Boston three-piece Rozamov have been pretty tightlipped when it’s come to their debut album. I had to go back and look at the dates, but it was last summer that I visited them at New Alliance Audio (feature here) while they were tracking the full-length, the title for which has been revealed today as This Mortal Road, so to say it’s been a while in the making seems fair, but to have them announce a solid release date — March 3 — through not one but two record labels in Battleground Records (LP) and Dullest Records (CD/CS), well, that’s definite progress.

And not like they haven’t been busy in the interim, playing Psycho California, breaking in new drummer Jeff Landry and touring earlier this year with Moon Tooth to support their split single with Los Angeles’ Deathkings (review here). Bottom line is dudes have hardly been sitting on their collective ass — plus there were haircuts to get! (been there, can relate) — but I’m glad to see This Mortal Road making its way toward fruition.

The PR wire brings background and preliminaries:

ROZAMOV: Boston Doom Outfit Completes Debut LP For Release Through Battleground Records And Dullest Records

Boston, Massachusetts-based doom metal outfit, ROZAMOV, has completed their first full-length recording, This Mortal Road. The band has hooked up with diverse underground labels, Battleground Records and Dullest Records, who are now solidifying the album for release in early 2017.

Since 2011, ROZAMOV has left their mark on the US metal circuit with their infectious psyche-tinged grueling doom, the band name having quickly spread beyond their local scene through touring abroad, having opened for countless national acts, and much more. Having independently released two EPs – 2012’s Rozamov and 2013’s Of Gods And Flesh – ROZAMOV now prepares to desensitize the masses with their proper debut album, This Mortal Road.

Following an already busy 2015, including performances at Psycho California, Converse Rubber Tracks Live alongside Slayer and Doomriders – with a corresponding Converse feature on the back cover of Decibel Magazine, a tour with Destroy Judas, and the release of a split 7″ with Deathkings, amidst the bleak and historic winter of 2014-15, ROZAMOV entered New Alliance Audio in Cambridge to record This Mortal Road. The result is a blistering sonic catharsis featuring the longest, heaviest and most progressive tracks the band has ever produced, the album recorded and mixed by Jon Taft at New Alliance Audio, and mastered by Nick Z at New Alliance East Mastering. The recording lineup for the album includes Tom Corino (bass/vocals/noise guitar), Matt Iacovelli (guitar/vocals/piano), and Will Hendrix (drums).

This Mortal Road will see release March 3rd on vinyl through Battleground Records (Vehemence, Eight Bells, CHRCH, Lago), on CD and cassette through Dullest Records (Cleanteeth, Crowhurst, Lambs, Hush), and digitally through the band. Stand by for the track listing, cover art, and additional details, audio samples, and more to be released in the coming weeks.

Since recording This Mortal Road, in 2016 ROZAMOV has completed a brief Canadian tour with Moon Tooth and added drummer Jeff Landry to the lineup, while finalizing the new album for release. A North American tour is currently being booked for March alongside the release of This Mortal Road.

https://rozamov.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/Rozamov
http://www.facebook.com/battlegroundrecords
http://battlegroundrecords.bigcartel.com
https://dullestrecords.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/DullestRecords

Rozamov, “Ghost Divine”

In a couple days, Philly-adjacent four-piece Gholas will head out on a weekender that will take them from Columbus, Ohio, through Chicago and Pittsburgh, finally looping south to Washington D.C. before heading back up I-95 to their home in New Jersey (a record release show at Kung Fu Necktie is set for later this month with Sadgiqacea and Lord Dying). The occasion for the roadtrip is the release of their second album, Litanies, which is out today on Dullest Records as the follow-up to 2010’s Zagadka and a prior EP, 2008’s Here I am, Here is Infinity, and which offers just under 40-minutes of vicious and unadulterated pummel.

Their roots are in hardcore. One can hear it easily enough in the vocals of baritone guitarists Bob and Chris (also in the fact that the band is first-names-only), their guttural shouts coming across gruff and raw-throated over the alternately crushing and pummeling tracks on Litanies. The two baritone guitars don’t hurt Gholas‘ overarching tonal thickness, either. Along with Joe‘s bass, they’re able to make a turn like that of the gruelingly slow end of “The Sleeper” into the faster rush of closer “The Fighters” all the more weighted, while drummer Dave handles that and all shifts of pace within the songs with suitable fluidity. While the closing duo both range over nine-minutes, Gholas are never far from a sense of immediacy, the initial thrust and multi-channel vocal tradeoffs of opener “…And the Lives Come Flooding” setting the table for a varied and sometimes disorienting album to come, with shades of Swans-via-Neurosis showing themselves in the guitars and the sense of fluidity that allows the band to transcend aesthetics for an approach less adherent to genre than working in defiance of it.

That’s not to say one can’t hear shades of sludge in the lurching riff of “The Worm,” Converge-style post-hardcore in “With Terrible Purpose” or ambient doom in the surprisingly brief “Call out to the Supplicants,” just that when taken as a whole, Litanies ultimately shows little interest in staying put in one realm or the other stylistically. It works to Gholas‘ advantage over the course of the album, which as a result is best approached front-to-back, rather than one song at a time or in vinyl-style sides. It’s a linear flow, a broader-than-it-at-first-seems range and 39 minutes of multifaceted bludgeoning. You will not hear me complain.

Some of Litanies‘ most atmospherically dense and complex stretches come about in “The Sleeper” and “The Fighters,” but even earlier than that, Gholas establish a brutal course that proves well worth following to its conclusion.

Player, release info and tour dates follow:

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Philadelphia doomhaulers GHOLAS lurk the murky depths of noise, down tuned guitars, no wave, not quite metal and a tad space gazing as only four unfortunate miscreants that spent their formative years in the festering wasteland that is New Jersey could. Their songs are harsh down tuned blasts of sound that scratch the surface of an unhealthy obsession with the writings of Frank Herbert, Philip K Dick and Arthur C. Clarke, among others.

Their latest LP, entitled Litanies, finds the band trimming down their attack while still incorporating the grating noise and ambience of their previous outings into a more concise and, at times, direct aural assault on people’s ears. Litanies was recorded in the winter of 2012/2013 at Red Planet and engineered and mixed by Joe Smiley, with masterful mastering courtesy of James Plotkin.

GHOLAS ON TOUR:
2.13 Columbus OH @ Cafe Bourbon St, The Summit w/ Earthburner
2.14 Chicago IL @ The Burlington
2.15 Pittsburgh PA @ The Rock Room w/ Dendritic Arbor
2.16 Washington DC @ Velvet Lounge
2.26 Philadephia PA @ Kungfu Necktie Record Release Show w/ Lord Dying, Sadgiqacea

Gholas on Thee Facebooks

Gholas on Bandcamp

Dullest Records