Posted in Whathaveyou on May 31st, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Once they were announced for Burque Rock City Fest in March, The only real question was how long weed-worshiping Polish sludge metallers Belzebong would be on the road in the US, and now we know. That festival in Albuquerque will be the final stop on a string of dates that covers just about a month’s worth of touring — there’s a four-day break in there and some other days off, but it’s a good run — and they’ll set off from the Eastern Seaboard on July 7 for what they’re calling ‘Weedsommar,’ because, well, weed, and midsummer, and that movie, and subculture speaking to itself. You get the idea.
This is the part where I point out Belzebong‘s last record came out five years ago. Whatever. Good edibles take a while sometimes. Keeping company with Greenbeard — who play both rock and roll — Belzebong were in the US last year for a stop through Psycho Las Vegas (review here) where the two bands also featured on the same day, though whether that’s where they met or not I have no idea. But it’s a European act coming to the US, so maybe everybody stop shooting each other for five minutes so we can make a decent impression, hmm? A lot to ask these days, I know.
Dates follow, and if you’ve never seen Belzebong before, I’ll tell you outright they’re a blast. Fun fun fun, and fun. From social media:
BELZEBONG – Weedsommar
North American Tour 2023 with Greenbeard. Tickets go on sale this Friday.
7/7 Cambridge, MA Sonia 7/8 Philadelphia, PA Kung Fu Necktie 7/9 Brooklyn, NY Saint Vitus Bar 7/11 Cleveland, OH No Class 7/12 Detroit, MI Sanctuary Detroit 7/13 Indianapolis, IN Black Circle 7/14 Chicago, IL Cobra Lounge 7/18 Dallas, TX Club Dada 7/19 Austin, TX The Lost Well 7/20 El Paso, TX Rockhouse Dive Bar Kitchen Venue 7/21 Tempe, AZ Yucca Tap Room 7/22 Los Angeles, CA Resident 7/25 Sacramento, CA Cafe Colonial 7/26 San Francisco, CA DNA Lounge 7/28 Eugene, OR John Henry’s 7/29 Vancouver, BC The Wise Hall & Lounge 7/30 Seattle, WA Funhouse Seattle 8/1 Portland, OR High Water Mark Lounge 8/3 Salt Lake City, UT Aces High Saloon 8/4 Denver, CO Hi-Dive Denver 8/5 Albuquerque, NM Burque Rock City Fest (#128168#)(#128168#)(#128168#) poster: Rafał Łagowski
(#128168#)(#128168#)(#128168#)
Coming at you live and direct from the Wegmans pharmacy counter where I’m waiting to pick up some pinkeye drops for my kid, who stayed home from half-day pre-k on Monday because the Quarterly Review isn’t complicated enough on its own. It was my diagnosis that called off the bus, later confirmed over telehealth, so at least I wasn’t wrong and shot my own day. I know this shit doesn’t matter to anyone — it’ll barely matter to me in half an hour — but, well, I don’t think I’ve ever written while waiting for a prescription before and I’m just stoned enough to think it might be fun to do so now.
Of course, by the time I’m writing the reviews below — tomorrow morning, as it happens — this scrip will have long since been ready and retrieved. But a moment to live through, just the same.
We hit halfway today. Hope your week’s been good so far. Mine’s kind of a mixed bag apart from the music, which has been pretty cool.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Yakuza, Sutra
Since it would be impossible anyway to encapsulate the scope of Yakuza‘s Sutra — the Chicago-based progressive psych-metal outfit led by vocalist/saxophonist Bruce Lamont, with Matt McClelland on guitar/backing vocals, Jerome Marshall on bass and James Staffel on drums/percussion — from the transcendental churn of “2is1” to the deadpan tension build in and noise rock payoff in “Embers,” the sax-scorch bass-punch metallurgical crunch of “Into Forever” and the deceptively bright finish of “Never the Less,” and so on, let’s do a Q&A. They still might grind at any moment? Yup, see “Burn Before Reading.” They still on a wavelength of their own? Oh most definitely; see “Echoes From the Sky,” “Capricorn Rising,” etc. Still underrated? Yup. It’s been 11 years since they released Beyul (review here). Still ahead of their time? Yes. Like anti-genre pioneers John Zorn or Peter Brötzmann turned heavy and metal, or like Virus or Voivod with their specific kind of if-you-know-you-know, cult-following-worthy individualist creativity, Yakuza weave through the consuming 53-minute procession of Sutra with a sensibility that isn’t otherworldly because it’s psychedelic or drenched in effects (though it might also be those things at any given moment), but because they sound like they come from another planet. A welcome return from an outfit genuinely driven toward the unique and a meld of styles beyond metal and/or jazz. And they’ve got a fitting home on Svart. I know it’s been over a decade, but I hope these dudes get old in this band.
The second offering from Philadelphia multi-instrumentalist Heath Rave (Altars of the Moon, former drums in Wolvhammer, etc.) under the banner of Lotus Thrones, the seven-song/38-minute The Heretic Souvenir (on Disorder and Seeing Red) draws its individual pieces across an aural divide by means of a stark atmosphere, the post-plague-and-the-plague-is-capitalism skulking groove of “B0T0XDR0NE$” emblematic both of perspective and of willingness to throw a saxophone overtop if the mood’s right (by Yakuza‘s Bruce Lamont, no less), which it is. At the outset, “Gore Orphanage” is more of an onslaught, and “Alpha Centauri” has room for both a mathy chug and goth-rocking shove, the latter enhanced by Rave‘s low-register vocals. Following the Genghis Tron-esque glitch-grind of 1:16 centerpiece “Glassed,” the three-and-a-half-minute “Roses” ups the goth factor significantly, delving into twisted Type O Negative-style pulls and punk-rooted forward thrust in a highlight reportedly about Rave‘s kid, which is nice (not sarcastic), before making the jump into “Autumn of the Heretic Souvenir,” which melds Americana and low-key dub at the start of its 11-minute run before shifting into concrete sludge chug and encompassing trades between atmospheric melody and outright crush until a shift eight minutes in brings stand(mostly)alone keys backed by channel-swapping electronic noise as a setup for the final surge’s particularly declarative riff. That makes the alt-jazz instrumental “Nautilus” something of an afterthought, but not out of place in terms of its noir ambience that’s also somehow indebted to Nine Inch Nails. There’s a cough near the end. See if you can hear it.
Realized at the formidable behest of Heavy Psych Sounds, the seventh installment of the Doom Sessions series (Vol. 8 is already out) brings together Sweden’s strongly cinematic sludge-doomers Endtime with fire-crackling North Carolinian woods-doomers Cosmic Reaper. With two songs from the former and three from the latter, the balance winds up with more of an EP feel from Cosmic Reaper and like a single with an intro from Endtime, who dedicate the first couple of minutes of “Tunnel of Life” to a keyboard intro that’s very likely a soundtrack reference I just don’t know because I’m horror-ignorant before getting down to riff-rumble-roll business on the righteously slow-raging seven minutes of “Beyond the Black Void.” Cosmic Reaper, meanwhile, have three cuts, with harmonized guitars entering “Sundowner” en route to a languid and melodic nod verse, a solo later answering the VHS atmosphere of Endtime before “Dead and Loving It” and “King of Kings” cult-doom their way into oblivion, the latter picking up a bit of momentum as it pushes near the eight-minute mark. It’s a little uneven, considering, but Doom Sessions Vol. 7 provides a showcase for two of Heavy Psych Sounds‘ up-and-coming acts, and that’s pretty clearly the point. If it leads to listeners checking out their albums after hearing it, mission accomplished.
Don’t skip this because of High Priest‘s generic-stoner-rock name. The Chicago four-piece of bassist/vocalist Justin Valentino, guitarists Pete Grossmann and John Regan and drummer Dan Polak make an awaited full-length debut with Invocation on Magnetic Eye Records, and if the label’s endorsement isn’t enough, I’ll tell you the eight-song/44-minute long-player is rife with thoughtful construction, melody and heft. Through the opening title-track and into the lumber, sweep and boogie of “Divinity,” they incorporate metal with the two guitars and some of the vocal patterning, but aren’t beholden to that anymore than to heavy rock, and far from unipolar, “Ceremony” gives a professional fullness of sound that “Cosmic Key” ups immediately to round out side A before “Down in the Park” hints toward heavygaze without actually tipping over, “Universe” finds the swing buried under that monolithic fuzz, “Conjure” offers a bluesier but still huge-sounding take and 7:40 closer “Heaven” layers a chorus of self-harmonizing Valentinos to underscore the point of how much the vocals add to the band. Which is a lot. What’s lost in pointing that out is just how densely weighted their backdrop is, and the nuance High Priest bring to their arrangements throughout, but whether you want to dig into that or just learn the words and sing along, you can’t lose.
Its catharsis laced in every stretch of the skin-peeling tremolo and echoing screams of “Altar of Liar,” Season Unknown arrives as the first release from Poland’s MiR, a directly-blackened spinoff of heavy psych rockers Spaceslug, whose guitarist/vocalist Bartosz Janik and bassist/vocalist Jan Rutka feature along with guitarist Michał Zieleniewski (71tonman) and drummer Krzystof Kamisiński (Burning Hands). The relationship to Janik and Rutka‘s other (main?) band is sonically tenuous, though Spaceslug‘s Kamil Ziółkowski also guests on vocals, making it all the more appropriate that MiR stands as a different project. Ripping and progressive in kind, cuts like “Lost in Vision” and the blastbeaten severity of “Ashen” are an in-genre rampage, and while “Sum of All Mourn” is singularly engrossing in its groove, the penultimate “Yesterday Rotten” comes through as willfully stripped to its essential components until its drifting finish, which is fair enough ahead of the more expansive closer “Illusive Loss of Inner Frame,” which incorporates trades between all-out gnash and atmospheric contemplations. I won’t profess to be an expert on black metal, but as a sidestep, Season Unknown is both respectfully bold and clearly schooled in what it wants to be.
Recorded by esteemed producer Martin Bisi (Swans, Sonic Youth, Unsane, etc.) in 2021-’22, Colder is Hiram-Maxim‘s third full-length, with hints of Angels of Light amid the sneering heaviness of “Bathed in Blood” after opener/longest track (immediate points) “Alpha” lays out the bleak atmosphere in which what follows will reside. “Undone” gets pretty close to laying on the floor, while “It Feels Good” very pointedly doesn’t for its three minutes of dug-in cafe woe, from out of which “Hive Mind” emerges with keys and drums forward in a moody verse before the post-punk urgency takes more complete hold en route to a finish of manipulated noise. As one would have to expect, “Shock Cock” is a rocker at heart, and the lead-in from the drone/experimental spoken word of “Time Lost Time” holds as a backdrop so that its Stooges-style comedown heavy is duly weirded out. Is that a theremin? Possibly. They cap by building a wall of malevolence and contempt with “Sick to Death” in under three minutes, resolving in a furious assault of kitchen-sink volume, that, yes, recedes, but is resonant enough to leave scratches on your arm. Don’t let anyone tell you this isn’t extreme music just because some dude isn’t singing about killing some lady or quoting a medical dictionary. Colder could just as easily have been called ‘Volcanic.’
Seeming always to be ready with a friendly, easy nod, Lafayette/Indianapolis, Indiana’s The Heavy Co. return with “Brain Dead” as a follow-up single to late-2022’s “God Damn, Jimmy.” The current four-piece incarnation of the band — guitarist/vocalist Ian Daniel, guitarist Jeff Kaleth, bassist Eric Bruce and drummer TR McCully — seem to be refocused from some of the group’s late-’10s departures, elements of outlaw country set aside in favor of a rolling riff with shades of familiar boogie in the start-stops beneath its solo section, a catchy but largely unassuming chorus, and a theme that, indeed, is about getting high. In one form or another, The Heavy Co. have been at it for most of the last 15 years, and in a little over four minutes they demonstrate where they want their emphasis to be — a loose, jammy feel held over from the riffout that probably birthed the song in the first place coinciding with the structure of the verses and chorus and a lack of pretense that is no less a defining aspect than the aforementioned riff. They know what they’re doing, so let ’em roll on. I don’t know if the singles are ahead of an album release or not, but whatever shows up whenever it does, The Heavy Co. are reliable in my mind and this is right in their current wheelhouse.
The intervening year since L.A.’s The Cimmerian made their debut with Thrice Majestic (review here) seems to have made the trio even more pummeling, as their Sword & Sorcery Vol. I two-songer finds them incorporating death and extreme metal for a feel like a combined-era Entombed on leadoff “Suffer No Guilt” which is a credit to bassist Nicolas Rocha‘s vocal burl as well as the intensity of riff from David Gein (ex-The Scimitar) and corresponding thrash gallop in David Morales‘ drumming. The subsequent “Inanna Rising” is slower, with a more open nod in its rhythm, but no less threatening, with fluid rolls of double-kick pushing the verse forward amid the growls and an effective scream, a sample of something (everything?) burning, and a kick in pace before the solo about halfway into the track’s 7:53. If The Cimmerian are growing more metal, and it seems they are, then the aggression suits them as the finish of “Inanna Rising” attests, and the thickness of sludge carried over in their tonality assures that the force of their impact is more than superficial.
Released as an offering from the amorphous Hungarian collective Psychedelic Source Records, the three-song Protoaeolianism arrives under the moniker of Nepaal — also stylized as :nepaal, with the colon — finding mainstay Bence Ambrus on guitar with Krisztina Benus on keys, Dávid Strausz on bass, Krisztián Megyeri on drums and Marci Bíró on effects/synth for captured-in-the-moment improvisations of increasing reach as space and psych and krautrocks comingle with hypnotic pulsations on “Innoxial Talent Parade” (9:54), the centerpiece “Brahman Sleeps 432 Billion Years” (19:14) and “Ineffable Minor States” (13:44), each of which has its arc of departure, journey and arrival, forming a multi-stage narrative voyage that’s as lush as the liquefied tones and sundry whatever-that-was noises. “Ineffable Minor States” is so serene in its just-guitar start that the first time I heard it I thought the song had cut off, but no. They’re just taking their time, and why shouldn’t they? And why shouldn’t we all take some time to pause, engage mindfully with our surroundings, experience or senses one at a time, the things we see, hear, touch, taste, smell? Maybe Protoaeolianism — instrumental for the duration — is a call to that. Maybe it’s just some jams from jammers and I shouldn’t read anything else into it. Here then, as in all things, you choose your own adventure. I’m glad to be the one to tell you this is an adventure worth taking.
There is much to dig into on the second full-length from Toledo, Ohio, duo Hope Hole — the returning parties of Matt Snyder and Mike Mulholland — who offer eight originals and a centerpiece cover of The Cure‘s “Sinking” that’s not even close to being the saddest thing on the record, titled Beautiful Doom presumably in honor of the music itself. Leadoff “Spirits on the Radio” makes me nostalgic for a keyboard-laced goth glory day that never happened while also tapping some of mid-period Anathema‘s abiding downer soul, seeming to speak to itself as much as the audience with repetitions of “You reap what you sew.” Some Godflesh surfaces in “600 Years,” and they’re resolute in the melancholy of “Common Sense” until the chugging starts, like a dirtier, underproduced Crippled Black Phoenix. Rolling with deceptive momentum, the title-track could be acoustic until it starts with the solo and electronic beats later before shifting into the piano, beats, drift guitar, and so on of “Sinking.” “Chopping Me” could be an entire band’s sound but it’s barely a quarter of what Hope Hole have to say in terms of aesthetic two records deep. “Mutant Dynamo” duly punks its arthouse sludge and shreds a self-aware over-the-top solo in the vein of Brendan Small, while “Pyrokinetic” revives earlier goth swing with a gruff biker exterior (I’d watch that movie) and a moment of spinning weirdo triumph at the end, almost happy to be burned, where the seven-minute finale “Cities of Gold” returns to beats over its gradual guitar start, emerging with chanting vocals to become its own declaration of progressive intent. Beautiful Doom ends with a steady march rather than the expected blowout, having built its gorgeous decay out of the same rotten Midwestern ground as the debut — 2021’s Death Can Change (review here) — but moved unquestionably forward from it.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 5th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
A couple things here. First and foremost, the name of Dopelord’s upcoming Fall tour — the ‘Tour for Satan’ — will make more sense generally in the context of the title of their next full-length, which I don’t think has yet been made public so I’m not going to say. But if you’re scratching your head on why it would be a tour with the devil as its purpose, that’s why. It’s a fitting name in light of that, and I’m sure the album announcement will be along the PR wire sooner or later. Probably five minutes after this post goes live, making me automatically behind as I perpetually seem to be. No, I don’t think that’s about me, and I don’t take it personally. This is doom. Leave your ego in the car.
Second and somehow-also-foremost, the album rules. The Warsaw-based outfit — who’ll hit Desertfest Belgium in Antwerp and Heavy Psych Sounds Festival in Germany (x2) on this run — have outdone themselves in melody and riffcraft and purpose in the impending batch of songs, and I say that as I’m in progress on liner notes for the PostWax edition of the release. Gotta get on that. Behind, as ever.
They mention below that the record will be out before they hit the road, which in addition to meaning I need to get on my shit as regards those liner notes, is also the closest thing to an official announcement I’ve seen of the release (since they got added to PostWax in 2021, anyhow), and apparently that’s well close enough for me to talk about it. The bottom line is whether or not you catch them on these dates, keep an eye for more about the record. Including, eventually, the name of it.
For now, the shows from Doomstar Bookings and the hint of the album’s coming dropped by the band on socials:
DOPELORD – Tour for Satan
Doomstar Bookings present Dopelord’s ‘Tour For Satan’ 2023 across Europe in October! See the confirmed dates below and the bandmark your calendar!
Says the band: “(#128481#)(#128128#)(#128481#) Attention! Tour For Satan will take place this October, shortly after the release of our next full album, thanks to Doomstar Bookings. FB events and tickets are live. (#128481#)(#128128#)(#128481#)”
Confimed dates: 12.10.23 – Prague (CZ) – Modra Vopice 13.10.23 – Cottbus (DE) – Muggefug 14.10.23 – Jena (DE) – KuBa 15.10.23 – Braunschweig (DE) – B58 16.10.23 – Hamburg (DE) – Hafenklang 17.10.23 – Malmö (SE) – Plan B 18.10.23 – Copenhagen (DK) – Loppen 19.10.23 – Kiel (DE) – Schaubude 20.10.23 – Groningen (NL) – Café de Walrus 21.10.23 – Nijmegen (NL) – Doornroosje w/ Bismut & Acid Rooster 22.10.23 – Antwerpen (BE) – Desertfest 23.10.23 – Lille (FR) – La Bulle Café 24.10.23 – Osnabrück (DE) – Bastard Club 25.10.23 – Düdingen (CH) – Bad Bonn 26.10.23 – Düsseldorf (DE) – Pitcher 27.10.23 – Berlin (DE) – Heavy Psych Sounds Festival 28.10.23 – Dresden (DE) – Heavy Psych Sounds Festival
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 27th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
There are two songs streaming now from Season Unknown, the debut album of Polish progressive black metallers MiR, who feature in their ranks Spaceslug guitarist/vocalist Bartosz Janik and bassist/vocalist Jan Rutka as well as guitarist Michał Zieleniewski of 71tonman and drummer Krzystof Kamisiński of Burning Hands. The first is raging, squibbly-inflected opener “Altar of Liar,” which duly scorches the earth so that it can be repainted in the greys and blacks one finds similarly manifested on the album’s cover, and the penultimate “Yesterday Rotten,” which departs in its second half toward more subdued and melodic fare, with Rutka and Kamil Ziółkowski (also Spaceslug) contributing vocals, and between the two, something of an atmospheric impression representing the record as a whole comes through.
It’s not the full story — MiR‘s Season Unknown runs eight songs and 43 minutes and puts that time to expansive use — but in severity and sprawl, a picture emerges. The best advice I can give is do go in with an open mind and don’t go in expecting Spaceslug. If you caught wind of 2021’s Memorial (review here), you know that outing had its moments of char as well, so MiR aren’t completely out of context, but it’s a purposeful step away from heavy psych, even if some cosmic aspects speak to the reach of a band like Oranssi Pazuzu in their furious churn en route to the sum-of-all that is seven-minute Season Unknown closer “Illusive Loss of Inner Frame.”
The project has been in the works for about half a decade, apparently, which explains the cohesion in the material throughout Season Unknown, but this is still a first release, and part of the impression it makes is for sure in the potential for MiR to reach deeper into the abyss they’re conjuring here, finding a place for themselves in post-black metal that’s neither lost the intensity of the root genre nor forsaken ambience in service to that.
A bit of info follows, culled from Bandcamp and social media, blah blah, and there’s the info for the release party on April 1, which is like this weekend or something, but consider the audio and just-posted video — directed and shot by Janik — the real point here, especially if you’re feeling like something that’s a little (okay a lot) out of the norm around these parts. Any and all opinions welcome either way in the comments:
Second single from upcoming full length just landed.
This time we brought Kamil and Jan from Spaceslug for special featuring and collaboration on vocal parts to complete this track and its dark essence.
Enjoy eternity.
-CD/Vinyl/Merch coming soon-
MiR – Season Unknown LP Release date: 31.03.2023 Album recorded at Perlazza Studio 4.04-15.04.2022 Mixed and mastered by Perła from Perlazza Studio and MiR
Tracklisting: 1. Altar of Liar 2. In the Stones 3. Lost in Vision 4. Sum of all Mourn 5. Moonlight Fever 6. Ashen 7. Yesterday Rotten 8. Illusive Loss of Inner Frame
Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 24th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Recorded over the course of two days in Oct. 2015 and released in Feb. 2016, the seven-song/43-minute debut album from Wrocław, Poland, heavy psych rockers Spaceslug, dubbed Lemanis (review here), is an album that still feels new in my mind. The trio of guitarist/vocalist Bartosz Janik, bassist/vocalist Jan Rutka and drummer/vocalist Kamil Ziółkowski offered it through Oak Island/Kozmik Artifactz on vinyl, BSFD Records on CD and Southcave Records on tape, and it almost immediately put them at the forefront of their country’s heavy underground for the richness of its tone, the languid nature of its groove and the flowing, laid back delivery of its vocal melodies that corresponded.
With headphone-ready depth in their mix — handled by the band with Jacek Maciołek, who also helmed the recording — and no wrong answer to either way of hearing them, Spaceslug‘s songs could either be experienced with glossed-over eyes or mined for details like the dual layers of feedback ringing out circa 4:30 into “Grand Orbiter” (with its sample of American president JFK at the start talking about going to the moon), 0r the particularly Sleepy riff that pays off the aptly-titled eight-minute side A capper “Supermassive,” slowing with classic stoner rock righteousness into a churn like the black holes at the center of the galaxies slowly sucking the cosmos into oblivion. By no means is that the only in-genre dogwhistle on Lemanis, either, but the fact that Spaceslug were conscious of what tropes they wanted to celebrate in their work — and which ones they didn’t — was a part of what made the songs feel so aesthetically complete.
Take the manner in which opener “Proton Lander” — one of the longer cuts at 7:45, with just “Supermassive” and the album-closing instrumental title-track (9:17) surpassing — comes apart at the finish. By the time the three-piece get there, they’ve built the song up from nothing, an initial hum fading gently in over some ambient noise, bass and guitar seeming to yawn themselves awake before the drums — who’ve already been up for a while and seem to have had their first cup of coffee — join in the procession. By the one-minute mark, they’re already rolling, but the abiding vibe is warm, cozy and easy to engage, and that remains true as they as volume and meter, shift into through verses, grow bigger in sound and seem to find multiple next-levels of density to their rich, lush fuzz. But after the six-minute mark, “Proton Lander” takes kind of a meandering turn, and rather than fading out the comedown, they jam through it and present the full ending of the song. They’re letting the listener in the room with them until there’s nothing but some noodling guitar left and the track ends organically, fluidly, decisively small after having been so grand and consuming only a few minutes before.
This is emblematic of what Lemanis accomplished across its whole span in terms of bringing to life a genuine sense of mellow-heavy. Spaceslug were by no means static in tempo either within or between their tracks, but even as “Hypermountain” picks up from that ending of “Proton Lander” and invigorates with a more directly forward movement, or as “Grand Orbiter” pushes through its open, half-time drum hook and surrounding effects swirl on vocals and guitar alike, the band remains steady in their presence. The vocals — the arrangements of which would flesh out and broaden in scope over the next several years with more aggressive takes sneaking in gradually and naturally — are never too far forward in the mix as to dominate the tones surrounding, and their placement is key and perfectly suited to the wall-o’-fuzz largesse being conveyed.
As the mostly-instrumental “Galectelion” (just a spoken part in the midsection) follows “Supermassive” as the centerpiece of the record and the start of side B — again carrying echoes of Sleep‘s riff worship but set to the band’s own earthier psychedelic intention, moving at a decent clip but consistent with the flow of its surrounding cuts — the affect is hypnotic in highlighting their jammier side, expanding on that impression at the end of “Proton Lander,” fleshing out the vibe on the whole in a way that makes the more lumbering bass and guitar effects barrage in the hooky “Grand Orbiter” stand out that much more. The 1:36 penultimate interlude “Quintessence” works in not entirely dissimilar fashion, picking up from the cold-cut feedback of “Grand Orbiter” with guitar floating in space before “Lemanis” announces its arrival with a distinct and welcome initial thud.
About that thud. While a large part of the impression Lemanis made and still makes seven years later comes from the mellow-heavy mood, the tones of the guitar and bass, and the laid back delivery of the vocals, even Ziółkowski‘s kick drum is worth mentioning in so clearly serving their purpose. It has a kind of muffled tone, the edges of the hammer’s impact rounded off and smooth in the recording, and where there’s a risk that the drums on the whole could detract from the liquidity of the material, they instead become the calming pulse at the core of it, definitely there but somehow gentle in how they punctuate the songs; one more aspect of craft that makes Spaceslug‘s debut such a standout even as they cap with the further trance induction of “Lemanis” itself, summarizing the abiding roll that has carried them and their audience through a deceptively cohesive breadth of turns and volume dynamics.
Spaceslug quickly affirmed the strengths of Lemanis with 2017’s sophomore LP, Time Travel Dilemma (review here), and set themselves on a course of progression across EPs and LPs that continues today — 2021’s Memorial (review here) was their fifth full-length and crowning achievement to-date; they’ll play Desertfest London this Spring and Høstsabbat in October, perhaps by then supporting or heralding a new release — and while they’ve added new elements to their style, they’ve never quite let go of the soothing nod of Lemanis. At the time, I couldn’t get away from a Sungrazer comparison, and I can still hear what in the songs put me in that place — worth noting that Spaceslug brought in former Sungrazer bassist for a guest spot on Time Travel Dilemma, so there’s some acknowledgement of the influence there — but listening to Lemanis seven years after the fact, it’s plain to hear even more just how much this record is the beginning of the band searching out their identity as a group, finding the niche they’d occupy and from which they’d grow and flourish as, fortunately, they have in the years since.
This is a pretty special record, and maybe that’s part of why it still feels new, because even looking back at it in hindsight, it’s so easy to lose oneself in the potential for expansion in its songs. As far as I’m concerned, that they’ve brought and are still bringing that potential to realization only makes it more of a landmark.
If you’ve been paying attention the last few weeks — and if you haven’t, it’s okay — I’ve been doing kind of an unofficial miniseries in these posts of Polish bands, with Sunnata last week, Elvis Deluxe the week before, Dopelord before that, and Tortuga starting off. Over a decade ago, I did a similar look at a few Polish acts in a category of posts called ‘On the Radar’ that I don’t really do anymore, and this has been a follow-up to that at least for me if not anyone else, and it’s been interesting to hear the various paths that these groups have taken, those who’ve come and gone, etc. Whether you’ve followed along or not, I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing Lemanis again, and I thank you as always for reading.
—
The Pecan opened his door at 4:30AM, and while I love him dearly, my heart sank thinking of the morning’s productivity evaporating in the face of demands for yogurt and more Sesame Street. I put him back to bed before he even started down the stairs, and he was willing to go, with was something of a surprise. It’s 5:57 now and that’s already later than he’s slept all week.
I’ve been having trouble sleeping as well. Wednesday was probably as bad as it’s gotten; I woke up at 1AM and never really fell back out, got up and decided to get to work at about 2:30. Yesterday was 3:30-ish, which felt like a gift as I also wasn’t really up overnight rolling over or needing to go to the bathroom like the old man I am. Today was 3AM. Generally speaking, my days don’t really need to be longer than they already are when the alarm goes off at 4. I’ve been pretty wrecked by the time the kid goes to bed around 7:30PM, and even last night was nodding off watching Star Trek: Picard bring back Worf in violent fashion. Ups and downs.
Ups and downs to everything, I guess. Yesterday started out awesome as I had a total blast writing that Enslaved review — so, so much fun; I don’t usually get much of a response when I write about that band, but I always enjoy doing so and that makes it worth it — and went swimming and that felt good in my body and the kid and I had a decent morning without really butting heads on random bullshit as we so often do. But then the driver and aide on his morning bus let me know he’s been yelling and generally being a jerk on the ride to school, which is kind of part of broader ongoing behavioral concerns — transitions, always a challenge, probably always will be to some yet-unsettled extent — and it just flattened the whole day.
By the time The Patient Mrs. got back from getting her haircut, which of course looks lovely, I was in a hole compared to where I’d started out. It sucked, in short. And the day never really found that groove again. He came home from school and was difficult, and I got mad, and The Patient Mrs. tried to be a go-between, and it’s just a shitty dynamic that doesn’t really make anyone feel good and I don’t know what to do about any of it. I ate a gummy and got stoned and at least that helped calm me down, but golly, it would be nice to get through a day without feeling like an absolute garbage parent. Hasn’t happened yet, but I’ll keep you in the loop if I ever get there.
He starts kindergarten in the Fall, which will be a sea change as the first time he’ll be out of the house on more of a full-time basis. The beginning of a new era of school, basically. I’ve been considering trying to find part-time work outside the house (or in it, remotely) when he goes. Not that I can’t busy myself with domestic concerns or more writing — there’s never enough time for either — but I can’t help but wonder if after nearly six years of being completely out of the labor force, some part of me isn’t missing feeling like I’m contributing to something beyond poisoning my family by being a miserable piece of shit.
I’ve never enjoyed jobs, but money’s been tighter than tight, and even if it’s just money for music and/or weed that I don’t have to take out of the familial coffers, that’s not nothing. I don’t know, but I’m thinking about it. I won’t pretend to have any clue what I need or want. I open my mouth and hear my father’s voice, which crushes me. I look in the mirror and see his stiff lumbering. I have felt a bit haunted, perhaps, by vague and unresolved trauma from that relationship, and I am in terror of paying forward the shitty emotional abuse to which I was treated as a child to my own kid. Already it is glaringly obvious to me that I am the problem. I would not mind dying in my sleep and thereby removing that problem.
6:22 and he’s up and down the stairs on the quick, crying that it’s starting to get light. I tell him it’s part of the coming Spring, that the sun is coming up earlier. I’m fucking trying. Every day, I’m fucking trying. Moments of okay amid continual failure are godsends. I need to buy yogurt today.
Next week is full streams of REZN, Sandrider and Stoned Jesus — three of the best records I’ve heard so far in 2023.
Thanks for reading and I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Have fun, watch your head, hydrate, all that stuff. Monday is a Desert Storm video premiere and it’s a banger so keep an eye out.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 17th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
It’s been about a decade since the Warsaw-based heavy rockers Satellite Beaver revamped their name and the concept of their band to become Sunnata, having made their full-length debut with 2009’s Trip Outside Your Mind(review here) and followed it with the 2012 EP, The Last Bow(review here). And if the kind of ritual metal, heavy psych and meditative spirit of Sunnata‘s work was the vision they were chasing all along, unquestionably that moniker swap was the right choice — it was on a few levels, actually. With the continued lineup of guitarist/vocalist Szymon “SZY” Ewertowski, guitarist Adrian “GAD” Gadomski, bassist Michał “DOB” Dobrzański and drummer Robert “ROB” Ruszczyk, the aesthetic turn was made manifest when Sunnata released Climbing the Colossus in March 2014. Here’s what the band had to say about the change at the time:
“Many things have changed since our start in 2008. After three short-length releases and numerous shows we all (finally) agreed to make a step closer to become premium pop-stars. However, the new band name doesn’t imply any lineup or makeup changes. It simply suits our approach to the music, which has become way heavier and trippy in comparison to what we played back in 2008. So here it is. SUNNATA is a soundscape, where noise crossfades clearness – where walls of fuzz, delay and reverb confront the monolith of absolute silence.”
As it turns out, they’d be confronting all kinds of monoliths as Sunnata, be it loud, quiet, in between or existential, and the “heavier and trippy” direction manifests clearheaded in Climbing the Colossus‘ 49-minute run across as series of short-growing-longer tracks the trail through which is marked by a series of aurally diverse interludes, be it the 40-second “I” which opens the record and leads into the horror-slash intensity of the guitar and the massive roll that typifies “Orcan,” repetition becoming ritual, the eight-second echo wisp “II” that swirls into the start of the subsequent “Asteroid,” a fuzzed but sharply executed thrust finding its apex after a series of start-stops in its second half, the shortest of the ‘song-songs’ at 3:39, or the almost-a-minute churn-noise and feedback of “V” that closes the record following the nine-minute “Fomalhaut,” which crescendos the aggression on display throughout Climbing the Colossus without letting go of the atmosphere that’s so much a part of the album’s overarching impression.
On a straight-through listen, as opposed to, say, hearing it on vinyl, the atmospherics become part of the songs. They are transitional intros/outros that flow from one piece to another, not in between every track, but something to move the listener along with the material so that the crushing low-end that rises to such unsullied crush in “Seven” after the end of “Asteroid” — a rolling movement that becomes elephantine as the song, which runs an appropriate 7:07, shifts into its back half, becoming likewise psychedelic and monstrous and massive; a watershed moment — gives over to the jingling and drone of “III” smoothly and with purpose, adding character to tracks that don’t necessarily want for it but that are richer for its being there. A key stretch arrives on what for the LP is the beginning of side B, with “Path” (7:48), “Stalagmites” (7:09) and “Monolith” (6:38) in a row.
There’s a pattern, you see: Interlude, one song, interlude, two songs, interlude, three songs, interlude, song, interlude (and if you want to replace the first and last “interlude” there with “intro” and “outro” I won’t stop you; I use “interlude” to show the consistency of purpose in deepening the ambience), and the intention even nine years after the fact still feels like Sunnata are pulling you deeper into this world as they go. Thus “Path” into “Stalagmites” and “Monolith,” even though each one gets subsequently shorter, is the stretch in which the listener is most immersed. “Path” has a hook and is as aggro in its vocals and chugging low end as it is spacious in the guitar later on — a kind of cosmic metal that in hindsight is very much Sunnata‘s own — and crashes to a stop for a few seconds of that “absolute silence” before “Stalagmites” begins to stir with a few nudges of echoing guitar before the proggy bassline starts that probably could’ve been their own interlude.
Nonetheless, once “Stalagmites” (which come up from the ground; ‘stalactites hold on tight, stalagmites might poke you in the butt’) kicks in from its buildup, it maintains its weight for the duration, and though “Monolith” has a quieter break as part of its procession, the muted stops in the second half are an early example of the band making the studio an instrument — ‘studio’ being a relative term since the drums were done at Demontazownia Studio while guitar, vocals and presumably bass were handled via home recording, ‘edited’ by Dobrzański while Jan Galbas had the difficult task of mixing and mastering to find balance amidst the purposefully conjured chaos — and pummeling in their own right, another call out to the metal of the mid-to-late ’90s. A moment to process in “IV” and then “Fomalhaut” feedbacks into immediate destruction. It is a summary as much conceptual as practical, sound-wise, has a mellow bridge and a languid lead that’s almost stoner rock as it moves to the halfway point, but makes that jangly chug transcend and become something bigger, a march that gets topped with a clean, low-register verse like cosmic spiritual swagger, growing more feverish as it goes before a resolute twist finishes, some residual feedback smoothing the way into the postscript grey psychedelia of “V,” which fades quickly on its way out.
It’s not just that Sunnata pulled off an aesthetic turn with Climbing the Colossus. They did, to be sure. But this record also set in motion a stylistic growth that continues to this day, with the same lineup behind it. That they’ve together undertaken the journey from Climbing the Colossus to 2016’s Zorya (review here), 2018’s Outlands (review here) and 2021’s Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth (review here) isn’t to be understated, as they’ve managed to consistently move forward with a sense of progression while reveling in the enduring atmospheric elements of their approach. In the varied realms of Polish heavy, they’re part of a generation of players emergent over the last decade who stand astride the 2020s as still-evolving veterans, and even as one looks back at the beginning steps of that process here, robes and harem pants and all, it’s almost impossible not to look forward to what they might do next.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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5:19AM at present. I woke up this morning at about 2:30, spent the next hour-plus tossing and turning, drifting to sleep and waking up again about every 20 minutes, until at 3:40 I gave up and decided I was just awake and that was it. That’s been a fairly steady pattern the last couple weeks. Yesterday, I think it was, I made it until the alarm went off at 4, and I felt like I had slept late.
So anyway, coffee.
Okay. Last weekend was The Patient Mrs.’ birthday. Happy birthday. All was good. We had my family over for dinner Saturday, and Sunday went to brunch in Brooklyn with friends of hers (who have three kids) who live there. After that, because The Pecan said it was his only goal for this year to see a dragon dance (he is a special kind of kid), we went to the Chinese New Year parade. It was overwhelming on the whole, but I was glad there wasn’t a mass shooting, which pretty much anytime you put humans in a place together these days in America becomes a concern; I’m standing there with the kid on my shoulders (he’s getting big for that), scanning the crowd for people who look like me except particularly distraught. Glad to see there weren’t any and nobody got killed. Mark it a win.
Except for the fact that The Patient Mrs. starting on Tuesday was violently ill. Not covid, she tested, but a stomach thing she and the friends’ kids seemed to share. Neither The Pecan nor I picked it up, which feels like a great, great victory, having seen her go through Tuesday and Wednesday, especially, without being able to eat or even really drink water without unfortunate consequences, but she was miserable and mostly in bed for that time, so probably not the post-birthday week she was hoping to have. I don’t understand how anyone who lives in a human body can believe it was made in the image of an almighty deity. Yeah, I hear god also projectile vomits when he eats some funky strawberries. Totally legit.
She seems like she’s on the other end of it now — or at least she managed to hold onto the white rice and scrambled egg she ate for dinner last night — but that kind of defined the week. The Pecan, meanwhile, had his first and second Tae Kwon Do classes with other kids. He likes it, seems to like it a lot, but is sort of transient by nature so we’ll see if he wants to stick with it after a couple more lessons. He likes things that are new, tires eventually and moves onto the next thing.
When I was a kid, the messaging that went along with that was that you needed to dedicate yourself to something, to “stick with it.” Having already seen him ice skate, play soccer, do tee-ball, track and field — he’s five, remember — I don’t necessarily believe he needs to “stick with” something that’s going to make him unhappy and think that his time might be better spent exploring new things until he finds what fits. I stuck with a bunch of shit in my time, including Tae Kwon Do, well past the point where I was enjoying any of it, and all I feel like I got for that was an obsessive personality and a constant feeling of failure. So yeah, when and if he’s ready to move on, that’s fine.
I need to remind myself of this because at this point it’s my nature to dig into a thing entirely regardless of enduring pleasure or displeasure. You might say it’s how and why The Obelisk exists and persists. Part of it, anyway. I consider myself fortunate that when I put on a record like the new Sandrider or REZN, or an older one like the Sunnata above, that I can still enjoy hearing it. Music has been the most consistent source of joy in my life. Worth waking up for.
This weekend, more family time. I was thinking of inviting my mother and sister and that crew for dinner tomorrow, but we might actually just mellow it out — can it be both? not entirely sure — and take a break for a day since on Sunday into the holiday Monday, The Patient Mrs.’ sister, her own two kids and two dogs are coming to stay, having not been able to make the trip down from Connecticut for her actual birthday. So you see how those afternoon hours on Saturday, which surely will drag without some ‘event’ scheduled, might be a bit of restorative boredom worth undertaking.
Whatever you’re up to, I hope it’s great and that you enjoy. Today at 5PM is a new ‘The Obelisk Show’ on Gimme Metal. Please listen. The music’s good and the support is appreciated. Plus it’s free on their app or site: http://gimmemetal.com
5:54 now and The Pecan just opened his door, which means it’s the start of the morning shift. It’ll be Sesame Street in no time. I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Have fun, watch your head, hydrate all that stuff. Next week is jammed front to back — premieres for Slumbering Sun, Dead Shrine, an Enslaved review, etc. — so that’ll all start to unfurl on Monday. Hope to see you then, and thanks for reading, as always.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 10th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
I always thought these guys had another album in them. Elvis Deluxe formed in 2002, concurrent to acts like Sweden’s Dozer from whose earliest work they took some notable influence, and while they by no means were the first Polish heavy rock band, their 2007 debut album, Lazy (review here) was in conversation with desert-style rock in a way that was an early arriver to the shifts in international creativity that the internet provided. In the era of bands flourishing by finding friends on MySpace — the quaint notion of a social media company actually allowing streams on a page — Elvis Deluxe were fuzzy and classic-swinging and, yeah, maybe more than a little stoned; a precursor to some extent of the modern Polish heavy rock scene, which is among Europe’s most vital in line with Greece, the UK, Germany, and so on.
During their time, which was relatively short, they offered up three albums — Lazy, 2011’s brilliant-yes-I-mean-that Favourite State of Mind, and 2013’s The Story So Far (review here), which was a mix of songs recorded live in the studio in 2012, demos from 2003, and a Stooges cover compiled — and seemed to be fading out from the vanguard just as Polish heavy began to flourish with the rise of bands like Belzebong, Satellite Beaver (who’d become Sunnata) and Dopelord, among others.
The band for Lazy‘s 10-song/40-minute run was the four-piece of bassist/vocalist Wojciech Ziemba, guitarists Tomasz “Bolek” Sierajewski and Marcin “Mechu” Hejak and drummer Mikołaj “Miko” Malanowski, and the work of the latter is particularly crucial. Not devaluing any performance here — how could I as “27” imagines Fredrik Nordin fronting Fu Manchu and “Money to Burn” rolls its second-half jam to a finish like a lost Kyuss B-side? — but as most of the album’s tracks run in the three-to-four-minute range, there’s an abiding sense of casual cool, and it’s rooted in the swing of Malanowski‘s drums before it can be built on with the deceptively light fuzz in the guitars as bolstered by the bass and the laid-back delivery of Ziemba‘s vocals.
From the loud-then-quiet noise that introduces opening track “Superorfeo,” which is among the speedier of the pieces included, through the breaking-apart wash that is the culmination of Lazy in closer “Between Heaven and Hell,” the band does nothing so much as toss off one memorable song after another like it’s no big deal, the second track “Extraterrestrial Hideout Seeker” emblematic of their ability to take garage rock push and desert tonality with more than an edge of swagger and build songs that, while largely traditional in their verse-chorus structures, nonetheless felt open and languid regardless of tempo, resulting in a vibe that was all Elvis Deluxe‘s own and that few bands I’ve come across from Poland or otherwise have been able to capture in quite the same way. If it needs to be said — and over 15 years later, maybe it does — the album was not lazy. In fact it was rife with movement.
To wit, the count-in-and-go of “Perfect Ride,” which sets its ambition in its title, is one of the more punkish cuts, maybe a bit of Demon Cleaner or Lowrider in there, as it definitely sounds aware of what stoner rock was at this point, but turned toward its own purposes, and off at a solid clip to do so. After the start-stop-and-roll of “27,” the outright nod of “Sleep Brings No Relief” taps …And the Circus Leaves Town-style bounce, but is given hints of psychedelia by the vocals, which sweetly contrast some of the rougher fuzz in the guitar and the buzzsaw wah solo (actually solos, since there are two lead layers there) that follows while the drums hold down the central progression they started with as though waiting for everyone else to rally around the verse again, which of course they do before a full-on distortion-wall push into a final chorus.
The subsequent “For the Soul” blends thrust and a tension-release bridge that’s not quite a chorus but not quite not, the mellow vocals pulling back from the harder delivery of the verse, the riff of which is delightfully twisty boogie rock, before it opens up again, resolidifying for its final stretch, topped with either synth or effects for good measure. Perhaps unsurprisingly, “Ready to Rage” goes even faster, and underscores its urgency with Little Richard piano strikes in its culmination, crashing out ahead of “Money to Burn” which starts with the bass and drums and is the longest track at a still-manageable 6:49, using that time to showcase nearly every strength that has worked to Lazy‘s benefit thus far, including a bit of weirdo jamming skillfully brought around to a righteous but not overblown finish.
Placed between that jam and the closer, “The Mountain” feels somewhat like an afterthought, but isn’t, as the second half of the song reveals another highlight melody in the layered vocals to go along with its engaging hook before giving over directly to “Between Heaven and Hell” as it might have done on stage. And “Between Heaven and Hell” is blown out even before its blowout, rising to a crescendo of noise that borders on the caustic before it fades out to cap the record. Even in that moment, Elvis Deluxe maintain their complete lack of pretense and easygoing mentality — like, “Oh the universe is collapsing on itself now? yeah that’s fine” — to the very last, letting it be a defining aspect of a debut that demonstrates nothing if not a purposeful declaration of who they were as a band.
And again, they’d build on that with Favourite State of Mind before the kind-of half-album that was The Story So Far, and to me, their second record always seemed to call for more of a follow-up than it got. Everybody is still alive and active musically, so never say never. Ziemba currently plays in The Heavy Clouds, Malanowski is in Wij, and Wojciech “Bert Trust” Trusewicz, who took over on guitar for Hejak in 2010, is in the Warsaw Afrobeat Orchestra, while Sierajewski started the hardcore punk outfit Czerwone Świnie in 2019. It’s not impossible they could come back together at some point — certainly there are many from their time doing so now, be it Mammoth Volume, Josiah or the aforementioned Lowrider and Dozer — and if they did, it would be a welcome return to be sure, and one would hope they’d get a bit of the respect at last that this record and the rest of their studio work diligently earned.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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Good morning. Everybody’s up. I got up at 4 with the alarm, The Pecan got up at 5:30, The Patient Mrs. about 15 minutes after that. It’s about 6:10 now and I’m just happy I managed to get the above done. These mornings I take what I can get.
Yesterday was a trip. I woke up at 2:30AM to go to the bathroom like the old man that I am — at least I woke up — and never got back to sleep. The kid took a Tae Kwon Do lesson yesterday afternoon — which he fucking loved — and it was a trip to be sure. Fun fact: I also did Tae Kwon Do for a few years as a kid, and unbeknownst to me, The Patient Mrs. booked him at the same school I went to when I was young. So I’m sitting there while the master is teaching The Pecan how to do a high block and I’m having flashbacks to when I was a little older than him doing the same thing. Different teacher, obviously. But yeah, weird. He wants to take classes. They’re expensive. We’ll see what happens.
This weekend is The Patient Mrs.’ birthday. I bought her present shortly after Xmas and it’s been nice to have that taken care of rather than hanging over my god damned head like it otherwise would be. We’re having my family over, as we will, while her sister and her sister’s family will come down from Connecticut next weekend. Gonna be a lot, but a hoot, which is pretty much how it goes with the loved ones. My entire family gets high now, which I think is hilarious. If you’d told my 18-year-old, just-got-busted-for-possession ass that someday I’d be asking my mom if she needs any edibles, well, I might believe it but I’d certainly be more pissed about having gotten arrested in the first place back then. But anyway, the slowdown of anxiety and general brain intensity is good for all of us, I think. I’ll gladly slough deeper into middle age with a goofy grin rather than my generally wretched, cruelly lucid state of self-loathing. Largely to myself, I’ve been thinking of it as a brain break, and in that regard, it both feels better and is more effective than xanax.
Next week is packed. I’m triple-booked for Tuesday, which is Valentine’s Day. Lot of love to go around, apparently. The rest of the week is full too, which is daunting but barring disaster I should be able to get through it alright. Does not allow for much fuckoff time, though, which is like mana to me. Also a Gimme Metal show next Friday, so I need to turn that in, and the PostWax liner notes for the REZN/Vinnum Sabbathi collaboration are coming due this weekend. I’ve only been talking about needing to bang those out for, oh, four months or so, so yes, it’s probably time to do so. I’ve also just been asked to finish an interview I started a while back that goes pretty deep into some of the back end work involved in this site and my personal history, so yeah. Busy, I guess, is the bottom line. Apparently that’s how I like it. Who doesn’t want to feel completely overwhelmed like all the time? Certainly no one I know.
Did you listen to that Westing track? Did you listen to Polymoon? Bastard Sword earlier today? I’ve resolved to dedicate more of my time to albums I choose rather than what comes across in premiere pitches and things like that, so that’s how you get Polymoon and Mathew’s Hidden Museum at the start of this week. I’ve been feeling a bit like I’m shouting into the void about records like that, but I’m enjoying writing about them, and in the next few weeks as we move into March, I’ve locked in album streams for the aforementioned REZN, Sandrider and Stoned Jesus, among others, and those are three of the best records I’ve heard so far this year, so I’m stoked on the alignment there. This coming week, I’ll also premiere a video from The Machine’s new LP, which is a gem. That’s one of the three slated for Tuesday. Indeed, lovely.
I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Have fun, hydrate, watch your head, get laid if you can and the vibe is right. I’ll be back on Monday with a L’Ira del Baccano video premiere and more besides. Good stuff to come. Thanks again for reading.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 3rd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
If one considers the cover art’s pipe-organ bongs emitting purple smoke, stoner pinup, Satanskull on keys — and of course he has a beard — a red sky far back and all the pot leaves, then yeah, you could probably say Dopelord‘s Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of record. The sophomore full-length from the Warsaw-based four-piece was self-released on April 24, 2014, which one assumes is as close as they could get to 4/20 that year, and fair enough.
Comprised of five tracks and running a tidy 40 minutes, with a sample about a sabbath at the start of the hooky “Addicted to Black Magick,” some standalone horror piano at the end of “Preacher Electrick,” a languid slog even behind the buzzsaw solo in the second half of “Acid Trippin'” that calls back to Black Sabbath‘s “Snowblind” before the tempo finally kicks up to its winding finish, the sense that “Green Plague” is falling apart even as it runs at a gallop reminiscent specifically of “Into the Void,” or the way the 11-and-a-half-minute finale “Pass the Bong” seems to lay it all on the line in its combination of Electric Wizard and Sleep influences, pulling together a Jus Oborn-style vocal over tonality that rests nicely alongside Sleep‘s “The Clarity,” which was released in July of the same year.
Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult — which certainly could be the name of a catalog I’d look forward to getting in the mail every month — codifies the ultra-stoner foundation Dopelord put forth on 2012’s Magick Rites (review here) and is a crucial moment for the band, coming at a time when the next generation of meme-ready weedian heavy was really just taking shape. Part of the record’s brilliance is in speaking to the subculture from within the subculture, as believe it or not, not everyone in the world is going to look at a bong pipe organ and understand that translates to the thick walls of fuzz distortion wrought by guitarist/lead vocalist Paweł Mioduchowski, guitarist Grzegorz Pawłowski, bassist/vocalist Piotr Zin and drummer Grzesiek “Xerxes” Wilpiszewski (currently in Black Tundra) or know immediately what planet that red sky is on.
Stoner doom is not the only subgenre under the heavy metal umbrella that preaches to the converted — see all, yes all, thrash metal since about 1989 — but the sense of Dopelord being fans of the style as well as players, rather than distancing themselves from it to pretend toward some kind of artistic objectivity, which is a fantasy at best in 99 percent of cases, is palpable throughout, and their revelry of nod becomes all the more accessible to the listener for the fact that the band is actually enjoying what they do.
And from the still-goes-where-you-think-it’s-going-but-twists-on-the-road-to-get-there changes in “Addicted to Black Magick” through the subversive critique buried in the lumber of “Preacher Electrick” — I saw Dopelord in October and before they played “Hail Satan” from 2020’s Sign of the Devil (review here), Mioduchowski noted from the stage that they could get arrested for playing that kind of song in a church in their home country; “Preacher Electrick” feels like the prototype on which that’s built — as the record moves into that three-song mega-dig of doomed riffs and hazy vibes, in “Preacher Electrick” (8:52), “Acid Trippin'” (7:39) and “Green Plague” (7:29), the roll they conjure coming out of the album’s opener is deepened, stretched out, beat up and chugged into oblivion across this span of tracks, listenable and melodic but never failing to speak to the style, is the heart of Dopelord‘s righteous in self-awareness.
That is to say, they know what they’re doing as they enjoy it, and whether it’s the black arts, the riff worship, or the weed cult, the vibe in the album is celebratory even as the riffing that leads the way through so much of it is downer-doomed and baked to the nines. It’s not so much “drop out of life with bong in hand” as it is, “we already dropped out of life with bong in hand, we recommend you do the same immediately, in fact, here’s an extra bong we have lying around, why don’t you take it and come party with us for a bit?” As invitations go, one could do far, far worse.
Whether or not you get the VHS-horror references tucked into the lyrics of “Addicted to Black Magick” — Riding with the Devil, anyone? — or get swept up in the is-that-an-extra-layer-of-drums headfuckery of noise in “Green Plague,” Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult remains brazen in its adherence to the tenets of genre, breaking the fourth wall a bit with a knowing wink directed toward its listenership, but clearly executed with a love of the heft it makes even in that chaotic wah-swirl as “Green Plague” moves toward its residual feedback culmination and “Pass the Bong” slams its massive initial crashes as if to announce you’ve arrived at the gates of the Riff-Filled Land with Al Cisneros as St. Peter, the consuming spirit of fun is reaffirmed in gloriously voluminous fashion.
Yes, fun. Among the greatest innovations of the generation of stoner heavy to which Dopelord belongs is to remember that for both those playing it and those hearing, this kind of music can be a good time, celebrating the legacy of the style and inherently adding something new to it in tone, method and construction of its own songs. Coming off their debut, Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult was a moment of realization for Dopelord, and for all its overbearing plod, there are flourishes and details throughout, be it vocal patterning, a run on bass, or what seems to be an extra layer of snare drum, or even just the way “Pass the Bong” seems to decide to swing on a whim in its final couple minutes on the way to the inevitably noisy ending, the is-as-does weedism of Dopelord is no less infectious than their catchiest chorus, and nine years after its initial release — there have been other reissues and pressings along the way — Black Arts, Riff Worship & Weed Cult speaks to a time of heavy resurgence not just for its native Polish underground, but for the heavier realms of fuzz as a whole. If it isn’t yet, it’s the kind of thing that those who were there will at some point be nostalgic about.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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On Sesame Street this morning, they’re using science to make a rainbow. There are human beings who would find such a thing threatening, and I don’t mind telling you those people are fucking idiots. No, that’s not a hot take, but it’s true just the same.
The Pecan got up at 5:15 this morning, made his way downstairs, and believe it or not was more interested in watching tv on my laptop than letting me finish writing the above. And as I was in the bathroom moments ago, number one, I could hear him in the living room yelling, “Daddy, yogurt!” as though I’d either forgotten or not told him I was hitting the can first. At least I didn’t get punched when I “finally” got back to the couch with the coveted Siggi’s vanilla. In a bit of a tyrant phase, we are.
The Patient Mrs., meanwhile, sleeps, and where I might otherwise get her up so I can go swimming, I’ll let her get whatever rest she can since she was out last night having dinner with a friend in Jersey City. I’ll go later, or tomorrow, it doesn’t matter. I do need to buy more yogurt at the Wegmans by the gym though, so that’s gonna weigh on my brain until it gets done, as that kind of thing does. Also, I missed taking out the garbage yesterday and I’m a little furious at myself for it.
My neurologist put me on Adderall, for ADHD, presumably. I started on 5mg last month, which was nothing, and moved up to 10mg this month, which by the way is also not a magic bullet for shutting up an apparently persistent sense of panic in my brain. This and 150mg of Wellbutrin for depression, along with a slew of vitamins, are the current morning regimen. I don’t like Wellbutrin and don’t think it helps, but I take it because I’m told to, and without my support whatever would become of those poor pharmaceutical companies? They should have a Bandcamp Friday for pills.
Speaking of, it’s Bandcamp Friday. I got a bit of cash from merch sales so have been enjoying that. Thanks if you bought a shirt or anything: http://mibk.bigcartel.com/products.
While I’m dropping plugs, new Gimme show at 5PM Eastern. Playlist will be posted before this is, and go here to stream it: http://gimmemetal.com.
Before I go make toast for the next stage of The Pecan’s breakfast, I’d like to thank you for the love this week as regards The Obelisk’s 14th anniversary. It doesn’t feel like all that long, but we’re heading toward 16,000 posts, so I guess my perspective on that is a bit warped. I’m pretty sure I’ve still missed more good stuff than I’ve caught, but I’m doing my best, gonna continue with that. In any case, the response was appreciated. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one getting something out of this.
Up and down week. Most are. Last weekend was crazy busy and I’m hoping this one will be less so. You know, once the sun finally comes up today.
Whatever you’re up to, have a great and safe time. Have fun, hydrate, watch your head. Next week I’m reviewing Polymoon and there’s a bunch of other stuff going on that I need to organize, so I’m gonna go do that. Okay. Thanks again.
