Good first day yesterday. Good second day today. I’ve been doing Quarterly Reviews for over a decade now, and I’ve kind of learned over time the kind of thing I should be writing about. It might be a record that has a ton of hype or one that has none, and it might be any number of styles — I also like to sneak some stuff in here that doesn’t ‘fit’ once in a while — but in my mind the standard is, “is this something I’ll want to have heard and/or written about later?”

For all the terrors of our age, the glut of good music coming out means there’s more than ever I want to write about, and in a weird way, I look forward to Quarterly Reviews as a way for me to dig in and get caught up a bit. I’ve already been blindsided this QR and it’s the second day. I call that a win.

Quarterly Review #11-20:

Kal-El, Astral Voyager Vol. 1

There are few acts the world over who so succintly summarize so much of the appeal of modern heavy rock. Norway’s Kal-El offer big riffs, big hooks, big melodies, songwriting, and still manage heavy-mellow vibes thanks to an ongoing cosmic thematic that brings desert rock methods to more ethereal places. Is “Cloud Walker” the best song they’ve yet written? It’s on the list for sure, but don’t discount nine-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “Astral Voyager” or the hey-that’s-a-Star-Trek-reference “Dilithium” with its dug-in low-distortion verses and the Captain‘s vocal outreach. All along, it’s never quite felt like Kal-El were reshaping heavy, but as time passes and they unveil Astral Voyager Vol. 1 with immediate promise of a follow-up, it’s curious how much Kal-El and notions of ‘peak genre’ align. Those of you who proselytize for riffs: even before you get to riding that groove in “Cosmic Sailor,” Kal-El are primed for ambassadorship.

Kal-El website

Majestic Mountain Records store

Blues Funeral Recordings website

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Bronco, Bronco

North Carolinian sludgethrowers Bronco take their name from their bassist/vocalist, who also goes by Bronco, and who in the 2010s cut a tone-worshiping generational swath through the Southern wing of the style as a member of Toke, proffering heavy riffs, harsh-throat vocals, and a disaffection that can only be called classic. With eight songs rolling out over 45 minutes, Bronco‘s Bronco picks up the thread where Toke left off with pieces like “Ride Eternal,” which crawls, or the declarative riffing of “Legion” (eerie guest vocals included amid all the pummel), or the closer “TONS,” which I’m going to assume isn’t titled after the Italian sludge-band, though if those guys wanted to put out a song called “Bronco” on their next record, they’d be well within their rights. A remarkably cohesive debut for something that’s so loudly telling you to fuck yourself. These guys’ll be opening for High on Fire in no time.

Bronco on Bandcamp

Magnetic Eye Records store

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Ocultum, Buena Muerte

Although one wouldn’t listen to Santiago, Chile’s Ocultum and be likely to have “refined” top the list of impressions given by the raw, rot-coated sludge of their third album and Heavy Psych Sounds debut, Buena Muerte, the grim-leaning atmosphere, charge later in the title-track, cultish presentation and the atmosphere emergent both from guitar-wail and yelling interlude “Fortunato’s Fortune” and from the material that surrounds, whether that’s the title-track or the just-under-12-minute “Last Weed on Earth.” The record finds the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Sebastián Bruna, bassist Pablo Cataldo and drummer Ricardo Robles dug in, stoned and malevolent. They’re not as over-the-top as many in cult rock, but one does get a sense of ceremony from “Last Weed on Earth” and subsequent capper “Emki’s Return” — the latter galloping in its first half and willfully devolved from there into avant noise — even if that’s more about the making of the songs than the performance of genre tropes.

Ocultum on Bandcamp

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Fidel A Go Go, Diss Engaged

The grunge crunch of “Running With Secrets” and the Cantrell-y acoustics of “Push” are barely the beginning of the story as regards Fidel A Go Go‘s meld of sounds, which ranges from the willfully desert rocking “Sandstorm” to the proggy “Lil Shit,” the transposed blues of “Rainy Days” and the penultimate “Psychedelicexistentialcrisisalidocious,” which is serene in its melody and troubling in the words, as one would hope, and while the moniker and the punny album title speak to shenanigans, the Brisbane four-piece offer a point of view both instrumentally and lyrically that is engaging and draws together the stylistic range. There’s little doubt left to whom “A Stench of Musk” and “Barely an Adversary” are about, but even that’s not the extent of the perspective resonant in these 11 songs. There’s enough fuzz here for desert heads, but Fidel A Go Go are broader in attitude and craft, and Diss Engaged makes a point of its artistic freedom.

Fidel A Go Go website

Fidel A Go Go on Bandcamp

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Tumble, Lost in Light

Like their 2023 debut EP, Lady Cadaver, Tumble‘s second short offering, Lost in Light sees the trio of guitarist/vocalist Liam Deak, bassist Tarun Dawar and drummer Will Adams working with producer/engineer Ian Blurton (Ian Blurton’s Future Now, etc.) to hone and sharpen a classic, proto-metallic sound without seeing a dip in recording quality. As such, the five songs/20 minutes of Lost in Light are duly brash — looking at you, “Dead by Rumour” and the Radio Moscow-esque “The Less I Know” — but crisp in tone and execution. The mid-tempo “Sullen Slaves” picks up in its solo section later for a bit of boogie, and the slightly-slower metallic lurch of “Laid by Fear” sets up a contrast with the swinging closer “Wings of Gold” that makes the ending of the EP an absolute strut. They aren’t even asking a half-hour of your time, and the rewards are more than commensurate for getting down. They continue to be one to watch as they position themselves for a full-length debut in the next couple years.

Tumble’s Linktr.ee

Stickman Records website

Echodelick Records on Bandcamp

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Putan Club, Filles d’Octobre

Normally I might consider it a hindrance to have no clue what’s going on, but if you’ve never before encountered Italy/France semi-industrial duo Putan Club you might just find yourself in better position going into Filles d’Octobre as the avant garde radfem troupe unfurl a live set recorded at Portugal’s Amplifest, presumably in 2022. But if you don’t know it’s a live record, what’s coming musically, or that Filles d’Octobre is derived from their 2017 debut album, Filles de Mai, there’s a decent change your contextless self will be scrathing your head in wonder of just what’s going on with the bouncy lurch and maybe xylophone of “Filippino,” and that seems to suit Putan Club just fine. If you have to break something to remake it, Putan Club are set to the task of manifesting a rock and roll that is dangerous, new, unrepentantly socially critical, and ready to dance when you are. That they meet these significant ambitions head on shouldn’t be discounted. Not for everybody, but definitely for everybody who thinks they’ve heard it all.

Putan Club website

Toten Schwan Records on Bandcamp

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IAH, En Vivo en Cabezas de Tormenta

The first live offering from Argentinian prog-heavy instrumentalists IAH follows behind the band’s most expansive studio LP to-date, 2023’s V (review here), and brings into emphasis the group’s dynamic. It’s not just about being able to make a part sound floaty or to make the part next to it crush, but the character of a piece like the 24-minute “Noboj pri Uaset” (which might be new) is as much about the journey undertaken in their builds and the smoothness of the shifts between parts. They dip back to their earlier going for “Sheut” at the start of the set and “Ourboros” and “Eclipsum” the latter of which closes, and the bass in “Sentado en el Borde de una Pregunta” is worth the price of admission alone, never mind as a complement to the extended progression of “Noboj pri Uaset,” which is something of the buried lede here. So be it. On stage or on record, IAH offer immersion unto themselves. A little more tonal edge as a result of the live recording doesn’t hurt that one bit.

IAH website

IAH on Bandcamp

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Gin Lady, Before the Dawn of Time

Before the Dawn of Time is upwards of the seventh full-length from Swedish vintage-style heavy rockers Gin Lady, and in addition to seeing them make the jump from Kozmik Artifactz to Ripple Music, the sans-pretense 11-songer invents its own moment. It’s like the comedown era (from 1968-1974, roughly) happened, but happened differently. It’s another path to a heavy rock future. There’s ’70s vibes in “Tingens Sanna Natur” a-plenty, and if it’s boogie or push or hooky melodic wash you want, “Mulberry Bend” has you covered for that and then some, never mind the down-home strum of “Bliss on the Line” or the pastoral contemplation of “The Long Now,” as Gin Lady put a classy stamp of their own on classic aural ideologies, as what are no doubt hyperspecific keyboards make the production smooth and let “Ways to Cross the Sky” commune with Morricone while capper “You’re a Big Star” drops a melody that can really only be called “arena ready.” As it stands, it’ll probably go over killer at festivals across Europe.

Gin Lady on Bandcamp

Ripple Music website

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Adrift, Dry Soil

Duly apocalyptic for being the band’s first full-length release since 2019, Adrift‘s fourth album, Dry Soil, elicits an overarching doom that makes its tonal claustrophobia all the more affecting. The long-running Madrid outfit offer six songs that veer between the contemplative and the caustic as throatrippers worthy of Enslaved add an element of the extreme to the post-metallic intensity of “Edge” and “Restart” in the record’s middle. There are heavy rock underpinnings — that is, somebody here still likes Sabbath — but Adrift are well at home in all the bludgeonry, and “Bonfire” finishes by tying black metal, sludge, noise and darkly thrashing metal together with a suitably severe ambience. Are they torching it at the end? Kind of, but just replace “it” with “everything” and you’ll have a better idea perhaps of where they’re coming from on the whole. But for regionalist discrimination, Adrift would’ve conquered Europe a long time ago.

Adrift on Facebook

Adrift on Bandcamp

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Black Sadhu, Ashes of Aether

Berlin trio Black Sadhu — guitarist/vocalist Max Lowry (also synth, effects), bassist Alex Glimm and drummer Martin Cederlund — employ atmosphere to a point of cinematics on their second full-length, Ashes of Aether, following up the post-doom wash of 2021 standalone single “Mindless Masses” with plays back and forth between full-heft nod and take-a-breather meanderings. This cuts momentum less than one might think as the keyboard and drone and sample of “Tumors of Light” lend experimentalist verve to “Descent,” the next of the nine-track outing’s more-complete-song songs, as the latter unfolds with a shine on the crash that continues to cut through the surrounding rumble as the procession unfurls. Patience, then. So long as you know the payoff is coming — and it is; looking at you, “Electric Death” — and don’t mind being stretched and contorted on a molecular level between here and there, you should be good to go.

Black Sadhu on Bandcamp

Black Sadhu on Instagram

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Recorded and released in DIY fashion by Néstor Ayala Cortés in Santiago, Chile, …And We Leave the Planet? is the third full-length from the solo-project Some Pills for Ayala, which began some time after Cortés‘ prior outfit, At Devil Dirt, faded out. The guitarist/vocalist/bassist/maker-of-drum-sounds-likely-programmed works in territory that will be familiar enough to those who took on At Devil Dirt‘s melodic wall o’ fuzz when the getting was good, but Some Pills for Ayala is able to dig into some noisier vibes like the Helmet-meets-“Symphony of Destruction” chug in “Counting Clouds” after the declarative opener “You Are Dead,” the earliest-QOTSA bassy turn “I Am Right” takes and fleshes out with organ, or the subsequent “The Pilot Knows… And We Leave the Planet?,” with its languid version of space rock push in the drumming and characteristic depth of tone. Cortés has been exploring various modes of heavycraft for at least the last 15 years. He is no stranger to doing this kind of work, and he does it on his own terms without compromises or outside input. Further, and specifically as regards …And We Leave the Planet?, he notes in the release info, “By the way, the whole album was made by a human being, there is no fucking AI in this work.”

Fair enough. Since he brought it up, I’ll note that the cover art indeed looks like it was made with AI — it’s credited to Pedro Ayala — but I’ve been wrong before, so don’t quote me. In any case, it would be hard to accuse …And We Leave the Planet? of lacking humanity. Whether it’s the hooky self-harmonies of “I Am Right” or a more expansive roll like that which “No Third Eye” conjures in its layered-vocal midsection, a cosmic stoner blowout like “Be Away” or something more desert grunge in “This is Where We Stand,” speaking to a live-band energy without, obviously, being that thing and hitting harder than some of what features elsewhere. As the penultimate consideration, “Be Away” is outright molten in its procession, sounding like the amps were melting as they were being recorded. And yes, the production is somewhat raw.

That’s been the case for Cortés‘ work since At Devil Dirt, and three albums deep into Some Pills for Ayala‘s evolution, it feels like both an aesthetic decision and a practical reality of self-recording. The good news is that the balance between clarity and fullness of sound with an organic, live feel is an asset working in …And We Leave the Planet?‘s favor. Druggy enough to suit the name of the project in some of the post-Alice in Chains vocal drawl, Some Pills for Ayala is able to come across as all the more dug in for the compact affect throughout. It feels like being squeezed through a tube, so it must be compression.

Set next to 2023’s Sleep Walkers (review here), it’s not really until the closer “Last Chance” that Cortés really mellows out in the spirit of that record’s title-track, say, but the second LP had plenty of elbows to throw around during its course and the third LP functions much the same in its intent. Corresponding to this is the growth in songwriting that allows Some Pills for Ayala to simultaneously evoke notions of barebones-DIY-fuzz-punk and headmelt atmospherics, subdued and contemplative in places like the start of “No Third Eye” to offset the bassy pull in “You Are Dead,” or taking the time to establish the guitar line in “The Pilot Knows… And We Leave the Planet?,” or even just to bring such a feeling of spaciousness in the mix so that as the tones shift from all-consuming heft to more entrancing open-reach psychedelia as that same semi-title-track does, and that boils down to the chief distinguishing factor between Some Pills for Ayala and what Cortés had done before.

There’s a clearness of purpose in the creative voice behind this album that gives it a sense of maturity even as it retains the spirit of something more barebones. It’s not garage-doom exactly, and it’s not like it was taped on a phone in a rehearsal space, but for what was likely a process of piecing these songs together painstakingly, one layer at a time over the I-assume-programmed drums, Some Pills for Ayala is able to convey a band-persona despite being wrought by a single creativity.

Maybe an easier way to say that is Cortés is able to employ more than one songwriting modus, and so different songs are chasing after different goals in terms of tempo, mood, or expression more broadly. A solo-project honing a sense of diversity across a collection of eight songs isn’t a huge surprise — it’s kind of what one would hope for, at least in most situations. And …And We Leave the Planet? delivers almost immediately as the big swing of “You Are Dead” with its weirdo spoken break and later thud, and the comparatively upbeat starts and stops of “Counting Clouds” lead the listener into the record’s crux, drawn from decades of influence in heavy rock and able to drift in “No Third Eye” without letting go of the structure beneath.

The arrangements of the vocals are a factor in the resultant feeling of ‘a plan at work’ across the album’s utterly manageable 38-minute span, but Cortés is still exploring as well, and the melodies on keys and voice in “I Am Right,” the thrust of backbeat for “The Pilot Knows… And We Leave the Planet?” and the ethereal turn at the end with “Last Chance” all speak to that aspect of what makes …And We Leave the Planet? feel so vibrant.

The closer brings into emphasis the important role a malleable mix has played throughout, and if the studio is becoming another instrument in Cortés‘ veteran hands, so much the better for how the adventure of Some Pills for Ayala might continue. As it stands with this late-2024 offering, Cortés occupies a place very much his own in style, executing with soul and a lack of pretense songs that range deep in character and tone alike. I know the robots are getting pretty good at stuff, but the humanity of the music was never in question here.

Some Pills for Ayala, …And We Leave the Planet? (2024)

Some Pills for Ayala on Instagram

Some Pills for Ayala on Bandcamp

Admittedly, there’s some ambition in my mind calling this the ‘Spring 2024 Quarterly Review.’ I’m done with winter and March starts on Friday, so yeah, it’s kind of a reach as regards the traditional seasonal patterns of Northern New Jersey where I live, but hell, these things actually get decided here by pissing off a rodent. Maybe it doesn’t need to be so rigidly defined after all.

After doing QRs for I guess about nine years now, I finally made myself a template for the back-end layout. It’s not a huge leap, but will mean about five more minutes I can dedicate to listening, and when you’re trying to touch on 50 records in the span of a work week and attempt some semblance of representing what they’re about, five minutes can help. Still, it’s a new thing, and if you see ‘ARTIST’ listed where a band’s name should be or LINK where ‘So and So on Facebook’ goes, a friendly comment letting me know would be helpful.

Thanks in advance and I hope you find something in all of this to come that speaks to you. I’ll try to come up for air at some point.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

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Slift, Ilion

One of the few non-billionaire groups of people who might be able to say they had a good year in 2020, Toulouse, France, spaceblasters Slift signed to Sub Pop on the strength of that wretched year’s Ummon (review here) and the spectacle-laced live shows with which they present their material. Their ideology is cosmic, their delivery markedly epic, and Ilion pushes the blinding light and the rhythmic force directly at you, creating a sweeping momentum contrasted by ambient stretches like that tucked at the end of 12-minute hypnotic planetmaker “The Words That Have Never Been Heard,” the drone finale “Enter the Loop” or any number of spots between along the record’s repetition-churning, willfully-overblown 79-minute course of builds and surging payoffs. A cynic might tell you it’s not anything Hawkwind didn’t do in 1974 offered with modern effects and beefier tones, but, uh, is that really something to complain about? The hype around Ilion hasn’t been as fervent as was for Ummon — it’s a different moment — but Slift have set themselves on a progressive course and in the years to come, this may indeed become their most influential work. For that alone it’s among 2024’s most essential heavy albums, never mind the actual journey of listening. Bands like this don’t happen every day.

Slift on Facebook

Sub Pop Records website

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Grin, Hush

The only thing keeping Grin from being punk rock is the fact that they don’t play punk. Otherwise, the self-recording, self-releasing (on The Lasting Dose Records) Berlin metal-sludge slingers tick no shortage of boxes as regards ethic, commitment to an uncompromised vision of their sound, and on Hush, their fourth long-player which features tracks from 2023’s Black Nothingness (review here), they sharpen their attack to a point that reminds of dug-in Swedish death metal on “Pyramid” with a winding lead line threaded across, find post-metallic ambience in “Neon Skies,” steamroll with the groove of the penultimate “The Tempest of Time,” and manage to make even the crushing “Midnight Blue Sorrow” — which arrives after the powerful opening statement of “Hush” “Calice” and “Gatekeeper” — have a sense of creative reach. With Sabine Oberg on bass and Jan Oberg handling drums, guitar, vocals, noise and production, they’ve become flexible enough in their craft to harness raw charge or atmospheric sprawl at will, and through 16 songs and 40 minutes (“Portal” is the longest track at 3:45), their intensity is multifaceted, multi-angular, and downright ripping. Aggression suits this project, but that’s never all that’s happening in Grin, and they’re stronger for that.

Grin on Facebook

The Lasting Dose Records on Bandcamp

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Pontiac, Hard Knox

A debut solo-band outing from guitarist, bassist, vocalist and songwriter Dave Cotton, also of Seven Nines and Tens, Pontiac‘s Hard Knox lands on strictly limited tape through Coup Sur Coup Records and is only 16 minutes long, but that’s time enough for its six songs to find connections in harmony to Beach Boys and The Beatles while sometimes dropping to a singular, semi-spoken verse in opener/longest track (immediate points, even though four minutes isn’t that long) “Glory Ragged,” which moves in one direction, stops, reorients, and shifts between genres with pastoralism and purpose. Cotton handles six-string and 12-string, but isn’t alone in Pontiac, as his Seven Nines and Tens bandmate Drew Thomas Christie handles drums, Adam Vee adds guitar, drums, a Coke bottle and a Brita filter, and CJ Wallis contributes piano to the drifty textures of “Road High” before “Exotic Tattoos of the Millennias” answers the pre-christofascism country influence shown on “Counterculture Millionaire” with an oldies swing ramble-rolling to a catchy finish. For fun I’ll dare a wild guess that Cotton‘s dad played that stuff when he was a kid, as it feels learned through osmosis, but I have no confirmation of that. It is its own kind of interpretation of progressive music, and as the beginning of a new exploration, Cotton opens doors to a swath of styles that cross genres in ways few are able to do and remain so coherent. Quick listen, and it dares you to keep up with its changes and patterns, but among its principal accomplishments is to make itself organic in scope, with Cotton cast as the weirdo mastermind in the center. They’ll reportedly play live, so heads up.

Pontiac on Bandcamp

Coup Sur Coup Records on Bandcamp

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The Polvos!, Floating

Already fluid as they open with the rocker “Into the Space,” exclamatory Chilean five-piece The Polvos! delve into more psychedelic reaches in “Fire Dance” and the jammy and (appropriately) floaty midsection of “Going Down,” the centerpiece of their 35-minute sophomore LP, Floating. That song bursts to life a short time later and isn’t quite as immediate as the charge of “Into the Space,” but serves as a landmark just the same as “Acid Waterfall” and “The Anubis Death” hold their tension in the drums and let the guitars go adventuring as they will. There’s maybe some aspect of Earthless influence happening, but The Polvos! meld that make-it-bigger mentality with traditional verse/chorus structures and are more grounded for it even as the spaces created in the songs give listeners an opportunity for immersion. It may not be a revolution in terms of style, but there is a conversation happening here with modern heavy psych from Europe as well that adds intrigue, and the band never go so far into their own ether so as to actually disappear. Even after the shreddy finish of “The Anubis Death,” it kind of feels like they might come back out for an encore, and you know, that’d be just fine.

The Polvos! on Facebook

Surpop Records website

Smolder Brains Records on Bandcamp

Clostridium Records store

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The Cosmic Gospel, Cosmic Songs for Reptiles in Love

With a current of buzz-fuzz drawn across its eight component tracks that allow seemingly disparate moves like the Blondie disco keys in “Hot Car Song” to emerge from the acoustic “Core Memory Unlocked” before giving over to the weirdo Casio-beat bounce of “Psychrolutes Marcidus Man,” a kind of ’60s character reimagined as heavy bedroom indie, The Cosmic Gospel‘s Cosmic Songs for Reptiles in Love isn’t without its resentments, but the almost-entirely-solo-project of Mercata, Italy-based multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Medina is more defined by its sweetness of melody and gentle delivery on the whole. An experiment like the penultimate “Wrath and Gods” carries some “Revolution 9” feel, but Medina does well earlier to set a broad context amid the hook of opener “It’s Forever Midnight” and the subsequent, lightly dub beat and keyboard focus on “The Richest Guy on the Planet is My Best Friend,” such that when closer “I Sew Your Eyes So You Don’t See How I Eat Your Heart” pairs the malevolent intent of its title with light fuzzy soloing atop an easy flowing, summery flow, the album has come to make its own kind of sense and define its path. This is exactly what one would most hope for it, and as reptiles are cold-blooded, they should be used to shifts in temperature like those presented throughout. Most humans won’t get it, but you’ve never been ‘most humans,’ have you?

The Cosmic Gospel on Facebook

Bloody Sound website

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Grave Speaker, Grave Speaker

Massachusetts garage doomers Grave Speaker‘s self-titled debut was issued digitally by the band this past Fall and was snagged by Electric Valley Records for a vinyl release. The Mellotron melancholia that pervades the midsection of the eponymous “Grave Speaker” justifies the wax, but the cult-leaning-in-sound-if-not-theme outfit that marks a new beginning for ex-High n’ Heavy guitarist John Steele unfurl a righteously dirty fuzz over the march of “Blood of Old” at the outset and then immediately up themselves in the riffy stoner delve of “Earth and Mud.” The blown-out vocals on the latter, as well as the far-off-mic rawness of “The Bard’s Theme” that surrounds its Hendrixian solo, remind of a time when Ice Dragon roamed New England’s troubled woods, and if Grave Speaker will look to take on a similar trajectory of scope, they do more than drop hints of psychedelia here, in “Grave Speaker” and elsewhere, but they’re no more beholden to that than the Sabbathism of capper “Make Me Crawl” or the cavernous echo of “Earthbound.” It’s an initial collection, so one expects they’ll range some either way with time, but the way the production becomes part of the character of the songs speaks to a strong idea of aesthetic coming through, and the songwriting holds up to that.

Grave Speaker on Instagram

Electric Valley Records website

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Surya Kris Peters, There’s Light in the Distance

While at the same time proffering his most expansive vision yet of a progressive psychedelia weighted in tone, emotionally expressive and able to move its focus fluidly between its layers of keyboard, synth and guitar such that the mix feels all the more dynamic and the material all the more alive (there’s an entire sub-plot here about the growth in self-production; a discussion for another time), Surya Kris Peters‘ 10-song/46-minute There’s Light in the Distance also brings the former Samsara Blues Experiment guitarist/vocalist closer to uniting his current projects than he’s yet been, the distant light here blurring the line where Surya Kris Peters ends and the emergently-rocking Fuzz Sagrado begins. This process has been going on for the last few years following the end of his former outfit and a relocation from Germany to Brazil, but in its spacious second half as well as the push of its first, a song like “Mode Azul” feels like there’s nothing stopping it from being played on stage beyond personnel. Coinciding with that are arrangement details like the piano at the start of “Life is Just a Dream” or the synth that gives so much movement under the echoing lead in “Let’s Wait Out the Storm,” as Peters seems to find new avenues even as he works his way home to his own vision of what heavy rock can be.

Fuzz Sagrado on Facebook

Electric Magic Records on Bandcamp

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Gozd, Unilateralis

Unilateralis is the four-song follow-up EP to Polish heavydelvers Gozd‘s late-2023 debut album, This is Not the End, and its 20-plus minutes find a place for themselves in a doom that feels both traditional and forward thinking across eight-minute opener and longest track (immediate points, even for an EP) “Somewhere in Between” before the charge of “Rotten Humanity” answers with brasher thrust and aggressive-undercurrent stoner rock with an airy post-metallic break in the middle and rolling ending. From there, “Thanatophobia” picks up the energy from its ambient intro and explodes into its for-the-converted nod, setting up a linear build after its initial verses and seeing it through with due diligence in noise, and closer “Tentative Minds” purposefully hypnotizes with its vague-speech in the intro and casual bassline and drum swing before the riff kicks in for the finale. The largesse of its loudest moments bolster the overarching atmosphere no less than the softest standalone guitar parts, and Gozd seem wholly comfortable in the spaces between microgenres. A niche among niches, but that’s also how individuality happens, and it’s happening here.

Gozd on Facebook

BSFD Records on Facebook

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Sativa Root, Kings of the Weed Age

You wouldn’t accuse Austria’s Sativa Root of thematic subtlety on their third album, Kings of the Weed Age, which broadcasts a stoner worship in offerings like “Megalobong” and “Weedotaur” and probably whatever “F.A.T.” stands for, but that’s not what they’re going for anyway. With its titular intro starting off, spoken voices vague in the ambience, “Weedotaur”‘s 11 minutes lumber with all due bong-metallian slog, and the crush becomes central to the proceedings if not necessarily unipolar in terms of the band’s approach. That is to say, amid the onslaught of volume and tonal density in “Green Smegma” and the spin-your-head soloing in “Assassins Weed” (think Assassins Creed), the instrumentalist course undertaken may be willfully monolithic, but they’re not playing the same song five times on six tracks and calling it new. “F.A.T.” begins on a quiet stretch of guitar that recalls some of YOB‘s epics, complementing both the intro and “Weedotaur,” before bringing its full weight down on the listener again as if to underscore the message of its stoned instrumental catharsis on its way out the door. They sound like they could do this all day. It can be overwhelming at times, but that’s not really a complaint.

Sativa Root on Facebook

Sativa Root on Bandcamp

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Volt Ritual, Return to Jupiter

Comprised of guitarist/vocalist Mateusz, bassist Michał and drummer Tomek, Polish riffcrafters Volt Ritual are appealingly light on pretense as they offer Return to Jupiter‘s four tracks, and though as a Star Trek fan I can’t get behind their lyrical impugning of Starfleet as they imagine what Earth colonialism would look like to a somehow-populated Jupiter, they’re not short on reasons to be cynical, if in fact that’s what’s happening in the song. “Ghostpolis” follows the sample-laced instrumental opener “Heavy Metal is Good for You” and rolls loose but accessible even in its later shouts before the more uptempo “Gwiazdolot” swaps English lyrics for Polish (casting off another cultural colonialization, arguably) and providing a break ahead of the closing title-track, which is longer at 7:37 and a clear focal point for more than just bearing the name of the EP, summarizing as it does the course of the cuts before it and even bringing a last scream as if to say “Ghostpolis” wasn’t a fluke. Their 2022 debut album began with “Approaching Jupiter,” and this Return feels organically built off that while trying some new ideas in its effects and general structure. One hopes the plot continues in some way next time along this course.

Volt Ritual on Facebook

Volt Ritual on Bandcamp

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Well, this is it. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to do Monday and Tuesday, or just Monday, or Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or the whole week next week or what. I don’t know. But while I figure it out — and not having this planned is kind of a novelty for me; something against my nature that I’m kind of forcing I think just to make myself uncomfortable — there are 10 more records to dig through today and it’s been a killer week. Yeah, that’s the other thing. Maybe it’s better to quit while I’m ahead.

I’ll kick it back and forth while writing today and getting the last of what I’d originally slated covered, then see how much I still have waiting to be covered. You can’t ever get everything. I keep learning that every year. But if I don’t do it Monday and Tuesday, it’ll either be last week of December or maybe second week of January, so it’s not long until the next one. Never is, I guess.

If this is it for now or not, thanks for reading. I hope you found music that has touched your life and/or made your day better.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

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David Eugene Edwards, Hyacinth

There are not a ton of surprises to behold in what’s positioned as a first solo studio offering from David Eugene Edwards, whose pedigree would be impressive enough if it only included either 16 Horsepower or Wovenhand but of course is singular in including both. But you don’t need surprises. Titled Hyacinth and issued through Sargent House, the voice, the presence, the sense of intimacy and grandiosity both accounted for as Edwards taps acoustic simplicity in “Bright Boy,” though even that is accompanied by the programmed electronics that provides backing through much of the included 11 tracks. Atop and within these expanses, Edwards broods poetic and explores atmospheres that are heavy in a different way from what Wovenhand has become, chasing tone or intensity. On Hyacinth, it’s more about the impact of the slow-rolling beat in “Celeste” and the blend of organic/inorganic than just how loud a part is or isn’t. Whether a solo career under his name will take the place of Wovenhand or coincide, I don’t know.

David Eugene Edwards on Instagram

Sargent House website

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Beastwars, Tyranny of Distance

Whatever led Beastwars to decide it was time to do a covers EP, fine. No, really, it’s fine. It’s fine that it’s 32 minutes long. It’s fine that I’ve never heard The Gordons, or Julia Deans, or Superette, or The 3Ds or any of the other New Zealand-based artists the Wellington bashers are covering. It’s fine. It’s fine that it sounds different than 2019’s IV (review here). It should. It’s been nearly five years and Beastwars didn’t write these eight songs, though it seems safe to assume they did a fair bit of rearranging since it all sounds so much like Beastwars. But the reason it’s all fine is that when it’s over, whether I know the original version of “Waves” or the blues-turns-crushing “High and Lonely” originally by Nadia Reid, or not, when it’s all over, I’ve got over half an hour more recorded Beastwars music than I had before Tyranny of Distance showed up, and if you don’t consider that a win, you probably already stopped reading. That’s fine too. A sidestep for them in not being an epic landmark LP, and a chance for new ideas to flourish.

Beastwars on Facebook

Beastwars BigCartel store

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Sun Dial, Messages From the Mothership

Because Messages From the Mothership stacks its longer songs (six-seven minutes) in the back half of its tracklisting, one might be tempted to say Sun Dial push further out as they go, but the truth is that ’60s pop-inflected three-minute opener “Echoes All Around” is pretty out there, and the penultimate “Saucer Noise” — the longest inclusion at 7:47 — is no less melodically present than the more structure-forward leadoff. The difference, principally, is a long stretch of keyboard, but that’s well within the UK outfit’s vintage-synth wheelhouse, and anyway, “Demagnitized” is essentially seven minutes of wobbly drone at the end of the record, so they get weirder, as prefaced in the early going by, well, the early going itself, but also “New Day,” which is more exploratory than the radio-friendly-but-won’t-be-on-the-radio harmonies of “Living for Today” and the duly shimmering strum of “Burning Bright.” This is familiar terrain for Sun Dial, but they approach it with a perspective that’s fresh and, in the title-track, a little bit funky to boot.

Sun Dial on Facebook

Sulatron Records webstore

Echodelick Records website

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Fuzzy Grass, The Revenge of the Blue Nut

With rampant heavy blues and a Mk II Deep Purple boogie bent, Toulouse, France’s Fuzzy Grass present The Revenge of the Blue Nut, and there’s a story there but to be honest I’m not sure I want to know. The heavy ’70s persist as an influence — no surprise for a group who named their 2018 debut 1971 — and pieces like “I’m Alright” and “The Dreamer” feel at least in part informed by Graveyard‘s slow-soul-to-boogie-blowout methodology. Raw fuzz rolls out in 11-minute capper “Moonlight Shades” with a swinging nod that’s a highlight even after “Why You Stop Me” just before, and grows noisy, expansive, eventually furious as it approaches the end, coherent in the verse and cacophonous in just about everything else. But the rawness bolsters the character of the album in ways beyond enhancing the vintage-ist impression, and Fuzzy Grass unite decades of influences with vibrant shred and groove that’s welcoming even at its bluest.

Fuzzy Grass on Facebook

Kozmik Artifactz store

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Morne, Engraved with Pain

If you go by the current of sizzling electronic pops deeper in the mix, even the outwardly quiet intro to Morne‘s Engraved with Pain is intense. The Boston-based crush-metallers have examined the world around them thoroughly ahead of this fifth full-length, and their disappointment is brutally brought to realization across four songs — “Engraved with Pain” (10:42), “Memories Like Stone” (10:48), “Wretched Empire” (7:45) and “Fire and Dust” (11:40) — written and executed with a dark mastery that goes beyond the weight of the guitar and bass and drums and gutturally shouted vocals to the aura around the music itself. Engraved with Pain makes the air around it feel heavier, basking in an individualized vision of metal that’s part Ministry, part Gojira, lots of Celtic Frost, progressive and bleak in kind — the kind of superlative and consuming listening experience that makes you wonder why you ever listen to anything else except that you’re also exhausted from it because Morne just gave you an existential flaying the likes of which you’ve not had in some time. Artistry. Don’t be shocked when it’s on my ‘best of the year’ list in a couple weeks. I might just go to a store and buy the CD.

Morne on Facebook

Metal Blade Records website

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Appalooza, The Shining Son

Don’t tell the swingin’-dick Western swag of “Wounded,” but Appalooza are a metal band. To wit, The Shining Son, their very-dudely follow-up to 2021’s The Holy of Holies (review here) and second outing for Ripple Music. Opener “Pelican” has more in common with Sepultura than Kyuss, or Pelican for that matter. “Unbreakable” and “Wasted Land” both boast screams worthy of Devin Townsend, while the acoustic/electric urgency in “Wasted Land” and the tumultuous scope of the seven-plus-minute track recall some of Primordial‘s battle-aftermath mourning. “Groundhog Days” has an airy melody and is more decisively heavy rock, and the hypnotic post-doom apparent-murder-balladry of “Killing Maria” answers that at the album’s close, and “Framed” hits heavy blues à la a missed outfit like Dwellers, but even in “Sunburn” there’s an immediacy to the rhythm between the guitar and percussion, and though they’re not necessarily always aggressive in their delivery, nor do they want to be. Metal they are, if only under the surface, and that, coupled with the care they put into their songwriting, makes The Shining Son stand out all the more in an ever-crowded Euro underground.

Appalooza on Facebook

Ripple Music website

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Space Shepherds, Washed Up on a Shore of Stars

An invitation to chill the beans delivered to your ears courtesy of Irish cosmic jammers Space Shepherds as two longform jams. “Wading Through the Infinite Sea” nestles into a funky groove and spends who-even-cares-how-much-time of its total 27 minutes vibing out with noodling guitar and a steady, languid, periodically funk-leaning flow. I don’t know if it was made up on the spot, but it sure sounds like it was, and though the drums get a little restless as keys and guitar keep dreaming, the elements gradually align and push toward and through denser clouds of dust and gas on their way to being suns, a returning lick at the end looking slightly in the direction of Elder but after nearly half an hour it belongs to no one so much as Space Shepherds themselves. ‘Side B,’ as it were, is “Void Hurler” (18:41), which is more active early around circles being drawn on the snare, and it has a crescendo and a synthy finish, but is ultimately more about the exploration and little moments along the way like the drums decided to add a bit of push to what might’ve otherwise been the comedown, or the fuzz buzzing amid the drone circa 10 minutes in. You can sit and listen and follow each waveform on its journey or you can relax and let the whole thing carry you. No wrong answer for jams this engaging.

Space Shepherds on Facebook

Space Shepherds on Bandcamp

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Rey Mosca, Volumen! Sesion AMB

Young Chilean four-piece Rey Mosca — the lineup of Josué Campos, Valentín Pérez, Damián Arros and Rafael Álvarez — hold a spaciousness in reserve for the midsection of teh seven-minute “Sol del Tiempo,” which is the third of the three songs included in their live-recorded Volumen! Sesion AMB EP. A ready hint is dropped of a switch in methodology since both “Psychodoom” and ” Perdiendo el Control” are under two minutes long. Crust around the edge of the riff greets the listener with “Psychodoom,” which spends about a third of its 90 seconds on its intro and so is barely started by the time it’s over. Awesome. “Perdiendo el Control” is quicker into its verse and quicker generally and gets brasher in its second half with some hardcore shout-alongs, but it too is there and gone, where “Sol del Tiempo” is more patient from the outset, flirting with ’90s noise crunch in its finish but finding a path through a developing interpretation of psychedelic doom en route. I don’t know if “Sol del Tiempo” would fit on a 7″, but it might be worth a shot as Rey Mosca serve notice of their potential hopefully to flourish.

LINK

Rey Mosca on Bandcamp

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Fawn Limbs & Nadja, Vestigial Spectra

Principally engaged in the consumption and expulsion of expectations, Fawn Limbs and Nadja — experimentalists from Finland and Germany-via-Canada, respectively — drone as one might think in opener “Isomerich,” and in the subsequent “Black Body Radiation” and “Cascading Entropy,” they give Primitive Man, The Body or any other extremely violent, doom-derived bludgeoners you want to name a run for their money in terms of sheer noisy assault. Somebody’s been reading about exoplanets, as the drone/harsh noise pairing “Redshifted” and “Blueshifted” (look it up, it’s super cool) reset the aural trebuchet for its next launch, the latter growing caustic on the way, ahead of “Distilled in Observance” renewing the punishment in earnest. And it is earnest. They mean every second of it as Fawn Limbs and Nadja grind souls to powder with all-or-nothing fury, dropping overwhelming drive to round out “Distilled in Observance” before the 11-minute “Metastable Ion Decay” bursts out from the chest of its intro drone to devour everybody on the ship except Sigourney Weaver. I’m not lying to you — this is ferocious. You might think you’re up for it. One sure way to find out, but you should know you’re being tested.

Fawn Limbs on Facebook

Nadja on Facebook

Sludgelord Records on Facebook

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Dune Pilot, Magnetic

Do they pilot, a-pilot, do they the dune? Probably. Regardless, German heavy rockers Dune Pilot offer their third full-length and first for Argonauta Records in the 11-song Magnetic, taking cues from modern fuzz in the vein of Truckfighters for “Visions” after the opening title-track sets the mood and establishes the mostly-dry sound of the vocals as they cut through the guitar and bass tones. A push of voice becomes a defining feature of Magnetic, which isn’t such a departure from 2018’s Lucy, though the rush of “Next to the Liquor Store” and the breadth in the fuzz of “Highest Bid” and the largesse of the nod in “Let You Down” assure that Dune Pilot don’t come close to wearing down their welcome in the 46 minutes, cuts like the bluesy “So Mad” and the big-chorus ideology of “Heap of Shards” coexisting drawn together by the vitality of the performances behind them as well as the surety of their craft. It is heavy rock that feels specifically geared toward the lovers thereof.

Dune Pilot on Facebook

Argonauta Records website

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Retrovisor is the fifth full-length from Chilean four-piece Adelaida, and in a surprising twist on the norm for a release announcement, it’s already out. That’s right. Not a single. Not two or three. The full record. You can stream it now and the vinyl will be out in February through Spinda Records, which announced it picked up the band at the end of last week. The band’s sound is varied in texture — room for The Cure and Nirvana in there, among others — but deeply informed by alt and psych rock, and has a kind of low-key progressive range that, to be honest I’m not even sure why I’m going on about it since you can just friggin’ listen to the thing. It exists.

Been trying to get this posted for days, obviously, but it’s something worth checking out if you have time. ‘South American heavy’ is often thought of as a monolith that it absolutely isn’t — as though an entire continent has one thing to say or one way to say it — and Adelaida remind of this with their melodic flourish and atmospheric push, songwriting and ambience.

Dig:

Chile-based band Adelaida released their fifth studio album ‘Retrovisor’ yesterday, announcing a surprise signing with Spinda Records. The album will be coming out on vinyl and CD in February 2024. For fans of 90s spectrum, grunge, indie rock and shoegaze.

Preorder: https://spindarecords.com/product/adelaida-retrovisor/

Bandcamp: https://spindarecords.bandcamp.com/album/retrovisor

Chile’s music scene lights up once again with the vibrant energy of Adelaida, indie band currently formed by Anke Steinhöfel, Jurel Sónico, Joaquín Roa and Tomás Pérez. In 2021 they won Premios Escuchar to best rock album with ‘Animita’ and best rock artist. And now, they’re presenting their fifth studio album, ‘Retrovisor’.

This highly anticipated full-length, available since yesterday in all majors streaming platforms via Disco Intrépido, promises to immerse the listener in a unique experience that will find its definite place in the hearts of their existing fans and in the of the new listeners approaching the band’s sound for the first time from this side of the pond. In ‘Retrovisor’ Adelaida takes a step forward, blending the evocative 90’s sounds of grunge, indie-rock and shoegaze with poetic and introspecive lyrics. However, for those looking to enjoy it in physical format, they’ll have to wait until February 2024 when its respective vinyl and compact disc editions will arrive -preorder here- through Spinda Records. In a surprising announcement just a couple of days ago, the label revealed the signing of the band from Santiago de Chile.

Advanced single “Desdén”, “Girasoles” and “Caída libre” already hinted that ‘Retrovisor’ was a true sonic odyssey that transports the listener through time, capturing the raw and emotive essence of the 90s while infusing a contemporary touch. In doing so, Adelaida align themselves with the new wave of alternatie rock from the Americas alongside bands like Fin del Mundo, El Shirota, Las Ligas Menores, Margaritas Podridas or La Ciencia Simple. The fact that they enlisted the talents of Pablo Giadach and Federico Zeppelin in the recording; Daniel Velásquez and Jurel Sónico in the mixing; and none other than Jack Endino in the mastering likely played a significant role – yes, the same Endino who worked with bands like Mudhoney, Nirvana, Tad, Melvins, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees or Mark Lanegan.

‘Retrovisor’ consists of 9 new songs and 4 tracks from ‘Monolito’, their iconic debut album that now celebrates a decade and which the band has revisited, giving a second life to some tracks that now sound more similar to their live performances. The digital edition includes a surprise titled “Brilla”, in which Adelaida takes on a contemporary classic by Chile band Suárez.

RETROVISOR CVR 1 1
RETROVISOR
1. Retrovisor
2. Océano mundial
3. La montaña
4. Caída libre
5. Espirales
6. Resplandor
7. Mi ventana
8. Girasoles
9. 12 días
10. Frutos de otoño
11. Solo por hoy
12. Pólvora
13. Brilla
14. Desdén

‘Retrovisor’, whose digital edition is now available, will be released on February 16, 2024, on compact disc and on a limited-edition-vinyl (350 copies in red, and 150 copies in black), which will be part of the ‘Noisy Series’ by Spinda Records. Physical formats can be pre-ordered on the website as well on as on the Bandcamp of the Andalusian label.

Preorder: https://spindarecords.com/product/adelaida-retrovisor/

Bandcamp: https://spindarecords.bandcamp.com/album/retrovisor

https://www.facebook.com/Adelaidabanda/
https://www.instagram.com/adelaida_banda/
https://adelaidaperdida.bandcamp.com/
https://linktr.ee/adelaidabanda

https://www.facebook.com/SpindaRecords
https://www.instagram.com/spindarecords
https://spindarecords.bandcamp.com/
https://www.spindarecords.com/

Adelaida, Retrovisor (2023)

[Click play above to stream the title-track of Some Pills for Ayala’s Sleep Walkers. Album is out July 7 available to preorder on Bandcamp.]

Sleepwalking has long been a ready-to-use analogue for conformity, and while there may be that aspect to the lyrics of Some Pills for Ayala‘s second full-length, Sleep Walkers, given the title, the astronaut and weed on the cover and the ultra-fuzzed largesse that ensues on album opener “A Flower in My Left Eye” and much of what follows, one wonders if the Chile-based outfit isn’t also nodding at the band Sleep as well. Certainly that leadoff could be said to be taking Sleep for a walk in its steady roll of stonerized buzz, and the later title-track accompanies its meditative bassline with a Cisernos-style monotone-ish vocal — also organ or maybe Mellotron — so there may be some in-genre communion happening across the nine-song/45-minute long-player from the Santiago-based solo-project of Néstor Ayala Cortés.

It follows behind 2022’s The Crows That Sing and two 2021 EPs, Space Octopus EP (review here) and a self-titled, and finds Cortés once again handling all instruments himself and helming the recording process at his Camino la Luna home studio. If that sounds somewhat insular as making a record by yourself at home might be, Sleep Walkers counteracts that both in being mixed by David Veliz at Planetario Fuzz Recs in Horcón and through its general expansiveness of sound. In its arrangements, it is a full-band style collection, as all Some Pills for Ayala‘s output has been to-date, give-or-take; drums, bass, guitar, keys, vocals, and so on. Cortés even manages an effective psych-tinged self-jam in the solo section of closer “The Way I See the Sound” before the repetitions of the synesthetic lyric “I hear color and see sound” and, after a break of silence, jams again as a kind of epilogue/secret reprise.

“A Flower in My Left Eye” opens heavy, and that’s ground that Some Pills for Ayala touches again on “Let Me Free,” punctuated by sharp, maybe-programmed snare sounds and underscored in its multi-layer-vocal verse by dense rumble of low end, as well as side B’s “Smile and Lie” and the penultimate “Sore.” What these songs have in common aside from their methodology is that they’re shorter than the five cuts that surround them; “A Flower in My Left Eye” is 4:07, none of the other of Sleep Walkers‘ heaviest tracks tops four minutes, and they move accordingly in terms of tempo.

To contrast, more psychedelic-leaning songs like “Into Oblivion” or the bassy centerpiece “Reflections,” or even the strutting second track “Blood or Love” — previously issued as a standalone single under the title “No More Love… No More Blood?” — with its right-on swing and ride cymbal foreshadow of “Sleep Walkers” to come, early Om meeting with Uncle Acid a bit in its instrumental/vocal blend between the verse and chorus, come through with a focus more on expanse than impact, and in the mellow fluidity of “Into Oblivion,” Cortés is patient and considered in crafting an immersive space for the listener.

His style of melody will be familiar to those who’ve heard At Devil Dirt, and some of the weightier punch throughout Sleep Walkers could be called a carry-over as well, but the branching-out in terms of sound is palpable, and if heavy is the stem of one of the pot leaves on the cover, than the multiple points surrounding might be different facets of it that are brought together on the album. That “The Way I See the World” ends the record and is also the longest track at 8:54 doesn’t feel like a coincidence, but the songs are also arranged alphabetically — as becomes apparent when one looks at side B with “Sleep Walkers,” “Smile and Lie” and “Sore” in succession — so it may well be. Aural kismet? Stranger things have definitely happened.

Through these various shifts and twists in style, Sleep Walkers is able to pivot smoothly in no small part owing to Cortés‘ strength as a songwriter. Again, that won’t be a revelation for those who followed from At Devil Dirt or who took on The Crows That Sing last year, but for being genuinely ‘solo’ in the writing, performance and recording, is distinctly full-band in its presentation to the degree that, if a lineup (or a laptop) were assembled, the songs could be played live. Whether there’s any interest on the part of Cortés in doing so, I don’t know, but it exists as a possibility, and on a record with such depth of mix, where one might not immediately characterize it as the work of one person alone, the spirit in the material is less insular than the phrase “solo-project” implies.

This is mirrored as well in the delivery of the material. “Reflections” as the centerpiece is representative in its sprawl and hypnotic repetitions across its first 90 seconds before it turns to fully-realized twists of fuzz and layers of vocal melody and effects. It is big, grand in an organic manner, and actively working to engage its audience. “Smile and Lie” and “Sore,” the pair of shorter, harder-hitting cuts before the finale, are no less emblematic of Some Pills for Ayala‘s quality of craft. They are neither haphazard nor lazy, they swing with vital fervency and in the case of the latter especially, speak to a living history of South American heavy rock and roll of which At Devil Dirt and Cortés‘ efforts here are part.

In “The Way I See the World,” Sleep Walkers encounters its greatest expanse and highlights the creativity at root beneath its construction. Languid, melodious guitar stretches out atop likewise flowing groove, bass and drums working to complement the exploration happening above in the mix as the vocals lend presence before the instrumental takeoff of the second half, from which — counter to accusations one might level against a solo-project as self-indulgent — the vocals return in the above-noted lyrical repetition before the song departs, somewhat suddenly, to silence, then noise, before picking up and light-chugging its way out to residual feedback and noise that end just before the nine-minute mark.

Given the breadth and seemingly willful changes in stylistic lean from one song to the next that happen throughout Sleep Walkers, I’m less inclined to guess what might be on a subsequent release from Some Pills for Ayala than I am to suggest simply that Cortés will keep it going. It’s a universe of infinite possibility, of course, but given the heart and obvious passion for the work that’s been put into this material, I would expect continued growth along the varied course charted here. So much the better as Sleep Walkers follows The Crows That Sing and looks further outward. That, too, may well continue. At present though, accessibility is an asset, not a detriment, to this second album, and multiple avenues of potential progression are laid out among those already realized.

Some Pills for Ayala, Sleep Walkers (2023)

Some Pills for Ayala on Instagram

Some Pills for Ayala on Bandcamp

This Friday, Chilean/Swiss avant noisemakers Muerte Espiral this week will release their debut album, Inframundo, which is composed of eight songs running 36 minutes cast between sludgy heft, heavy rock fluidity, harsher shout-topped noise and grunge. The trio recorded the outing live — which is a neat trick across continents; one assumes somebody traveled — but that was in 2017, so the outing, while a debut, is also somewhat archival. That is not the last seeming contradiction related to Inframundo by any means, but they manage to make it make at least their own kind of sense, and to that, I’ll point out the hand-animated claymation video below for the penultimate track on the record, “Conjuro.”

At 2:46, “Conjuro” is the second-shortest inclusion in Inframundo behind only the album intro “Hipnosis,” and it is by no means a representative sample of the entirety of the album. No single track on it is. From the post-punk-turned-noise-rock-onslaught that is “La Náuseas” through the pairing of “Mantenlo Real” and “Tierra de Nadie” that seem to delight in contrasting aggression and melody in a multi-tiered dynamic between guitarist/vocalist Jurel Sónico, bassist/guitarist Mia Moustache and drummer David Burger, the latter of whom punctuates the doomer thuds of “Mantenlo Real” before winding up and digging back into the pure shove of the verse, opening to a roller nod, and so on through an almost boogie-rock chorus there, because damnit, life is complicated.

“Tierra de Nadie” caps side A with a hook that is quintessential Chilean heavy rock and a lumbering thickness around that moves with deceptive swing around its bombastic ending, and then they’re off immediately on “Cráneo,” the bassline of which reminds of nothing so much as Primus‘ “Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver,” at least at the outset before the layered vocal melody of the verse unfolds, the riff semi-progressive in its severity as complemented by toms before turning back around after the hook. They break out a big nod in the second half of “Cráneo” as well, but the context has shifted, and the vocals have somewhat mellowed — Sónico has a high-register bark that reminds my metro-NY ears of some of what Negative Reaction used to get up to — while the guitar in that same second half hints at the meditative vibe of “Conjuro” still to come, but quickly, and on the way to its own ending.

It would be improper to call “El Camino” an outlier, but mostly because the entire album is outliers. It begins with the kind of guitar line that usually means someone in a band likes The Cure — not a complaint — before digging into proggier drumming and a churning build of tension into its first lines, already past two minutes into the total 5:48 by the time it gets there. Like any good book, Inframundo teaches the listener how to read it, and “Mantenlo Real” and “Tierra de Nadie” left clear instructions to watch for big turns in the longer tracks. “El Camino” might not hit six minutes long, but it delivers comeuppance just the same, with half-time cymbal crash behind a precisely-struck slowdown and crescendo, which feels like it might just keep going until it suddenly cuts into “Conjuro”; more than an interlude, a (‘nother) departure in vibe and ready to range as so much of the record to this point has been.

Twisting around the guitar line atop the solid percussive foundation, there’s room to bring it all back around to the hard-hitting pummel and yap, and Muerte Espiral do so in capper “Faz Roída,” growing noisier and grungier until at last the feedback seems to just kind of eat the song. Everything else cuts out and that’s it, but they’ve by then made the nod no less hypnotic than the drone in the album-intro would seem to have intended, and in between the two sides, demonstrated a range and particularly adventurous take on umpteen heavy styles. They don’t make it easy to keep up, necessarily — they’re not out here to be doing favors — Inframundo succeeds because it’s working so pointedly on its own level.

Generally one thinks of a first full-length as a tentative moment for a group. Bands all the time are ‘feeling it out’ on their debut records. And that’s a perfectly reasonable approach, but not necessarily what’s happening here. For sure, Muerte Espiral are exploring a new creative conversation, but there’s nothing tentative about it. They dive in outright and barely come up for air before they’re done. Given that their only other release to-date was 2017’s Invocaci​ó​n EP — apparently a pretty productive year for them between recording and releasing that and recording this — one can’t help but wonder what might be if they’d been pumping out records all the while over the last six years, but new songs or old, Inframundo is able to sound fresh because of its individualized take. They don’t make the rock you expect, and that becomes one of their greatest strengths.

The homemade video for “Conjuro” follows here. Please enjoy:

Muerte Espiral, “Conjuro” video premiere

Mia Moustache on “Conjuro”:

About the Video, it is selfmade DIY by me and Jurel Sonico, the singer and guit player of Muerte Espiral.

It just happened that we did this song and the video for it one day and thought it’s cool, we should show this, haha.

So no special story about it. We both love the desert and know about the crazy and meditative side of life so that’s what we did put in to it via Clay and other little things we found randomly at our homes and used goods stores. It took quite some days to finish it.

Muerte Espiral
INFRAMUNDO
1. Hipnosis 1:10
2. Las Náuseas 3:41
3. Mantenlo Real 6:21
4. Tierra De Nadie 6:10
5. Cráneo 4:22
6. El Camino 5:48
7. Conjuro 2:46
8. Faz Roída 6:13

Recorded live in Switzerland during summer 2017 at BlueShelter Studio.
Recording, Mix & Master by Marc Obrist
Artwork realisation & design by Manuel Guldimann

Bajo & Guit by Mia Moustache
Voz & Guit by Jurel Sónico
Batería by David Burger

Muerte Espiral, Invocación (2017)

Muerte Espiral on Facebook

Muerte Espiral on Instagram

Muerte Espiral on Bandcamp

Muerte Espiral on Spotlify

So here we are. A fascinating and varied trip this has been, and while I’m tempted to find some greater meaning in it as regards the ongoing evolution of genre(s) in heavy underground music, the truth is that the overarching message is really that it’s impossible to keep up with that complexity as it unfolds. Hitting 70 releases on this last day with another 50 to come in a couple weeks, I feel like there’s just so much out there right now, and that that is the primary signifier of the current era.

Whether it’s pandemic-born projects or redirects, or long-established artists making welcome returns, or who knows what from who knows where, the world is brimming with creativity and is pushing the bounds of heavy with like-proportioned force and intent. This hasn’t always been easy to write, but as I look at the lineup below of the final-for-now installment of the QR, I’m just happy to be alive. Thanks for reading. I hope you have also found something that resonates.

Quarterly Review #61-70:

Dommengang, Wished Eye

A fourth full-length from Dommengang — are they in L.A. now? Portland, Oregon? does it matter? — neatly encapsulates the heavy psychedelic scope and the organic-vibing reach that stands them out from the pack, as somehow throughout the nine songs of Wished Eye, the Thrill Jockey denizen trio are able to inhabit a style that’s the Americana pastoral wakeup of “Runaway,” the hill-howling “Society Blues,” the drift-fuzz of over solid drums of “Last Card,” the dense tube-burning Hendrixism of “Myth Time,” and the minimalist guitar of “Little Beirut.” And oh, it keeps going; each track contributing something to the lush-but-natural spirit of the whole work. “Blue & Peaceful” brings acoustics to its midsection jam, while “Petrichor” is the West Coast freedom rock you’ve been waiting for, the title-track goes inland for nighttime desertscaping that finishes in hypnotic loops on a likewise hypnotic fade, and “Flower” proves to be more vine, winding its way around the lead guitar line as the vocals leave off with a highlight performance prior a fire-blues solo that finishes the record as the amps continue to scream. Undervalued? Why yes, Dommengang are, and Wished Eye makes the argument in plain language. With a sonic persona able to draw from country, blues, psych, indie, doom, fuzz, on and on, they’ve never sounded so untethered to genre, and it wasn’t exactly holding them back in the first place.

Dommengang on Facebook

Thrill Jockey website

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Ryan Kent, Dying Comes With Age

Formerly the frontman of Richmond, Virginia, sludgers Gritter, Ryan Kent — who already has several books of poetry on his CV — casts himself through Dying Comes With Age as a kind of spoken word ringmaster, and he’s brought plenty of friends along to help the cause. The readings in the title-track, “Son of a Bitch” and the title-track and “Couch Time” are semi-spoken, semi-sung, and the likes of Laura Pleasants (The Discussion, ex-Kylesa) lends backing vocals to the former while Jimmy Bower (Down, EyeHateGod) complements with a low-key fuzzy bounce. I’ll admit to hoping the version of “My Blue Heaven” featuring Windhand‘s Dorthia Cottrell was a take on the standard, but it’s plenty sad regardless and her voice stands alone as though Kent realized it was best to just give her the space and let it be its own thing on the record. Mike IX Williams of EyeHateGod is also on his own (without music behind) to close out with the brief “Cigarettes Roll Away the Time,” and Eugene S. Robinson of Oxbow/Buñuel recounting an homage apparently to Kent‘s grandfather highlights the numb feeling of so many during the pandemic era. Some light misogyny there and in “Message From Someone Going Somewhere With Someone Else Who is Going Somewhere” feels almost performative, pursuing some literary concept of edge, but the aural collage and per-song atmosphere assure Dying Comes With Age never lingers anywhere too long, and you can smell the cigarettes just by listening, so be ready with the Febreze.

Ryan Kent on Bandcamp

Rare Bird Books website

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1782, Clamor Luciferi

The first hook on Clamor Luciferi, in post-intro leadoff “Succubus,” informs that “Your god is poison” amid a gravitationally significant wall of low-end buzzfuzz, so one would call it business as usual for Sardinian lurch-doomers 1782, who answer 2021’s From the Graveyard (review here) with another potent collection of horror-infused live resin audibles. Running eight songs and 39-minutes, one would still say the trio are in the post-Monolord camp in terms of riffs and grooves, but they’ve grown more obscure in sound over time, and the murk in so much of Clamor Luciferi is all the more palpable for the way in which the guitar solo late in “Devil’s Blood” cuts through it with such clarity. Immediacy suits them on “River of Sins” just before, but one would hardly fault “Black Rites” or the buried-the-vocals-even-deeper closer “Death Ceremony” for taking their time considering that’s kind of the point. Well, that and the tones and grit of “Demons,” anyhow. Three records in, 1782 continue and odd-year release pattern and showcase the individual take on familiar cultism and lumber that’s made their work to-date a joy to follow despite its sundry outward miseries. Clamor Luciferi keeps the thread going, which is a compliment in their case.

1782 on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Seum, Double Double

What Seum might be seen to lack in guitar, they more than make up in disgust. The Montreal trio — vocalist Gaspard, bassist Piotr, drummer Fred — offer a mostly-hateful 32-minute low-end mudslide on their second album, Double Double, the disaffection leaking like an oily discharge from the speakers in “Torpedo” and “Snow Bird” even before “Dog Days” lyrically takes on the heavy underground and “Dollarama” sees the emptiness in being surrounded by bullshit. For as caustic as it largely is, “Torpedo” dares a bit of dirt-caked melody in the vocals — also a backing layer in the somehow-catchy “Razorblade Rainbow” and the closing title-track has a cleaner shout — and the bass veers into funkier grooves at will, as on “Dog Days,” the winding second half of “Snow Bird,” where the bassline bookending the six-minute “Seum Noir” reminds a bit of Suplecs‘ “White Devil” in its fuzz and feels appropriate in that. Shades of Bongzilla persist, as they will with a scream like that, but like their impressive 2021 debut, Winterized (review here), Seum are able to make the big tones move when they need to, to the point that “Dollarama” brings to memory the glory days of Dopefight‘s over-the-top assault. Righteous and filthy.

Seum on Facebook

Electric Spark Records website

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Old Mine Universe, This Vast Array

Clearheaded desert-style heavy rock is the thread running through Old Mine Universe‘s debut album, This Vast Array, but with a bit of blues in “No Man’s Mesa” after the proggy flourish of guitar in “Gates of the Red Planet” and the grander, keyboardy unfolding of “My Shadow Devours” and the eight-minute, multi-movement, ends-with-cello finale “Cold Stream Guards,” it becomes clear the Canadian/Brazilian/Chilean five-piece aren’t necessarily looking to limit themselves on their first release. Marked by a strong performance from vocalist Chris Pew — whom others have likened to Ian Astbury and Glenn Danzig; I might add a likeness to some of Jim Healey‘s belting-it-out there as well, if not necessarily an influence — the songs are traditionally structured but move into a jammier feel on the loose “The Duster” and add studio details like the piano line in the second half of “Sixes and Sirens” that showcase depth as well as a solid foundation. At 10 songs/47 minutes, it’s not a minor undertaking for a band’s first record, but if you’re willing to be led the tracks are willing to lead, and with Pew‘s voice to the guitar and bass of David E. and Todd McDaniel in Toronto, the solos from Erickson Silva in Brazil and Sol Batera‘s drums in Chile, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the tracks take you different places.

Old Mine Universe on Facebook

Witch City Music on Facebook

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Saint Karloff, Paleolithic War Crimes

Although Olso-based riffers Saint Karloff have tasked Nico Munkvold (also Jointhugger) for gigs, the band’s third album, Paleolithic War Crimes, was recorded with just the duo of guitarist/vocalist Mads Melvold (also keys and bass here) and drummer Adam Suleiman, and made in homage to original bassist Ole Sletner, who passed away in 2021. It is duly dug-in, from the lumbering Sabbath-worship repetitions of “Psychedelic Man” through the deeper purple organ boogieprog of “Blood Meridian” and quiet guitar/percussion interlude “Among Stone Columns” into “Bone Cave Escape” tilting the balance from doom to rock with a steady snare giving way to an Iommi-circa-’75 acoustic-and-keys finish to side A, leaving side B to split the longer “Nothing to Come” (7:01), which ties together elements of “Bone Cave Escape” and “Blood Meridian,” and closer “Supralux Voyager” (8:26) with the brash, uptempo “Death Don’t Have No Mercy,” which — I almost hate to say it — is a highlight, though the finale in “Supralux Voyager” isn’t to be ignored for what it adds to the band’s aesthetic in its patience and more progressive style, the steadiness of the build and a payoff that could’ve been a blowout but doesn’t need to be and so isn’t all the more resonant for that restraint. If Munkvold actually joins the band or they find someone else to complete the trio, whatever comes after this will inherently be different, but Saint Karloff go beyond 2019’s Interstellar Voodoo (review here) in ambition and realization with these seven tracks — yes, the interlude too; that’s important — and one hopes they continue to bring these lessons forward.

Saint Karloff on Facebook

Majestic Mountain Records store

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Astral Sleep, We Are Already Living in the End of Times

Feels like a gimme to say that a record called We Are Already Living in the End of Times is bleak, but if I note the despair laced into the extremity of songs like “The Legacies” or “Torment in Existence,” it’s in no small part to convey the fluidity with which Finland’s Astral Sleep offset their guttural death-doom, be it with melancholic folk-doom melody as on the opening title-track, or the sweetly weaving guitar lines leading into the bright-hued finish of “Invisible Flesh.” Across its 46 minutes, Astral Sleep‘s fourth LP picks up from 2020’s Astral Doom Musick (review here) and makes otherwise disparate sounds transition organically, soaring and crashing down with emotive and tonal impact on the penultimate “Time Is” before “Status of the Soul” answers back to the leadoff with nine-plus minutes of breadth and churn. These aren’t contradictions coming from Astral Sleep, and while yes, the abiding spirit of the release is doomed, that isn’t a constraint on Astral Sleep in needing to be overly performative or ‘dark’ for its own sake. There’s a dynamic at work here as the band seem to make each song an altar and the delivery itself an act of reverence.

Astral Sleep on Facebook

Astral Sleep on Bandcamp

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Devoidov, Amputation

The second single in two months from New Jersey sludge slayers Devoidov, “Amputation” backs the also-knife-themed “Stab” and brings four minutes of heavy cacophonous intensity that’s as much death metal as post-hardcore early on, and refuses to give up its doomed procession despite all the harshness surrounding. It’s not chaotic. It’s not without purpose. That mute right around 2:40, the way the bass picks up from there and the guitar comes back in, the hi-hat, that build-up into the tremolo sprint and kick-drum jabs that back the crescendo stretch stand as analogue for the structure underlying, and then like out of nowhere they toss in a ripper thrash solo at the end, in the last 15 seconds, as if to emphasize the ‘fuck everything’ they’ve layered over top. There’s punk at its root, but “Amputation” derives atmosphere from its rage as well as the spaciousness of its sound, and the violence of losing a part of oneself is not ignored. They’re making no secret of turning burn-it-all-down into a stylistic statement, and that’s part of the statement too, leaving one to wonder whether the sludge or grind will win in their songwriting over the longer term and if it needs to be a choice between one or the other at all.

Devoidov on Instagram

Devoidov on Bandcamp

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Wolfnaut, Return of the Asteroid

Norwegian fuzz rollers Wolfnaut claim a lineage that goes back to 1997 (their debut was released in 2013 under their old moniker Wolfgang; it happens), so seems reasonable that their fourth full-length, Return of the Asteroid, should be so imbued with the characteristics of turn-of-the-century Scandinavian heavy. They might be at their most Dozerian on “Crash Yer Asteroid” or “Something More Than Night” as they meet careening riffs with vital, energetic groove, but the mellower opening with “Brother of the Badlands” gives a modern edge and as they unfurl the longer closing pair “Crates of Doom” (7:14) and “Wolfnaut’s Lament” (10:13) — the latter a full linear build that completes the record with reach and crunch alike, they are strident in their execution so as to bring individual presence amid all that thick tone crashing around early and the takeoff-and-run that happens around six minutes in. Hooky in “My Orbit is Mine” and willfully subdued in “Arrows” with the raucous “G.T.R.” following directly, Wolfnaut know what they’re doing and Return of the Asteroid benefits from that expertise in its craft, confidence, and the variety they work into the material. Not life-changing, but quality songwriting is always welcome.

Wolfnaut on Facebook

Ripple Music website

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Fuzz Voyage, Heavy Compass Demo

If you’re gonna go, take a compass. And if your compass can be made of primo fuzz riffing, isn’t it that much more useful? If not as an actual compass? Each of the four cuts on Washington D.C. instrumentalists Fuzz Voyage‘s Heavy Compass Demo coincides with a cardinal direction, so you get “South Side Moss,” “North Star,” “East Wind” and “West Ice Mountain.” These same four tracks featured across two separate ‘sessions’-type demos in 2020, so they’ve been fairly worked on, but one can’t discount the presentation here that lets “East Wind” breathe a bit in its early going after the crunching stop of “North Star,” just an edge of heavy psychedelia having featured in the northerly piece getting fleshed out as it heads east. I might extend the perception of self-awareness on the part of the band to speculating “South Side Moss” was named for its hairy guitar and bass tone — if not, it could’ve been — and after “East Wind” stretches near seven minutes, “West Ice Mountain” closes out with a rush and instrumental hook that’s a more uptempo look than they’ve given to that point in the proceedings. Nothing to argue with unless you’re morally opposed to bands who don’t have singers — in which case, your loss — but one doesn’t get a lot of outright fuzz from the Doom Capitol, and Fuzz Voyage offer some of the densest distortion I’ve heard out of the Potomac since Borracho got their start. Even before you get to the concept or the art or whatever else, that makes them worth keeping an eye out for what they do next.

Fuzz Voyage on Instagram

Fuzz Voyage on Bandcamp

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