Quarterly Review: Pelican, Earth Tongue, Boozewa & Nowhere, Fjords, Gran Moreno, Lord Elephant, Black Magic Tree, CB3, Mortal Blood, Faraj Risberg Rogefeldt
Posted in Reviews on March 20th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
Hey hey, it’s Friday. I’m not closing out the week this week because we’re not done with this Quarterly Review yet and that shift in writing mindset feels like too much of a jump at just this moment, but even though the QR will continue Monday, it still feels worth marking this as the end of a week. Yeah, I’ll be writing all weekend. Yeah, it ends next Tuesday, but making it through a Monday to Friday — especially this Monday to Friday — doesn’t feel like nothing as far as achievements go.
I hope you have a great and safe weekend, and I hope you find something to listen to hear that makes it even better. Thanks for reading.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
Pelican, Ascending
Chicago instrumentalists Pelican released their seventh album, Flickering Resonance (review here), in 2025, which filled three sides of a 2LP, and the title-track of their new EP, Ascending, would have fit right in as a seven-plus-minute crunch-riffer that chugs itself into an oblivion of lush bombast. I guess they figured they had enough, and fine. Certainly the album wasn’t missing anything. But “Ascending” stands well on its own, or in this case, leading off a succession of four cuts compiled for this release, the final two of which were previously issued on tape as Adrift/Tending the Embers (review here) in 2024, and the other being a version of “Cascading Crescent” from the EP with Geoff Rickley of Thursday on vocals. For the life of me, I’ve never been able to conceive a man’s voice singing Pelican songs, but Rickley‘s ability to work in dynamic layers, and of course the emotive cast, make the experiment fluid. More right-now-Pelican, you say? That’s a no-brainer yes.
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Earth Tongue, Dungeon Vision
Dungeon Vision is the third full-length from now-Berlin-based duo Earth Tongue, and it brings a potently-fuzzed choose-your-adventure run through medieval horrors presented with due quirk and subtle intricacy by guitarist/vocalist Gussie Larkin and drummer/vocalist Ezra Simons. It is not a radical shift from where they were on 2024’s Great Haunting (review here), full of dark themes and floaty melodies, the let’s-start-a-satanic-panic lyrics continuing as a basis here, but “Body of Water” toys with the arrangement, and who the hell could resist a nod like “Living Hell” anyway? You can hear growth in their songwriting along with the gnarl in their tone, and with cultish charisma, they lead the way deeper into the proceedings for hooks like “Watchtower,” “Orbit of a Witch” and the bounce of the penultimate “Harvester.” I’m not saying you should sell your soul for it, but that might actually be a decent investment.
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Boozewa & Nowhere, Split
They are, perhaps, somewhat united in their punkish undertones, but Pennslyvania’s Boozewa and Nowhere each build a sound of their own atop that foundation, and both turn out roilingly heavy. Each band adds four songs to this split. Nowhere plunder toward powerviolence as they move through “Neurogénesis” into “New JNCOs” and the 22-second capper “You Lose,” but the groove from “Convicción” onward is brash, so not that you see it coming, but the destination is justified by the journey. For Boozewa, their grunge seems to land ever harder, as “Garbage Day” and “Landline” push deeper into aggression before the narrative divergence in “The Big Dumb” leads into “4 Out of 10” finding the middle-ground in heavy rock and characteristic post-hardcore melody. You get about 11 minutes of Boozewa and about six of Nowhere and both leave you wanting more, so it’s a win for the classic-punk-rock, let’s-split-costs, limited-numbers DIY split 12″.
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Fjords, Gehenna
The 13:51 “Inferno” trades genres like most bands trade riffs, between progressive heavy rock, twisty garage rawness, hardcore crunch and intensity, and fluid doom nod. Don’t get me wrong. The five-minute “Purgatorio” on Fjords‘ four-track Gehenna LP, or the shorter opener “Virgilio” and the avant drone-stoner close they mount with “Paradiso” each have their respective scope, but as the Portuguese band run a line down the middle between madcap and methodical, their creative reach and their sheer chops align to lend their material a feeling of cohesion. The production is pretty barebones in terms of depth — it’s not a ‘huge’ sound on its face — but the jangly guitar suits the synth pulses in “Purgatorio” and “Paradiso,” giving an impression of outsiderism and of disruptive purpose behind all the movement in the songs. But if they’re transgressing, they’re gleeful in it; more mischief than destruction, and maybe influenced by the Melvins without trying to sound like them, which is twice as admirable.
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Gran Moreno, El Sol
Austin two-piece Gran Moreno offer one of heavy rock’s best debut albums of 2026 with El Sol. The songs are sharply composed, energeticaly delivered, full-sounding and professional without being overwrought. It is cohesive but not repetitive, and rife with hooks even as lyrics go back and forth between English and Spanish and the later “Oaxaca/Please Don’t Cry” brings in Mariachi horns. “Las Montañas” opens at a medium tempo to set an atmosphere and introduce the audience-engagement factor in its second half, but the subsequent “Aztlan” ignites a charge that affects the ’70s-styled blues riffing of “Huracán” and the desert strut and take-the-air of “Temple of Fire” (premiered here) before the organ-laced “La Mentira” pushes over the top into “Oaxaca/Please Don’t Cry” and six-minute strum’n’fuzz closer “Hikuri,” where they ride out the riff until it’s all the way gone. Skillfully conceived and executed modern underground heavy rock.
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Lord Elephant, Ultra Soul
The second Lord Elephant full-length, Ultra Soul, finds the Florence-based instrumentalist trio both exploring and providing comfort and warmth to the listener. That is, one can hear them pushing themselves further into desert rock as “Gigantia” picks up from the more laid back “Electric Dunes” at the record’s outset, before they up the plod for “Smoke Tower,” but their approach — as heavy as the album gets on “Astral” and “MindNight” and “Leave” on side B — is never so aggressive as to remove the listener from that mellower mindset. This lets crush become a gift, and encourages active listening and immersion. The centerpiece “Black River Blues” celebrates its heft in its contrasting stops, but the other thing “Electric Dunes”-into-“Gigantia” clues you into is the overarching flow across the 48-minute run, and Lord Elephant maintain this gorgeously while asking no more from the audience than to put it on and go with its roll, which they make it a pleasure to do.
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Black Magic Tree, Terra
Like their 2021 debut, Through the Grapevine (discussed here), Black Magic Tree‘s sophomore LP, Terra, was recorded by Richard Behrens, who is no stranger to sounds that span decades as this Berlin five-piece’s does. They can shuffle, they can fuzz-push, and if it’s a subdued vocal showcase like “Love and Doubt,” they can hold up to that, too. There is no ground they touch on the nine-song outing that they do not approach from a place of mastery, and while that might sound like they’re not taking risks, I don’t think that’s actually the case. I think they’ve just worked on these songs, hammered out the lyrics and instrumental parts to convey ideas that are classic in form but unplaceable to any time other than now. It’s a much more complex blend than the straightforward, traditionalist structures might lead you to believe; vital, intentional, efficient and heavy.
Majestic Mountain Records store
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CB3, Edge, End and Discovery
Why the hell didn’t someone tell me CB3 were done? The often-improvisational Malmö, Sweden, heavy psychedelic rockers led by guitarist/sometimes-vocalist Charolotta Andersson called it quits last Fall with the release of the three-song Edge, End and Discovery, following the progressive/songwriting-based turn that 2022’s Exploration (review here). “Edge of Forever,” “End of It All” and “Discovery” — which is broken into five-parts on the release, shifting between improv and pre-structured progressions — are lush with layers of synth and guitar alongside the fluid rhythms, and the movement through any of them should be enough to make you understand why it’s such a bummer they’re not a band anymore. Thanks to Andersson, bassist Pelle Lindsjö and drummer Natanael Solmonsson for the decade of growth. If it needed to end, Edge, End and Discovery is as suitable a place to land as one could ask.
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Mortal Blood, Vigil for a Hollowed Earth
Somewhere between gothic dirge metal and funeral doom’s rawer morose cast, Maryland solo-band Mortal Blood dwell in the noisy shadows of Vigil for a Hollowed Earth, with sole denizen Dan Krell not so much basking in the camp theatricality of goth doom/metal, but the darker despoondency, made all the more real through a solo-project’s inherently singular perspective. No, I’m not saying Krell‘s material lacks variety — Vigil runs 10 songs/58 minutes and is by no means unipolar — but that the programmed-sounding drums, the bite on the harsh vocals in “Decay and Burn,” early in “Crow’s Sweet Caress,” the closer “Clay Born Titan,” etc., the from-the-graveyard echo on the guitar and the feeling that it’s raining the whole time you’re listening are all part of the same expression of Krell‘s sonic ideal. It is not a minor undertaking, and not without its challenging aspects, but Vigil for a Hollowed Earth revels on its way to grim accomplishment.
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Faraj Risberg Rogefeldt, Faraj Risberg Rogefeldt
Sweet-toned heavy blues, and the more-than-an-edge of retroism in the tone and production on their self-titled debut give Faraj Risberg Rogefeldt an even more welcoming vibe as they bring the listener into the eight-song/50-minute course of the album, which isn’t gonna rush until it’s time to rush, so don’t worry about it. They get there in 11-minute highlight “Rötter,” to be sure, but even the proto-doom of the penultimate “Skepnad” is set to a march, so movement isn’t a problem throughout. With lyrics in Swedish, the trio nonetheless make the mellow early cut “Flera dagar bort” catchy enough for me to get my brain around the chorus, and the consideration behind the songs goes well beyond the tambourine perfectly placed in “En ny dag” and the cowbell in “Vet Hur Visorna Går,” however off-the-cuff, just-walked-in-and-hit-record they make it sound. Not reinventing the wheel, not trying to. They remind me most of Dirty Streets, who occupy a similar place between heavy rock and blues — I also feel compelled to namedrop November — but as they begin this exploration, Faraj Risberg Rogefeldt are softshoe fodder all the way. Language means nothing when you can boogie.
Faraj Risberg Rogefeldt’s Linktr.ee
Faraj Risberg Rogefeldt on Instagram
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