Posted in Whathaveyou on July 4th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I’m not at all at a place in my life where I could even if I was ever to be invited — which, in a conservative estimate I’ll say is struck-by-lightning-and-live-level unlikely — but man, I’d love to go on this tour. Imagine following Dozer, Gozu and High Desert Queen as they traipse across the US colluding on the delivery of ultra-fine heavy rock and roll for nine days, including stops at Desertfest New York and Ripplefest Texas both. Damn that’d be fun. Also tiring. And my wife would have my ass, if my entering-first-grade daughter didn’t get to kicking it first. Nonetheless, even the daydream of hurry-up-and-wait tour existence is fun in this case.
I think the last time Dozer were in the US was 2000? Something like that. I seem to recall they played the Brighton Bar in my beloved Garden State, but I could be wrong about that. They return Stateside in 2024 riding the utter triumph of their 2023 return LP, Drifting in the Endless Void (review here), which indeed is a cause worth heralding. I was lucky enough to catch Dozer last summer supporting the album (review here) and even luckier that it wasn’t my first time seeing the band, but to have them hit the US (and a lil bit of Canada!) alongside Gozu — their 2023 album, Remedy (review here), remains a standout — and High Desert Queen, who issued their widely anticipated second album, Palm Reader (review here) in May, is even better.
Mark it a win, kids. Poster and such from the ol’ social media:
USA! Endless void tour is coming for you this September…are you ready? 🤘 Support by @highdesertqueen and @gozu_band_boston
DOZER – Endless Void US Tour 2024 feat. Gozu & High Desert Queen 09.13 Braintree MA Widowmaker Brewing 09.14 Queens NY Desertfest NYC 09.15 Montreal QC Piranha Bar 09.16 Toronto ON The Garrison 09.17 Grand Rapids MI Pyramid Scheme 09.18 Chicago IL Reggies Rock Club 09.19 Omaha NE Reverb Lounge 09.20 Oklahoma City OK Resonant Head 09.21 Austin TX Ripplefest Texas
DOZER is: Tommi Holappa – Guitar Fredrik Nordin – Guitar/Vox Johan Rockner – Bass Sebastian Olsson – Drums
Posted in Reviews on April 20th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Dozer return. A decade almost to the day after beginning a reunion at Desertfest in Berlin and London (review here) and having played festivals and select other dates all the while if not having fully resumed life as a touring band, and the better part of two years announcing the project as part of Blues Funeral Recordings‘ PostWax subscription vinyl series — for which, in the interest of full disclosure, I wrote/write the liner notes — after full catalogue reissues through Heavy Psych Sounds and years of will-they-won’t-they speculation on the part of their audience, Dozer offer the Karl Daniel Lidén-helmed seven songs/42 minutes of Drifting in the Endless Void as a decade-and-a-half-later follow-up to 2008’s Beyond Colossal (featured here, discussed here, 2009 interview here), and part of what’s so stunning about it is that it makes that ridiculous idea a reality. A ‘follow-up’ 15 years later. Imagine where you were 15 years ago, who you were. Do you think you could step back into being that person?
Of course, the narrative here is more complex. Dozer announced their hiatus in 2009, but haven’t been actually-gone for a long time, and as founding guitarist Tommi Holappa has spent the intervening years building his concurrent outfit Greenleaf into a full-time touring act — in some ways fulfilling the role that Dozer otherwise might and taking on a more modern heavy sound, where Greenleaf was once a classic ’70s-style heavy rock side-project — they’ve never been entirely absent from consideration, the prospect of a new album looming over their being added to one fest or another, here, there, or Germany. But the ease with which Holappa and fellow founding member, guitarist/vocalist Fredrik Nordin — whose voice is no less a part of what makes Dozer who they are than the riffs or bombastic style of a song like “Run, Mortals, Run!” here — bassist Johan Rockner and drummer Sebastian Olsson (also of Greenleaf) have apparently stepped back into being Dozer is striking.
Part of that is the collaboration with the aforementioned Lidén on production. The history between the two parties is significant and winding, with his having been in Demon Cleaner, with whom Dozer did splits early on, having played in Greenleaf and produced Dozer numerous times in the past, which is not to mention drumming on 2005’s Through the Eyes of Heathens (featured here; discussed here) and the demo collection released during their hiatus, Vultures (review here; discussed here) — that, by the way, is the short version of the association thread — but his work at the board of Studio Gröndal is essential to the sound of Drifting in the Endless Void, from the opening riff and ride cymbal taps, thuds and frenetic tension that launches the record with the seven-and-a-half-minute “Mutation/Transformation” to the fullness of the groove that ensues in the last build and don’t-want-to-let-go finish of bookending closer “Missing 13” (also the longest song at 8:35), the balance between spaciousness and crunch in the mix seeming to pick up where the band left off those years ago like nothing ever happened. Like, oh, turns out Dozer were right there the whole time. Here’s “Dust for Blood.”
That song, which caps side A and is a standout hook even among Dozer‘s various surging choruses in “Ex-Human, Now Beast,” “Mutation/Transformation” and the intentionally grandiose crescendo of centerpiece “Andromeda” still to come, is quintessential Dozer. With an energy that comes through the kick drum and a threat of aggression coinciding, it is atmospheric in the reach of its echo around Nordin‘s vocals (which were self-recorded) and immediate in Rockner‘s bassline in the verse with the guitar picking up for the somehow-swaggering chorus push. They toy with pace throughout, as “No Quarter Expected, No Quarter Given” moves into and through a relative frenzy in its second half and hits into a false stop before bursting back into its own chorus, “Andromeda” rides its melancholy groove so fluidly, and “Run, Mortals, Run!” — yes, there is a lot of punctuation in the song titles; don’t get hung up — finds consciousness and purpose within its intensity, guitar howling out like a siren at about three and a half minutes into the 6:44 before the loud/quiet trade and ending ensue, the four-piece clearheaded in following a plot while making a thrill of the going.
But if one feels in listening like they’re riding a car that’s hitting the bumps in the road on purpose, the adrenaline that courses throughout Drifting in the Endless Void is also a crucial part of Dozer‘s approach and has been at least since 2002’s Call it Conspiracy (discussed here; also discussed here); they write songs you can feel in your blood, and they’d seem to know it. At the same time, it’s not 2009, or 2013, and as this material was written between 2021 and 2022 (recorded in Spring a year ago), it’s a fresh look at who Dozer are today. These aren’t tracks that have been laying around since 2015, and accordingly, Drifting in the Endless Void benefits from not being overworked. Of course there’s a plan at work — it would be hard to follow the course charted by “No Quarter Expected, No Quarter Given” through its snare-stomp-punctuated ebbs and flows and argue otherwise — but part of what lets the album as an entirety live up to the near-impossible expectations upon it is the fact that it avoids the issue entirely. Dozer know who they are.
And that awareness extends to their ability to be sweeping in their largesse or intimate and subdued, or both if we’re talking about the “Everything will be okay” reassurances that become the apex of “Missing 13” at the record’s conclusion, but in that, Drifting in the Endless Void isn’t just Dozer doing an impression of what Dozer used to be, either in sound or substance. These songs reach farther, find new middle grounds between one extreme or the other, and define themselves in part by how they interact with each other — the transitions between “Andromeda” and “No Quarter Expected, No Quarter Given,” or the dead stop of “Ex-Human, Now Beast” and the bright clarion of guitar at the start of “Dust for Blood” create a flow that, while still a series of individual tracks, gives the album a whole-work feel — and to think that a band would release a sixth album 15 years after their fifth and have it sound the same is ludicrous anyway. Dozer have grown. Mutated and transformed? Maybe. I’m not sure they could’ve gone to the same kinds of places during their original run as they do in that first cut or what follows. But they’re still Dozer.
It would be hyperbole to say Drifting in the Endless Void was worth the wait as the ‘next thing’ from the band, but that’s kind of true as well. At very least, the album justifies the anticipation that’s greeted it and reaffirms just how not-done Dozer were when they went on hiatus. Calling it a heavy rock landmark for 2023 feels like underselling it. Calling it one of the year’s best records? Superfluous. It’s not a record about this year or the last 15 years or even about next year. It’s a testament to everything Dozer have done that has both stood the test of time and remained so decisively individualized that nobody has been able to come along and do it better. This band, doing this thing, in their way. Inimitable. There has only ever been one Dozer. Thank goodness they showed up here.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 22nd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
There are going to be a lot of people with Dozer at the top of their best-of-2023 lists about 10 months from now, and none of them will get any argument from me. The venerated Swedish heavy rockers return after 15 years with Drifting in the Endless Void, which is out April 21 through Blues Funeral Recordings. By that time, the subscribers to the label’s PostWax service will have already gotten their platters — the download codes went out a couple evenings ago — and as I wrote the liner notes for that edition of the release, I won’t pretend not to have heard it. It’s new Dozer. I feel like that’s the highest compliment for it, and if you know the band, you know that means something.
Yesterday, the band and label posted the track “Ex-Human, Now Beast,” and I almost put this up then, but got the tipoff that the video was coming today for it, so here we are. I’ve waited a long time to talk about this record, so one more day isn’t killing me, but if you’re still reading, why? The clip is at the bottom of the post. Go. Go!
The PR wire brought the following info, preorder links, and so on. As I said, go:
Swedish stoner rock godfathers DOZER to release new album “Drifting in the Endless Void” on Blues Funeral Recordings; preorder + first single available!
Swedish godfathers of stoner rock DOZER return after over a decade with their long-anticipated sixth studio album “Drifting in the Endless Void”, to be released this April 21st on Blues Funeral Recordings. Watch their brand new video for “Ex-Human, Now Beast” right now!
About Dozer’s awaited comeback, Dozer co-founder and lead guitarist Tommi Holappa comments: “It’s been 15 years since the last Dozer album and this is who we are now. We might be older, maybe not so much wiser, but I think we may have made one of our best albums. When we started writing new material, we didn’t have a clue what this band would sound like in the 2020s. It was a bit nerve-wracking at first, but after we finished “Missing 13”, the first song we wrote for the album, we knew we were onto something. The first single “Ex-Human, Now Beast” has all the energy, power and heaviness we’ve always loved to create, it’s proof we can still rock and we can’t wait for people to hear it!”
About the video: “As soon as I saw the track name, I knew I needed to do a video where one or more of the guys get beastified by a giant tentacled monster,” laughs Peder Bergstrand, director, Lowrider frontman and longtime friend of the band. “The result is a mix of horror, humor, and these relentless animated nightmare sections that I think match the track’s non-stop rocket fuel drum parts really well.”
DOZER still bring the tumultuous churn that longtime fans expect, but their sound has become a gravitational mass that also pulls in massive sludge, fuzzed-out doom, space-tripping grooves, red-eyed psychedelics, and whatever else they find floating in the vast cosmic expanse. Their return to the musical landscape they helped shape is cause enough for celebration, but the explosive playing and fiery purpose is what makes “Drifting in the Endless Void” a truly unmissable experience!
“Drifting in the Endless Void” will be available worldwide on April 21st (with the ultra-limited deluxe vinyl edition shipping earlier to PostWax Vol. II subscribers) on various vinyl formats, limited digipack CD and digital.
New album “Drifting In The Endless Void” Out April 21st on Blues Funeral Recordings Get more info & subscribe to PostWax Vol. IIat this location
1. Mutation/Transformation 2. Ex-Human, Now Beast 3. Dust for Blood 4. Andromeda 5. No Quarter Expected, No Quarter Given 6. Run, Mortals, Run! 7. Missing 13
DOZER is: Tommi Holappa – Guitar Fredrik Nordin – Guitar/Vox Johan Rockner – Bass Sebastian Olsson – Drums
