This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you I’m quaking in my flip-flops about doing 100 reviews in the span of two weeks, how worried I am I’ll run out of ways to say something is weird, or psychedelic, or heavy, or whatever. You know what? This time, even with a doublewide Quarterly Review — which means 100 records between now and next Friday — I feel like we got this. It’ll get done. And if it doesn’t? I’ll take an extra day. Who even pretends to give a crap?

I think that’s probably the right idea, so let’s get this show on the road, as my dear wife is fond of saying.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

Alunah, Strange Machine

Following on from 2019’s Violet Hour (review here), Birmingham’s Alunah offer the nine songs and 42 minutes of Strange Machine on Heavy Psych Sounds. It’s a wonder to think this is the band who a decade ago released White Hoarhound (review here), but of course it’s mostly not. Alunah circa 2022 bring a powerhouse take on classic heavy rock and roll, with Siân Greenaway‘s voice layered out across proto-metallic riffs and occasional nods such as “Fade Into Fantasy” or “Psychedelic Expressway” pulling away from the more straight-ahead punch. One can’t help but be reminded of Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio — a different, more progressive and expansive take on the same style they started with — which I guess would make Strange Machine their Mob Rules. They may or may not be the band you expected, but they’re quite a band if you’re willing to give the songs a chance.

Alunah on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds on Bandcamp

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QAALM, Resilience & Despair

Skipping neither the death nor the doom ends of death-doom, Los Angeles-based QAALM make a gruesome and melancholic debut with Resilience & Despair, with a vicious, barking growl up front that reminds of none so much as George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher, but that’s met intermittently with airy stretches of emotionally weighted float led by its two guitars. Across the four-song/69-minute outing, no song is shorter than opener “Reflections Doubt” (14:40), and while that song, “Existence Asunder” (19:35), “Cosmic Descent” (18:23) and “Lurking Death” (17:16) have their more intense moments, the balance of miseries defines the record by its spaciousness and the weight of the chug that offsets. The cello in “Lurking Death” adds fullness to create a Katatonia-style backdrop, but QAALM are altogether more extreme, and whatever lessons they’ve learned from the masters of the form, they’re being put to excruciating use. And the band knows it. Go four minutes into any one of these songs and tell me they’re not having a great time. I dare you.

QAALM on Facebook

Hypaethral Records website

Trepanation Recordings on Bandcamp

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Ambassador Hazy, The Traveler

The Traveler is Sterling DeWeese‘s second solo full-length under the banner of Ambassador Hazy behind 2020’s Glacial Erratics (review here) and it invariably brings a more cohesive vision of the bedroom-psychedelic experimentalist songcraft that defined its predecessor. “All We Wanted,” for example, is song enough that it could work in any number of genre contexts, and where “Take the Sour With the Sweet” is unabashed in its alt-universe garage rock ambitions, it remains righteously weird enough to be DeWeese‘s own. Fuller band arrangements on pieces like that or the later “Don’t Smash it to Pieces” reinforce the notion of a solidifying approach, but “Simple Thing” nonetheless manages to come across like Dead Meadow borrowed a drum machine from Godflesh circa 1987. There’s sweetness underlying “Afterglow,” however, and “Percolator,” which may or may not actually have one sampled, is way, way out there, and in no small way The Traveler is about that mix of humanity and creative reaching.

Ambassador Hazy on Facebook

Cardinal Fuzz webstore

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Spiral Skies, Death is But a Door

Strange things afoot in Stockholm. Blending classic doom and heavy rock with a clean, clear production, shades of early heavy metal and the odd bit of ’70s folk in the verse of “While the Devil is Asleep,” the five-piece Spiral Skies follow 2018’s Blues for a Dying Planet with Death is But a Door, a collection that swings and grooves and is epic and intimate across its nine songs/43 minutes, a cut like “Somewhere in the Dark” seeming to grow bigger as it moves toward its finish. Five of the nine inclusions make some reference to sleep or the night or darkness — including “Nattmaran” — but one can hardly begrudge Spiral Skies working on a theme when this is the level of the work they’re doing. “The Endless Sea” begins the process of excavating the band’s stylistic niche, and by “Time” and “Mirage” it’s long since uncovered, and the band’s demonstration of nuance, melody and songwriting finds its resolution on closer “Mirror of Illusion,” which touches on psychedelia as if to forewarn the listener of more to come. Familiar, but not quite like anything else.

Spiral Skies on Facebook

AOP Records website

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Lament Cityscape, A Darker Discharge

Almost tragically atmospheric given the moods involved, Wyoming-based industrial metallurgists Lament Cityscape commence the machine-doom of A Darker Discharge following a trilogy of 2020 EPs compiled last year onto CD as Pneumatic Wet. That release was an hour long, this one is 24 minutes, which adds to the intensity somehow of the expression at the behest of David Small (Glacial Tomb, ex-Mountaineer, etc.) and Mike McClatchey (also ex-Mountaineer), the ambience of six-minute centerpiece “Innocence of Shared Experiences” making its way into a willfully grandiose wash after “All These Wires” and “Another Arc” traded off in caustic ’90s-style punishment. “The Under Dark” is a cacophony early and still intense after the fog clears, and it, “Where the Walls Used to Be” and the coursing-till-it-slows-down, gonna-get-noisy “Part of the Mother” form a trilogy of sorts for side B, each feeding into the overarching impression of emotional untetheredness that underscores all that fury.

Lament Cityscape on Facebook

Lifeforce Records website

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Electric Octopus, St. Patrick’s Cough

You got friends? Me neither. But if we did, and we told them about the wholesome exploratory jams of Belfast trio Electric Octopus, I bet their hypothetical minds would be blown. St. Patrick’s Cough is the latest studio collection from the instrumentalist improv-specialists, and it comes and goes through glimpses of various jams in progress, piecing together across 13 songs and 73 minutes — that’s short for Electric Octopus — that find the chemistry vital as they seamlessly bring together psychedelia, funk, heavy rock, minimalist drone on “Restaurant Banking” and blown-out steel-drum-style island vibes on “A2enmod.” There’s enough ground covered throughout for a good bit of frolicking — and if you’ve never frolicked through an Electric Octopus release, here’s a good place to start — but in smaller experiments like the acoustic slog “You Have to Be Stupid to See That” or the rumbling “Universal Knife” or the shimmering-fuzz-is-this-tuning-up “Town,” it’s only encouraging to see the band continue to try new ideas and push themselves even farther out than they were. For an act who already dwells in the ‘way gone,’ it says something that they’re refusing to rest on their freaked-out laurels.

Electric Octopus on Facebook

Interstellar Smoke Records store

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Come to Grief, When the World Dies

Behold, the sludge of death. Maybe it’s not fair to call When the World Dies one of 2022’s best debut albums since Come to Grief is intended as a continuation by guitarist/backing vocalist Terry Savastano (also WarHorse) and drummer Chuck Conlon of the devastation once wrought by Grief, but as they unleash the chestripping “Life’s Curse” and the slow-grind filthy onslaught of “Scum Like You,” who gives a shit? When the World Dies, produced of course by Converge‘s Kurt Ballou at GodCity, spreads aural violence across its 37 minutes with a particular glee, resting only for a breath before meting out the next lurching beating. Jonathan Hébert‘s vocal cords deserve a medal for the brutality they suffer in his screams in the four-minute title-track alone, never mind the grime-encrusted pummel of closer “Death Can’t Come Fast Enough.” Will to abrasion. Will to disturb. Heavy in spirit but so raw in its force that if you even manage to make it that deep you’ve probably already drowned. A biblical-style gnashing of teeth. Fucking madness.

Come to Grief on Facebook

Translation Loss Records store

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ZOM, Fear and Failure

In the works one way or the other since 2020, the sophomore full-length from Pittsburgh heavy rockers ZOM brings straight-ahead classicism with a modernized production vibe, some influence derived from the earlier days of Clutch or The Sword and of course Black Sabbath — looking at you, “Running Man” — but there’s a clarity of purpose behind the material that is ZOM‘s own. They are playing rock for rockers, and are geared more toward revelry than conversion, but there’s no arguing with the solidity of their craft and the meeting of their ambitions. Their last record took them to Iceland, and this one has led them to the UK. Don’t be surprised when ZOM announce an Australian tour one of these days, just because they can, but wherever they go, know what they have the songs on their side to get them there. In terms of style, there’s very little revolutionary about Fear and Failure, but ZOM aren’t trying to revamp what you know of as heavy rock and roll so much as looking to mark their place within it. Listening to the burly chug of “Another Day to Run,” and the conversation the band seems to be having with the more semi-metal moments of Shadow Witch and others, their efforts sound not at all misspent.

ZOM on Facebook

StoneFly Records store

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MNRVA, Hollow

Making their debut through Black Doomba Records, Columbia, South Carolina’s MNRVA recorded the eight-song Hollow in Spring 2019, and one assumes that the three-year delay in releasing is owed at least in to aligning with the label, plus pandemic, plus life happens, and so on. In any case, from “Not the One” onward, their fuzz-coated doom rock reminds of a grittier take on Cathedral, with guitarist Byron Hawk and bassist Kevin Jennings sharing vocal duties effectively while Gina Ercolini drives the march behind them. There’s some shifting in tempo between “Hollow” and a more brash piece like “With Fire” or the somehow-even-noisier-seeming penultimate cut “No Solution,” but the grit there is a feature throughout the album just the same. Their 2019 EP, Black Sky (review here), set them up for this, but only really in hindsight, and one wonders what they may have been up to in the time since putting this collection to tape if this is where they were three years ago. Some of this is straight-up half-speed noise rock riffing and that’s just fine.

MNRVA on Facebook

Black Doomba Records on Bandcamp

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Problem With Dragons, Accelerationist

The third full-length, Accelerationist, from Easthampton, Massachusetts’ Problem With Dragons is odd and nuanced enough by the time they get to the vocal effects on “Have Mercy, Show Mercy” — unless that’s a tracheostomy thing; robot voice; that’s not the first instance of it — to earn being called progressive, and though their foundation is in more straightforward heavy rock impulses, sludge and fuzz, they’ve been at it for 15 years and have well developed their own approach. Thus “Live by the Sword” opens to set up lumbering pieces like “Astro Magnum” and the finale title-track while “In the Name of His Shadow” tips more toward metal and the seven-minute “Don’t Fail Me” meets its early burl (gets the wurlm?) with airier soloing later on, maximizing the space in the album’s longest track. “A Demon Possessed” and “Dark Times (for Dark Times)” border on doom, but in being part of Problem With Dragons‘ overall pastiche, and in the band’s almost Cynic-al style of melodic singing, they are united with the rest of what surrounds. Some bands, you can just tell when individualism is part of their mission.

Problem With Dragons on Facebook

Problem With Dragons on Bandcamp

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Easthampton, MA, Dec. 22, 2016 — New England snow peppered the westward Masspike ride to Sonelab in Easthampton, MA, where Elder were working all week on their fourth album. Eight years ago, they made their self-titled debut (discussed here) as a youngling trio loaded with potential who’d already earned a reputation for blowing old dudes off stages. In less than a decade’s time and across the two follow-up records, 2011’s Dead Roots Stirring (review here) and 2015’s Lore (review here), they’ve traveled the world over and become arguably the most pivotal act in the American heavy underground. Released through Stickman Records and Armageddon Shop, Lore was nothing short of a landmark for Elder, as the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Nick DiSalvo, bassist Jack Donovan and drummer Matt Couto found a way to be heavy and progressive without sacrificing the impact of the one for the nuance of the other, or vice versa. Their cake, had and eaten.

They’d been at Sonelab all week putting pieces together for a crucial follow-up to Lore that, when released in 2017, will also mark their fastest turnaround between albums. The bulk of the recording was done. I pulled into the parking lot outside the studio, which is in a big warehouse space by the American Legion Hall with an independent brewery on either side — Easthampton is a big college area and looks to be gentrifying — and followed the low-end hum into the live room, where Elder were mid-jam. Sonelab engineer Justin Pizzoferrato and graphic artist Adrian Dexter were in the control room, further down the hallway, but in the live room the band was well dug in. A space longer than it was wide, with high ceilings — Pizzoferrato‘s recordings have a distinct snare drum sound, and with the space in question I immediately recognized its origin as Couto played — rooms off to the right for guitar and bass cabinets, painted concrete floors with the requisite rugs, amps and cabinets and organs and pianos and other assorted instrumentation lining the walls and otherwise scattered about. Old couches here and there. I took a seat on a piano bench and watched the jam unfold.

One does not necessarily think of Elder as a band given to improvisation. Particularly as time has gone on, their work has been clean, meticulous in its arrangements, and from what I heard of their impending fourth LP, that remains true, but these jams — and there were over 80 minutes of them recorded, ultimately — were being tracked with the intent of adding ambience to the record and building more of a sense of atmosphere. Interludes, maybe, or at very least complements to the structured songs. Joining the core lineup of the band were Mike Samos on a slide steel guitar setup and electric mandolin and keyboardist/guitarist Mike Risberg (a bandmate of DiSalvo‘s in the Gold & Silver side-project) on a Wurlitzer, who indeed fleshed out the effects wash bring proffered by the guitar as various jams built, established themselves, were held together by Donovan and pushed ahead by Couto‘s inimitable swing, and finally receded one by one. At times spacious and hypnotic and at times more active, this five-piece version of Elder was genuinely attempting to offer something different than anything the band has done before, and depending on which pieces actually make it onto the finished product, they just might get there.

Some meandering, some blending of progressive fuzzadelia and space rock, and some vital crash, the jams built from nothing into full-fledged explorations, each with their own personality. Arranged in a circle with a barrier setup behind Couto, they reveled in the process of creating this swirl, and though the going wasn’t always smooth — nor should it be — they held pieces together for as long as they wanted before letting them drift to a conclusion. The room was cold and bright, but the vibe warm and intimate, and standing outside some minutes later with the band and Dexter, whose designs for Elder have become an essential part of their presentation and whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting several times over the years despite his being based in Denmark, the same chemistry could be found in their ease of conversation, laughing and tossing off stories about rest stops on the sides of mountains in Sweden and, with ski-worthy Massachusetts Appalachians in the distance, remarking about the relative altitudes in places like the Netherlands, Denmark, and so on. This is a band who have traveled continents together, who’ve created together for a decade now, and their bond — even with Samos and Risberg, who are clearly close friends — is familial. One imagines that when DiSalvo, who’s been living in Berlin for the last year-plus, returned to hit the studio, the transition back into this mode of working was no less fluid than the jams I was fortunate enough to watch unfold in the live room.

Following the break, it was time to hear a new track. Pizzoferrato had been setting up rough mixes in the control room, so the band, Dexter and I made our way there to listen. No title yet, but DiSalvo informed that the sweeping nine-minute cut would be one of five included (plus whatever they got out of the jams), and as its quick start got underway, I could immediately hear progression not only in his vocals but in the arrangements from where Elder left off with Lore. Parts swept through over careening rhythms, winding basslines, stellar lead guitar work, sung harmonies and other flourish. It was clear they were building out arrangements, and with the layers working on top of each other as they were, I understood why prior to hitting the studio they’d played several shows with a four-piece, two-guitar lineup. One key distinction? The title-track of Lore had a part in its middle where DiSalvo‘s guitar emulated a Mellotron sound. This time the Mellotrons are real. Featured in both pieces I’d ultimately hear, they added their particular progressive theatricality to the proceedings, and helped further a lush melodicism that, once again, was complemented by considerable heft. I took notes as quickly as I could to keep up with the transitions — a direct quote from them: “It’s amazing how identifiable their sound has become” — as the Mellotron led through a break into the next movement of the song that, when the band kicked back in, made me hope Donovan would be high in the final mix. One of several guitar solos propelled the gallop to a cold finish circa 9:40, and as sudden as it had started, it was over.

Dexter, while the song played, showed me some of the progress for the cover and inside-the-LP artwork on his laptop, which at least as of now moves away from the deep blue tones of Lore and into darker browns and earthy, forest-feeling colors. Still elemental, but land, not sea. It was, of course, beautiful. When the track was finished, the band decided to do some more jamming, so it was back into the live room with DiSalvo, Donovan, Couto, Risberg and Samos. They’d discussed a few beginnings and ends for where interludes might make sense, decided they needed something in ‘G’ and something in ‘C,’ and set to it. It was a little more business-like than the first portion of the session had been with that set goal in mind, but each of the two movements conjured — one more droning and trance-inducing (I swear I lost time), the other led by Couto‘s toms, which was a departure in itself — seemed like it would give them something to work from. When the second one was finished, it kind of devolved into a heavy metal Xmas song, Donovan picking up sleigh bells and growling carol lyrics, laughing all the way and so on. He’d been taking direction from Risberg and the line of communication seemed to come apart toward the end, but again, that became part of the process of feeling the way through what the jam turned out to be. There were more slide guitar overdubs for Samos to add to other finished tracks, so his gear was moved into the control room and set up so he’d be able to see the specific places within the songs where his parts would go.

I don’t know how familiar Samos had been previously with the material prior to playing on it, but by the third time through each of the two songs I watched him play on, he’d nailed it. The first take, was a listen, the second a feeling out, the third — done. A fourth shot on the second song seemed more perfunctory than necessary, but didn’t hurt anything either. Still, they’d decided the jamming was done and the afternoon was getting on. It had been a two-hour trip for me to the studio, which meant two hours back, but before I left, I asked if I could hear another full track, just to get a better sense of the course of the record overall to go with the pieces, snippets, jams, and song I’d already heard. The band and Pizzoferrato were kind enough to oblige with the cut on which Samos had just played. DiSalvo set it up by calling it an “outlier” on the album, and I wouldn’t have the chance to ask him in what way he meant that, but I could hear their prog leanings coming to the forefront, another quick start of a winding motion met with his lead guitar. Some almost peak-era Porcupine Tree-style swirl crashed into deeper low end, leading to an open verse marked by harmonies at the ends of lines, and the song moved into a chorus that would cycle through and into a solo before taking off on an instrumental stretch that would be where the slide featured. Tempo shifted, the chorus returned, the Mellotron appeared, the crunch came back at the end, and trying to keep “outlier” in mind, I was nonetheless taken by the depths of layering at work, the sense of arrangement at play and, again, the growth that has marked each of Elder‘s records to-date and which seems to be fully intact going into this one as well.

Up next for the band was to continue with mixing on a song Pizzoferrato referred to as “Staving,” and to comb through the improvised material and see what fit where. No doubt that would be as much of a creative process in editing as was the making of those jams in the first place, but if Elder have shown anything over the course of their career, it’s a burgeoning sense of mastery in their sound. Lore may prove over the longer term to have been a moment of arrival for them, and I won’t speak to this follow-up as a whole without having heard the entire thing, but it was obvious to me sitting in the control room that their interest in stagnation is nil. Rather, Elder are evolving willfully, expanding their palette and broadening their approach in the same way that they’ve become closer as people over the years. How that will ultimately manifest in their next album remains to be seen as the holidays and New Year take hold, but one consistent factor in Elder‘s tenure has been that the potential they showed on barroom stages when they were still too young to buy beer has remained and blossomed with them, and as they’ve realized a catalog on which to look back, they’ve never lost sight that the most fundamental direction must always be forward.

My deepest thanks to the band, to Dexter and Pizzoferrato for having me to Sonelab. Elder‘s fourth album will be released in 2017. Please find more pictures from the studio after the jump, and thanks for reading.

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