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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blood Incantation, “Luminescent Bridge” official video

Blood Incantation, “Obliquity of the Ecliptic” official video

Heavy existentialism. With the Welsh concept of ‘hiraeth’ — being homesick for a place to which you can never return; mourning a loss of self-in-place — at its core, The Hiraeth Pit is the second Deer Creek full-length. The long-running Denver heavy rockers issued Menticide (review here) as a 20-years-later debut album in 2022, and the seven-track/38-minute The Hiraeth Pit follows just two years after with another round of consuming riff-led miseries. That relatively quick turnaround isn’t really a factor in terms of the band’s sound, as the four-piece of guitarist/vocalists Paul Vismara and Conan Hultgren, bassist/keyboardist Stephanie Hopper and drummer Marc Brooks have been around long enough to have some sense of who they are as a group either way, but atmospherically and in terms of mood, The Hiraeth Pit — recorded and mixed by Bart McCrorey at Crash Pad Studios, mastered by Chris Gresham at Ember Audio Productions — is vividly downtrodden.

It’s not that they’re playing death-doom, or even doom at all all of the time, but life becomes a wait for death within the album’s span, and lyrics like, “Why are we here again and again?/Simply fighting for your boring life,” from the penultimate “We Dreamed of Flames and Suffocation,” or the line “I watched the last bird die in your arms,” from the more broadly socially conscious “Crushed by the Hand Slowly Filling with Gold,” are emblematic of the point of view from which the proceedings as a whole emanate. With Vismara‘s lead vocals severe in delivery in a way that in other contexts might lean toward goth but is born of classic doom, the affecting depressiveness is there from the lumbering opener “Bodies to Be Kicked” onward, and it is the defining spirit of The Hiraeth Pit. As the listener, they put you right in it, and the deeper you go, the less any kind of escape feels possible. How do you escape when you’re your own problem anyway? When the mundane becomes a thing you dread?

“Grey” takes that hopelessness and departs from its first two verses into a litany of references to science fiction from Ghost in the Shell to The Wrath of Khan, but the central question around that escapism is asking the aliens, “As you get ready to leave/Will you give us a ride?” and the answer is a resounding no. We’re stuck here, in modernity. Stuck with the opiate crisis in “Bodies to Be Kicked” or the descent into distinctly-American stupid-leads-the-way fascism on “The Wretches Who Grovel” and “Crushed by the Hand Slowly Filling with Gold,’ grifted, without agency, and punished for existing as something other than rich. Stuck as “They Were Buried Yesterday” seems like it’s trying to shake itself out of grief but can’t, and stuck as “We Dreamed of Flames and Suffocation” imagines an overthrow of what capitalists sell as the natural order, but feels all the more like a dream as Deer Creek land in the bleak reality of closer “Almshouse Stench,” where “My zest for life grows cold,” and the album’s last lines beg for relief: “Save me from this pain/For I cannot face another day/Dreadful day of rain/Plagued by this clouded fate.”

To be sure, Deer Creek aren’t the first band to operate in this kind of emotional sphere of inward-looking and outwardly-trajected disaffection, but they are striking in the forwardness with which they do it, and the according feeling of gruel with which The Hiraeth Pit is delivered. It is resolute in its sadness, weary by the finish in a way that is consuming but not necessarily mirrored in the tempos of “Bodies to Be Kicked” or “The Wretches Who Grovel,” which at least feel relatively upbeat for how disheartened much of the lyrical perspective actually is. This contrast becomes part of what makes The Hiraeth Pit so engrossing, and it’s worth emphasizing the word “relatively” in that last sentence; it’s not like Deer Creek are writing Torche-style sludge-pop about feeling dead inside, but there’s movement in that opening duo and in the cave-doom-NWOBHM (think Witchfinder General and Pagan Altar, etc.) chug in the chorus of “Crushed by the Hand Slowly Filling with Gold” that lets the material come across as not completely void of hope even as “Crushed by the Hand Slowly Filling with Gold” resolves in flashes of noisy “soloing” that feel specifically in the tradition of Saint Vitus, who of course were no slouches themselves when it came to thematic downerism.

Ultimately, the lesson of The Hiraeth Pit isn’t so far removed from that of Menticide, but the sophomore long-player feels more purposeful in its construction as it makes a centerpiece of “They Were Buried Yesterday” and gives breadth to the central intangibility of mourning: “Ah, I miss you.”  Not brutal in the sense of death metal or other extreme styles, it nonetheless seems to center around the weight of its emotionalism as much as that offered tonally, and that leaves even “Grey” — which is arguably the least melancholic of the tracks, with its self-aware winks at The Empire Strikes Back, Dune, and so on — as an act of labor. But at no point, in “Grey” or otherwise, does it feel performative, like the band are putting on some woebegone veneer. In this way, “We Dreamed of Flames and Suffocation” feels almost daring in its willingness to envision living something other than the boot-on-neck life, and the most punishing impact isn’t even the extra-fervent plod around which “Almhouse Stench” coils and the low, throaty growl that accompanies, but the overarching feeling of loss and being lost that finds its culmination therein.

I’ve remarked on the lyrics a decent amount, and fair enough as The Hiraeth Pit has something to say about what serves as its crux in terms of subject matter, but it’s noteworthy that the title-line itself, which appears in “They Were Buried Yesterday,” isn’t trying to revel or celebrate grief. There’s no glee. But as purposeful as Deer Creek are in the expression that defines the work, they’re not lost in it or themselves consumed by what, as a listener, feels so consuming. This is where 20 years of songwriting before they did their first record comes into play, perhaps, but it’s also clear that in following-up Menticide, they’ve discovered something more about what makes an album a front-to-back experience. The Hiraeth Pit only benefits from this learning.

Deer Creek, The Hiraeth Pit (2024)

Deer Creek on Facebook

Deer Creek on Bandcamp

This is the next-to-last day of this Quarterly Review, and while it’s been a lot, it’s been encouraging to dig into so much stuff in such intense fashion. I’ve added a few releases to my notes for year-end lists, but more importantly, I’ve gotten to hear and cover stuff that otherwise I might not, and that’s the value at a QR has for me at its core, so while we’re not through yet, I’ll just say thanks again for reading and that I hope you’ve also found something that speaks to you in these many blocks of text and embedded streaming players. If not, there’s still 20 records to go, so take comfort in that as needed.

Quarterly Review #81-90:

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Harvestman, Triptych: Part One

The weirdo-psych experimental project of Steve Von Till (now ex-Neurosis, which is still sad on a couple levels) begins a released-according-to-lunar-orbit trilogy of albums in Triptych: Part One, which is headlined by opening track “Psilosynth,” boasting a guest appearance from Al Cisneros (Sleep, Om) on bass. If those two want to start an outsider-art dub-drone band together, my middle-aged burnout self is here for it — “Psilosynth (Harvest Dub),” a title that could hardly be more Von Till and Cisneros, appears a little later, which suggests they might also be on board — but that’s only part of the world being created in Triptych: Part One as “Mare and Foal” manipulates bagpipes into ghostly melodies, “Give Your Heart to the Hawk” echoes poetry over ambient strum, “Coma” and “How to Purify Mercury” layer synthesized drone and/or effects-guitar to sci-fi affect and “Nocturnal Field Song” finds YOB‘s Dave French banging away on something metal in the background while the crickets chirp. The abiding spirit is subdued, exploratory as Von Till‘s solo works perpetually are, and even as the story is only a third told, the immersion on Triptych: Part One goes as deep as the listener is willing to let it. I look forward to being a couple moons late reviewing the next installment.

Harvestman on Facebook

Neurot Recordings website

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Kalgon, Kalgon

As they make their self-titled full-length debut, Asheville, North Carolina’s Kalgon lay claim to a deceptive wide swath of territory even separate from the thrashier departure “Apocalyptic Meiosis” as they lumber through “The Isolate” and the more melodic “Grade of the Slope,” stoner-doom leaning into psych and more cosmic vibing, with the mournful “Windigo” leading into “Eye of the Needle”‘s slo-mo-stoner-swing and gutted out vocals turning to Beatlesy melody — guitarist Brandon Davis and bassist Berten Lee Tanner share those duties while Marc Russo rounds out the trio on drums — in its still-marching second half and the post-Pallbearer reaches and acoustic finish of “Setting Sun.” An interlude serves as centerpiece between “Apocalyptic Meiosis” and “Windigo,” and that two-plus-minute excursion into wavy drone and amplifier hum works well to keep a sense of flow as the next track crashes in, but more, it speaks to longer term possibilities for how the band might grow, both in terms of what they do sonically and in their already-clear penchant for seeing their first LP as a whole, single work with its own progression and story to tell.

Kalgon on Facebook

Kalgon on Bandcamp

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Agriculture, Living is Easy

Surely there’s some element in Agriculture‘s self-applied aesthetic frame of “ecstatic black metal” in the power of suggestion, but as they follow-up their 2022 self-titled debut with the four-song Living is Easy EP and move from the major-key lightburst of the title-track into the endearingly, organically, folkishly strained harmonies of “Being Eaten by a Tiger,” renew the overwhelming blasts of tremolo and seared screams on “In the House of Angel Flesh” and round out with a minute of spoken word recitation in “When You Were Born,” guitarists Richard Chowenhill (also credited with co-engineering, mixing and mastering) and Dan Meyer (also vocals), bassist/vocalist Leah B. Levinson and drummer/percussionist Kern Haug present an innovative perspective on the genre that reminds of nothing so much as the manner in which earliest Wolves in the Throne Room showed that black metal could do something more than it had done previously. That’s not a sonic comparison, necessarily — though there are basic stylistic aspects shared between the two — but more about the way Agriculture are using black metal toward purposefully new expressive ends. I’m not Mr. Char by any means, but it’s been probably that long since the last time I heard something that was so definitively black metal and worked as much to refresh what that means.

Agriculture on Facebook

The Flenser website

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Saltpig, Saltpig

Apparently self-released by the intercontinental duo last Fall and picked up for issue through Heavy Psych Sounds, Saltpig‘s self-titled debut modernizes classic charge and swing in increasingly doomed fashion across the first four songs of its A-side, laces “Burn the Witch” with samples themed around the titular subject, and dedicates all of side B to the blown out mostly-instrumental roll of “1950,” which is in fact 19 minutes and 50 seconds long. The band, comprised of guitarist/vocalist/noisemaker Mitch Davis (also producer for a swath of more commercially viable fare) and drummer Fabio Alessandrini (ex-Annihilator), are based in New York and Italy, respectively, and whatever on earth might’ve brought them together, in both the heavy-garage strut of “Demon” and the willfully harsh manner in which they represent themselves in the record’s back half, they bask in the rougher edges of their tones and approach more generally. “When You Were Dead” is something of a preface in its thicker distortion to “1950,” but its cavernous shouted vocals retain a psychedelic presence amid the ensuing grit, whereas once the closer gets underway from its feedback-soaked first two minutes, they make it plain there’s no coming back.

Saltpig on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Druidess, Hermits and Mandrakes

Newcomer UK doomers Druidess nod forth on their debut EP, Hermits and Mandrakes, with a buzzing tonality in “Witches’ Sabbath” that’s distinctly more Monolord than Electric Wizard, and while that’s fascinating academically and in terms of the generational shift happening in the heavy underground over the last few years, the fuzz that accompanies the hook of “Mandragora,” which follows, brings a tempo boost that situates the two-piece of vocalist Shonagh Brown and multi-instrumentalist/producer Daniel Downing (guitar, bass, keys, drum programming; he even had a hand in the artwork, apparently) in a more rocking vein. It’s heavy either way you go, and “Knightingales” brings Green Lung-style organ into the mix along with another standout hook before “The Hermit of Druid’s Temple” signs over its soul to faster Sabbath worship and closer “The Forest Witches’ Daughter” underscores the commitment to same in combination with a more occult thematic. It’s familiar-enough terrain, ultimately, but the heft they conjure early on and the movement they bring to it later should be plenty to catch ears among the similarly converted, and in song and performance they display a self-awareness of craft that is no less a source of their potential.

Druidess on Facebook

Druidess on Bandcamp

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Astral Construct, Traveling a Higher Consciousness

One-man sans-vocals psych outfit Astral Construct — aka Denver-based multi-instrumentalist Drew Patricks — released Traveling a Higher Consciousness last year, and well, I guess I got lost in a temporal wormhole or some such because it’s not last year anymore. The record’s five-track journey is encompassing in its metal-rooted take on heavy psychedelia, however, and that’s fortunate as “Accessing the Mind’s Eye” solidifies from its languid first-half unfolding into more stately progressive riffage. Bookended by the dreamy manifestation of “Heart of the Nebula” (8:12) and “Interstellar” (9:26), which moves between marching declaration and expansive helium-guitar float, the album touches ground in centerpiece “The Traveler,” but even there could hardly be called terrestrial once the drums drop out and the keys sweep in near the quick-fade finish that brings about the more angular “Long View of Astral Consciousness,” that penultimate track daring a bit of double-kick in the drums heading toward its own culmination. Now, then or future, whether it’s looking inward or out, Traveling a Higher Consciousness is a revelry for the cosmos waiting to be engaged. You might just end up in a different year upon hearing it.

Astral Construct on Facebook

Astral Construct on Bandcamp

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Ainu, Ainu

Although their moniker comes from an indigenous group who lived on Hokkaido before that island became part of modern Japan, Ainu are based in Genoa, Italy, and their self-titled debut has little to do sound-wise with the people or their culture. Fair enough. Ainu‘s Ainu, which starts out in “Il Faro” with sparse atmospheric guitar and someone yelling at you in Italian presumably about the sea (around which the record is themed), uses speech and samples to hold most positions vocals would otherwise occupy, though the two-minute “D.E.V.S.” is almost entirely voice-based, so the rules aren’t so strictly applied one way or the other. Similarly, as the three-piece course between grounded sludgier progressions and drifting post-heavy, touching on more aggressive moods in the late reaches of “Aiutami A. Ricordare” and the nodding culmination of “Khrono” but letting the breadth of “Call of the Sea” unfold across divergent movements of crunchier riffs and operatic prog grandiosity. You would not call it predictable, however tidal the flow from one piece to the next might be.

Ainu on Facebook

Subsound Records website

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Grid, The World Before Us

Progressive sludge set to a backdrop of science-fiction and extrasolar range, The World Before Us marks a turn from heretofore instrumental New York trio Grid, who not only feature vocals throughout their 38-minute six-tracker third LP, but vary their approach in that regard such that as “Our History Hidden” takes hold following the keyboardy intro “Singularity” (in we go!), the first three of the song’s 12 minutes find them shifting from sub-soaring melodicism to hard-growled metallic crunch with the comfort of an act who’ve been pulling off such things for much longer. The subsequent “Traversing the Interstellar Gateway” (9:31) works toward similar ends, only with guitar instead of singing, and the standout galloping kickdrum of “Architects of Our World” leads to a deeper dig into the back and forth between melody and dissonance, led into by the threatening effects manipulations of the interlude “Contact” and eventually giving over to the capstone outro “Duality” that, if it needs to be said, mirrors “Singularity” at the start. There’s nuance and texture in this interplay between styles — POV: you dig Opeth and Hawkwind — and my suspicion is that if Grid keep to this methodology going forward, the vocal arrangements will continue to evolve along with the rest of the band’s expanding-in-all-directions stylizations.

Grid on Facebook

Grid on Bandcamp

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Dätcha Mandala, Koda

The stated intentions of Bordeaux, France’s Dätcha Mandala in bringing elements of ’90s British alternative rock into their heavier context with their Koda LP are audible in opener “She Said” and the title-track that follows it, but it’s the underlying thread of heavy rock that wins the day across the 11-song outing, however danceable “Wild Fire” makes it or however attitude-signaling the belly-belch that starts “Thousand Pieces” is in itself. That’s not to say Koda doesn’t succeed at what it’s doing, just that there’s more to the proceedings than playing toward that particular vision of cool. “It’s Not Only Rock and Roll (And We Don’t Like It)” has fuzzy charm and a hook to boot, while “Om Namah Shivaya” ignites with an energy that is proggy and urgent in kind — the kind of song that makes you a fan at the show even if you’ve never heard the band before — and closer “Homeland” dares some burl amid its harmonized chorus and flowing final guitar solo, answering back to the post-burp chug in “Thousand Pieces” and underscoring the multifaceted nature of the album as a whole. I suppose if you have prior experience with Dätcha Mandala, you know they’re not just about one thing, but for newcomers, expect happy surprises.

Dätcha Mandala on Facebook

Discos Macarras Records website

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Dr. Space Meets Mr. Mekon, The Bubbles Scopes

Given the principals involved — Scott “Dr. Space” Heller of Øresund Space Collective, Black Moon Circle, et al, and Chris Purdon of Hawklords and Nik Turner’s Space Ritual — it should come as no surprise that The Bubbles Scopes complements its grammatical counterintuitiveness with alien soundscape concoctions of synth-based potency; the adventure into the unknown-until-it’s-recorded palpable across two extended tracks suitably titled “Trip 1” (22:56) and “Trip 2” (15:45). Longform waveforms, both. The collaboration — one of at least two Heller has slated for release this Spring; stay tuned tomorrow — makes it clear from the very beginning that the far-out course The Bubbles Scopes follows is for those who dwell in rooms with melting walls, but in the various pulsations and throbs of “Trip 1,’ the transition from organ to more electronic-feeling keyboard, and so on, human presence is no more absent than they want it to be, and while the loops are dizzying and “Trip 2” seems to reach into different dimensions with its depth of mix, when the scope is so wide, the sounds almost can’t help but feel free. And so they do. They put 30 copies on tape, because even in space all things digitalia are ephemeral. If you want one, engage your FOMO and make it happen because the chance may or may not come again.

Dr. Space on Facebook

Dr. Space on Bandcamp

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By the time today is through — come hell or high water! — we will be at the halfway point of this two-week Quarterly Review. It hasn’t been difficult so far, though there are ups and downs always and I don’t think I’m giving away secrets when I tell you that in listening to 50 records some are going to be better than others.

Truth is that even outside the 100 LPs, EPs, etc., I have slated, there’s still a ton more. Even in something so massive, there’s an element of picking and choosing what goes in. Curation is the nice word for it, though it’s not quite that creatif in my head. Either way, I hope you’ve found something that connects this week. If not yet, then today. If not today, then maybe next week. As I’m prone to say on Fridays, we’re back at it on Monday.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

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Pallbearer, Mind Burns Alive

While I won’t take away from the rawer energy and longing put into their earlier work, maturity suits Pallbearer. The Little Rock, Arkansas, four-piece of vocalist/guitarist Brett Campbell, guitarist/backing vocalist Devin Holt, bassist/synthesist/backing vocalist Joseph D. Rowland and drummer Mark Lierly have passed their 15th anniversary between 2020’s Forgotten Days (review here) and the self-recorded six tracks of Mind Burns Alive, and they sound poised harnessing new breadth and melodic clarity. They’ve talked about the album being stripped down, and maybe that’s true to some degree in the engrossing-anyhow opener “When the Light Fades,” but there’s still room for sax on the 10-minute “Endless Place,” and the quieter stretches of the penultimate “Daybreak” highlight harmonized vocals before the bass-weighted riff sweeps in after the three-minute mark. Campbell has never sounded stronger or more confident as a singer, and he’s able to carry the likewise subdued intro to “Signals” with apparent sincerity and style alike. The title-track flashes brighter hopes in its later guitar solo leads, but they hold both their most wistful drift and their most crushing plod for closer “With Disease,” because five records and countless tours (with more to come) later, Pallbearer very clearly know what the fuck they’re doing. I hope having their own studio leads to further exploration from here.

Pallbearer on Facebook

Nuclear Blast website

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BleakHeart, Silver Pulse

With its six pieces arranged so that side A works from its longest track to its shortest and side B mirrors by going shortest to longest, Denver‘s BleakHeart seem to prioritize immersion on their second full-length, Silver Pulse, as “All Hearts Desire” unfolds fluidly across nearly eight minutes, swelling to an initial lumbering roll that evaporates as they move into the more spacious verse and build back up around the vocals of Kiki GaNun (also synth) and Kelly Schilling (also bass, keys and more synth). Emotional resonance plays at least as much of a role throughout as the tonal weight intermittently wrought by JP Damron and Mark Chronister‘s guitars, and with Joshua Quinones on drums giving structure and movement to the meditations of “Where I’m Disease” before leaving the subsequent “Let Go” to its progression through piano, drone and a sit-in from a string quartet that leads directly into “Weeping Willow,” the spaces feel big and open but never let the listener get any more lost in them than is intended. This is the first LP from the five-piece incarnation of BleakHeart, which came together in 2022, and the balance of lushness and intensity as “Weeping Willow” hits its culmination and recedes into the subdued outset of “Falling Softly” and the doomed payoff that follows bodes well, but don’t take that as undercutting what’s already being accomplished here.

BleakHeart on Facebook

Seeing Red Records website

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Pryne, Gargantuan

Austria’s Pryne — also stylized all-caps: PRYNE — threaten to derail their first album before it’s even really started with the angular midsection breakdown of “Can-‘Ka No Rey,” but that the opener holds its course and even brings that mosher riff back at the end is indicative of the boldness with which they bring together the progressive ends of metal and heavy rock throughout the 10-song/46-minute offering, soaring in the solo ahead of the slowdown in “Ramification,” giving the audience 49 seconds to catch its breath after that initial salvo with “Hollow Sea” before “Abordan” resumes the varied onslaught with due punch, shove and twist, building tension in the verse and releasing in the melodic chorus in a way that feels informed by turn-of-the-century metal but seeming to nod at Type O Negative in the first half bridge of “Cymboshia” and refusing flat-out to do any one thing for too long. Plotted and complex even as “The Terrible End of the Yogi” slams out its crescendo before the Baronessy verse of “Plaguebearer” moves toward a stately gang shout and squibbly guitar tremolo, they roll out “Enola” as a more straight-ahead realignment before the drone interlude “Shapeless Forms” bursts into the double-kick-underscored thrash of closer “Elder Things,” riding its massive groove to an expectedly driving end. You never quite know what’s coming next within the songs, but the overarching sense of movement becomes a uniting factor that serves the material well regardless of the aggression level in any given stretch.

Pryne on Facebook

Pryne on Bandcamp

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Avi C. Engel, Too Many Souls

Backed by looped percussive ticks and pops and the cello-esque melody of the gudok, Toronto experimental singer-songwriter Avi C. Engel is poised as they ask in the lyrics of “Breadcrumb Dance,” “How many gods used to run this place/Threw up their hands, went into real estate” near the center of the seven-song Too Many Souls LP. Never let it be said there wasn’t room for humor in melancholy. Engel isn’t new to exploring folkish intimacy in various contexts, and Too Many Souls feels all the more personal even in “Wooly Mammoth” or second cut “Ladybird, What’s Wrong?” which gets underway on its casual semi-ramble with the line, “One by one I watch them piss into the sun,” for the grounded perspective at root. An ongoing thread of introspection and Engel‘s voice at the center draw the songs together as these stories are told in metaphor — birds return in the album’s second half with “The Oven Bird’s Song” but there’s enough heart poured in that it doesn’t need to be leaned into as a theme — and before it moves into its dreamstate drone still with the acoustic guitar beneath, “Without Any Eyes” brings through its own kind of apex in Engel‘s layered delivery. Topped with a part-backmasked take on the traditional “Wayfaring Stranger” that’s unfortunately left as an instrumental, Too Many Souls finds Engel continuing their journey of craft with its own songs as companions for each other and the artist behind them.

Avi C. Engel on Facebook

Somnimage website

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Aktopasa, Ultrawest

The 13-minute single “Ultrawest” follows behind Aktopasa‘s late-2022 Argonauta Records debut, Journey to the Pink Planet (review here), and was reportedly composed to feature in a documentary of the same name about the reshaping of post-industrial towns in Colorado. It is duly spacious in its slow, linear, instrumentalist progression. The Venice, Italy, three-piece of guitarist Lorenzo Barutta, bassist Silvio Tozzato and drummer Marco Sebastiano Alessi are fluid as they maintain the spirit of the jam that likely birthed the song’s floating atmospherics, but there’s a plan at work as well as they bring the piece to fruition, with Alessi subtly growing more urgent around 10 minutes in to mark the shift into an ending that never quite bursts out and isn’t trying to, but feels like resolution just the same. A quick, hypnotic showcase of the heavy psychedelic promise the debut held, “Ultrawest” makes it easy to look forward to whatever might come next for them.

Aktopasa on Facebook

Aktopasa on Bandcamp

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Guenna, Peak of Jin’Arrah

Right onto the list of 2024’s best debuts goes Guenna‘s Peak of Jin’Arrah, specifically for the nuance and range the young Swedish foursome bring to their center in heavy progressive fuzz riffing. One might look at a title like “Bongsai” or “Weedwacker” (video premiered here) and imagine played-to-genre stoner fare, but Guenna‘s take is more ambitious, as emphasized in the flute brought to “Bongsai” at the outset and the proclivity toward three-part harmonies that’s unveiled more in the nine-minute “Dimension X,” which follows. The folk influence toward which that flute hints comes forward on the mostly-acoustic closer “Guenna’s Lullaby,” which takes hold after the skronk-accompanied, full-bore push that caps “Wizery,” but by that point the context for such shifts has been smoothly laid out as being part of an encompassing and thoughtful songwriting process that in less capable hands would leave “Ordric Major” disjointed and likely overly aggressive. Even as they make room for the guest lead vocals of Elin Pålsson on “Dark Descent,” Guenna walk these balances smoothly and confidently, and if you don’t believe there’s a generational shift happening right now — at this very moment — in Scandinavia, Peak of Jin’Arrah stands ready to convince you otherwise. There’s a lot of work between here and there, but Guenna hold the potential to be a significant voice in that next-gen emergence.

Guenna on Facebook

The Sign Records website

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Slow Green Thing, Wetterwarte / Waltherstrasse

The interplay of stoner-metal tonal density and languid vocal melody in “I Thought I Would Not” sets an atmospheric mood for Slow Green Thing on their fourth LP, Wetterwarte / Waltherstrasse, which the Dresden-based four-piece seem to have recorded in two sessions between 2020 and 2022. That span of time might account for some of the scope between the songs as “Thousand Deaths” holds out a hand into the void staring back at it and the subsequent “Whispering Voices” answers the proggy wash and fuzzed soloing of “Tombstones in My Eyes” with roll and meditative float alike, but I honestly don’t know what was recorded when and there’s no real lack of cohesion within the aural mists being conjured or the heft residing within it, so take that as you will. It’s perhaps less of a challenge to put temporal considerations aside since Slow Green Thing seem so at home in the flow that plays out across Wetterwarte / Waltherstrasse‘s six songs and 44 minutes, remaining in control despite veering into more aggressive passages and basing so much of what they do on entrancing and otherworldly vibe. And while the general superficialities of thickened tones and soundscaping, ‘gaze-type singing and nod will be familiar, the use made of them by Slow Green Thing offers a richer and deeper experience revealed and affirmed on repeat listens.

Slow Green Thing on Facebook

Slow Green Thing on Bandcamp

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Ten Ton Slug, Colossal Oppressor

Don’t expect a lot of trickery in Ten Ton Slug‘s awaited first full-length record, Colossal Oppressor, which delivers its metallic sludge pummel with due transparency of purpose. That is to say, the Galway, Ireland, trio aren’t fucking around. Enough so that Bolt Thrower‘s Karl Willetts shows up on a couple of songs. Varied but largely growled or screamed vocals answer the furious chug and thud of “Balor,” and while “Ghosts of the Ooze” later on answers back to the brief acoustic parts bookending opener “The Ooze” ahead of “Mallacht an tSloda” arriving like a sledgehammer only to unfold its darkened thrash and nine-plus-minute closer “Mogore the Unkind” making good on its initial threat with the mosh-ready riffing in its second half, there’s no pretense in those or any of the other turns Colossal Oppressor makes, and there doesn’t need to be when the songs are so refreshingly crushing. These guys have been around for over a decade already, so it’s not a surprise necessarily to find them so committed to this punishing mission, but the cathartic bloodletting resonates regardless. Not for everyone, very much for some on the more extreme end of heavy.

Ten Ton Slug on Facebook

Ten Ton Slug on Bandcamp

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Magic Fig, Magic Fig

Don’t let the outward Beatles-bouncing pop-psych friendly-acid traditionalism of “Goodbye Suzy” lull you into thinking San Francisco psych rockers Magic Fig‘s self-titled debut is solely concerned with vintage aesthetics. While accessible even in the organ-and-synth prog flourish of “PS1” — the keyboards alone seeming to span generations — and the more foreboding current of low end under the shuffle and soft vocals of “Obliteration,” the six-song/28-minute LP is no less effective in the rising cosmic expanse that builds into “Labyrinth” than the circa-’67 orange-sun lysergic folk-rock that rolls out from there — that darker edge comes back around, briefly, in a stop around the two-minute mark; it’s hard to know which side is imagining the other, but “Labyrinth” is no less fun for that — and “Distant Dream,” which follows, is duly transcendent and fluid. Given additional character via the Mellotron and birdsong-inclusive meditation that ends it and the album as a whole, “Departure” nonetheless feels intentional in its subtly synthy acoustic-and-voice folkish strum, and its intricacy highlights a reach one hopes Magic Fig will continue to nurture.

Magic Fig on Facebook

Silver Current Records on Bandcamp

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Scorched Oak, Perception

If you followed along with Dortmund, Germany’s Scorched Oak on their 2020 debut, Withering Earth (review here), as that album dug into classic heavy rock as a means of longer-form explorations, some of what they present in the 39 minutes of Perception might make more sense. There was plenty of dynamic then too in terms of shifts in rhythm and atmosphere, and certainly second-LP pieces like “Mirrors” and “Relief” come at least in part from a similar foundation — I’d say the same of the crescendo verse of “Oracle” near the finish — but the reportedly-recorded-live newer offering finds the band making a striking delve into harder and more metallic impacts on the whole. An interplay of gruff — gurgling, almost — and soulful melodic vocals is laid out as opener/longest track (immediate points) “Delusion” resolves the brooding toms of its verse with post-metal surges. Perhaps it’s obvious enough that it doesn’t need to be said, but Scorched Oak aren’t residing in a single feel or progression throughout, and the intensity and urgency of “Reflection” land with a directness that the closing “Oracle” complements in its outward spread. The element of surprise makes Perception feel somewhat like a second debut, but that they pull off such an impression is in itself a noteworthy achievement, never mind how much less predictable it makes them or the significant magnitude of these songs.

Scorched Oak on Facebook

Scorched Oak on Bandcamp

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Today is Wednesday, the day we hit and pass the halfway mark for this week, which is a quarter of the way through the entirety of this 100-release Quarterly Review. Do you need to know that? Not really, but it’s useful for me to keep track of how much I’m doing sometimes, which is why I count in the first place. 100 records isn’t nothing, you know. Or 10 for that matter. Or one. I don’t know.

A little more variety here, which is always good, but I’ve got momentum behind me after yesterday and I don’t want to delay diving in, so off we go.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

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Saturnalia Temple, Paradigm Call

For the band’s fourth album, Paradigm Call, founding Saturnalia Temple guitarist/vocalist Tommie Eriksson leads the newcomer rhythm section of drummer Pelle Åhman and bassist Gottfrid Åhman through eight abyss-plundering tracks across 48 minutes of roiling tonal mud distinguished by its aural stickiness and Eriksson‘s readily identifiable vocal gurgle. The methodology hasn’t changed much since 2020’s Gravity (review here) in terms of downward pull, but the title-track’s solo is sharp enough to cut through the mire, and while it’s no less harsh for doing so, “Among the Ruins” explores a faster tempo while staying in line with the all-brown psychedelic swirl around it, brought to fruition in the backwards-sounding loops of closer “Kaivalya” after the declarative thud of side B standout “Empty Chalice.” They just keep finding new depths. It’s impressive. Also a little horrifying.

Saturnalia Temple on Facebook

Listenable Records website

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Dool, The Shape of Fluidity

It’s easy to respect a band so unwilling to be boxed by genre, and Rotterdam’s Dool put the righteous aural outsiderness that’s typified their sound since 2017’s Here Now There Then (review here) to meta-level use on their third long-player for Prophecy Productions, The Shape of Fluidity. Darkly progressive, rich in atmosphere, broad in range and mix, heavy-but-not-beholden-to-tone in presentation, encompassing but sneaky-catchy in pieces like opener “Venus in Flames,” the flowing title-track, and the in-fact-quite-heavy “Hermagorgon,” the record harnesses declarations and triumphs around guitarist/vocalist Raven van Dorst‘s stated lyrical thematic around gender-nonbinaryism, turning struggle and confusion into clarity of expressive purpose in the breakout “Self-Dissect” and resolving with furious culmination in “The Hand of Creation” with due boldness. Given some of the hateful, violent rhetoric around gender-everything in the modern age, the bravery of Dool — Van Dorst alongside guitarists Nick Polak and Omar Iskandr, bassist JB van der Wal and drummer Vincent Kreyder — in confronting that head-on with these narratives is admirable, but it’s still the songs themselves that make The Shape of Fluidity one of 2024’s best albums.

Dool on Facebook

Prophecy Productions website

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Abrams, Blue City

After releasing 2022’s In the Dark (review here) on Small Stone, Denver heavy rockers Abrams align to Blues Funeral Recordings for their fifth album in a productive, also-touring nine years, the 10-track/42-minute Blue City. Production by Kurt Ballou (High on Fire, Converge, etc.) at GodCity Studio assures no lack of impact as “Fire Waltz” reaffirms the tonal density of the riffs that the Zach Amster-led four-piece nonetheless made dance in opener “Tomorrow,” while the rolling “Death Om” and the momentary skyward ascent in “Etherol” — a shimmering preface to the chug-underscored mellowness of “Narc” later — lay out some of the dynamic that’s emerged in their sound along with the rampant post-hardcore melodies that come through in Amster and Graham Zander‘s guitars, capable either of meting out hard-landing riffs to coincide with the bass of Taylor Iversen (also vocals) and Ryan DeWitt‘s drumming, or unfurling sections of float like those noted above en route to tying it all together with the closing “Blue City.” Relatively short runtimes and straightforward-feeling structures mask the stylistic nuance of the actual material — nothing new there for Abrams; they’re largely undervalued — and the band continue to reside in between-microgenre spaces as they await the coming of history which will inevitably prove they were right all along.

Abrams on Facebook

Blues Funeral Recordings website

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Pia Isa, Burning Time

Superlynx bassist/vocalist Pia Isaksen made her solo debut under the Pia Isa moniker with 2022’s Distorted Chants (review here), and in addition to announcing the SoftSun collaboration she’ll undertake alongside Yawning Man‘s Gary Arce (who also appeared on her record), in 2024, she offers the three-song Burning Time EP, with a cover of Radiohead‘s “Burn the Witch” backed by two originals, “Treasure” and “Nothing Can Turn it Back.” With drumming by her Superlynx bandmate Ole Teigen (who also recorded), “Burn the Witch” becomes a lumbering forward march, ethereal in melody but not necessarily cultish, while “Treasure” digs into repetitive plod led by the low end and “Nothing Can Turn it Black” brings the guitar forward but is most striking in the break that brings the dual-layered vocals forward near the midpoint. The songs are leftovers from the LP, but if you liked the LP, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Pia Isa on Facebook

Argonauta Records website

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Wretched Kingdom, Wretched Kingdom

A late-2023 initial public offering from Houston’s Wretched Kingdom, their self-titled EP presents a somewhat less outwardly joyous take on the notion of “Texas desert rock” than that offered by, as an example, Austin’s High Desert Queen, but the metallic riffing that underscores “Dreamcrusher” goes farther back in its foundations than whatever similarity to Kyuss one might find in the vocals or speedier riffy shove of “Smoke and Mirrors.” Sharp-cornered in tone, opener “Torn and Frayed” gets underway with metered purpose as well, and while the more open-feeling “Too Close to the Sun” begins similar to “You Can’t Save Me” — the strut that ensues in the latter distinguishes — the push in its second half comes after riding a steady groove into a duly bluesy solo. There’s nothing in the material to take you out of the flow between the six component cuts, and even closer “Deviation” tells you it’s about to do something different as it works from its mellower outset into a rigorous payoff. With the understanding that most first-EPs of this nature are demos by another name and (as here) more professional sound, Wretched Kingdom‘s Wretched Kingdom asks little in terms of indulgence and rewards generously when encountered at higher volumes. Asking more would be ridiculous.

Wretched Kingdom on Facebook

Wretched Kingdom on Bandcamp

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Lake Lake, Proxy Joy

Like earlier Clutch born out of shenanigans-prone punk, Youngstown, Ohio’s Lake Lake are tight within the swinging context of a song like “The Boy Who Bit Me,” which is the second of the self-released Proxy Joy‘s six inclusions. Brash in tone and the gutted-out shouty vocals, offsetting its harder shoving moments with groovy back-throttles in songs that could still largely be called straightforward, the quirk and throaty delivery of “Blue Jerk” and the bluesier-minded “Viking Vietnam” paying off the tension in the verses of “Comfort Keepers” and the build toward that leadoff’s chorus want nothing for personality or chemistry, and as casual as the style is on paper, the arrangements are coordinated and as “Heavy Lord” finds a more melodic vocal and “Coyote” — the longest song here at 5:01 — leaves on a brash highlight note, the party they’re having is by no means unconsidered. But it is a party, and those who have dancing shoes would be well advised to keep them on hand, just in case.

Lake Lake on Facebook

Lake Lake on Bandcamp

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Gnarwhal, Altered States

Modern in the angularity of its riffing, spacious in the echoes of its tones and vocals, and encompassing enough in sound to be called progressive within a heavy context, Altered States follows Canadian four-piece Gnarwhal‘s 2023 self-titled debut full-length with four songs that effectively bring together atmosphere and impact in the six-minute “The War Nothing More” — big build in the second half leading to more immediate, on-beat finish serving as a ready instance of same — with twists that feel derived of the MastoBaroness school rhythmically and up-front vocal melodies that give cohesion to the darker vibe of “From Her Hands” after displaying a grungier blowout in “Tides.” The terrain through which they ebb and flow, amass and release tension, soar and crash, etc., is familiar if somewhat intangible, and that becomes an asset as the concluding “Altered States” channels the energy coursing through its verses in the first half into the airy payoff solo that ends. I didn’t hear the full-length last year. Listening to what Gnarwhal are doing in these tracks in terms of breadth and crunch, I feel like I missed out. You might also consider being prepared to want to hear more upon engaging.

Gnarwhal on Facebook

Gnarwhal on Bandcamp

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Bongfoot, Help! The Humans..

Help the humans? No. Help! The Humans…, and here as in so many of life’s contexts, punctuation matters. Digging into a heavy, character-filled and charging punkish sound they call “Appalachian thrash,” Boone, North Carolina, three-piece Bongfoot are suitably over-the-top as they explore what it means to be American in the current age, couching discussions of wealth inequality, climate crisis, corporatocracy, capitalist exploitation, the insecurity at root in toxic masculinity and more besides. With clever, hooky lyrics that are a total blast despite being tragic in the subject matter and a pace of execution well outside what one might think is bong metal going in because of the band’s name, Bongfoot vigorously kick ass from opener “End Times” through the galloping end of “Amazon Death Factory/Spacefoot” and the untitled mountain ramble that follows as an outro. Along the way, they intermittently toy with country twang, doom, and hardcore punk, and offer a prayer to the titular volcano of “Krakatoa” to save at least the rest of the world if not humanity. It’s quite a time to be alive. Listening, that is. As for the real-world version of the real world, it’s less fun and more existentially and financially draining, which makes Help! The Humans… all the more a win for its defiance and charm. Even with the bonus tracks, I’ll take more of this anytime they’re ready with it.

Bongfoot on Facebook

Bongfoot on Bandcamp

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Thomas Greenwood & The Talismans, Ateş

It’s interesting, because you can’t really say that Thomas Greenwood and the Talismans‘ second LP, Ateş isn’t neo-psychedelia, but the eight tracks and 38 minutes of the record itself warrant enunciating what that means. Where much of 2020s-era neo-psych is actually space rock with thicker tones (shh! it’s a secret!), what Greenwood — AKA Thomas Mascheroni, also of Bergamo, Italy’s Humulus) brings to sounds like the swaying, organ-laced “Sleepwalker” and the resonant spaciousness in the soloing of “Mystic Sunday Morning” is more kin to the neo-psych movement that began in the 1990s, which itself was a reinterpretation of the genre’s pop-rock origins in the 1960s. Is this nitpicking? Not when you hear the title-track infusing its Middle Eastern-leaning groove with a heroic dose of wah or the friendly shimmer of “I Do Not” that feels extrapolated from garage rock but is most definitely not that thing and the post-Beatles bop of “Sunhouse.” It’s an individual (if inherently familiar) take that unifies the varied arrangements of the acidic “When We Die” and the cosmic vibe of “All the Lines” (okay, so there’s a little bit of space boogie too), resolving in the Doors-y lumber of “Crack” to broaden the scope even further and blur past timelines into an optimistic future.

Thomas Greenwood and The Talismans on Facebook

Subsound Records website

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Djiin, Mirrors

As direct as some of its push is and as immediate as “Fish” is opening the album right into the first verse, the course that harp-laced French heavy progressive rockers Djiin take on their third album, Mirrors, ultimately more varied, winding and satisfying as its five-track run gives over to the nine-minute “Mirrors” and uses its time to explore more pointedly atmospheric reaches before a weighted crescendo that precedes the somehow-fluidity in the off-time early stretch of centerpiece “In the Aura of My Own Sadness,” its verses topped with spoken word and offset by note-for-note melodic conversation between the vocals and guitar. Rest assured, they build “In the Aura of My Own Sadness” to its own crushing end, while taking a more decisively psychedelic approach to get there, and thereby set up “Blind” with its trades from open-spaces held to pattern by the drums and a pair of nigh-on-caustic noise rock onslaughts before 13-minute capstone “Iron Monsters” unfolds a full instrumental linear movement before getting even heavier, as if to underscore the notion that Djiin can go wherever the hell they want and make it work as a song. Point taken.

Djiin on Facebook

Klonosphere Records website

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If you, like me, found dark-times comfort in BleakHeart‘s Fall-2020 debut, Dream Griever (discussed here), then word of an impending follow-up will no doubt be likewise well received. The band expanded to a five-piece for the 2022 two-songer, Twilight Visions, and bring breadth and depth to melancholy cuts like the string-laced “Sinking Sea” and the soulfully spacious “Where I’m Disease,” the latter of which serves as the goth-tinged first single from Silver Pulse, due out May 24 on Seeing Red Records. Minimal in “Let Go” and heavy with more-than-obligatory purpose as “Weeping Willow” culminates, the album reaches farther in sound and emotive expression, and while I’m just getting to know the songs, the space provided feels sympathetic in a way that not a lot of even tangentially-heavy anything is willing to be.

For more, the “Where I’m Disease” video is under the PR wire info following here. See where it takes you:

New album from Gloom Rockers BLEAKHEART launches today!

To make sense of a senseless world, the crux behind BleakHeart’s second full length album, Silver Pulse, expands beyond the mourning of Dream Griever (2020) into a lush melancholic personal telling of cellular decay and the wish to understand and break down powers outside of our control. It both expresses the pain felt within the wake of disease, loss, and the unknown, as well as surrendering to its taking.

“Once you have grappled with the sheer physicality that your body will have to be in, and go through for the rest of your life,” explains backing vocalist, lyricist, synth player Kiki GaNun about her experience with dynamic disability, “then comes the waves of emotions, and the reality that although this is not a fully inclusive and complete identity, it absolutely will color every part of you and your experience.”

Sonically, BleakHeart intertwines raw, rich interweaving guitars with string quartets, pulsating bass, and celestial synths and pianos, all beautifully blended as the underbelly for emotive, ethereal vocals. Produced by Pete de Boer of World Famous Studios, the all analogue production amplifies BleakHeart’s expansive sound and somber songwriting, inviting the listener in for a heart wrenching, intimate experience.

PREORDER Links:
Vinyl / CD / Digital
Bandcamp: https://bleakheart.bandcamp.com/
Seeing Red Records: https://shop.seeingredrecords.com/

Lyrics written by Kiki GaNun and Kelly Schilling. String quartet written and arranged by Kelly Schilling.

Performed by:
Violin – Amy Rosenberg
Violin – Ciarra Denman
Viola – Anthony Limon
Cello – Ron Schilling III
Produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by Pete de Boer at World Famous Studios April 2023
Cover art by Brian d’Agosta of Gostworks Art

Bleakheart is:
JP Damron – guitars
Mark Chronister – guitars
Kiki GaNun – vocals, synth
Kelly Schilling – vocals, keys, synth, bass guitar
Joshua Quinones – drums (album)
Garrett B Jones – drums (live)

https://facebook.com/bleakheartband
https://instagram.com/bleakheartband
https://bleakheart.bandcamp.com/
https://bleakheart.com/

https://instagram.com/seeing_red_records
https://www.facebook.com/seeingredrecords/
https://seeingredrecords.bandcamp.com/
http://www.seeingredrecords.com/

BleakHeart, “Where I’m Disease” official video

BleakHeart, Silver Pulse (2024)

Denver’s Hashtronaut make their full-length debut on March 22 with No Return, issued through Blues Funeral Recordings. “Dweller,” premiering below, is the third single from the nine-song/41-minute long-player, and like the preceding “Rip Wizard” and “Cough it Up,” it is not subtle as regards intention. At the floor of the open verse is Daniel Smith‘s bass and the crash of Eric Garcia‘s drums (Michael Honiotes is in the lineup now, apparently), setting a languid march that, unlike “Rip Wizard” with its war-on-drugs-PSA samples and unbridled next-gen stoner idolatry — and I say “next-gen” both because Hashtronaut have a modern style and because when bands were following riffs to the Failed-Piss-Test Land about 20-25 years ago, nobody wanted to call themselves “stoner rock”; stigma is clearly not an issue in the same way anymore — emphasizes largesse in the space it creates rather than the fullness of its roll or, as with “Cough it Up,” which seems to come apart during its own sample-laced course and emerge boogieing at the end in genuine Sabbathian scoot, the four-piece’s readiness to conjure an addled feel.

But especially when taken together as representing a third of the tracklist (and more than a third of the runtime) of No Return, the three singles give a suitable impression of the places Hashtronaut go throughout this first collection while still holding back the lurch of eight-minute third cut “Carcinogen,” which dutifully slogs through its first half, sounding like it’s an effort to carry itself through and very much wanting to sound like that, before Robb Park — credited with ‘stunt guitar’ below, as opposed to Kellen McInerney‘s ‘regular guitar,’ which might want further clarification as I don’t know if regular guitars are so huge — slow-wah’s out a solo, Smith‘s vocals grow rougher in their cavernous echo in preface to the harsh-your-mellow, sludgier vibe brought to the gutturalisms of “Lung Ruiner,” which as the PR wire notes situates Hashtronaut in a sphere of low-key volatility — that is to say, the aggression might come but you don’t necessarily know when until it happens — not unlike their now-labelmates in Poland’s Dopelord, while the lumber and melodic reach of “Dead Cloud” solidifies the procession coming out of “Carcinogen.” Hashtronaut show themselves as comfortable shifting into a medium-paced nod, getting noisy, and answering the hook of “Rip Wizard,” which is fortunate because the 1:51 blowout “Hex” awaits at the start of side B.

Well, it’s the first blowout, anyhow. Waiting at No Return‘s endgame is the 30-second punker gallop of “Blast Off” — if you need a High on Fire comparison to make it fit, it’s applicable, but it had me wondering if it was named in honor of B’last — to which “Hex” serves as a brash if more complete precursor, with time to squeeze a verse and chorus and a bit of thrashy-scorch soloing before the still-thick movement ends cold to let “Lung Ruiner” take hold as the benefactor of its momentum. Some of the spaciousness to follow in “Dweller” shows itself in the song before as well, in the spoken-word-topped early stretch made foreboding in hindsight as the riff floods in and the vocals turn to a low-register growl for the first time. Higher screams are layered in, but Hashtronaut don’t really depart from the atmosphere they’ve already cast — and it’s murky enough that they don’t need to — so the more extreme turn isn’t out of place as they go back to the verse and cycle through again before they ride the elephantine stomp of the main riff to the finish. “Dweller” certainly has its shout as well, but accompanies that with more of a melodic lean and a feel like they’re doubling-down on what “Lung Ruiner” just proffered without really repeating themselves, finding another corner in the sonic landscape from which to strike.

I can’t help but wonder if “Marsquake” isn’t somehow a sequel to the band’s 2021 debut standalone single “Moonquake” (discussed here) — perhaps a series is beginning that someday will bring Saturnquakes and, with an inevitable snicker, a Uranusquake — but the shred-topped penultimate instrumental feels like a victory lap as it reaffirms the tone and grooving intent Hashtronaut have been communicating all the while, speaking to the modern sphere of stonerized heavy that’s able to touch on doom, sludge or psych and be confident that the listener can keep up and, at what’s still a pretty nascent stage for the band, starting to mark out their place in the genre. “Marsquake” crashes out with due noise before the feedback and snare-drum-count-in of “Blast Off” lead into No Return‘s final statement, which is rousing in the heated-up-molecules sense of its pace but also for highlighting the fact that this is Hashtronaut‘s first album and for as aware of their approach as they come across in these songs and in the changes in personality between the two sides, their growth could lead them in any number of directions.

It’s not the most likely thing in the universe that a band who spends so much time on their debut exploring the monolithic would suddenly go full-on speed rock, but stranger things have happened. In any case, that last half-minute is crucial to No Return in staking a claim for the band on something they may or may not want to explore further and a bookend for “Hex.” Consistent in production, it nonetheless broadens their scope in a a way even “Hex” wouldn’t, and builds on the vibrancy in even the most grueling reaches of “Carcinogen” (which is more addled than confused, but still) for a surprising, brisk culmination that you might not even catch if you’ve been so lulled by the flow of “Marsquake” or had your brain flattened by the heft paraded throughout. Fodder for repeat visits, then, and a listening experience made richer with efficiency that’s hard to ignore. I’ll tell you outright that No Return is already in my notes under the the ‘best debuts of 2024’ section for year-end list time, but that’s secondary to what Hashtronaut are laying out as their own potential course of voluminous communion and what they might continue to bring to it moving forward.

It’s a hell of a thing.

Enjoy “Dweller” premiering below. Under the player is PR wire info, preorder links, the “Rip Wizard” video and the album player from Bandcamp. By all means, dig in:

Hashtronaut, “Dweller” track premiere

HASHTRONAUT “No Return”
Out March 22nd on Blues Funeral Recordings
Preorder on the Blues Funeral store: https://www.bluesfuneral.com/
and Bandcamp: https://wearehashtronauts.bandcamp.com/album/no-return

Red-eyed at the crossroads of thunderous stoner sludge and towering doom, HASHTRONAUT is more than ready to daze and inebriate the riff-obsessed masses on this planet and beyond. their debut album “No Return” is a resiny slab in the grand tradition of weed-fiend odysseys from Sleep, Weedeater and Bongzilla, an intoxicating and pummeling trip with a lungful of potent hook-doom and strikingly anthemic vocals that will enthrall fans of Monolord, Windhand and Dopelord.

Their debut album “No Return” will be released in limited Astral High Splatter vinyl edition, limited Heavy Resin vinyl edition, CD digipack and digital on March 22nd, with preorders available on Blues Funeral Recordings. “No Return” was recorded by Felipe Patino at Green Door Recordings in Denver and Seanan Hexenbrenner at Helvete Sound in Portland. Mixed and Mastered by Matt Qualls at Easley McCain Recording, Memphis TN. Cover art by Francisco Abril and Nuria Velasco (Welder Wings), album layout by Peder Bergstrand.

TRACKLIST:
1. Rip Wizard
2. Cough It Up
3. Carcinogen
4. Dead Cloud
5. Hex
6. Lung Ruiner
7. Dweller
8. Marsquake
9. Blast Off

Hashtronaut upcoming US shows:
3/11 – Replay Lounge, Lawrence KS
3/12 – Opolis, Norman OK
3/14 – SXSW Stoner Jam, Far Out Lounge, Austin TX
3/15 – The Lost Well, Austin TX
3/16 – Black Magic Social Club, Houston TX
3/17 – The Living Room, El Paso TX

HASHTRONAUT current lineup:
Michael Honiotes – Drums*
Kellen McInerney – Regular Guitar
Robb Park – Stunt Guitar
Daniel Smith – Bass/Vocals
*all tracks on the album recorded by Eric Garcia

Hashtronaut, “Rip Wizard” official video

Hashtronaut, No Return (2024)

Hashtronaut on Facebook

Hashtronaut on Instagram

Hashtronaut on Bandcamp

Hashtronaut’s Linktr.ee

Blues Funeral Recordings on Facebook

Blues Funeral Recordings on Instagram

Blues Funeral Recordings on Bandcamp

Blues Funeral Recordings website

Marked with a vital scathe and an unflinching capacity for staring into its own darkness, Clarion Void‘s second LP, Failure in Repetition, is being released March 1 through Lost Future Records. And between the failing referenced in the record’s title, the perhaps-tainted-but-still-a win cast in “Through Chaos We Succeed” and a alignment of opposites as “The Bottom” cycles through “The Top” in side B with the last of three industrial-ish drone interludes between them, one wouldn’t be wrong to feel pulled in different directions across the tumultuous 10-track/31-minute procession.

This is very clearly intentional on the part of the Colorado Springs four-piece, who embrace the caustic as a uniting factor from the outset of “Repetition I,” the minute-long machine-churn fade-in that immerses the listener with a ready tension that leads directly into the volatile, hardcore-informed extreme sludge that comes together with a corresponding black metal fervency on “Through Chaos We Succeed,” which lays out its harshness marked by harsh-toned lurch, vicious vocal bite from guitarist Greg Mullenax and an abiding current of noise. You would not call it friendly.

From the toying-with-fuzz-bass and the increasing insistence of chug in the instrumental first half of “Sisyphus Wept” to the seeming complement of blastbeats in the mythologically-on-theme finale “Rolling Boulder,” Failure in Repetition functions as a multifaceted entirety, leaning to one side or the other at a given moment and actually resting too long in one place, however many walls of tone or noise — looking at you, intro to “This is the Water” — they may build and tear down throughout, Mullenax, guitarist Evan Courtland, bassist Bryan Webb and drummer James Ivy maintain a harsh, unsettled atmosphere with a focus highlighted in “Repetition I,” “Repetition II” and “Repetition III” but is consistent in even the rawest moments of scathe, whether that’s the what’s-the-use-of-anything nod beneath the solo in “This is the Water” or the instrumental “Lulu’s Interlude” that follows it, not quite giving the listener a break from the onslaught, but perhaps gathering itself for the next violent phase in the second half of the tracklisting.

Clarion Void‘s 2023 debut, Deafening Sounds of Mortality, followed a not-entirely-dissimilar ethic of world scorch, but Failure in Repetition feels stripped down — though certainly the Greg Wilkinson production wants nothing for density, space or impact — even at its most complex moments. The extreme nature of the vocals is part of that, but as “Repetition II” and “The Bottom” unfold into “Repetition III” and “The Top,” the band show refinement of their craft in the stylistic diversity and abiding crush, as well as the efficiency with which “The Bottom” lumbers and “The Top” sad-slogs, making the churn in the 5:20 longest track/closer “Rolling Boulder” feel like a point of arrival as it digs into itself to build tension before loosing the aforementioned blasts, which feel as though they were held in reserve for the finish and lead into a verse that feels like it’s consuming the band as well as the listener like some kind of destructive ouroboros, then hits into a mega-slowdown to tease an ending before resuming its prior course of punishment.

There are some differences in intent between the two halves of the LP — you might note looking at it below that two of the interludes are on side B while side A feels more compact with “Through Chaos We Succeed,” “Sisyphus Wept” and “This is the Water,” and I think the listening experience bears that out — but Failure in Repetition is cohesive as a whole work of scope that’s almost deceptive with the forward crush and flay. You can stream the record in full below, and if you’re up for it, the void indeed calls you.

Enjoy:

Colorado Springs, CO band Clarion Void today share Failure in Repetition, their forthcoming sophomore album and debut on Lost Future Records.

Failure in Repetition is the newest album from the Colorado Springs, CO based doom-metal quartet Clarion Void. Focused on themes of inevitability and the futility of progress, the album crushes the listener with detuned, sludgy riffs before exploding into a breakneck black metal onslaught. Not for the faint of heart.

Failure in Repetition was recorded with Grammy nominated producer Greg Wilkinson (High on Fire, Pallbearer) at his studio in Oakland, CA.

The album will be available on LP and digital on March 1st, 2024 via Lost Future Records. Pre-orders are available HERE: https://clarionvoidco.bandcamp.com/

CLARION VOID LIVE:
02/29 Colorado Springs, CO – What’s Left Records (album release show)

Artist: Clarion Void
Album: Failure in Repetition
Label: Lost Future Records
Release Date: March 1st, 2024

Tracklisting:
01. Repetition I
02. Through Chaos We Succeed
03. Sisyphus Wept
04. This Is The Water
05. Lulu’s Interlude
06. Repetition II
07. The Bottom
08. Repetition III
09. The Top
10. Rolling Boulder

Clarion Void are:
Greg Mullenax – Guitar/vocals
Bryan Webb – Bass
Evan Courtland – Guitar
James Ivy – Drums

Clarion Void, “The Top” official video

Clarion Void on Instagram

Clarion Void on Bandcamp

Clarion Void’s Linktr.ee

Lost Future Records on Facebook

Lost Future Records on Instagram

Lost Future Records on Bandcamp

Lost Future Records website