Posted in Whathaveyou on June 22nd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
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.
Posted in Reviews on April 12th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 13th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
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
Posted in Buried Treasure on January 28th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Someone posted this record the other day in the Obelisk group on Facebook — thanks, Ted Parsons — and I’ve been glad ever since that they did. Release through the venerable 20 Buck Spin in 2012, Samothrace‘s second full-length, Reverence to Stone (review here), is a lesson that one can bludgeon and offer breadth at the same time. Tracked by Brandon Fitzsimons of Black Queen and Wormwood (among others), the 34-minute long-player from the Seattle-by-way-of-Lawrence-Kansas was not the first offering even from the West Coast to bring together such elements — nor was it claiming to be — but it made the point beautifully across its crawling reaches and in its most dug-in moments of sweep alike, manifesting an post-Earth heavy Americana from the outset of “When We Emerged” (14:21) in a manner that’s droning and impossibly weighted, the screams and growls of guitarist Bryan Spinks completely indecipherable as they join in the initial lurch built up from its softer foundation. There’s something happening there but you don’t know what it is yet. This is how they welcome you to the proceedings. Like Kids in the Hall: “I’m crushing your head.”
Spinks is joined in this incarnation of Samothrace by fellow founders Renata Castagna (who sat in for Chris Fielding of Conan after the two bands toured together in 2015) on guitar and Dylan Desmond (now more known for his work in Bell Witch) on bass, as well as Joe Axler (Theories, Book of Black Earth, etc.) on drums, and the four-piece work quickly and smoothly to demonstrate one of the great strengths of Reverence to Stone. As the lead cut continues to unfold, it reveals itself to be a massive thing, and the dragging tempo would be excruciating were it not for the exacting work on the part of the band tonally. It is the depth of tone that comes through in the recording — there’s just a hint of shimmer on the high end that had me looking back at pictures from seeing the band in 2014 (review here) to see what amps they were using; Oranges, Marshalls, etc. — that gives the listener so much room to get lost. They’re about one-tenth of the way through what’s still a pretty short album release, and they’ve already managed to build much of the world they’ll inhabit for the duration.
“When We Emerged” crashes and drones and seems to sway in the breeze of tis own making, but the (relative) speed kicks in just before the six-minute mark, and it becomes not only a sweep of momentum, but seemingly also the emergence hinted at in the title. A pattern of setting lead guitar soaring over the riffs is already established and put to good use, soon joined by Desmond‘s bass in a singularly righteous stretch. At their loudest, most forceful, the vocals return and are cavernous in the midst of that apex, a storm brought to bear that they start to draw down at around eight and a half minutes, making their way into a chasm of noise and feedback. There’s still a rhythm to it, but honestly, it’s hard to know where the wash ends and the undulations begin, and that’s the point.
A few patterns have been set. The separation of instruments is huge, particularly so in the overarching affect the space between them has on the listener. As the more extended “A Horse of Our Own” (20:29) launches and solely comprises side B, one guitar holds down the riff with the bass and drums, another shreds, and then by the time the second cut is into minute four, Samothrace have shifted into a section of quiet, intertwining guitar lines, far-back drum march and spacious, empty prairie tension. This is hypnotic, and that’s a strength into itself, but it is the smoothness with which they execute that transition and others to follow that helps make the song so undeniably immersive. “A Horse of Our Own” picks up shortly before 7:30 and unfurls not so much in a snap to reality as an organic surge, the land making waves around deceptively angular riffing before the next lead takes hold with a more fervent chug behind it.
Again, the tone. Even that guitar solo feels dense, and not just because of the bass and other guitar behind it or the shove of drums. Its fuzz is headphone-ready in its detail but still carries over as a wash and can move; it is the best of all worlds, and though it’s relatively brief and Samothrace are back to quiet again for an even-more-minimalist ambient stretch that takes them further into the track’s second half, they again make those details count. The march resumes as it inevitably would, but suddenly we’re back on familiar ground, reviving the riff and rhythm of the earliest minutes of the song as a bed for more roaring verses and a long stretch of deconstructing drone, the song spreading itself so wide ultimately that it disintegrates to a conclusion of residual noise. The final impression when one is oozed out the other side of all this morass might be “holy shit that was heavy” — and that’s not wrong, mind you — but part of the reason the weight is so present is because of the dynamic changes that bring it about. Even the final howls near the end of “A Horse of Our Own” have purpose as a part of that. Inhuman and inhumane as they might feel, they are a part of the land and reverence seemingly being depicted.
There was talk of a third Samothrace LP in the works circa late-2017/2018 — about a decade after their 2008 debut, Life’s Trade — but Reverence to Stone still stands as the to-date-latest studio release, followed by Live at Roadburn, which came out the next year and captured the above-linked set with Dorando Hodous (Fungal Abyss, ex-Lesbian) on bass. With all the upheaval and creative reshuffling of priorities of the last few years, it would make a weird kind of sense for another record to show up, but as to who would be in the band with Spinks and Axler and what on earth such a thing might sound like, I won’t speculate. I wouldn’t mind finding out, though.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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Hi, I can’t keep up with email. If I owe you an email back or a Facebook message or whatever and you’re seeing this, I’m sorry. It’s a lot. I don’t have a lot of time and I need to write. Yesterday I had like two hours plus whatever I could sneak in my phone throughout the day. I’m doing my best.
I’m thinking about going to see the Atomic Bitchwax next week with Mirror Queen and Sun Voyager. It’s in Brooklyn at the Knitting Factory. Maybe I’ll go, maybe I won’t, but I’m thinking about it. It’d be nice to see a real show again. Swallow the Sun were killer, but somehow I feel like going to New York is a different animal. But I want to see Uncle Acid and King Buffalo in a couple weeks, so this feels like a decent precursor to that. We’ll see if either happens. Sad.
The kid’s in school right now. His bus is for shit. It’s snowing and maybe we’re supposed to get a bunch more this weekend and maybe we’re not — nobody really knows — but I’ve got two nephews with birthdays this weekend, so I’m not sure what’s going on. My family is coming for dinner tonight and I’m going to make chaffles before they get here so that when everyone comes in they can be immediately be handed cheese and that can help stem the hanger that might otherwise define the evening while we wait for takeout.
Life.
I need to shower, so I’m going to cut out early and hope to finish doing that before the for-shit bus brings The Pecan home and it’s lunchtime and blah blah blah.
I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Have fun, watch your head, hydrate. I’ve got a gallon of water on one side of me and a cup of ice on the other. You do what you gotta do, damn it.
Posted in Reviews on January 21st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Last day. I guess we made it. There was never any doubt it would happen, but I wouldn’t call this the smoothest Quarterly Review ever by any stretch. Weather, canceled school, missed bus, The Patient Mrs. about to start a new semester at work, plus that day that had three noise rock records right in a row — who slots these things? (me) — it hasn’t all been easy. But, if you’ve ever read the QR you might know I’ve developed a tendency to load a bunch of killer stuff into the last day to kind of give myself a break, and here we are. No regrets.
Thanks for reading this week (and any other week if you’ve ever been on this site before). Here’s how we finish.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
Dream Unending, Tide Turns Eternal
Beautiful and sad, this first collaboration between drummer/vocalist Justin DeTore (Solemn Lament, ex-Magic Circle, many more) and guitarist/bassist Derrick Vella (Tomb Mold, Outer Heaven) under the moniker of Dream Unending harnesses a classic early ’90s death-doom melancholy, but it’s not as raw as the image of My Dying Bride circa ’92 that might bring to mind. If you want to do mashups, think Novembers Doom meets Alternative 4-era Anathema. Tide Turns Eternal brings together seven songs in 46 minutes and is memorable in stretches like the guitar progression of “In Cipher I Weep” and the crushing chug of the title-track as the Massachusetts/Toronto duo harness the a true sense of classic death metal just ahead of the two-minute weepy guitar interlude “Forgotten Farewell” and the 10-minute closing title-track. Perhaps there’s some inspiration from Bell Witch in the making, but Dream Unending‘s atmosphere and patience are their own.
The title don’t lie. French expat Sergio Garcia, living in Indonesia, concocts 11 instrumental tracks of fuzzy flood, and if he wants to call that soup, then yeah, that’s as good as anything I’ve got. “Razana” opens with two minutes of garage-style strut, while “Back to Origin” crunches and “Fuzz Soup” feels a bit more of a psych freakout with its lead guitar and drums that remind of Witch, all performed by Garcia, who adds organ to boot. “Quest for Fire” is probably more in homage to the movie than band, which is a little sad, but the song brings in some minor scales and droning atmospherics, and “Ride the Mammoth” pushes more straightforward into the languid wah whatnottery of “Argapura” at the presumed start of side B, which feels rawer in “The Shelter” and more chaotic in the buzz of “Surfin’ the Dune” before “The Cheating Mole” turns to nighttime darkjazz, “Tumulous” turns its acoustic start into a hairy march punctuated and grounded by the pop of snare, and closer “Narcolepsy” finishes with a duly zombified, organ-laced take on tape-trader doom. These experiments work well together throughout Fuzz Soup, united by weird and unpredictable as they are.
Gänger is third in a purported series of four EPs by Manchester, UK, four-piece Farfisa, and its four songs solidify some of the more let-go aspects of 2020’s Bravado, taking the folkish shine of a cut like “My Oh My” and turning it into the dug-in garage prog rock of “Honey Badger” and riffing out dirty and fuzzed on “River Rash.” Frankly, I don’t know why, having once conjured tones like those of the penultimate “Clinton” here, which sound like something that would make Ty Segall start a new band, one would ever not do that again, but I won’t claim to know what the fourth EP in the series might bring. One can only hope that, when the series is wrapped, they compile it into some sort of offering — a double-tape or some such — and release the whole thing together. As it stands though, Gänger is my first exposure to the band, and they smash through “Limitator” with due prejudice. I can think of five record labels off the top of my head who’d be lucky to have these guys, but nobody asks me these things.
Fucking a, rock and roll. Reykjavik’s Volcanova aren’t through “Salem,” the lead cut from their righteously titled Cosmic Bullshit EP, before they’ve cadenced Uncle Acid in the verse and broken out the cowbell, so yes, it’s that kind of party. That cowbell comes back almost immediately for “Gold Coast,” which tramps out big riffs like Def Leppard used to make, and “Desolation” brings the bass forward effectively in its hook, the band having already built fervent momentum that will carry through the rest of the 26-minute mini-album. Not to pick favorites, but “End of Time” feels purposefully placed near the middle, and “No Wheels” — yup, more cowbell — splits that and closer “Lost Spot” well, giving a grounded stretch of pure shove before the finale hard-boogies and big-drifts its way to a surprising wash of an ending, organ included. You don’t call your release Cosmic Bullshit if you’re not looking to get attention, and Volcanova certainly earn that with these tracks.
The premier collaboration between Arizona’s Aiwass and Colorado’s Astral Construct — the latter also stylized as ASTRAL COnstruct — is a seven-minute single called “Solis in Stellis” that bridges terrestrial and ethereal heavy psychedelias. At a bit under eight minutes, its melodic flourish and weighted underpinning of low end, drifting guitar and fluid rhythmic progression sound like nothing so much as the beginning of an album that should be made if it’s not currently in the works between Drew Patricks (Astral Construct) and Blake Carrera (Aiwass), who both function as solo artists in their respective projects but come together here to show the complementary potential of each for the other. Lush in atmosphere, patient in its delivery and spacious without being overwrought, “Solis in Stellis” is hopefully the beginning of more to come from these two, who might just end up having to call themselves the Aiwass Construct if they keep going the way they are.
Seven years after 2014’s The Witching Hour, Ohio’s Doctor Smoke return with Dreamers and the Dead, a solid 10-song/42-minute run that makes up for lost time by reimagining ’90s-era Megadeth sneer as dark and catchy heavy rock and roll. The four-piece led by founding guitarist/vocalist Matt Tluchowski may have let a few years get by them — that’ll happen — but if the intervening time was spent hammering out these songs, the effort shows itself in the efficiency with which each cut makes its point and gets out, a song like “These Horrid Things” casting its mood in the verses before opening to the chorus, winding fretwork building tension into and subsequently through the solo. This is a revamp of the idea of a classic metal influence, the first instance of a generational shift I can think of that’s bringing this particular vibe to a heavy rock context — the pounding and sprinting of the title-track might’ve been thrash in the ’80s, but a decade later it was thicker and so it is here as well — and Doctor Smoke make it theirs, no question. One wonders what the next seven years will bring.
Rebranded from their moniker of Sierra, Ontario progressive heavy rockers Willowater bring the four-track/14-minute EP as a quick hello to listeners new and old. Guitarist/vocalist Jason Taylor and bassist/drummer/vocalist Robbie Carvalho (also synth) chug out in early-Tool fashion on the opener “Ultimatum,” and the subsequent title-track answers back in kind with shared vocals and a bit of twisting, pulled squeals of guitar, and so on, while “Fly High” calls to mind Dio-style riffing with a bassline to bolster the classic metal vibe, and “Winter Now” builds a tension in its keyboard-laced 3:26 that, somewhat maddeningly, never pays itself off. Perhaps the message there is of more to come. Hope so, anyhow. Sierra were a quality band, and undervalued. Willowater seem to be taking another shot at catching as many ears as possible. A fresh start. Not so crazy different from what they were doing before, but sometimes a name can make all the difference.
This second EP from the anonymous Dutch outfit All Are to Return reignites the brutality of their 2020 self-titled debut short release (review here), while expanding the stylistic reach. Opener “Carceri” tips into industrial black metal before resolving itself in harsh screams and drones, while “Surveiller et Punir” feels even more experimental/art rock with tortured screams far back under noisy guitar. “Classified” is shorter and more beat-oriented, but the distorted wash of “Postscript on the Societies of Control” (bit of positive thinking there, almost in spite of itself) is abrasive as fuck, such that the quiet, minimal synth that starts “De Profundis” accompanied by more obscured screams seems almost like a relief before it builds to its own post-Godflesh industrialized crush. They finish atmospheric on “Desiring Machines,” blowing out conceptions of extreme music in about the time it takes for you to put on your shoes and jacket so you can go out, wander into the wilderness, and never be heard from again.
Members of Mirror Queen, the just-signed-to-Tee–Pee-proper Limousine Beach (really, I haven’t even had the chance to post the news yet), Zombi, Ruby the Hatchet and Osees coming together for three Mountain covers. Mountain Sides do “You Better Believe It,” “Dreams of Milk and Honey” and “Travelin’ in the Dark,” and they knock it out of the park accordingly. I don’t know that this would ever get to become a real band between the commitments of Morgan McDaniel, David Wheeler and Steve Moore, let alone Owen Stewart (Ruby the Hatchet‘s drummer) or Paul Quattrone from Osees and a geographic spread between New York, Philly, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, but as a quick outing to test the waters, these three songs want nothing for vibe. Of course, being Mountain songs helps, but it almost inevitably would. Still, I’d take a record of tunes they wrote themselves, even if it doesn’t happen for another decade because everyone’s busy.
Serenity in experimentalist drone and psychedelia, marked by the interplay of organic folk and otherworldly elements of fluid aural adventures. The backward, swelling repetitions of “The Alluring Pool” answer the watery worldmaking of leadoff “Rivers are a Place of Power,” the backing chimes reminding of water moving the air, the acoustic guitar on centerpiece “Riverbank” furthering the theme in sweetly plucked notes while Duncan Park (who also collaborates with Seven Rivers of Fire) picks up the journey again on “The Winding Stream” with a current of melody playing beneath the main acoustic lines of the song, instrumental in its entirety. Invoking the Flood, apart perhaps from some warning that might be read into the opener, grows more peaceful as it goes, though Park‘s inclusion of vocals on closer “Over the River” speaks perhaps of other tributaries waiting to be explored. Still, it is a sweet and encompassing, if short, trip downstream with Park here, and if the flood comes, at least we had a good time.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 24th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
I don’t follow a lot of music-related stuff on Twitter. Mostly, to be honest, I’m there for the Star Trek. But among the several bands, outlets, etc., I do follow is the label 20 Buck Spin, and I’m continually glad I do. For example, I caught sight of Dream Unending‘s cover art scrolling past all the Shatner the other day, checked out the track and, yeah, I am reaffirmed in my follow. With the combined efforts of Tomb Mold‘s Derrick Vella and Justin DeTore — who’s also in Innumerable Forms but who I know from his work in Magic Circle — the two-piece are set to issue their debut album, Tide Turns Eternal, through 20 Buck Spin on Nov. 19, and if you’re not yet down with the imprint’s all-things-death renaissance, now might be a good time. The extremity of ‘lead-single’ (such as it is) “In Cipher I Weep” is its own best argument. Find it at the bottom of this post.
The PR wire followed up on the social media algorithm thusly:
DREAM UNENDING, FEATURING TOMB MOLD’S DERRICK VELLA AND INNUMERABLE FORMS’ JUSTIN DETORE, SET NOV. 19 RELEASE DATE FOR DEBUT ALBUM: TIDE TURNS ETERNAL
HEAR “IN CIPHER I WEEP” FROM THE 20 BUCK SPIN RELEASE
LP / CD / TAPE / DIGITAL / TS / LS Releasing November 19th, 2021 Vinyl releasing February 4th, 2022
Dream Unending, a cleverly self-described “doom metal Postal Service” by founders Derrick Vella (Tomb Mold) and Justin DeTore (Innumerable Forms), release their debut album, Tide Turns Eternal on Nov. 19 via 20 Buck Spin.
The illustrious pair give listeners a taste of the seven-song, 45-minute album with today’s release of “In Cipher I Weep.”
“’In Cipher I Weep’ was the first song we wrote,” explains Vella of the sprawling track. “That must have been nearly 2 years ago now. Definitely the darkest song on the album. Intense lyrics. It leads off with that strange fretless bass, those dying flange harmonics, the vampiric harmonizing, the haunting organ (Thanks, Dad) and transforms into this spellbinding piece full of beauty only to be undone with the heaviest moment of the album. Justin’s vocals sound like the pillars of heaven crashing into the earth. It’s good stuff.”
Tides Turns Eternal sees the musicians expand into entirely new and unexpected directions, composing songs that drift between emotional states both forlorn and uplifting. Ascendant Floydian guitar textures and sparkling Cure-esque strumming lift the music out of the purely metal realm, where moody rock introspection allows for Elysian respite before DeTore’s world crushing roar assures no escape from earthly tumult is certain.
“Dream Unending and Tide Turns Eternal is a testament to the idea that music can be limitless,” continues Vella. “This album was created by Justin and I without ever being in the same room, city or country. It defied closed borders and acts as more than just a record. It’s an affirmation of life. It’s a vision quest. It poses questions pertaining to fear, discovery, the value of one’s soul and offers an answer. Dream Unending serves as an excellent outlet for a language that Justin and I speak that we can’t express elsewhere. It pays tribute to not just doom, but to all the styles of music we love, and the immersive/cinematic quality of fully realized albums. The songs are heavy, dreary, and dreamy. What more could you ask for?”
Tide Turns Eternal track list: 1. Entrance 2. Adorned In Lies 3. In Cipher I Weep 4. The Needful 5. Dream Unending 6. Forgotten Farewell 7. Tide Turns Eternal
Posted in Reviews on October 7th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Day three of the Quarterly Review. Always a landmark. Today we hit the halfway point, but don’t pass it yet since I’ve decided to add the sixth day next Monday. So we’ll get to 30 of the total 60 records, and then be past half through tomorrow. Math was never my strong suit. Come to think of it, I wasn’t much for school all around. Work sucked too.
Anyway, if you haven’t found anything to dig yet — and I hope you have; I think the stuff included has been pretty good so far — you can either go back and look again or keep going. Maybe today’s your day. If not, there’s always tomorrow.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Hum, Inlet
One has to wonder if, if Hum had it to do over again, they might hold back their first album in 23 years, Inlet, for release sometime when the world isn’t being ravaged by a global pandemic. As it stands, the largesse and melodic wash of the Illinois outfit’s all-growed-up heavy post-rock offers 55 minutes of comfort amid the tumult of the days, and while I won’t profess to having been a fan in the ’90s — their last studio LP was 1997’s Downward is Heavenward, and they sound like they definitely spent some time listening to Pelican since then — the overarching consumption Inlet sets forth in relatively extended tracks like “Desert Rambler” and “The Summoning” and the manner in which the album sets its own backdrop in a floating drone of effects make it an escapist joy. They hold back until closer “Shapeshifter” to go full post-rock, and while there are times at which it can seem unipolar, to listen to the crunching “Step Into You” and “Cloud City” side-by-side unveils more of the scope underlying from the outset of “Waves” onward.
Oslo’s Hymn answer the outright crush and scathe of their 2017 debut, Perish (review here), with a more developed and lethal attack on their four-song/38-minute follow-up, Breach Us. Though they’re the kind of band who make people who’ve never heard Black Cobra wonder how two people can be so heavy — and the record has plenty of that; “Exit Through Fire”‘s sludgeshuggah chugging walks by and waves — it’s the sense of atmosphere that guitarist/bassist/vocalist Ole Rokseth and drummer Markus Støle bring to the proceedings that make them so engrossing. The opening title-track is also the shortest at 6:25, but as Breach Us moves across “Exit Through Fire,” “Crimson” and especially 14-minute closer “Can I Carry You,” it brings forth the sort of ominous dystopian assault that so many tried and failed to harness in the wake of Neurosis‘ Through Silver in Blood. Hymn do that and make it theirs in the process.
Carried across with excruciating grace, Atramentus‘ three-part/44-minute debut album, Stygian, probably belongs in a post-Bell Witch category of extreme, crawling death-doom, but from the script of their logo to the dramatic piano accompanying the lurching riffs, gurgles and choral wails of “Stygian I: From Tumultuous Heavens… (Descended Forth the Ceaseless Darkness)” through the five-minute interlude that is “Stygian II: In Ageless Slumber (As I Dream in the Doleful Embrace of the Howling Black Winds)” and into the 23-minute lurchfest that is “Stygian III: Perennial Voyage (Across the Perpetual Planes of Crying Frost and Steel-Eroding Blizzards)” their ultra-morose procession seems to dig further back for primary inspiration, to acts like Skepticism and even earliest Anathema (at least for that logo), and as guttural and tortured as it is as it devolves toward blackened char in its closer, Stygian‘s stretches of melody provide a contrast that gives some semblance of hope amid all the surrounding despair.
As it clocks in 27 minutes, the inevitable question about Zyclops‘ debut release, Inheritance of Ash, is whether it’s an EP or an LP. For what it’s worth, my bid is for the latter, and to back my case up I’ll cite the flow between each of its four component tracks. The Austin, Texas, post-metallic four-piece save their most virulent chug and deepest tonal weight for the final two cuts, “Wind” and “Ash,” but the stage is well set in “Ghost” and “Rope” as well, and even when one song falls into silence, the next picks up in complementary fashion. Shades of Isis in “Rope,” Swarm of the Lotus in the more intense moments of “Ash,” and an overarching progressive vibe that feels suited to the Pelagic Records oeuvre, one might think of Zyclops as cerebral despite their protestations otherwise, but at the very least, the push and pull at the end of “Wind” and the stretch-out that comes after the churning first half of “Rope” don’t happen by mistake, and a band making these kinds of turns on their first outing isn’t to be ignored. Also, they’re very, very heavy.
It’s all peace and quiet until “Psionic Static” suddenly starts to speed up, and then like the rush into transwarp, Kairon; IRSE!‘s Polysomn finds its bliss by hooking up a cortical node to your left temple and turning your frontal lobe into so much floundering goo, effectively kitchen-sink kraut-ing you into oblivion while gleefully hopping from genre to cosmic genre like they’re being chased by the ghost of space rock past. They’re the ghost of space rock future. While never static, Polysomn does offer some serenity amid all its head-spinning and lobe-melting, be it the hee-hee-now-it’s-trip-hop wash of “An Bat None” or the cinematic vastness that arises in “Altaïr Descends.” Too intelligent to be random noise or just a freakout, the album is nonetheless experimental, and remains committed to that all the way through the shorter “White Flies” and “Polysomn” at the end of the record. You can take it on if you have your EV suit handy, but if you don’t check the intermix ratio, your face is going to blow up. Fair warning. LLAP.
The second 2020 offering from Hurst, Texas’ Slow Draw — the one-man outfit of Mark “Derwooka” Kitchens, also of Stone Machine Electric — the four-song Quiet Joy is obviously consciously named. “Tightropes in Tandem” and closer “Sometimes Experiments Fail” offer a sweet, minimal jazziness, building on the hypnotic backwards psych drone of opener “Unexpected Suspect.” In the two-minute penultimate title-track, Kitchens is barely there, and it is as much an emphasis on the quiet space as that in which the music — a late arriving guitar stands out — might otherwise be taking place. At 18 minutes, it is intended to be a breath taken before reimmersing oneself in the unrelenting chaos that surrounds and swirls, and while it’s short, each piece also has something of its own to offer — even when it’s actively nothing — and Slow Draw brims with purpose across this short release. Sometimes experiments fail, sure. Sometimes they work.
It took all of a week for the married duo of Ana Muhi (vocals, bass) and Sven Missullis (guitars, vocals, drums) to announce Might as their new project following the dissolution of the long-ish-running and far-punkier Deamon’s Child. Might‘s self-titled debut arrives with the significant backing of Exile on Mainstream and earns its place on the label with an atmospheric approach to noise rock that, while it inevitably shares some elements with the preceding band, forays outward into the weight of “Possession” and the acoustic-into-crush “Warlight” and the crush-into-ambience “Flight of Fancy” and the ambience-into-ambience “Mrs. Poise” and so on. From the beginning in “Intoduce Yourself” and the rushing “Pollution of Mind,” it’s clear the recorded-in-quarantine 35-minute/nine-song outing is going to go where it wants to, Muhi and Missullis sharing vocals and urging the listener deeper into doesn’t-quite-sound-like-anything-else post-fuzz heavy rock and sludge. A fun game: try to predict where it’s going, and be wrong.
Following a stint on Metal Blade and self-releasing 2018’s What Was and What Shall Be, West Virginia’s Brimstone Coven issue their second album as a three-piece through Ripple Music, calling to mind a more classic-minded Apostle of Solitude on the finale “Song of Whippoorwill” and finding a balance all the while between keeping their progressions moving forward and establishing a melancholy atmosphere. Some elements feel drawn from the Maryland school of doom — opener the melody and hook of “The Inferno” remind of defunct purveyors Beelzefuzz — but what comes through clearest in these songs is that guitarist/vocalist Corey Roth, bassist/vocalist Andrew D’Cagna and drummer Dave Trik have found their way forward after paring down from a four-piece following 2016’s Black Magic (review here) and the initial steps the last album took. They sound ready for whatever the growth of their craft might bring and execute songs like “When the World is Gone” and the more swinging “Secrets of the Earth” with the utmost class.
Take the brutal industrial doom of Author and Punisher and smash it together — presumably in some kind of stainless-steel semi-automated contraption — with the skin-peeling atmosphere and grueling tension of Khanate and you may begin to understand where All Are to Return are coming from on their debut self-titled EP. How they make a song like four-minute centerpiece “Bare Life” feel so consuming is beyond me, but I think being so utterly demolishing helps. It’s not just about the plodding electronic beat, either. There’s some of that in opener “Untrusted” and certainly “The Lie of Fellow Men” has a lumber to go with its bass rumble and NIN-sounding-hopeful guitar, but it’s the overwhelming sense of everything being tainted and cruel that comes through in the space the only-19-minutes-long release creates. Even as closer “Bellum Omnium” chips away at the last remaining vestiges of color, it casts a coherent vision of not only aesthetic purpose for the duo, but of the terrible, all-gone-wrong future in which we seem at times to live.
I saved this one for last today as a favor to myself. Originally released in 2016, Los Acidos‘ self-titled debut receives a well-deserved second look on vinyl courtesy of Necio Records, and with it comes 40 minutes of full immersion in glorious Argentinian psicodelia, spacious and ’60s-style on “Al Otro Lado” and full of freaky swing on “Blusas” ahead of the almost-shoegaze-until-it-explodes-in-sunshine float of “Perfume Fantasma.” “Paseo” and the penultimate “Espejos” careen with greater intensity, but from the folksy feel that arrives to coincide with the cymbal-crashing roll of “Excentricidad” in its second half to the final boogie payoff in “Empatía de Cristal,” the 10-song outing is a joy waiting to be experienced. You’re experienced, right? Have you ever been? Either way, the important thing is that the voyage that, indeed, begins with “Viaje” is worth your time in melody, in craft, in its arrangements, in presence and in the soul that comes through from front to back. The four-piece had a single out in late 2019, but anytime they want to get to work on a follow-up LP, I’ll be waiting.
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 17th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
A classic metal vibe pervades the new Spirit Adrift track, and don’t be surprised if the rest of the record follows suit, though as ever, founding guitarist Nathan Garrett isn’t one to necessarily reside in any single genre at a time. There are a few mentions of emotional upheaval surrounding the making of Enlightened in Eternity — out Oct. 16 through 20 Buck Spin in North America and Century Media everywhere else — and Garrett himself notes that his “life fell apart” between the writing and recording of this material. Well, okay. “Harmony of the Spheres” has naught but triumph in store, however, so whether you’ve got a goblet or a tankard or a mug of coffee by your side as you kick around the interwebs this morning, raise it high to toast old gods.
The PR wire has it like this:
SPIRIT ADRIFT ANNOUNCE TRIUMPHANT NEW ALBUM ENLIGHTENED IN ETERNITY
The 8-song LP will be released on October 16th. // Listen to the powerful first single “Harmony of the Spheres” now.
Spirit Adrift are a band who refuse to slow down. On their new album Enlightened In Eternity, guitarist/vocalist Nathan Garrett alongside drummer Marcus Bryant have created yet another monument to the timelessness of heavy metal. While Enlightened In Eternity builds on the sizable foundation established by the band’s previous albums, it also sets itself apart in formidable new ways, widening the scope of what Spirit Adrift can be.
Spirit Adrift have mastered the ability to invoke the power of metal’s past, whether it be the 70’s, 80’s or even the 90’s without ever feeling throwback or “retro.” Spirit Adrift urgently represent the sonic and emotional zeitgeist of 2020, and Enlightened In Eternity carries the same enormous magnitude of the most significant metal records of every era. Bandleader Nathan Garrett has carved out his own place among the greatest of songwriters by crafting uniquely classic and instantly recognizable songs.
Garrett comments, “I wrote the songs on Enlightened In Eternity before my life fell apart, and from the beginning I set out to make this our most uplifting and empowering album. I’m glad I did that, because ironically enough, these songs helped me keep going when things got bad. I’m proud of the work Marcus put in, I’m proud of these songs, and I’m proud of how we navigated the entire experience. This is the most challenging record I’ve ever made, and it’s my favorite record I’ve ever made. I hope it helps others the way it helped me.”
Vocally, Garrett again showcases an obvious evolution of his already extraordinary ability with more soaring soul and snarling venom injected into his classic metal form. The gorgeous guitar leads, melodies, harmonies, and unforgettably heavy riffs benefit from a huge, timeless production quality. Drummer Marcus Bryant has elevated his playing to new levels of intensity and tasteful subtlety. And as always, the tracks remain imprinted on the mind long after the album has finished.
Garrett continues, “Making a Spirit Adrift album is always intense, but Chained to Oblivion and Curse of Conception dealt with issues from my past, and Divided by Darkness dealt with external issues from more of a philosophical perspective, so there was a bit of a protective layer of detachment between the material and myself. On the other hand, when Marcus and I recorded Enlightened In Eternity, we were in the middle of a lot of intense emotional upheaval — hour to hour, minute to minute. Some days it took everything I had to keep working, particularly when it was time to record vocals. From a technical standpoint, things couldn’t have gone smoother. But from an emotional standpoint, it was brutal. The silver lining is that our hearts and souls are embedded into this record with a raw immediacy and urgency that’s unmatched by our previous material.”
Whether it’s their ever-expanding catalog of incredible albums and songs or their searing live performances, the dominance of Spirit Adrift upon the current heavy metal landscape is now undeniable. And while Enlightened In Eternity already marks the band’s fourth album, Spirit Adrift have only just begun.
Enlightened In Eternity will be released on October 16th via 20 Buck Spin in North America (on Century Media in the rest of the world), and is available for preorder directly from 20 Buck Spin and on Bandcamp. Look for more news and music from Spirit Adrift to surface soon.
Enlightened In Eternity Track Listing: 1. Ride into the Light 2. Astral Levitation 3. Cosmic Conquest 4. Screaming from Beyond 5. Harmony of the Spheres 6. Battle High 7. Stronger Than Your Pain 8. Reunited in the Void
Enlightened In Eternity credits: Engineered and mixed by Ryan Bram Produced by Ryan Bram, Marcus Bryant, and Nate Garrett Mastered by Howie Weinberg and Will Borza
