Posted in Whathaveyou on February 19th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
Ignoring decades of warnings from geological experts about the earth-rending that would happen if cosmic doom titans Ufomammut and YOB were ever to share a bill, Belgium’s Obsidian Dust — which, I guess, is also a description that applies to said scenario — have confirmed YOB for their lineup for just one of the two Euro shows the Oregonian trio will play this year. The other is Desertfest Berlin, so I guess if you’re in Europe and you wanna see YOB, there you go.
YOB aren’t the only add here, though. There’s Piss (not to be confused with Mrs. Piss, mind you), countrymen instrumentalists Apex Ten, Swedish melodic psych rockers Gaupa, Lili Refrain, Earthbong, Meatdripper (who I don’t know but am ready to learn based on their name), the esteemed Fuzz Sagrado and Satanic Witch. It’s a diverse bunch, to say the least of it, and with King Buffalo, Acid King, Blackwater Holylight, Earthless, Hermano and Gnod elsewhere on the bill, there’s a lot a lot a lot to like.
The fest is a two-dayer set for May 16 and 17 in Brussels, and the info for the new adds came through social media, which is how these things happen nowadays. I believe them when they say it’s going to be awesome.
Dig it:
Yob will headline Saturday at Obsidian Dust 2026!
They’re flying in for an exclusive show, one of just two European dates in 2026.
And the dust keeps rising with a wild mix of sounds: from the hardcore punch of PISS, the psychedelic waves of GAUPA, and Lili Refrain’s hypnotic ritual, to the crushing riffs of Meatdripper and Earthbong, the stoner grooves of Fuzz Sagrado & Surya Kris Peters, Apex Ten heavy drive, and the black metal-laden mystique of Satanic Witch.
Posted in Reviews on October 3rd, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Sneaking it in on a Friday? What is this madness? Fair question. The wretched truth is that in slating this Quarterly Review — welcome, by the way — I ran into a scheduling conflict with a stream I booked for Oct. 14. I wasn’t sure how to resolve the logistics there, and 10 reviews plus a full-album stream is more than I have brainpower to write in a day, even if I do nothing else, so think of this as like the soft-launch grand opening of the Fall 2025 Quarterly Review. I’ll go all through next week and then wrap up on Monday the 15th. 70 total releases covered, 10 per day, during that time.
It’s gonna be a lot, and I’m sure as always happens there will be other things I’ll fall behind on, but to be perfectly honest with you, I could really, really stand to force myself to sit down and engage the hardcore escapism of getting lost in 70 records one after the next, so I think I might actually enjoy this this time through. Famous last words, but last time was one of my favorite QRs ever, so I’ve got momentum on my side. I’ll keep you posted as we go, and while I’m here, have a great weekend. We’ll pick up with more on Monday.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Faetooth, Labyrinthine
While being terrible for most everything else, 2025 is a good year to go dark. Faetooth do so — darker, anyhow — with their sophomore album, Labyrinthine, and find a place where doomgaze and sludgier, scream-topped distortion can meet without seeming any more incongruous than the Los Angeles trio want it them to be. The record runs a substantial 10 songs/55 minutes, and songs like “Iron Gate,” “Hole,” “White Noise,” and “Eviscerate” derive as much of their atmosphere from the band scorching the ground beneath them as from the more subdued, murky and melodic stretches. With these elements put together in a cohesive whole sound, Labyrinthine is less an aesthetic revolution than a (welcome) generational refresh to doom and sludge, with the band set on a path of progression toward an increasingly individualized stylistic take. Idiot dudes will talk shit because they’re women. Don’t listen to idiot dudes. Listen to riffs. Faetooth have plenty to get you started.
The mighty Kiel, Germany, trio — oops, they just became a four-piece; heads up — recorded Bring Your Lungs this past April while on their first-ever tour of Australia. It’s a three-song, about-35-minute live-in-studio collection, and they’ll reportedly press it to vinyl in no small part so they have copies to take with them when they return down under in 2027. I guess it went well. Bring Your Lungs leaves little question as to why as the band put themselves in line among the heaviest sons of Sleep in the suitably-half-formed oeuvre of bong metal. Even the shortest of the three, the middle cut “Wax” (7:38) lays tonal waste(d), while “Fathead” (11:17) and “Goddamn High” (15:59) bark and crush and caveman plod, hitting into a slowdown and a speedup, respectively, that convey both the plan underlying the mire and the willfully, gleefully insurmountable nature of that mire itself. They’d like to teach the world to stone. Can’t help but think it’d be better for it.
We may not have circa-2005 Genghis Tron to manifest the in-brain chaos of modern overwhelm, but Jon Weisnewski (Sandrider, Akimbo) stands ready with the extremist shenanigans industrial grind of Nuclear Dudes to pick up the slack. Following the punishing radness of 2023’s Boss Blades (review here), Weisnewski, his keyboards, a buttload of samples and guitar here collaborate with vocalist Brandon Nakamura to manifest a cacophonous stew that almost gets away with tapping into “Welcome to the Jungle” on album opener “Napalm Life” (get it?) by making it almost completely unrecognizable. Further punishment is dealt with semiautomatic fervor on “Concussion Protocol” and “Juggalos for Congress,” but the 11-track/23-minute entirety of Nuclear Dudes‘ second full-length comes across like an intentional brainema, so approach with caution and know that, if it feels right, you’re not alone.
A quick glance at the social media for Italian stoner-droner heretofore solo-project Void Sinker, and one finds that sole denizen Guglielmo Allegro is currently searching for a bassist and a drummer to fill out the lineup. Unquestionably this would be a significant change to the proceedings on the five-song/69-minute Echoes From the Deep, which plunges frontal-lobe-first into undulating waveforms and its own distorted expanse. A clear progression of notes can be heard later in closer “Andromeda” (16:21) and “Hollow” is minimalist to the point of being barely there for most of its nine minutes, but obviously a certain kind of meditative monolith is constructed from lead cut “Cetus” onward. There are no shallow dives here, and one can’t help but wonder what Allegro might have in mind for filling out these arrangements with a rhythm section. Will Void Sinker adopt more straightforward stoner-doom riffing, or is the intention to try to make this kind of drone actually convey a sense of movement? Your guess is as good as mine, but for now, the trance induced is noteworthy.
Raw oldschool doom with a punker edge permeates Hebi Katana‘s first album for Ripple Music and fourth overall, Imperfection. And the title becomes somewhat ironic, because while the implication is they’re talking about a warts-‘n’-all sound perhaps in reference to the production rawness of the seven-track/35-minute outing highlighted by cuts like “Dead Horse Requiem” and “Blood Spirit Rising,” which shuffle-pushes into and out of a pastoral midsection, as well as the finale “Yume wa Kareno,” it just about perfectly suits the material itself, and the band bring vigor to the deceptively catchy “Praise the Shadows” that, while dark in atmosphere, speaks to a dynamic that’s developed in their sound over time. That is to say, they might be a ‘new band’ to listeners outside the band’s native Japan, but Imperfection conveys their experience in craft and in its chemistry. If it wasn’t recorded live, close enough. They’re not reshaping genre, but there is perspective at work, to be sure.
That Fair and Warlike Form/Return to Dust, a two-songer full-length with each consuming about 23 minutes of a vinyl side, sure feels like a landmark, but that seems to happen when Melbourne trio Khan are involved. Here they set a sprawl matched by few in heavy progressive psychedelia as the three-piece of Josh Bills (vocals, guitar, keyboard, recording, mixing, mastering), Will Homan (bass) and Beau Heffernan (drums) enact a linear build across the massive soundscape of “That Fair and Warlike Form,” as sure in their purpose as they are defiant of the expectation that these extended pieces might just be jams. Rather, that opener and “Return to Dust” are structured pieces, and resonate emotionally as well as immerse the listener in their clear-eyed breadth. “Return to Dust” is a level of triumph not every act achieves, and “That Fair and Warlike Form” is no less impactful throughout its procession. One of the best of 2025, but less about the fleeting moment than providing a place to dwell long-term. That is to say, it’s a record that has the potential for its own cult, never mind the wider following amassed by the band.
The first Sarkh LP, Helios (review here), arrived through Worst Bassist Records in 2023 and was a purposeful adventure across genre lines, taking elements of post-rock, heavy riffing, and even aspects of black metal and more extreme ideas into a context that became its own. The shimmer at the outset of “Helios” that starts their second full-length, Heretical Bastard, speaks immediately of communion, and as the German instrumentalists have set about refining and coalescing their sound, ambience remains central to what they do regardless of how outwardly heavy a given part gets, which, in tracks like “Kanagawa” and “Glazial,” is pretty gosh darn heavy, never mind the chug that pays off “Zyklon” or the wash that culminates 11-minute capper “Cape Wrath,” though admittedly, the latter is more about push that heft. It’s movement either way, and Heretical Bastard‘s greatest heresy might just be how convincingly invisible it makes the (yes, imaginary) lines that divide one style from another. A band on their own path, forging their own sound. If you can’t respect that, it’s your loss.
Eight years on from their well-received 2017 debut, Take Me to the Gallows, Chicagoan classic doom metallers Professor Emeritus reach pointedly into the epic with A Land Long Gone, their second record. The band’s traditionalism of form means there’s something inherently familiar about the proceedings, and certainly they’re not the only ones with an affinity for ’80s metal of various stripes these days, but in addition to being distinguished by the forward-mixed vocals of Esteban Julian Pena, the sheer weight of “Pragmatic Occlusion” and “Defeater” and the crescendo of “Kalopsia Caves” sets well alongside the graceful flow of “Zosimos” or the later, partly-acoustic “Hubris,” portraying the dynamic and sense of character brought into the material. Like Philly’s Crypt Sermon, they’re not pretending the intervening decades didn’t happen — you wouldn’t call A Land Long Gone retro, I mean — but their collective heart clearly bleeds for the classics just the same; Trouble, Candlemass, Iron Maiden. If that’s your speed, their blend of chug and soar should hit just right.
Florist know what they’re here for, and as they push through the let’s-start-with-the-universe’s-frequency “432Hz” into the modern, cavernous, riffage and nod of “Another Moon,” my brain sings a hearty fuck yes. They pack 29 minutes of rad into Adrift, their sophomore, six-songer LP, and while they’re not shy about lumber in “Grow” and the closer “Adrift (Part B),” that’s only one end of a style that’s able to move with marked fluidity across a range of tempos that, with a vibrant production, fullness of tone and hard-hit drums shoving it all, make for a refreshing take on what are unrepentantly familiar ideas. That is to say, there’s no pretense in Florist. Volume worship, riff worship, whatever you want to call it, it matters so little when the band are bashing away at “Out of Space” and hell’s bells it’s actually fun. Like, real life fun. The kind you might have with friends in a crowded room with the band on stage killing it through a set likewise heavy and intense but unashamed of the good time it’s having. Also giving, as one might a gift.
Ohio’s Paul Williams has released three ‘audio travelogues’ of the Blue Ridge Highway, with the Moog-only Under Blue Ridge Skies preceded directly by A Blue Ridge Spaceway and Our Grandfather the Mountain earlier this year. Maybe you have, and if so, that’s awesome, but to my knowledge I’ve never been on the Blue Ridge Highway, so I can’t necessarily speak to how the droney “Ghost Over a Pointed Top” or the kraut-style blips and bloops of “See Mount Mitchell” correlate to the experience of driving it. I’ll soak my ignorance in the keyboardy melancholia of “A Carolina Elegy,” which closes with evocations of past storms and forebodes of those still to come. Likewise, I’m not sure what the title “Abbott’s Fantasia” is a reference to, if anything at all, but you don’t get much more dug in than entire compositions played out on various layered, hyper-specific, probably-vintage-and-expensive-to-repair synthesizers, and it’s a kind of nerdery for which I’m very much on board.
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 27th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
This week, on Jan. 31, Kiel, Germany’s Earthbong will take part in Sloth-Fest in Erfurt, and I’ve seen them confirmed for Blue Moon Festival in July as well, so no, the April dates below and the prior stop the bong metal three-piece will make in Iceland for ReykjaDoom 2025 aren’t the sum-total of their current and upcoming live plans. And yes, I’m well aware these shows were posted in November. I know.
As to why they’re here again, well, on the most basic level, it’s killer that a band like Earthbong, who are on the more extreme end of a heavy aesthetic and about as dug in as you get to longform, weighted, generally pretty slow riffs, are undertaking something like scooting to the other side of the planet just days after swinging through Iceland and doing a round of shows. If you get to see them in whatever part of the world, that’s awesome. But it’s also probably a landmark for the band members themselves, like, as human beings. I know I’d mark something like this down as a ‘life event,’ anyhow, and I don’t think that’s any less valid because I do the same for grocery shopping.
Album this year? Didn’t I hear something about that? I can never remember, so put it down as a maybe. Don’t worry though. If one happens, you’ll hear it coming long before it actually gets here.
Tour dates and the ReykjaDoom poster. You could see Earthbong and Ufomammut on the same day if you live right:
ReykjaDoom 2025 takes place from April 4-5 at Gaukurinn Reykjavik and the australia tour dates are:
April 11 Geelong The Vault April 12 Adelaide Crown & Anchor April 17 Wollongong La La La’s April 18 Canberra Pot Belly April 19 Stoned To Death Fest Sydney April 24 Melbourne Gaso April 26 SunBurn 6 Festival Frankston
Tour artwork by Nils Sackewitz
Earthbong is: Mersel (Selly) Nuhiji: bass + vocals Claas (Ogo) Ogorek: guitar Thomas (Tommy) Handschick: drums
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 12th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
German bong/tone worshipers Earthbong will travel to Australia to tour next April. They’ll be in the company of Oz natives Lucifungus for the going, and the run will encompass seven shows across 15 days, assuring that there’s due travel time and maybe even room for a bit of exist-in-a-place instead of the usual show-up-and-wait-for-the-show. In any case, it’s the trip of a lifetime for a band, and Earthbong will go supporting last year’s Church of Bong (review here), which was released through Black Farm Records and Evil Noise Recordings. I don’t know any of these places — can’t help but note the Sydney stop shares its name with the venerable OG German heavyfest Stoned From the Underground — but I know that if you get the chance to go to Australia, you go. Maybe it’s less of a thing from Europe, but from my view it’s awesome that Earthbong get to do this at all. If I was in a band and we toured Australia, I’d have a hard time ever thinking of the project as less than successful again. It’s that kind of thing.
Lucifungus released their Lucifungus 4 album last year and are also signed to Black Farm. The shows are sure to be very, very heavy and correspondingly dank. Australia’s reputation for hospitality means I don’t feel like I need to remind anyone to give welcome to a traveling underground band, but if you’re in the path, I can only urge you to consider it as a way to obliterate a night.
From socials:
Bonglings! We still can’t believe that it’s happening but it is happening: We’re touring Australia in April 2025 with our BLACK FARM Records labelmates Lucifungus!
GET READY GET DOOMED
Apr 11 Geelong The Vault Apr 12 Adelaide Crown & Anchor Apr 17 Wollongong La La La’s Apr 18 Canberra Pot Belly Apr 19 Sydney Stoned From the Underground Apr 24 Melbourne Gaso Apr 26 Frankston SunBurn6
Tour artwork by Nils Sackewitz
Earthbong is: Mersel (Selly) Nuhiji: bass + vocals Claas (Ogo) Ogorek: guitar Thomas (Tommy) Handschick: drums
Legend has it that among the peoples of the Weedia there is a technique known as the ‘earthbong’ whereby a young one coming of age ascends to the top of Trichome Mountain, presents the sacred terpene relics to the goddess, and learns how to get high off the very air itself. Science calls it a ‘breathing technique,’ but you, me and the Weedia know it’s fucking magic, no question.
Kiel, Germany’s Earthbong made their full-length debut in 2018 with the hour-long One Earth One Bong — the title perhaps suggesting that all bongs are a part of the greater Earthbong, connected somehow by cannabinoid quantum entanglement — comprising four songs that have become among the defining releases for a niche known as bong metal. Repetitive, usually longform riffing, a doomed, sludgy cast, roaring vocals and more tonal heft than a Trichome Mountain avalanche; these are some of the characteristics on offer born out of the sludge wrought by the likes of Weedeater or Bongzilla, Bongripper, of course Sleep‘s Dopesmoker LP, Sabbath, Electric Wizard, and so forth. But through the work of Earthbong and acolytes of their ilk — arguable forerunners Belzebong, as well as Bongfoot, Bonginator, BongBongBeerWizards, among others — a microgenre has grown where once there was only hyperweedism and a lot of volume. Magic again, I know.
The consuming, duly musty-smelling 62 minutes of One Earth One Bong are a masterclass in aural dankness presented over four obviously extended pieces: “Drop Dead” (17:47), “Maze Crawler” (13:39), “Stash” (14:58) and “Gathering” (16:29), and in true punk rock fashion, the music invites the listener to take it more seriously than it seems to take itself. Even the fast parts are slow, and as the opener and longest track (immediate points) looks to make its first statement, the band six years ago following up on their Demo 2018 (review here) that offered proof-of-concept and included a shorter version of “Drop Dead,” indeed it’s a bong hit. They leave little doubt this sample was recorded organically in the as-yet-mellow lumber takes hold to establish the riff for a few minutes before they hit it full-volume. First the trance, then the tonal roundhouse kick to the head. Classic stuff.
Outwardly, the impression is raw. Even after “Drop Dead” clicks on its fuck-you pedal and begins the churn in earnest, Earthbong maintain the march as the first vocal bellows arrive, circa eight minutes in. “Maze Crawler” is a few minutes shorter and more active in the early going, topped with a harsher scream in alongside the lower gutturalism, but part of what “Drop Dead” is doing at the start of the record — aside from taking rips — is setting the mood, and the patience with which it does so is an essential element of the proceedings that follow. The arrangements are straightforward — guitar, bass, drums, nasty vocals, some samples — and while not without dynamic, the manner in which the songs hammer home their parts and ride the slow grooves they conjure is essential to what works so well throughout One Earth One Bong. It wouldn’t work if each song had 15 parts and jumped from one to the next in proggy style. Even as “Maze Crawler” layers its solo as it nods past the midsection and deeper into the second half, the vibe stays thick, plodding and mellow.
This of course builds to a roaring payoff, righteously punctuated by crash and pummeling noisily before the droning comedown that leads into the single note of guitar and declarative drumming that open “Stash.” Like most of what surrounds, it’s mostly instrumental — if they were yelling for all 15 minutes of the song, it would be a lot, mind you — but throaty shouts appear early before being subsumed into the undulating riff. There are ebbs and flows as the penultimate plodder oozes along, a quiet stretch in the middle before a resurgence no less satisfyingly awesome for being completely expected uses first a solo and then extra-biting vocals to convey a crescendo, bringing to light — such as it is light at all — the dynamic happening throughout One Earth One Bong.
It’s a strength that, given the extremity on display throughout and the general beat-you-over-the-head-with-this-riff nature of the work as a whole, I’m not sure it would be appropriate to call subtle, but at very least it’s not something they’re consciously playing toward — dynamics, that is — but the trio manage to convey the album as a singular construction without actually being the same thing for an hour. Consistency of tone and general atmospheric disposition around the brutalist impulse are of course part of what draws the material together — and the songs to a degree are supposed to be alike — but Earthbong‘s triumph is reaped through sounding monolithic without monotony, and there’s more flexibility in One Earth One Bong than one might at first realize as the band buries the listener’s head in dirt-coated distortion.
Closer “Gathering” bookends with “Drop Dead” and unfolds over two central movements, the first built to a head across the first seven minutes that comes through like High on Fire played at half-speed. This devolves by the time they reach the eight-minute mark into feedback that’s the better part of caustic, and there are a few seconds there where it seems like they’re just going to let it go for the entire second half of the song, but, somewhat mercifully, the guitar turns around to introduce another procession, creeping at the beginning of One Earth One Bong‘s last build and rising, gradually, into a Sabbathian celebration of roll that is massive, cavernous, and basking in stoner metal glory. More feedback ends it, but by then it might as well be church organs singing the praises of addled bliss.
The warriors of Weedia would be proud.
I suppose there’s room to quibble about genre at this point, where the divide between stoner metal and bong metal is, if one exists at all, but somehow that feels like missing the point. If it’s solely about generational turnover — and I’m not convinced it is, but one could argue that; my counterpoint is that two generations of stoner-everything tried to get away from being tagged as ‘stoner’; this revels in it while drawing influence from multiple sides of stoner rock, stoner metal, doom and sludge — then fine, but One Earth One Bong casts its depths as a line in the sand between those who can get on board and everyone else, with the latter probably a much higher percentage than the former. Not for everyone? Yeah, that’s the idea, chief.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
—
It wasn’t my intention when I mapped out today’s posts that all the subjects covered would be German — that’s Deaf Lizard, Mount Hush, Earthbong and Desertfest Berlin — but I got there either way. Sometimes it happens that a day is all-American bands or all-European. I’m sure this isn’t the first time that all-German has happened, and I’m pretty sure I’ve done all-Swedish and all-UK at some point in the last decade and a half, even if I can’t recall the specific instance. I post a lot of stuff. Sometimes these things just happen.
Speaking of posting a lot of stuff, as I reminded the always-a-little-sad-about-it The Patient Mrs. just a while ago, the next two weeks — and maybe the Monday after; I have to see how it goes — will be the Fall Quarterly Review. 100 releases covered, at least. I thought about breaking it up over a month or so, doing a week here, a week there — that happened in Spring and it wasn’t the worst thing ever, but I’ve got more going on in October than that can accommodate, my original plan had been to do the QR in early September — the start of school made that significantly less realistic — and I’m doubled up for a couple days in there as it is. It needs to be done, so it will, and the next two weeks is how it’s being done.
The Pecan had off from school yesterday for Rosh Hashanah — happy new year if you were celebrating — and The Patient Mrs. didn’t, so she and I had pretty much the whole day together while her mom worked. We hit the playground in the morning and the library after, then came home and she continued with a knockoff-Lego my mother brought her the other night that she’s been working on the last few days — the instructions aren’t as good on the cheap ones, so it turns out to be a little more of a challenge; we got her the $300 Lego Deku Tree set, because Zelda, which has like 2,500 pieces and is recommended for 18+ and she finished it in two days — and I got the Sonolith review done in time to post the premiere before the album actually came out today and she got a bath before going back to school today, which was very much needed, so I’ll call the day an unmitigated win. We had a nice time.
Zelda is a big one in the house right now. We did Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom all together, family-style, and now she’s watching Zelda-theory videos on YouTube and has played A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, The Minish Cap (which I finished last week and is fun), the Link’s Awakening Switch remake and The Wind Waker (which I just put on my phone; it lags a bit but not too badly) to one level or another, and in addition to all that, we’ve read through the Hyrule Historia, the Zelda Encyclopedia and the strategy guides for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom more times than I can count. One of those you’re-a-fan-of-this-thing-so-here’s-content-about-it specialty magazines came out around the release last week of Echoes of Wisdom — where you get to be Zelda herself for the first time (on a console; there was a PC game in the ’90s which I know about from… wait for it… reading a shit-ton about the series) — and we’ve read through that and we’re playing through the new game as well, though admittedly, that’s mostly her holding the controller until a boss fight, when she gives it to me, or a puzzle, when she gives it to her mother and then yells at her to do it right the first time. Turns out Zelda is some high-stakes shit when you’re six going on seven. Did I mention we’re putting together a giant birthday party for the 19th? Should make that second week of the Quarterly Review even more fun.
This weekend is a different birthday party (not hers) and then Sunday work on the QR and recovery from the day before. These things take a lot out of everybody, her not the least of all, so might try to get some movement in early in the day and then chill out. She’s best if you can get her out in the AM, but her sensory needs and her movement needs are so high — you should’ve seen her in the fastest spinny thing at the playground yesterday; I would have vomited and then died, even at her age — as she embodies the ADHD diagnosis questionnaire’s line about “Driven, as if by a motor” so much that some day I tell her to get it tattooed on her person, that she can’t really even out if she doesn’t get over that hurdle. School knows it too; it’s why she has the wobble-chair written into her 504 education plan. Between this and meds, she is thriving in Hyrule as well as actual reality. Some days it’s harder to see that in the big picture, but it’s true nonetheless. She’ll be a weirdo forever though, and she comes by it honestly enough.
I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Have fun out there, whatever you’re up to, and don’t forget to hydrate as we move into Fall. This month the leaves in New Jersey start change, and I’m looking forward to that, not the least because it will probably start right around the time the QR is done. Ha. In any case, thanks again for reading.
German megasludgers Earthbong are set to issue their third album, Church of Bong, Aug. 25 on tape via Evil Noise Recordings, with Black Farm Records vinyl to follow shortly thereafter. The Kiel-based three-piece issued their Proceed as One EP earlier this year, and have been basking in dense, low, 100MG-per-gummy riffing since their first demo in 2018 (review here), plunging deeper into resinous muck with their 2018 debut album, One Earth One Bong, and 2020’s Bong Rites (review here), the abiding idolatry amid all the rumble and semi-caustic noise being directed to the ultra-dug-in heavy likes of Bongzilla and a tonal attack that should remind of Conan, volume begetting volume in duly excessive proportion. Riffs piled on riffs piled on you, that kind of thing.
Church of Bong — perhaps a play on Belgian post-metallers Amenra‘s self-proclaimed ‘church of Ra?’; part of me hopes so — is two tracks and 39 minutes long, which considering the first two records both topped an hour feels like a direct choice of a single LP format. With it, the three-piece of bassist/vocalist Mersel “Selly” Nuhiji, guitarist Claas “Ogo” Ogorek and drummer Tommy Handschick offer the on-theme “Bong Aeterna” (18:59) and “Dies Bongrae” (20:36; video premiering below) as respective A and B sides, putting ars gratia artis to a test against purposefully wretched tectonic largesse. “Smoke weed until you fucking die,” chants the second cut in repetitions as the back half unfolds, answering the destructive lurch of its predecessor with a likeminded swallowing-whole vibe, even if for being so cannabinoid Earthbong don’t forget to make friends with some fungus either. The doom of shroom, perhaps, sneaking its way into the band’s sonic lair, which one imagines as a cavern filled with grow lights, meticulously arranged rows of pointy leaves sticking into the makeshift aisles; no pesticides, no actual sunlight, and life blossoming just the same. Chlorophyll is some magical shit.
And on the walls of that cavern, a lysergic fungus grows that manifests itself fluidly in both “Bong Aeterna” and “Dies Bongrae.” Look. I know there’s a whole league of bands around with ‘bong’ in their name, and for-stoner-by-stoner riff worship isn’t necessarily new, but if you let Earthbong go as a result of prejudice against either, you miss out. Not just on the onslaught. Building off of where they were Bong Rites, Nuhiji, Ogorek and Handschick bring a jammy chemistry to the procession of Church of Bong, resulting in pieces that are laid back even as they seem to be gnashing very large and monstrously sharp teeth. “Bong Aeterna,” after about seven minutes of extreme sludge lumber and death-stench zombie march, uses feedback and downwardly cascading tom hits to shift smoothly and gradually into a bassy exploration that still holds some residual threat — make no mistake, they come back huge after the 12-minute mark — but is much more subdued in its actual form, ambient guitar flourish joining the rhythm section’s steady flow.
If you’ve already been hypnotized or made swollen to the point of numbness by the first section of the song, it would be easy to miss, but that relatively brief jam is a part of the growth that Earthbong have undertaken over the last half-decade. In an aesthetic — they call it ‘bong metal,’ which I guess is fair enough; you could go with ‘bong doom’ to emphasize the riffs, but that’s splitting hairs — that seems to tout willful regression among its tenets in fostering big riffs played loudly, shouted over if possible and glacial in tempo, such divergence is notable, and “Dies Bongrae” follows suit structurally, fading in on biting feedback for its first minute before even thinking about introducing a riff, plunging into an abyss of sludgy nod and periodic bellowing. There are definitely lyrics to “Dies Bongrae” beyond the above-noted “Smoke weed till you fucking die,” but the last time that line is delivered as the song moves past its own 12th minute is especially punishing with an additional layer of shout joining the rasping growl. The turn happens there, and the included jam feels daringly mellow before it builds to layers of psych-tinged guitar shred, comes back screaming and giant-sloths its way to a sensory overload of a finish, feedback, soloing, throatrippers, crash, the whole deal. It’s like Earthbong decided to finish Church of Bong by razing the building, and maybe that’s the right idea.
With monolithic realization, Earthbong stand astride their third record with a sure notion of themselves as a group and a sense of spontaneity if not improvisation that complements the ur-stone doom revelry. The trio performed “Dies Bongrae” (a somewhat shorter version at just under 17 minutes) in January for a livestream event, and you can see the result premiering below. In a word, you would call it ‘heavy.’
Please enjoy:
Earthbong, “Dies Bongrae” video premiere
Earthbong on “Dies Bongrae”:
Dies Bongrae is the second song of our new album Church Of Bong. The title is a bongification of the roman rite requiem dies irae (day of wrath), which is also cited musically in the middle of the song. The message of the song is this: SMOKE WEED UNTIL YOU FUCKING DIE!
The live video is part of a video live session that was recorded on January 14th 2023 in Lübeck as a part of the localconcerts.stream-project.
ONE EARTH ONE BONG
Dies Bongrae is the second song of Earthbong’s new album CHURCH OF BONG that will be out on August 25th 2023 through Black Farm Records and Evil Noise Recordings.
Church Of Bong was written over the course of the past three years. The final form of the album was recorded live at Dickfehler Studio / East Frisia in August 2022 by Hanno Janssen and Johnny Röhl. The cover artwork was once again made by Rino Pelli who is the artist behind all album covers of the band. The album will be released on vinyl through Black Farm Records (France) and tape through Evil Noise Recordings (Norway).
Digital and tape release is set for August 25th 2023. On this day pre-order for the vinyl edition starts, too. Vinyl release of Church Of Bong is scheduled for November 2023.
A repress of their sold-out 2nd album Bong Rites and a vinyl release of their first album One Earth One Bong which was only released on tape so far are both scheduled for November 2023, too. Both albums will be released as double LP through Black Farm Records.
Earthbong is: Mersel (Selly) Nuhiji: bass + vocals Claas (Ogo) Ogorek: guitar Thomas (Tommy) Handschick: drums
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 30th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
The sadly-usual caveats that apply to everything circa 2021 — announcements, life, etc. — are of course in play here. Is DoomFarmFest 2021 going to happen? Well, I’m no viral expert — and that should probably be the end of the sentence, but it’s not — but it seems to me the fact that it’s in a barn, which is presumably a pretty well ventilated area, plus the fact that it’s in a kind of remote locale, means that you’ve got a likelier chance than something in a major urban center that’s perhaps about to come under lockdown scrutiny again. That doesn’t mean DoomFarmFest will, or can, or should be anything less than diligent in observing any and all local, national, international and — let’s face it — reasonable restrictions, I’m just saying we don’t know what those might be by the time the end of next month comes. Or next week, for that matter.
And anyway, if you’re getting either your information or your opinions on such things from my ass, shame on you.
But as I’ve said once or twice at this point, I’m choosing to err on the side of positivity. If that makes dumb in the face of cynicism-as-intelligence, then fine. I’ll be dumb.
2 days packed with concerts from dusk till dawn. Come join the harvest of the DOOMFARM in the wastelands of Brandenburg. The stage is in a huge barn on a ancient farm outside of Putlitz, Brandenburg.
After a season of enjoying riffs with our online eventson DoomFarmTV, the time of harvest has come to the farm of doom. 12 bands bringing you doom, psychedelic, black metal funeral doom, post-metal, stoner, sludge, bloodthirsty metal, dope doom bong metal, that will be a feast to your ears.
Fuzzy fields and distorted cows roam stoned through the meadows. After months of silence, our Post quarantined needy ears will rejoice to the drone of heavy riffs and growls through the night.
Free camping & shower. Food and bar will be there! We will be following all current and local hygiene requirements. To ensure the health of our crew and guests Everyone MUST bring a Negative test result or proof of vaccination, or convalescence. Stay doomed! Stay healthy!
Well, I’m starting an hour later than I did yesterday, so that’s maybe not the most encouraging beginning I could think of, but screw it, I’m here, got music on, got fingers on keys, so I guess we’re underway. Yesterday was remarkably easy, even by Quarterly Review standards. I’ve been doing this long enough at this point — five-plus years — that I approach it with a reasonable amount of confidence it’ll get done barring some unforeseen disaster.
But yesterday was a breeze. What does today hold? In the words of Mrs. Wagner from fourth grade homeroom, “see me after.”
Ready, set, go.
Quarterly Review #11-20:
Horisont, Sudden Death
With a hefty dose of piano up front and keys throughout, Gothenburg traditionalist heavy rockers Horisont push retro-ism into full-on arena status. Moving past some of the sci-fi aspects of 2017’s About Time, Sudden Death comprises 13 tracks and an hour’s runtime, so rest assured, there’s room for everything, including the sax on “Into the Night,” the circa-’77 rock drama in the midsection of the eight-minute “Archeopteryx in Flight,” and the comparatively straightforward seeming bounce of “Sail On.” With cocaine-era production style, Sudden Death is beyond the earlier-’70s vintage mindset of the band’s earliest work, and songs like “Standing Here” and the penultimate proto-metaller “Reign of Madness” stake a claim on the later era, but the post-Queen melody of “Revolution” at the outset and the acoustic swing in “Free Riding” that follows set a lighthearted tone, and as always seems to be the case with Horisont, there’s nothing that comes across as more important than the songwriting.
Scourge of the seven seas that German nautically-themed funeral doomers Ahab are, Live Prey is their first live album and it finds them some five years removed from their last studio LP, The Boats of the Glen Carrig (review here). For a band who in the past has worked at a steady three-year pace, maybe it was time for something, anything to make its way to public ears. Fair enough, and in five tracks and 63 minutes, Live Prey spans all the way back to 2006’s Call of the Wretched Sea with “Ahab’s Oath” and presents all but two of that debut’s songs, beginning with the trilogy “Below the Sun,” “The Pacific” and “Old Thunder” and switching the order of “Ahab’s Oath” and “The Hunt” from how they originally appeared on the first record to end with the foreboding sounds of waves rolling accompanied by minimal keyboards. It’s massively heavy, of course — so was Call of the Wretched Sea — and whatever their reason for not including any other album’s material, at least they’ve included anything.
Let’s assume the title High Protein might refer to the fact that Dutch/Belgian power trio Rrrags have ‘trimmed the fat’ from the eight songs that comprise their 33-minute sophomore LP. It’s easy enough to believe listening to a cut like “Messin'” or the subsequent “Sad Sanity,” which between the two of them are about as long as the 5:14 opener “The Fridge” just before. But while High Protein has movers and groovers galore in those tracks and the fuzzier “Sugarcube” — the tone of which might remind that guitarist Ron Van Herpen is in Astrosoniq — the stomping “Demons Dancing” and the strutter “Hellfire,” there’s live-Deep–Purple-style breadth on the eight-minute “Dark is the Day” and closer “Window” bookends “The Fridge” in length while mellowing out and giving drummer/vocalist Rob Martin a rest (he’s earned it by then) while bassist Rob Zim and Van Herpen carry the finale. If thinking of it as a sleeper hit helps you get on board, so be it, but Rrrags‘ second album is of unmitigated class and straight-up killer performance. It is not one to be overlooked.
There’s stoner roll and doomed crash in “New Body,” drone-laced spoken-word experimentalism in “Blood and Butter,” and post-punk angular whathaveyou as “Halloween Bolson” plays out its nine-minute stretch, but Viscerals — the third or fourth Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs album, depending on what you count — seems to be at its most satisfying in blowout freak-psych moments like opener “Reducer” and “Rubbernecker,” which follows, while the kinda-metal of “World Crust”‘s central riff stumbles willfully and teases coming apart before circling back, and “Crazy in Blood” and closer “Hell’s Teeth” are more straight-up heavy rock. It’s a fairly wide arc the UK outfit spread from one end of the record to the other — and they’re brash enough to pull it off, to be sure — but with the hype machine so fervently behind them, I have a hard time knowing whether I’m actually just left flat by the record itself or all the hyperbole-set-on-fire that’s surrounded the band for the last couple years. Viscerals gets to the heart of the matter, sure enough, but then what?
Kiel, Germany’s Earthbong answer the stoner-sludge extremity of their 2018 debut, One Earth One Bong (review here), with, well, more stoner-sludge extremity. What, you thought they’d go prog? Forget it. You get three songs. Opener “Goddamn High” and “Weedcult Today” top 15 minutes each, and closer “Monk’s Blood” hits half an hour. Do the quick math yourself on that and you’ll understand just how much Earthbong have been looking forward to bashing you over the head with riffs. “Weedcult Today” is more agonizingly slow than “Goddamn High,” at least at the beginning, but it builds up and rolls into a pace that, come to think of it, is still probably slower than most, and of course “Monk’s Blood” is an epic undertaking right up to its last five minutes of noise. It could’ve been an album on its own. But seriously, if you think Earthbong give a shit, you’re way off base. This is tone, riff and weed worship and everything else is at best a secondary concern. Spend an hour at mass and see if you don’t come out converted.
No doubt that at some future time shortly after the entire world has moved on from the COVID-19 pandemic, there will be a glut of releases comprised of material written during the lockdown. Peruvian four-piece Rito Verdugo are ahead of the game, then, with their Post-Primatus four-song EP. Issued digitally as the name-your-price follow-up to their also-name-your-price 2018 debut, Cosmos, it sets a 14-minute run from its shortest cut to its longest, shifting from the trippy “Misterio” into fuzz rockers “Monte Gorila” (which distills Earthless vibes to just over three minutes) and “Lo Subnormal” en route to the rawer garage psychedelia of “Inhumación,” which replaces its vocals with stretches of lead guitar that do more than just fill the spaces verses might otherwise be and instead add to the breadth of the release as a whole. Safe to assume Rito Verdugo didn’t plan on spending any amount of time this year staying home to avoid getting a plague, but at least they were able to use the time productively to give listeners a quick sample of where they’re at sound-wise coming off the first album. Whenever and however it shows up, I’ll look forward to what they do next.
Signed to Cruz Del Sur Music as part of that label’s expanding foray into traditionalist doom (see also: Pale Divine, The Wizar’d, Apostle of Solitude, etc.), Dublin’s Death the Leveller present an emotionally driven four tracks on their 38-minute label debut, the counterintuitively titled II. Listed as their first full-length, it’s about the same length as their debut “EP,” 2017’s I, but more important is the comfort and patience the band shows with working in longer-form material, opener “The Hunt Eternal,” “The Golden Bough” and closer “The Crossing” making an impression at over nine minutes apiece — “The Golden Bough” tops 12 — while “So They May Face the Sun” runs a mere 7:37 and is perhaps the most unhurried of the bunch, playing out with a cinematic sweep of guitar melody and another showcase for the significant presence of frontman Denis Dowling, who’s high in the mix at times but earns that forward position with a suitably standout performance across the record’s span.
It isn’t surprising to learn that the members of Fall River, Massachusetts, five-piece Marrowfields come from something of an array of underground styles, some of them pushing into more extreme terrain, because the five songs of their debut full-length, Metamorphoses, do likewise. With founding guitarist/main-songwriter Brandon Green at the helm as producer as well, there’s a suitably inward-looking feel to the material, but coinciding with its rich atmospheres are flashes of blastbeats, death metal chug, double-kick and backing growls behind the cleaner melodic vocals that keep Marrowfields distinct from entirely traditionalist doom. It is a niche into which they fit well on this first long-player, and across the five songs/52 minutes of Metamorphoses, they indeed shapeshift between genre elements in order to best serve the purposes of the material, calling to mind Argus in the progressive early stretch of centerpiece “Birth of the Liberator” while tapping Paradise Lost chug and ambience before the blasts kick in on closer “Dragged to the World Below.” Will be interesting to see which way their — or Green‘s, as it were — focus ultimately lies, but there isn’t one aesthetic nuance misused here.
Dätcha Mandala present a strong opening salvo of rockers on Hara, their second album for MRS Red Sound, before turning over to all-out tambourine-and-harp blues on “Missing Blues.” From there, they could go basically anywhere they want, and they do, leading with piano on “Morning Song,” doing wrist-cramp-chug-into-disco-hop in “Sick Machine” and meeting hand-percussion with space rocking vibes on “Moha.” They’ve already come a long way from the somewhat misleading ’70s heavy of opener “Stick it Out,” “Mother God” and “Who You Are,” but the sonic turns that continue with the harder-edged “Eht Bup,” the ’70s balladry of “Tit’s,” an unabashed bit o’ twang on “On the Road” and full-on fuzz into a noise freakout on closer “Pavot.” Just what the hell is going on with Hara? Anything Dätcha Mandala so desire, it would seem. They have the energy to back it up, but if you see them labeled as any one microgenre or another, keep in mind that inevitably that’s only part of the story and the whole thing is much weirder than they might be letting on. No complaints with that.
If you’ve got voices in your band that can harmonize like guitarists James Draper, Shane Linfoot and Mike Zoias, I’m not entirely sure what would lead you to start your debut record with a four-minute instrumental, but one way or another, Sydney, Australia’s Numidia — completed by bassist/keyboardist Alex Raffaelli and drummer Nathan McMahon — find worthy manners in which to spend their time. Their first collection takes an exploratory approach to progressive heavy rock, seeming to feel its way through components strung together effectively while staying centered around the guitars. Yes, three of them. Psychedelia plays a strong role in later pieces “Red Hymn” and the folky “Te Waka,” but if the eponymous “Numidia” is a mission statement on the part of the five-piece, it’s one cast in a prog mentality pushed forward with poise to suit. Side A capper “A Million Martyrs” would seem to draw the different sides together, but it’s no minor task for it to do so, and there’s little sign in these songs that Numidia won’t grow more expansive as time goes on.
