And then sometimes, apparently, you might make a record with your cousin. I like to imagine a cartoon version of Dr. Space‘s mom — the venerable Ma Space — somehow in a New Jersey accent scolding her synth-wizard offspring: “You know, all your collaborations and you’ve never once jammed with your cousin!” Obviously, I don’t know that that happened and I’m pretty sure Scott “Dr. Space” Heller‘s mother wasn’t from my beloved Garden State — though you never know and the Jersey diaspora is remarkable — so I’m not trying to portray a realistic scenario so much as goof on the idea of family behind Quasars of Destiny. Uniting the aforementioned Dr. Space with guitarist, drummer (and other percussion), bassist, and Rhodes pianist Craig Wall and percussionist James Malley (credited with cowbell and shakers), Quasars in Space recorded the three-song/43-minute Music to Listen to While Eating Planets in July 2023 at Heller‘s Estúdio Paraíso Nas Nuvens in Portugal, and by the time they’re a few minutes into “Colossus Approacheth” (6:18), they’ve just about got it all figured out.
Of course, layering is a factor, and I’ve already added extraneous narrative to Music to Listen to While Eating Planets once and I don’t need to do so again, but that first of three inclusions, which is backed by meat-of-the-album “Colossus Consumes” (30:45) and “Colossus Seeks a New Planet” (6:14) to close out, has enough movement to show a breadth of influence — that is, that Wall as a guitarist isn’t necessarily coming from the same place genre-wise as Heller, even if he’s not far off. Wall has played with tribute-type cover outfits like Sweet Magic and Eclipse: A Pink Floyd Experience and done a fair amount of his own recording, but while adjacent under a ‘rock’ umbrella, Dr. Space‘s oeuvre is specialized to say the least. To wit, he’s Dr. Space. He’s been to grad school for cosmic jamming. But as “Colossus Approacheth” — think of it as a somewhat tentative approach as Wall, Heller and Malley get their feet under them — demonstrates and the dug-in half-hour of “Colossus Consumes” proves, there’s plenty trippery for everyone.
The extended middle-cut — an inevitable focal point as it takes up more than two thirds of the total runtime — is unsurprisingly an album unto itself. It takes place over three main movements, each of which has its own flow and patient execution, the procession starting quietly as the guitar and cymbals wake up. After a few minutes, they’re in a solid, bluesy roll with the synth flowing out around the meandering guitar and the underlying drums that would seem to have been the root for the entire first movement, which recedes into a synth-led midsection with the drums further back in the mix setting up the room a guitar solo is soon to occupy. And from about minute 20 onward, there’s a pickup in the drums that marks the transition to the psych-bluesy final section of “Colossus Consumes,” which nails the balance between its two sides.
Because it’s not like classic, blues, and psych and space rock are without their commonalities — again, it’s all rock music — but for one of these players, making a half-hour-long song is its own kind of norm, where for Wall, as with most other humans, his playing style at least as I hear it in Music to Listen to While Eating Planets drives more toward structure. By the end of “Colossus Consumes,” though, the flow has gotten more open, more linear, and fair enough. If, as a listener or player, you’re not feeling it 29 minutes into the 30-minute take, it’s probably safe for you to turn off the record player, put down your instruments, go catch a nap to get yourself right, etc.
When you can get to it — and I do very much mean that in the Funkadelic sense — Music to Listen to While Eating Planets sets itself up as a tale of discovery, with the ‘band’ or maybe even the music itself in the Colossus role, making the journey almost as much as the listener. The underlying message is everybody’s finding their way. “Colossus Approacheth” brings the first forward steps, seeing where the music wants to end up. Of course, “Colossus Consumes” is the bulk of that question’s answer; an expansive and engrossing undertaking that’s purposefully been put together as-is to entrance the audience and convey a sense of depth in the layering, harnessing the appeal of live performance in a recording context that, personnel-wise, calls for overdubbing for the songs to be complete. That is to say, Wall‘s a pretty talented player, but he’s not ripping into the shimmery Hendrixing in the later reaches of “Colossus Consumes” at the same time he’s banging away on drums, playing bass, shaking shakers and mixing the track (with Gordon Davies; Heller mixed the opening and closing cuts). You can only be in so many places at once and “Colossus Consumes” already resides in a few.
And what does that journey lead to? More exploration, naturally. “Colossus Seeks a New Planet” comes dangerously close to being a song, at least in a linear sense. It feels grounded in a way that certainly the preceding track inherently can’t, and it completes a circle that begins with “Colossus Approacheth” while setting Quasars of Destiny on a forward path. Mind you, I have no idea if they’ll pick up from the ethereally boogieing improvisational stretch that caps “Colossus Seeks a New Planet,” but there is narrative audible in the music and it sounds like if Heller and Wall and Malley wanted to get together every few years and see where they end up, they’ll indeed end up somewhere.
It sounds like more than a one-off, to put it plainly, whether or not it is. For those who arrived at the doorstep of Music to Listen to While Eating Planets via Dr. Space‘s work, either on his own, or with Øresund Space Collective, Black Moon Circle, Aural Hallucinations, and so on, Quasars of Destiny has a (nascent) persona of its own, distinct from the rest. That alone makes it worth pursuing in my mind; an unknown destination and a hypnotic trip. I guess sometimes imaginary cartoon mom is right.
Quasars of Destiny, Music to Listen to While Eating Planets (2025)
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 17th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Øresund Space Collective bandleader and honcho-when-it-comes-to-releases Scott “Dr. Space” Heller details below a number of upcoming projects for 2025, but I can’t help but be particularly excited that included among the swath of live-on-stage and live-in-studio jams that are always the heart of what ØSC do there’s a new session listed from which at least two LPs (or maybe one 2LP? more likely two 2LPs) will be born. Sometimes it’s years before an Øresund Space Collective record, captured in the moment as it happened, makes it to public ears. The material retains the impov spirit with which it was made, of course, but it’s also nice to get a glimpse of where these players (and the cast does rotate somewhat over different sessions) are at now.
Hopefully something from that shows up sooner than later, but there’s also a 20th anniversary celebration to consider and other outings besides, and I’ll note that while the below is already more than many bands would do in two years, let alone one, Øresund Space Collective and adjacent projects from Dr. Space and other members, will likely have much, much more than this to come throughout the year. This is the start.
From the band’s newsletter:
Welcome to the new year and hope you are all doing well in the world of insanity. While we try to all disappear into the world of music, where we are safe, the weather, the rulers of the world, are going mad and trying to take us all down with them… We will not put up with it so what can you expect from us in 2025???
The Collective met in Stockholm for a studio session that was pretty fun despite the cold, grim, dark weather. I flew in from Portugal, Jiri and Mogens came from Denmark, Christian (Yuri Gagarin) came from Goteborg and we met with Jonathan and Mattias at Roth Handle studios. We spent the first two days making the soundtrack for a short animated film. That was fun and cool. Then we started to jam. About 6hrs of material was recorded over the next two days. Some great stuff as always and some new areas explored.
Sadly, the Relaxing in the Himalayas LPs were warped and had to be repressed, so they will not come until the end of January. The West Space and Love III LPs also had problems and had to be repressed. Links are below… Both are released on Space Rock Productions.
In April, we hope to have the new double LP/2CD, Alotta Hella down in Estrela released on Space Rock Productions. The LP features 4 tracks (one is 50mins) and the CD contains 2 bonus tracks (38 mins) not on the LP. It was recorded in the 2022 session in Portugal and features Dr Martin Weaver (Wicked Lady), Luis Simoes (Saturnia), Tim Wallander (Ex-agusa, Ozric Tentacles), Hasse Horrigmoe (Tangle Edge), Jonathan Segel (Camper van Beethoven), Dr Space, Jiri, Mogens and Pär….
We will also release a film of us live in the studio recording Ode to a Black Hole on DVD with a new 5.1 surround sound mix by Dr Space.. When I find time, I hope to mix some of our older records in 5.1 like The Black Tomato and Sleeping with the Sunworm.
April 11-12th, will be our 20th Anniversary shows and like our 10th anniversary show, we plan to have many different people playing the 4 different set that will be played and we will have the amazing light show of P&P from Germany (they do the lights at Fuzz Fest and other festivals). there will be an afterparty each night with the band til 2 and special merch, poster gallery, etc.. Please buy an advanced ticket…
In May we will play the Spaceboat in Hamburg for the 10th time. Wow.. Amazing. Thanks to Sabine from Sapphire and Space Rock Productions for putting in all the work that is required to make this happen. There are still tickets available. The shows are May 23-24th-..
Also coming in 2025 is the Kozfest 2023 DVD. I have to apologise up front though as I fucked this one up and send Ruben, who did the amazing video editing job of the show, the wrong mix of the audio so the audio is decent but our amazing drummer Tim is really buried in the mix. The upside is if you are bandcamp subscriber or buy the DVD, you will get the proper audio mix which sounds great.. Sorry, I fucked it up….
If you liked the more laid back CD from last year, Espaço, you will also dig, Espaço 2!!! This will be a Bandcamp subscriber CD and limited numbers will be available for the fans… I also expect the fans will get the multitrack recording of the Lygtens Kro gig as well (this was also filmed). It is also possible, I get finished the DVD from the Winter Jazz festival 2022 in Copenhagen.
We will likely also have another studio album out later in the year, either from the new session or one called Progably you´re Wrong, from the 2022-23 sessions. We will see..
We were trying to set up a tour in Sept down to Italy and back but this has failed. It is still possible we will do a weekend of gigs Sept 4-6th. We will see.. It is nearly impossible to set up a tour anymore. Sadly…
Who knows what else might pop up. Jonathan will have gigs with Camper van Beethoven in the USA this year, probably 10 more albums with Astral Magic and other cool collaborations. Dr Space, will have another Alien Planet Trip volume, perhaps another solo CD, Doctors of Space will have two CDs……
Thanks for all the support, you folks are what keeps me alive….. getting the guys together and making music for us and the fans..
Posted in Features on December 19th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
[PLEASE NOTE: These are not the results of the year-end poll, which ends in January. If you haven’t contributed your picks yet, please do so here.]
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Hi, and welcome to The Obelisk’s year in review for 2024. This is a thing that’s kind of developed over the 15-plus years the site’s been in operation, and it’s something that people sometimes tell me has been a help when it comes to finding new music. I know for myself as well, I’ve referred back to these lists a lot in subsequent years, to see where bands were and where my head was, and so on. Are best-of lists meaningful, at all, in any way? Probably to the person making them, and that’s me, so I’ll proceed.
I thought the format last year worked pretty well, so I’ve hijacked it for use here. Not something I expect anyone to notice, but I did want to mention it on the off-chance. I don’t have a best live album of the year, but there are a few worth talking about, surely.
It’s been a busy, fast year. The barrage of music is overwhelming — and as problems go, that’s among the best ones to have — but I do think we’re seeing some tapering off. Generational turnover is, in fact, a constant, but the 2020s are taking shape now with bands who started making their name around the mid-2010s shifting into headliner status, new bands coming up beneath, more diverse in sound and construction, and with new ideas. This isn’t universal, but it is the ideal vision of the thing. Circle of life and such.
But it’s a lot. Including the 50-releases-strong Quarterly Review last week, I’m well north of having reviewed 400 total different mostly-full-lengths since January. That’s insane. The math is obvious, but I’ll point out anyhow that you could buy an album for every day of the year and have enough for an extra month-plus afterward. An astonishing amount of music, and I’m by no means reviewing everything.
Which brings me to the inevitable last point. I haven’t reviewed everything. If you’re here wondering where Opeth and Blood Incantation are landing on my list, they aren’t. Nothing against either of them, I just haven’t dug into the records since I knew I wouldn’t be reviewing them. The regular standard of doing as much as I can, when I can, about as much as I can, applies.
Please if you disagree with some pick below or other — and if you do, that’s healthy — I kindly ask you to keep things civil in the comments. I’m not here to call people out on enjoying things I don’t — fascism aside — and I know it makes me sad when I break my ass for days to put this together and the first comment is, “NO [WHOEVER]. LIST SUCKS. NEVER READING THIS FILTH AGAIN,” etc. Before you comment, please take a second to read what you put back to yourself for kindness. That’s good for spelling too, not that I’d know.
That’s all the stalling I can do. Time to dive in. Happy holidays.
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The Top 60 Albums of 2024
**NOTE**: If you’re looking for something specific, try a text search.
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60-31
60. Psychlona, Warped Vision
59. Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, The Mind Like Fire Unbound
58. Massive Hassle, Unreal Damage
57. Temple of the Fuzz Witch, Apotheosis
56. Space Shepherds, Cycler
55. Abrams, Blue City
54. Castle Rat, Into the Realm
53. Heath, Isaak’s Marble
52. Weite, Oase
51. Cosmic Fall, Back Where the Fire Flows
50. Troy the Band, Cataclysm
49. Sunnata, Chasing Shadows
48. Skraeckoedlan, Vermillion Sky
47. Acid Mammoth, Supersonic Megafauna Collision
46. Deer Creek, The Hiraeth Pit
45. Big Scenic Nowhere, The Waydown
44. Grin, Hush
43. The Swell Fellas, Residuum Unknown
42. The Gates of Slumber, The Gates of Slumber
41. Coltaine, Forgotten Ways
40. Mountain of Misery, The Land
39. Mammoth Volume, Raised Up by Witches
38. Delving, All Paths Diverge
37. High on Fire, Cometh the Storm
36. Thou, Umbilical
35. The Giraffes, Cigarette
34. Fu Manchu, The Return of Tomorrow
33. Full Earth, Cloud Sculptors
32. Daevar, Amber Eyes
31. Causa Sui, From the Source
Notes:
Just in case you’re the type of person who’d say, “Oh how could you have a top 60? after a certain number it’s all the same,” I’ll admit that’s true, but 60 is apparently nowhere near the ‘certain number’ in question for me this year. I agonized over this part of the list. More than the top 30, and more than picking a best short release, best debut, or anything else. I wanted basically a second top 30, and I feel like if I saw this as that, as 30-1, I’d congratulate whoever submitted it on their taste. But maybe that’s just me agreeing with myself.
I like the mix of up and comers and established acts here. Sunnata and Skraeckoedlan, The Giraffes, of course High on Fire, Deer Creek and so on, mixing with up and comers like Full Earth, Daevar, Acid Mammoth, Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, Heath, Troy the Band and Weite. I feel somewhat compelled to justify my High on Fire placement, especially looking at the results so far of the year-end poll. They’re amazing, they’re devastating, they’re a singular live act, but I just didn’t listen to the record that much. There. A big part of me feels like it should be top 10 just by virtue of who the band are, but if I did that for everybody who deserved it, I wouldn’t have room for anything new. All I can do is be honest to my own listening habits and opinions. I know High on Fire are really, really good. I know this album is really, really good. That’s why it’s on this list. Should it be higher? Probably. I’m doing my best.
Thank you for your kind attention in this matter. Also, listen to The Giraffes.
You won’t hear me say a downer word about An Earlier Time‘s quieter stretches, but it’s the sweeping moments like “Limitless” that find Boston’s Sundrifter making the most resonant impression. Their third full-length and the follow-up to 2018’s Visitations (review here), it was a strong declaration of who Sundrifter want to be as they continue to grow, and deserved more love than I saw that it got.
Oh, look out for Mr. Blogosphere. He’s out here taking a real risk putting Tranquonauts on the year-end list, like the combining of forces between Melbourne, Australia, heavy psych blues rockers Seedy Jeezus and guitarist Isaiah Mitchell wasn’t gonna work the second time around? Wow, Mitchell‘s and Lex Waterreus‘ guitars sure do sound awesome together. Oh — it’s a hot-take! Better get your react videos ready. The internet is terrible. This album offers escape from it.
At the risk of having to give back my Music-Journalism-Level membership to the Sycophant Society, I’ll dare to point out that Chat Pile are way, way hyped. That happens sometimes. It’s not like they’re out there being like, “Hey we’re the noise rock white dudes shifting paradigms for noise rock white dudes, best in a generation.” It’s people like me with all the hyperbole and comma splicing. I get that too. It’s a sound geared toward inciting a strong reaction, from the sneering sarcasm of the title down. By the way, am I the only one who looks at the title Cool World and thinks of the 1992 semi-animated film of the same name? I kind of hope so. See? Big feelings all around.
Rest assured, I don’t, but if I had any friends, I’d be like, “Hey, you should check out this band Gnome from Belgium. They’ve got fun riffs and they beat you over the head with them until you remember them by heart.” And these ‘friends’ would be all, “Wow man, that sounds definitely like something I would ever want to introduce to the scope of my life experiences! Thank you! I’m so glad to be your friend and the world is definitely a better place with you in it.” And then everybody’s day is better, all because of sharing and the shenanigans-laced riff metal proffered by these three behatted miscreants from Antwerpen.
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26. Brant Bjork Trio, Once Upon a Time in the Desert
Brant Bjork‘s solo band begat Stöner, and Stöner begat Brant Bjork Trio as Bjork, drummer Ryan Güt and bassist Mario Lalli (Fatso Jetson, Mario Lalli and the Rubber Snake Charmers, Yawning Man, etc.). I’ll cop to being a nerd for Brant Bjork‘s output generally — it’s a kind of cool so definitively Californian, my NJ-ass self can’t help but admire it — but the chemistry in Once Upon a Time in the Desert is on point to an undeniable degree, and the songs are a reminder of how the back catalog got so strong in the first place. What else could you want?
Five albums in, a post-arrival Sergeant Thunderhoof stand ready. They know who they are, what they want their songs to do, why and how to make it happen. The Ghost of Badon Hill gives a conceptual focus to unite material intentionally sprawling, and lets listeners immerse in a narrative all the more easily for the quality of its songcraft. Self-recorded, it is masterful in performance and assured of its execution, pored over but not overworked; the happy accidents might have been left in on purpose, but they still sound like accidents. And Sergeant Thunderhoof still sound like a band driving themselves toward the unknown.
Doom metal is lucky to have Early Moods laying out a template for the next generation to hopefully follow. The Los Angeles five-piece’s second full-length, A Sinner’s Past, refined the lurch of their 2022 self-titled (review here), and the combination of hard touring and progressive craft continues to bode well as they look toward their next offering. They’ve put in their work, however swift their ascent to this point might feel, and they’re about one great record away from standing among the best doom of the 21st century. You could easily argue they’re already there. Every reason is accounted for on A Sinner’s Past.
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23. Morpholith, Dystopian Distributions of Mass Produced Narcotics
Iceland’s Morpholith enter the conversation with Dystopian Distributions of Mass Produced Narcotics, which has cosmic-doom breadth and bong-metal crush to spare in the first four minutes of “Psychophere” alone, never mind anything that surrounds. The band’s debut is a bombastic plodder, beating out the march to a futuristic — and cold — vision of the riff-filled land that may or may not be Reykjavik in the wintertime while simultaneously being both very much of weed and not outwardly about it, seeming to have much more than addled, Mid Atlantic Ridge-heavy riff worship because — look out! — they do. If cosmic doom is ever going to be more than a loose thread connecting YOB and Ufomammut, bands like Morpholith need to keep pushing it forward like this. “Dismalium.” I dare you.
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22. Lamp of the Universe Meets Dr. Space, Enters Your Somas
Lamp of the Universe is multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer and vocalist Craig Williamson, based in New Zealand. Dr. Space is synthesist, keyboardist, producer, bootlegger and bandleader Scott Heller. The ‘meeting’ of these two expanded minds takes place over two extended tracks, one vinyl side per, of lush psychedelic and multi-tiered drones, absolutely perfect for the zone-out hypnosis you’ve been trying to put yourself in all day but for that pesky consciousness. I wish I could come up with some kind of ritual awesome enough for the keyboard textures in “Enters Your Somas” or the propulsive space rock thuddenchug of “Infiltrates Your Mind,” but some sounds are just too cool for the planet. Come see how the freaks get down.
I spent some significant time with Dool‘s The Shape of Fluidity this Spring, before and after seeing them at Roadburn (review here), which was another highlight of the year. The album’s triumph, in songwriting, in transcending genre bounds and in conveying its theme of breaking loose from the gender binary, gave my parent-of-a-trans-kid self a hopeful vision of a future beyond dark, hateful rhetoric or implied/real violence. It showed me a possible path to victory on what will be and already is a hard road. It was there when I needed it, which is a specific ideal of art providing care. I’ll never forget that.
Granted the Western soundscaping at the outset of the eponymous “Buzzard” lays it on thick, but it’s supposed to! We’re talking fire-and-brimstone earthbound Americana folk with a doomly rhythmic cast, given the self-aware title of Doom Folk by the solo artist Buzzard, aka Christopher Thomas Elliott, laying it on thick is the point. Elliott has a follow-up out soon already. Thinking of Doom Folk as the beginning of a creative progression makes its nuance and individualist drive even more exciting, but the rawness of this debut, the straightforwardness of its structures and the resulting memorability are part of the appeal for sure.
Seven bangers. Not a dud in the bunch. Two nine-minute songs and you still couldn’t say a moment of High Desert Queen‘s rightly anticipated sophomore LP is wasted. Not when you’re building up to the roll of “Head Honcho,” certainly. The Texas outfit built on the good-time largesse and party-but-not-a-party-so-cool-you-don’t-feel-welcome vibing of 2021’s Secrets of the Black Moon (review here) and set themselves vociferously to the task of being the change in heavy rock that they wanted to hear. Palm Reader‘s infectiousness is a strength, both in terms of a catchy piece like “Ancient Aliens” or “Time Waster,” and also in the overarching positive-framed mood and heart so clearly put into the material.
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18. Ufomammut, Hidden
Released by Supernatural Cat and Neurot Recordings. Reviewed May 21.
Now a quarter-century on from their start, Italian trio Ufomammut have yet to put out a record that didn’t sound like a forward step from the one before it. And Hidden is their 10th album. The band are progenitors and refiners of a cosmic doom sound that is unto itself, and cuts like “Kismet” and “Leeched” manage to be both lumbering in their massive-tone grooves and sprawling with a synthy ambience that, though certainly influential, is immediately recognizable as Ufomammut. Hidden is part of a creative trajectory, to be sure, and the arc is ongoing, but there’s more than enough substance here to leave a crater behind in the listener’s brain.
In its arrangement as five separate dreams taking place over its component tracks, the only thing Pentasomnia doesn’t take into account is that another Iota LP was a dream all on its own even before music actually happened. A full 16 years after shaking the galaxy’s core with their 2008 debut, Tales (discussed here, and here), the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Joey Toscano (Dwellers, Hibernaut), drummer/producer Andy Patterson (The Otolith, ex-SubRosa, etc.) and bassist Oz Yasri (ex-Bird Eater) making a comeback — let alone it actually being good — was nigh on unthinkable. Then you heard “The Intruder” and reality shifted just a bit. Pretty sweet.
Few albums in 2024 were as entrancing as Langt, Langt Vekk, the hopefully-not-a-one-off collaboration between Norwegian progressive heavy instrumentalists Kanaan and neofolk contemporaries Ævestaden. Both adventurous outfits in their own right, the combination of elements, from live drums and synth to traditional plucked strings and Norwegian-language vocal choruses, works stunningly well. That little bit of fuzz in “Habbor og Signe,” or the cymbal wash behind “Dalebu Jonsson” — the songs are full of these little nuances or flourishes waiting to be found, but even with the most superficial of listens, the achievement resounds, whether one approaches from a viewpoint of heavy rock, prog, folk or psychedelia.
You know, I’ve kind of dug DVNE records all along, and I can’t really call Voidkind a surprise after 2021’s Etemen Ænka (review here), but these songs — “Eleonora,” “Sarmatae,” “Abode of the Perfect Soul,” among others — hit me much harder than I had expected, and the more I listened to try to twist my head around “Reliquary,” the more the album as a whole revealed of its character and detail. I review a lot of stuff, and I hear more than I review, so I don’t always get pulled back by every record, but Voidkind kept calling for return visits.
Look. If you’re reading this, I know I don’t have to tell you about Orange Goblin. Even if you don’t already have a soft spot for the long-running UK doom rockers, they’re perfectly happy to pummel one into you with Science, Not Fiction, their first album since 2018 and a realignment toward a harder-edged heavy rock sound, where the last, say, two records had leaned more metal. I heard some griping about the production not helping, but I heard absolutely nothing to complain about here. The band are on fire and the recording shows it, the songs aren’t necessarily any great progressive leap but for sure they’re Orange Goblin songs, and for a band who owes nobody proof of anything, they set a high standard and deliver accordingly, like god damned professionals should.
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13. Spaceslug, Out of Water
Released by Electric Witch Mountain Recordings. Reviewed May 14.
What I didn’t get about Spaceslug until I finally saw them live at Desertfest New York (review here) was just how metal the impact of their songs can get. It’s not necessarily that they’ve grown more aggressive, unless you want to incorporate harsh vocals or shouting — “Tears of Antimatter” also has gently-delivered barely-there spoken word, so it depends on the story you want to tell — but the blend of melancholic doom, heavy psychedelia and melodic fluidity that has become Spaceslug‘s stylistic wheelhouse is not to be missed. Out of Water finds them at their broadest and least concerned with genre, and brings into relief how special a band they’ve become. Also it rocks.
No secret how Craneium are doing it on Point of No Return; it’s right there in the songs. All of them. “One Thousand Sighs,” “The Sun,” “A Distant Shore,” “…Of Laughter and Cries,” “Things Have Changed” and “Search Eternal.” Texture and hooks, heft and scope and melody and crash and shove, classy progressive execution and swaggering conjurations. Most of all, songs that stay with you. Chances are, if you heard this record and gave it its due attention at some point in your time with it, you didn’t have to do much more than read the titles to have the tracks playing in your head. That’s not a coincidence. It’s craft. It’s a willful outreach on the part of the band and material. It’s what makes you want to sing along. And why would you not?
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11. Guhts, Regeneration
Released by Seeing Red Records and New Heavy Sounds. Reviewed Feb. 5.
More on it below, but for the moment, suffice it to say that the bludgeoning and/or scathe of Regeneration at its most intense and the depths its mix seemed to find, the debut full-length from New York post-metallers Guhts dared visceral emotionality in a way few records so heavy could or would hope to. The willing-to-break-her-voice-if-necessary performance of Amber Gardner and the weighted undulations surrounding from guitarist Scott Prater, bassist Daniel Martinez and drummer Brian Clemens, the open sway, unfettered crush, and quiet spaces offsetting all that bombast result in both a chaotic feel and an applicable world. Therefore it must be modern. Fine. It sounds like the future.
As to how Philadelphia’s Heavy Temple managed to fit so much swagger onto a single platter, you’d have to ask them, but their second album, Garden of Heathens, landed hard in tone and attitude alike. Songs like “Extreme Indifference to Life,” “House of Warship” and the galloping payoff of “Jesus Wept” ahead of the thrashy finale “Psychomanteum” affirmed what was set out in 2021’s Lupi Amoris (review here) and their earlier short releases while marking out and conquering decisively new territory in their sound. I know it was recorded two years ago or something like that, but it’s still a band beginning to realize their potential in craft and performance, and if a third LP happens sooner than later, so much the better.
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9. 1000mods, Cheat Death
Released by Ouga Booga and the Mighty Oug and Ripple Music. Reviewed Nov. 11.
Whether one embraces Cheat Death because the songs kick ass or because 1000mods are so vivid and uncompromising in pushing themselves forward from release to release, I don’t think you’re wrong. The forerunners of their generation in Greek heavy rock remain among the finest Europe’s heavy underground have to offer, and the atmosphere they’re able to conjure alongside the straight-ahead Matt Bayles-produced punk-metal hooks of these songs is emblematic of why. Without ever giving up their foundation in heavy rock, 1000mods have consistently refined their processes and grown as songwriters. The joke of Cheat Death is how alive the material feels.
Faced with the considerable task of following up the to-date album of their career, Elektrik Ram (review here), just one year later, South African heavy rockers Ruff Majik did not flinch. Instead, Moth Eater takes the outright charge and sharpness-minded efficiency of its predecessor in a stated trilogy that began with 2020’s The Devil’s Cattle (review here) and sets it as the foundation for a confident, creative growth and sustainable expansion of sound. They’re a little more willing to dwell in parts, and they’re well aware of how catchy they can be, but also, they know the power of momentum and they’re fully in control of the narratives they’re telling. As Moth Eater readily demonstrates, it’s hard to know which of that it is that makes them most dangerous.
It’s hard to overstate the accomplishment of Nell’ Ora Blu, and I’m well aware that the critical sphere is full of plenty who’ve spent the better part of 2024 trying. Reasonable. The completeness of the world Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats built in the work based around the concept of soundtracking a giallo film that didn’t exist was singularly evocative. With original dialogue recorded (in Italian) specifically for ‘movie’ ambience, Uncle Acid took what had always been an influence on the band’s sound within genre-cinema and its methods of storytelling, and flipped the process on its head by creating its own story. Their influence is already well spread throughout the heavy underground, for sure, but in bringing a vision to life, this might be the album Uncle Acid have been working toward all along.
A forward-thinking masterwork from even before “Deadname” sneaks a layer of acoustic guitar under the mountain of distortion in the verse lines and “Arrival” and “Transitions” give evocative chronicle to the album’s trans-experiential theme — it is the band’s first since guitarist/vocalist Simona Ohlsson transitioned, and admirable for both its projected triumph and vulnerability around that — the fifth full-length from Vokonis continues the progressive path they have walked for the last decade-plus. A lineup change has brought some shift in dynamic, but a new strength of voice behind the material that makes “Phantom Carriage,” “Chrysalis,” and, suitably enough, “Arrival,” feel like a declarative pinnacle, and having something to say makes the raw impact of its heaviest moments all the more powerful.
There’s little funnier to me about heavy rock as it exists in 2024 than the idea that Greenleaf would be a band people take for granted. “Oh, Tommi Holappa and Company putting out another collection of classic-heavy and blues-rocking bangers? Business as usual, I guess.” Until you listen to the album, maybe. Then you get the tumble of “Avalanche,” the hooks in “Breathe, Breathe Out,” and “A Wolf in My Mind,” the subdued-bluesy pair “That Obsidian Grin” and “An Alabastrine Smile” to remind how you much this band has been able to grow since Arvid Hällagård made his first appearance with them a decade ago, the way they’re able to move through a jam and land in a groove as solid as “Oh Dandelion,” reminiscent of Clutch in its start-stop funk but defined by its own persona. Every Greenleaf record is a gift. If feeling that way means I’m not impartial, good. We understand each other.
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4. Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, Big Dumb Riffs
Promises made, promises kept. Austin-based crunch purveyors Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol stripped any and all excess out of their approach on Big Dumb Riffs, resulting in a quick-feeling collection of memorable, heavy tracks that, whether fast like “1800EATSHIT” or slow like “In a Jar,” are united in the album’s central stated purpose. Already an established brand of heavy revelry, the three-piece didn’t change anything radically in aesthetic terms, but the songs found their target one after the other, front to back, and were clever and well composed, however willfully lunkheaded the central riffery might have been. They’re headed to Europe in Spring, and I’m already hearing rumors of a next record, so keep an eye out in 2025.
Slomosa‘s released-in-2020 self-titled debut (review here) was a salve to many in troubled times, representing a next-generation hope for underground heavy in energetically-delivered, classic-feeling songs. Tundra Rock, which gives a name to the band’s style seemingly in direct answer to anyone who might class them as ‘desert,’ confirms the Norwegian four-piece at the forefront of an up and coming cohort of younger acts beginning to find their expressive modus and step beyond their root influences. Tundra Rock finds Slomosa doing this while giving their dual-vocal live dynamic vibrant studio representation and growing their material in character and melody alike. Heavy rock and roll is Slomosa‘s for the taking.
A record that didn’t need to be loud to be heavy, Brume‘s Marten is without question my most-listened-to album of 2024. That needs no qualifying. I had high expectations going into it after seeing the San Francisco band at Desertfest New York 2022 (review here), and Marten surpassed every hope I might’ve been able to harness for it and then some. The collective voice of the band incorporating multiple viewpoints from bassist/vocalist/keyboardist Susie McMullan, guitarist/vocalist Jamie McCathie, drummer Jordan Perkins Lewis, and in her first appearance as a full-on member of the band, cellist/vocalist Jackie Perez Gratz (Grayceon, Amber Asylum, etc.), resulted in a fluid but deeply divergent collection, comprised of songs that went where they wanted to go — or didn’t, thank you very much — according to their own whims and purposes. It is a landmark for Brume and, if any number of subgenres are lucky, a blueprint from which others will hopefully learn.
I acknowledge breaking my own rules here — splits are always, until and including this year, categorized as short releases in these lists — but when it came to it, the thought of putting Elephant Tree and Lowrider‘s The Long Forever anywhere else, considering it as anything else, seemed ridiculous. Especially if you count writing the liner notes for it, I’ve gone on at length about the release as an intersection of crucial moments for the respective bands, with Lowrider following their first album in 20 years, Refractions (review here), and Elephant Tree answering the progressive statement of their own second LP, Habits (review here), both released in 2020. The storyline gets deeper as Elephant Tree also look to reestablish themselves following a near-fatal accident suffered by guitarist/vocalist Jack Townley, melding rawness of tone with lush vocal harmonies, and Lowrider drag fuzz-rock traditionalism kicking and screaming into a reality of being both fun and intelligent. There ultimately was nothing else to call The Long Forever than the album of the year. If that comes with an asterisk because it’s a split, it doesn’t lessen the effect of hearing it at all. So yeah, I’m breaking the rules of the game. I’m inconsistent. Unprofessional. Biased. I don’t know what to tell you except love makes you do crazy things. In these songs themselves — do I even need to talk about the collaboration — and in the drive behind them, that’s what most resonates here.
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The Top 60 Albums of 2024: Honorable Mention
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If the 60 above wasn’t enough, here are more leads to chase down, alphabetical but in kind of a hyper-specific, ass-backwards-seeming way:
Acid Rooster, Alber Jupiter, Altareth, Alunah, Astrometer, Bismarck, Black Capricorn, Blasting Rod, BleakHeart, Blue Heron, Bongripper, Boozewa, Caffeine, Carpet, Castle, Cleen, Clouds Taste Satanic, Codex Serafini, Cold in Berlin, Cortez, The Cosmic Dead, Crypt Sermon, Daily Thompson, Deadpeach, Deaf Wolf, Demon Head, Destroyer of Light, Dopethrone, Duel, Earth Ship, Elephant Tree, Emu, Familiars, Bill Fisher, 40 Watt Sun, Ghost Frog, Goat Major, Guenna, Heath, High Reeper, Hijss, Horseburner, Ian Blurton’s Future Now, Insect Ark, Inter Arma, Kelley Juett, Juke Cove, Kalgon, Kandodo, Kant, Kariti, Kungens Män (x2), Kurokuma, Leather Lung, Legions of Doom, Lord Buffalo, Magic Fig, Magick Brother & Mystic Sister, Magick Potion, Magmakammer, Mammoth Caravan, Massive Hassle, MC MYASNOI, Merlin, Methadone Skies, Monkey3, Morag Tong, The Mountain King, Mount Hush, MR.BISON, My Dying Bride, Myriad’s Veil, No Man’s Valley, Norna, The Obsessed, Oryx, Pallbearer, Patriarchs in Black, Pia Isa, Planet of Zeus, Red Mesa, Rezn, Rifflord, Sacri Monti, Sandveiss, Satan’s Satyrs, Saturnalia Temple, Scorched Oak, Sheepfucker & Kraut, Slift, Slower, Slow Green Thing, SoftSun, The Sonic Dawn, SONS OF ZÖKU, Spacedrifter, Spiral Grave, Spirit Mother, Stonebride, Sun Blood Stories, Sunface, Sun Moon Holy Cult, Swallow the Sun, The Swell Fellas, Swell O, Temple Fang, 10,000 Years, Thomas Greenwood and the Talismans, Thunderbird Divine, Tigers on Opium, Traum, 24/7 Diva Heaven, Valley of the Sun, Vlimmer, Void Commander, Weather Systems, The Whims of the Great Magnet, Whispering Void, White Hills, Per Wiberg, Esben Willems, Worshipper, WyndRider…
Notes:
With the eternal caveat that I’ll be adding to the honorable mentions for the next few days as people drop names they remembered and I forgot, I’ll say I can live with the list as it is now. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m happy with it, but I’ll live. I felt like there was just too much good stuff in the 60-30, stuff that deserved a better look, and god damn, look at the honorable mentions. You’re gonna tell me Rezn wasn’t top 30 material? Or Inter Arma, or 10,000 Years (who I still need to review), or Kandodo or Cortez, or Bongripper, Blue Heron, Merlin, Slower? Mount Hush, Vlimmer, Destroyer of Light — I could do this all day. That Carpet record. That MR.BISON record. Valley of the Sun. I see these names and want to punch myself. Then I see the names in the top 30 and I go, “Well…” and kind of have to hold off. I guess that means it turned out to be a pretty fantastic year.
I know for a fact I didn’t hear everything that came out, and I’m willing to bet that any number of people who see this will have their own opinions on the best albums of 2024 from top to bottom. I celebrate this difference and look forward to being exposed to new sounds because of it. Let comments fly, please. Once again, my only ask is that you keep it kind as relates to my own list(s) and any other picks someone might offer. If I’ve got facts wrong, something was a Dec. 2023 release instead of Jan. 2024, whatever, by all means, let me know. But we’re all friends here and being a jerk about it solves nothing.
And yes, I’ll admit to projecting some self-criticism in the Elephant Tree/Lowrider selection for album of the year. All I can tell you is I stand by that pick. It’s that because when I was putting together the list, it couldn’t have been anywhere else. I don’t love breaking my own arbitrary rules nearly as much as I love imposing those arbitrary rules in the first place, but sometimes apparently one is forced from one’s comfort zone to their own general betterment. Who knew?
Of course we’re not done yet.
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Debut Album of the Year 2024
Guhts, Regeneration
Other notable debuts (alphabetical):
Azutmaga, Offering
Buzzard, Doom Folk
Castle Rat, Into the Realm
Cleen, Excursion
Coltaine, Forgotten Ways
Full Earth, Cloud Sculptors
Goat Generator, Goat Generator
Goat Major, Ritual
Grave Speaker, Grave Speaker
Guenna, Peak of Jin’Arrah
Hashtronaut, No Return
Heath, Isaak’s Marble
Hijss, Stuck on Common Ground
Kalgon, Kalgon
Kant, Paranoia Pilgrimage
Kitsa, Dead by Dawn
Leather Lung, Graveside Grin
Legions of Doom, The Skull 3
Magic Fig, Magic Fig
Magick Potion, Magick Potion
Morpholith, Dystopian Distributions of Mass Produced Narcotics
Myriad’s Veil, Pendant
Neon Nightmare, Faded Dream
Plant, Cosmic Phytophthora
Rabid Children, Does the Heartbeat
Saltpig, Saltpig
Semuta, Glacial Erratic
SoftSun, Daylight in the Dark
Spacedrifter, When the Colors Fade
Sun Moon Holy Cult, Sun Moon Holy Cult
Ten Ton Slug, Colossal Oppressor
Tet, Tet
Tigers on Opium, Psychodrama
Tommy and the Teleboys, Gods Used in Great Condition
Troy the Band, Cataclysm
Weather Systems, Ocean Without a Shore
Esben Willems, Glowing Darkness
Young Acid, Murder at Maple Mountain
Notes:
First about Guhts: From the Andy Patterson recording and parts of the songs themselves, Guhts weren’t hiding influence from the likes of SubRosa or Julie Christmas, Made Out of Babies, etc., but what Regeneration did so well — and what I was trying to convey above — was take those recognizable elements and redirect them toward an expressive individuality. That album could be punishingly heavy or sweet and soothing and the fact that you never quite knew which was coming next was a major asset working in the band’s favor. There are a lot of killer debuts on this list, and plenty I’m sure that I’ve left off because, well, I’m inept, but Regeneration was so sure of what it was about and so crisp in making that real through sound that it’s still stunning.
A lot to celebrate on this list. Full Earth at the outset of a hopefully long-term progression. Tigers on Opium with attitude and craft. Castle Rat giving stage drama studio life. Weather Systems picking up where Anathema left off. Promising starts for Pontiac, Hashtronaut, Neon Nightmare, Cleen, Coltaine, Troy the Band, Buzzard, Magic Fig, Legions of Doom, and Heath, among others. If you’re worried about the state of underground heavy music, you don’t need to be. Granted the future of anything is unknowable even before you apply “uncertain times” caveats and all the rest, but bands are stepping up to carry the torch of established sounds and pushing themselves to realize new ideas — whether that’s Guhts and Magic Fig or Tigers on Opium, or Legions of Doom, Ten Ton Slug, Weather Systems and Monolord’s Esben Willems, new players or ones who’ve been around for decades.
If you want a top ten — and who doesn’t? — in addition to Guhts, make your way through Full Earth, Sun Moon Holy Cult, Morpholith, Guenna, Coltaine, Troy the Band, Young Acid, Emu, Buzzard and Kant to start, and you can dig deeper from there. That’s actually 11, but I don’t care. More new music won’t hurt you.
We press on.
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Short Release of the Year 2024
Moura, Fume Santo de Loureiro
Other notable EPs, Splits, Demos, Singles, etc.
Aktopasa, Ultrawest
Alreckque, 6PM
Bog Wizard, Journey Through the Dying Lands
Conan, DIY Series Issue 1
Cortége, Under the Endless Sky
Cult of Dom Keller, Extinction EP
Michael Rudolph Cummings, Money EP
Deer Lord, Dark Matter Pt. 2
Eagle Twin & The Otolith, Legends of the Desert Vol. 4
Fuzznaut, Wind Doula
Fuzzter, Pandemonium EP
Geezer & Isaak, Interstellar Cosmic Blues and the Riffalicious Stoner Dudes
Harvestman, Triptych EP(s)
Hermano, When the Moon Was High
Hollow Leg, Dust & Echoes
Holy Fingers, Endless Light Infinite Presence
King Buffalo, Balrog
Lurcher, Breathe EP
Okkoto, All is Light
Ord Cannon, Foreshots EP
Orme, No Serpents No Saviours
Pelican, Adrift/Tending the Embers
Pontiac, Hard Knox EP
Rope Trick, Red Tide EP
Sacred Buzz, Radio Radiation
Smoke & Doomsday Profit, Split
Spiral Guru, Silenced Voices EP
Toad Venom, Jag har inga problen osv...
Trigona & IO Audio Recordings, Split
Various Artists, International Space Station Vol. 2
Notes:
This category includes so much and can range so vastly between an EP that’s about 30 seconds short of being a full album to a standalone single released just for the hell of it to a band’s first rehearsal room demo. “Short releases” encompasses a lot, and as noted above, I’ve already broken my rules about where splits go. What about The Otolith and Eagle Twin? Geezer and Isaak? Smoke and Doomsday Profit? Trigona and IO Audio Recordings? The International Space Station four-wayer? If I’m crossing lines, don’t these also need to be considered as full-lengths?
You know what really sucks about it? This is an argument I’m going to have with myself for probably the next year. An existential crisis playing out in the back of my mind. More important? The Moura EP. The soundtracky textures the Spanish folk-informed progressive psychedelic rockers brought to the follow-up for their second album were both otherworldly and ground-born, and the material put emphasis on how much care and craft goes into their work while retaining the organic core against the threat of pretense. It was my most listened to short release of 2024, followed by Pelican, Holy Fingers, Pontiac, Toad Venom, Hollow Leg (x2), and Sacred Buzz. A new King Buffalo single was a late-year boon, that Hermano was worth it for the previously-unreleased studio track alone, and strong showings from Michael Rudolph Cummings, Deer Lord, Conan and Cortége, along with the aforementioned splits, assured that through the entire year, attention spans would receive consistent challenge in the movement from one thing to the next.
By way of a familiar confession, my list of short releases is nowhere near complete. It never is, and it never really could be. I’m sure there will be some I left out that I’ll add in for honorable mentions, etc., but I stand by the Moura pick for best short outing. They brought a soul to it that put the lie to the notion of EPs as between-album gap-fillers, and in a year that didn’t lack substance among its brevity-focused options, Fume Santo de Loureiro stood out in character, aesthetic and songwriting. Nobody else is making music quite like Moura.
If you have more to add here, by all means, please and thank you. Comments are below.
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Live Albums
Live Album of the Year 2024
Temple Fang, Live at Krach Am Bach
Castle, One Knight Stands: Live in NY
Danava, Live
Elder, Live at Maida Vale
Snail, Thou Art There
Stöner, Hittin’ the Bitchin’ Switch
Sula Bassana & Skyjoggers, Split
The Whims of the Great Magnet, Live at Bankastudios Maastricht 22-12-2023
Notes:
Fewer releases listed here than last year, but some killer ones for that. I put Temple Fang out there as live album of the year, and since we’re late in the post I’ll tell you honestly that it probably could be any of these on a given day. Danava’s live record crossed decades in badassery, the Sula/Skyjoggers split captured the vibe of a club night in Germany, the Whims of the Great Magnet’s live release made an excellent predecessor to their out-this-month studio album, Snail recorded theirs at a show I put on, Stöner capture the end of their two-album cycle with an awesome set, and Elder are Elder. The Maida Vale recording is short, and their songs are long, or you probably would’ve heard a lot more about that this year. If/when they do a proper live album, it will be a no-brainer.
But the Temple Fang has it all in molten progressivism, heavy tones, immersive psychedelia and outright soul, and of the bands I’ve managed to list here — if you want to add to the list, please do — there’s nobody who so much defines what they do by its live incarnation. Temple Fang’s music changes every night. They follow where it leads in a different way, and the ritualization of their performance comes through in Live at Krach Am Bach resoundingly. I’m not saying a bad word about their studio work to this point, but their heart manifests in a different way and at a different level onstage. They’re a great band and this shows a big part of why.
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Looking Ahead to 2025
Names, right? This one’s all about the names? Get to the names, jack? Okay, calm down.
With eternal appreciation to the folks of fine, upstanding moral character in the ‘The Obelisk Collective’ group on Facebook for the assistance, here’s a smattering of what one might look forward to in 2025:
Aawks, After Nations, All Them Witches, Amber Asylum, Author & Punisher, Bandshee, Black Spirit Crown, Bog Wizard, Bone Church, Borracho, Bronco, Buzzard, Dee Calhoun, Causa Sui, The Cimmerian, Clutch, Conan, Corrosion of Conformity, Daevar, Dead Meadow, Dead Shrine, Demons My Friends, Dream Unending, DUNDDW, Dunes, Flummox, Fuzz Sagrado, FVZZ POPVLI, Gaytheist, Gin Lady, Gnarled, Gnod & White Hills, Gods and Punks, Godzillionaire, Haze Mage, Kaiser, Kal-El, King Buffalo, Lamassu, Lo-Pan, Madmess, Mantar, Masters of Reality, Messa, Seán Mulrooney, Mouth., New Dawn Fades, Nightstalker, Øresund Space Collective, Pentagram, Pesta, Pothamus, Dax Riggs, Seedy Jeezus, Slomatics, Slow Wake, Stoned Jesus, Stone Machine Electric, Temple Fang, 3rd Ear Experience, Triptykon, Trouble, Turtle Skull, Warlung, Weedpecker, Yawning Balch, Year of the Cobra, YOB… and because it still hasn’t happened and someone invariably calls me out if they’re not listed: Om.
If you have names to add, “smash that comment button,” in the parlance of our times. Only don’t really smash it because you might hurt your hand or break your phone with your awesome strength.
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THANK YOU
It was among my primary goals for this post that it should be shorter than last year’s, and it looks like I’ll achieve that with room to spare, so I’m glad. Sometimes I get carried away, I think I probably don’t need to tell you.
Before I let go of 2024 — actually I still want to review that The Whims of the Great Magnet studio release and I’ve got a Darsombra video premiere set before the end of the year, news to catch up on from like the last two weeks and a whole lot more to cover — I’d like to take a moment to thank you one more time for reading and for being part of this project this year and each year it’s been ongoing. Your support is absolutely what keeps this site going and it means more to me than I can ever hope to comprehend.
Thank you to The Patient Mrs., who in the course of a given week let alone year puts up with more of my bullshit than any human being should ever have to. “Yes, love, the world’s ending and we have no money and the house is falling down around us and the dog needs to pee, but I just need two or three hours to go sit and write about riffs — is that cool?” Or better, when I’m pissy about it. The “my wife is a saint” routine is pretty played out as far as dudely excuses for being selfish, lazy and/or dumb go, but well, I am all of those things on the extreme regular and she hasn’t booted my ass to the curb yet. I find this to be a reason to celebrate and a thing to appreciate. I am loved and cared for in ways I could never hope to earn.
Thank you to my family for their support, year in and year out. They’ve all got Obelisk shirts and they all wear them, and while I’m not sure they understand the true depths of egoistic depravity involved in this project, they’ve been on board with it since the start, and this includes my wife’s side of the family as well. I am incredibly lucky to have the life I have.
I’m going to keep listening to music, keep writing about it as much as I can. I’m not quite as generally panicked about it as I used to be — older, busier in different ways, over the FOMO, maybe a little more discerning in terms of taste? — and I’m significantly less likely to break my brain answering email, but I’m doing my best.
The Obelisk presses on into what will be a busy 2025. I’ve got trips slated to Planet Desert Rock Weekend in Las Vegas this January, Desertfest Oslo in May, Freak Valley in Germany in June, Bear Stone in Croatia in July, and Desertfest New York in September, with more hopefully to come. I look forward to these adventures and to doing the writing that will happen as part of them, and one more time, I thank you for your time and attention in reading, in the past, now, and in the future. I’m taking tomorrow off. All the way off. Back on Monday for more.
Posted in Reviews on November 1st, 2024 by JJ Koczan
The oeuvre of Portugal-based interstellar synthlord Dr. Space expands like the universe itself; it spreads farther at a seemingly increasing rate, propelled by intangible forces. Known best for his work in the multinational Øresund Space Collective, as well as Black Moon Circle and contributions to albums dating back decades at this point, various collaborations like West, Space and Love with current and former members of Siena Root or his work with New Zealand’s Craig Williamson just this year on Lamp of the Universe Meets Dr. Space‘s Enters Your Somas (review here). He even had a column here when that was a thing. Sometimes it’s an ongoing project, sometimes it’s a one-off, but it’s almost always something, and what that ethic has allowed Dr. Space — né Scott Heller — to do is amass a multicontextual, highly varied catalog that nonetheless unites around the theme of exploration.
His latest three offerings — and I say that tentatively because you never really know when the next one is coming — are Dr. Space’s Alien Planet Trip Vol. 8 – Space With Bass IV: Purple Rose Powder, part of two series subset to his solo work, the new Dr. Space-proper LP, Music to Disappear To, with its striking cover art above, and the collaborative Doctors of Space‘s Wisdom of Clowns, which pairs Heller with guitarist/synthesist Martin Weaver (Wicked Lady) for two-plus hours of cosmic outreach, and something you need to understand is that most of what they are is ‘latest.’
I don’t mean that to take away from the music being made — period — or the admirable and raw creativity that Heller‘s output so reliably displays, whether it’s full-band improv psych or the throbbing drones, pulsations and synth sweeps of “Life is Hell” (20:01) setting a somewhat darker tone for the start of Music to Disappear To but finding solace in a second-half organ solo, singing bowls and other gleeful plays with arrangement before the despondent and somewhat vague spoken word returns. But they happen to be three albums that, between them, emphasize divergent influences and aspects of (some of) what Dr. Space does, and they’re roughly concurrent in all being released the same month. So far as I know and as the music indicates, there’s nothing directly tying them together. They’re not a series, they’re just the three records — maybe not even the only three — that Dr. Space put out in October. That and the differentiation of intent behind them are why they’re being grouped together now.
As noted, Music to Disappear To begins with “Life is Hell,” and that song is an encompassing improv manifesto of sound recorded throughout 2023 unfolding over multiple movements. Whatever Heller felt needed to be said — literally spoken — on it, it’s hard to decipher as his voice is buried in the mix and effects are all around, etc., but it’s worth noting that’s the only time anything is said on the album at all. “Life is Hell” is the opener and longest track (immediate points), and a focal point that defines the mood of what follows in “Smile and Rotate” (17:02), “Music to Disappear To” (14:54) and “Frozen Hypothalamus Pie” (15:02), even as each takes off on its own experimental sojourn.
“Smile and Rotate” gradually evolves from minimal drone to stark and lonely synthesizer boops to something that makes that same melancholia dance, while the title-track lives up to its name in its initial low tone and static noise — lest we forget that the force accelerating the expansion of the universe is called ‘dark energy’ — turning sci-fi in the midsection but holding that undertone until the final sweep. The evocation of ice in “Frozen Hypothalamus Pie” is a clever suggestion to suit the keyboardy sound, probably a reference, but doesn’t necessarily account for the tape-loop-sounding experimentation of the middle third or the conversation that seems to be happening perhaps between neurons as much as different vintage synthesizers. It is both Music to Disappear To and the place into which one might, at least for an hour, escape and find comfort.
Dr. Space’s Alien Planet Trip Vol. 8 Space With Bass IV: Purple Rose Powder tells you at least part of what you need to know right off. It’s Space, with bass. Where Music to Disappear To was entirely solo, Space With Bass IV pairs Heller with Hasse Horrigmoe as collaborator on a 2023 recording across four pieces: “Draptomaniac” (13:02), “Slowker” (6:49), “Purple Rose Powder” (32:11) and “Surfing the Sea of Bass” (13:31), the last of which was tracked remotely between the two earlier this year. Horrigmoe is a regular feature in Øresund Space Collective and was a founding member of Tangle Edge in Norway; this is by no means his first Alien Planet Trip, and he’s been involved in Doctors of Space on multiple sessions as well, including Wisdom of Clowns.
The chemistry and fluidity as “Draptomaniac” evolves is palpable. Horrigmoe and Heller are each on their own journey, but they remain complementary in sound between loops and effects and other spacey noisemakings, and “Draptomaniac” fills in space that the subsequent “Slowker,” aberrantly brief but not unprecedentedly so at six minutes, leaves open with a slow-undulating windy swirl behind the quiet bassline. As he does at several points across these records, Dr. Space ends “Slowker” by pushing the synth forward, creating more of a wash, then bringing everything down together, and his doing so reminds of the instrumental role the studio itself plays in making this material, which is inevitably carved out of longer stretches of jamming and improvisation.
“Purple Rose Powder” is inevitably a standout, being practically a full-length EP unto itself, but it is appreciable more for genuinely being a single work, a linear progression happening between movements of synth, loops, effects and I don’t know what. It is proggy and patient in kind, and it earns the choral mellotronic sounds of its finish, the bass once again receding at the end. And the recorded-later “Surfing the Sea of Bass” takes a line from Harrigmoe as its center and follows where the groove wants to go, in this case out over a shimmering ocean. Dr. Space‘s 2023 offering, Suite for Orchestra of Marine Mammals (review here) or Doctors of Space‘s earlier 2024 release, Adventures in the Deep Dark Seas of Sound, feel like relevant touchstones, but if it’s warm vibe you want, it’s there for the taking. If it’s Dr. Space‘s watery period, fair enough.
As they’ve moved away from recording and putting out monthly jams in the raw and more toward building those jams into improv-based studio albums, Doctors of Space have flourished as a project. Heller‘s approach is consistently malleable to those with whom he’s collaborating. Horrigmoe returns on Wisdom of Clowns, as noted, but what began as the duo of Martin Weaver and Dr. Space has let its growth and evolution play out almost in real time through their steady string of releases, and the textures the three players conjure on the opening “Wisdom of Clowns” (21:22), “Needs of the One” (38:44), which would be a highlight even if it wasn’t a Star Trek reference, “Mystic Challenger” (27:27), “Ascari” (20:10), and the concluding, indeed funkified “Dance Floor Hit (For Freaky Creatures)” (21:41) provide worlds to get lost in, whether they’re more active, like “Needs of the One,” which has a beat to remind you krautrock invented New Wave, or “Mystic Challenger,” which has an almost Nintendoan — if more manic — feel in its second half. It’s a ways from chiptune space rock, but pretty darn close to cosmic dub.
Coming in ahead of party time in “Dance Floor Hit (For Freaky Creatures),” the penultimate “Ascari” builds on some of the midi-type stylizations in “Mystic Challenger.” After opening with a proggier wash of synth and guitar/bass, the song brings looped synthesizer chime sounds ahead of the strummed repetitions, the concluding organ and synth not quite a bookend because the guitar started out, but a smooth shift into the organ that begins the closer. The beat kicks in before “Dance Floor Hit (For Freaky Creatures)” is 30 seconds old, and it treats funk with an oldschool-prog reverence. The groove becomes a sacred thing, and Weaver seems a bit to honor Eddie Hazel in the midsection burner of a solo without giving up a mellow sensibility or the flow of the rhythm behind it. Even weirdos gotta boogie. It’s as fitting an ending as one might ask, a reminder that it’s okay to have a good time as you plunge deeper into the outer recesses of the sonic unknown.
On some level, that is what’s happening on each of these releases. Heller under the guise of Dr. Space is well familiar in this terrain and as a veteran player, bandleader and producer, wields the power of suggestion as a part of an expansive and growing aesthetic, while adventures in arrangement continue to push the scope of ‘his thing,’ in terms of sound. A given listener might find themselves transported to other places by this material than what I’ve described here, might hear something else in it. I don’t think that’s wrong. When you make as much room for the audience to dwell in the material as Heller, Horrigmoe and Weaver craft on Wisdom of Clowns, Horrigmoe and Heller bring together for Purple Rose Powder and Heller fosters solo on Music to Disappear To, it should be no surprise that people will have their own interpretations.
Dr. Space, Music to Disappear To (2024)
Dr. Space’s Alien Planet Trip Vol. 8 – Space With Bass IV: Purple Rose Powder (2024)
This is it. This one’s for all the marbles. Well, actually there are no marbles involved, but if you remember way back like two weeks ago when this started out, I told you the tale of a hubristic 40-something dickweed blogger who thought he could review 100 albums in 10 days, and assuming I make it through the below without having an aneurysm — because, hey, you never know — today I get to live that particular fairy tale.
Lamp of the Universe Meets Dr. Space, Enters Your Somas
Who’s ready to get blasted out the airlock? New Zealand solo-outfit Lamp of the Universe, aka multi-instrumentalist Craig Williamson (also Dead Shrine, ex-Datura, etc.), and Portugal-residing synth master Dr. Space, aka Scott Heller of Øresund Space Collective, Black Moon Circle, and so on, come together to remind us all we’re nothing more than semi-sentient cosmic dust. Enters Your Somas is comprised of two extended pieces, “Enters Your Somas” (18:39) and “Infiltrates Your Mind” (19:07), and both resonate space/soul frequencies while each finds its own path. The title-track is more languid on average, where “Infiltrates Your Mind” reroutes auxiliary power to the percussive thrusters in its first half before drifting into drone communion and hearing a voice — vague, but definitely human speech — before surging back to its course via Williamson‘s drums, which play a large role in giving the material its shape. But with synthy sweeps from Heller, Mellotron and guitar coming and going, and a steady groove across both inclusions, Lamp of the Universe Meets Dr. Space offer galactic adventure limited only by where your imagination puts you while you listen.
Richmond, Virginia’s Inter Arma had no small task before them in following 2019’s Sulphur English (review here), but from the tech-death boops and bops and twists of New Heaven‘s leadoff title-track through the gothic textures of “Gardens in the Dark,” self-aware without satire, slow-flowing and dramatic, this fifth full-length finds them continuing to expand their creative reach, and at this point, whatever genre you might want to cast them in, they stand out. To wit, the blackdeath onslaught of “Violet Seizures” that’s also space rock, backed in that by the subsequent “Desolation’s Harp” with its classically grandiose solo, or the post-doom lumber of “Concrete Cliffs” that calls out its expanse after the seven-minute drum-playthrough-fodder extremity of “The Children the Bombs Overlooked,” or the mournful march of “Endless Grey” and the acoustic-led Nick Cavey epilogue “Forest Service Road Blues.” Few bands embrace a full spectrum of metallic sounds without coming across as either disjointed or like they’re just mashing styles together for the hell of it. Inter Arma bleed purpose in every turn, and as they inch closer to their 20th year as a band, they are masters unto themselves of this form they’ve created.
The opening “Chimera” puts Chasing Shadows quickly into a ritualized mindset, all the more as Warsaw meditative doomers Sunnata lace it and a decent portion of their 11-track/62-minute fifth album with an arrangement of vocals from guitarists Szymon Ewertowski and Adrian Gadomski and bassist/synthesist Michal Dobrzanski as drummer/percussionist Robert Ruszczyk punctuates on snare as they head toward a culmination. Individual pieces have their own purposes, whether it’s the momentary float of “Torn” or the post-Alice in Chains harmonies offset by Twin Peaks-y creep in “Saviours Raft,” or the way “Hunger” gradually moves from light to dark with rolling immersion, or the dancier feel with which “Like Cogs in a Wheel” gives an instrumental finish. It’s not a minor undertaking and it’s not meant to be one, but mood and atmosphere do a lot of work in uniting the songs, and the low-in-the-mouth vocal melodies become a part of that as the record unfolds. Their range has never felt broader, but there’s a plot being followed as well, an idea behind each turn in “Wishbone” and the sprawl is justified by the dug-in worldmaking taking place across the whole-LP progression, darkly psychedelic and engrossing as it is.
Among the most vital classic elements of The Sonic Dawn‘s style is their ability to take spacious ideas and encapsulate them with a pop efficiency that doesn’t feel dumbed down. That is to say, they’re not capitulating to fickle attention spans with short songs so much as they’re able to get in, say what they want to say with a given track, and get out. Phantom is their fifth album, and while the title may allude to a certain ghostliness coinciding with the melancholy vibe overarching through the bulk of its component material, the Copenhagen-based trio are mature enough at this stage to know what they’re about. And while Phantom has its urgent stretches in the early going of “Iron Bird” or the rousing “Think it Over,” the handclap-laced “Pan AM,” and the solo-topped apex of “Micro Cosmos in a Drop,” most of what they’re about here harnesses a mellower atmosphere. It doesn’t need to hurry, baby. Isn’t there enough rush in life with all these “21st Century Blues?” With no lack of movement throughout, some of The Sonic Dawn‘s finest stretches here are in low-key interpretations of funk (“Dreams of Change,” “Think it Over,” “Transatlantique,” etc.) or prog-boogie (“Scorpio,” “Nothing Can Live Here” before the noisier crescendo) drawn together by organ, subdued, thoughtful vocal melodies and craft to suit the organic production. This isn’t the first The Sonic Dawn LP to benefit from the band knowing who they are as a group, but golly it sure is stronger for that.
It’s not until the hook of second cut “Ohm Ripper” hits that Rifflord let go of the tension built up through the opening semi-title-track “Serpent Power,” which in its thickened thrashy charge feels like a specific callout to High on Fire but as I understand it is just about doing hard drugs. Fair enough. The South Dakota-based five-piece of bassist/vocalist Wyatt Bronc Bartlett, guitarists Samuel Hayes and Dustin Vano, keyboardist Tory Jean Stoddard and drummer Douglas Jennings Barrett will echo that intensity later in “Church Keys” and “Tumbleweed,” but that’s still only one place the 38-minute eight-track LP goes, and whether it’s the vocals calling out through the largesse and breadth of “Blessed Life” or the ensuing crush that follows in “LM308,” the addled Alice in Chains swagger in the lumber of “Grim Creeper” or the righteously catchy bombast of “Hoof,” they reach further than they ever have in terms of sound and remain coherent despite the inherently chaotic nature of their purported theme, the sheer heft of the tonality wielded and the fact that 39 Serpent Power has apparently been waiting some number of years to see release. Worth the wait? Shit, I’m surprised the album didn’t put itself out, it sounds so ready to go.
At the core of Mothman and the Thunderbirds is multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Alex Parkinson, and on the band’s second album, Portal Hopper, he’s not completely on his own — Egor Lappo programmed the drums, mixed, and plays a guitar solo on “Fractals,” Joe Sobieski guests on vocals for a couple tracks, Sam Parkinson donates a pair of solos to the cause — but it’s still very much his telling of the charmingly meandering sci-fi/fantasy plot taking place across the 12 included progressive metal mini-epics, which he presents with an energy and clarity of purpose that for sure graduated from Devin Townsend‘s school of making a song with 40 layers sound immediate but pulls as well from psychedelia and pop-punk vocals for an all the more emphatic scope. This backdrop lets “Fractals” get funky or “Escape From Flatwoods” hold its metallic chicanery with its soaring melody while “Squonk Kingdom” is duly over-the-top in its second-half chase soon enough fleshed out by “So Long (Portal Hopper)” ahead of the lightly-plucked finale “Attic.” The specificity of influence throughout Portal Hopper can be striking as clean/harsh vocals blend, etc., but given the narrative and the relative brevity of the songs complementing the whims explored within them, there’s no lack of character in the album’s oft-careening 38-minute course.
Given its pro-shop nature in production and performance, the ability of The Lunar Effect to grasp a heavy blues sound as part of what they do while avoiding either the trap of hyper-dudely navelgazing or cultural appropriation — no minor feat — and the fluidity of one piece into the next across the 40-minute LP’s two sides, I’m a little surprised not to have been sick of the band’s second album, Sounds of Green and Blue before I put it on. Maybe since it’s on Svart everyone just assumed it’s Finnish experimentalist drone? Maybe everybody’s burnt out on a seemingly endless stream of bands from London’s underground? I don’t know, but by the time The Lunar Effect make their way to the piano-laden centerpiece “Middle of the End” — expanding on the unhurried mood of “In Grey,” preceding the heavy blues return of “Pulling Daisies” at the start of side B that mirrors album opener “Ocean Queen” and explodes into a roll that feels like it was made to be the best thing you play at your DJ night — that confusion is a defining aspect of the listening experience. “Fear Before the Fall” picks on Beethoven, for crying out loud. High class and low groove. Believe me, I know there’s a lot of good stuff out already in 2024, but what the hell more could you want? Where is everybody?
Even if I were generally inclined to do so — read: I’m not — it would be hard to begrudge Portland heavy rock institution Danava wanting to do a live record after their 2023’s Nothing But Nothing (review here) found them in such raucous form. But the aptly-titled Live is more than just a post-studio-LP check-in to remind you they kick ass on stage, as side A’s space, classic, boogie, heavy rocking “Introduction/Spinning Temple” and “Maudie Shook” were recorded in 2008, while the four cuts on side B — “Shoot Straight with a Crooked Gun,” “Nothing but Nothing,” “Longdance,” “Let the Good Times Kill” and “Last Goodbye” — came from the European tour undertaken in Fall 2023 to support Nothing But Nothing. Is the underlying message that Danava are still rad 15 years later? Maybe. That certainly comes through by the time the solo in “Shoot Straight with a Crooked Gun” hits, but that also feels like reading too much into it. Maybe it’s just about representing different sides of who Danava are, and if so, fine. Then or now, psych or proto-thrashing, they lay waste.
A free three-songer from Varese, Italy’s Moonlit, Be Not Afraid welcomes the listener to “Death to the World” with (presumably sampled) chanting before unfurling a loose, somewhat morose-feeling nighttime-desert psych sway before “Fort Rachiffe” howls tonally across its own four minutes in more heavy post-rock style, still languid in tempo but encompassing in its wash and the amp-hum-and-percussion blend on the shorter “Le Conseguenze Della Libertà” (1:57) gives yet another look, albeit briefly. In about 11 minutes, Moonlit — whose last studio offering was 2021’s So Bless Us Now (review here) — never quite occupy the same space twice, and despite the compact presentation, the range from mid-period-QOTSA-gone-shoegaze (plus chanting! don’t forget the chanting!) to the hypnotic Isis-doing-space-push that follows with the closer as a but-wait-there’s-more/not-just-an-afterthought epilogue is palpable. I don’t know when or how Be Not Afraid was recorded, whether it’s portentous of anything other than itself or what, but there’s a lot happening under its surface, and while you can’t beat the price, don’t be surprised if you end up throwing a couple bucks Moonlit‘s way anyhow.
Much of Northern Lights is instrumental, but whether or not Leo Scheben is barking out the endtimes storyline of “Darkhammer” — stylized all-caps in the tracklisting — or “Night Terrors,” or just digging into a 24-second progression of lo-fi riffing of “Paranoid Isolation” and the Casio-type beats that back his guitar there and across the project’s 16-track latest offering, the reminder Doom Lab give is that the need to create takes many forms. From the winding scales of “Locrian’s Run” to “Twisted Logic” with its plotted solo lines, pieces are often just that — pieces of what might otherwise be a fleshed-out song — and Doom Lab‘s experimentalism feels paramount in terms of aural priorities. Impulse in excelsis. It might be for the best that the back-to-back pair “Nice ‘n’ Curvy” and “Let ’em Bounce” are both instrumental, but as madcap as Scheben is, he’s able to bring Northern Lights to a close with resonant homage in its title-track, and cuts like “Too Much Sauce on New Year’s Eve” and “Dark Matter” are emblematic of his open-minded approach overall, working in different styles sometimes united most by their rawness and uncompromising persona. This is number 100 of 100 records covered in this Quarterly Review, and nothing included up to now sounds like Doom Lab. A total win for radical individualism.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 OpethandHawkwind — 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.
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.
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.
Posted in audiObelisk on February 23rd, 2024 by JJ Koczan
It doesn’t take long on Live @ Club Void Effenaar 23-3-23 before you’re in the room. You can hear voices in the crowd as Dutch instrumental improvisationalists DUNDDW begin to unfold their set, soon enough to be joined by Scott “Dr. Space” Heller (Øresund Space Collective, Doctors of Space, Black Moon Circle, solo work, etc.) expanding the trio as a four-piece with a guest spot on synth after about 12 minutes in, some comment and a chuckle as things mellow and space way, way out thereafter in the jam’s dreamier midsection, and so on.
The LP-length single-song set is out today as an independent release from DUNDDW, for whom it follows a 2023 split with Kombynat Robotron (review here) and their 2022 debut, Flux (review here), and the occasion that brought Heller from Portugal to the Netherlands was Black Moon Circle touring to support their 2023 LP, the expansive Leave the Ghost Behind (review here). Held weekly in the smaller room at the legendary Effenaar in Eindhoven (and no, it’s not just legendary because I saw Motorpsycho there one time, though that’d be enough in my head), ‘Club Void’ is a series of shows put together by the venue’s Robert Schaeffer as well as Paul van Berlo of the Into the Void Festival (also Loud Noise Booking) and Peter van Elderen, formerly the vocalist of Peter Pan Speedrock. All of these are endorsements that, existentially speaking, are good to have.
But DUNDDW have been pretty well encouraged since their outset bringing bassist Huibert der Weduwen and drummer Peter Dragt of Bismut together with Mt. Echo‘s Gerben Elburg on guitar for pointedly exploratory purposes, and the flow they conjure throughout Live @ Club Void Effenaar 23-3-23 presents a vivid picture of why for listeners who haven’t had the chance to actually see them. The cosmic adventure is mellow in spirit on the whole, but communal in a way that feels active, and inviting in tone and groove. Dropping nearly to silence at times, it represents well the conversation happening on stage as the sounds were being made, while allowing the audience and the LP-listener space to put themselves in the moment. In the initial build-up, DUNDDW work their way into a voluminous build, guitar signaling volume changes as they ooze past nine minutes, and when Dr. Space hops on board after (or maybe during) the ensuing wash a short time later, the proceedings get duly hyperspatial.
They drift and reorient, finding a new path with the four of them on the stage, and gradually the float becomes more driving, pushing into intense space rock before noising out behind the waves of Heller‘s synth with Dragt‘s crash and tom fills marking the end of that movement circa 26:30 and the beginning of the final cycle of ebbs and flows, more solidified in their purpose than they were only minutes before, but clearly having learned from the second part of the jam. Keep an ear out for bells, which you might just hear in that last stretch if they, it, or anything actually exists, and know that DUNDDW save their most fervent push for the crescendo, and that the experience of getting there is as much the point as the big finish and ringout itself.
Live @ Club Void Effenaar 23-3-23 isn’t intended to be some grand statement. At its heart, it’s a bootleg-style outing that captures one night among many DUNDDW went on stage and did what they do. This, coupled with the Heller collaboration that stands it out among other gigs, is the appeal. It would be ridiculous if DUNDDW did some hyper-produced live record. They might as well go to a studio and jam out an new LP if they’re going to spend the time and money. But here, they express the sense of journey from one end of this massive piece to the other, while also conveying their root ethic of commitment to organically capturing the creative moment as it happens. For that, Live @ Club Void Effenaar 23-3-23 offers resonance even beyond that of its echoing final tones.
Again, it’s out today, so by all means, dig in below and enjoy. Some PR wire-type info follows:
Friday, February 23rd, we (Dutch improv instrumental spacerock band DUNDDW) will digitally release a 40 minute jam we played last year at Club Void in The Netherlands. Around 17 minutes in Dr. Space – aka Scott Heller from Øresund Space Collective, Black Moon Circle a.o. – joins in on the jam.
Says DUNDDW: ” We really felt the flow during this jam. It builds up in three waves, with Dr. Space joining in about halfway through with some great synths, bells and spacy genius.”
Says Dr. Space: “I’ve been friends with the guys in Bismut, and DUNDDW invited me to jam with them and it was fun. Sure we will do it again. Great guys.”
DUNDDW is a 100% improvising, instrumental spacerock/krautrock trio from The Netherlands, with members from Bismut and Mt. Echo. Their first full length album Flux was released in November 2022. In June 2023 they released a split vinyl LP with German krautrock band Kombynat Robotron. February 2024 marks the release of a live jam they played in 2023, with Dr. Space joining in.
DUNDDW = Peter Dragt – Drums Huibert der Weduwen – Bass Gerben Elburg – Guitars
Welcome back to the Summer 2023 Quarterly Review. I hope you enjoyed the weekend. Today we dig in on the penultimate — somehow my using the word “penultimate” became a running gag for me in Quarterly Reviews; I don’t know how or why, but I think it’s funny — round of 10 albums and tomorrow we’ll close out as we hit the total of 70. Could easily have kept it going through the week, but so it goes. I’ll have more QR in September or October, I’m not sure yet which. It’s a pretty busy Fall.
Today’s a wild mix and that’s what I was hoping for. Let’s go.
Quarterly Review #51-60:
Weite, Assemblage
Founded by bassist Ingwer Boysen (also High Fighter) as an offshoot of the live incarnation of Delving, of which he’s part, Weite release the instrumental Assemblage as a semi-improv-sounding collection of marked progressive fluidity. With Delving and Elder‘s Nick DiSalvo and Mike Risberg in the lineup along with Ben Lubin (Lawns), the story goes that the four-piece got to the studio with nothing/very little, spent a few days writing and recording with the venerable Richard Behrens helming, and Assemblage‘s four component pieces are what came out of it. The album begins with the nine-minutes-each pair of the zazzy-jazzy mover “Neuland,” while “Entzündet” grows somewhat more open, a lead guitar refrain like built around drum-backed drone and keys, swelling in piano-inclusive volume like Crippled Black Phoenix, darker prog shifting into a wash and more freaked-out psych rock. I’m not sure those are real drums on “Rope,” or if they are I’d love to know how the snare was treated, but the song’s a groover just the same, and the 14-minute “Murmuration” is where the styles unite under an umbrella of warm tonality and low key but somehow cordial atmosphere. If these guys want to get together every couple years into perpetuity and bang out a record like this, that’d be fine.
The fourth album from Portland, Oregon’s Mizmor — the solo-project of multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer, vocalist, etc.-ist A.L.N. — arrives riding a tsunami of hype and delivers on the band’s long-stated promise of ‘wholly doomed black metal.’ With consuming distortion at its heart from opener/longest track (immediate points) “Only an Expanse” onward, the record recalls the promise of American black metal as looser in its to-tenet conformity than the bulk of Europe’s adherents — of course these are generalizations and I’m no expert — by contrasting it rhythmically with doom, which instead of fully releasing the tension amassed by the scream-topped tremolo riffing just makes it sound more miserable. Doom! “No Place to Arrive” is admirably thick, like noisy YOB on charred ambience, and “Anything But” draws those two sides together in more concise and driving style, vicious and brutal until it cuts in the last minute to quiet minimalism that makes the slam-in crush of 13-minute closer “Acceptance” all the more punishing, with plenty of time left for trades between all-out thrust and grueling plod. Hard to call which side wins the day — and that’s to Mizmor‘s credit, ultimately — but by the end of “Acceptance,” the raging gnash has collapsed into a caldera of harsh sludge, and it no longer matters. In context, that’s a success.
With a couple quick drum taps and a clearheaded strum that invokes the impossible nostalgia of Bruce Springsteen via ’90s alt rock, Netherlands-based The Whims of the Great Magnet strolls casually into “Same New,” the project’s first outing since 2021’s Share My Sun EP. Working in a post-grunge style seems to suit Sander Haagmans, formerly the bassist of Sungrazer and, for a bit, The Machine, as he single-track/double-tracks through the song’s initial verse and blossoms melodically in the chorus, dwelling in an atmosphere sun-coated enough that Haagmans‘ calls it “your new summer soundtrack.” Not arguing, if a one-track soundtrack is a little short. After a second verse/chorus trade, some acoustic weaves in at the end to underscore the laid back feel, and as it moves into the last minute, “Same New” brings back the hook not to drive it into your head — it’s catchy enough that such things aren’t necessary — but to speak to a traditional structure born out of classic rock. It does this organically, with moderate tempo and a warm, engaging spirit that, indeed, evokes the ideal images of the stated season and will no doubt prove comforting even removed from such long, hot and sunny days.
German instrumentalists Sarkh follow their 2020 full-length, Kaskade, with the four-song/31-minute Helios EP, issued through Worst Bassist Records. As with that album, the short-ish offering has a current of progressive metal to coincide with its heavier post-rock affect; “Zyklon” leading off with due charge before the title-track finds stretches of Yawning Man-esque drift, particularly as it builds toward a hard-hitting crescendo in its second half. Chiaroscuro, then. Working shortest to longest in runtime, the procession continues with “Kanagawa” making stark volume trades, growing ferocious but not uncontrolled in its louder moments, the late low end particularly satisfying as it plays off the guitar in the final push, a sudden stop giving 11-minute closer “Cape Wrath” due space to flesh out its middle-ground hypothesis after some initial intensity, the trio of guitarist Ralph Brachtendorf, bassist Falko Schneider and drummer Johannes Dose rearing back to let the EP end with a wash but dropping the payoff with about a minute left to let the guitar finish on its own. Germany, the world, and the universe: none of it is short on instrumental heavy bands, but the purposeful aesthetic mash of Sarkh‘s sound is distinguishing and Helios showcases it well to make the argument.
A 2LP second long-player from mostly-traditionalist doom metallers Spiritual Void, Wayfare seems immediately geared toward surpassing their 2017 debut, White Mountain, in opening with “Beyond the White Mountain.” With a stretch of harsher vocals to go along with the cleaner-sung verses through its 8:48 and the metal-of-eld wail that meets the crescendo before the nodding final verse, they might’ve done it. The subsequent “Die Alone” (11:48) recalls Candlemass and Death without losing the nod of its rhythm, and “Old” (12:33) reaffirms the position, taking Hellhound Records-style methodologies of European trad doom and pulling them across longer-form structures. Following “Dungeon of Nerthus” (10:24) the shorter “Wandering Doom” (5:31) chugs with a swing that feels schooled by Reverend Bizarre, while “Wandersmann” (13:11) tolls a mournful bell at its outset as though to let you know that the warm-up is over and now it’s time to really doom out. So be it. At a little over an hour long, Wayfare is no minor undertaking, but for what they’re doing stylistically, it shouldn’t be. Morose without melodrama, Wayfare sees Spiritual Void continuing to find their niche in doom, and rest assured, it’s on the doomier end. Of doom.
Even when The River make the trade of tossing out the aural weight of doom — the heavy guitar and bass, the expansive largesse, and so on — they keep the underlying structure. The nod. At least mostly. To explain: the long-running UK four-piece — vocalist Jenny Newton, guitarist Christian Leitch (formerly of 40 Watt Sun), bassist Stephen Morrissey and drummer Jason Ludwig — offer a folkish interpretation of doom and a doomed folk on their fourth long-player, the five-song/40-minute A Hollow Full of Hope taking the acoustic prioritizing of a song like “Open” from 2019’s Vessels into White Tides (review here) and bringing it to the stylistic fore on songs like the graceful opener “Fading,” the lightly electric “Tiny Ticking Clocks” rife with strings and gorgeous self-harmonizing from Newton set to an utterly doomed march, or the four-minute instrumental closer “Hollowful,” which is more than an outro if not a completely built song in relation to the preceding pieces. Melodic, flowing, intentional in arrangement, meter, melody. Sad. Beautiful. “Exits” (9:56) and “A Vignette” (10:26) — also the two longest cuts, though not by a ton — are where one finds that heft and the other side of the doom-folk/folk-doom divide, though it is admirable how thin they make that line. Marked progression. This album will take them past their 25th anniversary, and they greet it hitting a stride. That’s an occasion worth celebrating.
Sons of Froglord is the fourth full-length in three years from UK amphibian conceptualist storytellers Froglord, and there’s just about no way they’re not making fun of space rock on “Road Raisin.” “Collapse” grows burly in its hook in the vein of a more rumbling Clutch — and oh, the shenanigans abound! — and there’s a kind of ever-present undercurrent sludgy threat in the more forward push of the glorious anthem to the inanity of career life in “Wednesday” (it doesn’t materialize, but there is a tambourine on “A Swamp of My Own,” so that’s something), but the bulk of the latest chapter in the Froglord tale delivers ’70s-by-way-of-’10s classic heavy blues rock, distinct in its willingness to go elsewhere from and around the boogie swing of “Wizard Gonk” and the fuzzy shuffling foundation of “Garden” at the outset and pull from different eras and subsets of heavy to serve their purposes. “Froglady” is on that beat. On it. And the way “A Swamp of My Own” opens to its chorus is a stirring reminder of the difference drumming can make in elevating a band. After a quick “Closing Ceremony,” they tack on a presumably-not-narrative-related-but-fitting-anyway cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival‘s “Born on the Bayou,” which complements a crash-laced highlight like “The Sage” well and seems to say a bit about where Froglord are coming from as well, i.e., the swamp.
Released digitally with the backing of Abraxas and on CD through Smolder Brains Records, the Cult of Devil Sounds split EP offers two new tracks each from São Paulo, Brazil’s Weedevil and Veraruz, Mexico’s Electric Cult. The former take the A side and fade in on the guitar line “Darkness Inside” with due drama, gradually unfurling the seven-minute doom roller that’s ostensibly working around Electric Wizard-style riffing, but has its own persona in tone, atmosphere and the vocals of Maureen McGee, who makes her first appearance here with the band. The swagger of “Burn It” follows, somewhat speedier and sharper in delivery, with a scorcher solo in its back half, witchy proclamations and satisfying slowdown at the end. Weedevil. All boxes ticked, no question. Check. Electric Cult are rawer in production and revel in that, bringing “Rising From Hell” and “Esoteric Madness” with a more uptempo, rock-ish swing, but moving through sludge and doom by the time the seven minutes of the first of those is done. “Rising From Hell” finishes with ambient guitar, then feedback, which “Esoteric Madness” cuts off to begin with bass; a clever turn. Quickly “Esoteric Madness” grows dark from its outset, pushing into harsh vocals over a slogging march that turns harder-driving with ’70s-via-Church–of–Misery hard-boogie rounding out. That faster finish is a contrast to Weedevil‘s ending slow, and complements it accordingly. An enticing sampler from both.
When I read some article about how the James Webb Space Telescope has looked billions of years into the past chasing down ancient light and seen further toward the creation of the universe than humankind ever before has, I look at some video or other, I should be hearing Dr. Space. I don’t know if the Portugal-based solo artist, synthesist, bandleader, Renaissance man Scott “Dr. Space” Heller (also Øresund Space Collective, Black Moon Circle, etc.) has been in touch with the European Space Agency (ESA) or what their response has been, but even with its organ solo and stated watery purpose, amid sundry pulsations it’s safe to assume the 20-minute title-track “Suite for Orchestra of Marine Mammals” is happening with an orchestra of semi-robot aliens on, indeed, some impossibly distant exoplanet. Heller has long dwelt at the heart of psychedelic improv and the three pieces across the 39 minutes of Suite for Orchestra of Marine Mammals recall classic krautrock ambience while remaining purposefully exploratory. “Going for the Nun” pairs church organ with keyboard before shimmering into proto-techno blips and bloops recalling the Space Age that should’ve had humans on Mars by now, while the relatively brief capper “No Space for Time” — perhaps titled to note the limitations of the vinyl format — still finds room in its six minutes to work in two stages, with introductory chimes shifting toward more kosmiche synth travels yet farther out.
The debut from Santa Fe-based solo drone project Ruiner — aka Zac Hogan, also of Dysphotic, ex-Drought — is admirable in its commitment to itself. Hogan unveils the outfit with The Book of Patience (on Desert Records), an 80-minute, mostly-single-note piece called “Liber Patientiae,” which if you’re up on your Latin, you know is the title of the album as well. With a willfully glacial pace that could just as easily be a parody of the style — there is definitely an element of ‘is this for real?’ in the listening process, but yeah, it seems to be — “Liber Patientiae” evolves over its time, growing noisier as it approaches 55 or so minutes, the distortion growing more fervent over the better part of the final 25, the linear trajectory underscoring the idea that there’s a plan at work all along coinciding with the experimental nature of the work. What that plan might manifest from here is secondary to the “Liber Patientiae” as a meditative experience. On headphones, alone, it becomes an inward journey. In a crowded room, at least at the outset it’s almost a melodic white noise, maybe a little tense, but stretched out and changing but somehow still solid and singular, making the adage that ‘what you put into it is what you get out’ especially true in this case. And as it’s a giant wall of noise, it goes without saying that not everybody will be up for getting on board, but it’s difficult to imagine the opaque nature of the work is news to Hogan, who clearly is searching for resonance on his own wavelength.
