Posted in Whathaveyou on May 6th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
You can’t look at the extensive list of dates below and not accuse Heavy Temple of slacking, to say the least of it. The Philadelphia trio will be out for six-plus weeks on this coast-to-coast US headlining tour, which I think is the longest single stretch they’ve yet undertaken, though I wouldn’t swear to it. In any case, it is a striking amount of shows, and in a time where a lot of bands break up the States into East or West Coast runs and cover the spaces between, Heavy Temple signal a righteous diving-in here.
They go in support of one of 2024’s best LPs, Garden of Heathens (review here), their second record through Magnetic Eye and built on a similarly all-in ethic as regards both craft and bombast. Note as well that support will come from also-no-strangers-to-the-road Valley of the Sun from Ohio, who are currently streaming the first half of and taking preorders for their forthcoming Quintessence LP (info here) ahead of releasing the second part and physical versions in the coming months. I hope they have ’em to bring on the tour.
And by “the tour” I mean this one. Behold:
The Nation of Heathens tour kicks off July 18th! We’re super stoked to have @valleyofthesunband with us on all these dates, and we’ll be joined by some other friends along the way. See dates below! 👇👇👇
7/17 – Boston, MA @ Mideast Upstairs 7/18 – New York, NY @ Kingsland 7/19 – Clifton, NJ @ Dingbats 7/20 – Baltimore, MD @ Metro Gallery 7/21 – Youngstown, OH @ Westside Bowl 7/24 – Columbus, OH @ Ace of Cups 7/25 – Detroit, MI @ Sanctuary 7/26 – Indianapolis, IN @ Black Circle 7/27 – Chicago, IL @ Reggie’s Music Joint 7/28 – Milwaukee, WI @ Club Garibaldi 7/30 – Minneapolis, MN @ Turf Club 7/31 – Iowa City, IA @ Wildwood 8/1 – Lincoln, NE @ 1867 Bar 8/2 – Denver, CO @ HQ Denver 8/3 – Salt Lake, UT @ Ace High Saloon 8/4 – Boise, ID @ Shredder 8/7 – Seattle, WA @ Sub Station 8/8 – Portland, OR @ Dantes 8/9 – San Fran, CA @ DNA Lounge 8/10 – Anaheim, CA @ The Parish (HOB) 8/11 – San Diego, CA @ Brick by Brick 8/13 – Las Vegas, NV @ Usual Place 8/14 – Phoenix, AZ @ Underground 8/15 – Albuquerque, NM @ Sister Bar 8/16 – El Paso, TX @ Rock House 8/17 – Dallas, TX @ Three Links 8/18 – Austin, TX @ The Lost Well 8/21 – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger 8/22 – Houston, TX @ Secret Group 8/23 – Lafayette, LA @ Freetown Boom Boom 8/24 – New Orleans, LA @ Santos Bar 8/25 – Pensacola, FL @ The Handlebar 8/27 – Jacksonville, FL @ Underbelly 8/28 – Orlando, Fl @ Wills Pub 8/29 – Tampa, FL @ Orpheum 8/30 – Atlanta, GA @ Boggs Social & Supply 8/31 – Richmond, VA @ The Camel 🐍🍎
Voidkind is the third full-length from Edinburgh-based five-piece DVNE and their second to be issued with the historically-significant endorsement of Metal Blade Records behind 2021’s Etemen Ænka (review here) and sees the heavy, progressive metallers reaching for and attaining new levels of refinement in terms of craft. In intensity, melody, ambience and impact, Voidkind (cover art by Felix Abel Klae) weaves its 10 tracks together across nearly an hour’s runtime that is so clearly meant to be taken in its entirety and only benefits from having enough arrogance to demand the listener’s attention for its span despite earning it with the songs themselves.
And as to those songs. They are dynamic in tempo, volume, the arrangements of vocals from Daniel Barter (also guitar live), keyboardist Maxime Keller and guitarist/keyboardist Victor Vicart, and the hairpin rhythmic turns of bassist/guitarist Allan Paterson (Alexandros Keros also contributes bass on stage) and drummer Dudley Tait, the latter with a performance that could and probably should be a blueprint on how to accompany younger-Mastodon-style angular riffing without overplaying. Working with returning producer Graeme Young on the recording and mix (Robyn Dawson assisted engineering) and the also-returning Magnus Lindberg (Domkraft, Vokonis, Wren, countless others, plus his own band) for the master, the pieces that comprise Voidkind resonate with scope and narrative, and as deep as you want to dig into the references and vocabulary of the lyrics, DVNE will meet you there for lines like “Synesthetic submergence saturates the mind,” from “Abode of the Perfect Soul” or “The zephyrian scents of verbena” from “Eleonora” earlier as the band dig in following the more bombastic, willfully aggressive opener “Summa Blasphemia.”
Like the lyrics, the instrumental arrangements feel plotted, worked on, and thoughtful of the linear thread that brings the songs together and the intended flow across Voidkind as a whole. “Summa Blasphemia” takes about nine seconds for its surge to sweep in, but from that point on, DVNE‘s sense of control is complete in the turn that introduces the record’s first soaring, melodic, emotive vocals at about the one-minute mark so they can gradually come together in the apex with the harsher growls and screams that pervade amid all the ensuing crush, and in the way “Reliquary” moves from its solo section to the ambient break that begins its second-half build, in the subtle atmospheric flourish of interludes “Path of Dust” (led by guitar) and “Path of Ether” (more of a keyboard/synth drone) and how they surround “Sarmatæ” even on the 2LP edition of the album, giving that song’s memorable lines about casting tales and ribbons into fire space to breathe before the rush start of “Abode of the Perfect Soul” renews the onslaught en route to the closing pair of the lushly post-metallic “Plērōma” and the near-10-minute finale “Cobalt Sun Necropolis,” which feels like nothing so much as a next-generation’s nodding back as its last crescendo is blown out in a mode not dissimilar from Neurosis‘ “Stones From the Sky” at the finish.
There are arguments to be made for and against what seems from outside to be such a deeply cerebral take, but at more than 10 years’ remove from their debut EP, Progenitor (review here), DVNE know who they are in terms of sound, and Voidkind comes through as all the more sculpted and literary in its ambitions for their efforts, and as they stand in the center of the tumult in “Eleonora” or bring together the airier float of guitar on “Reaching for Telos” with layered vocal harmonies as yet another example of their growth as a unit, the complexity is a strength. They’re never lost in it. They never forget where they just came from or lose track of where they’re going, how it fits, or why. As a listener, Voidkind is exciting even on a first impression because of its charge, its aggro throb, its stops and starts and twists that toy with adrenaline and pull you deeper into the material, but the reason any of it works at all is the emergent mastery of songwriting DVNE have been chasing for the last decade-plus.
So is Voidkind an arrival moment? Sure, and you wouldn’t have been wrong to say the same of Etemen Ænka or 2017’s debut LP, Asheran, either. At the very least, it’s a landmark for them along their path of continued evolution, but I also can’t seem to get out of my head the notion of placing it in the broader sphere of metal. Part of that might just be that DVNE sound fresh in their ideas of what heavy sounds can convey, whether fast or slow, loud or quiet, dissonant, melodic, etc., but Voidkind only gets more difficult to categorize the more one hears it. With the level of consideration put in and the somewhat heady vibes throughout, it’s only fair to call it progressive despite how much it uses raw ferocity to make its case, and while it might owe a debt of influence to post-hardcore, post-metal, sludge, and doom, it’s not just any one of those things. Familiar in parts, but imaginative and distinguished in its point of view.
Metal, as a genre, has splintered since the dawn of the internet such that, if someone were describing a band as “metal,” it would tell you almost nothing about the character of what you’re hearing other than it’s probably loud and potentially unspeakably dumb. Is DVNE metal? Is Pantera? Tool? Five Finger Death Punch (who are the worst band I’ve ever seen and I will say so every time I mention them)? Korn? Black Sabbath? You can get debate for the rest of your life about what is or isn’t metal, musically or as a lifestyle, without even a coherent definition to work from, and given the emotional attachment of those in the subculture to it and a long-held mistrust when those from outside — i.e., the broader pop-cultural sphere — deign to acknowledge its existence, that’s not likely to change. So what is metal and what should it be? I promise you I have no idea and I wouldn’t be so pretentious as to make any declaration in that regard even if I did. But if DVNE were the shape of metal to come, I have a hard time seeing how metal could be anything but better for it.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 6th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Desertfest Berlin 2024 has rolled out its last lineup additions — headed up by Poland’s Sunnata, who’ll support their expansive, released-this-week new LP, Chasing Shadows — and the afterparties and even a sleepover ticket option for those who want to camp out on-site.
I’ve heard of that kind of thing before, and it seems to me that if you’re making the weekend a party, that’s gonna be a way to keep it going. Looking at the day-splits and the rest of the lineup additions — Kombynat Robotron, Bottenhavet, Cava, Zukunft, Night Beats, Heckspoiler — there’s plenty of stylistic variety between them, which isn’t necessarily a surprise but should make for fun fest-days. If you’re headed out for it, stay safe and enjoy. It remains an annual daydream.
Poster and final lineup announcement follow, courtesy of the PR wire:
Desertfest Berlin has released its final band line-up for this year, and announces SUNNATA, BOTTENHAVET, CAVA, NIGHT BEATS plus bands for the outdoor stage: HECKSPOILER, KOMBYNAT ROBOTRON and ZUKUNFT!
They are joining the eclectic 2024 line-up featuring iconic PENTAGRAM at their last(!) Berlin show ever, Chris Goss’ mighty MASTERS OF REALITY, Californian krautrock frontrunners OSEES, post-metal masters AMENRA, desert rock legends BRANT BJORK TRIO, MONKEY3 with the new album “Welcome To The Machine” under their belt, and so many more. Get ready for THE riff party of the year – aside a wild and high-class blend of finest psychedelia, stoner rock, doom, desert punk blues, sludge and all that is metal, the official aftershow party will be happening on Friday Night, followed by the legendary Magic “Karaoke” on Saturday.
Furthermore, and due to incredibly expensive accommodation prizes in the German capitol, Desertfest Berlin is now offering sleep over options! For only 15€/night, guests can now book their “sleepover” ticket. Columbia Theater will be covered with pond foil for Desertfesters to stay the night with sleeping mat and sleeping bag.
Desertfest Berlin will take place between May 24 – 26, 2024 at Columbiahalle and Columbia Theater. Weekend Passes, Day Tickets + Sleep Over Options, are available to book at: www.desertfest-tickets.de
On April 18, Los Angeles-based mellow-heavy/shoegaze fuzz psych rockers (and then some) Dead Meadow announced that bassist Steve Kille had died the night before. Here’s the text of that post:
It is with the absolutely heaviest of hearts that we have to announce our beloved brother, bandmate, amazing and utterly unique bass player, and gifted artist Steve Kille passed away at 12 am last night. Writing, recording, performing music with Steve felt as fresh; inspiring, and as important as it did 27 years ago when we first started playing together. We don’t know what words could express this level of loss.
That of course is guitarist/vocalist and fellow founding member Jason Simon paying tribute.His math puts the start of Dead Meadow in 1997 at which point the band was still located in Washington D.C. Their first album, 2000’s Dead Meadow (discussed here), was released through Joe Lally of Fugazi‘s label, Tolotta Records — see also: Spirit Caravan, Stinking Lizaveta, Orthrelm (w/ Mick Barr), and so on — and Howls From the Hills followed the next year, once again on Tolotta and once again with Kille‘s art and design complementing the music.
Got Live if You Want It would follow in 2002 (on Bomp! and The Committee to Keep Music Evil), and the trio were signed to Matador Records ahead of 2003’s third studio album Shivering King and Others, but there’s a resonant rawness to the first two records that can only come from a band getting their feet under them and discovering who they are sonically. In that regard, the languid unfolding, wah-drenched fuzz tones and warm groove of “Drifting Down Streams” for sure learned some lessons from the self-titled. Recorded in Indiana by Shelby Cinca at a farm owned by the family of Stephen McCarty, who’d play drums on their fourth and fifth LPs, 2005’s Feathers and 2008’s Old Growth — also the era that saw Kille‘s emergence as a producer and recording engineer for the band — Howls From the Hills was ahead of its time in both the saunter of “Dusty Nothing” and the punctuated slow swing of “Jusiamere Farm,” and while I don’t have a negative word to say about Simon‘s tone or characteristic semi-sneering vocals or the urge-toward-movement that Mark Laughlin‘s drumming brings to the later “Everything’s Goin’ On,” it has always been Kille‘s bass work underneath Simon‘s higher-end fuzz that makes Howls From the Hills such a headphone-worthy listen.
It doesn’t matter if you’re in the stoned-in-the-summer-sun hook of “The White Worm” or caught in the feedback wash ahead of the Sabbathian march of “One and Old,” which becomes a classic-style outbound-jam departure before its 9:45 runtime is halfway through, getting louder, getting quieter, ebbing but always flowing before Simon brings it down with wistful but calming lead guitar over the last minute-plus. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the ’50s shimmer of the slide-inclusive “The Breeze Always Blows” or the sitar-backed bedroom folk ramble of “The One I Don’t Know” — which may or may not even have bass — Howls From the Hills highlights the particular fluidity that set Dead Meadow apart from most if not all of the turn-of-the-century-era heavy rockers, their willingness to let go of aggression where so many others couldn’t or didn’t want to, and the chemistry that was taking shape in their sound.
The last time I saw Kille play live was at the third night of Desertfest New York in May 2022 (review here), where Dead Meadow played the main stage between Big Business and the first of the evening’s headliners, Red Fang. You didn’t need to listen hard to hear the earthiness in his bass — there was plenty of volume to go around — and as much as Dead Meadow‘s style has been hailed over their years, records and tours for its floaty, drifting psychedelic aspects, in revisiting Howls From the Hills, the flexibility of craft that has let them go so many different places is so clearly emanating from the foundation laid out in the rhythm section. Kille could lock into a roller like “Dusty Nothing” or underscore the jangle of “The Breeze Always Blows” and still go a-wanderin’ in “The White Worm,” which is able to turn its exploration back around to the verse/chorus ending in no small part because Kille‘s been holding that groove the whole time.
Classic power trio dynamic, maybe, but in a context that makes it as much Dead Meadow‘s own as much as anyone else’s. Howls From the Hills immerses the listener early with the ambient noise and far-off feedback of “Drifting Down Streams” and is kind of a mini-blowout at the culmination of its eight minutes, but holds the same kind of deceptive movement as cuts like “Sleepy Silver Door” from the self-titled or the slowed-down trippier take on “Everything’s Goin’ On” that showed up on Shivering King and Others. The band’s live records — the aforementioned Got Live if You Want It, most of 2010’s Three Kings (for which Kille was interviewed here), 2020’s Live at Roadburn 2011 (review here), and 2021’s Levitation Sessions: Live From the Pillars of God — tell another important side of that story, and there too one finds Kille essential to creating that current-like motion beneath the surface flow.
On behalf of myself and this site, for whatever it’s worth, I offer condolences to Kille‘s family, to his bandmates Simon and Laughlin, and to the band’s many fans and the multitudes inspired by his playing, songwriting, visual and/or production styles. As part of Dead Meadow, his contributions have been part of influencing a generation of heavy psychedelia, and part of what makes Howls From the Hills feel timeless now is that records so individual to the artists making them never quite fit with their time to begin with. I don’t know the future of the band, and frankly I think it would be too early and crass to speculate, but there can be no question that Kille brought something special to the mix that made Dead Meadow who they are, and as always, that work will continue to live on.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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Gonna keep it short this time (or apparently not) to sort of let the above stand on its own, but I wanted to explain a bit. I was at Roadburn, actually standing in the skate park watching Heath when Virginia’s Stephen Smith — if ever at a show, anywhere on earth, there’s at least a 30 percent chance he’ll stop through on his way to the next one — showed me the post above on his phone. In addition to needing some time to get my head back after the fest and travel, I didn’t want to be rushing to post something like it was just part of the rest of the news catchup. A person died. You want to try to honor that loss.
Took me a week I guess to think of writing about him and Howls at the Hills at the same time. I actually closed a week with the same record about 11 years ago — shocking to me how long I’ve been doing Friday Full-Lengths, and yet they’re still all categorized as Bootleg Theater instead of their own thing; makes no sense — but I figure after a decade it’s fair game if I want it to be, and once I put it on I knew I wanted it to be. I didn’t talk much about the band’s later work above, but in fact I was back and forth with Kille as part of writing the liner notes for the PostWax edition of last year’s Force From Free, and in my experience he was only ever a laid back, easy kind of person to work with. I’d say the same of Simon. Both dudes who, if they were jerks you’d say, “Well, bigger band, indie cred, sometimes that happens,” who were very much not jerks. That kind of thing means a lot to me.
Anyhow, to that’s the way it ended up what it is. Not timely, but with something like this, it doesn’t necessarily need to be in the same way it otherwise would.
I was at an appointment (actually with the same surgeon who did my meniscus operation in late-2022) for my mother this morning as she starts the process of getting one of her two very-much-in-need-of-replacing knees replaced. Bone on bone, no cartilage. A little left in the other one. Surgery hopefully in a couple weeks. But that was a drain emotionally as well, and with a weekend ahead of going to Connecticut to help The Patient Mrs.’ mom move furniture, Elephant Tree liner notes that I think need a rewrite owing to some misunderstanding of what release they were actually for — they have a couple things in the works, including the also-PostWax split with Lowrider — the regular batch of writing and having this afternoon to engage the inevitable argument of trying to give The Pecan a bath, which just sucks lately, I’m gonna punch out and call it a week.
I hope to do that DVNE review that was slated for this week on Monday — Sunnata are next in line after, but not next week — the rest of the week has premieres lined up for Maragda, Los Tayos (a Psychedelic Source Records project that will happen if it’s done in time; I love working with that label and I’m not being sarcastic), High Noon Kahuna and We Broke the Weather, so it will not lack for awesome. Until then, have a great and safe weekend and thanks again for reading.
FRM. I don’t think there’s any merch on there right now, but I’m putting the link anyway because support MIBK.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 3rd, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Whatever brand of headache you’re working with today — be it work, family, life, hangover, bangover, undercaffeination, overcaffeination, general existential dread, etc. — Valley of the Sun offer Quintessence Pt. 1, the first half of their upcoming self-released LP, as the way out from under it. Recorded not one full month ago, these five new tracks find the long-running Ohoian heavy rockers led by guitarist/vocalist Ryan Ferrier operating as a trio with Chris Sweeney on bass/keys (also some guitar) and Johnny Kathman on drums (also also some guitar), and releasing in DIY fashion as the follow-up to The Chariot (review here), released in 2022 on Fuzzorama Records and Ripple Music.
Ferrier, Sweeney and Kathman pull back on some of the desert-hued thrust that might come to mind if you heard The Chariot or their preceding LPs with “Graviton,” and “Where’s This Place I Roam?” highlights a moodier atmosphere, but “Palus Somni” is as characteristic — quintessential? — Valley of the Sun as you could hope to hear, and as Pt. 1 is only half the story they’re telling, I’ll be all-ears for the rest whenever it might arrive.
They’re already confirmed for a return to Europe this October to play Keep it Low Festival in Munich, and I’m pretty sure there’s more touring to be announced shortly, so keep an eye out. In the meantime, album info and such goes like this, and physical-edition preorders are up now:
Inspired by the total solar eclipse which took place on day 1 of recording (April 8, 2024), Quintessence marks a return to the three-piece format for Valley of the Sun. With massive, sub-octave guitars, thundering bass, and a backbone of rock-solid drumming, the album is a bit of a departure from previous efforts, but long-time fans of the band will still find all the riffs, melodies, and soaring vocals that they’ve come to expect from VOTS over its previous four LP’s.
Releases July 25, 2024.
Quintessence Pt. 1 tracklisting: 1. Terra Luna Sol 04:25 2. Graviton 06:30 3. Where’s This Place I Roam? 04:35 4. The Late Heavy Bombardment 04:18 5. Palus Somni 04:58
Produced, mixed, and mastered by John Naclerio at Nada Recording Studio in Montgomery, New York. Artwork by Jarrod Warf.
Valley of the Sun are: Ryan Ferrier – guitars and vocals Chris Sweeney – bass, keys, and additional guitars Johnny Kathman – drums, percussion, and additional guitars (Additional guitars on Where’s This Place I Roam? by Pete Koretzky)
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 3rd, 2024 by JJ Koczan
To my knowledge, “Simulacrum” is the first single that New York’s Ken Wohlrob — known for his work in defunct doomers Eternal Black as well as the hardcore-minded End of Hope, the pandemic-era remote project Swarm of Flies and the nascent riffery of Northern Heretic‘s two-to-date singles (posted here and here) — has issued under his own name.
Released today through Bandcamp and probably a bunch of other scattered digital outlets, “Simulacrum” swells from its initial fade-in to a six-plus-minute procession of melodic guitar drone, neither minimal in construction or dispassionate as that kind of thing sometimes can be. And while the release info I’ve cut and pasted below is somewhat abstract, so is the song, and that I assume is part of the (friggin’) point. More aural sculpture than soundscape, it howls around synthesizer complement and leaves no shortage of room for the listener to get lost in its contemplative spaces, but has a defined course and forward progression in addition to offering something different from anything any of Wohlrob‘s bands have done before. I take the fact that “Simulacrum” makes me curious about both it — how many layers of guitar/keys are there, which layer was built on first, how long did it take for it to be recorded, when did it feel done and why, on and on — and about what’s to come from Wohlrob as good signs.
Maybe you’ll feel the same, but there’s only one way to find out. Take a pause to open your mind and focus your attention, then hit play and enjoy:
KEN WOHLROB – “Simulacrum”
A song can be a slippery thing. It can have no structure while still being bound to consistency. It can be sinister, but also beautiful. It can allow you space to think, moving into the background, but it can still enforce its presence. It can feel immovable, while it can feel as if it’s slithering away, unable to be held. Its components can be distinct, while its layers can melt into one another. It can sound familiar, yet unlike anything you’ve ever heard. It can have roots, but be unmoored from the past. It can borrow, cheat, and steal, while being pure and unique. It is a sum of its parts, but the parts don’t define it. It can engage the brain, but defy understanding. It can be one thing one minute, another thing the next But it should infect you…
Otherwise, what’s the friggin’ point?
There are guitars. They are synthesizers. They are effects. Slivers of old songs and styles that have been lurking in my brain, sitting in the unconscious, waiting to be deployed. Some influences overt, others indistinguishable. This was where my brain was at during the moments the song was recorded. It was not planned. Nor written. It was cobbled together from rapid impulses and dredged old thoughts.
Hope you dig it.
releases May 3, 2024 Written, performed and produced by Ken Wohlrob Recorded at Quatre Cagne, Mohegan Lake, NY February 2024 Obsidian Sky Records #009
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 3rd, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Blink and it’s been seven years since Texan classic heavy rockers Mothership released their third album, High Strangeness (review here). Led by brothers Kelley Juett and Kyle Juett on guitar and bass/vocals, respectively, that band toured as much as they could in the years that followed, including post-pandemic, and were not known to give anything less than everything they had on whatever stage they happened to occupy that night. If they were playing tomorrow, I’d tell you to go.
Kelley Juett‘s first solo outing promises an intentional sonic turn. There’s no audio from Wandering West posted as of this writing, but going by his own description that follows, it seems like purposefully exploratory, maybe even meditative instrumentalism is the order of the day, and as Juett has aligned with Glory or Death Records and an international consortium of other notable imprints (including Majestic Mountain, from whose preorder page his quote below comes), it may be the beginning point of a longer-term trajectory as stated. In any case, however divergent it might ultimately prove from Juett‘s work in Mothership, it’ll be worth it just to hear him playing on a record of his own.
Glory or Death has preorders up today. On special, no less. The details:
KELLEY JUETT – Wandering West
Here is one that is very special to us! Everyone’s favorite human, Kelley Juett, from the mighty Mothership has officially embarked on a solo mission! We are honored to announce that we will be releasing Kelley’s first solo album entitled “Wandering West” at Glory or Death Records. “Early Bird” pre orders will be available at only $17.99 for the vinyl and are dropping this Friday, May 3rd! After the full release the price will be $22.99.
Says Juett: “Welcome to the musical journey within my mind and be the first to witness the evolution of myself through music. This is the first solo piece of music I have released outside of my band Mothership and this means very much to me and who I am as a guitar player. All of these songs came together on the spot and with 100 percent improvisation, there were no “retakes” on this record I just went for it without any editing or pre-thought of riffs or ideas. This project has been a long time coming and this is only the beginning of many more chapters and evolutions to come with my solo career and journey with the guitar. Those who are into instrumental, peaceful, raw and real emotional music, or just looking for something interesting and new to put on to think, drive and relax to, give this musical therapy a shot.”
We will also be dropping some incredible DIY Test Presses with West-Themed Collage jackets and notes all from Kelley himself. Doesn’t get cooler than that! We have tons of special stuff planned for this record. More than we have ever done here at Glory or Death Records for a single release! Stay tuned as we unveil all that comes along with this journey of a record! The first single will be available for your ears this Friday as well!
For those GoD supporters and fans of Kels that are outside of USA – We have dialed in some international distribution for you to save some postage costs!
Special thanks to Majestic Mountain Records (Sweden), Electric Valley Records (Italy) & Kozmik Artifactz (Germany) for the extra support in saving our friends a few bucks!
“Wandering West” was Engineered by Jeff Henson of DUEL and Chris “OM” galt. Recorded and produced by Kelley Juett.
Finnish extreme industrial two-piece Vorare are releasing two albums this month, and the Rope Tower collaboration LP pairing them with Geneva, Switzerland, experimentalist noisemaker Earthflesh is the latter of them, set to issue on May 31. That puts it just one week after the standalone Atelier lands May 24 as the follow-up to 2022’s Voyeur (review here), and that record too is a barrage of death-stench machine cruelty. The concurrent offerings began their respective recording processes about two years ago, but where Atelier was finished in May 2022, the five-track/30-minute so-dark-it’s-like-you-read-the-news Rope Tower started toward the end of that summer and seems to have been longer in its poisonous steeping.
Earthflesh earlier this year released the 39-minute single-tracker Light-Matter-Spirit — also stylized all-caps — and amid the panicked pulsations of “Seepage” premiering in the ropes-and-hoods-themed video below, the effectively noise-on-noise blend feels particularly harsh, even in the context of what Vorare have done before. It all seems to decay in the middle of the six-minute piece, with indecipherable blown-out growling to offer no real comfort and a later drag of beat offset by various electronic hums before it ends with distorted drone. That’s also how “Ovigerous” leads off Rope Tower, but the opener hits less immediately with its beat, instead using that drone and various piercing high frequencies to set the backdrop for the cruelty about to unfold.
I’ll note that “Seepage” isn’t the first reference to bodily discharge from Vorare, whose debut EP was 2022’s The Drainage Rituals (review here), but together with Earthflesh, the foreboding ambience wrought in Rope Tower is its own thing. Listening front-to-back as “Haswell” slowly fades-in its threat with howls like distant mechanized beasts or war horns echoing over devastated landscapes, the feeling is like when you stand somewhere you know that a murder or something else awful happened. That lingering aura of the reality of violent death. Certainly the suicidal/executionary imagery bolsters this impression, but as “Haswell” cymbal-washes out circa 2:50 and everything but the guttural vocals goes away for about 20 seconds before slamming back with a grueling thud, rising to a speaker-blowing (seriously, watch out) low-end static unto its gradual wash of funereal sounds, the confrontation is consuming.
“Sopite” doesn’t blink in staring into this overarching void, evolving its infected cinematic tension with non-beat rhythmic back-and-forth and elements appearing and disappearing as they go. Without the onslaught of the vocals, the penultimate piece of Rope Tower feels like a respite, but the keyboard lines in its second half and the rumble underscoring them are consistent in their horrific manifestations and more than just a setup for the eight-minute finale “Turpentine Falls,” which begins with its own flatline drone and far-back growling over the course of its first two minutes. You could call it minimal in everything but how it makes your skin crawl. It’s not until 3:47 that the beat and harsh screaming kick in, and from there, the next several minutes embark on a vicious build-up so that by the time they hit the six-minute mark, “Turpentine Falls” has grown to the LP’s most ferocious cacophony.
It’s anyone’s guess who’s meting out which aspects of the punishing entirety — most of the vocals seem to come from the Vorare side, so that’s something — but as “Turpentine Falls” shifts from its payoff to the fading residual drone that ends, it underscores the way Rope Tower works on multiple levels at once in a mix that’s deep enough to hold the monsters it does. United perhaps most of all in their readiness to push the limits of extremity in music through their way-gone-and-way-dark approaches, the alignment of Earthflesh and Vorare results in an aurally caustic and immersive nightmare. Words like ‘heavy’ don’t begin to cut it.
Rope Tower is out May 31. “Seepage” premieres below. It’s NSFW unless you never want anyone in your office or other place of employment to talk to you again. Which maybe you do, and fair enough.
Good luck:
Vorare & Earthflesh, “Seepage” video premiere
VORARE, the Finnish avant-garde drone-doom/death industrial duo comes together with the Swiss one-man drone/noise outfit EARTHFLESH to bring you the five-track, 30-minute collaboration album Rope Tower. The albums is the second of the two VORARE albums coming out in May, scheduled to be released on May 31. Pre-orders available here:https://vorare.bandcamp.com/album/rope-tower
Having crossed paths first elsewhere, the idea for the two projects to collaborate came into fruition after each noticed they’re on similar wavelengths when it comes to hallucinatory aesthetics in both aural and visual worlds. The work begun in late summer ’22 and took its own time to morph and refine over the ensuing year and a half, involving multiple recording sessions across countries, and meticulous attention to detail above all. The end result is a perfect amalgamation of the two entities, presenting familiar corners from both worlds yet discovering brand new nooks along the way.
Rope Tower is an immensely dark but pervasive journey throughout various sonic fields ranging from structured bursts of industrial and doom to seeping, slowly evolving droning ambiances, that melt together seamlessly as a single tapestry free of dashed lines and silent spaces. The narratives detail real life events from the personal to the more broad instances, more often than not brushed in monochromatic colours and vile mien. You can only match the abyss by becoming one.
