Posted in Whathaveyou on May 27th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
The inaugural Tundra and Lightning Festival took a shape not dissimilar from this year’s by the time it was done, but with Goat and Gluecifer topping the bill here, Green Lung who by then will be out supporting their new album, and the merry likes of Skraeckoedlan, Kosmodome, Kryptograf and You Know Who and a lineup dug-in hard on its countrymen practitioners — which you can see in Emmerhoff and the Melancholy Babies, Håndgemeng, Aktiv Dödshjelp, and others, among them Death by Unga Bunga, who since they’re listed right under Green Lung I’m kind of embarrassed to say I don’t really know, despite having heard the memorable name.
It’s a bill less about focusing on one style than celebrating a range, but as will happen in Norway’s underground, the party is a factor. Both nights have that going and you can kind of see how it’s gonna play out over the two nights before everyone goes home on Sunday. You show up, get your ass kicked around in Bergen for a while, pack and bolt. I dig that this festival is back, and that it’s growing, and that it seems to have a sense of mission behind who and how it assembles for its bill.
I took the following from social media:
We’re beyond gassed to announce the final additions to 2026: Green Lung, Death By Unga Bunga, Aktiv Dödshjelp, Grandmas House, You Know Who, Kosmodome and Siste Sort.
Alright you beautiful maniacs. You screamed for it, we deliver. DAY SPLITS ARE OUT!
Let the countdown to October 2–3 begin. Day passes will be released on Thursday, May 28 at 10:00. Be ready! Festival passes are already available and ready to be snapped up.
And so we reach the penultimate day of this Quarterly Review; whichever quarter it is, I neither know nor particularly care, I’m just happy to be writing.
It’s been solid days so far. Yesterday was a little harried on timing, but that’s as close to an actual snag as I’ve gotten, which I’m happy to say. The music’s been good, the images and embeds have either been there already or have been easy to find, and there were only one or two things I had to replace along the way because they weren’t coming out for like another couple months. I’ve never been able to keep track of release dates.
I thought about putting a thing in the sidebar so people could list stuff and each week there would be a list, but I feel like I’d be the only one doing it and that’s not how I want to spend my limited time. I want to spend it writing, so I do. And no, it’s not even a little lost on me what a gift that is. It’s why I keep telling you my wife is so amazing. Part of why, anyhow.
We wrap tomorrow, so here’s today.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Ruff Majik, Tan Halen
The central thesis of Ruff Majik‘s recent single “Tan Halen”, that “Sundays are for surfing,” becomes the hook and foundation of this four-song EP of the same name that’s the band’s most substantial offering since they ended a relatively brief hiatus at the start of this year. On the four-track outing, “Tan Halen” is accompanied by “Tvn Hvlen (Tvpe Mix),” which sounds more compressed and vocals-forward, the haggardly swaggering prior single “For the Life of Me,” here presented in an alternate mix that in its maddening chorus brings up the snare and feels more chaotic at the end, and lastly, “Tan Halen (Too Much Fuzz, Not Enough Drums),” which is true more on the second account than the first — how much fuzz is too much for Ruff Majik? is that a pinnacle that’s yet been reached? — but with the drums lower in the mix and the filthy tones surrounding has kind of a garage rock feel, which again, is fair enough for a song about surfing. Only missing here is their first 2026 single, “Can of Wyrms” (posted here), but you can’t have everything. I’m just glad they’re putting out new music.
Releasing through Small Stone Records (US) and Kozmik Artifactz (EU), Spanish classic heavy rockers Green Desert Water bring warmth to boogie and once again distill decades of influence into a cohesive, movement-minded, dynamic package. Eerie Meadows is their third album and in pieces like “The Blacksmith” near the outset or the sweeping “Wolfhound” and shuffling “Bos Primigenius” ahead of the finale “Meteora” on side B, they make it all sound easy, natural, like it couldn’t be any other way. The way that happens is through command of craft, and Green Desert Water are there too in the push of fuzz that emerges at the end of soulful leadoff “Northern Lights,” the bluesier “Holy Ground” and the big crashes/softshoe of the title-track, the trio having constructed songs that can have been worked on but don’t feel like, that engage without cloying, and which thrill in their sundry twists and redirects. I’m not sure what more one could ask of them.
No, I don’t think Berlin newcomers Go Mahhh are the first to posit themselves as being “as high as the mountain,” as they do on opener “High Mountain,” in the stonerly genres, but their tight and heavy psychedelic rock comes through as inherited, and songs like “Happy Satan’s Reign” and the proto-chugging “BBSBBQ,” the kraut-dancey “Anatoliosis” and the percussively shuffling “The Sun King” offer variety united by an underlying current of weirdness. Perhaps it’s all leading to the seven-minute finale “Mind Aussalt” (sic), with its drift and drone and ’60s guitar earlier on, but the band never rest too long in one place, be it the buzzing roll of “Blood Transfusion” or the interlude “MSAZ-20,” with intertwining lines of standalone guitar. Part of me wants to talk about the potential for growth here and the idea that Go Mahhh are debuting with significant range on Doppelgänger, but honestly, the spirit of the album is so much more about the joy of exploration that pulling myself out of the moment feels inappropriate. Some records, you just want to go where they take you.
Heath‘s 2024 debut, Isaak’s Marble (review here) offered hints of progressivism to come, but Murmurations goes to another level, digging in across three tracks to recharacterize their sound from boogie traditionalism to something more expansive and their own. The two-minute mostly-vocals intro “Exordium in D Minor” leads into two 15-minutes-each cuts “Murmurations” and “Nosedive,” and while clearly jam-based, the two songs follow plotted, sometimes winding courses, still keeping a classic feel but lighting a fire under it by the time the title-track is through. Comprising what I assume is the entirety of side B, “Nosedive” unfolds patiently with Rhodes ambience and a gradual build of guitar, working its way to and through a build that hits into surprising heft before its done but makes its core impression in its burner midsection, because nothing tops a crescendo like another, slower, crashing crescendo. It’s like the chemistry here is slapping you in the face, and with the growth they show in this material, Heath‘s limits feel far off on the horizon.
There’s no obfuscation on The Crooked Skulls‘ debut full-length, Midnight Sun. The New Jersey crunch-riffers come right at you with it: thick tones, gravel-throated vocals, and an overarching groove somewhere between slower Orange Goblin and classic Corrosion of Conformity, leaving room for a bit of shove in “Skull Bong” and “Broken” while the mostly-instrumental “Slowsteal” cuts the pace and unfolds with an airier solo in its second half as part of a righteously nodding culmination. Elsewhere, the urgency of centerpiece “Let Me Out” reminds of The Obsessed riding the line between rock and doom, and the penultimate “Iron Smile” brings no less than Fu Manchu‘s Bob Balch in for an expectedly shredding guest guitar spot. Even there, The Crooked Skulls aren’t up to anything too fancy. They’re not looking to dizzy you with complexity so much as dizzy you with a fist upside the head, and that edge of East Coast confrontationalism becomes part of what makes their material feel so immediate in its execution right unto closer “Judgement Day,” which holds its burl through the finish. No tricks, but songs.
A healthy dose of Pentagram-style doom boogie pervades Broadslab‘s The Fifth Essence, and reasonably so as the Mike Dean-produced, Raleigh, North Carolina-based four-piece make their way to the nine-minute organ-laced capper “Constellations” through the classic swing of “Animal Divinity” and “Leslie” at the outset, setting an energetic and stage-ready tone for what follows, the interlude “Alienation” ahead of the all-in shred and burl of side A closer/centerpiece “Shameful Reality,” a more aggressive take than either of the first two cuts, but the beginning rather than the end of their branching out therefrom. The seven-minute “Keep on Rollin'” (not a Samavayo cover) and “Constellations” comprise most of side B, with the longer interlude “Quintessence” between, duly subdued to lead the way from the dual-vocal-style shove of the song before into the immediate kick the band deliver on their way to the extended jamming that carries them out. This might be their first record in 12 years? All the more of an occasion, then.
Bergen, Norway’s Purple Skies make their long-play debut with A Million Years, and thereby foster a sound that’s informed by retroism without actually sounding like it was recorded on vintage gear. That is, as “Haven” and “Too Worn to Tell” demonstrate, they aren’t beholden to a vintage aesthetic, despite influence by bands like Witchcraft (which you can hear in the vocals as well as the guitar progressions they follow) and whichever of their acolytes you’d prefer to namedrop. That doesn’t account for everything on the nine-song A Million Years — to wit, the harmonies on the title-track — but it’s a start and so is the record. They seem to find another layer of tonal depth for “Worthless Men,” and it’s perhaps telling that both of the closing duo of “Archaic Freeway” and “Red Road” are in some way about transportation, because movement is an important factor the whole way through. I wouldn’t say it’s all forward-thinking — having a song called “Bitchcraft” in 2026 is a downer — but they give themselves something to work from in these songs and one will be curious to hear how they refine over time what this material lays out so organically.
The verses are a little more opaque in their biting, harsh-throated sludgecore screams — Ken-E Bones of Negative Reaction comes to mind — but there’s no mistaking the point of view in the hook of “F.T.W.”: “Fuck the world/Fuck AI/Realize the billionaires want us all to die,” and so on. Kudos to Texas’ Red Beard Wall for having a not-shitty opinion. “F.T.W.,” which indeed is restored to its pre-Millennial acronymic purpose (this is not “For the Win,” it’s “Fuck the World”), is joined by the likewise structured “W.A.N.T.S.” (“We Are Not the Same”), and in neither case is Red Beard Wall mainman Aaron “He of the Red Beard” Wall fucking around. “W.A.N.T.S.” uses meme culture to convey no less disaffection than the song before it, and is accordingly castigating as it shifts into a chug worthy of Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol before its sub-four-minutes are up. The above-noted hook of “F.T.W.” is the frame for the short offering and maybe the most fitting summary of Wall‘s lyrical point of view, but shit, it’s not like he’s wrong, politically or in the riffs. It might not change the world, but it’s a well earned lashing out thereupon.
Trondheim’s White Tundra debuted in 2023 with their self-titled LP (review here) on Apollon Records before aligning with Argonauta imprint Octopus Rising for the six-song/37-minute follow-up full-length, Stories From the Dark. The second offering demonstrates more than a handful of positive lessons from the first, including the uptempo swing at the start of “Healer” and the symmetry across the album’s two sides, each of which works from its shortest to its longest inclusion. Fortunately, to coincide with this, their niche feels even more dug out as their own here, with deep fuzz and gravelly vocals as mainstay elements uniting the material, be it the spacious, eponymous closer “White Tundra” or the extra-dense-seeming nod of “The Lake” just before it. There’s more to discover in their songwriting — that is, I don’t think they’re done growing — but their ideas are surpassing their influences now in a way they weren’t three years ago, and for sure it’ll be a third record I’m going to watch for. Incremental, natural growth underway.
Titled simply EP, this three-song/15-minute pummeler draws together aspects of war/death metal and sets them in a context led by riffs, so that the battle-themed horrors of “Trench Division” and the roll of “Bog Bodies” and the lurch early in “Venomous Trait” balance extremity and accessibility in a way that feels like someone should probably send it to Fenriz. Has Fenriz heard this yet? It’s the band’s first release — the lineup includes Jason Brackin, Chad Remains (Ghorot, ex-Uzala), Jacob Depolitte and Marco Gonzalez, or so I’m told — and somewhat indistinguishable from a demo for that, but the fact is that while they might be outwardly basking in a kind of metallic primitivism, knuckle-dragging their and your way to oblivion with only gutturalisms for comfort, there’s no time wasted on EP in informing the listener who Past the Light are and what are their intentions in grim bludgeonry. Telling of things to come? I know better than to predict, but there’s intricacy amid the slaughter if you’re willing to hear it. The test is on you as the listener, whether and for how long you can hang in.
Welcome to the Quarterly Review. I’m not sure which quarter it is, and actually it’s been less than two full months since the last time we did this, but I had this crazy idea to NOT fall 50 records even further behind in covering stuff, so I decided to run one now. Maybe I’ll do another in July. Maybe a piano will fall on my head.
You know the drill by now. 10 releases per day covered. I think I’m going to keep this to 50 total, but I might tack on another day or two if I get through it and still have a bunch more on the docket. We’ll see. But time’s a crunch, so we gotta move.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Abrams, Loon
When the postmortem is done on this generation of heavy rock and roll, Abrams might be among its most underrated bands in terms of songwriting. The Denver unit led by guitarist/vocalist Zachary Amster offer the taut 10-song/37-minute run of Loon as further argument in their favor, basking in a heavy and post-hardcore blend and working with Godcity Studio and Kurt Ballou (Converge, High on Fire, etc.) to foster a more aggressive sound in pieces like “Glass House,” “While Walls,” “Said and Done,” and so on, bordering on noise rock while bringing grunge melody to “A State of Mind” and blasting double-kick drumming to closer “Remains.” At this point, I’m wondering if they’re too good. Are they too polished, is Amster too capable a singer? Is the songwriting too tight? In the immortal words of Will Ferrell, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Once again, Abrams do nothing wrong. One hopes the added charge wakes up more ears to what they’re doing. Or even better, instead of snagging jaded oldheads, put this shit on TikTok and let the 17 year olds learn about melody from it. That’s how it works now, right?
Buzzard, Take the Tyrant Down (Acoustic) b/w Hunchback, Vicar & Wizard
Two cuts from Massachusetts solo artist Buzzard, aka Christopher Thomas Elliott, whose voice and point of view for me personally has been salve in terrible times and for that a marker of the era. Late last year, Elliott released the EP Everything is Not Going to Be Alright (review here) with a plugged version of “Take the Tyrant Down,” which is stripped down here of its later chug and “Down down down/Sic semper tyrannis” vocal bridge. Perhaps too heavyhanded? It becomes a quiter contemplation of overcoming oppression, and its ultimate victory is no less sweet. The (digital) B-side is “Hunchback, Vicar and Wizard,” which wraps itself in an acoustic central line like “Doom Folk Fury” from the EP (which has also been expanded to an LP this year, heads up) but is less of a chorus surge, letting the Mellotron bring atmospheric backing to the lyrical tale of cathartic justice for the abuse victims of clergy. Yes, I’m talking about killing priests who rape children. Or Elliott is anyhow, in his increasingly solidified and yet malleable doom-folk aesthetic, with craft likewise prolific and purposeful.
As I understand it, Masheena have traded out half their lineup since recording Let the Spiders In with producer Machine (Clutch, etc.) in early 2024, but either way, the Bergen, Norway, heavy rocking four-piece bring expansive melodies to sharp structures in hooky cuts like “Going to the Mountain” and “One Good Eye,” taking bluesy energy in pieces like “Been Waiting” and “Don’t Tell Her” and the chug of the penultimate “Riffy” and fostering a sound that’s straightforward and accessible while not lacking at all in variety. It’s their second LP, and though on “Sara Lost Her Way,” they edge close to the big-stage energy of countrymen Spidergawd, the thickness in “Riffy” and the subsequent, nonetheless shuffling closer “You Owe Me,” as well as the generally bluesier foundations, aid in distinction. The album is paced comfortably at 34 minutes but never in any danger of overstaying its welcome. Can’t help but be curious how the dynamic has changed with the new lineup. It’s certainly solid in this material.
As Buenos Aires-based singer-songwriter Sergio Chotsourian (aka Sergio Ch., of Los Natas, Ararat, Soldati, etc.) has developed his solo approach, it’s satisfying to hear him working with a drum machine on “Last Dance,” the first cut on this two-song EP, paired with the 12-minute “The Journey.” It highlights a modernized bedroom-folk intimacy that’s always been in his experimentalist craft, and lets the guitar become the source of tension in the piece, which it does righteously. “The Journey” is more synth-based and is instrumental for most of its stretch, but there are late-arriving vocals. He also seems to be trying something new with his voice, though that might just be a result of returning to English-language lyrics after however long it’s been since last time. Note the guitar figure consistent beneath the keys of “The Journey” as well. Last Dance of a Dying Man is Sergio being Sergio, but part of that is pushing his own boundaries, and that can clearly be heard in these songs.
LSDREI, a combination of LSD and ‘drei,’ as in ‘three,’ is indeed the third LP from Danish jammers Vestjysk Ørken, and it begins with a long monologue over foreboding backing drone spoken by the drug itself, maybe from an old propaganda film? In any case, this first eight minutes set the mood before a burst-in of heavy fuzz after the eight-minute mark starts what’s presumed to be ‘Violets and Yellow’ in the six-parts-presented-as-a-single-36-minute-track of the LP. The full course is listed as “The Traveler / Violets & Yellow / Drei / Running My Head / (Backwards) Like A Mirror / Lovely Colours Shimmering,” and though immersion has always been a top priority for the Esbjerg outfit — theirs and yours both — they’ve never sounded quite so intentional in their exploration. The lumber gives way to shimmering lead guitar, more speech and a light but bassy boogie as they pass the halfway point, and plays back and forth from there between airy verses, ebbs and flows, more samples and, in the last few minutes, both shove and a massive concluding roll finishing with vague but angry shouts of a populace. It gets weird, kids. Actually, starts weird and gets weirder. For best results, recommend you do likewise.
Liminal Sky is presented as an extension of the work drummer, guitarist and keyboardist Jaime Gomez Arellano (also a noted producer in London) and guitarist, bassist, keyboardist Daniel Knight did together in the band Messenger, but the debut album All Tomorrow’s Darkness takes on an identity of its own, thanks in no small part to vocal collaborations with Mat McNerny (Hexvessel, Grave Pleasures), Kristoffer Rygg (Ulver) and Karin Park (Årabrot), as well as a slew of instrumental contributors too many to list in this space. This amalgam results in an emotionally resonant, post-genre melancholia, kin to the beauty in darkness in pieces like “Algebra of Unknowing,” “Penance” and “Forget Me Not,” the latter of which hits into a satisfying crescendo without giving up its core expressive purpose. It is not a minor undertaking in the substance of its songs, but Arellano and Knight create an entire world for this material, and the listener, to dwell in.
Professional-grade delivery from a professional band. Master of the Skies is the 11th album in the 35-plus-year tenure of Sweden’s The Quill, and if they’re exploring themes of mastery, you could hardly find a better theme to coincide with their sound. With expert hand and worldly care, they gracefully guide the listener through a diverse 45-minute collection, with rockers and ballads and acoustic numbers and the nine-minute volume-trade sprawl of the penultimate “Mastodon,” part Sabbath as they go, but more of a decades-meld of heavy rock ideologies so that “You Can Not Kill My Soul” hits with triumphant melody and side B opener “If Tomorrow Never Comes” wraps itself up in chugging largesse. The band — vocalist Magnus Ekwall, guitarist Christian Carlsson, bassist Roger Nilsson and drummer Jolle Atlagic — are unflinching in the refinement of their approach, but even when they reprise lead cut “Master of the Skies” to finish, there’s no pretense, just some of the most solid craft a band could hope to stand on.
Unearthed from the depths of Columbus, Ohio’s underground, Greenthrone‘s The Greenthrone EP was put to tape in 2010 and 2011 as a series of demos from what was then the bombastic duo of Danny Bays (guitar/vocals) and Lisa Bella Donna (drums/production), the latter also of much-missed progressive heavy explorers EYE. A five-song collection, it is brash and raw and finds Bays‘ vocal delivery somewhere between Matt Pike and Chuck Schuldiner on “The Sentinel” and “Beyond the Veil,” and that’s before they get into the sludgy push/roll of centerpiece “Hidden in Plain Sight” or the righteously-tin-can “Brujo,” and “Feather Crown” to close. There’s an audible shift in sound there ahead of the last two tracks, but there was point of view in the band even 15 years ago. Bays got a new lineup going at some point, a trio, and hopefully there’s more to follow sooner or later.
Dave Heumann, Chimes of Freedom // Further Adventures of Big Ten
Two at least semi-covers; one straight up take on Bob Dylan, the latter transmogrified reportedly from The Grateful Dead and David Crosby, and either make a fitting place for Arbouretum frontman Dave Heumann to dwell in for a while. The fragility of his voice in Dylan‘s lyrics on “Chimes of Freedom” makes that song feel all the more like a song for the people — in both the folk music and political senses, because they’re linked — while “Further Adventures of Big Ten” feels more like an exploration, being instrumental and set atop a drone and backed with hand-percussion as it is. “Chimes of Freedom” is the more straightforward, I guess, but its organ line and way-back-there gentle drums feel emblematic of the 1964 original, captured at the precipice of the birth of the psychedelic era. You could say a lot about the choices one way or the other, but from where I sit it’s five more minutes of Heumann singing and about 11 of him playing and I’ll take what I can get, thanks. He’s like if you gave the National Park System a voice.
Most of all, Towers of Silence sounds like the beginning of a rich and creative plunge into sound. Netherlands-based four-piece A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers take a sludgy angle on post-metallic lurch on this three-songer, and as “The Massacre of Flour” unfolds, it seems like it’s going to be all-onslaught until they hang a louie into a psychedelic midsection framed on the other side by a punishing return. “I Fuck People” follows and is noisier and more chaotic, but still manages to find room for saxophone in its second half, while the nine-minute title-track wraps by flipping the script into volume trades between meditative melodic contemplation and heavier bashing-away. The message that comes through is A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers aren’t restrained by genre ideology. Breaking out of it on three songs, they’re at the starting point in developing the individual creative expression one hears in this material. The prospects for where their journey might take them are exciting.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 7th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
Slomosa supporting Clutch. At the rate the Norwegian next-gen forerunners are going, I can’t help but wonder if the positions won’t be reversed in some not-too-distant future. In any case, it’s another forward step for the four-piece following their 2024 second album, Tundra Rock (review here), which two years after the fact feels ready to stand among the best records of this decade when the time comes for that. Their last US tour — a headlining run with however many sold out shows it was — wrapped up on May 1, not a week ago, and next week they head to Australia. Nice they could announce another tour in the “downtime” between one and the other.
The run with Clutch and Blood Vulture — who I saw in Jersey not too long ago and enjoyed; Jordan Olds from ‘Two Minutes to Late Night’ (which I’m told is a thing on the internet) does well onstage, perhaps unsurprisingly — starts Oct. 16 in North Carolina. Slomosa have a previously announced stint in Southern Europe in September, and I’m honestly not sure what’s between Australia and that, but surely something. Take summer off and make a landmark third album? Certainly if they wanted they could be at just about every festival in Europe, so I have to wonder about a late-’26/early-’27 release. Maybe we’ll get lucky in this already fantastic year for music.
Or maybe they’ll write the record and play the songs on tour first and record over the winter. See? This is how baseless speculation works in a universe of infinite possibility.
In all seriousness, nothing this decade in heavy rock has been more of a thrill than watching Slomosa‘s rise to the forefront. They’re one of the best and hardest-working heavy rock bands going, and if you’re reading this, you’re probably better off for having them in your life. Think about that for a second.
From social media:
BOOM!!!😮💨 Man, we had such a freakin good time in the US that we just had to book another one asap!! At least 50% of the audiences on the Breaking Ice tour wore some sort of Clutch-merch – so guess that means you’re hyped for this??🤘💨
We most definitely are!! So hyped to get play lots of new places whilst supporting the bonafida legends of Clutch together with Blood Vulture 🙏🔥
💥TICKETS WILL BE OUT FRIDAY 10am (local time)💥
Are you coming?
Slomosa – US Tour w/ Clutch & Blood Vulture 10.16 Charlotte NC The Fillmore 10.17 Myrtle Beach SC House of Blues 10.18 Jacksonville FL Five 10.20 Tampa FL The Ritz Ybor 10.22 New Orleans LA House of Blues 10.23 Robinsonville MS Bluesville at Horseshoe Tunica* 10.24 Fort Worth TX Sick New World (Clutch only) 10.25 Fayetteville AR Ozark Music Hall* 10.27 Des Moines IA Val Air Ballroom 10.29 Green Bay WI Epic Event Center 10.30 Moline IL The Rust Belt 10.31 Cincinnati OH The Andrew J. Brady Music Center 11.01 Fort Wayne IN Clyde Theatre 11.03 S. Burlington VT Higher Ground 11.05 Hampton Beach NH Casino Ballroom 11.06 Wilkes-Barre PA F.M. Kirby Center 11.07 Norfolk VA The Norva *No Blood Vulture
PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED: Slomosa – Year of the Horse Tour – Aus & NZ May 14 Auckland NZ May 15 Taupo NZ May 16 Wellington NZ May 22 Melboune AU May 23 Sydney AU May 24 Brisbane AU
PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED: 23.09 Larnaca, CY // Savino Live 🇨🇾 25.09 Athens, GR // Arch Club 🇬🇷 26.09 Thessonliki, GR // 8ball Club 🇬🇷 27.09 Sofia, BG // Pave Club 🇧🇬 29.09 Novi Sad, RS // SKCNS Fabrika 🇷🇸 30.09 Zagreb, HR // Vintage Industrial Bar 🇭🇷 01.10 Ljubljana, SL // Gala Hala 🇸🇮 05.10 Grenoble, FR // L’Ampérage 🇫🇷 06.10 Milan, IT // Legend Club 🇮🇹 07.10 Roma, IT // Traffic 🇮🇹 09.10 Munich, DE // Keep It Low Festival 🇩🇪
Slomosa features: Ben Berdous – vocals/guitar Marie Moe – vocals/bass Tor Erik Bye – guitar Jard Hole – drum
Posted in Whathaveyou on April 28th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
Lest you thought Norwegian heavy rockers Slomosa would take it easy after wrapping up current their US headlining run ending May 1, going home for two weeks, and then shooting over to Oceania to cover Australia and New Zealand, but yeah, no, of course they aren’t. The ‘Year of the Horse Tour’ on which they’ve already long since embarked will continue into this Fall, when they’ll launch a tour of Southern Europe that’s set to lead into their prior-announced slot at Keep it Low in Munich on Oct. 9.
I know, it’s been entire hours since the band last appeared in this space, but sometimes an outfit have a lot going on. You’ll find all the current dates I know about — there could a whole summer tour snuck in there I haven’t seen yet — below, including the last few on the current jaunt. Don’t be surprised if there’s more to come, but I also can’t help but wonder if they won’t record at any point this year to follow-up 2024’s Tundra Rock (review here) while momentum is still on their side. I guess that’s what you watch the short-form video content to find out.
Dates were posted on socials more or less (I put the ticket link in) as follows:
FINALLY!!💥💥💥 This has been a looong time coming.. We’re VERY delighted to announce our first South-European tour. We’re going to countries like Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Serbia – all for the very first time!! Yes, we have played in both Croatia and Italy before – but that feels like a decade ago. And this time we get to give you the full Slomosa package. So they kinda feel like firsts too. Anyway we hope to see you when we come on down? We’re anticipating some wild gigs on this one🐫🐫🐫
23.09 Larnaca, CY // Savino Live 🇨🇾 25.09 Athens, GR // Arch Club 🇬🇷 26.09 Thessonliki, GR // 8ball Club 🇬🇷 27.09 Sofia, BG // Pave Club 🇧🇬 29.09 Novi Sad, RS // SKCNS Fabrika 🇷🇸 30.09 Zagreb, HR // Vintage Industrial Bar 🇭🇷 01.10 Ljubljana, SL // Gala Hala 🇸🇮 05.10 Grenoble, FR // L’Ampérage 🇫🇷 06.10 Milan, IT // Legend Club 🇮🇹 07.10 Roma, IT // Traffic 🇮🇹 09.10 Munich, DE // Keep It Low Festival 🇩🇪
PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED: Slomosa – Year of the Horse Tour – Aus & NZ May 14 Auckland NZ May 15 Taupo NZ May 16 Wellington NZ May 22 Melboune AU May 23 Sydney AU May 24 Brisbane AU
USA Tour Remaining Dates: Apr 28 Toronto, ON – The Garrison Apr 29 Pittsburgh, PA – Preserving Underground Apr 30 Columbus, OH – A&R Music Bar May 1 Cleveland, OH – The Grog Shop
Slomosa features: Ben Berdous – vocals/guitar Marie Moe – vocals/bass Tor Erik Bye – guitar Jard Hole – drum
Posted in Reviews on April 27th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
It is too soon for anything Slomosa do to be legendary, even amid the rigors of promospeak and the necessary hype by which today’s music industry (sort of) survives. What the Bergen, Norway, four-piece are doing now is writing that legend so that someday it can hopefully be recounted in story, song and influence. The band’s Record Store Day release, Live in Bergen, captures a Dec. 2024 hometown show that, for the band, was clearly a special moment. Their second album, Tundra Rock (review here), had just come out in September on a bigger label (MNRK Heavy), and they had made a successful first foray into touring the United States, opening for Alkaline Trio on a quick release tour (review here), building on the success that the catchy hooks laid out across their 2020 self-titled debut (review here), which was warm enough in tone to be desert rock until the band boldly laid claim to their own microgenre. They’ve since headlined a US tour, among a slew of European runs, and continued their road-dogging ascent to the forefront of the worldwide heavy underground. Every step of the way, they’ve been greeted as liberators.
But even divorced from all hyperbole of ‘legend,’ Live in Bergen is deeply celebratory. The band’s 77-minute set at USK Verftet would’ve been among the bigger club dates they headlined — of course they were already making the festival rounds as well in Europe — and in performance, guitarist/vocalist Benjamin Berdous, guitarist Tor-Erik Bye, bassist/vocalist Marie Moe and drummer Jard Hole absolutely step up to meet the occasion. With producer Eirik Marinius Sandvik (who also mixed/mastered here) in the lineup as guitarist/keyboardist, Slomosa sound fully realized onstage, and their songs are delivered for character as much as impact, with earworm melodies like “Cabin Fever” and “In My Mind’s Desert” as part of an encompassing setlist with only one song left out from each of the band’s two-at-the-time LPs — “Dune” from Tundra Rock and “Traktor” from the self-titled; can’t have everything — resulting in a feeling across Live in Bergen that’s more like a greatest-hits than a live record made on just another tour stop.
What’s funny about that is that the ‘greatest hits’ are basically the first two records; again, just two songs missing. But Slomosa aren’t packing the set with filler when they include “MJ” or “Psykonaut,” they just have the songs across those two LPs to hold up a 15-track live release. They shift in mood throughout Live in Bergen between songs like “Estonia,” the initially-Moe-fronted “Red Thundra,” which must have that extra guitar in it to sound so full in its fuzz when the volume kicks in and Berdous comes in on vocals, and “Monomann,” which immediately follows with a kind of boogie that Hole has already made a signature of the band’s work, but there’s no real dip on Live in Bergen.
It doesn’t get tedious. It doesn’t feel indulgent in the mellower stretches of “Psykonaut” and the way the dense fuzz twists around to the immersive lead wash that caps it, or “Battling Guns,” with its hook on repeat in my head for years to come. It’s song after song after song, a powerhouse of a set, and it’s not like as they get into a nearly-seven-minute take on “Horses,” or “Kevin,” or “Scavengers,” they’re dropping the ball. It’s a front to back show, and the bottom line is that if you own one, either or both of Slomosa‘s albums to-date, even as a limited release, Live in Bergen makes itself feel like a necessary complement.
I’m not sure there’s another band whose ascent this decade — specifically this decade; not starting in the 2010s — has felt so fated. And they have marketing behind them now, but that feeling was there before they started headlining as well, and coming off Tundra Rock, there are few bands for whose next record I have such high expectations, set by the first two albums and this release as well, and the lessons they’ll have learned on the road over the last four or so years. The question of what they’ll do next looms large, but the level of craft they’ve shown to this point gives little reason to think they’re not the real deal, a generational band. Think of what The Sword were for Millennials. And like that band, Slomosa have set forth with a broadly recognizable sound — the self-titled Queens of the Stone Age LP is a defining influence of their work to this point — and set themselves to the task of manifesting their individuality through what they bring to it.
As to that, it’s perhaps this intangible aspect — you could call it talent, chemistry, songwriting and fleeting youth rolled together; all are factors — that most comes through in Live in Bergen. It’s not every day a seemingly tossoff 2LP live record feels like a document for posterity, but this one does. And given the implied upward trajectory of Slomosa, it’s easy to think of looking back in 10, 20 years to Slomosa‘s younger days — maybe their halcyon days? — and to continue to feel the vitality in this material played on this night in this place. Not knowing what they might do in the interim makes that speculative, but that’s been part of Slomosa‘s appeal to this point as well — their potential. ‘Who knows what triumphs a third album might bring? Hooks that could save the world.’ And so on.
The thing is, if you’ve seen Slomosa, you know that feeling is real. The converts already know. They’re a special band, born of the heavy underground and clearly aiming for broader reach, and that Live in Bergen carries that across so fluidly to the listener only reaffirms the supposition in the first place. Pro-shop, and not the least for Sandvik‘s contributions in mixing keeping Live in Bergen consistent with the band’s studio releases. I know, I know. Special vinyl. Limited releases. No repress! It’s exhausting in this day and age. Slomosa, however, sound like they’re having the time of their lives, and maybe they are, and if you’d like to share in that for a bit, Live in Bergen awaits with fuzz and welcome in kind.
Posted in Reviews on March 18th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
Feel like we’re really getting into it now, and that’s a good thing. I’m not saying I was shaking off rust for the first two days, but I look at the spread of styles across the names above and ‘it’s gonna be a good day’ pops inexorably into my head. I like that feeling, which I guess is how we get here in the first place.
It’s Wednesday of this seven-day QR, so we’re not quite halfway through yet. If you’ve been keeping up, thank you. If not, it’s okay. You’re still welcome to peruse the below and hopefully find something that speaks to you.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Clayton Burgess, If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home by Now
Self-recorded and just as raw as the day is long, the first solo album from Clayton Burgess (Satan’s Satyrs founder, also ex-Electric Wizard), If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home by Now, is so classic in its substance it can’t help be modern. And I’m not talking about the pop garage indie of the 2000s, like it sounds cheap but also everybody has perfect hair. Songs like “Kerosene” and the Mellotron-laced “Meadowlands” are more in the Rise Above Records mindset of retroism, which is to say doing the thing for real and letting the genres sort themselves out later. Thus the proto-punk of “Little Bat Dreams” and the strut of “Scenic Byway” coexist with the jazzy “Faustine,” and so on. “Signal Fire” and the closer “Golden Age of Volcanism” are a bit darker, maybe a little closer to Burgess‘ work with Satan’s Satyrs, while “Greasy Bangs” lives up to its name for all of its 90 seconds, a heavy garage instrumental of the ’60s tradition. What’s amazing about it is the whole style is based around familiarity and yet the indentity built up throughout is so individual. I haven’t seen a lot of hype about it, but here’s hoping Burgess continues this pursuit.
There have been some personnel shifts in Swedish stoner-doomnodders New Mexican Doom Cult, and their second full-length, Ziggurat, operates mostly in the same volume-worshipping vein of riffing as 2023’s Necropolis (review here), but with a deeper perspective in “Metatron” and the pointedly doomed “Return to Babylon,” among others. The band now is Nils Ahnland on guitar and vocals (also bass), drummer Jonathan Ekvall and Jonas Strömberg on keys/production, and though they’ve given up some tonal impact as a result of dropping to a single guitar (layering notwithstanding; looking at you, “Criosphinx”), the tradeoff is they’re more flexible in sound while remaining plenty heavy from “The Church of Starry Wisdom” onward. Sabbathian roll is a specialty of the house, but the satisfaction when “Sungod” finally kicks in at full volume speaks to a different kind of mastery before the doom-hook in “I Stand Alone” rounds out. Curious where they’ll go from here.
Following on from 2025’s Never Never (review here), Toronto mellow-hangs specialists Lammping continue their four-album cycle of collaborations with this second one, bringing them together with Drew Smith (The Bicycles) and Chris Cummings (Marker Starling), as core Lammping duo Mikhail Galkin (vocals, production, guitar, etc.) and Jay Anderson (drums) slide so smoothly into and out of dub instrumentals and low-key heavy vibes, always fluid, here hinting toward jazz, there shimmering into the techno experiment “Prelude to Never” ahead of the finale “Never Done,” which closes like psychedelic singer-songwriter fare from some lost decade that was never actually real. I guess the update is Lammping remain on their on wavelength of sound and on their own echelon of cool. Spending some time there with them could only be to your greater benefit. Two more LPs coming.
Most of the material on Mos Eisley Spaceport‘s apparently-self-released live album, Live on Crow Hill, comes from their 2023 debut, Further, but with newer two songs at the end in the 12-minute “Interstellar Mantis” and “In Your Mind,” the jam-based classic heavy blues boogie rockers give a glimpse at where they’re headed just the same. And that’s not to take away from “Space Shift” — which starts with the Star Wars sample from whence their moniker hails — or the scope in “Ashes to Ashes” made organic by the fluidity of the band’s performance, I’m just noting the progression underway in their sound. Whether brand new or not, they deliver, and the fact that they’ve added organ to the arrangements in the time since the record came out means these interpretations stand on their own regardless. Most of all, the set is a blast and sounds like they’re having as much fun playing as I am listening, which is plenty. It would feel silly to ask more of it than that, whatever it might portend for them moving forward.
How lucky you are that after 40-plus years of industrial sounds depicting dystopian apocalyptic scenarios you finally get to live in one. Dome Runner are the machine punishment humanity deserves in an era where a tech CEO can casually say something about flying drones into people’s heads to kill them and/or licensing common knowledge on a subscription model and not be immediately imprisoned or extrajudicially hanged to the benefit of all. World Panopticon is suitably brutal across a 76-minute span, the Tampere, Finland, troupe keeping one foot in ’90s industrial metal as they did on their 2021 debut, Conflict State Design (review here), but filtering this through modern tonality and horrors. There are breaks, quiet parts in longer songs, interludes, etc., but I don’t know that I’d call any of it a real letup in the looming sense of oppression, and well, get used to that, because the boot on your neck that they’re portraying isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Welcome to the age of it-gets-worse-and-nobody-stops-it. At least you still have the music, for now.
While clearly written as individual pieces, the six songs comprising the 36-minute run of Italian heavy psych instrumentalists Basaltic Plateau‘s late-’25 debut LP, Dead Dinosaurs Echoes flow exceedingly well into each other, extrapolating the ebbs and flows within a given track into how it interacts with those around it. In this way, the three-piece build a landscape of sound — some kind of sound… scape! — across the span, warm-toned and so easy enough to liken to a desert rock influence, but heavier in its payoff stretches and up for trippier weirdness in “Summer Dream” and the more technical severity of the closing title-cut, also the longest at nearly nine minutes, and less predictable in its entirety than one might expect going in. As a debut, their self-awareness bodes well, and the psych of “Cuttlefish Galaxy” and progressivism of “Sleep Paralysis” might be careening toward each other like the Milky Way and Andromeda, but if there’s to be a conflict between the two, it’s a ways off. In the meantime, their creative reach serves them in immersing the listener.
Should you find yourself needing a reason to feel hopeful about the future of heavy rock, that Gjenferd might be part of it should more than suffice. The Bergen, Norway, four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Vegard Bachmann Strand, bassist Samuel Robson Gardner, keyboardist/vocalist Jakob Særvoll and drummer/vocalist Sivert Kleiven Larsen present their second album in Black Smoke Rising, and draw a thread back through decades of heavy rock stylization to conjure a sound that is their own and welcoming, unpretentious and progressive in kind. Whether it’s the shuffle of “Bound to Fall” and the hook of “Ride On” or the moodier nod of “Calling Your Name” and the mellow-till-it-ain’t “The Silence,” the band are dynamic, thoughtful in their craft and vital very much in the ‘alive’ sense of the word across the 10 inclusions, further distinguishing themselves among the emergent next generation of heavy rock and rollers. The listenability here can’t and shouldn’t be discounted, which is to say, don’t be surprised when you come back for another round with it.
I feel like it may forever be my fate to feel like I’m trying to catch up to Codex Serafini. Yes, temporally — their second LP, Mother, Give Your Children Sanity, came out last November — but also stylistically, and in this I feel a oneness with the universe, for which the UK outfit are an intentionally odd fit. Spacerocking in their own dimensional phase, the band follow 2023’s The Imprecation of Anima (review here) with a status-quo threatening cohesion that lands heavy with Wayne Adams‘ production but is more about the plunge into the farther far-out, sax and skronk and ritualistic melodies and madness. The title-track brings healing, but not like you’re thinking, whatever you’re thinking, and the subsequent blowout in capper “Marching Like a Toad” (before the drone finish) could hardly be better earned. Bands rarely sound so willing to follow where their whims take them, and the quirk in Mother, Give Your Children Sanity is more appreciable for that.
Airy grunge pervades the self-titled 2025 full-length debut from UK trio Sunbreather, resulting in a tonal richness one can hear in the eponymous “Sunbreather” or the prior “Apricity” as the record gets going, creating a kind of terrestrial psychedelia that vocal effects and an upped fuzz quotient in all-caps centerpiece/side B leadoff “WINE” seems to revel in pushing to one side or another. I like this album a lot; the way it feels like it’s establishing one aspect of the band’s sound or another and then moves on to the next idea without losing itself in indulgence. The organic flow. The closing pair of “Sleep” and “Aubade” emphasize this, with a fuller lumber in “Sleep” that opens atmospherically in “Aubade” while staying dreamy in tempo at least for most of its time. I say all the time that the challenge for UK bands is distinguishing themselves from the constant glut of their home country’s underground. That might be true here as well, on its face, but in actually hearing the songs, Sunbreather come out ahead in terms of identity. I’m pretty sure this was self-released, but I can’t imagine they wouldn’t be able to find a label if they wanted to for it.
True, the Moscovian plodders don’t have ‘bong’ or ‘weed,’ etc., in their name, but they’re pretty close to bong metal regardless on this initial three-songer, Dope Druid, lumbering through dank megasludge on the opening title-track before rolling noisier into “Wolf Shepherd” and chug-and-feedbacking to a point of near-abrasion (of the willful sort, mind you) on “Tsar of Blood,” making for a solid 19 minutes of damage to eardrums and braincells alike. So much the better a tone on which to break onesself. Imagine drowning in bong water. They aren’t shooting for anything overly complicated, but there is sort of a scope to the onslaught, and the rawness overarching becomes a benefit to the impact of the material — its heft is engrossing and the way the harshness comes through the recording lends aggression to the groove — but I’m not sure that’s aspiration so much as fortunate circumstance. It’s moot, ultimately, because any way you go, Konung have come to crush you into flattened little bits, and the best advice I can give is go with it and deal with the cleanup after.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 5th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
A scant two weeks after wrapping the ‘Breaking Ice’ US tour that will mark the Norwegians’ first headlining run of the States, Slomosa will travel to New Zealand and Australia for a round of six shows in May. The band go in continued support of their declarative second album, 2024’s Tundra Rock (review here), and at this point, their reputation as a live act precedes them. If you live in that part of the world (which I know is bigger than these six locations, but it’s a first foray, not a last), and can make it happen, I strongly recommend you see this band.
I’ve included below a poster for the US run that updates on what shows are sold out or low, etc. Note that it’s not the most updated, since I know the Bowery Ballroom gig March 26 that begins the tour is already sold out. Check local listings before you roll out to a venue, I guess is what I’m saying. But do roll out.
From socials:
Pinch our arms, in May we’re bringing the Tundra Fire to AUSTRALIA and NEW ZEALAND!!! @sidewinder_official are coming along as support in NZ, what a perfect way to celebrate the Year of the Horse!🐴🐴🐴
Pre-sales (Australia only!!) for newsletter subscribers starts tomorrow, general ticket sales from Tuesday. Find ’em on our website [link in bio]🎫
As we’ve said before; when the band slowly started getting together nearly ten years ago our ambition was honestly to some day hopefully score a gig in Oslo. Go all the way to the other side of our country to play, that would be wild! Now we’re going to the other side of the Earth!!! So so insane💪🏽❤️🔥🙌🏽
So we hope to see the lot of you!! Which one(s) will it be??🇳🇿🇦🇺🇳🇿🇦🇺
Poster by @olympia.hertzelag 👏
Slomosa – Year of the Horse Tour – Aus & NZ May 14 Auckland NZ May 15 Taupo NZ May 16 Wellington NZ May 22 Melboune AU May 23 Sydney AU May 24 Brisbane AU
Breaking Ice U.S. Tour Mar 26 New York, NY – The Bowery Ballroom Mar 27 Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall Mar 28 Washington, DC – Pearl Street Warehouse Mar 29 Richmond, VA – Richmond Music Hall Mar 31 Greensboro, NC – Eulogy Apr 2 Atlanta, GA The Masquerade (Purgatory) Apr 3 Nashville, TN – The Blue Room Apr 6 Dallas, TX – Club Dada Apr 7 Austin, TX – Brushy Street Commons Apr 9 Phoenix, AZ – The Rebel Lounge Apr 10 Los Angeles, CA – The Roxy Theatre Apr 11 San Francisco, CA – Bottom of the Hill Apr 12 Sacramento, CA – Harlow’s Apr 14 Portland, OR – Mission Theater Apr 15 Seattle, WA – Tractor Tavern Apr 17 Boise, ID – Neurolux Apr 18 Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court Apr 20 Colorado Springs, CO – The Black Sheep Apr 21 Denver, CO – Marquis Apr 23 Kansas City, MO – The Record Bar Apr 24 Minneapolis, MN – 7th St Entry Apr 25 Chicago, IL – Cobra Lounge Apr 26 Detroit, MI – El Club Apr 28 Toronto, ON – The Garrison Apr 29 Pittsburgh, PA – Preserving Underground Apr 30 Columbus, OH – A&R Music Bar May 1 Cleveland, OH – The Grog Shop
Slomosa features: Ben Berdous – vocals/guitar Marie Moe – vocals/bass Tor Erik Bye – guitar Jard Hole – drum
