In no way am I remotely qualified to summarize the career of or eulogize Tomas Lindberg. The frontman of Gothenburg, Sweden, melodic death metal forerunners At the Gates passed away this week after more than a year of fighting cancer, and while his contributions to metal went far, far beyond the ’90s-era run of this band — he was in Lockup, Disfear, Nightrage, The Lurking Fear, was even with The Crown for a record — their 1995 fourth album, Slaughter of the Soul, remains pivotal.

On the level of influence it’s a generational landmark, and whether it was fellow Swedes like In Flames and Dark Tranquility or an entire wave of US acts like Killswitch Engage, Unearth, and the masses of ’00s-era metalcore that followed, a great, great many groups learned how to pinpoint impact from this record, and its razor riffs have lost little of their slice in the subsequent 30 years. No doubt that’s an anniversary that the band should and would otherwise be celebrating.

Again, I’m not minimizing Lindberg‘s work in other outfits or even in the rawer earlier days of At the Gates. Their first two full-lengths, 1992’s The Red in the Sky is Ours and 1933’s With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness are raw and punishing, but there’s an intelligence in the songwriting there as well. The production uptick on 1994’s Terminal Spirit Disease makes it a preface in my mind to what the band — at the time comprised of brothers Anders Björler (guitar) and Jonas Björler (bass), guitarist Martin Larsson, drummer Adrian Erlandsson and Lindberg — would accomplish on Slaughter of the Soul, setting a standard of rush and righteousness that few could or would ever hope to meet.

The album runs 34 minutes and 11 tracks. I’ll admit it’s been a while since I last listened — five years post-reunion, At the Gates featured at Roadburn 2019 (review here), and that would’ve been the last time, probably — but I can still remember standing outside the cafeteria as a disaffected sophomore with headphones on hearing “Blinded by Fear” for the first time on a mixtape given to me by a friend I assume hoping to make me weirder. It worked. I wasn’t far off from finding my way into the more extreme end of metal in high school and college, including my first dalliances with the heavy underground, but Slaughter of the Soul was eye-opening for me in that process. One of those, “There’s a whole world out there, kid,” moments.

Opened with the noisy sweep and sampled speech, “We are blind to the worlds within us, waiting to be born” — a quote from Luke Rhinehart’s The Dice Man, and not the last — which by now is a familiar sign across generations of what’s about to follow, “Blinded by Fear” begins a succession of one of the finest A-sides heavy metal has ever produced, regardless of niche or microgenre. I don’t know who does all-time metal lists these days, but an easy way to tell if such a list is bullshit is if this record isn’t on it.

“Blinded by Fear” leads into “Slaughter of the Soul” — I don’t even have to hear the chorus, “Slaughter of the soul/Suicidal final art/Children born of sin/Tear your soul apart,” to hear it in my head — leads into the hard-chug gallop of “Cold,” leads into the double-kick shove of “Under a Serpent Sun,” gives over to the unrepentantly pretty instrumental “Into the Dead Sky” rounding out the first side of the album, and though it was the CD era in 1995, the structure (and a runtime abbreviated compared to much of what was around at the time in metal; further evidence of their being hardcore punks at heart, or at least influenced by crossover thrash) is set up for vinyl, with “Suicide Nation” leading off with a cocking rifle before the riff becomes the shot fired. Like “Under a Serpent Sun,” there’s a hook and some tension/release happening, but it’s so much more about charge.

And I’d say that’s the last of the record’s hits, but it isn’t. “World of Lies” stands out more to my ears now than it did when the record was new, both for its riff-groovy start and the dbeat verse that ensues over the next couple minutes leading into the rush of “Unto Others,” which isn’t the same kind of highlight but still offers something to the entirety through its twisting solo and momentum maintenance. It’s after “Unto Others” that Slaughter of the Soul shifts into its final stretch, though, with “Nausea,” “Need” and the calmer instrumental finishing move “Flames of the End” all under three minutes long and the first two of them unbridled in their intensity, at least until “Need” hits the two-minute mark and gives over to toy piano ahead of the ‘secret track’-type keyboard epilogue, the title and sans-vocal procession of which both reference “Blinded by Fear” back at the outset.

For what it is and what they were trying to do, Slaughter of the Soul edges toward perfection, and for 19 years, it was the final, definitive statement from At the Gates, but as alluded above, the band got back together in 2014 and released At War with Reality, which codified Slaughter of the Soul as defining At the Gates‘ sound. Two more albums followed, 2018’s To Drink From the Night Itself, which I heard, and 2021’s The Nightmare of Being, which I did not, as the band set themselves once again to the work of being active, touring regularly, main-staging metal festivals throughout Europe and flying the banner of their work without at any point becoming just a nostalgia act.

I could go on about what this particular record helped bring into my life, but, well, I’m mostly cliche and the story is too. Instead, I’ll emphasize for anyone unfamiliar that looking back at this one album barely leaves a mark on the surface of the career of Tomas Lindberg, but it’s a special moment and intricately tied to what his legacy in heavy metal will be. On behalf of myself and this site, condolences to you if you knew him (and given my social media this week, a lot of you seemed to), as well as to his family, friends and of course bandmates in and out of At the Gates. As always, it’s the work that remains and we’re fortunate to have it.

Thanks for reading.

—

More of the same this week. Meetings at and about school (and more to come! in like half an hour if the person actually calls!) while we decide on just what kind of class she’s going to spend just how much of her day in, and so on. Everybody seems to agree we’ll be back on an IEP from the 504, which I’ll point out that I brought up doing this past Spring and was largely poo-pooed, and that’s a big meeting with big paperwork that happens I want to say next Wednesday. I’ve kept the calendar around here pretty flexible accordingly. Psych, just kidding. I’ve got a Stoned Jesus review that I’m going to try to write for Monday and it’s fully booked thereafter. Duh.

Today in the meantime we need to go file paperwork to update her passport. Yes, because we lost the other one, but the name was wrong on it anyhow. Things are difficult. Picking her up early from school. She’ll enjoy that part of it, at least, then complain the entire time going to, potentially being at, and leaving from the passport place.

A backdrop of terror, corruption, collusion and normalized extremism helps this not even a teeny bit. But that’s the world we live in. If I knew a way to hide from it forever, I would. I suppose that makes me weak, but I never claimed not to be.

Premieres next week for Electric Hydra, Thunderbird Divine, Stone Machine Electric and Black Charger. If I get that Stoned Jesus review up, that’ll be a bonus since it won’t have to wait a week and everything else is on a schedule. I was hoping to review it before it was out — I was hoping to stream it; I was hoping to interview Igor — but these weeks are getting away from me and I’m splitting my time between this site, my kid who has me back and forth to the school three times a day (that is the literal minimum; dropoff, pickup and meds boost at lunchtime), continuing to learn Hungarian (I had two classes this week and about five hours of homework, which has become the standard), and whatever else around the house. I may or may not be as busy as I would be if I had a full-time job, but being pulled in however many different directions throughout the day isn’t really what I’d call preferred compared to the zen of sitting on the couch and writing about riffs. Once upon a time, I even had a desk. Those days would seem to be well behind me, and I won’t fall further prey to nostalgia by lionizing them. I do my best now, as I’ve always done.

Great and safe weekend. Hydrate. Fuck fascism and its perpetrators. Free Palestine.

FRM.

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Oh, hello there. Don’t mind me. I’m just here, reviewing another 10 records today. I did it yesterday too. I’ll do it again tomorrow. No big deal. It’s Quarterly Review time. You know how it goes.

Crazy day yesterday, crazy day today, but I’m in that mode where I kind of feel like I can make this go as long as I want. Next Monday? Why not? Other than the fact that I have something else slated, I can’t think of a reason. Fortunately, having something else slated is enough of one. Ha. Let’s go.

Quarterly Review #31-40:

DVNE, Etemen Ænka

It’s like Scotland’s DVNE threw all of modern heavy metal into a blender and hit “cohesive.” Etemen Ænka‘s lofty ambitions are matched indeed by the cohesion of the band’s craft, the professionalism of their presentation, and the scope of their second album’s 10 component tracks, whether that’s in the use of synth throughout “Towers” or the dreamy post-rock aside in “Omega Severer,” the massive riffing used as a tool not a crutch in “Court of the Matriarch,” closer “Satuya” and elsewhere, and even the interlude-y pieces “Weighing of the Heart,” “Adraeden” and the folkish “Asphodel” that leads into the finale. DVNE have made themselves into the band you wish Isis became. Also the band you wish Mastodon became. And probably six or seven others. And while Etemen Ænka is certainly not without prog-styled indulgence, there is no taking away from the significant accomplishment these songs represent for them as a group putting out their first release on Metal Blade. It’ll be too clean for some ears, but the tradeoff for that is the abiding sense of poise with which DVNE deliver the songs. This will be on my year-end list, and I won’t be the only one.

DVNE on Thee Facebooks

Metal Blade Records website

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Wowod, Yarost’ I Proshchenie

Beginning with its longest track (immediate points) in the 11-minute “Rekviem,” Yarost’ I Proshchenie is the third full-length from St. Petersburg’s Wowod, and its sudden surge from ‘unfold’ to ‘onslaught’ is a legitimate blindside. They hypnotize you then push you down a flight of stairs as death growls, echoing guitar lines and steady post-metallic drum and bass hold the line rhythmically. This sense of disconnect, ultimately, leads to a place of soaring melody and wash, but that feeling of moving from one place to another is very much the core of what Wowod do throughout the rest of the album that follows. “Tanec Yarosti” is a sub-three-minute blaster, while “Proshschenie” lumbers and crashes through its first half en route to a lush soundscape in its second, rounding out side A. I don’t care what genre “Zhazhda” is, it rules, and launches side B with rampaging momentum, leading to the slow, semi-industrial drag of “Chornaya Zemlya,” the harsh thrust of “Zov Tysyachi Nozhey” and, finally, dizzyingly, the six-minute closer “Top’,” which echoes cavernous and could just as easily have been called “Bottom.” Beautiful brutality.

Wowod on Thee Facebooks

Church Road Records on Bandcamp

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Trace Amount, Endless Render

The chaos of last year is writ large in the late-2020 Endless Render EP from Brooklyn-based solo industrial outfit Trace Amount. The project headed by Brandon Gallagher (ex-Old Wounds) engages with harsh noise and heavy beatmaking, injecting short pieces like “Pop Up Morgues” with a duly dystopian atmosphere. Billy Rymer (The Dillinger Escape Plan, etc.) guests on drums for opener “Processed Violence (in 480P)” and the mminute-long “Seance Stimulant,” but it’s in the procession of the final three tracks — the aforementioned “Pop Up Morgues,” as well as “S.U.R.V.I.V.A.L.” and “Easter Sunday” — that Gallagher makes his most vivid portrayals. His work is evocative and resonant in its isolated feel, opaque like staring into an uncertain future but not without some semblance of hope in its resolution. Or maybe that’s the dream and the dance-party decay of “Dreaming in Displacement” is the reality. One way or the other, I’m looking forward to what Trace Amount does when it comes to a debut album.

Trace Amount on Thee Facebooks

Trace Amount on Bandcamp

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Fuzzcrafter, C-D

French instrumentalists Fuzzcrafter issued C-D in October 2020 as a clear answer/complement to 2016’s A-B, even unto its Jo Riou cover art, which replaces the desert-and-fuzz-pedal of the first offering with a forest-and-pedal here. The six works that make up the 41-minute affair are likewise grown, able to affect a sense of lushness around the leading-the-way riffage in extended cuts “C2” (13:13) and the psychedelic back half of “D2” (13:18), working in funk-via-prog basslines (see also the wah guitar starting “D1” for more funk) over solid drums without getting any more lost than they want to be in any particular movement. In those songs and elsewhere, Fuzzcrafter make no attempt to hide the fact that they’re a riff-based band, but the acoustic side-finales in “C3” (which also features Rhodes piano) and “D3,” though shorter, reinforce both the structural symmetry of the mirrored sides as a whole and a feeling of breadth that is injected elsewhere in likewise organic fashion. They’re not changing the world and they’re not trying to, but there’s a mark being left here sound-wise and it’s enough to wonder what might be in store for the inevitable E-F.

Fuzzcrafter on Thee Facebooks

Fuzzcrafter on Bandcamp

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Pine Ridge, Can’t Deny

Pine Ridge‘s second album, Can’t Deny, finds the Russian four/five-piece working in textures of keys and organ for a bluesier feel to tracks like the post-intro opening title-cut and the classic feeling later “Genesis.” Songwriting is straightforward, vocals gritty but well attended with backing arrangements, and the take on “Wayfaring Stranger” that ends the record’s first half conjures enough of a revivalist spirit to add to the atmosphere overall. The four tracks that follow — “Genesis,” “Runaway,” “Sons of Nothing” and “Those Days” — featured as well on 2019’s Sons of Nothing EP, but are consistent in groove and “Sons of Nothing” proves well placed to serve as an energetic apex of Can’t Deny ahead of “Those Days,” which starts quiet before bursting to life with last-minute electricity. A clear production emphasizes hooks and craft, and though I’ll grant I don’t know much about Siberia’s heavy rock scene, Pine Ridge ably work within the tenets of style while offering marked quality of songwriting and performance. That’s enough to ask from anywhere.

Pine Ridge on Thee Facebooks

Karma Conspiracy website

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Watchman, Behold a Pale Horse

Plain in its love for Sabbath-minded riffing and heavy Americana roll, “Bowls of Wrath” opens the three-song Dec. 2020 debut EP, Behold a Pale Horse, from Indiana-based solo-project Watchman, and the impression is immediate. With well-mixed cascades of organ and steadily nodding guitar, bass, drums and distorted, howling vocals, there is both a lack of pretense and an individualized take on genre happening at once. The EP works longest to shortest, with “Wormwood” building up from sparse guitar to far-back groove using negative space in the sound to bolster “Planet Caravan”-ish watery verses and emphasize the relative largesse of the track preceding as well as “The Second Death,” which follows. That closer is a quick four minutes that’s slow in tempo, but the lead-line cast overtop the mega-fuzzed central riff is effective in creating a current to carry the listener from one bank of the lake of fire to the other. In 15 minutes, multi-instrumentalist/vocalist/producer Roy Waterford serves notice of intention for a forthcoming debut LP to be titled Doom of Babylon, and it is notice worth heeding.

Watchman on Instagram

Watchman on Bandcamp

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Bomg, Peregrination

Bomg‘s Peregrination isn’t necessarily extreme the way one thinks of death or black metal as extreme styles of heavy metal, but is extreme just the same in terms of pushing to the outer limits of the aesthetics involved. The album’s four track, “Electron” (38:12), “Perpetuum” (39:10), “Paradigm” (37:17) and “Emanation” (37:49), could each consume a full 12″ LP on their own, and presented digitally one into the next, they are a tremendous, willfully unmanageable two-and-a-half-hour deep-dive into raw blowout dark psychedelic doom. The harsh rumble and noise in “Perpetuum” some 28 minutes on sounds as though the Ukrainian outfit have climbed the mountains of madness, and there is precious little clarity to be found in “Paradigm” or “Emanation” subsequent as they continue to hammer the spike of their manifestations deeper into the consciousness of the listener. From “Electron” onward, the self-recording Kyiv trio embark on this overwhelming journey into the unknown, and they don’t so much invite you along as unveil the devastating consequences of having made the trip. Righteously off-putting.

Bomg on Thee Facebooks

Robustfellow Productions on Bandcamp

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White Void, Anti

As much as something can fly under the radar and be a Nuclear Blast release, I’m more surprised by the hype I haven’t heard surrounding White Void‘s debut album, Anti. Pulling together influences from progressive European-style heavy rock, classic metal, cult organ, New Wave melodies and a generally against-grain individualism, it is striking in its execution and the clear purpose behind what it’s doing. It’s metal and it’s not. It’s rock and it’s pop and it’s heavy and it’s light and floating. And its songs have substance as well as style. With Borknagar‘s Lars Nedland as the founding principal of the project, the potential in Anti‘s eight component tracks is huge, and if one winds up thinking of this as post-black metal, it’s a staggeringly complex iteration of it to which this and any other description I’ve seen does little justice. It’s going to get called “prog” a lot because of the considered nature of its composition, but that’s barely scratching the surface of what’s happening here.

White Void on Thee Facebooks

Nuclear Blast Records store

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Day of the Jackal, Day Zero

Leeds, UK, four-piece Day of the Jackal bring straight-ahead hard rock songwriting and performance with an edge of classic heavy. There’s a Guns ‘n’ Roses reference in “Belief in a Lie” if you’re up for catching it, and later cuts like “Riskin’ it All” and “‘Til the Devil” have like-minded dudes-just-hit-on-your-girlfriend-and-you’re-standing-right-there vibes. They’re a rock band and they know it, and while I was a little bummed out “Rotten to the Core” wasn’t an Overkill cover, the 10 songs of love and death that pervade this debut long-player are notably hooky from “On Your Own” to “Deadfall” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll Deathride,” which casually inhabits biker riffing with no less ease of movement than the band would seem to do anything else. Production by James “Atko” Atkinson of Gentlemans Pistols highlights the clarity of the performance rather than giving a rawer glimpse at who Day of the Jackal might be on stage, but there’s plenty of vitality to go around in any case, and it’s headed your way from the moment you start the record.

Day of the Jackal on Thee Facebooks

Day of the Jackal on Bandcamp

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Green Druid, At the Maw of Ruin

Following their 2018 debut, Ashen Blood (review here), Denver heavy lifters Green Druid give due breadth to their closing take on Portishead‘s “Threads,” but the truth is that cover is set up by the prior five tracks of huge-sounding riffery, basking in the varying glories of stoner doom throughout opener “The Forest Dark” while keeping an eye toward atmospheric reach all the while. It is not just nod and crush, in other words, in Green Druid‘s arsenal throughout At the Maw of Ruin, and indeed, “End of Men” and “Haunted Memories” bridge sludge and black metal screaming as “A Throne Abandoned” offers surprising emotional urgency over its ready plod, and the long spoken section in “Desert of Fury/Ocean of Despair” eventually gives way not only to the most weighted slamming on offer, but a stretch of noise to lead into the closer. All along the way, Green Druid mark themselves out as a more complex outfit than their first record showed them to be, and their reach shows no sign of stopping here either.

Green Druid on Thee Facebooks

Earache Records website

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It’s been 33 years since Godflesh released this self-titled EP, and it’s still ahead of its time. That’s utter hyperbole, right? Nonsense. The kind of fluff lazy writers throw out there when something is good and has made an impact. For sure. Until you listen to it.

Godflesh, founded by guitarist/vocalist/synthesist Justin K. Broadrick and bassist G.C. Green following a stint together in a group called Fall of Because, weren’t the first band out there to bring together the sides of electronic music and rock. Krautrock had been doing it for over a decade by then. Ministry were offering up The Land of Rape and Honey the same year, and Skinny Puppy had already been going for more than half a decade, as well as others in the darker/gothier vein. But with Broadrick and Green, the rawness of their presentation became an instrument unto itself, and the repetitive churn of the drum machine they were playing to on these tracks became in itself an emblem of the disaffection, monotony, and emotional malaise the songs were bringing to bear.

They were kids asking “what the fuck?” and this EP became their way of phrasing the question.

The rumble of “Avalanche Master Song,” the echoes and whines in “Veins,” the oh-so-very-very-very-English brooding in “Godhead” and the mechanized discordant noise of “Spinebender” — these songs have a solid emotive base under them, and for all the putoff and bombast one might hear in their crashing, it’s a fragile sound, like the duo were processing trauma as much as drum beats. The guttural dismay in “Weak Flesh” and almost punkish run that ensues there feels with the benefit of over three decades of hindsight almost singular in its expression. Godflesh might not have been the first — much as fellow Birmingham natives Black Sabbath weren’t the first to bring together blues rock and a heavier low-end underpinning — but no one had done it quite like they were doing it, and the sonic persona that comes through on the six tracks of the original Godflesh EP, still just half an hour long, are post-modernism in the form of metallic songwriting. That feeling of abandonment in “Ice Nerveshatter?” Yeah, that’s god being dead.

Lines in that song like, “I am defeated, I gotta walk away/I won’t walk away, let me see/And I needed this you watch me/I’ll bleed to death, watch me,” and the screams and concluding digital wash to which they lead bring a kind of human, personal edge to what seems so much to be a purposefully inhuman sound, Broadrick‘s shouts echoing out into nothing. There are other bands who built entire careers off trying to accomplish the same thing and not doing it nearly so organically.

True, the first sounds you hear on the EP are digitized. It’s almost keyboard grindcore behind a metronome count-in — what today might be a click track with a digital boop — and then a few seconds later, the song crashes in. And I do mean “crashes,” as in, it almost comes across as accidental. In those key first few seconds, Godflesh aren’t trying to make some grand triumphant entrance; “Here we are, you didn’t even know you’d been waiting for us.” Instead, “Avalanche Master Song” excoriates hypocrisy in working class culture — these were the Thatcher years — and unveils a perspective that is urgent, clever, and vicious, which goes on not to spare the self from its own wrath, lashing in and out alike.

Godflesh are of a caliber of band, like Sabbath, like Motörhead, where the influence they’ve had is pervasive and monumental enough that there’s really no way to fairly estimate it. At least two generations of bands across disparate genres have benefitted by learning from their work, whether it was the rise of industrial-tinged metal in the ’90s (for better or worse; some of that stuff was and remains awful), a current wave of same, or the rhythmic cues that a group like Isis took from Godflesh and made their own. Of course Godflesh — which would see reissue through Earache in 1990 with “Wounds” and “Streetcleaner 2” added, to bring the running time over a CD-era’s 50-minute span — would end overshadowed by its successor in the band’s 1989 landmark, Streetcleaner, and yeah, fair enough for the continued relevance that record and the band’s subsequent work has had. But the EP serves as a convenient, potent reminder of how just because something involves synthesizer or keyboard or a drum machine, that doesn’t mean it needs to be void of emotion.

One of the most important aspects to keep in mind when listening to the Godflesh EP — which for context I’d recommend doing without the extra tracks included in the version above, though they serve a different purpose — is how raw it is. It was recorded by the band, and it sounds like it, but that becomes essential to the character of the release. So much of the industrial that emerged in Godflesh‘s wake was chrome-polished. Godflesh sound like they’re covered in rust and oil sludge. In this way, the intervening years not only makes these songs a challenge to the chestbeating heavy metal that was coming out at the time, something that dared to find strength in its own fragility, but a further challenge to those who would cloak themselves in a mechanized veneer to remain human at the core. In 33 years, no one has managed to do this thing as well as this band.

Between 1989 and 2001, Godflesh toured the world and put out six albums, the last one of which, 2001’s Hymns, led Broadrick into his next project, the more melodic and atmospheric Jesu. Godflesh would reunite a decade later and since 2011 have continued to tour and offer releases on their own terms — the 2014 EP, Decline & Fall (review here), was followed that same year by A World Lit Only by Fire (review here), and after several more years of shows, they offered Post Self (review here) late in 2017. It remains their most recent outing, but Broadrick has been active as ever, working under his own name, his alias JK Flesh and releasing Jesu‘s Terminus (discussed here) in 2020 as their first full-length in seven years.

I should note that the above stream comes from the Earache Bandcamp page. The band also has a separate Bandcamp set up with their more recent stuff. I know the label has been involved in a number of contract disputes over the years, but can’t speak to whether or not they have one with Godflesh. I just wanted to make sure you had the link to their newer material as well.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

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I need some Advil. Hang on.

There.

I went back to the oral surgeon’s office this week because despite the fact that the molar is now gone — bye bye — the fistula on the side of my gumline was still there and needed to be drained. I’ve done two rounds of antibiotics. I’m thinking it might just be time to have my jaw replaced with a robotic one like whatshisface from The Venture Bros., and yes, I know Venture Bros. because I’m a dude of a certain age.

Anyway, it continues to be sore as well. It’s now been over two weeks but the guy who removed the tooth called the roots “stubborn,” so it’s not such a surprise given the amount of physical effort I saw on his part that, yeah, I’d feel some residual discomfort. It was the pus that sent me back to the office. I saw a different surgeon, who first congratulated me on the size of the original infection in my jaw — “that’s one for the record books” — didn’t take an x-ray, and then told me everything looked good. That was enough to get me out of the office, but on further thought it just seems too easy.

This shit was infected for the better part of 2020 and I just couldn’t do anything about it. So I lost the tooth — I won’t miss it — and had the infection scraped out and the antibiotics and the bone graft, but yeah, it all still seems not-as-complicated-as-it-possibly-could-be-and-therefore-inevitably-must-be. I have my originally-scheduled follow-up Monday afternoon, and I just imagine the guy doing an x-ray, seeing there’s still more infection underneath, and having to go back in, scrape out the first graft, tunnel deeper into the bone of my jaw, which, yes, had a gaping hole in it, and then give me yet another graft at the end of that process. Doesn’t sound likely to you? Welcome to your life not as me.

Speaking of schedules, I’m supposedly getting my first COVID-19 vaccine dose this afternoon. I’ll believe it when they pull the needle back out from my arm. The Patient Mrs. had her second shot on… Wednesday? Yeah, Wednesday. It summarily put her on her ass for the bulk of yesterday, fever, aches. She says she’s a little headachy today but otherwise alright. Seems a fair trade to avoid the ol’ firelung there.

Yesterday morning, I went to Moonlight Mile in Hoboken and recorded vocals on a demo for what might be a new project in the works. We’ll see. It was pretty brutal, and it all came together on the quick. I reached out to them with the idea I think on Monday. In less than 24 hours, there was the demo track (and two more in the works besides) waiting for vocals. I took Wednesday to get lyrics and patterns, then recorded yesterday. As a proof-of-concept, I thought it came out well, but we’ll see. They might tell me to fuck off. Always a possibility. I have never been easy to work with on really any level. You may be surprised to find out I have a habit of expressing opinions. I know, right?

Plus I’m crazy and suck at reading people. So yeah, I try to walk on eggshells, especially starting something new. I get excited and forget myself.

In any case, if nothing else comes of it, recording screams and grows on that one track I did yesterday was the most fun I ever had with a studio experience. If it goes nowhere, I’d be perfectly happy to have that as my last-ever memory of recording. Even with the jaw pain.

I put more logs on the fire in the fireplace. It’s 9AM. It’s been chilly in the mornings as I’ve been getting up, so I light a fire and at least it warms my brain if nothing else. Then I drink coffee and get overheated. Then I drink iced tea and get cold again. Then I type some. And that’s existence.

No Gimme show this week, but I turned in the playlist for the one next Friday and voice recordings. I do more talking on it, which they asked for, in shorter breaks. And most of it is shorter songs. The longest I think was Earthless at 14 minutes. Compared to last episode which only had two tracks, that’s quite a shift.

Busy week as ever. More questionnaires and reviews and streams and all this and that. I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Stay well, stay hydrated. I’ll be around if anyone needs me.

FRM.

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Anyone remember WinAmp? I’d say I’m at the risk of dating myself, but the truth is I don’t care if you know how old my sorry ass is. Anyway, WinAmp was an audio program that was pretty popular before iTunes came in and swallowed the planet and subsequently gave way to the likes of Spotify and YouTube and Bandcamp and whatever else people use now. It was handy for playing those mp3s you just downloaded off Napster and were going to brag about on you MySpace page. You get the point.

WinAmp had a visualization feature, and golly gosh, the new video from Denver’s Green Druid reminds me an awful lot of what might happen if you set Winamp’s visualization to “cause a seizure” and let it loose. The clip is for “Ritual Sacrifice,” which comes from Green Druid‘s recently-issued Earache Records debut, Ashen Blood and sees release ahead of the band’s performances this May at Brant Bjork‘s Stoned and Dusted fest in Joshua Tree and Electric Funeral Fest in Denver this June. The be-robbed riff worshipers have a couple other dates as well that you can see below, courtesy of the PR wire.

The is, of course, if you make it that far without your head pounding from the flashing lights. Good luck with that.

And enjoy:

Green Druid, “Ritual Sacrifice” official video

GREEN DRUID worships at the feet of the monolithic amplifier and performs holy communion with the tremorous onslaught of murky tones that emanate from its maw. “While our first EP and foray into the world of doom could be viewed as us learning the ins-and-outs of the genre, Ashen Blood is where we really started to hone in on our own voice,” issues the band. “Taking influence from the dark fantasy landscapes of games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, we strove to create a truly doomed psychedelic experience.”

GREEN DRUID will play a handful of area performances including an appearance at Stoned And Dusted and Electric Funeral Fest III with additional shows to be announced soon. See all confirmed dates below.

GREEN DRUID:
4/20/2018 Lion’s Liar – Denver, CO w/ Necropanther, Ghosts of Glaciers
4/26/2018 Bar Bar – Denver, CO w/ Thorr Axe, Giardia
5/26/2018 Stoned And Dusted – Joshua Tree, CA w/ Brant Bjork, The Obsessed, Nebula, more
6/29/2018 Electric Funeral Fest – Denver, CO w/ Speedwolf (reunion show), Spirit Adrift, Aseethe, R.I.P., more

Green Druid on Thee Facebooks

Green Druid on Twitter

Green Druid on Instagram

Green Druid on Bandcamp

Earache Records website

Earache Records on Thee Facebooks

Green Druid are not quick to show off complexity in their debut release, Ashen Blood. If anything, just the opposite. Comprised of seven tracks and running a brazenly unmanageable 74 minutes, the full-length presents itself with a purposeful drive toward lunkheaded lumber, the plod of opener “Pale Blood Sky” pulling directly from the Sleep miieu of riff worship, thinking specifically of “The Druid” from Sleep’s Holy Mountain as a touchstone. It’s not until you dig in a bit that the complexity begins to show itself. The melodic callout to “Sweet Dreams are Made of This” early and airy solo late in “Pale Blood Sky” melting together doom and stoner impulses. The droning breadth that accompanies the tonal rumble of the subsequent “Agoraphobia.” The slow devolution into noise on the 18-minute album centerpiece “Cursed Blood” recalling Electric Wizard even as the drums of Ryan Sims stay clear in their thud as the final sustained element.

There is no shortage of low-end cinderblock-on-the-chest heft to the proceedings, as bassist Ryan Skates and guitarists Graham Zander and Chris McLaughlin (the latter also vocals) revel in the thickness of their own potent brew, but the periodically-enshrouded four-piece dig deep enough and voraciously enough into stonerism that it becomes kind of an atmosphere unto itself, not necessarily so separate at times from the murk conjured by Windhand, but definitely evolving its own direction, as the psychedelic flourish of guitar in “Rebirth” so readily puts on display. Oh, and just in case the point hasn’t yet gotten across: it’s really, really fucking heavy.

It does not seem at all like a coincidence that Green Druid have been plucked from an emergent underground in Denver, Colorado, to release Ashen Blood on Earache Records. One of heavy metal’s most historically celebrated imprints has a history of landmarks in terms of riffy fare — the aforementioned Sleep’s Holy Mountain chief among them but by no means the only one; albums from Cathedral, Iron Monkey, Fudge Tunnel, Deadbird and Hour of 13 come to mind — and even if it’s not the style for which Earache is chiefly known, Green Druid represent well the core values of modern stoner-doom idolatry, a nodder like “Dead Tree” rolling itself forward slowly but not without a fluid drive.

And surrounded as they are in their hometown by the likes of the pure onslaught of Primitive Man, the emotive doom of Khemmis, the unbridled boogie of Cloud Catcher, and so on, Green Druid succeed via the tortured string pulls and wails of “Cursed Blood” in finding a blown-out space of immersive rhythm and Iommic rollout, each righteous-for-righteousness’-sake riff helping to sculpt a niche for the band that, by the time they get around to the three-minute noise finale “Nightfall,” they’ve made their own and thoroughly dominated. Whatever it might seem to accomplish superficially, Ashen Blood proves deceptive in its ambition in displaying the band’s sheer will to overwhelm their listeners with viscous tonality, obscure shouts and jarring thud and crash. It should be considered nothing less than a joy to the already converted, and as they present their mystical lyrical themes with a bent more toward fantasy literature than cultish posturing, there’s a classic sensibility drawn from the metal of old that only makes Green Druid seem all the more human in their approach. They’re fans too. Clearly.

Four of Ashen Blood‘s seven tracks, including the knife-sharpening three-and-a-half-minute atmospheric finale “Nightfall” — not that one necessarily expected a Blind Guardian cover, but it might’ve been fun — appeared on Green Druid‘s 2015 EP, and they appear here presented in reverse order. That is, “Nightfall” opened that short release and “Cursed Blood” closed it, with “Ritual Sacrifice” and “Rebirth” in between. Forward or backward, up and down, side to side, Green Druid‘s Ashen Blood is like a long staircase down into some dark cavern that, as you go, even the torch you’re carrying — because of course you’re carrying a torch — seems to lose is light. Riffs are immersive to the point of hypnosis, the grooves varied and the ambience almost universally darkened in stretches of “Dead Tree” and the crash wash of “Ritual Sacrifice,” and none of it feels like happenstance.

If one regards “Pale Blood Sky,” “Agoraphobia” and “Dead Tree” perhaps as newer material than the four tracks that follow — and mind you, I don’t know what was written when; the album may or may not have been compiled from two EP-length releases — a narrative emerges already of creative development on the part of the band, more confident in cleaner vocal sections and showing just a tinge of The Wounded Kings-style theatricality in “Agoraphobia” while staying patient overall in their execution and turning the songs themselves into the rituals in question rather than just a means of describing same. One wouldn’t call it innovative in either its outcome or intention, but that’s not the point here so much as Green Druid establishing their place in the sphere of heavy within and without of the borders of their hometown. I’d gladly argue Ashen Blood accomplishes that, and puts out a showing of potential especially in its moments of flourish and detail that lets its listeners know the band has by no means finished growing or becoming what they will ultimately be. Yes, it’s true. Things could get even more massive from here.

Green Druid, “Dead Tree” official video

Green Druid on Thee Facebooks

Green Druid on Twitter

Green Druid on Instagram

Green Druid on Bandcamp

Earache Records website

Earache Records on Thee Facebooks

On March 16, Denver four-piece Green Druid will release Ashen Blood, their debut full-length, via Earache Records. The label is quick to break out the reminder that once upon a quarter-century ago it stood behind a relatively unknown riffy band called Sleep, and neither is the comparison moot in terms of the various influences under which Green Druid might be working, though the harsher screaming that emerges in the now-streaming-hey-there-it-is-at-the-bottom-of-this-post-amazing-how-these-things-work-sometimes-isn’t-it video for “Dead Trees” speaks to sludgier and more extreme vibes, and if you listen hard enough, there’s some Electric Wizard poking through as well.

As Denver’s heavy underground has bloomed in the last couple years around varied bands like Primitive Man, The Munsens, Cloud Catcher and events like The Decemburger and Electric Funeral Fest, the city is quickly developing a reputation for quality alongside its quantity, and nothing I hear so far from Green Druid — Earache has a couple tracks posted and the band released a self-titled EP in 2015 — should do anything to change that. Isn’t it funny how weed gets legalized and then all of a sudden there are a bunch of killer bands coming up? The damnedest thing.

Just kidding, obviously. I don’t want to go around making assumptions about anyone’s lifestyle or anything.

Info from the PR wire:

GREEN DRUID: Psychedelic Stoner Doom Collective To Release Ashen Blood Debut Full-Length Via Earache Records This March; Album Details Revealed Plus New Track Streaming

Psychedelic stoner doom collective GREEN DRUID will release their debut full-length Ashen Blood via Earache Records this March. Brooding, atmospheric, and isolationist with weighty riffs summoning the Lovecraftian horrors of the cosmos, GREEN DRUID’s music entrances listeners with tales of the Old Blood and of dismal worlds too soon forgotten.

From the label that brought you Sleep… welcome to the stage Green Druid. Brooding, atmospheric, isolationist… with weighty riffs summoning the Lovecraftian horrors of the cosmos, Green Druid’s psychedelic doom entrances listeners with tales of the Old Blood and of dismal worlds too soon forgotten.

Hailing from the land of Denver, Colorado – the first US city to legalize marijuana – GREEN DRUID worships at the feet of the monolithic amplifier, and performs holy communion with the tremorous onslaught of murky tones that emanate from its maw. Written during ‘the most chaotic and depressing of circumstances’ Ashen Blood is over an hour and fifteen minutes of crushing Psych-Doom.

“While our first EP and foray into the world of doom could be viewed as us learning the ins-and-outs of the genre, Ashen Blood is where we really started to hone in on our own voice,” issues the band. “Taking influence from the dark fantasy landscapes of games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, we strove to create a truly doomed psychedelic experience.”

Ashen Blood will descend upon the ears of the worthy on March 16th on CD, LP, and digital formats. For preorder bundles, go to THIS LOCATION.

In related news, GREEN DRUID will rumble the stages of several venues in the coming weeks with additional performances to be announced soon. See all confirmed dates below.

GREEN DRUID:
2/02/2018 3 Kings Tavern – Denver, CO w/ Palehorse, Palerider, Weathered Statues
2/09/2018 Bar Bar – Denver, CO w/ The Hazytones, Green Mountain, Pennysick
2/22/2018 Bar Bar – Denver, CO w/ Ghosts of Glaciers, Kenaima, Vexing

Ashen Blood Track Listing:
1. Pale Blood Sky
2. Agoraphobia
3. Dead Tree
4. Cursed Blood
5. Rebirth
6. Ritual Sacrifice
7. Nightfall

GREEN DRUID:
Graham Zander – guitar
Chris McLaughlin – guitar/vocals
Ryan Sims – drums
Ryan Skates – bass

http://www.facebook.com/greendruidband
http://twitter.com/GreenDruidBand
http://www.instagram.com/greendruidband
https://greendruid.bandcamp.com/
http://www.earache.com
http://www.facebook.com/earacherecords

Green Druid, “Dead Tree” official video

Cathedral, Forest of Equilibrium (1991)

As lauded as they were during their time — from their stint touring with Black Sabbath in the ’90s to impact at MTV, influence on doom in and out of their native UK, etc. — I still think that for the actual quality of the work they did, Cathedral are underrated. While much of their legacy would be set on subsequent offerings like 1993’s The Ethereal Mirror (reissue review here) and 1995’s The Carnival Bizarre, paying a much-needed revisit to their 1991 Earache Records debut, Forest of Equilibrium (reissue review here) only demonstrates the powerful nature of the band from their very beginnings.

I don’t think the story needs to be recounted here of vocalist Lee Dorrian growing weary of punk following his time in Napalm Death and finding himself in the company of guitarist Gaz Jennings to found Cathedral and move in a decidedly different, more Sabbath-influenced direction. On Forest of Equilibrium, the lineup would be Dorrian, Jennings, guitarist Adam Lehan, bassist Mark Griffiths and drummer Mike Smail (Dream Death), and with additional flourish of keyboard and flute, they’d run through a CD-era-runtime set of seven songs and 54 minutes of raw but deceptively complex, grueling doom that, even 27 years later, remains striking in both how ahead of its time it was is arriving, how progressive the underpinnings of Cathedral‘s sound were even at that point, and how assured they seemed to be of what they were doing even as they flew in the face of trend in both punk and metal.

Cathedral didn’t invent modern doom by any stretch. Trouble had been around for more than a decade by the time Forest of Equilibrium came out, and others like Saint Vitus, Pentagram and Candlemass had been lumbering the earth for some time as well. But they did represent a different, more loyalist aspect of the generation up and coming in England at the time. Consider what Cathedral did with songs like “A Funeral Request,” “Comiserating the Celebration” and “Ebony Tears” in terms of concurrent groups like Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride and Pagan Angel, who’d later become Anathema. While not emotionless and not without its own sense of drama at times — looking at you, “Reaching Happiness, Touching Pain” — Cathedral‘s songs took from punk a sense of bare scathe, and their material was less about theatrics and drama than it was about the basic impact of their plod and wretched atmospheres. As the intro “Picture of Beauty and Innocence” leads into “Comiserating the Celebration” (the title of which just screams grindcore in its alliterative construction), Cathedral were very clearly on their own wavelength separate from the emerging death-doom movement. Throughout their career, they would never quite fit in. Forest of Equilibrium was the crucial beginning point of that.

The band seemed to know it. Not necessarily that they’d go on to release 10 LPs and have one of doom’s most storied tenures before calling it quits after 2013’s The Last Spire (review here), but just that they were right to be so firm in their sonic convictions. Even in its faster moments — the centerpiece “Soul Sacrifice” or in the later reaches of “A Funeral Request” — Forest of Equilibrium maintains its viscous tonality and ambience, and Dorrian‘s harsh, morose vocal approach only adds to the way in which the riffs of the chugging “Serpent Eve” and the nod-ready dual-guitar-highlight semi-title-track “Equilibrium” seem to ooze from the speakers even these many years later. It would be rare for a band making their debut to be so confident in what they were doing in any case, but to have Cathedral emerge from the UK’s primordial doom soup as cohesive in their purposes as they were continues to be striking. Plenty of acts talk about going against the grain. Far fewer have lived out that particular cliche and stood as tall in doing so as Cathedral.

Not only that, but listen to the acoustics and flute at the outset in “Pictures of Beauty and Innocence” as they foreshadow the flute and keys to be included as “Reaching Happiness, Touching Pain” rounds out, and you begin to realize just how little of Forest of Equilibrium was an accident, and that, however much its primary statement is made with excruciating tempos and/or a take on doom informed in part by what was happening in extreme metal at the time, there was also so much more behind the band’s approach as a whole. That’s easier to read in hindsight than it would’ve been at the time, but even so, it is one more element at play that makes the first Cathedral long-player one of the boldest doom releases certainly of the 1990s, if not ever. They knew what they were doing, they knew how they wanted to do it, and they were brazen enough to make it expansive as well as loaded with sonic grit. It would be improper to consider that anything less than a triumph of sound and aesthetic.

Of course, Cathedral‘s career would be marked with several of those along the way, but Forest of Equilibrium holds a special place as the first of them, and while they’d develop through phases more indebted to heavy rock and a kind of middle-ground traditionalism before 2010’s The Guessing Game (review here) made their most progressive statement and the aforementioned 2013 swansong found them coming full circle in a return to darker fare, their position as stylistic forerunners never wavered, and in their latter material or their earliest work, they’re defined ultimately by the same relentless creative drive, and yeah, as much praise as they’ve gotten over the decades, that’s still underappreciated.

I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

So uh, this week was the Quarterly Review. Did you notice? It seemed like it was pretty quiet. A few of the bands shared links and whatnot, and that’s always appreciated, but by and large it was kind of a muted response. Fair enough, I guess, but I still hope you managed to find something you dug in that batch of 50 records. I found a few, to be sure.

I guess the week was up and down in general, though. “Iron” Al Morris fucking died. “Fast” Eddie Clarke fucking died. A new YOB record was announced. I got to premiere a video from The Obsessed. So yeah, lows and highs. I end the week today with a trip to the dentist to follow-up on the root canal I had a couple weeks ago and a couple festival writeups, so yeah, even that: hits and misses.

Next week The Patient Mrs. goes back to work. The semester is starting up, classes start Wednesday and she’s teaching Wednesday night. Her schedule means that I’m home with The Pecan for stretches at least on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about it — not the least because the kid still won’t take a bottle from me. We’ve been through like five different brands at this point and he just wants no part of it. Before he came along, I was nervous about changing diapers. I’d never really done it before. Hell. I’ll change diapers all fucking day. I don’t care. You wanna rocket-ass poop all over the place? Whatever Pecan, I can clean it up. But a miserable kid who’s hungry and over-tired and screams inconsolably when you try to feed him? Yeah, that’s way rougher. Shit everywhere if you want, but save me from that fucking bottle.

We’ll see how it goes.

In the meantime, my food issues continue. I have an appointment Monday afternoon with a nutritionist whose position, I expect, will be something along the lines of, “Um, eating disorders are bad, m’kay?” and for that I will have driven probably an hour each way because that’s how long it takes to get just about anywhere from where I live. I’ve had one meal so far in 2018 (actually since Xmas) not comprised of protein powder. It was garlicky cloud bread with pesto. I think on the 8th? Somewhere around there. The Patient Mrs. also made me low-carb scones that I inexplicably gained four pounds from eating and haven’t been able to get rid of since. The rest is shakes, coffee and fake peanut butter, though even the fake peanut butter now seems like too much food to me and I don’t eat it every day. I’d just about take a human life if the tradeoff was a guarantee I could have a cheeseburger and not put on three pounds from it. I don’t even need a bun.

You don’t give a fuck. Save it for your therapist. Get back to the riffs, bro. Riffs. Fair enough.

Here’s what’s in the notes for next week:

Mon.: Somali Yacht Club review/track premiere.
Tue.: Wolftooth review/track premiere; Ozone Mama track-by-track/full-album stream.
Wed.: Clamfight review/full-album stream.
Thu.: Manthrass track premiere/review.
Fri. Six Dumb Questions with Atala.

All subject to change, addition, subtraction, etc., but that’s the plan. It’s a considerable amount of stuff for what’s a busy week otherwise, but hell, I did 50 reviews this week, have a two-month-old baby kicking around the house and basically starve myself as much as I possibly can and still manage to live through the day. Ain’t nothing that hard. The track premieres will get done. Ha.

I hope you have a great and safe weekend. I’m going to sleep late tomorrow, which is a thing I’m very much looking forward to doing, and then some family is coming up from CT on Sunday into Monday, which I also expect will be enjoyable. Beyond that, maybe some reading, new Star Trek on Sunday night, protein shakes and coffee. Good times will be had, no doubt.

Thanks for reading. Please check out the forum and the radio stream.

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Iron Monkey, Iron Monkey (1997)

One could look at any number of sludge or sludge metal acts coming out of the UK these days and point to the continued impact of the relatively short tenure of Nottingham’s Iron Monkey. The dual-guitar deconstructionists issued two full-lengths in their time — 1997’s Iron Monkey and 1998’s Our Problem — through Earache and hooked up with Frank Kozik‘s Man’s Ruin Records for the We’ve Learned Nothing EP, also released as a split with Church of Misery in 1999. They split up that same year, and in 2002, the live album Ruined by Idiots: Live and Unleashed surfaced, compiling material from shows between 1995 and 1999 in memory of vocalist Johnny Morrow, who died of heart failure in June 2002. By the time they were done, they’d traded out both guitarists who appear on the self-titled, Jim Rushby and Steven Watson (Ravens Creed) for Dean Berry (ex-Capricorns) and Stuart O’Hara (ex-Acrimony, now Sigiriya), which left Morrow, bassist Doug Dalziel and drummer Justin Greaves as founding members. Dalziel would go on to play in The Dukes of Nothing with Berry and O’Hara, while Greaves did time in Electric Wizard and Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine, among others, before founding Crippled Black Phoenix, with whom he remains to this day.

But if Iron Monkey‘s legacy has tentacled its way into a sort of varied pedigree, the music on the self-titled is almost entirely more singular in its purpose. Topped with Morrow‘s uniform throat-ripping rasp, it is a more active, upbeat thrust than, say Grief‘s Come to Grief, released a few years earlier in 1994, but similar in its attitude and consuming fuckall. From the crawling “Fink Dial” through the chaos-minded mega-chug of “666 Pack” — just in case you doubted a punker lineage — Iron Monkey remain as crusty as Bongzilla but uniformly pissed off. Their tones were thicker and their approach more refined than Buzzov*en — for whom being stripped down meant peeling flesh from bone — but they were perhaps even more vicious. You felt every single second of the self-titled. It’s still not an easy record to get through. It remains more geared toward destruction than a good time.

And disaffection. Woof. “Web of Piss.” “Big Loader.” The lurching “Shrimp Fist.” These songs would be anthems if everyone who ever said “fuck it” to life had any interest in picking a rallying cry. The above version of Iron Monkey includes a bonus track cover of Black Sabbath‘s “Cornucopia” from Earache‘s 1997 Masters of Misery tribute CD, which also included the likes of Sleep, Godflesh and Cathedral — it’s a good one if you can find it. There have been a few reissues of the album over the years, 1999, 2012 on vinyl, a 2009 boxed set with Our Problem (review here), etc., so it’s not exactly a lost classic, but at the same time, the better part of two decades later, it still feels like Iron Monkey are underappreciated for just how furious they actually were.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

—

Not exactly disingenuous, but in some ways I feel like closing out the week with Iron Monkey is at very least in opposition to my current mood. I’ll spare you the effusiveness and just break it down to a list of thanks:

THANK YOU to the nearly 200 people who’ve contributed so far to the 2015 Readers Poll.

THANK YOU to those who’ve placed the 30-plus orders for The Obelisk merch, hoodies and t-shirts. That response is more than I could’ve dreamed of. It’s on sale till next Friday, so if you want to get in on it, please do so.

THANK YOU to everyone who’s as psyched as I am for the Obelisk All-Dayer next August at the Saint Vitus Bar. I’ve got one open slot left in the lineup and will start making announcements early next year.

THANK YOU to everybody who has shared a link, left a comment, retweeted, etc., the lists and other posts this week. It’s been hugely appreciated.

THANK YOU to The Patient Mrs. for continuing to take care of me as my ankle heals up.

And THANK YOU to Kings Destroy for the invitation to join them on their Australian tour with Radio Moscow in February, which I’m going to make every effort to do.

It’s been a wild week and I feel like this is really just the tip of the iceberg. If you’re reading this, thank you.

Next week, maybe we start off with the year-end podcast? Seems reasonable, right? Maybe I’ll shoot for putting that together on Sunday. I’m going to try to get a writeup done for the Borracho/Geezer split, which I’m sure is long-since sold out by now, and I have a stack of tapes that I’d love to get through before the month ends. Working on it. Also look out for the Top 20 Debuts of 2016 and if I have time, a revisit of that massive 2015 Most Anticipated List that went up in January.

Gonna start on the Quarterly Review as well, because it occurs to me that the weekend before it starts –when I would be writing it — is Xmas. Whoops. Maybe we’ll push that one back to the start of next month? We’ll see how it goes.

Again, thank you all so much for the support, for reading and hopefully digging what goes on in this space. Please have a great and safe weekend, and please check out the forum and the radio stream.

The Obelisk Forum

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