After celebrating the fifth anniversary edition in 2023, German festival Hoflärm has made known the first round of acts confirmed for its three-day stretch from Aug. 8-10. If you’re paying attention — and I know you are — that’s the same weekend that SonicBlast Fest is happening in Portugal, and Brant Bjork Trio, Wine Lips, Sacri Monti, Home Front and Poison Ruin are confirmed for that as well, so there’s going to be some driving happening that weekend across Western Europe, to be sure. Nonetheless, the initial lineup reveal for Hoflärm finds the German fest welcoming Slomatics and Siena Root in addition to the above, and from this we can glean that Brooklyn’s Castle Rat will be taking their theatrical show abroad supporting their to-be-released debut LP, and Bikini Beach, Thronehammer and Tornet round out. If this was it — and as the poster tells you, it isn’t — you’d call it three days well spent. Or I would, anyhow.

From social media:

HOFLÄRM – First Band Announcement – THE RIDE IS ALWAYS LOW

Join us 2024 for the 6th stony ride to Hoflärm! We are very happy to announce the first bands of the line-up today! We also announce the start of the presale by 01.01.2024 at 6 pm (link in bio)!

Get ready for our first Headliner @winelipsband !

Coming all the way from Canada, Wine Lips will tear down the stage with a big Mushroom Death Sex Bummer Party of their current album! If you know, you know!

Needles to say, @brant_bjork is a legend. Therefore we felt very honoured to welcome Brant, @mariolalli and Ryan Gut for the second time to the unholy woods of mary valley! Back at Hoflärm 2022 these guys visited with Stöner, in 2024 they will hit Hoflärm with a special Brant Björk set!

You wanted something new, you get something new! @poisonruin and @arewenothomefront will test you apart with their fresh sound! Poison ruin will deliver you some Infest the Rats‘Nest Vibes, while Home Front brings you the energy with their influences by Joy Division, High Vis and late 80s Post Punk.

We welcome @siena root, @slomatics and @sacri_monti_band ! These three bands are the holy trio of stoner, psych and doom!

What would be a Hoflärm Fest without our dearest Friends Sabine, Jan and Andre ? This year they will come to perform with @earthship_official

Castle Rat will be for the first time in Europe! They just played Desertfest New York with their Electric Wizard inspired Doom!

To complete this announcement we welcome @thronehammer.official , @bikini_beach_fuzz & @tornet_xvi !

Tickets go on sale by 01.01.2024 18:00 cet.

https://www.facebook.com/Hofcafe.Hoflaerm
https://instagram.com/hoflaerm/
https://www.hoflaerm.de/

Sacri Monti, Live at Sonic Whip 2022 (2023)

Goodness gracious. Desertfest Belgium 2016 continues to up its stakes. I don’t know if this is the final lineup announcement, but Graveyard would definitely seem to be the final of the three headliners — they join Red Fang and Goat in doing the honors — and the Swedish retro rock trailblazers top a whole list of new lineup additions, from native Belgian groups like Moaning Cities and Dorre to UK psychedelic classicists Purson. If this is the end of Desertfest Belgium’s lineup — if it’s actually complete at this point — it’s already an impressively packed bill, but I’m not at all convinced the fest doesn’t have more tricks up its sleeve. Guess we’ll see as we get closer to October.

From the PR wire:

GRAVEYARD is the last headliner at DESERTFEST ANTWERP 2016

So here it is – the last headliner announcement! We’re relieved to finally reveal that the mighty GRAVEYARD will be headlining the 2016 edition of Desertfest Antwerp.
Joining them we have the last few names to complete the line-up: the proggy witchcraft of Purson, the equally mysterious Josefin Öhrn and the sludgers from Berlin, Earth Ship. We’re also proud to welcome Belgian sleaze legends La Muerte to our stage, as well as some Belgian heavy mainstays Toxic Shock and Moaning Cities. Finally, local young talent Black Mirrors and Dorre will get a chance to prove themselves on the Desertfest Stage.

Unfortunately, there’s also some bad news with the good: John Garcia has cancelled his European fall tour for personal reasons and will not be performing at the festival.

So now that’s it, get running for the earlybird priced tickets because in about a week, we will announce day tickets and prices will raise to regular!

GRAVEYARD

The unique psychedelic metal of Graveyard is rooted in the 70s heydays of Led Zep and Sabbath, but the success of Gothenburg’s hard rocking quartet lies in the timeless quality they bring to their riffage. We feel honoured and blessed that their steady climb through the Ranks of Rock’n’Roll now brings them to the Desertfest stage as a headliner.

PURSON

Rosalie Cunningham describes her band as “vaudeville carny psych”. Weaving together influences ranging from Cream to Deep Purple to Jethro Tull, Purson serves up a quasi-mystical pastiche of psychedelic wonder made up of fuzzed-out guitars and Wurlitzer organs. In 2016, the band released their sophomore outing, Desire’s Magic Theatre to much acclaim.

JOSEFIN ÖHRN

Josefin Öhrn and The Liberation combine a retro-chic pop sensibility with 60s psychedelia and krautrock, creating a heady mix that is all their own. The focal point is the enchanting Josefin, who radiates the aura of a lurking spirit, playfully coaxing the listener to embrace a deeper plane of consciousness.

EARTH SHIP

Behold the power of the riff in all shapes and sizes! It would be a serious understatement to simply lump Earth Ship in with the rest of the sludge rock genre. On their recent release ‘Hollowed’, these Berlins once more gracefully tackle the soft yet stronger dynamic of bands like Kylesa and Crowbar with morbid melodies that would make Alice In Chains proud.

LA MUERTE

Fuelled by vitriol, compared to such legendary gutter-dwelling sleaze-merchants as The Birthday Party, Foetus, and The Stooges, La Muerte has become a standard reference when it comes to Belgium‘s underground rock scene. Throughout the 80s and early 90s they released a string of cult-albums and EP’s which heavily resonated with those abandoned by love or devoid of hope.

MOANING CITIES

A psychedelic rock’n’roll band from Brussels blending blues roots, fuzz guitars and oriental psychedelia. Featuring a female powerduo on drums and bass, their sitar-driven groove comes into its own on the new upcoming album ‘D. Klein’.

TOXIC SHOCK

Belgian crossover thrash metal hardcore, influenced by the eighties Venice bands, Slayer, old Metallica and NYHC. Played their first show in 2011 with Black Breath, and since then played shows with Exodus, Cro-Mags, Power Trip, AF, Suicidal Tendencies, and many other trash legends.

BLACK MIRRORS

From Blues Garage Rock to Janis Joplin, with a melodic grace sustained through Qeens Of The Stone Age rythms, Black Mirrors seems to appear between shamanic evocations and spooky representations, in search of a tradition buried in the volcanic foldings of the earth.

DORRE

Dorre was born at the Rock Café in Leuven Belgium, serving up a cohesion of doom, noise, psychedelic rock, blues and stoner in long organic pieces.

https://www.facebook.com/desertfestbelgium/
https://twitter.com/desertfestBE
https://www.facebook.com/events/488174281372335/
http://www.desertfest.be/tickets

Graveyard, “Too Much is Not Enough” official video

To call Berlin’s Earthship (also stylized as Earth Ship) a sludge rock band is really only telling half the story. Maybe even less than half. I haven’t had the pleasure yet as regards their impending fourth full-length, Hollowed — out June 24 via Napalm Records — but to listen to “Valley of Thorns,” there’s sludge, yeah, but also metallic underpinnings that come through in the guitar periodically, a hint of Slayer here, some black metal, something more extreme in the middle, more progressive in the ending. Couple that with a shift into melodies brazenly born out of the self-titled-era Alice in Chains playbook, which is ground few dare to tread, and Earthship emerge four minutes later with a sound that seems less indebted to genre than built outward from it.

If sonic individuality isn’t enough to intrigue on principle, there’s also songwriting at work, and a sense of scope to “Valley of Thorns” as it moves between these elements, almost struggling against itself as it works out verses and choruses en route to a bleaker, chugging midsection. Growls back cleaner singing as they unleash the true hook in the nodding second half, and they finish with a torrent of a guitar solo before cutting “Valley of Thorns” short presumably to make way for what follows in the tracklisting (if you’re curious, it’s “Conjured”). How representative “Valley of Thorns” might be of Hollowed as a whole, again, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find Earthship changing up their approach, considering their past releases and the fact that a band so intentionally stylistically broad is rarely content to stand still.

You can find the premiere of a new lyric video for “Valley of Thorns” below, followed by some comment from the band on the track.

Please enjoy:

Earthship, “Valley of Thorns” lyric video

Earthship on “Valley of Thorns”

“VALLEY OF THORNS is one of our faster, a bit more progressive and cheerful tracks of the album but quite the opposite are the lyrics, mainly dealing with emptiness and despair. A sad and lonesome trip into oblivion but in a very colorful and metaphorical way. It shows you up somehow that we’re all running our private race against time before it’s all over and gone. Life is short, let’s get some shots!”

Earthship website

Earthship on Thee Facebooks

Napalm Records website

After issuing their third album, Withered, on Pelagic Records in 2014, Berlin-based four-piece Earthship have signed to Napalm Records and will make their debut on the label with Hollowed on June 24. Their winding riffery touches on progressive territory in such a way that to call them “sludge” doesn’t really do the full scope of their mission justice, but there is for sure a dirt-under-the-fingernails sensibility to their songs, however melodically conscious they may ultimately be.

Interesting that the title Hollowed follows Withered in being a past participle. Not to mention the central idea of decay between them. I wonder if the two records are related thematically somehow. Only one way to find out:

EARTHSHIP – Announce Title, Track Listing, Artwork & Release Date Of Upcoming Album!

Behold the power of the riff in all shapes and sizes: It would be a serious understatement, even borderline ignorance to simply lump EARTHSHIP in with the rest of the sludge rock genre – a horribly abused and undefined tag.

Berlin based EARTHSHIP was born in 2010 and present an intriguing mix of heavy metal, fuzzy Stoner Rock & some of the finest sludge to date. The band has already released 3 full-length albums & toured all across Europe and the UK. Now it’s time to take the next step together with their new home at Napalm Records! This four-piece has announced the details of their upcoming album entitled Hollowed including the Album artwork, track listing & release date!

Hollowed track listing:
1 Reduced to Ashes
2 Hollowed
3 Valley of Thorns
4 Conjured
5 Monolith
6 In Fire’s Light
7 In the Arms of Medusa
8 Castle of Sorrow
9 Safeguard of Death
10 Red Leaves
11 The Edge of Time
12 Blood Candy (Bonus Track)
13 The Edge of Time – Acoustic (Bonus Track)

On Hollowed, these Berlins once more gracefully tackle the soft yet stronger dynamic of bands like Kylesa and Black Tusk, celebrating and crowning the whole thing with morbid melodies Alice In Chains would be proud of. Saturated with monolithic doom and hauntingly good! Hollowed is set to be released on June 24th via Napalm Records. Pre-Orders will be available shortly!

Hollowed available as:

LTD 4 Page Digipack CD (+2 Bonus Tracks)
1 LP Gatefold Edition
Upcoming tour dates will be announced soon! Stay tuned!

www.wearetheearthship.com
www.facebook.com/wearetheearthship
napalmrecords.com

Earthship, Withered (2014)