Every now and again I get asked to write a band bio. I’m happy to do it when I’m able, but  it always takes me an absurdly long time to get it completed. Still, when Conan comes calling, it’s either step up or face some kind of doomly ceremonial beheading, so I figured I’d better get on it. If nothing else, I was happy to have an excuse to put on their new album, Blood Eagle (review here), which will be out late this month/early next month on Napalm Records.

After a few rounds back and forth correcting my many uses of the literary device known as the “typo,” here’s how it came out:

CONAN, Blood Eagle bio

With monolithic tones and barbarian tales, Conan were born to destroy. The Northwestern UK trio of guitarist/vocalist Jon Paul Davis, bassist/vocalist Phil Coumbe and drummer Paul O’Neil began in 2006 with the Battle in the Swamp EP as their first outing in 2007, but it was 2010’s Horseback Battle Hammer EP that first caught the attention of the international underground, and the impression of Conan’s “caveman battle doom” was immediate. Songs like “Satsumo” and “Krull” showed that just because the band sounded big didn’t mean they couldn’t also write a song, and when their debut long-player, Monnos, followed in 2012 preceded by a 2011 split with Slomatics, the response was duly huge.

A slot at the Netherlands’ prestigious Roadburn festival in 2012 resulted in 2013’s Mount Wrath live album, and Conan continued to shake venue floors and cave in chest cavities wherever they played. Touring Europe, they shared the stage with Sleep in Norway and in 2013, Conan featured at Desertfest in London, laying waste to Camden’s famed Underworld club alongside Chicago’s Bongripper, with whom they also released a split EP, Conan’s contribution coming in the form of the sprawling, droned-out “Beheaded,” their longest song to date at over 17 minutes.

After tracking them using forensic experts and analysis of the footprints the band left stomping across the UK and Europe to support Monnos, including at the 2013 Damnation Festival, Napalm Records signed Conan for the release of their second album. Davis, in turn, set about building a temple. Working with the band’s longtime producer Chris Fielding, he constructed Skyhammer Studio, where,  as the house engineer, Fielding would helm 2014’s Blood Eagle for Napalm as both Conan’s and the studio’s reputation continued to grow.

To celebrate their return with their most accomplished blend yet of riff-largesse and memorable hooks, topped off as always by Tony Roberts artwork featuring their mascot “The Sentinel,” Conan set forth a full European tour for Spring 2014, including a return to Roadburn and appearances at Doom Over Leipzig, Droneburg Festival, Temples Festival, the St. Helena Doom Fest and France’s famed Hellfest. Their shows already the stuff of legend and the Blood Eagle songs being their most bludgeoning material, Conan’s conquering days have just begun.

Conan, “Foehammer” official video

Conan’s website

Conan on Thee Facebooks

Napalm Records

German purveyor of swamp-psych-blues Larman Clamor — aka Alexander von Wieding — has announced a Sept. 10 release for its fourth full-length, Alligator Heart. Like last year’s Frogs (review here), it’ll be released by Small Stone, and today the tracklisting and cover art were officially unveiled, and I was lucky enough to get an advanced listen to write the bio to go with the album.

Here’s that bio — in blue even though I wrote it — plus the cover, of course by von Wieding himself, and the tracklisting:

Larman Clamor, Alligator Heart bio

Larman Clamor is throwing a carnival. More of a street fair, really. You’ll find the sky is tinted a greenish yellow watercolor, the air is tepid and wet with humidity, bugs come in swarms, and later, a parade of children on the backs of reptiles will come out of the swamp and march down the crossroad.

Welcome to Alligator Heart.

The third Larman Clamor full-length, Alligator Heart follows on the heels of 2012’s Frogs, 2011’s Altars to Turn Blood and that same year’s debut self-titled EP. It is the most accomplished release to date from the solo-project of Alexander von Wieding – also illustrator for Karma to Burn, Wo Fat, Monster Magnet, Freedom Hawk, Infernal Overdrive and countless others – and like its predecessors, it masterfully captures a swamp-boogie atmosphere, updating blues and rock traditions with a down-home psychedelia that’s alternately creeping and malevolent and raising its hands in upbeat testimony. Based in Hamburg and begun in 2008, Larman Clamor pays a heavy debt to Delta blues (John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, Mississippi Fred MacDowell), but has never sounded so much like itself as on Alligator Heart.

Where Frogs reveled in its post-Tom Waits weirdness and von Wieding’s gravelly vocals, Alligator Heart strips away some of the extras to get at Larman Clamor’s muddy, folkish heart. Short ditties like “Banshee w’Me,” “Done No Good” and “I’m Buildin’ Ruins” stomp and clang as ever, but with surprisingly ripe hooks, and atmospheric pieces like “Sambucus Nigra” and the 16 Horsepower-style banjo echo of “Crow on a Wagon Wheel” show a side of Larman Clamor that’s able to make a case as much with minimalism as with an onslaught of varied elements. Rounding out with “Aether Bound I – Scorched Earth” and “Aether Bound II – Dust & Ghost,” Alligator Heart ultimately shows  von Wieding’s most accomplished songwriting to date, and that as he pushes further away from the shore to get swept up in that river’s current, the results are all the more rewarding.

Blending acoustic and electric guitar, simple drums and throaty vocals, Larman Clamor presents an alternate view of tradition and a new take on its own approach. More and more, there’s nothing else that sounds quite like it.

So while you wait on the corner of that crossroad for the parade to go by, just make sure you keep a count of all your fingers. Alligator Heart has a bite with some mean teeth.

Tracklisting:
1. Alligator Heart
2. Banshee W’Me
3. Perdition At Dawn
4. Done No Good
5. Vines Of Yggdrasil
6. Been Cookin’
7. Sambucus Nigra
8. She Sent Her Hounds
9. I’m Buildin’ Ruins
10. Crow On A Wagon Wheel
11. Aether Bound I – Scorched Earth
12. Aether Bound II – Dust & Ghost

Larman Clamor on Thee Facebooks

Small Stone Records

Earlier this week, Small Stone Records announced the latest in a string of European pickups: French four-piece The Socks, from Lyon. The Socks follow in a line of bands that includes their countrymen Abrahma and Mother of God, as well as Deville, Isaak and Asteroid as part of Small Stone‘s Euro expansion, and as it happens, they needed a bio. Well, I’ve done a couple in my day and with a bit of info to work from, I actually kind of like the process, so when I was asked, I was happy to oblige with one for The Socks.

They’re a band about whom I didn’t know much leading into it, but after checking out their two posted EPs — this year’s Bedrock (which you’ll find below courtesy of their Bandcamp) and Side A from 2011 — they seem like a solid addition to a rapidly growing roster. In case you’re not familiar, here’s the bio I wrote:

The Socks – Bio

Julien – Lead Guitar & Vocals
Jess – Drums & Percussions
Nico – Guitar, Keyboards & Vocals
Vincent – Bass

Some dudes just sound like they were born to do it, and listening to the classic heavy rock groove of The Socks, there can be no doubt it’s what they’re made for. They’re naturals. The double-guitar French foursome formed in Lyon in 2009 and started surprising audiences almost immediately, eventually settling down to pump out their debut EP the following year.

2010’s Side A was five songs well concentrated from a band still feeling out where they wanted to go. You had your Sabbath, your Zeppelin, and The Socks supported the release by playing with an array of national and international acts, busting out energetic, intense gigs while continuing to develop their style. The next two years drove the band to write darker songs, hit harder, become thicker, more powerful, more calculating and less frenetic.

The resulting 2012 EP, Bedrock, soon caught Small Stone Records’ eye, with strong instrumental performances from Jess (drums), Vincent (bass), Nico (guitar/keys/vocals) and Julien (vocals/guitar), the latter also serving as the frontman and delivering a guttural but memorable vocal performance throughout the tracks, psychedelic in some places and elsewhere delving into a neo-grunge moodiness that was a change from the first release. During Fall 2012, The Socks completed their first European tour, drawing on experience garnered from festivals and gigs alongside Karma to Burn, Red Fang, Truckfighters, Horisont, Mars Red Sky, Black Rainbows and many others with whom they share some elements while still maintaining a personality of their own.

Simply put, they were a hit. Small Stone picked up the band and is set to issue their first full-length in 2013, as the band continue to thrust themselves into Europe’s next generation of heavy rock and roll alongside acts like Abrahma, Deville, Asteroid, Isaak, Black Rainbows and Mother of God. Look for The Socks to continue their momentum into 2013 and beyond, in the studio and on the road, and expect nothing less than some of the finest riffs the continent has to offer. That’s how it goes when you deal with naturals.

[NOTE: I wanted to give Neurosis‘ Live at Roadburn 2007 some attention because, well, it’s Neurosis and that’s what I do, but I was conflicted because I wrote the promotional bio for the album, got paid for it and can’t even attempt to feign impartiality as I usually do. My solution is to print the bio itself; it’s a review of sorts anyhow. Hope you dig it. Live at Roadburn 2007 is available now through Neurot Recordings.]

Neurosis – Live at Roadburn 2007

This will be my last letter. I’m tired of trying to make you understand. Hell, I’m tired of trying to understand. After this, you won’t be hearing from me again. I’m not coming back.

You know where everyone still has it wrong about Neurosis? The mind. Look at the legion of imitators and you’ll see they’re like children trying to build a treehouse without instructions. There are mathematical equations being done, but they’re the wrong ones. Emotion plus volume. The cerebellum gets all the credit, but this music comes from the stomach. Listen to the washes at the back of “Water is Not Enough.” Listen to the grimacing cries of “At the End of the Road,” the mortal desolation of “A Season in the Sky.” You’ll hear it or you’re a fool.

Not that it’s perfect. That isn’t the idea. It’s the humanity you’re getting here. The raw stuff of human performance. The need to transmit from one to another an idea, shape, sound. It is as close to authenticity as we come.

What do you think they called a square the first time saw it drawn in the dirt? It was a thing without a name. It was a creation inextricably tied to the one who crafted it. It was art. That’s what this is, delivered at painful volume to ears that, if they could, would scream back as if to say, “I’m here too, I can see it now. It is even on all sides.”

Imagine what it must have been like to have Neurosis step out on that stage. The 013 Popcentrum, Tilburg. Roadburn. An event unlike anything else the world over, and Neurosis with a legacy of carved granite. It must have been like rivers joining, flowing in the same direction. Forces of nature.

There are nine tracks on this release. As you listen, set aside expectation. Put away your thoughts about what you think the work should or does sound like. It is not about the definitive. It is the execution. The temporal and the fleeting. You need to understand: This is the moment, captured. Emotion plus volume. They’ve been doing it one way or another since Reagan.

If you’re still reading this, you know the deal. That year they released Given to the Rising, which was the black to The Eye of Every Storm’s grey, and to the red of A Sun that Never Sets, and the hard lines of Times of Grace, and so on. The material is fresh, vibrant and unrelenting. Even when it breathes, you don’t. Two years later they’d be asked to curate their Beyond the Pale Festival under the Roadburn banner, hand-picking the artists with whom they would share the stage for their return performance. This is the genesis of that.

Like they say: “Sun-whitened bones in a landscape of hounds.” We’re those hounds, you and I. All we can do is feast, chew endlessly and hope to get a bit of marrow. Break our teeth on it. And maybe understand. I’m tired of trying to make you understand. So tired.

—JJ Koczan