Posted in Reviews on December 19th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
I guess sometimes you get told at the door the venue doesn’t allow outside photographers. My honest first thought: yeah but I’m here to shoot inside. Alas, idiot. Now you feel outré and not in a good way for lugging your backpack from New Jersey. Not that I walked or anything.
Last time I saw SunnO))) was at Psycho Las Vegas in 2018 (review here), and I’m willing to wager that if I didn’t tell you right now that’s where and when the photo above was from, you’d never know. Band makes a point to bury themselves in smoke at every gig. I was not necessarily heartbroken not to be able to take pictures, though like everyone else, I had my phone anyhow.
Solo drone cellist Leila Bordreuil opened in suitably noisy fashion. I knew nothing about her work going into her set, but could a appreciate a bit of sonic deconstruction or I wouldn’t have been at the show in the first place. My touchstone for cello experimentalism is Helen Money, and Bordreuil seemed less based in traditional composition than Allison Chesley or, say, Jo Quail, but the feedback and loops and crushing distortion grew more intense as she went on, so for sure there was a plan at work even if the opacity was part of it.
Frequency manipulation, willful aural fuckery, sounds alternately harsh and immersive, low hums and high squeals, the lights red, yellow, blue, red, Bordreuil admirably calm at the set’s most tempestuous. Maybe she went to college for it. Fucking a. She was followed by the ur-dude early-Metallica-riffs-plus-screamy-vocals of High Command, who are on Southern Lord. The crowd, half-artouse at least, dutifully raised its fucking horns when instructed to do so. Mask on in the circle pit. These are strange times. I can’t imagine a SunnO))) audience is easy to play to if you’re a metal band, let alone a young one, seething even at the stillest slow-Slayer parts, but credit where it’s due: they sold it well. The kind of stuff they play, they might need to do it for another 10-15 years before anyone realizes they’re awesome, but they seemed up to it.
Speed riffa, chain mic stand, came out with a sword, ’80s visor shades on the guitarist, good fun all. A new generation of metallers creating their future nostalgia. Come on, man, shit’ll never be like it was in the ’20s again. Those were the days. And so on. They weren’t ‘my thing’ at all, but I kind of had to love it anyway. And they’re from Worcester, Mass! They probably grew up in the shadow of the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival. Makes total sense. And they’ve got the right drummer. Fucking rad. Fucking metal.
SunnO))) — Greg “The Lord” Anderson (who also runs Southern Lord Recordings) amd Stephen O’Malley — billed this tour as the ‘Shoshin (初心) Duo,’ in reference to the fact that, where the band has expanded its lineup in various ways and incarnations over the last two decades, this is the thing in its barest form. So be it. Both Anderson and O’Malley were out to check their guitars and it was long enough before they went on that even standing in the back it was crowded enough to make me even less sad about not taking pictures, not that the ensuimg fart cloud was any great treat, but you know. I had wondered if maybe they wouldn’t play in the robes, raw form and all that, but indeed, the fog, the robes, the rumble, all of that.
For being essentially a rectangle box with a high ceiling and exposed brick from when the building was whatever it invariably was before it was this, the structural integrity of the venue stood up well to the assault of volume it received, and the undulating waveforms of guitar were by no means merciful. SunnO))) have been doom, black metal, white metal, death and life, dark neoclassical and more, and having never seen the core of thee project — the original best-stoned-band-idea ever — there was something of value to the experience. I imagined seeing it in 1998 and not getting it, or seeing it in 1999 amd maybe getting it. I remember seeing them in 2005 and worshiping it. This wasn’t that show or any of the others, and if it was a novelty that it was just the two of them, well, novelty has always been part of SunnO))), however otherwise branded they might be for a given record. Dudes, amps, robes, fog. You could feel it in the floor, in your chest. The venue was selling earplugs outside. They should’ve been giving them away.
I brought my own anyhow, stood in back and watched their shadows play slowly between the monolithic full stacks behind them. Tone henge. Fair enough. From there on in, it was all watch-the-smoke and endurance to see who could stand with them. People began to subconsciously or not step backward in front of me, pushed away by it, even as others stepped forward, and that’s what good art does. The lights brightened, dimmed, the air smelled like dry ice and gentrified beer burps. The amps did the singing in bleak chorus, and all was crushed as advertised. I thought suddenly, standing there, about a Tiffany show I’d been invited to that was probably happening at the same time, and what a big, weird planet this is.
Tell you what, I’d had a cold all week and SunnO))) were at least as effective a treatment for my sinuses as anything else I’d ingested, if harder on the ears. Folks started to get antsy about 40 minutes into the set, which is reasonable, and for a band whose entire concept is to be overwhelming, SunnO))) delivered on that particular promise even in this supposedly minimal manifestation. An hour would’ve been plenty, so they played for 90 minutes and gravity smooshed all our faces against unbreaking plexiglass while the riffs promulgated through the swirling fog. Breezy in that rectangle, but they got their point across for sure. I caught myself grinding my teeth. Lightning strobe and rising mist monsters. It was a grand sonic squashing.
Then, right at the end, just as the strobe headache was really settling in and they were feedbacking like they meant it, I found a dollar on the floor. Shit. A buck! Ultimate win. I may not have been allowed to use my fancy camera, but I rolled out of that show a richer man than I walked in. Not too shabby, all told.
Special thanks to Earle Connelly for the ticket and getting me out of the house, and thank you for reading.
Posted in Reviews on September 28th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
I’m in it. The only reason I even know what day it is is because I keep notes and I set up the back end of these posts ahead of time. They tell me what number I’m on. As for the rest, it’s blinders and music, all all all. Go. Go. Go. I honestly don’t even know why I still write these intro paragraphs. I just do. You know the deal, right? 10 records yesterday, 10 today, 10 more tomorrow. At some point it ends. At some point it begins again. Presumably before then I’ll figure out what day it is.
Quarterly Review #71-80:
James Romig & Mike Scheidt, The Complexity of Distance
James Romig is a Pulitzer-finalist composer, and Mike Scheidt is the founding guitarist/vocalist of YOB. I refuse to cut-and-paste-pretend at understanding all the theory put into the purported ’13:14:15′ ratio of beat cycles throughout The Complexity of Distance — or, say, just about any of it — but the resulting piece is about 57 minutes of Scheidt‘s guitar work, as recorded by Billy Barnett (YOB‘s regular producer). It is presented as a single track, and with the (obviously intentional) chord progressions in Romig‘s piece, “The Complexity of Distance” is a huge drone. If you ever wanted to hear Scheidt do earlier-style Earth guitar work — yes, duh — then this might satisfy that curiosity. There’s high-culture intersecting with low here in a way that takes Scheidt out of it creatively — that is to say, Romig did the composing — but I won’t take away from the work in concept or performance, or even the result. Hell, I’ll listen to Mike Scheidt riff around for 57 minutes. It’ll be the best 57 minutes of my god damned day. Perhaps that’s not universal, but I don’t think Romig‘s looking for radio hits. Whether you approach it on that theory level or as a sonic meditation, the depths welcome you. I’d take another Scheidt solo record someday too, though. Just saying.
Copenhagen’s Mythic Sunship turned Light/Flux around so quick after 2021’s Wildfire (review here) they didn’t even have time to take a new promo photo. There is no question the Danish five-piece have been on a tear for a few years now, and their ascent into the psych-jazz fusion ether continues with Light/Flux, marrying its gotta-happen-right-this-second urgency to a patience in the actual unfolding of songs like the sax’ed out “Aurora” and the more guitar-led “Blood Moon” at the outset — light — with the cosmic triumphalist horn and crashes of “Decomposition” leading off side B and moving into the hey-where’d-you-come-from boogie of “Tempest,” presumably flux. Each half of the record ends with a standout, as “Equinox” follows “Blood Moon” with a more space rock-feeling takeoff pulse, right up to the synth sweep that starts at about 2:50, and “First Frost” gives high and low float gracefully over steady toms like different dreams happening at the same time and then merging in purpose as the not-overblown crescendo locks in. May their momentum carry them ever forward if they’re going to produce at this level.
What a fascinating direction the progression of Sweden’s Deville has taken these 15 years after Come Heavy Sleep. Heavy Lies the Crown finds the Swedish journeymen aligned to Sixteentimes Music for the follow-up to 2018’s Pigs With Gods (review here), and is through its eight tracks in a dense-toned, impact-minded 33 minutes with nary a second to spare in cuts like “Killing Time” and “Unlike You” and “A Devil Around Your Neck.” Their push and aggressive edge reminds of turn-of-the-century Swedish heavy rockers like Mustasch or Mother Misery, and even in “Hands Tied” and “Serpent Days” — the two longest cuts on Heavy Lies the Crown, appearing in succession on side A — they maintain an energy level fostered by propulsive drums and a rampant drive toward immediacy rather than flourish, but neither does the material feel rushed or unconsidered right up to the final surprising bit of spaciousness in “Pray for More,” which loosens up the throttle a bit while still holding onto an underlying chug, some last progressive angularity perhaps to hint at another stage to come. One way or the other, in craft and delivery, Deville remain reliable without necessarily being predictable, which is a rare balance to strike, particularly for a band who’ve never made the same record twice.
Guitarist/vocalist Bill Jenkins and bassist Matthew Kahn hail from Kingsnake (begat by Sugar Daddie in days of yore), drummer Michael Scarpone played in Wizard Eye, and guitarist Christopher Wojcik made a splash a few years back in King Bison, so yes, dudes have been around. Accordingly, Superdeluxe know off the bat where their grooves are headed on this five-song self-titled EP, with centerpiece “Earth” nodding toward a somewhat inevitable Clutch influence — thinking “Red Horse Rainbow” specifically — and seeming to acknowledge lyrically this as the project’s beginning point in “Popular Mechanix,” driving somewhat in the vein of Freedom Hawk but comfortably paced as “Destructo Facto” and “Severed Hand” are at the outset of the 19-minute run. “Ride” finishes out with a lead line coursing over its central figure before a stop brings the chorus, swing and swagger and a classic take on that riff — Sabbath‘s “Hole in the Sky,” Goatsnake‘s “Trower”; everybody deserves a crack at it at least once — familiar and weighted, but raw enough in the production to still essentially be a demo. Nonetheless, veteran players, new venture, fun to be had and hopefully more to come.
Based in Berlin and featuring bassist Cozza, formerly of Melbourne, Australia’s Riff Fist, alongside guitarist Moseph and drummer 666tin, Esel are an instrumentalist three-piece making their full-length debut with the live-recorded and self-produced Asinus. An eight-tracker spanning 38 minutes, it’s rough around the edges in terms of sound, but that only seems to suit the fuzz in both the guitar and bass, adding a current of noise alongside the low end being pushed through both as well as the thud of 666tin‘s toms and kick. They play fast, they play slow, they roll the wheel rather than reinvent it, but there’s charm here amid the doomier “Donkey Business” — they’ve got a lot of ‘ass’ stuff going on, including the opener “Ass” and the fact that their moniker translates from German as “donkey” — and the sprawling into maddening crashes “A Biss” later on, which precedes the minute-long finale “The Esel Way Out.” Want to guess what it is? Did you guess noise and feedback? If you did, your prize is to go back to the start and hear the crow-call letters of the band’s name and the initial slow nod of “Ass” all over again. I’m going to do my best not to make a pun about getting into it, but, well, I’ve already failed.
With riffs to spare and spacious vibes besides, London instrumentalists Blue Tree Monitor offer Cryptids, working in a vein that feels specifically born out of their hometown’s current sphere of heavy. Across the sprawl of “Siberian Sand” at the beginning of the five-song/38-minute debut album, one can hear shades of some of the Desertscene-style riffing for which Steak has been an ambassador, and certainly there’s no shortage of psych and noise around to draw from either, as the cacophonous finish manifests. But big is the idea as much as broad, and sample-topped centerpiece “Sasquatch” (also the longest cut at 8:41) is a fine example of how to do both, complete with fuzzy largesse and a succession of duly plodding-through-the-woods riffs. “Antlion” feels laid back in the guitar but contrasts with the drums, and the closer “Seven” is more straight-ahead heavy rock riffing until its second half gets a little more into noise rock before its final hits, so maybe the book isn’t entirely closed on where they’ll go sound-wise, but so much the better for listening to something with multifaceted potential in the present. To put it another way, they sound like a new band feeling their way forward through their songs, and that’s precisely what one would hope for as they move forward from here.
Vigilant in conveying the Brooklynite unit’s progressive intentions, from the synthy-sounding freakout at the end of “Wavelength Synchronizer” to the angular beginning of “Conglobulations,” Incubation is the first two-songer offering from Astrometer, who boast in their ranks members of Hull, Meek is Murder and Bangladeafy. The marriage of sometimes manically tense riffing and a more open keyboard line overhead works well on the latter track, but one would at no point accuse Astrometer of not getting their point across, and with ready-for-a-7″ efficiency, since the whole thing takes just about seven and a half minutes out of your busy day. I’m fairly sure they’ve had some lineup jumbling since this was recorded — there may be up to three former members of Hull there now, and that’s a hoot also audible in the guitars — but notice is served in any case, and the way the ascending frenetic chug of the guitar gives way to the keyboard solo in “Wavelength Synchronizer” is almost enough on its own to let you know that there’s a plan at work. See also the melodic, almost post-rock-ish floating notes above the fray at the start of “Conglobulations.” I bought the download. I’d buy a tape. You guys got tapes? Shirts?
Somewhere between a solo-project and an actual band is Oldest Sea. Led by songwriter, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and recording engineer Sam Marandola — joined throughout the four tracks of debut EP Strange and Eternal by lead guitarist/drummer Andrew Marandola and on 10-minute closer “The Whales” by bassist Jay Mazzillo — the endeavor is atmospherically weighted and given a death-doom-ish severity through the echoing snare on “Consecration,” only after opener “Final Girl” swells in distortion and melody alike until receding for string-style ambience, which might be keyboard, might be guitar, might be cello, I don’t know. Marandola also performs as a solo folk artist and one can hear that in her approach to the penultimate “I’ll Take What’s Mine,” but in the focus on atmosphere here, as well as the patience of craft across differing methodologies in what’s still essentially an initial release — if nothing before it proves the argument, certainly “The Whales” does — one hears shades of the power SubRosa once wielded in bringing together mournful melody and doomed tradition to suit purposes drawing from American folk and post-metallic weight. At 25 minutes, I’m tempted to call it an album for its sheer substance. Instead I’ll hang back and just wait and get my hopes up for when that moment actually comes.
Based in Austria with roots in Canada, Spain and Sweden, Weddings are vocalist/guitarist Jay Brown, vocalist/drummer Elena Rodriguez and bassist Phil Nordling, and whether it’s the grunge turnaround on second cut “Hunter” or the later threatening-to-be-goth-rock of “Running Away” — paired well with “Talk is Cheap” — the trio are defined in no small part by the duet-style singing of Brown and Rodriguez. The truly fortunate part of listening to their sophomore LP, Book of Spells, is that they can also write a song. Opener “Hexenhaus” signals a willful depth of atmosphere that comes through on “Sleep” and the acoustic-led gorgeousness of “Tundra,” and so on, but they’re not shy about a hook either, as in “Greek Fire,” “Hunter,” “Running Away” and closer “Into the Night” demonstrate. Mood and texture are huge throughout Book of Spells, but the effect of the whole is duly entrancing, and the prevailing sense from their individual parts is that either Brown or Rodriguez could probably front the band on their own, but Weddings are a more powerful and entrancing listen for the work they do together throughout. Take a deep breath before you jump in here.
A classic rock spirit persists across the nine songs of The Heavy Crawls‘ sophomore full-length, Searching for the Sun, as the Kyiv-based trio of guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist Max Tovstyi, bassist/backing vocalist Serj Manernyi and drummer/backing vocalist Tobi Samuel offer nods to the likes of the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix, among others, with a healthy dose of their own fuzz to coincide. The organ-laced title-track sounds like it was recorded on a stage, if it wasn’t, and no matter where the trio end up — looking at you, Sabbath-riffed “Stoner Song” — the material is tied together through the unflinchingly organic nature of their presentation. They’re not hiding anything here. No tricks. No BS. They’re writing their own songs, to be sure, but whether it’s the funky “I Don’t Know” or the languid psych rollout of “Take Me Higher” (it picks up in the second half) that immediately follows, they put everything they’ve got right up front for the listener to take in, make of it what they will, and rock out accordingly, be it to the mellow “Out of My Head” or the stomping “Evil Side (Of Rock ‘n’ Roll) or the sweet, sweet guitar-solo-plus-organ culmination of “1,000 Problems.” Take your pick, really. You’re in good hands no matter what.
Posted in Reviews on September 26th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Welcome back to the Fall 2022 Quarterly Review. It’s not quite the same as the Mountain of Madness, but there are definitely days where it feels like they’re pretty closely related. Just the same, we, you and I, persist through like digging a tunnel sans dynamite, and I hope you had a great and safe weekend (also sans dynamite) and that you find something in this batch of releases that you truly enjoy. Not really much point to the thing otherwise, I guess, though it does tend to clear some folders off the desktop. Like, 100 of them in this case. That in itself isn’t nothing.
Time’s a wastin’. Let’s roll.
Quarterly Review #51-60:
Boris, Heavy Rocks
One can’t help but wonder if Boris aren’t making some kind of comment on the franchise-ification of what sometimes feels like every damn thing by releasing a third Heavy Rocks album, as though perhaps it’s become their brand label for this particular kind of raucousness, much as their logo in capital letters or lowercase used to let you know what kind of noise you were getting. Either way, in 10 tracks and 41 minutes that mostly leave scorch marks when they’re done — they space out a bit on “Question 1” but elsewhere in the song pull from black metal and layer in lead guitar triumph — and along the way give plenty more thick toned, sometimes-sax-inclusive on-brand chicanery to dive into. “She is Burning,” “Cramper” and “My Name is Blank” are rippers before the willfully noisy relative slowdown “Blah Blah Blah,” and Japanese heavy institution are at their most Melvinsian with the experiment “Nosferatou,” ahead of the party metal “Ruins” and semi-industrial blowout “Ghostly Imagination,” the would-be-airy-were-it-not-crushing “Chained” and the concluding “(Not) Last Song,” which feeds the central query above in asking if there’s another sequel coming, piano, feedback, and finally, vocals ending what’s been colloquially dubbed Heavy Rocks (2022) with an end-credits scene like something truly Marvelized. Could be worse if that’s the way it’s going. People tend to treat each Boris album as a landmark. I’m not sure this one is, but sometimes that’s part of what happens with sequels too.
Along with the depth of tone and general breadth of the mix, one of the aspects most enjoyable about Mother Bear‘s debut album, Zamonian Occultism, is how it seems to refuse to commit to one side or the other. They call themselves doom and maybe they are in movements here like the title-track, but the mostly-instrumental six-track/41-minute long-player — which opens and closes with lyrics and has “Sultan Abu” in the middle for a kind of human-voice trailmarker along the way — draws more from heavy psychedelia and languid groove on “Anagrom Ataf,” and if “Blue Bears and Silver Spliffs” isn’t stoner riffed, nothing ever has been. At the same time, the penultimate title-track slows way down, pulls the curtains closed, and offers a more massive nod, and the 10-minute closer “The Wizaaard” (just when you thought there were no more ways to spell it) answers that sense of foreboding in its own declining groove and echo-laced verses, but puts the fuzz at the forefront of the mix, letting the listener decide ultimately where they’re at. Tell you where I am at least: On board. Guitarist/vocalist Jonas Wenz, bassist Kevin Krenczer and drummer Florian Grass lock in hypnotic groove early and use it to tie together almost everything they do here, and while they’re obviously schooled in the styles they’re touching on, they present with an individual intent and leave room to grow. Will look forward to more.
After being kicked out of black metallers Absu for coming out as trans, Melissa Moore founded Sonja in Philadelphia with Grzesiek Czapla on drums and Ben Brand on bass, digging into a ‘true metal’ aesthetic with ferocity enough that Loud Arriver is probably the best thing they could’ve called their first record. Issued through Cruz Del Sur — so you know their ’80s-ism is class — the 37-minute eight-tracker vibes nighttime and draws on Moore‘s experience thematically, or so the narrative has it (I haven’t seen a lyric sheet), with energetic shove in “Nylon Nights” and “Daughter of the Morning Star,” growing duly melancholy in “Wanting Me Dead” before finding its victorious moment in the closing title-track. Cuts like “Pink Fog,” “Fuck, Then Die” and opener “When the Candle Burns Low…” feel specifically born of a blend of 1979-ish NWOBHM, but there’s a current of rock and roll here as well in the penultimate “Moans From the Chapel,” a sub-three-minute shove that’s classic in theme as much as riff and the most concise but by no means the only epic here. Hard not to read in catharsis on the part of Moore given how the band reportedly came about, but Loud Arriver serves notice one way or the other of a significant presence in the underground’s new heavy metal surge. Sonja have no time to waste. There are asses to kick.
Seven-minute opener ends in a War of the Worlds-style radio announcement of an alien invasion underway after the initial fuzzed rollout of the song fades, and between that and the subsequent interlude “Funeral March,” Reverend Mother‘s intent on Damned Blessing seems to be to throw off expectation. The Brooklynite outfit led by guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Jackie Green (also violin) find even footing on rockers like “Locomotive” or the driving-until-it-hits-that-slowdown-wall-and-hey-cool-layering “Reverend Mother,” and the strings on the instrumental “L.V.B.,” which boasts a cello guest spot by High Priestess Nighthawk of Heavy Temple, who also returns on the closing Britney Spears cover “Toxic,” a riffed-up bent that demonstrates once again the universal applicability of pop as Reverend Mother tuck it away after the eight-minute “The Masochist Tie,” a sneering roll and chugger that finds the trio of Green, bassist Matt Cincotta and drummer Gabe Katz wholly dug into heavy rock tropes while nonetheless sounding refreshing in their craft. That song and “Shame” before it encapsulate the veer-into-doom-ness of Reverend Mother‘s hard-deliver’d fuzz, but Damned Blessing comes across like the beginning of a new exploration of style as only a next-generation-up take can and heralds change to come. I would not expect their second record to sound the same, but it will be one to watch for. So is this.
The pedigree here is notable as Umbilicus features founding Cannibal Corpse drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz and guitarist/engineer Taylor Nordberg (also visuals), who’s played with Deicide, The Absence and a host of others, but with the soar-prone vocals of Brian Stephenson out front and the warm tonality of bassist Vernon Blake, Umbilicus‘ 10-song/45-minute first full-length, Path of 1000 Suns is a willful deep-dive into modernly-produced-and-presented ’70s-style heavy rock. Largely straightforward in structure, there’s room for proto-metallurgy on “Gates of Neptune” after the swinging “Umbilicus,” and the later melodic highlight “My Own Tide” throws a pure stoner riff into its second half, while the concluding “Gathering at the Kuiper Belt” hints at more progressive underpinnings, it still struts and the swing there is no less defining than in the solo section of “Stump Sponge” back on side A. Hooks abound, and I suppose in some of the drum fills, if you know what you’re listening for, you can hear shades of more extreme aural ideologies, but the prevailing spirit is born of an obvious love of classic heavy rock and roll, and Umbilicus play it with due heart and swagger. Not revolutionary, and actively not trying to be, but definitely the good time it promises.
Not as frenetic as some out there of a similar technically-proficient ilk, Lawrence, Kansas, double-guitar instrumental four-piece After Nations feel as much jazz on “Féin” or “Cae” as they do progressive metal, djent, experimental, or any other tag with which one might want to saddle the resoundingly complex Buddhism-based concept album, The Endless Mountain — the Bandcamp page for which features something of a recommended reading list as well as background on the themes reportedly being explored in the material — which is fluid in composition and finds each of its seven more substantial inclusions accompanied by a transitional interlude that might be a drone, near-silence, a foreboding line of keys, whathaveyou. The later “Širdis” — penultimate to the suitably enlightened “Jūra,” if one doesn’t count the interlude between (not saying you shouldn’t) — is more of a direct linear build, but the 40-minute entirety of The Endless Mountain feels like a steep cerebral climb. Not everyone is going to be up for making it, frankly, but in “}}}” and its punctuationally-named companions there’s some respite from the head-spinning turns that surround, and that furthers both the dynamic at play overall and the accessibility of the songs. Whatever else it might be, it’s immaculately produced and every single second, from “Mons” and “Aon” to “))” and “(),” feels purposeful.
With the over-the-top Danzig-ian vocals coming through high in the mix, the drums sounding intentionally blown out and the fuzz of bass and guitar arriving in tidal riffs, Denmark’s Holy Dragon for sure seem to be shooting for memorability on their second album, Mordjylland. “Hell and Gold” pulls back somewhat from the in-your-face immediacy of opener “Bong” — and yet it’s faster; go figure — and the especially brash “War” is likewise timely and dug in. Centerpiece “Nightwatch” feels especially yarling with its more open riff and far-back echoing drums — those drums are heavy in tone in a way most are not, and it is appreciated — and gives over to the Judas Priestly riff of “Dunder,” which sounds like it’s being swallowed by the bass even as the concluding solo slices through. They cap with “Egypt” in classic-metal, minor-key-sounds-Middle-Eastern fashion, but they’re never far from the burly heft with which they started, and even the mellower finish of “Travel to Kill” feels drawn from it. The album’s title is a play on ‘Nordjylland’ — the region of Denmark where they’re from — and if they’re saying it’s dead, then their efforts to shake it back to life are palpable in these seven songs, even if the end front-to-back result of the album is going to be hit or miss with most listeners. Still, they are markedly individual, and the fact that you could pick them out of the crowd of Europe’s e’er-packed heavy underground is admirable in itself.
Lincoln, Nebraska, trio Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships are right there. Right on the edge. You can hear it in the way “Beg Your Pardon” unfolds its lumbering tonality, riff-riding vocals and fervency of groove at the outset of their second album, Consensus Trance. They’re figuring it out. And they’re working quickly. Their first record, 2021’s TTBS, and the subsequent Rosalee EP (review here) were strong signals of intention on the part of guitarist/vocalist Jeremy Warner, bassist Karlin Warner and drummer Justin Kamal, and there is realization to be had throughout Consensus Trance in the noisy lead of “Mystical Consumer,” the quiet instrumental “Distalgia for Infinity” and the mostly-huge-chugged 11-minute highlight “Weeping Beast” to which it leads. But they’re also still developing their craft, as opener “Beg Your Pardon” demonstrates amid one of the record’s most vibrant hooks, and exploring spaciousness like that in the back half of the penultimate “Silo,” and the sense that emerges from that kind of reach and the YOB-ish ending of capper “I.H.” is that there’s more story to be told as to what Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships have to offer in style and substance. So much the better since Consensus Trance has such superlative heft at its foundation.
Kind of funny to think of Menticide as a debut LP from Deer Creek, who’ve been around for 20 years — one fondly recalls their mid-aughts splits with Church of Misery and Raw Radar War — but one might consider that emblematic of the punk underpinning the sludgy heavy roll of “(It Had Neither Fins Nor Wings) Nor Did it Writhe,” along with the attitude of fuckall that joins hands with resoundingly dense tonality to create the atmosphere of the five originals and the cover medley closer “The Working Man is a Dead Pig,” which draws on Rush, Bauhaus and Black Sabbath classics as a sort of partially explanatory appendix to the tracks preceding. Of those, the impression left is duly craterous, and Deer Creek, with Paul Vismara‘s mostly-clean vocals riding a succession of his own monolithic riffs, a bit of march thrown into “The Utter Absence of Hope” amid the breath of tone from his and Conan Hultgren‘s guitars and Stephanie Hopper‘s bass atop the drumming of Marc Brooks. One is somewhat curious as to what drives a band after two full-length-less decades to make a definitive first album — at least beyond “hey a lot of things have changed in the last couple years” anyhow — but the results here are inarguable in their weight and the spaces they create and fill, with disaffection and onward and outward-looking angst as much as volume. That is to say, as much as Menticide nods, it’s more unsettling the more attention you actually pay to what’s going on. But if you wanted to space out instead, I doubt they’d hold it any more against you than was going to happen anyway. Band who owes nothing to anyone overdelivers. There.
Following the mid-’90s C.O.C. tone and semi-Electric Wizard shouts of “Black Lotus Trance,” “Detroit Demons” calls out Stooges references while burl-riffing around Pantera‘s “I’m Broken,” and “Loose” manifests sleaze to coincide with the exploitation of the Never Sleep at Night EP’s cover art. All of this results in zero-doubt assurance that the Brazilian trio have their bona fides in place when it comes to dudely riffs and an at least partially metal approach; stylistically-speaking, it’s like metal dudes got too drunk to remember what they were angry at and decided to have a party instead. I don’t have much encouraging to say at this juncture about the use of vintage porn as a likely cheap cover option, but no one seems to give a shit about moving past that kind of misogyny, and I guess as regards gender-based discrimination and playing to the male gaze and so on, it’s small stakes. I bet they get signed off the EP anyway, so what’s the point? The point I guess is that the broad universe of those who’d build altars to riffs, Riffcoven are at very least up front with what they’re about and who their target audience is.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on September 23rd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Just for reference, this isn’t actually the first time I’ve closed out a week with an unofficial release, aka a bootleg. I normally wouldn’t — obviously, or it’d’ve happened more often by now — but the category has only been called ‘Bootleg Theater’ for the last 13 years, so you can think of it as periodically living up to the premise if that helps. In any case, Type O Negative never actually put out an honest-to-goodness live album — you’ll recall 1992’s The Origin of the Feces was sub-titled ‘Not Live at Brighton Beach,’ and indeed, it wasn’t really live. If nothing else, I’d offer Blood Melting Extremity as a candidate or substitute for that.
Actually, if this show, recorded from the soundboard at the Gino in Stockholm, Sweden, on Oct. 2, 1994 (the set ends in the video above at 55:30; there’s a demo of “Summer Breeze/Set Me on Fire,” a track by Laibach and other stuff tacked on here but I went with what I could find), was to finally see a proper mixdown, master and release, it would only be earned. The sound quality is incredible enough to justify that — also the many, many subsequent incarnations the bootleg has received, including titles like Even Snow Dies and Bloody Stockholm, etc.; if you’re interested, I chose Blood Melting Extremity over those because it’s the CD of the show I first bought — and the performance, stage banter and setlist encapsulate everything that worked so well about the quintessential Brooklyn four-piece at that point in their history. Touring for their landmark 1993 third album, Bloody Kisses, the band were at an early pinnacle, embracing goth metal in their over-the-top Sabbath-meets-Beatles fashion with frontman Peter Steele, a prototype of the metal icon he’d become throughout the rest of the 1990s, leading the four-piece on bass with Kenny Hickey on guitar/vocals, Josh Silver on keys and Sal Abruscato (I think; he was also in Life of Agony at the time; if it wasn’t him it would’ve been Johnny Kelly of course) on drums.
I’ll gladly put the version of “Gravitational Constant: G = 6.67 x 10^-8 Cm^-3 Gm^-1 Sec^-2” on Blood Melting Extremity forward as one of the best things the band ever did. For that alone, this disc. But “Too Late: Frozen,” the Black Sabbath cover “Paranoid,” and especially “Christian Woman” shine here, tinted bright-but-muted green and the latter introduced in trademark deadpan by Steele as, “A song about a girl who loved god just a little bit too much,” ahead of “Bloody Kisses (A Death in the Family)” and “Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All),” the latter of which would’ve already been a hit for them by the time they got abroad on this tour. Given the audience also singing along to “Christian Woman” earlier, gloriously audible, that would’ve been true of that song as well. And closing out, played just a little bit faster than on the album, the keyboard line in “Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All)” is all the more clearly a send-up of goth culture, heavy metal, everything.
As the vocal warble in “Too Late: Frozen” demonstrates early, one of the things that distinguishes Blood Melting Extremity from various other Type O Negative bootlegs out there — and many other even soundboard bootlegs that I’ve encountered at various points; Black Sabbath‘s Asbury Park 1975 (discussed here) comes to mind as one of the few of its caliber — is that the quality of the recording allows both the nuance and the power in the band’s sound to shine through at this point. The chug of “Christian Woman” in the verse threatens to swallow Steele‘s voice, yet in the second half of the song when he slips into sexualized rhythmic breathing — gleefully homoerotic and goth-theatrical as ever — it comes through clearly, as do the chime sounds there, keys as their take on “Paranoid” slips into Seals and Crofts, and the surging instrumental melody along with the utterly doomed march of “Bloody Kisses (A Death in the Family)” as it moves toward its eighth minute before the declining mourning bell tones back the final push.
It’s not just a novelty release of a band playing songs; their dynamic is captured. I was fortunate enough to see Type O Negative multiple times prior to Steele‘s death in 2010, and Blood Melting Extremity is who they were on stage. I don’t know if you’d call them “hungry” — thirsty perhaps, in the parlance of our times — in the sense of cloyingly going for audience approval, but they make it not at all counterintuitive to think of a band playing slow as nonetheless being urgent. That is to say, they sound young, but also like the emergent masters of their sound that they were. The hook in “Black No. 1” alone is ready proof, waiting to be heard. And when Steele shouts the line, “it was like fucking the dead,” there’s melody there too, which along with the “I don’t know…” added to the first verse of “Christian Woman” speaks to the band’s open approach to their own material. They were confident, arrogant, enough to change it up at this point, and they’d continue to be throughout their career, but locked in as a group in terms of chemistry and each member of the band knowing where the other was headed. As far as shows go, this is superlative, and I mean that.
There are arguments to be made that Bloody Kisses was the peak of the band. I don’t think it was — and if you want to have a friendly debate on the point, golly, that sounds like a good time — but there’s no question this era was a special time for them and the beginning of an ascent that would go even further, commercially and aesthetically, on 1996’s October Rust (discussed here). They’d built on what they’d done across 1991’s Slow Deep and Hard and The Origin of the Feces, come into their own as performers and songwriters (Steele is largely credited with the latter, but I won’t downplay the contributions of the others in making Type O Negative who they were), and however dumb they may have called themselves, they were clearly intelligent and self-aware enough to know they had a good thing going.
But to bottom-line it for you, I could’ve closed out this week with Bloody Kisses (and I will close a week with it eventually). I’ve had it on my desktop for the better part of a month, just waiting for its turn. But I went with Blood Melting Extremity instead.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thank you for reading.
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So, Quarterly Review, huh?
You should know that after writing that sentence I stopped for 25 minutes and tried desperately to get caught up on email. It didn’t work. I’m still at 182, down from 191 new. Most of that is Questionnaires from May, June, July, this week. I just suck at everything, but please understand I’m doing my best.
I had a (telehealth) appointment yesterday with a neurologist. Given my family history and the fact that I continue to feel like I’m from a different planet than, say, everybody else, I wanted to try to understand what’s going on with my brain. Am I on the spectrum? Apparently, probably not. But I do have ADHD and some kind of autonomic brain dysfunction, which was oddly reassuring to hear. I was offered ADHD meds but I was like, “No way lady, I’m in the middle of a Quarterly Review! I’ve got 50 records to write up next week and need all the hyper-focus I can get!”
But it was fascinating to be so nailed. The doctor ran through an array of symptoms/manifestations in my personality and, even more, physicality, that I’ve dealt with throughout my entire life, and for someone I’ve never actually met to have that much of a sense of at least that part of who I am, well, yeah. Read me like a book. She even went so far as to prescribe orthotics for my fucked up feet. She told me to go swimming more. So I guess I’m doing that this morning.
I need to have blood work done — blood tests are a running gag for me going back over half a decade to all the fertility treatments before The Pecan was born; she said it and I rolled my eyes because of course blood work — and have a neuropsychological evaluation to schedule for like two months from now. A big questionnaire to fill out that I’m sure will be daunting emotionally. I don’t know what I’m looking to find out other than maybe to give a name to why I seem to myself to operate and to feel so differently from other people — understand, this is not me calling myself “special” unless you mean “special” in the sense of “unable to function like everyone else” — and maybe give a little bit of context and future understanding to my son.
Because he’s the one who’s going to reap all my bullshit, and I know that precisely because I did the same. But my father never sought treatment of any kind, never even tried to take meds (I’m still testing waters being off Citalopram after about five years; it’s going as you might expect), just spent his whole life wanting to die and then eventually dying alone, not even cognizant it was happening at the time. I don’t want to be remembered like that. At least Joe — that’s his name — will be able to say I tried to understand what was happening and why I was the wreck I was when I’m gone. I’m trying.
Anyway, life takes you to interesting places.
More Quarterly Review next week, also a full stream and probably not as much of a review as I’d like to write for Sonic Flower on Thursday, and Abronia video premiere (already reviewed the album so that’ll be easier) on Tuesday and other odds and ends throughout the week as they come up.
I hope you have a great and safe weekend. We’re coming into Fall now, which is my favorite season, because it’s beautiful and you can wear flannel without getting overheated. I hope you enjoy it as well.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 7th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Very, very curious to hear what a fourth full-length from Brooklyn-based melodic heavy rock traditionalists The Golden Grass will entail. Even without the two pandemic years between, the band’s 2018 third album, Absolutely (review here), pushed their style to its furthest progressive reach, building on the foundation of harmonies and classic heavy rock from the first two LPs but inherently pulling away from the straightforward songcraft of their Svart-issued 2014 self-titled debut (review here) — 2016’s Coming Back Again (review here) was an organic halfway between the two points, as one would hope — in favor of more complex structures.
The band have been widely lauded, certainly by me, also by many others, since even before the first record — and the sense I’ve always gotten from them is they know it — and accordingly, I’m wondering if their fourth record will continue the progression of the third or attempt to strip back some of the flourish in favor of a return to the sunshiny charm of their roundly cherished earlier material. I’ve heard nothing of it or from them since before covid hit, so I’m not playing coy — I genuinely don’t know what’s up or what “new perspectives” might manifest in their sound — but they posted the notice below on social media so old people like me could see it and, well, I guess that worked.
Also somewhat curious through what label the yet-untitled album — presumably a 2023 release — will come out. Their last two were on Listenable Records, and three-album deals are a thing that happens, but it’s been long enough to justify wondering at least in my own head. Certainly Ripple Music or Heavy Psych Sounds would be a fit and lucky to have them, but so would a bunch of other outlets, Stickman, Lay Bare, and the up and coming Majestic Mountain Records among them and in keeping with the band’s steady focus on Europe.
So, more to come.
For now:
THE GOLDEN GRASS – New Album Recording
Excited to say we just spent 4 days at #UrbanSpaceman studio in Brooklyn, NY (with @electrorocket engineering) tracking main instruments for our next (and 4th) full length album! It was a smashing success, the takes sound brilliant, and the playing is truly inspired!
We started writing these tunes back in 2019, after we returned from our 5th European tour, with the almighty @wedge.band, and the plan was to take a year off, write a new album and release it in 2020…obviously things didn’t work out as planned, for anyone…
But here we are, finally, and perhaps the elongated break gave us infinite new perspectives into our writing, and more time than we would have initially given ourselves, so, we take it all as the blessing the universe intended!
Next step, is tracking all overdubs and vocals at Adam’s #InforTheKill studio in Brooklyn, NY…and then finally for 4 days of mixing with the brilliant @jeffreyberner at Studio G in early October….
Posted in Questionnaire on September 5th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
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: Jon Ehlers of Astrometer & Bangladeafy
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I’d like to think that I take the overlooked elements of musical timbres and turn it into something that demands attention. If it’s a synth tone, I kind of zero in on the ugliest feature of it and extract it in its purest form and put truck nuts on it.
Describe your first musical memory.
I remember sitting in the backwards facing seat of a station wagon and listening to Marshall Tucker and ZZ Top on the radio while watching the world pass by in reverse.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Watching Nine Inch Nails perform as I was crammed at the foot of the stage on Randall’s Island during the Panorama Music Festival. It was extremely hot out and I had already drank all my water but was too stubborn to leave my coveted spot. As the band began to play, a cool breeze came off the East River and everything fell into place.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
I’ve never thought this strongly about my convictions and it’s tough to answer. I’ve been in certain situations where I am forced to interact with extremely ignorant people and I believe that they are victims of some awful circumstance out of their control. I try to approach them with patience and understanding until I can’t because my own circumstances have reached a breaking point.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
I can tell you where it does not lead: perfection. It is a series of challenges, pride and letdowns that hopefully amount to a legacy that will be uncovered by alien archaeologists.
How do you define success?
Success in terms of music or the visual medium of art is best defined in its replay value. How often do you listen or look at what you created and feel satisfaction?
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
When I was about 10 years old, I watched my dog kill a puppy when I was home alone. I blocked it out for a long time.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I would one day like to create a retro-style kaiju series that captures and expands on the magical campiness of it all.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Discipline in regards to the time put aside for it.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Posted in Questionnaire on August 12th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
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: Drew Mack of Astrometer, Cleanteeth, ex-Hull, ex-Somnuri, etc.
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I define my artist identity as a Songwriter. I play guitar but have never been very interested in shredding the hardest or coming up with the craziest solos to play, I have always been more interested in the structure of a song and I’m consistently drawn to the rhythm section of a band.
I grew up in a small town in Wyoming that, to this day, is extremely behind the times as far as music goes. I was fortunate enough to land a gig DJing on a local FM radio station toward the end of high school, during the same time that the internet was blossoming, and this lead to an exhilarating discovery of bands all over the country playing types of music (mostly metal) I had never even dreamed of. So began my bloodlust toward finding ALL of these bands and driving five hours each way to Salt Lake City, Utah, to see any heavy band play in the live setting.
I eventually thought that maybe I could be a musician, since I felt so passionate about music, and I decided I wanted to be a drummer. I don’t know why it came as such a surprise to me that buying a set of drums was so damn expensive, but I lucked out when I found that a friend of mine had an old kit sitting in his garage. We set this thing up and I have to be honest, it was the worst drum set I have ever seen! The cymbals were so old that if you hit the crash or ride, they would invert like an umbrella in a windstorm, and even the mechanism that powers the movement of the kick pedal was made of LEATHER! I tried to make that work for a couple of garage bands that I started with my dudes, but didn’t get much satisfaction out of trying to make that kit sound even remotely decent.
So I did what I think a lot of people in that situation would do: I decided that the singer of a band is the one that gets the most attention, and since I could scream better than most of my friends, I transitioned into that role. More mediocrity ensued with my bands, until my 18th birthday came around and my step-sister handed me a guitar! I honestly looked at her like she was a crazy person and said, “what the hell is this for?” She thought I may enjoy playing it and SHE WAS CORRECT! As soon as I started learning how to play that guitar (still have and play that piece of shit ‘X-Cort’ to this day) I was hooked!
Describe your first musical memory.
The first musical experience that I really wish I had a clearer memory of was being taken to my first real show to see Lynyrd Skynyrd (one of the members happened to live in my home town in Wyoming). In this day and age, it would be pretty cool to be able to say ‘yeah I sang along to freebird when I was a kid at my first show’, but I really don’t recall much of the show, aside from the general good vibes in the crowd. My first real musical memory would be from hanging out with my mom(also responsible for the Skynyrd show). We would ride around in her car and she would just BLAST classic rock and sing her ass off and rock the fuck out and then would turn the music down real quick and ask my sister and I if we could name the artist.
It was a fantastic game and I fully appreciate that she acclimated my ears to the volume my future self would require. I also remember quite vividly any time I said I want-want-wanted a toy or something, she would sit me down in our living room and play ‘You can’t always get what you want’ by the Rolling Stones, which somehow eased the pain of not getting that silly toy or whathaveyou. Parents, please carry on the torch of this tradition!!
Describe your best musical memory to date.
I would have to say the best musical memory to date would be my collective experience performing in Hull over eight years. That was the band I first got to go out on the road with (my happy place) and through very thick and very thin, every single issue or struggle or problem in the world would melt away when my brothers and I got on that stage and did our thing. It really was an awakening experience of how you can achieve something so much bigger than success or fame or just having fun or partying, but a deep connection within the mind and spirit of my brothers in arms that, even though Hull didn’t last the test of time, we will all have this heightened experience engrained in us for the rest of our time on earth.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Well, New York City will absolutely chew you up and spit you out and then be like “WHAT, FOOL?! DEAL WITH IT!” and I was no exception. I have lived in NYC for 18-plus years now and have been homeless for some of them, living out of my practice space, working my bones into a powder, and trying not to succumb to the idea that I had made a huge mistake in moving to NYC to follow my passion in music. In the lowest of those times, I absolutely questioned everything, but today I can confidently say that I did make the right choice and all of those struggles only sweetened the horizon for me.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
I believe that true artistic progression literally leads EVERYWHERE. I find it hard to believe that some people will listen to basically one band or one genre their entire life. To me, that sounds like a lack of curiosity and/or passion. I remember back in my ‘hardcore days’ we would tell an urban legend type of joke about someone’s roommate who used to be into grimy, gnarly noise rock and metal but then got a little older and now he only listens to Bjork. As if that would be too absurd for this world to handle! I like to remind myself of the tiny stereocilia in your ears that get tired after hearing certain frequencies too often- or the theory that plants and animals respond differently to various types of music. If that is not nature’s sign to follow your physiological responses towards new things, well I don’t know what is.
I also try to remind myself how slowly susceptible we can be to things we experience only for a moment or even once. Like the time I was first introduced to the band Isis. My friend put on SGNL>05 for me and I vividly remember ABSOLUTELY HATING it. I even told my pal, ‘this is so dumb! Why are they playing so slow?! This is so two dimensional!’ and I made him turn it off after only hearing a minute or so of the song. Fast forward to a week or two later and that minute of Isis that I had begrudgingly heard was LOOPING NON-STOP IN MY HEAD! So I went out and bought SGNL>05 and rocketed myself into DECADES of loving Isis with all of my being. (REST IN POWER!)
How do you define success?
As a musician and a fabricator who builds things in a woodshop, I define success as creating something that you personally feel proud of, regardless of the response from any other person. It is easy to get sucked into the consumerism of this modern world and to respond in kind by churning out art quickly and specifically for the masses, and yet I believe that without creating inside a place of individual freedom for the strict betterment of yourself and maybe the collaborators you have connected with, this assembly line art can have a much shorter shelf life. Over the years, in the multiple bands I have played in, the conversation has changed from striving for success, into a desire to create something timeless in this fleeting mortal coil.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
OOF there are many things I wish I had not seen in the past nearly two decades in NYC. Not to mention, growing up in Wyoming had its own special pitfalls, like having nine friends die throughout my years in school. One thing that really sticks with me was witnessing a very dear friend’s bandmate die in front of me in the hallways of my practice space in Brooklyn. I had to operate the freight elevator for the firefighters who had just performed CPR on this man for over 45 minutes and while we were in the elevator, I looked down upon his blue-grey body as they pulled out the manual resuscitator from his mouth and nose and blood spilled out of his face and I knew he was at death’s door. I was completely destroyed for my friends who played in a band with that man. I couldn’t even begin to imagine losing one of my brothers in arms like that and at such a young age!!
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I have been dreaming for a long time of the day when I have the tools and the collaborators to create a truly magical audio/visual performance. I think if I ever feel too old to climb up on a stage and perform, I would love to have developed some sort of film scoring/soundtrack writing career by then.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
I believe the most essential function of art is to connect humans with each other. Even on the smallest scale, such as an art enthusiast feeling moved by a painting, there is a connection there even though the artist is not physically present. Critiquing such art can get messy, since we are all individuals and experience everything at least slightly differently, which is why I prefer the musical medium. Standing in a crowd and enjoying the same set of frequency waves washing over everyone equally and feeling so harmoniously as one organism is really so extremely magical. I love feeling all of society’s pigeonholed and compartmentalized ideas of individuality just melt away!
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
As a father of a six-year-old boy, I am very excited to watch him grow up, knowing he may or may not be a musician, he may or may not love heavy metal like I do, he may or may not grow out his hair and a beard, he may or may not become a cop!! Who the fuck knows?! And that is exciting…
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 28th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Welcome bit of good news on the day as Brooklyn trio Somnuri sign to MNRK Heavy for the release of their upcoming third album in 2023. This almost invariably means they’ll tour with Crowbar, who they’ll also join for a hometown gig at Saint Vitus Bar on Aug. 9, as the two are now labelmates, and a support slot for High on Fire doesn’t seem impossible either, frankly. Bottom line is this puts them in a different league of bands.
All the better since they earned it. Their second record, 2021’s Nefarious Wave (review here), came out on Blues Funeral Records and remains a ripper even as the three-piece post the new song and clip, “Coils.” In addition to the Vitus Bar date, they’ll be at Tattoo the Earth, and one imagines there’s more to come, particularly in the New Year with a new album. Right on.
The PR wire made it official:
SOMNURI: Brooklyn Stoner/Sludge Trio Joins MNRK Heavy Roster; “Coils” Video Unveiled
Brooklyn, New York stoner/sludge trio SOMNURI has united with MNRK Heavy for the release of their upcoming, third full-length today, unveiling a stand-alone video single, “Coils.”
Among other hustles, hitting the pavement and providing a cannabis delivery service was one of the main catalysts in SOMNURI’s infant stages and a DIY ethos was adopted early on. The grind it takes to survive in New York City seeps into their music and it’s hard not to hear elements of the city throughout: sludge, atmosphere, and at times brutal dissonance, layered with pounding and entrancing rhythms and low-end frequencies that make your guts rattle. SOMNURI’s sound weaves in and out of hauntingly infectious melodies and bludgeoning riffs and grooves that shift time and tempo often.
In celebration of their signing, the band is pleased to reveal their new single, “Coils.” The track seamlessly fuses rugged heaviness with epic and melodic instrumentals. Their groove-forward, bludgeoning riffs, and psychedelic atmosphere is in spirit with the likes of High On Fire, Mastodon, and Torche.
Notes the band, “The song ‘Coils’ is about getting stuck in loops. It’s about repeating the same mistakes and searching deep within to overcome them.”
SOMNURI Live: 8/09/2022 Saint Vitus Bar – Brooklyn, NY w/ Crowbar, Spirit Adrift, Stabbed 8/26/2022 Tattoo The Earth Festival Pre-Party @ The Palladium – Worcester, MA w/ Unearth, Sworn Enemy, Boundaries, Hazing Over
SOMNURI started when two multi-instrumentalists joined forces after sharing the stage and practice spaces in previous Brooklyn-based bands. Justin Sherrell (guitar/vocals) had guitar ideas he wanted to develop further and soon linked up with drummer Phil SanGiacomo. The ability for both founding members to explore ideas on guitar, bass, drums, and vocals continues to be the band’s lifeblood. The band’s first and second LPs were very well-received. With a willingness to venture into new sonic spaces of heavy music, SOMNURI’s upcoming full-length is in the works and due out in 2023 via MNRK Heavy. Further info will be unveiled in the coming months.
SOMNURI Live Lineup: Justin Sherrell – guitar, vocals Phil SanGiacomo – drums Mike G – bass
SunnO))) — Greg “The Lord” Anderson (who also runs Southern Lord Recordings) amd Stephen O’Malley — billed this tour as the ‘Shoshin (初心) Duo,’ in reference to the fact that, where the band has expanded its lineup in various ways and incarnations over the last two decades, this is the thing in its barest form. So be it. Both Anderson and O’Malley were out to check their guitars and it was long enough before they went on that even standing in the back it was crowded enough to make me even less sad about not taking pictures, not that the ensuimg fart cloud was any great treat, but you know. I had wondered if maybe they wouldn’t play in the robes, raw form and all that, but indeed, the fog, the robes, the rumble, all of that.
