Posted in Whathaveyou on April 25th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Just over a month’s remove from the March release of their first record in 14 years, The Return of Magik (review here), Little Rock, Arkansas, atmospheric post-doomers Rwake have lined up a few live dates this June to support the album. No, it isn’t the most extensive list of shows I’ve ever put up, but between frontman CT‘s Mutants of the Monster Fest (which some day I will try to attend, because it seems cool and it’s a good place to see Rwake) and sharing the stage with Acid Bath, among others, clearly the idea is more quality than quantity.
Shows are in Arkansas, Alabama, Florida and Georgia. Saint Vitus Bar doesn’t exist anymore, so I don’t know how you get this band to New York ever again, but if it happened I’d do my damnedest to be there. The point though is that if you’re in their path, don’t take it for granted and see the band while you can.
It was 14 years between releases, and yeah, they’ve done local/regional shows all along — it’s not like they ever broke up, I mean — and the press release says there are more shows TBA, but I haven’t seen any signs that these four dates will be backed by a six-week coast-to-coast US run followed by five more weeks in Europe, plus South America, plus Japan and Australia. So if this is where the magik is gonna be, it’s a place to put yourself if you can. That’s all I’m saying.
From the PR wire:
RWAKE Confirms Special Live Dates This June; The Return Of Magik Full-Length Out Now On Relapse Records
RWAKE will take to the stage this June on four special shows including a performance at this year’s edition of Mutants Of The Monster Fest on their home turf of Little Rock, Arkansas as well as a show supporting Acid Bath and Weedeater in St. Petersburg, Florida. More dates will be announced in the weeks to come.
RWAKE Live:
6/06/2025 Mutants Of The Monster Fest – Little Rock, AR 6/26/2025 Saturn – Birmingham, AL w/ Hexxus, Hiraeth 6/28/2025 Jannus Live – St. Petersburg, FL w/ Acid Bath, Weedeater 6/29/2025 The Earl – Atlanta, GA w/ Canopy, Insomniac
RWAKE released their long-awaited new full-length, The Return Of Magik, last month on Relapse Records.
RWAKE: C.T. – vocals, words, theme Reid – bass guitars, distortion John – guitars, lap + pedal steel, 12-string bass Austin – guitars Brittany – energy peddler, keys and a microphone Jeff – drums, acoustic guitar, 12-string bass
* “…Psychedelic Incarceration” written and spoken by Jim “Dandy” Mangrum, February 17th, 2024 in Black Oak, Arkansas.
Posted in Reviews on March 12th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
[NOTE: In this interest of full disclosure, I wrote the promotional bio for this album (posted here) and was compensated for it by Relapse Records. This did not factor into my decision to do this review — you can see in the links below it’s not my first time writing about the band — and I’m pretty sure the reason I was asked to do the bio in the first place was because I’m a fan, which, yes, I am. But I took a journalism class one time, so I feel a need to mention this kind of thing when it applies. Thanks for reading.]
One could not accuse Rwake of failing to see the beauty in horror. The Little Rock, Arkansas-based post-metallic conjurors are closing in on the 30th anniversary of the band next year, and perhaps the looming onset of another decade was a factor in their making The Return of Magik, their sixth album and first since 2011’s Rest (review here), but the passage of time is an important part of the procession, coinciding with the dynamic changes in space throughout.
That is to say, while “You Swore We’d Always Be Together” opens with a wistful stretch of acoustic guitar — drummer Jeff Morgan is credited with acoustics and 12-string bass, though John Judkins also plays guitar, lap and pedal steel and 12-string bass, and this record introduces Austin Sublett on lead guitar; Reid Raley plays bass, Brittany handles vocals and keys and Christopher “C.T.” Terry, also vocals, gives form to the preaches and cosmic declarations of “The Return of Magik,” “With Stardust Flowers,” and so on — the sense of breadth the band cast is met head-on by claustrophobically heavy riffing. Just because it’s been 14 years and one assumes a fair amount of life-living done in that time doesn’t mean Rwake are going to stop being Rwake.
The world they cast in The Return of Magik is their most vivid to-date — a place out in the woods on soft ground that you feel might just eat you on your next step because it might. The animal bones on the cover, especially cleaned and cared for as these have been, could hardly be more appropriate. It shows a reverence for the natural order and a reminder of the human place in it, and to coincide, they are more spiritual, ritualized in the delivery.
In his 2010 documentary, Slow Southern Steel (discussed here), Terry posits the advent of Southern heavy in part as a response to the cultural dominance of the southern baptist church, and Rwake have always been in conversation with that musical ideology, which one can hear in some of the guitar throughout the linear courses of “The Return of Magik” and “With Stardust Flowers” before Black Oak Arkansas‘ Jim “Dandy” Mangrum steps in for a spoken word guest spot in “Distant Constellations and the Psychedelic Incarceration,” the longest song at 13:56, reading a poem he wrote sort of as an existential assessment. It’s interesting how much of the spoken/semi-spoken vocals throughout feel like a sermon.
Mangrum‘s voice is manipulated with effects to give an otherworldly aspect, and that fits well alongside the rest of The Return of Magik, which from the mammoth lurch of “You Swore We’d Always Be Together” to the quiet space created at the finish by the sub-two-minute outro “Φ” (the Greek letter “Phi”), which follows the gnashing and consumptive churn and darkly progressive reality twist — plus a shimmering, scream-topped beautifully apocalyptic ending that’s more graceful than the black metal from which it might otherwise have derived — with some backmasking before it bursts into the crescendo.
Brittany, or sometimes just B., has a rasp of voice that is singular in underground heavy music, and like few harsh vocalists, she is able to both add to the atmosphere of the album’s five extended pieces while also providing some of its most vivid moments of extremity. “You Swore We’d Always Be Together” draws a lot of its impression from the lead guitar and acoustic thread, but especially in its first half, the title-track is monstrous in a genuinely nightmarish way, bleak and threatening and subliminal — of couse it ends gorgeous — and “With Stardust Flowers” plays back and forth off a similar level of crush.
This, in turn, flows like thick, seemingly bottomless, water into “Distant Constellations and the Psychedelic Incarceration,” with “In After Reverse” and “Φ” for culmination. A six-song/53-minute course is not inconsiderable in an age of fleeting attention spans and the instant/false gratification of technology’s numb-you-out-to-rob-you dopamine drip, but Rwake are a guiding presence through this ethereal mire they’ve swirled together — there’s talk of cauldrons I think in the title-track, and the image feels appropriate given both the dirt-mystique of those lyrics which are discernible in spoken parts and screams, etc. — and as much as aural threat persists, a sense of catharsis pours through even through the most outwardly caustic stretches.
Coupled with the willingness to veer into gorgeousness, whether that happens as the prog-metal twisting solo six minutes into “With Stardust Flowers” or the residual drone epilogue to “In After Reverse” or indeed many of the rawest and most intense stretches since that’s a kind of beauty too, Rwake circa 2025 present a mature take on some of what’s felt less controlled in their sound in the past, without letting go of the progressive songwriting ethic central to their richly individualized approach.
What that boils down to in terms of the listening experience is immersion with a pointed depth of mood and intermittent, well-used harshness among the tools employed, along with traditional Southern rock, psychedelic, prog metal, post-sludge, folk and an experimentalist foundation underpinning it all. Maybe even a little bit of New Age in there if you want to count some of the philosophy being thrown around in the lyrics.
One way or the other, The Return of Magik is a striking comeback for Rwake that, despite the 14 years it’s been since their last outing, will be recognizable to those who followed their course the better part of a generation ago while introducing new listeners to the fold, most of all by highlighting who Rwake are in its uncompromising, forward-thinking, distinctive craft. It’s a cohesive, engrossing, wholly realized work that’s an intangible meld of different players, ideas, styles, and times, so if you want to sum that up by calling it ‘magic’ — or ‘magik,’ as it were — then fair enough.
They don’t make you wait much longer than the four-count into opener “Soil the Dove” before Dirtmother tell you what they’re all about. And even that count-in has feedback behind it. Based in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and counting their origins back to 2006, the four-piece reformed in 2023 after I don’t know how long of a break, and make their self-released debut with the eight songs and 44 minutes of Dirtmother. The tracks are raw to the point of being raw as a point, and across the span, the band — vocalist Tim Stockburger, guitarist Anthony Harvell, bassist Todd Bohannon (ex-Deadbird, Deadeyejack), and drummer Jay Hollingshead (ex-Wrought) — capture the groove and despondent aggression of classic Southern sludge.
Riffs are followed, nods are nodded, screams are screamed, and that explosion as “Soil the Dove” picks up that count is a scouring, lumbering, nasty-ass take on the style, meaner at high volumes but intentionally caustic regardless. I don’t know how long these songs have been around — for a band with 19 years of history releasing their first album, the possibility for vintage riffs grows — but Dirtmother show up with the clear purpose of laying waste and “Plinko” starts with a “shit! fuck!” sample before setting out on its own roll, backing the opener with mid-tempo low-end push as aural torque behind Stockburger growls and higher-register throatrippers, only intermittently intelligable, but in little danger of not making their statement regardless. “Close your eyes…” is repeated in the chorus of “Plinko,” but Dirtmother are less about hooks or accessibility than about pummel, and their energies are thusly directed in songwriting.
Once upon a time, about 20-25 years ago, scores of bands like this wandered the earth. I was in one. The hillsides were painted with them, all pissed off and crashing around about who knows what. Dirtmother‘s Dirtmother doesn’t really feel anachronistic — such as it is, the production is way more 2020s than 2000s, but after a certain point, raw is raw — as longest cut “Goodnight Mommy” (7:53) draws down the pace to emphasize the doomly pulls and rearing-back before the next crushing measure, but it’s a take on sludge that I can only think of as ‘classic’ in my mind, odd as that seems. The way everything stops to let the guitar establish a riff after two minutes into “Goodnight Mommy” and for how the scream starts before they crash back in on that same groove; or the way “None Would Name It” pushes even further into grueling tempo and filthy revelry, a bit of swing arriving for contrast coinciding with a ’00s janga-janga shuffle — the stuff of stoner rock when it was still embarrassed to be called that.
“None Would Name It” feels especially dark in tone, but it moves fluidly even if the band sound like they have knives for teeth. There aren’t going to be a ton of surprises for those who’ve had experience with Southern sludge, but neither should that be taken to mean Dirtmother are aping Eyehategod or anyone else in the sphere. If you look at Dirtmother as a first record from a band who got going in 2023, it’s a fascinating and righteous representation of the style.
The fact that they started in the aughts, and that they highlight that longevity — something that one generally expects from black metal bands, who somehow all formed in 1991 — even with the implication of a break of some years between eras, changes the context. I didn’t see Dirtmother in Arkansas circa 2006, or 2007, or ever, so I can’t speak to how they sounded then vs. how they sound now — I found a clip on YouTube from 2008; way blown out, but consistent in methodology — but as they start the second half of the record with “Bad Ideas All Around,” with Stockburger seeming to open wide and swallow the whole song in the first minute, only to have the riff persist thereafter, it’s a strange thing to feel nostalgic about. Obviously, different listeners will bring themselves to it in their own way.
Growing deathly in its grows, “Bad Ideas All Around” comes to a halt around a sample and feedback at around the halfway point — the use of samples serving as another tie to original-era sludge; think Buzzov*en, Rwake, etc. — and crawls to its finish from there. Nothing on side B hits the seven-minute mark like “Goodnight Mommy,” but there’s little letup just the same. “Beware of God” is likewise harsh and Sabbathian, another sample after the first verse and a slowdown into a lower-growling middle eventually gives back to swing, but keeps the barebones feel of its most methodical crush.
I don’t know what the lyrics are and I’m not sure I want to, but “Reverse Cowgirl” follows suit in its first verse, opening to a chorus that cycles through around crashes and a twist of riff, Stockburger as scathing as he’s yet been on vocals. There’s a slowdown, a speed-up, and even some cleaner shouts in the last minute, so “Reverse Cowgirl” isn’t without its dynamic — it’s the shortest cut at 4:05 — and it ends with push and the repeated line, “Baby, you’ve got no reason to stop..” giving over to a sample at the start of closer “Trucker,” someone in a Southern accent talking about hitting something or someone; it’s pretty vague.
The capper is no less an assault than one would hope. No, Dirtmother haven’t been hiding some too-clever-by-half divergence up their collective sleeve, and they’re not about to take away from the album-as-monolith impression they’ve given throughout while still highlighting different pieces of individual tracks. “Trucker” is a rolling stoner riff, blues-via-Sabbath-via-Southern-Baptist-trauma, and it finishes Dirtmother‘s Dirtmother with six and a half minutes of reaffirmed assault.
They get a little Goatsnakey in the second half, and that’s certainly welcome and suited to Hollingshead‘s drumming, but hit into the inevitable slowdown and there make their final stand. There’s the expected amount of fanfare to cap — i.e. not very much at all; a sample gives over to residual echo as the amps drop to hum and cut to silence — and Dirtmother exit the proceedings with no more pretense than they came in. A band who showed up, wrecked the place, got out. I’d say they don’t make ’em like that anymore, but apparently they do. Sludge on.
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 28th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Don’t get so lost in the 12 minutes of Rwake‘s new single that you don’t realize the act of world-creation happening around you atmospherically, because The Return of Magik — which is the Little Rock, Arkansas, outfit’s first long-player since 2011’s Rest (review here) dwells in the sinister spirituality one can hear manifest in the title-track. The interweaving of vocalists CT and Brittany remains singularly vicious, and the former’s semi-spoken litany in the midsection of “The Return of Magik” is righteously weird and correspondingly from the heart. Rwake have never been about catchy hooks or fodder for light-listening. “The Return of Magik” asks you to immerse accordingly.
I was fortunate enough in December to do some bio writing for the album. Some of that appears below — “Years have now…,” the part about Austin Sublett and the paragraph after — which is neat if you happen to be me, but the real crux here is the song itself, which lays out a scope and vibe that really is Rwake‘s own, however one might align them to post-sludge or another niche of the like. Extreme swamp doom mysticism? Eventually, you keep paring down elements, and Rwake are just Rwake.
The PR wire gives it back thusly:
RWAKE To Release First New Album In Over 13 Years, The Return Of Magik, On March 14th Via Relapse Records; New Video/Single Now Playing + Preorders Available
After thirteen years of silence, an unsettling sound that is strangely familiar yet somehow even more haunted re-emerges from the Arkansas depths. There is no mistake as to what this is. RWAKE has released a new transmission. The Return Of Magik, set for release on March 14th via Relapse Records, has arrived.
Years have now fed into an album that reaches into a swirling, cosmic unknown – RWAKE has grown, and the perspective of the material has shifted accordingly. Overwhelming at its peak and haunting during moments of respite, The Return Of Magik is undeniably RWAKE. Every movement feels like an emotionally engrossing journey. Arrangements carefully and thoughtfully built in layers over a period of years lend mystique and a feeling of building toward a cathartic release. There is no box into which the material might fit other than one with the band’s name on it.
Today, the band shares the official video for the album’s title track.
The Return Of Magik will be released on CD, LP, and digital formats. Find preorders at Relapse.com HERE.
The Return Of Magik Track Listing: 1. You Swore We’d Always Be Together 2. The Return Of Magik 3. With Stardust Flowers 4. Distant Constellations And The Psychedelic Incarceration 5. In After Reverse 6. Φ
Additionally, RWAKE has announced their first shows of 2025 around the release of The Return Of Magik including a hometown release show on March 15th.
RWAKE Live: 3/14/2025 Eastside Bowl – Nashville, TN 3/15/2025 Rev Room – Little Rock, AR * Record Release Show 4/11/2025 Bear’s – Shreveport, LA 4/12/2025 Siberia – New Orleans, LA
Recorded in early 2024 at East End Sounds in Hensley, Arkansas, The Return Of Magik introduces RWAKE’s new lead guitarist Austin Sublett with a barrage of shredded solos suited to the angular, progressive metal riffing of the album’s most jaw-clenching moments, while presenting a through-line of molten, immersive ambience. The opener “You Swore We’d Always Be Together” – already a fixture of live sets – and the expansive sprawl of “Distant Constellations And The Psychedelic Incarceration” move with cruelty and grace alike. Foreboding, syncopated riffs sway against Moog-driven space and guttural bellows. The Return Of Magik’s songs stand alone as individualized post-metallic blends of genres.
RWAKE remains dually fronted; Chris Terry’s powerful vocals lay against Brittany Fugate’s visceral screams. Jeff Morgan returns to the drum kit, in addition to acoustic guitar and 12-string bass. Bassist/noisemaker Reid Raley, Sublett, and fellow guitarist John Judkins set an instrumental backdrop that is vast and engrossing in itself – quiet, contemplative passages often explode into gut-wrenching, doomed out distortions. The Return Of Magik, which features artwork by Loni Gillum of Minerva’s Menagerie and RWAKE, burns brighter and beyond the ferocity of the band’s already storied catalog.
Although the Magik may be bleak, the manner in which RWAKE revels in it can only be called a celebration.
RWAKE: C.T. – vocals, words, theme Reid – bass guitars, distortion John – guitars, lap + pedal steel, 12-string bass Austin – guitars Brittany – energy peddler, keys and a microphone Jeff – drums, acoustic guitar, 12-string bass
* “…Psychedelic Incarceration” written and spoken by Jim “Dandy” Mangrum, February 17th, 2024 in Black Oak, Arkansas.
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 16th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
The roots of Arkansas sludge metallers Dirtmother trace back to 2006, as will happen, but it’s still their debut album that’s set to release on March 8. Release show is the same night. To be issued by the band, Dirtmother‘s Dirtmother follows a 2023 regrouping and brings together players known for their work in Deadbird, Mud Lung and others. Their first audio showcase from the album — a four-minute teaser single obviously named “Plinko” in honor of the coolest game on The Price is Right — is a vicious reminder of the nasty turn Southern heavy took right around the turn of the century, when the lessons of Eyehategod, or Buzzov*en, Grief and so on, seemed to be taken up by screamy riffers with harsh intent and more aggressive underpinnings of metal emerged alongside the punker roots of the genre.
It’s something of an oldschool sound, is what I’m saying, but the truth is that even when there was a lot of it happening — and right around 2005/2006 that kind of waned and post-metal picked up a more atmospheric slack, for better or worse — sludge metal has never been the cool thing. There are microtrends within the correspondingly micro genre, but even in the days when Emissions From the Monolith was nestled into the Midwest teaching a generation of listeners how to make and embrace heavy music, sludge was an outsider thing. It remains one now, and “Plinko” revels in that. I look forward to hearing the rest of the album.
Info is minimal, but you get the audio below and that’s the thing. Have at it:
The song Plinko, from Dirtmother’s self-titled album debut, available March 8th 2025. Sludge, Blues Doom, from Fayetteville, Arkansas. Birthed in 2006, Reformed in 2023. Featuring current members of Mud Lung, and Liquid Courage. Former members of Deadbird, Deadeyejack, Sinking South.
Album mixed and Mastered by Sabin Hice. Recorded by Mason Gills at Huntsville Road Studios.
DIRTMOTHER Album Release Show Saturday March 8th w/ Grand Inquisitor & Ghost Hollow
Posted in Reviews on October 14th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Second week of the Fall 2024 Quarterly Review begins now. You stoked? Nah, probably not, but at least at the end of this week there will be another 50 records for you to check out, added to the 50 from last week to make 100 total releases covered. So, I mean, it’s not nothing. But I understand if it isn’t the make-or-break of your afternoon.
Last week was killer, and today gets us off to another good start. Crazy, it’s almost like I’m enjoying this. Who the hell ever heard of such a thing?
Quarterly Review #51-60:
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White Hills, Beyond This Fiction
New York’s own psychedelic heads on fire White Hills return with Beyond This Fiction, a collection of sounds so otherworldly and lysergic they can’t help but be real. Seven tracks range from the fluid “Throw it Up in the Air” to the bassy experimental new wave of “Clear as Day,” veering into gentle noise rock as it does before “Killing Crimson” issues its own marching orders, coming across like if you beamed Fu Manchu through the accretion disk of a black hole and the audio experienced gravitational lensing. “Fiend” brings the two sides together and dares to get a little dreamy while doing it, the interlude “Closer” is a wash of drone, and “The Awakening” is a good deal of drone itself, but topped with spoken word, and the closing title-track takes place light-years from here in a kind of time humans haven’t yet learned to measure. It’s okay. White Hills records will still be around decades from now, when humans finally catch up to them. I’m not holding my breath, though.
Five records deep into a tenure now more than a decade long, I feel like Demon Head are a band that are the answer to a lot of questions being asked. Oh, where’s the classic-style band doing something new? Who’s a band who can sound like The Cure playing black metal and be neither of those things? Where’s a band doing forward-thinking proto-doom, not at all hindered by the apparent temporal impossibility of looking ahead and back at the same time? Here they are. They’re called Demon Head. Their fifth album is called Through holes Shine the Stars, and its it’s-night-time-and-so-we-chug-different sax-afflicted ride in “Draw Down the Stars” is consuming as the band take the ’70s doomery of their beginnings to genuinely new and progressive places. The depth of vocal layering throughout — “The Chalice,” the atmo-doom sprawl of “Every Flatworm,” the rousing, swinging hook and ensuing gallop of “Frost,” and so on — adds drama and persona to the songs, and the songs aren’t wanting otherwise, with a dug-in intricacy of construction and malleable underlying groove. Seriously. Maybe Demon Head are the band you’re looking for.
You can call Earth Ship sludge metal, and you’re not really wrong, but you’re not the most right either. The Berlin-based trio founded by guitarist/vocalist Jan Oberg and bassist Sabine Oberg, plus André Klein on drums, offer enough crush to hit that mark for sure, but the tight, almost Ministry-esque vocals on the title-track, the way “Radiant” dips subtly toward psychedelia as a side-A-capping preface to the languid clean-sung nod of “Daze and Delights,” giving symmetry to what can feel chaotic as “Ethereal Limbo” builds into its crescendo, fuzzed but threatening aggression soon to manifest in “Acrid Haze,” give even the nastiest moments throughout a sense of creative reach. That is to say, Soar — which Jan Oberg also recorded, mixed and mastered at Hidden Planet Studio and which sees release through the band’s The Lasting Dose Records — resides in more than one style, with opener “Shallow” dropping some hints of what’s to come and a special lumber seeming to be dedicated to the penultimate “Bereft,” which proves to be a peak in its own right. The Obergs seem to split their time these days between Earth Ship and the somewhat more ferocious Grin. In neither outfit do they misspend it.
Bassist/vocalist Tommy Stewart (ex-Hallows Eve, owner of Black Doomba Records) once more sits in the driver’s seat of the project that shares his name, and with four new tracks Tommy Stewart’s Dyerwulf on Fyrewulf One — which I swear sounds like the name of a military helicopter or somesuch — offer what will reportedly be half of their third long-player with an intention toward delivering Fyrewulf Two next year. Fair enough. “Kept Pain Busy” is the longest and grooviest fare on offer, bolstered by the quirk of shorter opener “Me ‘n’ My Meds” and the somewhat more madcap “Zoomagazoo,” which touches on heavy rockabilly in its swing, with a duly feedback-inclusive cover of Bloodrock‘s “Melvin Laid an Egg” for good measure. The feeling of saunter is palpable there for the organ, but prevalent throughout the original songs as well, as Stewart and drummer Dennis Reid (Patrick Salerno guests on the cover) know what they’re about, whether it’s garage-punk-psych trip of “Me ‘n’ My Meds” the swing that ensues.
The narrative — blessings and peace upon it — presents A Grand Stream as the result of Smote guitarist Daniel Foggin and drummer Rob Law absconding to a cabin in the woods by a stream to write and record. There’s certainly escapism in it, and one might argue Smote‘s folk-tinged drone and atmospheric heavy meditations have always had an aspect of leaving the ol’ consciousness at the flung-open doors of perception, etc., but the 10-minute undulating-but-mostly-stationary noise in “Chantry” is still a lot to take. That it follows the 16-miinute “Coming Out of a Hedge Backwards,” laced with sitar and synth and other backing currents filling out the ambience, should be indicative of the sprawl of the over-70-minute LP to begin with. Smote aren’t strangers at this point to the expanse or to longform expression, but there still seems to be a sense of plunging into the unknown throughout A Grand Stream as they make their way deeper into the 18-minute “The Opinion of the Lamb Pt. 2,” and the rolling realization of “Sitting Stone Pt. 1” at the beginning resounds over all of it.
Hard to argue with Mammoth Caravan‘s bruising metallism, not the least because by the time you’d open your mouth to do so the Little Rock, Arkansas, trio have already run you under their aural steamroller and you’re too flat to get the words out. The six-song/36-minute Frostbitten Galaxy is the second record from the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Robert Warner, bassist/vocalist Brandon Ringo and drummer Khetner Howton, and in the willful meander of “Cosmic Clairvoyance,” in many of their intros, in the tradeoffs of the penultimate “Prehistoric Spacefarer” and in the clean-sung finale “Sky Burial,” they not only back the outright crush of “Tusks of Orion” and “Siege in the Stars,” as well as opener/longest track (immediate points) “Absolute Zero,” with atmospheric intention, but with a bit of dared melody that feels like a foretell of things to come from the band. On Frostbitten Galaxy and its correspondingly chilly 2023 predecessor Ice Cold Oblivion (review here), Mammoth Caravan have proven they can pummel. Here they begin the process of expanding their sound around that.
If you caught Harvestman‘s psychedelic dub and guitar experimentalism on Triptych Part One (review here) earlier this year, perhaps it won’t come as a shock to find former Neurosis guitarist/vocalist Steve Von Till, aka Harvestman, working in a similar vein on Triptych Part Two. There’s more to it than just heady chill, but to be sure that’s part of what’s on offer too in the immersive drone of “The Falconer” or the 10-minute “The Hag of Beara vs. the Poet (Forest Dub),” which reinterprets and plays with the makeup of opener “The Hag of Beara vs. the Poet.” “Damascus” has a more outward-facing take and active percussive base, while “Vapour Phase” answers “The Falconer” with some later foreboding synthesis — closer “The Unjust Incarceration” adds guitar that I’ve been saying for years sounds like bagpipes and still does to this mix — while the penultimate “Galvanized and Torn Open,” despite the visceral title, brings smoother textures and a steady, calm rhythm. The story’s not finished yet, but Von Till has already covered a significant swath of ground.
Following up on 2022’s successful debut full-length, Born of Obsidian, the 11-song/37-minute Of Amber and Sand highlights the UK outfit’s flexibility of approach as regards metal, sludge, post-heavy impulses, intricate arrangements and fullness of sound as conveyed through the production. So yes, it’s quite a thing. They quietly and perhaps wisely moved on from the bit of amateur anthropology that defined the MesoAmerican thematic of the first record, and as Of Amber and Sand complements the thrown elbows in the midsection of “Death No More” and the proggy rhythmmaking of “Fenjaan” with shorter interludes of various stripes, eventually and satisfyingly getting to a point in “Bell Tower,” “Neheh” and “Timekeeper” where the ambience and the heft become one thing for a few minutes — and that’s kind of a separate journey from the rest of the record, which turns back to its purposes with “Crux Ansata,” but it works — but the surrounding interludes give each song a chance to make its own impact, and Kurokuma take advantage every time.
SlugWeed, The Mind’s Ability to Think Abstract Thoughts
Do you think a band called SlugWeed would be heavy and slow? If so, you’d be right. Would it help if I told you the last single was called “Bongcloud?” The instrumental New England solo-project — which, like anything else these days, might be AI — has an ecosystem’s worth of releases up on Bandcamp dating back to an apparent birth as a pandemic project with the long-player The Power of the Leaf, and the 11-minute single “The Mind’s Ability to Think Abstract Thoughts” follows the pattern in holding to the central ethic of lumbering instrumental riffage, all dank and probably knowing about trichomes and such. The song itself is a massive chug-and-groover, and gradually opens to a more atmospheric texture as it goes, but the central idea is in the going itself, which is slow, plodding, and returns from its drift around a fervent chug that reminds of a (slower) take on some of what Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol had on offer earlier in the year. It probably won’t be long before SlugWeed return with anther single or EP, so “The Mind’s Ability to Think Abstract Thoughts” may just be a step on the way. Fine for the size of the footprint in question.
Dug-in solo krautistry from Tempe, Arizona’s Jeff Hopp, Man and Robot Society‘s Asteroid Lost comes steeped in science-fiction lore and mellow space-prog vibes. It’s immersive, and not a story without struggle or conflict as represented in the music — which is instrumental and doesn’t really want, need or have a ton of room for vocals, though there are spots where shoehorning could be done if Hopp was desperate — but if you take the trip just as it is, either put your own story to it or just go with the music, the music is enough to go on itself, and there’s more than one applicable thread of plot to be woven in “Nomads of the Sand” or the later “Man of Chrome,” which resonates a classic feel in the guitar ahead of the more vibrant space funk of “The Nekropol,” which stages a righteous keyboard takeover as it comes out of its midsection and into the theremin-sounding second half. You never quite know what’s coming next, but since it all flows as a single work, that becomes part of the experience Man and Robot Society offer, and is a strength as the closing title-track loses the asteroid but finds a bit of fuzzy twist to finish.
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 28th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Fresh off an appearance last month at Mutants of the Monster Fest in their hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas, riff-plodder trio Mammoth Caravan announce they’ll release their second album through Blade Setter Records sometime before the end of the year. You might recall their 2023 debut, Ice Cold Oblivion (review here) was a highlight of last year’s wintry earliest hours, and along with word of their signing, the band has said that the follow-up will be out before the end of 2024. Even if that becomes the first months of 2025, they’re still working on a pretty quick turnaround.
No audio yet from the new record, but the band also offered the 16-minute single “I, Megafauna” last year, and that’s certainly a thing to dig into if you either didn’t catch the first record, etc. It’s at the bottom of the post, duh. Note the lineup shift since the first album that has moved Robert Warner from drums to guitar/vocals/synth and seen Khetner Howton take over the drummer role while Brandon Ringo continues to hold down bass/vocals. Info and such follows:
Doom Trio MAMMOTH CARAVAN Signs to Blade Setter Records
Little Rock doom trio MAMMOTH CARAVAN has announced that they have signed to Blade Setter Records, an Arkansas-based record label.
The band is currently working with the label on the release of a forthcoming LP that was recorded at Wolfman Studios in Little Rock and mastered by Justin Weis of Trackworx.
The partnership formed in the summer of 2023 in a record store of all places when the band met with label head Kelley Struble at Iron Horse Records in Van Buren, Arkansas before a show in Ft. Smith.
“After the record was finished with mastering, we knew we wanted to work with a label, but we knew that it needed to be the right one. After meeting Kelley and seeing how passionate he is about the process and about our music, it just seemed like a natural partnership. After a few conversations about details of the release, we decided to sign with Blade Setter and we couldn’t be happier about the future for both the band and label.” bassist/vocalist Brandon Ringo said.
“MAMMOTH CARAVAN came to my attention through Robert, the guitarist for the band. We met as collectors online and later met at a fest. The band formed through various key meetings and has since poured consistent effort into their time together. I felt the urge to step in because of their drive. Having worked with other bands in different circumstances, this is the only one to willingly take on the same amount of risk for what they want to do. They would never ask for a handout and that’s a big reason why they fit here. Not to mention they do what they truly want to do and that can’t be said for most bands.” – Blade Setter Records founder Kelley Struble said.
“This album was all about taking risks. In the previous lineup, everyone saw me as a drummer even though on the off-stage side, I had so much to writing the guitar parts to the first LP and EP, so this was a chance to take a risk and show a new side of MC that we aren’t just a beat down doom band and that we have the ability to grow and showcase new styles and flares. In this new journey, we are able to amp the energy up and also highlight the newest member of our band, Khetner Howton. Signing with BSR was a very easy decision. I have known Kelley for years and with his drive and passion for underground music and the presentation of it, I knew there was no one better to work with the vision of this album. LP#2 is a labor of love and we made sure to have some of the best people on board.” – Guitarist Robert Warner said.
With a revamped lineup, a retooled sound, and a violent tale of mammoths in space, the band’s next offering promises to be their heaviest and most diverse material yet.
MAMMOTH CARAVAN released their full-length debut Ice Cold Oblivion in February 2023, followed by the single “I, Megafauna” in August. Listen on Bandcamp, Spotify, and Apple Music.
Line-Up: Brandon Ringo – Vocals/Bass Robert Warner – Vocals/Guitar/Synth Khetner Howton – Drums
By the time today is through — come hell or high water! — we will be at the halfway point of this two-week Quarterly Review. It hasn’t been difficult so far, though there are ups and downs always and I don’t think I’m giving away secrets when I tell you that in listening to 50 records some are going to be better than others.
Truth is that even outside the 100 LPs, EPs, etc., I have slated, there’s still a ton more. Even in something so massive, there’s an element of picking and choosing what goes in. Curation is the nice word for it, though it’s not quite that creatif in my head. Either way, I hope you’ve found something that connects this week. If not yet, then today. If not today, then maybe next week. As I’m prone to say on Fridays, we’re back at it on Monday.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
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Pallbearer, Mind Burns Alive
While I won’t take away from the rawer energy and longing put into their earlier work, maturity suits Pallbearer. The Little Rock, Arkansas, four-piece of vocalist/guitarist Brett Campbell, guitarist/backing vocalist Devin Holt, bassist/synthesist/backing vocalist Joseph D. Rowland and drummer Mark Lierly have passed their 15th anniversary between 2020’s Forgotten Days (review here) and the self-recorded six tracks of Mind Burns Alive, and they sound poised harnessing new breadth and melodic clarity. They’ve talked about the album being stripped down, and maybe that’s true to some degree in the engrossing-anyhow opener “When the Light Fades,” but there’s still room for sax on the 10-minute “Endless Place,” and the quieter stretches of the penultimate “Daybreak” highlight harmonized vocals before the bass-weighted riff sweeps in after the three-minute mark. Campbell has never sounded stronger or more confident as a singer, and he’s able to carry the likewise subdued intro to “Signals” with apparent sincerity and style alike. The title-track flashes brighter hopes in its later guitar solo leads, but they hold both their most wistful drift and their most crushing plod for closer “With Disease,” because five records and countless tours (with more to come) later, Pallbearer very clearly know what the fuck they’re doing. I hope having their own studio leads to further exploration from here.
With its six pieces arranged so that side A works from its longest track to its shortest and side B mirrors by going shortest to longest, Denver‘s BleakHeart seem to prioritize immersion on their second full-length, Silver Pulse, as “All Hearts Desire” unfolds fluidly across nearly eight minutes, swelling to an initial lumbering roll that evaporates as they move into the more spacious verse and build back up around the vocals of Kiki GaNun (also synth) and Kelly Schilling (also bass, keys and more synth). Emotional resonance plays at least as much of a role throughout as the tonal weight intermittently wrought by JP Damron and Mark Chronister‘s guitars, and with Joshua Quinones on drums giving structure and movement to the meditations of “Where I’m Disease” before leaving the subsequent “Let Go” to its progression through piano, drone and a sit-in from a string quartet that leads directly into “Weeping Willow,” the spaces feel big and open but never let the listener get any more lost in them than is intended. This is the first LP from the five-piece incarnation of BleakHeart, which came together in 2022, and the balance of lushness and intensity as “Weeping Willow” hits its culmination and recedes into the subdued outset of “Falling Softly” and the doomed payoff that follows bodes well, but don’t take that as undercutting what’s already being accomplished here.
Austria’s Pryne — also stylized all-caps: PRYNE — threaten to derail their first album before it’s even really started with the angular midsection breakdown of “Can-‘Ka No Rey,” but that the opener holds its course and even brings that mosher riff back at the end is indicative of the boldness with which they bring together the progressive ends of metal and heavy rock throughout the 10-song/46-minute offering, soaring in the solo ahead of the slowdown in “Ramification,” giving the audience 49 seconds to catch its breath after that initial salvo with “Hollow Sea” before “Abordan” resumes the varied onslaught with due punch, shove and twist, building tension in the verse and releasing in the melodic chorus in a way that feels informed by turn-of-the-century metal but seeming to nod at Type O Negative in the first half bridge of “Cymboshia” and refusing flat-out to do any one thing for too long. Plotted and complex even as “The Terrible End of the Yogi” slams out its crescendo before the Baronessy verse of “Plaguebearer” moves toward a stately gang shout and squibbly guitar tremolo, they roll out “Enola” as a more straight-ahead realignment before the drone interlude “Shapeless Forms” bursts into the double-kick-underscored thrash of closer “Elder Things,” riding its massive groove to an expectedly driving end. You never quite know what’s coming next within the songs, but the overarching sense of movement becomes a uniting factor that serves the material well regardless of the aggression level in any given stretch.
Backed by looped percussive ticks and pops and the cello-esque melody of the gudok, Toronto experimental singer-songwriter Avi C. Engel is poised as they ask in the lyrics of “Breadcrumb Dance,” “How many gods used to run this place/Threw up their hands, went into real estate” near the center of the seven-song Too Many Souls LP. Never let it be said there wasn’t room for humor in melancholy. Engel isn’t new to exploring folkish intimacy in various contexts, and Too Many Souls feels all the more personal even in “Wooly Mammoth” or second cut “Ladybird, What’s Wrong?” which gets underway on its casual semi-ramble with the line, “One by one I watch them piss into the sun,” for the grounded perspective at root. An ongoing thread of introspection and Engel‘s voice at the center draw the songs together as these stories are told in metaphor — birds return in the album’s second half with “The Oven Bird’s Song” but there’s enough heart poured in that it doesn’t need to be leaned into as a theme — and before it moves into its dreamstate drone still with the acoustic guitar beneath, “Without Any Eyes” brings through its own kind of apex in Engel‘s layered delivery. Topped with a part-backmasked take on the traditional “Wayfaring Stranger” that’s unfortunately left as an instrumental, Too Many Souls finds Engel continuing their journey of craft with its own songs as companions for each other and the artist behind them.
The 13-minute single “Ultrawest” follows behind Aktopasa‘s late-2022 Argonauta Records debut, Journey to the Pink Planet (review here), and was reportedly composed to feature in a documentary of the same name about the reshaping of post-industrial towns in Colorado. It is duly spacious in its slow, linear, instrumentalist progression. The Venice, Italy, three-piece of guitarist Lorenzo Barutta, bassist Silvio Tozzato and drummer Marco Sebastiano Alessi are fluid as they maintain the spirit of the jam that likely birthed the song’s floating atmospherics, but there’s a plan at work as well as they bring the piece to fruition, with Alessi subtly growing more urgent around 10 minutes in to mark the shift into an ending that never quite bursts out and isn’t trying to, but feels like resolution just the same. A quick, hypnotic showcase of the heavy psychedelic promise the debut held, “Ultrawest” makes it easy to look forward to whatever might come next for them.
Right onto the list of 2024’s best debuts goes Guenna‘s Peak of Jin’Arrah, specifically for the nuance and range the young Swedish foursome bring to their center in heavy progressive fuzz riffing. One might look at a title like “Bongsai” or “Weedwacker” (video premiered here) and imagine played-to-genre stoner fare, but Guenna‘s take is more ambitious, as emphasized in the flute brought to “Bongsai” at the outset and the proclivity toward three-part harmonies that’s unveiled more in the nine-minute “Dimension X,” which follows. The folk influence toward which that flute hints comes forward on the mostly-acoustic closer “Guenna’s Lullaby,” which takes hold after the skronk-accompanied, full-bore push that caps “Wizery,” but by that point the context for such shifts has been smoothly laid out as being part of an encompassing and thoughtful songwriting process that in less capable hands would leave “Ordric Major” disjointed and likely overly aggressive. Even as they make room for the guest lead vocals of Elin Pålsson on “Dark Descent,” Guenna walk these balances smoothly and confidently, and if you don’t believe there’s a generational shift happening right now — at this very moment — in Scandinavia, Peak of Jin’Arrah stands ready to convince you otherwise. There’s a lot of work between here and there, but Guenna hold the potential to be a significant voice in that next-gen emergence.
The interplay of stoner-metal tonal density and languid vocal melody in “I Thought I Would Not” sets an atmospheric mood for Slow Green Thing on their fourth LP, Wetterwarte / Waltherstrasse, which the Dresden-based four-piece seem to have recorded in two sessions between 2020 and 2022. That span of time might account for some of the scope between the songs as “Thousand Deaths” holds out a hand into the void staring back at it and the subsequent “Whispering Voices” answers the proggy wash and fuzzed soloing of “Tombstones in My Eyes” with roll and meditative float alike, but I honestly don’t know what was recorded when and there’s no real lack of cohesion within the aural mists being conjured or the heft residing within it, so take that as you will. It’s perhaps less of a challenge to put temporal considerations aside since Slow Green Thing seem so at home in the flow that plays out across Wetterwarte / Waltherstrasse‘s six songs and 44 minutes, remaining in control despite veering into more aggressive passages and basing so much of what they do on entrancing and otherworldly vibe. And while the general superficialities of thickened tones and soundscaping, ‘gaze-type singing and nod will be familiar, the use made of them by Slow Green Thing offers a richer and deeper experience revealed and affirmed on repeat listens.
Don’t expect a lot of trickery in Ten Ton Slug‘s awaited first full-length record, Colossal Oppressor, which delivers its metallic sludge pummel with due transparency of purpose. That is to say, the Galway, Ireland, trio aren’t fucking around. Enough so that Bolt Thrower‘s Karl Willetts shows up on a couple of songs. Varied but largely growled or screamed vocals answer the furious chug and thud of “Balor,” and while “Ghosts of the Ooze” later on answers back to the brief acoustic parts bookending opener “The Ooze” ahead of “Mallacht an tSloda” arriving like a sledgehammer only to unfold its darkened thrash and nine-plus-minute closer “Mogore the Unkind” making good on its initial threat with the mosh-ready riffing in its second half, there’s no pretense in those or any of the other turns Colossal Oppressor makes, and there doesn’t need to be when the songs are so refreshingly crushing. These guys have been around for over a decade already, so it’s not a surprise necessarily to find them so committed to this punishing mission, but the cathartic bloodletting resonates regardless. Not for everyone, very much for some on the more extreme end of heavy.
Don’t let the outward Beatles-bouncing pop-psych friendly-acid traditionalism of “Goodbye Suzy” lull you into thinking San Francisco psych rockers Magic Fig‘s self-titled debut is solely concerned with vintage aesthetics. While accessible even in the organ-and-synth prog flourish of “PS1” — the keyboards alone seeming to span generations — and the more foreboding current of low end under the shuffle and soft vocals of “Obliteration,” the six-song/28-minute LP is no less effective in the rising cosmic expanse that builds into “Labyrinth” than the circa-’67 orange-sun lysergic folk-rock that rolls out from there — that darker edge comes back around, briefly, in a stop around the two-minute mark; it’s hard to know which side is imagining the other, but “Labyrinth” is no less fun for that — and “Distant Dream,” which follows, is duly transcendent and fluid. Given additional character via the Mellotron and birdsong-inclusive meditation that ends it and the album as a whole, “Departure” nonetheless feels intentional in its subtly synthy acoustic-and-voice folkish strum, and its intricacy highlights a reach one hopes Magic Fig will continue to nurture.
If you followed along with Dortmund, Germany’s Scorched Oak on their 2020 debut, Withering Earth (review here), as that album dug into classic heavy rock as a means of longer-form explorations, some of what they present in the 39 minutes of Perception might make more sense. There was plenty of dynamic then too in terms of shifts in rhythm and atmosphere, and certainly second-LP pieces like “Mirrors” and “Relief” come at least in part from a similar foundation — I’d say the same of the crescendo verse of “Oracle” near the finish — but the reportedly-recorded-live newer offering finds the band making a striking delve into harder and more metallic impacts on the whole. An interplay of gruff — gurgling, almost — and soulful melodic vocals is laid out as opener/longest track (immediate points) “Delusion” resolves the brooding toms of its verse with post-metal surges. Perhaps it’s obvious enough that it doesn’t need to be said, but Scorched Oak aren’t residing in a single feel or progression throughout, and the intensity and urgency of “Reflection” land with a directness that the closing “Oracle” complements in its outward spread. The element of surprise makes Perception feel somewhat like a second debut, but that they pull off such an impression is in itself a noteworthy achievement, never mind how much less predictable it makes them or the significant magnitude of these songs.
