It’s a new day for Brazil’s Black Feather Fuzz, who trace their origins back 15 years to 2011 and tomorrow release their five-song EP, Fuzzy Catharsis, as their first outing under a new name. It’s pretty close to their own moniker, which was Black Feather Klan — and surely the cultural connotations of starting ‘clan’ with a ‘k’ are different in Brazil than in the very-white-supremacist US, but still, the change makes sense — but distant enough to avoid the racist-shitbag association altogether as they reach out toward an international audience.
The 23 minutes of marterial across Fuzzy Catharsis indeed has some hair on its tone, but it’s perhaps less just about fuzz than one might think given the title and the band’s moniker. Guitarist Pedro “Zé” Barros harnesses a crunch in “Less Than a Shadow” that establishes the heft toward which bassist Rubens “Grilão” da Trindade also adds, nestling into a start-stop groove near the opener’s midpoint as a setup for the slow-wah solo layered in while drummer Thiago Fernandes holds the line on groove and vocalist Cristiano “Nibal” Soares takes the break he’s earned layering in clean and harsh vocals. The latter lend a spirit of confrontation to the outing, and that doesn’t go away as the procession leads into the death-growls of “Liar, Fire…” later on, and the release accordingly ends up somewhere between heavy rock and metal, not the first to ride the line but doing so with particular glee and the confidence of experience behind them.
That’s not to say there’s no chaos. Second cut “All the Space You Can Take,” in its very first few seconds before it smoothes out into the verse, teases the blowout with which it will end off, pushing into a dense and abrasive wash of overmodulated static distortion, still with the vocals cutting through, but sounding as though the instrumental levels were pushed to the top of the board. This is about as willfully unpleasant a Black Feather Fuzz get — and I’d argue that moment is more ‘extreme’ even than the aforementioned growls that follow shortly — but the thread of in-your-faceness continues into the patterned double-kick and concurrent shove of “Sentinel,” which is both the centerpiece and the shortest cut on the EP, resolving with a hardcore-born chug that’s righteously raw as it moves into its cold stop, letting the low-end rumble of “Liar, Fire…” lumber out the penultimate song’s threatening atmosphere even before the vocal gnash begins. It’s a standout moment, obviously, and feels a bit like what the the EP to that point has been driving toward — a crescendo of sorts — as the band employs doomly slowdowns and very, very heavy tones toward somewhat theatrical ends.
Does that make “Balm as Refuge” an afterthought? I’d argue not, since what the closer does in terms of reorienting the final impression Fuzzy Catharsis makes toward heavy rock and roll from the grimly crushing mire of the piece before it. That decision of how to leave off feels purposeful, and is executed successfully, the band’s maturity displayed in both the choice and the apparent ease with which they make it happen. It’s not finishing on a light note by any means, but the cleaner basstone in the second half break and the funky drums accompanying feel a good distance removed from the depths of “Liar, Fire…” and helps reaffirm how far Black Feather Fuzz have gone in a relatively short span of time. Going back to the start, it is a complement to “Less Than a Shadow,” but that song also does the work of setting up the scope of the EP, so there’s more happening than just that one conversation in the material.
FuzzyCatharsisoffers more of the latter than the former, but still feels like the work of a band who know what they’re about in terms of impact and aesthetic, and while definitely a studio work, it has enough energy to make one believe Black Feather Fuzz bring it live, which they probably do.
You’ll find the EP streaming in full on the player below, followed by more from the PR wire. Please enjoy:
Black Feather Fuzz, Fuzzy Catharsis EP
On August 21st, the Bruxa Verde has the great pleasure of streaming “Fuzzy Catharsis”, new EP from the stoner/doom metal quartet @blackfeatherfuzz
Originally Black Feather Klan (or just BFK) the group enters a new phase, with a new name but with the same quality and sound density as ever. Raw riffs, heavy psychedelic passages, viscerality and energy, that explode in their cathartic performances.
“Fuzzy Catharsis” brings five tracks from the band in a massive outfit, inspired by names like Red Fang, Clutch, Kyuss and Black Sabbath.
The production, recording and mixing work was done by Manfredo Savassi (also responsible for mastering) and the band itself, and the EP cover was taken care of Tim Tatoo Blackhorseman and Rogério Castro.
“Fuzzy Catharsis” tracklisting: 1. Less than a shadow 2. All the space you can take 3. Sentinel 4. Liar, fire 5. Balm as Refuge (Marla Calazans backing vocal)
Composição: todos Letra: Cristiano Soares
BANDA: Cristiano “Nibal” Soares – vocal Pedro “Zé” Barros – guitarra Rubens “Grilão” da Trindade – baixo Thiago Fernandes – bateria
Today we hit the halfway mark on this relative quickie Quarterly Review on the way to 50 releases covered by the end of the week. We’ll get there if past is prologue, and I’m having a good time so far digging in. Some of these are thrown together, some are more intentional. This just kind of came about as there was so much out there and so much more piling on. I’m glad it’s not a drag, is what I’m saying. Sometimes they’re fun but more of a challenge to get through. Shockingly, kickass records are a help.
Enjoy your day. I’m about to enjoy mine.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
-(16)-, Forgeries Vol. 1 1972-1984
True, 16, or, if you prefer their full name, -(16)-, are in a better position to take on covers than they’ve ever been in their career. They’re self-contained in terms of production with Al Shuster recording, and founding guitarist/now-vocalist Bobby Ferry has introduced more flexibility in their approach to sludge and punk and metal than they’ve had in their 35-year history. No, that’s not going to make Scorpions‘ “Can’t Get Enough,” which opens here, recognizable, but it is going to make it heavy. The key information on Forgeries Vol. 1 1972-1984 is of course the span of years, which means you get X, Rudimentary Peni, Fear, Agent Orange and Black Flag alongside Blue Öyster Cult, Black Sabbath, Bee Gees, KISS and UFO. And guess what? I think that’s pretty much how the band happened too. Also note this is Vol. 1. If it’s the ’80s next time, I hope they do Duran Duran, but if they went for a new LP of originals instead, I wouldn’t complain.
The four-song/34-minute The End is High from Polish instrumentalist bong-worship pioneers Belzebong opens with its longest track (immediate points) in the 10:54 “Bong and Chain,” which rolls straight-ahead enough until spacing out for a while and realigning around its chug. Riffs are the priority, always. This is the first studio outing from Belzebong since 2018’s Light the Dankness (review here), and “420 Horseman” lands heavy enough to make up for lost time, shortest of the bunch but heavy straight through. “Hempnotized” starts with a sample like the song before it, something about getting high, before unfurling its solo-topped lumber, and “Reefer Mortis” caps side B (the sample’s at the end this time) in riffversation with the opener. This isn’t the record you put on when you’re just getting stoned. It’s the one you put on when you’re already very, very high. It sounds like it was made with a similar mindset.
Born out of Blood Mist‘s debut EP (review here) in 2017, Baltimorean five-piece Haze Mage went on to develop a sound likewise ritualistic, heavy metal, and fun on their 2019 debut, Chronicles (review here), and seven years later, their second full-length, High Fantasy refines this sound while putting a cap on the band’s tenure. That’s right. They might not sound like it on the catchy “Evil Candle” or the Southern-style “Bat Brain” or the vocals-forward-till-it’s-time-to-rip “Ogre,” and so on, but Haze Mage are done as of the last sway into the crashout of “Sleepers,” and while that’s unfortunate since their songwriting had perspective and brought a needed lack of pretense to cultism, the good news is High Fantasy itself, which comes across like Ouija shenanigans across the nine included songs, and if it’s all we’re ever gonna get from them, I’m glad Haze Mage are going out on their own terms. Nothing else could be so appropriate.
Adventurous and sometimes genre-defiant punk is the root from which Fir Cone Children branches, and Alexander Leonard Donat (also Vlimmer, Blackjack Illuminist Records, etc.) revels in the shove of “Enhype!” as much as the post-everything gaze of “Severe Weather Warning” and the Sonic–Youth-but-make-it-sweet guitar-based noise of “(Hang in There) My Moon,” resolving ultimately in the sprint of “Beating the Real World” and the acoustic/electric blend of “Forever,” gleefully breaking its own rules as fast as it can make them as only a project about one’s kids could. Momentum stays on Donat‘s side through the more ethereal moments, and the playful bounce of “Vampire Queen” and the noisier “Time to Ask” convey movement while feeling dug into the process of their own creation, the album’s 32-minute course managing to be atmospheric despite the fact that it never stays in one place all that long. Aesthetic malleability is nothing new for Donat or Fir Cone Children, and it’s nice to be reminded that just because a song is 71 seconds long doesn’t mean it can’t have reach.
I’m not sure how many full-length releases Brazilian duo White Canyon and the 5th Dimension have to their name, but I think it’s more than might be indicated by the title IV. Nonetheless, if this eight-song/40-minute collection is their fourth proper studio LP, fair enough for the cohesion the band find in moody psychedelic melodymaking and, tonal and vocal warmth. “Silver Womb” at the outset tells the listener a lot of what they need to know about where the two-piece are headed — into a misty nighttime sprawl, it seems — and feels restrained even in its later breakout. This proves to foreshadow “Gravestone Lips” and pieces like the sax-laced “Alumia Part II,” which have a headphone-ready dynamic that encourages deeper, active hearing and draws one across the album’s span — effectively broken into two sides for vinyl, if that’s your preference — with a sense of overarching flow. The penultimate “River Song” and wobbly-guitar closer “Wicked Eyes” assure that in the final stretch, there’s no loss of ground covered from where the wailing lead of “Where the Dreamers Go” winds up. Immersion is key. So, immerse.
Presumably Belgium’s Onionfuzz are called what they are because the fuzz is like an onion: layered, as per Shrek. Fair enough for the intertwining of guitars and bass on their new live-captured seven-song collection Meeplek Naar Nemen (‘take a seat’), but if that would imply the band get up to some studio wizardry, however many waveforms lined up with guitars on every frequency from here to 35Hz. Not the case, even in the fuzz of “Ongebluste Kalk.” Onionfuzz are much more in-the-moment on these gathered improvisations, recorded at various shows throughout 2025 and immediately distinguished among the improv-based wing of the Euro heavy underground by the use of (I think also improvised) vocal lines underscoring the point that you, the audience, don’t know what’s coming next, whether it’s in the jazzy title-track or the more minimal meander “Answers to Question,” which for most of its 7:42 lets you hear the crowd chattering. That’s not the case as the subdued “The Bees Partout” answers back to the opener “The Bees Don’t Laugh When I Mow the Grass,” so I guess it depends on which night you catch their mellow fluidity. In any case, Meeplek Naar Nemen argues convincingly for doing so.
I’ve heard vaguely similar moody, heavy post-rock positioned as night-desert before, but Glisten Trick aren’t playing to genre so much as they’re serving the songs with their six-track Death Cult Rainbows EP, with airy guitar, subdued, breathy vocals, deceptively weighted low end textures and straightforward but not boring rhythm. “Dirge From Above” dares toward psychedelic fuzz, but the title-cut’s electronic beat feels indie-fed, and though “Deep Cut” is clever for the sonar sounds included and manipulated within its five-minute span, the lightly meandering guitar, emotive delivery and subtly building procession is more a highlight precisely for how to-style it isn’t. I’m not sure where Glisten Trick are in terms of landscape metaphor — the mostly-solo-project of Glasán Ghost, geographically, is from the UK — but in the swing of “No Comedown” and “Black Acid” they’re barely terrestrial to begin with, so maybe such concerns are all pretend anyway and don’t matter.
Zagreb’s Stonebride — the four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Siniša Krneta, guitarist Tješimir Mendaš, bassist Matija Ljevar and drummer Stjepan Kolobarić — are reportedly (i.e. it’s what they said on Bandcamp) thinking of the two-song No Chances Given EP as indicative of where they might want to be direction-wise coming off of 2024’s Smiles Revolutionary (review here), and listening back to that album, neither “111” (4:12) nor “Barren Slope” (7:13) are a radical departure, but the former eases up on thrust somewhat and the latter feels more patient with specific attention to the vocal arrangement and the feeling of space as it builds toward its culmination, so the balance has been apparently mindfully adjusted. I won’t predict how that’ll play out among their more charge-minded impulses as shown on that LP, but an intention to grow and try new things has served them thus far into their tenure and I see no reason why it would stop now. If they’re indeed headed into more open sounds, as “Barren Slope” might hint, they have a real opportunity to play back and forth and develop their dynamic. That they’re even interested in doing so after 20 years is both deeply admirable and indicative of why you should listen.
Sounds of Waking and Weather is the soundtrack to a forthcoming novel, and while I’m not sure if that’s also by Aidan Baker (of Nadja and numerous other collaborations) or not, the acoustic guitar threaded through the included 12 songs on the 79-minute offering resonates thematically as something in literature might, even running backward as it does in “Dream Song I.” Such manipulations are prevalent throughout this solo effort, and Baker brings field recordings into “Dream Song II,” which at 10:58 is one of three extended pieces alongside “Weather I (Tule)” and the 18-minute finale “The Black Swan.” Sometimes minimal, with piano in the lead on “Weather III (Advection),” the songs might be peopled by drones, sharp hi-hat, a dulcimer in there somewhere, Baker feels purposeful in the choices of arrangement and texture, and I’m curious about the story being told in the music. If you want the spoiler from the album, it ends in the open, at night, with the sounds of insects and no humans after the bassy avant-doom nod has given way. I’m not sure what that means for plot or character, but Baker‘s ability to put you in a place and time is palpable as ever.
Latvian post-metal instrumentalists Tesa released Interval in June 2025 through My Proud Mountain, and with it offer four engrossing tracks, each with its own feeling of the journey being undertaken, each adding to the scope of the entirety. The harsher noise that makes its way into the back half of “Interval I,” or the tension held in the drums after coming back from the drone in “Interval II” which also ends the song, the time-to-riff moment of arrival at the start of “Interval III” and the fuller push over the edge of its crescendo and the 11-minute sprawl of “Interval IIII” — which does include voice if not lyrics — provide landmarks along the way, but it’s the overarching feeling of going deeper with each one until finally “Interval IIII” caps with a shimmering megawash that’s most resonant. I don’t know if it was written as one whole work or as distinct, separately-processed songs, but between the titling and the listening experience, cohesion was obviously a priority. It comes through manifest in the music itself, for which I’d recommend a healthy dose of whatever volume you can give it.
From Desertfest Berlin to Freak Valley, with Obsidian Dust, Grand Paris Sludge, Esbjerg Fuzztival and club shows between, you’ll pardon me if I think of Fuzz Sagrado‘s inaugural tour of anywhere as more than just that, since it’s also the return to the European circuit of the now-Brazil-based Christian Peters, formerly of Samsara Blues Experiment.
Together with his assembled Fuzz Sagrado lineup, which itself also operates as the band Black Box Massacre, Peters will present songs from throughout his career at these shows, and he’s been both specific and intentional all the way about saying, yes, Samsara Blues Experiment material is fair game, in addition to what he’s been doing these last few years as he’s made his way creatively back toward a kind of progressive, heavy psychedelic rock.
I was already hoping to get to Freak Valley, but I’ll say that’s only more the case knowing Fuzz Sagrado will take part there. The Obelisk is co-presenting the tour, and I’m honored for that — thank you to Peters and Sound of Liberation — but it doesn’t necessarily mean I know when Pt. 2 will be, though my guess is Fall fest season. In any case, this will be a chance to see something for the first time, and as I was lucky enough to see Peters‘ former outfit on several occasions, I look forward to finding out what Fuzz Sagrado will bring with them when they begin to hit stages.
From the PR wire:
FUZZ SAGRADO – European Tour 2026 Pt.1
14.05.2026 Berlin, Desertfest 15.05.2026 Jena, KuBa 17.05.2026 Brussels, Obsidian Dust 18.05.2026 Lille, Cafe Bulle 19.05.2026 Düsseldorf, Pitcher 20.05.2026 Köln, Kantine 21.05.2026 Stuttgart, Goldmark’s 23.05.2026 Savigny le Temple, Grand Paris Sludge 24.05.2026 Nijmegen, De Onderbroek 27.05.2026 Leipzig, PxLxKxL@kh89 29.05.2026 Esbjerg, Fuzztival 30.05.2026 Flensburg, Kühlhaus 01.06.2026 Oldenburg, MTS records 03.06.2026 Münster, Rare Guitar 04.06.2026 Rotterdam, Baroeg 06.06.2026 Netphen, Freak Valley + more to come in 2026!
Chris Peters:
“This is incredibly exciting, and it’s taken about two years to get to this point. As most of you know, I’ve been living in Brazil for the last five years and had some interesting experiences there. After leaving Samsara, I thought about quitting and didn’t want to play in a band anymore, but life had other plans. At 45, I’m still too young to retire. So, in 2024 I tried my luck with a Brazilian band; we played to 600 people in São Paulo, but Brazil is a tough country.
Since around 2022, I’ve had the idea of starting a new band project with new songs, but also personal highlights from 25+ years as a musician and songwriter. There are tracks like Southern Sunset, Orchid Annie, Center of the Sun etc. Who else could sing or play these very personal songs? And no, I won’t forget them! There wasn’t a proper tour for the last Samsara album, and in a way, we re-connect to that with this new group.
It wasn’t my plan to continue with other musicians under the name Samsara Blues Experiment, even though – from a business perspective* – all would have been easier and, in some ways, probably the logical next step. Things have become even more difficult in recent years, and I’d rather focus on the positive aspects. I honor my journey and the people I’ve met along the way, but in my opinion this new band is already playing on a different musical level, literally: A New Dimension!”
*Musicians have to pay their bills too ;) Know what I mean?
Many thanks:
Matte @soundofliberation, for making this tour possible. We’ve come a long way since our first small gigs together. Wolf @worldinsound, thank you for everything! Who’d have thought that when I bought that Dragonwyck CD, ages ago! Jeff @echodelick, thank you for being the first label to believe in this new project. Kai @kozmikartifactz, thank you for taking the risk of releasing the first Fuzz Sagrado-album on vinyl, although it’s no typical stoner album at all ;) Steffen, Charlie, and Raphael @blackboxmassacre for dedicating time and efforts to this project. We’re in this together! Thanks also to Holger @rockhard + Mike @eclipsedrockmagazin + Theee Obelisk @jjkoczan for helping to spread the word! Poster image by @stevenyoyada
Posted in Reviews on November 17th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Happy Monday, and welcome to the Quarterly Review. Or welcome back, anyhow. I said last month that I might try to sneak another one of these weeks in before the end of November, and I’m honestly not prepared to say this’ll be it for the year. There’s a lot out there to keep up with, and this is the most efficient means I have for ‘keeping up,’ as best as I can do that anyhow. I don’t know, man. I’m just trying to get through the day.
This QR is 50 releases — I was slating them right up to yesterday, so some of it’s pretty fresh — and will go from today through Friday. It will be most, if not all, of what is posted this week. I hope you find something you enjoy. Let’s go.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Beastwars, The Ship // The Sea
At nearly 15 years’ remove from their self-titled debut (review here), New Zealand’s Beastwars have been through ringers in life and music alike, but their sound on their sixth full-length, they’ve never sounded quite so refined. Understand, it’s Beastwars, so I still mean immersive and crushing riff-heavy rock, which the band have honed to a point of bordering on noise rock in pieces like “The Storm” or the later “You Know They’re Burning the Land.” “Rust” and “The Howling” maintain a sense of the epic with Matt Hyde‘s shouts alternately into and out from the abyss, but the band have grown in the six years since their last album of originals, 2019’s IV (review here), and for the blowout in “The Devil” and the weight of chug in “Guardian of Fire,” their impact feels all the more craterous for it.
I won’t take away from the shorter bangers here, whether it’s the wah-on immediacy of “Listen Close” or “Weird Scenes” with its stick-click immediacy, but each half(-ish) of Lacertilia‘s third LP (first for Majestic Mountain), Transcend, ends with a more extended cut, with “Nothing Sacred” (10:34) and “The Sun is the Key” (7:13) rounding out their respective sides, and the band are right to take the time when they take it. Of course, it’s symptomatic of the broader variety brought to the Cardiff five-piece’s craft, and they make Transcend a showcase of their reach, be it into acoustic strum and emergent bluesier scorch on “Over and Out,” the twisting lead guitar progressivism of “Deviate From the Plan,” which meets the grandeur halfway, or the percussion-laced instrumentalist build of the semi-title-track “Transcending.” They end up offering something different with each of the 10 songs, and balance raucousness and expressive purpose as they go in malleable and distinctive style.
With their debut album, Turin three-piece Dune Aurora draw together disparate ideas from across the modern riffy pastiche such that garage-style sway and more traditonalist stoner chug combine with at-times-ethereal melody, desert push, psychedelia and, in the case of “Trapdoor,” a poppier take entirely. There’s cohesion in the songwriting to match the aesthetic ambition, though, and Dune Aurora don’t come off as haphazard so much as multifaceted. The reworked prior single “Fire” demonstrates a fuzzy drive waiting in the wings as part of their approach, but the nod in “Burning Waters” is more dug in, and “Sunless Queen” reveals a patience underlying their builds that might come out more on subsequent outings, but the shove of “Crocodile” and that Nirvana riff in “Dune Chameleon” are vital to Ice Age Desert too, and it’s still just a sampling of the elements Dune Aurora use to ensnare the listener. As much as they have going on, that they don’t come across as confused seems to give them all the more potential.
Ghost Pain is the debut two-songer from Almeria, Spain, post-metallic four-piece Khayrava, who present “Red Hot Sun” (7:04) and “Ghost Pain” (10:32) with a marked sense of texture as part of their intention. Both tracks crush, but both also offer a moment of departure from that, and the latter plays off the impact of the former with a keyboardier air and its later divergence into floating melody and crash before, just past the eight-minute mark, they torch the whole thing with a worthy and minutes-long crescendo. “Red Hot Sun” is huge, but its midsection gives over to a break of Tool-y groove met with heavy post-rock flourish from the guitar. That also, of course, comes back around to the pummel, but it’s in the getting there that Khayrava begin to reveal the character of the band, and with the depth of mix they bring to Ghost Pain and the clear intent toward nuance of style, I’ll be on the lookout for where they go from here.
“Who invented 9-5,” River Cult ask on “Fast Crash.” “They should be shot dead,” is the answer the lyrics give. Fair. The third long-player from the heretofore undervalued New York-based disgruntled fuzzbringers manages to make a mental health crisis swing like desert rock on “Smoke Break,” the sixth of the seven inclusions on the 38-minute offering, seeming to answer the crash-in, warm tone and lyrical fuckall of the opening title-track in the process. They’re not wrong, and if you’re gonna say the world sucks, at least “Feels Good to Scream” has a density of distortion to hold up to the message, vocals biting through like early-metal’s cultist inheritor, cavernous and obscure ahead of centerpiece “Mind the Teeth” start-stop chugging as the lore of ‘The Wolf’ is cast. The trio of guitarist/vocalist Sean Forlenza, bassist Anthony Mendolia and drummer Eli Pizzuto (ex-Naam) find a niche for themselves in downtrodden fuzz, ending with “New Song,” which even having been tracked at Brooklyn’s Studio G sounds fresh off the stage.
In the soaring vocals of Kate Prokop and the riffs behind them chugging away at the verses of “The Dead Follow” and the moodier surge into the layered hook of “Witch Hunt,” Omaha, Nebraska’s Beast Eagle answer their 2024 self-titled debut EP with five more songs of metal-rooted heavy groove, clear and fluid in “Sharp Tongue” but not without aggression underlying. The bass in “The Dead Follow” is mixed the way I feel bass should always be — forward — and that gives even the mellower stretch as they move into the ending a different sense of presence than it might otherwise have, but in the galloping verse and sprawling chorus of “The Demonstration” and the rush of “Send Me Down,” the latter of which, admittedly, is more of a rocker, speaking to a burgeoning dynamic in their sound, they retain a feeling of charge, and that defines Sorceress‘ 19-minute run as much as the taut chug in “Sharp Tongue.”
Having relocated from Denver to Asbury Park, New Jersey, The Munsens are no less vicious or crushing on their second album, Degradation in the Hyperreal. “Eternal Grasp” starts the procession as much death metal as it is sludge, which is an ethic that “Supreme Death” will bring to gorgeously extreme fruition a short time later, while pieces like the melancholic, minimalist instrumental “Vesper” and the blistering megasludger “Sacred Ivory” and the outro “I Avow” offset the onslaught of “The Knife,” “Scaling Ceausescu’s Balcony” and the lumber-into-double-kick of “Drauga,” vocals offering precious little comfort for the downward journey of the record’s 46 minutes. That “The Knife” finishes, specifically, ahead of “I Avow,” stands as testament to just how far The Munsens have pushed into extremity over the course of their decade-plus, but they are not entirely unforgiving either, despite having grown only more gnashing over the course of their decade-plus tenure.
They’re not thrash, but thrash is part of what Dayton, Ohio’s Rattlesnake Venom Trip get up to on their new four-song EP, Eclipse the Sun, with a sharp edge to the riffing on lead cut “Hollowed Eyes” that tells the tale. The second half of that track subsides some in terms of forward thrust, setting up the still-chugging-but-slower “Ablaze Set I,” with a more resonant hook, and “Brushstrokes/Eclipse the Sun,” which in its first half is as far as Rattlesnake Venom Trip go in divergence from the burl and push, but in its second answers for the metal and the nod both that it seems to have inherited from the opener. Punchy bass’ed reinforcement takes place over the five minutes of “Cold Winds Blow,” and the four-piece maintain a clear-eyed sense of identity through whatever turns the material makes, somewhere between heavy rock, Southern metal, thrash and stoner idolatry. You could sit and parse it, but the band make it pretty easy to trust where they’re headed as they go.
For their third long-player, The Craft of Pain (on Glory or Death), Brazil’s Pesta offer a take on doom born of traditional metal. They’re not aggro, or outwardly depressive, but “Masters of the Craft of Pain” and the swinging “Marked by Hate” find a route from Sabbath and the NWOBHM to doom just the same. A guest appearance from Scott “Wino” Weinrich (The Obsessed, etc.) on vocals for “Mirror Maze” is a departure, but not so radical as to be out of place, especially backed by the depth of groove in the subsequent rocker “In the Drive’s End.” On side B, the pair of “The Inquisitor Pt. I” and the initially-acoustic-based “The Inquisitor Pt. II” provide a more theatrical reach, but the acoustic-and-key-strings “Canto XXI” brings in Rodrigo Garcia (Diffuse Reality) for another curve before “Shadows of a Desire” returns to ground to finish out not so far from where “Marked by Hate” left off. At no point do Pesta feel like they’ve diverged from where they want to be.
The lyrics posted with the cumbersomely-titled “J.I.B.B.E.R.I.S.H. (John Inflates Balloons Because Every Remote Island Starts Hallucinating)” are wrong, and the level of psychedelic tricksterism and playfulness across Atom Lux‘s debut, Voidgaze Dopamine Salad is such that I’m not sure if that’s on purpose or not. Rest assured, different references to “I Am the Walrus” are being made. The self-recording solo-project of Roman multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Lucio Filizola is a garden of weirdo delights, with the keyboardy bounce of “Death by Small Talk” giving away none of the subversively easy garage swing of “Spaghettification Apocalypse” and “Stoned Monkey Heritage” bashing away like it’s an alternate-reality 1964, which by the way I’m no longer convinced it isn’t. It’s from gleeful oddities like “Dance Plague Delirium” that progressive rock first emerged in the comedown era. The same trajectory may or may not be in store for Atom Lux long term, but right now any kind of ‘comedown’ still feels a good ways off.
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.
about as willfully unpleasant a Black Feather Fuzz get — and I’d argue that moment is more ‘extreme’ even than the aforementioned growls that follow shortly — but the thread of in-your-faceness continues into the patterned double-kick and concurrent shove of “Sentinel,” which is both the centerpiece and the shortest cut on the EP, resolving with a hardcore-born chug that’s righteously raw as it moves into its cold stop, letting the low-end rumble of “Liar, Fire…” lumber out the penultimate song’s threatening atmosphere even before the vocal gnash begins. It’s a standout moment, obviously, and feels a bit like what the the EP to that point has been driving toward — a crescendo of sorts — as the band employs doomly slowdowns and very, very heavy tones toward somewhat theatrical ends.
