Posted in Whathaveyou on February 20th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
What I can’t get over here is how glad I am that Gothenburg’s Cities of Mars put out their 2022 self-titled (review here) before they put the band to bed, seemingly for good. What will now serve as the swansong from the big-riff conceptual/sci-fi themed trio was without a doubt the pinnacle of their progression up to the point of its release, following 2019’s The Horologist (review here) with a marked intentionality in their songwriting and a collection of tracks that reached boldly into new spaces. I’m sorry Cities of Mars won’t get its own foll0w-up, but nine years out from 2015’s initial single, Cyclopean Ritual/The Third Eye (review here), set their plotline in motion beneath the rusty Martian surface, fair enough to consider the tale as told as it’s going to be.
I’ll take a second to wish the band the best, and to say thanks for the work they did and the concrete-sledge-upside-the-head their grooves fostered. They’re very much stating the announcement below as a farewell — “we will miss you all, great people of the heavy underground…,” which does not say to me, “look for our new bands in two weeks” — but whatever they get up to, whether it’s different heavy projects or nothing at all, what they did together as Cities of Mars remains. From my standpoint, they were a joy to write about from the first offering to the last.
Their message is below, and duly up front in its point of view. I bought a shirt on Bandcamp as my own little goodbye. Here you go:
Even good things come to an end.
Following a shared decision between all band members, Cities of Mars is now dissolved.
We had a good run where we achieved more than we ever expected: we made four beautiful vinyl albums, we toured the underground scene in twelve countries, made so many new great friends and had mostly good times (and some bad times too, as it goes). We’ve had the opportunity to visited so many amazing cities and have played cool festivals.
We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone who came to any of our shows, shared a beer, bought a tee, helped us book a gig, promoted a show, gave us food or shelter or in many other ways became a part of our humble journey. Thanks to all the great bands we shared the stage and laughs with and whose company we’ve really enjoyed.
Some extra thanks are required: Roger Andersson, Gero Argonauta, Todd Severin, Ripple Music, Esben Willems, Kent Stump
For us it’s time to move on and do different things but we will miss you all, great people of the heavy underground, where the love of music is real. Be kind to another and be a part of the good fight that is needed in our bleak times.
All the best wishes and again, thank you! /Daniel, Chris & Johan
Cities of Mars: Danne Palm – lead vocals, bass, synths Christoffer Norén – lead vocals, guitar Johan Aronstedt – backing vocals, drums & percussion, sound FX
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 8th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
With the caveat of more shows to come, Swedish heavy-nodder three-piece Cities of Mars have let it be known they’re headed out on a round of touring next month. They go in support of their Ripple-issued 2022 self-titled full-length (review here), which was both their most accomplished and broadest reaching album to-date. That’s cause enough to celebrate if you need it, and they’ll meet up with Dirt Forge along the way for an added bonus, but amid the crush of quality records that came out in 2022 — a genuine splurge post-covid — Cities of Mars managed to stand out through their use of space and the largesse with which they filled it, as well as the progressive spirit in which their heft was delivered, methodically, patiently.
They’ve always been dense when it comes to tone, but in the increase in melody and the continued scope of their narrative were brought to a different level of realization this time out and it felt like the arrival they’d been pushing toward all along. I am not sorry to have the excuse to revisit it that posting these tour dates represents, is what I’m trying in my roundabout-ass way to tell you.
The poster below isn’t final, as the Prague date got added after they first put out word of the shows — living up to that whole ‘TBA’ thing — but you get the idea anyway. If more gigs are announced or I get that poster, I’ll add it in accordingly.
From social media:
CITIES OF MARS – Spring Tour
Earthlings! The Cosmonauts of Doom are hitting the roads in April.
Together with our friends in the mighty Dirt Forge we’ll make #denmark dance again.
It’s been way to long since we hung out with our brethren so these shows will go down in history.
It’s happening.
Where will you be seeing us??
Cities of Mars live: 8 April Gloomy Easter Linköping SE 12 April Vaterland Oslo NO 13 April Basement Copenhagen DK 14 April Kontrast Herning DK* 15 April Headquarters Aarhus DK* 18 April Chemiefabrik Dresden DE 19 April Modra Vopice Prague CZ 21 April Reset Club Berlin DE 22 April Archiv Potsdam DE +more TBA * w/ Dirt Forge
Line-up: Danne Palm – lead vocals, bass, synths Christoffer Norén – lead vocals, guitar Johan Aronstedt – backing vocals, drums & percussion, sound FX
[Click play above to stream Cities of Mars’ self-titled album in full. It’s out Friday on Ripple Music.]
As regards volume and Cities of Mars‘ third full-length, the correct answer is ‘however much you can give it.’ The latest offering from the Gothenburg three-piece arrives in continued association with Ripple Music as a suitably declarative self-titled, running a confident eight songs and 43 minutes that significantly expand the palette of their prior work while holding true to the central narrative concept embodied in their moniker. The sprawl of their science-fictional Martian underground metropolises is met head-on by their self-recorded tonal spaciousness and largesse, fleshed out with currents of synth and effects and an increased focus on melody in the shared vocals of bassist Daniel Palm and guitarist Christoffer Norén, who share lead duties while drummer Johan Aronstedt — who seems to have come aboard since 2019’s The Horologist (review here) — their arrangements coming into greater depth to match the richness and breadth given to each instrument, which seems to have its own space even as the songs tie together around the foundation of guitar, bass and drums.
We’ve visited some of these places before, but each title on Cities of Mars save for the also-aptly-titled intro “Before the Storm” is given a parenthetical location, and at very least the feeling of place in 12-minute closer “The Black Shard (Bahb-Elon)” rings familiar, as do the core elements of their sound. It’s the manner in which the three-piece have actively progressed and explored their ideas and craft that make the release so stunning.
It’s not necessarily just a question of their having become more melodic — though they have, and tracing back their evolution from 2015’s two-songer Cyclopean Ritual/The Third Eye (review here), their 2016 Celestial Mistress EP (review here), the subsequent 2017 debut LP, Temporal Rifts (review here) and The Horologist, they’ve done so with steady and incremental efforts — but the atmosphere across Cities of Mars is broader, drawing from modern progressive heavy in the uptempo shove of “A Dawn of No Light (Chthon)” and delivering that with an undercurrent of crush-based groove as if to remind that even as they gallop, they’re still kin to the likes of fellow Göteborgers Domkraft and Monolord, both of whom have also moved outward from their more straight-up stylistic foundations.
Post-intro lead cut “Towering Graves (Osmos)” is huge and self-aware in kind, a patient, cavernous, lurching dirge that smoothly emerges from the synth drone of “Before the Storm,” and almost immediately, Cities of Mars signal to their audience their increased range and their mastery of nod. Aronstedt hits hard and brings a sense of lumber following the quiet break in “The Prophet (Methusalem)” that’s a willful slog and especially with Palm and Norén sharing vocals over it, feels like a payoff even before the actual payoff, further evidence of just how dug-in Cities of Mars get coming with the immersive movement across that seven-minute track, dynamic in its changes but working according to a master plan that is loyal to the concept of the album as a whole and which very much feeds into that flow. And the overarching affect is huge.
Of course, conveying “big” sound is nothing new for Cities of Mars, but what feels most crucial to understand about the self-titled is that they’re working in three dimensions more than ever before. You can feel the width and the height, the depth of “The Dreaming Sky (Anur)” as the guitars go high and airy and the bass goes low and dirty and both are right up front in the mix paced by the drums and ready with a gut-punch of a chug for the chorus. That track and the aforementioned “A Dawn of No Light (Chthon)” follow behind the acoustic-based “Song of a Distant Earth (Hathra),” in which the vocal harmonies become a focal point in sweet, folkish arrangement and in under three minutes, Cities of Mars essentially redefine the scope of who they are as a band.
“Song of a Distant Earth (Hathra)” is not an interlude, and it’s not something they would’ve done in 2017, or even 2019, and if it’s a result of being restricted from playing live as much as they otherwise may have over the last couple years, the transition into the Baroness-style rush of “A Dawn of No Light (Chthon)” can only be called a fair trade for the proggier turn and the attention to detail in their delivery. The penultimate and somewhat longer at 3:49 “Reflected Skyline (Sarraqum)” is likewise subdued, but this back and forth movement, pushing, pulling and careening and stomping all the while is fluid. Not that Cities of Mars was necessarily written as a single piece — I don’t know that it wasn’t, but the songs have identities of their own — but there was very clearly care put into how the band would tell the stories in addition to the stories being told.
Less directly folk in its cadence, “Reflected Skyline (Sarraqum)” is more daring vocally than “Song of a Distant Earth (Hathra),” but it works, and when the cymbal wash and lead guitar announce the arrival of “The Black Shard (Bahb-Elon),” a patient intro unfurls over the next two and a half minutes until the first verse takes flight. The song recedes for a moment but comes back and is angular and vast and melodic and crunching at the same time and I suppose in that, and in its classic-style solo at the 10-minute mark to finish out in the remaining time, it’s a fitting summary of the album as a whole. They end with an almost sudden coming apart.
Perhaps that’s the transmission from the ancient satellite cutting out, or maybe they just pushed it as far as they could go. Given everything up to that point, it’s believable. Whatever the circumstances behind the manner in which Cities of Mars manifested these shifts in approach on this album, one can’t help but view Cities of Mars as the record they’ve been moving toward over the last seven-plus years, and the fact that it’s self-titled reinforces that notion. If this is the band stating outright that they’ve found themselves in these songs and in these somewhat opaque but engaging lyrical tales — concept has never trumped songwriting for them and it doesn’t here either — then their statement resonates accordingly, echoing through space, back to this distant earth.
Cities of Mars, “Towering Graves (Osmos)” official video
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 7th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
No-brainer here. Sweden’s Cities of Mars have been rolling out grooves for well over half a decade now and they’ve got a third album ready to go for May on Ripple. That’s good news. Okay. Even more encouraging is the fact that the three-piece have self-titled it. That says to me there’s a purpose in declaring Cities of Mars as something definitive. This isn’t a band naming the first record after the band — or the band after the first record, which I guess also happens — but deciding after 2019’s The Horologist (review here), 2017’s Temporal Rifts (review here), 2016’s Celestial Mistress EP (review here) and 2015’s Cyclopean Ritual/The Third Eye (review here) single that they’ve found the thing they’ve been looking for all this time. And if you’ve followed along their path to any degree, you know their work also has a central sci-fi plotline — or at least a universe in which it takes place — and they bring that forward across seven new songs here too, the first of which is streaming now.
Given the thought they put into their work anyway, and the hints the PR wire is dropping below about arrangement-depth here, I’m more than willing to blindly look forward to this new Cities of Mars even before I manage to click play on “Towering Graves (Osmos),” their new video which you can stream at the bottom of this post, along with The Horologist. Hey, sometimes you just want to get the news up on the quick.
Art (rules), info (infomative), preorder links (useful for financial planning), and video (let’s find out) follow, in that order:
Gothenburg cosmic doom unit CITIES OF MARS to release new album on Ripple Music this May; watch new video “Towering Graves (Osmos)”
Swedish doom cosmonauts CITIES OF MARS announce the release of their third studio full-length ‘Cities of Mars’, to be issued on May 20th through Ripple Music. Unfold the mysteries of their heavy realm with new video “Towering Graves (Osmos)”! https://smarturl.it/toweringgraves
CITIES OF MARS combine heavy doom riffs with ambient soundscapes and haunting vocals. The lyrics on each song add a chapter in a continuing story, where a Soviet cosmonaut on a covert space mission in 1971 discovers an ancient Martian city and awakens a sleeping conspiracy from the dawn of humanity…
Their third album is even more rooted in the band’s evolving mythos, with each song adding another piece to the puzzle. ‘Cities of Mars’ contains a story from each of the seven cities on the red planet, each invoking a distinct identity and character. Seven years of existence as a band, several European tours and countless hours of relentless 105 dB creativity later, CITIES OF MARS present their widest sonic palette to date, including acoustic songs, more intricate vocals and prominent electronic soundscapes, all recorded by the band but mixed and mastered by Kent Stump (of Wo Fat fame) in his Crystal Clear Sound studio in Texas.
From the ethereal melody of the ghost city of Sarraqum in “Reflected Skyline”, the haunted skyscraper riff of “Towering Graves”, to the desperate howls from the buried city of Methusalem in “The Prophet”, this album represents all the musical facets so far of Daniel, Chris and Johan in their quest for not only the heaviest of riffs but also great melodies, hooks and the occasional 80’s throwback. Artwork was designed by Mirkow Gastow.
CITIES OF MARS ‘Cities Of Mars’ Out May 20th on Ripple Music US preorder: https://ripplemusic.bigcartel.com/products EU preorder: https://en.ripple.spkr.media/ Bandcamp: https://ripplemusic.bandcamp.com/album/cities-of-mars
Line-up: Danne Palm – lead vocals, bass, synths Christoffer Norén – lead vocals, guitar Johan Aronstedt – backing vocals, drums & percussion, sound FX
