Next month, Kingston, New York, trio Geezer and Richmond, Virginia, four-piece Book of Wyrms will head north together for a three-date weekender in Ontario and Quebec. As both bands note below, it’s their first time playing in Canada, and for the dates in Toronto, Ottawa and Québec City, they’ll be keeping good company with a sampling of the righteous Canadian heavy underground. You can see the names on the poster and in the announcement, so I’ll spare you my just listing them again, but it’s a curated assemblage.

Geezer go in continued support of 2022’s Stoned Blues Machine (review here) on Heavy Psych Sounds, having most recently played Heavy Psych Sounds Fest in San Francisco and Joshua Tree, California. For Book of Wyrms, they’ll herald new projects in the works, including plans to record their next full-length at summer’s end, which will follow their 2022 single “Sodapop Glacier” (premiered here) as well as 2021’s Occult New Age (review here), released by Desert Records.

Of the locals, I’ll cop to being less familiar with Hempress and Acid Moth, though Hempress released their Masters of the Trade LP last year and that’s pretty cool and Acid Moth just last Friday offered their self-titled debut EP, complete with a Trailer Park Boys reference and riffs a-plenty. Aawks, Low Orbit and Witchrot are known quantities and killer enough to make the Toronto show practically a festival. And you’ll note The Death Wheelers, who play the last date in Québec City, released their Topon Das-mastered Mondo Trasho 7″ last Fall as the follow-up to their 2020 debut on RidingEasy Records. Sounds like fun, but I know one way to find out for sure.

To that end, I hit up Geezer last week and invited myself along for the trip. Looks like it might even happen, so one way or the other, here’s looking forward:

GEEZER & BOOK OF WYRMS – Canadian Road Trip

Geezer and Book of Wyrms are teaming up for a May road trip to Canada, joined by noted northern lights Aawks, Low Orbit, and Witchrot (Toronto May 11), Hempress and Acid Moth (Ottawa May 12), and the Death Wheelers (Quebec City May 13). These ragers are generously brought to you by Pale Horse Promotions, Fuzzed n Buzzed Records, and Sewer Pool Productions.

Says Pat Harrington of Geezer: “This will be our first time in Canada and we are totally stoked about it. I reached out to Jake from BoW about the idea of doing some shows together and they were already working on the Canadian idea, so we put our heads together and it all worked out real quick. We’re excited about the bands we’re playing with and the promoters have already been working hard on spreading the word, so we expect this short run to be a banger!”

Says Book of Wyrms’ Jake Linsley: “This will be our first time playing outside the US, and getting to go with our buddies in Geezer just makes it extra badass. I’ve been listening to Aawks a lot so it’s gonna be cool to play with them while we’re up there. Other than that, we have a few summer runs coming up that haven’t been announced yet, a new song on a compilation that hasn’t been announced yet, and we’ll be back in the studio at the end of the summer to record our fourth LP.”

GEEZER & BOOK OF WYRMS live:
May 11 Hard Luck Toronto ON w/ AAWKS, Low Orbit & Witchrot
May 12 Dominion Ottawa ON w/ Hempress & Acid Moth
May 13 Scanner Québec City QC w/ The Death Wheelers

Geezer are:
Pat Harrington – vocals/guitar
Richie Touseull – bass
Steve Markota – drums

Book of Wyrms are:
Sarah Moore-Lindsey: Vocals and synthesizers
Kyle Lewis: Guitar
Chris DeHaven: Drums
Jay “Jake” Lindsey: Bass

https://www.facebook.com/Bookofwyrms/
https://instagram.com/bookofwyrms
https://bookofwyrms.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/desertrecordslabel/
https://desertrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://desertrecords.bigcartel.com/

https://www.instagram.com/geezertown/
https://www.facebook.com/geezerNY/
http://geezertown.bandcamp.com/

heavypsychsoundsrecords.bandcamp.com
www.heavypsychsounds.com
https://www.facebook.com/HEAVYPSYCHSOUNDS/

Book of Wyrms, “Sodapop Glacier” (2022)

Geezer, Stoned Blues Machine (2022)

Richmond, Virginia’s Book of Wyrms release their new single ‘Sodapop Glacier’ on Oct. 26 through Desert Records, and much of what you need to know is in the first sentence of the quote from bassist/synthesist Jay “Jake” Lindsey, where he says outright, “We wanted to do something totally different.” All that’s missing is John Cleese sitting at a desk on a beach or in the woods or somewhere; you get the point. And if you’ve heard Book of Wyrms before — which certainly you have, because you’re hip like that, and if not, all are welcome, no gatekeeping — on their 2021 third album Occult New Age (review here) or 2019’s Remythologizer (review here) and 2017’s debut, Sci-Fi/Fantasy (review here), the sense of departure will be pretty immediate in the new piece, the title of which sounds like both a fizzy cloud rolling in over the horizon and a classic Pink Floyd experimentalist epic, and so, I think it’s mission accomplished all around for Lindsey and the rest of the four-piece.

With “Sodapop Glacier,” Book of Wyrms embrace texture as a core methodology. In its 8:54 realization — there is also the 15:42 “Sodapop Glacier (Extended Version)” that comes with the Bandcamp download — the song arrives in movements and waves of drones and synth. Some of the lines of bass hint toward the band’s more structured fare, which is to say, they might sneak in a riff, but the exploratory mindset is paramount, and it is a marked difference from what one generally expects of Book of Wyrms — Lindsey alongside vocalist/synthesist Sarah Moore Lindsey, guitarist Kyle Lewis and drummer Bobby Hufnell — who usually embrace structured and traditional heavy rock songwriting as a central part of their creative ethos. “Sodapop Glacier” is qualitatively ‘something different’ in that it’s directly engaging with ambience and drone meditation in a way that Book of Wyrms never have before.

The result is deeply psychedelic. A mantra of a riff arrives about halfway through the “short” version and the 15-minute version of “Sodapop Glacier” and that feels like a central ground to be touch on as the outward ooze of done and low-key rhythm holds — there are bands in other parts of the world wearing robes and making whole careers out of sounding a lot like this — but it’s a gorgeous procession one way or the other. Also noted below, this is the first time Book of Wyrms have done their own cover art. One sincerely hopes it isn’t the last.

No, Book of Wyrms aren’t the first usually-verse/chorus band to trip out, but they do it remarkably well and in a way that follows their own rules rather than those of drone as a genre, and that makes it all the more easier to appreciate. Maybe it’s a one-off, or maybe their next record will have something working off similar impulses — Occult New Age, which you can stream near the bottom of this post, has the eight-minute “Hollergoblin” with a goodly bit of jamming, so “Sodapop Glacier” isn’t completely out of the blue (and pink and green and orange, all melting together) — but either way it’s an example of a band being willing to try out a new way of working in sound and in addition to respecting that in theory, the reality of the piece itself is gorgeously hypnotic. And I can hear some of the Indian folk influence Lindsey is talking about — there’s a part that sounds like sunrise; you’ll hear it — but he’s right in pointing out that, indeed, it’s not a raga.

Track is out on Wednesday but you can stream it below, followed by the aforementioned quote.

Please enjoy:

Jay Lindsey on “Sodapop Glacier”:

We wanted to do something totally different. We kind of specialize in LPs of very planned songs, so this was pretty much the exact opposite. By myself on a rainy day over the summer and feeling inspired by the weather, I just started playing bass over a drone for a few hours while it rained and thundered. The melodies and phrases were heavily inspired by Northern Indian monsoon ragas (which I listen to a lot during the late spring and summer), but I don’t want anyone to think it’s an authentic interpretation of that rich tradition.

I picked my favorite sections and cut out the rest, and then went back through and built drones and synths to accompany the bass. We brought those tracks to Absolute Future Studio and Bobby added drums and Kyle added guitar. It was very spontaneous for them – they just sort of showed up and played along. Bobby doesn’t usually play to a click without the rest of the band tracking, and Kyle doesn’t use a Telecaster, so that was another element of trying something new. The song was originally 18 minutes long, which is both a sacred number in Judaism and 6+6+6, but we cut it shorter for release (a longer version is available as a bonus track with the single).

It’s also the first time we did the cover art ourselves. We wanted this to be a really different and idiosyncratic effort from us – it’s a collage of some outer space photos and an old painting of a Lord Dunsany story. The song doesn’t tell a story, but it’s supposed to capture the feeling of relief and drama of watching a storm coming in during the hottest part of the day and just violently cooling everything off. You can feel the energy exchanging through the air and it’s both sublimely relaxing and crushingly powerful. You can smell it coming, and you can almost feel the plants and trees opening themselves to the storm. I guess you could call it a prayer or meditation on nature. Thank you for listening and we hope it takes you somewhere cool.

Virginia stoner metal band BOOK OF WYRMS will release their instrumental single “Sodapop Glacier” on October 26th via Desert Records. The song will be available on Bandcamp and all streaming platforms.

Pre-order: https://bookofwyrms.bandcamp.com/album/sodapop-glacier-single

Book of Wyrms are:
Bobby Hufnell – Drums and Percussion
Sarah Moore Lindsey – Vocals/ Synthesizer
Jay “Jake” Lindsey – Bass/ Synthesizer
Kyle Lewis – Guitar

Book of Wyrms, Occult New Age (2021)

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Book of Wyrms on Bandcamp

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Desert Records on Bandcamp