One might recall Blues.Noir bassist/vocalist Daniel Palm (center above) from the rhythm section of Gothenburg sci-fi-themed crunchriffers Cities of Mars, who called it a day last year. Blues.Noir is a new project whose debut single “Främlingar på tåg” is out today, working around the concept of playing dark, heavy blues rock and making a point of doing so in Swedish. For the song, Cities of Mars‘ drummer Johan Aronstedt recorded, and the trio indeed manifests a darker sense of tonal threat certainly than one thinks of modern blues rock as having.

I don’t know much about the band’s plans going forward, but they note below there are more singles coming as they continue their initial explorations of the concept and where it might take them in terms of sound. A heavy blues revamp is easy enough to get on board with considering that so much of ‘blues rock’ is flat-out awful — I’m not supposed to say that but I don’t care — but I wouldn’t assume they’re done growing as a project just because they have an idea to start from either.

You’ll find “Främlingar på tåg” at the bottom of this post. Here’s background from the PR wire:

BLUES.NOIR – On a mission to play the blues heavier than ever, in Swedish.

Once, the blues could be played loud and dirty, rivalling many rock bands in heavy ferocity. These days, the blues is often an old man’s genre, either relishing in glories past, lingering as a non-grooving inoffensive muzak or being packaged in a big band Bonamassa-style bonanza. This state of affairs will of course not do. In Sweden, as elsewhere, the blues needs a double shot of heaviness and darkness and that’s where BLUES.NOIR are cranking their amps.

To make things more interesting, all lyrics are sung in Swedish, drawing inspiration equally from our current bleak times of hybrid warfare and the rumble from the East, as well as Lovecraft-esque tales of horrors in the dark.

After disbanding Cities of Mars in 2024, Daniel Palm spent some time looking for a new creative outlet. Being a lifelong fan of ZZ Top, a seed was rooting for a band that combined the bluesy riffs of yesteryear with the influences of stoner, doom and heavy psych that years of writing, recording and touring with CoM had brought. Soon drummer Magnus Könberg was added with a string of potential guitarists coming and going. With the rhythm section quickly settling in firmly, finding a guitar player that had good improvisational skills, a sense of the blues as well as a good handling of brutal riff weight proved a lot harder. Most of 2024 was spent trying out guitar candidates while writing songs.

A concert with legendary Swedish band Kent in 2025 proved to be an epiphany, when the emotional directness of lyrics in Daniel’s native language suddenly gave an interesting idea of translating all the songs into Swedish. For better or worse, this change brought an interesting dimension to the band and at the same time drummer Magnus’ old bandmate Tim McWeird joined on guitar. Tim quickly proved to have both a properly loud amp setup as well as riffs and solos aplenty, suddenly songs were completed and the band live debuted short thereafter.

The first single Främlingar på tåg (Strangers on a train) was quickly recorded with ex-CoM drummer Johan Aronstedt before being sent to Kent Stump of Wo Fat fame at his Crystal Clear Sound studio in Dallas, TX for mixing. This first song has quite a classical blues structure, but played with hard intent and is meant to be cranked loud. Three more songs are in the pipeline for release in the coming months and now BLUES.NOIR are ready to blow out the windows of blues venues where cobwebs have grown long enough.

Blues.Noir are:
Tim McWeird – guitar
Daniel Palm – bass/vocals
Magnus Könberg – drums

https://bluesnoir.se/
https://bluesnoir.bandcamp.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@bluesnoirband
https://www.instagram.com/blues.noir
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61556334886031

Blues.Noir, “Främlingar på tåg”

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

www.facebook.com/citiesofmars
http://citiesofmars.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/citiesofmars

https://www.facebook.com/theripplemusic/
https://ripplemusic.bandcamp.com/
http://www.ripple-music.com/

Cities of Mars, Cities of Mars (2022)

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

www.facebook.com/citiesofmars
http://citiesofmars.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/citiesofmars

https://www.facebook.com/theripplemusic/
https://ripplemusic.bandcamp.com/
http://www.ripple-music.com/

Cities of Mars, Cities of Mars (2022)

Picking up from last time, and leading into next time, this episode continues the Some of the Best of 2022 coverage for ‘The Obelisk Show,’ and I feel reasonably comfortable assuming that would come through clearly even if I didn’t say it outright.

You’ll note this one starts pretty heavy and aggro with 16. That’s on purpose. My timeslot on Gimme Metal follows artist-guest specials, and I’ve felt at times in the past like it’s a really abrupt shift from most of those — sometimes death metal, grind, and otherwise extreme — and what I do, which is different. I know that’s the point, but I wanted to see if I could make that transition smoother than it otherwise can be. We’ll see how it goes, I guess.

From there, there’s a good amount of branching out, and while this is by no means all of the killer stuff that 2022 has wrought, my hope is that at least some of the sprawl comes through, some of the combination of new and old bands, and so forth. Next episode, which will be #100 and the last one of the year — bit of an event in the life of the show — will continue the thread.

Thanks for listening if you do, thanks for reading if you are.

The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at: http://gimmemetal.com.

Full playlist:

The Obelisk Show – 12.09.22 (VT = voice track)

The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is Dec. 23 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.

Gimme Metal website

The Obelisk on Facebook

Good show. Good tracks. Two Acid King songs to start, new stuff from Nebula, Sasquatch, Obiat, Torpedo Torpedo, Les Nadie — with whose debut album I am enthralled; review next week — Chat Pile, Brujas del Sol, Cities of Mars, Freedom Hawk (also reviewing next week). Classics from YOB, The Devin Townsend Band, Yawning Man, Kyuss, Sleep. New classic, anyhow, from the latter and a live cut from Yawning Man that’s gorgeously immersive to end out before the bonus track Freedom Hawk closes. I don’t know how much sense it makes on paper, but it flows well.

I don’t really have a theme here other than “make a good show.” I wanted to mix it up with stuff people might know and not, hopefully keep listeners hooked. Even 89 episodes of The Obelisk Show, I still a little bit live in fear that at some point Gimme Metal is going to be like, “You’re weird, you play weird shit, you never turn your playlists in on time and you suck at this,” and give me the axe. It’s happened to me on radio before (ask me about that some time; glorious story), but hasn’t happened yet here. Still, a nod to accessibility isn’t the worst idea once every 90 shows or so.

Thanks if you listen and thanks for reading.

The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at: http://gimmemetal.com.

Full playlist:

The Obelisk Show – 07.22.22 (VT = voice track)

The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is Aug. 5 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.

Gmme Metal website

The Obelisk on Facebook

Desertfest Belgium, now in its eighth year and second to feature festivals in two cities — Antwerp and Ghent — has put day tickets on sale as of yesterday. Further, the day splits — who plays when — have been announced, so I guess if you only want to see one day’s worth of killer shit, you can do that. Honestly though, unless you have a pressing prior engagement like your own wedding or there’s a family emergency or some such, I’m not sure how you make a conscious decision to not do all three days.

Even if The Brian Jonestown Massacre isn’t your thing, or you’ve never been huge on Red Fang or Wolves in the Throne Room, look down these bills. From Gozu and Samavayo and Josh Graham‘s IIVII the first day, Naxatras and Suma the next (talk about a marriage of opposites) and Bongripper and Polymoon the third, there’s really no way you lose. Pick one? Shit, I’ll take 10.

Ghent is apparently next to be filled out, and of course there will be some crossover for bands who are tour for a couple weeks, but there’s always a bunch of acts reserved for one or the other as well. I don’t know. I like bands playing shows. I like fests. I’d like to go to Belgium one day and make up for that one time I was there only long enough to fuck up ordering coffee in French like the dipshit passthrough tourist I was. Make up for it by probably doing the same thing, that is.

Oh, and they’re not on this poster, but Cities of Mars play on Sunday.

From the PR wire:

DF 2022 ANTWERP: WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM, BELZEBONG, AND MORE!

Back once again, with another headbanger. This time we break out the truly deep ‘n’ heavy, from all over Europe and beyond. Please take note: the following bands will be appearing at DF ANTWERP ONLY. News on the Ghent edition to follow in short order.

Making up for last year’s unfortunate cancellation, we’re glad that WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM will make it this year. Let’s burn some black candles to ward off any new pandemic, shall we? We’re also very glad to welcome two doom titans from the east and the north. BELZEBONG from Poland are always a Good Bad-Ass Time with their ripping lowdown instrumentals, and Sweden’s SUMA are keen on celebrating a belated 20th birthday on stage.

In case you were wondering if there will be a no-frills blues rock fix on the bill, wonder no more! THE HEAVY EYES have us covered with their homegrown Delta boogie, while DOMMENGANG will be here to deliver a West Coast vibe.

Greece has been delivering the stoner goods for a long time now, and it is with great pleasure we announce the return of the jam-adelic NAXATRAS and the first-time arrival of HALF GRAMME OF SOMA.

We promised some deep cuts, and we got ’em. Berlin scene mainstays SAMAVAYO will be here, as well as Sweden’s Ripple Records signees CITIES OF MARS. We’re also very excited that POLYMOON will come to dish out a hefty dose of Finnish nu psychedelia.

To round things off, two Belgian bands from extreme ends of the spectrum. On the one end we got the extremely grim sludgers of HISPYN, at the other is the very goofy but equally hard-banging GNOME who despite their diminutive appearance are not to be messed with.

What’s more? This Monday 18/07 at 11:00 AM CET we will announce the day per day lineup for DF ANTWERP. This means that on Monday 18/07 separate one day tickets will go on sale for DF ANTWERP! You have been warned!

Let’s be honest here: things are looking good, and better by the minute. Your hard-earned money will be well spe.. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T HAVE YOUR TICKET YET!! Ticket prices are still reduced now, go get ’em before we start calling ’em ‘regular’!

MESSAGE OF GENERAL IMPORTANCE: We now welcome the Day Trippers to join the Weekend Trippers, as DAY TICKETS for the Antwerp Edition (Friday, Saturday & Sunday) become available as of NOW, Monday 18 July at 11am. You can find them on our ticketing page at the price of €58 (all-in) per day.

Desertfest insiders know what’s coming next: the DAILY SCHEDULE for both festivals is also visible on our line-up page, and will be complemented with any new acts we announce from now on. This will somewhat facilitate the hard choice to make when picking a day.

But! Let’s not forget that them Reduced Combi tickets are still available, so maybe you don’t have to choose after all. Get the full monty, 3 days of Desertfest Antwerp, or even throw in a day of Desertfest Ghent as a kicker.

We’ll be back soon with another round of new names.. stay tuned!

DF ANTWERP & GHENT REDUCED COMBI: 149 Euros
(valid 4 days: 14-16/10 – Antwerp & 30/10 – Ghent)

DF ANTWERP ONLY REDUCED COMBI: 120 Euros
(valid 3 days: 14-16/10 – Antwerp)

DF GHENT ONLY REDUCED DAY TICKET: 52 Euros
(valid 1 day: 30/10 – Ghent)

http://www.desertfest.be/
https://www.facebook.com/desertfestbelgium/
https://www.instagram.com/desertfest_belgium/

[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

Cities of Mars on Facebook

Cities of Mars on Bandcamp

Cities of Mars on Instagram

Cities of Mars website

Argonauta Records on Facebook

Argonauta Records website

That’s a hell of a lineup for a birthday party. As you no doubt figured, GockelScream #3 is the third edition of the festival, which is based somewhere — no, I don’t know where — near Dresden in Germany and has an international pull enough to get Heavy Psych Sounds denizens like Duel and Geezer on board during their European tours, as well as to supplement with acts like Cities of Mars, Acid Rooster, Bantoriak, Poland’s Black Smoke and so on. It’s a two-dayer, so let’s assume that the birthday presumably for somebody, perhaps even Gockel, from ElbSludgeBooking will be duly celebrated. In screaming fashion.

If you’re in the region and able to attend, it’s a private festival (then why the press?), so you need to reach out to ElbSludge and ask them where to go, when, how much it costs, and so on. In my mind, that only makes this cooler. A rager with some good friends in the who-knows-where, righteous tunes, laid-back hangs, yeah. That’s about my speed.

Here’s the details that are public:

“In 2022 the notorious booking crew ElbSludgeBooking from Dresden/East-Germany will host the 3rd edition of its Stoner Rock festival „GockelScream“. What started as an excessive birthday party evolved into a proper fest with a special selection of international bands from Stoner to Doom, from Sludge to Krautian Psychedelia. This year will feature illustrious musical presentations by touring bands as Geezer, Duel and Cities of Mars and one-off shows by RRRAGS, Speck and Black Smoke. The whole line-up is of highest caliber, accompanied by a psychedelic light crew, massive PA, good food and German Punkerbier at a very special location, just 30 minutes east of downtown Dresden. If you dig the Stoner scene in its pure and cozy DIY-form this one’s for you. “.

Full line-up:

GEEZER (US)
DUEL (US)
RRRAGS (NL)
CITIES OF MARS (SWE)
ACID ROOSTER (GER)
CANNABINEROS (GER)
BANTORIAK (IT)
SPECK (AUT)
ANDROMEDA SPACE RITUAL (POL)
BLACK SMOKE (POL)
KOMBYNAT ROBOTRON (GER)
ALLIGATOR RODEO (GER)
ACACIA & MAGNOLIA (GER)

All the details like admission fee and the exact location are only available after writing to gockelscream@elbsludge.de.

https://www.facebook.com/Elbsludgebooking/
https://www.instagram.com/elbsludgebooking/

Duel, In Carne Persona (2021)