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

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

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Finn Akuma of BÜZÊM, Dredge the House Promotions, Ezra Pound and Born on Your Knees

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

Imagine you’ve taken a windowpane. You were contact high from DMT 6hrs before. You now hit a full bowl. Go beyond the gates and meet God. Subsequently you kill them after coitus because well…? You ever seen Hellhaiser, but got turned on? BAM! Fuck it! You are gone man. Beyond the regions and realms of existence and understanding. Oh then Satan somehow appears and is like, “The fuck you doing? Go back and never come here again. You didn’t need to die to find tonality.”………… and out from this intense cascading wall of sound and monolithic riffs we flesh into humming circles of familiarity to when Earth first started. In short if you smoke a lot of pot and trip while listening to grindcore on 33rpm then you’ll dig us.

Describe your first musical memory.

My mother for Christmas bought me a keyboard when I was 5? And so I’d try to play the usual stuff like Mary Had A Little Lamb or whatever. But my mother with this old grand piano would be playing away for days. Expected me to play along with her to stuff like Mozart. Did that for a minute. But my real first one is getting a violin through a school music program. I never practiced, but when i did it was fun to do these like slow dragging strokes like if it’s a bad note or if it sounded like someone dying. Beautiful is its own thing, but for me that was a sound I found later in just some of the most merciless drone and black metal.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

In 2018 I saw The Obsessed and had taken some photos. It’s 2022. Walking past the tour buses for the Ministry / Melvins / COC tour in Portland, ME. This guy with super muttonchops walks by me and we’re talking for a minute. When I realize it’s Reid obviously I got all gitty cuz dude! Fucking RWAKE! Well turns out that a photo I had taken of Reid while with The Obsessed from what he told me was that he still shows people that photo. As someone who is virtually unknown it was a big boost in knowing that I did something that meant something to someone else. And to get recognition alone was huge, but to get that from someone who you look up to? Pretty rad!

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

That being myself wasn’t worth my time. Something I’ve dealt with my whole life. But in the last few months I’ve been shown how foolish I’d been in my early years. All that I’m doing now is because I found the opportunity to do so. As a kid I just had the chances, but was never allowed to really flush it out. As I got older I had to work more to be comfortable existing and wasted so much time never just creating. Because I’ve seen it in little spurts where what I do inspires someone and I was always selfish thinking I’m not doing anything. And come to find out people are doing because I did something because someone else inspired me. Realizing your self worth and actualizing that to make others wanna do the same is a huge struggle to overcome.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

In the sense that an artist is never truly done with what they’re doing? That I do believe.

How do you define success?

Naively I say being able to live off being a musician and not scrubbing dishes. I quit being a cook at one point because I kept wanting to cut my fingers off or wanting to hurt those around me because of the mental abusive world it is. But success I don’t really care for much. Ya I’d like to be seen. Who doesn’t want that? Success is only found through royally fucking it up until you don’t. Worst way to put it. But the more you keep doing something, but always willing to adapt then you’ll achieve a goal I think.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

When I was 12 years old I watched my father slowly die of cancer over 6ms and that image of watching the soul leave the body as you see the eyes go from white to this stained yellow wall color. It’s not pretty. Someone healthy become a skeleton of a human being. The only I can describe what that looked like is seeing photos of holocaust victims. That emaciated appearance as you watch someone slowly accept their death and essentially quit trying to live because at that point you can’t go back. And watching my father have to struggle with death destroyed me for twenty years. There really is no way to describe what that was like.

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

Wrote a musical and performance art play two years ago that I’d kill to get off the ground. Very fortunate to be in Portland right now where we’re all trying to just create. There’s no limitations. There’s no overseer or magazine or anything defining what we are right now and I gotta say that is amazing. Sure you could pigeonhole someone into a demographic, but there’s so many people wanting to just do. And I want to bring that all together in a way that someone twenty years from now will take and try to perform that. I’d love to be at some summer outdoor theater and watch a local troupe put on this play, but I just go as participant. Weird to think that I guess, but it makes me strive to wanna do something of value instead of jerk off and waste my time.

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

Imagination. For it to be whatever you want it to be. Art needs to move you. I get so bored at shows watching bands just play to play. For me that’s what cover bands are so why am I gonna waste my time in this world being boring? You’d hope to wanna inspire the next wave of kids and people your age to get off their asses and make something of themselves. In other words if you’re reading this? Don’t become just another industry band that only plays with the same collective circle of people and then burn out because you never did anything with the gift you’re given.

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

It’s weird as everything I center myself around is music. Stopped trying like 8 years ago. Been looking for the time to start up again. Back in 2012 I went to IFC to pitch a TV series, but was so ill-prepared for that and just fucking fucked up the meeting. But eventually I got around to writing out a 10 episode series I’d love to see be out in the world. Alongside that I wrote two features I hope to direct some day about Boston that I don’t feel is ever expressed nor approached before.

Upcoming Shows:
May 6th: Geno’s in Portland, ME with Extinction A.D., Goblet, BÜZÊM, Mankala, Death’s Hand
June 16: Charlie O’s in Montpelier, VT with Komodo VT, Black Axe, BÜZÊM, A River Of Trees
June 20: The Cavern in Portland, ME with Guhts, False Gods, Hollow Leg, BÜZÊM, In The Wind
July 7th: Sammy’s Patio in Revere, MA with Hobo Wizard, BÜZÊM, High’n’Heavy, Going2Hell
July 8th: The Cavern in Portland, ME with Hobo Wiard, BÜZÊM, High’n’Heavy, Mast
July 22: Geno’s in Portland, ME with VRSA, North Star The Wanderer, Afghan Haze, Trash Fire, As Real

https://www.facebook.com/thedecayofnature/
http://instagram.com/thedecayofnature/
https://buzem.bandcamp.com/

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https://www.instagram.com/dredgethehouse
https://linktr.ee/dredgethehouse

BÜZÊM, The Pig in the Owl’s Nest (2023)

Week two, day one. Day six. However you look at it, it’s 10 more records for the Summer 2022 Quarterly Review, and that’s all it needs to be. I sincerely hope you had a good weekend and you arrive ready to dig into new music, most of which you’ve probably already encountered — because you’re cool like that and I know it — but maybe some you haven’t. In any case, there’s good stuff today and plenty more to come this week, so bloody hell, let’s get to it.

Quarterly Review #51-60:

Celestial Season, Mysterium I

After confirming their return via 2020’s striking The Secret Teachings (review here), Netherlands-based death-doom innovators Celestial Season embark on an ambitious trilogy of full-lengths with Mysterium I, which starts with its longest song (immediate points) in the heavy-hitting single “Black Water Rising,” but is more willing to offer string-laced beauty in darkness in songs like “The Golden Light of Late Day,” which transitions fluidly into “Sundown Transcends Us.” That latter cut, third of seven total on the 40-minute LP, provides some small hint of the band’s more rock-minded days, but the affair is plenty grim on the whole, whatever slightly-more-uptempo riffy nod might’ve slipped through. “This Glorious Summer” hits the brakes for a morose slog, while “Endgame” casts it lot in more aggressive speed at first, dropping to strings for much of its second half before returning to the deathly chug. The pair “All That is Known” and “Mysterium” close in massive and lurching form, and not that there was any doubt about this group 30 years on from the band’s founding, but yeah, they still got it. No worries. The next two parts are reportedly due before the end of next year, and one looks forward to knowing where the rest of the story-in-sound goes from here. If it’s down, they’re already there.

Celestial Season on Facebook

Burning World Records website

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Noorvik, Hamartia

Post. Metal. Also post-metal. The third full-length from Koln-based instrumental four-piece Noorvik, Hamartia, glides smoothly between atmosphere and aggression, the band’s purposes revealed as much in their quiet moments as in those where the guitar comes forward and present a more furious face. In the subdued reaches of “Ambrosia” (10:00) or even opener “Tantalos” (6:55), the feeling is still tense, to where over the course of the record’s 68 minutes, you’re almost waiting for the kick to come, which it reliably does, but the form that takes varies in subtle ways and the bleeding of songs into each other like “Omonoia” into “Ambrosia” — which crushes by the time it’s done — the delving into proggy astro-jazz on “Aeon” and the reaching heights of “Atreides” (which TV tells me is a Dune reference) assure that there’s more than one path that gets Noorvik to where they’re going. At 15:42, “The Feast” is arguably the most bombastic and the most ambient both, but if that’s top and bottom, the spaces in between are no less coursing, and in their willingness to be metal while also being post-metal, Noorvik bring excitement to a style that’s made a trope of its hyper-cerebral nature. This has that and might also wreck your house, and if you don’t think that’s a big difference, ask your house.

Noorvik on Facebook

Tonzonen Records website

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Doctors of Space, Mind Surgery

Wait. What? You mean to tell me that right now there are some people in the world who aren’t about to dig on 78 minutes’ worth of improvised psychedelic synth and guitar drones? Like, real people? In the world? What kind of terrible planet is this? Obviously, for Doctors of Space — Scott “Dr. Space” Heller (Øresund Space Collective) on synth, Martin Weaver (Wicked Lady) on guitar — this planet is nowhere near cool enough, and while it’s fortunate for the cosmos at large that once shared, these sounds have launched into the broader reaches of the solar system where they’ll travel as waves to be interpreted by some future civilization perhaps millions of years from now that evolved on a big silly rock a long, long way from here and those people will finally be the audience Doctors of Space richly deserve. But on Earth? Beyond a few loyal weirdos, I don’t know. And no, Doctors of Space aren’t shooting for mass appeal so much as interstellar manifestation through sound, but they do break out the drum machine on 23-minute closer “Titular Parody” to add a sense of ground amid all that antigravity float. Nonetheless, Mind Surgery is far out even for far out. If you think you’re up to it, get your head in the right mode first, because they might just open that thing up by the time they’re done.

Doctors of Space on Facebook

Space Rock Productions website

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Astral Pigs, Our Golden Twilight

Pull Astral Pigs‘ second album, Our Golden Twilight, out of the context of the band’s penchant for vintage exploitation horror and porn and the record’s actually pretty cool. The title-track and slower-rolling “Brass Skies/Funeral March” top seven minutes in succession following instrumental opener “Irina Karlstein,” and spend that time in nod-inducement that goes from catchy-and-kinda-slow to definitely-slow-and-catchy before the long stretch of organ starts the at least semi-acoustic “The Sigil” and “Dragonflies” renews the density of lumbering fuzz, the English-language lyrics from the Argentina-based four-piece giving a duly ceremonious feel to the doomly drama unfolding, but long song or shorter, their vibe is right on and well in league with DHU Records‘ ongoing fascination with aural cultistry. The Hammond provided by bassist/producer Fabricio Pieroni isn’t to be ignored for what it brings to the songs, but even just on the strength of their guitar and bass tones and the mood they conjure throughout, Our Golden Twilight, though just 25 minutes long, unquestionably flows like a full-length record.

Astral Pigs on Facebook

DHU Records store

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Carson, The Wilful Pursuit of Ignorance

No question, Carson have learned their lessons well, and I’ll admit, it’s been a while since a basically straightforward, desert-derived heavy rock record hit me with such an impression of songwriting as does their second full-length, The Wilful Pursuit of Ignorance. Issued through Sixteentimes Music, the eight-track/36-minute outing from the Lucerne-via-New-Zealand-based unit plays off influences like Kyuss, Helmet (looking at you, title-track), Dozer, Unida, and so on, and honest to goodness, it’s refreshing to hear a band so ready and willing to just kick ass musically. Not saying that an album with a title like this doesn’t have anything deeper to say, just that Carson make their offering without even a smidgeon of pretense about where they’re coming from, and from opener “Dirty Dream Maker” onward, their melody, their groove, their transitions and sharper turns are right on. It’s classic heavy rock, done impeccably well, made modern. A work of genre that argues in favor of itself and the style as a whole. If you were introducing someone to riff-based heavy, Carson would do the trick just fine.

Carson on Facebook

Sixteentimes Music website

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Isaurian, Deep Sleep Metaphysics

Comprised of vocalist Hoanna Aragão, guitarist/vocalist Jorge Rabelo (also keys, co-production, etc.), guitarist Guilerme Tanner, bassist Renata Marim and drummer Roberto Tavares, Brazil’s Isaurian adapt post-rock patience and atmospheric guitar methods to a melody-fueled heavy purpose. Production value is an asset working in their favor on their second full-length, Deep Sleep Metaphysics, and seems to be a consistent factor throughout their work since Matt Bayles and Rhys Fulber produced their first two EPs in 2017. Here it’s Muriel Curi (Labirinto) and Chris Common (Pelican, many others), who bring a decided sense of space that’s measurable from the locale difference in Aragão‘s and Rabelo‘s vocal levels from opener “Árida” onward. Their intensions vary throughout — “For Hypnos” has “everybody smokes pot”-esque gang chants near its finish, “The Dream to End All Dreams” is a piano-inclusive guitar-flourish instrumental, “Autumn Eyes” is duly mellow and brooding, “Hearts and Roads” delivers culmination in a brighter melodic wash ahead of a bonus Curi remix of the opener — but it’s the melodic nuance and the clarity of sound that pull the songs together and distinguish the band. They’ve been tagged as “heavygaze” and various other ‘-gaze’ whathaveyou, and they borrow from that, but their drive toward fidelity of sound makes them something else entirely. They should tour Europe asap.

Isaurian on Instagram

Isaurian on Bandcamp

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Kadavermarch, Into Oblivion

Hints of Kadavermarch‘s metallic origins — members having served in Helhorse, Illdisposed, as well as the Danish hip-hop group Tudsegammelt, and others — sneak into their songs both in the more upfront manner of harsher backing vocals on “The Eschaton” and the subsequent “Abyss,” and in some of the double-guitar work throughout, though their first album, Into Oblivion, sets their loyalties firmly in heavy rock. Uncle Acid may be an influence in terms of vocal melody, but the riffs throughout cuts like “Satanic” and “Reefer Madness” and the galloping “Flowering Death” are bigger and feel drawn in part from acts like The Sword and Baroness, delivered with a sharp edge. It’s a fascinating blend, and the recording on Into Oblivion lets it shine with a palpable band-in-the-room sensibility and stage-style energy, while still allowing enough breadth for a build like that in the finale “Beyond the End” to pay off the record as a whole. Capable craft, a sound on its way to being their own, a turquoise vinyl pressing, and a pedigree to boot — there’s nothing more I would ask of Into Oblivion. It feels like an opening salvo for a longer-term progression and I hope it is precisely that.

Kadavermarch on Facebook

Target Group on Bandcamp

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Büzêm, Here

The violence implied in the title “Regurgitated Ambition Consuming Itself” takes the form of a harsh wall of noise drone that, once it starts, continues to unfurl for the just-under-eight-minute duration of the first of two pieces on Büzêm‘s more simply named Here EP. The Portland, Maine, solo art project of bassist/anythingelse-ist Finn has issued a range of exploratory outings, mostly EPs and experiments put to tape, and that modus very much suits the avant vibe throughout Here, which is markedly less caustic in the more rumbling “In an Attempt to Become the Creator” — presumably about Jackson Roykirk — the 10 minutes of which are more clearly the work of a standalone bass guitar, but play out with a sense of the human presence behind, as perhaps was the intention. Here‘s stated purpose is meditative if disaffected, Finn turning mindfulness into an already-in-progress armageddon display, and fair enough, but the found recording at the end, or captured footsteps, whatever it is, relate intentions beyond the use of a single instrument. Not ever going to be universally accessible, nonetheless pushing the kind of boundaries of what’s-a-song that need to be pushed.

Büzêm on Facebook

BÜZÊM on Bandcamp

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Electric Mountain, Valley Giant

Can’t mess with this kind of heavy rock and roll. The fuzz runs thick, the groove is loose (not sloppy), and the action is go from start to finish. Electric Mountain‘s second LP, Valley Giant digs on classic desert-style heavy vibes, with “Vulgar Planet” riffing on Kyuss and Fu Manchu only after “Desert Ride” has dug headfirst into Nebula via Black Rainbows and cuts like “Outlanders” and the hell-yes-wah-bass of big-nodder “Morning Grace” have set the stage for stoner and rock, by, for and about being what it is. Picking highlights, it might be “A Fistful of Grass” for the angular twists of fuzz in the chorus, but “Vulgar Planet” and the penultimate acoustic cut “At Last Everything” both make a solid case ahead of the eight-plus-minute instrumental closing jam “A Thousand Miles High.” The band’s 2017 self-titled debut (also on Electric Valley Records) was a gem as well, and if they can get some forward momentum going on their side after Valley Giant, playing shows, etc., they’d be well placed at the head of the increasingly crowded Mexico City underground.

Electric Mountain on Facebook

Electric Valley Records website

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Hush, The Pornography of Ruin

Also stylized all-caps with punctuation — perhaps a voice commanding: HUSH. — Hudson, New York, five-piece Hush conjure seven songs and 56 minutes of alternately sprawling and oppressive atmospheric sludge on their third full-length, The Pornography of Ruin, and if you take that to mean the quiet parts are spaced and the heavy parts are crushing, well, that’s true too, but not exclusively the case. Amid lyrical poetry, melodic ranging, slamming rhythms — “There Can Be No Forgiveness Without the Shedding of Blood” walks by and waves, its hand bloody — and harsh shouts and screams, Hush shove, pull, bite and chew the consciousness of their listener, with the 12-minute “By This You Are Truly Known” pulling centerpiece duty with mostly whispers and ambience in a spread-out midsection, bookended by more slow-churning pummel. Followed by the shorter “And the Love of Possession is a Disease with Them,” the keyboard-as-strings “The Sound of Kindness in the Voice” and the likewise raging-till-it-isn’t-then-when-it-is-again closer “At Night We Dreamed of Those We Were Stolen From,” the consumption is complete, and The Pornography of Ruin challenges its audience with the weight of its implications and tones alike. And for whatever it’s worth, I saw these guys in Brooklyn a few years back and they fucking destroyed. They’ve expanded the sound a bit since then, but this record is a solid reminder of that force.

Hush on Instagram

Hush on Bandcamp

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