In terms of methodology, it’s been a long time between releases for Australian jammers Frozen Planet….1969, but they haven’t been completely absent. In 2022, the Sydney-based heavy psychedelic explorers released Not From 1969 (review here), which was an all-in collection of adventures in aural chemistry and in-the-open jaunts. Mellow-heavy freedom, wrought and recorded. Echoland is the first time to my recollection that the trio — guitarist Paul Attard, drummer Frank Attard (who also produced and mixed) and bassist Lachlan Paine –have dug into more structured material on a record. To look back at the time since Not From 1969, songs on Echoland like opener “The Plants” or the partially-structured “Setting the Scene for Time to Stand Still” find precedent on later-2022’s Glassblaster EP and the earlier-2025 single “Night Movers,” which does appear on the download of the record in an alternate take, but seems to have come about as the three-piece were reconvening around an evolved intention.

Between the initial tight boogie of “Night Movers” and “Night Movers (Alternate Take,” which crosses the 10-minute mark and feels a bit more jazz-swaggering in its plotted flow, the impression remains centered around live performance. Frozen Planet….1969 haven’t come back after three years with a hyper-produced sound, but the shift in their purpose from pure jamming to building songs out of the material resulting from their jams is palpable even as “Night Movers (Alternate Take)” and everything from “The Plants” onward works in some way to toy with the balance between the two sides.

One finds a winding highlight in the fuzzy lead work of “If I Had Wings,” a sometimes-howling line of soloing threaded, eventually in layers, atop an unassuming backing procession. Psychedelic for the tone, “If I Had Wings” gives over to a seemingly-plotted, not-improvised roll, but the key sounds, the course of the nod that arrives as that lead line departs, and the ease with which they carry the song to the finish speak to the tradeoff being made here. For the band, it’s a change in target for Echoland. It’s not about capturing the moment of inspiration anymore, about how the songs are finding their path through uncharted terrain, but about how arrangements are conceived and executed, and how the band are able to foster a sense of purpose behind the choices they’re making to go where and when they do.

“If I Had Wings” resolves in a kind of well-here-we-are proggy bop, after the organ has stepped up in place of the guitar solo and itself made way for the comedown ahead of the also-five-and-a-half-minutes-long “Plastic Banquet,” which feels immediately plotted in its acoustic-guitar-meets-keyboard unfolding, electric guitar gradually layered in. In this way, Frozen Planet….1969 show that not only are they looking at structure as something malleable to their craft, but also realizing their flexibility in terms of arrangement, which feels as much forward-looking as it does about the present moment. Texture and evocation remain a strong piece of Frozen Planet….1969‘s impression on the listener, it’s just that those and others become tools put to use rather than, to the listener, happy accidents along the way.

And I guess that leads to the central question of Echoland, which is just how academic that difference is in the first place. From its melancholy solo line that’s conversing with “If I Had Wings” before it to the chimes in the midsection and the light Morricone-ism that ensues in the second half, “Plastic Banquet” feels declarative in terms of what Echoland is going for and accomplishing as Frozen Planet….1969 take on this bit of willful evolution, but the primary impact of their work — still feels open. That’s true for the lack of vocals throughout, for the linear nature of the structures employed, for the readiness to shift arrangements and the fact that they actually spend a decent amount of time jamming or recounting jams in passages. Does it matter to the casual listener? Is there a discernable difference between Echoland and an earlier work like 2017’s Electric Smokehouse (review here)?

I hate to say it, but it depends almost entirely on the person hearing it. If you want to put on Echoland and from the classic in medias res rush of “The Plants” dive into the multi-stage dynamism of “Setting the Scene for Time to Stand Still” and experience it on the level of appreciating the decisions that have gone into making it, the careful way that Frozen Planet….1969 have taken these steps to have more of a foundation beneath them even as they continue to harness atmospheres beyond, you can. If you want to just let it go and see where it takes you, maybe approach it without the baggage of consideration among the rest of their catalog — just hearing it — the album accommodates this as well. If you don’t believe me, they have the 18-minute closing title-track to prove it.

Now, I say “closing,” and you should know that “Night Movers (Alternate Take)” follows on the download, if not the compact disc version. But the point is that even in its reaches there’s structure, purpose behind the going. If you told me the midsection was completely improvised, or that the entire second half was improvised, or that the entire thing was improvised around a prior backdrop, I’d believe you, but the point is that by the time they’re 13 minutes deep, it doesn’t really matter whether that little flourish of guitar noise was thought of beforehand or not. A solo emerges from the low-key freakout and carries into more noise and skronk, which they bring to a speedier-shuffle culmination to cap as they otherwise might onstage.

No question they finish with their jammiest take, and the messaging there seems to be that making it up as they go is still a part of who Frozen Planet….1969 are, even if the band’s internal definitions of what they do and how they do it have changed and/or are changing. I won’t predict where another three years will find their sound, except perhaps to point out they seem committed to instrumentalism, but Echoland makes them a stronger outfit because of its ethereal reach and the shapes the band are able to carve therefrom.

Frozen Planet….1969, Echoland (2025)

Frozen Planet….1969 Linktr.ee

Frozen Planet….1969 on Instagram

Frozen Planet….1969 on Facebook

Pepper Shaker Records on Bandcamp

Pepper Shaker Records on Instagram

Pepper Shaker Records on Facebook

Thus ends my favorite Quarterly Review since the last one. Yeah, some of my motivation was in bookkeeping, in wanting to cover this stuff before the year’s done, but trying to keep up is always part of the thing, so that’s nothing new. I am grateful to have spent so much time this listening to music. I get asked a lot to listen to stuff and I’m not sure I’ve ever had less time for hearing new music than I presently have. So take a week and do nothing but that has been fulfilling.

As always, I hope you’ve found something cool to check out, and I hope you tune in for the next one, maybe in December, maybe in January, maybe this is low-key evolving into a monthly thing and eventually I’m going to have to rename the feature — and so on.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

Brant Bjork and the Bros., Live in the High Desert

The difference between Brant Bjork and the Bros. and prior Brant Bjork solo incarnations was that it was the first time the desert rock figurehead had stepped into the role of being a genuine live bandleader. He’d of course toured with solo bands, as he’s continued to, but The Bros. as a backing band gave him the space to shine in a different way onstage, and that comes through in classics like “Too Many Chiefs” and the medleys near the finish of the 78-minute set from 2009 captured on Live in the High Desert, recorded at Pappy & Harriet’s in Pioneertown, CA. I saw this band, and they were hot shit. If you don’t believe me, “Low Desert Punk” here makes the point better than I could, while a piece from the era like “Freaks of Nature” emphasizes the chemistry Bjork and his Bros. fostered during their time. As a follow-up to recent studio LP reissues, as an archival fan-piece, and as nearly 80-minutes of blowout heavy dezzy grooves, this should be an absolute no-brainer for Bjork followers or aficionados.

Brant Bjork website

Duna Records website

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Dresden Wolves, Vol. IV

Mexico City heavy rocking two-piece Dresden Wolves named their six-song EP Vol. IV presumably because by some count it’s their fourth release, but that’s not the same as being their fourth full-length album, if that’s what you were thinking. Here they offer 25 minutes of brash, cymbal-and-low-end-heavy crunch. “Tiempo” has some debut to psychedelia, but mostly in the echo, and the density of the prior “ECO” feels more representative, though with the movement of bassfuzz in “Wherter” I’m not sure one is more weighted than the other. They’re in the element stoner punking in “Robin,” and “Pesadilla” rounds out answering the Sabbathism of “Ketamina” with raw shouts and a swirling current of noise laced around a central shove. They’re not reinventing riffery, but they execute with both personality and a sense of craft while simultaneously bashing away in a manner that my silly lizard brain finds utterly delightful. They’ve been around a decade now. Album?

Dresden Wolves on Bandcamp

Dresden Wolves on Instagram

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Sherpa, Alignment

The obscuring-all-else drones of the nine-minute title-, opening and longest track (immediate points) are the major draw to Alignment, as “Alignment” is the only one of the seven inclusions not previously released in some form. Thus can it be said that Italian experimental psych post-rockers Sherpa remained experimental right up to the very end, as Alignment sees issue as a farewell release, comprised most of demos from Matteo Dossena of what would become Sherpa songs featured on their albums, which is fair enough. There’s sun reflecting on “River Nora” and “The Mother of Language,” from 2018’s second LP Tigris and Euphrates (review here), remains hypnotic even in this raw take, samples and/or field recordings seemingly a part of its skeleton. If you didn’t know Sherpa during their time, Alignment probably isn’t the place to start, since the material isn’t finished, but whatever if it gets you to hear the band.

Sherpa on Bandcamp

Subsound Records website

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Barren Heir, Far From

Crushing. Far From is the third full-length from Chicagoan post-sludge tonebearers Barren Heir, and when “Patient” ends and you feel like you can finally breathe after that four-minute assault, know you’re not alone. Uniformly harsh in vocals, intense in impact and aggression alike, and weighed down by copious amounts of distorted concrete, one piece bleeds into the next as Far From builds momentum through the megariffed “Medicine” and the subsequent, slightly more angular “No Roses,” which seems to get eaten by its own chug before it’s done. The remnants fade into the more peaceful beginning of “Abcesstral,” which serves as a quiet interlude creating tension ahead of the start of “Way In,” which scorches. I guess, if you don’t know the band, what you need to take away is they’re very, very heavy, and they know just where on the upside of your head to hit you with it. There’s a thread of noise rock, but I think maybe it’s just the trio being pissed off, and the blasting away, successive slowdowns and residual noise in closer “Inside a Burning Vehicle” are as punishing an end as Far From justifies. You know I never mention Swarm of the Lotus lightly. Well, here we are.

Barren Heir Linktr.ee

Barren Heir on Bandcamp

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Some Pills for Ayala, Dystopia

There’s a moment about five minutes in, before the solo starts, where opening cut “Little Fingers” sort of settles into its groove, and the effect is an immediate chill on the listener. Néstor Ayala Cortés, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and the sole denizen of the project, has long specialized in the heavy and languid, and without lacking either activity or swing — lookin’ at you, “Black Rains” — as the melodies touch on a heavy psychedelia only bolstered by the abiding tonal warmth. Three tracks top eight minutes — “Little Fingers,” “Above and Below” and “Falling Down” — and while these are obvious focal points, both for how they dwell in parts and how they differentiate from the shorter pieces that space them out, a song like “Rise to the Surface” or experiments like “Regrets” and “Flying to Nowhere” use their relative brevity as a strength, and while one might as well hang a big old ‘you are here’ sign on Dystopia, the closing title-track, a subdued instrumental flesh-out into a quick fade and the only song under three minutes long, is arguably the most hopeful sounding of the bunch. Go figure. Cortés, like South American heavy as a whole, remains underappreciated, but his songwriting remains vibrant and forward-looking.

Some Pills for Ayala on Bandcamp

Some Pills for Ayala on Instagram

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Stonebirds, Perpetual Wasteland

Cerebral French post-metallers Stonebirds offer their first new music in five years with Perpetual Wasteland, their fifth full-length. The album is comprised of six tracks that range from minimalist guitar standing alone to an explosive, big-the-way-modern-pop-is-big chorus like that of “Sea of Sorrow” (not a cover). Stonebirds might be aggressive, as on “Circles” at the outset, or they might even delve into a bit of post-black metal in “Croak,” but there’s never a point at which Perpetual Wasteland lacks purpose. Each side is three songs, two between five and six minutes and a closer circa eight; I’m telling you the symmetry is multi-tiered. And as destructive as “So Far Away” feels at its start, “The Last Time” mirrors with a more open-sounding approach, lush in melody in a way they’ve been before by then, and still tense in chug, but pulled back in the delivery. They’re dynamic, they have range, and they craft their material with clear consideration of how every second is going to unfold.

Stonebirds on Bandcamp

Ripple Music website

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Yurt, VI – Rippling Mirrors of the Other

VI – Rippling Mirrors of the Other is indeed the sixth LP from Irish space rockers Yurt, as I remind myself that just because I’d never heard the band before doesn’t mean they haven’t been around over 16 years. So it goes. The keyboard-prone three-piece — Andrew Bushe and drums and then some, Steven Anderson on guitar/vocals and sax, and Boz Mugabe on bass, vocals, keys (plus visuals) — find a way to make a classic-style motorik push feel mellow on “From the Maggot’s Perspective,” where “Shop of the Most Auspicious Frog” is more of a freakout and “Seventh is the Skut” is more about the jazzprog instrumental chase. Those three songs are shorter, but the album has three more extended pieces as well in opener “The Cormorant Tree” (15:33), “Pagpag Variations” (16:28) and “Sun Roasted Rodent” (13:30), which unfurl across multiple movements, bringing heavy doomjazz skronk and more experimentalist space rock together in a way that makes me bummed to be late to the party, but also kind of feel like I’m right on time.

Yurt website

Yurt on Bandcamp

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Evoken, Mendacium

As the band are now past the 30-year mark, it is an honor to once again be drenched in Evoken‘s pouring, grey, cold, wretched visions. Mendacium brings eight songs themed, because obviously, around the slow decline and death of a 14th century Benedictine monk, running 62 dug-in minutes of beauty-in-darkness extremity. It is not universally crawling, as “Lauds” and “Sext” move with a poise that feels kin to modern Paradise Lost, but for sure is defined by and uses that sense of slow, grueling churn to bolster its atmosphere, which is duly wood-churchy for its subject matter. They’re not all-pummel, of course, and never were. The penultimate “Vesper” is a brief organ interlude before closer “Compline” lowers you down into the pit to face whatever it is that takes place in the song after the seven-and-a-half-minute mark, and there is a morose peace to be found in the quiet moments throughout, as with what might be their only album this decade, Evoken land that much harder for the emotional weight the songs carry, whatever metaphor might be applied to them.

Evoken website

Profound Lore Records website

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Mourners & Yanomamo, Mourners & Yanomamo Split EP

Oh that’s nasty. You might think you’re ready for what Mourners and Yanomamo are bringing in gutter-dwelling death-doom and gnashing, crush-prone sludge roll, but that isn’t likely to save you as the two Sydney-based acts align for a three-song/20-minute split EP that wastes not a second in terms of efficiency of infliction. Mourners present “It Only Gets Worse,” with a raw punch in its bass chug, low-deathly growls and a sound that’s so down and dense across 11 minutes that it sounds slower than it actually is. It dies loud in a wash of noise to let Yanomamo‘s feedback-and-sample start “Lifefucker,” pointedly miserable in its unfolding. It and the growl-into-a-void-but-the-void-is-you diagnosing of mankind’s miseries in “Self-Inflicted” are shorter together than “It Only Gets Worse,” but more outwardly aggressive, as if to make sure you got spit out after being so thoroughly chewed up. I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s pretty heavy in that the-world-is-dying-and-nobody’s-coming-to-stop-it kind of way.

Yanomamo on Bandcamp

Mourners on Bandcamp

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Muttering Bog, Sword Axe Wizard Cult

The craggy dark-wizard-giving-soon-to-be-unheeded-warnings vocals of Muttering Bog‘s first release, the sludgy Sword Axe Wizard Cult, become a defining aspect. The Winchester, Virginia, band’s lone member, credited only as Ben, hones a raw-throated rasp that, where parts of the album might otherwise be stoner metal, keep a tether to extremity that feels as much born of black metal as Bongzilla. It is a challenging but not unrewarding listen; a just-out-of-the-dirt basement doom that isn’t afraid of being caustic or harsh in its riffy, weedian homage. And yeah, it comes across as pretty rough. Some of the changes are choppy on the drums and such, but hell’s bells, it’s a fully DIY make-and-release-a-thing from one person that pushes limits, is certain to evoke an emotional response, and is absolutely uncompromising in the identity being carved. None of that makes it listenable, if you’re looking for listenability, but it does make it art.

Muttering Bog on Bandcamp

Muttering Bog on Instagram

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Melbourne classic-style heavy psych rockers Seedy Jeezus released their self-titled debut in March 2015. Next year, the band will reissue the album in deluxe style, including a lost session from Incubator Studios that hasn’t been out before. That’s enough of a hook for me, honestly. I don’t know how long the self-titled’s actually been out of print, but hell yeah bonus material.

The band earlier in ’25 released their third album, Damned to the Depths (review here), through their own Blown Music as well as Lay Bare Recordings (EU) and Echodelick Records (US), and I’m not sure if the upcoming reissue will be through the same consortium or not, but they’ve got a photo book in the works and such to include as well, and that album and the new one are both streaming below, so if you want to make an afternoon of it with Seedy Jeezus, by all means. You’re not wrong.

Saw this on socials, did the old cutnpasteandturnitblue:

We’ve got something special in the pipeline for 2026, but we’re too excited to keep it a secret.

Our Debut album has been out of print for some time, and we’ve decided to reissue it in a big way. We’re currently deep in the works on an expanded 2LP Deluxe Edition.

Here’s what makes this special: Before we recorded the debut with Tony Reed, we laid down a full album at Incubator Studios here in Melbourne with Adrian Akkerman at the helm. For the first time ever, this deluxe set will include those unreleased Incubator sessions. You’ll get to hear the original 18-minute version of ‘How ya Doin” (which we had to cut back for the Debut album) and ‘Blue Day Glo,’ a track that was dropped entirely.

To capture the feel of that era, we’re also including a 30-page (and growing!) book of unseen photos and memorabilia, plus other curiosities from the archives.

It’s all in motion right now, so stay tuned for more details!”

https://www.facebook.com/seedyjeezuspage/
https://www.instagram.com/seedyjeezus/
https://seedyjeezus.bandcamp.com/
http://www.seedyjeezus.com/

https://laybarerecordings.com/
https://www.facebook.com/laybarerecordings/
https://www.instagram.com/laybarerecordings/
https://laybarerecordings.bandcamp.com/

https://www.echodelickrecords.com/
https://echodelickrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/echodelickrecords/
https://www.facebook.com/ERECORDSATL

Seedy Jeezus, Damned to the Depths (2025)

Seedy Jeezus, Seedy Jeezus (2015)

Despite the somewhat monochromatic style of its nonetheless-rad, obi-inclusive cover art, Light Rite is not misnamed. The debut album from Australia-based/China-rooted psychedelic explorers Spawn arrives following 2021’s Live at Moonah Arts Collective (review here) and sets itself to a clear mission of aural healing. For sure its six-song/42-minute procession is heavy; from the doomly fuzz in the nodding opener “Lotus Rising” through the rumbling crescendo in the 14-minute finale “All is Shiva,” the Melbourne six-piece want nothing for either heft or scope of presence, and after a few tumultuous years of lineup changes around guitarist/vocalist/thereminist Lenz Ma — joined here by bassist/vocalist Andie Kate, guitarist/vocalist Madi O’Shea, sitarist/vocalist Dr. Sarita McHarg, keyboardist Angelique Forsyth and drummer Rhiannon Smith; as well as Jewel Gold, who wrote “Ascension” and is credited as being somewhere on an outro — the band sound both cohesive in their purpose and creatively open, striking a balance between structured fare like the repetition-based “Remember to Be Here Now” and the rolling jam that “Don’t Let Them Dim Your Light” was likely born from.

Recorded in Melbourne by Paul Maybury (who also mixed), Light Rite engages positive messaging in its lyrics alongside a spiritual expression. The ‘rite’ in the title has less to do with ‘occult’ leaning genre tropes and is more concerning the listening experience itself. That is to say, as one might make a routine of meditating or doing yoga, something like this toward some notion of wellness or just not losing your mind in a world and time so persistently awful, Spawn position these songs as a similar kind of fulfilling respite. If you don’t believe music can heal, I’m sorry for whatever trauma has brought you to that point. The lyrics especially feel geared toward doing just that, as the aforementioned “Don’t Let Them Dim Your Light” demonstrates in its first verse:

“Don’t be sad, listen to the birds
Don’t give up, you have come so far
Don’t lose sight, just open up your eyes
Don’t lose hope, sun always rise up
Don’t you worry, just be here now
Don’t divide, we are in this together”

Later in the track, there is mention of an ‘eternal soul’ and the joy of saving one. That might be what Spawn are doing here and it might not, but “Lotus Rising” sets out ‘In the muddy slime’ alongside its willfully-slow initial roll, buzzing lead guitar and eventual introduction of the sitar, which takes its place in the broad instrumental sections of “Don’t Let Them Dim Your Light” and “All is Shiva,” working alongside soloing guitar lines, keys, and percussion in the closer, while stepping back the weightier-feeling “Remember to Be Here Now” and adding deep-mixed echoing ethereality to the penultimate “Truthful People,” where the sinewy verses of the first half make a build for the fuzz-toned realizations complementing the invocation of Hindu philosophy’s highest spiritual planet, Krsnaloka. That song, in accord with the suitably blossoming position “Lotus Rising” puts the beginning of the album, calls out, “Truthful people please come to me,” before naming this a “A world of lies/The greatest thing will be the fall of it.” These two songs may well have been written in response to the band’s own experiences in terms of lineup changes, and even the way the snare persists under the lush vocal harmonies as “Don’t Let Them Dim Your Light” moves through its mellower opening comes across as pointed and determined.

“Ascension,” the only track not credited as being written/arranged by the whole band, posits love as transcending physical reality (“space and time”), and is a partial departure with its “Planet Caravan”-y watery vocal effect early on, volume trades and throater, shouted vocal lines, but it doesn’t feel out of place nearly so much as it adds to the dynamic of Light Rite as a whole, and honestly, it’s not like the aural context surrounding is so rigidly constructed. There is a plot, to be sure, and pieces vary beyond runtime and lyrical structures as a part of that. At its fullest toward the midsection, “Ascension” doesn’t and plainly isn’t trying to capture the same kind of impacts as the plod of “Remember to Be Here Now” (which is also half as long, which is why I mentioned runtimes in the previous sentence) at around two and a half minutes in. It’s about a diversity of intention musically, brought together under the cogent themes in the lyrics.

About that. Being someone without gods, any gods, I’m maybe less inclined than some to embrace notions of the soul and being one with spiritual beings. The chanting at the outset of “All is Shiva” is no less gorgeousness for not aligning with what I believe to be true about the universe, and if there are religious aspects to Light Rite, they run alongside the ultra-terrestrial anchor of “Remember to Be Here Now,” which issues its titular reminder 20 times (plus that one from “Don’t Let Them Dim Your Light” makes it 21 for the record), and the grounded-feeling fluidity of groove that begins in the grittier moments of “Lotus Rising” and runs a thread through to the swirl of the finale, which, yes, is a prayer lyrically.

I find the idea of a higher power manifest in the creative; the embodiment of something more than the self. The instrumental conversation, the way a song can speak to your brain so directly it becomes a part of you, or, as noted before, heals you. I believe in that, and am content to let the rest be a backdrop to the meditative nature of what Spawn have crafted throughout this immersive, soothing, care-based debut album. Like the live release before it, Light Rite feels raw in terms of its basic sound, and that is part of the organic aesthetic that Spawn hone in this material, giving a folkish hue to the melodicism and letting the otherworldliness of the most psychedelic moments shine out with due reach. I won’t hazard to predict where the band might go from here, but as thoughtful as it is, Light Rite is a meditative practice that feels like it was made for many returns, and it is all the more a gift for that.

Spawn, Light Rite (2025)

Spawn, “Lotus Rising” lyric video

Spawn Linktr.ee

Spawn on Bandcamp

Spawn on Instagram

Spawn on Facebook

Ramble Records website

Ramble Records on Bandcamp

Ramble Records on Instagram

Ramble Records on Facebook

WV Sorcerer Productions store

WV Sorcerer Productions on Bandcamp

WV Sorcerer Productions on Instagram

WV Sorcerer Productions on Facebook

It was Jack Harlon and the Dead Crows‘ 2023 covers release, Hail to the Underground (review here), that brought the Melbourne, Australia, atmospheric heavy rockers into what I’ll lovingly call the “Jaddverse,” which is to say the sphere of labels surrounding Blues Funeral Recordings founder, Magnetic Eye Records honcho, ex-MeteorCity magnate — throw Ripple in there somehow — and so on mover-and-shaker Jadd Shickler (also vocals in Blue Heron). That LP came out on Blues Funeral, and the next one will be Magnetic Eye. Fair enough. If you’re wondering what’s the difference, I think it has to do with distribution under the Spkr Media umbrella, but of course I don’t have those particulars, so that’s just me assuming a thing.

In any case, congrats to Jack Harlon and the Dead Crows — none of whom are even named Jack, let alone Harlon — on the new deal, and here’s looking forward to their next full-length, which is reportedly in the works for next year. When I see more on that, I’ll post it. In the meantime, the band have a few shows in Melbourne coming up throughout the Australian spring and into summertime, and you’ll find those below along with the signing announcement and background, all courtesy of the PR wire.

Behold:

JACK HARLON & THE DEAD CROWS ink deal with Magnetic Eye Records

Australian psychedelic stoner doom outfit JACK HARLON & THE DEAD CROWS have signed a multi-album deal with Magnetic Eye Records. The exceptional and unique four-piece from Melbourne, Victoria will release their upcoming fourth full-length via the label early next year.

JACK HARLON & THE DEAD CROWS comment: “We are beyond excited to be jumping on board with Magnetic Eye Records”, vocalist and guitarist Tim Coutts-Smith enthuses on behalf of the band. “I discovered the label after buying the ‘Electric Ladyland Redux’ over a decade ago. and was blown away by how well all the featured bands interpreted Hendrix’ sound. I began collecting more of their Redux albums, and never in a million years did I think that our band would ever be featured on one of those tribute compilations, let alone end up signing to the label that releases these beauties! Unreal!”

Jadd Shickler adds: “Jack Harlon’s first album ‘Hymns’ caught my attention immediately for its unique blend of fuzzed-out stoner rock and pummeling doom with this twanging Morricone-esque swerve into old western scores,” the Magnetic Eye director explains. “I cannot say, if their music really is the soundtrack of the Australian outback or if I’ve just made this up in my head because of where they’re from. But either way, there’s an exotic quality to how they approach massive riffs and dreamy psych, which to me sounds like a blend of Afghan Whigs and Monster Magnet with Church of Misery and Nick Cave. I’ve already had the pleasure to work with them on a couple of one-off projects, so welcoming them fully onto the Magnetic Eye roster alongside their regular tourmates Greenleaf is something I’ve been anxiously pursuing for some time. I can hardly wait to share and elevate their music to every nook and cranny of our beloved scene!”

Live
18 OCT 2025 Melbourne (AU) Stay Gold
15 NOV 2025 Melbourne (AU) The Evelyn
06 DEC 2025 Melbourne (AU) Cactus Room

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Quite often, music is thought to be influenced by the terroir from which it originates, much like wine. According to this theory, Norwegian black metal has been shaped by deep dark fjords and frostbitten winters, while desert rock just had to be developed in the Mojave or another arid place. What to make, then, of a band hailing from Melbourne, Victoria at the south-eastern tip of Australia?

Ruling out Tasmania, Antarctica, and the Outback as too far away to constitute a direct influence, it is not easy to fit the unique sound of JACK HARLON & THE DEAD CROWS into this premise. Well, for the sake of a narrative, their eclectic style that explores a wide range of genres and incorporates elements of blues, stoner rock, lo-fi fuzz, spaghetti western scores, and doom metal could be interpreted as a reflection of the city’s high level of diversity with many of its inhabitants originating from elsewhere on the globe.

Leaving speculation aside, it is an established fact that JACK HARLON & THE DEAD CROWS started out as a side project by singer Tim Coutts-Smith around the year 2015. Over time, the band developed into a full-fledged performing act.

Since day one, Coutts-Smith centered his lyrics and themes around a fictional western outlaw named Jack Harlon. He would often begin writing about real people and events, before turning them into characters and stories in a science fiction themed western landscape.

JACK HARLON & THE DEAD CROWS are known for their ‘DIY’ approach as they have produced most of their albums and visual art internally. As a live act, the band has mostly toured and performed in Australia including sharing stages with international acts such as GREENLEAF, SASQUATCH, WO FAT, and WHORES.

So far, JACK HARLON & THE DEAD CROWS have released a self-titled debut EP in 2016, followed by three critically acclaimed albums and continuously growing recognition within the heavy underground: “Hymns” (2018), “The Magnetic Ridge” (2021), and “Hail to the Underground: Interpretations” (2023). The band also appeared on Magnetic Eye Records’ “Superunknown Redux” tribute to Soundgarden with their fuzzed-out, hallucinatory rendition of deep cut ‘Kickstand’.

JACK HARLON & THE DEAD CROWS are currently preparing to release their new fourth album via Magnetic Eye Records in early 2026.

Line-up
Tim Coutts-Smith – vocals, guitar
Jordan Richardson – guitar
Brayden Becher – drums
Liam Barry – bass

https://jackharlon-dawsonthedeadcrows.bandcamp.com/
https://instagram.com/jack.harlon.and.the.dead.crows
https://www.facebook.com/jackharlondoom/

http://store.merhq.com
http://magneticeyerecords.com/
https://www.instagram.com/magneticeyerecords/
https://www.facebook.com/MagneticEyeRecords

Jack Harlon and the Dead Crows, Hail to the Underground (2023)

If you’ve been keeping up, you already know this Quarterly Review goes through next Monday (because screw weekends anyhow) and will top out at 70 releases covered. Today, then, is when we hit the halfway mark en route to that number. Does it matter? Probably not unless you’re the guy on the other side of the laptop writing it, but maybe you just enjoy having the division done for you.

More of a range of styles today than yesterday, which I need to keep this going, so you’ll pardon me while I dig in in the hope that you do the same. Thanks for reading.

Quarterly Review #31-40:

Mountain of Misery, Shades of the Ashes

Somewhat impressively, Mountain of Misery remains the solo-project of Kamil Ziółkowski, who perhaps if he wasn’t also the drummer/vocalist in Spaceslug might’ve put together a full band by now, but seems committed to keeping the band in-house. But it is a band, to be sure. Shades of the Ashes is Ziółkowski‘s third LP under the moniker, and it pushes deeper into a progression distinct from Spaceslug however familiar some of the vocals are, and offers depth of its own, whether that’s tonally in the thickened fuzz of “Follow the Sun” or the way he makes it boogie in “Speed King” (not a cover) while at the same time setting up the lush nod of “From Fall to Rise.” Between “Thornado” at the outset and the eight-minute finale “Blow,” Ziółkowski refines Mountain of Misery‘s sound with a freshness that is metal, grunge, heavy rock and psychedelic all at once, and stronger for that cohesion with his signature mellow vocals over top. It’s kind of surprising at this point he hasn’t been tempted to do it live, but clearly this is working, so I wouldn’t necessarily encourage messing with the process either.

Mountain of Misery on Bandcamp

Mountain of Misery on Facebook

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Dërro, Halcyon

A fresh take on the notion of Southern heavy from Asheville, North Carolina’s Dërro, who put a bit of twang into the post-Alice in Chains harmonies of “Brain Worm” (surely a song for our times) and a bit of emotive soar into “Echo Mountain” in complement to a guitar tone that feels kin to earlier Tool, all while retaining a ‘doing its own thing’ vibe. That is to say, the six-song Halcyon — which is the band’s first outing so far as I know — feels like the credited-as-composers duo of Neal Brewer and Corey Tossas, working with Pat Gerasia on drums, would seem to have come into this debut offering with a firm idea of what they wanted the band to be sound-wise, and unless they’ve secretly been working on it for a decade, the results of that shimmer with intention and feeling alike in the chuggy “Alone” and the drawl-into-power-nod opening title-track. One to watch? Maybe, but way more of a thing to hear now.

Dërro on Bandcamp

Dërro on Instagram

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Soporose, Soporose

The guitar/drum duo of Marco Bianciardi (The Somnambulist, ex-Arte, etc.) and Sara Neidorf (Mellowdeath, Sarattma, ex-Aptera, etc.) apparently recorded their six-track/36-minutes self-titled debut in a day. That implies much of it was done live, though it doesn’t account for the keyboards that show up in “Spectral Swell” and “Countershading,” or the lead layering in “Talking Moonshine,” but it’s not unlikely that after showing up and banging it out they had a little time for overdubs. Fair enough. The pieces are varied and prone to getting weirder toward their respective ends, rooted in doomjazz but groove-conscious just the same, and the garage-y strum in “Gruttling From Outer Space” bends and twists as it goes in a way that surely defines what ‘gruttling’ might be, while “Edge of Forthcoming Rain” hints at more peaceful ideas without giving up its restlessness and “The Cosmonaut’s Secret” turns out to be the shove into its own finish. They close with a saunter in “Talking Moonshine” and that feels as right as anything for a collection that’s so casually eclectic while minimizing the actual elements involved in its making.

Soporose Linktr.ee

Soporose on Bandcamp

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VVarp, Power Held in Stone

Melbourne three-piece VVarp — also stylized all-caps: VVARP — seem to imagine a universe wherein the thickened tones and keyboard flourish of Slomatics meets with more traditionalist doom riffing, but that’s still just half the story as bassist Claudia Sullivan and guitarist/keyboardist John Bollen share lead vocals in harmonized style over the voluminous roll of “Druid Warfare,” the cavernous and lumbering “A Path Through the Veil,” assuring there’s beauty to coincide with all the crush that surrounds. Running 34 minutes and five tracks, Power Held in Stone follows 2020’s First Levitations and is accordingly their second full-length, given ethereal, almost-chanting presence through the vocals on centerpiece “Equinox Portal” where “Iron Cloak” is more resolved to its own heads-down-all-go bombast fueled by drummer Scott McLatchie as the song shoves into the residual keys that carry to the rumble at the outset of 10-minute capper “Stone Silhouette,” likewise gorgeous, immersive and encompassing.

VVarp on Bandcamp

VVarp on Instagram

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Atom Juice, Atom Juice

Easily among the best debut albums I’ve heard in 2025 comes this modernized-classic psychedelia outreach from Poland’s Atom Juice, who would seem to have some relation to meloproggers Weedpecker through guitarist/vocalist Bartek Dobry, but who take a different path to get to bright and melodic fruition. The five-piece outfit’s self-titled debut (on Heavy Psych Sounds) runs shortest to longest on each of its component sides, with copious Beatles influence in “Gooboo” (circa ’70) and delves elsewhere into modern space rock (“Dead Hookers”), the most engaging funk-psych I’ve heard since Wight on “Sexi Frogs,” and an identity in the doing conjured through a blend of influences older and new. As closer “Honey” gives a bit of push in its first half, there’s nowhere Atom Juice wind up on the record that they don’t make themselves welcome, and with rare warmth, they give hopeful hints at the shape of heavy psychedelia to come. I haven’t seen a lot of hype for this one. If you’re reading this, don’t skip it.

Atom Juice on Bandcamp

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Hooveriii, Manhunter

The 15 tracks of Hooveriii‘s Manhunter have a foundation in garage rock and an according off-the-cuff feel, but at the same time, interludes and exploratory instrumentals like “In the Rain,” “Night Walks in Montreaux,” the spacey title-track and the penultimate organ soundscaper “Awful Planet” assure that nothing actually comes across as haphazard in a way that undercuts the dynamic. “Melody” and “Tin Lips” open in rocking style, while the fuzz grows more fervent in “Westside Pavilion of Dreams” and “Heaven at the Gates” before “Cul-de-Sac” marks the transition to the next phase with the forceful shuffle of “The Fly,” answered a short while later by the heft of “Question.” It goes like this, flowing except where it doesn’t want to, and with the jazzy “Me King” and the aforementioned mellow-vocalized “Awful Planet” for setup, “Stage” reroutes into pastoralism and feels pointedly kind in so doing. Clearly a band for whom genre takes a secondary role to their own craft, and one whose appeal is broader for that.

Hooveriii on Bandcamp

The Reverb Appreciation Society store

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Gaupa, Fyr

Fluidity is part of the nature of what Sweden’s Gaupa do, as the Falun-based troupe have established over their two-to-date LPs and other sundry outings. The five-song/35-minute Fyr finds them working with producer Karl Daniel Lidén — which was a very good idea that somebody had — and is billed as a mini-album, which I think is to account for its being only one minute shorter than their most recent LP, 2022’s Myriad (review here). Vocalist Emma Näslund remains a focal point in the songs, but the balance of the mix is malleable as “Heavy Lord” demonstrates, and “Elastic Sheep” finds the entire band aligned around a fullness that one only hopes is emblematic of their third to come. Plus a big ol’ slowdown, and while we’re talking bonuses, the 11-minute live take on “Febersvan” from their first EP is a welcome glimpse at how far they’ve progressed to this point to complement the potential still so obvious in their sound. They’re the kind of band you hope never stop growing.

Gaupa Linktr.ee

Nuclear Blast Records store

Magnetic Eye Records store

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Foot, The Hammer

With multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Paul Holden still at the center of the project — Mathias Dowle is also credited with playing on and co-engineering the album with Holden and Ryan Fallis — Melbourne psych-grunge rockers Foot seem to pick up where they left off with 2022’s You Are Weightless, tapping into a style that’s grounded in terms of structure and committedly straightforward but that still lends a feeling of scope and space to the nine cuts on the 45-minute Copper Feast-issued LP. The fuzz is prevalent, perhaps nowhere more so than “Walking Into Walls All Week,” where “Intensify” is more of a vocal showcase until its later heavy sweep. Holden does a cover of Marcy Playground‘s “Sex and Candy”… for… some reason… and but for that, as one would both expect and hope for the band at this point, they remain a songwriting-based unit, able to present a diversity of ideas and moods without ever making it feel like a departure at all.

Foot on Bandcamp

Copper Feast Records website

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Diagram, Short Circuit Control

Enter Diagram with a ready definition for ‘dug in’ on their second album, Short Circuit Control. The Berlin duo of founder Hákon Aðalsteinsson and Fred Sunesen offer heady listeners a heady listen with nine inclusions that commune with the history of electronics in krautrock while still keeping both a modern and a psychedelic affect. Is that neo-kraut? I honestly don’t know, but cuts like “This is How We Lead Our Lives” transcend their outward poppiness through repetition and exploration, and the abiding lesson seems to be that just because something is dancey doesn’t also mean it can’t be purposefully building an atmosphere — “Close Your Eyes” walks by and waves (not that you can see it with your eyes closed). The single “Dub Boy” answers the New Wave aspects of opener “Breath in Your Fire,” and a ’90s electro finale awaits in “Through the Wall of Sound” for anybody adventurous enough to take it on.

Diagram on Bandcamp

P.U.G. Records on Bandcamp

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The Phantom Eye, Cymatic Waves

Brookynite heavy progressive rockers The Phantom Eye offer blend across Cymatic Waves‘ four tracks that feels metallic at its root but has grown and redirected to more complex fare. Between the volume trades of “Circuit Rider,” the noise baked into the finish of “Palindrome,” the synth adding drama to “Black Hotel” and the intricate balancing of guitar layers in “Silent Symphony,” the focus is never purely on just being heavy, but ‘heavy,’ as a musical ideal, is a piece of the puzzle here, framing a broad melodic reach and giving shape to the structures underlying. I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to what they might sound like in five years, but as they’re following 2021’s Chromesthesia EP (review here) with this second short release, it’s even more difficult to pin them down as any one thing. This could hardly feel more intentional than it does in the songs. There’s a plan at work here. It’s just starting to pan out.

The Phantom Eye Linktr.ee

The Phantom Eye on Bandcamp

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Sneaking it in on a Friday? What is this madness? Fair question. The wretched truth is that in slating this Quarterly Review — welcome, by the way — I ran into a scheduling conflict with a stream I booked for Oct. 14. I wasn’t sure how to resolve the logistics there, and 10 reviews plus a full-album stream is more than I have brainpower to write in a day, even if I do nothing else, so think of this as like the soft-launch grand opening of the Fall 2025 Quarterly Review. I’ll go all through next week and then wrap up on Monday the 15th. 70 total releases covered, 10 per day, during that time.

It’s gonna be a lot, and I’m sure as always happens there will be other things I’ll fall behind on, but to be perfectly honest with you, I could really, really stand to force myself to sit down and engage the hardcore escapism of getting lost in 70 records one after the next, so I think I might actually enjoy this this time through. Famous last words, but last time was one of my favorite QRs ever, so I’ve got momentum on my side. I’ll keep you posted as we go, and while I’m here, have a great weekend. We’ll pick up with more on Monday.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

Faetooth, Labyrinthine

While being terrible for most everything else, 2025 is a good year to go dark. Faetooth do so — darker, anyhow — with their sophomore album, Labyrinthine, and find a place where doomgaze and sludgier, scream-topped distortion can meet without seeming any more incongruous than the Los Angeles trio want it them to be. The record runs a substantial 10 songs/55 minutes, and songs like “Iron Gate,” “Hole,” “White Noise,” and “Eviscerate” derive as much of their atmosphere from the band scorching the ground beneath them as from the more subdued, murky and melodic stretches. With these elements put together in a cohesive whole sound, Labyrinthine is less an aesthetic revolution than a (welcome) generational refresh to doom and sludge, with the band set on a path of progression toward an increasingly individualized stylistic take. Idiot dudes will talk shit because they’re women. Don’t listen to idiot dudes. Listen to riffs. Faetooth have plenty to get you started.

Faetooth Linktr.ee

The Flenser website

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Earthbong, Bring Your Lungs

The mighty Kiel, Germany, trio — oops, they just became a four-piece; heads up — recorded Bring Your Lungs this past April while on their first-ever tour of Australia. It’s a three-song, about-35-minute live-in-studio collection, and they’ll reportedly press it to vinyl in no small part so they have copies to take with them when they return down under in 2027. I guess it went well. Bring Your Lungs leaves little question as to why as the band put themselves in line among the heaviest sons of Sleep in the suitably-half-formed oeuvre of bong metal. Even the shortest of the three, the middle cut “Wax” (7:38) lays tonal waste(d), while “Fathead” (11:17) and “Goddamn High” (15:59) bark and crush and caveman plod, hitting into a slowdown and a speedup, respectively, that convey both the plan underlying the mire and the willfully, gleefully insurmountable nature of that mire itself. They’d like to teach the world to stone. Can’t help but think it’d be better for it.

Earthbong on Bandcamp

Black Farm Records store

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Nuclear Dudes, Truth Paste

We may not have circa-2005 Genghis Tron to manifest the in-brain chaos of modern overwhelm, but Jon Weisnewski (Sandrider, Akimbo) stands ready with the extremist shenanigans industrial grind of Nuclear Dudes to pick up the slack. Following the punishing radness of 2023’s Boss Blades (review here), Weisnewski, his keyboards, a buttload of samples and guitar here collaborate with vocalist Brandon Nakamura to manifest a cacophonous stew that almost gets away with tapping into “Welcome to the Jungle” on album opener “Napalm Life” (get it?) by making it almost completely unrecognizable. Further punishment is dealt with semiautomatic fervor on “Concussion Protocol” and “Juggalos for Congress,” but the 11-track/23-minute entirety of Nuclear Dudes‘ second full-length comes across like an intentional brainema, so approach with caution and know that, if it feels right, you’re not alone.

Nuclear Dudes on Bandcamp

Nuclear Dudes on Instagram

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Void Sinker, Echoes From the Deep

A quick glance at the social media for Italian stoner-droner heretofore solo-project Void Sinker, and one finds that sole denizen Guglielmo Allegro is currently searching for a bassist and a drummer to fill out the lineup. Unquestionably this would be a significant change to the proceedings on the five-song/69-minute Echoes From the Deep, which plunges frontal-lobe-first into undulating waveforms and its own distorted expanse. A clear progression of notes can be heard later in closer “Andromeda” (16:21) and “Hollow” is minimalist to the point of being barely there for most of its nine minutes, but obviously a certain kind of meditative monolith is constructed from lead cut “Cetus” onward. There are no shallow dives here, and one can’t help but wonder what Allegro might have in mind for filling out these arrangements with a rhythm section. Will Void Sinker adopt more straightforward stoner-doom riffing, or is the intention to try to make this kind of drone actually convey a sense of movement? Your guess is as good as mine, but for now, the trance induced is noteworthy.

Void Sinker Linktr.ee

Void Sinker on Instagram

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Hebi Katana, Imperfection

Raw oldschool doom with a punker edge permeates Hebi Katana‘s first album for Ripple Music and fourth overall, Imperfection. And the title becomes somewhat ironic, because while the implication is they’re talking about a warts-‘n’-all sound perhaps in reference to the production rawness of the seven-track/35-minute outing highlighted by cuts like “Dead Horse Requiem” and “Blood Spirit Rising,” which shuffle-pushes into and out of a pastoral midsection, as well as the finale “Yume wa Kareno,” it just about perfectly suits the material itself, and the band bring vigor to the deceptively catchy “Praise the Shadows” that, while dark in atmosphere, speaks to a dynamic that’s developed in their sound over time. That is to say, they might be a ‘new band’ to listeners outside the band’s native Japan, but Imperfection conveys their experience in craft and in its chemistry. If it wasn’t recorded live, close enough. They’re not reshaping genre, but there is perspective at work, to be sure.

Hebi Katana website

Ripple Music website

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Khan, That Fair and Warlike Form/Return to Dust

That Fair and Warlike Form/Return to Dust, a two-songer full-length with each consuming about 23 minutes of a vinyl side, sure feels like a landmark, but that seems to happen when Melbourne trio Khan are involved. Here they set a sprawl matched by few in heavy progressive psychedelia as the three-piece of Josh Bills (vocals, guitar, keyboard, recording, mixing, mastering), Will Homan (bass) and Beau Heffernan (drums) enact a linear build across the massive soundscape of “That Fair and Warlike Form,” as sure in their purpose as they are defiant of the expectation that these extended pieces might just be jams. Rather, that opener and “Return to Dust” are structured pieces, and resonate emotionally as well as immerse the listener in their clear-eyed breadth. “Return to Dust” is a level of triumph not every act achieves, and “That Fair and Warlike Form” is no less impactful throughout its procession. One of the best of 2025, but less about the fleeting moment than providing a place to dwell long-term. That is to say, it’s a record that has the potential for its own cult, never mind the wider following amassed by the band.

Khan Linktr.ee

Khan website

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Sarkh, Heretical Bastard

The first Sarkh LP, Helios (review here), arrived through Worst Bassist Records in 2023 and was a purposeful adventure across genre lines, taking elements of post-rock, heavy riffing, and even aspects of black metal and more extreme ideas into a context that became its own. The shimmer at the outset of “Helios” that starts their second full-length, Heretical Bastard, speaks immediately of communion, and as the German instrumentalists have set about refining and coalescing their sound, ambience remains central to what they do regardless of how outwardly heavy a given part gets, which, in tracks like “Kanagawa” and “Glazial,” is pretty gosh darn heavy, never mind the chug that pays off “Zyklon” or the wash that culminates 11-minute capper “Cape Wrath,” though admittedly, the latter is more about push that heft. It’s movement either way, and Heretical Bastard‘s greatest heresy might just be how convincingly invisible it makes the (yes, imaginary) lines that divide one style from another. A band on their own path, forging their own sound. If you can’t respect that, it’s your loss.

Sarkh on Bandcamp

Worst Bassist Records website

Echodelick Records on Bandcamp

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Professor Emeritus, A Land Long Gone

Eight years on from their well-received 2017 debut, Take Me to the Gallows, Chicagoan classic doom metallers Professor Emeritus reach pointedly into the epic with A Land Long Gone, their second record. The band’s traditionalism of form means there’s something inherently familiar about the proceedings, and certainly they’re not the only ones with an affinity for ’80s metal of various stripes these days, but in addition to being distinguished by the forward-mixed vocals of Esteban Julian Pena, the sheer weight of “Pragmatic Occlusion” and “Defeater” and the crescendo of “Kalopsia Caves” sets well alongside the graceful flow of “Zosimos” or the later, partly-acoustic “Hubris,” portraying the dynamic and sense of character brought into the material. Like Philly’s Crypt Sermon, they’re not pretending the intervening decades didn’t happen — you wouldn’t call A Land Long Gone retro, I mean — but their collective heart clearly bleeds for the classics just the same; Trouble, Candlemass, Iron Maiden. If that’s your speed, their blend of chug and soar should hit just right.

Professor Emeritus website

No Remorse Records website

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Florist, Adrift

Florist know what they’re here for, and as they push through the let’s-start-with-the-universe’s-frequency “432Hz” into the modern, cavernous, riffage and nod of “Another Moon,” my brain sings a hearty fuck yes. They pack 29 minutes of rad into Adrift, their sophomore, six-songer LP, and while they’re not shy about lumber in “Grow” and the closer “Adrift (Part B),” that’s only one end of a style that’s able to move with marked fluidity across a range of tempos that, with a vibrant production, fullness of tone and hard-hit drums shoving it all, make for a refreshing take on what are unrepentantly familiar ideas. That is to say, there’s no pretense in Florist. Volume worship, riff worship, whatever you want to call it, it matters so little when the band are bashing away at “Out of Space” and hell’s bells it’s actually fun. Like, real life fun. The kind you might have with friends in a crowded room with the band on stage killing it through a set likewise heavy and intense but unashamed of the good time it’s having. Also giving, as one might a gift.

Florist website

Threat Collection Records website

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Church of Hed, Under Blue Ridge Skies

Ohio’s Paul Williams has released three ‘audio travelogues’ of the Blue Ridge Highway, with the Moog-only Under Blue Ridge Skies preceded directly by A Blue Ridge Spaceway and Our Grandfather the Mountain earlier this year. Maybe you have, and if so, that’s awesome, but to my knowledge I’ve never been on the Blue Ridge Highway, so I can’t necessarily speak to how the droney “Ghost Over a Pointed Top” or the kraut-style blips and bloops of “See Mount Mitchell” correlate to the experience of driving it. I’ll soak my ignorance in the keyboardy melancholia of “A Carolina Elegy,” which closes with evocations of past storms and forebodes of those still to come. Likewise, I’m not sure what the title “Abbott’s Fantasia” is a reference to, if anything at all, but you don’t get much more dug in than entire compositions played out on various layered, hyper-specific, probably-vintage-and-expensive-to-repair synthesizers, and it’s a kind of nerdery for which I’m very much on board.

Church of Hed website

Church of Hed on Facebook

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The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: John Bollen of VVARP

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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

I’m a musician and a filmmaker. Specifically in VVARP I play guitar and sing. Started playing guitar at 13, and have been playing in bands since then basically. 20 years!

Describe your first musical memory.

I remember having some Christmas carol or nursery rhyme in my head at around three and asking my parents if I could learn an instrument then. I started learning piano shortly after that.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

In 2014, three bands ago, my friends and I recorded an album of the music we’d written between the ages of 16-21. Getting the physical copy of that record was a really big accomplishment for a bunch of young lads who could barely concentrate on a conversation, let alone writing a bunch of music and getting it recorded. It was that project in particular that set me on the path of writing and recording my own tunes with collaborators. This marks album number five in approx 10 years of doing it. Hope to have done another five when I check back in 10 years time.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

I think Jason Fuller at Goatsound challenged my idea that I should just improvise guitar leads and hope for the best when we did First Levitations. He was like, “yeah nice solo, can you double track it?” and naturally I could not… I went and wrote something a bit more replicable and did as he said, and found that the lead sounded way more full and present… I’ve been double tracking (or sometimes quad tracking) solos since then and I think he was right. No one is saying it can’t start from an improvised place – there’s a time and a place for it for sure, but I think sometimes in order to make something good you just have to put in a bit of work.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

I can only speak from my own experience, I think it can lead to satisfaction in one’s own achievements but it can also lead to the disestablishment of long-held beliefs in the self. Comparing what inspires you then to what inspires you now, what needs to be included in your “art” for it to be “yours” are all challenging questions I’ve faced on the journey of my own artistic progression.

How do you define success?

At 18, I would have defined artistic success as being Matt Pike, or being David Lynch. Now I see success as a self-sustaining artistic practice with a natural rhythm and flow to your life and those you share it with.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

Honestly I wish I hadn’t seen the headline about Brent Hinds passing. He was my childhood hero and I just saw him play Leviathan in full last December. He once let me and my pal Jim party with him when we were 19. He took us backstage after partying the next night, fed us dinner and introduced us to the other guys in the band so we could take photos. RIP!

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

The band and I have been discussing live visuals and how we incorporate that into the album release shows. I’d love the video accompaniment to move with the ebb and flow of the tunes, and feature imagery inspired by our lyrics. Imagine a 40-minute-long version of the visuals in our video from “A Path Through The Veil” and you’re pretty close.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

It’s such a cliche, but it should move you – whether it’s something you enjoy, find funny, are scared by or are disgusted by… But I feel that’s the point of art. To make you feel something I guess!

Say something positive about yourself.

I make a really good cottage pie. My wife requests it basically every week. The secret is to buy good mince, not cheap out on something dodgy from Aldi.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

I’m heading to the UK for a month to visit friends and family, but also to visit a few neolithic sites that I drew inspiration from for this record. Hoping to get to some lesser-known spots in Ireland and Scotland too.

[Photo by Robert Cuzens.]

https://vvarp.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/vvarp666/
https://www.facebook.com/vvarp666/

VVARP, Power Held in Stone (2025)