Posted in Whathaveyou on October 13th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Everybody has a role to play. Derrick Vella and Justin DeTore — who have enough pedigree between them that they hardly even need the other designations — are ‘Architect of Dreams’ and ‘The Bridge Between Two Worlds,’ respectively. Esteemed guests like Phil Swanson (Solemn Lament, ex-Hour of 13, etc.) and Leila Abdul-Rauf (Cardinal Wyrm, Vastum, etc.) join in as ‘The Forlorn’ and ‘The Siren’s Call,’ and they’re by no means the only ones. Figure out your own title if you like. For the purposes of this post at least, I dub myself ‘Exhausted of Spirit.’
Quite sure you don’t need a reminder from me as to the poised death-doom that was on offer with Dream Unending‘s debut, Tide Turns Eternal (review here), when it was released last year. Thus Song of Salvation, which is out Nov. 11 through 20 Buck Spin and Ván Records, is all the more something took forward to as the follow-up. The album info below — unceremoniously hoisted from the label’s Bandcamp — drops hints of a 16-minute closer, and that sounds like a win in terms of expanding on what they did last time, and the guest appearances will no doubt flesh out the already class aesthetic that the project established last time through. I didn’t know this was coming — see ‘Exhausted of Spirit’ above — but if you were ready to close the book on new records for 2022, consider “Secret Grief” below a call to hold off a bit longer.
As seen on the internet:
The 2021 Dream Unending debut album ‘Tide Turns Eternal’ was a marked shift in musical ambition for Derrick Vella (Tomb Mold) and Justin DeTore (Innumerable Forms, Sumerlands). While structured with a foot firmly in Death / Doom, a far loftier purpose and progressivism was its hallmark, as such distancing itself from others pursuing the style. Now returning only a year later with the stunning ‘Song of Salvation’, that exploratory zeal is given substantially greater allowance to soar and shine.
The 14 minute title track opener enters like a morning sunrise over a calm sea before ramping up into ethereal heaviness like the richly textured waves of a sudden ocean storm. The songs momentum never retreats into laborious repetition, always opening new doorways, ebbing and flowing like river water from its source.
Like solitarily gazing at the downtown lights of the city at night from the window of a darkened room, ’Secret Grief’ features the guest talents of vocalist Phil Swanson and Leila Abdul-Rauf on trumpet, further widening the breadth of musical talent involved and the sweep of “Song of Salvation’s” distinctive narrative.
The tranquil interlude of ‘Murmur Of Voices’ gives way to the evocative ‘Unrequited’ that begins with a lonely solo guitar before transitioning into a drifting daze of afternoon reverie and subconscious meditation.
Finally comes the album’s epic bookend,16 minute closer ‘Ecstatic Reign’. It features perhaps the album’s heaviest straight Doom moments along with the return of ‘Tide Turns Eternal’ featured guest voices McKenna Rae and Richard Poe. Tomb Mold drummer / throat Max Klebanoff also appears for a shattering back and forth vocal tradeoff with DeTore. The album’s cinematic vision and painstaking colorful detail are fully encompassed bringing this enthralling journey to its enduring peak.
Only a year on from ‘Tide Turns Eternal’ Dream Unending’s rapid evolution on the boundless panorama of ‘Song of Salvation’ is, crucially and intrinsically, a continued departure from limiting genre norms and an adept redefining of them.
Tracklisting: 1. Song Of Salvation 2. Secret Grief 3. Murmur Of Voices 4. Unrequited 5. Ecstatic Reign
Members: Derrick Vella – Architect of Dreams Justin DeTore – The Bridge Between Two Worlds
Piano and Synth contributions by David Vella
Featuring: Phil Swanson as The Forlorn Leila Abdul-Rauf as The Siren Call Max Klebanoff as Final Judgement McKenna Rae as The Implorer Richard Poe as The Dreamer
Drums captured at Solomon’s Temple by Arthur Rizk and J.K Allison Guitars captured at Boxcar Studio by Sean Pearson Mixed and Mastered by Arthur Rizk Cover Painting by Benjamin A. Vierling Layout by Chimère Noire
Posted in Radio on January 21st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Yeah, this is a good one. A lot of this comes from stuff that’s been and is being covered around here over the last couple weeks, and suffice it to say I’ve got no regrets about choosing any of these tracks. I was worried about White Manna getting lost in the Quarterly Review shuffle, so consider this an extra nod to check that out, and celebrating the new Big Scenic Nowhere, Lamp of the Universe, Weedpecker and Pia Isa records feels about right, as well as the Electric Moon collection, Phase, which put “The Loop” right back in my head like it had never left.
Upcoming stuff from Seremonia, Obsidian Sea, Fostermother, and SÖNUS give a glimpse of things to be released over the next month-plus, and the hardest part about including an Author & Punisher track is not rambling incoherently for 20 minutes about how great the rest of the record from which it comes is. I suppose there will be time for such things.
For now, I thank you for listening as always if you do and I’m grateful you see these words either way.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at: http://gimmemetal.com.
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 01.21.22
Pia Isa
Follow the Sun
Distorted Chants
SÖNUS
Pay Me Your Mind
Usurper of the Universe
Weedpecker
Endless Extensions of Good Vibrations
IV: The Stream of Forgotten Thoughts
VT
Fostermother
Hedonist
The Ocean
Frozen Planet….1969
Diamond Dust
Not From 1969
Author & Punisher
Drone Carrying Dread
Kruller
Wormsand
Carrions
Shapeless Mass
Dream Unending
In Cipher I Weep
Tide Turns Eternal
VT
Obsidian Sea
Mythos
Pathos
Lamp of the Universe
Descendants
The Akashic Field
Electric Moon
The Loop
Phase
Papir
7.2
7
Seremonia
Unohduksen Kidassa
Neonlusifer
White Manna
Monogamous Casanova
First Welcome
VT
Big Scenic Nowhere
The Long Morrow
The Long Morrow
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is Feb. 4 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
Posted in Reviews on January 21st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Last day. I guess we made it. There was never any doubt it would happen, but I wouldn’t call this the smoothest Quarterly Review ever by any stretch. Weather, canceled school, missed bus, The Patient Mrs. about to start a new semester at work, plus that day that had three noise rock records right in a row — who slots these things? (me) — it hasn’t all been easy. But, if you’ve ever read the QR you might know I’ve developed a tendency to load a bunch of killer stuff into the last day to kind of give myself a break, and here we are. No regrets.
Thanks for reading this week (and any other week if you’ve ever been on this site before). Here’s how we finish.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
Dream Unending, Tide Turns Eternal
Beautiful and sad, this first collaboration between drummer/vocalist Justin DeTore (Solemn Lament, ex-Magic Circle, many more) and guitarist/bassist Derrick Vella (Tomb Mold, Outer Heaven) under the moniker of Dream Unending harnesses a classic early ’90s death-doom melancholy, but it’s not as raw as the image of My Dying Bride circa ’92 that might bring to mind. If you want to do mashups, think Novembers Doom meets Alternative 4-era Anathema. Tide Turns Eternal brings together seven songs in 46 minutes and is memorable in stretches like the guitar progression of “In Cipher I Weep” and the crushing chug of the title-track as the Massachusetts/Toronto duo harness the a true sense of classic death metal just ahead of the two-minute weepy guitar interlude “Forgotten Farewell” and the 10-minute closing title-track. Perhaps there’s some inspiration from Bell Witch in the making, but Dream Unending‘s atmosphere and patience are their own.
The title don’t lie. French expat Sergio Garcia, living in Indonesia, concocts 11 instrumental tracks of fuzzy flood, and if he wants to call that soup, then yeah, that’s as good as anything I’ve got. “Razana” opens with two minutes of garage-style strut, while “Back to Origin” crunches and “Fuzz Soup” feels a bit more of a psych freakout with its lead guitar and drums that remind of Witch, all performed by Garcia, who adds organ to boot. “Quest for Fire” is probably more in homage to the movie than band, which is a little sad, but the song brings in some minor scales and droning atmospherics, and “Ride the Mammoth” pushes more straightforward into the languid wah whatnottery of “Argapura” at the presumed start of side B, which feels rawer in “The Shelter” and more chaotic in the buzz of “Surfin’ the Dune” before “The Cheating Mole” turns to nighttime darkjazz, “Tumulous” turns its acoustic start into a hairy march punctuated and grounded by the pop of snare, and closer “Narcolepsy” finishes with a duly zombified, organ-laced take on tape-trader doom. These experiments work well together throughout Fuzz Soup, united by weird and unpredictable as they are.
Gänger is third in a purported series of four EPs by Manchester, UK, four-piece Farfisa, and its four songs solidify some of the more let-go aspects of 2020’s Bravado, taking the folkish shine of a cut like “My Oh My” and turning it into the dug-in garage prog rock of “Honey Badger” and riffing out dirty and fuzzed on “River Rash.” Frankly, I don’t know why, having once conjured tones like those of the penultimate “Clinton” here, which sound like something that would make Ty Segall start a new band, one would ever not do that again, but I won’t claim to know what the fourth EP in the series might bring. One can only hope that, when the series is wrapped, they compile it into some sort of offering — a double-tape or some such — and release the whole thing together. As it stands though, Gänger is my first exposure to the band, and they smash through “Limitator” with due prejudice. I can think of five record labels off the top of my head who’d be lucky to have these guys, but nobody asks me these things.
Fucking a, rock and roll. Reykjavik’s Volcanova aren’t through “Salem,” the lead cut from their righteously titled Cosmic Bullshit EP, before they’ve cadenced Uncle Acid in the verse and broken out the cowbell, so yes, it’s that kind of party. That cowbell comes back almost immediately for “Gold Coast,” which tramps out big riffs like Def Leppard used to make, and “Desolation” brings the bass forward effectively in its hook, the band having already built fervent momentum that will carry through the rest of the 26-minute mini-album. Not to pick favorites, but “End of Time” feels purposefully placed near the middle, and “No Wheels” — yup, more cowbell — splits that and closer “Lost Spot” well, giving a grounded stretch of pure shove before the finale hard-boogies and big-drifts its way to a surprising wash of an ending, organ included. You don’t call your release Cosmic Bullshit if you’re not looking to get attention, and Volcanova certainly earn that with these tracks.
The premier collaboration between Arizona’s Aiwass and Colorado’s Astral Construct — the latter also stylized as ASTRAL COnstruct — is a seven-minute single called “Solis in Stellis” that bridges terrestrial and ethereal heavy psychedelias. At a bit under eight minutes, its melodic flourish and weighted underpinning of low end, drifting guitar and fluid rhythmic progression sound like nothing so much as the beginning of an album that should be made if it’s not currently in the works between Drew Patricks (Astral Construct) and Blake Carrera (Aiwass), who both function as solo artists in their respective projects but come together here to show the complementary potential of each for the other. Lush in atmosphere, patient in its delivery and spacious without being overwrought, “Solis in Stellis” is hopefully the beginning of more to come from these two, who might just end up having to call themselves the Aiwass Construct if they keep going the way they are.
Seven years after 2014’s The Witching Hour, Ohio’s Doctor Smoke return with Dreamers and the Dead, a solid 10-song/42-minute run that makes up for lost time by reimagining ’90s-era Megadeth sneer as dark and catchy heavy rock and roll. The four-piece led by founding guitarist/vocalist Matt Tluchowski may have let a few years get by them — that’ll happen — but if the intervening time was spent hammering out these songs, the effort shows itself in the efficiency with which each cut makes its point and gets out, a song like “These Horrid Things” casting its mood in the verses before opening to the chorus, winding fretwork building tension into and subsequently through the solo. This is a revamp of the idea of a classic metal influence, the first instance of a generational shift I can think of that’s bringing this particular vibe to a heavy rock context — the pounding and sprinting of the title-track might’ve been thrash in the ’80s, but a decade later it was thicker and so it is here as well — and Doctor Smoke make it theirs, no question. One wonders what the next seven years will bring.
Rebranded from their moniker of Sierra, Ontario progressive heavy rockers Willowater bring the four-track/14-minute EP as a quick hello to listeners new and old. Guitarist/vocalist Jason Taylor and bassist/drummer/vocalist Robbie Carvalho (also synth) chug out in early-Tool fashion on the opener “Ultimatum,” and the subsequent title-track answers back in kind with shared vocals and a bit of twisting, pulled squeals of guitar, and so on, while “Fly High” calls to mind Dio-style riffing with a bassline to bolster the classic metal vibe, and “Winter Now” builds a tension in its keyboard-laced 3:26 that, somewhat maddeningly, never pays itself off. Perhaps the message there is of more to come. Hope so, anyhow. Sierra were a quality band, and undervalued. Willowater seem to be taking another shot at catching as many ears as possible. A fresh start. Not so crazy different from what they were doing before, but sometimes a name can make all the difference.
This second EP from the anonymous Dutch outfit All Are to Return reignites the brutality of their 2020 self-titled debut short release (review here), while expanding the stylistic reach. Opener “Carceri” tips into industrial black metal before resolving itself in harsh screams and drones, while “Surveiller et Punir” feels even more experimental/art rock with tortured screams far back under noisy guitar. “Classified” is shorter and more beat-oriented, but the distorted wash of “Postscript on the Societies of Control” (bit of positive thinking there, almost in spite of itself) is abrasive as fuck, such that the quiet, minimal synth that starts “De Profundis” accompanied by more obscured screams seems almost like a relief before it builds to its own post-Godflesh industrialized crush. They finish atmospheric on “Desiring Machines,” blowing out conceptions of extreme music in about the time it takes for you to put on your shoes and jacket so you can go out, wander into the wilderness, and never be heard from again.
Members of Mirror Queen, the just-signed-to-Tee–Pee-proper Limousine Beach (really, I haven’t even had the chance to post the news yet), Zombi, Ruby the Hatchet and Osees coming together for three Mountain covers. Mountain Sides do “You Better Believe It,” “Dreams of Milk and Honey” and “Travelin’ in the Dark,” and they knock it out of the park accordingly. I don’t know that this would ever get to become a real band between the commitments of Morgan McDaniel, David Wheeler and Steve Moore, let alone Owen Stewart (Ruby the Hatchet‘s drummer) or Paul Quattrone from Osees and a geographic spread between New York, Philly, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, but as a quick outing to test the waters, these three songs want nothing for vibe. Of course, being Mountain songs helps, but it almost inevitably would. Still, I’d take a record of tunes they wrote themselves, even if it doesn’t happen for another decade because everyone’s busy.
Serenity in experimentalist drone and psychedelia, marked by the interplay of organic folk and otherworldly elements of fluid aural adventures. The backward, swelling repetitions of “The Alluring Pool” answer the watery worldmaking of leadoff “Rivers are a Place of Power,” the backing chimes reminding of water moving the air, the acoustic guitar on centerpiece “Riverbank” furthering the theme in sweetly plucked notes while Duncan Park (who also collaborates with Seven Rivers of Fire) picks up the journey again on “The Winding Stream” with a current of melody playing beneath the main acoustic lines of the song, instrumental in its entirety. Invoking the Flood, apart perhaps from some warning that might be read into the opener, grows more peaceful as it goes, though Park‘s inclusion of vocals on closer “Over the River” speaks perhaps of other tributaries waiting to be explored. Still, it is a sweet and encompassing, if short, trip downstream with Park here, and if the flood comes, at least we had a good time.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 24th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
I don’t follow a lot of music-related stuff on Twitter. Mostly, to be honest, I’m there for the Star Trek. But among the several bands, outlets, etc., I do follow is the label 20 Buck Spin, and I’m continually glad I do. For example, I caught sight of Dream Unending‘s cover art scrolling past all the Shatner the other day, checked out the track and, yeah, I am reaffirmed in my follow. With the combined efforts of Tomb Mold‘s Derrick Vella and Justin DeTore — who’s also in Innumerable Forms but who I know from his work in Magic Circle — the two-piece are set to issue their debut album, Tide Turns Eternal, through 20 Buck Spin on Nov. 19, and if you’re not yet down with the imprint’s all-things-death renaissance, now might be a good time. The extremity of ‘lead-single’ (such as it is) “In Cipher I Weep” is its own best argument. Find it at the bottom of this post.
The PR wire followed up on the social media algorithm thusly:
DREAM UNENDING, FEATURING TOMB MOLD’S DERRICK VELLA AND INNUMERABLE FORMS’ JUSTIN DETORE, SET NOV. 19 RELEASE DATE FOR DEBUT ALBUM: TIDE TURNS ETERNAL
HEAR “IN CIPHER I WEEP” FROM THE 20 BUCK SPIN RELEASE
LP / CD / TAPE / DIGITAL / TS / LS Releasing November 19th, 2021 Vinyl releasing February 4th, 2022
Dream Unending, a cleverly self-described “doom metal Postal Service” by founders Derrick Vella (Tomb Mold) and Justin DeTore (Innumerable Forms), release their debut album, Tide Turns Eternal on Nov. 19 via 20 Buck Spin.
The illustrious pair give listeners a taste of the seven-song, 45-minute album with today’s release of “In Cipher I Weep.”
“’In Cipher I Weep’ was the first song we wrote,” explains Vella of the sprawling track. “That must have been nearly 2 years ago now. Definitely the darkest song on the album. Intense lyrics. It leads off with that strange fretless bass, those dying flange harmonics, the vampiric harmonizing, the haunting organ (Thanks, Dad) and transforms into this spellbinding piece full of beauty only to be undone with the heaviest moment of the album. Justin’s vocals sound like the pillars of heaven crashing into the earth. It’s good stuff.”
Tides Turns Eternal sees the musicians expand into entirely new and unexpected directions, composing songs that drift between emotional states both forlorn and uplifting. Ascendant Floydian guitar textures and sparkling Cure-esque strumming lift the music out of the purely metal realm, where moody rock introspection allows for Elysian respite before DeTore’s world crushing roar assures no escape from earthly tumult is certain.
“Dream Unending and Tide Turns Eternal is a testament to the idea that music can be limitless,” continues Vella. “This album was created by Justin and I without ever being in the same room, city or country. It defied closed borders and acts as more than just a record. It’s an affirmation of life. It’s a vision quest. It poses questions pertaining to fear, discovery, the value of one’s soul and offers an answer. Dream Unending serves as an excellent outlet for a language that Justin and I speak that we can’t express elsewhere. It pays tribute to not just doom, but to all the styles of music we love, and the immersive/cinematic quality of fully realized albums. The songs are heavy, dreary, and dreamy. What more could you ask for?”
Tide Turns Eternal track list: 1. Entrance 2. Adorned In Lies 3. In Cipher I Weep 4. The Needful 5. Dream Unending 6. Forgotten Farewell 7. Tide Turns Eternal