Remember when Donald Rumsfeld talked about the known-knowns and the unknown-knowns and the known-unknowns and the unknown-unknowns? A surprisingly enduring and useful linguistic slab of neocon bullshit, that was. As a title, Dream Unending‘s Certain Uncertainties adds an extra play to the concept for the use of the word ‘certain’ having the potential to mean either decided-upon/definite or to be used as an allusion to something unmentioned. ‘Certain’ proclivities, and such. It’s a clever way to give depth to the idea, and if you listen to the two-piece’s new single “Strained Sincerity” at the bottom of this post, you’ll already know that depth is a big part of what Dream Unending do.

The two-piece were last heard from with 2022’s Song of Salvation, and the ensuing four years would not seem to have made them less atmospheric. In “Strained Sincerity,” a melancholy lead guitar floats above the deathly gurgle, giving a melodic sweetness to what might otherwise be death-doomly mire. To hear the PR wire tell it, they’ve maybe stripped down some of their approach, shorter songs, etc. If that’s the case, then that guitar part in the first single might be telling of their ability to highlight such elements in the mix while still ultimately refining what they do. I’ll look forward to finding out.

Release info follows:

DREAM UNENDING: Epic Dream Doom Duo Presents Certain Uncertainties LP, To Be Released October 30th On 20 Buck Spin; “Strained Sincerity” And Preorders Posted

DREAM UNENDING, the eclectic duo uniting Derrick Vella of Tomb Mold and Justin DeTore of Innumerable Forms, Sumerlands, and Magic Circle, presents their expansive third album, Certain Uncertainties.

With their first two albums, DREAM UNENDING transformed the familiar architecture of death doom into a place of their own making. A language where cavernous heaviness could coexist with progressive rock, ambient music, jazz-informed improvisation and a disarming emotional candor. On their new album Certain Uncertainties, that expression remains intact, but its gaze has shifted. Where previous records often seemed to reach upward and outward, this one comes back down to earth: leaner in construction, rougher around the edges and possessed of a distinctly nocturnal atmosphere. Call it adult contemporary doom, perhaps; music of considerable weight that has nevertheless learned how much can be said by leaving certain things unsaid.

Recorded with fewer layers and a deliberately more immediate instrumental approach, Certain Uncertainties gives the individual performances room to breathe. Derrick Vella’s guitars move through blues, jazz and progressive vocabulary with unusual freedom, at times carrying the open-ended character of American roots music into territory rarely encountered within doom. Justin DeTore’s drums are present throughout, lending the album a more physical momentum and helping its compositions arrive at their destinations with greater economy. Yet concision has not diminished DREAM UNENDING’s taste for release: the opening and closing pieces in particular build toward enormous pressure points, while the spaces between allow Vella’s playing to wander, react, and occasionally remain imperfect. Each song operates as its own vignette; part desert reverie, part after-hours noir; with traces of Western landscape, dim rooms and empty roads running throughout the album.

That earthbound quality suits an album concerned, at its core, with instability and reconstruction. Written during a period in which Vella was rebuilding his own sense of confidence in risk-taking, Certain Uncertainties carries doubt within it without surrendering to despair. The bruised balladry of “I Carry Your Burden,” the improvisational openness of the title track, and the album’s uglier eruptions of death doom all belong to the same emotional terrain: beauty and discomfort allowed to occupy the same frame. If DREAM UNENDING’s earlier work imagined another world beyond the limits of heavy music, Certain Uncertainties finds something equally strange in the one beneath our feet. A record of dry air, long shadows, unresolved questions and the stubborn impulse to keep moving through them. Fans of Anathema, Blue Nile, Live, Evoken, Tiamat, Opeth, Trouble, Alice In Chains, and Kings X must hear DREAM UNENDING.

With Justin DeTore on drums and vocals, and Derrick Vella handling guitars and bass, Certain Uncertainties features several special guests, with trumpet from Leila Abdul-Rauf (Vastum) and additional percussion by Benny Grotto on the title track, keys on “Rubato” by Dave Vella, and vocals on “I Carry Your Burden” by Brendan Radigan (Magic Circle, Pagan Altar).

The drums were recorded by Arthur Rizk at Solomon’s Gate except “Certain Uncertainties,” recorded by Benny Grotto at Mad Oak Studios, and the guitars and bass were recorded by Sean Pearson at Boxcar Sound. The album was mixed and mastered by Arthur Rizk with additional editing by Tom Waltz, and the album is completed with cover art by Benjamin Vierling (Dream Unending, Joanna Newsom, Pallbearer) and layout by Chimere Noire.

Certain Uncertainties will be issued on LP, CD, MC, and digitally on October 30th. Preorders for all formats are available at 20 Buck Spin’s webshop HERE: https://www.20buckspin.com/collections/dream-unending and Bandcamp HERE: https://20buckspin.bandcamp.com/album/certain-uncertainties

Certain Uncertainties Track Listing:
1. Blinding Allure
2. Certain Uncertainties
3. Strained Sincerity
4. Rubato
5. I Carry Your Burden
6. Causal

Additional percussion on “Certain Uncertainties” by Benny Grotto
Trumpet on “Certain Uncertainties” by Leila Abdul-Rauf
Keys on “Rubato” by Dave Vella
Vocals on “I Carry Your Burden” by Brendan Radigan

Drums recorded by Arthur Rizk at Solomon’s Gate, Easton, Pennsylvania except “Certain Uncertainties” recorded by Benny Grotto at Mad Oak Studios, Allston Massachusetts.
Guitars and Bass recorded by Sean Pearson at Boxcar Sound, Hamilton Ontario
Mixed and Mastered by Arthur Rizk
Additional Editing by Tom Waltz
Front Cover by Benjamin Vierling
Layout by Chimere Noire

DREAM UNENDING:
Justin DeTore – drums, vocals
Derrick Vella – guitars, bass

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Dream Unending, Certain Uncertainties (2026)

Dream Unending, “Strained Sincerity”

Day two, feeling good after coming in hot yesterday after the weekend of writing. Have I ever told you about my fantasy QR? No? I write reviews of stuff all along, every day, then when it’s QR time I just roll it all out and take an actual week off. Wouldn’t it enhance your enjoyment knowing that somewhere, sometime, I’m sitting on ass and not frantically trying to finish the next day’s reviews?

I haven’t ever been able to manifest that reality, so here I am, yesterday, maybe two days before, trying to put it together. Same as every other QR I’ve done in the past 12 or 13 years, however long I’ve been doing these. Long enough to know when one feels good. Yesterday was cool. I have high hopes accordingly for today’s batch. I try to do myself favors in putting these together as best I can.

Quarterly Review #11-20:

Spirit Adrift, Infinite Illumination

Led for the last decade by Nate Garrett initially as a solo-project and then as a full, touring and working band, Spirit Adrift come to a reported close with Infinite Illumination, the Austin outfit’s sixth album. Melancholia and metal intertwine on songs like “Window Within,” the chuggy ’90s groover “Born in a Bad Way,” and “White Death,” which resolves with a massive nod. The band have always tipped the balance of metal and doom, so these are fitting sounds on which to go out, if in fact Garrett (also Neon Nightmare) is done with it. “Where Once There Was an Ocean” unfolds slowly at the end of the album, and stately in its intro and very much in that place between, what with the shredding solo and chugging center riff progression, but it’s all part of the identity the band carved during their time, keeping ’90s Hellhound Records-style doom alive and carried forward for the next generation. Excited for what Garrett does next, but Spirit Adrift earned this farewell in the interim.

Spirit Adrift website

20 Buck Spin website

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The Mon, Songs of Embrace

‘Embrace’ doesn’t necessarily mean accessibility as Ufomammut‘s Urlo puts the finishing stamp on the two-LP ‘Embrace the Abandon’ cycle with his solo-project The Mon‘s Songs of Embrace. What he calls ’embrace,’ I would generally consider immersion. Drone is a big part of it through this 10-track answer to 2025’s Songs of Abandon (review here), textures of synth and guitar, some jangling keys before the static push in “Ritual of Night Violence.” There’s beauty to be had, whether it’s in the more direct guitar of “Incantation” or “Embers of Calendula,” but neither is “Ritual of Night Violence” the only foray into abrasion, with the penultimate “Echoes of the Drowned” and opener “Invocation of the Abyss” also harnessing these textures. “Embrace the Abandon,” a title-track for two records, closes with shimmery synth, noise, a machine that goes ‘bing!’ and other echoing noises. Texture, in other words. You knew it was going to be out there. Hoping Urlo keeps developing this project as an outlet for such weirdness.

The Mon website

Supernatural Cat Records website

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Hällas, Panorama

The fourth album from Sweden’s dramatic progressive kraut rockers Hällas — also their first self-release through Äventyr Records — Panorama opens with its longest track (immediate points) in the 21-minute, side-A-consuming “Above the Continuum,” and as a single track, it indeed goes down like the half an album it is. Packed with twists, vocal and tonal changes, shifts in arrangement, that spoken piece in the second half and each new part seeming like a different stage in the dynamic procession leading toward a somehow-not-overblown finish, it’s a triumph of their craft, to say the least of it. Side B brings four cuts starting with “Face of an Angel,” which might be yacht prog but for the Nazgûl wails, while “The Emissary” is more sweeping in its scope and works into a headspinning tizzy before it’s done, giving over to the penultimate “Bestiaus,” which in itself is voice and keyboard but also has a waveform static intro to closer “At the Summit,” begun with classical guitar as they make ready to blow-out a six-minute finish that feels duly epic in its reach. This is a band who’ve made their own place by fitting nowhere else. Panorama feels earned.

Hällas website

Hällas on Bandcamp

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Okay You Win, End of Days

London heavy rockers Okay You Win give a couple different looks on their debut album, End of Days, on Blues Funeral. Underlying it all across the eight-song/52-minute offering is a sense of songwriting and intention in how each track unfolds, but to that, there is a longform modus and what feels like a complementary immediacy to offset some of the digging in of songs like “Beat Me Down” or “The Greatest Lie.” End of Days somewhat turns expectation on its head by putting the more expansive material up front, and cuts like “This Damned Place,” closer “Own It” and the abovementioned — all of which top seven minutes in length — present a scope informed by desert heavy and dual-guitar metal, feeling a bit like a complement to labelmates Solace in that regard. The shorter (sub-five minutes) title-track and “Red Flag” land with a more direct take, and what comes across most of all is a nascent malleability between the two sides that feels like it will eventually be bridged in their sound. Taken as a whole, the album is elemental, which is to say, this is a strong and ambitious initial showing, and how they grow from here will be the ultimate story of the band.

Okay You Win on Bandcamp

Blues Funeral Recordings website

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Bong Voyage, Hedonistic Hard Rock

You would not call Bong Voyage subtle in opening cut “Saturday Rite Special” (get it?) as they quickly toss out “Hail Satan and Iron Maiden!” among the fervent declarations of self and purpose. That’s not the last time they’ll make that rhyme. The Oslo heavy party rockers, true to form, have plenty of metal in their foundations and the namedrops to prove it, but are here for a good time, and even a comparative letup like “UFOria” or the ’80s-tastic take on Billy Idol in “Enabler” ahead of the big-roller “Wizard of Ozlo” stand testament to the point, never mind the shouty shenanigans of “Large and In Charge,” “Outer Space Freebase” or “In Possession” at the finish. If you’re at the show, they’ve already spilled (poured?) beer on you, but that’s to be expected for material of such physicality, songs written with movement and audience engagement central to their ideology. They’re not reinventing the wheel, but they’re bending the frames to make it roll like it’s drunk and never hungover.

Bong Voyage on Bandcamp

Ripple Music website

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King Potenaz, Arcane Desert Rituals Vol. 2

Unflinching in their exploration of the darker side of heavy rock and roll and dungeon-style metal, Fasano, Italy’s King Potenaz follow 2025’s Arcane Desert Rituals Vol. 1 (review here) as the core trio of guitarist/vocalist Giuseppe Guarini, bassist Francesco Pensato and drummer Piero Schiavone mirror that album’s structure in a likewise adventurous complement. Whether it’s the grim desert expanse of “Sumerian Nights” or the lumbering psychedoomic jam “A Crack in the Void (The Empty Hand Pt. 2),” King Potenaz remain unto themselves in intention, fostering a fuzzy but still post-punk shove in “Lord of the Rust” — think stonergoth — while “The Nothingness” feels as much like a ritual as a song, the band putting the listener into the proceedings as much as itself. Not redundant of the prior album, but pushing farther from it, Arcane Desert Rituals Vol. 2 reaffirms the individual nature of what King Potenaz do. They aren’t quite like anything else out there, and more, they seem to know it.

King Potenaz on Bandcamp

Majestic Mountain Records webstore

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Cowboys & Aliens, Finis Temporum

Celebrating their 30th anniversary in 2026, Cowboys & Aliens unveil Finis Temporum, a front-to-back six-song/32-minute banger that’s as righteous an argument in favor of classic-style, turn-of-the-century European heavy rock as one could ask from a band who was there and part of making it. Closer “Asteroid Blast” reminds of that, remade as it was from 2000’s A Trip to the Stonehenge Colony, but I’ll be damned if the opening salvo of “Life Tree” and “Rabbit Hole” doesn’t kick ass out of the gate, backed by the reachout in “Vengeance of the Weird” and the big hook in “Ordinary Bliss” ahead of the fuzzstrutter “Icy Grip.” I suppose that’s to say momentum gets on their side early and the shove that ensues is rad. Melodies soar over tonally and rhythmically vibrant riffing, and though they’re never far removed from the root verse/chorus trades of the material, the excitement level runs high across the span without sounding redundant at any point. If you’re not on board by the end of “Life Tree,” consult your primary care physician.

Cowboys & Aliens on Bandcamp

Polderrecords website

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Endless Floods, Passages

Endless Floods retain an experimentalist feel despite the outward solidity of their post-metallic take on Passages. With resonant vocals from Louise Dehaye (also sax), the largesse and sway of the full-band sound behind conjured by Stéphane Miollan (bass, guitar, vocals, synth) and Benjamin Sablon (drums, guitars, vocals, percussion) feels expansive and puporseful in a way that ‘experimental’ rarely captures. What’s happening across the four mostly-extended inclusions on the 37-minute outing, however, is a construction of form that is Endless Floods‘ own, able to slide or lumber or crunch through a piece like “Visions” or the lead single “Dieuxième Monde,” which are lush and gorgeous and still feel like a setup for the glory reached in the 10-minute linear build of “Liminal” and the synthy bleed toward closer “Primordial,” wherein the onslaught one might expect is subverted in favor of heavy post-rock ambience, contemplative melody and expansive soundscaping. If you never believed heavy metal could be beautiful, first of all, what are you doing here, and second, Passages serves as a convincing argument. It is engrossing.

Endless Floods on Bandcamp

Endless Floods on Instagram

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Duncan Park, Prana

Wooden clackychimes mark the beginning of Duncan Park‘s “Chöd” at the outset of the four-song Prana EP, soon complemented by resonant hand-drumming that gradually comes forward as the clacky-clacky recedes. This subdued moment is not misspent, but rather essential to the procession, shifting to standalone guitar on “BEBEBe” in the flavor of something Ben Chasny might elicit from the instrument in serene pastoralism, exploratory but grounded and accessible. Voice is an instrument in “Surfing the Bardo,” and that presence isn’t to be underestimated, but it’s still the guitar in focus, and the way the movement comes apart (before realigning) in the second half reminds of Beatles Esher demos and is correspondingly organic. Same could be said of the tape hiss behind the guitar of the title-track, which noodles around its central figure and sounds joyful in the doing, without getting lost even as it seems to rewind itself back for another listen. A quiet embrace from the Johannesburg-based Park, whose work remains evocative and escapist.

LINK

LINK

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Luxury Weapons, The Light in a Low Place

Richmind, Virginia’s Luxury Weapons is the trio of Trevor Thomas (Human Thurma, etc.), Bill Badgley (Federation X, etc.) and Erik Josephson (Hex Machine, etc.), and you can just take all that ‘etc.’ as meant to convey lifetimes’ worth of experience making music and playing in bands. The songwriting here is noise rock-sharp, but where the aggression to coincide with the chug might otherwise be is a rousing melodic sensibility, bolstered by the Kyle Spence (Harvey Milk) recording job and present in the spacious “Surrender” and the precision turns of “Been Gone” or “All We Knew.” This record came out over a year ago — yeah, it’s damn near June and I’m still sneaking in 2025 releases; wait until you hear about the decades of recorded music that existed before last month — so if you want to take this is me making a note to myself on something cool, I’m fine with that. There’s enough character in Luxury Weapons‘ sound to stand them out regardless of the last 13 months, and I certainly don’t hear anything on their debut that sounds like it’s about to expire now. If you haven’t heard it — and I know you have because you’re cooler than me — perhaps a word to the wise.

Luxury Weapons on Bandcamp

Luxury Weapons on Soundcloud

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Austin-based progressive doom metallers Spirit Adrift today issue what’s their sixth and reportedly last full-length, Infinite Illumination. Led to the finish by Nate Garrett, who started the band as a solo-project more than a decade ago, unveiled the standalone single “Eternal Celestial Energy” and have already played their alleged final live show, supporting Crowbar and Eyehategod, which, if you gotta go out, is a good one on which to do so.

I guess all the “reportedly” and “alleged” as regards the end of the band can make it seem like I’m skeptical about the band breaking up. I don’t think Garrett, who was in bands before Spirit Adrift and still has Neon Nightmare and other projects going, is done making music, and as often as these things are presented as absolutes, time passes and sometimes a band might resurface who at the time seemed to be done for good. Can anyone think of a high-profile example of this in recent, like the last month, history? Anybody? You in the back? Yes, fuggin’ Neurosis. Thank you.

So while one can applaud the accomplishments of Spirit Adrift and be thankful that a ‘last album’ exists at all, let alone in such a manner as to let you hear it immediately, forever is a really long time, and you never know where life will bring you when you set out to make a change. Maybe they’re done for good and maybe not. Today what matters is the record putting the bookend on their tenure, and that they’re going out on their own terms. Whether they at any point come back the same way, I guess we’ll have to see.

From the PR wire:

The end has come… long revered and widely acclaimed heavy metal giants SPIRIT ADRIFT have released their sixth and final album, Infinite Illumination, today via 20 Buck Spin. Bookending a monumental decade+ long run, the band’s bittersweet swan song is marked by one of their most ambitious and crushing records to date.

SPIRIT ADRIFT mastermind Nathan Garrett’s final magnum opus is a return to the wellspring that first inspired it all and a testament to a band that in the last 10 years has crafted an impeccable signature thoroughly their own, molded from the elemental matter of more than a half century of heavy metal exaltation.

Infinite Illumination has a directness to it, a sense of urgency and raw intensity. The songs feel inevitable, like they had to be driven out from deep within during a time of great upheaval. The fatalistic ‘Born in a Bad Way’ summons a vengeful “broken relic from another age” that must “live again and make them pay” via Garrett’s swaggering snarl, while “White Death” impugns “God shined on a chosen few, we must kill the rest of you”. These songs have a palpable sense of malaise both spiritual and terrestrial, personal and universal, inflicted via crushing traditional Doom riffs, thunderous mid-tempo marches and Garrett’s impassioned vocal delivery.

Long after the band is gone fans will continue to discover the SPIRIT ADRIFT catalog and witness the breadth of greatness they delivered in just a decade’s time. Every melodic, epic and emotionally charged thread that defines the band’s legacy honors the animating force behind pure creative ambition. And at its core Infinite Illumination carries both the weight of conclusion and the troubling realization that it is rarely painless to say farewell.

Infinite Illumination is available digitally today. Gatefold LP and CD editions will be released May 15th. Pre-order here: https://www.20buckspin.com/spiritadrift

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Spirit Adrift, Infinite Illumination (2026)

Spirit Adrift, “Eternal Celestial Energy” (2026)

Spirit Adrift, Hot and Heavy: Live in Tejas (2024)

This is the last day of the Fall 2024 Quarterly Review. Day 11 of 10, as it were. Bonus-extra, as we say at home. 10 more releases of various kinds to underscore the point of the infinite creative sphere. Before we dive in, I want to make a note about the header above. It’s the same one I used a couple times during the pandemic, with the four horseman of the apocalypse riding, and I put it in place of the AI art I’d been using because that seems to be a trigger for so many people.

In my head, I did that to avoid the conversation, to avoid dealing with someone who might be like, “Ugh, AI art” and then a conversation that deteriorates in the way of people talking at each other on the internet. This saves me the trouble. I’ll note the irony that swiping an old etching out of the public domain and slapping an Obelisk logo on it is arguably less creative than feeding a prompt into a generative whathaveyou, but at least this way I don’t have to hear the underground’s moral panic that AI is coming for stoner rock.

Quarterly Review #101-110:

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Chat Pile, Cool World

Chat Pile are two-for-two on living up to the hype in my mind as Cool World follows the band’s 2022 debut, God’s Country (review here), with a darker, more metal take on that record’s trauma-poetic and nihilistic noise rock. Some of the bassy jabs in songs like “Camcorder” and “Frownland” remind of Korn circa their self-titled, but I’m not sure Chat Pile were born when that record came out, and that harder, fuller-sounding impact comes in a context with “Tape” following “Camcorder” in bringing together Meshuggah and post-punk, so take it as you will. Based in Oklahoma City, Chat Pile are officially A Big Deal With Dudes™, but in a style that’s not exactly known for reinvention — i.e. noise rock — they are legitimately a breath of air that would be ‘fresh’ if it weren’t so desolate and remains innovative regardless. There’s gonna be a lot of mediocre riffs and shitty poetry written in an attempt to capture a fraction of what this record does.

Chat Pile on Facebook

The Flenser website

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Neon Nightmare, Faded Dream

I guess the anonymous project Neon Nightamre — who sound and aesthetic-wise are straight-up October Rust-and-later Type O Negative; the reason the album caught my eye was the framing of the letters around the corners — have gotten some harsh response to their debut, Faded Dream. Critic-type dudes pearl-clutching a band’s open unoriginality. Because to be sure, beyond dedicating the album to Peter Steele — and maybe they did, I haven’t seen the full artwork — Neon Nightmare could hardly do more in naked homage to the semi-goth Brooklyn legends and their distinctive Beatles/Sabbath worship. But I mean, that’s the point. It’s not like this band is saying they’re the first ones doing any of this, and in a world where AI could scrape every Type O record and pump out some half-assed interpretation in five minutes, isn’t something that attempts to demonstrate actual human love for the source material as it builds on it worth at least acknowledging as creative? I like Type O Negative a lot. The existence of Neon Nightmare doesn’t lessen that at all, and there are individual flashes of style in “Lost Silver” — the keyboard line feels like an easter egg from “Anesthesia”; I wondered if the title was in honor of Josh Silver — and the guitar work of “She’s Drowning” that make me even more curious to see where this goes.

Neon Nightmare on Facebook

20 Buck Spin website

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Astrometer, Outermost

Brooklyn-based instrumentalist five-piece Astrometer present their full-length debut after releasing their first demo, Incubation (review here), in 2022. The double-guitar pairing of Carmine Laietta V and Drew Mack and the drumming of Jeff Stieber at times will put you in mind of their collective past playing together in Hull, but the keys of Jon Ehlers (Bangladeafy) and the basswork of Sam Brodsky (Meek is Murder) assure that the newer collective have a persona and direction of their own, so that while the soaring solo in “Power Vulture” or the crashes of “Blood Wedding” might ring familiar, the context has shifted, so that those crashes come accompanied by sax and there’s room for a song like “Conglobulations” with its quirk, rush and crunching bounce to feel cosmic with the keyboard, and that blend of crush and reach extends into the march of closer “Do I Know How to Party…” which feels like a preface for things to come in its progressive punch.

Astrometer on Facebook

Astrometer on Bandcamp

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Acid Rooster, Hall of Mirrors

An annual check-in from universe-and-chill molten and mellow heavy psych explorers Acid Rooster. It’s only been a year since the band unfurled Flowers and Dead Souls, but Hall of Mirrors offers another chance to be hypnotized by the band’s consuming fluidity, the 39-minute four-songer coming across as focused on listener immersion in no small part as a result of Acid Rooster‘s own. That is, it’s not like you’re swimming around the bassline and residual synth and guitar effects noise in the middle of the 14-minute “Chandelier Arp” and the band are standing calm and dry back on the beach. No way. They’re right in it. I don’t know if they were closed-eyes entranced while the recording was taking place, but if you want a definition of ‘dug in,’ Hall of Mirrors has four, and Acid Rooster‘s capacity for conveying purpose as they plunge into a jam-born piece like “Confidence of Ignorance” sets them apart from much of Europe’s psychedelic underground in establishing a meditative atmosphere. They are unafraid of the serene, and not boring. This is an achievement.

Acid Rooster on Facebook

Cardinal Fuzz webstore

Little Cloud Records website

Tonzonen website

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Giants Dawrfs and Black Holes, Echo on Death of Narcissus

Five years on from their start, Germany’s Giants Dwarfs and Black Holes present Echo on Death of Narcissus as their third full-length and the follow-up to 2023’s In a Sandbox Full of Suns (review here) as the four-piece bring in new guitarist Caio Puttini Chaves alongside vocalist Christiane Thomaßen, guitarist Tomasz Riedel (also bass and keys) and drummer Carsten Freckmann for a five-track collection that has another album’s worth of knows-what-it’s-about behind it. Opener “Again,” long enough at eight minutes to be a bookend with the finale “Take Me Down” (13:23) but not so long as to undercut that expanse, leads into three competent showings of classic progressive/psychedelic rock, casual in the flow between “Soul Trip” and the foreboding strums of centerpiece “Flowers of Evil” ahead of the also-languid “December Bloom.” And when they get there, “Take Me Down” has a jammy breadth all its own that shimmers in the back half soloing, which kind of devolves at the end, but resounds all the more as organic for that.

Giants Dwarfs and Black Holes on Facebook

Sireena Records website

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Oryx, Primordial Sky

Oryx‘s Primordial Sky threads a stylistic needle across its four songs. Delivered through Translation Loss, the 41-minute follow-up to the Denver trio’s 2021 offering, Lamenting a Dead World (discussed here), is no less extreme than one would expect, but to listen to 13-minute opener/longest track (immediate points), 13-minute capper “Look Upon the Earth,” or either of the seven-minute cuts between, it’s plain to both hear and see that there’s more to Oryx atmospherically than onslaught, however low guitarist Thomas Davis (also synth) pushes his growls amid the lurching grooves of bassist Joshua Kauffman and drummer Abigail Davis. This is something that five records and more than a decade on from their start their listeners know well, but as they refine their processes, even the outright sharp-toothed consumption of “Ephemeral” has some element of outreach.

Oryx on Facebook

Translation Loss Records store

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Sunface, Cloud Castles

Heads up on this record for those who dig the mellower end of heavy psych, plus intricacy of arrangement, which is a number in which I very much count myself. By that I mean don’t be surprised when Sunface‘s Cloud Castles shows up on my year-end list. It’s less outwardly traditionalist than some of the heavy rock coming out of Norway at this point in history, but showcasing a richer underground only makes Cloud Castles more vital in my mind, and as even a shorter song like “Thunder Era” includes an open-enough sensibility to let a shoegazier sway enter the proceedings in “Violet Ponds” without seeming incongruous for the post-All Them Witches bluesy sway that underlies it. Innovative for the percussion in “Tall Trees” alone, Sunface are weighted in tone but able to move in a way that feels like their own, and to convey that movement without upsetting the full-album flow across the 10 songs and 44 minutes with radical changes in meter, while at the same time not dwelling too long in any single stretch or atmosphere.

Sunface on Facebook

Apollon Records website

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Fórn, Repercussions of the Self

While consistent with their two prior LPs in the general modus of unmitigated aural heft and oppressive, extreme sludge, Fórn declare themselves on broader aesthetic ground in incorporating electronic elements courtesy of guitarist Joey Gonzalez and Andrew Nault, as well as newcomer synthesist Lane Shi Otayonii, whose clean vocals also provide a sense of space to 11-minute post-intro plunge “Soul Shadow.” If it’s the difference between all-crush and mostly-crush, that’s not nothing, and “Anamnesis” can be that much noisier for the band’s exploring a more encompassing sound. Live drums are handled in a guest capacity by Ilsa‘s Josh Brettell, and that band’s Orion Peter also sits in alongside Fórn‘s Chris Pinto and Otayonii, and with Danny Boyd on guitar and Brian Barbaruolo on bass, the sound is duly massive, tectonic and three-dimensional; the work of a band following a linear progression toward new ideas and balancing that against the devastation laid forth in their songs. Repercussions of the Self does not want for challenge directed toward the listener, but the crux is catharsis more than navelgazing, and the intensity here is no less crucial to Fórn‘s post-metallic scene-setting than it has been to this point in their tenure. Good band actively making themselves better.

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Persistent Vision Records website

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Gravity Well, Negative Space

Big-riffed heavy fuzz rock from Northern Ireland as the Belfast-based self-releasing-for-now four-piece of vocalist/synthesist Fionnuala McGlinchy, guitarist Tom Finney, bassist Michael McFarlane and drummer Ciaran O’Kane touch on vibes reminiscent of some of Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard‘s synth-fused sci-fi doom roil while keeping the material more earthbound in terms of tone and structure, so that the seven-minute “The Abstract” isn’t quite all-in on living up to the title, plenty liquefied, but still aware of itself and where it’s going. This mitigated terrestrialism — think Middle of Nowhere-era Acid King — is the source of a balance to which Negative Space, the band’s second album, is able to reshape as required by a given song — “Burning Gaze” has its far-out elements, they’re there for a reason — and thereby portray a range of moods rather than dwelling in the same emotional or atmospheric space for the duration. Bookending intro “As Above” and the closer “So Below” further the impression of the album as a single work/journey to undertake, and indeed that seems to be how the character of “The Forest,” “Delirium” and the rest of the material flourishes.

Gravity Well on Facebook

Gravity Well on Bandcamp

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Methadone Skies, Spectres at Dawn

Romanian instrumentalist heavy psych purveyors Methadone Skies sent word of the follow-up to 2021’s Retrofuture Caveman (review here) last month and said that the six-songer Spectres at Dawn was the heaviest work they’d done in their now-six-album tenure. Well they’re right. Taking cues from Russian Circles and various others in the post-heavy sphere, guitarists Alexandru Wehry and Casian Stanciu, bassist Mihai Guta and drummer Flavius Retea (also keyboards, of increasing prominence in the sound), are still able to dive into a passage and carry across a feeling of openness and expanse, but on “Mano Cornetto” here that becomes just part of a surprisingly stately rush of space metal, and 10-minute closer “Use the Excessive Force” seems to be laying out its intention right there in the title. Whether the ensuing blastbeats are, in fact, excessive, will be up to the individual listener, but either way, Methadone Skies have done their diligence in letting listeners know where they’re headed, and Spectres at Dawn embodies that forwardness of ethic on multiple levels.

Methadone Skies on Facebook

Methadone Skies on Bandcamp

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I like to imagine that wherever Vancouver gothy-type doom metallers Tribunal go, rain follows. In Seattle? Well that wouldn’t be such a surprise, but when the downpour starts in Vegas or L.A. or Reno, people might be scratching their heads a bit. Not you, provided you get tickets, but, you know, squares. The nine-day jaunt has been given the suitable billing of ‘Doom Over the West Coast,’ and it’s not the first stretch the band have undertaken in support of last year’s The Weight of Remembrance (review here). They were recently on the Eastern Seaboard and did Western Canada last year as well, leaving a trail of classy misery behind them that surely still swirls in the air.

The PR wire brought dates for your perusal:

TRIBUNAL: Vancouver Symphonic Doom Act Announces Doom Over The West Coast September Tour Dates; Acclaimed The Weight Of Remembrance Debut LP Out Now On 20 Buck Spin

Following their North American East Coast tour with Mares Of Thrace last month, Vancouver-based gothic/orchestral doom collective TRIBUNAL this week announces an upcoming tour of the Western US to close out the Summer. The Doom Over The West Coast tour will run from September 12th through the 21st, with shows booked in Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington.

TRIBUNAL Doom Over The West Coast:
9/12/2024 Aces High Saloon – Salt Lake City, UT
9/13/2024 Sinwave – Las Vegas, NV
9/14/2024 Knucklehead – Los Angeles, CA
9/15/2024 Brick By Brick – San Diego, CA
9/17/2024 Ivy Room – Albany, CA
9/18/2024 Midnight Coffee Roasting – Reno, NV
9/19/2024 John Henry’s – Eugene, OR
9/20/2024 Dante’s – Portland, OR
9/21/2024 The Funhouse – Seattle, WA

TRIBUNAL continues touring in support of their acclaimed debut LP, The Weight Of Remembrance, released in June of 2023 on 20 Buck Spin. Featuring classically trained cellist/bassist/vocalist Soren Mourne and guitarist/vocalist Etienne Flinn, TRIBUNAL’s brick-heavy classic doom riffage borders on death metal heaviness, like My Dying Bride filtered through a colossal stained-glass edifice. The sound is instantly familiar with nods to the ‘80s and ‘90s but never sounds retro or like mere homage. Rather, The Weight Of Remembrance evokes the feeling of a painstakingly composed orchestral movement fit for a crumbling cathedral overgrown with moss. The duo frequently trades off vocals alternating between haunted wailing cleans, scathing black-metal style shrieks and dread-filled death calls.

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Tribunal, The Weight of Remembrance (2023)

We’ve been here before. Actually not as regards Vancouver’s Tribunal, who released their impressive debut album, The Weight of Remembrance (review here), earlier in 2023 via respected purveyors 20 Buck Spin, but in general I find myself in a familiar position of putting up a band’s tour dates that are happening nowhere near me or anywhere I’m planning to be — shows I won’t see, in other words — as an excuse to revisit a record. And The Weight of Remembrance is a weight worth bearing for its goth-hinting atmospheres and deathly downerism, a doom as much existential as tonal. With some bands, you can tell the songs are made on purpose and some bands it’s folks in a room seeing what happens. I’m not decrying either method — both certainly have their place — but for the style Tribunal are honing, the less haphazard, the better, and The Weight of Remembrance feels very much like it’s going where it wants to go and getting there on its own terms. A thing to respect.

Blah blah here’s me telling you the Bandcamp player is below. Blah blah here’s me setting up the text from the PR wire. See? I told you we’d been here before.

And yet it’s all new somehow. ‘Doom Over Western Canada’ — I guarantee Western Canada never sees it coming — starts July 7 and the cycle of shows goes into August, the bulk of it in a long weekender July 13-16. I’d be interested to see how they do it live:

TRIBUNAL: Vancouver Orchestral Doom Act Announces Doom Over Western Canada Summer Tour; Acclaimed The Weight Of Remembrance Debut LP Out Now On 20 Buck Spin

Vancouver-based gothic/orchestral doom collective TRIBUNAL announces a run of Summer tour dates in support of their acclaimed debut LP, The Weight Of Remembrance, released at the beginning of the year on 20 Buck Spin.

Doom Over Western Canada Summer 2023 begins on July 7th when TRIBUNAL performs alongside Profanatica, Gevurah, The Ominous Circle, Egregore, and more at the two-day Covenant Festival in their hometown. From there, the band tours through Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, and Victoria into early August. The Calgary and Edmonton dates will see TRIBUNAL co-headlining with Liminal Shroud. See the confirmed tour routing below and watch for further updates to post.

TRIBUNAL Doom Over Western Canada Summer 2023:
7/07/2023 Covenant Festival @ Wise Hall – Vancouver, BC
7/13/2023 Starlite Temple – Edmonton, AB
7/14/2023 The Palomino – Calgary, AB
7/15/2023 Amigos Cantina – Saskatoon, SK
7/16/2023 Good Will Social Club – Winnipeg, MB
8/02/2023 Centennial Square – Victoria, BC

Featuring classically trained cellist/bassist/vocalist Soren Mourne and guitarist/vocalist Etienne Flinn, TRIBUNAL’s brick-heavy classic doom riffage borders on death metal heaviness, like My Dying Bride filtered through a colossal stained-glass edifice. The sound is instantly familiar with nods to the ‘80s and ‘90s but never sounds retro or like mere homage. Rather, The Weight Of Remembrance evokes the feeling of a painstakingly composed orchestral movement fit for a crumbling cathedral overgrown with moss. The duo frequently trades off vocals alternating between haunted wailing cleans, scathing black-metal style shrieks and dread-filled death calls.

The Weight Of Remembrance features additional contributions from several other talented musicians, including drums by Julia Geaman, additional drums on “Apathy’s Keep” by Magdalena Wienski, piano on “Remembrance” by Claine Lamb, and additional vocals by Rory Say. The album was recorded by TRIBUNAL except for the primary drums which were recorded by Andrew Conroy at Fifth Chord Studios and Wienski’s drums which were recorded by Violetta Macri at CJSF, after which the songs were mixed and mastered by Markov Soroka. The beautifully painted cover artwork was created by Soren Mourne, with lettering and frame by Karmazid, photography by Liam Kanigan, and layout by Dan Fried completing the presentation. Steeped in the black velvet finery of gothic doom metal, the band weaves dark tales of ultimate judgement, never-ending rain, and forsaken despair.

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Tribunal, The Weight of Remembrance (2023)

Welcome to day three of the Spring 2023 Quarterly Review. Traditionally, this is where the halfway point is hit, like that spot on the wall in the Lincoln Tunnel where it says New York on the one side and New Jersey on the other. That’s not the case today — though it still applies as far as this week goes — since this particular QR runs seven days, but one way or the other, I’m glad you’re here. There’s been an absolutely overwhelming amount of stuff so far and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon, so don’t let me keep you, except maybe to say that if you’re actually reading as well as browsing Bandcamp (or whoever) players, it is appreciated. Thanks for reading, to put it another way.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

Signo Rojo, There Was a Hole Here

As lead/longest track — yes, immediate points — “Enough Rope” shifts between modern semi-melodic heavy burl post-Baroness to acoustic-tinged flourish to rolling shout-topped post-hardcore on the way back to its soaring chorus, yes, it’s fair to say Sweden’s Signo Rojo establish a broad swath of sounds on their third full-length, There Was a Hole Here. Later they grow more massive and twisting on “What Love is There,” while “Also-Ran” finds the bass managing to punch through the wall of guitar around it (not complaining) and the concluding “BotFly” lets its lead guitar soar over a crescendo that’s almost post-metal, so they want nothing for variety, but whether it’s “The World Inside” with its progressive chug or the more swaying title-track, the songs are united by tone in the guitars of Elias Mellberg and Ola Bäckström, the shouty vocals of bassist Jonas Nilsson adding aggressive edge, and the drums of Pontus Svensson reinforcing the underlying structures and movements. Self-recorded, mixed by Johan Blomström and mastered by Jack Endino for name-brand recognition, There Was a Hole Here is angles and thrown-elbows, but not disjointed. Tumultuous, they power through and find themselves unbruised while having left a few behind them.

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Majestic Mountain Records store

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Tribunal, The Weight of Remembrance

Stunning first album. Vancouver’s Tribunal — the core duo of cellist/bassist/vocalist Soren Mourne and guitarist/vocalist Etienne Flinn, working on their first record, The Weight of Remembrance, with Julia Geaman on drums on the seven-song/47-minute sprawl of bleak, goth-informed death-doom — resound with purpose between the atmosphere and the dramaturge of their material. “Apathy’s Keep” (Magdalena Wienski on additional drums) alone would tell you they’re a band with a keen sense of what they want to accomplish stylistically, but the patience in execution necessary from the My Dying Bride-esque back and forth shifts between harsh and clean vocals on opener “Initiation” to the grim, full-toned breadth of the 12-minute finale “The Path,” on which Mourne‘s severity reminds of Finland’s Mansion, and yes that’s a compliment, while Flinn finds new depths from which to gurgle out his harsh screaming. The semi-titular piano interlude “Remembrance” is well-placed at the end of side A to make one nostalgic for some lost romance that never happened, and the stop-chug of “A World Beyond Shadow” seem to speak to SubRosa‘s declarative majesty as well as the more extreme spirit of Paradise Lost circa ’91-’92, Tribunal crossing eras and intentions with an organic meld that hints there and in “Without Answer” or the airy cello of “Of Creeping Moss and Crumbled Stone” earlier at even grander and perhaps more orchestral things to come while serving as one of 2023’s best debuts in the interim. Like finding your great grandmother’s wedding dress, picking it up out of the box and having the dried-out fabric and lace crumble in your hands. Sad and necessary.

Tribunal on Facebook

20 Buck Spin website

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Bong Corleone, Bong Corleone

From whence came Finland’s Bong Corleone? Well, from Finland, I guess, but that hardly answers the question on planetary terms. Information is sparse and social media presence is nil from the psychedelic-stoner-doom explorers, who string synth lines through four mostly-extended pieces on this self-titled, self-released, seemingly self-actualized argument for dropping out of life and you know the rest. Second cut “Gathering” (8:34) sees lead guitar step in for where vocals might otherwise be, but there and in the prior leadoff “Chemical Messenger” (9:15), synthesizer plays a prominent role that’s been compared rightly to Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard, though “Gathering” departs in for a midsection meander-jam that lets itself have and be more fun before crashing back around to the roll. As it invariably would, “Astrovan” (6:18) shoves faster, but the synth stays overtop along with some floating guitar, and the sense of control remains strong even in the second half’s splurge and slowdown, shifting with ambient drone and residual amp hum into 11-minute closer “Offering,” which rounds out with a sample, what might be a bong rip, and a density of fuzz that apparently Bong Corleone have been keeping in their collective pocket all the while, crushing and stomping before turning to more progressive exploration later. It’s a substantial enough release at 35 minutes that the band might — like MWWB before them — regret the silly name, but even if they never follow it with anything, the immersion factor in these four songs shouldn’t be discounted. May they (if in fact it’s more than one person) never reveal a lineup.

Bong Corleone on Bandcamp

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Old Spirit, Burning in Heaven

This second full-length from Wisconsin-based solo-project Old Spirit — formed and executed at the behest of Jason Hartman (Vanishing Kids, sometimes Jex Thoth) — Burning in Heaven feels at home in contradictions, whether it’s the image provoked by the title or in the songs themselves, be it the Celtic–Frost-on-Monster–Magnet‘s-pills “Dim Aura” or the electro Queens of the Stone Age shuffle in “Ash,” or the Candlemass-meets-Chrome succession of “Fallacy,” or the keyboard and guitar interlude “When the Spirit Slips Away.” The title-track opens and has an oldschool ripper solo late, but there’s so much going on at any given moment that it’s one more element thrown in the mix as much as a precursor to the later reaches of “Angel Blood” — a Slayer nod, or two, perhaps? — which precedes the emergent wash of “Bleak Chapel” and the devolution undertaken from song to drone that gives over to closer “In Dismay,” which seems all set in its garage-goth doom rollout until the tempo kick brings it and the record to a place of duly dug-in progressive psych-metal oddness. Fitting end to a record clearly meant to go wherever the hell it wants and on which the rawness of the production becomes a uniting factor across otherwise willfully disparate material, skirting the danger that it all might collapse on itself while proselytizing individualist fuckall; Luciferian without being outright Satanic.

Old Spirit on Bandcamp

Bright as Night Records on Facebook

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Los Acidos, Stereolalo

Argentina’s Los Acidos return after reissuing 2016’s self-titled debut (review here) in 2020 through Necio Records with Stereolalo, putting emphasis on welcoming listeners from the outset with the opening title-track and “Ascensor,” which are the two longest cuts on the record (double points) and function as world-builders in terms of establishing the acoustic/electric blend and melodic flourish with which much of the 50-minute outing functions. Like everything, the blend is molten and malleable, as shorter pieces like “Atardecer” or side B’s build-to-boogie “Madre” and the keyboard-backed psych-funk verses of “Atenas” show, and they resist the temptation to really blow it out as they otherwise might even in those first two tracks; the church organ seeming to keep the penultimate “Interior” in line before “Buscando el Mar” calls out ’60s psych on guitar with a slow-careening progression from whatever kind of keyboard that is, ending almost folkish, having said what they want to say in the way they want to say it. Light in atmosphere, there nonetheless are deceptive depths from which the songs seem to swim upward.

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Los Acidos on Bandcamp

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JAGGU, Rites for the Damned

Rites for the Damned offers the kind of aesthetic sprawl that can only be summarized in vague catchall tags like ‘progressive,’ with the adventurous and ambitious Norwegian outfit JAGGU threatening extremity on “Carnage” at the beginning of the eight-song/40-minute LP while instead taking the angularity and thrust and through “Earth Murder” fostering an element of noise rock that feeds its aggression into “Mindgap” before the six-minutes-each pair of “Electric Blood” and “Lenina Ave.” further reveal the breadth, hooks permeating the amalgam of heavy styles being bent and reshaped to suit the band’s expressive will, the latter building from acoustic-inclusive post-metallic balladry into a solo that seems to spread far and wide as it draws the listener deeper into side B’s reaches, the dizzying start of “Enthralled,” post-black-metal-but-still-metal “Marching Stride” — more of a run, actually — and the prog-thrash finale “God to be Through” that caps not to bring it all together, but to celebrate the variations encountered along the course and highlight the skill with which JAGGU have been guiding the proceedings all along, unsettled in their approach on this second record in such a way as to speak to perpetual growth rather than their being the kind of band who’ll find a niche and stagnate.

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Evil Noise Recordings store

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Falling Floors, Falling Floors

Escapist and jam-based-but-not-just-jamming psychedelia pervades the self-titled debut from UK trio Falling Floors, who add variety amid the already-varied krautrock in the later reaches of opener “Infinite Switch,” the lockdown slog of “Flawed Theme,” the tambourine-infused hard strums of “Ridiculous Man” and the 18-minute side-B-consuming “Elusive and Unstable Nature of Truth,” which is organ-inclusive bombast early and drone later, with three numbered interludes, furthering the notion of these works being carved out of experiments. A malleable songwriting process and a raw, seemingly live recording make Falling Floors‘ seven-song run come across as formative, but the rougher edges are part of the aesthetic, and ultimately bolster the overarching impression that the band — guitarist/vocalist Rob Herian, bassist/organist Harry Wheeler and drummer/percussionist Colin Greenwood — can and just might go wherever the hell they want. And they do, in that extended finisher and elsewhere throughout, capturing an exploratory moment of creation in willfully unrefined fashion, loose but not unhinged and seemingly as curious in the making as in the result. I don’t know that a band can do this kind of adventuring twice — invariably any second album is informed by the experience of making the first — but Falling Floors make a resounding argument for wanting to find out in these shared discoveries.

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Warp, Bound by Gravity

Spacing out from a fuzzy foundation like Earthless taking on The Sword — with a bit of Tool in the second-half leads of eight-minute second track “The Hunger” — Israeli trio Warp make their Nasoni Records label debut with their sophomore full-length, Bound by Gravity, putting due languid slog into “Your Fascist Pigs are Back” while finding stonerized salvation in “Dirigibles” ahead of the more melodic and more doomed title-track, which Sabbath-blues-boogies right into its shout-topped sludge slowdown before the bounce and swing of “Impeachment Abdication” readily counteracts. “The Present” unfolds with hints of Melvins while “Head of the Eye” rides a linear groove into a winding midsection that resolves in a standout chorus and capper “I Don’t Want to Be Remembered” is a vocal highlight — guitarist Itai Alzaradel, bassist Sefi Akrish and drummer Mor Harpazi all contribute in that regard at some juncture or another — and a reaffirmation of the gonna-roll-until-we-don’t mindset on the part of the band, ending cold after shifting into a faster chug like the song’s about to take off again. That’d be a hell of a way to start their next record and we’ll see if they get there. Pointedly of-genre, Warp bring exploratory craft to a foundation of tonal heft and ask few indulgences on the listener’s part. Big fuzz gonna make some friends among the converted.

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Nasoni Records store

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Halo Noose, Magical Flight

Leading off with its spacebound title-track, Halo Noose‘s debut album, Magical Flight, finds the Scottish solo-outfit plumbing the outer reaches of fuzz-drenched acid rock, coming through like an actually-produced version of Monster Magnet‘s demo era in its roughed-up Hawkwind-via-Stooges pastiche, “Cinnamon Garden” edging toward Eastern idolatry without going full-sitar while “Fire” engages with a stretched-out feel over its slow, maybe-programmed drums and centerpiece “When You Feel it Babe” tops near-motorik push with watery vocals like a less punk Nebula or some of what Black Rainbows might conjure. “Kaliedoscopica” is based largely around a single riff and it’s a masterclass in wah at its 4:20 runtime, leading into the last outward leaps of “Rollercoasting Your Mind” and the forward-and-backwards “Slow Motion” which isn’t actually much slower than anything else here and thus reminds that time is a construct easily subverted by lysergics, fading out with surprising gentleness to return the listener to a crueler reality after a consuming half-hour’s escape. Right on.

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Ramble Records store

Echodelick Records on Bandcamp

The Acid Test Recordings store

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Dope Skum, Gutter South

If you’d look at the name and the fact that the trio hail from Tennessee and think you’re probably in for some caustic Southern sludge, you’re part right. Dope Skum on their second EP, the 17-minute Gutter South, embrace the tonal heft and chugging approach of the harder end of sludge riffing, but rather than weedian throatrippers, a cleaner vocal style pervades from guitarist Cody Landress-Gibson across opener “Folk Magic,” the banjo-laced “Interlude,” “Feast of Snakes,” “Belly Lint” and the punkier-until-its-slowdown finish of “The Cycle,” and the difference between a shout and a scream is considerable in the impressions made throughout. Bassist Todd Garrett and drummer Scott Keil complete the three-piece and together they harness a feel that’s true to that nasty aural history while branching into something different therefrom, genuinely sounding like a new generation’s interpretation of what Southern heavy was 15-20 years ago. More over, they would seem to be conscious of doing it. Their first EP, 2021’s Tanasi, was more barebones in its production, and there’s still development to be done, but it will be interesting to hear how they manifest across a first long-player when the time comes, as Gutter South underscores potential in its songwriting and persona as well as defiance of aesthetic expectation.

Dope Skum on Facebook

Dope Skum on Bandcamp

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Everybody has a role to play. Derrick Vella and Justin DeTore — who have enough pedigree between them that they hardly even need the other designations — are ‘Architect of Dreams’ and ‘The Bridge Between Two Worlds,’ respectively. Esteemed guests like Phil Swanson (Solemn Lament, ex-Hour of 13, etc.) and Leila Abdul-Rauf (Cardinal Wyrm, Vastum, etc.) join in as ‘The Forlorn’ and ‘The Siren’s Call,’ and they’re by no means the only ones. Figure out your own title if you like. For the purposes of this post at least, I dub myself ‘Exhausted of Spirit.’

Quite sure you don’t need a reminder from me as to the poised death-doom that was on offer with Dream Unending‘s debut, Tide Turns Eternal (review here), when it was released last year. Thus Song of Salvation, which is out Nov. 11 through 20 Buck Spin and Ván Records, is all the more something took forward to as the follow-up. The album info below — unceremoniously hoisted from the label’s Bandcamp — drops hints of a 16-minute closer, and that sounds like a win in terms of expanding on what they did last time, and the guest appearances will no doubt flesh out the already class aesthetic that the project established last time through. I didn’t know this was coming — see ‘Exhausted of Spirit’ above — but if you were ready to close the book on new records for 2022, consider “Secret Grief” below a call to hold off a bit longer.

As seen on the internet:

The 2021 Dream Unending debut album ‘Tide Turns Eternal’ was a marked shift in musical ambition for Derrick Vella (Tomb Mold) and Justin DeTore (Innumerable Forms, Sumerlands). While structured with a foot firmly in Death / Doom, a far loftier purpose and progressivism was its hallmark, as such distancing itself from others pursuing the style. Now returning only a year later with the stunning ‘Song of Salvation’, that exploratory zeal is given substantially greater allowance to soar and shine.

The 14 minute title track opener enters like a morning sunrise over a calm sea before ramping up into ethereal heaviness like the richly textured waves of a sudden ocean storm. The songs momentum never retreats into laborious repetition, always opening new doorways, ebbing and flowing like river water from its source.

Like solitarily gazing at the downtown lights of the city at night from the window of a darkened room, ’Secret Grief’ features the guest talents of vocalist Phil Swanson and Leila Abdul-Rauf on trumpet, further widening the breadth of musical talent involved and the sweep of “Song of Salvation’s” distinctive narrative.

The tranquil interlude of ‘Murmur Of Voices’ gives way to the evocative ‘Unrequited’ that begins with a lonely solo guitar before transitioning into a drifting daze of afternoon reverie and subconscious meditation.

Finally comes the album’s epic bookend,16 minute closer ‘Ecstatic Reign’. It features perhaps the album’s heaviest straight Doom moments along with the return of ‘Tide Turns Eternal’ featured guest voices McKenna Rae and Richard Poe. Tomb Mold drummer / throat Max Klebanoff also appears for a shattering back and forth vocal tradeoff with DeTore. The album’s cinematic vision and painstaking colorful detail are fully encompassed bringing this enthralling journey to its enduring peak.

Only a year on from ‘Tide Turns Eternal’ Dream Unending’s rapid evolution on the boundless panorama of ‘Song of Salvation’ is, crucially and intrinsically, a continued departure from limiting genre norms and an adept redefining of them.

Tracklisting:
1. Song Of Salvation
2. Secret Grief
3. Murmur Of Voices
4. Unrequited
5. Ecstatic Reign

Members:
Derrick Vella – Architect of Dreams
Justin DeTore – The Bridge Between Two Worlds

Piano and Synth contributions by David Vella

Featuring:
Phil Swanson as The Forlorn
Leila Abdul-Rauf as The Siren Call
Max Klebanoff as Final Judgement
McKenna Rae as The Implorer
Richard Poe as The Dreamer

Drums captured at Solomon’s Temple by Arthur Rizk and J.K Allison
Guitars captured at Boxcar Studio by Sean Pearson
Mixed and Mastered by Arthur Rizk
Cover Painting by Benjamin A. Vierling
Layout by Chimère Noire

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Dream Unending, Song of Salvation (2022)