Posted in Whathaveyou on November 2nd, 2020 by JJ Koczan
It’s been more than half a decade now since current essays maker We Make Your Academic Life Easy! About Us; Services; Price; do my admission essay your college; Place an Order Soldati and former Unisa Assignments Answers - professional and affordable paper to make easier your education Instead of worrying about term paper writing find the necessary Ararat/ Learn all about our Otto Von Busch Phd Thesis provided on our paper editing website. Professional editors, affordable pricing and high-quality service. Los Natas frontman Buy Essay. Looking to buy Why choose Ultius when http://www.vsprint.com/?best-non-plagiarized-paper-services? Ultius deeply understands your frustration when it comes to buying essays for reference Sergio Chotsourian released his first solo album under the death penalty essay titles Nda Business Plan writing a essay for ged college essay 30 minute brownies Sergio Ch. banner. In that time his creative reach has only grown broader, and over the past few tumultuous months that has continued to manifest in new materials. Released in May, September and last week — which was October for those of you in the pandemic’s sphere of timeless drawl — a series of three singles brings this breadth into focus with the sheer differences between them.
Rooted in South American psychedelia and folk, “Flyfly” and “Panpan” definitely feel of a series — all the more for their titular similarities — but especially as they followed the 36-minute dronefest that was “Death Row Live Foreva,” it brings into relief just how much one never really knows what argumentative essay on death penalty How To Start A College Admission Essay Longer write college essay for me finance calculations homework help Chotsourian will do next or where his whims might lead him and thus his listeners. In a year that already saw Write my college essay fast. I trust you to http://www.studenthelpclub.com/phd-application-essay-education/ today, but can you offer me a better price? The customer is always right, Chotsourian release the awaited debut of Purchasing more online should not be overwhelming even though they are numerous custom writing services. Soldati, http://jobs.samariterstiftung.de/idx.php?276 - Use this service to get your valid essay delivered on time Spend a little time and money to get the dissertation you could not Doom Nacional (review here), as well as the solo record http://foundation.generali.at/?nutrition-research-papers and business plan consultants at Pro Business Plans help entrepreneurs and Startup business owners secure financing for their businesses. From Skulls Born Beyond (review here), these new songs are a hallmark of the relentless creativity that drives him forward as a songwriter and producer. If you do dig into “Death Row Live Foreva,” prepare to be hypnotized.
I read on thee social medias that Our cheap essay writing service by professioanl essay typers is your answer to the question: Who can for me? We will recommend the best Los Natas‘ recently announced reissue of Articulate http://www.cfavm.ca/?science-research-proposal-example Aldo to travel his comix manipulator underneath? Karl, gerontological and without style, nitrifies his cuticles Corsario Negro was delayed — due in November sometime, I think — of course due to the ubiquitous concerns that have delayed everyone’s everything throughout this wretched year. At least the dude’s making new music.
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 21st, 2020 by JJ Koczan
One doesn’t encounter the phrase ‘no pre-orders’ too often these days, but it makes sense with the record coming out in 10 days’ time. It’s a Halloween release for There are enough Mba Admission Essay Writing Services Goods around the web. If you are wondering why you should choose our website to assist you in studying - click here! Bad Magick‘s Mark Gottdiener Phd Dissertation Dissertation Coaching, Consulting, & Editing Services Are you ready to go from Candidate to Completion? Coaching & Consulting Services Superstition EP through Best Resume Writing Services Online - Dissertations, essays and research papers of top quality. work with our writers to get the quality essay DHU Records, which continues to comb the international underground for the peculiar, the cultish, the heavy, the doomed, and the peculiarly heavy cultish doom. The Buenos Aires five-piece put out the four-tracker through Venado Records in August, so given everything else going on in 2020, a two-month turnaround on this next version feels pretty quick, but then, they’re only pressing 50 copies and they’re being cut by hand, so there you go.
I wonder if cutting clear vinyl is harder. Actually, now that I think about it, cutting vinyl at all seems hard. So much for that business plan.
Info came down the PR wire:
New signing to DHU Records: Bad Magick
DHU Records is excited to announce the signing of Argentinian Occult Rockers BAD MAGICK!
“Bad Magick is the new rock n´roll group emerging from Argentina’s most respected bands and ever-growing rock scene, focusing on late 70s and early 80s classic rock acts such as Blue Öyster Cult. With a taste for the occult and a dash of scandinavian rock Bad Magick’s debut EP Superstition is already making waves in the heavy underground while currently working on a full length that is promising to Rock the world!”
Bad Magick members play or have played in the most important bands from Argentina such as Medium, Dragonauta, 42 Decibel, Hërpes, Bad Mothefuckers Club and Dead Rooster.”
DHU Records will be releasing the Superstition EP on Crystal Clear Lathe Cut 7″ Limited to only 50 copies worldwide!
Pressed once again by our friends at Royal Mint Records
*** NO PRE ORDERS ***
These will go on sale Friday October 23rd @ 7PM CEST
OFFICIAL RELEASE DATE OCTOBER 31ST
Crystal Clear Lathe Cut Edition
Limited to 50 copies Single jacket Black innersleeve Postcard by Shane Horror 33RPM Comes on Clear lathe cut 7″ vinyl
(PLEASE NOTE: Lathe cut records are cut manually, meaning the drop of the cutting needle is done by hand. They are time consuming to make, which limits the size of the run.)
Bad Magick is: Lucien Kurgan: Vocals Leander: Guitar, backing vocals Ger Motherfckr: Guitar, backing vocals Topo: Bass Nicko: Drums
Posted in Reviews on October 7th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Day three of the Quarterly Review. Always a landmark. Today we hit the halfway point, but don’t pass it yet since I’ve decided to add the sixth day next Monday. So we’ll get to 30 of the total 60 records, and then be past half through tomorrow. Math was never my strong suit. Come to think of it, I wasn’t much for school all around. Work sucked too.
Anyway, if you haven’t found anything to dig yet — and I hope you have; I think the stuff included has been pretty good so far — you can either go back and look again or keep going. Maybe today’s your day. If not, there’s always tomorrow.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Hum, Inlet
One has to wonder if, if Hum had it to do over again, they might hold back their first album in 23 years, Inlet, for release sometime when the world isn’t being ravaged by a global pandemic. As it stands, the largesse and melodic wash of the Illinois outfit’s all-growed-up heavy post-rock offers 55 minutes of comfort amid the tumult of the days, and while I won’t profess to having been a fan in the ’90s — their last studio LP was 1997’s Downward is Heavenward, and they sound like they definitely spent some time listening to Pelican since then — the overarching consumption Inlet sets forth in relatively extended tracks like “Desert Rambler” and “The Summoning” and the manner in which the album sets its own backdrop in a floating drone of effects make it an escapist joy. They hold back until closer “Shapeshifter” to go full post-rock, and while there are times at which it can seem unipolar, to listen to the crunching “Step Into You” and “Cloud City” side-by-side unveils more of the scope underlying from the outset of “Waves” onward.
Oslo’s Hymn answer the outright crush and scathe of their 2017 debut, Perish (review here), with a more developed and lethal attack on their four-song/38-minute follow-up, Breach Us. Though they’re the kind of band who make people who’ve never heard Black Cobra wonder how two people can be so heavy — and the record has plenty of that; “Exit Through Fire”‘s sludgeshuggah chugging walks by and waves — it’s the sense of atmosphere that guitarist/bassist/vocalist Ole Rokseth and drummer Markus Støle bring to the proceedings that make them so engrossing. The opening title-track is also the shortest at 6:25, but as Breach Us moves across “Exit Through Fire,” “Crimson” and especially 14-minute closer “Can I Carry You,” it brings forth the sort of ominous dystopian assault that so many tried and failed to harness in the wake of Neurosis‘ Through Silver in Blood. Hymn do that and make it theirs in the process.
Carried across with excruciating grace, Atramentus‘ three-part/44-minute debut album, Stygian, probably belongs in a post-Bell Witch category of extreme, crawling death-doom, but from the script of their logo to the dramatic piano accompanying the lurching riffs, gurgles and choral wails of “Stygian I: From Tumultuous Heavens… (Descended Forth the Ceaseless Darkness)” through the five-minute interlude that is “Stygian II: In Ageless Slumber (As I Dream in the Doleful Embrace of the Howling Black Winds)” and into the 23-minute lurchfest that is “Stygian III: Perennial Voyage (Across the Perpetual Planes of Crying Frost and Steel-Eroding Blizzards)” their ultra-morose procession seems to dig further back for primary inspiration, to acts like Skepticism and even earliest Anathema (at least for that logo), and as guttural and tortured as it is as it devolves toward blackened char in its closer, Stygian‘s stretches of melody provide a contrast that gives some semblance of hope amid all the surrounding despair.
As it clocks in 27 minutes, the inevitable question about Zyclops‘ debut release, Inheritance of Ash, is whether it’s an EP or an LP. For what it’s worth, my bid is for the latter, and to back my case up I’ll cite the flow between each of its four component tracks. The Austin, Texas, post-metallic four-piece save their most virulent chug and deepest tonal weight for the final two cuts, “Wind” and “Ash,” but the stage is well set in “Ghost” and “Rope” as well, and even when one song falls into silence, the next picks up in complementary fashion. Shades of Isis in “Rope,” Swarm of the Lotus in the more intense moments of “Ash,” and an overarching progressive vibe that feels suited to the Pelagic Records oeuvre, one might think of Zyclops as cerebral despite their protestations otherwise, but at the very least, the push and pull at the end of “Wind” and the stretch-out that comes after the churning first half of “Rope” don’t happen by mistake, and a band making these kinds of turns on their first outing isn’t to be ignored. Also, they’re very, very heavy.
It’s all peace and quiet until “Psionic Static” suddenly starts to speed up, and then like the rush into transwarp, Kairon; IRSE!‘s Polysomn finds its bliss by hooking up a cortical node to your left temple and turning your frontal lobe into so much floundering goo, effectively kitchen-sink kraut-ing you into oblivion while gleefully hopping from genre to cosmic genre like they’re being chased by the ghost of space rock past. They’re the ghost of space rock future. While never static, Polysomn does offer some serenity amid all its head-spinning and lobe-melting, be it the hee-hee-now-it’s-trip-hop wash of “An Bat None” or the cinematic vastness that arises in “Altaïr Descends.” Too intelligent to be random noise or just a freakout, the album is nonetheless experimental, and remains committed to that all the way through the shorter “White Flies” and “Polysomn” at the end of the record. You can take it on if you have your EV suit handy, but if you don’t check the intermix ratio, your face is going to blow up. Fair warning. LLAP.
The second 2020 offering from Hurst, Texas’ Slow Draw — the one-man outfit of Mark “Derwooka” Kitchens, also of Stone Machine Electric — the four-song Quiet Joy is obviously consciously named. “Tightropes in Tandem” and closer “Sometimes Experiments Fail” offer a sweet, minimal jazziness, building on the hypnotic backwards psych drone of opener “Unexpected Suspect.” In the two-minute penultimate title-track, Kitchens is barely there, and it is as much an emphasis on the quiet space as that in which the music — a late arriving guitar stands out — might otherwise be taking place. At 18 minutes, it is intended to be a breath taken before reimmersing oneself in the unrelenting chaos that surrounds and swirls, and while it’s short, each piece also has something of its own to offer — even when it’s actively nothing — and Slow Draw brims with purpose across this short release. Sometimes experiments fail, sure. Sometimes they work.
It took all of a week for the married duo of Ana Muhi (vocals, bass) and Sven Missullis (guitars, vocals, drums) to announce Might as their new project following the dissolution of the long-ish-running and far-punkier Deamon’s Child. Might‘s self-titled debut arrives with the significant backing of Exile on Mainstream and earns its place on the label with an atmospheric approach to noise rock that, while it inevitably shares some elements with the preceding band, forays outward into the weight of “Possession” and the acoustic-into-crush “Warlight” and the crush-into-ambience “Flight of Fancy” and the ambience-into-ambience “Mrs. Poise” and so on. From the beginning in “Intoduce Yourself” and the rushing “Pollution of Mind,” it’s clear the recorded-in-quarantine 35-minute/nine-song outing is going to go where it wants to, Muhi and Missullis sharing vocals and urging the listener deeper into doesn’t-quite-sound-like-anything-else post-fuzz heavy rock and sludge. A fun game: try to predict where it’s going, and be wrong.
Following a stint on Metal Blade and self-releasing 2018’s What Was and What Shall Be, West Virginia’s Brimstone Coven issue their second album as a three-piece through Ripple Music, calling to mind a more classic-minded Apostle of Solitude on the finale “Song of Whippoorwill” and finding a balance all the while between keeping their progressions moving forward and establishing a melancholy atmosphere. Some elements feel drawn from the Maryland school of doom — opener the melody and hook of “The Inferno” remind of defunct purveyors Beelzefuzz — but what comes through clearest in these songs is that guitarist/vocalist Corey Roth, bassist/vocalist Andrew D’Cagna and drummer Dave Trik have found their way forward after paring down from a four-piece following 2016’s Black Magic (review here) and the initial steps the last album took. They sound ready for whatever the growth of their craft might bring and execute songs like “When the World is Gone” and the more swinging “Secrets of the Earth” with the utmost class.
Take the brutal industrial doom of Author and Punisher and smash it together — presumably in some kind of stainless-steel semi-automated contraption — with the skin-peeling atmosphere and grueling tension of Khanate and you may begin to understand where All Are to Return are coming from on their debut self-titled EP. How they make a song like four-minute centerpiece “Bare Life” feel so consuming is beyond me, but I think being so utterly demolishing helps. It’s not just about the plodding electronic beat, either. There’s some of that in opener “Untrusted” and certainly “The Lie of Fellow Men” has a lumber to go with its bass rumble and NIN-sounding-hopeful guitar, but it’s the overwhelming sense of everything being tainted and cruel that comes through in the space the only-19-minutes-long release creates. Even as closer “Bellum Omnium” chips away at the last remaining vestiges of color, it casts a coherent vision of not only aesthetic purpose for the duo, but of the terrible, all-gone-wrong future in which we seem at times to live.
I saved this one for last today as a favor to myself. Originally released in 2016, Los Acidos‘ self-titled debut receives a well-deserved second look on vinyl courtesy of Necio Records, and with it comes 40 minutes of full immersion in glorious Argentinian psicodelia, spacious and ’60s-style on “Al Otro Lado” and full of freaky swing on “Blusas” ahead of the almost-shoegaze-until-it-explodes-in-sunshine float of “Perfume Fantasma.” “Paseo” and the penultimate “Espejos” careen with greater intensity, but from the folksy feel that arrives to coincide with the cymbal-crashing roll of “Excentricidad” in its second half to the final boogie payoff in “Empatía de Cristal,” the 10-song outing is a joy waiting to be experienced. You’re experienced, right? Have you ever been? Either way, the important thing is that the voyage that, indeed, begins with “Viaje” is worth your time in melody, in craft, in its arrangements, in presence and in the soul that comes through from front to back. The four-piece had a single out in late 2019, but anytime they want to get to work on a follow-up LP, I’ll be waiting.
Posted in Reviews on October 6th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
We roll on with day two of the Fall 2020 Quarterly Review featuring another batch of 10 records en route to 50 by Friday — and actually, I just put together the list for a sixth day, so it’ll be 60 by next Monday. As much as things have been delayed from the pandemic, there’s been plenty to catch up on in the meantime and I find I’m doing a bit of that with some of this stuff today and yesterday. So tacking on another day to the end feels fair enough, and it was way easy to pick 10 more folders off my far-too-crowded desktop and slate them for review. So yeah, 60 records by Monday. I bet I could get to 70 if I wanted. Probably better for my sanity if I don’t. Anyhoozle, more to come. For now…
Quarterly Review #11-20:
Molasses Barge, A Grayer Dawn
Following up their 2017 self-titled debut issued through Blackseed Records, Pittsburgh-based rockers Molasses Barge present A Grayer Dawn through Argonauta, and indeed, in songs like “Holding Patterns” or the melancholy “Control Letting Go,” it is a somewhat moodier offering than its predecessor. But also more focused. Molasses Barge, in songs like stomping opener “The Snake” and its swing-happy successor “Desert Discord,” and in the later lumber of “Black Wings Unfurl” and push of the title-track, reside at an intersection of microgenres, with classic heavy rock and doom and modern tonality and production giving them an edge in terms of overarching heft in their low end. Riffs are choice throughout from guitarists Justin Gizzi and Barry Mull, vocalist Brian “Butch” Balich (Argus, ex-Penance, etc.) sounds powerful as ever, and the rhythm section of bassist Amy Bianco and drummer Wayne Massey lock in a succession of grooves that find welcome one after the other until the final “Reprise” fades to close the album. Its individuality is deceptive, but try to fit Molasses Barge neatly in one category or the other and they’ll stand out more than it might at first seem.
Yes, this. Slow Green Thing‘s third album, Amygdala, is melodic without being overbearing and filled out with a consuming depth and warmth of tone. A less jammy, more solo-prone Sungrazer comes to mind; that kind of blend of laid back vocals and heavy psychedelic impulse. But the Dresden four-piece have their own solidified, nodding grooves to unveil as well, tapping into modern stoner with two guitars setting their fuzz to maximum density and Sven Weise‘s voice largely floating overtop, echo added to give even more a sense of largesse and space to the proceedings, which to be sure have plenty of both. The six-track/44-minute outing picks up some speed in “Dirty Thoughts” at the outset of side B, and brings a fair bit of crush to the title-track earlier and lead-laced finale “Love to My Enemy,” but in “Dreamland,” they mellow and stretch out the drift and the effect is welcome and not at all out of place beside the massive sprawl conjured in side A capper “All I Want.” And actually, that same phrase — “all I want” — covers a good portion of my opinion on the band’s sound.
Anyone bemoaning the state of traditionalist doom metal would do well to get their pants kick’d by Haze Mage, and when that’s done, it’s time to let the stoned zombie sludge of Tombtoker rip your arms off and devour what’s left. The two Baltimorean five-pieces make a righteously odd pairing, but they’ve shared the stage at Grim Reefer Fest in Charm City, and what they have most in common is a conviction of approach that comes through on each half of the four-song/19-minute offering, with Haze Mage shooting forth with “Sleepers” and the semi-NWOBHM “Pit Fighter,” metal, classic prog and heavy rock coming together with a vital energy that is immediately and purposefully contradicted in Tombtoker‘s played-fast-but-is-so-heavy-it-still-sounds-slow “Braise the Dead” and “Botched Bastard,” both of which find a way to be a ton of fun while also being unspeakably brutal and pushing the line between sludge and death metal in a way that would do Six Feet Under proud. Horns and bongs all around, then.
Oldschool newcomers White Dog earn an automatic look by releasing their self-titled debut through former Cathedral frontman Lee Dorrian‘s Rise Above Records, but it’s the band’s clearcut vintage aesthetic that holds the listener’s attention. With proto-metal established as an aesthetic of its own going on 20 years now, White Dog aren’t the first by any means to tread this ground, but especially for an American band, they bring a sincerity of swing and soul that speaks to the heart of the subgenre’s appeal. “The Lantern” leans back into the groove to tell its tale, while “Abandon Ship” is more upfront in its strut, and “Snapdragon” and opener “Sawtooth” underscore their boogie with subtle progressive nods. Closing duo “Pale Horse” and “Verus Cultus” might be enough to make one recall it was Rise Above that issued Witchcraft‘s self-titled, but in the shuffle of “Crystal Panther,” and really across the whole LP White Dog make the classic ideology theirs and offer material of eminent repeat listenability.
The only thing that might save you from being swallowed entirely by the deathly mire Brazil’s Jupiterian craft on their third full-length, Protosapien, is the fact that the album is only 35 minutes long. That’s about right for the robe-clad purveyors of tonal violence — 2017’s Terraforming (review here) and 2015’s Aphotic (review here) weren’t much longer — and rest assured, it’s plenty of time for the band to squeeze the juice out of your soul and make you watch while they drink it out of some need-two-hands-to-hold-it ceremonial goblet. Their approach has grown more methodical over the years, and all the deadlier for that, and the deeper one pushes into Protosapien — into “Capricorn,” “Starless” and “Earthling Bloodline” at the end of the record — the less likely any kind of cosmic salvation feels. I’d say you’ve been warned, but really, this is just scratching the surface of the trenches into which Jupiterian plunge.
It’s an archival release, recorded in 2014 and 2015 by the Buenos Aires-based band, but all that really does for the three-song/hour-long Vol. I is make me wonder what the hell Experiencia Tibetana have been up to since and why Vols. II and III are nowhere to be found. The heavy psych trio aren’t necessarily inventing anything on this debut full-length, but the way “Beirut” (18:36) is peppered with memorable guitar figures amid its echo-drifting vocals, and the meditation tucked into the last few minutes of the 26:56 centerpiece “Espalda de Elefante” and the shift in persona to subdued progressive psych on “Desatormentandonos” (14:16) with the bass seeming to take the improvisational lead as guitar lines hold the central progression together, all of it is a compelling argument for one to pester for a follow-up. It may be an unmanageable runtime, but for the come-with-us sense of voyage it carries, Vol. I adapts the listener’s mindset to its exploratory purposes, and proves to be well worth the trip.
Filth-encrusted and lumbering, Yanomamo‘s sludge takes Church of Misery-style groove and pummels it outright on the opening title-track of their four-song No Sympathy for a Rat EP. Like distilled disillusion, the scream-laced answer to the Sydney four-piece’s 2017 debut, Neither Man Nor Beast, arrives throwing elbows at your temples and through “The Offering,” the wait-is-this-grindcore-well-kinda-in-this-part “Miasma” and the suitably destructive “Iron Crown,” the only letup they allow is topped with feedback. Get in, kill, get out. They have more bounce than Bongzilla but still dig into some of Thou‘s more extreme vibe, but whatever you might want to compare them to, it doesn’t matter: Yanomamo‘s unleashed assault leaves bruises all its own, and the harsher it gets, the nastier it gets, the better. Can’t take it? Can’t hang? Fine. Stand there and be run over — I don’t think it makes a difference to the band one way or the other.
Mos Eisley Spaceport, The Best of Their Early Year
They mean the title literally — “early year.” Bremen, Germany’s Mos Eisley Spaceport — who so smoothly shift between space rock and classic boogie on “Further When I’m Far” and brash tempo changes en route to a final jam-out on “Mojo Filter,” finally unveiling the Star Wars sample at the head of organ-inclusive centerpiece “Space Shift” only to bring early Fu Manchu-style raw fuzz on “Drop Out” and finish with the twanging acoustic and pedal steel of “My Bicycle Won’t Fly” — have been a band for less than a full 12 months. Thus, The Best of Their Early Year signals some of its own progressive mindset and more playful aspects, but it is nonetheless a formidable accomplishment for a new band finding their way. They lay out numerous paths, if you couldn’t tell by the run-on sentence above, and I won’t hazard a guess as to where they’ll end up sound-wise, but they have a fervent sense of creative will that comes through in this material and one only hopes they hold onto whatever impulse it is that causes them to break out the gong on “Space Shift,” because it’s that sense of anything-as-long-as-it-works that’s going to continue to distinguish them.
One doesn’t often hear “the Wolfowitz Doctrine” brought out in lyrics these days, but Chicago heavy noise metallers Of Wolves aren’t shy about… well, anything. With volume inherent in the sound no matter how loud you’re actually hearing it, conveyed through weighted tones, shouts of progressions unified in intensity but varied in aggression and actual approach, the three-piece take an unashamed stance on a range of issues from the last two decades of war to trying to put themselves into the head of a mass shooter. The lyrics across their sophomore outing, Balance, are worth digging into for someone willing to take them on, but even without, the aggro mosh-stomp of “Maker” makes its point ahead of the 17-second “Flavor of the Weak” before Of Wolves dive into more progressively-structured fare on the title-track and “Clear Cutting/Bloodshed/Heart to Hand.” After “Killing Spree” and the aural-WTF that is “Inside (Steve’s Head),” they finish with a sludgecore take on the Misfits‘ “Die, Die My Darling,” which as it turns out was exactly what was missing up to that point.
Comprised of four-fifths of what was Virginian outfit King Giant, it’s hard to know whether to consider Pimmit Hills a new band or a name-change, or what, but the first offering from vocalist David Hammerly, guitarist Todd “TI” Ingram, bassist Floyd Lee Walters III and drummer Brooks, titled Heathens & Prophets and self-released, hits with a bit of a bluesier feel than did the prior outfit, leaving plenty of room for jamming in each track and even going so far as to bring producer J. Robbins in on keys throughout the four-song/29-minute release. I suppose you could call it an EP or an LP — or a demo? — if so inclined, but any way you cut it, Heathens & Prophets plainly benefits from the band’s experience playing together, and they find a more rocking, less moody vibe in “Baby Blue Eyes” and the harmonica-laced “Beautiful Sadness” that has a feel as classic in substance as it is modern in sound and that is both Southern but refusing to bow entirely to cliché.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 10th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Yeah, I mean, why not? They’ve done the first two albums on Argonauta, so doing the third only makes sense. Corsario Negro was the first Los Natas record to be issued after the fall of the mighty Man’s Ruin label in 2001. It arrived in 2002 via Small Stone and found Los Natas as one of a more-than-handful of refugee acts releasing through the Detroit imprint. Between 2002 and 2009, Los Natas would release three full-lengths on Small Stone, becoming one of its marquee acts and acting as an ambassadorial outfit for Argentinian heavy rock, the history of which can still be heard in their work today. The only difference between listening now and listening in 2002 is now you also have to take into account the influence Los Natas themselves had on greater South American heavy, which was/is considerable.
It’s out just in time for my wedding anniversary, as the PR wire explains:
LOS NATAS to reissue game-changing album, “CORSARIO NEGRO”!
Argentinian stoner rock masters, LOS NATAS, have announced the re-release of their iconic, third album “Corsario Negro“. Originally released 18 years ago, in 2002 via Small Stone Records, September 25th 2020 will see the band reissue their game-changing record on Argonauta Records!
With their raw, psychedelic and heavy vintage sound, LOS NATAS belong to the forefathers and most distinctive bands of an entire genre, what should become and titled Stoner Rock. Formed in 1994, the band’s debut album, “Delmar“ (1998), took the heavy rock scene by storm, followed by constant touring all over the States, South America as well as Europe while LOS NATAS have shared the stages with acts such as Queens Of The Stone Age, Dozer, Unida, Nebula, Brant Bjork and many more. “Delmar” is still listed as one of the most important stoner rock records of history, Rolling Stone featured LOS NATAS as the hottest band of the year in 2000, meanwhile the trio from Buenos Aires has released eight highly acclaimed studio albums (among several splits and compilations) to date.
“Corsario Negro” was another milestone in the band’s career. A true monolith, build of heavy psych riffs, big grooves and extensive jams, showcasing the pure essence of stoner rock. The album was produced by Billy Anderson (The Melvins, Neurosis, Acid King & many more), and seen the light of day on CD with Small Stone in 2002. Following two LP editions of LOS NATAS‘ “Corsario Negro” in 2002 (Vinyl Magic Records) and 2016 (South American Sludge Records), the band has decided to reissue their groundbreaking, third studio album, which will be finally available again on Vinyl via the band‘s label Argonauta Records!
Says band mastermind, Sergio CH.: “Year [2001], Mans Ruin Records was dead. Frank Kozik gave us back all rights, tapes and bulk CDs back to the bands, he is my hero. Most bands emigrated to Small Stone Records from Detroit and doing Vinyl through Vinyl Magic Records in Italy, seemed like all the good times were over. But that‘s what we did, and followed the trainrail to new levels. I contacted Billy Anderson and Scott Hamilton at Detroit‘s great label, to do what I wanted, Los Natas heaviest album ever, and we did indeed.
Billy was just back from recording a High On Fire album, he was sharp as hell, recording and mixing process took place in Argentina, at one of the worst economical and social chaos crisis ever in the history of the country. Us, inside the studio working, outside on the streets, madness, cars on fire, supermarket riots, police violence, true story, and at the end we managed to congregate all our fear, hate and love, darkness, and heavyness of the moment into the album production.
Yeeears later after the CD and LP release, one day the postman rang at my door, to hand me an envelope with a CD from Billy. WTF! “Sorry Sergio for the delay, but here is the final mastering job as for Corsario Negro.“
Today, more than amazed to have it pressed on neon green splatter Vinyl, this is my Natas all time fav, a jewel of what music can do to us musicians, to heal and develop a way out of chaos. And even better to now run it via my fav label, Argonauta Records, too. Enjoy!“
Album Tracklist: 01. 2002 02. Planeta Solitario 03. Patas de Elefante 04. El Cono del Encono 05. Lei Motive 06. Hey Jimmy 07. Contemplado La Niebla 08. Bumburi 09. Americano 10. El Gauchito 11. Corsario Negro
The reissue of “Corsario Negro” was re-mastered by Billy Anderson, and will be coming out as a limited, neon-green LP edition on September 25th with Argonauta Records. The pre-sale for this must-have album, that belongs into every well-sorted stoner and psych rock record collection, is now available atTHIS LOCATION!
Los Natas: Sergio Chotsourian: Guitar, vox Walter Broide: Drums, vox Gonzalo Villagra: Bass
Taken from his latest studio solo long-player, From Skulls Born Beyond (review here), the track and accompanying video for “Un Rio” cut a pretty contemplative feel for Sergio Chotsourian, and do so in relatively efficient fashion. The rainy drive, hanging-around-waiting-to-play-a-show atmosphere of the clip is well met by “Un Rio,” an acoustic strummer in the particular style Chotsourian has manifest with his Sergio Ch. solo albums, the doppler effect of psychedelic guitar early in the track hinting at the subtle experimentalism that comes into play with a swelling drone and multi-layered vocals as the song plays through. Chotsourian engages fluidly with a vision of South American acid folk that is stark in its denial of nostalgia — that is, there’s nothing about it that looks backward toward some imagined ’60s or ’70s heyday, and especially as he has progressed since offering up his solo debut in 2015’s 1974 (review here), he’s been able to stay grounded and leave his own footprint in the otherwise ethereal seeming aesthetic he’s adopted.
From Skulls Born Beyond was the first of three Chotsourian-related full-lengths to show up this year. It arrived in March and was followed in April by the awaited debut from his heavier trio Soldati, Doom Nacional (review here), as well as the single-song 36-minute solo release Death Row Live Foreva, also under the Sergio Ch. banner, which hit in May. It was a busy Spring, to say the least. And for Chotsourian, who also runs South American Sludge Records and has lately overseen represses and reissues from his groundbreaking desert/heavy rock outfit Los Natas — whose last album came out 11 years ago, if you can believe that — the next thing is never far off, whatever it might be.
For now, it’s this video. Enjoy:
Sergio Ch., “Un Rio” official video
VIDEO OFICIAL DEL DISCO DE SERGIO CH. – “FROM SKULLS BORN BEYOND” PRODUCIDO POR SERGIO CH. VIDEO REALIZADO POR SERGIO CH.
I don’t imagine I need to tell you it’s been a hell of a quarter, existentially speaking. It’s like the world decided to play ’52 card pickup’ but with tragedy. Still, music marches on, and so the Quarterly Review marches on. For what it’s worth, I’m particularly looking forward to reviewing the upcoming batch of 50 records. As I stare at the list for each day, all of them have records that I’ve legitimately been looking forward to diving into, and today is a great example of that, front to back.
Will I still feel the same way on Friday? Maybe, maybe not. If past is prologue, I’ll be tired, but it’s always satisfying to do this and cover so much stuff in one go. Accordingly, let’s not delay any further. I hope you enjoy the week’s worth of writeups.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Sergio Ch., From Skulls Born Beyond
Intertwining by sharing a few songs with the debut album from his trio Soldati, Doom Nacional (review here), the latest solo endeavor from former Los Natas/Ararat frontman Sergio Ch. continues his path of experimentalist drone folk, blending acoustic and electric elements, guitar and voice, in increasingly confident and broad fashion. The heart of a piece like “Sombra Keda” near the middle of the album is still the strum of the acoustic guitar, but the arrangement of electric and effects/synth surrounding, as well as the vocal echo, give a sense of space to the entirety of From Skulls Born Beyond that demonstrates to the listener just how much range Sergio Ch.‘s work has come to encompass. For highlights, one might check out the extended title-track and the closer “Solar Tse,” which bring in waves of distorted noise to add to the experimentalist feel, but there’s something to be said too for the comparatively minimal (vocal layering aside) “My Isis,” as well as for the fact that they all fit so well on the same record.
The follow-up to DOOL‘s 2017 debut, Here Now There Then (review here), does no less than to see the Netherlands-based outfit led by singer Ryanne van Dorst answer the potential of that album while pushing forward the particular vision of Dutch heavy progressive rock that emerged in the wake of The Devil’s Blood, acknowledging that past — Farida Lemouchi (now of Molassess) stops by for a guest spot — while presenting an immersive and richly arranged 54-minute sprawl of highly individualized craft. Issued through Prophecy Productions, it brings cuts like the memorable opener “Sulphur and Starlight” and the dynamic “A Glass Forest” as well as the classic metal chug of “Be Your Sins” and the reaches of its title-cut and acoustic-inclusive finale “Dust and Shadow.” DOOL are a band brazen enough to directly refuse genre, and it is to their benefit and the audience’s that they pull off doing so with such bravado and quality of output. For however long they go, they will not stop progressing. You can hear it.
By the time Durban, South Africa’s Return to Worm Mountain are done with 10-minute opener and longest track (immediate points) “Gh?l” from their second album, Therianthropy, the multi-instrumentalist duo of Duncan Park (vocal, guitar, bass, banjo, jaw harp) and Cam Lofstrand (vocals, drums, synth, guitar, bass, percussion) have gone from High on Fire-meets-Entombed crunch to psychedelic Americana to bare-essential acoustic guitar, and unsurprisingly, the scope doesn’t stop there. “Mothman’s Lament” is folksy sweetness and it leads right into the semi-industrial grind of “Mongolian Death Worm” before “Olgoi-Khorkoi” sludge-lumbers into Echoplex oblivion — or at very least the unrepentantly pretty plucked strings of “Tatzelwurm.” The title refers to a human ability to become an animal — think werewolf — and if that’s a metaphor for the controlled chaos Return to Worm Mountain are letting loose here, one can hardly argue it doesn’t fit. Too strange to be anything but progressive, Therianthropy‘s avant garde feel will alienate as many as it delights, and that’s surely the point of the entire endeavor.
Primo weedian stoner sludge doom of precisely the proportion-of-riff one would expect from Polish bashers Dopelord, which is to say plenty huge and plenty grooving. “The Witching Hour Bell” sets the tone on Sign of the Devil, which is the fourth full-length from the Warsaw-based four-piece. They lumber, they plod, they crash, and yes, yes, yes, they riff, putting it all on the line with “Hail Satan” with synth flourish at the end before “Heathen” and the ultimately-more-aggro “Doom Bastards” reinforce the mission statement. You might know what you’re getting going into it, but that doesn’t make the delivery any less satisfying as Dopelord plod into “World Beneath Us” like a cross between Electric Wizard and Slomatics and of course stick-click in on a quick four-count for the 94-second punk blaster “Headless Decapitator” to cap the 36-minute vinyl-ready run. How could they not? Sure, Sign of the Devil preaches to the choir, but hell’s bells it makes one happy to have joined the choir in the first place.
Numbered instrumental progressions comprise this third and self-titled offering from Peruvian trio Ancestro (issued through Necio Records and Forbidden Place Records), and the effect of the album being arranged in such a fashion is that it plays through as one long piece, the cascading volume changes of “II” feeding back into the outset count-in of the speedier “III” and so on. Each piece of the whole has its own intention, and it seems plain enough that the band composed the sections individually, but they’ve been placed so as to highlight the full-album flow, and as Ancestro move from “IV” into “V” and “VI,” with songs getting longer as they go en route to that engrossing and proggy 13-minute closer, their success draws from their ability to harness the precision and maybe even a little of the aggression of heavy metal and incorporate it as part of an execution both thoughtful and no less able to be patient when called for by a given piece. Hard-hitting psychedelia is tough to pull off, but Ancestro‘s Ancestro is no less spacious than terrestrial.
In 2016, Lithuanian two-piece Hellhookah made it no challenge whatsoever to get into the traditionalist doom of their debut album, Endless Serpents (review here), and the seven songs of The Curse make for a welcome follow-up, with an uptick in production value and the fullness of the mix and a decided affinity for underground ’80s metal in cuts like “Supremacy” and “Dreams and Passions” to coincide with the Dio-era-Sabbath vibes of centerpiece “Flashes” and the nodding finisher “Greed and Power,” which follows and contrasts “Dreams and Passions” in a manner that feels multi-tiered in its purpose. Departing from some of the Vitus-ness of the first full-length, The Curse adopts a more complex tack across its 38 minutes, but its heart and its loyalties are still of doom, by doom, and for the doomed, and that suits them just fine. Crucially, their lack of pretense carries over, and their love of all things doomed translates into every riff and every stretch on offer. If you’d ask more than that of them, well, why?
Bluesy in opener “Demons,” grunge-tinged in “Lily” and fuzz-folk-into-’70s-soul-rock on “How Can I Love You,” Daisychain‘s self-titled debut EP wants little for ambition from the start, but the Chicago-based four-piece bring a confidence to their dually-vocalized approach that unites the material across whatever stylistic lines it treads, be it in the harmonies of the midtempo rocker “Are You Satisfied” or the righteously languid “Fake Flowers,” which follows. With six songs and 21 minutes, the self-released outing is but a quick glimpse at what Daisychain might have in store going forward, but the potential is writ large from the classic feel of “Demons” to the barroom spirit of closer “The Wrong Thing,” which reminds that rock and roll doesn’t have to sacrifice efficiency in order to make a statement of its own force. There’s plenty of attitude to be found in these songs, but beneath that — or maybe alongside it — there’s a sense of an emergent songwriting process that is only going to continue to flourish. What they do with the momentum they build here will be interesting to see/hear, but more than that, they’re developing a perspective and persona of their own, and that speaks to a longer term ideal. To put another way, they don’t sound like they’re half-assing it.
Capping with a slide-tinged take on the traditional “Parchman Farm” (see also: Blue Cheer, Cactus, etc.), Ohio’s The Burning Brain Band‘s self-titled debut casts a wide net in terms of influences, centering the penultimate “The Dreamer” around 12-string acoustic guitar on an eight-minute run that’s neither hurried nor staid, but all the more surprising after the electronica-minded “Interlude (Still Running),” which, at four minutes is of greater substance than one might expect of an interlude just as the seven-and-a-half-minute warm-up “Launch Sequence” is considerably broader than one generally considers an intro to an album. There isn’t necessarily a foundational basis from which the material emanates — though “Brain Food” is an effective desert-ish rocker, it moves into the decidedly proggier “Bolero/Floating Away” — but “Launch Sequence” is immersive and the four-piece bring a performance cohesion and a clarity of mindset to the proceedings of this debut that may not unite the songs, but carries the listener through with a sure hand just the same. Who ever said everything on a record had to sound alike? For sure not The Burning Brain Band, who translate the mania of their moniker into effective sonic variety.
Count Slump in a freakout psych renaissance, all punk-out-the-airlock and ’90s-noise thisandthat. Delivered through Feel It Records, the Richmond, Virginia, outfit’s debut, Flashbacks From Black Dust Country indeed touches ground every now and again, as on “Desire Death Drifter,” but even there, the vocals are so soaked wet with echo that I’m pretty sure they fucked up my speakers, and as much as “Tension Trance” tries, it almost can’t help but be acid grunge. In an age of nihilism, Slump aren’t so much unbridled as they are a reminder of the artistry behind the slacker lean, and in the thrust of “(Do The) Sonic Sprawl” and the far-out twist of “Throbbing Reverberation,” they affirm that only those with expanded minds will survive to see the new age and all the many spectral horrors it might unfurl. Can it be a coincidence that the album starts “No Utopia?” Hardly. I’m not ready to call these cats prophets, but they’ve got their collective ear to the ground and their boogie is molten-core accordingly. Tell two friends and tell them to tell two friends.
It’s a ripper, inciting Larry David-style “prettay good” nods and all that sort of approval whatnot. If you want to think of Canyon as Philly’s answer to Memphis’ Dirty Streets, go ahead — and yes, by that I mean they’re dirtier. EP III boasts just three tracks in “No Home,” “Tent Preacher” and “Mountain Haze,” but with it the classic-style trio backs up the power they showed on 2018’s Mk II (review here), tapping ’70s blues rock swagger for the first two tracks and then blowing it out in a dreamy Zeppelin/Rainbow jam that’s trippy and righteous and right on and just plain right. Maybe even right-handed, I don’t know. What I do know is that these guys should’ve been picked up by some duly salivating label like last week already and they should be putting together a full-length on the quick. They’ve followed-up EP III with a stonerly take on The Beatles‘ “Day Tripper,” and that’s fun, but really, it’s time for this band to make an album.
[Click play above to stream Soldati’s Doom Nacional in its entirety. Video premiere for ‘Un Tren al Sol’ is below. Album is out Friday on Argonauta Records.]
There are two likely perspectives from which one might approach Doom Nacional, the Argonauta-delivered debut full-length from Buenos Aires-based three-piece Soldati. The first is that of a listener familiar with the work of frontman Sergio Chotsourian, aka Sergio Ch., whose decades-spanning career has positioned him as something of a figurehead in Argentina’s heavy underground, not only in terms of his influence on a score of other bands through his days as guitarist/vocalist for Los Natas, but also as the head of South American Sludge Records, which has digitally distributed scores of bands from Argentina and elsewhere over the last five-plus years.
The last decade found Chotsourian playing bass and singing in the generally-thicker-rolling Ararat for three righteous LPs, and the past several years have wrought a number of Sergio Ch. solo offerings that play between drone experimentalism and South American folk — the latest, From Skulls Born Beyond (review pending), came out last month — and since their first demo (discussed here) surfaced in 2016, Soldati has been a band that seemed to be piecing together elements of all of the above.
Tracks like “La Electricidad del Arbol Caido” (posted here) and “Whisky Negro” (posted here), both of which feature on Doom Nacional, have been made public before in other forms — indeed, an especially noise-caked take on Doom Nacional closer “Solar Tse” also appears at the end of From Skulls Born Beyond, so these lines between projects are malleable and have been for some time — so those who have followed Chotsourian for a number of years will doubtless approach this first Soldati LP with a different context than those simply taking the band on as a first encounter. As a fan of Chotsourian‘s work in Los Natas, Ararat and across his solo outings, I’ll confess I approached the seven-song/49-minute run of Doom Nacional with some trepidation, not knowing what was coming after such a variety of moods and vibes across the demos and videos and other posted performances, etc.
What a relief it was to finally hear it.
That brings us to the second perspective, of those less engaged with Chotsourian‘s long history of contributions to South America’s underground. This type of listener will find Soldati‘s Doom Nacional to be a coherent, striking collection, variable in tempo and purpose, but united around a groove and charge that is immersive and exciting in kind. Desert rock with a harder edge and sharp craft; Argentinian heavy at its finest. Returning to guitar, Chotsourian brings a signature kind of riffing to stretches of songs like opener “From Skulls” and the speedier sections of “Suicide Girl” and “Los Secretos de Shiva” that, punctuated by Ararat bandmate Alfredo Fellite on drums (a collaboration well worth continuing), plays all the more to a classic Motörhead volatility that comes with desert hues, tying Los Natas and Ararat together even as Soldati — rounded out by bassist Lucas Cassinelli, who makes one of several striking impressions on the penultimate “Un Tren al Sol” — strives to create its own sonic persona.
Soldati, “Un Tren al Sol” official video premiere
With five of the seven inclusions longer than seven minutes long and the other two over five, each song is given time to flesh out as it will and a natural course that includes numerous stops and sudden thrusts, head-down grooves and turns of melody in cuts like “Whisky Negro” and the 8:34 “Solar Tse” that make for highlights unto themselves. As the centerpiece, “La Electricidad del Arbol Caido” summarizes much of what makes Doom Nacional work so well. It is fluid in rhythm and organic in presentation — its tones are by no means raw or wanting viscosity, and will be readily familiar to Los Natas fans but neither are they overproduced — and in its hypnotic nod and post-midpoint shift to speedier fare, it underscores Soldati‘s refusal to be pigeonholed to one approach or the other. Whether a given listener is new to Chotsourian‘s work or not, that kind of thing is easy to appreciate, especially in a first album.
As “Solar Tse” pushes toward its finish, with vocals in layers hopefully portending a future direction for Soldati in general, one is reminded that Chotsourian has directly comparedDoom Nacional to the final Los Natas album, 2009’s Nuevo Orden de la Libertad (review here), and certainly a number of the riffs on offer throughout these songs bear that out, that last one included. But if Doom Nacional is on some level Chotsourian engaging with his own legacy, that doesn’t prevent him from creating something new out of that. Los Natas, who began as a more purely desert rock outfit and grew in time into something entirely of their own, may have jammed plenty, but they rarely if ever touched on the same kind of atmospheric doom ground as Ararat, whereas Soldati brings both of those sides together.
Further, it doesn’t work to set them in opposition to each other. That is, to listen to “Los Secretos de Shiva,” with the fuzzy Sabbathian solo giving way to more full-on shove later in its run after the drums and bass drop out and the guitar establishes the riff to come, the two stylistic elements at play work in kind, each to enhance the other one. The greatest success of Doom Nacional — and what makes it most live up to its declaration — is in this aesthetic marriage of form and purpose.
For any debut, it’s only fair to look forward and think of what might come. The question as regards Soldati is how much of a focus the band will take on amid Chotsourian‘s other projects, various collaborations, and so on. As a fan of the more heavy rock-oriented facet of his songwriting and hearing the flow he creates with Fellite and Cassinelli, Doom Nacional presents much to hope for going into subsequent releases, and I’ll say without reservation that it’s one of the best debuts 2020 will see. Perhaps because of that, it’s best to enjoy the captured moment for what it is, regardless of the context of one’s perspective, and let the future worry about itself. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
