Posted in Whathaveyou on August 11th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Keeping things moving right along as he follows up on 2025 outings from his soon-to-be-live-incarnated project Fuzz Sagrado and the defunct Samsara Blues Experiment (a collection of material from well before they were defunct), Christian Peters has put word out of a new release under his solo banner — or one of them; there have been a couple and Fuzz Sagrado started as a solo-project and why you gotta categorize everything anyway, man??? — Surya Kris Peters. Produced and recorded by Peters in Brazil, Viva Galaxia promises a gamut run through influences new and old, and given the productive streak Peters is on (he’s got more coming, reportedly), I believe it.
The good news is it’s not a long wait to take the trip. Viva Galaxia is out this Friday, Aug. 15, as a digital release, with physical to follow. Nothing up from the record yet:
Surya Kris Peters new album “Viva Galaxia” is a rich tapestry of musical influences, blending sounds from across decades and continents.
Drawing deeply from the 70s German Krautrock scene – think Ashra & Manuel Göttsching, Michael Rother, Popol Vuh and Tangerine Dream – it also pays homage to English Prog, especially the atmospheric stylings of Mike Oldfield and Pink Floyd. Adding to the mix are vibrant global inspirations like India’s Ananda Shankar, Japan’s Osamu Kitajima and Isao Tomita, and Turkey’s Erkin Koray.
Modern textures weave through the album as well, with echoes of My Sleeping Karma, Ozric Tentacles, God Is An Astronaut, and even touches of 80s Synthwave and 90s Trance. Much like its predecessor, this release is packed with soaring guitar solos reminiscent of Peters’ former band, Samsara Blues Experiment. And this time, the Indian music influence makes a powerful return.
Alright, y’all. This is where it ends. The Quarterly Review has been an absolute blast, an easy, fun, good time to have, but inevitably it must come to close and that’s where we’re at. Last day. Last 10 releases. Thanks if you’ve kept up. I’ll be back I think in September with another one of these, probably longer.
Hope you’ve found something killer this week. I did.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
Katatonia, Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State
Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State is the first long-player in the 34-year history of Katatonia — upwards of their 13th album, depending on what you count — to not feature guitarist Anders Nyström. That leaves frontman Jonas Renkse as the remaining founder of the band, with two new guitarists in Nico Elgstrand and Sebastian Svalland, bassist Niklas Sandin and drummer Daniel Moilanen, steering one of heavy music’s most identifiable sounds in new ways. “Wind of No Change” is duly subversive, and “Departure Trails” basks in texture in a way Katatonia have periodically throughout the last 20 years, but the Opethian severity of they keys in “The Light Which I Bleed” and the declarative chug at the end of opener “Thrice” speak to the band’s awareness of the need to occasionally be very, very heavy, even as “Efter Solen” shifts into dark, emotive electronics ahead of the sweeping finale “In the Event Of…” Renkse has never wanted for expression as a singer. If he’s to be the driving force behind Katatonia, fair enough for how that manifests here.
Black Moon Circle, A Million Leagues Beyond: Moskus Sessions Vol. I
Trondheim, Norway’s Black Moon Circle recorded the four-song set of A Million Leagues Beyond: Moskus Sessions Vol. 1 at the hometown venue of Moskus, a small bar that, to hear them tell it, mostly hosts jazz. Fair enough for cosmic heavy psychedelic grunge rock to join the fray, I should think. It was late in 2023, so earlier that year’s Leave the Ghost Behind (review here) full-length features readily, with “Snake Oil” following the opener “Drifting Across the Plains” — which is jazzy enough, certainly — ahead of the chunkier-riffed “Serpent” and a 20-minute take on “Psychedelic Spacelord (Lighter Than Air),” which has become a signature piece for the three-piece, suitably expansive. If you know Black Moon Circle‘s studio albums, you know they do as much as they can live. Honestly, A Million Leagues Beyond: Moskus Sessions Vol. I isn’t all that different, but it’s definitely a performance worth enjoying.
Kudos if you had ‘new Bloodhorse‘ on your 2025 Stoner Rock Bingo card or caught it when they launched an Instagram page last year. I certainly didn’t. The Massachusetts aughts-type prog-leaning riffmakers were last heard from with their 2009 debut album, Horizoner (review here), and the six-song/28-minute A Malign Star serves as a vital return, if not one brimming with good vibes as “The Somnambulist” dream-crushes its four-minute course, the band not so much dwelling in atmospheres like the relatively careening “Shallowness,” but getting into a song, making their point, and getting out. This works to their advantage in opener “Saboteur” and the chuggier title-track that follows, but even six-minute closer “Illumination” retains a sense of immediacy amid the dirty fuzz and comparatively laid back roll. This band was once the shape of sludge to come. 16 years later, the future has taken a different course and everybody’s a little more middle-aged, but Bloodhorse still kind of feel like they’re waiting for the world to catch up.
Should you find yourself thinking you didn’t remember Canadian riffers Aawks — also stylized all-caps: AAWKS — having quite such a nasty streak, you’re not alone. Their 2022 debut, Heavy on the Cosmic (review here), had a take that seems like fuzzy dream-pop in comparison to “Celestial Magick” and the screamy sludge that populates On Through the Sky Maze, their second LP. The nine-song 48-minute full-length is the first to feature bassist/vocalist Ryan “Grime Pup” Mailman alongside guitarist/vocalist Kris Dzierzbicki, guitarist Roberto Paraíso, and drummer Randylin Babic, and songs like “Lost Dwellers” or the mellow-spacier “Drifting Upward,” with no harsh vocals, seem to hit more directly, in addition to arriving in a different context with the “blegh”s of “Wandering Supergiants” and “Caerdoia,” and so on. In the end, Mailman‘s rasp becomes one more tool in Aawks‘ songwriting shed, and the band have more breadth and are less predictable for it. Call that a win, even before you get to the record being good.
The shimmering, floating guitar in “Echoes (The Empress)” tells part of the story in the deep-running The Cure influence, and the somewhat moody vocals of Charlie Suárez echo that emotional foundation, which is coupled in that song and throughout Moon Destroys‘ debut album, She Walks by Moonlight, with a willful progressivism in the songwriting, attention to detail in the arrangements, melodies, even the mix. Comprised of Suárez, guitarist Juan Montoya (ex-Torche), bassist Arnold Nese and drummer/producer Evan Diprima (Royal Thunder), the band are able to set a wash in place that’s not deceptively heavy in “The Nearness of June” (an earlier demo track) because it’s beating you over the head with tone, but still has more to offer than just its own heft. “Only” sounds like heavied-up proto-emo, while the roll of “Set Them Free” is massive in terms of both its riff and its big feelings. If you’re willing to let it grow on you, She Walks by Moonlight can be a space to occupy.
In Space We Trust is one of four-so-far full-lengths that Santtu Laakso — multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer and producer — has out between Astral Magic and related collaborations and projects. It’s not a pace of releasing one can keep up with, but if you need a check-in from the generation ship that is Astral Magic, chances are Laakso is out there on some voyage or other between classic space rock and clearheaded prog, spanning galaxies. The eight-song/42-minute In Space We Trust pairs him with lead guitarist Jonathan Segel (Øresund Space Collective, etc.), and one should not be surprised at the cosmic nature of the resulting music. The pair get into some sci-fi atmospherics in “Ancient Pilots” and “Alien Emperor,” but the synth and guitar are leading the way across the galaxy and the vibe across the board is more Voyager and less Nostromo, so yes, smooth solar-sailing the whole way through.
The dreamy guitar, semi-rapped vocal, and dub backbeat give the opening title-track of Never Never a decidedly ’90s cast, but it’s not the summary of what Toronto’s Lammping have to offer in their collaboration with weirdo-rockabilly solo artist Bloodshot Bill, bringing together their urbane, grounded psych and studiocraft, samples, etc., with the singer/guitarist’s low, sometimes bluesy delivery across seven songs totaling 15 minutes, peppering the vibe-on-vibes of “Never Never,” “One and Own” and “Won’t Back Down” — the longest inclusion at 3:23 — with ramble and flow alike, with experimental jawns like “Coconut,” “0 and 1” or “Anything is Possible” and the closer “Nitey Nite,” all under two minutes long and each going their own way with the casual cool one has come to expect from Lammping, quietly staking out their own wavelength while still sounding like something from a half-remembered soundtrack to a radder version of your life. This is one of four releases Lammping will reportedly have over the next year or so. Way on board for whatever’s coming next.
After the disbanding of Samsara Blues Experiment in 2021, guitarist/vocalist Christian Peters — who had already by then moved from Germany to Brazil — unveiled Fuzz Sagrado with EPs in July and October of that year. Fuzz Sagrado‘s 2021 self-titled (review here) and Vida Pura EPs are included on Strange Daze, a new compilation of tracks unified through a remaster by John McBain, showcasing the early outreach of keyboard and guitar that served as the foundation for the project. As Peters readies a live band for an eventual return to the stage, Strange Daze demonstrates how multifaceted the growth has been in terms of songwriting and still feels exploratory in hindsight as it did when the material was first released. Also included is the jammy “Arapongas,” which wasn’t on either EP but was recorded around the same time. Something of a curio or a fan-piece, but I ain’t arguing.
When the Deadbolt Breaks, In the Glow of the Vatican Fire
A couple different modes on When the Deadbolt Breaks‘ In the Glow of the Vatican Fire, which is the long-running Connecticut malevolent doomers’ umpteenth album, running 63 minutes and eight songs. Some of those are longer pieces, like opener “The Scythe Will Come” (12:24), “The Chaos of Water” (14:02), “The Deep Well” (10:42) and “Red Sparrow” (10:57), but interspersed with these are a succession of shorter tracks, and the breakdown between them isn’t just that the short songs are fast and the long songs are slow. Certainly the ripping early portions (and the later, more minimalist spaciousness) of “The Chaos of Water” argue against this, and the dynamic turns out to be correspondingly complex to suit the abiding murk of mood, as founding guitarist/vocalist Aaron Lewis and co-singer Cherilynne provide foreboding croon to suit the lo-fi, creeping, distorted terrors of the music surrounding. This is When the Deadbolt Breaks absolutely in their element; bleak, churn-chaotic, expressive, immersive. They’re able to put you where they want you whether you want to go or not.
It may have sat on the shelf for two years since recording finished in 2023, but don’t worry, it’s still from the future. Laughter is the second-on-Sulatron full-length from Italian experimentalists A/lpaca, and it sees them push deeper into electronic elements and ambiences, keeping some of the krautrock elements of their 2021’s Make it Better, but with songs that are shorter on average and that stand ready to convey a sense of quirk in the keyboard elements or the Devo verses of the title-track, which isn’t without its aspect of shove. Does it get weird? You bet your ass it does. “Bianca’s Videotape,” “Who’s in Love Daddy?,” the post-punk synthery meeting doomed fuzz on “Empty Chairs,” the list goes on. Actually, it’s just the tracklisting and it’s all pretty freaked out, so as long as you know going in that the band are working from their own standard of weirdoism, making the jump into the keyboardy gorge of “Kyrie” or the new wave-y “Don’t Talk” should be no problem. If you heard the last record, yeah, this is different. Seems like the next one will probably be different again too. Not everyone wants to do the same thing all the time.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 6th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
A lot happening in the Fuzz Sagrado camp at just this moment. Last week, the Brazil-based solo-outfit of Samsara Blues Experiment founding guitarist/vocalist Chris Peters, both released a comp of the project’s first two EPs, Strange Daze, and were announced as appearing in the US in early 2026 at Planet Desert Rock Weekend VI in Las Vegas. By my count, that’s Peters‘ first time in the States with a band since SBE came over in 2015 for a Psycho California and Austin Psych Fest. Fuzz Sagrado will likely have other shows around the fest appearance, as some international acts did for PDRW this year, and they’ve newly unveiled the lineup that will be playing any and all of the band’s gigs to be announced.
Members of Blackbox Massacre, Coogans Bluff, a four-piece incarnation — back to Samsara Blues Experiment‘s roots in that regard — and an intended mix of new material from the new band and some classics from the old, all make for an enticing proposition when it comes to ‘Fuzz Sagrado live.’ Of course, Samsara Blues Experiment was put to rest with 2020’s End of Forever (review here), though the years since have seen a few posthumous outings of live sets, demos and such. To wit, the latest collection under the band’s name, Time Wizardry, brings together material from their earliest self-released stuff and some others along the way. It also came out this past Friday, concurrent to Fuzz Sagrado‘s Strange Daze.
So, Samsara Blues Experiment, though not a band anymore, are still a presence here, and Fuzz Sagrado, with Peters steering, plans to acknowledge the legacy by playing those songs. That feels right, to be honest. Clearly there’s been some dispute about the name — Peters says below he can’t use the other one, and I have to think if he could he would if only for the ease of branding — but, frankly, Peters should be playing those songs if that’s what he wants to do. I’m not going to discount any former member of his band’s impact on that band, but nobody here is claiming to be that band, so it shouldn’t be a problem.
But, also being honest, if Peters had gotten to call this band a new version of Samsara Blues Experiment, I’d be looking forward to that too. Turns out the music is good whatever you want to call it. Don’t tell that to genre heads like me though.
From social media:
FUZZ SAGRADO – NEW LIVE BAND 💥
Simply because I can’t contain my own excitement any longer. The new FUZZ SAGRADO live band consists of a number of legends from the German Heavy Psych – scene …
With me are Steffen (formerly of SPACESHIP LANDING on additional guitar duty), Charlie (also drummer of COOGANS BLUFF) and young gun Raphael (bass). All three also play as BLACKBOX MASSACRE (new album coming soon).
On a personal note: We already had this band in 2023 – but the last few years have brought some confusion. A proposed former band name can and will no longer be used. We will continue as FUZZ SAGRADO for now, being very aware of my own musical heritage and the wishes of so many fans.
In short, among new songs we will continue to play a few SBE songs too. In a way, this is the long awaited sequel and we are all very excited about it!
Thank you to ALL former band mates. I am not perfect, will never be – I hope one day everyone can understand it all from a relaxed perspective.
Thank you Lorrayne Castro for the picture, and good vibes!
And this is the point: We all deserve good things!
Posted in Reviews on April 14th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Welcome back to the Quarterly Review. Just because it’s a new week, I’ll say again the idea here is to review 10 releases — albums, EPs, the odd single if I feel like there’s enough to say about it — per day across some span of days. In this case, the Quarterly Review goes to 70. Across Monday to Friday last week, 50 new, older and upcoming offerings were written up and today and tomorrow it’s time to wrap it up. I fly out to Roadburn on Wednesday.
Accordingly, you’ll pardon if I spare the “how was your weekend?”-type filler and jump right in instead. Let’s. Go.
Quarterly Review #51-60:
Megaritual, Recursion
Last heard from in 2017, exploratory Australian psychedelic solo outfit Megaritual — most often styled all-lowercase: megaritual — returns with the aptly-titled Recursion, as multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and producer Dale Paul Walker taps expansive kosmiche progressivisim across nine songs and 42 minutes. If you told me these tracks, which feel streamlined compared to the longer-form work Walker was doing circa 2017, had been coming together since that time, the depth of the arrangements and the way each cut comes across as its own microcosm within the greater whole bears that out, be it the winding wisps of “Tres Son Multitud” or the swaying echoey bliss of later highlight “The Jantar Mantar.” I don’t know if that’s the case or it isn’t, but the color in this music alone makes it one of the best records I’ve heard in 2025, and I can’t get away from thinking some of the melody and progressive aspects comes from metal like Opeth, so yeah. Basically, it’s all over the place and wonderful. Thanks for reading.
Slab-heavy riffage from Andalusian three-piece Red Eye‘s III spreads itself across a densely-weighted but not monolithic — or at least not un-dynamic or unipolar — eight songs, as a switch between shouted and more melodic vocals early on between the Ufomammut-esque “Sagittarius A*” (named for the black hole at the Milky Way’s center; it follows the subdued intro “Ad Infinitum”) and the subsequent, doomier in a Pallbearer kind of way “See Yourself” gives listeners an almost-immediate sense of variety around the wall-o’-tone lumbering fuzz that unites those two and so much else throughout as guitarist/vocalist Antonio Campos del Pino, bassist/synthesist Antonio Pérez Muriel and drummer/synthesist/vocalist Pablo Terol Rosado veer between more and less aggressive takes. “No Morning After” renews the bash, “Beyond” makes it a party, “Stardust” uses that momentum to push the tempo faster and “Nebula” makes it swing into the Great Far Out before “The Nine Billion Names of God” builds to a flattening crescendo. Intricate in terms of style and crushingly heavy. Easy win.
Even by the respective standards of the bands involved — and considering the output of Detroit grit-doomers Temple of the Fuzz Witch and Montreal sans-guitar scathemakers Seum to this point, it’s a significant standard — Conjuring is some nasty, nasty shit. Presented through Black Throne Productions with manic hand-drawn cover art that reminds of Midwestern pillsludge circa 2008, the 27-minute split outing brings three songs from each outfit, and maybe it’s the complementary way Seum‘s low-end picks up from the grueling, chugging, and finally rolling fare Temple of the Fuzz Witch provide, but both acts come through as resoundingly, willfully, righteously bleak. You know how at the dentist they let you pick your flavor of toothpaste? This is like that except surprise you just had all your teeth pulled. It only took half-an-hour, but now you need to figure out what to do with your dazed, gummy self. Good luck.
Uncle Woe offer two eight-minutes-each tracks on the new EP, Folded in Smoke, Soaked and Bound, as project founder/spearhead Rain Fice (in Canada) and collaborator Marc Whitworth (in Australia) bring atmosphere and grace to underlying plod. It’s something of a surprise when “One is Obliged” relatively-speaking solidifies at about five minutes in around vocal soar, which is an effective, emotional moment in a song that seems to be mourning even as it grows broader moving toward the finish. “Of Symptoms and Waves” impresses vocally as well, deep in the mix as the vocals are, but feels more about the darker prog metal-type stretch that unfolds from about the halfway point on. But what’s important to note is these plays on genre are filtered through Uncle Woe‘s own aesthetic vision, and so this short outing becomes both lush and raw for the obvious attention to its sonic details and the overarching melancholy that belongs so much to the band. A well-appreciated check-in.
I would not attempt to nor belittle the band’s accomplishments by trying to summarize 35 years of Negative Reaction in this space, but as the West-Virginia-by-way-of-Long-Island unit led by its inimitable principal/guitarist/vocalist Ken-E Bones mark this significant occasion, the collection Salvaged From the Kuiper Belt provides 16 decades-spanning tracks covering sundry eras of the band. I haven’t seen a liner, so I don’t even know the number of players involved here, but Bones has been through several incarnations of Negative Reaction at this point, so when “NOD” steamrollers and later pieces like “Mercy Killing” and the four-second highlight “Stick o’ Gum” are more barebones in their punksludge, it makes sense in context. Punk, psych, sludge, raw vocals — these have always been key ingredients to Negative Reaction‘s often-harsh take, and it’s a blend that’s let them endure beyond trend, reason, or human kindness. Congrats to Bones, whom I consider a friend of long-standing, and many more.
Given how many different looks Fomies present on Liminality, and how movement-based so much of it is between the uptempo proto-punk, krauty shuffle and general sense of push — not out of line with the psych of the modern age, but too weird not to be its own spin — it feels like mellower opener “The Onion Man” is its own thing at the front of the album; a mellower lead-in to put the listener in a more preferred mindset (on the band’s part) to enjoy what follows. This is artfully done, as is the aforementioned “what follows,” as the band thoughtfully boogie through the three-part “Colossus,” find a moment for frenetic fuzz via Gary Numan in “Neon Gloom,” make even the two-and-a-half-minute “Happiness Relay” a show of chemistry, finish in a like-minded tonal fullness with “Upheaval,” and engage with decades of motorik worship without losing themselves more than they want to in the going. At 51 minutes, Liminality is somewhat heady, but that’s inherent to the style as well, and the band’s penchant for adventure comes through smoothly alongside all that super-dug-in vibing.
Classic Boston DGAF heavy riff rock, and if you hear a good dose of hardcore in amid the swing and shove, The Long Wait‘s self-titled debut comes by it honestly. The five-piece of vocalist Glen Dudley (Wrecking Crew), guitarist Darryl Shepard (Kind, Milligram, Slapshot, etc.) and Steven Risteen (Slapshot), bassist Jaime Sciarappa (SSD, Slapshot) and drummer Mark McKay (Slapshot) plunder through nine cuts. Certainly elbows are out, but considering where they’re coming from, it’s not an overly aggressive sound. Hardcore dudes have been veering into heavier riffing à la “Uncharted Greed” or “FWM” for the last 35 years, so The Long Wait feels well in line with a tradition that some of these guys helped set in the first place as it revisits songs from 2023’s demo and expands outward from there, searching for and beginning to find its own interpretation of what “bullshit-free” means in terms of the band’s craft.
Since 2020, Miskolc, Hungary-based solo-band Babona have released three EPs, a couple singles and now two full-lengths, with Az Utolsó Választás Kora (‘the age of the last choice’) as the second album from multi-instrumentalist and producer Tamás Rózsa. Those with an appreciation for the particular kind of crunch Eastern Europe brings to heavy rock will find the eight-tracker a delight in the start-stops of “2/3” and the vocals-are-sampled-crying-and-laughing “A Rendszer Rothadása,” which digs into its central riff with suitable verve. The later “Kormányalakítás” hints at psych — something Rózsa has fostered going back to 2020 with Ottlakán, from whom Babona seems to have sprung — and the album isn’t without humor as a crowing rooster snaps the listener out of that song’s trance in the transition to the ambient post-rocker “Frakció,” but when it’s time to get to business, Rózsa caps with “Pártatlan” as a grim, sludgy lumber that holds its foreboding mood even into its own comedown. That’s not the first time Az Utolsó Választás Kora proves deceptively immersive.
Sit tight, because it’s about to get pretty genre-nerdy. Sutras, the Washington D.C.-based two-piece of Tristan Welch (vocals/guitar) and Frederick Ashworth (drums/bass) play music that is psychedelic and heavy, but with a strong foundation specifically in post-hardcore. Their term for it is ‘Dharma punk,’ which is enough to make me wonder if there’s a krishna-core root here, but either way, The Crisis of Existence feels both emotive and ethereal as the duo bring together airy guitar and rhythmic urgency, raw, sometimes gang-shouted vocals, and arrangements that feel fluid whether it’s the rushing post-punk (yeah, I know: so much ‘post-‘; I told you to sit tight) of “Racing Sundown” or the denser push of “Bloom Watch” or the swing brought to that march in “Working Class Devotion.” They cap the 19-minute EP with posi-vibes in “Being Nobody, Going Nowhere,” which provides one last chance for their head-scratching-on-paper sound to absolutely, totally work, as it does. The real triumph here, fists in the air and all that, is that it sounds organic.
The story of Sleeping in Samsara‘s self-titled two-songer as per Christian Peters (formerly Samsara Blues Experiment, currently Fuzz Sagrado, etc.) is that in 2023, My Sleeping Karma drummer Steffen Weigand reached out with an interest in collaborating as part of a solo-project Weigand was developing. Weigandpassed away in June 2023, and “Twilight Again” and “Downtime,” with underlying basic tracks from Weigand in drums, keys/synth, and rhythm guitar, and Peters adding lead guitar, vocals, bass in the latter, the songs are unsurprising in their cohesion only when one considers the fluidity wrought by both parties in their respective outfits, and though the loss of Weigand of course lends a bittersweet cast, that this material has seen the light of day at all feels like a tribute to his life and cretive drive.
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 5th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Likewise unexpected and bittersweet comes this two songer from the remote collaborative project Sleeping in Samsara, issued by guitarist/vocalist Christian Peters — Fuzz Sagrado, ex-Samsara Blues Experiment; he’s the ‘Samsara’ — and Steffen Weigand, the drummer of My Sleeping Karma, who passed away in June 2023. To hear Peters tell it, the project was Weigand‘s to start with, as were the foundations of the songs, which were eventually fleshed out with vocals, bass and lead guitar over Weigand‘s drums, synth and rhythm guitar.
“Downtime” is mellower and driftier than “Twilight Again,” and has some classic ’70s soul later on. The lead cut is longer and more active, though, with a janga-janga riff obscured in a not-too-busy mix, really pulling from both sides. They could’ve gotten a record’s worth of material out of this approach, no problem, so it’s something of a “what could’ve been” kind of release, but as a listener it’s fortunate these two songs are out there at all — let alone as a free download, which it is, by the way.
I’ll leave it to Peters to tell the rest. This is a thing that just happened today:
New and special release …
At the beginning of April 2023, Steffen Weigand contacted me via email, quite unexpectedly. We had known each other for about twenty years, but were not very close until then. Our previous bands The Great Escape and Terraplane played a few concerts together, and later we often shared stages with My Sleeping Karma and SBE. The Great Escape left quite an impression on us back then, as we were about ten years younger and much less experienced musicians, and I always respected the great rhythm work of Steffen and Matte Vandeven on bass.
When Steffen contacted me, we talked about everything really, and it was like really getting to know each other after such a long time. His illness was also a topic, and I remember how I tried to give him strength with anecdotes from my life, or experiences from the past. I lost my mother at a very young age and had seen a lot of what cancer can do. At some point Steffen mentioned working on a solo project, but he also wanted to involve other musicians. He offered me two of his songs to participate where he had already worked out quite a lot. Besides his drumming there were already melodies, song-structures, etc. What was missing, however, was perhaps a bit more character (especially lyrics) and that’s where I came in.
He was a bit shy and didn’t seem completely convinced with these tracks yet, but I immediately recognized the potential and delivered lyrics and guitar solos in no time. In about a week I had both ready, written and recorded, much to Steffen’s amazement. We were both euphoric!! In my naivety I thought that this collaboration would be so positive that it could help to heal him. Then it was time to mix, and I asked Steffen if it was okay if I published my own mixes. He allowed me to do that in one of his last emails, and then I waited about three weeks for further news from him. On the morning of June 13, 2023, however, I had to read the terrible news and was paralyzed for weeks. I couldn’t believe it.
What I also have to say is that this short collaboration was the first time I had seriously worked with another musician since the end of SBE in 2020. For this reason alone, these songs are very important to me, as difficult as it was to finish them for a long time. I also have a lot of personal connections to both. It’s a real collaboration between Steffen’s music and my lyrics and guitar solos, which I’m particularly proud of, especially in the first track. Interestingly, these were the very first rough takes, but I never captured that spirit again, so I left it at these relatively raw recordings.
So I will release the songs as they are now… as a gift to the fans of both our bands. Unfortunately, that’s all that will remain from this project.
I would like to dedicate these two tracks to Steffen and also to my mother-in-law (“mama dois”) Imaculada Silva Castro, who also died of cancer last year. She listened to “Downtime” during one of her previous visits to our house and she liked it very much. I will never forget that.
Music by Steffen Weigand. Lyrics by Christian Peters. Steffen’s parts recorded in Aschaffenburg. Chris parts recorded in Brasil, May 2023. Mix and master by Chris Peters, Brasil February 2025.
Sleeping in Samsara: Steffen Weigand – drums, keyboards and synthesizers, rhythm guitar in track 1 Christian Peters – vocals, lead guitar, bass guitar in track 2
Posted in Reviews on December 10th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Day two. I mean, it’s work in the sense of it takes effort to put together these posts and structure thoughts into hopefully somewhat coherent sentences, etc., but at this point the Quarterly Review is a pretty important tool for me to hear records that, generally once I hear them, I feel like I want to be covering. Sometimes the intensity of that feeling varies; there are things that don’t “fit” with the stoner-and-doom adjacent foundations of what this site does, but the format allows for that flexibility as well, and I credit the QR for helping broaden the perspective of the site as a whole and making me push my own boundaries.
Admittedly, the trade for covering so much — 50 records in five days is a lot, if it needs to be said — is that I can’t always get as deep as I otherwise might, but as I’ve said before, the fact is that I’m one person, and if writing about a lot of this stuff didn’t happen in this way, it probably wouldn’t happen at all. It’s still never going to be everything I want to cover, but doing it this was is often more suited to the subject at hand than a longform writeup would be, it gives me a chance to explore, it’s a consistently challenging undertaking on multiple levels, and it’s satisfying like little else around here when you’re on the other end of one and immediately start building the next.
I’m not entirely sure why I felt the need right there to justify the existence of the entire Quarterly Review thing as a part of this site. If you care, thanks. If not, I can only call that understandable. Thanks for seeing this sentence and whatever you came here for anyway.
We march on, into day two.
Quarterly Review #11-20:
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Fuzz Sagrado, Cold Remains
As Christian Peters has gradually embraced his inner rocker over the last couple years with Fuzz Sagrado, rediscovering the sacredness of tone, if you will, and using an expanded palette of synth and keyboards to build on the project’s beginnings while tying it together with his prior outfit, the heavy psych rockers Samsara Blues Experiment, it’s fascinating how much the respective personalities of the two acts still shine through. On Cold Remains, along with the new song “Snowchild” that leads off, Peters showcases three until-now lost pieces that have their origins in his former band but were never released: “Cold Remains,” a grim-lyric title-track given due heft of low end, the short “Morphine Prayer,” which intertwines acoustic strum and electric leads and drops the drums for an even more open feel, and “Neurotic Nirvana,” which clues you into the grunge of its central riff in the title but stretches outward from there across six minutes with particular bliss in the solo for a hopeful second half. It sounds like reconciliation, and in that, it fits well with the ongoing growth of Peters‘ Brazilian period.
From the punkish opening shove of “Rat Race” and “Manic Street Ballet,” 24/7 Diva Heaven‘s second full-length for Noisolution, Gift, unfolds a style that’s both raw and dense enough to carry a heavy groove, straightforward but nuanced in craft and threaded through with attitude born out of ’90s-era riot grrrl noise rock, but able to temper that somewhat with a mellower, more melodic rocker like “Crown of Creation” — some influence from The Donnas, maybe? — before the sharp-edged intensity of “Face Down” and the thrust of “These Days” precede the centerpiece title-track’s quiet-grunge trading off with careening, hard-hitting punk rock in a way that works. No worries, as “L.O.V.E. Forever” and the Godsleep-esque aggro-rocker “Suck it Up” follow at what might be the start of side B, with a highlight bassy groove in the QOTSA-meets-Nirvana catchy “Born to Get Bored,” staying in a heavy rock modus but nonetheless faster and kind of threatening to throw a punch in “Flawless Fool,” the piano-led “Nothing Lasts” capping with duly wistful minimalism. Killer. It’s 11 tracks in 32 minutes, wastes zero of its own or your time, and has something to say both in sound and its lyrics. This band should be on all the festivals.
Holy smokes that’s a vibe. Even at its most active — which would be “Grey Smoke,” if you want specifics — the heavygaze-adjacent psych blues rock of Germany’s Mount Hush holds an encompassing sense of atmosphere, and while cuts like “All I See” or the smokey “Blues for the Dead” can trace some of what they do to the likes of All Them Witches, Queens of the Stone Age, Colour Haze, and so on, the material is inventive, unrushed and explores outward from a solid foundation of craft, leaning perhaps deepest into psych on “Celestial Eyes,” featuring a classy bit of flute in the penultimate “54” and going big in melody and tone for the finishing move in “Blood Red Sky,” working in Eastern scales for a meditative feel while staying loyal to its own distortion and post-Uncle Acid swing; one more part of the not-slapdash pastiche Mount Hush build as they take a marked breadth of influence, melt it down and shape something of their own from it. Gorgeously. Flowing with grace at no expense to the impact, II is a striking and forward looking point of arrival waiting to be caught up to. This is a band I’m glad to have heard, even before you get to the RPG.
Wherever you’re headed, Luna Sol are ready to meet you there. David Angstrom — also of Hermano — leads the bluesy heavy rockers with a slew of choice, family-style cuts. Granted, with 15 tracks and more than 50 minutes of material, there’s room to move around a bit, but whether it’s the Leaf Hound cover “Freelance Fiend” or Mountain‘s “Never in My Life” or the delay-laced verses of not-a-cover “Surrounded by Thieves” later on, Vita Mors offers both scope and craft around the heavy blues framework. That can get a little meaner tonally in “Watch Our Skeletons Die” or fuzzily back a bouncing groove on “I’ll Be Your One,” and the songs will remain united through Angstrom‘s vocals and the trust the band as a whole earn through the strength of their songwriting. It’s not a minor undertaking in an age of short attention spans, but given their time, Vita Mors‘ songs can very easily start to live with you.
Taut in their two-guitar drive and going big on hooks and harmonies alike, Ian Blurton’s Future Now‘s second album, Crimes of the City, is a heart-on-sleeve heavy rocker brimming with life, purpose in its construction, and a sense of celebrating the riffs and metals of old. With Blurton himself on guitar/vocals, guitarist Aaron Goldstein, bassist Anna Ruddick and drummer Glenn Milchem — Gregory MacDonald is also listed as ‘The Goose’ in the credits — the four-piece don’t touch the four-minute mark once in Crimes of the City‘s succession of 10 bangers, despite coming close in “Cast Away the Stones,” and as one could only expect, the songs are air tight in structure and delivery. And just when it seems to run the risk of being too perfect, Blurton drops the layers for the verse of “Nocturnal Transmissions” or exudes sheer delight in the ’80s metal of “Seventh Sin of Devotion,” or the whole band rides a groove like “School’s In,” and it’s all so open, welcoming and vibrant that it can’t help but be human in the end. Killer at any volume, but more don’t hurt.
Prone to a psych-garage freakout, willfully jagged on the swaying “Two Birds,” indie drifting to the Riff-Filled Land™ and the neighboring Epicsolosburg on “Ten Lies” and righteously horny/not creepy on “Woman,” Mirage is the first full-length from South Africa’s Moskitos, and while it has some element of sneer as a facet inherited from in-genre influences, “Ryder” still feels sincere as it departs what Moe called a “carhole” one time in favor of a more open landscape. There’s intricacy in the rhythm of “Believer” if you want it, and the set-up-for-contrast relative patience of opener “Umbra,” which, yeah, still twists the cosmos a bit by the time it’s done, is a highlight as well, and “Trigger” shifts between quiet parts and putting a shuffle beneath its melodic ending, but some of the most effective moments here are more about the soul behind it all. The feel is loose, but they’re not without a plan, and while there’s no shortage of haze between here and there, it will be interesting to hear how Moskitos build on ideas like the expansive-but-not-unpoppy-till-the-payoff “Ten Lies” and what new ground they find as they move forward.
This Halloween-issued sequel to Deer Lord‘s early-2023 EP, Dark Matter (review here) unfolds across six tracks broken into two sides of three each. Each begins with its longest track (immediate points), and uses the spaciousness cast in “Dark Matter” (8:11) and “Intelligent Life” (7:24), respectively, to bolster the atmosphere of the rockers that follow, “Faster” and “Dogma” on side A, the swinging cosmic blowout “Blade” and closer “Pay” on side B. If that makes it sound somewhat orderly, this symmetry is contrasted by the loosen-your-head psychedelic drive of “Dogma” or “Faster” sounding like Clutch as beamed from Voyager 1 hitting a gravity wave on the way. The now-trio of guitarist/vocalist Sheafer McOmber, drummer Ryan Alderman and bassist Jared Marill hit on a sonic niche of earthy fuzz meeting with spaced plasmatic volatility. It’s big and it moves! It would be more of a surprise if they weren’t signed by somebody or other by the time they get around to their debut full-length.
Following up on their 2023 self-titled-if-you-go-by-apparent-pronunciation LP, Tiefenrausch, Book of Circles sees instrumentalist three-piece TFNRSH make a striking entry into the admittedly crowded German and greater European sans-vocal heavy psychedelic underground. Standing out through a proggy use of synth, the second album offers “Zorn” in the place the first put “Slift,” and while it’s true the band remain not without influence from the modern European heavy psychedelic ouevre — some of the twists in “Zemestån” feel Elderian, as an example — they’re distinguished not only by how heavy “Zorn” eventually gets or “WRZL” is at its outset, or by Julius Watzl‘s stellar hold-it-together drumming amid the currents of synth being run by both guitarist Sasan Bahreini and bassist Stefan Wettengl there, but also by the float and patience of “Ammoglÿd” — imagine a mid-period Anathema intro but it unfolds as the whole song and it works — which only underscores the progressive mindset underlying all of this material. The kind of record that won’t hit with everybody but will hit with some very, very hard.
While based largely in doom, Altareth‘s Passage: The Welfare Sessions absolutely soars in the solo of its centerpiece track “Singapore,” picking up from a mellower kind of lumbering brood and answering the lift of its middle with a push to the finish. Passage: The Welfare Sessions may be worth the asking price for that alone, but that hardly means that’s all the Gothenburg five-piece have on offer, when there’s acoustic to layer into the subsequent “Pilgrim” or the blend of murk and impact in the rolling leadoff “Passage,” the way “The Stars” holds to its crawling tempo but offers a sense of payoff anyhow, or the psychedelia that runs alongside the march of “Recluse,” which rounds out the reportedly live-recorded proceedings with emotive melancholy and a final stretch of quiet, sample-topped guitar. Produced by Kalle Lilja and Per Stålberg at Welfare Sounds, hence the title, Passage: The Welfare Sessions speaks even more boldly to the band’s potential than their 2021 debut, Blood (review here). Don’t be fooled by smooth transitions and a subtlety of scope. Altareth are onto something.
If you find yourself wanting to applaud in the couple seconds of silence between “Bat Trip” and the pointedly doomjazzy “Piosenka o przemijaniu,” at least know that you’re not alone. Antropocen is the debut full-length from Kraków, Poland’s Jarzma, and with it, the band invent a style of playing that is immediately their own, basing their arrangements around nyckelharpha and imaginative percussion and drumming either folkish or not, voices coming and going through songs that don’t just sound the way they do as a novelty, but break their own rules from the very outset in the poppish dance hook of opener “Big Heat.” It’s brazen, it’s masterful in terms of performance, and it’s made from a place of wanting to add to the scope of the genre that birthed it (doom/heavy) and represent something about its place to those outside. I guess you could call it experimental in terms of sound, but that’s not to say there’s anything haphazard about it. Given the range of what they’re doing — the band is comprised of Piotr Aleksander Nowak on the aforementioned nyckelharpa and drummer/vocalist Katarzyna Bobik, and there are guests throughout — it’s kind of astonishing for how clearly the plan comes across, actually. When you want something in heavy music you’ve never heard before, Jarzmo will be waiting.
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 18th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
The naked exploration happening in Christian Peters‘ work post-Samsara Blues Experiment continues as Fuzz Sagrado in just a few weeks unveils the new three-songer EP Cold Remains. Opener “Snowchild” is a four-minute fuzz sprawl that digs into some meatier-toned chug as it moves through its verse, while the Mellotron of “Morphine Prayer,” the title-track takes on a darker lyric with a steady psychedelic flow of riff pushing it forward, and as the title might hint, the closing “Neurotic Nirvana” has some element of grunge in its initial progression, but don’t be fooled by the misdirect as it spreads itself across a six-minute psychscape, way more about fluidity than making punk despondent.
The abiding feel of the 19-minute offering is that Peters is continuing the journey he’s been on certainly since relocating from Germany to Brazil, but especially since winding down Samsara Blues Experiment with a final album and taking on Fuzz Sagrado as a main project alongside his Surya Kris Peters solo work. Initially synth-based, the material has grown steadily more rocking as he’s gone on, and now with vocals, the songs feel born out of his particular vision of heavy psychedelic rock, but at the same time, they’re shorter individually, tighter in terms of structure, and the synth hasn’t gone away. What you get is a mix of new and familiar ideas emblematic of how Peters has progressed all along, pushing toward a moving-target expressive ideal. One way or the other, he can be safely relied upon to get the point across, and he does once again on Cold Remains.
Cover and info follow, courtesy of the PR wire. No audio yet, but keep an eye on socials:
So this was a slightly more difficult task for me, as all these four songs deal with heavier themes. The only new song here is “Snowchild”, which I created in just a few days in early 2024 and experimented with a few different fuzz sounds to give the song a bit of a 60s Psychedelic Rock-feeling perhaps.
“Cold Remains” is a leftover from Samsara Blues Experiment’s “End Of Forever”-period, but I’ve changed a few things here and of course don’t claim to be replacing the two former rhythm guys. But I like this new version better than what we played in the band. It’s simpler, more to the point. And no, I’m not suicidal.
“Morphine Prayer” is a very old track from 2011 (SBE “Revelation & Mystery”-period) that I never recorded well until now. All I had before was a dark black and white video recording of me playing this song in my Berlin apartment. It’s inspired from a hospital stay in Holland when SBE were supposed to play Roadburn Festival, and I suddenly fell sick and spent a painful night under strong medication.
“Neurotic Nirvana” was one of the very first ideas for Fuzz Sagrado in 2021 and somehow I haven’t managed to finish it earlier. I tried to play this in one of the recent band settings, but somehow I felt like I had to finish it myself. Like all of these four tracks it’s also a kind of goodbye to former “friends”. I try not to be bitter about any of it …
to be released December 2, 2024
All music & lyrics written, played, recorded, mixed & mastered by Christian Peters, Passos Brasil 2024.
Brazilian proto-heavy specialists Caixão are set to digitally release their second album, Entre o Velho Tempo Futuro, on Monday, Sept. 30 (vinyl in November), through Glory or Death Records. Their debut, Da Porta ao Sumiço, arrived on Halloween 2020 — spooky indeed — and as obscure-horror buffs can probably tell you, their moniker translates to English as “coffin.” A straightforward, evocative object, a memento mori and something that feels ancient and steeped in tradition could hardly be more fitting to the band’s sound, which draws in vintage style from the heavy ’70s and rawer modern garage doom even unto the application of the fadeout at the end of “Bloodstains.”
The unpolished 1960s-born sound of the organ in opener “Fungos,” “Luz Estranha em Quixadá” and the later “Talvez” can tell you a lot about where they’re coming from, but across the span, Entre o Velho Tempo Futuro plays less for volume than to nestle into its own groove, mellow but weighted in the manner of your grandfather’s heavy rock. Caixão don’t sound entirely like they’re from the 1970s, and I don’t think they want to, but that influence and production style is at the core of the nine-song/24-minute album — 28 minutes if you add the LP bonus track “Candelabro,” which becomes the longest inclusion at 4:08, beating “Aniversário dos Mágicos” by eight seconds — which benefits from its lo-fi character in letting each song add to the intricacy of the whole.
Arrangement shifts like the aforementioned organ/keys in “Fungos,” “Luz Estranha em Quixadá” and “Talvez” or the acoustic guitar that comes on to lead the way through the sweetly pastoral instrumental “Mar Ciano” are part of that, but Caixão are fluid through changes in methodology as well. To wit, “Fungos,” “Luz Estranha em Quixadá” the prog-swaying “Introspecção,” “Mar Ciano,” the minute-long “Enquanto o Mundo Jorra Sangue,” which plays out like subdued Earth circa ’05 if they’d peppered the nod with doom-bluesy flourishes, and “Candelabro” are instrumental. “Aniversário dos Mágicos” and “Talvez” have lyrics in Portuguese, while “Bloodstains” and “In the Shadow of the Red Sun” are in English, so between these changes in approach and the corresponding malleability of Caixão‘s songwriting, they end up never quite doing the same thing twice.
Even as “In the Shadow of the Red Sun” and “Aniversário dos Mágicos” play out in succession — both chug-happy rockers tense in their build around classic swing, the latter dipping just a bit toward Uncle Acid in its effects-laced vocal presentation — the language swap provides an opportunity to likewise adjust the patterning of the lines and the rhythms being accented. One doesn’t generally think of a barebones-produced, stripped-down take on ’70s craft as something particularly full or rich — often a low recording volume in comparison to “modern” productions and empty space in the mix is part of the cultish appeal, and I think that’s the case here too — but Entre o Velho Tempo Futuro delivers a satisfying progression amid this variety. The production becomes a unifying factor as much as a choice suited to aesthetic or genre trope.
So not only does Entre o Velho Tempo Futuro not dwell in any single place for too long — or any range of places; again, the record’s under a half-hour — but it keeps an individualized sensibility as it purposefully basks in familiar ideas and draws itself together around disparate intentions. It feels led by the songs, as though founding principal Italo Rodrigo has given the material time to flesh itself out and become what it wants/needs to be, but in part because of the brevity and lack of self-indulgence all around, it avoids the trap of getting lost in any part or song, creating a definitive full-album flow, just in condensed form.
Take the Monday-instead-of-Friday release as a delightful bucking of convention in keeping with the cleverness of the songwriting and execution throughout Entre o Velho Tempo Futuro, and please enjoy the full album stream below, followed by more info from the PR wire:
Caixão, Entre o Velho Tempo Futuro album premiere
Caixão is a Brazilian band formed in 2018 by Italo Rodrigo, who is well-known for playing drums in Echoes of Death and Damn Youth, both Death and Thrash Metal bands based in Ceará.
Describing Caixão’s music in terms of genre is challenging, but their roots are in Proto Metal, combined with influences from Psychedelic and Progressive music of the 1970s.
After various line-up changes and reincarnations, including releases of Splits, EPs, and Singles, they released their first full-length album, “Da Porta ao Sumiço,” in 2020. This album was available in both digital and tape formats and was the first to feature songs with vocals.
The band’s music includes a mix of Portuguese and English lyrics, as well as instrumental tracks.
Entre o Velho Tempo Futuro, the band’s second album, is an invitation to dive into the universe they’ve created. The experience fluctuates between intoxicating shades of green and blue, sometimes intense, sometimes calm, crafting vast soundscapes that pull the listener into another world.
Ítalo says, “This work is rawer, more direct, and less cryptic sonically than its predecessor. We love progressive rock, psychedelic music, and, above all, timeless music from past decades. We try to express our influences, capturing the rawness of the 60s and the heaviness of the 70s, but in a way that remains uniquely ours and carries our own identity.”
The new album features nine tracks, plus a bonus track, Candelabro, previously released as part of a split with the band Abismo.
1. Fungos 02:51 2. Bloodstains 03:24 3. Luz Estranha em Quixadá 02:25 4. Introspecção 01:30 5. In The Shadow of the Red Sun 03:29 6. Aniversário dos Mágicos 04:00 7. Mar ciano 02:25 8. Talvez 03:44 9. Enquanto o Mundo Jorra Sangue 01:01 10. Candelabro (Bonus/Only on Vinyl) 04:08
