I had two ideas in my head for this episode. The first was to do a stuff-to-look-forward-to-next-year playlist, which I did, and the second was to do a me-spending-your-money-on-Black-Friday-Bandcamp-recommendations edition, which I did not do.

Was it the right choice? I don’t know, but it kind of feels like a victory for the good guys every time I get to play All Souls, or King Buffalo, or Sasquatch — or Gozu, or Conan, Stöner, Colour Haze, etc. — and there’s some small chance anybody will hear it, so I won’t exactly say I regret going the way I did. There will be other Bandcamp Fridays, I think.

And to be perfectly honest, I like thinking about this stuff, about new records coming out. I like to wonder what bands will come up with, song-wise, sound-wise, how things will have changed since their last record, how the identity of a group can shift over time. Think of High on Fire. Think of Dozer! A new Dozer album after 14 years. Who the hell knows what that’s going to sound like?

So yeah, that’s what I went with. And since preorder is up for some of this stuff — 40 Watt Sun, the PostWax series of which Dozer are a part, Naxatras, Messa, Earthless — I guess maybe you could spend some money anyway here. Plus there’s always older records to buy. It’s a big planet. There are a lot of albums on it.

Thanks for listening if you do and/or reading. I hope you enjoy.

The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at: http://gimmemetal.com.

Full playlist:

The Obelisk Show – 11.26.21

The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is Dec. 10 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.

Gimme Metal website

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Los Angeles heavy rockers and band-you-should-be-listening-to All Souls are currently embroiled in the recording process for their nine-song next album at Total Annihilation Studios — apparently located under a church — working with producer Alain Johannes (Chris Cornell, Queens of the Stone Age, his own rad solo stuff, and so on) to follow-up 2020’s Songs for the End of the World (review here) and their 2018 self-titled debut (review here). Their third long-player is high on my personal gotta-hear list for next year, and over the weekend they posted an in-studio clip of the guitar tracking in progress, having already put to bed the drums and bass. Progress being made, in other words. That’s the best kind of progress!

They’re apparently doing more regular updates via Patreon, but they sent this clip along the Bandcamp email list and there have been photos and some short clips along the way on other sociable medias as well, so one could hardly accuse them of lacking transparency as regards the process. You don’t really get much a sample of the material — it’s not like Antonio Aguilar is riffing out through a whole song or anything — but you get to see him trying some cool stuff out and making some weirdo sounds, ‘using the studio as an instrument,’ as it were, and that’s only encouraging as regards the shape the songs will take when they’re done.

Also of note, you’ll see in the update below that there’s mention of All Souls having recently played their first show as a trio. I don’t know if that means guitarist Matt Price (also Behold! the Monolith) is out of the band or just off doing other stuff or whathaveyou, but I’ll be interested to see if he shows up on the record one way or another. Aguilar and bassist Meg Castellanos were enthusiastic about his having joined when we spoke earlier this year for a video interview. Alas, situations, fluidity. You know how it goes.

When you’re done spending a couple minutes behind the scenes, feel free to watch All Souls jam out in a van, see Alain Johannes absolutely lay waste to a solo that will reportedly appear on the track “Who Holds the Answer,” or just listen to Songs for the End of the World itself near the bottom of the post. Then go buy merch or something. Their shirts have cats on them. Why not pugs, I wonder?

However you go, enjoy:

All Souls, Day 4 Recording at Total Annihilation

Greetings from the recording studio!

We are on Day 4 at Total Annihilation Studios in Los Angeles with Alain Johannes producing. We have completed basic tracking. Alain and Antonio are in the midst of adding guitar layers and solos and we should be starting vocals tomorrow. Here is a behind the scenes video from today.

If you are interested in following the process more closely, we will be posting on our Patreon page videos of recording each individual song as parts are being laid down, and vocals get added. Lots of pre-production videos are already up there, along with song sketches, our first live video clip as a 3 piece from a few weeks ago, tour and studio dispatches, member features and more: https://www.patreon.com/AllSouls

thank you for following us and our music!

All Souls, Alain Johannes slaughters guitar solo for “Who Holds the Answer”

All Souls, Orange Jam/Jam in the Van

All Souls, Songs for the End of the World (2020)

All Souls on Facebook

All Souls on Twitter

All Souls on Instagram

All Souls on Bandcamp

All Souls website

Two reasons for posting this video, right out of the gate. One, it gives me an excuse to put on the second All Souls album, 2020’s Songs for the End of the World (review here). Two, it gives me an excuse to send the band a message and say in my not so subtle way, hey-where’s-the-next-one?, which, yes, I did this morning.

There’s progress on that front, as according to bassist/backing vocalist Meg Castellanos, the band — she, guitarist/vocalist Antonio Aguilar, drummer Tony Tornay and guitarist Matt Price (Behold! the Monolith), who’ll make his debut with them on their next outing — have finished writing their third full-length and next week will begin pre-production with Alain Johannes helming. The band played the new song “Who Holds the Answer” in June as part of their ‘Virtual Volumes’ live stream (review here) with Fatso Jetson, with whom they share Tornay, and though that was actually Price‘s first public performance with the group, one could hear the interplay of his and Aguilar‘s guitars on what was the set-opener and it was only encouraging as to where the All Souls dynamic might be headed, particularly with the complexity of the melody involved.

It’s easy to daydream and consider what Johannes might bring to All Souls as a producer in terms of a fullness of sound and highlighting their more melodic side, which of course showed up plenty on Songs for the End of the World as well, but for now it’s pretty much daydreams, and that’s fair. New album next year. Maybe they’ll be able to tour for it. Maybe I’ll get to see All Souls in 2022. That’d be good, and hey, weirder things have happened.

So a found-footage video is welcome by me, and maybe as they think about embarking on their next outing, this is their way of bidding farewell to Songs for the End of the World. Like so many killer albums issued over the last 18-months, it hasn’t gotten a fair shake in the way it normally would — i.e. with the band touring to support it — but all you can do is move forward in the most productive way possible, and clearly that’s what All Souls are doing. Can’t wait to hear more of their new stuff.

For now, enjoy:

All Souls, “Death Becomes Us” official video

Meg made a video for our song “Death Becomes Us” using found footage. This song is off our album Songs for the End of the World.

Get your copy at:
www.allsoulsband.bigcartel.com!!!

All Souls, Orange Jam/Jam in the Van

All Souls, Songs for the End of the World (2020)

All Souls on Facebook

All Souls on Twitter

All Souls on Instagram

All Souls on Bandcamp

All Souls website

Over the course of the last year-plus, there have been livestreams from practice spaces, concert halls, city parks, national parks, recreational vehicles, and of course, (mostly) empty venues. There have been one-offs and multi-day festivals. We’ve been up, we’ve been down, inside, out, all around. Multi-camera, shot-on-phone, sometimes both. All of it. I’m sure if you sat own and thought for a couple minutes you’d be able to come up with something no one had done yet, but it would take some effort.

It was kind of refreshing to tune into ‘Virtual Volumes’ this weekend and find it tossing off concerns of novelty. This was bands hitting it, period. Total Annihilation Studios was the setting, and Fatso Jetson and All Souls indeed hit it, one and then the other. The proceedings were filmed in March, as All Souls‘ guitarist/vocalist Tony Aguilar and bassist/vocalist Meg Castellanos recently discussed here, and with a minimum of personnel involved made even one fewer by the fact that the two outfits share drummer Tony Tornay.

Tornay has pulled precisely this double-duty on tour before, and it’s safe to assume he got a drink of water or something between sets, even if that required momentary mask removal. Hard times, folks.

And not to sound flip about it either, because over 600,000 people have died in this country alone and the plague’s still going on even amid vaccines and reopenings and all. Livestreams never took the place of shows and shame on you if you thought they might, but they have served dual noble purposes in letting audiences support and engage with artists and helping artists with new work promote that work and not completely lose momentum owing to a breakdown of the touring infrastructure. I’ve felt bad for a lot of people in the last 15 months, among them bands with really good records who can’t do a damn thing with them.

To wit, All Souls. Their ‘Virtual Volumes’ set — well shot with multiple cameras and cool projection effects on a white-sheet background and featuring sound worthy of the live album they’ll release hopefully any minute now — follows on the heels of their 2020 second album, Songs for the End of the World (review here), which just deserves more attention than it’s gotten. I don’t know how else to say it. I can slather on and on about the emotive weight of All Souls‘ songs, and certainly that’s resonant in the version of “You Just Can’t Win” they brought to the stream after the new song “Who Holds the Answer” — let alone fucking “Winds” — along with due tonal crunch. I can talk about the melodies, the craft, the nuance present even as they introduced new guitarist Matt Price (Behold! the Monolith), but the bottom line remains the same.

I don’t mind saying it bums me out to see bands do awesome things and not get a commensurate response. It’s part of why I’ve spent the last 12 and a half years doing this. Watching All Souls tear into “Sentimental Rehash” from the new album was just a reminder though of the fate of those who lie between styles. Too punk for rockers, too rock for punkers, too this and that.

Fuck that. They’re so good. People don’t know. How many bands are you gonna sit and watch play with masks on as a part of your Saturday and come out of it with no regrets? All Souls twisting around the leads of “Time Bomb” from the first record — 2018’s self-titled (review here) — almost frenetic but with Aguilar‘s voice cutting through that torrent in a melancholy, raw human presence. They well earn the fire and exploding lights at the finish. Psychedelic punk would be lucky if this was psychedelic punk.

Hilariously interspliced with some introductory vintage photos of Fatso Jetson? Three hotdogs in wrap-around rolls. And, those included, kind of told the story of the band over a couple minutes, from the raw desert trio of guitarist/vocalist Mario Lalli, bassist Larry Lalli and Tony Tornay on drums to the inclusion of Dino Lalli (now with a shaved head) on guitar, Vince Meghrouni on sax and so on, and eventually up to the moment, capping with shots of them tuning at Total Annihilation and masked outside. The video itself, mellow, black and white, Larry Lalli in a Karma to Burn shirt, unassuming. They opened with “Monoxide Dreams” from 2010’s Archaic Volumes (discussed here, review here), and held to that vibe throughout, running under half an hour like All Souls before them, but spending their time well.

As far as I can tell — for the Fatso Jetson catalog is a vast and many-storied thing — “Drifting off to Storybook Deth” was a new song, and it built to a lumbering psychedelic head with grace that came through fully in the studio setting, the two guitars intertwining, Dino closed eyes, in the zone, Mario‘s nose poking out of his bandana mask (soon pulled back up), vocals echoing, Larry and Tony holding it down up the middle. “Living All Over You” featured on the band’s stellar 2014 split with Herba Mate, Early Shapes (review here), and fit right in with the procession, subdued and melodic, and through “Long Deep Breaths,” the four-piece maintained the spirit of the thing. No lack of dynamic, you understand — even where not by blood, these guys are family — but weaving in gentler fashion through volume changes and sand-psych complexity.

A blowout finish was welcome in “Dream Homes” from 2016’s Idle Hands (review here) — quick but effective in rounding out with a reminder that punk’s the root beneath it all, whatever jazzy weirdness and quirk they might toss in along with it. There’s a quick minute of residual movement after the song ends — leftover rhythmic tension — and then the credits roll. Thanks for coming, drive safe.

I’ll spare you wax poetry about the persistence of human creativity in time of plague. You’ve heard it all in a million needless thinkpieces rendered with careful, hyper-literary eloquence. Blech. Give me rock and roll, please. I’ve seen Fatso Jetson. I’ve never seen All Souls, but I’d like to. This wasn’t a gig, but it was welcome, and it gave me another excuse to write about these bands and to watch them play, and I’m thankful for that. If livestreams are a marker of our times, one could do a lot fucking worse.

Fatso Jetson & All Souls, ‘Virtual Volumes’ teaser

All Souls on Facebook

All Souls on Twitter

All Souls on Instagram

All Souls on Bandcamp

All Souls website

Fatso Jetson on Facebook

Fatso Jetson on Twitter

Fatso Jetson on Instagram

Fatso Jetson website

Heavy Psych Sounds website

Heavy Psych Sounds on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds on Bandcamp

Stuff that’s been on my mind lately or came in recently and caught my fancy. Nothing really too tricky to how this one came together. Heavy Temple and All Souls are the two most recent interviews I’ve done, and the King Buffalo and Moon Coven and Vokonis and Whims of the Great Magnet are also things I’ve covered lately. Ditto Cavern Deep. Electric Moon I bought a shirt from the other day — they’re putting together a new comp of their studio work — and the Somnuri record continues to demolish.

Déhà and Seputus and Gateway are killer and more extreme, Slomatics are recording, the Wooden Veins record is out on The Vinyl Division and was a record I wanted to give more attention to, and yeah, as far as motivation goes, this is basically what’s been circling around in my head for the last two weeks. More than that in some cases.

Without waxing poetic, I guess that’s kind of the point of the show. Hear new music, share new music. It’s not the most ambitious goal I’ve undertaken, but not to put too fine a point on it, it is essentially the rule by which I govern everything I do here. Next episode has more of a united theme (I already turned the playlist in; look at me being ahead of the game for once), but I think this flows well just the same.

Thanks for listening and/or reading. I hope you enjoy.

The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmemetal.com

Full playlist:

The Obelisk Show – 06.11.21

The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is June 25 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.

Gimme Metal website

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On June 18, All Souls will oversee the airing of their ‘Virtual Volumes’ livestream. I know, we all miss shows and streams aren’t the same. Save it. They took the time to make the thing, even went so far as to make it their first gig with new guitarist Matt Price (Behold! the Monolith), and it’s awesome and not five hours long, so yeah, you can squeeze it into your busy life, trust me. They split the digital bill with Fatso Jetson, with whom they just so happen to share drummer Tony Tornay.

All Souls was founded by guitarist/vocalist Tony Aguilar and bassist/backing vocalist Meg Castellanos years after the putting to rest of their prior outfit together, Totimoshi, and with the acoustic-and-dance duo Alma Sangre between. Aguilar counts Alma Sangre, in which he sung in Spanish and in Mexican folk traditional styles, as pivotal to the development of All Souls, which indeed brings more melodic nuance to the heavy rock foundation that one otherwise might call carried over from Totimoshi. The bottom line, it all ties together.

The band have the bulk of a third album finished — also the owners of Eastside Rehearsal in Los Angeles, they spent lockdown in otherwise unoccupied rehearsal rooms writing with Tornay when they might’ve been on tour; Price had yet to join but is adding to what was done as a trio — and are hoping to record before the end of the year. I’m also hoping that happens, because 2020’s Songs for the End of the World (review here) and their 2018 self-titled debut (review here) are resonant joys and emotive to such a degree that I was somewhat surprised when Aguilar talked about the process of recording the live stream as being more of an analog to live shows, since he tends to lose himself in the music more than feed off audience energy anyway. For someone who — even masked as he is in ‘Virtual Volumes’; they recorded in March and Castellanos was the only one who’d been vaccinated — is so expressive, I genuinely thought the opposite would be the case.

I am a fan of All Souls, even more for having done this interview. Accordingly, I had a lot I wanted to talk to them about. Actually even more than is in the video. I had wanted to talk about the Josh Graham video for “Winds” but decided to pull the question when I realized that all I wanted to do was a Chris Farley-style “that was awesome” kind of thing. Incidentally though, it was awesome. And so is the recent ‘Jam in the Van’ session that was posted last month that you can see below.

One way or the other, this was a fun interview this past Saturday at 9:30PM, when under normal circumstances I’d most likely have been in bed because I’m just that lame. Thanks for reading and/or watching.

Enjoy:

All Souls Interview with Meg Castellanos & Tony Aguilar, June 5, 2021

All Souls‘ ‘Virtual Volumes’ stream from Total Annihilation Studios in Los Angeles airs June 18. Tix and merch at Livefrom.events. Songs for the End of the World has been waiting for you since its release last Fall. That and the ‘Jam in the Van’ performance discussed above are right here for your convenience.

All Souls, Orange Jam/Jam in the Van

All Souls, Songs for the End of the World (2020)

All Souls on Facebook

All Souls on Twitter

All Souls on Instagram

All Souls on Bandcamp

All Souls website

Hey, here’s a thing I’m gonna watch. All Souls and Fatso Jetson, each playing a pretty quick set, about an hour in total, nobody trying to make it like pretend-you’re-at-a-show-so-here-goes-your-whole-evening kind of thing, but still offering enough general kickassery to hopefully sell a few shirts and spread good cheer. I’m not saying I’ve heard the audio from these performance or anything, but yes, I have, and they both sound fantastic. Sharing drummer Tony Tornay between them and recording live at Total Annihilation Studios, everybody gets down to business and until I can actually go and see All Souls in-person, I’ll happily take this not as a replacement, but at least a sign of something I should look forward to down the line.

But whatever, you know all that. I don’t know when the exact airdate is, but it’ll be sometime next month, so keep an eye out.

Here’s the update from All Souls:

Hey folks! We will be releasing Virtual Volumes this in June on LiveFrom Events with options to buy exclusive merchandise along with the stream. The video lasts about an hour and includes 5 songs each from ALL SOULS & FATSO JETSON with some behind the scenes footage.

The recording will be available soon for pre-order on vinyl as a gatefold with a DVD of the performance. We are beyond stoked on this, especially because it’s a project with our long time friends Fatso Jetson, filmmaker Joshua Erkman (he just filmed and directed the recently aired Levitation Sessions with the Ty Segall Freedom Band and Fuzz), Memo Villaseñor (our go-to photographer for all our band shoots), Brandon Henderson (desert buddy, amazing projectionist) and Eddie Rivas (sound engineer, owner of Total Annihilation and partner at Eastside Rehearsal). We are really happy with the way it came out.

AND…. we recently performed for Jam in the Van. We literally set up and played in a camper van and it turned out great! That will be airing on May 28th so we are told. Be sure to follow www.jaminthevan.com or their social media pages. I’ll include a link of the performance in one of the next updates.

Meg/Antonio/TT/Matt
ALL SOULS

https://www.facebook.com/allsoulsband/
https://www.instagram.com/allsoulsband/
https://allsoulsband.bandcamp.com/
http://allsoulsband.com/

All Souls, Songs for the End of the World (2020)

This is a thing I’ll watch. Watch it with me. It’ll be fun. This weekend, All Souls and Fatso Jetson — who just so happen to share a drummer, lest there be any concern about limiting personnel — will each record a set to be aired as a livestream upcoming on Veeps, which so far as I know is another one of these services that has cropped up with a back end to handle such things or at very least found new purpose in doing so far prior products offered. All I know about it, in other words, is it’s the same place All Them Witches did their streams, and those seemed to go well enough from what I heard.

All Souls‘ second album, Songs for the End of the World (review here), came out last October, and it’s still on my phone, which as far as my listening-in-the-car-not-because-it’s-something-I-need-to-review-but-just-for-my-own-enjoyment habits go, is high praise. I didn’t get the chance to do an interview with them around the time of release, so maybe this would be the perfect excuse for a chat. I’ll see what I can set up.

All Souls announced the proceedings to come thusly:

Greetings!

We are getting antsy.
Not playing shows is a drag.

We decided to put together a virtual concert which we will be filming this weekend.

2 bands: All Souls and Fatso Jetson recording live at Total Annihilation Studios in Los Angeles with rad projections. We’re doing it right with a 3 camera crew and will edit it down with the recording soon after to be streamed on Veeps. More info as soon as we have a release date on that.

And then there is the Jam in the Van/Orange Amplifier’s sponsored show with Earthless on April 20!

We’re doing stuff!

Also, we have a new guitarist – Matt Price who also plays in Behold! the Monolith. He shreds and is a great addition to the band. We are busy writing new material for the next album which we plan to record soon.

thanks for your support. we dig folks that value good music.

https://www.facebook.com/allsoulsband/
https://www.instagram.com/allsoulsband/
https://allsoulsband.bandcamp.com/
http://allsoulsband.com/

All Souls, Songs for the End of the World (2020)

All Souls, “You Just Can’t Win” official video