Posted in Whathaveyou on January 20th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
This isn’t the first time UK doom/psych rockers Alunah have been in the position of replacing a vocalist. It was something of a shock last August when Siân Greenaway announced her departure from the band to pursue other projects, but Greenaway herself had taken on the lead singer role after founding bassist/vocalist Sophie Day left, so Daisy Savage comes to the group as the third lead singer in their 19-year history.
Alunah‘s final album with Greenaway was 2024’s Fever Dream (review here), about which the story very quickly became the departing singer. The band have done a couple shows with Savage already and what video I could find is below, but it’s hard to really get a full sense of what she’s bringing to the band from somebody’s social media story (as grateful as I am to that same person for posting the clip in the first place). The real tell will be when and if they get to work on their next recording, which feels both like it should happen quickly since there’s a new lineup to embark on and solidify, and too soon because a record just came out.
A pickle in time and space, but again, Alunah are pros and can be trusted to steer through the change with veteran maturity. I look forward to hearing Savage in action with the band. Continued best wishes, onward ever forward, all that get-out-there-and-kill-it-type stuff.
Their announcement and a new show confirmation are below, posted successive days on socials:
Today we’re announcing Daisy Savage as the permanent singer of Alunah.
After having opened for us in her previous outfit Hot Little Hands on our Strange Machine hometown launch show three years ago, and more recently having joined the live fold for two hugely successful festival dates in Leeds and London, the time feels right to announce her as our official bandmate!
Daisy has brought a new energy, charisma and grit to our set that’s made the future feel very exciting, just ahead of our run of festival dates in the UK and Europe this spring and summer.
We’ve got a few aces up our sleeve still to tell you about in good time, but our first show with Daisy officially in the band will be with Brant Bjork and Earl Of Hell in Birmingham on February 1st.
We hope you’ll all make her feel welcome as we embark on this new chapter. 🤘
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‼️GIG ANNOUNCEMENT‼️
Leicester! Following yesterday’s exciting news, we’re pleased to announce a one-off headline show at Duffy’s Bar as a warmup for our run of festivals in the UK and Europe.
We’re working on a set at the moment with old classics, new favourites, and perhaps something we haven’t played live before? 👀
Resin Events is helping to put this one together and we’ll have some special guests opening the night that we’ll let you know about very soon.
Mark your calendars and we’ll see you very soon! Until then, our next show is with ex-Kyuss legend Brant Bjork in Birmingham two weeks today via Rawk Promotions / DJ Harris, and then after this Leicester date we’re in Greece for HPS Athens 🤘
Posted in Reviews on October 11th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I got a note from the contact form a bit ago in my email, which happens enough that it’s not really news, except that it wasn’t addressed to me. That happens sometimes too. A band has a form letter they send out with info — it’s not the most personal touch, but has a purpose and doesn’t preclude following-up individually — or just wants to say the same thing to however many outlets. Fair game. This was specifically addressed to somebody else. And it kind of ends with the band saying to send a donation link, like, “Wink wink we donate and you post our stuff.”
Well shit. You mean I coulda been making fat stacks off these stoner bands all the while? Living in my dream house with C.O.C. on the outdoor speakers just by exploiting a couple acts trying to get their riffs heard? Well I’ll be damned. Yeah man, here’s my donation link. Daddy needs a new pair of orthopedic flip-flops. I’ma never pay taxes again.
Life, sometimes.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
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Alunah, Fever Dream
The seventh full-length from UK outfit Alunah, Fever Dream, will be immediately noteworthy for being the band’s last (though one never knows) with vocalist Siân Greenaway fronting the band, presiding over an era of transition when they had to find a new identity for themselves. Fever Dream is the third Alunah LP with Greenaway, and its nine songs show plainly how far the band has come in the six-plus years of her tenure. “Never Too Late” kicks off with both feet at the intersection of heavy rock and classic metal, with a hook besides, and “Trickster of Time” follows up with boogie and flute, because you’re special and deserve nice things. The four-piece as they are here — Greenaway on vocals (and flute), guitarist Matt Noble, bassist Dan Burchmore and founding drummer Jake Mason — are able to bring some drama in “Fever Dream,” to imagine lone-guitar metal Thin Lizzy in the solo of the swaggering “Hazy Jane,” go from pastoral to crushing in “Celestial” and touch on prog in “The Odyssey.” The finale “I’ve Paid the Price” tips into piano grandiosity, but by the time they get there, it feels earned. A worthy culmination for this version of this band.
Swiss heavy post-hardcore unit Coilguns‘ fourth LP and the first in five years, though they’ve had EPs and splits in that time, Odd Love offers 11 songs across an adventurous 48 minutes, alternately raw or lush, hitting hard with a slamming impact or careening or twisting around, mathy and angular. In “Generic Skincare,” it’s both and a jet-engine riff to boot. Atmosphere comes to the fore on “Caravel,” the early going of “Featherweight” and the later “The Wind to Wash the Pain,” but even the most straight-ahead moments of charge have some richer context around them, whether that’s the monstrous tension and release of capper “Bunker Vaults” or, well, the monstrous tension and release of “Black Chyme” earlier on. It’s not the kind of thing I always reach for, but Coilguns make post-hardcore disaffection sound like a good time, with intensity and spaciousness interwoven in their style and a vicious streak that comes out on the regular. Four records deep, the band know what they’re about but are still exploring.
Subconscious Awakening is Robot God‘s second album of 2024 and works in a similar two-sides/four-songs structure as the preceding Portal Within, released this past Spring, where each half of the record is subdivided into one longer and shorter song. It feels even more purposeful on Subconscious Awakening since both “Mandatory Remedy” and “Sonic Crucifixion” both hover around eight and a half minutes while side A opens with the 13-minute “Blind Serpent” and side B with the 11-minute title-track. Rife with textured effects, some samples, and thoughtful melodic vocals, Subconscious Awakening of course shares some similarity of purpose with Portal Within, which was also recorded at the same time, but a song like “Sonic Crucifixion” creates its own sprawl, and the outward movement between that closer and the title-track before it underscores the progressivism at work in the band’s sound amid tonal heft and complex, sometimes linear structures. Takes some concentration to wield that kind of groove.
Especially for an experimentalist, drone-based act who relies on audience theater-of-the-mind as a necessary component of appreciating its output, Pittsburgh solo outfit Fuzznaut — aka guitarist Emilio Rizzo — makes narrative a part of what the band does. Earlier this year, Fuzznaut‘s “Space Rock” single reaped wide praise for its cosmic aspects. “Wind Doula” specifically cites Neil Young‘s soundtrack for the film Dead Man as an influence, and thus brings four minutes more closely tied to empty spread of prairie, perhaps with some filtering being done through Earth‘s own take on the style as heard in 2005’s seminal Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method. One has to wonder if, had Rizzo issued “Wind Doula” with a picture of an astronaut floating free on its cover, it would be the cosmic microwave background present in the track instead of stark wind across the Great Plains, but there’s much more to Fuzznaut than self-awareness and the power of suggestion. Chalk up another aesthetic tryout that works.
Trad metal enthusiasts will delight at the specificity of the moment in the history of the style Void Moon interpret on their fourth album, Dreams Inside the Sun. It’s not that they’re pretending outright that it’s 1986, like the Swedish two-piece of guitarist/bassist Peter Svensson and drummer/vocalist Marcus Rosenqvist are wearing hightops and trying to convince you they’re Candlemass, but that era is present in the songwriting and production throughout Dreams Inside the Sun, even if the sound of the record is less directly anachronistic and their metallurgical underpinnings aren’t limited to doom between slowed down thrash riffs, power-metal-style vocalizing and the consuming Iommic nod of “East of the Sun” meeting with a Solitude Aeturnus-style chug, all the more righteous for being brought in to serve the song rather than to simply demonstrate craft. That is to say, the relative barn-burner “Broken Skies” and the all-in eight-minute closer “The Wolf (At the End of the World,” which has some folk in its verse as well, use a purposefully familiar foundation as a starting point for the band to carve their own niche, and it very much works.
Best known for slinging his six-string alongside brother Kyle Juett in Texas rockers Mothership, Kelley Juett‘s debut solo offering, Wandering West pulls far away from that classic power trio in intention while still keeping Juett‘s primary instrument as the focus. Some loops and layering don’t quite bring Wandering West the same kind of experimental feel as, say, Blackwolfgoat or a similar guitarist-gonna-guitar exploratory project, but they sit well nonetheless alongside the fluid noodling of Juett‘s drumless self-jams. He backs his own solo in centerpiece “Breezin’,” and the subsequent “Electric Dreamland” seems to use the empty space as much as the notes being cast out into it to create its sense of ambience, so if part of what Juett is doing on Wandering West is beginning the process of figuring out who he is as a solo artist, he’s someone who can turn a seven-minute meander like “Lonely One” (playing off Mos Generator?) into a bluesy contemplation of evolving reach, the guitar perfectly content to talk to itself if there’s nobody else around. Time may show it to be formative, but let the future worry about the future. There’s a lot to dig into, here and now.
With vocalists Kristian Eivind Espedal (Gaahls Wyrd, Trelldom, ex-Gorgoroth, etc.) and Lindy-Fay Hella (Wardruna, solo, etc.), guitarist Ronny “Valgard” Stavestrand (Trelldom) and drummer/bassist/keyboardist/producer Iver Sandøy (Enslaved, Relentless Agression, etc.), who also helmed (most of) the recording and mixed and mastered, Whispering Void easily could have fallen into the trap of being no more than the sum of its pedigree. Instead, the seven songs on debut album At the Sound of the Heart harness aspects of Norwegian folk for a rock sound that’s dark enough for the lower semi-growls in the eponymous “Whispering Void” to feel like they’re playing toward a gothic sentiment that’s not out of character when there’s so much melancholy around generally. Mid-period Anathema feel like a reference point for “Lauvvind” and the surging “We Are Here” later on, and by that I mean the album is intricately textured and absolutely gorgeous and you’ll be lucky if you take this as your cue to hear it.
You know how sometimes in a workplace where there’s a Boss With Personality™, there might be a novelty sign or a desk tchotchke that says, “The beatings will continue until morale improves?” Like, haha, in addition to wage theft you might get smacked if you get uppity about, say, wage theft? Fine. Orme sound like what happens when morale doesn’t improve. The 24-minute single-song No Serpents, No Saviours EP comes a little more than a year after the band’s two-song/double-vinyl self-titled debut (review here) and finds them likewise at home in longform songwriting. There are elements of death-doom, but Orme are sludgier in their presentation, and so wind up able to be morose and filthy in kind, moving from the opening crush through a quiet stretch after six minutes in that builds into persistent thuds before dropping out again, a sample helping mark the transitions between movements, and a succession of massive lumbering parts trading off leading into a final march that feels as tall as it is wide. I like that, in a time where the trend is so geared toward lush melody, Orme are unrepentantly nasty.
Budapest instrumentalist duo Azutmaga make their full-length debut with the aptly-titled Offering, compiling nine single-word-title pieces that reside stylistically somewhere between sludge metal and doom. Self-recorded by guitarist Patrik Veréb (who also mixed and mastered at Terem Studio) and self-released by Veréb and drummer Martin Várszegi, it’s a relatively stripped-down procession, but not lacking breadth as the longer “Aura” builds up to its full roll or the minute-long “Orca” provides an acoustic break ahead of the languid big-swing semi-psychedelia of “Mirror,” informed by Eastern European folk melodies but ready to depart into less terrestrial spheres. It should come as no surprise that “Portal” follows. Offering might at first give something of a monolithic impression as “Purge” calls to mind Earth‘s steady drone rock, but Azutmaga have a whole other level of volume to unfurl. Just so happens their dynamic goes from loud to louder.
After trickling out singles for over a year, including the title-track of the album and, in 2022, an early version of the instrumental “The Freaks Come Out at Night” that may or may not have been from before vocalist Virginie D. joined the band, the hashtag-named #chaleurhumaine delights in shirking heavy rock conventions, whether it’s the French-language lyrics or divergences into punk and harder fare, but nothing here — regardless of one’s linguistic background — is so challenging as to be inaccessible. Catchy songs are catchy, whether that’s “Fada Fighters” or “La Diable au Corps,” which dares a bit of harmonica along with its full-toned blues rock riffing. Likewise, nowhere the album goes feels beyond the band’s reach, and while “La Ligne” doesn’t sound especially daring as it plays up the brighter pop in its verse and shove of a chorus, well made songs never have any trouble finding welcome. I’m not sure why it’s a hashtag, but #chaleurhumaine feels complete and engaging, at once familiar and nothing so much as itself.
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 26th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Kind of a surprise to see vocalist Siân Blu Greenaway departing from Alunah, and that’s in no small part because the band are about to release a new album, titled Fever Dream, on Sept. 20 through Heavy Psych Sounds. They have shows coming up, too. At least a slot at Heavy Psych Sounds Fest in London this November. I don’t know what’s going to happen with that or with the band going forward, but one assumes Greenaway will shift her focus to her glam rock project Bobbie Dazzle, whose debut LP, Fandabidozi, will be out Oct. 4 on Rise Above Records.
One recalls vividly when Greenaway joined the band in 2017, taking on a standalone-singer role in place of guitarist/vocalist Sophie Day. That was after Alunah‘s 2017 album, Solennial (review here), came out through Svart and reaffirmed the forest-worship doom of the band’s earliest work. The addition of Greenaway would coincide with a shift away from the natural themes that were so much a part of the band’s original persona, and when guitarist David Day followed Sophie out, the metamorphosis was complete. Drummer Jake Mason, bassist Dan Burchmore and guitarist Matt Noble have said that the band will continue, but in just what form or incarnation remains to be seen. Can Alunah pull off remaking themselves twice? Why not?
Ultimately, Greenaway would front Alunah for three albums, including Fever Dream, and the 2018 EP that introduced her to the band’s established listenership. One looks forward to hearing what the future brings for Greenaway with Bobbie Dazzle and for Alunah, and certainly the upcoming LPs from both are given a different contextual shine from the announcement you’ll find below as it appeared on social media this past Friday:
ALUNAH – Announcement
Sian after 7 years with the band is hanging up her velvet catsuits and leaving Alunah.
“Thank you so much to all the fans for the years of love and support and thank you from me to Jake, Dan and Matt for the music we created together. Alunah isn’t over and I wish the boys all the luck as they go forward. I of course have my solo music so I’ll still be performing and I look forward to seeing the next phase of Alunah as they continue.”
Siân’s swansong is released September 20th so preorder “Fever Dream” from HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS.
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 24th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Oh, you know, no big deal. It’s just Desertscene (the folks behind Desertfest London) and Heavy Psych Sounds (the foremost European heavy imprint and booking concern) pairing up for a London-based Heavy Psych Sounds Fest this November with Dozer, Black Rainbows, Lord Dying, Black Tusk, Alunah, The Cosmic Dead, Margarita Witch Cult, Child, Josiah, MR.BISON and The Clamps at The Underworld and The Black Heart. Oh wait, that is a big deal, and awesome besides. Like a mini-Desertfest, tucked right in there after the end of the always-busy Eurofestival October. Killer bill, killer clubs. Dozer and Josiah in the same lineup alone. Total no-brainer. If you can go, just go. Trust me, the rest of us will wish we could too.
From the PR wire:
*** HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS FEST LONDON 2024 ***
– LINEUP + TICKETS PRESALE ANNOUNCED –
HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS FEST returns to London after four years this fall to make Camden Town rumble and crumble under the mighty fuzz assault of some of the most revered bands in the stoner, doom, psych and heavy rock scene!
The festival will proudly welcome Swedish stoner rock royalty Dozer, Portland genre-bending heavy metallers Lord Dying, and Savannah swamp sludge specialists Black Tusk for the first time. Fuzz and buzz will be supplied by some of the finest live acts from the HPS roster with stoner rock icons Black Rainbows, Scottish space rock explorers The Cosmic Dead, Birmingham’s soulful proto-rock merchants Alunah and occult doom revelers Margarita Witch Cult, Italian heavy psych goldsmiths Mr.Bison and speed stoner’n’roll unit The Clamps, as well as UK heavy psych veterans Josiah. Fans of the finest psychedelic blues be delighted by an exclusive UK appearance of Australia’s own Child.
Curated by two major players of the European & UK heavy rock scene with London’s fuzz-worshipping Desertscene and leading independent heavy rock label Heavy Psych Sounds, this decibel-charged weekender promises to be one for the books, so don’t wait to book your ticket!
HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS FEST LONDON 2024 @ The Underworld // 2nd November 2024 @ The Black Heart // 3rd November 2024
– LINEUP – DOZER BLACK RAINBOWS LORD DYING BLACK TUSK THE COSMIC DEAD ALUNAH MARGARITA WITCH CULT CHILD JOSIAH MR.BISON THE CLAMPS
Long-running Birmingham heavy rockers Alunah will return with the band’s seventh full-length, Fever Dream, on Sept. 20. Following up 2022’s Strange Machine (review here) and continuing to issue through Heavy Psych Sounds — which last week announced it has re-signed them for this outing — the record also furthers the band’s collaboration with producer Chris Fielding (Conan, etc.), who has now helmed their last four albums going back to 2017’s Solennial (review here).
And while subsequent to that release the band went through their most major lineup shift, which brought vocalist Siân Greenaway on board with bassist Dan Burchmore and founding drummer Jake Mason — guitarist Matt Noble joined in 2020 — the fact remains that Alunah have never put out the same record twice. Their delve into classic heavy vibes can be heard on the suitably-hooky new single “Never Too Late,” and in the sharpness of its tonality and the urgent feel of its groove, there are hints of metal being dropped even as Francis Tobolsky of Dresden, Germany’s Wucan guests on vocals alongside Greenaway, who in the interim since 2022 has also signed to Rise Above with the more glam-rock-oriented project/alter-ego Bobbie Dazzle.
That is to say, “Never Too Late,” while catchy and very much Alunah‘s own, hints at shifts in intention as part of the band’s ongoing creative growth and expanding reach. This will likely be the record that carries them past their 20th anniversary (they started out in 2006), and moving forward feels like the most appropriate way they could possibly honor such a thing, since that’s what they’ve done all along.
Album details follow from the PR wire. “Never Too Late” premieres on the player like three lines down from here and last year’s standalone Alice Cooper cover is at the bottom of the post for further digging.
Get ready to have this one stuck in your head for the rest of the day, and enjoy:
Alunah, “Never Too Late” track premiere
With their third album on Heavy Psych Sounds Records, Alunah have wasted no time in a post-pandemic haze since their last release, balancing being on the European festival circuit alongside touring the UK. However, in a Birmingham rehearsal room away from the outside world, everyday life and online noise, their latest full length “Fever Dream” has been quietly brewing waiting to see the light of day.
Forged from a period of extensive jamming and soul searching “Fever Dream” digs into the core of what makes Alunah tick, being in a room together making the music they want to hear. Recorded during the winter of 2024, the atmosphere of the historic Foel Studio allows groove to flow alongside riff, heft and melody in equal measure. The brooding progressive majesty of the title track, the eastern soundscape of “Sacred Grooves” and the doom and roll of “Far From Reality” each highlight the album’s ability to surprise and deliver in equal measure throughout the emotive journey of its nine tracks. Let yourself fall deep into the “Fever Dream”.
“Never Too Late” combines the bones of an idea we came up with right at the start of the writing process for the album, along with fresh inspiration that happened once in the recording studio. Fran from Wucan graciously added her vocal lines to help surpass our initial vision, so turn it up loud and enjoy.
Credits Produced by Chris Fielding (Electric Wizard, Conan) Artwork by Stefán Ari (The Vintage Caravan) “Never Too Late” additional vocals by Francis Tobolsky (Wucan) “I’ve Paid The Price” additional piano by Aaron B. Thompson (Rosalie Cunningham)
ALUNAH lineup Siân Greenaway – Vocals Matt Noble – Guitar Dan Burchmore – Bass Jake Mason – Drums
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 23rd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
On Sept. 1, UK heavy rollers Alunah will release their new single, a cover of Alice Cooper‘s ultra-classic ‘I’m Eighteen,’ as a limited one-sided 12″ vinyl along with two live tracks, a patch and download. The release is timed to a stint of shows that the Birmingham-based four-piece will do alongside The Obsessed, three nights in October that include supporting the doom legends at The Underworld in London, and the song originally appeared on the Pale Wizard Records tribute compilation, Killer: 50 Years Later, celebrating the half-century legacy of that album released in 1971.
I don’t really cover tribute comps at this point if I can help it — I wouldn’t have time to write about anything else; heavy rock loves heavy rock — but in light of “I’m Eighteen” being released as a standalone single, it seemed like fair play. The vinyl is available to preorder through Bandcamp, naturally, but you can also stream the track on the player at the bottom of this post, assuming your internet isn’t being as choppy as mine this morning. Nonetheless, we persist.
From social media:
ALUNAH – I’m Eighteen
PRE ORDER – I’m eighteen – Special Edition 12″ Tour Promo (one sided, white label) with Patch & Download from Alunah
RELEASE DATE 1st September ’23 to celebrate the UK dates with The Obsessed. Originally featured as a bonus track on the “Killer: 50 Years Later” Alice Cooper tribute cd, now remastered by Chris Fielding and appearing on vinyl for the first time, along with:
* “Bootlegged Out From The Void” (a two song vinyl only recording from “Into The Void Festival”)
* An Alunah logo printed patch ready to cut to size*
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 10th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Not to take away from Bear Stone Festival completing its lineup by adding Church of the Cosmic Skull, Alunah, Deville and Malady Lane, but the transportation update from the fest is a big one as well, especially for somebody like me, who while not morally opposed to camping is in no way a camper. Running the proverbial shuttle-into-town lets the Croatian fest accommodate a greater range of attendees, and again, for someone like me, that makes a big difference.
And to return to the lede, the lineup is frickin’ awesome and the vibe looks right. You want to see Church of the Cosmic Skull and Conan and Orange Goblin and Monster Magnet in a Croatian riverside field? I do. Bringing Deville on board from Sweden adds impact alongside the awesome weirdoism of The Freak Folk of Mangrovia, and with Alunah, Seven That Spells, Mother Cake, Woodstock Barbie, Cojones and Malady Lane, there’s aural and geographic variety to be had. For their second installment, Bear Stone are showing that they learned important lessons the first time out and are looking to build their event over a longer term. I look forward to keeping up over the next few years.
The following came down the PR wire:
Bear Stone Festival 2023 Full Lineup Announcement + Transportation Update
After months of looking at locked brackets in the poster, we’re proud to finally present you with the full lineup for Bear Stone Festival 2023:
MONSTER MAGNET (USA) ORANGE GOBLIN (UK) CHURCH OF THE COSMIC SKULL (UK) CONAN (UK) MOTHER’S CAKE (AT) SEVEN THAT SPELLS (CRO) COJONES (CRO) ALUNAH (UK) WOODSTOCK BARBIE (HU) DEVILLE (SWE) MALADY LANE (CRO) THE FREAK FOLK OF MANGROVIA (CRO)
From Nottingham (UK) we have Church of the Cosmic Skull, part time seven piece Rock/Prog/Psych/Pop band and a part time spiritual organization that puts “Abba in Sabbath”.
Also coming from the UK, from the Sabbath City of Birmingham Alunah brings their very own Doom/Blues/Psych brand of Hard Rock amped up by ethereal vocal expression of their frontwoman Siân Greenaway.
For more than 15 years Swedish powerhouse Deville have been touring on their signature fusion of Rock, Metal and Stoner. This summer the road brings them to the lovely shores of the Mrežnica river.
Last but not least are Croatia’s very own Malady Lane, a Rock band whose creativity stretches through various realms of Post-Grunge, Alternative, Indie Rock and dreamy lyrics. Their music is compared by many with the spirit of the Seattle scene of the 90’s with its groove and ferocity.
TRANSPORTATION UPDATE
In order to make Bear Stone Festival more accessible to our visitors that plan to travel to the festival by using public transport, we have partnered up with our local transportation provider Autopromet Slunj to create our very own bus line.
Bear Stone Festival bus line will drive from Slunj to Bear Stone Festival and back several times a day starting on Thursday, July 06 and finishing up on Sunday, July 09.
We’ll give you more details regarding the bus line timetable as we get closer to the festival.
This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you I’m quaking in my flip-flops about doing 100 reviews in the span of two weeks, how worried I am I’ll run out of ways to say something is weird, or psychedelic, or heavy, or whatever. You know what? This time, even with a doublewide Quarterly Review — which means 100 records between now and next Friday — I feel like we got this. It’ll get done. And if it doesn’t? I’ll take an extra day. Who even pretends to give a crap?
I think that’s probably the right idea, so let’s get this show on the road, as my dear wife is fond of saying.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Alunah, Strange Machine
Following on from 2019’s Violet Hour (review here), Birmingham’s Alunah offer the nine songs and 42 minutes of Strange Machine on Heavy Psych Sounds. It’s a wonder to think this is the band who a decade ago released White Hoarhound (review here), but of course it’s mostly not. Alunah circa 2022 bring a powerhouse take on classic heavy rock and roll, with Siân Greenaway‘s voice layered out across proto-metallic riffs and occasional nods such as “Fade Into Fantasy” or “Psychedelic Expressway” pulling away from the more straight-ahead punch. One can’t help but be reminded of Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio — a different, more progressive and expansive take on the same style they started with — which I guess would make Strange Machine their Mob Rules. They may or may not be the band you expected, but they’re quite a band if you’re willing to give the songs a chance.
Skipping neither the death nor the doom ends of death-doom, Los Angeles-based QAALM make a gruesome and melancholic debut with Resilience & Despair, with a vicious, barking growl up front that reminds of none so much as George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher, but that’s met intermittently with airy stretches of emotionally weighted float led by its two guitars. Across the four-song/69-minute outing, no song is shorter than opener “Reflections Doubt” (14:40), and while that song, “Existence Asunder” (19:35), “Cosmic Descent” (18:23) and “Lurking Death” (17:16) have their more intense moments, the balance of miseries defines the record by its spaciousness and the weight of the chug that offsets. The cello in “Lurking Death” adds fullness to create a Katatonia-style backdrop, but QAALM are altogether more extreme, and whatever lessons they’ve learned from the masters of the form, they’re being put to excruciating use. And the band knows it. Go four minutes into any one of these songs and tell me they’re not having a great time. I dare you.
The Traveler is Sterling DeWeese‘s second solo full-length under the banner of Ambassador Hazy behind 2020’s Glacial Erratics (review here) and it invariably brings a more cohesive vision of the bedroom-psychedelic experimentalist songcraft that defined its predecessor. “All We Wanted,” for example, is song enough that it could work in any number of genre contexts, and where “Take the Sour With the Sweet” is unabashed in its alt-universe garage rock ambitions, it remains righteously weird enough to be DeWeese‘s own. Fuller band arrangements on pieces like that or the later “Don’t Smash it to Pieces” reinforce the notion of a solidifying approach, but “Simple Thing” nonetheless manages to come across like Dead Meadow borrowed a drum machine from Godflesh circa 1987. There’s sweetness underlying “Afterglow,” however, and “Percolator,” which may or may not actually have one sampled, is way, way out there, and in no small way The Traveler is about that mix of humanity and creative reaching.
Strange things afoot in Stockholm. Blending classic doom and heavy rock with a clean, clear production, shades of early heavy metal and the odd bit of ’70s folk in the verse of “While the Devil is Asleep,” the five-piece Spiral Skies follow 2018’s Blues for a Dying Planet with Death is But a Door, a collection that swings and grooves and is epic and intimate across its nine songs/43 minutes, a cut like “Somewhere in the Dark” seeming to grow bigger as it moves toward its finish. Five of the nine inclusions make some reference to sleep or the night or darkness — including “Nattmaran” — but one can hardly begrudge Spiral Skies working on a theme when this is the level of the work they’re doing. “The Endless Sea” begins the process of excavating the band’s stylistic niche, and by “Time” and “Mirage” it’s long since uncovered, and the band’s demonstration of nuance, melody and songwriting finds its resolution on closer “Mirror of Illusion,” which touches on psychedelia as if to forewarn the listener of more to come. Familiar, but not quite like anything else.
Almost tragically atmospheric given the moods involved, Wyoming-based industrial metallurgists Lament Cityscape commence the machine-doom of A Darker Discharge following a trilogy of 2020 EPs compiled last year onto CD as Pneumatic Wet. That release was an hour long, this one is 24 minutes, which adds to the intensity somehow of the expression at the behest of David Small (Glacial Tomb, ex-Mountaineer, etc.) and Mike McClatchey (also ex-Mountaineer), the ambience of six-minute centerpiece “Innocence of Shared Experiences” making its way into a willfully grandiose wash after “All These Wires” and “Another Arc” traded off in caustic ’90s-style punishment. “The Under Dark” is a cacophony early and still intense after the fog clears, and it, “Where the Walls Used to Be” and the coursing-till-it-slows-down, gonna-get-noisy “Part of the Mother” form a trilogy of sorts for side B, each feeding into the overarching impression of emotional untetheredness that underscores all that fury.
You got friends? Me neither. But if we did, and we told them about the wholesome exploratory jams of Belfast trio Electric Octopus, I bet their hypothetical minds would be blown. St. Patrick’s Cough is the latest studio collection from the instrumentalist improv-specialists, and it comes and goes through glimpses of various jams in progress, piecing together across 13 songs and 73 minutes — that’s short for Electric Octopus — that find the chemistry vital as they seamlessly bring together psychedelia, funk, heavy rock, minimalist drone on “Restaurant Banking” and blown-out steel-drum-style island vibes on “A2enmod.” There’s enough ground covered throughout for a good bit of frolicking — and if you’ve never frolicked through an Electric Octopus release, here’s a good place to start — but in smaller experiments like the acoustic slog “You Have to Be Stupid to See That” or the rumbling “Universal Knife” or the shimmering-fuzz-is-this-tuning-up “Town,” it’s only encouraging to see the band continue to try new ideas and push themselves even farther out than they were. For an act who already dwells in the ‘way gone,’ it says something that they’re refusing to rest on their freaked-out laurels.
Behold, the sludge of death. Maybe it’s not fair to call When the World Dies one of 2022’s best debut albums since Come to Grief is intended as a continuation by guitarist/backing vocalist Terry Savastano (also WarHorse) and drummer Chuck Conlon of the devastation once wrought by Grief, but as they unleash the chestripping “Life’s Curse” and the slow-grind filthy onslaught of “Scum Like You,” who gives a shit? When the World Dies, produced of course by Converge‘s Kurt Ballou at GodCity, spreads aural violence across its 37 minutes with a particular glee, resting only for a breath before meting out the next lurching beating. Jonathan Hébert‘s vocal cords deserve a medal for the brutality they suffer in his screams in the four-minute title-track alone, never mind the grime-encrusted pummel of closer “Death Can’t Come Fast Enough.” Will to abrasion. Will to disturb. Heavy in spirit but so raw in its force that if you even manage to make it that deep you’ve probably already drowned. A biblical-style gnashing of teeth. Fucking madness.
In the works one way or the other since 2020, the sophomore full-length from Pittsburgh heavy rockers ZOM brings straight-ahead classicism with a modernized production vibe, some influence derived from the earlier days of Clutch or The Sword and of course Black Sabbath — looking at you, “Running Man” — but there’s a clarity of purpose behind the material that is ZOM‘s own. They are playing rock for rockers, and are geared more toward revelry than conversion, but there’s no arguing with the solidity of their craft and the meeting of their ambitions. Their last record took them to Iceland, and this one has led them to the UK. Don’t be surprised when ZOM announce an Australian tour one of these days, just because they can, but wherever they go, know what they have the songs on their side to get them there. In terms of style, there’s very little revolutionary about Fear and Failure, but ZOM aren’t trying to revamp what you know of as heavy rock and roll so much as looking to mark their place within it. Listening to the burly chug of “Another Day to Run,” and the conversation the band seems to be having with the more semi-metal moments of Shadow Witch and others, their efforts sound not at all misspent.
Making their debut through Black Doomba Records, Columbia, South Carolina’s MNRVA recorded the eight-song Hollow in Spring 2019, and one assumes that the three-year delay in releasing is owed at least in to aligning with the label, plus pandemic, plus life happens, and so on. In any case, from “Not the One” onward, their fuzz-coated doom rock reminds of a grittier take on Cathedral, with guitarist Byron Hawk and bassist Kevin Jennings sharing vocal duties effectively while Gina Ercolini drives the march behind them. There’s some shifting in tempo between “Hollow” and a more brash piece like “With Fire” or the somehow-even-noisier-seeming penultimate cut “No Solution,” but the grit there is a feature throughout the album just the same. Their 2019 EP, Black Sky (review here), set them up for this, but only really in hindsight, and one wonders what they may have been up to in the time since putting this collection to tape if this is where they were three years ago. Some of this is straight-up half-speed noise rock riffing and that’s just fine.
The third full-length, Accelerationist, from Easthampton, Massachusetts’ Problem With Dragons is odd and nuanced enough by the time they get to the vocal effects on “Have Mercy, Show Mercy” — unless that’s a tracheostomy thing; robot voice; that’s not the first instance of it — to earn being called progressive, and though their foundation is in more straightforward heavy rock impulses, sludge and fuzz, they’ve been at it for 15 years and have well developed their own approach. Thus “Live by the Sword” opens to set up lumbering pieces like “Astro Magnum” and the finale title-track while “In the Name of His Shadow” tips more toward metal and the seven-minute “Don’t Fail Me” meets its early burl (gets the wurlm?) with airier soloing later on, maximizing the space in the album’s longest track. “A Demon Possessed” and “Dark Times (for Dark Times)” border on doom, but in being part of Problem With Dragons‘ overall pastiche, and in the band’s almost Cynic-al style of melodic singing, they are united with the rest of what surrounds. Some bands, you can just tell when individualism is part of their mission.
