Quarterly Review: Sergeant Thunderhoof, Swallow the Sun, Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, Planet of Zeus, Human Teorema, Caged Wolves, Anomalos Kosmos, Pilot Voyager, Blake Hornsby, Congulus

Posted in Reviews on December 12th, 2024 by JJ Koczan

THE-OBELISK-FALL-2020-QUARTERLY-REVIEW

Day four of five for this snuck-in-before-the-end-of-the-year Quarterly Review, and I’m left wondering if maybe it won’t be worth booking another week for January or early February, and if that happens, is it still “quarterly” at that point if you do it like six times a year? ‘Bimonthly Quality Control Assessments’ coming soon! Alert your HR supervisors to tell your servers of any allergies.

No, not really.

I’ll figure out a way to sandwich more music into this site if it kills me. Which I guess it might. Whatever, let’s do this thing.

Quarterly Review #31-40

Sergeant Thunderhoof, The Ghost of Badon Hill

sergeant thunderhoof the ghost of badon hill 1

A marked accomplishment in progressive heavy rock, The Ghost of Badon Hill is the fifth full-length from UK five-piece Sergeant Thunderhoof, who even without the element of surprise on their side — which is to say one is right to approach the 45-minute six-tracker with high expectations based on the band’s past work; their last LP was 2022’s This Sceptred Veil (review here)  — rally around a folklore-born concept and deliver the to-date album of their career. From the first emergence of heft in “Badon” topped with Daniel Flitcroft soar-prone vocals, Sergeant Thunderhoof — guitarists Mark Sayer and Josh Gallop, bassist Jim Camp and drummer Darren Ashman, and the aforementioned Flitcroft — confidently execute their vision of a melodic riffprog scope. The songs have nuance and character, the narrative feels like it moves through the material, there are memorable hooks and grand atmospheric passages. It is by its very nature not without some indulgent aspects, but also a near-perfect incarnation of what one might ask it to be.

Sergeant Thunderhoof on Facebook

Pale Wizard Records store

Swallow the Sun, Shining

swallow the sun shining

The stated objective of Swallow the Sun‘s Shining was for less misery, and fair enough as the Finnish death-doomers have been at it for about a quarter of a century now and that’s a long time to feel so resoundingly wretched, however relatably one does it. What does less-misery sound like? First of all, still kinda miserable. If you know Swallow the Sun, they are still definitely recognizable in pieces like “Innocence Was Long Forgotten,” “What I Have Become” and “MelancHoly,” but even the frontloading of these singles — don’t worry, from “Kold” and the ultra Type O Negative-style “November Dust” (get it?), to the combination of floating, dancing keyboard lines and drawn out guitars in the final reaches of the title-track, they’re not short on highlights — conveys the modernity brought into focus. Produced by Dan Lancaster (Bring Me the Horizon, A Day to Remember, Muse), the songs are in conversation with the current sphere of metal in a way that Swallow the Sun have never been, broadening the definition of what they do while retaining a focus on craft. They’re professionals.

Swallow the Sun on Facebook

Century Media website

Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, The Mind Like Fire Unbound

Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships The Mind Like Fire Unbound

Where’s the intermittently-crushing sci-fi-concept death-stoner, you ask? Well, friend, Lincoln, Nebraska’s Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships would like to have a word, and on The Mind Like Fire Unbound, there’s a non-zero chance that word will come in the form of layered death metal growls and rasping throatripper screams representing an insectoid species about to tear more-melodically-voiced human colonizers to pieces. The 45-minute LP’s 14-minute opener “BUGS” that lays out this warning is followed by the harsh, cosmic-paranoia conjuration of “Dark Forest” before a pivot in 8:42 centerpiece “Infinite Inertia” — and yes, the structure of the tracks is purposeful; longest at the open and close with shorter pieces on either side of “Infinite Inertia” — takes the emotive cast of Pallbearer to an extrapolated psychedelic metalgaze, huge and broad and lumbering. Of course the contrast is swift in the two-minute “I Hate Space,” but where one expects more bludgeonry, the shortest inclusion stays clean vocally amid its uptempo, Torche-but-not-really push. Organ joins the march in the closing title-track (14:57), which gallops following its extended intro, doom-crashes to a crawl and returns to double-kick behind the encompassing last solo, rounding out with suitable showcase of breadth and intention.

Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships on Facebook

Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships on Bandcamp

Planet of Zeus, Afterlife

Planet of Zeus Afterlife

Planet of Zeus make a striking return with their sixth album, Afterlife, basing their theme around mythologies current and past and accompanying that with a sound that’s both less brash than they were a few years back on 2019’s Faith in Physics (review here) and refined in the sharpness and efficiency of its songwriting. It’s a rocker, which is what one has come to expect from these Athens-based veterans. Afterlife builds momentum through desert-style rockers like “Baptized in His Death” and the hooky “No Ordinary Life” and “The Song You Misunderstand,” getting poppish in the stomp of “Bad Milk” only after the bluesy “Let’s Call it Even” and before the punkier “Letter to a Newborn,” going where it wants and leaving no mystery as to how it’s getting there because it doesn’t need to. One of the foremost Greek outfits of their generation, Planet of Zeus show up, tell you what they’re going to do, then do it and get out, still managing to leave behind some atmospheric resonance in “State of Non-Existence.” There’s audible, continued forward growth and kickass tunes. If that sounds pretty ideal, it is.

Planet of Zeus on Facebook

Planet of Zeus on Bandcamp

Human Teorema, Le Premier Soleil de Jan Calet

Human Teorema Le Premier Soleil

Cinematic in its portrayal, Le Premier Soleil de Jan Calet positions itself as cosmically minded, and manifests that in sometimes-minimal — effectively so, since it’s hypnotic — aural spaciousness, but Paris’ Human Teorema veer into Eastern-influenced scales amid their exploratory, otherworldly-on-purpose landscaping, and each planet on which they touch down, from “Onirico” (7:43) to “Studiis” (15:54) and “Spedizione” (23:20) is weirder than the last, shifting between these vast passages and jammier stretches still laced with synth. Each piece has its own procession and dynamic, and perhaps the shifts in intent are most prevalent within “Studiis,” but the closer is, on the balance, a banger as well, and there’s no interruption in flow once you’ve made the initial choice to go with Le Premier Soleil de Jan Calet. An instrumental approach allows Human Teorema to embody descriptive impressions that words couldn’t create, and when they decide to hit it hard, they’re heavy enough for the scale they’ve set. Won’t resonate universally (what does?), but worth meeting on its level.

Human Teorema on Instagram

Sulatron Records store

Caged Wolves, A Deserts Tale

Caged Wolves A Deserts Tale

There are two epics north of the 10-minute mark on Caged Wolves‘ maybe-debut LP, A Deserts Tale: “Lost in the Desert” (11:26) right after the intro “Dusk” and “Chaac” (10:46) right before the hopeful outro “Dawn.” The album runs a densely-packed 48 minutes through eight tracks total, and pieces like the distortion-drone-backed “Call of the Void,” the alt-prog rocking “Eleutheromania,” “Laguna,” which is like earlier Radiohead in that it goes somewhere on a linear build, and the spoken-word-over-noise interlude “The Lost Tale” aren’t exactly wanting for proportion, regardless of runtime. The bassline that opens “Call of the Void” alone would be enough to scatter orcs, but that still pales next to “Chaac,” which pushes further and deeper, topping with atmospheric screams and managing nonetheless to come out of the other side of that harsh payoff of some of the album’s most weighted slog in order to bookend and give the song the finish it deserves, completing it where many wouldn’t have been so thoughtful. This impression is writ large throughout and stands among the clearest cases for A Deserts Tale as the beginning of a longer-term development.

Caged Wolves on Facebook

Tape Capitol Music store

Anomalos Kosmos, Liminal Escapism

Anomalos Kosmos Liminal Escapism

I find myself wanting to talk about how big Liminal Escapism sounds, but I don’t mean in terms of tonal proportion so much as the distances that seem to be encompassed by Greek progressive instrumentalists Anomalos Kosmos. With an influence from Grails and, let’s say, 50 years’ worth of prog rock composition (but definitely honoring the earlier end of that timeline), Anomalos Kosmos offer emotional evocation in pieces that feel compact on either side of six or seven minutes, taking the root jams and building them into structures that still come across as a journey. The classy soloing in “Me Orizeis” and synthy shimmer of “Parapatao,” the rumble beneath the crescendo of “Kitonas” and all of that gosh darn flow in “Flow” speak to a songwriting process that is aware of its audience but feels no need to talk down, musically speaking, to feed notions of accessibility. Instead, the immersion and energetic drumming of “Teledos” and the way closer “Cigu” rallies around pastoral fuzz invite the listener to come along on this apparently lightspeed voyage — thankfully not tempo-wise — and allow room for the person hearing these sounds to cast their own interpretations thereof.

Anomalos Kosmos on Facebook

Anomalos Kosmos on Bandcamp

Pilot Voyager, Grand Fractal Orchestra

Pilot Voyager Grand Fractal Orchestra

One could not hope to fully encapsulate an impression here of nearly three and a half hours of sometimes-improv psych-drone, and I refuse to feel bad for not trying. Instead, I’ll tell you that Grand Fractal Orchestra — the Psychedelic Source Records 3CD edition of which has already sold out — finds Budapest-based guitarist Ákos Karancz deeply engaged in the unfolding sounds here. Layering effects, collaborating with others from the informal PSR collective like zitherist Márton Havlik or singer Krisztina Benus, and so on, Karancz constructs each piece in a way that feels both steered in a direction and organic to where the music wants to go. “Ore Genesis” gets a little frantic around the middle but finds its chill, “Human Habitat” is duly foreboding, and the two-part, 49-minute-total capper “Transforming Time to Space” is beautiful and meditative, like staring at a fountain with your ears. It goes without saying not everybody has the time or the attention span to sit with a release like this, but if you take it one track at a time for the next four years or so, there’s worlds enough in these songs that they’ll probably just keep sinking in. And if Karancz puts outs like five new albums in that time too, so much the better.

Pilot Voyager on Instagram

Psychedelic Source Records on Bandcamp

Blake Hornsby, A Village of Many Springs

Blake Hornsby A Village of Many Springs

It probably goes without saying — at least it should — that while the classic folk fingerplucking of “Whispering Waters” and the Americana-busy “Laurel Creek Blues” give a sweet introduction to Blake Hornsby‘s A Village of Many Springs, inevitably it’s the 23-minute experimentalist spread of the finale, “Bury My Soul in the Linville River,” that’s going to be a focal point for many listeners, and fair enough. The earthbound-cosmic feel of that piece, its devolution into Lennon-circa-1968 tape noise and concluding drone, aren’t at all without preface. A Village of Many Springs gets weirder as it goes, with the eight-minute “Cathedral Falls” building over its time into a payoff of seemingly on-guitar violence, and the subsequent “O How the Water Flows” nestling into a sweet spot between Appalachian nostalgia and foreboding twang. There’s percussion and manipulation of noise later, too, but even in its repetition, “O How the Water Flows” continues Hornsby‘s trajectory. For what’s apparently an ode to water in the region surrounding Hornsby‘s home in Asheville, North Carolina, that it feels fluid should be no surprise, but by no means does one need to have visited Laurel Creek to appreciate the blues Hornsby conjures for them.

Blake Hornsby on Facebook

Echodelick Records website

Congulus, G​ö​ç​ebe

Congulus Gocebe

With a sensibility in some of the synth of “Hacamat” born of space rock, Congulus have no trouble moving from that to the 1990s-style alt-rock saunter of “Diri Bir Nefes,” furthering the momentum already on the Istanbul-based instrumentalist trio’s side after opener “İskeletin Düğün Halayı” before “Senin Sırlarının Yenilmez Gücünü Gördüm” spaces out its solo over scales out of Turkish folk and “Park” marries together the divergent chugs of Judas Priest and Meshuggah, there’s plenty of adventure to be had on Göç​ebe. It’s the band’s second full-length behind 2019’s Bozk​ı​r — they’ve had short releases between — and it moves from “Park” into the push of “Zarzaram” and “Vordonisi” with efficiency that’s only deceptive because there’s so much stylistic range, letting “Ulak” have its open sway and still bash away for a moment or two before “Sonunda Ah Çekeriz Derinden” closes by tying space rock, Mediterranean traditionalism and modern boogie together in one last jam before consigning the listener back to the harsher, decidedly less utopian vibes of reality.

Congulus on Facebook

Congulus on Bandcamp

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Quarterly Review: Alunah, Coilguns, Robot God, Fuzznaut, Void Moon, Kelley Juett, Whispering Void, Orme, Azutmaga, Poste 942

Posted in Reviews on October 11th, 2024 by JJ Koczan

THE-OBELISK-FALL-2020-QUARTERLY-REVIEW

I got a note from the contact form a bit ago in my email, which happens enough that it’s not really news, except that it wasn’t addressed to me. That happens sometimes too. A band has a form letter they send out with info — it’s not the most personal touch, but has a purpose and doesn’t preclude following-up individually — or just wants to say the same thing to however many outlets. Fair game. This was specifically addressed to somebody else. And it kind of ends with the band saying to send a donation link, like, “Wink wink we donate and you post our stuff.”

Well shit. You mean I coulda been making fat stacks off these stoner bands all the while? Living in my dream house with C.O.C. on the outdoor speakers just by exploiting a couple acts trying to get their riffs heard? Well I’ll be damned. Yeah man, here’s my donation link. Daddy needs a new pair of orthopedic flip-flops. I’ma never pay taxes again.

Life, sometimes.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

Alunah, Fever Dream

Alunah Fever Dream

The seventh full-length from UK outfit Alunah, Fever Dream, will be immediately noteworthy for being the band’s last (though one never knows) with vocalist Siân Greenaway fronting the band, presiding over an era of transition when they had to find a new identity for themselves. Fever Dream is the third Alunah LP with Greenaway, and its nine songs show plainly how far the band has come in the six-plus years of her tenure. “Never Too Late” kicks off with both feet at the intersection of heavy rock and classic metal, with a hook besides, and “Trickster of Time” follows up with boogie and flute, because you’re special and deserve nice things. The four-piece as they are here — Greenaway on vocals (and flute), guitarist Matt Noble, bassist Dan Burchmore and founding drummer Jake Mason — are able to bring some drama in “Fever Dream,” to imagine lone-guitar metal Thin Lizzy in the solo of the swaggering “Hazy Jane,” go from pastoral to crushing in “Celestial” and touch on prog in “The Odyssey.” The finale “I’ve Paid the Price” tips into piano grandiosity, but by the time they get there, it feels earned. A worthy culmination for this version of this band.

Alunah on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds website

Coilguns, Odd Love

coilguns odd love

Swiss heavy post-hardcore unit Coilguns‘ fourth LP and the first in five years, though they’ve had EPs and splits in that time, Odd Love offers 11 songs across an adventurous 48 minutes, alternately raw or lush, hitting hard with a slamming impact or careening or twisting around, mathy and angular. In “Generic Skincare,” it’s both and a jet-engine riff to boot. Atmosphere comes to the fore on “Caravel,” the early going of “Featherweight” and the later “The Wind to Wash the Pain,” but even the most straight-ahead moments of charge have some richer context around them, whether that’s the monstrous tension and release of capper “Bunker Vaults” or, well, the monstrous tension and release of “Black Chyme” earlier on. It’s not the kind of thing I always reach for, but Coilguns make post-hardcore disaffection sound like a good time, with intensity and spaciousness interwoven in their style and a vicious streak that comes out on the regular. Four records deep, the band know what they’re about but are still exploring.

Coilguns on Facebook

Hummus Records website

Robot God, Subconscious Awakening

robot god subconscious awakeningrobot god subconscious awakening

Subconscious Awakening is Robot God‘s second album of 2024 and works in a similar two-sides/four-songs structure as the preceding Portal Within, released this past Spring, where each half of the record is subdivided into one longer and shorter song. It feels even more purposeful on Subconscious Awakening since both “Mandatory Remedy” and “Sonic Crucifixion” both hover around eight and a half minutes while side A opens with the 13-minute “Blind Serpent” and side B with the 11-minute title-track. Rife with textured effects, some samples, and thoughtful melodic vocals, Subconscious Awakening of course shares some similarity of purpose with Portal Within, which was also recorded at the same time, but a song like “Sonic Crucifixion” creates its own sprawl, and the outward movement between that closer and the title-track before it underscores the progressivism at work in the band’s sound amid tonal heft and complex, sometimes linear structures. Takes some concentration to wield that kind of groove.

Robot God on Facebook

Kozmik Artifactz website

Fuzznaut, Wind Doula

fuzznaut wind doula

Especially for an experimentalist, drone-based act who relies on audience theater-of-the-mind as a necessary component of appreciating its output, Pittsburgh solo outfit Fuzznaut — aka guitarist Emilio Rizzo — makes narrative a part of what the band does. Earlier this year, Fuzznaut‘s “Space Rock” single reaped wide praise for its cosmic aspects. “Wind Doula” specifically cites Neil Young‘s soundtrack for the film Dead Man as an influence, and thus brings four minutes more closely tied to empty spread of prairie, perhaps with some filtering being done through Earth‘s own take on the style as heard in 2005’s seminal Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method. One has to wonder if, had Rizzo issued “Wind Doula” with a picture of an astronaut floating free on its cover, it would be the cosmic microwave background present in the track instead of stark wind across the Great Plains, but there’s much more to Fuzznaut than self-awareness and the power of suggestion. Chalk up another aesthetic tryout that works.

Fuzznaut on Facebook

Fuzznaut on Bandcamp

Void Moon, Dreams Inside the Sun

void moon dreams inside the sun

Trad metal enthusiasts will delight at the specificity of the moment in the history of the style Void Moon interpret on their fourth album, Dreams Inside the Sun. It’s not that they’re pretending outright that it’s 1986, like the Swedish two-piece of guitarist/bassist Peter Svensson and drummer/vocalist Marcus Rosenqvist are wearing hightops and trying to convince you they’re Candlemass, but that era is present in the songwriting and production throughout Dreams Inside the Sun, even if the sound of the record is less directly anachronistic and their metallurgical underpinnings aren’t limited to doom between slowed down thrash riffs, power-metal-style vocalizing and the consuming Iommic nod of “East of the Sun” meeting with a Solitude Aeturnus-style chug, all the more righteous for being brought in to serve the song rather than to simply demonstrate craft. That is to say, the relative barn-burner “Broken Skies” and the all-in eight-minute closer “The Wolf (At the End of the World,” which has some folk in its verse as well, use a purposefully familiar foundation as a starting point for the band to carve their own niche, and it very much works.

Void Moon on Facebook

Personal Records website

Kelley Juett, Wandering West

Kelley Juett Wandering West

Best known for slinging his six-string alongside brother Kyle Juett in Texas rockers Mothership, Kelley Juett‘s debut solo offering, Wandering West pulls far away from that classic power trio in intention while still keeping Juett‘s primary instrument as the focus. Some loops and layering don’t quite bring Wandering West the same kind of experimental feel as, say, Blackwolfgoat or a similar guitarist-gonna-guitar exploratory project, but they sit well nonetheless alongside the fluid noodling of Juett‘s drumless self-jams. He backs his own solo in centerpiece “Breezin’,” and the subsequent “Electric Dreamland” seems to use the empty space as much as the notes being cast out into it to create its sense of ambience, so if part of what Juett is doing on Wandering West is beginning the process of figuring out who he is as a solo artist, he’s someone who can turn a seven-minute meander like “Lonely One” (playing off Mos Generator?) into a bluesy contemplation of evolving reach, the guitar perfectly content to talk to itself if there’s nobody else around. Time may show it to be formative, but let the future worry about the future. There’s a lot to dig into, here and now.

Mothership on Facebook

Glory or Death Records website

Whispering Void, At the Sound of the Heart

Whispering Void At the Sound of the Heart

With vocalists Kristian Eivind Espedal (Gaahls Wyrd, Trelldom, ex-Gorgoroth, etc.) and Lindy-Fay Hella (Wardruna, solo, etc.), guitarist Ronny “Valgard” Stavestrand (Trelldom) and drummer/bassist/keyboardist/producer Iver Sandøy (Enslaved, Relentless Agression, etc.), who also helmed (most of) the recording and mixed and mastered, Whispering Void easily could have fallen into the trap of being no more than the sum of its pedigree. Instead, the seven songs on debut album At the Sound of the Heart harness aspects of Norwegian folk for a rock sound that’s dark enough for the lower semi-growls in the eponymous “Whispering Void” to feel like they’re playing toward a gothic sentiment that’s not out of character when there’s so much melancholy around generally. Mid-period Anathema feel like a reference point for “Lauvvind” and the surging “We Are Here” later on, and by that I mean the album is intricately textured and absolutely gorgeous and you’ll be lucky if you take this as your cue to hear it.

Whispering Void on Facebook

Prophecy Productions on Bandcamp

Orme, No Serpents, No Saviours

Orme No Serpents No Saviours Artwork

You know how sometimes in a workplace where there’s a Boss With Personality™, there might be a novelty sign or a desk tchotchke that says, “The beatings will continue until morale improves?” Like, haha, in addition to wage theft you might get smacked if you get uppity about, say, wage theft? Fine. Orme sound like what happens when morale doesn’t improve. The 24-minute single-song No Serpents, No Saviours EP comes a little more than a year after the band’s two-song/double-vinyl self-titled debut (review here) and finds them likewise at home in longform songwriting. There are elements of death-doom, but Orme are sludgier in their presentation, and so wind up able to be morose and filthy in kind, moving from the opening crush through a quiet stretch after six minutes in that builds into persistent thuds before dropping out again, a sample helping mark the transitions between movements, and a succession of massive lumbering parts trading off leading into a final march that feels as tall as it is wide. I like that, in a time where the trend is so geared toward lush melody, Orme are unrepentantly nasty.

Orme on Facebook

Orme on Bandcamp

Azutmaga, Offering

azutmaga offering

Budapest instrumentalist duo Azutmaga make their full-length debut with the aptly-titled Offering, compiling nine single-word-title pieces that reside stylistically somewhere between sludge metal and doom. Self-recorded by guitarist Patrik Veréb (who also mixed and mastered at Terem Studio) and self-released by Veréb and drummer Martin Várszegi, it’s a relatively stripped-down procession, but not lacking breadth as the longer “Aura” builds up to its full roll or the minute-long “Orca” provides an acoustic break ahead of the languid big-swing semi-psychedelia of “Mirror,” informed by Eastern European folk melodies but ready to depart into less terrestrial spheres. It should come as no surprise that “Portal” follows. Offering might at first give something of a monolithic impression as “Purge” calls to mind Earth‘s steady drone rock, but Azutmaga have a whole other level of volume to unfurl. Just so happens their dynamic goes from loud to louder.

Azutmaga on Facebook

Azutmaga on Bandcamp

Poste 942, #chaleurhumaine

poste 942 chaleurhumaine

After trickling out singles for over a year, including the title-track of the album and, in 2022, an early version of the instrumental “The Freaks Come Out at Night” that may or may not have been from before vocalist Virginie D. joined the band, the hashtag-named #chaleurhumaine delights in shirking heavy rock conventions, whether it’s the French-language lyrics or divergences into punk and harder fare, but nothing here — regardless of one’s linguistic background — is so challenging as to be inaccessible. Catchy songs are catchy, whether that’s “Fada Fighters” or “La Diable au Corps,” which dares a bit of harmonica along with its full-toned blues rock riffing. Likewise, nowhere the album goes feels beyond the band’s reach, and while “La Ligne” doesn’t sound especially daring as it plays up the brighter pop in its verse and shove of a chorus, well made songs never have any trouble finding welcome. I’m not sure why it’s a hashtag, but #chaleurhumaine feels complete and engaging, at once familiar and nothing so much as itself.

Poste 942 on Facebook

Poste 942 on Bandcamp

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Live Review: Stoned Jesus, Dopelord, Shapat Terror and Red Swamp in Budapest, 08.02.24

Posted in Reviews on August 5th, 2024 by JJ Koczan

Stoned Jesus (Photo by JJ Koczan)

I knew when I saw the dude in the Trouble shirt that I was on the right bus. It wasn’t as hot today, some rain, but still humid enough to sweat on the way to Dürer Kert, which has tables enough outside for probably a couple hundred people, though there weren’t that many about a half-hour before the listed 7PM show time. A couple food trucks around. A bar playing music with a beat, including a lounge-techno version of “Imagine.” A small, now-empty, stage that would be perfect for a DJ. Dürer Kert (the ‘kert’ means ‘garden,’ I think as in beer garden) looked ready for a party. It got one.

I wouldn’t have fretted about arriving early — that’s a total lie; yes I would — but the prompt start the other night made me want to play it safe. That, despite two more bands on the bill as locals Red Swamp — whose metal-tinged soundcheck I heard walking up — and Shapat Terror were opening. On some levels, I guess that’s the difference between a Monday and a Friday night gig. I’m nervous either way. For everything. All the time. Won’t matter when the music starts.

This being my first time seeing Stoned Jesus made it something of an event in my mind. Nothing against Dopelord, just that I’ve watched them play before, though the advent of 2023’s Songs for Satan (review here) put them at another level in my mind. I’ll say I was looking forward to both and mean it for more than diplomacy’s sake, but I’ve enjoyed and written about both for over a decade, and this would be my first live experience with Stoned Jesus. I was nervous for that too, even with a fair amount of night to go before I got there.

Doors were at 7, so that’s when I went in. It was just me in the nagyterem (“big room”) for a while, but they were playing good music and it was cooler than outside and I’m a fucking misanthrope, so I sat on the floor and waited. Green Lung, Dozer, Kyuss, etc. Me and security. I didn’t know there was a photo pit or I’d have tried to get a pass. I messaged Igor from Stoned Jesus, whom I was looking forward to meeting, working under the kind-of-a-bummer assumption that dude had better things to do a couple hours before showtime than get me sorted. So it goes, in my mind. In real life, he came through in like five minutes, I met the promoter and got to take pictures no problem without having to stand in one spot all night and feel like a jerk. That turnaround, that kindness (thank you, Zsanett), kind of made my night.

But there was a show. Here’s how it went:

Red Swamp

Red Swamp (Photo by JJ Koczan)

Pretty discouraging to have studied the magyarul language for over a year now and barely be able to pick up a word of Red Swamp’s between-song banter apart from “thanks very much” (köszönöm szépen) and other syllables here and there. Long way to go if I actually want to speak it, I guess. Their lyrics were in English to follow suit from their moniker and their style of riff metal more broadly, in which influences from the likes of Lamb of God and Pantera could be heard in addition to the odd metalcore breakdown, vocals capably shifting between cleans and harsher screams/growls. Their opener, “Stoned,” made a hook of a line that was something approximate to “Cuz I’m already stoned,” and that was a bit of charm, and when they hit a slowdown, the Crowbarian nod was there for sure, but their baseline level of aggression would’ve been a surprise if I hadn’t cheated and checked out their newest single “Born to Bleed” this afternoon. They took a photo together on stage when they were done — the last song had the biggest (“a legnagyobb,” which I learned this week) groove of the bunch — and left to the start of “Sweet Leaf” over the P.A. Maybe not my kind of metal all the way, but they were good at what they were doing, having fun and nobody got hurt, so I’m not complaining. The room almost completely cleared when they were done as people went to sit outside with their drinks. I looked up from writing on my phone and there were like six dudes left. Suppose that’s how it’s done at Dürer Kert. I dig it.

Shapat Terror

Shapat Terror (Photo by JJ Koczan)

While both their name and the animated logo on the screen behind them gave a nastier superficial impression, Shapat Terror won me over quickly with their not-emo-but-post-hardcore-rooted melody and noise-rock-but-grown-up sway. Big Soundgarden influence in the vocals, and that’s not a comparison I’m wont to break out unless it’s a compliment. I’d checked them out for a cursory listen before the show too, and I liked that enough to pick up the tape they had at the merch table, but the way the punch of bass from the stage set alongside the major-key reach and the summery groove, well, I wish I’d heard of them before this gig but they’re a band I’m glad to have seen. Nothing too fancy arrangement-wise, but no chestbeating either, and no pretense in a down-to-earth stage presence despite sounding as a group like they probably listen to seven different kinds of punk I’ve never heard of, including whichever kind has chug. Everybody who had gone outside and then some came back in, and by the time they were wrapping up, I legitimately wished they would do a longer set. A couple backing screams near the end were a surprise but not out of place. Good band. Sometimes you luck out.

Dopelord

Their Satanic majesties rolled from start to finish, opening with “The Chosen One” from Songs for Satan, which, yes, has absolutely been playing nonstop in my brain since I found out this show was happening while I was in Hungary. That, “Addicted to Black Magick,” and everything else was a highlight as the Polish four-piece found a consuming level of volume and used it to proliferate a stoner idolatry with a lumber all their own. Great pairing, their being out with Stoned Jesus. Two bands who can break out a massive groove when they need to but have much more to offer than just that, however much the sense of worship — volume, riff, devil, whathaveyou — is central to the character of Dopelord’s music. They played in front of grainy horror footage and the plod was thick until they thrashed out “Headless Decapitator,” which felt like a long way removed from the stage-intro “It Is So Nice to Get Stoned,” but was a hell of a way to spend a couple minutes just the same. Singularly stoned and pummelingly heavy, it was a celebration for the converted, and watching Dopelord, it’s rarely such a raw pleasure to be among that number. They closed with “Reptile Sun” and “Doom Bastards.” Beers were raised. Hoots were hollared. Ar last one couple I saw was making out. Not so much for the latter, though, you know, whatever, but I was really, really glad to have left the apartment to witness Dopelord’s absolutely uncompromising vision of Sabbathian stoner doom, which has only become more their own over time.

Stoned Jesus

Stoned Jesus (Photo by JJ Koczan)

I met Igor Sydorenko, Andrew Rodin and Yurii Kononov during Dopelord’s set. The latter two, also brothers, are newcomers in the rhythm section of the band celebrating their 15th — or XVth, as they put it on the poster — anniversary with this tour and their upcoming Fall run. But if you want to know anything about Stoned Jesus, know this: Igor’s no dummy. He’s got a new lineup, but if they weren’t full-baked, or ready, or something was off, they wouldn’t be out on a tour like this at all. Instead, as the band has relocated to Germany as wartime expats following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and are pivoting from the originally intended follow-up to 2023’s Father Light (review here) — that album was slated to be part of a duology with Mother Dark, now shelved as understand it with the band moving forward in the current incarnation and new new material — while also doing catalog reissues through Season of Mist, the band were airtight through material new and old. “Thoughts and Prayers” from the new album was a highlight, and the set brought into focus for me just how much Stoned Jesus like a blues lick, sure, but how they’re able to shift between a mellow boogie and outright crush without making either feel out of place in the song. Igor is a better singer than I’ve ever seen him get credit for, and the band’s emphasis is exactly where they want it to be, where Igor wants it to be. They auctioned off an original vinyl of Seven Thunders Roar to go to their Ukraine fund. It went for 33,000 HUF, which is about US $90. Worth every penny all the more since they went into “I’m the Mountain” after. The classic. It wasn’t the last song they played, but an inevitable crescendo anyhow, and the crowd was right there for it with he band. The nod of “Get What You Deserve” followed, then “Buried Alive by Love” and “Here Come the Robots” for a lively finish.

Not gonna lie, by the time Stoned Jesus were done rocking out, I was all rocked out. Out-rocked, even. I leaned on the wall in the back, sore, tired and ready to be done with a day that was going on 19 hours ahead of another early start in the morning. I hobbled my plantar fasciitis self through the parking lot and out to the road to meet up with the taxi I called for in the Bolt app (the last bus back had been at 11:36), my phone at 23 percent battery and my body no less in need of a charge.

The taxi driver, Tamás, was a hero with chill techno and no conversation. I saw him glance in the back seat a couple times, presumably to make sure I was still alive. It had been another night I felt lucky to be so — and here I acknowledge The Patient Mrs., through whom all thigs are possible — and the subsequent crash-out was proportional to the joy of the experience. Thank you, Budapest. I’ll always remember that the first time I saw Stoned Jesus — and I very much hope not the last — it was here.

Thanks for reading. More pics after the jump.

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In Budapest Now Through Aug. 7

Posted in Features on July 10th, 2024 by JJ Koczan

Hi. I’m in Budapest, Hungary, from now through the first week of August, with my family.

As always, I will write as much as I can, when I can. The parameters of that may not be the same as they are when I’m home and things are running as normal. If there are two posts a day, one, or none, I’m sure nobody will blink, but I wanted to put this here just so that if you were wondering or didn’t see it mentioned on social media — whatever — there’s some record of what’s going on at this time. Plus, when I look back on it later, I’ll be able to say, “oh yeah, that’s why there were only five posts that week.”

This is the longest trip my wife, daughter, dog and I have undertaken to anywhere, ever, and in addition to being distracted, a good portion of my attention will need to be in that direction as we get settled and adjust to a new place, even for just a couple weeks.

Bottom line is I thank you for reading, for your continued support of this site, and for in some ways making this trip with us. I haven’t decided if or how much I’m going to write about the travel/city itself — I certainly had a few things to say about Zagreb; check in on Friday — but I’m going to play it by how imperative it feels in my brain, which is about the only standard I ever apply.

Once again, thanks. If you’re seeing this, I hope it finds you well. I’ll be back in NJ in August. If you need me for anything in the meantime, the contact form is there or you can probably get me on the aforementioned socials. If you’re sending/following up on music, please be patient and consider ‘as much as I can when I can’ above.

This post is going to stay here for the duration. New posts will appear underneath.

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Quarterly Review: Samsara Blues Experiment, Restless Spirit, Stepmother, Pilot Voyager, Northern Liberties, Nyxora, Old Goat Smoke, Van Groover, Hotel Lucifer, Megalith Levitation

Posted in Reviews on October 3rd, 2023 by JJ Koczan

the obelisk winter quarterly review

I broke my wife’s phone yesterday. What a mess. I was cleaning the counter or doing some shit and our spare butter dish — as opposed to the regular one, which was already out — was sitting near the edge of the top of the microwave, from where I bumped it so that the ceramic corner apparently went right through the screen hard enough that in addition to shattering it there’s a big black spot and yes a new phone has been ordered. In the meantime, she can’t type the letter ‘e’ and, well, I have to hand it to Le Creuset on the sturdy construction of their butter dishes. Technology succumbing to the brute force of a harder blunt object and gravity.

Certainly do wish that hadn’t happened. What does it have to do with riffs, or music at all, or really anything? Who cares. I’m about to review 10 records today. I can talk about whatever the hell I want.

Quarterly Review #11-20:

Samsara Blues Experiment, Rock Hard in Concert

samsara blues experiment rock hard in concert

10 years after releasing 2013’s Live at Rockpalast (review here), and nearly three after they put out their 2021 swansong studio LP, End of Forever (review here), German heavy psych rockers Samsara Blues Experiment offer the 80-minute live 2LP Rock Hard in Concert, and while it’s not their first live album, it gives a broader overview of the band from front to (apparent) back during their time together, as songs opening salvo of “Center of the Sun,” “Singata Mystic Queen” and “For the Lost Souls” from 2010’s debut, Long-Distance Trip (review here), melds in the set with “One With the Universe” and “Vipassana” from 2017’s One With the Universe (review here), End of Forever‘s own title-track and “Massive Passive,” and “Hangin’ on a Wire” from 2013’s Waiting for the Flood (review here) to become a fan-piece that nonetheless engages in sound and presentation. If you were there, it’s likely must-own. For the rest of us, who maybe did or didn’t see the band during their time — glad to say I did — it’s a reminder of how immersive they could be, especially in longer-form material, and how much influence they had on the last decade-plus of jam-based heavy psych in Europe. Recorded in 2018 at a special gig for Germany’s Rock Hard magazine, Rock Hard in Concert follows behind 2022’s Demos & Rarities (review here) in the band’s posthumous catalog, and it may or may not be Samsara Blues Experiment‘s final non-reissue release. Whether it is or not, it summarizes their run gorgeously and puts a light on the chemistry of the trio that led them through so many winding aural paths.

Samsara Blues Experiment on Facebook

World in Sound Records website

Restless Spirit, Afterimage

Restless Spirit Afterimage

Sounding modern and full and in opening cut “Marrow” almost like the fuzz is about to swallow the rest of the song, Restless Spirit step forward with their third long-player, Afterimage, and establish a new level of craft for themselves. In 2021, the Long Island heavy/doom rock trio offered Blood of the Old Gods (review here), and their guitar-led energetic surges continue here in Afterimage riffers like the chug-nod “Shadow Command” and “Of Spirit and Form,” which seems to account for the underlying metallic edge of the band’s execution with its sharper turns. Their first album for Magnetic Eye Records, its eight tracks fit smoothly into the label’s roster, which at its baseline might be said to foster modern heavy styles with a particular ear for songwriting and melody, and Restless Spirit dig into “All Furies” like High on Fire galloping into a wall of Slayer records, only to follow with the 1:45 instrumental reset “Brutalized,” which is somehow weightier. They touch on the ethereal with the guitar in “The Fatalist,” but the vocals are more post-hardcore and have a grounding effect, and after starting with outright crush, “Hell’s Grasp” offers respite in progressive flourish and midtempo meandering before resuming the double-plus-huge roll and pointed riff and noodly offsets, the huge hook coming back in a way that makes me miss doing a radio show. “Hell’s Grasp” is the longest piece on the collection at 6:25, but “From the Dust Returned” closes, mindful of the atmospherics that have been at work all along and no less huge, but clearly saving a last push for, well, last. I’ll be interested in how it holds up over the long term, but Magnetic Eye has become one of the US’ most essential labels in heavy music and releases like this are exactly why.

Restless Spirit on Facebook

Magnetic Eye Records store

Stepmother, Planet Brutalicon

stepmother planet brutalicon

When did Graham Clise from Witch Lecherous Gaze, etc. — dude used to be in Uphill Battle; I remember that band — move to Australia? Doesn’t matter. It happened and Stepmother is the raw, garage-ish fuzz rock outfit the now-Melbourne-residing Clise has established, with Rob Muinos on bass and vocals and Sam Rains on drums. With Clise on guitar/vocals peppering hard-strummed riffs with bouts of shred and various dirtier coatings, the 12-tracker goes north of four minutes one time for “Do You Believe,” already by then having found its proto-Misfits bent in the catchy “Scream for Death.” But whether they’re buzz-overdosing “Waiting for the Axe” or digging into the comedown in “Signed DC” ahead of the surf-informed rager of a finale “Gusano,” Planet Brutalicon is a debut that presents fresh ideas taking on known stylistic elements. And it’s not a showcase for Clise‘s instrumental prowess on a technical level or anything — he’s not trying to put on a clinic — but from the sound of his guitar to the noises he gets from it in “The Game” (that middle part, ultra-fuzz) and at the end of “Stalingrad,” it is very much a guitar-centered offering. No complaints there whatsoever.

Stepmother on Instagram

Tee Pee Records website

Pilot Voyager, The Structure is Still Under Construction

Pilot Voyager The Structure is Still Under Construction

WARNING: Users who take even a small dose of Pilot Voyager‘s The Structure is Still Under Construction may find themselves experiencing euphoria, or adrift, as though on some serene ocean under the warm green sky of impossibly refracted light. The ethereal drones and melodic textures of the 46-minute single-song LP may cause side effects like: momentary flashes of inner peace, the quieting of your brain that you’ve been seeking your whole life without knowing it, calm. Also nausea, but that’s probably just something you ate. Talk to your doctor about whether this extended work from the Hungarian collective Psychedelic Source Records (szia!) is right for you, and if it is, make sure to consume responsibly. Headphones required (not included or covered by insurance). Do not be afraid as “The Structure is Still Under Construction” leaves the water behind to float upward in its midsection, finally resolving in intertwining drones, vague sampled speech echoing far off somewhere — ugh, the real world — and birdsong someplace in the mix. Go with it. This is why you got the prescription in the first place. Decades of aural research and artistic movement and progression have led you and the Budapesti outfit to this moment. Do not operate heavy machinery. Ever. In fact, find an empty field, take off your pants and run around for a while until you get out of breath. Then drink cool water and giggle. This could be you. Your life.

Pilot Voyager on Facebook

Psychedelic Source Records on Bandcamp

Northern Liberties, Self-Dissolving Abandoned Universe

northern liberties Self-Dissolving Abandoned Universe

Philadelphia has become the East Coast US’ hotbed for heavy psychedelia, which must be interesting for Northern Liberties, who started out more than two decades ago. The trio’s self-released, 10-song/41-minute Self-Dissolving Abandoned Universe — maybe their eighth album, if my count is right — with venerated producer Steve Albini, so one might count ‘instant-Gen-X-cred’ and ‘recognizably-muddy-toms’ among their goals. I wasn’t completely sold on the offering until “Infusorian Hymnal” started to dig a little further into the genuinely weird after opener “The Plot Thickens” and the subsequent “Drowned Out” laid forth the crunch of the tones and gave hints of the structures beneath the noise. “Crucible” follows up the raw shove of “Star Spangled Corpse” by expanding the palette toward space rock and an unhinged psych-noise shove that the somehow-still-Hawkwindian volatility of “The Awaited” moves away from while the finale “Song of the Sole Survivor” calls back to the folkish vocal melody in “Ghosts of Ghosts,” if in echoing and particularly addled fashion. Momentum serves the three-piece well throughout, though they seem to have no trouble interrupting themselves (can relate), and turning to follow a disparate impulse. Distractable heavy? Yeah, except bands like that usually don’t last two decades. Let’s say maybe their own kind of oddball, semi-spaced band who aren’t afraid to screw around in the studio, find what they like, and keep it. And whatever else you want to say about Albini-tracked drums, “Hold on to the Darkness” has a heavier tone to its snare than most guitars do to whole LPs. Whatever works, and it does.

Northern Liberties website

Northern Liberties on Bandcamp

Nyxora, “Good Night, Ophelia”

Nyxora Good Night Ophelia

“Good Night, Ophelia” is the first single from the forthcoming debut full-length from semi-goth Portland, Oregon, heavy rock four-piece Nyxora. There are worse opening shots to fire than a Hamlet reference, I suppose, and if one regards Ophelia’s character as an innocent driven to suicide by gender-based oppression, then her lack of agency is nothing if not continually relevant. Nonetheless, for NyxoraVox on, well, vox, guitarist E.Wrath, bassist Luke and drummer Weatherman — she pairs with dark-boogie riff recorded for edge with Witch Mountain‘s Rob Wrong at his Wrong Way Studio. There are some similarities between Nyxora and Wrong‘s own outfit — I double-checked it wasn’t Uta Plotkin singing some of the higher-reaching lines of “Good Night, Ophelia,” which is a definite compliment — but I get the sense that fuller atmosphere of Nyxora‘s first LP isn’t necessarily encapsulated in this one three-and-a-half-minute song. That is, I’m thinking at some point on the album, Nyxora will get more morose than they are here. Or maybe not. Either way, “Good Night, Ophelia” is an enticing teaser from a group who seem ready to dig their niche when the album is released, I’ll assume in 2024 though one never knows.

Nyxora on Facebook

Nyxora on Bandcamp

Old Goat Smoke, Demo

Old Goat Smoke Demo

I hate to do it, but I’m calling bullshit right now on Sydney, Australia’s Old Goat Smoke. Sorry gents. To be sure, your Bongzilla-crusty, ultra-stoned, Church of Misery-esque-in-its-madcap-vocal-wails, goat weed metal is only a pleasure to behold. But that’s the problem. How’re you gonna write a song called “Old Goat Smoke” and not post the lyrics? I shudder to think of the weed puns I’m missing. Fortunately, it’s not too late for the newcomer band to correct the mistake before the entire project is derailed. In that eponymous one of three total tracks included, Old Goat Smoke cast themselves in the mold of the despondent and disaffected. “Return to Dirt” shifts fluidly in and out of screams and harsher fare while radioactive-dirt tonality infects the guitar and bass that have already challenged the drums to cut through their morass. So that there’s no risk of the point not being made, they cap this initial public offering with “The Great Hate,” and eight-and-a-half-minute treatise on feedback and raw scathe that’s likewise a show of future nastiness to manifest. Quit your job, do all the drugs you can find, engage the permanent fuck-off. Old Goat Smoke may not have ‘bong’ in their moniker, but that’s about all they’re missing. And those lyrics, I guess, though by the time the 20 minutes of Demo have expired, they’ve made their caustic point regardless.

Old Goat Smoke on Facebook

Old Goat Smoke on Bandcamp

Van Groover, Back From the Shop

Van Groover Back From the Shop

German transport-themed heavy rock and rollers Van Groover — as in, one who grooves in or with vans — made a charming debut with 2021’s Honk if Parts Fall Off (review here), and the follow-up five-song EP, Back From the Shop, makes no attempt to fix what isn’t broken. That would seem to put it at odds with the mechanic speaking in the intro “Hill Willy’s Chop Shop,” who runs through a litany of issues fixed, goes on long enough to hypnotize and then swaps in body parts and so on. From there, the motor works, and Van Groover hit the gas through 21 minutes of smells-like-octane riffing and storytelling. In “A-38″ — the reference being to the size of a sheet of paper in Europe; equivalent but not the same as the US’ 8.5″ x 11” — they either get arrested, which would seem to be the ending of “The Bandit” just before,” or are at the DMV, I can’t quite tell, but it doesn’t matter one you meet “The Grizz.” The closer has an urgency to its push that doesn’t quite sound like I’d imagine being torn apart by a bear to feel, but the Lebowski-paraphrased penultimate line, “Some days you get eaten by the bear, some days the bear eats you,” underscores Van Groover‘s for-the-converted approach, speaking to the subculture from within. Possibly while driving. Does look like a nice van, though. The kind you might write a song or two about.

Van Groover on Facebook

Van Groover on Bandcamp

Hotel Lucifer, Hotel Lucifer

Hotel Lucifer Hotel Lucifer

Facts-wise, there’s not much more I can tell you about Hotel Lucifer than you might glean from looking at the New York four-piece’s Bandcamp page. Their self-released and self-titled debut runs 43 minutes and eight tracks, and its somewhat bleak, not-obligated-to-heavy-tonalism course takes several violent thematic turns, including (I think.) in opener “Room 222,” where Katie‘s vocals seem to talk about raping god. This, “Murderer,” “Torquemada,” “The Ultimate Price,” “Picking Your Eyes Out” and 12-minute horror noisefest closer “Beheaded” — only the classic metaller “Training the Beast” and the three-minute acoustic-backed psychedelic voice showcase “Echidna” seem to restrain the brutaller impulses, and I’m not sure about that either. With Jimmy on guitar, Muriel playing bass and Ed on drums, Hotel Lucifer are defined in no small part by the whispers, rasps and croons that mark their verses and choruses, but that becomes an effective means to convey character and mood along with the instrumental ambience behind, and so Hotel Lucifer find this strange, almost willfully off-putting cultish individualism, and it’s not hooks keeping your attention so much as the desire to figure it out, to learn more about just what the hell is going on on this record. I’ll wish you good luck with that as I continue my efforts along similar lines.

Hotel Lucifer on Bandcamp

Megalith Levitation, Obscure Fire

Megalith Levitation Obscure Fire

Its five songs broken into two sections along lines of “Obscure Fire” pairing with “Of Silence” and “Descending” leading to “Into the Depths” with “Of Eternal Doom” answering the question that didn’t even really need to be asked about which depths the Russian stoner sludge rollers were talking about. The Sleep-worshiping three-piece of guitarist/vocalist SAA, bassist KKV and drummer PAN — whose credits are worth reading in the band’s own words — lumber with purpose as they make that final statement, each side of Obscure Fire working shortest to longest beginning with the howling guitar and drum thud of the title-track at nine minutes as opposed to the 10 of “Of Silence.” At two minutes, “Descending” is barely more than feedback and tortured gurgles, so yes, very much a fit with the concrete-toned plod of the subsequent “Into the Depths” as the band skirt the line between ultra-stoner metal and cavernous atmospheric sludge without necessarily committing to one or the other. That position favors them, but after a certain point of being bludgeoned with huge riffs and slow-nodding, deeply-weighted churn, your skull is going to be goo either way. The route Megalith Levitation take to get you there is where the weed is, aurally speaking.

Megalith Levitation on Facebook

Addicted Label on Bandcamp

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Quarterly Review: Slift, IIVII, Coogans Bluff, Rough Spells, Goblinsmoker, Homecoming, Lemurian Folk Songs, Ritual King, Sunflowers, Maya Mountains

Posted in Reviews on March 26th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

quarterly review

Thursday. Everyone doing well? Healthy? Kicking ass? Working from home? There seems to be a lot of that going around, at least among the lucky. New Jersey, where I live, is on lockdown with non-essential businesses shuttered, roads largely empty and all that. It can be grim and apocalyptic feeling, but I’m finding this Quarterly Review to be pretty therapeutic or at least helpfully distracting at a moment when I very much need something to be that. I hope that if you’re reading this, whether you’ve been following along or not, it’s done or can do the same for you if that’s what you need. I’ll leave it at that.

Quarterly Review #31-40:

Slift, Ummon

slift ummon

The second album from French space/psych trio Slift is a 72-minute blowout echoshred epic — too aware not to be prog but too cosmic not to be space rock. Delivered through Stolen Body Records and Vicious Circle, Ummon is not only long, it speaks to a longer term. It’s not an album for this year, or for this decade, or for any other decade, for that matter. It’s for the ongoing fluid now. You want to lose yourself in the depths of buzz and dreamy synth? Yeah, you can do that. You want to dig into the underlying punk and maybe a bit of Elder influence in the vocal bark and lead guitar shimmer of “Thousand Helmets of Gold?” Well hell’s bells, do that. The mega-sprawling 2LP is a gorgeous blast of distortion, backed by jazzy, organic drum wud-dum-tap and the bass, oh, the bass; the stuff of low end sensory displacement. Amid swirls and casts of melodic light in “Dark Was Space, Cold Were the Stars,” Slift dilate universal energy and push beyond the noise wash reaches of “Son Dong’s Cavern” and through the final build, liftoff and roll of 13-minute closer “Lions, Tigers and Bears” with the deft touch of those dancing on prior conceptions. We’d be lucky to have Ummon as the shape of space rock to come.

Slift on Thee Facebooks

Stolen Body Records store

Vicious Circle Records store

 

IIVII, Grinding Teeth/Zero Sleep

Two LPs telling two different stories released at the same time, Grinding Teeth/Zero Sleep (on Consouling Sounds) brings Josh Graham‘s aural storytelling to new cinematic reaches. The composer, guitarist, synthesist, programmer, visual artist, etc., is joined along the way by the likes of Jo Quail, Ben Weinman (ex-The Dillinger Escape Plan), Dana Schecter (Insect Ark), Sarah Pendleton (ex-SubRosa) and Kim Thayil (Soundgarden) — among others — but across about 90 minutes of fluidity, Graham/IIVII soundtracks two narratives through alternatingly vast and crushing drone. The latter work is actually an adaptation from a short sci-fi film about, yes, humanity losing its ability to sleep — I feel you on that one — but the former, which tells a kind of meth-fueled story of love and death, brings due chaos and heft to go with its massive synthesized scope. Josh Graham wants to score your movie. You should let him. And you should pay him well. And you should let him design the poster. And you should pay him well for that too. End of story.

antiestrogensonline.net
bestabortionpillsonline.com

IIVII on Thee Facebooks

Consouling Sounds store

 

Coogans Bluff, Metronopolis

coogans bluff metronopolis

Following the initial sax-laden prog-rock burst and chase that is opener “Gadfly,” Berlin’s Coogans Bluff bring a ’70s pastoralia to “Sincerely Yours,” and that atmosphere ends up staying with Metronopolis — their fifth album — for the duration, no matter where else they might steer the sound. And they do steer the sound. Sax returns (as it will) in the jabbing “Zephyr,” a manic shred taking hold in the second half accompanied by no-less-manic bass, and “Creature of the Light” reimagines pop rock of the original vinyl era in the image of its own weirdness, undeniably rock but also something more. Organ-inclusive highlight “Soft Focus” doesn’t so much touch on psychedelics as dunk its head under their warm waters, and “The Turn I” brings an almost Beatlesian horn arrangement to fruition ahead of the closer “The Turn II.” But in that finale, and in “Hit and Run,” and way back in “Sincerely Yours,” Coogans Bluff hold that Southern-style in their back pocket as one of several of Metronopolis‘ recurring themes, and it becomes one more element among the many at their disposal.

Coogans Bluff on Thee Facebooks

Noisolution store

 

Rough Spells, Ruins at Midday

rough spells ruins at midday

An underlying current of social commentary comes coated in Rough Spells‘ mysticism on Ruins at Midday, the Toronto unit’s second LP. Recorded by Ian Blurton and presented by Fuzzed and Buzzed and DHU Records, the eight-track LP has, as the lyrics of “Chance Magic” say, “No bad intentions.” Indeed, it seems geared only toward eliciting your participation in its ceremony of classic groove, hooks and melodies, even the mellow “Die Before You Die” presenting an atmosphere that’s heavy but still melodic and accessible. “Grise Fiord” addresses Canada’s history of mistreating its native population, while “Pay Your Dues” pits guitar and vocal harmonics against each other in a shove of proto-metallic energy to rush momentum through side B and into the closing pair of the swaggering “Nothing Left” and the title-track, which is the longest single cut at five minutes, but still keeps its songwriting taut with no time to spare for indulgences. In this, and on several fronts, Ruins at Midday basks in multifaceted righteousness.

Rough Spells on Thee Facebooks

Fuzzed and Buzzed store

DHU Records store

 

Goblinsmoker, A Throne in Haze, A World Ablaze

goblinsmoker a throne in haze a world ablaze

Upside the head extreme sludgeoning! UK trio Goblinsmoker take on the more vicious and brutal end of sludge with the stench of death on A Throne in Haze, A World Ablaze (on Sludgelord Records), calling to mind the weedian punishment of Belzebong and others of their decrepit ilk. Offered as part two of a trilogy, A Throne in Haze, A World Ablaze is comprised of three tracks running a caustic 26 minutes thick enough such that even its faster parts feel slow, a churning volatility coming to the crash of “Smoked in Darkness” at the outset only to grow more menacing in the lurch of centerpiece “Let Them Rot” — which of course shifts into blastbeats later on — and falling apart into noise and echoing residual feedback after the last crashes of “The Forest Mourns” recede. Beautifully disgusting, the release reportedly furthers the story of the Toad King depicted on its cover and for which the band’s prior 2018 EP was named, and so be it. The lyrics, largely indecipherable in screams, are vague enough that if you’re not caught up, you’ll be fine. Except you won’t be fine. You’ll be dead. But it’ll be awesome.

Goblinsmoker on Thee Facebooks

Sludgelord Records on Bandcamp

 

Homecoming, LP01

homecoming lp01

Progressive metal underpins French trio Homecoming‘s aptly-titled first record, LP01, with the guitars of second cut “Rivers of Crystal” leading the way through a meandering quiet part and subsequent rhythmic figure that reminds of later Opeth, though there’s still a strong heavy rock presence in their tones and grooves generally. It’s an interesting combination, and all the more so because I think part of what’s giving off such a metal vibe is the snare sound. You don’t normally think of a snare drum determining that kind of thing, but here we are. Certainly the vocal arrangements between gruff melodies, backing screams and growls, etc., the odd bit of blastbeating here and there, bring it all into line as well — LP01 is very much the kind of album that would title its six-minute instrumental centerpiece “Interlude” — but the intricacy in how the nine-minute “Return” develops and the harmonies that emerge early in closer “Five” tell the tale clearly of Homecoming‘s ambitions as they move forward from this already-ambitious debut.

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Lemurian Folk Songs, Logos

lemurian folk songs logos

Tracked in the same sessions as the Budapest outfit’s 2019 album, Ima (review here), it should not come as a major surprise that the six-track/49-minute Logos from Lemurian Folk Songs follows a not entirely dissimilar course, bringing together dream-drift of tones and melodies with subtle but coherent rhythmic motion in a fashion not necessarily revolutionary for heavy psych, but certainly well done and engaging across its tracks. The tones of guitar and bass offer a warmth rivaled only by the echoing vocals on opener/longest cut (immediate points) “Logos,” and the shimmering “Sierra Tejada” and progressively building “Calcination” follow that pattern while adding a drift that is both of heavy psych and outside of it in terms of the character of how it’s played. None of the last three tracks is less than eight minutes long — closer “Firelake” tops nine in a mirror to “Logos” at the outset, but if that’s the band pushing further out I hear, then yes, I want to go along for that trip.

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Ritual King, Ritual King

ritual king ritual king

Progressive heavy rockers Ritual King display a striking amount of grace and patience across their Ripple Music-issued self-titled long-player. Tapping modern influences like Elder and bringing their own sense of melodic nuance to the proceedings across a tightly-constructed seven songs and 42 minutes, the three-piece of vocalist/guitarist Jordan Leppitt, bassist Dan Godwin — whose tone is every bit worthy of gotta-hear-it classification — and drummer/backing vocalist Gareth Hodges string together linear movements in “Headspace” and “Dead Roads” that flow one into the next, return at unexpected moments or don’t, and follow a direction not so much to the next chorus but to the next statement the band want to make, whatever that might be. “Restrain” begins with a sweet proggy soundscape and unfolds two verses over a swaying riff, then is gone, where at the outset, “Valleys” offers grandeur the likes of which few bands would dare to embody on their third or fourth records, let alone their first. Easily one of 2020’s best debuts.

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Sunflowers, Endless Voyage

sunflowers endless voyage

You know what? Never mind. You ain’t weird enough for this shit. Nobody’s weird enough for this shit. I have a hard time believing the two souls from Portugal who made it are weird enough for this shit. Think I’m wrong? Think you’re up for it and you’re gonna put on SunflowersEndless Voyage and be like, “oh yeah, turns out mega-extreme krautrock blasted into outer space was my wavelength all along?” Cool. Bandcamp player’s right there. Have at it. I dare you.

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Maya Mountains, Era

maya mountains era

Italian heavy rockers Maya Mountains formed in 2005 and issued their debut album, Hash and Pornography, through Go Down Records in 2008. Era, which follows a narrative about the title-character whose name is given in lead cut “Enrique Dominguez,” who apparently travels through space after being lost in the desert — as one does — and on that basis alone is clearly a more complex offering than its predecessor. As to where Maya Mountains have been all the time in between records — here and there, in other bands, etc. But Era, at 10 tracks and 44 minutes, is the summation of five years of work on their part and its blend of scope and straight-ahead heavy riffing is welcome in its more heads-down moments like “Vibromatic” or in the purposefully weirder finale “El Toro” later on. Something like a second debut for the band after being away for so long, Era at very least marks the beginning of a new one for them, and one hopes it continues in perhaps more productive fashion than the last.

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Lemurian Folk Songs, Ima: Pyramid Dreams of Triacontagon

Posted in Reviews on November 7th, 2019 by JJ Koczan

Lemurian Folk Songs Ima

Sonic escapism can take any number of shapes or any number of non-shapes, and Lemurian Folk Songs do likewise. The first thing one hears on the nine-minute opener “Highself Roadhouse” is a chant-like vocal from singer/keyboardist Benus Krisztina that’s just two words: “Eternal circle.” Amid echo and reverb spaciousness comes a tonal warmth that extends from Ambrus Bence‘s guitar and newcomer Nemesházi Attila‘s bass to Baumgartner István‘s snare drums, adding to a fluid mix of fuzz and psychedelic vibing that becomes the running theme throughout the four-song/38-minute long-player, Ima. The title of the album is properly written with a kind of pyramid symbol next to the word (I can never get those things to show up in text; this site runs on a very old framework), but it would seem to tie into the pyramid-minded artwork, conjuring visions of ancient astronaut weirdness and all sorts of amalgamated who-knows-what.

And fair enough, since the Para Hobo Records-released album operates in a not completely dissimilar manner, with each song finding its own way around that central warmth as the Budapest-based four-piece steer its direction through airy post-whatnot or psychedelic boogie in second track “Füst,” indeed a bit of folk serenity in the penultimate “Pillanat,” and, on the 15:42 closer “Melusina III,” a deluxe, nod-ready fuzzed-out jam that resolves itself in a wash of noise and residual effects, seeming to leave nothing behind as the guitar line drifts out and leaves the bass and drums to hold out the central rhythm until that too dissipates, leaving just the lasers-in-space of guitar, which also fades out over the final minute-plus. That’s an as-reasonable-as-anything ending for a record like Ima — which is the band’s second behind 2017’s Maro and their 2016 debut EP, Nommo, from before Krisztina joined — but of course the focus such as it is is much more centered around the journey to get there rather than what happens at the end. That’s the nature of an offering such as this, but it’s a form in which Lemurian Folk Songs thrive, finding a home for themselves among a host of otherworldly sensibilities.

They would seem to be aware of such a trajectory, as well. Even the band’s moniker refers to some vision of a lost world, with Lemuria having been a once-postulated sunken continent that united India, Madagascar and Australia via what’s now the Indian Ocean. Obviously it would’ve been a sizable continent, but it was theorized because of similarities primate fossils in those places — thus Lemuria from “lemur.” Some Tamil writers adopted Lemuria as an interpretation of their own legendary sunken continent, Kumari Kandam (thanks Wikipedia), and others have taken on the idea of a lost civilization and so on. Lemurian Folk Songs, then, would be what these mythical people in this forgotten culture sang, whoever and whenever they were. So it is that the ethereal is manifest throughout Ima, and though the moniker is more a framework than a conceptual lens — that is, I don’t think they’re actually trying to write a lost culture’s folk music so much as they’re trying to write quality heavy psychedelia; a goal they achieve and then some, by the way — the feeling of being in another place is nonetheless crucial to the affect of the material.

Lemurian Folk Songs (Photo by Robert Kranitz)

From those initial chants, “Highself Roadhouse” sets itself out across a sonic sprawl that’s immersive and rife with intertwining energies, hypnotic in its repetitions but with enough change throughout to stave off being redundant. The trajectory is outward, but “Highself Roadhouse” is less about space than spirit, and as one can’t see a song title containing the word “roadhouse” without thinking of The Doors, it’s worth noting that Krisztina does work a bit of Jim Morrison swagger into her cadence on the opener. That’s all the more fitting as Ima shifts gears into “Füst,” which is faster and more physical in its movement, Bence showcasing choice lead work as Attila‘s bass tone continues to be a highlight unto itself. I am an eternal sucker for righteous low-end warmth, but even so, the work done here in anchoring the proceedings in complementing István in the rhythm section as well as the Bence‘s guitar is the kind that only makes a good album or band that much better.

“Füst” smooths and chills out effectively over its 8:25 run, and that makes the transition into the shorter “Pillanat” that much more of a highlight unto itself. The line between “Highself Roadhouse” and “Füst” was drawn with a quiet guitar and silence before the boogie riff started, but with “Füst” and “Pillanat” it’s more direct, an echoing vocal ending the second track shortly before the third picks up with its soft and melodic line. And “Pillanat” may be the briefest cut on Ima at just over five minutes, but it’s a beautifully meditative moment that does much to enrich the record as a whole in vibe, mood and aesthetic, showcasing a patience and broader dynamic than Lemurian Folk Songs have yet shown while also acting as a setup for “Melusaina III,” the rolling fuzz of which hits immediately and in hell-yes fashion, with Bence wasting no time in establishing the central riff as effects come to swirl around it, the drums take a laid back push and the bass, as ever, thickens the proceedings engagingly, given further dimension to the space the tones occupy.

It’s also Attila‘s bass that holds to the central figure as Bence‘s guitar goes wandering in the closer’s midsection, eventually working its way back to the roll and out again as Krisztina‘s keys fill out the melody. From there, there’s just about no coming back and Lemurian Folk Songs know it. But “coming back” was seemingly never in the plans anyway, and their already-noted departure-via-noise gives a last-minute flourish of experimentalism that comes across as underscoring the live feel of the performances preceding. I don’t know if they recorded live or not, but there’s a vitality to the work throughout Ima that very much suits Lemurian Folk Songs, and with the range of their songcraft and the meld of spontaneity and structure they bring to the offering, the converted among heavy psych heads should be well on board for the voyage as they present it. A sleeper, maybe, but not to be missed, with each track doing something to enhance the entirety in such a way as to make it all the more resonant by the time it’s done.

Lemurian Folk Songs, Ima (2019)

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Track-by-Track & Full Album Stream: Ozone Mama, Cosmos Calling

Posted in audiObelisk, Features on January 16th, 2018 by JJ Koczan

ozone mama

Hungarian heavy rock four-piece Ozone Mama will release their third album, Cosmos Calling, on Jan. 19 as their debut on Ripple Music. Whether it’s the element of bluesy Southern twang that shows up in the title-track, “The Alchemist” or the earlier “Straight on Till Morning Light” — pretty much anytime they break out the organ — or the unbridled hook that makes “High Ride” such a shimmering standout, the record boasts a clarity of intent and craft front to back that coincides with its straightforward, frills-need-not-apply ethic of songwriting. And it very much lives up to that ethic in performance and execution — it can sound clean because there’s nothing it needs to mask beneath a layer of sonic grit.

Comprised of vocalist Márton Székely, guitarist András Gábor, bassst Gergely Dobos and drummer Máté GulyásOzone Mama debuted ozone mama cosmos callingwith 2012’s The Starship and followed that with 2016’s Sonic Glory. A penchant for spacey themes notwithstanding, their material is nothing if not grounded on Cosmos Calling, as shown in the shuffling “Cold Light of Day” or the manner in which the swing of “Doppelganger” updates the ideology of ’70s heavy rock so as to allow both the rhythmic shove and the melody come through — a little cowbell there doesn’t hurt either, naturally. Taken in kind with the thicker riffing that shows itself throughout moments like the intro to “The Alchemist” or the winding “Feel so Alive,” Ozone Mama set up a range for their sound that remains unified thanks to the overarching quality of their hooks, the presence of Székely as a frontman and the obvious chemistry shared between the band as a whole.

As the closing pair of “The Alchemist” and “Moon Pilot” — the latter something of a sonic shift from much of what precedes — play out as two of the longest cuts on Cosmos Calling, the message is only further nailed down of a conscientious approach to their work, which is a big part of the reason why, in featuring the album in its entirety today ahead of its release later this week, it seemed all the more prudent to get the perspective of the group itself. I don’t do track-by-tracks so often, but in a case like that of Ozone Mama, where they’re so readily apparent in demonstrating intent and purpose behind their work, it could hardly feel more appropriate.

You’ll find Cosmos Calling in its entirety on the player below, followed by the band’s runthrough of each song on it.

Please enjoy:

Ozone Mama, Cosmos Calling Track-by-Track

(Courtesy of the band)

1. Evil Ways

This one has a dark psychedelic intro with spooky oriental vibe. Along with the use of the haunting tanpura and mellotron, the distorted vocals and lyrics are reminiscent to Blind Willie Johnson, and for such a short song it’s the one on the album that’s guaranteed to give anyone the creeps.

2. Straight on Till Morning Light

This one’s a sequel to “Evil Ways” and our tribute to Gregg Allman, who passed away recently. Southern rock has always been a strong influence on our songwriting. The bridge brings back that gothic vibe of the intro with a chant-like vocal and if you like slide guitars, tasty Rhodes piano and that upbeat/psychedelic ‘Allman-vibe,’ this is the one for you.

3. Doppelganger

A cheerful-sounding song based on a heavy riff but with very dark lyrics. This song is about that ‘evil twin’ which lurks inside all of us; paranoia, schizophrenia, all of those things which can hit anyone at any point in their life. The story is about a sinister parasitic twin living in the person’s head, very reminiscent of Stephen King’s The Dark Half.

4. High Ride

This is an unusual song from us. It was our first single from Cosmos Calling and has a totally different vibe than the rest, with catchy melodies and a heavy fuzz solo. It’s essentially an invitation for a ride to set you free.

5. Shout at the Sky

A melodic piece on the album, a slow ballad-like song about the constant search for the right path and the right decisions of life. The story behind this one is basically about a man who had made a mistake and the regret was so heavy that his misery made him ill. There is a second interpretation too. The other reading of it is a story of a man with cancer and as his moods swing and memories becoming more poignant.

6. Freedom Fighters

A high-octane rock and roll song with a very simple message: set yourself free and take steps to eliminate all the bad things that ruin your life. “Freedom Fighters” refers to revolutionary people, spiritual leaders and the ones fighting for a greater good and equality.

7. Cosmos Calling

The title-track from the album. This bluesy, psychedelic and heavy fuzz number has plenty of Hammond organs, and harmonized vocals and is a very upbeat and cosmic love song with hints of humour in the vein of Kurt Vonnegut.

8. Feel so Alive

This song is about the power of music. When you turn up the volume and the joy and adrenaline rushes through your veins. Heavy fuzz, tight basslines, funky wah-work and a hint of Motown in the verses. There’s also a tape delay under the solo which might bring you back to the best moments of the ’70s space-rock bands.

9. Cold Light of Day

This one is another upbeat song but it does have slight cold and wintry vibe to it. It’s the story of a man who has been in a poisonous relationship and finally he realizes that he’s been wrong all along and a change must inevitably happen. Escaping from the witch’s spell and get rid of those chains before it’s too late.

10. The Alchemist

A fuzz-heavy, riff-based fiction with a very dark vibe this one’s about a guy who’s trying to save his friends in a plague-ridden town but, at the end, he dies just like the others despite all his best efforts at concocting a cure.

11. Moon Pilot

“Moon Pilot” is the climactic point of the album, the last song on the record, longer than the rest and it has a space rock sound with lyrics reminiscent of the darkest novels of Philip K. Dick and a theme not to dissimilar to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Just updated a little for today’s rock audience.

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