It might not be improper to think of Signs of Infinite Power as a sequel to 2007’s We Must Obey (discussed here), seeing as how the lineup is consistent, two records comprise the entirety of the band’s Century Media era and are distinct from the rest of their catalog for the more aggressive side of their sound captured by producer Sergio Chavez, while Andrew Alekel (who produced the album before) mixed. Signs of Infinite Power, which was released on Oct. 20, 2009 — it was covered here when this site was just a little baby obbylisk; barely a nubbin — doesn’t carry the same kind of tonal thickness as its predecessor, but might be meaner on balance with songs like “Steel.Beast.Defeated,” “El Busta,” “Webfoot Witch Hat,” the title-track and opener “Bionic Astronautics” setting the mood.

Of course, this is Fu Manchu‘s 10th album (depending on how you keep count), and it also marks the second time in their career they put out three full-lengths featuring the same lineup. Here, that’s founding guitarist/vocalist Scott Hill, lead guitarist Bob Balch, bassist Brad Davis and drummer Scott Reeder, the latter of whom came aboard ahead of 2003’s live album, Go for It…Live! (review here) and made his studio debut with 2004’s subsequent Start the Machine (discussed here). Signs of Infinite Power was also Fu Manchu‘s goodbye to the aughts, which as a decade weren’t as productive as the 1990s — five records between ’94-’99 and four between ’02-’09 — but featured crucial stylistic growth and were pivotal for the longterm sustainability of the band. Nailing down the personnel making the music, duh, was an essential part of this. Being on that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 soundtrack helped too.

As the opener, “Bionic Astronautics” does a fair amount of work in telling the listener what they need to know going in. The midpoint dig-in behind the line, “You worship what you fear,” calls back to the density of the LP before, and that’s an important part of Signs of Infinite Power‘s personality — I ain’t knocking it — while finding a rawer take for their signature fuzz riffing. “Steel.Beast.Defeated” follows and is a typical rhythmic patterning, driven both for momentum coming from the leadoff and moving deeper into the record. When Fu Manchu put out The Return of Tomorrow (review here) in 2024, Hill noted the early single “Hands of the Zodiac” was lyrically inspired by an astrologer friend of long standing who apparently had a thing for saying wacky one-liners. “Steel.Beast.Defeated” and “Webfoot Witch Hat” here could have been similarly sourced, if they weren’t.

But if you’re looking for consistency among Fu Manchu‘s catalog, you don’t have to look far. In 2009, the band were 15 years removed from their debut album, and wanting neither for craft or purpose. They’d grown in some ways beyond their punk/hardcore roots, but more into their own aesthetic as a forerunner of heavy, fuzzed-out rock and roll, an alternative to the chestbeating of the heavy metal or the pop-emo that had infiltrated the punk of the time, but speaking to various sides within various genres with a solid identity conveyed through their songs. You could feasibly argue that by 1996-’97, Fu Manchu knew who they were in terms of sound and what they wanted their material to do. Skate rock for SoCal surfers. Stoner rock for an emergent next generation heavy heads. I find I’m more into Signs of Infinite Power now than when it came out. The songs have aged well and it feels liberated from expectation of what it might lead to in terms of their sound.

Because Signs of Infinite Power worked. We Must Obey worked. But taken together, the two feel like they’re pushing into a side of Fu Manchu‘s sound that they explore fully, and that of course is the aggro. They were heavy before, and they were heavy after, but they were never before or after heavy quite in the same way they were here. It’s not all furies, with slick rollers like “Eyes x 10,” or the start-stop reachout and subtle chorus melody of the penultimate “Take it Away,” but much of the funk that drummer Brant Bjork (who by this time was well into his solo career) helped bring to their sound was taken out of focus, and replaced with a more direct, on-the-beat thrust. Accordingly, amid the shred of “El Busta” and the still-hardcore two-minute closer “One Step Too Far,” a slowdown like that in “Bionic Astronautics” emphasizes that Fu Manchu, even on a mission as they seemed to be, were dynamic.

“Signs of Infinite Power” stands among the finer nods Fu Manchu have ever set forth, but as one familiar with their work would invariably expect, hooks are prevalent throughout. Some 17 years later, I’m still not sure what’s going on with “Webfoot Witch Hat” on a thematic level, but it’s memorable, and the chug and bombast of “Gargantuan March” is appreciable for being maybe as far into lumber as Fu Manchu would to-date get. They’re not a band known for extremes — that is to say they’re not an extreme heavy/metal band; their songs are accessible and they were punker kids — but Signs of Infinite Power sees them pushing themselves in what for them was still a new direction, answering the promise of We Must Obey in a manner not dissimilar from how 1997’s The Action is Go (discussed here) carried forward ideas from In Search Of… (discussed here), complementing what they’d done in the past while seeking less familiar ground.

So the last remaining question is was this really as far into charge as the band could get? By the time they were following this, the culture around heavy rock and roll — and much else — had changed owing to the increased mobilization of the internet as a means of disseminating and distributing music, and Fu Manchu would embrace a maturity that encompassed multiple facets of their style, taking their place as an influence in a word-of-mouth-fueled heavy underground. This album and this era aren’t and probably won’t ever be the band’s most widely lauded, but both on the level of the songs they were crafting and the execution they fostered during these years, it remains something special within the discography and without.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

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It feels earlier than it is, coming on 11AM. That’s likely because I was out last night at that Clutch/C.O.C. show that apparently all of New Jersey decided also to hit up. Good for the bands, bad for finding a place in the venue to be. For me, anyhow. Plenty of people did just fine.

Running late means I’m on borrowed time. Coming on noon now, for example, and I know exactly where the last hour went: to the park, so The Pecan could practice riding her bike on hills. I try to remind myself that these are the actual fleeting moments, and that the writing that feels so urgent in my head and habit will still be there afterward.

Monday is a Buzzard premiere. There’s more after that but I don’t know what off the top of my head. That Kal-El review is hanging over me in a way I don’t enjoy and feel like is holding me back from other stuff, so I’m not sure what I’ll do about that, but I hope to resolve the issue by either writing about it or choosing to not by next Friday. Oh, there’s a premiere in there for Occult Hand Order from France, whose record is pretty good.

Quick Zelda update: I beat Wind Waker again. Still fun. I had mods/cheats for infinite magic, arrows and bombs, had the whole map from the start and enough hearts so that I didn’t need to do minigames or chase heart pieces I didn’t want to. A lot of that era of gaming was about prolonging the experience, and some of it’s fun and some is tedious. I really like the look, mood and controls of that game though, better than Twilight Princess, which I’ve yet to play a second time, or Ocarina of Time 3D, much as I enjoyed revisiting that. I guess I’m not a huge fan of super-long dungeons. The Twilight Princess ones were like a multi-day project. I started a new game in Echoes of Wisdom yesterday, might dig into that again because it’s fun as hell, but there are a couple in-world things I want to do in Wind Waker as well, so we’ll see what if anything next week brings.

I have homework over the weekend for Hungarian class(es) and more writing besides, so I’ll be on the laptop if you’re looking to get in touch. Unless you’re a nazi piece of shit warmongering scumbag, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Should the caveat apply, do the world a favor and fall in a hole forever. Everyone else, thanks for reading.

FRM.

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Behold a record that hits hard enough it kind of feels ironic to have a soft spot for it. Fu Manchu released We Must Obey in 2007 through Liquor and Poker Music, which at the time was a Century Media imprint that also put out Nebula, The Hellacopters, Fireball Ministry and the Scott Reeder (Kyuss, The Obsessed, etc.) solo record, among others. Really, it was the first of two offerings Fu Manchu would make through Century Media, and I think if you take it on the sheer level of its tones, We Must Obey is the heaviest album Fu Manchu have released to-date.

Comprising 11 songs running 36 minutes, We Must Obey almost inevitably feels like a marked and purposeful contrast to 2004’s Start the Machine (discussed here). It was co-produced by the band and Andrew Alekel (The Company Band, Fireball Ministry, Kyng, Velvet Revolver, etc.), and for a group whose sound is so vividly realized — who have such a clear internally-defined style, who know who they are as a band and what they want to do — it is an outlier from records before and after. Since their start, and even unto the cleaner production sound of Start the Machine, and even here, Fu Manchu retained some traceable connection to their punk rock roots.

We Must Obey does this as well, but with a more aggressive take than ever before, and with a thickness of tone that, for the first time, sees the band keyed in for largesse more than movement. If that sounds like a splitting-hairs difference, I’ll argue it isn’t. “Land of Giants” has all the more stride for it, and faster pieces like “Let Me Out” and “Between the Lines” come across as more cacophonous for all the heft of distortion being thrown around in the guitars of Scott Hill and Bob Balch, as well as, crucially, Brad Davis‘ bass. Having brought on drummer Scott Reeder (not the same one; this one’s solo record as Jacket Thief came out in ’23) ahead of the LP prior, they held onto the flexibility of groove that Brant Bjork had helped bring to their sound and turned that funk into the massive nod that rounds out here in “Sensei vs. Sensei,” and the sleek roll drawn out against the push of “Lesson,” not quite as brash as the leadoff title-track — it’s not aggro or sharp-cornered enough to be metal, but neither is it far off — but groovier and offering something else.

But if you’re looking for the most consistent factor in their work — and already in 2007 they had 17 years across which to establish consistency — it’s not the fuzz or the Southern Californian skater/surfer/slacker vibing. It’s songwriting. No matter what the ultimate shape of a given album is, in terms of the recording sound or thematic intent, Fu Manchu have always been a song-based band from 1994’s No One Rides for Free (discussed here) onward, and as they hammered out over those early records both the lineup around Hill as the founding member and the parameters of their sound and aesthetic — straightforward, no pretense, not at all without a performance aspect — it was the songs that carried them through those changes, and when you think of Fu Manchu, it’s the songs you think of, whatever era of the band they might be from.

And to answer back to the opening above, I do have a soft spot for We Must Obey. I remember getting it after hearing Start the Machine and being struck by the turnaround. After what had seemed to be a more commercial turn, here came Fu Manchu and they weren’t just hitting it harder than they ever had, but doing it with a killer batch of songs one after the other: “We Must Obey” into “Knew it All Along” into “Let Me Out” into “Hung Out to Dry” into “Shake it Loose” and “Land of Giants.” That’s a side A that as far as I’m concerned stands up to anything in their catalog to which you might want to compare it, and as side B makes its way to “Sensei vs. Sensei” through “Between the Lines,” “Lesson,” the The Cars cover “Moving in Stereo” — a song made a generational landmark by Phoebe Cates’ exposure in Fast Times at Ridgemont High; very much an aesthetically suitable piece for them to take on, and a riff they make their own — and the penultimate “Didn’t Really Try,” they keep momentum as well as memorability on their side.

Being their eighth or ninth record (depending on what you count) and coming 13 years on from their first, I’m not sure it would’ve been fair to expect Fu Manchu to introduce any really radically new ideas to their sound, but within the context of what they do, We Must Obey does that anyhow. In terms of their influence, one is more likely to see records like 1996’s In Search Of… (discussed here) — they have a 30th anniversary edition coming soon — or 1997’s The Action is Go (discussed here) cited. We Must Obey feels more in league with 2000’s King of the Road (discussed here), adding charge to the deeper fuzz that LP wrought but emphasizing craft through things like subtle changes in tempo, the dynamic between Hill and Balch on guitar, and Davis‘ bass tone. It’s still very much a Fu Manchu album, but it also expanded the definition of what that means when it came out.

I’m not about picking favorites and if you’re a ’90s-epoch hyperfan, I know better than to argue. What I would advise is that if you’re going to take on We Must Obey, do it with fresh ears and a consideration for the winding path that brought Fu Manchu to that point, from hardcore punk to pioneering fuzzy roll and ever-refined processes. At the time, it showed there was still life in their riffy shove, and that reassurance shouldn’t be discounted, but in hindsight it holds up even stronger among the best of their discography. Don’t be surprised if, after making your way through it once, you don’t find yourself going back around for another go.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

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Friday. I am duly fried. I spent a decent portion of yesterday beating myself up because I didn’t end up having time to write the Kal-El review and that’s my fault anyway. I had to take my mother to the doctor, then pick up the kid. But yeah I should be able to work with both infinite time and infinite energy at the expense of the rest of my life for the tenuous reward of… this. And when I can’t, or even when I just don’t want to, that’s definitely something I should feel bad about. Also I should feel bad about when I do it, because that’s time I could probably spend cleaning the house, having a job, or failing that, being a better parent. That’s Obelisking 17 years on, for an audience that I’m pretty sure is largely imaginary.

Today begins The Pecan’s spring break — tavaszi szünet, in Hungarian, as I learned this week — and it will go through the end of next week. Accordingly, don’t be surprised if next week is one or two posts a day instead of three or four. I have some things I need to get done, but want to be around for the kid who probably will blow me off and go play with Legos anyway, as is developmentally appropriate and sad in kind, eight going on 14 as she is. The break, in any case, will be good for her.

We had a call with some of the administrator-level folks from the school district as part of our ongoing wtf-do-we-do-about-schooling-this-kid efforts. Our application for the previously discussed half-hour-away private 2E-specializing place is in, and suddenly yesterday we were pitched putting her in fourth grade math (she’s in second grade), which is where she apparantly scored on whatever assessment it was. Hilarious because when I proposed putting her even one year ahead in math last year in order to challenge her and build interest I was told flat-out “we can’t do that.” Direct quote. Start talking about making the district shell out tuition money to provide a free, fair and appropriate public education to this child and the realm of the possible seems to expand at a word. How about that.

I don’t know if we’re going to do that and I’m not sure the shiny jiggling keys of manifesting a prior desperate request will be enough to distract from the very real structural concerns at root in The Pecan’s issues in her current educational setting, between the sensory overwhelm of too-crowded classes and the sit-in-this-chair-and-pay-attention learning model in which she’s neither interested nor neurologically suited to thrive. It’s been three years of ‘let’s try this now’ flailing and as much as I relish the convenience and community engagement of having her in the local public school, I’m not willing to trade her getting the most she can out of these years and have her end up feeling like all she learned in school was how to feel bad about herself when there might be a better way to start with.

Those conversations will continue after break, presumably at some point in-person, maybe with the advocate we have kind of hanging out in our back pocket. I’ve never done this before, so I’m at something of a disadvantage as regards process.

No huge plans for next week. The Patient Mrs. has work — her spring break was a couple weeks ago; she took students to Italy and worked super-hard the whole time, thereby resulting in no break at all — so it’ll be me and the kid. I’ll wake up earlier hopefully to write. I tried to get up at 5:15 this AM and it just didn’t take. Tomorrow I’ll try for six, then 5:30, then five on Monday to get me where I want to be for a week where I’ll need all the time I can take to write because once the day starts I probably won’t get a lot of time. I don’t know that I’ll review that Kal-El, or the C.O.C., which is next on my list, or what, but I’ve got premieres set for We Follow the Earth, Hylko, Slow Draw and Prophet and Flesh, and I’m also going to see Clutch and C.O.C. at Starland Ballroom next Thursday, which will be fun and needed in kind.

Later this afternoon, we’re going to a circus that’s apparently set up in a tent in the parking lot of the Rockaway Mall, which I’m thinking will not be fun because to me the circus isn’t a good time as much as it’s like casual animal and/or human abuse and the kind of thing parents do with kids because it’s like ‘shrug are you old enough to have a human conversation yet no okay well let’s go kill time at the circus until you are.’ I’m sure there are people who actively enjoy that kind of thing, or it wouldn’t be happening — let alone happening in such an in-demand locale — and I get that the Flying Wallendas are impressive, but it’s cold, and rainy, and I’d rather not.

But you go. Because maybe the kid will have some life-epiphany or whatever and it turns out that it’s the single moment defining her in some pivotal way like the angle of the acrobat led her to discover the theory of everything and you weren’t there because you have an anxiety disorder and felt better staying home drinking seltzer and playing Zelda, so try to stave off feeling like a dipshit for the rest of your own life — which surely you’ll find some other way to do anyhow — you go to the fucking circus. Look, a clown.

I wish you a great, safe and well-hydrated weekend, whatever you’re up to. I’ll be back Monday with, I don’t know, probably more complaining. Fuck fascism. Fuck oil companies. Fuck the monsters who think raping children is a small price to pay to serve their hate. Fuck the gender binary. Fuck capitalism. Fuck every CEO. On and on. So much fucking. You’d think it would be a better time, generally.

FRM.

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

No, not really.

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

Quarterly Review #31-40

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Sergeant Thunderhoof, The Ghost of Badon Hill

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

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Swallow the Sun, Shining

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

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Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, The Mind Like Fire Unbound

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

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Planet of Zeus, Afterlife

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

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Human Teorema, Le Premier Soleil de Jan Calet

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

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Caged Wolves, A Deserts Tale

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

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Anomalos Kosmos, Liminal Escapism

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

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Pilot Voyager, Grand Fractal Orchestra

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

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Blake Hornsby, A Village of Many Springs

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

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Echodelick Records website

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Congulus, G​ö​ç​ebe

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

Congulus on Facebook

Congulus on Bandcamp

—

I’ll never forget that my first real show back from the pandemic was to see Finnish melodic death-doomers Swallow the Sun at Dingbatz in Clifton, New Jersey, in November 2021 (review here). Not that they were lacking status in my mind as a sentimental favorite before then, but the truth is I was apprehensive getting back out in the era of plague, and they delivered the reminder that as soon as the music starts and I’m standing in front of the stage — even masked, in sweatpants as I was — everything’s okay. Their early 2025 return to the States in celebration of their new album, Shining (out Oct. 18 on Century Media), will find them hitting Gramercy Theater in NYC, headlining alongside Harakiri for the Sky, Ghost Bath and Snakes of Russia. The first single, the tightly-composed, lushly produced “What I Have Become,” came out a couple weeks back and can be streamed at the bottom of this post.

Hoping to have more to come on the album as we get closer to the release, but here are the tour dates for now so you have an excuse to mark your calendar early:

Finnish Death-Doom Masters SWALLOW THE SUN Announce 2025 North American Headline Tour

New Album ‘Shining’ Out October 18th via Century Media Records — Pre-Order HERE: https://swallowthesun.lnk.to/Shining

Finnish death-doom pioneers SWALLOW THE SUN are set to embark on a highly anticipated North American headline tour supporting their forthcoming album, ‘Shining,’ which drops on October 18th via Century Media Records. The tour features support from Harakiri For The Sky, Ghost Bath, and Snakes of Russia. Kicking off on February 20th in Detroit, MI, the tour will bring the band’s signature blend of despair, beauty, and crushing heaviness to audiences across the continent, wrapping up on March 15th in Chicago, IL. The artist pre-sale is going on now; general tickets go on sale August 30th, at 1:00 PM EDT / 10:00 AM PDT.

“What a great line-up we have on this tour. Join the happiest tour of 2025 and secure your tickets immediately,” says vocalist Mikko Kotamäki

SWALLOW THE SUN
With Harakiri For The Sky, Ghost Bath, and Snakes of Russia
2/20/25 – Detroit, MI – Sanctuary
2/21/25 – Toronto, ON – Velvet Underground
2/22/25 – Montreal, QC – Fouf’s
2/23/25 – Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall
2/24/25 – New York, NY – Gramercy Theater
2/25/25 – Baltimore, MD – Baltimore Soundstage
2/26/25 – Greensboro, NC – Hangar 1819
2/27/25 – Atlanta, GA – The Earl
2/28/25 – Orlando, FL – Conduit
3/1/25 – Pensacola, FL – Handlebar
3/2/25 – Houston, TX – Parish Room @ House of Blues
3/3/25 – Austin, TX – Come And Take It Live
3/4/25 – Albuquerque, NM – Launch Pad
3/5/25 – Phoenix, AZ – Rebel
3/6/25 – San Diego, CA – Brick By Brick
3/7/25 – Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex
3/8/25 – San Francisco, CA – Neck of The Woods
3/9/25 – Portland, OR – Bossanova Ballroom
3/10/25 – Seattle, WA – El Corazon
3/12/25 – Salt Lake City, UT – Metro Music Hall
3/13/25 – Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater
3/14/25 – Omaha, NE – Reverb
3/15/25 – Chicago, IL – Reggies

The tour announcement follows the release of the band’s latest single, “What I Have Become,” a powerful track that delves into themes of transformation and rebirth. Produced and mixed by Dan Lancaster (Bring Me the Horizon, Muse, Enter Shikari), the song showcases SWALLOW THE SUN at their most intense, both sonically and lyrically.

More than two decades of despair, beauty, and heartache have not only shaped but fueled Finnish melancholy torchbearers, the chart-topping and two-time Finnish Grammy nominated SWALLOW THE SUN.

Formed in Jyväskylä in 2000, the quintet has enjoyed numerous fan-lauded music videos (10+ million YouTube views) and streaming dominance (50+ million Spotify plays), while also embarking on a four-continent, 900-show run over the course of their 20-year career.

Their new music, however, is the group’s first step on the new path to the unknown.

SWALLOW THE SUN are:
Juha Raivio – Guitar, Keys
Juho Räihä – Guitar
Mikko Kotamäki – Vocals
Matti Honkonen – Bass
Juuso Raatikainen – Drums

https://www.facebook.com/swallowthesun
https://www.instagram.com/swallowthesunofficial/
http://www.swallowthesun.net/

https://www.facebook.com/centurymedia
https://www.instagram.com/centurymediarecords/
http://www.centurymedia.com/

Swallow the Sun, “What I Have Become” visualizer

Swallow the Sun, “Innocence Was Long Forgotten” official video

I’d already long-since had a soft spot in my heart for Finnish melodic death-doom metallers Swallow the Sun, but I’ll never forget that the band were my first show back from the pandemic, in Nov. 2021. They came all the way from Finland to play Dingbatz in Clifton, NJ (review here). I wore a mask. And sweatpants. It was a weird and in-my-case warm night, but the five-piece were absolute professionals on stage, and the show was a reminder blasted into my brain of the sustaining presence live music adds to my life after nearly two years of no gigs.

I’ve got the band’s new album, Shining, on right now, and it sounds big, produced, in a way that reminds in parts of modern Katatonia, but in the keys and the drum sounds of new single “What I Have Become,” and some of what’s happening around the guitars and bass in “Under the Moon and Sun,” the way the ambience is developed in the arrangements, I feel like you can hear what Dan Lancaster is bringing to it as producer. It moves like a modern record, and not that 2021’s way-dark Moonflowers (review here) didn’t, but it’s different and fascinating. I’m looking forward to getting to know the songs better, but when they talk about it being brighter, that comes through the melody as well. And the tracks seem to be shorter on average, so there’s that too.

This one’s out the day before my birthday. Might have to get a preorder in as a gift to myself. Here’s how that happens from the PR wire:

Finnish Death-Doom Masters SWALLOW THE SUN Announce New Album ‘Shining’ Out October 18th via Century Media Records

Unveils Heavy New Single “What I Have Become” + Visualizer

Pre-Order HERE: https://swallowthesun.lnk.to/Shining

‘Shining,’ the latest full-length album from the Finnish Death Doom pioneers SWALLOW THE SUN, will be available via Century Media Records on Oct 18th. The powerful and very heavy new track of transformation and rebirth – “What I Have Become” – will take you through personal hell and back.

The new record is produced and mixed by Dan Lancaster (Bring Me the Horizon, Muse, Enter Shikari, etc.), mastered by Tony Lindgren (Fascination Street Studios), and recorded by Juho Räihä at SoundSpiral Audio, except vocals recorded by Dan Lancaster.

Juha Raivio comments on the new song:

“´What I Have Become` is about that moment when you look yourself deep in the eye from the mirror and your own eyes start to tell what your soul has become instead of what you always wanted it to be. The hardest thing is to forgive yourself and break that circle”.

About ‘Shining’ Juha Raivio adds:

“After our last album, it soon became clear to me that writing another Moonflowers album would kill me. So, I made a quiet wish to myself that if there ever will be any new music then please have a little bit of mercy on yourself rather than be that infinite black hole that will suck out the rest of your remaining light and soul just for the sake of it. Musically this album shines like a glacier diamond and has that power and punch that feels like a kick in your face! While lyrically the album deals with how fearing life will eventually kill you and how melancholy can become your God.

“We want to thank all the support and trust from Century Media, not to mention our insanely talented producer Dan Lancaster having the balls and guts to jump straight in the deep end with this band and get us out of our comfort zone. This album truly feels like a sunrise in the night sky”.

‘Shining’ Track List:
1. Innocence Was Long Forgotten
2. What I Have Become
3. MelancHoly
4. Under The Moon & Sun
5. Kold
6. November Dust
7. Velvet Chains
8. Tonight Pain Believes
9. Charcoal Sky
10. Shining

Moreover, SWALLOW THE SUN will host a very unique and exclusive event at the beautiful Aleksanterin Teatteri in Helsinki on October 16th, 2024. Their upcoming studio album ‘Shining’ will be listened to in its entirety, before its official release on October 18th. Please note the band will not perform at the event.

Anyone who wishes to attend the event can register and get their tickets via Levykauppa Äx from now until Oct 4th. To order and register, visit HERE: https://swallowthesun.lnk.to/Shining

At the exclusive pre-listening session, fans will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in SWALLOW THE SUN’s latest work with the best possible sound in one of the most beautiful places in northern Europe, the Aleksanterin Teatteri.

Mikko Kotamäki shares about the pre-listening session:

“Very excited to go back to the very special theater, but this time enjoying the music as a listener! Also cool to meet everyone and talk about the ‘Shining’ process and how it was working with such people as Dan! See you in Helsinki!”

SWALLOW THE SUN are:
Juha Raivio – Guitar, Keys
Juho Räihä – Guitar
Mikko Kotamäki – Vocals
Matti Honkonen – Bass
Juuso Raatikainen – Drums

https://www.facebook.com/swallowthesun
https://www.instagram.com/swallowthesunofficial/
http://www.swallowthesun.net/

https://www.facebook.com/centurymedia
https://www.instagram.com/centurymediarecords/
http://www.centurymedia.com/

Swallow the Sun, “What I Have Become” visualizer

Swallow the Sun, “Innocence Was Long Forgotten” official video

Based in Denver — also perhaps the Oort Cloud — the progressive/death metal unit Blood Incantation will issue their new two-track full-length, Absolute Elsewhere, in October through Century Media. The offering follows on from 2022’s synth-led Timewave Zero EP, performed in full by the band at this year’s Roadburn Festival (review here), which was a highlight both for the ultra-dug-in krautrock worship and the laser lightshow that accompanied. At least going by the descriptions below, Absolute Elsewhere — with all the hi-we-like-obscure-prog signaling and pulp sci-fi vibes — would seem to follow suit.

No complaints there. I dig their death metal side and have been lucky enough to see them crush bones thusly as well, but they’re a better band for the scope they bring to their dark-energy-expanded explorations. There’s two tracks on the new record and I haven’t heard any of it yet, but the video for “Luminescent Bridge” that they put out in April should be fair enough induction, and if not, there’s an app called ‘Elsewhere Searcher’ that I haven’t checked out yet but likely has some snippet or other to show off. Also note Nicklas Malmqvist of Hällas sitting in and guest appearances from Thorsten Quaeschning (Tangerine Dream) and Malte Gericke (Sijjin) as the band continue to reach into the beyond to discover new places their music can go.

Oct. 4 is the release date. Surely touring will happen. Keep an eye out. Here’s this from the PR wire:

BLOOD INCANTATION Announce New Album Absolute Elsewhere Coming October 4 via Century Media

Launch Elsewhere Searcher App: https://stargateresearchsociety.app/

Stargate Research Society Discord: https://discord.com/invite/XnPTFmAHzV

The new Blood Incantation album, Absolute Elsewhere, is unlike anything you’ve ever heard before. Yes, that’s an audacious, possibly hyperbolic claim, but few can claim a sonic watershed as readily as this Denver, Colorado quartet. Hovering at nearly 45 minutes, their longest full length recording yet, the album’s two sprawling movements – “The Stargate” and “The Message” – are as confounding as they are engaging, exponentially expanding upon the formulas laid down by their scene-shattering debut Starspawn (2016) and landmark followup Hidden History of the Human Race (2019).

As Blood Incantation’s Paul Riedl tells, “‘Absolute Elsewhere’ is our most potent audial extract/musical trip yet; like the soundtrack to a Herzog-style Sci-Fi epic about the history of/battle for human consciousness itself, via a 70s Prog album played by a 90s Death Metal band from the future.” For inspiration, the group looked to the mid-70’s progressive rock collective, Absolute Elsewhere (best known as a celestial stopover for King Crimson drummer, Bill Bruford) as the album’s namesake. For the uninitiated, Absolute Elsewhere’s obscure 1976 album, In Search of Ancient Gods, was constructed as a musical accompaniment to the works of Chariots of the Gods author, Erich Von Daniken, and his theories of non-terrestrial humanoid prompts towards mankind’s evolution. The subject matter of which should serve as no surprise to anyone familiar with Blood Incantation’s cosmically philosophical leanings. But make no mistake, the four musicians working under the Blood Incantation banner for the past decade – guitarist and vocalist Paul Riedl, drummer Isaac Faulk, guitarist Morris Kolontyrsky and bassist Jeff Barrett – have successfully left the microgravity of genre behind and are re-writing the Rosetta Stone of extreme music with a new language entirely. Demonstrations like their 2022 all-synth show or 2024’s Roadburn Festival headlining appearance where they played back-to-back death metal and ambient made it clear: Blood Incantation have honed their abilities to go boldly where few bands have gone before, and reveal no signs of slowing down.

For Absolute Elsewhere, the band’s first full-length since their cinematic Timewave Zero EP (2022) and epic Luminescent Bridge maxi-single (2023), Blood Incantation decamped to the celebrated Hansa Tonstudios in Berlin, Germany in July 2023 to record with wünderkid producer Arthur Rizk (Power Trip, Spectral Voice, Kreator, Wayfarer, Sumerlands, etc). This legendary, pre-Weimar-built recording complex was where many of their most progressive influences including Tangerine Dream, Eloy and Brian Eno created classic albums in the 1970s. Unmistakably, Hansa and Berlin became part of the underlying character of the album, culminating in Tangerine Dream’s own Thorsten Quaeschning contributing lead synths, Mellotron and programming to “The Stargate [Tablet II]”. Other special guests include Nicklas Malmqvist, from Sweden’s star-riding Hällas, on lead synths/keys, piano and Mellotron throughout all tracks, and Malte Gericke, the Sijjin/ex-Necros Christos mainman contributing guest vocals in his native tongue. Underscoring the classic Progressive Rock vibe, the album is adorned with contemporary visionary paintings by the iconic and reclusive 70s Sci-Fi artist Steve R. Dodd. Together, this international all-star team adds to the unearthly atmospherics of Absolute Elsewhere, which defines a new musical epoch for Blood Incantation.

Today they have launched their Stargate Research Society discord and Elsewhere Searcher app – a home for discussions of all things Blood Incantation. Researchers at the society recently unearthed an 80’s era floppy disk containing vintage celestial tracker software. The researchers were able to re-activate the space tracker and through meticulous study of the visible solar system have noticed the appearance of a new red planet in the vicinity of Orion’s Belt. The researchers also claim that the new planet is intermittently emitting signals, although no recordings of these transmissions have been captured yet. The society has made their research available to the public in an effort to warn citizens of the planet’s rapid approach toward Earth, with a possible collision occurring in October 2024. The tracker is open for public use at www.stargateresearchsociety.app.

Absolute Elsewhere Tracklist:
1. The Stargate (20:20)
2. The Message (23:23)

Blood Incantation Lineup:
Paul Riedl – Guitars, Vocals
Isaac Faulk – Drums
Morris Kolontyrsky – Guitars
Jeff Barrett – Fretless Bass

https://www.facebook.com/BloodIncantationOfficial
https://www.instagram.com/bloodincantationofficial
https://bloodincantation.bigcartel.com/
https://www.bloodincantation.org/

https://www.facebook.com/centurymedia
https://www.instagram.com/centurymediarecords/
http://www.centurymedia.com/

Blood Incantation, “Luminescent Bridge” official video

Blood Incantation, “Obliquity of the Ecliptic” official video

At the risk of being Dude On The Internet With Opinions™, I’ll profess to having strong feelings about Strapping Young Lad‘s 2005 opus, Alien. Specifically, about the version of the song “Love?” that appears on the final record.

Sometime between when Century Media sent out the sleeve-promo CDs for review and when the album was actually released, both now 19 years ago, there was an edit made to “Love?” that took out just over a minute of runtime. What’s actually missing — and yes, it is very much missing — is a section of muted chugs, a turn back to a tremolo riff and an “Awww shit/Fuck it.” The playlist above has both versions — the longer one is tacked onto the end, along with the concurrent Melvins cover “Zodiac.”

And I acknowledge that if you’ve never heard the record before, or maybe didn’t hear the original version of “Love?” as part of the original 11-song/55-minute tracklisting coming out of “Shitstorm” and going into “Shine,” then maybe it wouldn’t be such a big deal, but I’ll tell you honestly, I took the CD from the jewel case I eventually got and put it in the sleeve, and took the one from the promo and put that in the jewel case. That’s the album in my mind. The other “Love?” sounds butchered to my ears.

Having that association, and “Love?” as part of what I’ll put forward as one of metal’s most righteous opening salvos regardless of microgenre — the intro “Imperial” and “Skeksis” and “Shitstorm” merrily blasting away and running through a litany of power-declarations and complaints; to wit, the lyrics of “Shitstorm”: “And I don’t want to fight because I don’t know what’s WRONG or RIGHT/But I’ll do ANYTHING just to get some FUCKING sleep tonight/And I can’t even EAT/And I can’t even FUCKING PISS/All I’ve been doing is thinking about GOD and DEATH/Infinity” in founding guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist/producer/principle-songwriter Devin Townsend‘s trademark conversational-with-self style — all drawing up to the exhaled single word question, “love?” and the immediate snapback answer, “Children!”

And that’s where you find out what the purported shitstorm is really about. Having a baby. Underscoring all that initial tumult as Townsend, guitarist/backing vocalist Jed Simon, bassist Byron Stroud and megadrummer Gene Hoglan tore away at the fabric of the universe while dropping references to Jim Henson’s legit-terrifying-to-a-five-year-old 1986 film The Dark Crystal was insecurity about procreating, thinking about love and the power dynamics of relationships (“This love, it’s about control”), the direction of one’s life in the face of one of the most major changes one can make to it. Dude was scared having a kid would wreck is life.

Townsend‘s correspondingly brilliant solo follow-up, 2006’s Synchestra (discussed here), worked under a similar thematic and tied to Alien in its lyrics and music. The two are very much complements, but Strapping Young Lad were unto themselves in catharsis, and that’s audible in “Love?” (either version, admittedly) and the from-void screams of “Shine,” which follows and the gallop-thrash charge of “We Ride” trying to see the upside of life outside the band from within its cycles while a little bit making fun of Pantera in the solos, the way the wretched-but-funny shout at the start of “Possessions” becomes the opening line that unfolds seconds later into chugging impact and a build of tension as Townsend grapples lyrically, “Children and money and family and DEATH and TAXES and CAREER and PICKET FENCES…JUST GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!/TAKE IT!!!/FUCK IT ALL!!!”

“Possessions” makes it even clearer early on, “”…And being HUMAN is FUCKED as it is./With all these questions of FAITH, and of…KIDS!!!/So what do you wanna do now baby???/Do you wanna have a fucking BABY?!” The answer that comes in the song is an immediate and emphatic negative. As I understand it, this is a traditionally masculine point of view — reproduction as subtracting from (your life) rather than adding to (your family) — but stereotyping it undercuts the honesty of expression throughout Alien, raw language used to convey raw feelings. Backed by a choir for its push-pull, ugh-pop hook, “Possessions” prefaces some of the more accessible turns SYL would make on their cobbled-together 2006 final LP, The New Black, but is a highlight in context as Alien plunges deeper into its second half, giving over to the acoustic-led Floydian escapism of “Two Weeks.”

Remember vacation? “What do you wanna do now, baby?/Should we take the day, maybe go to the beach?” The opening lines set the scene: easy breezy, no need to be anywhere and thus able to be everywhere. Compare it to “So what do you wanna do now, baby?” from the song before, and it’s clear there’s a different kind of life being represented here, at least in ideal. Freedom of movement and a claim to one’s own time. “Two Weeks” drifts and drones in preface to what the closing 12-minute experimentalist sample/synth excursion “Info Dump” will bring, but before the band gets there, “Thalamus” begins the culmination by returning — gradually, considering how prone the band was to plunge headfirst at this point — to the onslaught with its verse and more melodic chorus, releasing some if not all of the jaw-clench before moving into an almost operatic but still definitely metal procession and “Zen” finding its peace, such as it is, in Hoglan‘s endless double-kick and resolve, the line “Connect now and emerge” calling back to “We Ride” before it all comes to a head and gives over to “Info Dump” at the finish.

Toward the end of that extended drone piece, a machine static takes hold and is willfully abrasive — I guess after so much blowout, that’s what a blowout might sound like. I’ll admit I don’t always listen to “Info Dump” in its totality, but it’s usually a couple minutes before I realize I’m in it because Alien front-to-back leaves you so mesmerized and/or punchdrunk. As regards heavy metal, it’s one of the best records I’ve ever heard, and even before I had a kid, its tales of terror were vividly relatable. The better part of two decades later, they remain such.

I won’t attempt to summarize the varied directions of Devin Townsend‘s career since. You’re on the internet. You can look it up. But for me, while Strapping Young Lad‘s early-career industrial-metal-let’s-do-Fear–Factory-but-less-robots-and-more-personality take holds a special place, Alien is a pinnacle among several in Townsend‘s catalog. For something more recent, less aggro and perhaps working from a similarly over-the-top point of view, hit up his 2019 Empath album, though genius abounds in the discography, the label-needs-a-single “Love?” edit notwithstanding.

Either way, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

Next week is Freak Valley Festival. Flight is booked for Wednesday, but I don’t know that I’m actually going to make it. My mother was scheduled to have knee surgery this week, had to postpone, now it’s slated for — you guessed it — this coming Wednesday. The Patient Mrs.’ take was, “You seem like you could use some time standing in a field with people you like.” She is correct, but what’s a boy to do.

That trip hangs pretty much in the balance of timing. If her surgery is early in the day, I can be there to support her and my sister and then go to the airport and embark on a few days that I very much consider as supporting myself. If it’s afternoon, which it was gonna be this week, less. But my mother is in her late 70s and getting her knee replaced has been years in the making and she’s finally willing to do it because basically she can’t walk anymore, so if it’s happening, I don’t have much choice. Certainly I’ve been that selfish in the past — what’s the point of being the youngest kid if you can’t? — but this is my mother, and she is both my only remaining parent and the only one I ever connected with on any human level.

It is… complicated.

Or maybe just sad.

This is a long weekend. The Pecan is off from school today (it’s coming on 7AM, she should be up momentarily), Monday and Tuesday for an extended Memorial Day giveback of snow days worked into the calendar apparently without need because it doesn’t snow here anymore. Definitely used to. The Patient Mrs. wants to go north to her mother’s place on the beach in Connecticut — The Cottage, we call it — and either tomorrow or Sunday she’ll take the kid and head up.

At her suggestion, I’ll stay home for another day, do as much of Monday and Tuesday’s writing as I can stand, and then likely spend the rest of that day in a stoned stupor playing the already-at-100-perecent-complete Tears of the Kingdom, slaughtering Lynels and picking mushrooms in pursuit of restorative boredom, loin-girding for following them north on Sunday or Monday, staying there I guess until Tuesday so we can all come home and be tired going into the shortened school week and the arrival of June with all of its what’s-that-black-dot-on-the-ceiling little jumpy spiders and emergent Northeastern humidity.

The dog needs a bath. The kid needs one more. I could use one myself. We’ve been extra-extra-broke this just-ended semester, and today’s payday, so Costco’s in the offing and maybe Job Lot if we can keep it together long enough to hit two stores. Big if.

As implied above, I’ve got stuff slated for Monday and Tuesday despite the long weekend here. There’s news to catch up on from being in the Quarterly Review, and premieres and all that throughout the week, regardless of my travel situation. Fuck I hope I get to go to that festival, but — and I know this won’t surprise you if you’ve ever spent more than five minutes on this site — I’m not optimistic about my chances.

Whatever you’re up to (or not), I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Watch your head, be safe, all that stuff. And thank you for reading, as always.

FRM.

The Obelisk Forum

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The Obelisk merch

Here we go again as we get closer to 100 records covered in this expanded Fall 2022 Quarterly Review. It’s been a pretty interesting ride so far, and as I’ve dug in I know for sure I’ve added a few names (and titles) to my year-end lists for albums, debuts, and so on. Today keeps the thread going with a good spread of styles and some very, very heavy stuff. If you haven’t found anything in the bunch yet — first I’d tell you to go back and check again, because, really? nothing in 60 records? — but after that, hey, maybe today’s your day.

Here’s hoping.

Quarterly Review #61-70:

Spirit Adrift, 20 Centuries Gone

The second short release in two years from trad metal forerunners Spirit Adrift, 20 Centuries Gone pairs two new originals in “Sorcerer’s Fate” and “Mass Formation Psychosis” — songs for our times written as fantasy narrative — with six covers, of Type O Negative‘s “Everything Dies,” Pantera‘s “Hollow,” Metallica‘s “Escape,” Thin Lizzy‘s “Waiting for an Alibi,” ZZ Top‘s “Nasty Dogs and Funky Kings” and Lynyrd Skynyrd‘s “Poison Whiskey.” The covers find them demonstrating a bit of malleability — founding guitarist/vocalist does well with Phil Lynott‘s and Peter Steele‘s inflections while still sounding like himself — and it’s always a novelty to hear a band purposefully showcase their influences like this, but “Sorcerer’s Fate” and “Mass Formation Psychosis” are the real draw. The former nods atop a Candlemassian chug and sweeping chorus before spending much of its second half instrumental, and “Mass Formation Psychosis” resolves in burly riffing, but only after a poised rollout of classic doom, slower, sleeker in its groove, with acoustic strum layered in amid the distortion and keyboard. Two quick reaffirmations of the band’s metallic flourishing and, indeed, a greater movement happening partially in their wake. And then the covers, which are admirably more than filler in terms of arrangement. Something of a holdover, maybe, but by no means lacking substance.

Spirit Adrift on Facebook

Century Media store

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Northless, A Path Beyond Grief

Just because it’s so bludgeoning doesn’t necessarily mean that’s all it is. The melodic stretch of “Forbidden World of Light” and delve into progressive black metal after the nakedly Crowbarian sludge of “A Path Beyond Grief,” the clean vocal-topped atmospheric heft of “What Must Be Done” and the choral feel of centerpiece “Carried,” even the way “Of Shadow and Sanguine” seems to purposefully thrash (also some more black metal there) amid its bouts of deathcore and sludge lumbering — all of these come together to make Northless‘ fourth long-player, A Path Beyond Grief, an experience that’s still perhaps defined by its intensity and concrete tonality, its aggression, but that is not necessarily beholden to those. Even the quiet intro “Nihil Sanctum Vitae” — a seeming complement to the nine-minute bring-it-all-together closer “Nothing That Lives Will Last” — seems intended to tell the listener there’s more happening here than it might at first seem. As someone who still misses Swarm of the Lotus, some of the culmination in that finale is enough to move the blood in my wretched body, but while born in part of hardcore, Northless are deep into their own style throughout these seven songs, and the resultant smashy smashy is able to adjust its own elemental balance while remaining ferociously executed. Except, you know, when it’s not. Because it’s not just one thing.

Northless on Facebook

Translation Loss Records store

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Lightrain, AER

Comprised of five songs running a tidy 20 minutes, each brought together through ambience as well as the fact that their titles are all three letters long — “Aer,” “Hyd,” “Orb,” “Wiz,” “Rue” — AER is the debut EP from German instrumentalists Lightrain, who would seek entry into the contemplative and evocative sphere of acts like Toundra or We Lost the Sea as they offer headed-out post-rock float and heavy psychedelic vibe. “Hyd” is a focal point, both for its eight-minute runtime (nothing else is half that long) and the general spaciousness, plus a bit of riffy shove in the middle, with which it fills that, but the ultra-mellow “Aer” and drumless wash of “Wiz” feed into an overarching flow that speaks to greater intentions on the part of the band vis a vis a first album. “Rue” is progressive without being overthought, and “Orb” feels born of a jam without necessarily being that jam, finding sure footing on ground that for many would be uncertain. If this is the beginning point of a longer-term evolution on the part of the band, so much the better, but even taken as a standalone, without consideration for the potential of what it might lead to, the LP-style fluidity that takes hold across AER puts the lie to its 20 minutes being somehow minor.

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Lightrain on Bandcamp

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1965, Panther

Cleanly produced and leaning toward sleaze at times in a way that feels purposefully drawn from ’80s glam metal, the second offering from Poland’s 1965 — they might as well have called themselves 1542 for as much as they have to do sound-wise with what was going on that year — is the 12-song/52-minute Panther, which wants your nuclear love on “Nuclear Love,” wants to rock on “Let’s Rock,” and would be more than happy to do whatever it wants on “Anything We Want.” Okay, so maybe guitarist, vocalist and principal songwriter Michał Rogalski isn’t going to take home gold at the Subtlety Olympics, but the Warsaw-based outfit — him plus Marco Caponi on bass/backing vocals and Tomasz Rudnicki on drums/backing vocals, as well as an array of lead guitarists guesting — know the rock they want to make, and they make it. Songs are tight and well performed, heavy enough in tone to have a presence but fleet-footed in their turns from verse to chorus and the many trad-metal-derived leads. Given the lyrics of the title-track, I’m not sure positioning oneself as an actual predatory creature as a metaphor for seduction has been fully thought through, but you don’t see me out here writing lyrics in Polish either, so take it with that grain of salt if you feel the need or it helps. For my money I’ll take the still-over-the-top “So Many Times” and the sharp start-stops of “All My Heroes Are Dead,” but there’s certainly no lack of others to choose from.

1965 on Facebook

1965 on Bandcamp

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Blacklab, In a Bizarre Dream

Blacklab — also stylized BlackLab — are the Osaka, Japan-based duo of guitarist/vocalist Yuko Morino and drummer Chia Shiraishi, but if you’d enter into their second full-length, In a Bizarre Dream, expecting some rawness or lacking heft on account of their sans-bass configuration, you’re more likely to be bowled over by the sludgy tonality on display. “Cold Rain” — opener and longest track (immediate points) at 6:13 — and “Abyss Woods” are largely screamers, righteously harsh with riffs no less biting, and “Dark Clouds” does the job in half the time with a punkier onslaught leading to “Evil 1,” but “Evil 2” mellows out a bit, adjusts the balance toward clean singing and brooding in a way that the oh-hi-there guest vocal contribution from Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab (after whom Blacklab are partially named) on “Crows, Sparrows and Cats” shifts into a grungier modus. “Lost” and “In a Bizarre Dream,” the latter more of an interlude, keep the momentum going on the rock side, but somehow you just know they’re going to turn it around again, and they absolutely do, easing their way in with the largesse of “Monochrome Rainbow” before “Collapse” caps with a full-on onslaught that brings into full emphasis how much reach they have as a two-piece and just how successfully they make it all heavy.

Blacklab on Facebook

New Heavy Sounds at Cargo Records store

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Sun King Ba, Writhing Mass

I guess the only problem that might arise from recording your first two-songer with Steve Albini is that you’ve set an awfully high standard for, well, every subsequent offering your band ever makes in terms of production. There are traces of Karma to Burn-style chug on “Ectotherm,” the A-side accompanied by “Writhing Mass” on the two-songer that shares the same name, but Chicago imstrumental trio Sun King Ba are digging into more progressively-minded, less-stripped-down fare on both of these initial tracks. Still, impact and the vitality of the end result are loosely reminiscent, but the life on that guitar, bass and drums speaks volumes, and not just in favor of the recording itself. “Writhing Mass” crashes into tempo changes and resolves itself in being both big and loud, and the space in the cymbals alone as it comes to its noisy finish hints at future incursions to be made. Lest we forget that Chicago birthed Pelican and Bongripper, among others, for the benefit of instrumental heavy worldwide. Sun King Ba have a ways to go before they’re added to that list, but there is intention being signaled here for those with ears to hear it.

Sun King Ba on Instagram

Sun King Ba on Bandcamp

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Kenodromia, Kenodromia

Despite the somewhat grim imagery on the cover art for Kenodromia‘s self-titled debut EP — a three-cut outing that marks a return to the band of vocalist Hilde Chruicshank after some stretch of absence during which they were known as Hideout — the Oslo, Norway, four-piece play heavy rock through and through on “Slandered,” “Corrupted” and “Bound,” with the bluesy fuzzer riffs and subtle psych flourishes of Eigil Nicolaisen‘s guitar backing Chruicshank‘s lyrics as bassist Michael Sindhu and drummer Trond Buvik underscore the “break free” moment in “Corrupted,” which feels well within its rights in terms of sociopolitical commentary ahead of the airier start of “Bound” after the relatively straightforward beginning that was “Slandered.” With the songs arranged shortest to longest, “Bound” is also the darkest in terms of atmosphere and features a more open verse, but the nod that defines the second half is huge, welcome and consuming even as it veers into a swaggering kind of guitar solo before coming back to finish. These players have been together one way or another for over 10 years, and knowing that, Kenodromia‘s overarching cohesion makes sense. Hopefully it’s not long before they turn attentions toward a first LP. They’re clearly ready.

Kenodromia on Facebook

Kenodromia on Bandcamp

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Mezzoa, Dunes of Mars

Mezzoa are the San Diego three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Ignacio “El Falcone” Maldonado, bassist Q “Dust Devil” Pena (who according to their bio was created in the ‘Cholo Goth Universe,’ so yes, charm is a factor), and drummer Roy “Bam Bam” Belarmino, and the 13-track/45-minute Dunes of Mars is their second album behind 2017’s Astral Travel. They sound like a band who’ve been around for a bit, and indeed they have, playing in other bands and so on, but they’ve got their approach on lockdown and I don’t mean for the plague. The material here, whether it’s the Helmet-plus-melody riffing of “Tattoos and Halos” or the more languid roll of the seven-minute “Dunes of Mars” earlier on, is crisp and mature without sounding flat or staid creatively, and though they’re likened most to desert rock and one can hear that in the penultimate “Seized Up” a bit, there’s more density in the guitar and bass, and the immediacy of “Hyde” speaks of more urgent influences at work. That said, the nodding chill-and-chug of “Moya” is heavy whatever landscape you want to say birthed it, and with the movement into and out of psychedelic vibes, the land is something you’re just as likely to leave behind anyway. Hit me as a surprise. Don’t be shocked if you end up going back to check out the first record after.

Mezzoa on Facebook

Iron Head Records website

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Stone Nomads, Fields of Doom

Released through emergent Texas-based imprint Gravitoyd Heavy Music, Stone Nomads‘ Fields of Doom comprises six songs, five originals, and is accordingly somewhere between a debut full-length and an EP at half an hour long. The cover is a take on Saint Vitus‘ “Dragon Time,” and it rests well here as the closer behind the prior-released single “Soul Stealer,” as bassist Jude Sisk and guitarist Jon Cosky trade lead vocal duties while Dwayne Crosby furthers the underlying metallic impression on drums, pushing some double-kick gallop under the solo of “Fiery Sabbath” early on after the leadoff title-track lumbers and chugs and bell-tolls to its ending, heavy enough for heavy heads, aggro enough to suit your sneer, with maybe a bit of Type O Negative influence in the vocal. Huffing oldschool gasoline, Fields of Doom might prove too burled-out for some listeners, but the interlude “Winds of Barren Lands” and the vocal swaps mean that you’re never quite sure where they’re going to hit you next, even if you know the hit is coming, and even as “Soul Stealer” goes grandiose before giving way to the already-noted Vitus cover. And if you’re wondering, they nail the noise of the solo in that song, leaving no doubt that they know what they’re doing, with their own material or otherwise.

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Gravitoyd Heavy Music on Bandcamp

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Blind Mess, After the Storm

Drawing from various corners of punk, noise rock and heavy rock’s accessibility, Munich trio Blind Mess offer their third full-length in After the Storm, which is aptly-enough titled, considering. “Fight Fire with Fire” isn’t a cover, but the closing “What’s the Matter Man?” is, of Rollins Band, no less, and they arrive there after careening though a swath of tunes like “Twilight Zone,” “At the Gates” and “Save a Bullet,” which are as likely to be hardcore-born shove or desert-riffed melody, and in the last of those listed there, a little bit of both. To make matters more complicated, “Killing My Idols” leans into classic metal in its underlying riff as the vocals bark and its swing is heavy ’70s through and through. This aesthetic amalgam holds together in the toughguy march of “Sirens” as much as the garage-QOTSA rush of “Left to Do” and the dares-to-thrash finish of “Fight Fire with Fire” since the songs themselves are well composed and at 38 minutes they’re in no danger of overstaying their welcome. And when they get there, “What’s the Matter Man?” makes a friendly-ish-but-still-confrontational complemement to “Left to Do” back at the outset, as though to remind us that wherever they’ve gone over the course of the album between, it’s all been about rock and roll the whole time. So be it.

Blind Mess on Facebook

Deadclockwork Records website

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