Posted in Whathaveyou on January 20th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
This isn’t the first time UK doom/psych rockers Alunah have been in the position of replacing a vocalist. It was something of a shock last August when Siân Greenaway announced her departure from the band to pursue other projects, but Greenaway herself had taken on the lead singer role after founding bassist/vocalist Sophie Day left, so Daisy Savage comes to the group as the third lead singer in their 19-year history.
Alunah‘s final album with Greenaway was 2024’s Fever Dream (review here), about which the story very quickly became the departing singer. The band have done a couple shows with Savage already and what video I could find is below, but it’s hard to really get a full sense of what she’s bringing to the band from somebody’s social media story (as grateful as I am to that same person for posting the clip in the first place). The real tell will be when and if they get to work on their next recording, which feels both like it should happen quickly since there’s a new lineup to embark on and solidify, and too soon because a record just came out.
A pickle in time and space, but again, Alunah are pros and can be trusted to steer through the change with veteran maturity. I look forward to hearing Savage in action with the band. Continued best wishes, onward ever forward, all that get-out-there-and-kill-it-type stuff.
Their announcement and a new show confirmation are below, posted successive days on socials:
Today we’re announcing Daisy Savage as the permanent singer of Alunah.
After having opened for us in her previous outfit Hot Little Hands on our Strange Machine hometown launch show three years ago, and more recently having joined the live fold for two hugely successful festival dates in Leeds and London, the time feels right to announce her as our official bandmate!
Daisy has brought a new energy, charisma and grit to our set that’s made the future feel very exciting, just ahead of our run of festival dates in the UK and Europe this spring and summer.
We’ve got a few aces up our sleeve still to tell you about in good time, but our first show with Daisy officially in the band will be with Brant Bjork and Earl Of Hell in Birmingham on February 1st.
We hope you’ll all make her feel welcome as we embark on this new chapter. 🤘
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‼️GIG ANNOUNCEMENT‼️
Leicester! Following yesterday’s exciting news, we’re pleased to announce a one-off headline show at Duffy’s Bar as a warmup for our run of festivals in the UK and Europe.
We’re working on a set at the moment with old classics, new favourites, and perhaps something we haven’t played live before? 👀
Resin Events is helping to put this one together and we’ll have some special guests opening the night that we’ll let you know about very soon.
Mark your calendars and we’ll see you very soon! Until then, our next show is with ex-Kyuss legend Brant Bjork in Birmingham two weeks today via Rawk Promotions / DJ Harris, and then after this Leicester date we’re in Greece for HPS Athens 🤘
Posted in Reviews on October 11th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I got a note from the contact form a bit ago in my email, which happens enough that it’s not really news, except that it wasn’t addressed to me. That happens sometimes too. A band has a form letter they send out with info — it’s not the most personal touch, but has a purpose and doesn’t preclude following-up individually — or just wants to say the same thing to however many outlets. Fair game. This was specifically addressed to somebody else. And it kind of ends with the band saying to send a donation link, like, “Wink wink we donate and you post our stuff.”
Well shit. You mean I coulda been making fat stacks off these stoner bands all the while? Living in my dream house with C.O.C. on the outdoor speakers just by exploiting a couple acts trying to get their riffs heard? Well I’ll be damned. Yeah man, here’s my donation link. Daddy needs a new pair of orthopedic flip-flops. I’ma never pay taxes again.
Life, sometimes.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
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Alunah, Fever Dream
The seventh full-length from UK outfit Alunah, Fever Dream, will be immediately noteworthy for being the band’s last (though one never knows) with vocalist Siân Greenaway fronting the band, presiding over an era of transition when they had to find a new identity for themselves. Fever Dream is the third Alunah LP with Greenaway, and its nine songs show plainly how far the band has come in the six-plus years of her tenure. “Never Too Late” kicks off with both feet at the intersection of heavy rock and classic metal, with a hook besides, and “Trickster of Time” follows up with boogie and flute, because you’re special and deserve nice things. The four-piece as they are here — Greenaway on vocals (and flute), guitarist Matt Noble, bassist Dan Burchmore and founding drummer Jake Mason — are able to bring some drama in “Fever Dream,” to imagine lone-guitar metal Thin Lizzy in the solo of the swaggering “Hazy Jane,” go from pastoral to crushing in “Celestial” and touch on prog in “The Odyssey.” The finale “I’ve Paid the Price” tips into piano grandiosity, but by the time they get there, it feels earned. A worthy culmination for this version of this band.
Swiss heavy post-hardcore unit Coilguns‘ fourth LP and the first in five years, though they’ve had EPs and splits in that time, Odd Love offers 11 songs across an adventurous 48 minutes, alternately raw or lush, hitting hard with a slamming impact or careening or twisting around, mathy and angular. In “Generic Skincare,” it’s both and a jet-engine riff to boot. Atmosphere comes to the fore on “Caravel,” the early going of “Featherweight” and the later “The Wind to Wash the Pain,” but even the most straight-ahead moments of charge have some richer context around them, whether that’s the monstrous tension and release of capper “Bunker Vaults” or, well, the monstrous tension and release of “Black Chyme” earlier on. It’s not the kind of thing I always reach for, but Coilguns make post-hardcore disaffection sound like a good time, with intensity and spaciousness interwoven in their style and a vicious streak that comes out on the regular. Four records deep, the band know what they’re about but are still exploring.
Subconscious Awakening is Robot God‘s second album of 2024 and works in a similar two-sides/four-songs structure as the preceding Portal Within, released this past Spring, where each half of the record is subdivided into one longer and shorter song. It feels even more purposeful on Subconscious Awakening since both “Mandatory Remedy” and “Sonic Crucifixion” both hover around eight and a half minutes while side A opens with the 13-minute “Blind Serpent” and side B with the 11-minute title-track. Rife with textured effects, some samples, and thoughtful melodic vocals, Subconscious Awakening of course shares some similarity of purpose with Portal Within, which was also recorded at the same time, but a song like “Sonic Crucifixion” creates its own sprawl, and the outward movement between that closer and the title-track before it underscores the progressivism at work in the band’s sound amid tonal heft and complex, sometimes linear structures. Takes some concentration to wield that kind of groove.
Especially for an experimentalist, drone-based act who relies on audience theater-of-the-mind as a necessary component of appreciating its output, Pittsburgh solo outfit Fuzznaut — aka guitarist Emilio Rizzo — makes narrative a part of what the band does. Earlier this year, Fuzznaut‘s “Space Rock” single reaped wide praise for its cosmic aspects. “Wind Doula” specifically cites Neil Young‘s soundtrack for the film Dead Man as an influence, and thus brings four minutes more closely tied to empty spread of prairie, perhaps with some filtering being done through Earth‘s own take on the style as heard in 2005’s seminal Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method. One has to wonder if, had Rizzo issued “Wind Doula” with a picture of an astronaut floating free on its cover, it would be the cosmic microwave background present in the track instead of stark wind across the Great Plains, but there’s much more to Fuzznaut than self-awareness and the power of suggestion. Chalk up another aesthetic tryout that works.
Trad metal enthusiasts will delight at the specificity of the moment in the history of the style Void Moon interpret on their fourth album, Dreams Inside the Sun. It’s not that they’re pretending outright that it’s 1986, like the Swedish two-piece of guitarist/bassist Peter Svensson and drummer/vocalist Marcus Rosenqvist are wearing hightops and trying to convince you they’re Candlemass, but that era is present in the songwriting and production throughout Dreams Inside the Sun, even if the sound of the record is less directly anachronistic and their metallurgical underpinnings aren’t limited to doom between slowed down thrash riffs, power-metal-style vocalizing and the consuming Iommic nod of “East of the Sun” meeting with a Solitude Aeturnus-style chug, all the more righteous for being brought in to serve the song rather than to simply demonstrate craft. That is to say, the relative barn-burner “Broken Skies” and the all-in eight-minute closer “The Wolf (At the End of the World,” which has some folk in its verse as well, use a purposefully familiar foundation as a starting point for the band to carve their own niche, and it very much works.
Best known for slinging his six-string alongside brother Kyle Juett in Texas rockers Mothership, Kelley Juett‘s debut solo offering, Wandering West pulls far away from that classic power trio in intention while still keeping Juett‘s primary instrument as the focus. Some loops and layering don’t quite bring Wandering West the same kind of experimental feel as, say, Blackwolfgoat or a similar guitarist-gonna-guitar exploratory project, but they sit well nonetheless alongside the fluid noodling of Juett‘s drumless self-jams. He backs his own solo in centerpiece “Breezin’,” and the subsequent “Electric Dreamland” seems to use the empty space as much as the notes being cast out into it to create its sense of ambience, so if part of what Juett is doing on Wandering West is beginning the process of figuring out who he is as a solo artist, he’s someone who can turn a seven-minute meander like “Lonely One” (playing off Mos Generator?) into a bluesy contemplation of evolving reach, the guitar perfectly content to talk to itself if there’s nobody else around. Time may show it to be formative, but let the future worry about the future. There’s a lot to dig into, here and now.
With vocalists Kristian Eivind Espedal (Gaahls Wyrd, Trelldom, ex-Gorgoroth, etc.) and Lindy-Fay Hella (Wardruna, solo, etc.), guitarist Ronny “Valgard” Stavestrand (Trelldom) and drummer/bassist/keyboardist/producer Iver Sandøy (Enslaved, Relentless Agression, etc.), who also helmed (most of) the recording and mixed and mastered, Whispering Void easily could have fallen into the trap of being no more than the sum of its pedigree. Instead, the seven songs on debut album At the Sound of the Heart harness aspects of Norwegian folk for a rock sound that’s dark enough for the lower semi-growls in the eponymous “Whispering Void” to feel like they’re playing toward a gothic sentiment that’s not out of character when there’s so much melancholy around generally. Mid-period Anathema feel like a reference point for “Lauvvind” and the surging “We Are Here” later on, and by that I mean the album is intricately textured and absolutely gorgeous and you’ll be lucky if you take this as your cue to hear it.
You know how sometimes in a workplace where there’s a Boss With Personality™, there might be a novelty sign or a desk tchotchke that says, “The beatings will continue until morale improves?” Like, haha, in addition to wage theft you might get smacked if you get uppity about, say, wage theft? Fine. Orme sound like what happens when morale doesn’t improve. The 24-minute single-song No Serpents, No Saviours EP comes a little more than a year after the band’s two-song/double-vinyl self-titled debut (review here) and finds them likewise at home in longform songwriting. There are elements of death-doom, but Orme are sludgier in their presentation, and so wind up able to be morose and filthy in kind, moving from the opening crush through a quiet stretch after six minutes in that builds into persistent thuds before dropping out again, a sample helping mark the transitions between movements, and a succession of massive lumbering parts trading off leading into a final march that feels as tall as it is wide. I like that, in a time where the trend is so geared toward lush melody, Orme are unrepentantly nasty.
Budapest instrumentalist duo Azutmaga make their full-length debut with the aptly-titled Offering, compiling nine single-word-title pieces that reside stylistically somewhere between sludge metal and doom. Self-recorded by guitarist Patrik Veréb (who also mixed and mastered at Terem Studio) and self-released by Veréb and drummer Martin Várszegi, it’s a relatively stripped-down procession, but not lacking breadth as the longer “Aura” builds up to its full roll or the minute-long “Orca” provides an acoustic break ahead of the languid big-swing semi-psychedelia of “Mirror,” informed by Eastern European folk melodies but ready to depart into less terrestrial spheres. It should come as no surprise that “Portal” follows. Offering might at first give something of a monolithic impression as “Purge” calls to mind Earth‘s steady drone rock, but Azutmaga have a whole other level of volume to unfurl. Just so happens their dynamic goes from loud to louder.
After trickling out singles for over a year, including the title-track of the album and, in 2022, an early version of the instrumental “The Freaks Come Out at Night” that may or may not have been from before vocalist Virginie D. joined the band, the hashtag-named #chaleurhumaine delights in shirking heavy rock conventions, whether it’s the French-language lyrics or divergences into punk and harder fare, but nothing here — regardless of one’s linguistic background — is so challenging as to be inaccessible. Catchy songs are catchy, whether that’s “Fada Fighters” or “La Diable au Corps,” which dares a bit of harmonica along with its full-toned blues rock riffing. Likewise, nowhere the album goes feels beyond the band’s reach, and while “La Ligne” doesn’t sound especially daring as it plays up the brighter pop in its verse and shove of a chorus, well made songs never have any trouble finding welcome. I’m not sure why it’s a hashtag, but #chaleurhumaine feels complete and engaging, at once familiar and nothing so much as itself.
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 26th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Kind of a surprise to see vocalist Siân Blu Greenaway departing from Alunah, and that’s in no small part because the band are about to release a new album, titled Fever Dream, on Sept. 20 through Heavy Psych Sounds. They have shows coming up, too. At least a slot at Heavy Psych Sounds Fest in London this November. I don’t know what’s going to happen with that or with the band going forward, but one assumes Greenaway will shift her focus to her glam rock project Bobbie Dazzle, whose debut LP, Fandabidozi, will be out Oct. 4 on Rise Above Records.
One recalls vividly when Greenaway joined the band in 2017, taking on a standalone-singer role in place of guitarist/vocalist Sophie Day. That was after Alunah‘s 2017 album, Solennial (review here), came out through Svart and reaffirmed the forest-worship doom of the band’s earliest work. The addition of Greenaway would coincide with a shift away from the natural themes that were so much a part of the band’s original persona, and when guitarist David Day followed Sophie out, the metamorphosis was complete. Drummer Jake Mason, bassist Dan Burchmore and guitarist Matt Noble have said that the band will continue, but in just what form or incarnation remains to be seen. Can Alunah pull off remaking themselves twice? Why not?
Ultimately, Greenaway would front Alunah for three albums, including Fever Dream, and the 2018 EP that introduced her to the band’s established listenership. One looks forward to hearing what the future brings for Greenaway with Bobbie Dazzle and for Alunah, and certainly the upcoming LPs from both are given a different contextual shine from the announcement you’ll find below as it appeared on social media this past Friday:
ALUNAH – Announcement
Sian after 7 years with the band is hanging up her velvet catsuits and leaving Alunah.
“Thank you so much to all the fans for the years of love and support and thank you from me to Jake, Dan and Matt for the music we created together. Alunah isn’t over and I wish the boys all the luck as they go forward. I of course have my solo music so I’ll still be performing and I look forward to seeing the next phase of Alunah as they continue.”
Siân’s swansong is released September 20th so preorder “Fever Dream” from HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS.
Long-running Birmingham heavy rockers Alunah will return with the band’s seventh full-length, Fever Dream, on Sept. 20. Following up 2022’s Strange Machine (review here) and continuing to issue through Heavy Psych Sounds — which last week announced it has re-signed them for this outing — the record also furthers the band’s collaboration with producer Chris Fielding (Conan, etc.), who has now helmed their last four albums going back to 2017’s Solennial (review here).
And while subsequent to that release the band went through their most major lineup shift, which brought vocalist Siân Greenaway on board with bassist Dan Burchmore and founding drummer Jake Mason — guitarist Matt Noble joined in 2020 — the fact remains that Alunah have never put out the same record twice. Their delve into classic heavy vibes can be heard on the suitably-hooky new single “Never Too Late,” and in the sharpness of its tonality and the urgent feel of its groove, there are hints of metal being dropped even as Francis Tobolsky of Dresden, Germany’s Wucan guests on vocals alongside Greenaway, who in the interim since 2022 has also signed to Rise Above with the more glam-rock-oriented project/alter-ego Bobbie Dazzle.
That is to say, “Never Too Late,” while catchy and very much Alunah‘s own, hints at shifts in intention as part of the band’s ongoing creative growth and expanding reach. This will likely be the record that carries them past their 20th anniversary (they started out in 2006), and moving forward feels like the most appropriate way they could possibly honor such a thing, since that’s what they’ve done all along.
Album details follow from the PR wire. “Never Too Late” premieres on the player like three lines down from here and last year’s standalone Alice Cooper cover is at the bottom of the post for further digging.
Get ready to have this one stuck in your head for the rest of the day, and enjoy:
Alunah, “Never Too Late” track premiere
With their third album on Heavy Psych Sounds Records, Alunah have wasted no time in a post-pandemic haze since their last release, balancing being on the European festival circuit alongside touring the UK. However, in a Birmingham rehearsal room away from the outside world, everyday life and online noise, their latest full length “Fever Dream” has been quietly brewing waiting to see the light of day.
Forged from a period of extensive jamming and soul searching “Fever Dream” digs into the core of what makes Alunah tick, being in a room together making the music they want to hear. Recorded during the winter of 2024, the atmosphere of the historic Foel Studio allows groove to flow alongside riff, heft and melody in equal measure. The brooding progressive majesty of the title track, the eastern soundscape of “Sacred Grooves” and the doom and roll of “Far From Reality” each highlight the album’s ability to surprise and deliver in equal measure throughout the emotive journey of its nine tracks. Let yourself fall deep into the “Fever Dream”.
“Never Too Late” combines the bones of an idea we came up with right at the start of the writing process for the album, along with fresh inspiration that happened once in the recording studio. Fran from Wucan graciously added her vocal lines to help surpass our initial vision, so turn it up loud and enjoy.
Credits Produced by Chris Fielding (Electric Wizard, Conan) Artwork by Stefán Ari (The Vintage Caravan) “Never Too Late” additional vocals by Francis Tobolsky (Wucan) “I’ve Paid The Price” additional piano by Aaron B. Thompson (Rosalie Cunningham)
ALUNAH lineup Siân Greenaway – Vocals Matt Noble – Guitar Dan Burchmore – Bass Jake Mason – Drums
Welcome back to the Quarterly Review. Good weekend? Restful? Did you get out and see some stuff? Did you loaf and hang out on the couch? There are advantages to either, to be sure. Friday night I watched my daughter (and a literal 40 other performers, no fewer than four of whom sang and/or danced to the same Taylor Swift song) do stand-up comedy telling math jokes at her elementary school variety show. She’s in kindergarten, she likes math, and she killed. Nice little moment for her, if one that came as part of a long evening generally.
The idea this week is the same as last week: 50 releases covered across five days. Put the two weeks together and the Spring 2024 Quarterly Review — which I’m pretty sure is what I called the one in March as well; who cares? — runs 100 strong. I’ll be traveling, some with family, some on my own, for a bit in the coming months, so this is a little bit my way of clearing my slate before that all happens, but it’s always satisfying to dig into so much and get a feel for what different acts are doing, try and convey some of that as directly as I can. If you’re reading, thanks. If this is the first you’re seeing of it and you want to see more, you can either scroll down or click here.
Either way, off we go.
Quarterly Review #51-60:
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Pelican, Adrift/Tending the Embers
Chicago (mostly-)instrumentalist stalwarts Pelican haven’t necessarily been silent since 2019’s Nighttime Stories (review here), with a digital live release in Spring 2020, catalog reissues on Thrill Jockey, a couple in-the-know covers posted and shows hither and yon, but the stated reason for the two-songer EP Adrift/Tending the Embers is to raise funds ahead of recording what will be their seventh album in a career now spanning more than 20 years. In addition to that being a cause worth supporting — they’re on the second pressing; 200 blue tapes — the two new original tracks “Adrift” (5:48) and “Tending the Embers” (4:26) reintroduce guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec as a studio presence alongside guitarist Trevor Shelley de Brauw, bassist Bryan Herweg and drummer Larry Herweg. Recorded by the esteemed Sanford Parker, neither cut ranges too far conceptually from the band’s central modus bringing together heavy groove with lighter/brighter reach of guitar, but come across like a tight, more concise encapsulation of earlier accomplishments. There’s a certain amount of comfort in that as they surf the crunching, somehow-noise-rock-inspired riff of “Adrift,” sounding refreshed in their purpose in a way that one hopes they can carry into making the intended LP.
Something of a harsher take on A Mortal Binding, which is the 15th full-length from UK death-doom forebears My Dying Bride, as well as their second for Nuclear Blast behind 2020’s lush The Ghost of Orion (review here. The seven-song/55-minute offering from the masters of misery derives its character in no small part from the front-mixed vocals of Aaron Stainthorpe, who from opener “Her Dominion” onward, switches between his morose semi-spoken approach, woeful as ever, and dry-throated harsher barks. And that the leadoff is all-screams feels like a purposeful choice as that rasp returns in the second half of “The 2nd of Three Bells,” the 11-minute “The Apocalyptist,” “A Starving Heart” and the ending section of closer “Crushed Embers.” I don’t know when the last time a My Dying Bride LP sounded so roiling, but it’s been a minute. The duly morose riffing of founding guitarist Andrew Craighan unites this outwardly nastier aspect with the more melodic “Thornwyck Hymn,” “Unthroned Creed” and the rest that isn’t throatripper-topped, but with returning producer Mark Mynett, the band has clearly honed in on a more stripped-down, still-room-for-violin approach, and it works in just about everything but the drums, which sound triggered/programmed in the way of modern metal. It remains easy to get caught in the band’s wretched sweep, and I’ll note that it’s a rare act who can surprise you 15 records later.
Masonic Wave‘s self-titled debut is the first public offering from the Chicago-based five-piece with Bruce Lamont (Yakuza, Corrections House, Led Zeppelin II, etc.) on vocals, and though “Justify the Cling” has a kind of darker intensity in its brooding first-half ambience, what that build and much besides throughout the eight-song offering leads to is a weighted take on post-hardcore that earlier pieces “Bully” and “Tent City” present in duly confrontational style before “Idle Hands” (the longest inclusion at just under eight minutes) digs into a similar explore-till-we-find-the-payoff ideology and “Julia” gnashes through noise-rock teethkicking. Some of the edge-of-the-next-outburst restlessness cast by Lamont, guitarists Scott Spidale and Sean Hulet, bassist Fritz Doreza and drummer Clayton DeMuth reminds of Chat Pile‘s arthouse disillusion, but “Nuzzle Up” has a cyclical crunch given breadth through the vocal melody and the sax amid the multiple angles and sharp corners of the penultimate “Mountains of Labor” are a clue to further weirdness to come before “Bamboozler” closes with heads-down urgency before subtly branching into a more spacious if still pointedly unrelaxed culmination. No clue where it might all be headed, but that’s part of the appeal as Masonic Wave‘s Sanford Parker-produced 39 minutes play out, the songs engaging almost in spite of themselves.
There are shades of latter-day Conan (whose producer/former bassist Chris Fielding mixed here) in the vocal trades and mega-toned gallop of opening track “Sky Father,” which Bismarck expand upon with the more pointedly post-metallic “Echoes,” shifting from the lurching ultracrush into a mellower midsection before the blastbeaten crescendo gives over to rumble and the hand-percussion-backed whispers of the intro to “Kigal.” Their first for Dark Essence, the six-song/35-minute Vourukasha follows 2020’s Oneiromancer (review here) and feels poised in its various transitions between consuming aural heft and leaving that same space in the mix open for comparatively minimal exploration. “Kigal” takes on a Middle Eastern lean and stays unshouted/growled for its five-plus minutes — a choice that both works and feels purposeful — but the foreboding drone of interlude “The Tree of All Seeds” comes to a noisy head as if to warn of the drop about to take place in the title-track, which flows through its initial movement with an emergent float of guitar that leads into its own ambient middle ahead of an engrossing, duly massive slowdown/payoff worthy of as much volume as it can be given. Wrapping with the nine-minute “Ocean Dweller,” they summarize what precedes on Vourukasha while shifting the structure as an extended, vocal-inclusive-at-the-front soundscape bookends around one more huge, slow-marching, consciousness-flattening procession. Extremity refined.
That fact that Sun Moon Holy Cult exist on paper as a band based in Tokyo playing a Sabbath-boogie-worshiping, riff-led take on heavy rock with a song like “I Cut Your Throat” leading off their self-titled debut makes a Church of Misery comparison somewhat inevitable, but the psych jamming around the wah-bass shuffle of “Out of the Dark,” longer-form structures, the vocal melodies and the Sleep-style march of “Savoordoom” that grows trippier as it delves further into its 13 minutes distinguish the newcomer four-piece of vocalist Hakuka, guitarist Ryu, bassist Ame and drummer Bato across the four-song LP’s 40 minutes. Issued through Captured Records and SloomWeep Productions, Sun Moon Holy Cult brings due bombast amid the roll of “Mystic River” as well, hitting its marks stylistically while showcasing the promise of a band with a clear idea of what they want their songs to do and perhaps how they want to grow over time. If this is to be the foundation of that growth, watch out.
Dortmund, Germany’s Daily Thompson made their way to Port Orchard, Washington, to record Chuparosa with Mos Generator‘s Tony Reed at the helm, and the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Danny Zaremba, bassist/vocalist Mercedes Lalakakis and drummer/vocalist Thorsten Stratmann bring a duly West Coast spirit to “I’m Free Tonight” and the grunge-informed roll of “Diamond Waves” and the verses of “Raindancer.” The former launches the 36-minute outing with a pointedly Fu Manchuian vibe, but the start-stops, fluid roll and interplay of vocals from Zaremba and Lalakakis lets “Pizza Boy” move in its own direction, and the brooding acoustic start of “Diamond Waves” and more languid wash of riff in the chorus look elsewhere in ’90s alternativism for their basis. The penultimate “Ghost Bird” brings in cigar-box guitar and dares some twang amid all the fuzz, but as “Raindancer” has already branched out with its quieter bassy midsection build and final desert-hued thrust, the album can accommodate such a shift without any trouble. The title-track trades between wistful grunge verses and a fuller-nodding hook, from which the three-piece take off for the bridge, thankfully returning to the chorus in Chuparosa‘s big finish. The manner in which the whole thing brims with purpose makes it seem like Daily Thompson knew exactly what they were going for in terms of sound, so I guess you could say it was probably worth the trip.
Kicking off with the markedly Graveyardian “Hangtime,” Mooch ultimately aren’t content to dwell solely in a heavy-blues-boogie sphere on Visions, their third LP and quick follow-up to 2023’s Hounds. Bluesy as the vibe is from which the Montreal trio set out, the subsequent “Morning Prayer” meanders through wah-strum open spaces early onto to delve into jangly classic-prog strum later, while “Intention” backs its drawling vocal melody with nylon-stringed acoustic guitar and hand percussion. Divergence continues to be the order of the day throughout the 41-minute eight-songer, with “New Door” shifting from its sleepy initial movement into an even quieter stretch of Doors-meets-Stones-y melody before the bass leads into its livelier solo section with just a tinge of Latin rhythm and “Together” giving more push behind a feel harkening back to the opener but that grows quiet and melodically expansive in its second half. This sets up the moodier vibe of “Vision” and gives the roll of “You Wouldn’t Know” an effective backdrop for its acoustic/electric blend and harmonized vocals, delivered patiently enough to let the lap steel slide into the arrangement easily before the brighter-toned “Reflections” caps with a tinge of modern heavy post-rock. What’s tying it together? Something intangible. Momentum. Flow. Maybe just the confidence to do it? I don’t know, but as subdued as they get, they never lose their momentum, and as much movement as their is, they never seem to lose their balance. Visions might not reveal its full scope the first time through, but subsequent listens bring due reward.
The narrative — blessings and peace upon it — has it that guitarist/vocalist Bobby Spender recruited bassist Loz Fancourt and drummer Harry Flowers after The Pleasure Dome‘s prior rhythm section left, ahead of putting together the varied 16 minutes of the Liminal Space EP. For what it’s worth, the revamped Bristol, UK, trio don’t sound any more haphazard than they want to in the loose-swinging sections of “Shoulder to Cry On” that offset the fuller shove of the chorus, or the punk-rooted alt-rock brashness of “The Duke Part II (Friends & Enemies),” and the blastbeat-inclusive tension of “Your Fucking Smile” that precedes the folk-blues finger-plucking of “Sugar.” Disjointed? Kind of, but that also feels like the point. Closer “Suicide” works around acoustic guitar and feels sincere in the lines, “Suicide, suicide/I’ve been there before/I’ve been there before/On your own/So hold on,” and the profession of love that resolves it, and while that’s at some remove from the bitter spirit of the first two post-intro tracks, Liminal Space makes its own kind of sense with the sans-effects voice of Spender at its core.
A solid four-songer from Birmingham’s Slump, who are fronted by guitarist Matt Noble (also Alunah), with drummer David Kabbouri Lara and bassist Ben Myles backing the riff-led material with punch in “Buried” after the careening hook of “Dust” opens with classic scorch in its solo and before the slower and more sludged “Kneel” gets down to its own screamier business and “Vultures” rounds out with a midtempo stomp early but nods to what seems like it’s going to be a more morose finish until the drum solo takes off toward the big-crash finish. As was the case on Slump‘s 2023 split with At War With the Sun, the feel across Dust is that of a nascent band — Slump got together in 2018, but this is their most substantial standalone release to-date — figuring out what they want to do. The ideas are there, and the volatility at which “Kneel” hints will hopefully continue to serve them well as they explore spaces between metal and heavy rock, classic and modern styles. A progression underway toward any number of potential avenues.
What dwells in Green Hog Band‘s Fuzz Realm? If you said “fuzz,” go ahead and get yourself a cookie (the judges also would’ve accepted “riffs” and “heavy vibes, dude”), but for those unfamiliar with the New Yorker trio’s methodology, there’s more to it than tone as guitarist/producer Mike Vivisector, bassist/vocalist Ivan Antipov and drummer Ronan Berry continue to carve out their niche of lo-fi stoner buzz marked by harsh, gurgly vocals in the vein of Attila Csihar, various samples, organ sounds and dug-in fuckall. “Escape on the Wheels” swings and chugs instrumentally, and “In the Mist of the Bong” has lyrics in English, so there’s no lack of variety despite the overarching pervasiveness of misanthropy. That mood is further cast in the closing salvo of the low-slung “Morning Dew” and left-open “Phantom,” both of which are instrumental save for some spoken lines in the latter, as the prevailing sense is that they were going to maybe put some verses on there but decided screw it and went back to their cave (presumably somewhere in Queens) instead, because up yours anyhow. 46 minutes of crust-stoned “up yours anyhow,” then.
[Please note: If you’ve been keeping up with this as a series, Technical Ecstasy would be next, but it closed out a week already and I stand by what I wrote there as it relates to the catalog. In any case, thanks for reading. -JJ]
Never Say Die! was of course the death knell of Black Sabbath‘s original run. It is to wonder what might’ve been had they been able to hold together the founding incarnation of the band into perpetuity instead of splitting with vocalist Ozzy Osbourne after wrapping the Fall tour alongside openers Van Halen supporting this release. But maybe there’s a glimpse of that in how the mixed-bag nine songs of Never Say Die! strode forth with swagger and renewed vigor after the band seemed confused in their ambitions on 1976’s Technical Ecstasy (discussed here), which was perhaps pulled between impulses toward commercial success, being taken seriously as artists, guitarist Tony Iommi‘s pull toward broader-scope songwriting that had been flourishing just a few years earlier on 1975’s Sabotage (discussed here) and 1973’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (discussed here) and his increasing role as producer and emergent bandleader. A flash of what an Ozzy-fronted Sabbath might’ve been as the shift to the 1980s loomed, just closer than the horizon.
To wit, a new generation of hard rock bands and also — a few acts like Trouble, The Obsessed and Saint Vitus working directly in younger-Sabbath‘s wake — were coming up and would continue to in the next few years. The ’70s were winding down. Vietnam was history. Even disco was passé by 1978, or at least on its way to becoming New Wave. Joy Division‘s first album would come out in 1979. Things had changed. Black Sabbath met those changes with what probably sounded at the time like a sustainable version of their approach. As pieces like “Junior’s Eyes” signaled their maturity in the parental voice of the lyrics and “Over to You” somewhat tamely renewed a penchant for societal critique that had brought about “Children of the Grave” and “War Pigs,” Never Say Die! would nonetheless be defined by the shove of its opening title-track.
Uptempo in its shove but inevitably swill swinging with Bill Ward on drums, “Never Say Die” is sub-four minutes of heavy rock righteousness with an earworm hook and a sweeping riff that gives both Osbourne and bassist Geezer Butler room to shine. Never Say Die! isn’t without its Sab-experimental aspects. Whether it’s Don Airey‘s keys starting off second track “Johnny Blade” and piano adding atmospheric light touches in “Air Dance” or the sax-laced strut of the penultimate interlude “Breakout” before Ward takes lead vocals for the finale “Swinging the Chain,” there’s plenty of showcase for the sonic progression that would in some ways end with this record. But while “Johnny Blade” has a Sabbath-does-Bowie vibe to its storytelling and does well in creating an atmosphere corresponding to that, at its heart is the bluesy stomp of its riff, and that holds true for “Junior’s Eyes” and side A capper “A Hard Road,” with its everybody-on-board gang vocals in the chorus and unabashed-feeling groove. All three of those run over six minutes long, and they’re not without their indulgences in solos and arrangement, but in terms of the underlying approach, the band’s vision of who they are seems clearer than it did two years prior.
I won’t claim to know why that is, and it doesn’t really line up with the circumstances of Never Say Die!‘s making, which involved Osbourne (whose father’s death is the basis for the aforementioned “Junior’s Eyes” lyric) quitting the band and being replaced by Dave Walker (Savoy Brown, Fleetwood Mac) before rejoining, finishing the record, touring, and being fired, various other disagreements over direction, more business trouble and working at a studio in Toronto that reportedly no one had looked at beforehand, drugs drugs drugs — also booze — and so on. But as side B launches with the standout “Shock Wave,” fostering a tonal grit reminiscent of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath topped off by a layered melody from Osbourne, if Never Say Die! is sloppy or haphazard, it’s organic to the material in a captured-live sense. “Air Dance” pushes against this idea with its midsection departure into piano, keys and wistful jazz guitar, and so does “Breakout” with its cocaine-era saxophone wankery, but Sabbath had done acoustic and/or piano pieces before, and “Air Dance” establishes its verse and atmosphere before embarking on what’s still a plotted linear build, and under the brass in the two and a half minutes of “Breakout” is a rolling movement that feels like it maybe taught Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats (among others) how guitars should sound.
“Over to You,” which appears between “Air Dance” and “Breakout” in the tracklisting, keeps the piano from the preceding song, and feels sure-footed enough in its verse and chorus that “Breakout” doesn’t come across as so substantially different in intent from “Orchid” on Master of Reality (discussed here) or “Laguna Sunrise” from Vol. 4 (discussed here), even if its actual execution leads it elsewhere. All of these feed into an overarching vibe for Never Say Die! that positions it as tangibly above Technical Ecstasy in craft and performance — each member of this band hit their stride as a player at some point in this eight-year stretch in ways that would define their respective career arcs, but that didn’t necessarily happen all at the same time or according to the order of LP releases — while having traded some of its soul for that self-awareness and direction.
As “Swinging the Chain” wraps, Ward holds out his notes and even hits a falsetto that speaks to his emergence as a singer. In another reality, would he have taken over lead vocals after Osbourne‘s departure? Or could Black Sabbath have pulled it together and kept the Osbourne/Iommi/Butler/Ward configuration somehow, and if they had, would they still push forward with something as outright majestic as 1980’s Heaven and Hell (discussed here), which introduced then ex-Rainbow singer Ronnie James Dio as their new frontman and felt like all the more a radical turn for it, or continue to backslide into a kind of comfortable mediocrity even before they hit middle-age? Flashes of their former greatness amid an endless string of identifiable but watered-down riffs, with neither the force nor passion behind them of their earliest work?
Of course these things could’ve happened, and if they had, maybe Black Sabbath would still be as revered as they’ve been since reforming their lineup in the later-1990s. But in this universe, Never Say Die is impossible to divorce from its context as the ‘last’ Black Sabbath original-lineup LP, and if you reorient to a position of looking forward from it rather than looking back at it, maybe that’s for the best. Nonetheless, at its center, it’s still these players captured at this time, and as the capstone of their run, there remains positive forward potential in its songs as well as the exeunt omnes spirit so easily read into “A Hard Road,” making it an ending worthy of the beginning from whence it came.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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I gotta answer some emails. If you’ve reached out to me, oh, let’s say in the last four or five months, and not heard back, I’m sorry. My time is pretty tight these days — genuinely more so than I expected it to be when I sent my daughter off to full-day kindergarten this past Fall — and I’ve found my capacity for getting back has taken the brunt of that. I was never especially good at email, to be honest. I find now I’m about ready to move on from it, though no, that doesn’t mean I’m shutting off the contact form on this site. Just that I’m ready for whatever technological advance in communications might eventually follow to render it obsolete. Branded mini-emails like social media DMs aren’t really cutting it either. Same anxiety on approach, less easy to sort through and find what you need when you need it.
First, I’m lucky anyone thinks enough of what I do here to send their music in the first place, whether it fits or not. Second, I’m doing my best and I acknowledge that things will not always be as they are today.
But yeah, email.
If you dug the string of Black Sabbath week-closeouts, I’m glad. It was a fun project. I was thinking I might dig into Kyuss in a similar fashion, but we’ll see. There are a couple other not-multiple-week odds and ends I’d like to do as well, but I’m content not to decide anything about even next Friday this week, as much as I do enjoy getting an answer for that kind of question ahead of time. For example, I currently have two full albums slated to stream in May, and not necessarily at the start of the month. Working ahead is how I stay sane in this to the extent that I do. In my head, I’m feeling like it’s time to put together the back end for Monday’s review.
And about next week. Monday’s a Skraeckoedlan full stream, Tuesday I’m going to try to follow that with a Colour Haze studio log-ish-type feature. Wednesday is Cancervo’s new LP, Thursday is the Esben Willems solo record with a track-by-track, and Friday I’m leaving open either for Craneium or some other review that strikes my fancy. Or maybe I’ll post that Brume video interview where I, well, just sucked. Their record doesn’t, and that helps. We’ll see.
I got some pretty thoughtful comments last week, more than just internet-style platitudes and/or empty optimism, and thank you for that. You might not find this surprising, but sometimes writing a thing out helps me organize my thoughts. Wild, I know.
This week was my wife’s Spring Break, and it was wonderful to have her home. Tuesday we went to the Job Lot, today we went to the library to look at alternative Zelda books for The Pecan, who at this point continues to want to read nothing else, and even just having her in the house, whether she’s working upstairs or down, whatever it is, makes life better on every level. I’ll miss her next week when she goes back to work.
I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Have fun, watch your head, hydrate. I’ve got my water jug and my bluetooth speaker and some clothes laid out for after I shower, which is my stank-ass-self’s next stop. Beyond that, primo hours of fuck-off time ahead. I hope you also get a bit of a chance to relax, however that looks for you. Thanks again for reading and checking in. Back Monday.
The number jump between 1973’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and 1975’s Sabotage feels big in comparison to the pace with which Black Sabbath released their first three records between Feb. 1970 and July 1971, but as their sixth album and first signed to NEMS Records, Sabotage followed copious road time in 1974 after canceling their Spring ’73 US run, and landed on July 28, 1975. That was about three months after the end of the Vietnam War. David Bowie had just put out “Fame.” Styx‘s “Lady” took off two years after its own release. Disco was coming up, punk was about to happen, Judas Priest would take the lessons Sabbath were teaching and utilize them in the personality shift between Rocka Rolla (1974) and Sad Wings of Destiny (1976), in no small part setting the stage for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.
And while Black Sabbath were obviously essential in setting the stage for that setting the stage for the NWOBHM — perhaps the most proto of proto-metals — which arguably was the first time ‘metal’ stepped out as its own genre under the umbrella of rock and roll, by virtue of that, they couldn’t be part of the next generation’s movement. Their major creative innovation had already been made. But Sabbath had evolved as well, and in some ways, Sabotage is a pinnacle of what the original lineup of guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler, drummer Bill Ward and vocalist Ozzy Osbourne would accomplish before splitting with the latter after 1978’s Never Say Die!.
In the trajectory of the eight full-lengths released between 1970-1978, Sabotage resides at the tail end of the second group of three, continuing to build on the production style and driving heavy rock that began to surface in 1972 with Vol. 4 (discussed here) and the expanded arrangements brought to the aforementioned Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (discussed here). Some of the severity and harsh cast of their earliest work was gone, but Sabotage filled that space in the mix with more adventurous craft, the corresponding side-enders “Megalomania” and “The Writ” — the two longest tracks on the LP, which would become a trope of heavy rock — taking flight with a dark psychedelic cast in the former that gives over to a stark, effects-tainted procession and boogie jam, while “The Writ” recounts the legal trouble the band was in at the time lyrically during its roll, stops dead to weirdo ambient noise, and moves to incorporate acoustic guitar, chimes and pleading vocals in answer to its own crunch before finally deciding the latter is where it wants to end.
It’s arguable — here’s me, arguing — that Sabotage and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath are the two original-lineup Black Sabbath LPs in closest conversation with each other, despite the longer break between outings. It also features two of the best and hardest-hitting songs they’d release in opener “Hole in the Sky” and “Symptom of the Universe,” which follows after the bit-of-finger interlude “Don’t Start (Too Late)” and retains its aggressive shove 49 years after the fact. Ward is furious on the crash as he rides Iommi‘s verse riff, Butler is the weight in ‘heavy’ as ever, and Osbourne snarls the verse lines and holds out a “Yeah…” afterward in a way that none of the hundreds of cover versions have managed to capture. Then comes the willfully meandering acoustic guitar and percussion jam. Between it and “Hole in the Sky” prior, buzzing to life with an immediate roller groove and a riff that in the decades since has become a founding principal across two generations of heavy/stoner rock, Sabotage wouldn’t need much more to stand as a worthy entry in the Sabbath catalog, but in the instrumental-but-for-the-chorus grandiosity of “Supertzar,” the keyboard of Gerald “Jezz” Woodruffe interwoven into “Am I Going Insane (Radio)” and even the purpose with which they manifest the final build in “Megalomania,” the band are still presenting new ideas and pushing themselves forward.
That said, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath had “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” and “Sabbra Cadabra” as its straight-ahead-heavy party rockers, “Who Are You” as precursor to “Am I Going Insane (Radio),” and the branched-out arrangements of “A National Acrobat” and “Spiral Architect” to lend a high-concept, progressive feel that “The Writ” and “Supertzar” complement on Sabotage. Even on the most superficial level — their titles — they feel like companion pieces. Is that Black Sabbath, on a deadline, distracted by legal trouble, infamously cocaine-addled as I understand the entire music industry was circa 1975, and maybe getting a little tired of hanging out with each other all the time working more directly from one record to the next than they otherwise might? Leaning on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath more than Master of Reality (discussed here) or Paranoid (discussed here) drew from the self-titled (dicsussed here) in the primary of their two essential trilogies between 1970-’71?
Maybe. If they were developing a formula and measuring quotas for what each Black Sabbath record should include, fair enough, though part of the consistency of sound from Vol. 4 through Sabotage also has to be attributed to the band having taken on more responsibility for their own production in addition to defining their approach on an aesthetic level. The double-edge of their maturity meant that, while more mindful of what they were exploring around the core, riff-driven style that side B leadoff “The Thrill of it All” so readily highlights in its start-stop verse and handclaps as well as in the plus-keyboard second-half triumph before the fadeout, that also meant they had distinct ideas about who they were and what they did as a group that are inherently a limit as much as a blueprint. They weren’t shy about trying things they hadn’t done before, but they also had a career to protect — which would’ve been all the more in-mind given the court battles with management at the time — and Sabotage seems to be preserving what Sabbath had become as well as adding to that already prevalent sense of persona.
What does that mean? Late in 1975, NEMS issued the 2LP compilation We Sold Our Souls for Rock ‘n’ Roll, an encapsulating best-of drawn from their first six albums, and the sense of Black Sabbath as a band with ‘greatest hits’ stands in opposition to Black Sabbath as the clueless kids from Birmingham — Ozzy in “The Writ”: “I wish I’d walked before I started to run to you”– who blues-rocked their way into inventing doom. By knowing more about who they were and their goals, by maturing as artists and performers, they’d moved past the rawer side of their early outings. They were still heavy in tone, still forceful rhythmically with enough melody around that to be accessible and commercially viable when they wanted to be, but there’s still something about Sabotage as a whole that comes across as settling into the course of their career, and even at its most vibrant moments, Sabotage hints in hindsight at the unevenness to follow in 1976’s Technical Ecstasy no less than it frames the idolization of their younger days. It had only been five years, but it was the five years in which Black Sabbath grew up, for better and for worse.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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I was on a telehealth appointment Monday afternoon with my neurologist. A probably-overdue check-in after some months on a new combination of mood-stabilizers and ADHD meth-but-it’s-okay-because-we-say-it-is meds. As much as I frame my life experience — probably not all of it, but enough that I can’t really think of anything to which this doesn’t apply off the top of my head — around things like depression and anxiety, I’m starting to also feel like maybe I need to add OCD to that mix given how overwhelming I find small sudden changes and how heavily minute housekeeping shit weighs on my mind. I have another appointment in a month. I think it’s the day before I leave for Roadburn. Seems like a good time to bring that up.
‘At’ this Monday’s appointment — and I put ‘at’ in quotes because really I was on the same couch where I’m sitting now — I was talking about my tendency to fall down holes of negative self-talk. Not just I can’t do a thing — which rest assured I can’t, whatever it is, pretty much ever — but I’m a fucking idiot for trying and should just fucking die to ease the burdens of those who have to live with me, on and on in a thematic loop in my brain throughout every day. In parenting, in my relationship with my wife, which I don’t think is any less strained for my feeling like garbage all the time and telling myself I’m right to do so, and just in my own day to day, it gets brutal. Mean voice. Bad voice. And it’s my own voice. I’m that person calling me worthless. Hoo. Ray.
She told me to take a step back and, while assuring me it wasn’t pop-psych nonsense just in case that mattered to me (I’m not sure it does), to go into that conversation with myself and look at who I’m talking to. She specifically asked me how old is the me I’m speaking to. Am I speaking to me as a child like that? How old is the me in my head being chastised for whatever mistake he’s made, major, minor or not-actually-there? These things come up so often throughout the day — rest assured, I fuck up all the time and rarely let an opportunity slip to make myself feel bad about it — that I usually think I’m talking to myself now, in the present. Like I’m outside of the moment in so many ways, stuck in my narcissistic navelgazing viewpoint so much of the time, but that’s the moment where I really shine. Where I’m most myself. Tearing me down.
But I’ve been thinking about it all week. I might be 13. Pubescent, hapless, feeling and being made to feel shitty in my fat-kid body every day in a way that wasn’t even new by the time I’d started to listen to music and think about growing my hair out. A weird kid doing the class-clown thing in some attempt to find a place. I’ve been thinking about that kid a lot. It’s hard for me not to fucking hate him.
The questions she told me to ask myself: Why am I so brutal to him? Because he’s not worth it? Because he ruined my life, messing things up? What’s his true age? At that age, does he have everything he needs to make good judgements and take good actions? If he was my son, how would I help him? She encouraged me to realize that the power of my own adulthood is to not let it keep happening, to take care of that child and not reject him over and over. To help him recover and repair himself.
I had a paragraph here that I just deleted that totally derailed and redirected the conversation, so maybe it’s fair for me to say I find it difficult to process these ideas. I have a good life. It’s never been better to be me than it is now. Right now. I have a wife, a kid, a car, a house. My mother is still alive. My sister and her husband and my wife’s family and everybody’s kids are great. I’m well supported in the creative work I do, and I don’t have a job that I have to either go to or take away from my writing time/brainpower in order to perform. I am lucky to be me. I am also the thing most keeping me from realizing this and internalizing it on a level from which I might then live as though I really believed it to be true. Tidal waves of self-loathing. I drown.
I’m not over being that kid, whether or not he’s who I’m yelling at all the time (and he might be, I just don’t think it’s so easily settled). I’m not over finding out I couldn’t make a baby eight years ago after three years of trying. I’m not over eating disorders or feeling wrong in my body. I’m just older.
How much older? And what does it mean to be older? I don’t know. These are the kinds of things you explore in talk-therapy, which I’ve certainly cycled through any number of times in the last 25-30 years. One way or the other, I know enough to know I want to keep the life I have. I don’t want to alienate my wife. I don’t want to pass on my feeling-shitty-about-yourself character to my daughter, who has her own hills to climb as regards neurology. I want to help her. She’s the kid I want to embrace, to be there for, to help and love and serve more than some imaginary version of me. The way I am now, I get pissed when she talks back, I get sad when she throws a punch. Last night, I shut off the Switch because she was telling me no and I couldn’t tell her what to do after I asked her to go to the bathroom before bedtime, she turned and just started to wail on me. Then, when I left to take the dog out basically just to get out of the room before I lost it and wound up yelling at her, she followed me out of the house and it kept going.
This was five minutes out of an otherwise passable, not unpleasant evening, and afterward, we took the time to work it out, watched a Bluey and went upstairs to read the Zelda Encyclopedia— though we used to cover a range of topics, it’s been Zelda-only information processing since well before Xmas — and by the time I left her room, we were in a calmer, more peaceful place. It felt okay again. But that five minutes counts too, and I don’t want to live like that, standing in the yard in the dark trying to get the dog to pee while yelling at the kid to go in the house, sit and think about why she’s not playing Nintendo anymore. That’s not who I want to be at any age. I don’t want to be own my piece-of-shit father, or hers.
I’ve gone on here longer than I wanted to, and if you read all that, thanks. I’m not going to undercut how I feel by calling it a brain-dump, but clearly I’m trying to work things out in my head and sort through these issues, and if you put eyes to any of it, can relate or not, I appreciate your time. This site is basically the only outlet I have for this kind of exploration, and I value your… indulgence?… acceptance?… I don’t know. Maybe just feeling like I can say these things with less fear of being judged as the terrible person I’ve believed I am all along in some horrifying validation.
I wish you a great and safe weekend. Have fun if you like fun, be safe either way, and don’t forget to hydrate. Next week is slammed with a Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol review, full-album streams for the new Carpet (banger!) and Iota (ultra-banger!) LPs, another premiere for Maragda that I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about yet, and videos from Ripple Music doomers Haunted and Heavy Psych Sounds denizens Acid Mammoth. Yes, some days are doubled-up. Stick around and we’ll see if I make it through without collapsing.
With the clarion riff of its title-track sounding the call to worship at its outset, experiments in folk and synth more realized than the band had yet attempted, an emergent progression of sound, arguably the first party-rock riff in “Sabbra Cadabra” and performances that find the young Black Sabbath hitting their stride as players, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath was released in Dec. 1, 1973 on Vertigo Records. That put it just 14 months after Vol. 4 (discussed here), the band’s forward momentum taking a hit after the cancelation of their Spring 1973 tour either as a result of burnout, drugs, or both, depending on who’s telling the story, but it’s still about the same turnaround as that between Vol. 4 and its predecessor, 1971’s Master of Reality (review here). They were a working band.
And the eight songs and 42 minutes of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath sound like it. Gone is the willful cultish slog of their self-titled (discussed here), somewhat contrary to the impression of Dan Struzan‘s cover art, and the gritty judgementalism of Paranoid (discussed here) — at least mostly — as the returning four-piece of vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, who branches out instrumentally on various keys, flute on “Looking for Today,” bagpipes on “Spiral Architect,” etc., bassist Geezer Butler (also some synth and Mellotron) and drummer Bill Ward dug into an expansion of ideas that began to come forward on the album prior to find a more rousing and uptempo take. Accordingly, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, as the fifth Black Sabbath full-length from the original lineup and the entry into the back half of their multi-genre-defining eight-record run, is also the first LP in their catalog that truly comes across like a follow-up to the one before it.
There are positive and negative aspects to that, and its audible in the expanded arrangements throughout as well as in the production around the guitar, bass, drums and vocals. As the Narrative (blessings and peace upon it) saw cocaine, alcohol and whatever other substance abuse famously rooting itself into the already-wasn’t-lacking-for-shenanigans culture of Black Sabbath as a group, they were also more confident and more self-aware in recording themselves than they’d yet been. Working with engineer Mike Butcher following writing sessions in Los Angeles (unsuccessful) and at Clearwell Castle in Gloucestershire, UK (successful), where the likes of Led Zeppelin, Queen and Deep Purple, among others, had composed and/or recorded (you can get married there now), the band stepped forward with a crunch in Iommi‘s tone audible right at the outset of “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” — reportedly the first riff he wrote for the album — that was consistent with Vol. 4 in a new and purposeful way. It was the first time Black Sabbath sounded like they actively chose how they wanted to sound on a recording.
I’ll also argue that Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and its July 1975 successor, Sabotage, represent this version of Black Sabbath at the peak of their powers. That isn’t to say it’s necessarily their ‘best’ album — I’m not picking — but it’s among the best played. Between Vol. 4, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage, Osbourne, whose first statement with the band in the eponymous “Black Sabbath” was that, yes, he could reach those notes organically, found new levels of accomplishment as a singer. Here, he’s grandiose with Butler‘s lyrics in “A National Acrobat,” emotive and sincere in the realization at the end of “Spiral Architect,” and the swagger and lighthearted spirit he brings to “Sabbra Cadabra” is enough to make its generic met-a-girl-feel-good-about-it storyline come through as sweet instead of hollow as did the sappy “Changes” a year earlier.
He’s credited with composing the side B standout “Who Are You” on synthesizer — Rick Wakeman of Yes sat in on keys; maybe also for “Sabbra Cadabra” — and demonstrates a range between the creeper cinematic vibe that makes it the darkest track on the album and the still-melodic shoutier approach on “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” that uses the instrument of his voice in more complex ways, also incorporating different effects so that the bluesy swing in “Sabbra Cadabra” and the back half of “Killing Yourself to Live” could exist alongside the more adventurous instrumental arrangements in “Fluff” and the closing salvo of “Looking for Today” and “Spiral Architect.” In a singularly influential discography spanning more than five decades, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath could easily be a candidate for Ozzy‘s best work as a singer, though admittedly it’s not the only one in the running.
But Ozzy wasn’t the only one to step up, either. While Ward would always be defined by his swing and the creativity with which his fills gave force and character in complement to Iommi‘s riffs, he sets a march in “A National Acrobat” that conveys drudgery without actually being it, gives nodding shape to “Who Are You,” and double-times the hi-hat in the verse of “Looking for Today” — more strut than march — to bring a sense of energy without taking away from the vocals and guitar or Butler‘s bass, which could by this point in the original Sabbath‘s tenure be well relied upon for righteousness. As Iommi dug into the sunny folkishness of “Fluff” and the not-guitar elements noted above brought to “Looking for Today” and “Spiral Architect,” one could not say his core modus had been abandoned, even if broader ambitions were coming to the surface around that. A greater depth of structure overall makes the sudden blues-rocker turn of “Killing Yourself to Live,” which might otherwise be thought of as a mirror atmospherically for “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,” natural, and as far out as “Spiral Architect” goes after its acoustic introduction, it signals nascent maturity in its patient unfolding and finds space atop its central groove enough that neither the strings nor Butler‘s nose flute feel out of place.
As composers and musicians, Black Sabbath were growing, and things were only going to get weirder from here, but they had found the band they wanted to be and set themselves to chasing that ideal on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath in ways that would inform their work for the next five years and heavy music for the subsequent 50-plus so far. If I call it essential, I mean it speaks to the very heart of what Black Sabbath were at the time.
Like always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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Busy week, busy weekend. You know I’m still not caught up on news from last week’s Quarterly Review? I was a little embarrassed yesterday putting up that Inter Arma album news a week after the fact of the actual announcement, and there are a couple things that I’m probably just going to have to drop because more has come in. I don’t particularly enjoy that, which is putting it mildly, but I remind myself that the stakes are pretty low, content-urgency is an illusion, and that I do as much as I can. I’m trying. There’s just a lot out there.
Anyway. The kid had half-days Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday because of parent-teacher conference, so it was hands-on parenting time for most of the week, which not at all shockingly does not allow for much concentrated writing. That the news was good from her kindergarten teacher — she reads well, has stopped putting what we call “the claw” in other kids’ faces, got a perfect score on her last math assessment, etc. — I won’t say makes it worthwhile, because it’s worthwhile anyway spending time with your kid, but was encouraging just the same. She’s different at home and at school, and though we have a hard time sometimes — she started ice skating lessons again on Wednesday and that claw was dug into my throat as I carried her nervous-to-go self to the car so her mother could take her — every time I step back and look at the progress she’s made and the difficult work she’s done and does every day, I can only admire her strength. Less when she’s using that strength to punch me or The Patient Mrs. for turning off the Switch at bedtime or coming downstairs an hour later to whine in her Bluey voice that she’s hungry for another yogurt, but still.
I have a bio to write today and a call scheduled with Jack from Elephant Tree ahead of doing the liner notes for their upcoming PostWax split with Lowrider. I haven’t heard any music yet from it, so don’t ask. I think they’re still mixing. I guess I’ll probably ask about that, too. But hopefully there will be some downtime in there as well. The Patient Mrs.’ mother’s birthday was yesterday and she’s coming down from Connecticut to NJ for tonight and tomorrow, which will be great, and I think her sister and her sister’s kids are coming Saturday too? I’m not sure, but also wedged in the next two days is The Pecan at a mermaid-themed pottery-painting birthday party. I don’t know how all of this will shake out, but it won’t be the first tired Monday I’ve ever had, so whatever. See “worthwhile,” above.
I’m gonna leave it there.
Thanks again for reading. I hope you’re digging the Sabbath (though if not you’re probably not still reading either) and I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Next week is once more booked front-to-back, and I look forward to again feeling both like I’m doing way too much and like I can’t keep up at all. See you Monday.
