Posted in Whathaveyou on September 26th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
A few different tours coming together here, right? Stoned Jesus, Greenleaf and Somali Yacht Club on the road together. Elder, Pallbearer and Irist. Hippie Death Cult out there on their own now that their would’ve-been-tourmates High Reeper dropped off. Naxatras making the rounds. Sasquatch doing like they do on a stretch with Orange Goblin before continuing a longer European run (you should always stretch first; ain’t nobody getting younger). Electric Citizen out with Fu Manchu. All of this is organized, mapped out ahead of time, and a lot of it is starting this weekend at Up in Smoke 2022 in Pratteln, Switzerland, as though to save you the time, money and effort necessary to hit up all these individual tours, which may or may not be routed everywhere to start with.
You can see the final lineup below with Fu Manchu, Orange Goblin and Elder getting top billing, and as the first of Sound of Liberation‘s Fall festivals in Europe — Keep it Low in Munich and Desertfest Belgium will follow in the coming weeks, and there’s a bunch of others besides — Up in Smoke is distinguished by vibe even more than timing. I’ve always been curious what it would feel like to sleep in the venue after a show. Indoor camping. Are there showers? Could be a pretty smelly affair by the third day; Up in Stink Lines, if you will. But more about the mindset. Are you so locked into the experience at that point that you wake up, find breakfast and are ready to roll as a part of the thing? I’m not sure I’d ever actually be brave enough to do it — not exactly the camping type in any context — but it could be interesting. Sound of Liberation has also posted the time-table, if you’d like to know more about what time to wake up.
The lineup below is final final final, and the day splits make it look like one hell of a festival. If you’re going to be there, I hope it’s a blast. I’d love to hear about it:
UP IN SMOKE 2022 – DAY SPLIT & DAY TICKETS – UP IN SMOKE FESTIVAL Z7 Pratteln 2022
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 11th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
True, most of the lineup for Up in Smoke 2022 — set for Sept. 30 through Oct. 2 in, as ever, Pratteln, Switzerland — was previously announced, and some of it goes back to what the fest would’ve been in 2020, but I’ve got two reasons for posting it now. First, it’s a new announcement and the festival’s social media has fallen into some kind of digital chasm I don’t and couldn’t hope to understand, and second, that lineup is perfect.
Seriously, they say there are more bands coming. Don’t on my account. This’ll be just fine. There was one band on this poster with whom I was not immediately familiar by name, and that was Midnight Deadbeats, who released their debut album, Moonshine Carnival, in late 2020 on Sixteentimes Music. You can stream it below. To me it sounds like earliest Dozer and if you think I’m about to complain about that you’re out of your mind. And everybody that surrounds on this bill is someone I’d like to see, whether I’ve seen them before or not. Fu Manchu and Slomosa. Irist and Orange Goblin. Naxatras and Echolot. Stoned Jesus and Sasquatch and Mars Red Sky and The Heavy Eyes. Greenleaf. Somali Yacht Club, High Reeper and Hippie Death Cult. Fucking a.
I won’t get there — these Fall fests are perennially out of my reach — but god damn what a show this weekend will be. Sound of Liberation is handling the promotion and that’s where to go for social media at this point. They just made the announcement that follows:
UP IN SMOKE FESTIVAL: LINE-UP ANNOUNCEMENT
Hey friends,
Today we’re absolutely stoked to present you the majority of bands for our beloved Up In Smoke Festival!
Get ready for three days of heavy psychedelic, stoner rock and doom at the Z7 Fabrik in Pratteln, Switzerland!
Already (re-)confirmed for 2022:
FU MANCHU – ORANGE GOBLIN – ELDER – STONED JESUS – PALLBEARER – GREENLEAF – SASQUATCH – NAXATRAS – MARS RED SKY – SOMALI YACHT CLUB – ELECTRIC CITIZEN – SLOMOSA – MOTHER ENGINE – IRIST – HIPPIE DEATH CULT – HIGH REEPER – THE HEAVY EYES – CARSON – ECHOLOT – MIDNIGHT DEADBEATS
More bands to be announced!
Tickets: https://www.sol-tickets.com
Tickets + 3 Day Sleepover Ticket: http://www.z-7.ch
Well, in the aftermath of reviewing 100 albums over the span of 10 days, there was just about no way I wouldn’t have enough to fill out a Gimme Metal playlist, and hey guess what? I was only like six days late turning it in! At least the playlist. Voice tracks I think I cut on Tuesday. I honestly have no idea.
But in any case, it didn’t feel as late as last time because it wasn’t, and I’m glad to be featuring a smattering of some of what stood out to me from the finished-today QR, plus a new Dreadnought track that I got excited about because the album announcement came in while I was putting the playlist together and I couldn’t not include it. Probably won’t be the last time.
But if you see/hear/want to dig more on any of this stuff, you can either look for the review or just tap and Google that shit. I think there were maybe two (maybe) bands who weren’t on Bandcamp easily accessible, so everyone else, it’s all right there for you. Plus here, all newly written up in my typical turnt-brain-to-goo Quarterly Review style.
Thanks if you listen and thanks for reading.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at: http://gimmemetal.com.
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 07.08.22 (VT = voice track)
Witchfinder
The Maze
Endless Garden
0N0
Clay Weight
Unwavering Resonance
Church of the Sea
Odalisque
Odalisque
Dreadnought
Midnight Moon
The Endless
VT
Faeries
Fresh Laces
Faeries
My Diligence
Celestial Kingdom
The Matter, Form and Power
Supplemental Pills
Freedom March
Volume 1
Kaleidobolt
Ultraviolent Chimpanzee
This One Simple Trick
Black Lung
Hollow Dreams
Dark Waves
The Cimmerian
Silver and Gold
Thrice Majestic
Astral Pigs
Our Golden Twilight
Our Golden Twilight
Carson
Dirty Dream Maker
The Wilful Pursuit of Ignorance
Kadavermarch
1,000 Yard Stare
Into Oblivion
Electric Mountain
A Fistful of Grass
Valley Giant
VT
Øresund Space Collective
Deep Breath for the EARTH
Oily Echoes of the Soul
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is July 22 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
Week two, day one. Day six. However you look at it, it’s 10 more records for the Summer 2022 Quarterly Review, and that’s all it needs to be. I sincerely hope you had a good weekend and you arrive ready to dig into new music, most of which you’ve probably already encountered — because you’re cool like that and I know it — but maybe some you haven’t. In any case, there’s good stuff today and plenty more to come this week, so bloody hell, let’s get to it.
Quarterly Review #51-60:
Celestial Season, Mysterium I
After confirming their return via 2020’s striking The Secret Teachings (review here), Netherlands-based death-doom innovators Celestial Season embark on an ambitious trilogy of full-lengths with Mysterium I, which starts with its longest song (immediate points) in the heavy-hitting single “Black Water Rising,” but is more willing to offer string-laced beauty in darkness in songs like “The Golden Light of Late Day,” which transitions fluidly into “Sundown Transcends Us.” That latter cut, third of seven total on the 40-minute LP, provides some small hint of the band’s more rock-minded days, but the affair is plenty grim on the whole, whatever slightly-more-uptempo riffy nod might’ve slipped through. “This Glorious Summer” hits the brakes for a morose slog, while “Endgame” casts it lot in more aggressive speed at first, dropping to strings for much of its second half before returning to the deathly chug. The pair “All That is Known” and “Mysterium” close in massive and lurching form, and not that there was any doubt about this group 30 years on from the band’s founding, but yeah, they still got it. No worries. The next two parts are reportedly due before the end of next year, and one looks forward to knowing where the rest of the story-in-sound goes from here. If it’s down, they’re already there.
Post. Metal. Also post-metal. The third full-length from Koln-based instrumental four-piece Noorvik, Hamartia, glides smoothly between atmosphere and aggression, the band’s purposes revealed as much in their quiet moments as in those where the guitar comes forward and present a more furious face. In the subdued reaches of “Ambrosia” (10:00) or even opener “Tantalos” (6:55), the feeling is still tense, to where over the course of the record’s 68 minutes, you’re almost waiting for the kick to come, which it reliably does, but the form that takes varies in subtle ways and the bleeding of songs into each other like “Omonoia” into “Ambrosia” — which crushes by the time it’s done — the delving into proggy astro-jazz on “Aeon” and the reaching heights of “Atreides” (which TV tells me is a Dune reference) assure that there’s more than one path that gets Noorvik to where they’re going. At 15:42, “The Feast” is arguably the most bombastic and the most ambient both, but if that’s top and bottom, the spaces in between are no less coursing, and in their willingness to be metal while also being post-metal, Noorvik bring excitement to a style that’s made a trope of its hyper-cerebral nature. This has that and might also wreck your house, and if you don’t think that’s a big difference, ask your house.
Wait. What? You mean to tell me that right now there are some people in the world who aren’t about to dig on 78 minutes’ worth of improvised psychedelic synth and guitar drones? Like, real people? In the world? What kind of terrible planet is this? Obviously, for Doctors of Space — Scott “Dr. Space” Heller (Øresund Space Collective) on synth, Martin Weaver (Wicked Lady) on guitar — this planet is nowhere near cool enough, and while it’s fortunate for the cosmos at large that once shared, these sounds have launched into the broader reaches of the solar system where they’ll travel as waves to be interpreted by some future civilization perhaps millions of years from now that evolved on a big silly rock a long, long way from here and those people will finally be the audience Doctors of Space richly deserve. But on Earth? Beyond a few loyal weirdos, I don’t know. And no, Doctors of Space aren’t shooting for mass appeal so much as interstellar manifestation through sound, but they do break out the drum machine on 23-minute closer “Titular Parody” to add a sense of ground amid all that antigravity float. Nonetheless, Mind Surgery is far out even for far out. If you think you’re up to it, get your head in the right mode first, because they might just open that thing up by the time they’re done.
Pull Astral Pigs‘ second album, Our Golden Twilight, out of the context of the band’s penchant for vintage exploitation horror and porn and the record’s actually pretty cool. The title-track and slower-rolling “Brass Skies/Funeral March” top seven minutes in succession following instrumental opener “Irina Karlstein,” and spend that time in nod-inducement that goes from catchy-and-kinda-slow to definitely-slow-and-catchy before the long stretch of organ starts the at least semi-acoustic “The Sigil” and “Dragonflies” renews the density of lumbering fuzz, the English-language lyrics from the Argentina-based four-piece giving a duly ceremonious feel to the doomly drama unfolding, but long song or shorter, their vibe is right on and well in league with DHU Records‘ ongoing fascination with aural cultistry. The Hammond provided by bassist/producer Fabricio Pieroni isn’t to be ignored for what it brings to the songs, but even just on the strength of their guitar and bass tones and the mood they conjure throughout, Our Golden Twilight, though just 25 minutes long, unquestionably flows like a full-length record.
No question, Carson have learned their lessons well, and I’ll admit, it’s been a while since a basically straightforward, desert-derived heavy rock record hit me with such an impression of songwriting as does their second full-length, The Wilful Pursuit of Ignorance. Issued through Sixteentimes Music, the eight-track/36-minute outing from the Lucerne-via-New-Zealand-based unit plays off influences like Kyuss, Helmet (looking at you, title-track), Dozer, Unida, and so on, and honest to goodness, it’s refreshing to hear a band so ready and willing to just kick ass musically. Not saying that an album with a title like this doesn’t have anything deeper to say, just that Carson make their offering without even a smidgeon of pretense about where they’re coming from, and from opener “Dirty Dream Maker” onward, their melody, their groove, their transitions and sharper turns are right on. It’s classic heavy rock, done impeccably well, made modern. A work of genre that argues in favor of itself and the style as a whole. If you were introducing someone to riff-based heavy, Carson would do the trick just fine.
Comprised of vocalist Hoanna Aragão, guitarist/vocalist Jorge Rabelo (also keys, co-production, etc.), guitarist Guilerme Tanner, bassist Renata Marim and drummer Roberto Tavares, Brazil’s Isaurian adapt post-rock patience and atmospheric guitar methods to a melody-fueled heavy purpose. Production value is an asset working in their favor on their second full-length, Deep Sleep Metaphysics, and seems to be a consistent factor throughout their work since Matt Bayles and Rhys Fulber produced their first two EPs in 2017. Here it’s Muriel Curi (Labirinto) and Chris Common (Pelican, many others), who bring a decided sense of space that’s measurable from the locale difference in Aragão‘s and Rabelo‘s vocal levels from opener “Árida” onward. Their intensions vary throughout — “For Hypnos” has “everybody smokes pot”-esque gang chants near its finish, “The Dream to End All Dreams” is a piano-inclusive guitar-flourish instrumental, “Autumn Eyes” is duly mellow and brooding, “Hearts and Roads” delivers culmination in a brighter melodic wash ahead of a bonus Curi remix of the opener — but it’s the melodic nuance and the clarity of sound that pull the songs together and distinguish the band. They’ve been tagged as “heavygaze” and various other ‘-gaze’ whathaveyou, and they borrow from that, but their drive toward fidelity of sound makes them something else entirely. They should tour Europe asap.
Hints of Kadavermarch‘s metallic origins — members having served in Helhorse, Illdisposed, as well as the Danish hip-hop group Tudsegammelt, and others — sneak into their songs both in the more upfront manner of harsher backing vocals on “The Eschaton” and the subsequent “Abyss,” and in some of the double-guitar work throughout, though their first album, Into Oblivion, sets their loyalties firmly in heavy rock. Uncle Acid may be an influence in terms of vocal melody, but the riffs throughout cuts like “Satanic” and “Reefer Madness” and the galloping “Flowering Death” are bigger and feel drawn in part from acts like The Sword and Baroness, delivered with a sharp edge. It’s a fascinating blend, and the recording on Into Oblivion lets it shine with a palpable band-in-the-room sensibility and stage-style energy, while still allowing enough breadth for a build like that in the finale “Beyond the End” to pay off the record as a whole. Capable craft, a sound on its way to being their own, a turquoise vinyl pressing, and a pedigree to boot — there’s nothing more I would ask of Into Oblivion. It feels like an opening salvo for a longer-term progression and I hope it is precisely that.
The violence implied in the title “Regurgitated Ambition Consuming Itself” takes the form of a harsh wall of noise drone that, once it starts, continues to unfurl for the just-under-eight-minute duration of the first of two pieces on Büzêm‘s more simply named Here EP. The Portland, Maine, solo art project of bassist/anythingelse-ist Finn has issued a range of exploratory outings, mostly EPs and experiments put to tape, and that modus very much suits the avant vibe throughout Here, which is markedly less caustic in the more rumbling “In an Attempt to Become the Creator” — presumably about Jackson Roykirk — the 10 minutes of which are more clearly the work of a standalone bass guitar, but play out with a sense of the human presence behind, as perhaps was the intention. Here‘s stated purpose is meditative if disaffected, Finn turning mindfulness into an already-in-progress armageddon display, and fair enough, but the found recording at the end, or captured footsteps, whatever it is, relate intentions beyond the use of a single instrument. Not ever going to be universally accessible, nonetheless pushing the kind of boundaries of what’s-a-song that need to be pushed.
Can’t mess with this kind of heavy rock and roll. The fuzz runs thick, the groove is loose (not sloppy), and the action is go from start to finish. Electric Mountain‘s second LP, Valley Giant digs on classic desert-style heavy vibes, with “Vulgar Planet” riffing on Kyuss and Fu Manchu only after “Desert Ride” has dug headfirst into Nebula via Black Rainbows and cuts like “Outlanders” and the hell-yes-wah-bass of big-nodder “Morning Grace” have set the stage for stoner and rock, by, for and about being what it is. Picking highlights, it might be “A Fistful of Grass” for the angular twists of fuzz in the chorus, but “Vulgar Planet” and the penultimate acoustic cut “At Last Everything” both make a solid case ahead of the eight-plus-minute instrumental closing jam “A Thousand Miles High.” The band’s 2017 self-titled debut (also on Electric Valley Records) was a gem as well, and if they can get some forward momentum going on their side after Valley Giant, playing shows, etc., they’d be well placed at the head of the increasingly crowded Mexico City underground.
Also stylized all-caps with punctuation — perhaps a voice commanding: HUSH. — Hudson, New York, five-piece Hush conjure seven songs and 56 minutes of alternately sprawling and oppressive atmospheric sludge on their third full-length, The Pornography of Ruin, and if you take that to mean the quiet parts are spaced and the heavy parts are crushing, well, that’s true too, but not exclusively the case. Amid lyrical poetry, melodic ranging, slamming rhythms — “There Can Be No Forgiveness Without the Shedding of Blood” walks by and waves, its hand bloody — and harsh shouts and screams, Hush shove, pull, bite and chew the consciousness of their listener, with the 12-minute “By This You Are Truly Known” pulling centerpiece duty with mostly whispers and ambience in a spread-out midsection, bookended by more slow-churning pummel. Followed by the shorter “And the Love of Possession is a Disease with Them,” the keyboard-as-strings “The Sound of Kindness in the Voice” and the likewise raging-till-it-isn’t-then-when-it-is-again closer “At Night We Dreamed of Those We Were Stolen From,” the consumption is complete, and The Pornography of Ruin challenges its audience with the weight of its implications and tones alike. And for whatever it’s worth, I saw these guys in Brooklyn a few years back and they fucking destroyed. They’ve expanded the sound a bit since then, but this record is a solid reminder of that force.
Posted in Questionnaire on June 13th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Elina Willener and Kieran Mortimer-Jones of Carson
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
Kieran Mortimer-Jones: I attempt to recreate feelings and emotions musically and deliver them in such a way that the same emotions are felt within the listener.
Elina Willener: I play rock music and I think I got that from my father. He makes music himself and to him I owe my love for guitar music.
Describe your first musical memory.
Kieran: I remember being kicked out of the recorder group lessons in primary school because I was playing all the songs way too fast. That’s when it was suggested to me that I learn the clarinet, as it was a much more challenging instrument to play.
Elina: At home in our living room listening to Mani Matter (one of the greatest Swiss singer-songwriters, who unfortunately died much too early). I have always loved his music, although at that time I did not understand the lyricism and great meaning of his lyrics, of course.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Kieran: I remember one Christmas when I was about 14 and my father bought me my first electric guitar and amp. That was an amazing feeling, opening those boxes, holding it my hands and making a lot of noise. Being able to recreate the sounds and riffs of the bands I was listening to was mind blowing. I guess realizing that it wasn’t some magic trick, and that I could learn to do it too.
Elina: There are too many to name just one, but every time on stage with Carson is a highlight for me.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Kieran: That day is yet to come.
Elina: I also have nothing to say about this yet.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Kieran: I feel it leads to wherever you want it to take you. You can progress artistically but still feel you haven’t gone anywhere. You can RE-gress and someone else might say you have developed. Art is always subjective as the consumer is ever changing, you never have the same audience twice and one man’s rubbish is another man’s gold.
Elina: Any creative progression is about discovering something new within ourselves and taking that something out into the world so that others can experience and enjoy it.
How do you define success?
Kieran: I would define success by being able to support myself and my family with income generated by my art. Simply because it allows you to do what you love, everyday.
But on a deeper level, I think success would be finally finding happiness and peace within myself. The search for contentment is long and tiring.
Elina: To be able to do what I love to do, to make my passion my profession, or at least partially.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Kieran: The development and consummation of the ‘Smart Phone’. No one has any peace anymore. No one looks out the window at the real world. No one can bear five minutes of listening to their own thoughts. Distract yourself from yourself with consumerism.
Elina: The ignorance that certain people still have when it comes to our environment. That makes me sad.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
Kieran: I would like to build my own house. From start to finish, like my old man did. Something my family and I could be proud of.
Elina: Living from music.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Kieran: Enjoyment. To distract the audience from themselves and their regretful lives. To stir emotion in people in a way that suprises them. To connect with people.
Elina: Broadening of horizons, innovation and provocation.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Kieran: The demise and inevitable end of humanity.
