See you back here Monday, huh? Yeah. If onslaughts of new music are your thing and you’ve been following along throughout this week — first, thank you — and second, we’ll pick up after the weekend with another 50 albums in this double-wide Fall 2022 Quarterly Review. This was a good week though. Yesterday had some genuine killers, and I’ve added a few to my best-of lists for the end-of-year stuff to come. There’ll be another Quarterly Review then too. Never any trouble filling slots with new releases. I’ve already started, in fact.

Madness. Didn’t I say something yesterday about one thing at a time? Ha.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

Crippled Black Phoenix, Banefyre

There are times where I wonder if Crippled Black Phoenix aren’t just making fun of other bands, their audience, themselves, and everything, and then there are times when I’m pretty sure they are. To wit, their latest outing for Season of Mist, Banefyre, is nearly an hour into its 90-plus-minute runtime before they offer up the 10-minute “Down the Rabbit Hole,” and, well, if we’re not down it by then, where the hell are we? See also “Wyches and Basterdz” near the outset. Whatever else they may be, the long-running, dynamic, progressive, dark heavy rock troupe surrounding founding songwriter and guitarist Justin Greaves are like nothing else. They offer shades of influences, discernable elements from this or that style, this or that band — “The Reckoning” has a bit of The Cure, “Blackout77” filters that through Katatonia, etc. — but are never working to be anyone but themselves. Accordingly, the thoroughly British depressive triumphs throughout Banefyre — looking at you, “I’m OK, Just Not Alright” — are part of an ongoing narrative of creative development that will hit its 20th year in 2024 and has offered listeners an arc of emotive and stylistic depth that, in whatever genre you want to try to confine it, is only ever going to escape. The only real tragedy of Banefyre is that they’ll probably have another record out before this one can be properly digested. That’ll take a few years at least.

Crippled Black Phoenix on Facebook

Season of Mist website

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Chat Pile, God’s Country

An Oklahoma hardcore-born circus of sludge-toned tragedies personal, cultural and socioeconomic played out across nine songs/42 minutes held together at times seemingly most of all by their disenchantment, Chat Pile‘s debut album, God’s Country is arthouse angularity, raw aggression and omnidirectional intensity. As the UK’s post-industrial waste once birth’d Godflesh, so now come vocalist Raygun Busch, guitarist Luther Manhole, bassist Stin and electronic-drummer Cap’n Ron with brilliantly constructed tales of drugs, murder, suicide, loss, violence, misery, and general wretchedness of spirit, presented instrumentally with quick turns that draw from hardcore as noted, but also death metal, sludge, industrial doom, and so on. The lyrics are masterful drug poetry and delivered as such, semi-spoken, shouted, some singing, some acting out, such that you never know from what direction the next punch is coming. “Why” tackles homelessness, “Pamela” demonstrates the impossibility of coping with loss, “Slaughterhouse” is what it says, and closer “Grimace_Smoking_Weed.jpeg” resolves its nine minutes in long-held feedback and crashes as Busch frantically screams with decreasing intelligibility until it’s even words anymore. A perfect finish to a stunning, terrifying, moving first album. Don’t go into it expecting listenability. Even as “I Don’t Care if I Burn” offers some respite, it does so while describing a murder fantasy. It’s not the only one.

Chat Pile on Instagram

The Flenser store

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Early Moods, Early Moods

Fuck yes Gen-Z doom. Yes. Yes. Yes. Show the old men how it’s done. Please. Not a gray hair in the bunch, or a bullshit riff, or a lazy groove. Early Moods got their influences in line with their 2020 debut EP, Spellbound (review here), and you can still hear some Candlemass in “Broken,” but their self-titled debut LP stamps its foot to mark their arrival as something new and a fresh take on classic ideas. Vocalist Alberto Alcaraz is a distinct presence atop the hard-distorted guitars of Eddie Andrade and Oscar Hernandez, while Elix Feliciano‘s bass fuzz-rumbles through the interlude “Memento Mori” and Chris Flores‘ big-room-ready kick counts in the Trouble‘d early highlight “Live to Suffer.” Later on, “Curse of the Light” leans into the metal end of classic doom metal ahead of the chugging roll of “Damnation” and the finisher “Funeral Macabre,” but Early Moods have already put these things in play by then, as demonstrated with the eponymous title-track. Songs are tight, crisply produced, and executed to style with a promise of more growth to come. It’s an easy record to get excited about, and one of 2022’s best albums. I might just buy the tape and the CD.

Early Moods on Facebook

RidingEasy Records store

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Larman Clamor, With a Deadly Hiss

Less than a year after a return born of celebrating the project’s 10th anniversary with the Ink fo’ Blood (review here) full-length, prolific visual artist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and singer Alexander von Wieding returns with Larman Clamor‘s latest, With a Deadly Hiss. As ever, formalities are dispensed with in favor of deceptively intricate arrangements of slide acoustic and electric guitar, whatever’s-around-style percussion and von Wieding‘s telltale throaty vocals, which on “Swamp Jive” and even a bit of the six-minute finale “Eleventh Spell to Cast” draw back the throaty grit in favor of a more melodic, somewhat less performative delivery that suits the material well. Songs are mostly short — there are 11 of them and the aforementioned closer is the longest by about three minutes — but each is a blinking glimpse into the humid, climbing-vine world of von Wieding‘s creation, and in instrumentals like the manic percussion of “Monkey and the Trash Goblins” and the distortion-backed algae-delica of “Iguana at the Fountain,” the brashness of “Tortuga” and the playful falsetto of the leadoff title-track are expanded in such a way as to hint of future paths to be explored. One way or the other, Larman Clamor remains an entity unto itself in concept, craft and delivery, and if With a Deadly Hiss is just another forward step en route to the next stop on down the road, even better.

Larman Clamor on Facebook

Larman Clamor on Bandcamp

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The Necromancers, When the Void Rose

Recorded in 2021, The Necromancers‘ third album would seem to have a mind toward picking up where the Poitiers, France-based four-piece left off pre-pandemic with 2018’s Of Blood and Wine (review here). Can hardly blame them, frankly. Now self-releasing (their first two albums were on Ripple), the semi-cult heavy rockers bring an air of classic metal to the proceedings but are remarkably cohesive in their craft, with guitarist/vocalist Basile Chevalier-Coudrain fronting the band even in the studio as demonstrated on the ’80s metal roller “The Needle,” which follows the eight-minute doom-adjacent unfolding of “Crimson Hour” — and that “adjacent” is a compliment, by the way; The Necromancers are less concerned with playing to genre than with it — wherein guitarist Robin Genais adds a short but classy solo to underscore the willful grandiosity. Bassist Simon Evariste and drummer Benjamin Rousseau underscore the grooves, prominent in the verse of the title-track, and while it’s guitars up front in traditionalist fashion, the truth is all four players are critical here, and it’s the overarching affect of the whole that makes When the Void Rose such an engaging listen, rather than the individual parts. That is to say, listen front to back for best results.

The Necromancers on Facebook

The Necromancers on Bandcamp

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Les Lekin, Limbus

Though instrumental across its vast stretches, Les Lekin‘s Limbus — their first full-length since 2017’s Died with Fear, also on Tonzonen, and third overall — begins with a verbal message of hope, lyrics in German, in the beginning intro “Licht.” That gives a specifically covid-era context to the proceedings, but as the subsequent three massive sans-vocal pieces “Ascent” (14:14), “Unknown” (8:18) and closer “Return” (22:00), unfold, they do so with a decidedly otherworldly, deeply-weighted psychedelic verve. The narrative writes itself in the titles, so I’ll spare you the pretense of insight (on my part there), but note that if it was escapism through music being sought on the part of the meditative Salzburg three-piece, the richness of what’s on offer throughout Limbus is generous enough to share that experience with the audience as well. “Ascent” swells and builds as it moves duly upward, and in “Unknown,” the trio explores post-metallic atmospherics in a crunching midsection without ever losing sight of the ambience so central to what they’re doing, while it would be hard for “Return” not to be the highlight, drums and initial bass rumble giving way to a huge sounding, engrossing procession of atmospheric density. Les Lekin have been a critical favorite for a while now, and it’s easy to hear why, but their work here holds far more than academic appeal or to-genre conformity. They embody the release they would seem to have sought and still carry an exploratory spirit despite the clearly charted course of their songs.

Les Lekin on Facebook

Tonzonen Records store

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Highbay, LightShower

LightShower is the fourth session from Hungarian jammers Highbay to see release in the last year-plus, and it arrives with the immediately noteworthy backing of Psychedelic Source Records. In the vein of many of that collective’s offerings, it is live recorded, probably improvised, and wholly instrumental, the trio vibing their way into a groove early on “Walking on Bubbles” and holding gently to that locked-in, entranced feel across the following five jams. The shimmering guitar tone, particuly as “Miracle Under Water” moves into the more extended “Spaceship” and the pleasantly funky “FunKing Dragons Above Fissure Mountains,” is a highlight, but the intention here is a full set, and I won’t take away from the fuzzier, riffier emergence later on in “FunKing Dragons” either, or, for that matter, the ready-to-wander post-rock float of closer “3D(ays) Trippin’.” It’s a big universe, and Highbay have their work cut out for them if they want to feel their way through all of it, but “Spaceship” mellows its way off into a greater beyond, and even “Hungover Sadness (’90s Romance)” manages to not be a drag as filtered through the trio’s chemistry. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t be the last time Highbay are heard from this year, but they’re yet another name to add to the list of Psychedelic Source-associated acts whose jammy sensibilities are helping manifest a new generation of Eastern European lysergic rock and roll.

Psychedelic Source Records on Facebook

Psychedelic Source Records on Bandcamp

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Sound Animal, Yes, Yes, You

Think of this as less of a review and more of a general reminder to throw a follow in the direction of Berkeley, California’s dug-in-as-hell Sound Animal, or at very least let your ears pay a visit every now and again to soak up some of the weirdo drone, dance, psych electronics and whatever else might be had on any given afternoon from the prolific solo-project. “Yes, Yes, You” is the latest single, but likely not for long, and it plays out across 3:33 of keyboardian ambience and recitations of the titular reassurance that would be soul-pop were they not so definitively experimental and part of such an ongoing creative splurge. Tucked away in a corner of the Bandcamp dimension, Sound Animal comes across as an outlet for ideas as much as sonics, and with the persistent thud of a beat beneath, one, two, three, four, the melodic serenity of the wash feels like direct conversation, with the listener, the self, or, more likely, both. It is beautiful and brief, as I’m told life also is, and it may just be the thing that came after one thing and before the next, but if you stop for a minute or three and let it sink in, you just might find a more substantial place to reside. Not gonna be for everyone, but the fact that “Yes, Yes, You” is so vague and yet so clearly encouraging rather than accusatory speaks to the artistic purpose writ large throughout Sound Animal‘s e’er expanding catalog. Wouldn’t be surprised or sad to find a subsequent single going somewhere else entirely, but again, just a reminder that it’s worth finding that out.

Sound Animal on Facebook

Sound Animal website

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Warcoe, The Giant’s Dream

Somewhere between classic metal and doom, heavy rock’s riff-led impulses and cultish atmospheres there resides the Pesaro, Italy, trio Warcoe and their debut album, The Giant’s Dream. Led by guitarist/vocalist Stefano — who also plays bass on some of the later tracks — with bassist Carlo and drummer Francesco proffering thickened roll and punctuating rhythm all the while save for the early acoustic interlude “Omega Sunrise,” the band nestle smoothly into a modern-via-not-at-all-modern sphere, yet neither are they retro or aping ’70s methodologies. Maybe that moment has passed and it’s the ascent of the ’80s metal and doom we’re seeing here — or maybe I just slated Warcoe and Early Moods the same day and both bands dig Trouble and Death Row/Pentagram, I won’t pretend to know — but the bass in “Fire and Snow” is more of a presence than bass was pretty much ever 40 years ago, so to call The Giant’s Dream anything but ‘now’ is inaccurate. They lean into rock on “Thieves, Heretics and Whores” and manifest grim but stately lurch before the fade of the penultimate “Scars Will Remain,” but wherever each piece might end up, the impression is abidingly dark and offers a reminder that Italy’s history of cult doom goes farther back than most. Paul Chain, Steve Sylvester, your legacy is in good hands.

Warcoe on Facebook

Forbidden Place Records on Bandcamp

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DONE, Aged and Untreated

Hard to find info on the Boston or Boston-adjacent extreme-metal-inflected, sludge-toned dark hardcore outfit DONE — and that may just as well be anti-social-media mystique creation as the fact that their name is ungooglable — but the tape slays. Aged and Untreated hammers 15 scathing tracks into its 28 minutes, and dies on a hill of wintry black metal and barking hardcore mostly but not completely summarized in the turns of “Soulsplitter.” The fun part is when they bounce back and forth, throw in some grind on “To Curt on Waverly,” scratch your eyes out with “Dance for Them” — the second cut behind says-it-all-in-a-minute opener “Nah” — and willfully crash into a wall on the comparatively sprawling 2:35 “I Fucking Hate Thinking About You.” Haven’t seen a lyric sheet and probably won’t if my success rate in tracking down relevant factoids is anything to go by, but shit, I lived on the South Shore for seven years, including the record-breaking winter of 2014, and it sure felt a lot like this. Maybe they’re from Arizona, and if they are, I’m sure some hack would say the same thing, but hell’s bells Aged and Untreated is an intense listen, and its wreck-your-shit violence is meted out such that even the slightly-slower punch in the first half of “Hope Trickle” makes the song feel sarcastic. I wouldn’t put it on every day, but yeah. Righteously pissed.

Tor Johnson Records on Bandcamp

Tor Johnson Records store

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08.18.22 – 11:03PM Pacific – Thursday – Psycho Swim

This is no place for lucidity.

I’ve been waiting weeks to say that. It is, however, a place for imposter syndrome, and I’ll admit to having already filled my quota of wondering how the hell I managed to get here. Considering I can barely get up to get myself a cup of water — I brought my pink water-drinking cup from home — let alone ice from somewhere down the hall, it feels pretty odd to not be at home right now. I am lucid, mostly. A little while ago I got back from seeing Kadabra at the Redtail and I guess that was the end of my night. I picked up a hamburger salad on the way back and that was dinner and I keep expecting it to kick in and have a surge of energy, but yeah, probably not.

Never had coffee today. There’s a Starbucks downstairs that I’ll hit in the AM. Desperate times, if I didn’t say that before.

What I learned throughout the course of today is that Resorts World is fucking huge. It’s three or four or seven plus-size hotels all interconnected. I don’t even know where one casino ends and another begins, or what’s where or whose is anything and there are a lot of flashing lights and a kind of mall attached with a big chrome watery-looking ball in it that’s like the mall art you remember but on steroids or maybe given a grim alien reboot. Finding the check-in to get my wristband this morning was a hoot, and from there I had my work even more cut out for me finding the pool. I was back and forth a few times throughout the day — there was one point during Early Moods where, righteous and doomed as they were, I just needed air conditioning. That’s poolside.

No, I didn’t go in. A lot of people did. My bathing suit is in the wash, or at least it was when I left the house yesterday to go to the airport. Clouds rolled in as the afternoon went on and Rifflord begat Early Moods begat Uniform and so forth, but it wouldn’t rain until during Elder’s set, which even though it was dark already still felt something like a godsend. I had been headed inside anyway. I’m getting ahead of myself.

The day was two days, how it worked out. I wound up splitting the schedule into two parts. Taking a break in the middle meant missing Deathchant, about whose set I’ve already heard good things, but made the rest of the day doable. Sometimes in life we have to make sacrifices. I’d rolled up early for Rifflord, got my bag searched for the first of three times today — the second time I was told to throw out my water bottle, which seems a little counterintuitive for an outdoor event in Las Vegas in August; I kind of felt like there should be refilling stations every two meters along the wall — and was asked about the camera gear but I said I was media (hence that whole imposter thing noted above) and they let it go. After I shot Rifflord and the head of Psycho’s team of 10 photographers came up to me and with a very West Coast manner, introduced himself and proceeded to tell me he didn’t know there was any outside media allowed to shoot the festival. The implication, of course, that I shouldn’t be there.

Well, there I was. One band, who rocked by the way, into a four-day festival, 100 degrees minimum with the sun trying to cleave my skull, and Photo Dude coming ’round to put me in my place. Yessir. Well sir, you see. And so on. He said his piece and even knowing I was right — which, yes, I was — it was still a kind of shitty way to start the thing. Fortunately, Rifflord had played “Tumbleweed” so I felt like I could take on anything the planet might put in my way, and it was too hot to be really bummed out. The trick is finding somewhere to be. Staking out a spot and putting yourself in it. I found a little shade toward the back and sat down. I’d been in one of the cabanas, but the people who’d staked it out came back and it was pretty clearly time to move on. I’d watch Early Moods, abscond for a few minutes to cool off by walking around the big, empty, fenced-off dirt lot that I assume is going to be eventually turned into some kind of ‘experience’, and then return for the finish of their set.

Classic heavy rock and doomer vibes. The morose aspects of Early Moods were a good setup for Uniform in that if Early Moods was bumming out about the world, Uniform were judging and finding it wanting. It made sense in a stages-of-grief kind of way. Rifflord and Early Moods were both bands I pointedly wanted to see, and Uniform’s harsher take — some industrial elements, mostly dark, aggro noise — was a shift in atmosphere that was welcome despite the groove the first two acts had established. By the time Uniform were finished, I felt like I was ready to die. I’d been hydrating and saying hello to the people kind enough to say hello to me, and I just plunked myself down at one point and did the math on eating and sleeping and found that their increasing my likelihood to last the full day made it worth a journey back to the room.

I did find my way back, eventually, but I’m still not sure that, say, if I was going to Dawg House to watch Elder at 1AM finish their rained-out set, I’d know how to get there. I’ll be asleep before then anyhow — already writing with one eye closed, which is never a good sign for continued consciousness. I ate a protein bar and then settled myself onto the bed, still not really having decided I was going to sleep. Then I turned off the light and was out in about five seconds. I’d set an alarm to be up in time for me to get back to the pool for Elder with flex enough that I got to see some of Bridge City Sinners’ goth-bluegrass, which was a good time, even if the singer seemed let down by the audience response. It was just starting to ‘cool off,’ so I got where both she and the crowd in front of the stage were coming from. Even having slept, I would hardly call myself up to full speed. And maybe it was a bad time to go off my meds after all. I don’t know.

Elder were next, and I’ll do you the favor of sparing you the music-as-magic-because-they-made-it-rain thing. I mean, yes, obviously that’s what happened, I just feel stupid writing about it. They weren’t through “Compendium” before it started coming down. As noted, they’ll be at the Dawg House — one of the many venue-type places nestled into the mall-ish area; I stumbled on it earlier — but yeah. I was on my way to catch Salem’s Bend who were on before Kadabra at the Redtail. I’d thought about hitting Eyehategod back at the pool and Midnight are Midnight, but there was no way I was going to make it. Death would occur. I got to see two bands I’d never seen before in Salem’s Bend and Kadabra, and that felt like a win, which I also kind of feel obligated to point out because some of the comments I got yesterday or whenever that was were a little off-putting, like I’m not enjoying myself. Well, I was getting on a fucking airplane. What’s enjoyable about that? Even if you’re looking forward to where you’re going, you have to get there first.

Psycho Las Vegas is really, really, really big. Yeah, there’s your pullquote — you’re welcome. I’m media! But even compared to when I was out here in 2018 and it was at the Hard Rock, it’s mammoth. Today there were four stages that had stuff going at various points. Tomorrow is six, and it starts at noon and it ends at 2:45AM and you could never see it all — they rightly call it a ‘choose your adventure’ festival — but it’s fun to try if completely overwhelming. I think that’s the idea. I think maybe it’s supposed to be fun. Sounds weird, I know.

But you have to understand the scale of the thing. This morning, looking at the schedule for the next four days, it was like I was staring down a tidal wave or maybe more appropriately a sandstorm since we’re in the desert, and I hardly feel any different about that now that the day is over. However big you’re thinking it is, it’s bigger. It’s more on the scale of SXSW Music than a regular one- or two-stage fest. More like getting around a city.

I was ready for Kadabra when they went on, following the heavy boogie of Salem’s Bend, whose guitarist had a very proud aunt in the crowd and whose bassist opted to go without pants, presumably being fresh out of the pool. Good fun all around, and Kadabra followed it well, with a more drawn out, fuzzier take that still reminds me of the first Mars Red Sky record. Their Ultra album came out last year on Heavy Psych Sounds and was a gem that I thought didn’t get enough love. Having seen them live, now I know that’s the case. First smiling drummer I saw all day, and maybe a win on tone as well, but it was the melody, depth of tone and the swinging groove that had me locked in. All of that coming together in a languid nodder psychedelia given just enough push to keep rolling downhill? Sign me up forever. Or at least for the next album.

Between the pizza joint, the Mexican place, the vegan place and the breakfast place, the nearest I got to a caesar salad was the hamburger-with-chipotle-dressing thing I ate a bit ago. Not something I’d likely order on a normal day — I have increasing trouble trusting red meat when I don’t know where it comes from — but glorious and quickly consumed for all that. My head has already started thinking about the long day that tomorrow will be, and that’s a good thing, but today was an interesting one. The heat, the sun and fatigue, disorientation, dreadful sobriety, and so on, were a drag at various points, but the music sounds good and it’s… fun. Still feels kind of strange to say that.

Tomorrow is the first day of the festival proper. I’m lonely but holding up. I’ve got Dreadnought, Stinking Lizaveta and Hippie Death Cult as one-two-three first thing in the afternoon, and coffee to find before that. First sleep.

Thanks for reading.

On Dec. 31, Los Angeles-based classic-style doomers Early Moods will take the stage at the Permanent Records Roadhouse in their hometown to ring in 2022 alongside Deathchant. Further occasion to celebrate comes with the fact that the two bands are now labelmates on RidingEasy Records, which, even if you’re not into getting loaded on the last night of the year, is reason for the season, if you know what I’m saying. If you do, please tell me, because I’m not quite certain.

Early Moods, who’ve also been confirmed for the Legions of Metal Festival in Chicago next May, released their debut EP, Spellbound (review here), in 2020 through Dying Victims Productions, and in addition to that release, the EP is also available on tape thanks to Olde Magick Records in a pressing of what I’m sure is a suitably doomed shade of purple.

I don’t know if RidingEasy Records has plans for Spellbound as well, but band and label alike mentioned plans for new material in 2022. One can’t help but wonder if there will be continued delays in the pressing of vinyl. How quickly it’s become normal for a 12″ to arrive months past a CD/DL. RidingEasy puts CDs in handy lil digipaks, and that does just fine for me, so I’m not in crisis over those wait times, but I acknowledge being in the weirdo minority — that is, in the minority of weirdos — currently of that mindset. People want their records on records. Not gonna say I don’t get it.

No big announcement on Early Moods at this point, which either would or pointedly wouldn’t have word of a next release/maybe debut full-length, but here’s this from social media along with the stream the the EP in case you need an argument to buy whatever format is left.

Behold:

We are proud to welcome @early_moods to the #ridingeasyrecords roster. Give them a follow and look out for new music next year!

Early moods is :
Eddie Andrade – Guitar
Elix Feliciano – Bass
Alberto Alcaraz – Vocals
Chris Flores – Drums & Percussions
Oscar Hernandez – Guitar

https://www.facebook.com/earlymoods/
https://www.instagram.com/early_moods
https://earlymoods.bandcamp.com/releases
ridingeasyrecs.com

Early Moods, Spellbound (2020)

I just decided how long this Quarterly Review is actually going to be. It’s seven days, then I’ll do my year-end list and the poll results on New Year’s Eve and Day, respectively. That’s the plan. Though honestly, I might pick up after that weekend and continue QR-style for that next week. There’s a lot more to cover, I think. The amount of releases this year has been pretty insane and completely overwhelming. I’ve tried to keep up as best I can and clearly have failed in that regard or I probably wouldn’t be so swamped now. So it goes. One way or the other, I don’t think a lot of emails are getting answered for the next two weeks, though I’ll try to keep up with that too.

But anyhow, that’s what’s up. Here’s Day II (because this is the QR where I do Roman numerals for absolutely no reason).

Quarterly Review #11-20:

16, Dream Squasher

The fourth long-player since 16‘s studio return with 2009’s Bridges to Burn, the 10-track Dream Squasher begins with tales of love for kid and dog, respectively. The latter might be the sweetest lyrics I’ve ever read for something that’s still bludgeoning sludge — said dog also gets a mention amid the ultra-lumbering chug and samples of “Acid Tongue” — and it’s worth mentioning that as the Cali intensity institution nears 30 years since their start in 1991, they’re branching out in theme and craft alike, as the melody of the organ-laced “Sadlands” shows. There’s even some harmonica in “Agora (Killed by a Mountain Lion),” though it’s soon enough swallowed by pummel and the violent punk of “Ride the Waves” follows. “Summer of ’96” plays off Bryan Adams for another bit of familial love, while closing duo “Screw Unto Others” and “Kissing the Choir Boy” indict capitalist and religious figureheads in succession amid weighted plod and seething anger, the band oddly in their element in this meld of ups, downs and slaughter.

16 on Thee Facebooks

16 at Relapse Records

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BoneHawk, Iron Mountain

Kalamazoo four-piece BoneHawk make an awaited follow-up to their 2014 debut, Albino Rhino (discussed here), in the form of Iron Mountain, thereby reminding listeners why it’s been awaited in the first place. Solid, dual-guitar, newer-school post-The Sword heavy rock. Second cut “Summit Fever” reminds a bit of Valley of the Sun and Freedom Hawk, but neither is a bad echelon of acts to stand among, and the open melodies of the subsequent title-track and the later “Fire Lake” do much to distinguish BoneHawk along the way. The winding lead lines of centerpiece “Wildfire” offer due drama in their apex, and “Thunder Child” and “Future Mind” are both catchy enough to keep momentum rolling into the eight-minute closer “Lake of the Clouds,” which caps with due breadth and, yes, is the second song on the record about a lake. That’s how they do in Michigan and that’s just fine.

BoneHawk on Thee Facebooks

Cursed Tongue Records webstore

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DÖ, Black Hole Mass

DÖ follow the Valborg example of lumbering barking extremity into a cosmic abyss on their Black Hole Mass three-songer, emitting charred roll like it’s interstellar background radiation and still managing to give an underlying sense of structure to proceedings vast and encompassing. “Gravity Sacrifice” and “Plasma “Psalm” are right on in their teeth-grinding shove, but it’s the 10-minute finale “Radiation Blessing” that steals my heart with its trippy break in the middle, sample, drifting guitar and all, as the Finnish trio build gradually back up to a massive march all the more effective for the atmosphere they’ve constructed around it. Construction, as it happens, is the underlying strength of Black Hole Mass, since it’s the firm sense of structure beneath their songs that allows them to so ably engage their dark matter metal over the course of these 22 minutes, but it’s done so smoothly one hardly thinks about it while listening. Instead, the best thing to do is go along for the ride, brief as it is, or at least bow head in appreciation to the ceremony as it trods across rigid stylistic dogma.

DÖ on Thee Facebooks

Lay Bare Recordings website

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Howling Giant & Sergeant Thunderhoof, Turned to Stone Chapter 2: Masamune & Muramasa

Let this be a lesson to, well, everyone. This is how you do a conceptual split. Two bands getting together around a central idea — in this case, Tennessee’s Howling Giant and UK’s Sergeant Thunderhoof — both composing single tracks long enough to consume a vinyl side and expanding their reach not only to work with each other but further their own progressive sonic ideologies. Ripple Music‘s Turned to Stone split series is going to have a tough one to top in Masamune & Muramasa, as Howling Giant utterly shine in “Masamune” and the rougher-hewn tonality of Sergeant Thunderhoof‘s “Maramasa” makes an exceptional complement. Running about 41 minutes, the release is a journey through dynamic, with each act pushing their songwriting beyond prior limits in order to meet the occasion head-on and in grand fashion. They do, and the split easily stands among the best of 2020’s short releases as a result. If you want to hear where heavy rock is going, look no further.

Howling Giant on Thee Facebooks

Sergeant Thunderhoof on Thee Facebooks

Ripple Music on Bandcamp

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Chimney Creeps, Nosedive

Punkish shouts over dense noise rock tones, New York trio Chimney Creeps make their full-length debut with Nosedive, which they’ve self-released on vinyl. The album runs through seven tracks, and once it gets through the straight-ahead heavy punk of “March of the Creeps” and “Head in the Sand” at the outset, the palette begins to broaden in the fuzzy and gruff “Unholy Cow,” with the deceptively catchy “Splinter” following. “Creeper” and “Satisfied” before it are longer and accordingly more atmospheric, with a truck-backing-up sample at the start of “Creeper” that would seem to remind listeners just where the band’s sound has put them: out back, around the loading dock. Fair enough as “Diving Line” wraps in accordingly workmanlike fashion, the vocals cutting through clearly as they have all the while, prominent in the mix in a way that asks for balance. “Bright” I believe is the word an engineer might use, but the vocals stand out, is the bottom line, and thereby assure that the aggressive stance of the band comes across as more than a put-on.

Chimney Creeps on Thee Facebooks

Chimney Creeps on Bandcamp

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Kingnomad, Sagan Om Rymden

Kingnomad‘s third album, Sagan Om Rymden certainly wants nothing for scope or ambition, setting its progressive tone with still-hooky opener “Omniverse,” before unfurling the more patient chug in “Small Beginnings” and taking on such weighted (anti-)matter as “Multiverse” and “The Creation Hymn” and “The Unanswered Question” later on. Along the way, the Swedish troupe nod at Ghost-style melodicism, Graveyard-ish heavy blues boogie — in “The Omega Experiment,” no less — progressive, psychedelic and heavy rocks and no less than the cosmos itself, as the Carl Sagan reference in the record’s title seems to inform the space-based mythology expressed and solidified within the songs. Even the acoustic-led interlude-plus “The Fermi Paradox” finds room to harmonize vocals and prove a massive step forward for the band. 2018’s The Great Nothing (review here) and 2017’s debut, Mapping the Inner Void (review here), were each more accomplished than the last, but Sagan Om Rymden is just a different level. It puts Kingnomad in a different class of band.

Kingnomad on Thee Facebooks

Ripple Music on Bandcamp

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Shores of Null, Beyond the Shores (On Death and Dying)

By the time Shores of Null are nine minutes into the single 38-minute track that makes up their third album, Beyond the Shores (On Death and Dying), they would seem to have unveiled at least four of the five vocalists who appear throughout the proceedings, with the band’s own Davide Straccione joined by Swallow the Sun‘s Mikko Kotamäki as well as Thomas A.G. Jensen (Saturnus), Martina Lesley Guidi (of Rome’s Traffic Club) and Elisabetta Marchetti (INNO). There are guests on violin, piano and double-bass as well, so the very least one might say is that Shores of Null aren’t kidding around when they’re talking about this record in a sense of being ‘beyond’ themselves. The journey isn’t hindered so much as bolstered by the ambition, however, and the core five-piece maintain a steady presence throughout, serving collectively as the uniting factor as “Beyond the Shores (On Death and Dying)” moves through its portrayal of the stages of grief in according movements of songcraft, gorgeously-arranged and richly composed as they are as they head toward the final storm. In what’s been an exceptional year for death-doom, Shores of Null still stand out for the work they’ve done.

Shores of Null on Thee Facebooks

Spikerot Records website

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The Device, Tribute Album

Tectonic sludge has become a mainstay in Polish heavy, and The Device, about whom precious little is known other than they’re very, very, very heavy when they want to be, add welcome atmospherics to the lumbering weedian procession. “Rise of the Device” begins the 47-minute Tribute Album in crushing form, but “Ritual” and the first minute or so of “BongOver” space out with droney minimalism, before the latter track — the centerpiece of the five-songer and only cut under six minutes long at 2:42 — explodes in consuming lurch. “Indica” plays out this structure again over a longer stretch, capping with birdsong and whispers and noise after quiet guitar and hypnotic, weighted riffing have played back and forth, but it’s in the 23-minute closer “Exhale” that the band finds their purpose, a live-sounding final jam picking up after a long droning stretch to finish the record with a groove that, indeed, feels like a release in the playing and the hearing. Someone’s speaking at the end but the words are obscured by echo, and to be sure, The Device have gotten their point across by then anyhow. The stark divisions between loud and quiet on Tribute Album are interesting, as well as what the band might do to cover the in-between going forward.

Galactic SmokeHouse Records on Thee Facebooks

The Device on Bandcamp

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Domo, Domonautas Vol. 2

Spanish progressive heavy psychedelic semi-instrumentalists Domo follow late-2019’s Domonautas Vol. 1 (review here) with a four-song second installment, and Domonautas Vol. 2 answers its predecessor back with the jazz-into-doom of “Avasaxa” (7:43) and the meditation in “Dolmen” (13:50) on side A, and the quick intro-to-the-intro “El Altar” (2:06) and the 15-minute “Vientohalcón” on side B, each piece working with its own sense of motion and its own feeling of progression from one movement to the next, never rushed, never overly patient, but smooth and organic in execution even in its most active or heaviest stretches. The two most extended pieces offer particular joys, but neither should one discount the quirky rhythm at the outset of “Avasaxa” or the dramatic turn it makes just before five minutes in from meandering guitar noodling to plodding riffery, if only because it sounds like Domo are having so much fun catching the listener off guard. Exactly as they should be.

Domo on Thee Facebooks

Clostridium Records website

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Early Moods, Spellbound

Doom be thy name. Or, I guess Early Moods be thy name, but doom definitely be thy game. The Los Angeles four-piece make their debut with the 26-minute Spellbound, and I suppose it’s an EP, but the raw Pentagram worship on display in the opening title-track and the Sabbath-ism that ensues flows easy and comes through with enough sincerity of purpose that if the band wanted to call it a full-length, one could hardly argue. Guitar heads will note the unbridled scorch of the solos throughout — centerpiece “Isolated” moves from one into a slow-Slayer riff that’s somehow also Candlemass, which is a feat in itself — while “Desire” rumbles with low-end distortion that calls to mind Entombed even as the vocals over top are almost pure Witchcraft. They save the most engaging melody for the finale “Living Hell,” but even that’s plenty grim and suited to its accompanying dirt-caked feel. Rough in production, but not lacking clarity, Spellbound entices and hints at things to come, but has a barebones appeal all its own as well.

Early Moods on Thee Facebooks

Dying Victims Productions website

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