It’s a new day for Brazil’s Black Feather Fuzz, who trace their origins back 15 years to 2011 and tomorrow release their five-song EP, Fuzzy Catharsis, as their first outing under a new name. It’s pretty close to their own moniker, which was Black Feather Klan — and surely the cultural connotations of starting ‘clan’ with a ‘k’ are different in Brazil than in the very-white-supremacist US, but still, the change makes sense — but distant enough to avoid the racist-shitbag association altogether as they reach out toward an international audience.
The 23 minutes of marterial across Fuzzy Catharsis indeed has some hair on its tone, but it’s perhaps less just about fuzz than one might think given the title and the band’s moniker. Guitarist Pedro “Zé” Barros harnesses a crunch in “Less Than a Shadow” that establishes the heft toward which bassist Rubens “Grilão” da Trindade also adds, nestling into a start-stop groove near the opener’s midpoint as a setup for the slow-wah solo layered in while drummer Thiago Fernandes holds the line on groove and vocalist Cristiano “Nibal” Soares takes the break he’s earned layering in clean and harsh vocals. The latter lend a spirit of confrontation to the outing, and that doesn’t go away as the procession leads into the death-growls of “Liar, Fire…” later on, and the release accordingly ends up somewhere between heavy rock and metal, not the first to ride the line but doing so with particular glee and the confidence of experience behind them.
That’s not to say there’s no chaos. Second cut “All the Space You Can Take,” in its very first few seconds before it smoothes out into the verse, teases the blowout with which it will end off, pushing into a dense and abrasive wash of overmodulated static distortion, still with the vocals cutting through, but sounding as though the instrumental levels were pushed to the top of the board. This is about as willfully unpleasant a Black Feather Fuzz get — and I’d argue that moment is more ‘extreme’ even than the aforementioned growls that follow shortly — but the thread of in-your-faceness continues into the patterned double-kick and concurrent shove of “Sentinel,” which is both the centerpiece and the shortest cut on the EP, resolving with a hardcore-born chug that’s righteously raw as it moves into its cold stop, letting the low-end rumble of “Liar, Fire…” lumber out the penultimate song’s threatening atmosphere even before the vocal gnash begins. It’s a standout moment, obviously, and feels a bit like what the the EP to that point has been driving toward — a crescendo of sorts — as the band employs doomly slowdowns and very, very heavy tones toward somewhat theatrical ends.
Does that make “Balm as Refuge” an afterthought? I’d argue not, since what the closer does in terms of reorienting the final impression Fuzzy Catharsis makes toward heavy rock and roll from the grimly crushing mire of the piece before it. That decision of how to leave off feels purposeful, and is executed successfully, the band’s maturity displayed in both the choice and the apparent ease with which they make it happen. It’s not finishing on a light note by any means, but the cleaner basstone in the second half break and the funky drums accompanying feel a good distance removed from the depths of “Liar, Fire…” and helps reaffirm how far Black Feather Fuzz have gone in a relatively short span of time. Going back to the start, it is a complement to “Less Than a Shadow,” but that song also does the work of setting up the scope of the EP, so there’s more happening than just that one conversation in the material.
FuzzyCatharsisoffers more of the latter than the former, but still feels like the work of a band who know what they’re about in terms of impact and aesthetic, and while definitely a studio work, it has enough energy to make one believe Black Feather Fuzz bring it live, which they probably do.
You’ll find the EP streaming in full on the player below, followed by more from the PR wire. Please enjoy:
Black Feather Fuzz, Fuzzy Catharsis EP
On August 21st, the Bruxa Verde has the great pleasure of streaming “Fuzzy Catharsis”, new EP from the stoner/doom metal quartet @blackfeatherfuzz
Originally Black Feather Klan (or just BFK) the group enters a new phase, with a new name but with the same quality and sound density as ever. Raw riffs, heavy psychedelic passages, viscerality and energy, that explode in their cathartic performances.
“Fuzzy Catharsis” brings five tracks from the band in a massive outfit, inspired by names like Red Fang, Clutch, Kyuss and Black Sabbath.
The production, recording and mixing work was done by Manfredo Savassi (also responsible for mastering) and the band itself, and the EP cover was taken care of Tim Tatoo Blackhorseman and Rogério Castro.
“Fuzzy Catharsis” tracklisting: 1. Less than a shadow 2. All the space you can take 3. Sentinel 4. Liar, fire 5. Balm as Refuge (Marla Calazans backing vocal)
Composição: todos Letra: Cristiano Soares
BANDA: Cristiano “Nibal” Soares – vocal Pedro “Zé” Barros – guitarra Rubens “Grilão” da Trindade – baixo Thiago Fernandes – bateria
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.
Posted in Questionnaire on March 10th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
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: Marcos Resende of Pesta
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I see myself as a person who, in addition to being a musician, likes to be involved in the whole chain that involves my music, this has a bit of Underground culture that makes you have to create other skills to bring your music to your audience. This involves playing guitar, producing shows, making music videos, anyway… I realized that I just wanted to insert myself more and more in all issues related to my music.
Describe your first musical memory.
I don’t know exactly what was the first thing I heard that caught my attention, I grew up in a house with a lot of music, since my parents listened to“Samba, which is a very popular Brazilian music (now a little less) like “Cartola” and “Jorge Ben Jor” and my sister listening to a lot of ’80s pop music… and all that music always caught my attention somehow… Rock and Metal came after that… I discovered Queen’s A Night at the Opera at the beginning of my teenage years, and at that time I didn’t know much about it! But I was sure at that time that I needed an electric guitar, there was no other way! and at the same year I got one by trading an old acoustic guitar I had and a few more things, at that time I was consuming everything I could find, from punk to death metal.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Among many memorable moments it’s hard to choose one as the apex, but I think when I bought my first “real” guitar, it was something so great to me that I couldn’t believe I had done it! Well, this has a context, as you may have already noticed I’m from Brazil, and things here are not easy, but I don’t want this to sound like a complaint because I have a good structure, it’s just a fact, going back to context… when I finally thought I could buy a real guitar the prices were pretty absurd in here, and the Chinese forgeries took over, and that made everything more complicated to get any guitar of those consolidated brands like Gibson, Fender, Gretsch, Epiphone…
So an opportunity came to do a job in Europe, and I decided to extend this trip a little and pass a few weeks in London, at the end of that trip I found a used Gibson Les Paul in a window at Macari’s Guitar Shop at Camden Town, all my money ran out at that moment but I was already at the end of the trip and couldn’t be happier to have no money. I came back with this guitar on my back and all Pesta’s records were recorded with this guitar, this memory remains incredible in my memory.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
I think we are all being tested all the time, with conflicts between professional and artistic life… Family conflicts, political conflicts… But I think in my teenage years, I saw my family becoming a very religious family, and at the time I didn’t exactly understand why, but in that time that seemed to be my way too, I wanted to understand what was happening with them, after all they are my family, but a while went by and I saw that it was not for me, and this rupture/separation was a little disturbed, but very important to move forward, today I see that my belief is outside of any religious or institutional role, I do not believe in that and intend to continue that way.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
For most artists one thing is certain, it will not lead to success and media fame as we grew up seeing, this is a fact. But for all people who are firmly in the art somehow, they have a possible aspiration to get recognition, most of the time it will come from a niche or a community, some will break this barrier and reach people outside this niche, and to me what matters most in artistic growth is not the size that the artist will be at some point from now, but if his art is growing and being recognized, and this recognition is not the cover of Rolling Stone, it can come from any corner, from any site, blog, from friends or fans, even if they are a few, but this crescent role gives you a consistency to continue and target new things, audiences, etc.
How do you define success?
Well, while my art is growing I understand this as a success, while people are sending us messages saying that our music is marking his moment in life, so I understand it as success, we have to keep putting our goals, some of them is more reachable, others more challenging… But for every goal, where do we succeed, like get our album released in a vinyl version, doing a big show or a tour, I understand it as success.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
I wish I didn’t need to see the stupid president we have in Brazil today… Well, the list of “disgusts” is huge, but this is the top of the moment.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
Right now, I want to keep recording albums with Pesta, it’s been a good journey with these guys and we are finally releasing the version we made of Nightmare song by Sarcófago’s on streaming platforms, after some agreements with Cogumelo Records which is the rights holder, we will release a music video of this song as well and we are excited! But I still want to explore some psychedelic things with Brazilian rhythms because it’s something that is culturally important to me, and it’s part of my experience here somehow… And finish a personal project called Necropolis Ascends, which is a project of mine with a great friend from Greece, we’re in the final stages of recording our first EP and we’re pretty excited about the Trip Gothic Doom madness we’re creating.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
For me to take people away from the tyranny of everyday life, from this reality that is at the same time chaotic and trapped, plastered with rules and duties… The Freedom that art brings is liberating for those who are aware of it, and this liberation is a fuel incredible powerful for a less ordinary life.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Absolutely everything I think as aspiration that I want to do involves music somehow, but maybe the “less” musical of my projects is slowing down from Technology (which is my main occupation) and opening a Pub, this project has already been about to happen a few times but I’ve always bumped into time, but at some point I want to put this dream into practice, it won’t be exactly a place to play just what I like, because in this case I would go broke (lol), but a small place that allow pocket shows and be intimate enough to go with your friends, get drunk and listen to good music! I know we already have this type of option around here, but there’s still room for more!
about as willfully unpleasant a Black Feather Fuzz get — and I’d argue that moment is more ‘extreme’ even than the aforementioned growls that follow shortly — but the thread of in-your-faceness continues into the patterned double-kick and concurrent shove of “Sentinel,” which is both the centerpiece and the shortest cut on the EP, resolving with a hardcore-born chug that’s righteously raw as it moves into its cold stop, letting the low-end rumble of “Liar, Fire…” lumber out the penultimate song’s threatening atmosphere even before the vocal gnash begins. It’s a standout moment, obviously, and feels a bit like what the the EP to that point has been driving toward — a crescendo of sorts — as the band employs doomly slowdowns and very, very heavy tones toward somewhat theatrical ends.
