually hear those waves. Rationally, it seems more likely that’s imagination, but with the twists in the audio that arise as “Part I” makes its way from layered drones into a hiss-heavy minimalist key line and, eventually, to a programmed beat that’s gone almost as soon as it appears — could this be walking through different doors and finding what’s there? — the feeling of undulating sound remains. “Part II” carries the theme of opening with a space-themed sample and moving into drones, but as soon as it kicks in is darker-toned and more foreboding.

Since side one and side two are both over half an hour long, chances are that if you’re listening to Doorway, you’re going to get lost in it at some point. “Part II” doesn’t have that same kind of snap-you-back-to-reality to it that the aforementioned beat offered in “Part I,” but distinguishes itself with more of a sense of build, going from low hum to abrasive, distorted noise over the course of 20 minutes and keeping some of the cave echo that will be familiar to those who’ve been aware of Rochondo‘s work in Ice Dragon. If it’s space, “Part II” is deeper, darker space than “Part I,” and by about 22 minutes in, it’s arrived at someplace threatening. It’s more of a surprise, then, that around 23 minutes in, “Part II” comes to a complete, dead stop and begins all over with a quiet, almost mumbling, sample explaining planetary rotation topping wind-style analog synth. There are effects low in the mix on the sample, giving a suitable otherworldly feel (another benefit of headphones), and another stop afterwards marks a break into ringing electronic tones that build, resonate, distort and finally, echo away over the last several minutes, the last minute rising from silence to a machine hum that in turn fades out.

Probably goes without saying that Qosmic Qey isn’t going to be for everyone, but I’ll say it anyway. It’s either going to be a zone-out or a conscious challenge, but either way, Doorway provokes a response, and particularly with such an experimental feel, that’s something of an accomplishment. I can think of way worse ways to lose your head. If you’re an Ice Dragon fan looking for a curio or a drone-head seeking a fix, you don’t really lose out.

Qosmic Qey, Doorway (2013)

Qosmic Qey on Bandcamp

Qosmic Qey on Thee Facebooks

If you’ve got the time, The Golden Grass have the vibe. Their 456th Div. tape is available now on In for the Kill Records in a limited edition of 50. I don’t know what of that number are left — the Brooklyn trio were taking Paypal orders on their Thee Facebooks — but considering there weren’t that many to start with, it’s likely there aren’t that many remaining, but even though the audio is fairly rough, 456th Div. offers listeners something different even from the band’s more official debut, the One More Time b/w Tornado 7″ single. That release has clean studio versions of two songs, and the A-side appears here as well, but it arrives coupled with two April 2013 demos — one for “Please Man” and one for “One More Time” — and the live track “Stuck on a Mountain” that, to date, I haven’t come across anywhere else. Between that and the Boy Scout-esque patch with which the cassette arrives, it proves a fitting curio both for collectors or someone interested in the development of the band in their early going.

“One More Time” is almost maddeningly catchy. With lead vocals from drummer Adam Kriney (La Otracina) and backing tracks from guitarist Michael Rafalowich (Strange Haze), it’s a smooth summertime roll that comes on friendly and stays crisp front to back. In its finished, studio form, it’s a classic rocker all the way, comfortably paced and worthy of the sing-alongs for which the chorus seems to be asking. The demo version that closes here, as expected, is more bare-bones, without the vocal interplay. Fortunately, throughout all the material but most especially the live track “Stuck on a Mountain,” which was recorded at Brooklyn’s St. Vitus bar on Sept. 6, bassist Joe Noval comes through at the fore, where all too often with tape compression the low end suffers most. Of course a lot depends on your system and equalizer, but he’s there. This being my first exposure to “Stuck on a Mountain” and “Please Man” — both of which may or may not show up on The Golden Grass‘ full-length debut, reportedly tracked last week with Jeff Berner (Naam) — the songs didn’t have the immediate familiarity of “One More Time” (there’s nothing to make you feel like you know a song like listening to it a bunch of times), but were immediately engaging nonetheless and fitting with the positive spirit and classic rock warmth that seems to typify all of The Golden Grass‘ material that I’ve encountered thus far.

I already alluded to it, but the actual sound of 456th Div. is raw. If it’s going to be your first exposure to the band, the 7″ is probably the way to go, but as a further precursor to the LP and a complement to the single, it makes sense. The four-song program repeats on sides one and two of the plain white tape, and at louder volumes, there’s a considerable hiss. This would seem to be less in the interest of the songs themselves, though particularly for the demo cuts and the live track it makes sense in that, “Dude, my buddy just dubbed this for me” kind of way, and if the options are no physical pressing of this material or 456th Div., I’d certainly rather have the than not, hiss or no. As The Golden Grass move quickly into the making of their debut, one might think of 456th Div. in combination with the 7″ as a document of their beginnings, and on that level as well as getting a whatever-the-aural-version-of-a-sneak-peak-is at two yet-unheard songs, I’m glad to have gotten a copy.

The Golden Grass, One More Time b/w Tornado (2013)

The Golden Grass on Thee Facebooks

In for the Kill Records

What I like most about Mountain God‘s debut demo tape, Experimentation on the Unwilling (released on Archaic Revival Records), is that it gets more and more fucked the further into it you go. Based in Brooklyn, the four-piece band incorporate a dreary kind of psychedelia, and come across partially indebted to Electric Wizard on the nodding “Fields of Life” or side two closer “Maarrat al-Nu’man,” but seem less fixated on the darker aspects of pop, and so are less generally anchored and all the more chaotic for it. The five tracks included on the tape would sound blown-out no matter what media they appeared on, but Mountain God — which features Alkahest members Nikhil Kamineni and Jonathan Powell on bass/vocals/engineering and keys/vocals, respectively, as well as guitarist/vocalist Ben Ianuzzi and drummer Ian Murray — make their atmospheric intentions clear on their first outing, and the format on which they’ve chosen to present it plays a role in that as well.

So do the keys, actually. And the multiple vocalists. And the overbearing buzz of the guitar distortion. Really the whole thing is feeding into an overarching sense of mood — foggy, vaguely demented, generally but not necessarily outwardly threatening — but it’s Powell‘s keys that make the most striking impression, and they do so most of all on “Prophet,” which rounds out side one. With just a few single notes that reach up from the chaotic, swirling morass, Powell pushes the song into a different league of individuality and memorability — somebody had The Downward Spiralwhen they were in high school — and elsewhere on Experimentation on the Unwilling, as on the preceding “Fields of Life,” the keys lend a horrific ambience to what would otherwise be almost expected churn. The sheer nastiness that comes across on the opening title cut and spacious chug of “Fallout” would likely be enough to distinguish Mountain God anyway, but the listening experience is that much richer for the creeping melodies that ensue from the keyboard.

Particularly from a demo, I wouldn’t ask much more than that kind of rudimentary show of personality, but Mountain God‘s songs have more to offer than nascent aesthetic and generalized potential. For the consuming tones of “Fallout” alone or the lyrical narrative of the lysergically-riffed “Prophet,” Experimentation on the Unwillinggives more to dig into than it might initially seem, and taken as two whole sides on the tape, it’s immersive and hypnotic in keeping with its atmosphere. I hope these guys have a fog machine. They might need two or three by the time they get around to writing their next batch of material. In the meantime, their debut is available currently in a physical edition of 100 cassettes that seem to just be waiting for vinyl companionship.

Mountain God, Experimentation on the Unwilling (2013)

Mountain God on Thee Facebooks

Mountain God on Bandcamp

Archaic Revival Records

You can turn on the “noise reduction” if you want when you’re listening to Richmond trio Druglord‘s new Enter Venus tape, but be warned that if you do, there might not be anything left. The cave-echo sludge three-piece will play Stoner Hands of Doom XIII at Strange Matter in their hometown on Thursday, Nov. 7, with fellow Richmonders Gritter, as well as Compel, Clamfight and others, and they bring a presence to the festival like few others. Released in limited edition by STB Records, Enter Venus follows behind 2011’s Motherfucker Rising (review here) and their 2010 self-titled debut demo (review here), and if I call it their most solidified outing yet, please take that in the appropriate context of viciously misanthropic and lurchingly cavernous sludge. The three-piece band of guitarist/vocalist Tommy Hamilton, bassist Greta Brinkman and drummer Hufknell may be cohesive across the four songs recorded by Windhand‘s Garrett Morris at The Darkroom in Richmond, but their pummel continues molten and unhinged.

Starting with a snare fill from Hufknell, the title-track — third of the four cuts included on Enter Venus and the first on side 2 — is Southern sludge as filtered through a nightmare, but a guitar solo emerges on an almost hopeful note from the morass of distortion and plod. Like everything else in the song’s path, it’s ultimately consumed, but it’s flashes like this that mark out the development in Druglord‘s approach, and the complementing nod is the most hypnotic they’ve concocted to date. Hamilton‘s vocals echo from the depths of the mix, consistent in their approach but not entirely amelodic, and he seems to be setting himself up for more sonic adventurousness their next time out. In his and Brinkman‘s tone, there’s bound to be some similarity to Windhand‘s Soma, the two releases having both been helmed by Morris, but Druglord maintain a more misanthropic resonance from their earlier works, though the lyrics of the songs and the image of Aleister Crowley screenprinted onto the hand-numbered bag in which the cassette arrives do give some impression of vague cultish leanings.

Even so, the crash and drown of opener “Grievous Heaving” — also a more than fairly apt description of the song itself — mark out this material as Druglord‘s most encompassing. A sample launches the opener, but the first verse of “Grievous Heaving” is quick to arrive and fittingly malevolent, slow, punishing, and “Feast on the Eye,” which follows as the second half of side 1, is perhaps more atmospheric, but ultimately similarly minded in its dreary course. If one encounters it or any of this material through a player with substantive low end, then a warning is in order. One hardly thinks of tapes as busting woofers or sounding big, but whether it’s Brinkman‘s low end or Hufknell‘s kick, Enter Venus makes a considerable sonic presence for itself and is all the more threatening at loud volumes, the organ that shows up layered into “Feast on the Eye” giving creepy classicism to what’s already a cinematic-feeling horror show.

As I understand it, the Enter Venus tapes are almost gone if they’re not gone already, but even if Druglord don’t have any on hand for SHoD, there will be a vinyl version of Enter Venus coming early in 2014. Think of the cassette as an early warning alert system ahead of that, and hopefully a harbinger of where Druglord‘s continued progression might be leading them for their next outing.

Druglord, “Feast on the Eye” from Enter Venus (2013)

Stoner Hands of Doom XIII

Druglord on Thee Facebooks

Druglord on Bandcamp

STB Records

Admittedly, there’s a decent chance I’d have endeavored to pick up the Dream Dragon tape from Boston psych doomers Ice Dragon anyway, but it was the layout of the cover that made it so imperative. You can see the font they used in the picture above, and the black-bar along the bottom. This was something that was done with albums back when tapes were a companion format with vinyl so that cover art wouldn’t have to be warped to fit the longer tape case, and even down to the type-setting and the relative size of the band name and album title, Ice Dragon nailed it. Same goes for the spine of the tape itself and the tracklisting, right down to “side one” and “side two” and the fake barcode. They couldn’t have done a better job with it if it had been white with red letters.

The blue tape itself is somewhat less playing to tradition, but as did their 2007 self-titled and 2011’s The Sorrowful Sun (both discussed here), Dream Dragon makes an excellent cassette, the band’s self-recorded, lo-fi aesthetic coming through extra gnarly when intended, as on the ballsy “Maximum Trip” and still offering depth enough of mix to make it seem that the “Planet Caravan”-style synth trails of the nonetheless-rumbling “Dream Dragon” have space to move around. It’s also too long for a single vinyl at 55 minutes, but breaking it up into sides one and two here — the first ending with “A Dragon’s Dream, Pt. I” and the second with closer “A Dragon’s Dream, Pt. II” — makes Dream Dragon more accessible without taking away from the hypnosis of it, especially on side two, when the relationship-gone-good and relationship-gone-bad “For Once in My Life” and “More than I Can Say for You” give way to the engaging psychedelia that closes out the last several cuts, the brash half-speed garage of “Beard of Thieves” seeming a much greater distance away than the start of the second half of the album.

And throughout, whether it’s the mellotron of opener “Dreamliner” or the bass-heavy “Stumble onto Magic,” which sounds like it was recorded off a tv performance in 1967, or the patiently unfurling “Me and My Lady (My Lady and Me),” Dream Dragon lives up to its name and its easily-deciphered bent toward the ethereal. Moments of threat loom in the drones of “I Know You’re Here” and the later instrumental “Unter der Gnomen” — and certainly Ice Dragon have made good on those threats elsewhere in their rapidly expanding discography — but the prevailing mood here is peaceful, otherworldly, and the flow the band create never gets shaken enough to really be interrupted. Until of course you wake up. Both parts of “A Dragon’s Dream” have a dirge march to them with far-off drums crashing and intertwining layers of guitar, and the second one seems to come apart at the end, leaving just a final trace of scratchy analog synth.

Ever-prolific, Ice Dragon — then the trio of drummer/vocalist Ron Rochondo, guitarist Carter and bassist Joe (all of whom handle a variety of instruments here as well as backing vocals for the latter two) — have released an EP and two full-lengths since, but I think it’s audible even on the latest, Born a Heavy Morning (review here), that they were developing some similar atmospheres to what they’d done on Dream Dragon, so I’m glad they went back and gave this one a physical issue. I’m not about to complain about their standing free-Bandcamp-downloads-for-all, but particularly with an album of this kind of breadth, it deserves some presence in the terrestrial realm as well, tenuous as its connection to it sonically may or may not be.

Ice Dragon, Dream Dragon (2012)

Ice Dragon on Thee Facebooks

Ice Dragon on Bandcamp

I wasn’t quite sure what was going on with Mos Generator‘s new Live in Europe 2013 cassette until I flipped the case over and saw three crucial words written all in caps: “STEREO AUDIENCE RECORDING.”

In a way, that tells a large part of the story with the Lame is Me Records release, which is the second recorded document to emerge from the Washington trio’s European run earlier this year with Saint Vitus behind the Lay Bare Recordings vinyl, In Concert (review here). It is an audience recording. Where In Concert had professional production, a crisp, clear sound and a vibrant mix, Live in Europe 2013 is much rawer in sound and execution. It’s a solid pickup for fans of the band and no doubt makes a decent option on the merch table, but its intent is clearly different from the other live outing. More or less, it’s a bootleg.

And once I realized that, my entire context for it changed. The tape compiles two sets — one recorded in Aschaffenburg, Germany, and one recorded in Vienna, Austria — and puts one on each side, a slightly varied setlist setting them apart as changing out a jamming “Step Up” for “Beyond the Whip” marks out one night from its companion. Immediately I was reminded of being in the musty shop where I used to buy my bootlegs, scanning the spines of cassette cases for dates and places to see which copied shows from which tours I could get on the cheap. Audience recordings, straight from master to the tape or stripped through further generations of recording-to-recording transfer of what little fidelity they had, are always a tricky prospect, because so much depends on the equipment. Mos Generator‘s material comes in pretty clearly, considering, but if you go into Live in Europe 2013 thinking it’s going to be hitting the same kind of standard as In Concert, let me be the first to tell you that’s not what’s going on here and it doesn’t seem like it was meant to be.

One of the big arguments I hear against the “tape revival” is that it’s needless. Why bother with a tape for anything other than ’90s sentimentality (including, as you can see in the paragraph above, my own)? Well, a release like this, with its transparent green cassette, limited run and for-fans-only vibe, makes a perfect tape. You wouldn’t press either of these shows to a CD, and the expense of doing a vinyl run for an audience recording — let alone a 2LP to get both shows in — is ridiculous. But with a tape, anyone interested in getting more of a taste of Mos Generator‘s 2013 European tour can do so with a sonic feel that, in its own way, is as classic as the rock itself. I’ve got some audience-recorded Sabbath bootlegs and other stuff. It’s a very specific sound, and again, once I saw those three words, Live in Europe 2013 made a whole lot more sense.

If, like me, you’re a fan of what Mos Generator do — especially if, like me, you’re a fan who’s never seen them live — then Live in Europe 2013 legitimately has something to offer that even In Concert can’t by its very nature. If you want to call my digging on a raw-sounding tape pointless nostalgia, well fine, but you could just as easily apply the same critique to people delving into heavy ’70s riffing in the first place, and that’s not an argument I hear very often. Dig it or don’t, if it’s one more way to get a feel for what these guys can do on a stage, then the only complaint I’m about to make is that neither show has “Cosmic Ark” on it. Beyond that, my issues are nil.

Mos Generator, “This is the Gift of Nature” Live in Vienna, Austria, March 22, 2013

Mos Generator’s official store

Lame is Me

Is Espejismos, the latest release from Peruvian progressive heavy psych rockers Don Juan Matus, an album? There are a couple different ways to answer the question, and I don’t think any of them are wrong, only more right than the others. You could say no, it’s not. It collects five new songs recorded separately by the band members and couples them with alternate versions and early mixes to, at most, make an EP with bonus tracks dispersed throughout. You’re not wrong. You could say yes, it’s an album. It’s cohesive, it’s got a flow from song to song, and the five-piece obviously took the time to structure it in a way that made the most of that, so who cares if there are six engineers listed in the tape liner and that recording was done over a period of six years between the band’s beginnings in 2007 and 2013? They put it out as an album, it’s an album. Who cares anyway?

You wouldn’t be wrong to say that either. It’s all true. I land on the third option: Kinda. Is it an album? Well, kinda. Those new tracks — “Contico a los Dioses Antiguos,” “Vortice Espiral II,” “Espejismos II,” “Auroral” and “Carne Humana para las Masas” — do a lot to tie the release together, but for anyone who heard 2010’s Más Allá del Sol Poniente (review here), the Melvins chug and soaring vocals of “Mundo Alterno” and the classic heavy prog rock of “Kadath” are going to be familiar, even if the context is different and the songs appear on Espejismos in different versions than on the last album (“Kadath” also showed up on a split 7″ with Oxido last year; streamed here). So it’s kinda a new album from Don Juan Matus, whose future is reportedly uncertain on account of geographical distance between its members, but whatever you want to call it, it’s a smooth, varied listen, and particularly on the Caligari Records tape, which forces you to hear one side at a time, it does have an undeniable flow.

Only one of the new songs appears on side one, and that’s the opener, so side two, which starts with “Vortice Espiral II” is bound to be less familiar. What starts out with heavy ’70s style weirdo psych — Alice Cooper Band, maybe? — soon gets met with chirping frogs, acoustic guitar, flute and mellotron on a 2008 version of “Matorral,” only to give way to cymbal wash and kick drum thud on the brief “Espejismos II,” only to move into patient, ambient pastoralia on “Auroral” and offset more nuanced psych exploration on “Verde Nocturno/Las Horas Azules” with a cinematic vocal and instrumental progression backing an extended classic rock solo. Rounding out, “Carne Humana para las Masas” is — of course — a theremin, snare and lightly plucked electric guitar piece that sounds vaguely Eastern European in its sad melody, only to end with concert hall applause. So yeah, it’s a bit of work to keep up with everything Don Juan Matus have to offer even on the half of Espejismos that’s mostly new, but as was the case with Más Allá del Sol Poniente, it’s a challenge worth taking on for adventurous ears.

The cassette version of the album — if that’s where you’re at on the delineation — is limited to 100 hand-numbered copies (I got #29), and comes with an eight-panel insert on quality card stock that on one side has the foldout Daniel Serrano artwork and on the other gives the info on who in the band recorded what and when. That’s a lot to keep up with as well, but the upshot is that even when you know the songs, you never quite know what’s coming next as you make your way through the two sides.

Don Juan Matus, Espejismos (2013)

Don Juan Matus on Thee Facebooks

Caligari Records