Posted in Whathaveyou on March 5th, 2018 by JJ Koczan
Cheers to hazy psych-gazers The Dunes on inking a deal to release their debut album through Oak Island Records. The Kozmik Artifactz-distributed imprint will handle putting out the Adelaide, Australia, sextet’s long-player sometime later this year, but if you’re clever and make it all the way to the bottom of this post, you can get a load of The Dunes‘ new single, “(Just Because You’re Not Being Followed Doesn’t Mean You’re Not) Paranoid,” which basks in depth of mix and repetitions of the word “paranoid” while guitars space out and hum their way through three and a half minutes of groovy-man-groovy fuzzernalia. Worth your time, and you know I value your time.
The PR wire brought word of the signing:
Oak Island Records Announce New Signing – “The Dunes”
We are super stoked to be working with The Dunes on the release of their debut album, which will be release later this year on stunning vinyl.
The Dunes have quickly gained a reputation in Adelaide, Australia, as the town’s leading drone-fuzz-psych band, incorporating haunting guitar lines with reverb-drenched vocals, fuzzed out bass and 60s inspired keys and synth. With their debut full length album about to be released, it builds on their previous work and captures the bands true live sound; extended jams and repetitive noise that opens the mind and expands the consciousness.
Recorded and Engineered in Adelaide SA by Jon McNicol at Twin Earth Studios (Asteroid Belt, Hydromedusa), and Produced, Mixed and Mastered in Austin, TX by Brett Orrison at Spaceflight Records / The Austin Recording Service (The Black Angels, Widespread Panic, Think No Think, Christian Bland & The Revelators, MIEN), the new album is set for AUS release on garage rock label Off The Hip and US/UK release on Oak Island Records.
Speaking about the signing, The Dunes said:
“The Dunes are very excited to be working with Oak Island Records for our first full length album. We have tried to capture our sound as best as possible on this record, working closely with Jon McNicol at Twin Earth to record to tape and then bounce the tracks over to Brett Orrison in Austin, TX where he has done an amazing mix – its a dream to work with people who understand our musical vision. We have wanted to get our music out into the wide world – and thanks to Oak Island this is now possible. Long live the fuzz. Long live the drone.”
The Dunes are: Stacie Reeves (vocals/ percussion) Matt Reiner (guitar) Adam Vanderwerf (bass) Jess Honeychurch (keys) Brett Walter (synth) Clair O’Boyle (drums)
Posted in Whathaveyou on April 5th, 2017 by JJ Koczan
Fuzz-coated Australian heavy blues rockers Kitchen Witch will release their self-titled debut LP via Kozmik Artifactz on April 14. That’s pretty soon. Like less that two weeks from now. Sorry for the lack of heads up on this one, but we’re still technically in the preorder phase, so it’s not like you missed out if you want to grab a copy. The 12″, which will be pressed in a total edition of 316, is made up of songs from the Adelaide four-piece’s two prior EPs, 2016’s Back to the Mud, which you can hear in the Bandcamp player below, and 2015’s Trouble, from which the last couple tracks were left off. Hey, sometimes you run out of room. It happens.
Australia’s heavy boom continues unabated.
Details from the PR wire:
Kitchen Witch set to release self-titled debut album this spring via Kozmik Artifactz
Australian stoner-blues rockers, Kitchen Witch, are set to release their debut full length this spring via Kozmik Artifactz. Comprised of tracks from the bands original self-released EPs, “Kitchen Witch” is a fuzzy, droning, soulful record that perfectly captures what Kitchen Witch are all about.
With their EPs having amassed over 10k plays on YouTube, Kitchen Witch are set to make waves this year. Fans of Royal Thunder, Blues Pills and Kyuss will be at home here as Kitchen Witch deliver a confident full length debut.
‘Kitchen Witch’ will be available on high quality 180g vinyl through Kozmik Artifactz on April 14th, 2017.
VINYL FACTZ – Plated & pressed on high performance vinyl at Pallas/Germany – limited & coloured 180g vinyl – 166x green/white marbled (Exclusive mailorder edition, handnumbered) – 150x black – 300gsm gatefold cover – special vinyl mastering
TRACKS 1. Slipstream 2. Third Eye 3. Delusion 4. Like Blood 5. Smoking 6. Trouble 7. Don’t Waste Your Time 8. O’Lord
KITCHEN WITCH are: Vocals – Georgie Cosson Bass – Simon Elliott Guitar – Conor Kinsella Drums – John Russo
Posted in Reviews on March 30th, 2017 by JJ Koczan
From harsh doom to urban pastoralism to heavy blues rock to rolling doom nonetheless metallic in its defiance, Day Four of the Quarterly Review spins around a swath of styles and hopefully, hopefully, finds something you dig in the doing. It’s been a long week already. You know it. I know it. But it’s also been really good to dig into this stuff and I know I’ve found a few records that have made their way onto the already-ongoing 2017 lists — best short releases, debuts, albums, etc. — so to say it’s been worth it is, as ever, an understatement. Today likewise has gems to offer, so I won’t delay.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Unearthly Trance, Stalking the Ghost
Brooklyn’s Unearthly Trance make a somewhat unexpected reentry with Stalking the Ghost (on Relapse), their sixth album. In the years since 2010’s V (review here), guitarist/vocalist Ryan Lipynsky has delved into a wide variety of extreme genres, from the blackened fare of The Howling Wind to the deathly-doom of Serpentine Path, in which Unearthly Trance bassist Jay Newman and drummer Darren Verni also shared tenure, but reuniting as Unearthly Trance feels like a significant step for the three-piece, and on tracks like “Dream State Arsenal” and the darkly post-metallic “Lion Strength,” they remind of what it was that made them such a standout in the first place while demonstrating that their years away have done nothing to dull the surehandedness of their approach. At eight tracks/52 minutes, Stalking the Ghost is a significant dirge to undertake, but Unearthly Trance bring pent-up anguish to bear across this varied swath of punishing tracks, and reassert their dominance over an aesthetic sphere that, even after all this time, is thoroughly their own.
Probably a smart move on the part of Heavy Traffic spearhead guitarist Ian Caddick and drummer/vocalist Tav Palumbo to swap coasts from Santa Cruz to Brooklyn ahead of putting together their sixth (!) full-length in three years and Twin Earth Records debut, Plastic Surgery. Cali is awash in heavy psych anyway and Brooklyn’s been at a deficit (as much as it’s at a deficit of anything) since space forerunners Naam became one with the cosmos, so even apart from the acquisition of bassist David Grzedzinki and drummer Dan Bradica, it’s a solid call, and one finds the fruits yielded on Plastic Surgery’s dream-fuzzed blend of heft and roll, heady jams like “See Right Through,” the oh-you-like-feedback-well-here’s-all-the-feedback “Broth Drain” and winding “Medicated Bed” finding a place where shoegaze and psychedelia meet ahead of the low-end-weighted closing title-cut and the bonus track “White and Green,” which finishes with suitable push and swirl to mark a welcome and vibe-soaked arrival for the band. Hope you enjoy the Eastern Seabord. It could use you.
In the second Saturn album, Beyond Spectra, one can hear one of retro rock’s crucial next movements taking place. The Swedish four-piece, who debuted on Rise Above with 2014’s Ascending and return with a periodically explosive 10-track/45-minute outing here, find a niche for themselves in adding dual-guitar NWOBHM elements to ‘70s-style (also ‘10s-style) boogie, as on the scorching “Still Young” or opener “Orbital Command.” They’re not the only ones doing it – Rise Above alums Horisont come to mind readily – but they’re doing it well, and the last three years have clearly found them refining their approach to arrive at the tightness in the shuffle of “Wolfsson” and the creeping Priestism of “Helmet Man” later on. I’ll give bonus points for their embracing the idea of going completely over the top in naming a song “Electrosaurus Sex,” but by the time they get down to closing duo “Silfvertape” and “Sensor Data,” I’m left thinking of the subdued intro to “Orbital Command” and the interlude “Linkans Delight” and wondering if there isn’t a way to bring more of that dynamic volume and tempo breadth into the songwriting as a whole. That would really be far out. Maybe they’ll get there, maybe they won’t. Either way, Beyond Spectra, like its predecessor, makes a largely inarguable case for Saturn’s potential.
Measuring its impact between doomly traditionalism and attitudinal fuckall, Lucifer’s Fall’s II: Cursed and Damned (on Nine Records) is a doom-for-doomers affair that tops 55 minutes with its nine tracks, recalling Dio-era Sabbathian gallop on opener “Mother Superior” and landing a significant blow with the slow-rolling nine-minute push of “The Necromancer.” Shades of Candlemass, Reverend Bizarre, and the most loyal of the loyalists show themselves throughout, but whether it’s the crawl in the first half of “Cursed Priestess” or the blistering rush of the clarion centerpiece “(Fuck You) We’re Lucifer’s Fall,” there’s an undercurrent of punk in the five-piece’s take that lends an abiding rawness to even the album’s most grueling moments. One looks to find a middle ground in songs like “The Mountains of Madness” and closer “Homunculus,” but Lucifer’s Fall instead offer NWOBHM-style guitar harmonics and soaring vocals, respectively, only pushing their stylistic breadth wider, playing by and breaking rules they’re clearly setting for themselves rather than working toward outside expectation. As a result, II: Cursed and Damned keeps its fist in the air for the duration, middle finger up.
Over the course of six-minute opener “A New Architecture,” guitarist Trevor Shelley de Brauw gradually moves the listener from abrasive noise to sweet, folkish acoustic guitar backed by amplified wavelengths. It’s a slowly unfolding change, patiently done, and it works in part to define Uptown (on The Flenser), the Pelican guitarist’s six-song solo debut long-player. Noise and drone make themselves regulars, and there’s a steady experimentalism at root in pieces like “Distinct Frequency,” the low-end hum and strum of “You Were Sure,” and the should’ve-been-on-the-soundtrack-to-Arrival “Turn up for What,” which unfurls a linear progression from minimalism to consuming swell in eight minutes ahead of the more actively droning 11-minute sendoff “From the Black Soil Poetry and Song Sprang,” but de Brauw manages to keep a human core beneath via both the occasional acoustic layer and through moments where a piece is being palpably manipulated, à la the spacious distorted churn of “They Keep Bowing.” I’m not sure how Uptown didn’t wind up on Neurot, but either way, it’s an engaging exploration of textures, and one hopes it won’t be de Brauw’s last work in this form.
Someone in Scuzzy Yeti has roots in metal, and the good money’s on it being vocalist Chris Wells. Joined in the Troy, New Hampshire, five-piece by guitarists Brad Decatur and Jason Lawrence (ex-Skrogg), bassist Wayne Munson and drummer Josh Turnbull, Wells casts a sizable frontman presence across the five-tracks of Scuzzy Yeti’s self-titled debut EP, belting out “Westward” and “BTK” as the band behind him hones a blend of classic heavy rock and doom. The sound is more reminiscent of Janne Christoffersson-era Spiritual Beggars than what one might expect out of New England, and the band amass some considerable momentum as centerpiece “Conqueror” and the shorter shuffle “Knees in the Breeze” push toward slower, lead-soaked closer “Flare,” which finds the lead guitar stepping up to meet Wells head-on. They might have some work to do in finding a balance between the stylistic elements at play, but for a first outing, Scuzzy Yeti shows all the pieces are there and are being put into their rightful place, and the result is significant, marked potential.
The insistent push from punctuated Denver trio Urn.’s self-titled debut demo/EP is enough to remind one of the days when the primary impression of Mastodon wasn’t their complexity, but the raw savagery with which that complexity was delivered. Urn. – the three-piece of Scott Schulman, Graham Wesselhoff and Jacob Archuleta – work in some elements of more extreme metal to “Rat King” after opener “Breeder,” both songs under three minutes and successfully conveying an intense thrust. The subsequent “Stomach” ranges further and is the longest cut at 4:45, but loses none of its focus as it winds its way toward closer “To the Grave,” which in addition to maintaining the nigh-on-constant kick drum that has pervaded the three tracks prior, offers some hints of lumbering stomp to come. As a first sampling, Urn.’s Urn. is a cohesive aesthetic blast setting in motion a progression that will be worth following as it develops. Call it rager metal and try not to spill your beverage while you windmill, you wild headbanger.
2016 found San Diego aggressors Nebula Drag making their self-titled, self-released debut (review here) with a record that seemed to work in willful defiance of their hometown’s psychedelic underground while at the same time occasionally nodding to it. The forebodingly-titled Always Dying three-song EP does likewise, launching with a vengeance on “Crosses” before burying the vocals and spacing out behind the crashes of the more languid-rolling title-track and giving a bit of both sides with the four-minute closer “Flying Fuckers.” It’s almost as if the three-piece of Corey Quintana, bassist Mike Finneran and drummer Stephen Varns, having thus completed their first album, decided to boil it down to its essential stylistic components and the result of that was this 14-minute outing. An intriguing prospect, but it could also be these were leftovers from the prior session with Jordan Andreen at Audio Design Recording and putting them up for a free download was an easy way to give them some purpose. In any case, if you haven’t yet been introduced to the band, Always Dying is an efficient telling of their story thus far.
If their moniker doesn’t have you immediately running through the most legendary of cheat codes, congratulations on being born after 1990. Cleveland burl-sludge metallers Contra make their full-length debut on respected purveyor Robustfellow with the 10-track/41-minute Deny Everything, and if it sounds like they have their shit together – at least sound-wise – it should make sense given the pedigree of drummer Aaron Brittain (ex-Rue), bassist/guitarist Adam Horwatt (So Long Albatross), guitarist Chris Chiera (ex-Sofa King Killer) and vocalist Larry Bent (ex-Don Austin). Be it established that songs like “Snake Goat” and “Son of Beast” are nobody’s first time at the sludge rodeo. Fair enough. Doesn’t mean Contra don’t establish their own personality in the overarching fuckall and total lack of pretense throughout Deny Everything – hell, seven-minute closer “Shrimp Cocktail” proves that on its own – just that that personality has roots. What Contra wants to do with them still kind of seems up in the air, but something about these tracks makes me think the band likes it that way. See the aforementioned “fuckall.”
Comprised of four songs tracked live in the trio’s native Córdoba at 440 Estudio, the self-titled debut EP from Argentine trio IAH – guitarist Mauricio Condon, bassist Juan Pablo Lucco and drummer José Landín – would seem destined to catch the attention of South American Sludge Records if it already hasn’t. In the interim, the three-piece have made the instrumental EP available as a free download and its unpretentious heavy psychedelics and edge of rock-minded thrust on opener “Cabalgan los Cielos” and the early going of closer “Eclipsum” more than justify their intention to spread the word as much as possible. Set to a balance of post-rock guitar, the bassline of “Stolas” carries a progressive inflection, and the fuzz that emerges halfway into second track “Ouroboros” shows a desert rock influence that blends well into its surroundings as a part of a richer sonic entity. A nascent but palpable chemistry at work across its 26 minutes, IAH’s IAH could portend expansive ideas to come, and one hopes it does precisely that.
It’s easy to tell right off the bat that Australian traditional doom outfit Rote Mare are well versed in the ways of their forebears. What began as a one-man project for guitarist/vocalist Phil Howlett, the band released seven CDR demos between 2005 and 2009, and after evolving into a full four-piece, wasted no time in issuing the Sorrows Path EP and the subsequent Serpents of the Church long-player via Altsphere Productions. The album, which came out toward the end of last year, consciously offers grand paeans to Black Sabbath and Celtic Frost, and winds up in the process having plenty in common with bands like Reverend Bizarre and Apostle of Solitude, who took and take a similar guitar-led, sans-frills approach, letting riffs and melodies carry across the ideas and moods they want to convey. In the case of Rote Mare, the mood is pretty singular: Doomed. Five of the total seven tracks on Serpents of the Church are over 10 minutes long – centerpiece “Funeral Song” hits 14:36 – and though the pace varies somewhat, it’s mostly from crawling to lumbering to creepy. With a total runtime of 76:20, Rote Mare’s first full-length as a complete band is a cumbersome affair. Howlett is joined in the band by guitarist Sean Wiskin, bassist Jess Erceg and drummer Ben Dodunski, and together they plod through the songs, mostly led by the guitar (the aforementioned centerpiece is an exception in this regard), and though it doesn’t lack personality, it’s a long trip to make and a long time to be drenched in Rote Mare’s woes. Serpents of the Church (as opposed to, one assumes, its “servants”) probably could have been two full-lengths and no one would’ve batted an eye. Though that kind of glut of material generally speaks of some self-indulgence on the part of the band involved, none of these tracks feel overwritten, so it may just be a case of Rote Mare, and Howlett as the one who’s probably still the guiding force despite having brought in the other three members, continuing an already established prolific nature in this form. So be it.
“Funeral Song” and “The Martyr,” which between them account for a full 27 minutes of listening time, provide a fitting summation of what Serpents of the Church is all about. Touches of Trouble show up in Howlett’s riffing, and his tradeoffs between sorrowful melodic singing and gruffer shouts, especially in “The Martyr,” remind of Chuck Brown of Apostle of Solitude, but Rote Mare seem less concerned with carving out a highly individualized niche in doom than with paying homage to their favorite bands via riffs and crashes. I’ve heard far worse done with less noble intentions, and if Serpents of the Church has anything at all, it has its heart in the right place. The first thing you hear on the record, for example, is the slow riff that becomes the central figure of the opening title-track, and as much as the already-noted later two tracks summarize the scope of the album as a whole, that initial riff tells a lot of the tale. It comes through a rough but relatively flat production and sounds downtrodden in the doomed tradition. It’s not long before Howlett’s vocals kick in – the second guitar seems to be the final element to arrive – and the slow rolling groove continues as he switches to a throatier approach during the chorus. The riffs are relatively simple, and if you’re familiar with the genre of traditional doom or have ever seen the inside of the Bizarre Reverend’s rectory, then a lot of what Rote Mare are doing here won’t be shocking. “Crossroads,” which follows the titular opener, follows a similar course, marking its territory early on a grooving doom riff and building around it, picking up its pace and filling out the sound somewhat later on, but keeping more or less the same progression throughout that process. Hey, if you can’t take slow, agonizing plod, you might as well pack it in as regards doom.
Here I was, wondering when someone would make a song that included — nay, featured — the line “Cryogenics won’t mend a broken heart,” when along comes weirdo Aussie four-piece Van Cleef with the song “Dalek Gulch” to impart that very knowledge. Ask and ye shall rock.
The track comes off the Adelaide outfit’s self-released (I think) full-length debut, Where the River Meets the Rock, which was issued in December and is available now and for a limited time on Van Cleef‘s Bandcamp page as a pay-what-you-want-including-nothing download. The video — which rules, as you’ll see if you haven’t yet pressed play — was made completely by the band with no outside directors or anything like that. Good on them and their video editing skills. As vocalist Lord GordNords (yup, really) says in the song, “Science: It can be your friend.”
So yeah, bring on the Devo comparisons. I think this stuff is fun.
