Posted in Whathaveyou on July 23rd, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Not going to feign impartiality here. The upcoming Elephant Tree and Lowrider split LP, The Long Forever, is one I’ve lived with for a while. It’s the final release of Blues Funeral Recordings‘ PostWax Vol. II, and a while in the making to say the least. As As has been the case since PostWax’s inception, I’ve handled liner notes — they’ll also be included with the wider release this time, which is fair in context — for the offering, and I don’t mind telling you it was the most difficult time I’ve ever had putting such a thing together.
I spoke to Elephant Tree‘s Jack Townley and Lowrider‘s Peder Bergstrand, and I count both as friends, but it was a hard story to tell between Jack nearly losing his life in a biking accident and the pressure on both bands to deliver after second albums one could arguably call landmarks arriving in much different contexts, both trying to do new things in terms of sound. There being more narrative than room to recount it was only part of the problem. Yeah. I’ll be honest. The notes got turned in like a month and a half ago and I’m still kind of sweating over being dissatisfied with my end of the work. I both hope I get a copy of the CD (in addition to the PostWax edition vinyl) and never see the finished product of those notes printed. A familiar-enough anxiety, heightened in this instance.
Fortunately, I’m relieved to say that backdrop has done precious little to sap my enjoyment of the tracks themselves, which put The Long Forever in obvious, feel-dumb-even-saying-so contention for the best short release of the year (yes, it’s full-length, but I count splits as short releases; if you care, next time we meet in person you can punch me in the face over it). Elephant Tree‘s video for “Long Forever” is streaming now, and I encourage you not to delay in checking it out. I’ll shut the fuck up in order to facilitate.
Info from the PR wire:
Like two timelines converging, ELEPHANT TREE and LOWRIDER come together to present the collaborative album “The Long Forever,” easily one of the most eagerly awaited split releases in the history of heavy rock.
Arriving in the wake of two landmark 2020 releases (“Habits” from Elephant Tree and “Refractions” from Lowrider), “The Long Forever” finds both bands at critical junctures: each has a broad and expanding influence, each is revered onstage and off, and each is delivering its first proper new release in four years to tremendous anticipation.
Despite that pressure, Elephant Tree and Lowrider have seized the opportunity to redefine who they are and declare where their musical voyages will go next.
Bringing these bands onto a shared collaborative platter would be an event regardless of the surrounding circumstances. As it is, though, the significance of this album is even greater.
“The Long Forever” takes its title from the nickname Elephant Tree singer/guitarist Jack Townley gave to the multi-week coma he was kept in for medical reasons following a near-fatal biking accident in early 2023. Dreaming without waking and losing all sense of time as his mind attempted to process and cope with the ordeal, that lyrical description can only hint at the enormity of Jack’s experience.
And yet, the year or so that followed manifested a musical freedom in the bands’ respective approaches. Lowrider has grown more complex and expressive, while Elephant Tree has chosen a rawer, set-up-the-mics-and-go approach.
“The Long Forever” is the vehicle through which the bands meet, subverting and superseding the expectations on them, with a traumatic nexus as the gravitational singularity around which the entire LP orbits, bending and shaping every note that escapes forth.
In the end, perseverance, healing and stubbornness of passion made “The Long Forever” a reality. We hope fans will listen with open minds and love in their hearts!
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 16th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Set to appear among the hordes in the enviable lineup for this year’s Ripplefest Texas, the Jadd Shickler-fronted — formerly of Spiritu, best known for his work with Blues Funeral Recordings, Magnetic Eye, ex-Meteorcity, and so on — heavy rockers from Albuquerque will issue their second full-length, Everything Fades. The band are rolling out the title-track — and I do mean rolling — to coincide with the album’s announcement, and the song’s gritty hook should pique the interest of anyone who caught onto the band’s 2022 debut, Ephemeral (review here) or the 2023 split they issued with High Desert Queen, Turned to Stone Ch. 8: The Wake (review here) last year.
I guess the theme of ephemerality is still represented in the new record’s title and lead single, and fair enough. The fleeting nature of reality as we experience it hasn’t dulled any in the last two years, and from where I sit, a sludge-blues-desert-rocking nod such as that on offer here is worth embracing while you can. I haven’t heard the record yet, so can’t comment on other shenanigans, but if you can dig it, by all means, dig it.
This info is from Bandcamp. I expect a proper press release in the inbox about 30 seconds after it gets posted [actually, I waited for it — ed.]. So it goes. If you have the art and song and release date and you can get to Bandcamp for preorders, you probably have what you need anyway, and I say that as a dude who writes band bios on the (too) regular:
New Mexico heavy rockers BLUE HERON announce new album “Everything Fades” on Blues Funeral Recordings; stream title track now!
Albuquerque, New Mexico’s desert rock torchbearers BLUE HERON have announced the release of their new studio album “Everything Fades” on September 27th through Blues Funeral Recordings. Listen to the debut single and title track on all streaming services today!
BLUE HERON expand on their unyielding desert sound with a new slab of propulsive, sun-scorched riff-heaviness. “Everything Fades” finds the band reveling in low-tuned roil and amplifier hum, churning out swerving grooves as if the primordial spirit of the desert itself compels them.
Balanced between laid-back, meditative atmospherics and heavier, more aggressive lunges, BLUE HERON’s cruising jams and gritty stoner romps call to mind echoes of Kyuss, Clutch and Monster Magnet, as well as modern contemporaries Valley of the Sun and Greenleaf. Full of rhythmic intensity, sledgehammer riffing, and vocals ranging from clean and moody to howling and raw, “Everything Fades” covers a wide expanse of musical ground that shows how familiar influences can always be molded into inventive, exciting new forms.
The album will be issued on vinyl, CD digipack and digital formats on September 27th, with preorders available now via Blues Funeral Recordings.
Tracklisting: 1. Null Geodesic 2. Everything Fades 3. Swansong 4. We Breathe Darkness 5. Dinosaur 6. Trepidation 7. Clearmountain 8. Bellwether 9. Flight of the Heron
Blue Heron coalesced in 2018 around a compulsion to fill the wide New Mexico skies with massive volume, and saturate their piece of desert with thunderous riffs, drums that pummel and swing, deep, thrumming tones and vocals that rip and roar. Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, their firsthand relationship with the desert is inextricable from who they are and how they sound.
BLUE HERON is Mike Chavez – Guitars Ricardo Sanchez – Drums Steve Schmidlapp – Bass Jadd Shickler – Vocals
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 4th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I’m not at all at a place in my life where I could even if I was ever to be invited — which, in a conservative estimate I’ll say is struck-by-lightning-and-live-level unlikely — but man, I’d love to go on this tour. Imagine following Dozer, Gozu and High Desert Queen as they traipse across the US colluding on the delivery of ultra-fine heavy rock and roll for nine days, including stops at Desertfest New York and Ripplefest Texas both. Damn that’d be fun. Also tiring. And my wife would have my ass, if my entering-first-grade daughter didn’t get to kicking it first. Nonetheless, even the daydream of hurry-up-and-wait tour existence is fun in this case.
I think the last time Dozer were in the US was 2000? Something like that. I seem to recall they played the Brighton Bar in my beloved Garden State, but I could be wrong about that. They return Stateside in 2024 riding the utter triumph of their 2023 return LP, Drifting in the Endless Void (review here), which indeed is a cause worth heralding. I was lucky enough to catch Dozer last summer supporting the album (review here) and even luckier that it wasn’t my first time seeing the band, but to have them hit the US (and a lil bit of Canada!) alongside Gozu — their 2023 album, Remedy (review here), remains a standout — and High Desert Queen, who issued their widely anticipated second album, Palm Reader (review here) in May, is even better.
Mark it a win, kids. Poster and such from the ol’ social media:
USA! Endless void tour is coming for you this September…are you ready? 🤘 Support by @highdesertqueen and @gozu_band_boston
DOZER – Endless Void US Tour 2024 feat. Gozu & High Desert Queen 09.13 Braintree MA Widowmaker Brewing 09.14 Queens NY Desertfest NYC 09.15 Montreal QC Piranha Bar 09.16 Toronto ON The Garrison 09.17 Grand Rapids MI Pyramid Scheme 09.18 Chicago IL Reggies Rock Club 09.19 Omaha NE Reverb Lounge 09.20 Oklahoma City OK Resonant Head 09.21 Austin TX Ripplefest Texas
DOZER is: Tommi Holappa – Guitar Fredrik Nordin – Guitar/Vox Johan Rockner – Bass Sebastian Olsson – Drums
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 24th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I very pointedly went into the new Mammoth Volume single with no expectations of what was coming. I still managed to be surprised. The yacht-rock synth, classic prog weirdo bounce, somehow so Swedish and yet likewise so much not even of this reality’s wavelength — a decadescopic mashup that’s still later Beatles influenced but has gone so far off the deep end as to define its own normality as a standard for pop. Oh, and it rocks too.
It’s a good thing the record’s not out until August so maybe I can have a chance of getting my brain around this one four-minute segment of it. “Serpent in the Deep” — the track in question — comes from the Lysekil troupe’s new LP, Raised Up by Witches, which is out Aug. 23 on Blues Funeral Recordings. It’s the follow-up to their 2022 return album, The Cursed Who Perform the Larvagod Rites (review here), which came out first through Blues Funeral‘s PostWax subscription series, for which I’ve handled liner notes up to this point (full disclosure, etc.). As for anything more on the new record, I can’t say since I haven’t heard it. If you caught the last one though, you know it’s out there.
This came in a Bandcamp update yesterday, so I expect the PR wire follow-up to roll through probably five minutes after this is posted and shared. So it goes. The song streaming at the bottom is the point anyhow, and that’s there. Have at it:
MAMMOTH VOLUME – Raised Up by Witches
MAMMOTH VOLUME return with Raised Up By Witches, an absorbing trek through head-nodding grooves, wistful instrumentation and quirky brilliance that harnesses their absolute fluency with the surprisingly compatible genres of 70s progressive rock and classic stoner grooves.
MAMMOTH VOLUME has made it their brand to go unexpected places and take surprising turns pretty much every time you think you have them pegged. The latest installment in their angular yet infectious alternative to straightforward boogie van riffage, Raised Up By Witches is an exhilarating new trip where MAMMOTH VOLUME are basically the only vehicle on the road.
1. The Battle of Lightwedge 2. Black Horse Beach 3. Scissor Bliss 4. Diablo III: Faces in the Water 5. Lisa 6. Serpent in the Deep 7. Cult Of Eneera 8. A Tale about a Photon 9. Sången om Ymer
Austin, Texas, heavy Americana four-piece Lord Buffalo will release their third album, Holus Bolus, on July 12 through Blues Funeral Recordings. And as surely as one would never mistake a holus bolus for a rumpus, a ruckus or a hullabaloo, the textures of Lord Buffalo‘s sound across the record’s seven songs and 38 minutes are accordingly recognizable. If you heard 2020’s Tohu Wa Bohu (discussed here), the hard strikes of maybe-piano and low-drawl effects of “Slow Drug” will feel like an inheritor of some of that outing’s ambience, and the swing to which the band set those elements arises to sashay only after the opening title-track has reimagined Wovenhand as fronted by Nick Cave. We are grim, grey, thoroughly American gothic. Violins and violence.
Elsewhere amid the tumult, centerpiece “Malpaisano” tackles a vast dronescape that is not at all minimalist while seeming to be exactly and purposefully that, topped with Daniel Pruitt‘s All Them Witches-y musings, and “Passing Joy” brings together loose-strum acoustic ramble and bowed-string noise in a cinematic culmination that can’t help but resonate troubled times, and “I Wait on the Door Slab” (lyric video premiering below) teases folkish casualness, but is off on a build of layers upon layers in what first feels like manifest destiny trampling skulls forgotten in history’s romance but turns to a shimmer of guitar like it found Jesus meandering through the prairie because he’s always in the last place you look or so I’m told. The melody, the sweep, the underlying somehow-doom groove like the matte painting against which the grainy scene is portrayed — this is the stuff of thoughtful construction and meticulous detailing, maybe cynical but at least it seems to have earned that.
While there are plenty of moments throughout — to wit: the echoing lumber at the start of the penultimate “Cracks in the Vermeer,” soulful vocals soon to join — that feel obscure or perhaps intentionally vague in a way that comes across as more than the sum of their parts partly because you don’t know what the band is actually banging on, it would be a mistake to call Lord Buffalo or this encompassing Holus Bolus experimental, because by the time these songs hit your ears, the experiments have already been conducted. On a scientific level, a progression like “Cracks in the Vermeer,” or indeed “I Wait on the Door Slab” with its fuck-yes second-half heft and nigh on industrial stomp, does not hit its wash by happenstance. The sound of each cut is reasoned, plotted. And like the mix, which has enough going on to have potentially taken much longer than it probably actually did to finalize, the moody vibe of closer “Rowing in Eden” feels broader and deeper in its overarching instrumental severity than the band have yet gone; growth evident in in the vividness of the shapes and silhouettes in their fog.
As to what, if anything Holus Bolus is saying about America itself, I won’t speculate beyond basics like “dark” and “foreboding,” but that’s honestly enough in a culture that can’t stop hatefucking itself with false nostalgia en route to paved-over, luxury-rental, VC-funded obliteration masqueraded as authentic anything. Lord Buffalo aren’t trying to find redemption here, or to paint things as other than they are, but it’s not disgust that makes “Holus Bolus” shine and it’s not hopelessness that lends “I Wait on the Door Slab” such a feeling of rhythmic movement. Perhaps it is the nature of the thing to feel some hope. Perhaps it is desperate. Either way, before the oceans rightly rise to consume all of us, Holus Bolus gives an emotionalist lifeline to the lost and the weird who recognize the post-modernism for what it is — a death of gods and a call to dance. So get your shoes on and go.
Lyric video for “I Wait on the Door Slab” follows, backed by PR wire text in blue.
Please enjoy:
Lord Buffalo, “I Wait on the Door Slab” lyric video premiere
Lord Buffalo is heavy in the way that ghosts are heavy… in the way that billowing dust is heavy.
That is to say, the Austin, TX Psych-Americana band’s music impacts hard, though it seems impossible to touch. Their sound flows through us, it doesn’t invite the Pavlovian response of typical heavy rock music.
Perhaps it’s fitting then that their new album Holus Bolus takes its name from an antiquated term meaning “all at once.” It materializes instantly from the first notes of the opening title track, like a dark grey haze drawing listeners in with the band’s deft juxtapositions of droning violin, guitars, drums and vocals. It draws equally from Morricone and Badalementi as from Sabbath and Swans.
While the quartet trudges the same murky waters as dark emotive brethren David Eugene Edwards/Woven Hand, Chelsea Wolfe, Emma Ruth Rundle, Earth/Dylan Carlson, Echo & The Bunnymen, Nick Cave, etc., their creative interplay of Middle Eastern influence with a distinctly Western feel takes listeners in entirely new directions as the album envelops them.
Lord Buffalo is Daniel Pruitt (guitar, bass, piano, vocals, melodica), Garrett Hellman (guitar, sub-bass, piano, synths), Patrick Patterson (violin), and Yamal Said (drums, percussion). Holus Bolus was recorded by Danny Reisch and Max Lorenzen at Good Danny’s in Lockhart, TX. Mixed by Danny Reisch. Mastered by Max Lorenzen.
“While the making of this record feels a bit like a sleep-deprived hallucination to me,” Pruitt says. “Listening to it now, I find it strangely hopeful — there’s a kind of release that you hit in exhaustion. I think the record knew what it was after, even if we didn’t. It felt very much like the record just appeared one day, holus bolus.”
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 27th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I guess the goal is to have the second Delving album out well enough in advance of the band hitting the road with Iron Jinn to support it. The group featuring Nick DiSalvo and Michael Risberg of Elder (both also Weite) as well as bassist Ingwer Boysen (also Weite, High Fighter) and drummer Uno Bruniusson (also Maggot Heart, formerly Death Alley and In Solitude, etc.) will issue said sophomore full-length through Stickman Records in Europe, and they’ve been newly picked up by Blues Funeral Recordings for the US as well. September, maybe? That’s what ‘late summer/early fall’ says to me, anyhow.
Delving recorded the follow-up to 2021’s Hirschbrunnen (review here) in Berlin with Richard Behrens at Big Snuff Studio and in addition to the core lineup — which I think in the studio is mostly DiSalvo with Risberg — will feature Fabien de Menou (Perilymph) on keyboard. Nick said it was gonna get weird. I take him at his word.
But the pairing with Iron Jinn is noteworthy here as well, as that band continues their ascent toward the fore of the Euro psych-prog underground with a darker and very-much-their-own take. Dates follow here, courtesy of the PR wire:
delving (feat. Nicholas DiSalvo of ELDER) announces European Tour Dates with Special Guests IRON JINN!
delving, the instrumental psych-kraut-prog-rock project headed by Nicholas DiSalvo (best known as frontman of Elder) has announced a tour in November to support a brand new studio album!
While delving is in essence a solo studio project from multi-instrumentalist DiSalvo, his music takes flight in rare live performances thanks to a stellar live band consisting of guitarist Michael Risberg (Elder, Weite), bassist Ingwer Boysen (Weite, High Fighter) and Uno Bruniusson (Maggot Heart, ex-Death Alley).
Joining delving are the equally genre-bending psychedelic beast of Iron Jinn from Amsterdam.
Stay tuned for news regarding the upcoming new delving album, slated for release in late summer/early fall of 2024 on Stickman Records (EU) and Blues Funeral Recordings (US)!
Make sure to catch delving live at the following dates this year, tickets go on sale May 29th:
20.11. Hamburg, DE – Hafenklang 21.11. Leuven, BE – SoJo 23.11. London, UK – Oslo 24.11. Brighton, UK – Green Door Store 25.11. Paris, FR – La Boule Noire 26.11. Nijmegen, NL – Doornroosje 27.11. Bochum, DE – Die Trompete2 8.11. Siegen, DE – Vortex Surfer 29.11. Leipzig, DE – Noel’s Ballroom 30.11. Berlin, DE – Neue Zukunft 01.12. Warsaw, PL – Voodoo 03.12. Brno, CZ – Kabinet MUZ 04.12. Vienna, AT – Arena0 5.12. Innsbruck, AT – PMK 06.12. Munich, DE – Feierwerk
Today is Wednesday, the day we hit and pass the halfway mark for this week, which is a quarter of the way through the entirety of this 100-release Quarterly Review. Do you need to know that? Not really, but it’s useful for me to keep track of how much I’m doing sometimes, which is why I count in the first place. 100 records isn’t nothing, you know. Or 10 for that matter. Or one. I don’t know.
A little more variety here, which is always good, but I’ve got momentum behind me after yesterday and I don’t want to delay diving in, so off we go.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
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Saturnalia Temple, Paradigm Call
For the band’s fourth album, Paradigm Call, founding Saturnalia Temple guitarist/vocalist Tommie Eriksson leads the newcomer rhythm section of drummer Pelle Åhman and bassist Gottfrid Åhman through eight abyss-plundering tracks across 48 minutes of roiling tonal mud distinguished by its aural stickiness and Eriksson‘s readily identifiable vocal gurgle. The methodology hasn’t changed much since 2020’s Gravity (review here) in terms of downward pull, but the title-track’s solo is sharp enough to cut through the mire, and while it’s no less harsh for doing so, “Among the Ruins” explores a faster tempo while staying in line with the all-brown psychedelic swirl around it, brought to fruition in the backwards-sounding loops of closer “Kaivalya” after the declarative thud of side B standout “Empty Chalice.” They just keep finding new depths. It’s impressive. Also a little horrifying.
It’s easy to respect a band so unwilling to be boxed by genre, and Rotterdam’s Dool put the righteous aural outsiderness that’s typified their sound since 2017’s Here Now There Then (review here) to meta-level use on their third long-player for Prophecy Productions, The Shape of Fluidity. Darkly progressive, rich in atmosphere, broad in range and mix, heavy-but-not-beholden-to-tone in presentation, encompassing but sneaky-catchy in pieces like opener “Venus in Flames,” the flowing title-track, and the in-fact-quite-heavy “Hermagorgon,” the record harnesses declarations and triumphs around guitarist/vocalist Raven van Dorst‘s stated lyrical thematic around gender-nonbinaryism, turning struggle and confusion into clarity of expressive purpose in the breakout “Self-Dissect” and resolving with furious culmination in “The Hand of Creation” with due boldness. Given some of the hateful, violent rhetoric around gender-everything in the modern age, the bravery of Dool — Van Dorst alongside guitarists Nick Polak and Omar Iskandr, bassist JB van der Wal and drummer Vincent Kreyder — in confronting that head-on with these narratives is admirable, but it’s still the songs themselves that make The Shape of Fluidity one of 2024’s best albums.
After releasing 2022’s In the Dark (review here) on Small Stone, Denver heavy rockers Abrams align to Blues Funeral Recordings for their fifth album in a productive, also-touring nine years, the 10-track/42-minute Blue City. Production by Kurt Ballou (High on Fire, Converge, etc.) at GodCity Studio assures no lack of impact as “Fire Waltz” reaffirms the tonal density of the riffs that the Zach Amster-led four-piece nonetheless made dance in opener “Tomorrow,” while the rolling “Death Om” and the momentary skyward ascent in “Etherol” — a shimmering preface to the chug-underscored mellowness of “Narc” later — lay out some of the dynamic that’s emerged in their sound along with the rampant post-hardcore melodies that come through in Amster and Graham Zander‘s guitars, capable either of meting out hard-landing riffs to coincide with the bass of Taylor Iversen (also vocals) and Ryan DeWitt‘s drumming, or unfurling sections of float like those noted above en route to tying it all together with the closing “Blue City.” Relatively short runtimes and straightforward-feeling structures mask the stylistic nuance of the actual material — nothing new there for Abrams; they’re largely undervalued — and the band continue to reside in between-microgenre spaces as they await the coming of history which will inevitably prove they were right all along.
Superlynx bassist/vocalist Pia Isaksen made her solo debut under the Pia Isa moniker with 2022’s Distorted Chants (review here), and in addition to announcing the SoftSun collaboration she’ll undertake alongside Yawning Man‘s Gary Arce (who also appeared on her record), in 2024, she offers the three-song Burning Time EP, with a cover of Radiohead‘s “Burn the Witch” backed by two originals, “Treasure” and “Nothing Can Turn it Back.” With drumming by her Superlynx bandmate Ole Teigen (who also recorded), “Burn the Witch” becomes a lumbering forward march, ethereal in melody but not necessarily cultish, while “Treasure” digs into repetitive plod led by the low end and “Nothing Can Turn it Black” brings the guitar forward but is most striking in the break that brings the dual-layered vocals forward near the midpoint. The songs are leftovers from the LP, but if you liked the LP, that shouldn’t be a problem.
A late-2023 initial public offering from Houston’s Wretched Kingdom, their self-titled EP presents a somewhat less outwardly joyous take on the notion of “Texas desert rock” than that offered by, as an example, Austin’s High Desert Queen, but the metallic riffing that underscores “Dreamcrusher” goes farther back in its foundations than whatever similarity to Kyuss one might find in the vocals or speedier riffy shove of “Smoke and Mirrors.” Sharp-cornered in tone, opener “Torn and Frayed” gets underway with metered purpose as well, and while the more open-feeling “Too Close to the Sun” begins similar to “You Can’t Save Me” — the strut that ensues in the latter distinguishes — the push in its second half comes after riding a steady groove into a duly bluesy solo. There’s nothing in the material to take you out of the flow between the six component cuts, and even closer “Deviation” tells you it’s about to do something different as it works from its mellower outset into a rigorous payoff. With the understanding that most first-EPs of this nature are demos by another name and (as here) more professional sound, Wretched Kingdom‘s Wretched Kingdom asks little in terms of indulgence and rewards generously when encountered at higher volumes. Asking more would be ridiculous.
Like earlier Clutch born out of shenanigans-prone punk, Youngstown, Ohio’s Lake Lake are tight within the swinging context of a song like “The Boy Who Bit Me,” which is the second of the self-released Proxy Joy‘s six inclusions. Brash in tone and the gutted-out shouty vocals, offsetting its harder shoving moments with groovy back-throttles in songs that could still largely be called straightforward, the quirk and throaty delivery of “Blue Jerk” and the bluesier-minded “Viking Vietnam” paying off the tension in the verses of “Comfort Keepers” and the build toward that leadoff’s chorus want nothing for personality or chemistry, and as casual as the style is on paper, the arrangements are coordinated and as “Heavy Lord” finds a more melodic vocal and “Coyote” — the longest song here at 5:01 — leaves on a brash highlight note, the party they’re having is by no means unconsidered. But it is a party, and those who have dancing shoes would be well advised to keep them on hand, just in case.
Modern in the angularity of its riffing, spacious in the echoes of its tones and vocals, and encompassing enough in sound to be called progressive within a heavy context, Altered States follows Canadian four-piece Gnarwhal‘s 2023 self-titled debut full-length with four songs that effectively bring together atmosphere and impact in the six-minute “The War Nothing More” — big build in the second half leading to more immediate, on-beat finish serving as a ready instance of same — with twists that feel derived of the MastoBaroness school rhythmically and up-front vocal melodies that give cohesion to the darker vibe of “From Her Hands” after displaying a grungier blowout in “Tides.” The terrain through which they ebb and flow, amass and release tension, soar and crash, etc., is familiar if somewhat intangible, and that becomes an asset as the concluding “Altered States” channels the energy coursing through its verses in the first half into the airy payoff solo that ends. I didn’t hear the full-length last year. Listening to what Gnarwhal are doing in these tracks in terms of breadth and crunch, I feel like I missed out. You might also consider being prepared to want to hear more upon engaging.
Help the humans? No. Help! The Humans…, and here as in so many of life’s contexts, punctuation matters. Digging into a heavy, character-filled and charging punkish sound they call “Appalachian thrash,” Boone, North Carolina, three-piece Bongfoot are suitably over-the-top as they explore what it means to be American in the current age, couching discussions of wealth inequality, climate crisis, corporatocracy, capitalist exploitation, the insecurity at root in toxic masculinity and more besides. With clever, hooky lyrics that are a total blast despite being tragic in the subject matter and a pace of execution well outside what one might think is bong metal going in because of the band’s name, Bongfoot vigorously kick ass from opener “End Times” through the galloping end of “Amazon Death Factory/Spacefoot” and the untitled mountain ramble that follows as an outro. Along the way, they intermittently toy with country twang, doom, and hardcore punk, and offer a prayer to the titular volcano of “Krakatoa” to save at least the rest of the world if not humanity. It’s quite a time to be alive. Listening, that is. As for the real-world version of the real world, it’s less fun and more existentially and financially draining, which makes Help! The Humans… all the more a win for its defiance and charm. Even with the bonus tracks, I’ll take more of this anytime they’re ready with it.
It’s interesting, because you can’t really say that Thomas Greenwood and the Talismans‘ second LP, Ateşisn’t neo-psychedelia, but the eight tracks and 38 minutes of the record itself warrant enunciating what that means. Where much of 2020s-era neo-psych is actually space rock with thicker tones (shh! it’s a secret!), what Greenwood — AKA Thomas Mascheroni, also of Bergamo, Italy’s Humulus) brings to sounds like the swaying, organ-laced “Sleepwalker” and the resonant spaciousness in the soloing of “Mystic Sunday Morning” is more kin to the neo-psych movement that began in the 1990s, which itself was a reinterpretation of the genre’s pop-rock origins in the 1960s. Is this nitpicking? Not when you hear the title-track infusing its Middle Eastern-leaning groove with a heroic dose of wah or the friendly shimmer of “I Do Not” that feels extrapolated from garage rock but is most definitely not that thing and the post-Beatles bop of “Sunhouse.” It’s an individual (if inherently familiar) take that unifies the varied arrangements of the acidic “When We Die” and the cosmic vibe of “All the Lines” (okay, so there’s a little bit of space boogie too), resolving in the Doors-y lumber of “Crack” to broaden the scope even further and blur past timelines into an optimistic future.
As direct as some of its push is and as immediate as “Fish” is opening the album right into the first verse, the course that harp-laced French heavy progressive rockers Djiin take on their third album, Mirrors, ultimately more varied, winding and satisfying as its five-track run gives over to the nine-minute “Mirrors” and uses its time to explore more pointedly atmospheric reaches before a weighted crescendo that precedes the somehow-fluidity in the off-time early stretch of centerpiece “In the Aura of My Own Sadness,” its verses topped with spoken word and offset by note-for-note melodic conversation between the vocals and guitar. Rest assured, they build “In the Aura of My Own Sadness” to its own crushing end, while taking a more decisively psychedelic approach to get there, and thereby set up “Blind” with its trades from open-spaces held to pattern by the drums and a pair of nigh-on-caustic noise rock onslaughts before 13-minute capstone “Iron Monsters” unfolds a full instrumental linear movement before getting even heavier, as if to underscore the notion that Djiin can go wherever the hell they want and make it work as a song. Point taken.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 1st, 2024 by JJ Koczan
If you find yourself this November in one of the below-listed locales and are wondering perhaps how to cope with the ending of another busy, festival-filled October in Europe, Poland’s Dopelord and France’s Red Sun Atacama have your back as they join forces for about two weeks of club shows in Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland and Belgium. The Warsaw stoner-doom titans will head out in support of 2023’s Songs for Satan (review here), which turned the familiar genre trope of devil-worship in cult riffing into a political statement against their home country’s religion-backed push to the right in addition to having suitably burned its hooks into the foreheads of those who heard it.
Red Sun Atacama touched on modern space boogie blowout with 2022’s Darwin (review here), the three-piece scorching their way through a cosmos of expansive tones and resonant crashing bombast. I probably don’t need to say it, but one way or the other, it’s a tour that’s gonna groove. In heaping doses.
Poster and dates follow in blue, as they will:
DOPELORD (Doom, Poland) and RED SUN ATACAMA (Heavy Psych, France) to tour Europe this Fall
Polish heavier-than-heavy quartet DOPELORD and French riff machine RED SUN ATACAMA to hit the road together in November! Presented by Doomstar Bookings and 3C, the tour party plans to cross Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain and Belgium. Get tickets!
03.11.2024 DE KARLSRUHE – Alte Hackerei 04.11.2024 CH BASEL – Hirscheneck 05.11.2024 FR LYON – Rock’n’Eat 06.11.2024 FR MONTPELLIER – L’Antirouille 07.11.2024 SP BARCELONA – Sala Upload 08.11.2024 SP MADRID – Wurlitzer Ballroom 09.11.2024 FR BORDEAUX-PESSAC – Sortie 13 10.11.2024 FR NANTES – Le Ferrailleur 11.11.2024 FR PARIS – Petit Bain 12.11.2024 BE ANTWERP – Kavka Zappa 13.11.2024 DE BOCHUM – Die Trompete 14.11.2024 DE BRAUNSCHWEIG – B58 15.11.2024 DE BERLIN – Urban Spree 16.11.2024 DE COTTBUS – Muggefug e.V. (without Red Sun Atacama)
DOPELORD is Paweł Mioduchowski – Guitars and Vocals Piotr Ochociński – Drums Grzegorz Pawłowski – Guitars Piotr Zin – Bass, Vocals and Mellotron
LINE-UP: Clément Marquez: bass, vocals Robin Caillon: drums Vincent Hospital: guitar, keyboard
