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.

Megaritual on Bandcamp

Echodelick Records website

Psychedelic Salad Records store

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Red Eye, III

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.

Red Eye’s Linktr.ee

Discos Macarras Records website

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Temple of the Fuzz Witch & Seum, Conjuring

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.

Seum on Bandcamp

Temple of the Fuzz Witch on Bandcamp

Black Throne Productions website

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Uncle Woe, Folded in Smoke, Soaked and Bound

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.

Uncle Woe on Bandcamp

Uncle Woe’s Linktr.ee

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Negative Reaction, Salvaged From the Kuiper Belt

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.

Negative Reaction on Bandcamp

Negative Reaction on Facebook

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Fomies, Liminality

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.

Fomies on Bandcamp

Taxi Gauche Records website

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The Long Wait, The Long Wait

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.

The Long Wait on Bandcamp

The Long Wait’s Facebook group

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Babona, Az Utolsó Választás Kora

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.

Babona on Bandcamp

Babona on Facebook

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Sutras, The Crisis of Existence

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.

Sutras on Bandcamp

Sutras on Instagram

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Sleeping in Samsara, Sleeping in Samsara

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. Weigand passed 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.

Fuzz Sagrado website

Electric Magic Records on Bandcamp

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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

https://www.facebook.com/fuzzsagrado
https://www.instagram.com/fuzzsagrado/
https://fuzzsagrado.blogspot.com/
https://electricmagic.bandcamp.com/

Sleeping in Samsara, Sleeping in Samsara (2025)

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.

Fuzz Sagrado on Facebook

Electric Magic Records on Bandcamp

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24/7 Diva Heaven, Gift

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.

24/7 Diva Heaven on Facebook

Noisolution website

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Mount Hush, II

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.

Mount Hush on Facebook

Mount Hush’s Linktr.ee

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Luna Sol, Vita Mors

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.

Luna Sol on Facebook

Ripple Music website

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Ian Blurton’s Future Now, Crimes of the City

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.

Ian Blurton’s Future Now on Facebook

Ian Blurton’s Future Now on Bandcamp

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Moskitos, Mirage

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.

Moskitos on Facebook

Moskitos’ Linktr.ee

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Deer Lord, Dark Matter Pt. 2

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.

Deer Lord on Facebook

Deer Lord on Bandcamp

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TFNRSH, Book of Circles

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.

TFNRSH on Facebook

TFNRSH on Bandcamp

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Altareth, Passage: The Welfare Sessions

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.

Altareth on Facebook

Altareth on Bandcamp

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Jarzmo, Antropocen

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.

Jarzmo on Facebook

Jarzmo on Bandcamp

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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.

Cover photography by my father Roberto Peters.

https://www.facebook.com/fuzzsagrado
https://www.instagram.com/fuzzsagrado/
https://fuzzsagrado.blogspot.com/
https://electricmagic.bandcamp.com/

Fuzz Sagrado, Luz e Sombra (2023)

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 Sumi​ç​o, 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

Band photo by Joakim Fotografia.

Caixão on Instagram

Caixão on Bandcamp

Caixão on YouTube

Caixão Linktr.ee

Glory or Death Records on Facebook

Glory or Death Records on Instagram

Glory or Death Records on Bandcamp

Glory or Death Records webstore

The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Eduardo Camini of Locomotiva Elétrica

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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

I define Music as an Art that makes me leave everyday reality and explore “mental spaces” that I can only access through it. The same music that brings me relief and makes my mind calmer to move forward.

Describe your first musical memory.

Music came into my life in the late 80s, through Rock bands that I started to enjoy because of my older sister. Playing the guitar came next, and the rest is history…

Describe your best musical memory to date.

The best musical memory is not just one, but every time I can go on stage and play, in addition to the shows I was able to see artists I like.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

I believe it was in 2009 at the first Ozzy Osbourne concert I saw. The expectation was for a bad show due to Ozzy’s age but I went to see “the guy” who invented Heavy Metal. But the show was awesome and really changed my perception about career time/expectations.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

I believe it leads to exploring chords, textures and sound experiences that at a given moment we didn’t imagine existed or that we believed wouldn’t fit into a certain song. Furthermore, I think there is a change in conception about a musical career.

How do you define success?

I think that success is something that is in everyone’s head, very particular. My success can be something everyday for someone else and vice versa, so I can only talk about my success. For me, it’s being in cool places, doing what I like with people who make me feel comfortable.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn´t?

Musically speaking, I’ve seen many fantastic bands ending up in limbo or artists leaving this life. This hurts because so much good music has been lost.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

I have two musical dreams: having a studio and recording a vinyl.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

Make people feel good about themselves.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

Right now I long for an end to the clashes between different countries that I have seen on the news. This is all very wrong.

https://www.instagram.com/locomotivaeletrica/
https://locomotivaeletrica.bandcamp.com/

Locomotiva Elétrica, Os Animais Que Nos Habitam (2024)

Welcome to Wednesday of the Quarterly Review. If you’ve been here before — and I do this at least four times a year, so maybe you have and maybe you haven’t — I’m glad you’re back, and if not, I’m glad you’re here at all. These things are always an undertaking, and in a vacuum, I’m pretty sure busting out 10 shorter reviews per day would be a reasonably efficient process. I don’t live in a vacuum. I live vacuuming.

Metaphorically, at least. Looking around the room, it’s pretty obvious ‘vacuum life’ is intermittent.

Today we hit the halfway mark of this standard-operating-procedure QR, and we’ll get to 30 of the 50 releases to be covered by the time Friday is done or die trying, as that’s also the general policy. As always, I hope you find something in this batch of 10 that you dig. Doesn’t have to be any more of a thing than that. Doesn’t need to change your life, just maybe take the moment you’re in and make it a little better.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

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Deadpeach, The Cosmic Haze and the Human Race

A new full-length from Italian cosmic fuzz rockers Deadpeach doesn’t come along every day. Though the four-piece here comprised of guitarist/vocalist Giovanni Giovannini, guitarist Daniele Bartoli, bassist Mrsteveman and drummer Federico Tebaldi trace their beginnings back to 1993, the seven-song/37-minute exploration The Cosmic Haze and the Human Race is just their fourth full-length in that span of 31 years, following behind 2013’s Aurum (review here), though they haven’t been completely absent in that time, with the 2019 unplugged offering Waiting for Federico session (review here), 2022’s Live at Sidro Club, etc. But whether it’s the howling-into-the-void guitar over the methodical toms in the experimental-vibing closer “Loop (Set the Control to Mother Earth),” the mellower intro of “Madras” that leads both to chunky-style chug and the parade of classic-heavy buzz that is “Motor Peach,” what most comes through is the freedom of the band to do what they want in the psychedelic sphere. “Man on the Hill (The Fisherman and the Farmer)” tells its tale with blues rock swing while the subsequent “Cerchio” resolves Beatlesian with bouncy string and horn sounds and is its own realization at the center of the procession before the languid roll of “Monday” (so it goes) picks up its tempo later on. A mostly lo-fi recording still creates an atmosphere, and Deadpeach represent who they are in the weirdo space grunge of “Rust,” toying with influences from a desert that’s surely somewhere on another planet before “Loop (Set the Controls for Mother Earth)” turns repetition into mantra. They might be underrated forever, but Deadpeach only phase into our dimension intermittently and it’s worth appreciating them while they’re here.

Deadpeach on Facebook

Deadpeach website

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SÂVER, From Ember and Rust

In or out of post-metal and the aggressive end of atmospheric sludge, there are few bands currently active who deliver with the visceral force of Oslo’s SÂVER. From Ember and Rust is the second LP from the three-piece of Ole Ulvik Rokseth (guitar), Markus Støle (drums) and Ole Christian Helstad (bass/vocals), and while it signals growth in the synthy meditation worked into “I, Evaporate” after the lead-with-nod opener “Formless,” and the intentionally overwhelming djent chug that pays off the penultimate “The Object,” it is the consuming nature of the 43-minute entirety that is most striking, dynamic in its sprawl and thoughtful in arrangement both within and between its songs — the way the drone starts “Eliminate Distance” and returns to lull the listener momentarily out of consciousness before the bassy start of centerpiece “Ember and Rust” prompts a return ahead of its daring and successful clean vocal foray. That’s a departure, contextually speaking, but noteworthy even as “Primal One” lumbersmashes anything resembling hope to teeny tiny bits, leaving room in its seven minutes to catchy its breath amid grooving proggy chug and bringing back the melodic singing. As much as they revel in the caustic, there’s serenity in the catharsis of “All in Disarray” at the album’s conclusion, and as much as SÂVER are destructive, they’re cognizant of the world they’re building as part of that.

SÂVER on Facebook

Pelagic Records website

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Ruben Romano, The Imaginary Soundtrack to the Imaginary Western Twenty Graves Per Mile

Departing from the heavy psychedelic blues rock proffered by his main outfit The Freeks, multi-instrumentalist and elsewhere-vocalist Ruben Romano — who also drummed for Fu Manchu and Nebula in their initial incarnations — digs into Western aural themes on his cumbersomely-titled solo debut, The Imaginary Soundtrack to the Imaginary Western Twenty Graves Per Mile. To be clear, there is no movie called Twenty Graves Per Mile (yet), and the twice-over-imaginary nature of the concept lets Romano meander a bit in pieces like “Sweet Dream Cowboy” and “Ode to Fallen Oxen,” the latter of which tops its rambling groove with a line of delay twang, while “Chuck Wagon Sorrow” shimmers with outward simplicity with a sneaky depth to its mix (to wit, the space in “Not Any More”). At 10 songs and 27 minutes, the collection isn’t exactly what you’d call ‘feature length,’ but as it hearkens back to the outset with “Load the Wagon (Reprise)” bookending the opener, it is likewise cohesive in style and creative in arrangement, with Romano bringing in various shakers, mouth harp, effects and so on to create his ‘soundtrack’ with a classic Western feel and the inevitable lysergic current. Not as indie or desert chic as Spindrift, who work from a similar idea, but organic and just-came-in-covered-with-dust folkish just the same. If the movie existed, I’d be interested to know which of these tracks would play in the saloon.

Ruben Romano on Facebook

Ruben Romano on Bandcamp

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Kosmodrom, Welcome to Reality

With the seven-minute “Earth Blues” left off the vinyl for want of room, German heavy psychedelic instrumentalists Kosmodrom put a color filter on existence with Welcome to Reality as much as on the cover, shimmering in “Dazed in Space” with a King Buffalo‘ed resonance such that the later, crunchier fuzz roll of “Evil Knievel” feels like a departure. While the three-piece are no doubt rooted in jams, Welcome to Reality presents finished works, following a clear plot in the 10-minute “Quintfrequenz” and the gradual build across the first couple minutes of “Landstreicher” — an intent that comes more into focus a short while later on “Novembersong” — before “Earth Blues” brings a big, pointed slowdown. They cap with “OM,” which probably isn’t named after the band but can be said to give hints in their direction if you want to count its use of ride cymbal at the core of its own build, and which in its last 40 seconds still manages to find another level of heft apparently kept in reserve all along. Well played. As their first LP since 2018, Welcome to Reality feels a bit like it’s reintroducing the band, and in listening, seems most of all to encourage the listener to look at the world around them in a different, maybe more hopeful way.

Kosmodrom on Facebook

Kosmodrom on Bandcamp

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The Endless, The Endless

Heads experienced in post-metal will be able to pick out elements like the Russian Circles gallop in The Endless‘ “Riven” or the Isis-style break the Edmonton-based instrumental unit veers into on “Shadows/Wolves” at the center of their self-titled debut, but as “The Hadeon Eon” — the title of which references the planet’s earliest and most volatile geological era — subtly invites the listener to consider, this is the band’s first recorded output. Formed in 2019, derailed and reconstructed post-pandemic, the four-piece of guitarists Teddy Palmer and Eddy Keyes, bassist James Palmer and drummer Jarred Muir are coherent in their stylistic intent, but not so committed to genre tenets as to forego the sweeter pleasure of the standalone guitar at the start of the nine-minute “Reflection,” soon enough subsumed though it is by the spacious lurch that follows. There and throughout, the band follow a course somewhere between post-metal and atmospheric sludge, and the punch of low end in “Future Archives,” the volume trades between loud and quiet stretches bring a sense of the ephemeral as well as the ethereal, adding character without sacrificing impact in the contrast. Their lack of pretense will be an asset as they continue to develop.

The Endless on Facebook

The Endless on Bandcamp

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Our Maddest Edges, Peculiar Spells

Kudos if you can keep up with the shifts wrought from track to track on Our Maddest Edges‘ apparent first long-player, Peculiar Spells, as the Baltimorean solo-project spearheaded by Jeff Conner sets out on a journey of genuine eclecticism, bringing The Beatles and Queens of the Stone Age stylistically together and also featuring one of the several included duets on “Swirl Cone,” some grunge strum in “Hella Fucky” after the remake-your-life spoken/ambient intro “Thoughts Can Change,” a choral burst at the beginning of the spoken-word-over-jazz “Slugs,” which of course seems to be about screwing, as well as the string-laced acoustic-led sentimentality on “Red Giant,” the Casio beat behind the bright guitar plucks of “Frozen Season,” the full-tone riffs around which “I Ain’t Done” and “St. Lascivious” are built, and the sax included with the boogie of “The Totalitarian Tiptoe,” just for a few examples of the places its 12 component tracks go in their readily-consumable 37-minute runtime. Along with Conner are a reported 17 guests appearing throughout, among them Stefanie Zaenker (ex-Caustic Casanova). Info is sparse on the band and Conner‘s work more broadly, but his history in the punkish Eat Your Neighbors accounts for some of the post-hardcore at root here, and his own vocals (as opposed to those of the seven other singers appearing) seem to come from somewhere similar. Relatively quick listen, but not a minor undertaking.

Jeff Conner on Bandcamp

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Saint Omen, Death Unto My Enemy

Rolling out with the ambient intro before beginning its semi-Electric Wizardly slog in “Taken by the Black,” Death Unto My Enemy is the 2023 debut from New York City’s Saint Omen. Issued by Forbidden Place Records, its gritty nod holds together even as “Evolution of the Demon” threatens to fall apart, samples filling out the spaces not occupied by vocals, communicating themes dark, violent, and occult in pieces like the catchy-despite-its-harsher-vocal “Destroyer” or the dark swirl of “Sinners Crawl.” Feeling darker as it moves through its 10 songs, it saves a particular grim experimentalism for closer “Descent,” but by the time Death Unto My Enemy gets there, surely your mind and soul have already been poisoned and reaped, respectively, by “The Seventh Gate,” “The Black Mass” and the penultimate title-track, that deeper down is the only place left to go. So that’s where you go; a humming abyss of anti-noise. Manhattan has never been a epicenter of cultish doom, but Saint Omen‘s abiding death worship and bleakness — looking at you, “Sleepness” — shift between dramaturge and dug-in lumber, and the balance is only intriguing for the rawness with which it is delivered, harsher in its purpose than sound, but still plenty harsh in sound.

Saint Omen on Facebook

Forbidden Place Records store

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Samsara Joyride, The Subtle and the Dense

The psychedelic aspects of Samsara Joyride‘s The Subtle and the Dense feel somewhat compartmentalized, but that’s not necessarily a detriment to the songs, as the solo that tops the drearily moderated tempo of “Too Many Preachers” or the pastoral tones that accompany the bluesier spirit of “Who Tells the Story” emphasize. The Austrian outfit’s second full-length, The Subtle and the Dense seems aware of its varied persona, but whether it’s the swaggering stops of “No One is Free” calling to mind Child or the sax and guest vocals that mark such a turn with “Safe and Sound” at the end, Samsara Joyride are firm in their belief that because something is bluesy or classic doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be simple. From the layer of acoustic guitar worked into opener “I Won’t Sign Pt. 1” — their first album also had a two-parter, the second one follows directly here as track two — to the gang chorus worked in amid the atmospheric reach of “Sliver,” Samsara Joyride communicate a progressive take on traditionalist aesthetics, managing as few in this end of the heavy music realm ever do to avoid burly masculine caricature in the process. For that alone, easily worth the time to listen.

Samsara Joyride on Facebook

Samsara Joyride on Bandcamp

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That Ship Has Sailed, Kingdom of Nothing

Like a check-in from some alternate-universe version of Fu Manchu who stuck closer to their beginnings in punk and hardcore, Californian heavy noise rockers That Ship Has Sailed tap volatility and riffy groove alike through the five songs of their Kingdom of Nothing EP, with an admirable lack of bullshit included within that net-zero assessment amid the physical push of riffs like “One-Legged Dog” or “Iron Eagle II” when the drums go to half-time behind the guitar and bass. It’s not all turn-of-the-century disaffection and ‘members of’ taglines though as “Iron Eagle II” sludges through its finish and “I Am, Yeah” becomes an inadvertent anthem for those who’ve never quite been able to keep their shit together, “Sweet Journey” becomes a melodic highlight while fostering the heaviest crash, and “Ready to Go” hits like a prequel to Nebula‘s trip down the stoner rock highway. Catchy in spite of its outward fuckall (or at least fuckmost), Kingdom of Nothing is more relatable than friendly or accessible, which feels about right. It’s cool guys. I never got my shit together either.

That Ship Has Sailed on Instagram

That Ship Has Sailed on Bandcamp

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Spiral Guru, Silenced Voices

The fourth EP in the 10-year history of Brazi’s Spiral Guru, who also released their Void long-player in 2019 and the “The Fantastic Hollow Man” single in 2021, Silenced Voices is distinguished immediately by the vocal command and range of Andrea Ruocco, and I’d suspect that if you’re already familiar with the band, you probably know that. Ruocco‘s voice, in its almost operatic use of breath to reach higher notes, carries some element of melodic metal’s grandeur, but Samuel Pedrosa‘s fuzz riffing and the fluid roll of bassist José Ribeiro and drummer Alexandre H.G. Garcia on the title-track avoid that trap readily, ending up somewhere between blues, psych, and ’70s swing on “Caves and Graves” but kept modern in the atmosphere fostered by Pedrosa‘s lead guitar. Another high-quality South American band ignored by the gringo-dude-dominant underground of Europe and the US? Probably, but I’m guilty too a decade after Spiral Guru‘s start, so all I can say is I’m doing my best out here. This band should probably be on Nuclear Blast by now. Stick around for “The Cabin Man” and you’d best be ready to dance.

Spiral Guru on Facebook

Spiral Guru on Bandcamp

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Admittedly, there’s some ambition in my mind calling this the ‘Spring 2024 Quarterly Review.’ I’m done with winter and March starts on Friday, so yeah, it’s kind of a reach as regards the traditional seasonal patterns of Northern New Jersey where I live, but hell, these things actually get decided here by pissing off a rodent. Maybe it doesn’t need to be so rigidly defined after all.

After doing QRs for I guess about nine years now, I finally made myself a template for the back-end layout. It’s not a huge leap, but will mean about five more minutes I can dedicate to listening, and when you’re trying to touch on 50 records in the span of a work week and attempt some semblance of representing what they’re about, five minutes can help. Still, it’s a new thing, and if you see ‘ARTIST’ listed where a band’s name should be or LINK where ‘So and So on Facebook’ goes, a friendly comment letting me know would be helpful.

Thanks in advance and I hope you find something in all of this to come that speaks to you. I’ll try to come up for air at some point.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

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Slift, Ilion

One of the few non-billionaire groups of people who might be able to say they had a good year in 2020, Toulouse, France, spaceblasters Slift signed to Sub Pop on the strength of that wretched year’s Ummon (review here) and the spectacle-laced live shows with which they present their material. Their ideology is cosmic, their delivery markedly epic, and Ilion pushes the blinding light and the rhythmic force directly at you, creating a sweeping momentum contrasted by ambient stretches like that tucked at the end of 12-minute hypnotic planetmaker “The Words That Have Never Been Heard,” the drone finale “Enter the Loop” or any number of spots between along the record’s repetition-churning, willfully-overblown 79-minute course of builds and surging payoffs. A cynic might tell you it’s not anything Hawkwind didn’t do in 1974 offered with modern effects and beefier tones, but, uh, is that really something to complain about? The hype around Ilion hasn’t been as fervent as was for Ummon — it’s a different moment — but Slift have set themselves on a progressive course and in the years to come, this may indeed become their most influential work. For that alone it’s among 2024’s most essential heavy albums, never mind the actual journey of listening. Bands like this don’t happen every day.

Slift on Facebook

Sub Pop Records website

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Grin, Hush

The only thing keeping Grin from being punk rock is the fact that they don’t play punk. Otherwise, the self-recording, self-releasing (on The Lasting Dose Records) Berlin metal-sludge slingers tick no shortage of boxes as regards ethic, commitment to an uncompromised vision of their sound, and on Hush, their fourth long-player which features tracks from 2023’s Black Nothingness (review here), they sharpen their attack to a point that reminds of dug-in Swedish death metal on “Pyramid” with a winding lead line threaded across, find post-metallic ambience in “Neon Skies,” steamroll with the groove of the penultimate “The Tempest of Time,” and manage to make even the crushing “Midnight Blue Sorrow” — which arrives after the powerful opening statement of “Hush” “Calice” and “Gatekeeper” — have a sense of creative reach. With Sabine Oberg on bass and Jan Oberg handling drums, guitar, vocals, noise and production, they’ve become flexible enough in their craft to harness raw charge or atmospheric sprawl at will, and through 16 songs and 40 minutes (“Portal” is the longest track at 3:45), their intensity is multifaceted, multi-angular, and downright ripping. Aggression suits this project, but that’s never all that’s happening in Grin, and they’re stronger for that.

Grin on Facebook

The Lasting Dose Records on Bandcamp

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Pontiac, Hard Knox

A debut solo-band outing from guitarist, bassist, vocalist and songwriter Dave Cotton, also of Seven Nines and Tens, Pontiac‘s Hard Knox lands on strictly limited tape through Coup Sur Coup Records and is only 16 minutes long, but that’s time enough for its six songs to find connections in harmony to Beach Boys and The Beatles while sometimes dropping to a singular, semi-spoken verse in opener/longest track (immediate points, even though four minutes isn’t that long) “Glory Ragged,” which moves in one direction, stops, reorients, and shifts between genres with pastoralism and purpose. Cotton handles six-string and 12-string, but isn’t alone in Pontiac, as his Seven Nines and Tens bandmate Drew Thomas Christie handles drums, Adam Vee adds guitar, drums, a Coke bottle and a Brita filter, and CJ Wallis contributes piano to the drifty textures of “Road High” before “Exotic Tattoos of the Millennias” answers the pre-christofascism country influence shown on “Counterculture Millionaire” with an oldies swing ramble-rolling to a catchy finish. For fun I’ll dare a wild guess that Cotton‘s dad played that stuff when he was a kid, as it feels learned through osmosis, but I have no confirmation of that. It is its own kind of interpretation of progressive music, and as the beginning of a new exploration, Cotton opens doors to a swath of styles that cross genres in ways few are able to do and remain so coherent. Quick listen, and it dares you to keep up with its changes and patterns, but among its principal accomplishments is to make itself organic in scope, with Cotton cast as the weirdo mastermind in the center. They’ll reportedly play live, so heads up.

Pontiac on Bandcamp

Coup Sur Coup Records on Bandcamp

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The Polvos!, Floating

Already fluid as they open with the rocker “Into the Space,” exclamatory Chilean five-piece The Polvos! delve into more psychedelic reaches in “Fire Dance” and the jammy and (appropriately) floaty midsection of “Going Down,” the centerpiece of their 35-minute sophomore LP, Floating. That song bursts to life a short time later and isn’t quite as immediate as the charge of “Into the Space,” but serves as a landmark just the same as “Acid Waterfall” and “The Anubis Death” hold their tension in the drums and let the guitars go adventuring as they will. There’s maybe some aspect of Earthless influence happening, but The Polvos! meld that make-it-bigger mentality with traditional verse/chorus structures and are more grounded for it even as the spaces created in the songs give listeners an opportunity for immersion. It may not be a revolution in terms of style, but there is a conversation happening here with modern heavy psych from Europe as well that adds intrigue, and the band never go so far into their own ether so as to actually disappear. Even after the shreddy finish of “The Anubis Death,” it kind of feels like they might come back out for an encore, and you know, that’d be just fine.

The Polvos! on Facebook

Surpop Records website

Smolder Brains Records on Bandcamp

Clostridium Records store

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The Cosmic Gospel, Cosmic Songs for Reptiles in Love

With a current of buzz-fuzz drawn across its eight component tracks that allow seemingly disparate moves like the Blondie disco keys in “Hot Car Song” to emerge from the acoustic “Core Memory Unlocked” before giving over to the weirdo Casio-beat bounce of “Psychrolutes Marcidus Man,” a kind of ’60s character reimagined as heavy bedroom indie, The Cosmic Gospel‘s Cosmic Songs for Reptiles in Love isn’t without its resentments, but the almost-entirely-solo-project of Mercata, Italy-based multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Medina is more defined by its sweetness of melody and gentle delivery on the whole. An experiment like the penultimate “Wrath and Gods” carries some “Revolution 9” feel, but Medina does well earlier to set a broad context amid the hook of opener “It’s Forever Midnight” and the subsequent, lightly dub beat and keyboard focus on “The Richest Guy on the Planet is My Best Friend,” such that when closer “I Sew Your Eyes So You Don’t See How I Eat Your Heart” pairs the malevolent intent of its title with light fuzzy soloing atop an easy flowing, summery flow, the album has come to make its own kind of sense and define its path. This is exactly what one would most hope for it, and as reptiles are cold-blooded, they should be used to shifts in temperature like those presented throughout. Most humans won’t get it, but you’ve never been ‘most humans,’ have you?

The Cosmic Gospel on Facebook

Bloody Sound website

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Grave Speaker, Grave Speaker

Massachusetts garage doomers Grave Speaker‘s self-titled debut was issued digitally by the band this past Fall and was snagged by Electric Valley Records for a vinyl release. The Mellotron melancholia that pervades the midsection of the eponymous “Grave Speaker” justifies the wax, but the cult-leaning-in-sound-if-not-theme outfit that marks a new beginning for ex-High n’ Heavy guitarist John Steele unfurl a righteously dirty fuzz over the march of “Blood of Old” at the outset and then immediately up themselves in the riffy stoner delve of “Earth and Mud.” The blown-out vocals on the latter, as well as the far-off-mic rawness of “The Bard’s Theme” that surrounds its Hendrixian solo, remind of a time when Ice Dragon roamed New England’s troubled woods, and if Grave Speaker will look to take on a similar trajectory of scope, they do more than drop hints of psychedelia here, in “Grave Speaker” and elsewhere, but they’re no more beholden to that than the Sabbathism of capper “Make Me Crawl” or the cavernous echo of “Earthbound.” It’s an initial collection, so one expects they’ll range some either way with time, but the way the production becomes part of the character of the songs speaks to a strong idea of aesthetic coming through, and the songwriting holds up to that.

Grave Speaker on Instagram

Electric Valley Records website

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Surya Kris Peters, There’s Light in the Distance

While at the same time proffering his most expansive vision yet of a progressive psychedelia weighted in tone, emotionally expressive and able to move its focus fluidly between its layers of keyboard, synth and guitar such that the mix feels all the more dynamic and the material all the more alive (there’s an entire sub-plot here about the growth in self-production; a discussion for another time), Surya Kris Peters‘ 10-song/46-minute There’s Light in the Distance also brings the former Samsara Blues Experiment guitarist/vocalist closer to uniting his current projects than he’s yet been, the distant light here blurring the line where Surya Kris Peters ends and the emergently-rocking Fuzz Sagrado begins. This process has been going on for the last few years following the end of his former outfit and a relocation from Germany to Brazil, but in its spacious second half as well as the push of its first, a song like “Mode Azul” feels like there’s nothing stopping it from being played on stage beyond personnel. Coinciding with that are arrangement details like the piano at the start of “Life is Just a Dream” or the synth that gives so much movement under the echoing lead in “Let’s Wait Out the Storm,” as Peters seems to find new avenues even as he works his way home to his own vision of what heavy rock can be.

Fuzz Sagrado on Facebook

Electric Magic Records on Bandcamp

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Gozd, Unilateralis

Unilateralis is the four-song follow-up EP to Polish heavydelvers Gozd‘s late-2023 debut album, This is Not the End, and its 20-plus minutes find a place for themselves in a doom that feels both traditional and forward thinking across eight-minute opener and longest track (immediate points, even for an EP) “Somewhere in Between” before the charge of “Rotten Humanity” answers with brasher thrust and aggressive-undercurrent stoner rock with an airy post-metallic break in the middle and rolling ending. From there, “Thanatophobia” picks up the energy from its ambient intro and explodes into its for-the-converted nod, setting up a linear build after its initial verses and seeing it through with due diligence in noise, and closer “Tentative Minds” purposefully hypnotizes with its vague-speech in the intro and casual bassline and drum swing before the riff kicks in for the finale. The largesse of its loudest moments bolster the overarching atmosphere no less than the softest standalone guitar parts, and Gozd seem wholly comfortable in the spaces between microgenres. A niche among niches, but that’s also how individuality happens, and it’s happening here.

Gozd on Facebook

BSFD Records on Facebook

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Sativa Root, Kings of the Weed Age

You wouldn’t accuse Austria’s Sativa Root of thematic subtlety on their third album, Kings of the Weed Age, which broadcasts a stoner worship in offerings like “Megalobong” and “Weedotaur” and probably whatever “F.A.T.” stands for, but that’s not what they’re going for anyway. With its titular intro starting off, spoken voices vague in the ambience, “Weedotaur”‘s 11 minutes lumber with all due bong-metallian slog, and the crush becomes central to the proceedings if not necessarily unipolar in terms of the band’s approach. That is to say, amid the onslaught of volume and tonal density in “Green Smegma” and the spin-your-head soloing in “Assassins Weed” (think Assassins Creed), the instrumentalist course undertaken may be willfully monolithic, but they’re not playing the same song five times on six tracks and calling it new. “F.A.T.” begins on a quiet stretch of guitar that recalls some of YOB‘s epics, complementing both the intro and “Weedotaur,” before bringing its full weight down on the listener again as if to underscore the message of its stoned instrumental catharsis on its way out the door. They sound like they could do this all day. It can be overwhelming at times, but that’s not really a complaint.

Sativa Root on Facebook

Sativa Root on Bandcamp

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Volt Ritual, Return to Jupiter

Comprised of guitarist/vocalist Mateusz, bassist Michał and drummer Tomek, Polish riffcrafters Volt Ritual are appealingly light on pretense as they offer Return to Jupiter‘s four tracks, and though as a Star Trek fan I can’t get behind their lyrical impugning of Starfleet as they imagine what Earth colonialism would look like to a somehow-populated Jupiter, they’re not short on reasons to be cynical, if in fact that’s what’s happening in the song. “Ghostpolis” follows the sample-laced instrumental opener “Heavy Metal is Good for You” and rolls loose but accessible even in its later shouts before the more uptempo “Gwiazdolot” swaps English lyrics for Polish (casting off another cultural colonialization, arguably) and providing a break ahead of the closing title-track, which is longer at 7:37 and a clear focal point for more than just bearing the name of the EP, summarizing as it does the course of the cuts before it and even bringing a last scream as if to say “Ghostpolis” wasn’t a fluke. Their 2022 debut album began with “Approaching Jupiter,” and this Return feels organically built off that while trying some new ideas in its effects and general structure. One hopes the plot continues in some way next time along this course.

Volt Ritual on Facebook

Volt Ritual on Bandcamp

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