Buzzard‘s new EP, Everything is Not Going to Be Alright, will be released on Nov. 7. For Christopher Thomas Elliott, the project’s sole denizen, it (probably?) tops off a busy year that began with a full-length release called Satiricus Doomicus Americus (review here) and that this Spring brought new levels of tonal weight and metallic intention to the established ‘doom folk’ sound — Doom Folk (review here) was also Buzzard‘s mostly-acoustic-guitar-based 2024 debut — and in Spring, another full album, Mean Bone (review here), followed. That’s three records in about 13 months’ time from the Massachusetts-based solo outfit, and with the seven tracks/30 minutes of Everything is Not Going to Be Alright — fair enough for it to be billed as an EP since the other outings are longer, but it’s also still definitely longer than other full-length releases I’ve encountered in the last week — Elliott continues the thread of growing progressively heavier each time out, pushing himself to see how far into doom metal he can go while retaining the clear-voiced Americana aspect of his songwriting, which is likewise growing more malleable around a foundation in verse/chorus and (duh) folk traditionalism.
Whatever it’s billed as in your head-canon — it’s ‘short-album’ in mine, in part for the flow between songs and the implication of narrative cast across the lyrics to all of them. And if the title didn’t give it away, Everything is Not Going to Be Alright is themed around this troubled, fractured moment in United States history. Elliott has a relatable axe to grind with the future his generation was promised and that which has been realized, and beginning with “This Land is Your Land (Until it’s Not),” he lays bare grievances for redress, and whether it’s the role of corporations in fascism or the more personal appeal in “Fever Breaks” (video here), “Together we could save your farms, your hospitals, your schools/I’ll help you quit the cult of klepto-fascist rule,” before laying out a final regime-change riff, Elliott not only stands on the cliffside to summon Yog-Sothoth as “Screaming into the Void” posits but is a witness to the dismantling of the remaining post-Citizens-United vestiges of US democracy seemingly as it happens in maddening, overwhelming real-time. As “Doom Folk Fury” starts out its first, acoustic-led verse, “Ever since 2024, I don’t give a fuck no more,” the rest of the lyrics there (and no, the references don’t end with Clutch) and in the surrounding six pieces reveal that apathy as aspirational. If Elliott didn’t care deeply about his country’s present and future betrayal to the ideals it once touted, his response to it wouldn’t be so passionate.
And passion is a guiding principle here. It’s shown as a kind of fervency that extends to the arrangements of the songs themselves, which from the doomly lumber of “This Land is Your Land (Until it’s Not)” through the three-and-a-half-minute epic finale “Lunatic Lighthouse Keeper” — which becomes a kind of dark-hallucinatory response to everything else happening lyrically before it; an endgame of apocalyptic, swirling, still-melodic heavy metal depicting Lovecraftian universe-death and renewal; it’s also a new pinnacle for outward-facing heaviness in Buzzard‘s sound; atmosphere, impact and craft; it’s perfect because you don’t know what’s real, and while I’m run-on ranting I’ll tell you it’s among the best songs I’ve heard this year, easily, and not the first by Elliott on that list — can convey chaos but is never actually out of control. Elliott keeps a firm grip on his craft, and has enough distance from his subject to not get lost in his messaging. The songs vary accordingly, and on purpose. “Doom Folk Fury” picks up from its beginning with a cathartic sweep of a chorus and follows suit from the opener before it in utilizing a break-and-redirect bridge to foster depth of character, arrangement and narrative in the songs. Later, he’ll use more keys as well, but as “Doom Folk Fury” surges through its second hook (I’ve typed out the lyrics below, from memory; note the reference to “Cockroaches and Weed” from Doom Folk and the Satiricus LP) and passes the three-minute mark, it leaves distortion momentarily behind and sets up an all-the-more satisfying return.
This structure is put to use throughout, in a variety of ways, as “Screaming Into the Void” uses its chorus of “I upload, repost share and BCC a prayer/But the stars at night give zero likes, not a soul says ‘hey there,'” to contrast a verse that’s like half-nerd-rapped, or at least rhymed for rhythmic emphasis while surrounded by a willful overdose of tonal fuzz. The lyrics and one-liners make a it highlight,. Declarations like, “I fought bullies in the kiddie pool/I hated jocks in high school/I did drugs/I still do/I’m doing them now,” are likewise clever and empowering, and the later backing vocal line, “Elliott phone home,” references the movie E.T. with a taunt that, being named Elliott, rings true to kids being shitty to each other. A bit of autobiography amid essaying; not a complaint, especially leading to a ’90s Bowie call and response ending. “Terms and Conditions Apply” speaks with a broader stroke in calling out the asterisks of American social progress. “You’re free to speak your mind/Terms and conditions apply,” and such. The repeated title line grounds the proceedings, but as “Screaming Into the Void” used its soothing hook melody as its departure from the full heft of its layered guitar, “Terms and Conditions Apply” more directly employs loud/quiet tradeoffs between its verse and chorus, and so Elliott does kind of the same thing in a different way. This creates an album-style flow across the EP, which, again, culminates in “Lunatic Lighthouse Keeper” with a new level of stately aural force.
It wouldn’t be possible if there weren’t two sides of Buzzard‘s sound to dynamically oppose each other. In so doing, “Terms and Conditions Apply” is very much the centerpiece of Everything is Not Going to Be Alright, but Elliott is an apt enough songwriter to break his own rules, and the prior-standalone-single “Fever Breaks” does that, pushing the guitar down in the mix to give the vocals more space but keeping largely to its central level of intensity. The guitar becomes a clarion and there’s a takeoff later, but “Fever Breaks” feels more folkish for its comparative straightforwardness, and it pairs fluidly with the imagined better future of “Take the Tyrant Down” that follows, the penultimate track being acoustically-based on balance, save for the somewhat theatrical chugging departure in its second half, an urging procession as repetitions of “Down down down” are complemented by the reminder “Sic semper tyrannis” (“ever thus to tyrants”), the obvious reference there to the US’ history of political violence — you might say it’s how the country started and it never really stopped — can only be called relevant, though I suppose if you wanted to say “unsubtle,” that would also apply to its righteous rage. Mellotron provides an epilogue to “Take the Tyrant Down,” which like “Fever Breaks” is a classic protest song, if varied in its manifestation.
If we — that is, the speaker in the lyrics and the audience carried along with the (at least partially pretend) storyline — are trying to see a future beyond oppression and bootlicking, “Take the Tyrant Down” is hopeful. “Lunatic Lighthouse Keeper,” on the other hand, is crushing. The present it sees is the title-character crashing ships against the shoreline, “Just to see the sailors drown,” and is driven by omens and voices in his head to consume all light with some dark magic and, in the end, using that same power on himself to start creation over. “Turning the mirror on himself, he explodes with the light of a trillion suns” leads into the last chorus, “Golden fire/Devoid of form/There never was nor shall there be safe harbor from this storm.” The description in the second verse as “Obsidian beams of nothingness swallow the passing cars/douse the lights of cities/Snuff out the moon and smother the stars” is no less immersive than the downer chugging riff around which the song is based, and the bleak triumph of “Lunatic Lighthouse Keeper” seems to underscore the idea that perhaps the best future of all, as regards the universe more broadly, is one free of humanity. The notion of ‘burn it all down’ writ on a cosmic scale. Heavy fucking metal.
Is Elliott screaming into the void? Maybe. To some degree or other, everyone is. But what I’ll tell is that I got sent this EP maybe a month ago and I’ve sat with it more than I’ve sat with anything else I’ve listened to this year save for Satiricus Doomicus Americus, which came out in January, and that in the anthemic defiance of “Doom Folk Fury,” I’ve found both catharsis and comfort, and felt a little less alone in the inflicted terrors of this moment for that. While free speech lasts, I can hardly think of a better use to put it toward. The end of the line in “This Land is Your Land (Until it’s Not)” is “Everything is not going to be alright… unless we fight every little thing.” So maybe it’s not so hopeless as one thinks.
“Doom Folk Fury” premieres on the player below, followed by the lyrics and Elliott‘s own, far-more-concise summary of the EP’s mission.
Please enjoy, and keep your head up. We’re all we have and we need each other. You’re not crazy for feeling crazy and you’re not the only one. Thanks for reading.
Buzzard, “Doom Folk Fury” track premiere
“Doom Folk Fury” lyrics:
Ever since 2024, I don’t give a fuck no more I faced the facts and the fact I faced is the fucked up face of the human race. Hockey teams compete for the Cup as couples smack each other up. Holy yahoos take up arms as chickens cry on factory farms.
Oh-oh-oh Pure fuckin’ Doom Folk Fury Whoa-oh-oh Pure fuckin’ Doom Folk Fury Fight a fascist, fight a bully, fight the church Get out of the country Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh Pure fuckin’ Doom Folk Fury
So much fury, so much sound, so much love to go around No thank you, I do not comply with POTUS, ICE or the FBI I try to see things from all sides but I end up gouging out my eyes Truth hits me like a firehose when I can’t see what’s right under my nose (yeah, here it comes…)
Singin’ oh-oh-oh Pure fuckin’ Doom Folk Fury Whoa-oh-oh Pure fuckin’ Doom Folk Fury The way we shit on each other and smile Makes me sad, it’s fucking vile Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh Pure fuckin’ Doom Folk Fury
See the new beginning — viruses and cockroaches evolve! Monuments erected for time immemorial dissolve! Smell the forest flowers, hear the mountain choirs in the air! It’s beautiful! It’s brutal! It’s real! And none of us are there! None of us are there.
I used to check my phone but now I don’t I used to follow the blow-by-blow of the constant news like a fiend for dope I used to care but something broke Something broke I don’t know what In my head, in my heart, in my gut.
Whoa, whoa Well Pure fuckin’ Doom Folk Fury Singin’ whoa-oh-oh Pure fuckin’ Doom Folk Fury I can’t believe what we did to the great white shark What a world we wasted Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh Pure fuckin’ vegan Doom Folk Fury
My hopes were high And so was I The higher the dream The farther you fall All we can do Is to help each other muddle through
Politically charged 7-song EP pulls zero punches. Artwork by Jari Tanduk.
Tracklisting 1. This Land Is Your Land (Until It’s Not) 2. Doom Folk Fury 3. Screaming Into the Void 4. Terms and Conditions Apply 5. Fever Breaks 6. Take the Tyrant Down 7. Lunatic Lighthouse Keeper
Created by Christopher Thomas Elliott: vocals, electric and acoustic guitars, bass, drum programming, dobro, keyboards.
Buzzard, Everything is Not Going to Be Alright (2025)
Posted in Questionnaire on September 2nd, 2025 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Christopher Thomas Elliott of Buzzard
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
A lone guitar and a point of view. My elevator pitch is “What if Bob Dylan listened to Black Sabbath and read H.P. Lovecraft?” because it’s 100% true and authentic to who I am.
As a kid, I bonded with Sabbath’s We Sold Our Soul… via a Columbia House mail-order subscription. “Wicked World” and “War Pigs” were the first socially conscious songs that resonated with me. To this day, I spin Sabbath on the regular, including my collection of original Vertigo pressings. Iommi worship runs through my veins.
I also wasn’t the first teenager to become entranced by the bleak cosmology of Lovecraft. Growing up in rural upstate New York, I would stare up at the stars, imagining the vast expanses. Lovecraft was the first writer who reported back what terrors might be lurking. His stories felt relevant to the way I saw the world, where religion and other human endeavors were failing rather spectacularly.
In college, Dylan is the musician who opened up the world of narrative songwriting and Americana music. Beyond every official Dylan release, I’ve collected over 300 bootlegs of live shows and outtake collections. Lyrics-forward songwriting was where I started finding my voice.
The first songs I wrote were purely humorous and satirical (examples, “The Minuteman” about premature ejaculation and “Your Dog Is Dead” about, well, the death of your dog, like Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch). However, I never felt comfortable being called merely “clever,” as that to me connotes superficiality and smugness. In my 20s, my first modest successes on stage were making audiences laugh, to both my joy and my chagrin.
Over the years, I’ve worked on improving my musicianship and writing chops to add soul, guts, and heart to my songs. Buzzard is one of the most exciting creative periods in my life because I’m finding a way to bring together all of these musical and literary interests, and the possibilities feel endless. YYMV on all counts, but that’s my story.
Describe your first musical memory.
The first music I bought were 45s of “Back in Black” and “Staying’ Alive.” I have a vivid sense memory of listening to that AC/DC song on headphones in my quiet, remote country home. I can see it now: motes of dust falling from the sunlight as the riff exploded out of the silence. It was revelatory. An entire world of possibilities came to life. The electricity of that guitar lick and groove rewired my brain with drive and imagination. That may sound hyperbolic, but that’s how the sense memory sits in my mind.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
That’s tough – so many to choose from. As an audience member, I’ve managed to see some of my favorite bands up close in small venues: Trouble, Candlemass, Zeal and Ardor, Opeth, Blue Oyster Cult, Kreator. One Dylan highlight was seeing him perform for the first and last time the obscure deep cut “10,000 Men.” Not a great song necessarily, but it was a fantastic on-off performance. Historic, to a Dylanologist.
If I had to pick my one favorite show, it might have to be non-musical: Mitch Hedberg. I saw him in his prime in Boston. There’s a reason he’s a legend we still talk about. It was one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen. The recordings you find online are great but don’t quite capture the magic he conjured. Every joke killed. Pure joy.
Speaking of comedy, as a performer some of my favorite memories come from Club Passim in Cambridge, where I had the opportunity to play humorous songs in front of packed crowds. While I like the music I make now better than the music I made then, I do sometimes miss the rush of making audiences laugh. And I mean explosive guffaws, not tepid chuckles. I had a few songs that killed comedically, but I just never had the talent or drive to create a full-on musical comedy act–my ultimate ambitions were different. I’m envious of stand-up comics who have that gift.
Besides that, so many of my favorite music memories are not on stage or in public, but playing my heart out alone in a room, recording in my studio, or composing songs for hours.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
That’s an interesting question. One answer is, “every day, when another current event chips away at any hope I might have for humanity.”
Another answer is “How firm are my beliefs, anyway?” My understanding of the world is like that of an ant crawling on a superconductor. (And that may be doing the ant a disservice, as we humans know little about insect consciousness.)
As Bertrand Russell once said, “I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.” This sounds about right when it comes to political ideology.
Other answers that come to mind are personal enough that they feel more appropriate to discuss on a psychologist’s couch rather than in a Google doc. So, I’ll leave that stone unturned, except to say that evolving from a child into an adult entails shedding illusions about the nature of family, personal identity, and culture. (Isn’t it odd that the word “disillusioned” carries a negative connotation, when it should be considered a good thing to discard illusions?)
To deliver one concrete answer in regards to allowing our beliefs to evolve, I’ll say this. In my journey to becoming vegetarian, there was a tipping point. I was visiting a farm and a pig walked up to the fence separating the two of us, laid down, and looked at me. We made eye contact. So acutely and deeply did I sense the presence of a sentient mind capable of reason, joy, and sorrow, that I knew I could never eat an animal again.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
To finding your own unique voice. You ask yourself, “What can I do creatively that nobody else can do?” An artist starts as derivative and progresses towards self-actualization.
To paraphrase the self-help books, there will always be a better guitarist or drummer than you, but there can never be a better you than you. None of us can (or should) agree on what is good or bad art, but the least subjective aspect might be whether the audience perceives a fully-formed expression of the artist as an individual. You know it when you see it: art that has fully manifested a one-of-a-kind vision (like it or not).
Artistic progression reaches its apotheosis when your name becomes a shorthand for an entire aesthetic. When a reviewer describes a new artist by comparing them to you, you know you’ve arrived.
The ultimate achievement is to become such a singular figure that your name becomes an adjective: Dylanesque, Orwellian, Kafkaesque. Only a handful of artists arrive there in popular culture, but within niches and genres, it’s possible to establish an identity distinct enough to serve as a touchstone.
How can we evolve? Progression is not just a matter of becoming a better player or composer, but also becoming a better human being. This includes expanding your experiences, questioning your assumptions, deepening your empathy, freeing your imagination, connecting with your community, and so on. To play with the famous Walt Whitman quote, you should contradict yourself more often in order to contain more multitudes. That’s how you grow.
How do you define success?
Narrowly defined, success means reaching a goal, however small or grand. Professional success could mean completing a job for a client, marital success could mean reaching a 20-year anniversary, and artistic success could mean selling 20 or 20,000 records or simply pressing the publish button for a song on Bandcamp.
But rather than focusing on success, it might be more useful to think in terms of purpose. A purpose-filled life can bring greater meaning and satisfaction than a success-obsessed existence. Emphasizing quantifiable success can set up feelings of frustration and failure, since so much remains out of our control. Instead of a success/failure binary, I try to reframe things in terms of curiosity, community building, and creative growth.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
I’m stumped. I can’t think of anything I wish I hadn’t seen. Is it because my life has been sheltered from war and trauma? Or because I’m grateful when I do see terrible and ugly things because the truth dispels illusions?
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
Outside of art, in the “if I won the lottery” category, I’d like to create a wildlife refuge or animal sanctuary.
In terms of music, I’d be curious to explore heavy music in a band setting, some kind of Buzzard ensemble, however that might become a realistic possibility. I do have a picture in my mind of how this music might look on stage, with visual projections and lights.
Most realistically, I’d like to publish my lyrics in book form, both as illustrated chapbooks of select albums and a hefty omnibus volume of lyrics from across my career. This might coincide with a curated re-release/re-recording of the best previously released songs that have sunk into the void over the decades.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
To make each of us feel less alone. A book can make us think, “Oh good, I’m not the only person who sees things this way,” or a song can make us feel “I’m just as excited about this riff as the person who came up with it.” Art depicts the unique interior life of its creator, with whom we may commiserate.
Small talk, daily relationships, and may bring us together in their own ways, but art is where individuals can connect across space and time intimately about truths both terrible and terrific.
Say something positive about yourself.
I have been told that I’m a generally kind, patient, and agreeable person, and I won’t argue with that assessment.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
The fact I’m struggling to come up with an answer here tells me something. I need to get out more!
Recently I visited Portland, Oregon for the first time, and absolutely fell in love with the old growth forests. I look forward to planning another trek, driving up the coast from Northern California to the Olympic Peninsula, stopping for long hikes and West Coast IPAs along the way. Bucket list right there. Deep in a forest and near waterfalls, I feel at peace.
In the extreme short term, tonight a buddy of mine is going to come over to smoke cigars and sip Blue Note bourbon in the barn. That feels like an appropriately Buzzard-esqe way to end this questionnaire.
“Mount Din” is the second new track from Massachusetts solo outfit Buzzard in as many months, and like “Fever Breaks” (posted here), it’s a heavied-up take on some of the ideas that songwriter/sole-denizen Christopher Thomas Elliott has been exploring over the course of this year — Buzzard‘s second full-length, Mean Bone (review here), came out in April and was preceded in January by the self-titled debut from a maybe-side-project called Satiricus Doomicus Americus (review here) — and, as he notes in the video info below, working in a not-dissimilar lyrical frame to Mean Bonecloser “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century” (video premiere here).
That album finale told the story of future archeologists looking back on the titular ruins left behind by the present day; a shopping mall interpreted as the religious site capitalism made it, and so on. “Mount Din” changes that somewhat so that it’s aliens coming to investigate the aftermath of human wreckage. The ‘Din,’ as an unpleasant and/or abrasively loud noise, was human society. There’s less precise critique in “Mount Din” than “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century,” and in the last verse, the speaker in the song says, “I light a spark in a lump of carbon to start the experiment of life on Earth again,” which, yes, in 2025 absolutely does qualify as a hopeful ending.
I have it on decent authority that the trickling-out of new material from Buzzard is leading toward a new EP release sometime (maybe?) before the end of the year. That’s nothing concrete, mind you, so don’t go looking for a release date yet, but the underlying message is there’s more coming and I continue to spend a potentially-embarrassing amount of time thinking about the course of the interpretation of folk via doom and doom via folk happening in Elliott‘s songwriting.
There’s not a lot in “Mount Din” that sounds outwardly folkish, for example, and yet the roots of the lyrical style and the method of storytelling are unquestionably derived therefrom, and Elliott‘s clear vocal approach — even in the layers with which one finds him working in the chorus — is a tie there as well. As focused as the latest material has found him on pushing limits to see just how heavy Buzzard can get and not collapse under its own weight — so far, pretty heavy — in doing so, he’s also broadening the project’s palette as a whole for the future. Thus far, the blend of earthy melody and emergent, consuming heft has resulted in a sound that is immediately identifiable as Elliott‘s own. In terms of ‘starts,’ a better one would be tough to come by.
The lyric video for “Mount Din” follows, with more beyond about the comp it comes from, and the aforementioned Buzzard-and-adjacent 2025 LPs.
Enjoy:
Buzzard, “Mount Din” lyric video
Hello, all. I’m pleased to announce that a new Buzzard song “Mount Din” appears on the latest compilation by Santa Sangre Magazine, the Sixth Configuration, available here:
With lines like “From the cells of Louisiana to El Salvador/Gilded techno robber barons screw the working poor,” and, “You angry fools in Magastan get the future you deserve,” the question becomes whether Buzzard is keeping up with the news as it happens or precogging it Minority Report-style. Or maybe it’s just that the only realistic trajectory right now is ‘things will get worse’ as the United States reenters a fascist hell-loop of a news cycle with every single day’s wakeup, legacy media and supposed centrists lining up to echo-chamber right-wing talking points, people grabbed off the street sent to concentration camps while others pose for tourist photos outside. A whole bunch of (too many) humans who know nothing of actual hardship or the fear others live with every day pretending they do while inflicting horrors on those around them. In no year of my life have I been so ashamed to be an American, human, or alive at a moment in history.
Based in Massachusetts — which gets billed as a progressive haven in this era of conservative/oligarchic authoritarianism because rich people there have to pay, I believe, any taxes whatsoever; at least on paper — Buzzard is comprised of Christopher Thomas Elliott (also of the folk duo Austin & Elliott), who has already overseen the release of two full-lengths this year in Buzzard‘s second LP, Mean Bone (review here), and the self-titled debut from a side-project called Satiricus Doomicus Americus (review here) that’s another Buzzard record in everything but name despite the use of samples and some other shifts in methodology. I won’t bog you down by telling you how many hours I’ve spent with those two albums — Mean Bone‘s out on tape, and Elliott has vinyl of Buzzard‘s debut, Doom Folk (review here), plus CDs for us from-the-’90s types — but it’s even more when you count hearing them in my head when they’re not on. “Crushing Burden of Despair” has certainly been a regular feature. Ditto “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century,” the video for which premiered here in April.
I remain curious for how Buzzard‘s sound is developing. Mean Bone upended the acoustic-based hard-strum-riffs of Doom Folk, and was outwardly heavier in tone. Electric guitar-based. His voice still cutting through clearly in the songs — there’s little-if-any reverb on there — speaks of a truth-to-power troubadour tradition to make your voice heard, and that being the case on “Fever Breaks” as well, and the lyrics being so written-in-the-last-two-months topical, it seems the embrace of heavy-heavy will continue. This allows for elements like banjo and acoustic guitar to arrive as flourish for the central riffage and lets Elliott broaden atmospheres like “Murder in the White Barn” or “Ghost of Orphan James,” among others. At the same time, Satiricus Doomicus Americus throws a wrench in the gears of expectation. It’s smoother in production and distinguished by the excellent use to which it puts its samples. Its songs are pointedly political and topical, like “Fever Breaks,” but it’s apparently divergent enough that Elliott considers it a separate project and maybe even (though hopefully not) a one-off, likely because of the internal differences behind how it was made.
So you end up with three records made by the same person that speak to three different sides of the same nascent artistic progression. Elliott isn’t new at writing songs, but he is new at writing and releasing heavy music, and his path has been immediately individual in doing so. I won’t predict where Buzzard will go, but my sincere hope is Elliott can find a way to draw all the sides together into a cohesive, pointed collection of material, informed by the taut craft of Satiricus Doomicus Americus with the organic foundation of Doom Folk and the heavy embrace of Mean Bone. A third (fourth?) album would be a great place to do that, but it’s not nearly the only way Buzzard can go and find success. Elliott could continue to explore more disparate themes and arrangements in the vein of Mean Bone and define a personality for the project that is that much stronger for its amorphousness. One way or the other, I look forward to what’s to come. Doom needs Buzzard‘s voice to weed out the assholes — and ‘assholes’ and ‘weed’ are in near-like proportion in the heavy underground, whether anyone wants to admit it or not amid thousands of white dudes deciding “not to be political” as if that’s not a political decision — and Satiricus Doomicus Americus is easily the record I’ve listened to most in this stupid, wretched, sadly ongoing year.
The “Fever Breaks” lyric video follows. It’s been out for a bit, I know. The song first appeared on the compilation Songs of Resistance benefitting Palestine, which you’ll find streaming in its entirety below as well, along with Mean Bone from the Buzzard Bandcamp. Stay safe and enjoy:
Buzzard, “Fever Breaks” official video
Lyric video of entire song “Fever Breaks.” Subtle as a sledgehammer, and the better for it.
Available on the benefit comp Songs of Resistance on Bandcamp and Ampwall.
This is the second premiere from Buzzard‘s new album, Mean Bone (review here), to be posted on this site, and it comes with some context. I know. The c-word. Sigh. Just bear with me.
If you click that link, you’ll see that in the review, I said the record ends with a song called “Sorrow, Terror and Evil,” a heavy and lumbering culmination of the statement in doom that Buzzard‘s lone denizen, Christopher Thomas Elliott (also of the folk duo Austin and Elliott and various other solo works), was making throughout the songs prior. Cool way to end a declarative second full-length from Elliott‘s project, the only trouble is that’s not how the record actually ends.
Oops.
To be fair, that song is real and was on the version of Mean Bone that I got to review, it just got crossed up between the album being done and the other premiere being slated, hearing the thing, etc. As clerical errors go, it could be far worse. But once I heard it, I did want to write about “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century,” because it changes on the level of persona the way Mean Bone finishes. It’s not at all an apex of the heavy riffage that rolls out in other songs. It’s a decidedly quieter, more contemplative finish.
Like a lot of Elliott‘s work to-date as Buzzard and elsewhere, it tells a story. Folk balladry, as a form, is crucial to how the material is framed — think of songs like “Murder in the White Barn,” which tells a troubling tale of its own through dialogue, and “Flies, Mosquitos, Rats and Sparrows,” which recounts a Chinese famine resulting from Great Leap Forward-era ecosystem tampering — and “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century” isn’t his first foray into incorporating science-fiction as part of that.
To story, put succinctly below, is that far-future archeologists discover a mall and attempt to figure out what it’s for. Good luck. Hearing the song for the first time, I couldn’t help think of the sentient insects who evolve on Elliott‘s earlier-2025 Satiricus Doomicus Americus (review here), which I’ve been largely unable to put down, in the closing track “Cockroaches and Weed.” But it doesn’t seem like we know ultimately who these future entities are, only that they’re looking back and seeing how we lived through our savage age.
Elliott was kind enough to put together the lyric video premiering below for “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century,” and especially as Mean Bone has been out for a couple weeks now and attention spans go the way of attention spans, I appreciate the chance to give the album review an addendum and let the song stand on its own as well, since that’s how I’ve experienced it.
If you’ve never heard Buzzard, Elliott or any of it, this might not actually be a terrible place to start. Just a thought.
Congrats. You made it through the context. I hope you enjoy:
Buzzard, “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century” lyric video premiere
“Writing this song I imagined alien or human archeologists in the distant future excavating the remains of a shopping mall.” – Christopher Thomas Elliott
If Buzzard‘s first album, Doom Folk (review here), cast its own genre designation in the title, the upcoming second Buzzard LP, Mean Bone, flips that around. Not doom folk, but a ‘folk doom,’ drawing from Americana and slow, churning heavy groove in such a way as to feel like a reversal of the balance that Buzzard‘s sole auteur and denizen, Christopher Thomas Elliott, portrayed on the first record less than one full year ago.
And yeah, all this narrative about “first record” and “second record” when it comes to Buzzard is complicated by the release in January of Satiricus Doomicus Americus (review here), a largely-heavy, sample-laced and frankly brilliant examination of the current sociopolitcal moment, issued by Elliott under the eponymous guise of Satiricus Doomicus Americus and filtering its perspective through story and metaphor in a way that the 13 tracks and not-a-minor-undertaking 55 minutes of Mean Bone expand upon in multiple directions.
For example, “Conclusions,” which isn’t the last track but drops to acoustic guitar and ties directly with “Too Many Humans” from Satiricus Doomicus Americus and is a lyrical complement, but prior single “Crushing Burden of Despair,” the opener/current single “Darkness Wins” (premiering below), the chugging “Primitive” and “Changeling” are more about outward impact and feel freer to explore lyrically. “Changeling,” in particular, is parental in its point of view despite ending in murder, and actually “Murder in the White Barn,” following the initial salvo of “Darkness Wins” and “Crushing Burden of Despair” — maddeningly catchy, blindsiding in tone if you heard the debut and don’t know hard riffs are coming — ups that body count as well. Can’t have modernity without at least a little wanton killing, it seems.
In his propenity for shifting arrangements, clear singing voice and his foundation in folk and Americana, Elliott calls to mind an isolated David Eugene Edwards, perhaps if 16 Horsepower had felt their way through as a solo-project. But here, on Doom Folk and on Satiricus Doomicus Americus, the recording is part of the character of the listening experience. Elliott‘s voice is often layered but rarely enough drenched in effects to make the repetitions of “I bite my tongue/I bite my tongue…/Until I spit it all out” amid the pointedly Mars Red Skyian fuzz of centerpiece/highlight “Twisted Love” genuinely stand out.
Against a backdrop of probably-programmed drums and a sound that’s raw enough to be called organically digital — that is, it sounds like it was made on a laptop and it’s not trying to pretend that laptop was a million-dollar studio. I’m pretty sure it’s not AI, but it’s not like I was there when it was made, and if you asked me to prove I’m also not AI to you at this point, I couldn’t. Regardless, Elliott‘s homemade-feeling penchant for hard rhymes in thoughtful lyrics tells the decidedly human story of “Ghost of Orphan James,” become moodier and more creepingly malevolent to suit the cruelties described, even grimmer than “Murder in the White Barn,” though both songs seem to be about justice from some angle, their lyrics and those of the rest of the material made a focal point by the clarity of the vocal delivery.
Based around a bible story where a demon possessing somebody or other is cast into a herd of pigs who are then thrown into a river or some such, “Gadarene Swine” feels sincere in examining cruelty to animals in christian dogma, while “Dunwich Farm” directly pairs country blues and doom traditions, laying itself out like “Parchman Farm” to the horrors of present-day capitalist exploitation — the penultimate “Plight of the Planet” answers back with heavy-landing stomp and crash later (also the album’s title line), more specifically environmental in scope — or China’s Four Pest Campaign as depicted in “Flies, Mosquitos, Rats and Sparrows” that discounted ecology to the tune of 55 million deaths. In the song, Elliott is sure to mention they were peasants, the implication that no one cared about this ‘cost of progress’ laid bare.
It’s not all heavy-handed, but some of it definitely is, and that’s not a weakness considering how much the songs stand up to the message(s). Even closer “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century,” which wraps with a weirdo-key-and-distortion-backed harmony worthy of Uncle Acid repeating warnings to women about, “Sorrow, terror, evil in the hearts of all good men,” brings a moment to complement what’s come before or expand the breadth of Buzzard in some way. The album by no means works from an optimistic point of view — see “Darkness Wins,” right up front — but neither is it entirely hopeless.
In “Crushing Burden of Despair,” as Elliott brings a duly cynical view of his times in lines like, “Knuckles dragging on the ground/Creationists arch a unibrow,” when he gets to “Stare into the abyss” in a later verse, the next line’s answer back is, “The abyss stares back and blows a kiss.” Sometimes if you can’t cry, laughing is all that’s left. And if you’re curious as to why I’m so focused on the lyrics, they’re relevant. Elliott notes below in talking about “Darkness Wins” that the music, “poured forth naturally from the lyrics.” That means the lyrics were there first. I’d be surprised if much of Mean Bone wasn’t built up that way. The words have been worked on no less than the riffs, which feels weird mostly for feeling weird.
Doom Folk brought Elliott to light as a solo, mostly acoustic-based singer-songwriter working from a heavy underground — doom and stoner, classic heavy rock, etc. — influence and bringing that forward alongside Americana and darker folk craft. Not the first to unite those worlds, necessarily, but doing so on a basis of notably strong songwriting and nascent persona. Mean Bone skillfully reinterprets this formula and claims new stylistic ground for Buzzard as a project, opening new possibilities — would/could an actual full-band happen? live if not in the studio? — while showing that the impressive 2024 outset was no fluke and, in combination with Satiricus Doomicus Americus, representing an expressive voice that seems to be disovering new moments of realization as it goes. There are plenty of them here, and if the quick turnaround on this second LP is an indicator that more are on the way, fair enough. That’s Buzzard offering a bit of hope as well, maybe.
Enjoy “Darkness Wins” below, followed by more from the PR wire:
Buzzard, “Darkness Wins” lyric video premiere
Christoher Thomas Elliott on “Darkness Wins”:
“Darkness Wins” is a response to the optimistic statement made by Detective Cohle at the end of True Detective, Season 1: “If you ask me, the light’s winning.” Actually, no, it is not.
In his essay “Through a Ligottian Lens: Session 9 and True Detective,” weird fiction author Jon Padgett discusses how the HBO series incorporates the cosmic pessimism of Thomas Ligotti into the monologues of Matthew McConaughey’s character, who spouts passages nearly verbatim from Ligotti’s anti-natalist treatise The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. However, despite the show’s pervasive bleakness, the final episode betrays its Ligottian nihilism with a pat whodunit conclusion in which our heroes nab the “Scooby Doo villain,” as author Laird Barron quips. Hope is rekindled, however tentatively.
But the song is here to remind us, sorry, my friends. Darkness did, does, and will prevail.
Besides Padgett’s essay, another inspiration for the song is Brandon Trenz’s artwork for the Chiroptera Press edition of Michigan Basement: the ghostly carnival, the oppressive darkness, the raw dread. The music of “Darkness Wins” poured forth naturally from the lyrics, made easy by a lifetime listening to Sabbath, Candlemass, and Trouble.
Injecting more metal into the malevolent Americana of Doom Folk, Buzzard’s 2nd LP Mean Bone aims to define the modern singer/songwriter doom genre. Created by Christopher Thomas Elliott, the 13 tracks traverse extremes of haunting beauty and brooding heaviness. Sabbathian riffs meet traditional folk songs in tales of depraved zealots, mad tyrants, and avenging ghosts.
Unlike Doom Folk, which was composed mainly on a handmade Alan Carruth acoustic guitar, Mean Bone was written mostly with an Ibanez electric guitar sporting a Cattle Decapitation sticker. Influenced by classic Doom and Americana, the music of Mean Bone ranges from crunchy metal to creepy folk. Informed by socially conscious Weird Fiction and Dylan-esque songwriting, the lyrics lament the evils of religion, the cruelty of mankind, and the plight of the planet.
Mean Bone was written, performed, and produced by Elliott in his lean and mean home studio, dubbed Inscrutable Studios for its tangled wires and eldritch gear.
Tracklisting: 1. Darkness Wins 2. Crushing Burden of Despair 3. Murder in the White Barn 4. Primitive 5. Changeling 6. Ghost of Orphan James 7. Twisted Love 8. Gadarene Swine 9. Dunwich Farm 10. Flies, Mosquitoes, Rats, and Sparrows 11. Conclusions 12. Plight of the Planet 13. Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century
Posted in Reviews on January 13th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Satiricus Doomicus Americus. Released this past Friday, it is timely enough that it felt in the spirit of the thing to review it the next day, and it serves as something a sidestep, or a holdover, or a gap-bridger between Christopher Thomas Elliott‘s first album under the moniker Buzzard, which was the well-received, less-than-a-year-old Doom Folk (review here), and an impending second full-length, Mean Bone, previously announced as due in 2025. At least as of now, Satiricus Doomicus Americus is listed as a separate project — there are times where it feels like it’s the second Buzzard record we’re getting before the second Buzzard record, and that’s not a complaint — and its songs are distinguished by their outward heft. But, if it is a separate project, it remains adjacent to Buzzard in style and comes across as building off that record’s floor of — wait for it — traditionalist folk influenced by doom metal, tipping if not outright reversing the balance between the two.
Comprised of nine songs, some which reportedly date back to 2009 but are fresh in construction and recording, Satiricus Doomicus Americus lays out its purpose firmly and decisively in the leadoff title-track. The line, “I’m not a cynic I’m a realist,” is defining. There and across much of what follows, Elliott positions himself as a doom troubadour, a post-apocalyptic dustbowl plugged-in Woody Guthrie, skewering fascists and fools with poetry in straightforward language in songs like “Wrong Neighborhood” and “Too Many Humans,” distortion at the ready but never a crutch to be leaned upon. Satiricus Doomicus Americus, in another marked departure from its Buzzardly beginnings, presents a conversationalist aspect with a liberal use of sampling. Not just as random bits of noise or speech thrown here and there, but sounds being purposely applied for rhythm and theme. Part of what a given song — in fact all of them — is expressing.
So although it’s fair to say Satiricus Doomicus Americus is complementary to Buzzard‘s to-date lone LP and likely the one to come it is not shy in its divergences. More on it below, but the closing duo of revamped Buzzard songs that close out, “Death Metal in America (Meat Market Version),” which gets a winning extra verse I won’t spoil and “Cockroaches and Weed (Kills Them Dead Version),” which puts old commercial taglines to good use, are a ready analogy for how Satiricus Doomicus Americus and Elliott‘s ‘main band’ (?) are intertwined. As the name of the project, title and eponymous opening track reaffirm, social critique is also a big part of what’s on display.
The sneer of “Nice Little Annihilation Song” is well suited to the frenetic acoustic strum and banjo arrangement as Elliott and his litany of old clips conjure endtimes preach, departing the stomp of the opener for a dark Americana shuffle — as opposed to the “Shuffle of the Dead,” which comes later — before the fuzz returns in “Wrong Neighborhood.” A ballad in terms of the lyrical storytelling, it cleverly takes the trope of a racist dogwhistle and turns it on its head to point out the hypocrisy beneath, and has one of the album’s best hooks besides and an arrangement that’s atmospheric and heavy with a garage-doom strut.
Satiricus Doomicus Americus is louder, generally, than circa-’24 Buzzard, but the manner in which it varies in mood and what’s happening in the details of each song is consistent. “Grass is Greener” stays mellow with foreboding plucked notes and the standout line, “A leaf will curl and die to catch the rain,” starting with a sample about man’s dominance over nature and mesmerizing with subdued vibe before old horns spliced in from the public domain blast to snap you back to reality for “Automobile,” which brings the drums back to the mix with a splash of cymbals to meet the low fuzz in the bass before the first verse, thoughtful in its rhyme scheme and lumbering in its chug as the hook asks who’s gonna kill the automobile. And indeed, who?
This kind of direct sociopolitical comment, unrepentantly relevant, was part of what made Doom Folk such an immediate standout, and Elliott is in his element across Satiricus Doomicus Americus, counting on his audience to get the Candlemass nod and understand that beneath all the trades between acoustics and electrics, electrics and acoustics, acoustic electrics and electric acoustics, banjo, bass, probably-programmed drums, the foundations of songs like “Too Many Humans” is as much slow metallic crawl as it is gothified pastoralia or protest folk.
That Elliott can dwell in either space, as that same song readily proves en route to the Night of the Living Dead sample that makes itself a hook in the subsequent “Shuffle of the Dead,” is revealed as a strength here that Doom Folk only hinted toward, and for what it’s worth, neither the doom nor the folk are skimped. If you caught Buzzard‘s single “Crushing Burden of Despair” (posted here) back in October, the full-tone, full-band-style swing that was being explored is part of Satiricus Doomicus Americus as well, at least intermittently, and the statement is plain that Elliott refuses to be limited to one modus or another in terms of sound or statement.
Again, “Death Metal in America (Meat Market Version)” and “Cockroaches and Weed (Kills Them Dead Version)” say it even plainer. Both are thickened up versions of cuts from Doom Folk, as noted, and before you start to wonder if that counts as a cover when somebody reworks a song across two at least nominally different solo-projects and surely cause your head to explode, what matters more is the willingness to let those songs be malleable. To let them live. My understanding is these are earlier versions or at least rooted in earlier versions than what showed up on Doom Folk, but the point stands. Just because one version of a thing is recorded, that doesn’t mean it has to be static, only that, forever. That very same creative openness, Elliott letting himself just mess with it, is likewise responsible for the varied arrangements throughout and Satiricus Doomicus Americus‘ capacity to boil down complex ideas into accessible sound.
You can pinpoint this or that nuance in terms of influence, either from doom, metal, folk, or, with the samples, hip-hop and pop, but I can only think of one other outfit with a style like Satiricus Doomicus Americus, and that’s Buzzard. This record will resonate more with some than others — it hit a nerve with me, clearly — but it shares Buzzard‘s listenability as it expands on the purpose and scope of the craft. It makes me more excited to hear where Elliott might take Buzzard over the course of Mean Bone while likewise making it harder to predict just what that will actually sound like. Given the results here, Elliott obviously thrives in open possibility.
Whatever else is to follow, as my homeland makes ready to reembrace the politics of hateful and destructive absurdity with demonstrably little to no preparation to get what it asked for, the moment feels right for Satiricus Doomicus Americus. Sometimes you get just what you need.
Posted in Features on December 19th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
[PLEASE NOTE: These are not the results of the year-end poll, which ends in January. If you haven’t contributed your picks yet, please do so here.]
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Hi, and welcome to The Obelisk’s year in review for 2024. This is a thing that’s kind of developed over the 15-plus years the site’s been in operation, and it’s something that people sometimes tell me has been a help when it comes to finding new music. I know for myself as well, I’ve referred back to these lists a lot in subsequent years, to see where bands were and where my head was, and so on. Are best-of lists meaningful, at all, in any way? Probably to the person making them, and that’s me, so I’ll proceed.
I thought the format last year worked pretty well, so I’ve hijacked it for use here. Not something I expect anyone to notice, but I did want to mention it on the off-chance. I don’t have a best live album of the year, but there are a few worth talking about, surely.
It’s been a busy, fast year. The barrage of music is overwhelming — and as problems go, that’s among the best ones to have — but I do think we’re seeing some tapering off. Generational turnover is, in fact, a constant, but the 2020s are taking shape now with bands who started making their name around the mid-2010s shifting into headliner status, new bands coming up beneath, more diverse in sound and construction, and with new ideas. This isn’t universal, but it is the ideal vision of the thing. Circle of life and such.
But it’s a lot. Including the 50-releases-strong Quarterly Review last week, I’m well north of having reviewed 400 total different mostly-full-lengths since January. That’s insane. The math is obvious, but I’ll point out anyhow that you could buy an album for every day of the year and have enough for an extra month-plus afterward. An astonishing amount of music, and I’m by no means reviewing everything.
Which brings me to the inevitable last point. I haven’t reviewed everything. If you’re here wondering where Opeth and Blood Incantation are landing on my list, they aren’t. Nothing against either of them, I just haven’t dug into the records since I knew I wouldn’t be reviewing them. The regular standard of doing as much as I can, when I can, about as much as I can, applies.
Please if you disagree with some pick below or other — and if you do, that’s healthy — I kindly ask you to keep things civil in the comments. I’m not here to call people out on enjoying things I don’t — fascism aside — and I know it makes me sad when I break my ass for days to put this together and the first comment is, “NO [WHOEVER]. LIST SUCKS. NEVER READING THIS FILTH AGAIN,” etc. Before you comment, please take a second to read what you put back to yourself for kindness. That’s good for spelling too, not that I’d know.
That’s all the stalling I can do. Time to dive in. Happy holidays.
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The Top 60 Albums of 2024
**NOTE**: If you’re looking for something specific, try a text search.
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60-31
60. Psychlona, Warped Vision
59. Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, The Mind Like Fire Unbound
58. Massive Hassle, Unreal Damage
57. Temple of the Fuzz Witch, Apotheosis
56. Space Shepherds, Cycler
55. Abrams, Blue City
54. Castle Rat, Into the Realm
53. Heath, Isaak’s Marble
52. Weite, Oase
51. Cosmic Fall, Back Where the Fire Flows
50. Troy the Band, Cataclysm
49. Sunnata, Chasing Shadows
48. Skraeckoedlan, Vermillion Sky
47. Acid Mammoth, Supersonic Megafauna Collision
46. Deer Creek, The Hiraeth Pit
45. Big Scenic Nowhere, The Waydown
44. Grin, Hush
43. The Swell Fellas, Residuum Unknown
42. The Gates of Slumber, The Gates of Slumber
41. Coltaine, Forgotten Ways
40. Mountain of Misery, The Land
39. Mammoth Volume, Raised Up by Witches
38. Delving, All Paths Diverge
37. High on Fire, Cometh the Storm
36. Thou, Umbilical
35. The Giraffes, Cigarette
34. Fu Manchu, The Return of Tomorrow
33. Full Earth, Cloud Sculptors
32. Daevar, Amber Eyes
31. Causa Sui, From the Source
Notes:
Just in case you’re the type of person who’d say, “Oh how could you have a top 60? after a certain number it’s all the same,” I’ll admit that’s true, but 60 is apparently nowhere near the ‘certain number’ in question for me this year. I agonized over this part of the list. More than the top 30, and more than picking a best short release, best debut, or anything else. I wanted basically a second top 30, and I feel like if I saw this as that, as 30-1, I’d congratulate whoever submitted it on their taste. But maybe that’s just me agreeing with myself.
I like the mix of up and comers and established acts here. Sunnata and Skraeckoedlan, The Giraffes, of course High on Fire, Deer Creek and so on, mixing with up and comers like Full Earth, Daevar, Acid Mammoth, Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, Heath, Troy the Band and Weite. I feel somewhat compelled to justify my High on Fire placement, especially looking at the results so far of the year-end poll. They’re amazing, they’re devastating, they’re a singular live act, but I just didn’t listen to the record that much. There. A big part of me feels like it should be top 10 just by virtue of who the band are, but if I did that for everybody who deserved it, I wouldn’t have room for anything new. All I can do is be honest to my own listening habits and opinions. I know High on Fire are really, really good. I know this album is really, really good. That’s why it’s on this list. Should it be higher? Probably. I’m doing my best.
Thank you for your kind attention in this matter. Also, listen to The Giraffes.
You won’t hear me say a downer word about An Earlier Time‘s quieter stretches, but it’s the sweeping moments like “Limitless” that find Boston’s Sundrifter making the most resonant impression. Their third full-length and the follow-up to 2018’s Visitations (review here), it was a strong declaration of who Sundrifter want to be as they continue to grow, and deserved more love than I saw that it got.
Oh, look out for Mr. Blogosphere. He’s out here taking a real risk putting Tranquonauts on the year-end list, like the combining of forces between Melbourne, Australia, heavy psych blues rockers Seedy Jeezus and guitarist Isaiah Mitchell wasn’t gonna work the second time around? Wow, Mitchell‘s and Lex Waterreus‘ guitars sure do sound awesome together. Oh — it’s a hot-take! Better get your react videos ready. The internet is terrible. This album offers escape from it.
At the risk of having to give back my Music-Journalism-Level membership to the Sycophant Society, I’ll dare to point out that Chat Pile are way, way hyped. That happens sometimes. It’s not like they’re out there being like, “Hey we’re the noise rock white dudes shifting paradigms for noise rock white dudes, best in a generation.” It’s people like me with all the hyperbole and comma splicing. I get that too. It’s a sound geared toward inciting a strong reaction, from the sneering sarcasm of the title down. By the way, am I the only one who looks at the title Cool World and thinks of the 1992 semi-animated film of the same name? I kind of hope so. See? Big feelings all around.
Rest assured, I don’t, but if I had any friends, I’d be like, “Hey, you should check out this band Gnome from Belgium. They’ve got fun riffs and they beat you over the head with them until you remember them by heart.” And these ‘friends’ would be all, “Wow man, that sounds definitely like something I would ever want to introduce to the scope of my life experiences! Thank you! I’m so glad to be your friend and the world is definitely a better place with you in it.” And then everybody’s day is better, all because of sharing and the shenanigans-laced riff metal proffered by these three behatted miscreants from Antwerpen.
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26. Brant Bjork Trio, Once Upon a Time in the Desert
Brant Bjork‘s solo band begat Stöner, and Stöner begat Brant Bjork Trio as Bjork, drummer Ryan Güt and bassist Mario Lalli (Fatso Jetson, Mario Lalli and the Rubber Snake Charmers, Yawning Man, etc.). I’ll cop to being a nerd for Brant Bjork‘s output generally — it’s a kind of cool so definitively Californian, my NJ-ass self can’t help but admire it — but the chemistry in Once Upon a Time in the Desert is on point to an undeniable degree, and the songs are a reminder of how the back catalog got so strong in the first place. What else could you want?
Five albums in, a post-arrival Sergeant Thunderhoof stand ready. They know who they are, what they want their songs to do, why and how to make it happen. The Ghost of Badon Hill gives a conceptual focus to unite material intentionally sprawling, and lets listeners immerse in a narrative all the more easily for the quality of its songcraft. Self-recorded, it is masterful in performance and assured of its execution, pored over but not overworked; the happy accidents might have been left in on purpose, but they still sound like accidents. And Sergeant Thunderhoof still sound like a band driving themselves toward the unknown.
Doom metal is lucky to have Early Moods laying out a template for the next generation to hopefully follow. The Los Angeles five-piece’s second full-length, A Sinner’s Past, refined the lurch of their 2022 self-titled (review here), and the combination of hard touring and progressive craft continues to bode well as they look toward their next offering. They’ve put in their work, however swift their ascent to this point might feel, and they’re about one great record away from standing among the best doom of the 21st century. You could easily argue they’re already there. Every reason is accounted for on A Sinner’s Past.
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23. Morpholith, Dystopian Distributions of Mass Produced Narcotics
Iceland’s Morpholith enter the conversation with Dystopian Distributions of Mass Produced Narcotics, which has cosmic-doom breadth and bong-metal crush to spare in the first four minutes of “Psychophere” alone, never mind anything that surrounds. The band’s debut is a bombastic plodder, beating out the march to a futuristic — and cold — vision of the riff-filled land that may or may not be Reykjavik in the wintertime while simultaneously being both very much of weed and not outwardly about it, seeming to have much more than addled, Mid Atlantic Ridge-heavy riff worship because — look out! — they do. If cosmic doom is ever going to be more than a loose thread connecting YOB and Ufomammut, bands like Morpholith need to keep pushing it forward like this. “Dismalium.” I dare you.
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22. Lamp of the Universe Meets Dr. Space, Enters Your Somas
Lamp of the Universe is multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer and vocalist Craig Williamson, based in New Zealand. Dr. Space is synthesist, keyboardist, producer, bootlegger and bandleader Scott Heller. The ‘meeting’ of these two expanded minds takes place over two extended tracks, one vinyl side per, of lush psychedelic and multi-tiered drones, absolutely perfect for the zone-out hypnosis you’ve been trying to put yourself in all day but for that pesky consciousness. I wish I could come up with some kind of ritual awesome enough for the keyboard textures in “Enters Your Somas” or the propulsive space rock thuddenchug of “Infiltrates Your Mind,” but some sounds are just too cool for the planet. Come see how the freaks get down.
I spent some significant time with Dool‘s The Shape of Fluidity this Spring, before and after seeing them at Roadburn (review here), which was another highlight of the year. The album’s triumph, in songwriting, in transcending genre bounds and in conveying its theme of breaking loose from the gender binary, gave my parent-of-a-trans-kid self a hopeful vision of a future beyond dark, hateful rhetoric or implied/real violence. It showed me a possible path to victory on what will be and already is a hard road. It was there when I needed it, which is a specific ideal of art providing care. I’ll never forget that.
Granted the Western soundscaping at the outset of the eponymous “Buzzard” lays it on thick, but it’s supposed to! We’re talking fire-and-brimstone earthbound Americana folk with a doomly rhythmic cast, given the self-aware title of Doom Folk by the solo artist Buzzard, aka Christopher Thomas Elliott, laying it on thick is the point. Elliott has a follow-up out soon already. Thinking of Doom Folk as the beginning of a creative progression makes its nuance and individualist drive even more exciting, but the rawness of this debut, the straightforwardness of its structures and the resulting memorability are part of the appeal for sure.
Seven bangers. Not a dud in the bunch. Two nine-minute songs and you still couldn’t say a moment of High Desert Queen‘s rightly anticipated sophomore LP is wasted. Not when you’re building up to the roll of “Head Honcho,” certainly. The Texas outfit built on the good-time largesse and party-but-not-a-party-so-cool-you-don’t-feel-welcome vibing of 2021’s Secrets of the Black Moon (review here) and set themselves vociferously to the task of being the change in heavy rock that they wanted to hear. Palm Reader‘s infectiousness is a strength, both in terms of a catchy piece like “Ancient Aliens” or “Time Waster,” and also in the overarching positive-framed mood and heart so clearly put into the material.
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18. Ufomammut, Hidden
Released by Supernatural Cat and Neurot Recordings. Reviewed May 21.
Now a quarter-century on from their start, Italian trio Ufomammut have yet to put out a record that didn’t sound like a forward step from the one before it. And Hidden is their 10th album. The band are progenitors and refiners of a cosmic doom sound that is unto itself, and cuts like “Kismet” and “Leeched” manage to be both lumbering in their massive-tone grooves and sprawling with a synthy ambience that, though certainly influential, is immediately recognizable as Ufomammut. Hidden is part of a creative trajectory, to be sure, and the arc is ongoing, but there’s more than enough substance here to leave a crater behind in the listener’s brain.
In its arrangement as five separate dreams taking place over its component tracks, the only thing Pentasomnia doesn’t take into account is that another Iota LP was a dream all on its own even before music actually happened. A full 16 years after shaking the galaxy’s core with their 2008 debut, Tales (discussed here, and here), the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Joey Toscano (Dwellers, Hibernaut), drummer/producer Andy Patterson (The Otolith, ex-SubRosa, etc.) and bassist Oz Yasri (ex-Bird Eater) making a comeback — let alone it actually being good — was nigh on unthinkable. Then you heard “The Intruder” and reality shifted just a bit. Pretty sweet.
Few albums in 2024 were as entrancing as Langt, Langt Vekk, the hopefully-not-a-one-off collaboration between Norwegian progressive heavy instrumentalists Kanaan and neofolk contemporaries Ævestaden. Both adventurous outfits in their own right, the combination of elements, from live drums and synth to traditional plucked strings and Norwegian-language vocal choruses, works stunningly well. That little bit of fuzz in “Habbor og Signe,” or the cymbal wash behind “Dalebu Jonsson” — the songs are full of these little nuances or flourishes waiting to be found, but even with the most superficial of listens, the achievement resounds, whether one approaches from a viewpoint of heavy rock, prog, folk or psychedelia.
You know, I’ve kind of dug DVNE records all along, and I can’t really call Voidkind a surprise after 2021’s Etemen Ænka (review here), but these songs — “Eleonora,” “Sarmatae,” “Abode of the Perfect Soul,” among others — hit me much harder than I had expected, and the more I listened to try to twist my head around “Reliquary,” the more the album as a whole revealed of its character and detail. I review a lot of stuff, and I hear more than I review, so I don’t always get pulled back by every record, but Voidkind kept calling for return visits.
Look. If you’re reading this, I know I don’t have to tell you about Orange Goblin. Even if you don’t already have a soft spot for the long-running UK doom rockers, they’re perfectly happy to pummel one into you with Science, Not Fiction, their first album since 2018 and a realignment toward a harder-edged heavy rock sound, where the last, say, two records had leaned more metal. I heard some griping about the production not helping, but I heard absolutely nothing to complain about here. The band are on fire and the recording shows it, the songs aren’t necessarily any great progressive leap but for sure they’re Orange Goblin songs, and for a band who owes nobody proof of anything, they set a high standard and deliver accordingly, like god damned professionals should.
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13. Spaceslug, Out of Water
Released by Electric Witch Mountain Recordings. Reviewed May 14.
What I didn’t get about Spaceslug until I finally saw them live at Desertfest New York (review here) was just how metal the impact of their songs can get. It’s not necessarily that they’ve grown more aggressive, unless you want to incorporate harsh vocals or shouting — “Tears of Antimatter” also has gently-delivered barely-there spoken word, so it depends on the story you want to tell — but the blend of melancholic doom, heavy psychedelia and melodic fluidity that has become Spaceslug‘s stylistic wheelhouse is not to be missed. Out of Water finds them at their broadest and least concerned with genre, and brings into relief how special a band they’ve become. Also it rocks.
No secret how Craneium are doing it on Point of No Return; it’s right there in the songs. All of them. “One Thousand Sighs,” “The Sun,” “A Distant Shore,” “…Of Laughter and Cries,” “Things Have Changed” and “Search Eternal.” Texture and hooks, heft and scope and melody and crash and shove, classy progressive execution and swaggering conjurations. Most of all, songs that stay with you. Chances are, if you heard this record and gave it its due attention at some point in your time with it, you didn’t have to do much more than read the titles to have the tracks playing in your head. That’s not a coincidence. It’s craft. It’s a willful outreach on the part of the band and material. It’s what makes you want to sing along. And why would you not?
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11. Guhts, Regeneration
Released by Seeing Red Records and New Heavy Sounds. Reviewed Feb. 5.
More on it below, but for the moment, suffice it to say that the bludgeoning and/or scathe of Regeneration at its most intense and the depths its mix seemed to find, the debut full-length from New York post-metallers Guhts dared visceral emotionality in a way few records so heavy could or would hope to. The willing-to-break-her-voice-if-necessary performance of Amber Gardner and the weighted undulations surrounding from guitarist Scott Prater, bassist Daniel Martinez and drummer Brian Clemens, the open sway, unfettered crush, and quiet spaces offsetting all that bombast result in both a chaotic feel and an applicable world. Therefore it must be modern. Fine. It sounds like the future.
As to how Philadelphia’s Heavy Temple managed to fit so much swagger onto a single platter, you’d have to ask them, but their second album, Garden of Heathens, landed hard in tone and attitude alike. Songs like “Extreme Indifference to Life,” “House of Warship” and the galloping payoff of “Jesus Wept” ahead of the thrashy finale “Psychomanteum” affirmed what was set out in 2021’s Lupi Amoris (review here) and their earlier short releases while marking out and conquering decisively new territory in their sound. I know it was recorded two years ago or something like that, but it’s still a band beginning to realize their potential in craft and performance, and if a third LP happens sooner than later, so much the better.
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9. 1000mods, Cheat Death
Released by Ouga Booga and the Mighty Oug and Ripple Music. Reviewed Nov. 11.
Whether one embraces Cheat Death because the songs kick ass or because 1000mods are so vivid and uncompromising in pushing themselves forward from release to release, I don’t think you’re wrong. The forerunners of their generation in Greek heavy rock remain among the finest Europe’s heavy underground have to offer, and the atmosphere they’re able to conjure alongside the straight-ahead Matt Bayles-produced punk-metal hooks of these songs is emblematic of why. Without ever giving up their foundation in heavy rock, 1000mods have consistently refined their processes and grown as songwriters. The joke of Cheat Death is how alive the material feels.
Faced with the considerable task of following up the to-date album of their career, Elektrik Ram (review here), just one year later, South African heavy rockers Ruff Majik did not flinch. Instead, Moth Eater takes the outright charge and sharpness-minded efficiency of its predecessor in a stated trilogy that began with 2020’s The Devil’s Cattle (review here) and sets it as the foundation for a confident, creative growth and sustainable expansion of sound. They’re a little more willing to dwell in parts, and they’re well aware of how catchy they can be, but also, they know the power of momentum and they’re fully in control of the narratives they’re telling. As Moth Eater readily demonstrates, it’s hard to know which of that it is that makes them most dangerous.
It’s hard to overstate the accomplishment of Nell’ Ora Blu, and I’m well aware that the critical sphere is full of plenty who’ve spent the better part of 2024 trying. Reasonable. The completeness of the world Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats built in the work based around the concept of soundtracking a giallo film that didn’t exist was singularly evocative. With original dialogue recorded (in Italian) specifically for ‘movie’ ambience, Uncle Acid took what had always been an influence on the band’s sound within genre-cinema and its methods of storytelling, and flipped the process on its head by creating its own story. Their influence is already well spread throughout the heavy underground, for sure, but in bringing a vision to life, this might be the album Uncle Acid have been working toward all along.
A forward-thinking masterwork from even before “Deadname” sneaks a layer of acoustic guitar under the mountain of distortion in the verse lines and “Arrival” and “Transitions” give evocative chronicle to the album’s trans-experiential theme — it is the band’s first since guitarist/vocalist Simona Ohlsson transitioned, and admirable for both its projected triumph and vulnerability around that — the fifth full-length from Vokonis continues the progressive path they have walked for the last decade-plus. A lineup change has brought some shift in dynamic, but a new strength of voice behind the material that makes “Phantom Carriage,” “Chrysalis,” and, suitably enough, “Arrival,” feel like a declarative pinnacle, and having something to say makes the raw impact of its heaviest moments all the more powerful.
There’s little funnier to me about heavy rock as it exists in 2024 than the idea that Greenleaf would be a band people take for granted. “Oh, Tommi Holappa and Company putting out another collection of classic-heavy and blues-rocking bangers? Business as usual, I guess.” Until you listen to the album, maybe. Then you get the tumble of “Avalanche,” the hooks in “Breathe, Breathe Out,” and “A Wolf in My Mind,” the subdued-bluesy pair “That Obsidian Grin” and “An Alabastrine Smile” to remind how you much this band has been able to grow since Arvid Hällagård made his first appearance with them a decade ago, the way they’re able to move through a jam and land in a groove as solid as “Oh Dandelion,” reminiscent of Clutch in its start-stop funk but defined by its own persona. Every Greenleaf record is a gift. If feeling that way means I’m not impartial, good. We understand each other.
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4. Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, Big Dumb Riffs
Promises made, promises kept. Austin-based crunch purveyors Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol stripped any and all excess out of their approach on Big Dumb Riffs, resulting in a quick-feeling collection of memorable, heavy tracks that, whether fast like “1800EATSHIT” or slow like “In a Jar,” are united in the album’s central stated purpose. Already an established brand of heavy revelry, the three-piece didn’t change anything radically in aesthetic terms, but the songs found their target one after the other, front to back, and were clever and well composed, however willfully lunkheaded the central riffery might have been. They’re headed to Europe in Spring, and I’m already hearing rumors of a next record, so keep an eye out in 2025.
Slomosa‘s released-in-2020 self-titled debut (review here) was a salve to many in troubled times, representing a next-generation hope for underground heavy in energetically-delivered, classic-feeling songs. Tundra Rock, which gives a name to the band’s style seemingly in direct answer to anyone who might class them as ‘desert,’ confirms the Norwegian four-piece at the forefront of an up and coming cohort of younger acts beginning to find their expressive modus and step beyond their root influences. Tundra Rock finds Slomosa doing this while giving their dual-vocal live dynamic vibrant studio representation and growing their material in character and melody alike. Heavy rock and roll is Slomosa‘s for the taking.
A record that didn’t need to be loud to be heavy, Brume‘s Marten is without question my most-listened-to album of 2024. That needs no qualifying. I had high expectations going into it after seeing the San Francisco band at Desertfest New York 2022 (review here), and Marten surpassed every hope I might’ve been able to harness for it and then some. The collective voice of the band incorporating multiple viewpoints from bassist/vocalist/keyboardist Susie McMullan, guitarist/vocalist Jamie McCathie, drummer Jordan Perkins Lewis, and in her first appearance as a full-on member of the band, cellist/vocalist Jackie Perez Gratz (Grayceon, Amber Asylum, etc.), resulted in a fluid but deeply divergent collection, comprised of songs that went where they wanted to go — or didn’t, thank you very much — according to their own whims and purposes. It is a landmark for Brume and, if any number of subgenres are lucky, a blueprint from which others will hopefully learn.
I acknowledge breaking my own rules here — splits are always, until and including this year, categorized as short releases in these lists — but when it came to it, the thought of putting Elephant Tree and Lowrider‘s The Long Forever anywhere else, considering it as anything else, seemed ridiculous. Especially if you count writing the liner notes for it, I’ve gone on at length about the release as an intersection of crucial moments for the respective bands, with Lowrider following their first album in 20 years, Refractions (review here), and Elephant Tree answering the progressive statement of their own second LP, Habits (review here), both released in 2020. The storyline gets deeper as Elephant Tree also look to reestablish themselves following a near-fatal accident suffered by guitarist/vocalist Jack Townley, melding rawness of tone with lush vocal harmonies, and Lowrider drag fuzz-rock traditionalism kicking and screaming into a reality of being both fun and intelligent. There ultimately was nothing else to call The Long Forever than the album of the year. If that comes with an asterisk because it’s a split, it doesn’t lessen the effect of hearing it at all. So yeah, I’m breaking the rules of the game. I’m inconsistent. Unprofessional. Biased. I don’t know what to tell you except love makes you do crazy things. In these songs themselves — do I even need to talk about the collaboration — and in the drive behind them, that’s what most resonates here.
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The Top 60 Albums of 2024: Honorable Mention
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If the 60 above wasn’t enough, here are more leads to chase down, alphabetical but in kind of a hyper-specific, ass-backwards-seeming way:
Acid Rooster, Alber Jupiter, Altareth, Alunah, Astrometer, Bismarck, Black Capricorn, Blasting Rod, BleakHeart, Blue Heron, Bongripper, Boozewa, Caffeine, Carpet, Castle, Cleen, Clouds Taste Satanic, Codex Serafini, Cold in Berlin, Cortez, The Cosmic Dead, Crypt Sermon, Daily Thompson, Deadpeach, Deaf Wolf, Demon Head, Destroyer of Light, Dopethrone, Duel, Earth Ship, Elephant Tree, Emu, Familiars, Bill Fisher, 40 Watt Sun, Ghost Frog, Goat Major, Guenna, Heath, High Reeper, Hijss, Horseburner, Ian Blurton’s Future Now, Insect Ark, Inter Arma, Kelley Juett, Juke Cove, Kalgon, Kandodo, Kant, Kariti, Kungens Män (x2), Kurokuma, Leather Lung, Legions of Doom, Lord Buffalo, Magic Fig, Magick Brother & Mystic Sister, Magick Potion, Magmakammer, Mammoth Caravan, Massive Hassle, MC MYASNOI, Merlin, Methadone Skies, Monkey3, Morag Tong, The Mountain King, Mount Hush, MR.BISON, My Dying Bride, Myriad’s Veil, No Man’s Valley, Norna, The Obsessed, Oryx, Pallbearer, Patriarchs in Black, Pia Isa, Planet of Zeus, Red Mesa, Rezn, Rifflord, Sacri Monti, Sandveiss, Satan’s Satyrs, Saturnalia Temple, Scorched Oak, Sheepfucker & Kraut, Slift, Slower, Slow Green Thing, SoftSun, The Sonic Dawn, SONS OF ZÖKU, Spacedrifter, Spiral Grave, Spirit Mother, Stonebride, Sun Blood Stories, Sunface, Sun Moon Holy Cult, Swallow the Sun, The Swell Fellas, Swell O, Temple Fang, 10,000 Years, Thomas Greenwood and the Talismans, Thunderbird Divine, Tigers on Opium, Traum, 24/7 Diva Heaven, Valley of the Sun, Vlimmer, Void Commander, Weather Systems, The Whims of the Great Magnet, Whispering Void, White Hills, Per Wiberg, Esben Willems, Worshipper, WyndRider…
Notes:
With the eternal caveat that I’ll be adding to the honorable mentions for the next few days as people drop names they remembered and I forgot, I’ll say I can live with the list as it is now. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m happy with it, but I’ll live. I felt like there was just too much good stuff in the 60-30, stuff that deserved a better look, and god damn, look at the honorable mentions. You’re gonna tell me Rezn wasn’t top 30 material? Or Inter Arma, or 10,000 Years (who I still need to review), or Kandodo or Cortez, or Bongripper, Blue Heron, Merlin, Slower? Mount Hush, Vlimmer, Destroyer of Light — I could do this all day. That Carpet record. That MR.BISON record. Valley of the Sun. I see these names and want to punch myself. Then I see the names in the top 30 and I go, “Well…” and kind of have to hold off. I guess that means it turned out to be a pretty fantastic year.
I know for a fact I didn’t hear everything that came out, and I’m willing to bet that any number of people who see this will have their own opinions on the best albums of 2024 from top to bottom. I celebrate this difference and look forward to being exposed to new sounds because of it. Let comments fly, please. Once again, my only ask is that you keep it kind as relates to my own list(s) and any other picks someone might offer. If I’ve got facts wrong, something was a Dec. 2023 release instead of Jan. 2024, whatever, by all means, let me know. But we’re all friends here and being a jerk about it solves nothing.
And yes, I’ll admit to projecting some self-criticism in the Elephant Tree/Lowrider selection for album of the year. All I can tell you is I stand by that pick. It’s that because when I was putting together the list, it couldn’t have been anywhere else. I don’t love breaking my own arbitrary rules nearly as much as I love imposing those arbitrary rules in the first place, but sometimes apparently one is forced from one’s comfort zone to their own general betterment. Who knew?
Of course we’re not done yet.
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Debut Album of the Year 2024
Guhts, Regeneration
Other notable debuts (alphabetical):
Azutmaga, Offering
Buzzard, Doom Folk
Castle Rat, Into the Realm
Cleen, Excursion
Coltaine, Forgotten Ways
Full Earth, Cloud Sculptors
Goat Generator, Goat Generator
Goat Major, Ritual
Grave Speaker, Grave Speaker
Guenna, Peak of Jin’Arrah
Hashtronaut, No Return
Heath, Isaak’s Marble
Hijss, Stuck on Common Ground
Kalgon, Kalgon
Kant, Paranoia Pilgrimage
Kitsa, Dead by Dawn
Leather Lung, Graveside Grin
Legions of Doom, The Skull 3
Magic Fig, Magic Fig
Magick Potion, Magick Potion
Morpholith, Dystopian Distributions of Mass Produced Narcotics
Myriad’s Veil, Pendant
Neon Nightmare, Faded Dream
Plant, Cosmic Phytophthora
Rabid Children, Does the Heartbeat
Saltpig, Saltpig
Semuta, Glacial Erratic
SoftSun, Daylight in the Dark
Spacedrifter, When the Colors Fade
Sun Moon Holy Cult, Sun Moon Holy Cult
Ten Ton Slug, Colossal Oppressor
Tet, Tet
Tigers on Opium, Psychodrama
Tommy and the Teleboys, Gods Used in Great Condition
Troy the Band, Cataclysm
Weather Systems, Ocean Without a Shore
Esben Willems, Glowing Darkness
Young Acid, Murder at Maple Mountain
Notes:
First about Guhts: From the Andy Patterson recording and parts of the songs themselves, Guhts weren’t hiding influence from the likes of SubRosa or Julie Christmas, Made Out of Babies, etc., but what Regeneration did so well — and what I was trying to convey above — was take those recognizable elements and redirect them toward an expressive individuality. That album could be punishingly heavy or sweet and soothing and the fact that you never quite knew which was coming next was a major asset working in the band’s favor. There are a lot of killer debuts on this list, and plenty I’m sure that I’ve left off because, well, I’m inept, but Regeneration was so sure of what it was about and so crisp in making that real through sound that it’s still stunning.
A lot to celebrate on this list. Full Earth at the outset of a hopefully long-term progression. Tigers on Opium with attitude and craft. Castle Rat giving stage drama studio life. Weather Systems picking up where Anathema left off. Promising starts for Pontiac, Hashtronaut, Neon Nightmare, Cleen, Coltaine, Troy the Band, Buzzard, Magic Fig, Legions of Doom, and Heath, among others. If you’re worried about the state of underground heavy music, you don’t need to be. Granted the future of anything is unknowable even before you apply “uncertain times” caveats and all the rest, but bands are stepping up to carry the torch of established sounds and pushing themselves to realize new ideas — whether that’s Guhts and Magic Fig or Tigers on Opium, or Legions of Doom, Ten Ton Slug, Weather Systems and Monolord’s Esben Willems, new players or ones who’ve been around for decades.
If you want a top ten — and who doesn’t? — in addition to Guhts, make your way through Full Earth, Sun Moon Holy Cult, Morpholith, Guenna, Coltaine, Troy the Band, Young Acid, Emu, Buzzard and Kant to start, and you can dig deeper from there. That’s actually 11, but I don’t care. More new music won’t hurt you.
We press on.
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Short Release of the Year 2024
Moura, Fume Santo de Loureiro
Other notable EPs, Splits, Demos, Singles, etc.
Aktopasa, Ultrawest
Alreckque, 6PM
Bog Wizard, Journey Through the Dying Lands
Conan, DIY Series Issue 1
Cortége, Under the Endless Sky
Cult of Dom Keller, Extinction EP
Michael Rudolph Cummings, Money EP
Deer Lord, Dark Matter Pt. 2
Eagle Twin & The Otolith, Legends of the Desert Vol. 4
Fuzznaut, Wind Doula
Fuzzter, Pandemonium EP
Geezer & Isaak, Interstellar Cosmic Blues and the Riffalicious Stoner Dudes
Harvestman, Triptych EP(s)
Hermano, When the Moon Was High
Hollow Leg, Dust & Echoes
Holy Fingers, Endless Light Infinite Presence
King Buffalo, Balrog
Lurcher, Breathe EP
Okkoto, All is Light
Ord Cannon, Foreshots EP
Orme, No Serpents No Saviours
Pelican, Adrift/Tending the Embers
Pontiac, Hard Knox EP
Rope Trick, Red Tide EP
Sacred Buzz, Radio Radiation
Smoke & Doomsday Profit, Split
Spiral Guru, Silenced Voices EP
Toad Venom, Jag har inga problen osv...
Trigona & IO Audio Recordings, Split
Various Artists, International Space Station Vol. 2
Notes:
This category includes so much and can range so vastly between an EP that’s about 30 seconds short of being a full album to a standalone single released just for the hell of it to a band’s first rehearsal room demo. “Short releases” encompasses a lot, and as noted above, I’ve already broken my rules about where splits go. What about The Otolith and Eagle Twin? Geezer and Isaak? Smoke and Doomsday Profit? Trigona and IO Audio Recordings? The International Space Station four-wayer? If I’m crossing lines, don’t these also need to be considered as full-lengths?
You know what really sucks about it? This is an argument I’m going to have with myself for probably the next year. An existential crisis playing out in the back of my mind. More important? The Moura EP. The soundtracky textures the Spanish folk-informed progressive psychedelic rockers brought to the follow-up for their second album were both otherworldly and ground-born, and the material put emphasis on how much care and craft goes into their work while retaining the organic core against the threat of pretense. It was my most listened to short release of 2024, followed by Pelican, Holy Fingers, Pontiac, Toad Venom, Hollow Leg (x2), and Sacred Buzz. A new King Buffalo single was a late-year boon, that Hermano was worth it for the previously-unreleased studio track alone, and strong showings from Michael Rudolph Cummings, Deer Lord, Conan and Cortége, along with the aforementioned splits, assured that through the entire year, attention spans would receive consistent challenge in the movement from one thing to the next.
By way of a familiar confession, my list of short releases is nowhere near complete. It never is, and it never really could be. I’m sure there will be some I left out that I’ll add in for honorable mentions, etc., but I stand by the Moura pick for best short outing. They brought a soul to it that put the lie to the notion of EPs as between-album gap-fillers, and in a year that didn’t lack substance among its brevity-focused options, Fume Santo de Loureiro stood out in character, aesthetic and songwriting. Nobody else is making music quite like Moura.
If you have more to add here, by all means, please and thank you. Comments are below.
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Live Albums
Live Album of the Year 2024
Temple Fang, Live at Krach Am Bach
Castle, One Knight Stands: Live in NY
Danava, Live
Elder, Live at Maida Vale
Snail, Thou Art There
Stöner, Hittin’ the Bitchin’ Switch
Sula Bassana & Skyjoggers, Split
The Whims of the Great Magnet, Live at Bankastudios Maastricht 22-12-2023
Notes:
Fewer releases listed here than last year, but some killer ones for that. I put Temple Fang out there as live album of the year, and since we’re late in the post I’ll tell you honestly that it probably could be any of these on a given day. Danava’s live record crossed decades in badassery, the Sula/Skyjoggers split captured the vibe of a club night in Germany, the Whims of the Great Magnet’s live release made an excellent predecessor to their out-this-month studio album, Snail recorded theirs at a show I put on, Stöner capture the end of their two-album cycle with an awesome set, and Elder are Elder. The Maida Vale recording is short, and their songs are long, or you probably would’ve heard a lot more about that this year. If/when they do a proper live album, it will be a no-brainer.
But the Temple Fang has it all in molten progressivism, heavy tones, immersive psychedelia and outright soul, and of the bands I’ve managed to list here — if you want to add to the list, please do — there’s nobody who so much defines what they do by its live incarnation. Temple Fang’s music changes every night. They follow where it leads in a different way, and the ritualization of their performance comes through in Live at Krach Am Bach resoundingly. I’m not saying a bad word about their studio work to this point, but their heart manifests in a different way and at a different level onstage. They’re a great band and this shows a big part of why.
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Looking Ahead to 2025
Names, right? This one’s all about the names? Get to the names, jack? Okay, calm down.
With eternal appreciation to the folks of fine, upstanding moral character in the ‘The Obelisk Collective’ group on Facebook for the assistance, here’s a smattering of what one might look forward to in 2025:
Aawks, After Nations, All Them Witches, Amber Asylum, Author & Punisher, Bandshee, Black Spirit Crown, Bog Wizard, Bone Church, Borracho, Bronco, Buzzard, Dee Calhoun, Causa Sui, The Cimmerian, Clutch, Conan, Corrosion of Conformity, Daevar, Dead Meadow, Dead Shrine, Demons My Friends, Dream Unending, DUNDDW, Dunes, Flummox, Fuzz Sagrado, FVZZ POPVLI, Gaytheist, Gin Lady, Gnarled, Gnod & White Hills, Gods and Punks, Godzillionaire, Haze Mage, Kaiser, Kal-El, King Buffalo, Lamassu, Lo-Pan, Madmess, Mantar, Masters of Reality, Messa, Seán Mulrooney, Mouth., New Dawn Fades, Nightstalker, Øresund Space Collective, Pentagram, Pesta, Pothamus, Dax Riggs, Seedy Jeezus, Slomatics, Slow Wake, Stoned Jesus, Stone Machine Electric, Temple Fang, 3rd Ear Experience, Triptykon, Trouble, Turtle Skull, Warlung, Weedpecker, Yawning Balch, Year of the Cobra, YOB… and because it still hasn’t happened and someone invariably calls me out if they’re not listed: Om.
If you have names to add, “smash that comment button,” in the parlance of our times. Only don’t really smash it because you might hurt your hand or break your phone with your awesome strength.
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THANK YOU
It was among my primary goals for this post that it should be shorter than last year’s, and it looks like I’ll achieve that with room to spare, so I’m glad. Sometimes I get carried away, I think I probably don’t need to tell you.
Before I let go of 2024 — actually I still want to review that The Whims of the Great Magnet studio release and I’ve got a Darsombra video premiere set before the end of the year, news to catch up on from like the last two weeks and a whole lot more to cover — I’d like to take a moment to thank you one more time for reading and for being part of this project this year and each year it’s been ongoing. Your support is absolutely what keeps this site going and it means more to me than I can ever hope to comprehend.
Thank you to The Patient Mrs., who in the course of a given week let alone year puts up with more of my bullshit than any human being should ever have to. “Yes, love, the world’s ending and we have no money and the house is falling down around us and the dog needs to pee, but I just need two or three hours to go sit and write about riffs — is that cool?” Or better, when I’m pissy about it. The “my wife is a saint” routine is pretty played out as far as dudely excuses for being selfish, lazy and/or dumb go, but well, I am all of those things on the extreme regular and she hasn’t booted my ass to the curb yet. I find this to be a reason to celebrate and a thing to appreciate. I am loved and cared for in ways I could never hope to earn.
Thank you to my family for their support, year in and year out. They’ve all got Obelisk shirts and they all wear them, and while I’m not sure they understand the true depths of egoistic depravity involved in this project, they’ve been on board with it since the start, and this includes my wife’s side of the family as well. I am incredibly lucky to have the life I have.
I’m going to keep listening to music, keep writing about it as much as I can. I’m not quite as generally panicked about it as I used to be — older, busier in different ways, over the FOMO, maybe a little more discerning in terms of taste? — and I’m significantly less likely to break my brain answering email, but I’m doing my best.
The Obelisk presses on into what will be a busy 2025. I’ve got trips slated to Planet Desert Rock Weekend in Las Vegas this January, Desertfest Oslo in May, Freak Valley in Germany in June, Bear Stone in Croatia in July, and Desertfest New York in September, with more hopefully to come. I look forward to these adventures and to doing the writing that will happen as part of them, and one more time, I thank you for your time and attention in reading, in the past, now, and in the future. I’m taking tomorrow off. All the way off. Back on Monday for more.
