Posted in Whathaveyou on March 14th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
As you can see on the poster below, DVNE aren’t exactly taking it easy this coming Spring. They’ll be on the road from May 1 to June 1 with festival dates thereafter as they continue to support their 2024 album, Voidkind (review here), which I’m happy as hell to have an excuse to put on this afternoon while I write about the tour.
I’ve been lucky enough to see DVNE twice over the years and if all goes according to my evil plan I’ll see them again on this run at Desertfest Oslo, and Voidkind is part of the reason I’m so much looking forward to that. As precise as DVNE are on the record, I’ve never heard them put anything to tape they couldn’t do from the stage, and so I find myself hoping very much that songs like “Eleonora” or “Sarmatæ” make it into the setlist. Fingers crossed.
I don’t know Allochiria, but given the other three who’ll be supporting DVNE along the way — Pothamus, Sunnata and Pijn — I should probably get on that.
No text list of the shows that I saw — bad for archiving, easy for social media posting; nobody thinks long-term, including me or I’d be printing ‘zines in my basement — but the poster has it and I know you’re perfectly capable of checking local listings, and so on. Here’s the announcement from socials:
⚔️ European Spring/Summer Tour Update ⚔️
More shows, tour supports & new art! We will finally play in the Balkans with shows in Ljubljana, Zagreb, Novi Sad and Sofia before we head to Greece.
Vienna—after last year’s flooding, we said we’d run it again! Excited to finally make it up to you!
We will also hit a few festivals this summer with Rock For People, Alcatraz Festival, and ArcTanGent, with more festivals to come.
Joining us along the way: ⚫️ Pothamus (Belgium & Netherlands) ⚫️ SUNNATA (Poland) ⚫️ Allochiria (Balkans & Greece) ⚫️ Pijn (Haarlem) + Local supports to be announced
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 20th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Ahead of starting their tour this week with Brant Bjork Trio — which indeed prefaces runs this Spring alongside Masters of Reality and Alain Johannes himself, with whom I believe they’ve already toured as both opener and backing band; yup, that happened — Edinburgh heavy rockers Earl of Hell have announced an April 25 release date for their self-titled debut LP. Copper Feast Records will handle the release, and I’ll admit I’m curious to find out what the band are about in terms of songwriting a bit after their early singles and the newly-unveiled video for “The Infernal Dream” that you can see at the bottom of this post. Their accomplishments on stage at this point aren’t insignificant.
All of those tour dates and the album details follow here, courtesy of the PR wire:
UK heavy rock’n’roll merchants EARL OF HELL share first track and video off upcoming self-titled debut album; full UK tour announced!
Scottish rock’n’roll purveyors EARL OF HELL announce the release of their self-titled debut album on April 25th and an extensive series of winter and spring UK shows supporting Brant Bjork Trio, Masters Of Reality and Alain Johannes. Blast their intoxicating new single “The Infernal Dream” now!
Watch Earl Of Hell’s new video “The Infernal Dream” + listen to the single on all streaming services: https://lnkfi.re/earlofhelldream
Earl of Hell’s self-titled debut album bestows a juggernaut of raucous dive-bar rock ‘n’ roll delivered with a relentless, raw punk energy. Comprising nine tracks recorded at Deep Storm Productions and mixed and mastered by Alain Johannes, this unapologetic high-octane follow-up to 2022’s “Get Smoked” EP unveils a more refined sound that is both thoughtfully embellished yet unapologetically gritty.
Embodying the spirit of bands like Alice In Chains, Killing Joke and Black Sabbath, this album pays homage to its stoner rock roots while exploring historical and futuristic concepts from Edinburgh’s infamous grave robbers to Planet Earth’s impending doom. It will be available on April 25th via Bandcamp and on all digital streaming platforms.
TRACKLIST: 1. Satan Is Real 2. The Infernal Dream 3. Impaler 4. Brave New Age 5. Calling, Is The Crow 6. My Twisted Mind 7. Macabra Cadabra 8. Waiting To Die 9. Bloodlines
Earl Of Hell UK tour dates 2025: ° with Brant Bjork Trio / ✢ with Masters of Reality / ▴ with Alain Johannes Jan 24 – The Craufurd Arms, Milton Keynes ° Jan 25 – Rebellion, Manchester ° Jan 26 – The Cluny, Newcastle ° Jan 27 – Audio, Glasgow ° Jan 31 – Sin City, Swansea ° Feb 1 – Mama Roux’s, Birmingham ° Feb 2 – Strange Brew, Bristol ° Feb 3 – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds ° Feb 4 – Waterfront Studio, Norwich ° Feb 5 – The Forum, Tunbridge Wells ° Feb 6 – The 1865, Southampton ° Feb 7 – The Arch, Brighton ° Feb 8 – Oslo, London ° April 6 – The 1865, Southampton ✢ April 7 – Rebellion, Manchester ✢ April 8 – The Classic Grand, Glasgow ✢ April 9 – 229, London ✢ May 1 – The Cluny, Newcastle ▴ May 2 – Voodoo, Belfast ▴ May 3 – Grand Social, Dublin ▴ May 8 – The Craufurd Arms, Milton Keynes ▴ May 9 – The Underworld, London ▴ May 10 – The Bunkhouse, Swansea ▴ May 11 – The Hairy Dog, Derby ▴ May 15 – Lending Room, Leeds ▴ May 16 – Future Yard, Birkenhead ▴ May 17 – The Cathouse, Glasgow ▴
EARL OF HELL is Eric Brock – Lead Vocals Lewis Inglis – Guitar & Vocals Dan Mitchell – Guitar Dean Gordon – Bass Ryan Wilson – Drums
Voidkind is the third full-length from Edinburgh-based five-piece DVNE and their second to be issued with the historically-significant endorsement of Metal Blade Records behind 2021’s Etemen Ænka (review here) and sees the heavy, progressive metallers reaching for and attaining new levels of refinement in terms of craft. In intensity, melody, ambience and impact, Voidkind (cover art by Felix Abel Klae) weaves its 10 tracks together across nearly an hour’s runtime that is so clearly meant to be taken in its entirety and only benefits from having enough arrogance to demand the listener’s attention for its span despite earning it with the songs themselves.
And as to those songs. They are dynamic in tempo, volume, the arrangements of vocals from Daniel Barter (also guitar live), keyboardist Maxime Keller and guitarist/keyboardist Victor Vicart, and the hairpin rhythmic turns of bassist/guitarist Allan Paterson (Alexandros Keros also contributes bass on stage) and drummer Dudley Tait, the latter with a performance that could and probably should be a blueprint on how to accompany younger-Mastodon-style angular riffing without overplaying. Working with returning producer Graeme Young on the recording and mix (Robyn Dawson assisted engineering) and the also-returning Magnus Lindberg (Domkraft, Vokonis, Wren, countless others, plus his own band) for the master, the pieces that comprise Voidkind resonate with scope and narrative, and as deep as you want to dig into the references and vocabulary of the lyrics, DVNE will meet you there for lines like “Synesthetic submergence saturates the mind,” from “Abode of the Perfect Soul” or “The zephyrian scents of verbena” from “Eleonora” earlier as the band dig in following the more bombastic, willfully aggressive opener “Summa Blasphemia.”
Like the lyrics, the instrumental arrangements feel plotted, worked on, and thoughtful of the linear thread that brings the songs together and the intended flow across Voidkind as a whole. “Summa Blasphemia” takes about nine seconds for its surge to sweep in, but from that point on, DVNE‘s sense of control is complete in the turn that introduces the record’s first soaring, melodic, emotive vocals at about the one-minute mark so they can gradually come together in the apex with the harsher growls and screams that pervade amid all the ensuing crush, and in the way “Reliquary” moves from its solo section to the ambient break that begins its second-half build, in the subtle atmospheric flourish of interludes “Path of Dust” (led by guitar) and “Path of Ether” (more of a keyboard/synth drone) and how they surround “Sarmatæ” even on the 2LP edition of the album, giving that song’s memorable lines about casting tales and ribbons into fire space to breathe before the rush start of “Abode of the Perfect Soul” renews the onslaught en route to the closing pair of the lushly post-metallic “Plērōma” and the near-10-minute finale “Cobalt Sun Necropolis,” which feels like nothing so much as a next-generation’s nodding back as its last crescendo is blown out in a mode not dissimilar from Neurosis‘ “Stones From the Sky” at the finish.
There are arguments to be made for and against what seems from outside to be such a deeply cerebral take, but at more than 10 years’ remove from their debut EP, Progenitor (review here), DVNE know who they are in terms of sound, and Voidkind comes through as all the more sculpted and literary in its ambitions for their efforts, and as they stand in the center of the tumult in “Eleonora” or bring together the airier float of guitar on “Reaching for Telos” with layered vocal harmonies as yet another example of their growth as a unit, the complexity is a strength. They’re never lost in it. They never forget where they just came from or lose track of where they’re going, how it fits, or why. As a listener, Voidkind is exciting even on a first impression because of its charge, its aggro throb, its stops and starts and twists that toy with adrenaline and pull you deeper into the material, but the reason any of it works at all is the emergent mastery of songwriting DVNE have been chasing for the last decade-plus.
So is Voidkind an arrival moment? Sure, and you wouldn’t have been wrong to say the same of Etemen Ænka or 2017’s debut LP, Asheran, either. At the very least, it’s a landmark for them along their path of continued evolution, but I also can’t seem to get out of my head the notion of placing it in the broader sphere of metal. Part of that might just be that DVNE sound fresh in their ideas of what heavy sounds can convey, whether fast or slow, loud or quiet, dissonant, melodic, etc., but Voidkind only gets more difficult to categorize the more one hears it. With the level of consideration put in and the somewhat heady vibes throughout, it’s only fair to call it progressive despite how much it uses raw ferocity to make its case, and while it might owe a debt of influence to post-hardcore, post-metal, sludge, and doom, it’s not just any one of those things. Familiar in parts, but imaginative and distinguished in its point of view.
Metal, as a genre, has splintered since the dawn of the internet such that, if someone were describing a band as “metal,” it would tell you almost nothing about the character of what you’re hearing other than it’s probably loud and potentially unspeakably dumb. Is DVNE metal? Is Pantera? Tool? Five Finger Death Punch (who are the worst band I’ve ever seen and I will say so every time I mention them)? Korn? Black Sabbath? You can get debate for the rest of your life about what is or isn’t metal, musically or as a lifestyle, without even a coherent definition to work from, and given the emotional attachment of those in the subculture to it and a long-held mistrust when those from outside — i.e., the broader pop-cultural sphere — deign to acknowledge its existence, that’s not likely to change. So what is metal and what should it be? I promise you I have no idea and I wouldn’t be so pretentious as to make any declaration in that regard even if I did. But if DVNE were the shape of metal to come, I have a hard time seeing how metal could be anything but better for it.
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 12th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
DVNE‘s Bandcamp updated overnight (or at least I saw the email this morning) to account for the new release, and the PR wire made it official just a bit ago that Voidkind, the third LP from the Edinburgh-based progressive/post-metallers, will be out April 19. Am I crazy or does that seem like a time crunch? Singles are starting to roll out for records that aren’t coming until June, and April 19 is just five weeks away.
Maybe they’re in a hurry, and with the coinciding tour also coming up quickly, fair enough. Keeping good company as they go, DVNE will embark on their Spring tour of the UK and Europe on April 23, just on the other side of Voidkind‘s release weekend. So perhaps that’s where some of the urgency comes from, or maybe that’s just me feeling the after-effects of listening to the new single “Plerõma,” with its winding riff and striking melodic turn. As with DVNE‘s 2021 long-player, Etemen Ænka (review here), the new album will be out on Metal Blade.
I’ll also note this isn’t the first time a band has cited the game Dark Souls (released 2011 for PS3/Xbox, remastered in 2018, with sequels in 2012 and 2016) as inspiration. I only mention it in case you, like me, just got out of an 835-hour relationship with Tears of the Kingdom and are looking for something on the rebound.
Meanwhile, preorders are up, the video’s at the bottom of the post and the album info and tour dates came from the PR wire.
Have at it:
DVNE: Scottish Progressive Post-Metal Collective To Release Voidkind April 19th On Metal Blade Records; New Video/Single Now Playing + Preorders Available
Scottish progressive post-metal act DVNE will release their new full-length, Voidkind, on April 19th via Metal Blade Records.
Formed in Edinburgh in 2013 by Frenchman Victor Vicart and native Scot Dudley Tait, progressive post-metal/sludge artisans DVNE have been building a powerful head of steam since their second album, 2021’s kaleidoscopically mesmerizing Etemen Ænka. Their first release for the legendary Metal Blade Records label, the LP was a concerted hike up the greasy pole for this enigmatic outfit, enabling DVNE to embark on UK and European headline tours and win spots at such discerning festivals as Hellfest, ArcTanGent, Desertfest, Damnation, and Resurrection. A live EP of reimagined album tunes, 2022’s Cycles Of Asphodel, kept up their profile while satiating demand from a rapidly mushrooming fanbase, and now in 2024, stunning third album Voidkind looks set to propel this expanded five-piece line-up (welcoming Maxime Keller on keyboards) to the top of their game.
Voidkind succeeds in finding new modes of expression for DVNE. The songs are more pointed, direct, and memorable, but the soundscape still has a radiant, evolving, hypnotic flow, the effect achieved with fewer layers of sonic ornamentation, consciously urging closer to DVNE’s incendiary live sound. And despite the addition of a full-time keyboardist, Vicart has no doubt about the album’s defining feature, “We wanted very distinct left and right guitars, and punchier drums and bass, which would transcribe better live. And the synths needed to be clearer; it’s very easy to put five guitars on each side, loads of different vocals and keys, but then you end up watching a band with an album you really like, and the songs sound nothing like the record. That’s what we wanted to avoid. As soon as the song starts, we want people to immediately recognise the riff.”
Conceptually, the lyrics continue the band’s overarching narrative – “following a religious group through the generation line from the beginning to its end” – while Voidkind’s extraordinary sleeve art depicts the main theme of this chapter, namely, “a godlike entity seducing and luring followers through their dreams and these followers’ multigenerational journey to reach their god dimension.”
One book that has been particularly impactful on the band’s thought process: 1989 novel Hyperion by Dan Simmonds. Notes Vicart, “It’s a very dark Sci-Fi book with loads of interesting parts, so you can go really prog with it, but you can also go more violent and animalistic.” Further inspirational touchstones include FromSoftware video game Dark Souls, and the Japanese manga series that inspired it, Berserk, “It’s a very cool, violent, psychedelic, medieval dark fantasy,” explains Vicart. “We wanted to have these kinds of visuals and aesthetics on this album, in this mix-up of things. Even without the vocals we wanted to evoke something, different places and spaces, and take the listener on a journey.”
Vicart further elaborates on the themes driving “Plerõma,” the first single from Voidkind, and its accompanying video, which was directed by Vicart, “Plerõma is a concept that has appeared in Gnosticism, Greek Philosophy, and Judeo-Christian religions. In Gnosticism, it is the spiritual universe as the abode of God and of the totality of the divine powers and emanations. It is also the ultimate source of transformation. ‘Plerõma’ is a key moment of the album narrative where religious followers are consuming the essence of their deity and reach a new sense of awakened existence. It is the first step in their transformation. Musically, it also represents something similar to us, as it is a song that is bringing new elements that we didn’t explore musically until that point.”
Voidkind was recorded between September and November 2023 in Edinburgh at Craigiehall Temple and Byres Farm in Scotland and features the stunning artwork of Felix Abel Klae.
The record will be released on CD and digital formats as well as 2xLP in the following color variants:
Burnt Skin Marble (US) White Black Marble (US) Dark Crimson Marbled (EU) 180g Black (EU) Grey Brown w/ Black Smoke (EU – ltd. 500) Crystal Clear (EU – ltd. 300) White/Black Dust (EU – ltd. 300) Clear w/ Black Smoke (EU – ltd. 666) Clear w/ Black, Red + Gold Splatter (EU – ltd.200) Clear w/ Black Smoke (Band Exclusive – ltd. 666 availableHERE) Clear w/ Black, Red + Gold Splatter (Band Exclusive – ltd. 200 availableHERE)
Voidkind Track Listing: 1. Summa Blasphemia 2. Eleonor 3. Reaching for Telo 4. Reliquar 5. Path of Dust 6. Sarmatae 7. Path of Ether 8. Abode of the Perfect Soul 9. Plerõma 10. Cobalt Sun Necropoli
Following the release of Voidkind, DVNE will embark on a European Spring tour which includes shows with Sleemo, Conjurer, and My Diligence on select dates. See all confirmed dates below.
DVNE Live: 4/23/2024 The Cluny – Newcastle, UK w/ Sleemo 4/24/2024 Brudenell — Leeds, UK w/ Sleemo 4/25/2024 Voodoo Daddies – Norwich, UK w/ Sleemo 4/26/2024 Green Door Store – Brighton, UK w/ Sleemo 4/27/2024 The Exchange – Bristol, UK w/ Sleemo 4/28/2024 Devils Dog – Birmingham, UK w/ Sleemo 5/04/2024 Headbangers – Ball Izegem, BE w/ Conjurer 5/05/2024 P8 – Karlsruhe, DE w/ Conjurer 5/07/2024 Casseopia – Berlin, DE w/ Conjurer 5/08/2024 Rosenkeller – Jena, DE w/ Conjurer 5/09/2024 Schon Schön – Mainz, DE w/ Conjurer 5/10/2024 Dunk Festival – Ghent, BE 5/11/2024 Hall Of Fame – Tilburg, NL w/ Conjurer 5/16/2024 La Belle Angele – Edinburgh, UK 5/19/2024 Desertfest, – London, UK 5/22/2024 Le Ferrailleur – Nantes, FR w/ My Diligence 5/23/2024 Le Confort Moderne – Poitiers, FR w/ My Diligence 5/24/2024 Le Rex – Toulouse, FR w/ My Diligence 5/26/2024 L’Antirouille – Montpellier, FR w/ My Diligence 5/28/2024 Les Caves du Manoir – Martigny, CH w/ My Diligence 5/29/2024 Amperage – Grenoble, FR w/ My Diligence 5/30/2024 La Laiterie – Strasbourg, FR w/ My Diligence 5/31/2024 Black Lab – Lille, FR w/ My Diligence 6/01/2024 Le Petit Bain – Paris, FR w/ My Diligence 6/02/2024 Club Zentral – Stuttgart, DE 6/04/2024 Rockhouse – Salzburg, AT 6/05/2024 Dürer Kert – Budapest, HU 6/06/2024 Escape – Vienna, AT 6/08/2024 Mystic Festival – Gdansk, PL 6/09/2024 Into The Grave Festival – Leeuwarden, NL 6/11/2024 Le Botanique – Brussels, BE w/ My Diligence 6/19/2024 Copenhell – Copenhagen, DK
DVNE Album Lineup: Allan Paterson – guitars, bass Daniel Barter – vocals Dudley Tait – drums Maxime Keller – keys, vocals Victor Vicart – guitars, keys, vocals
DVNE Live Lineup: Allan Paterson – bass Daniel Barter – guitar, vocals Dudley Tait – drums Maxime Keller – keys, vocals Victor Vicart – guitar, vocals Occasional Live Member: Alexandros Keros – bass
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 8th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Earlier this week, Edinburgh classic-style heavy rockers Hair of the Dog announced they were done, and it’s worth noting that their announcement came some four years after they actually marked the end of the band. Fair enough. They are not the only ones for whom life has taken unexpected directions in the 2020s, and what it turns out has happened is that the trio — who released their third album, It’s Just a Ride (discussed here), early in 2020 — came back together and enough had changed that they’re becoming a new band.
So it’s Hair of the Dog out and Elmsrow in, though how that shift will play out sound-wise is still to be heard. After reading the band’s post that you can see in the image below dutifully hoisted from their social media, I asked guitarist/vocalist Adam Holt — joined in either outfit by drummer Jon Holt and bassist Iain Thomson — for some more details about the transition from one to the next and where he thinks it might be leading. His answers are what you’ll find in the blue text below.
In a spirit of looking forward, dig:
So as our post says, we felt like we were on a bit of a roll on the lead up to “It’s Just a Ride”, we had just lined up a host of spring and summer festivals and were busy marking out a tour between them all – with a particular focus on spending time in Germany where a majority of our fan base is located. We were super stoked on the new record, really proud of it and just bursting to get it out and hit the road…
Then BOOM literally over night, Scotland and the entire UK is put into a lockdown that just went on and on, month to month until basically two years of our lives were gone along with 80% of my livelihood, out with the band.
That first lockdown also coincided nicely with the birth of my first child. So yeah, rough times. Showing your parents their grandson through the patio door as they sit on deckchairs on your lawn X amount of distance away in masks…my son was 3 months old by the time lockdown restrictions had eased enough for his grandparents to hold him for the first time.
I just fell out of love with music and quite frankly life.
I’m prone to bouts of depression, so I wallowed in that for months and then one day picked the guitar up and 1..2…3…..4……out came a succession of song ideas. But they weren’t Hair of the Dog.
I’d felt it for months but knew then that Hair of the Dog was done.
That chapter just felt done. I don’t think it would even feel right singing and playing those songs now, I don’t feel like that person anymore. The pandemic killed the momentum, killed the vibe, and ultimately killed the band we knew as Hair of the Dog.
So the only clear thing to do was to start a fresh…with a new name. We are so early in the process that we only finalised the name this week, Elmsrow.
How do the two bands compare? Well, it’s still myself, my brother Jon and our lifelong friend Iain. Musically though, the only similarity will be the odd lean towards the blues… but other influences include, Tool, Deftones, Kal-El (been really digging Kal-El of late), Dozer, Red Fang… yeah, far removed. It certainly fills a gap in what I personally would want to hear, which is usually a good sign. You got to be into the music you make.
I’d been getting really bad cramps in both my hands during HOTD last run of shows. To the point that my pick would just fall out my fingers because I couldn’t feel or move my hands. It’s been utterly devastating to have developed this, but as a result I’m going to be pulling back on the guitar work and focusing more on my love of unusual and challenging chords and chord sequences. There’s a lot of melody and harmony to be found under the heaviness. Iain really takes centre stage in Elmsrow, and gets an opportunity to show why he’s the best bass player in the underground, maybe even world…. in my opinion. And drummers will rejoice, as Jon too shines through on this new material.
It’s exciting, it will probably divide HOTD fans, but music needs to come from the heart and sadly, post-pandemic, my heart personally, was no longer in that band.
All we have at present is the name, the music (minus any lyrics) and a lot of exciting plans. One of these is a feature length documentary about the creation of our first new EP, but more specifically a look at what it’s like to be a band in the underground, what goes into being a band and why? Haha why do middle-aged men such as ourselves around the world NEED this in their life?
Posted in Whathaveyou on December 13th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Edinburgh-based heavy progressive metallers DVNE are set to hit the road across the UK next April as a precursor to appearing at Resurrection Fest in Spain and ArcTanGent in England. They go ostensibly as they continue to support 2021’s Etemen Ænka (review here), which will be two years old by the time these shows start, but is a cause worth supporting nonetheless. And for the merch table, they did issue a live album earlier this year. Actually, I wouldn’t necessarily be surprised if they put together an EP or something ahead of next Spring and Summer and hit the road harder again, but if this is it, then at least they’re getting out. Certainly right around March 2021 there wasn’t a lot of that happening, UK or elsewhere.
I was fortunate enough to catch DVNE for the second time this past summer as they appeared at Freak Valley Festival (review here), and hearing the complex structures and melodies from Etemen Ænka come through with no letup on impact — that blend of progressivism and heft — was only reassuring when it comes to their presentation of the work live. I guess that’s my way of saying if you dug the record — stream is below for a refresher — you won’t be disappointed by how they present it live, as sharply-produced as that album is.
TUE 11 APRIL Stereo Glasgow, UK WED 12 APRIL Nottingham Bodega Nottingham, UK THU 13 APRIL The Corporation Sheffield, UK FRI 14 APRIL Crofters Rights Bristol Bristol, UK SAT 15 APRIL Oslo Hackney London, UK SUN 16 APRIL Soup Manchester, UK WED 28 JUNE – SAT 1 JULY Resurrection Fest 2023 Viveiro, Spain WED 16 AUGUST ArcTanGent 2023 Compton Martin, UK
Excited to get back on the road.
Art by Chris J Alliston
Dvne line-up: Victor Vicart – guitar, vocals, keys Dudley Tait – drums Daniel Barter – guitar, vocals Allan Paterson – bass Maxime Keller – keys
It’s been a load road, getting from there to here, and here isn’t even there yet if you know what I mean. Alas, Thursday. Day four — 4, IV, I can’t remember how I’ve been writing it out — of the Spring 2022 Quarterly Review, and it’s a doozy. These things are always packed, in fact it’s pretty much the idea, but I still find that even this week as I’m putting out 10 reviews a day — we’ll get to 60 total next Monday — I’m playing catchup with more stuff coming down the pike. It seems more and more like each Quarterly Review I’ve done out of like the last five could’ve been extended a day beyond what it already was.
Alas, Thursday. Overwhelmed? Me too.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Messa, Close
After two LPs through Aural Music, Italy’s Messa arrive via Svart with a crucial third album in Close. The hype surrounding the record has been significant, and Close earns every bit of it across its 10-song/64-minute run, intricately arranged as the Italian four-piece continue to bridge stylistic gaps with an ease born of expansive songcraft and stunning performance, first from vocalist Sara Bianchin (also percussion) and further from guitarist Alberto Piccolo (also oud, mandolin), bassist/synthesist/vocalist Marco Zanin (also various keys and percussion), and drummer Rocco Toaldo (also harsh vocals, percussion), who together create a complete and encompassing vision of doom that borrows periodically from black metal as anything artsy invariably must, but is more notable for its command of itself. That is, Messa — through the entirety of the hour-plus — are nothing but masterful. There’s an old photo of The Beatles watching Jimi Hendrix circa 1967, seeming resigned at being utterly outclassed by the ‘next thing.’ It’s easy to imagine much of doom looking at Messa the same way.
If what goes around comes around, then don’t be surprised when “Fire & Ice” goes circle-mosh near the end and you get punched in the head. Old. School. Southern. Sludge. Metal. Dudes play it big, and mean, and grooving. Think of turn of the century acts like Alabama Thunderpussy and Beaten Back to Pure, maybe earlier Sourvein, but with a big old lumbering update in sound thanks to a Phillip Cope recording job and a ferocity of its own. They’ve got a pedigree that includes Black Skies, Manticore and Black Hand Throne, and though The Weight of Death is their first long-player, they’ve been a band for seven years and their anti-dogmatic culmination in “Mr. Miserum” feels sincere as only it can coming from the land of the Southern Baptist Church. Aggression pervades throughout, but the band aren’t necessarily monochromatic. Sometimes they’re mad, sometimes they’re pissed off. Watch out when they’re pissed off. And am I wrong for feeling nostalgic listening? Can’t be too soon for them to be retro, right? Either way, they hit it hard and that’s just fine. Everybody needs to blow off steam sometime.
Do I even need to say it, that a band called Dirty Nips offering up a demo called Can O’ Dirty Demo Nipples get up to some pretty cheeky shenanigans therein? I hope not. Still, as the Bristol-via-Poland outfit crunch out the riffs of “The Third Nipple” and harmonica-laced Hank Williams-style country blues on “As I Stumbled” and touch on psychedelic jamming in opener “The Basement” and the later experimental-feeling “Dirty Nips Pt. II,” which just drops to silence in the middle enough to make you wonder if it’s coming back (it is), there’s clearly more going on here than goofball chicanery. “Jechetki” builds on the blues and adds a grunge chug, and closer “Mountain Calling” is — dare I say it? — classy with its blend of acoustic guitar and organ, echoing spoken vocal and engagingly patient realization. They may end up wishing they called themselves something else as time goes on, but as it stands, Dirty Nips‘ demo tape heralds a sonic complexity that makes it that much harder to predict where they might end up, and is all the more satisfying a listen for that.
Though they’re by no means the only band in Sweden to dig into some form of traditionalism in heavy rock, Västerås five-piece Ocean to Burn evoke a decidedly more straight-ahead, Southern-heavy feel throughout the nine songs and 33 minutes of Vultures, their self-released full-length. The throaty grit of vocalist Adam Liifw is a big part of that impression, but in the guitars of Mathilda Haanpää and Fredrik Blomqvist, the tone is more stripped-down than huge-sounding, and the grooves from bassist Pontus Jägervall and drummer Fredrik Hiltunen follow suit. That central purpose suits songs like “Wastelands” and the more strutting “Nay Sayer,” and though they largely stick to their guns style-wise, a bluesier nod on “No Afterlife” early and a breakout in closer “Vulture Road” assure there’s some toying with the balance, even as the tracks all stick to the three- to about four-and-a-half-minute range. They’ve been at it for a while, and seem to revel in the ‘nothin-too-fancy’ attitude of the material, but honestly, they don’t need tricks or novelty to get their point across.
Following an encouraging start in 2019’s Cirrus (review here), Nijmegen instrumentalists Mt. Echo return with the conceptual-feeling Electric Empire, still holding some noise rock crunch in “Automaton” following the opener “Sound & Fury,” but saving its biggest impacts for the angular “50 Fanthoms,” the 10-minute “Flummox” and subsequent “As the Tide Serves,” and on the whole working to bring that side of their approach together with the atmospheric heavy post-rock float of “The End of All Dispute” and the early going of “These Concrete Lungs.” At 10 songs and just under an hour long, Electric Empire has room for world-building, and one of Mt. Echo‘s great strengths is being able to offset patience with urgency and vice versa. By the time they cap with “Torpid,” the trio of Gerben Elburg, Vincent Voogd and Rolf Vonk have worked to further distinguish themselves among their various sans-vocals proggy peers. One hopes they’ll continue on such a path.
Vocalist Eric Brock, guitarist/backing vocalist/principal songwriter Lewis Inglis, bassist Dean Gordon and drummer Ryan Wilson are Edinburgh’s Earl of Hell, and their debut EP, Get Smoked, builds on the brash grooves of prior singles “Arryhthmia” (sic) and “Blood Disco,” the latter of which appears as the penultimate of the six included tracks on the 23-minute outing. More stomp-and-swing than punch-you-in-the-face, “I Am the Chill” nonetheless makes its sense of threat clear — it is not about chilling out — as if opener “Hang ’em High” didn’t. Split into two three-song sides each with a shorter track between, it’s in “Parasite” and “Blood Disco” that the band are at their most punk rock, but as the slower “Bitter Fruits” mellows out in opening side B, there’s more to their approach than just full-sprint shove, though don’t tell that to closer “Kill the Witch,” which revels in its call and response with nary a hesitation as it shifts into Spanish-language lyrics. High-octane, punk-informed heavy rock and roll, no pretense of trying to push boundaries; just ripping it up and threaten to burn ladies alive, as one apparently does.
Released on New Year’s Day after being recorded in Dec. 2021 in the trio’s native Rome, “Yonder” serves as the initial public offering and first single from Slugg, and at 9:59, it is more than a vague teaser for the band they might be. The guitar of Jacopo Cautela and the bass of Stephen Drive bring a marked largesse that nonetheless is able to move when called upon to do so by Andrea Giamberardini‘s drumming, and Cautela‘s corresponding vocals are pushed deeper back in the mix to emphasize those tones. Much of the second half of “Yonder” is given to a single, rolling purpose, but the band cleverly turn that into a build as they move forward, leaving behind the gallops of the first few minutes of the song, but making the transition from one side to another smoothly via midsection crashes and ably setting up the ring-out finish that will draw the song to its close. Not without ambition, “Yonder” crushes with a sense of physical catharsis while affecting an atmosphere that is no less broad. They make it easy to hope for more to come along these lines.
Joe Freedman, also of Banshee, first saw Telepathic Radio released as the debut full-length from Mirage in 2021 through Misophonia Records on tape. There are still a few of them left. That version runs 30 songs and 90 minutes. The Cardinal Fuzz/Centripetal Force edition is 50 minutes/20 tracks, but either way you go, get your head ready for dug-in freakness. Like freakness where you open the artwork file for the digital promo and all three versions are the cover of a Rhapsody album. Ostensibly psychedelic, songs play out like snippets from a wandering attention span, trying this weird thing and seeing it through en route to the next. In this way, Telepathic Radio is both broad-ranging and somewhat contained. The recordings are raw, fade in and out and follow their own paths as though recorded over a stretch of time rather than in one studio burst, which seems indeed to be how they were made. Horns, samples, keys, even some guitar, a bit of “TV Party” and “TV Eye” on “TV Screens,” Mirage howls and wails out there on its private wavelength, resolved to be what it is regardless of what one might expect of it. By the time even the 20-track version is done, the thing you can most expect is to have no clue what just happened in your brain. Rad.
With its first, self-titled release, An Evening Redness basks in morose Americana atmospheres, slow, patient guitar drones, warm bass and steady rhythms giving way to periodically violent surges. Founded perhaps as a pandemic project for Brandon Elkins of Auditor and Iron Forest, the six-song full-length explores the underlying intensity and threat to person and personhood that a lot of American culture just takes for granted. The name and inspiration for the project are literary — ‘An Evening Redness in the West’ is the subtitle of Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 novel, Blood Meridian — and An Evening Redness, even in the long instrumental stretch of 12-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “Alkali,” treats the subject matter with duly textured reverence. Elkins isn’t alone here, and the vocals of Bridget Bellavia on the brooding “Mesa Skyline” and the closing pair of “Pariah” and “Black Flame at the Edge of the Desert,” as well as the contributions of other guests in various locales around the world up to and including Elkins‘ native Chicago should not be downplayed in enriching these explorations of space and sound. Bands like Earth and Across Tundras warrant mention as precursors of the form, but An Evening Redness casts its own light in the droning “Winter, 1847” and the harmonica-wailing “The Judge” enough to be wholly distinct from either in portraying the sometimes horrifying bounty of the land and the cruelty of those living in it.
Brothers John and Marc Beaudette — who if they aren’t twins are close enough — comprise New Hampshire’s Cryptophaser, and XXII is their first demo, pressed in an edition of 50 purple tapes. Dudes might as well just open my wallet. Fair enough. In what’s a show of chemistry and musical conversation that’s obviously been going on longer than these songs — that is, I highly suspect the maybe-twin brothers who drum and play guitar have been playing together more than a year — they bring an adversarial bent to the conventions of heavy fuzz, and do so with the proverbial gusto, breaking away from monolithic tones in favor of sheer dynamic, and when they shift into the drone in “October 83,” they make themselves a completely different band like it isn’t even a thing. Casual kickass. At 13 minutes, it flows like a full-length and has a full-length’s breadth of ideas (some full-lengths, anyway), and the energy from one moment to the next is infectious, be that next part fast, slow, loud, quiet, or whatever else they want it to be.
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 1st, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Check out DVNE with a full Fall of touring. Europe and UK and Damnation Festival to boot. I kind of feel like everybody’s waiting to see what’s going to happen with that pesky Delta Variant — which is SUCH a cooler name than either “coronavirus” or “COVID-19”; I’m not glad the pandemic is ongoing, I am glad it finally hired someone to handle branding — playing havoc in various places around the world, but even if the Edinburgh five-piece can squeeze in a little road time to support this year’s Etemen Ænka (review here), that’s a worthy cause. The release was a highlight of early 2021 and while some of the hype has subsided, the stylistic reach of the album itself has not dulled in the slightest. Getting out and pressing more vinyl, as they are, would be a boon toward forward momentum.
And forward momentum is itself a novelty at this point.
The PR wire has this:
Dvne announces European tour with labelmates Déluge; new Bandcamp exclusive vinyl for ‘Etemen Ænka’ now available!
After releasing their sophomore album, Etemen Ænka, earlier this year – and landing on the worldwide charts for their efforts (#43 in Germany, #65 on the UK Indie Charts!) – Dvne has now announced a European co-headlining tour with labelmates Déluge. Kicking off in September, this will be the first run of shows in support of Etemen Ænka, before the band heads to the UK for an appearance at Damnation Fest, followed by a trek with Bossk in the winter.
A new Bandcamp exclusive vinyl edition of Etemen Ænka – white with black dust (featuring a gatefold jacket, 2-sided insert, and poster) – can be pre-ordered now at: https://songs-of-arrakis.bandcamp.com. Limited to 200 copies, this vinyl will be released on August 13th, 2021 – reserve your copy now!
Dvne line-up: Victor Vicart – guitar, vocals, keys Dudley Tait – drums Daniel Barter – guitar, vocals Allan Paterson – bass Evelyn May – keys
