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The Obelisk Questionnaire: Johnny Lee of Miss Lava

Posted in Questionnaire on March 1st, 2021 by JJ Koczan

miss lava

The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Johnny Lee of Miss Lava

How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

My first art expression and my first roots were drawing. Since forever, I remember drawing and trying to replicate everything all the time. The more realistic or the closest to the original the best.

But as I grew up, I became a huge music fan and music turns out to be my favorite type of art, especially metal and rock music. I’ve learned most of my English by reading metal bands’ lyrics. I developed my drawing skills by drawing, countless times, all of Iron Maiden’s album covers, and by drawing every band logo I could.

Since a very early age, I sang along with all of my favorite metal bands of the ’80s and I started to sing and write lyrics on top of instrumental songs as well.

That was the starting point of everything, but in one-way or another, I’ve always wanted to become a singer and wanted to do something art related. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

Nowadays, I work as a Creative Director in an advertising agency and I’m the singer of a Stoner Rock Band. I guess I could say “Mission accomplished”.

Describe your first musical memory.

When I was four or five years old, around 1980/81, I remember grabbing one of my mother’s tapes and playing it over and over. Side A – Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” and side B – Supertramp “Crime of The Century”. I guess that first impact of reproducing some music made me feel very powerful, like I had a superpower or something. In a way I think that feeling still lasts as I have become a music collector. I own more than 1,000 records and almost 1,500 CDs.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

In 1995 Megadeth and Corrosion of Conformity played in my hometown, Cascais in Lisbon, Portugal.

I was a big C.O.C. fan, I am still, and me and K. Rafaah (Miss Lava’s Guitarist) found Pepper Keenan and Woody Weatherman drinking some wine in a terrace in Cascais the night before the show. We invited them to a pool house bar where we used to hang.

Turns out we spent that night partying with Corrosion’s Pepper, Woody and Reed Mullin and Megadeth’s late Nick Menza. We drank, played some pool, talked about music all night and by the time we were so drunk, me and Pepper sang together, in the middle of the street, the song “Shelter” from the album Deliverance that they were promoting at the time.

On the next day, during the show, Reed pulled me from the crowd onto the stage to sing with them “Rather See You Dead” (Legionaire’s Disease Band cover) and before playing “Vote with a Bullet,” Pepper dedicated the song to us, me and Raffah.

I was 19 years old at the time, and I think nothing will ever top that for as long as I live. Epic!

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

That is a tough one. I guess all the time. I try to be as straightforward, true and honest as I can, but honesty and truth most of the times are too hard to handle by others. Certainly, I compromise more than I should or want. I guess it’s a learning process.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

Hopefully will lead to better places, better times, freedom and deeper emotions.

For me, Art is a constant, shifting universe that stimulates my very own space and time.

It’s the way that I chose to live my life, to challenge my boundaries and I hope that I’ll continue to make something meaningful and different each time.

How do you define success?

I guess success is: to look back and being able to understand and appreciate how far we’ve come. Have no regrets. Feel good with the choices we’ve made and to be proud of our achievements. Success should put us in a good place and make us feel happy about the journey. But the most important thing about success is being able to share it with your friends, family and keep them all around you.

We can’t be successful all alone.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

Back in 1996 I went to a soccer match in Lisbon, Portugal. It was the Cup Final between my team, Sporting Portugal and our main rivals Benfica. During Benfica’s first goal celebration, one of Benfica’s supporters fired a rocket flare towards Sporting fans. I saw the rocket speeding my way, crossing from one point of the stadium to another, only a few meters above the players’ heads, when suddenly it changed direction and hits a peaceful man, next to me, in the throat and kills him on the spot (he was the father of two small children). I was just a few meters away. I remember seeing all the blood splashing from the man’s throat as the rocket was still burning inside him and I remember thinking that could have happened to me. Very sad memory.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

I would like to direct a music video for our band.

And I’ve never tried doing a sculpture. I think I would like to make a realistic one someday. Maybe an Ozzy or a Lemmy bust or even a Cristiano Ronaldo’s, to see if I can top the ridiculous one hahaha.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

Establishing communication with our emotions.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

Like I said before, I like do draw as realistic as I can. In the near future, I want to make a full detailed gigantic realistic painting of a foot plant, hahaha. Don’t know why? Probably it’s going to be the unfinished work at the end of my life.

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Miss Lava, Doom Machine (2021)

Miss Lava, “The Great Divide” official video

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Miss Lava Premiere “The Great Divide” Video From Doom Machine LP

Posted in Bootleg Theater, Reviews on December 18th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

miss lava the great divide

Portuguese heavy rockers Miss Lava release their new album, Doom Machine, Jan. 15 on Small Stone and Kozmik Artifactz. The band’s fourth long-player and second through Small Stone behind 2016’s Sonic Debris (review here), it is an explosion of well-crafted, professional-sounding material that feels built for European heavy-fest stages. Your Desertfests, certainly SonicBlast, they’re already booked for a festival in Spain this March (which seems ambitious), and so on. It was, appropriately enough, recorded live, with Miguel “Veg” Marques at the helm of Generator Music Studios in Sintra. The energy with which the songs are delivered is only part of the album’s personality though, because the CD version comes with a whopping 15 tracks running a total of 56 minutes, as the returning four-piece of vocalist Johnny Lee, guitarist K. Raffah, bassist Ricardo Ferreira and drummer J. Garcia tear into one hook after the other, careening with desert-inspired purpose through “Fourth Dimension” and “In the Mire” at the outset like an all-grown-up Kyuss with the rest of the album that follows working in different stages set off by interludes, groups of one or two songs complemented by short pieces of varied atmosphere that lend breadth to the proceedings as a whole.

Most of those spacers are quick instrumentals. Guitar, bass, drums. “Magma,” the first of them, and “Karma” follow that pattern, while “Alpha” adopts a more mellow spirit and the last, “Terra” captures wave sounds and guitar noise ahead of the closing title-track, which is also the longest song on the outing at 6:58. The interludes bolster Doom Machine‘s flow and make it all the more immersive despite being largely based around straightforward craft of high grade verses and choruses, though certainly longer stretchesmiss lava doom machine like “Brotherhood of Eternal Love” (5;46), the Alice in Chains-style harmonized “The Fall” (6:31) and “Doom Machine” itself want nothing for atmosphere. “The Fall” is a highlight in that regard, but it contends with single-worthy cuts like the maddeningly catchy “Sleepy Warm” and the slower, more spacious “The Great Divide” nearby for that title, with the latter as the assumed end of the vinyl’s side A and, indeed, the split between the first half of the album and the second — not counting the bonus tracks. That’s not to mention a cut like “The Oracle,” later on, which singlehandedly shows how Miss Lava take cues from classic desert rock and turn them into something of their own all across Doom Machine as a whole. Maybe it’s safer not to talk about highlights.

Amid the many hooks, interludes and spot-on moves made throughout Doom Machine is the narrative of K. Raffah having lost a child after only a month and a half from birth. That brutal context underpins even the most uptempo of Miss Lava‘s songs here, and adds weight to already impactful pieces like “The Fall” and “In the Mire” earlier on, the melodies and momentum betraying little of what’s actually going on but remaining expressive nonetheless. One doesn’t want to call it a disconnect, but Doom Machine hardly sounds dragged down by grief or anything else as Miss Lava courses through. Even the bonus tracks, “God Feeds the Swine,” ‘Feel Surrea” and “Red Atlantis,” boast quality hooks — the last one of them especially so — so there is a balance of elements and themes at play throughout, and the band aren’t necessarily beholden to one or the other of them, as impossible as that might seem.

To wit, the video premiering below for “The Great Divide” takes a post-apocalyptic environmentalist stance, looking out at the world and seeing it being used and torn down by humanity as a whole. The clip was directly by José Dinis, who offers some comment on it below, along with that of Johnny Lee.

As always, I hope you enjoy:

Miss Lava, “The Great Divide” official video premiere

According to singer Johnny Lee, “‘The Great Divide’ is a euphemism for death, an apocalyptic vision for mankind. We keep destroying our planet and forgetting that when this ends, it ends for everyone.”

Director José Dinis reflects that this is “A concept story about an apocalyptic world, where an unhopeful man just tries to survive. As in real life, there is always a way out, a solution, a chance to live a more colourful life, no matter what.”

“The Great Divide” was filmed at Mina de São Domingos, a deserted open-pit mine in Alentejo, Portugal. The site is one of the volcanogenic massive sulfide ore deposits in the Iberian Pyrite Belt, which extends from the southern Portugal into Spain. It was the first place in Portugal to have electric lighting.

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Miss Lava on Bandcamp

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Miss Lava Set Jan. 15 Release for Doom Machine; “Fourth Dimension” Video Posted

Posted in Whathaveyou on November 13th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

miss lava

Issuing through Kozmik Artifactz and Small Stone, the impending Doom Machine full-length from Miss Lava will be the band’s first since 2016’s Sonic Debris (review here). The title, Doom Machine, doesn’t inspire much in considerations of individuality — it’s kind of a generic name for a record, band, song, riff, amp, heavy thing, etc. — but the album actually deals with some hard-hitting emotional content on the part of the group, and as one expects from Miss Lava well more than a decade into their tenure, they know exactly what they’re doing when it comes to songwriting and capturing a stage-ready energy in the studio.

Will there be stages for Miss Lava to support the record once it’s out? Hell if I know. Seems unlikely in January, but you know, maybe at some point, ever, they’ll get to tour again.

To preface Doom Machine‘s arrival, Miss Lava have a video up now for the opening track “Fourth Dimension,” and you can see that at the bottom of this post, following the PR wire info and this kickass cover art right here:

miss lava doom machine

MISS LAVA: Lisbon Heavy Rock Unit To Release Doom Machine This January Via Small Stone / Kozmik Artifactz; “Fourth Dimension” Video Now Playing + Preorders Available

Lisbon’s premier heavy rockers MISS LAVA will release their long-awaited new full-length, Doom Machine, this January via Small stone.

The perfect soundtrack for the post-lockdown world, the band’s fourth album and follow-up to 2017’s Dominant Rush EP stands as their densest output to date doused in kaleidoscopic riff explorations and hypnotic interludes; a multi-textured sonic journey that’s at once deep, heavy, mesmerizing, and cathartic. Captured live at Generator Music Studios in Sintra, Portugal by Miguel “Veg” Marques, the record carries with it the warmth and soul of a band full of fresh vigor and perhaps the demons of these tumultuous times.

The record is loosely focused on the tragic death of guitarist K. Raffah’s baby son and the other members’ children born during the creative process. “Doom Machine is a very emotional experience for us…,” Raffah shares. “[My son] was only here for a month and a half, but his light was very bright. We feel his presence every time.” Thematically vocalist Johnny Lee adds, “This album reflects on how each one of us can breed and unleash our own self-destructive force, assembled to be part of a giant ‘Doom Machine.'”

In advance of the record’s release, today the band is pleased to unveil a video for first single, “Fourth Dimension,” noting, “this is a riff raff explosion that urges people to get out of the cave allegory they live in.”

Directed by José Dinis, view MISS LAVA’s “Fourth Dimension.”

Doom Machine will be released on CD and digitally via Small Stone with Kozmik Artifactz handling a limited vinyl edition. Find preorders at THIS LOCATION.

Doom Machine Track Listing:
1. Fourth Dimension
2. In The Mire
3. Magma
4. Brotherhood Of Eternal Love
5. Sleepy Warm
6. The Great Divide
7. Karma
8. The Fall
9. Alpha
10. The Oracle
11. Terra
12. Doom Machine
13. God Feeds The Swine *
14. Feel Surreal *
15. Red Atlantis *
** Bonus tracks on CD and digital only

Doom Machine is the successor to MISS LAVA’s Dominant Rush EP (2017), Sonic Debris (2016), Red Supergiant (2013), and Blues For The Dangerous Miles (2009), as well as a limited edition self-titled blood red vinyl EP (2008).

https://www.facebook.com/MissLavaOfficial/
http://www.instagram.com/miss.lava/
http://www.smallstone.com
http://www.facebook.com/smallstonerecords
http://www.smallstone.bandcamp.com
http://kozmik-artifactz.com/
https://www.facebook.com/kozmikartifactz

Miss Lava, “Fourth Dimension” official video

Miss Lava, Doom Machine (2021)

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