Posted in Whathaveyou on April 21st, 2026 by JJ Koczan
Set to arrive June 11 through Centripetal Force with a full-color eight-page artbook, SOMA‘s new album, Songs of the Lotus Born follows 2025’s devotional Your Soul is the Holy Sound (review here) and seems to have drawn inspiration from the travel the group undertook to support that record. Fair enough, one thing leading to another, great rivers of time flowing and such. There’s no audio yet from Songs of the Lotus Born, but if the New Jersey-based five-piece say they’re pushing deeper, I’m inclined to take their word for it and look forward to hearing. At least viewing from the outside, it seems like that kind of progression is part of why the band exists at all.
June 11 is the release date. The info below all came from the Centripetal Force page on Bandcamp, linked below for preorders in case that’s how you roll — very neurotypical of you — and I’ll hope to have a review going at some point soon. For now, here’s this:
Songs of the Lotus Born, a limited edition of 100 vinyl copies, includes an eight page full color booklet with artwork by Robert Ryan and Kevin Craig, inspired by the art found in Shambhala Publications.
New Jersey ensemble SOMA returns with Songs of the Lotus Born, a deeply immersive new release that expands the group’s sonic and spiritual vocabulary, while remaining rooted in the exploratory musicality that has defined their work to date. The album is presented as a limited vinyl pressing of 100 copies, accompanied by an eight page full color booklet featuring artwork by Robert Ryan, an artist known for his intricate and symbolic visual language, and Kevin Craig, a collaborator whose work complements the album’s devotional tone.
Serving as the follow up to 2024’s Burning is Learning, released via Centripetal Force, this latest offering finds SOMA stepping into more devotional territory, a shift in intention that never abandons the richly textured, music first approach that listeners have come to embrace.
The seeds of Songs of the Lotus Born were planted during a transformative 2025 California tour, a journey that began under a full moon as SOMA opened for Tyler Childers, a singular voice in contemporary American music, at the legendary Hollywood Bowl, an enduring cultural landmark in Los Angeles. From there, the group moved through a series of intimate and spiritually resonant spaces, including the Philosophical Research Society, a hub for esoteric study and inquiry, the Laguna Beach Kali Mandir, a sacred space supporting an active ashram community, and finally a gathering in Ojai, a kirtan and live discussion hosted by Jaymee Carpenter, the voice behind the Love Is the Author podcast.
A pivotal moment occurred during an opening ceremony led by Sam Bercholz, the visionary founder of Shambhala Publications, a teacher, author, practitioner, and lifelong bridge builder between spiritual communities, and his daughter Sara, a collaborator in both ritual and intention. It was through Sam’s request, his inspiration, and his guidance that SOMA stepped onto the path that would become Songs of the Lotus Born.
In that meeting, a moment both immediate and enduring, the Guru Vajra mantra was revealed, a sacred utterance that the group began to integrate into both their collective work and their personal practices, a thread that now runs throughout the album.
This mantra, understood as the life essence of all buddhas and deities, offers a direct connection to the compassionate energy of Padmasambhava, the Lotus Born, a central figure in Tibetan Buddhism whose presence resonates through the work.
With Songs of the Lotus Born, SOMA invites listeners into a space where sound becomes practice, and practice becomes sound, a continuum that bridges the ecstatic and the meditative, the communal and the deeply personal.
For listeners attuned to SOMA’s evolving voice, this release signals not a departure, but a deepening, a further step into the unknown that remains grounded in sound.
Tracklisting: 1. Prayer of Padmasambhava 2. The Thunderbolt Way 3. Vajra Guru Mantra 4. Song of the Lotus Born 5. Mother of Liberation 6. Guru Rinpoche Mantra
Posted in Reviews on November 17th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Happy Monday, and welcome to the Quarterly Review. Or welcome back, anyhow. I said last month that I might try to sneak another one of these weeks in before the end of November, and I’m honestly not prepared to say this’ll be it for the year. There’s a lot out there to keep up with, and this is the most efficient means I have for ‘keeping up,’ as best as I can do that anyhow. I don’t know, man. I’m just trying to get through the day.
This QR is 50 releases — I was slating them right up to yesterday, so some of it’s pretty fresh — and will go from today through Friday. It will be most, if not all, of what is posted this week. I hope you find something you enjoy. Let’s go.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Beastwars, The Ship // The Sea
At nearly 15 years’ remove from their self-titled debut (review here), New Zealand’s Beastwars have been through ringers in life and music alike, but their sound on their sixth full-length, they’ve never sounded quite so refined. Understand, it’s Beastwars, so I still mean immersive and crushing riff-heavy rock, which the band have honed to a point of bordering on noise rock in pieces like “The Storm” or the later “You Know They’re Burning the Land.” “Rust” and “The Howling” maintain a sense of the epic with Matt Hyde‘s shouts alternately into and out from the abyss, but the band have grown in the six years since their last album of originals, 2019’s IV (review here), and for the blowout in “The Devil” and the weight of chug in “Guardian of Fire,” their impact feels all the more craterous for it.
I won’t take away from the shorter bangers here, whether it’s the wah-on immediacy of “Listen Close” or “Weird Scenes” with its stick-click immediacy, but each half(-ish) of Lacertilia‘s third LP (first for Majestic Mountain), Transcend, ends with a more extended cut, with “Nothing Sacred” (10:34) and “The Sun is the Key” (7:13) rounding out their respective sides, and the band are right to take the time when they take it. Of course, it’s symptomatic of the broader variety brought to the Cardiff five-piece’s craft, and they make Transcend a showcase of their reach, be it into acoustic strum and emergent bluesier scorch on “Over and Out,” the twisting lead guitar progressivism of “Deviate From the Plan,” which meets the grandeur halfway, or the percussion-laced instrumentalist build of the semi-title-track “Transcending.” They end up offering something different with each of the 10 songs, and balance raucousness and expressive purpose as they go in malleable and distinctive style.
With their debut album, Turin three-piece Dune Aurora draw together disparate ideas from across the modern riffy pastiche such that garage-style sway and more traditonalist stoner chug combine with at-times-ethereal melody, desert push, psychedelia and, in the case of “Trapdoor,” a poppier take entirely. There’s cohesion in the songwriting to match the aesthetic ambition, though, and Dune Aurora don’t come off as haphazard so much as multifaceted. The reworked prior single “Fire” demonstrates a fuzzy drive waiting in the wings as part of their approach, but the nod in “Burning Waters” is more dug in, and “Sunless Queen” reveals a patience underlying their builds that might come out more on subsequent outings, but the shove of “Crocodile” and that Nirvana riff in “Dune Chameleon” are vital to Ice Age Desert too, and it’s still just a sampling of the elements Dune Aurora use to ensnare the listener. As much as they have going on, that they don’t come across as confused seems to give them all the more potential.
Ghost Pain is the debut two-songer from Almeria, Spain, post-metallic four-piece Khayrava, who present “Red Hot Sun” (7:04) and “Ghost Pain” (10:32) with a marked sense of texture as part of their intention. Both tracks crush, but both also offer a moment of departure from that, and the latter plays off the impact of the former with a keyboardier air and its later divergence into floating melody and crash before, just past the eight-minute mark, they torch the whole thing with a worthy and minutes-long crescendo. “Red Hot Sun” is huge, but its midsection gives over to a break of Tool-y groove met with heavy post-rock flourish from the guitar. That also, of course, comes back around to the pummel, but it’s in the getting there that Khayrava begin to reveal the character of the band, and with the depth of mix they bring to Ghost Pain and the clear intent toward nuance of style, I’ll be on the lookout for where they go from here.
“Who invented 9-5,” River Cult ask on “Fast Crash.” “They should be shot dead,” is the answer the lyrics give. Fair. The third long-player from the heretofore undervalued New York-based disgruntled fuzzbringers manages to make a mental health crisis swing like desert rock on “Smoke Break,” the sixth of the seven inclusions on the 38-minute offering, seeming to answer the crash-in, warm tone and lyrical fuckall of the opening title-track in the process. They’re not wrong, and if you’re gonna say the world sucks, at least “Feels Good to Scream” has a density of distortion to hold up to the message, vocals biting through like early-metal’s cultist inheritor, cavernous and obscure ahead of centerpiece “Mind the Teeth” start-stop chugging as the lore of ‘The Wolf’ is cast. The trio of guitarist/vocalist Sean Forlenza, bassist Anthony Mendolia and drummer Eli Pizzuto (ex-Naam) find a niche for themselves in downtrodden fuzz, ending with “New Song,” which even having been tracked at Brooklyn’s Studio G sounds fresh off the stage.
In the soaring vocals of Kate Prokop and the riffs behind them chugging away at the verses of “The Dead Follow” and the moodier surge into the layered hook of “Witch Hunt,” Omaha, Nebraska’s Beast Eagle answer their 2024 self-titled debut EP with five more songs of metal-rooted heavy groove, clear and fluid in “Sharp Tongue” but not without aggression underlying. The bass in “The Dead Follow” is mixed the way I feel bass should always be — forward — and that gives even the mellower stretch as they move into the ending a different sense of presence than it might otherwise have, but in the galloping verse and sprawling chorus of “The Demonstration” and the rush of “Send Me Down,” the latter of which, admittedly, is more of a rocker, speaking to a burgeoning dynamic in their sound, they retain a feeling of charge, and that defines Sorceress‘ 19-minute run as much as the taut chug in “Sharp Tongue.”
Having relocated from Denver to Asbury Park, New Jersey, The Munsens are no less vicious or crushing on their second album, Degradation in the Hyperreal. “Eternal Grasp” starts the procession as much death metal as it is sludge, which is an ethic that “Supreme Death” will bring to gorgeously extreme fruition a short time later, while pieces like the melancholic, minimalist instrumental “Vesper” and the blistering megasludger “Sacred Ivory” and the outro “I Avow” offset the onslaught of “The Knife,” “Scaling Ceausescu’s Balcony” and the lumber-into-double-kick of “Drauga,” vocals offering precious little comfort for the downward journey of the record’s 46 minutes. That “The Knife” finishes, specifically, ahead of “I Avow,” stands as testament to just how far The Munsens have pushed into extremity over the course of their decade-plus, but they are not entirely unforgiving either, despite having grown only more gnashing over the course of their decade-plus tenure.
They’re not thrash, but thrash is part of what Dayton, Ohio’s Rattlesnake Venom Trip get up to on their new four-song EP, Eclipse the Sun, with a sharp edge to the riffing on lead cut “Hollowed Eyes” that tells the tale. The second half of that track subsides some in terms of forward thrust, setting up the still-chugging-but-slower “Ablaze Set I,” with a more resonant hook, and “Brushstrokes/Eclipse the Sun,” which in its first half is as far as Rattlesnake Venom Trip go in divergence from the burl and push, but in its second answers for the metal and the nod both that it seems to have inherited from the opener. Punchy bass’ed reinforcement takes place over the five minutes of “Cold Winds Blow,” and the four-piece maintain a clear-eyed sense of identity through whatever turns the material makes, somewhere between heavy rock, Southern metal, thrash and stoner idolatry. You could sit and parse it, but the band make it pretty easy to trust where they’re headed as they go.
For their third long-player, The Craft of Pain (on Glory or Death), Brazil’s Pesta offer a take on doom born of traditional metal. They’re not aggro, or outwardly depressive, but “Masters of the Craft of Pain” and the swinging “Marked by Hate” find a route from Sabbath and the NWOBHM to doom just the same. A guest appearance from Scott “Wino” Weinrich (The Obsessed, etc.) on vocals for “Mirror Maze” is a departure, but not so radical as to be out of place, especially backed by the depth of groove in the subsequent rocker “In the Drive’s End.” On side B, the pair of “The Inquisitor Pt. I” and the initially-acoustic-based “The Inquisitor Pt. II” provide a more theatrical reach, but the acoustic-and-key-strings “Canto XXI” brings in Rodrigo Garcia (Diffuse Reality) for another curve before “Shadows of a Desire” returns to ground to finish out not so far from where “Marked by Hate” left off. At no point do Pesta feel like they’ve diverged from where they want to be.
The lyrics posted with the cumbersomely-titled “J.I.B.B.E.R.I.S.H. (John Inflates Balloons Because Every Remote Island Starts Hallucinating)” are wrong, and the level of psychedelic tricksterism and playfulness across Atom Lux‘s debut, Voidgaze Dopamine Salad is such that I’m not sure if that’s on purpose or not. Rest assured, different references to “I Am the Walrus” are being made. The self-recording solo-project of Roman multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Lucio Filizola is a garden of weirdo delights, with the keyboardy bounce of “Death by Small Talk” giving away none of the subversively easy garage swing of “Spaghettification Apocalypse” and “Stoned Monkey Heritage” bashing away like it’s an alternate-reality 1964, which by the way I’m no longer convinced it isn’t. It’s from gleeful oddities like “Dance Plague Delirium” that progressive rock first emerged in the comedown era. The same trajectory may or may not be in store for Atom Lux long term, but right now any kind of ‘comedown’ still feels a good ways off.
There’s a lot to unpack here, even before you get to the audio. Soma — or SOMA, all-caps to highlight the acronym Sacred Order of Mystic Apogees — is a five-piece-and-then-some collective from the Asbury Park area of New Jersey. The music they play is connected to psychedelic rock in its rhythmic underpinnings and some of its tonal presence, but it is not rock and roll and while Your Soul is the Holy Sound is definitely interested in communion, the carefully arranged five tracks across the 30 minutes of the record aren’t getting there with volume or riffs. Instead, Soma perform a kind of devotional music known as kirtan, which is call-and-response chanting set to music.
At least some members of the group are rooted in the Jersey Shore rock underground, however. Stephen Triolo (Slow Rise, Constellation of Angels) and Robert Ryan (ex-Lord Sterling) take part, the latter under the assumed name of Shivanesh, and the lineup is completed by Kalpa, Nataraja and Vasudeva, also presumably assumed names, while Krishnadas Sharma, Madhuri and Bhakti Devi contributed backing vocals, John Krajewski, Triolo (who also mixed) and Nicholas Sudol recorded and Adam Vaccarelli at RetroMedia Sound in Red Bank mastered. It was recorded in an episcopal church. It is a cultural blend that is particularly New Jerseyan.
My beloved Garden State houses about 10 percent of the US population of Indian immigrants, and the town where I grew up, Parsippany (farther north from Asbury/Red Bank, and only in the state itself does that in any way matter), is an enclave to the point that the schools take off for Diwali and other holidays. At the same time, I don’t think I’ll be the first to note the Italian cultural influence in the region. They made The Sopranos about it, if you want to go just by the stereotypes or get a lesson in the state’s secondary, not-really-legal bureaucracies. But the Jersey is there in Soma‘s kirtan chants as well, and with the 10″ edition of the record put together through Samaritan Press with art by David V. D’Andrea (Om, etc.), the overarching impression is surprisingly encompassing for something that’s still just a half-hour long.
“Chamundaye” begins with a singular joy in its execution. As promised, the crux of what Soma do is in the call and response — a voice leads, others follow and repeat. If you’re open to it — and that’s going to be a question of some magnitude depending on how you feel about worshiping gods — the song is made to be sung, and that sense of outreach, of bringing the listener into the proceedings of Soma‘s homage, is the presiding impression across Your Soul is the Holy Sound. In addition to opening, “Chamundaye” is the longest inclusion (immediate points) at 7:53, and it grows to some proportion by the time it’s wrapping up, but while it has an instrumental melody, the bulk of its impact is in the percussion, whether that’s handclaps or hand-drumming, along with the melody of voice and (I think) sitar drone.
Your Soul is the HolySound does not get so danceable again, but it stays reverent. “Father of Ma’at” has a spoken part over an instrumental exploration that winds up in a meditative flow, mellow again with hand percussion and a variety of string sounds and rhythmic nuances. It’s more than just an instrumental transition piece, but no question it and the penultimate “The Tarot Will Teach You,” also sans vocals, were placed to offset “Chamundaye,” the centerpiece “Shiva’s Grace” and the closing “Garland of Names” that brings the ceremony to a rousing conclusion in calling out various deities, among them Krishna, Rama, Shiva, Vishnu, Buddha, Jesus, in succession. “The Tarot Will Teach You” is shorter and more directly keyboardian feeling, but the tabla and jangling bells provide organic movement beneath.
The big question here, as regards Your Soul is the Holy Sound and Soma more generally, is whether we’re talking about cultural appreciation or appropriation, because even if these guys have been on this track of influence since the krishna-core days of NJ’s 1990s punker underground, to look at the basic superficial optics, you’ve still got a bunch of dudes from Jersey playing traditional music from half a world away, under assumed names. There’s no getting away from that, obviously, and Soma‘s methodology deals with it through the deep respect for the source material. This isn’t Elvis Presley taking the music Black people were making in the South and making it palatable for white folks. It’s a celebration of form.
If you’ve ever read up on the Hare Krishna movement or anything like that, you know the goal is to curry favor from the gods basically by calling them out and saying their name over and over again. I have no religion and no gods, period, but I do find the idea charming of being able to basically nag one’s creator-figureheads into doing what you want them to do, and I think anyone who’s ever been a parent asked the same question 50 times in a two-minute span can appreciate the image as well. Kirtan is a part of this, and in “Chamundaye,” “Shiva’s Grace” and “Garland of Names,” and even in the drones and flow of the instrumentals, Soma bring these songs to life in a way that bleeds love.
Its not always a soothing listen, and it’s not supposed to be. The idea is to get your blood moving, to get you excited, to get the gods excited, and then I think everybody just parties and things are cool until someone comes along and is like, “Yeah my god is named Sassafras” and then war has to happen forever or somesuch. The net-negative cultural effect of religiousness notwithstanding — though that’s a big ‘un to put aside — Soma seek spiritual enrichment through time-tested means and find ways to make traditionalist sounds their own without cheapening the presence of history in the material or giving up raw sonic impact. It is a work of outreach such that nearly every second doubles as an invitation to the one hearing it: “Come. Be a part of this with us.”
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 15th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
No strangers to rollercoasters, last week, Solacelost their original frontman Jason. Next week, they’ll embark on a tour headed westward to appear at Planet Desert Rock Weekend in Las Vegas, playing Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Arizona with a parade of killer supporting acts. I guess that makes this week the time to announce the band has signed to Magnetic Eye Records and will reissue their debut album, 2000’s Further (discussed here), in honor of its 25th anniversary, as well as hit the studio to record a follow-up to late-2019’s The Brink (review here) for release later this year.
That’s the plan, I guess. Plans change, but the prospect of new music from Solace is enticing, even as the band are mourning their recent loss. And for a holdover, a revisit to the first record is nothing to complain about. I’m stoked to see these guys in Vegas. It’s been too long. And this announcement might amount to paperwork since Solace released their last album on Blues Funeral Recordings and the first two through MeteorCity and so have worked with Jadd Shickler on releases for their entire career through different labels, but I’m happy for the excuse to put Further on again and remind you that the band uploaded all their records to YouTube (not the EPs/live stuff yet, so far as I know) for your streaming enjoyment. The Brink is at the bottom of the post as well, just to cover all sides.
A quarter-century on from Solace‘s first LP, here’s looking forward:
SOLACE sign with Magnetic Eye Records!
American metal stalwarts SOLACE have signed a multi-album contract with Magnetic Eye Records. The five-piece originally from Asbury Park, New Jersey will issue an expanded edition of their debut album “Further” in celebration of its 25th anniversary this summer, along with their upcoming fifth full-length also via the label in the last quarter of 2025.
SOLACE have already announced US live dates for early 2025. The roadtrip through the South and Southwest kicks off on January 23 at Bandito’s in Richmond, VA. Please see below for all currently confirmed shows.
SOLACE comment: “Solace are happy to announce our signing to Magnetic Eye Records, a label we respect and more importantly who respects us”, guitarist Justin Daniels writes on behalf of the band. “We’re looking forward to an awesome partnership that lets us get more of our dirt metal out to the world.”
Daniels continues: “This announcement is bittersweet in coming just a week after the passing of our original singer Jason. If nothing else, Solace perseveres as long as we can lift guitars and switch on amps. We move through sadness and look forward to honoring Jason’s legacy and our own with this newest chapter of the band.”
Jadd Shickler adds: “I had the privilege to sign Solace in 1999”, the Magnetic Eye director adds. “They were the best band my first label ever signed, and they still are. Through different incarnations and numerous line-ups, I’ve dedicated countless years to making sure as many people as possible saw and heard their greatness, and I’m more than ready for Magnetic Eye Records to ram Solace’s music down throats for countless more years to come.”
SOLACE Live 2025: 1/23 Richmond, VA – Bandito’s w/ Book of Wyrms + Hagstone 1/24 Atlanta, GA – Star Bar w/ Hot Ram + Brood of Mockers 1/25 New Orleans, LA – Siberia w/ Wizard Dick, So Awful + Burial Gift 1/27 Houston, TX – Black Magic Social Club w/ Grim Trophies + Mr Plow 1/28 Arlington, TX – Growl Records w/ Sons of Gulliver + King Otter 1/29 Austin, TX – Valhalla w/ Crimson Devils + Ungrieved 1/30 Tempe, AZ – Yucca Tap Room w/ Jupiter Cyclops + Weapon of Pride 2/1 Las Vegas, NV – The Usual Place, Planet Desert Rock Weekend
SOLACE are celebrated veterans of the American metal scene. Hailing from Asbury Park, New Jersey at the windswept shore of the Western Atlantic, the band was founded in 1996. Built on a solid foundation of classic metal, early doom and punk ethic, the original four-piece infused a healthy dose of hardcore fury into grooving, grinding sludge.
Debut full-length “Further” garnered immediate attention for SOLACE on both sides of the Atlantic at the turn of the millennia. Three years later, the sophomore album “13” (2003) witnessed the Americans expanding and solidifying their style by highlighting the epic side of their songwriting. In the wake of this album, the band was invited twice to perform at the prestigious Roadburn Festival in 2006 and 2009, which further endeared them to an international audience.
Following a string of singles and EPs, the shoremen returned with acclaimed third album “A.D.” in 2010. Although the release was again well received, a hiatus followed during which SOLACE implemented some changes in their line-up. This maneuver got the heavy ship afloat again, and the remarkable full-length number four, “The Brink” made landfall in 2019. This album has been described as a glorious trek through churning riffage, weighty doom power and drunken sea shanties, while the massive use of NWOBHM dual-guitar attack was also gladly noted.
SOLACE call their amalgamation of doom and heavy metal with hardcore elements dirt metal, while elsewhere it has been somewhat tongue-in-cheekly dubbed shorecore. Others file the New Jersey five-piece under stoner metal – and in truth, all these descriptions fit to an extent.
SOLACE aim to release their upcoming fifth full-length via Magnetic Eye Records by the end of 2025.
P.S.: In January 2025, original SOLACE singer Jason L. sadly passed away, just as the band prepare to honour their classic debut album (and the first to feature Jason’s vocals) as an expanded new edition this summer. Raise a glass to his legacy and everything he brought to the band during his formative years as their tortured and brilliant frontman.
Line-up: Justin Daniels – guitar Justin Goins – keyboard, vocals Tim Schoenleber – drums Mike Sica – bass Tommy Southard – guitar
In the annals of Black Sabbath bootlegdom, there are two unofficial documents of the original-lineup era that stand above the rest as utterly essential for their sound quality and the band’s performance. One is Paris 1970 (discussed here), and the other is this recording from Aug. 5, 1975, from Asbury Park, New Jersey. The show was at Convention Hall, right on the Boardwalk of the beach town, and the band were in the US promoting the yet-to-be-released Sabotage, and as one can hear in the renditions of “Hole in the Sky,” “War Pigs,” “Spiral Architect” and on and on, the band was pure stoned fire. Captured at what I’d gladly argue was his peak as an actual singer, if not as a frontman, vocalist Ozzy Osbourne engages the crowd and nails each song, even if he flubs the lyrics here and there, as on “Symptom of the Universe” early in the 100-minute set. With solos from guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward — sadly nothing from the bass; it would be amazing to have a Geezer Butler solo captured in such fidelity — the band is both vibrant and poised, and whether they’re ripping into “Supernaut” or jamming out an early version of what would become “Rock ‘n’ Roll Doctor” on 1976’s Technical Ecstasy, Black Sabbath absolutely laid waste to Asbury Park (it would take the shore town decades to recover) and, seemingly, everyone in the vicinity. As Ozzy says at the beginning of “Hole in the Sky”: “Are you high?” Cheers. “Are you HIGH???” Louder cheers. “So am I.”
I won’t doubt the veracity of that claim, which is to say, he probably was high. Black Sabbath‘s adventures in weed, cocaine, booze, etc., are well documented, and as they were about to release their sixth album, they were about to enter the period in which that excess of excess would begin to take its toll, eventually leading to the split with Osbourne and a collaboration with then-Rainbow vocalist Ronnie James Dio. Of course, they would put out Technical Ecstasy and 1978’s Never Say Die before that happened, and both of those albums certainly have their moments, but there’s a reason the t-shirt says you can only trust yourself and the first six Black Sabbath records, and it seems that no small part of that reason is because by the time they were six and then eight years removed from their genre-defining 1970 self-titled debut, they were fried on multiple levels. “Are you high?” Cheers. “So am I.”
That of course is just one example of choice banter from Ozzy throughout. He talks about the “new album” a lot, tells the crowd he loves them multiple times, and at the end of the set, says on behalf of himself and the band behind that the New Jersey crowd is, “a good bunch of people.” It’s the kind of thing that would rare make it onto an official live release, since it so directly ties it to the place and the specific date, but in hearing it some 43 years after the fact, it brings the listener that much more into the moment of what was happening that night, at that time, at that particular gig. And that’s the thing about the Convention Hall show. It was a stop on the tour. They’d have another show the night after and/or the night after that. This could’ve been Black Sabbath any other day of the week, and they’re utterly lethal. Even the slow-rolling beginning section of “Megalomania” sees them dominating.
There are various stories about this show. One that it was a radio broadcast. Another that it was recorded and intended for release as a live album that was subsequently shelved. I don’t know how true any of that is or isn’t — neither is outside the realm of possibility; it’s not like the rumor is it was actually recorded by time travelers who wanted to do the future a favor and record the best show the band ever played — but I know that this set is just as essential as any official live record Sabbath ever put out, if not more so, and that it demonstrates the power in Black Sabbath‘s delivery at the time. They were dead on.
I’ve been a bootleg nerd for a while and have amassed a decent Sabbath collection at this point, but if you have a favorite you’d like to campaign for — I hear good things about London ’78, and of course there’s the 1974 California Jam — please feel free to let fly in the comments. In the meantime, as always, I hope you enjoy. How could you not?
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I don’t know how many typos there are in the section above, but I was falling asleep pretty hard for a little bit while putting it together, so I’m sure there are some. I’ll try to read it over in the next day or so and make copy fixes. Sometimes that kind of thing happens when you start writing at five in the morning, even with a decent amount of coffee in your system.
This weekend is Desertfest in London and Berlin. If you’re going, I hope you have a great time. I’ll actually be in the UK from May 13-23, which is just a week late to catch the festival. Timing is everything. I’m planning on seeing Elephant Tree though while I’m in town at The Black Heart. That will be fun. Fingers crossed for a new song or two in the set.
Feels like the bulk of this week was still Roadburn recovery, but actually most of it was baby time. The weather in New England has turned from shit-miserable to less-shit-miserable — Spring has sprung! — so I’ve been able to take The Pecan out for walks and that kind of thing. He’s sitting up and proto-crawling, but not standing yet at all. We’ve started him on solid foods, puffs and the like. Obviously I regret not starting my “Doomestic Living” blog when he was born. I’d basically have to give this up though to do it right and clearly that’s not something I’m prepared to do.
My therapist this week told me I should write about my experience with having an eating disorder. That’d be a fun one. I’d like to do that. Don’t really have the time, aside from the odd mention here of starving myself or, alternately, not, and being miserable about one or the other or both. Front to back I’m pretty wretched either way.
To wit: my wife and I were talking about this or that old busted appliance the other day, and I said something about, “weighs 300 pounds and doesn’t work,” waited a second and then added, “I can relate.”
(pause for laughter)
As I’m flying to London next Saturday, I’ve of course packed as much into the coming week as possible. I’m not sure yet what my days will be like in the UK, but of course I’ll do as much as I can when I can. In the meantime, here’s what’s coming up as of now, subject to change of course:
Mon.: Dee Calhoun review.
Tue.: Tunguska Mammoth review/stream.
Wed.: Abramis Brama review; Big Kizz video premiere.
Thu.: Drug Cult review/video premiere.
Fri.: Mos Generator album stream.
Alright, y’all. I’m gonna check out. I’ve got work to do over the weekend, so I’ll be around. Would be nice to catch up on email and Facebook messages, but at this point that feels like a longer-term project. Way, way behind, as usual.
Have a great and safe weekend. Enjoy the Sabbath, have fun, be safe, and eat some ice cream. I’ll see you back here Monday for another onslaught of riffy whatnot.
They touch every now and again on late ’60s psychedelic garage pop, but at their core, there’s very little about The Ribeye Brothers that one could classify in one way or another as nonsense. Not no-nonsense, no-frills, but very few. On their fourth album, Call of the Scrapheap — released this year on Main Man Records — the Jersey-based five-piece prove heavy on wit and self-deprecation and light on flourish. That’s not to insinuate the 14 tracks on the 40-minute album, all but five of which clock in under three minutes, are somehow lacking, just that they’re efficient in a classic pop sense. Verses lead to strong choruses, organs complement guitars, and vocalist Tim Cronin and guitarist Jon Kleiman lead the band through good-time misery that makes as much use of Cronin‘s lyrical wit as any other element, the earliest cuts “Apples, Plums and Pears” and “Come in Last” setting the tone for the mood that the rest of the album follows through.
That mood? Filled with dry sarcasm, pointed self-critique and sometimes hilarious turns of phrase. “Apples, Plums and Pears” offers a straightforward hook in, “It’s cloudy all the time/The sun it never shines,” but “Coward’s Way” turns cliche on its head with “Some say it’s the coward’s way/I say cowards stay/I say cowards stay too long,” and “Good as New” asserts that “My good as new/Is neither good nor new.” Cronin‘s voice is perfectly suited to delivering these lines, he keeps a tongue-in-cheek feel that neither undercuts the sincerity in what he’s saying nor makes Call of the Scrapheap too wallowing. In addition, the upbeat rocking vibes of “Come in Last” and buzzsaw fuzz of “Smart Like Aristotle” provide an endearing contrast to the negativity of prose, giving The Ribeye Brothers a more complex vibe than they’d have if all the tracks were as much downers musically as they seem on the surface to be lyrically. Even as Cronin asserts that it’s cloudy all the time, the music behind him — provided by Kleiman, guitarist Brent Sisk, bassist Joe Calandra and drummer Neil O’Brien (who also did the album cover) — is as sunny as one could ask it to be.
Posted in Reviews on September 7th, 2011 by JJ Koczan
I don’t get down that way as often as I used to, but once every year and a half or so, Asbury Park does me just right. Last night was one such occasion. I left the office a bit after 8PM, sloshed my way through the rain Southbound on the world famous Garden State Parkway, down to admirable Asbury mainstay The Saint, where West Virginian instrumental riffers were joined by Jersey‘s own The Atomic Bitchwax and The Ominous Order of Filthy Mongrels, who were about halfway through their set when I forked over my $12 and got in.
Despite having On the Radar-ized them as far back as last April, and despite my fandom of guitarist Mike Schwiegert and vocalist Kevin LeBlanc‘s prior bands (Lord Sterling and A Day of Pigs, respectively), and despite living a mere 90 minutes away, it was my first time catching The Ominous Order of Filthy Mongrels live, and I was glad to have the chance to do so. They’ve got some classic crossover in their sound that they offset with noisy crunch and thick tones, and with their first full-length reportedly in the can, there seems to be much more to look forward to.
The five-piece were something of a standout on the bill for how aggressive they were, but there was no denying the formidable presence they brought to the stage. LeBlanc is a natural frontman who plays to the strength of his screams, and Schwiegert — joined on guitar by Dave Anderson — excellently displays his hardcore roots without giving in to East Coast chest-thumping cliche. The material they played was pummeling, and it looked as though they were having fun finding out just how heavy they can be.
The Atomic Bitchwax, on the other hand, seemed just to be having fun. Not counting the couple minutes I saw at Roadburn, it was the first I’d seen them since the release of their latest album, The Local Fuzz (review here), and while they capped their set with about 20 minutes of that 42-minute instrumental riff-fest, they ran through a handful of other songs first, including “So Come On,” “Shitkicker” and the Core cover, “Kiss the Sun,” which served as a reminder of just how much a part of the Bitchwax guitarist/vocalist Finn Ryan has become since coming on board prior to the release of 3 in 2005.
Rightfully so since he used to be in Core, Ryan took lead vocal on that song as per usual, but bassist/vocalist Chris Kosnik seems to have stepped back on some of the material from 3 and 2009’s TAB4 as well — “Destroyer” from the former comes to mind — though both had smiles on their faces for “Gettin’ Old” from the band’s classic 1999 self-titled debut. The Atomic Bitchwax being rounded out by “Monster Bob” Pantella on drums, Kosnik is the only remaining founding member, but without hesitation, I’ll say their set at The Saint was among the tightest I’ve ever seen them, and I’ve seen them plenty.
Kosnik and Ryan were completely locked in on bass and guitar, their fingers rapidly making their way through the band’s signature winding riffs with speeds approaching Slayer levels at times during “The Local Fuzz.” That album probably took some flack for moving so far away from 4‘s pop-based songwriting modus — it’s easy to see it as a kind of “diarrhea of the riff” — but live, it made more sense, and it seemed almost as though the band were stripping everything down to the essential parts, and answering those who likewise denigrated 4‘s hyper-accessibility by saying, “Well, you want fuzzy riffs, here they are.” And there they were. For about 20 minutes solid.
And I guess if Karma to Burn is going to get a lead in, there probably isn’t one more appropriate than that. The trio’s anti-bullshit stance is long noted, most recently evinced on their second album for Napalm Records, V, but as they ran through a set of their numerically-titled instrumental pieces, it became increasingly clear that something was amiss, particularly with guitarist Will Mecum.
When drummer Rob Oswald (ex-Nebula) came around his kit early on to fix the foot of his bass drum, Mecum cursed audibly and with frustration. I don’t know what the situation is with the band, if he was pissed at Oswald for something or if he stubbed his toe — I refuse to speculate or spread rumors needlessly — but something had him off his game. He played much of the set like some men operate heavy machinery: with his ballcap pulled down over his eyes and his shoulders slumped in contempt.
And though he spent a significant amount of time facing the wall to the side of the stage, leaving Oswald‘s near-flatly-set toms high cymbals and bassist Rich Mullins with the task of acknowledging the audience in a manner not unlike someone trying to explain away a domestic disturbance to the cops the neighbors called, (prior to their going on, Mullins had told me the tour was, “a lot of work”), they sounded really good. It was almost in spite of themselves.
They’re clearly three very different individuals — Mecum with his grit and seemingly endless supply of riffs, Mullins with his gaunt rocker’s looks and stage presence, and Oswald the beardo wizard in back launching into impossible-looking fills — and again, I don’t know what the situation is in the band, but Karma to Burn has become so influential in heavy rock because there’s a special chemistry among the players, and that came through in the songs. They cut the set short, nixing “41” from 2009’s Appalachian Incantation among others, and obviously it was a bad night for the band, but I didn’t leave The Saint disappointed.
The music was right on and I got to see a new band for the first time, a local staple who were mind-bogglingly tight, and an act who’ve left an indelible mark on their genre. It was a good night, I got to see some good people. For $12 on a rainy Tuesday, you can’t reasonably ask much more than that. It was a bummer that it was a bummer for Karma to Burn, but hopefully they’ll make it up on the rest of the tour, which hits Boston tonight (Sept. 7, with formidable locals Black Thai and Ichabod) and Brooklyn tomorrow, once again with The Atomic Bitchwax on the latter bill as a replacement for the apparently-defunct Black Pyramid.
More pics after the jump. Thanks to The Saint for being so brightly lit.
