Posted in Questionnaire on February 9th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Deven Andersen of Elk Witch
—
How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I create music with the goal of being heavy and impactful. I came to being a musician through my obsession with music and wanting to make music that I like to hear, feel and play. I started playing guitar at around 12 trying to learn songs from Metallica, Megadeth, etc. A few years later I came across the Corrosion Of Conformity, Deliverance album. I think the sound of that album lies somewhere in the realm of stoner, doom and sludge. That set me off on the path that I am on today which is more rooted in Sabbath.
Describe your first musical memory.
My first musical memory or at least one that sticks in my head was my dad rocking some ZZ Top vinyl on his home stereo back in the 80’s. The album was Eliminator. I loved the sound of an overdriven guitar right from the start. Wasn’t too much longer when I got a walkman for my birthday. My grandfather was a jazz drummer in LA and was glad to see me getting into music. When he was up to visit he went to the local music store and asked them what was the “hip” rock music for a kid. I ended up with tapes from Van Halen, Starship, and REO Speedwagon from what I remember. Since then music has always been a constant in my life.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
My best musical memory was from last spring when we went out on our first regional tour. I’ll never forget all the venues, bands and good times we had. Other than that, I have been to some really good shows over the years. One band I love seeing live is Elder. I saw them at Stumpfest in Portland, OR a few years ago and again this year at Dante’s in Portland. Both times were epic.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
I guess it would have been when I was 23 or so, I was into punk bands like Bad Religion and Pennywise which led to reading a bunch of Carl Sagan books. His writing advocates for skeptical thinking and the scientific method. After finishing several of the books I had a completely different view of religion
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
I feel like personally it leads to greater satisfaction and the ability to get ideas out of my head and through the speakers. I do feel sometimes it can be a double edge sword though. At least in heavy rock music, progression can take you off on a different path or sound that strays off your core sound.
How do you define success?
I define success by accomplishing the goals you set out to achieve. It’s a moving target as things progress. For me after I accomplish a goal I usually set a higher goal to see how far I can take things.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
I once rolled up on a guy laying on the ground with his leg going in a direction that wasn’t normal. He had just crashed on a dirt bike, I’m assuming his tibia / fibula had full breakage.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I have been wanting to create a music video for one of our songs. Maybe it’s the 80’s kid in me but I love music videos. I wish old school MTV would make a comeback.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Making yourself or someone feel something as you listen or look at it. Art is being able to create and express something that you like, of course it’s cool if others like it as well!
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
I’m rebuilding an engine for my Econoline van myself from the block up. I’m looking forward to wrapping up the rebuild then swapping in the new engine.
Also I have some off time that I’m looking forward to. I’ll be hanging with my family and kids for a few weeks.
Here we are in the Spring 2022 Quarterly Review. I have to hope and believe you know what this means by now. It’s been like eight years. To reiterate, 10 reviews a day for this week. I’ve also added next Monday to the mix because there’s just so, so, so much out there right now, so this Quarterly Review will total 60 albums covered. It could easily be more. And more. And more. You get the point.
So while we’re on the edge of this particular volcano, looking down into the molten center of the Quarterly Review itself, I’ll say thanks for reading if you do at any point, and I hope you find something to make doing so worth the effort.
Here we go.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Spidergawd, VI
Like clockwork, Spidergawd released V (review here), in 2019, and amid the chaos of 2020, they announced they’d have a new record out in 2021 — already the longest pause between LPs of their career — for which they’d be touring. The Norwegian outfit — who aren’t so much saviors of rock as a reminder of why it doesn’t need saving in the first place — at last offer the nine songs and 41 minute straight-ahead drive of VI with their usual aplomb, energizing a classic heavy rock sound and reveling in the glorious hooks of “Prototype Design” and “Running Man” at the outset, throwing shoulders with the sheer swag of “Black Moon Rising,” and keeping the rush going all the way until “Morning Star” hints toward some of their prior psych-prog impulses. They’ve stripped those back here, and on the strength of their songwriting and the shining lights that seem to accompany their performance even on a studio recording, they remain incomparable in working to the high standard of their own setting.
The first Eight Bells full-length for Prophecy Productions, Legacy of Ruin comes six years after their second LP, Landless (review here), and finds founding guitarist/vocalist Melynda Marie Jackson, bassist/guitarist/vocalist Matt Solis, drummer Brian Burke, a host of guests and producer Billy Anderson complicating perceptions of Pacific Northwestern US black metal. Across the six songs and in extended cuts like “The Well” and closer “Premonition,” Eight Bells remind of their readiness to put melodies where others fear tread, and to execute individualized cross-genre breadth that even in the shorter “Torpid Dreamer” remains extreme, whatever else one might call it in terms of style. “The Crone” and other moments remind of Enslaved, but seem to be writing a folklore all their own in that.
Swiss four-piece Blue Rumble bring organically-produced, not-quite-vintage-but-retro-informed heavy psych blues boogie on their self-titled debut full-length, impressing with the sharp edges around which the grooves curve, the channel-spanning, shred-ready solo of the guitars, and the organ that add so much to where vocals might otherwise be. The five-minute stretch alone of second cut “Cosmopolitan Landscape,” which follows the garage urgency of opener “God Knows I Shoulda Been Gone,” runs from a mellow-blues exploration into a psych hypnosis and at last into a classic-prog freakout before, miraculously, returning, and that is by no means the total scope of the album, whether it’s the winding progressions in “Cup o’ Rosie (Just Another Groovy Thing),” the laid back midsection of “Sunset Fire Opal” or the hey-is-that-flute on the shorter pastoral interlude “Linda,” as if naming the song before that “Think for Yourself” wasn’t enough of a Beatles invocation. The strut continues unabated in “The Snake” and the grittier “Hangman,” and closer “Occhio e Croce” (‘eye and cross,” in Italian) shimmers with Mellotron fluidity atop its central build, leaving the raw vitality of the drums to lead into a big rock finish well earned. Heads up, heavy rock and rollers. This is hot shit.
It’s palindrome time on Mainz, Germany’s The Mountain King‘s WolloW. Once the solo-project of guitarist/vocalist/programmer Eric McQueen, the experimentalist band here includes guitarist Frank Grimbarth and guest bassist Jack Cradock — you can really hear that bass on “II In Grium Imus Noctem Aram et Consumimur Igni” (hope you practiced your conjugations) and through five songs, they cross genres from the atmospheric heavygaze-meets-Warning of “I Bongnob” through the blackened crunch of the above-noted second cut to a gloriously dreamy and still morose title-track, and the driving expanse of “V DNA Sand.” Then they do it backwards, as “V DNA Sand” seems to flip halfway through. But they’re also doing it backwards at the same time as forward, so as The Mountain King work back toward album finale “bongnoB I,” what was reversed and what wasn’t has switched and the listener isn’t really sure what’s up or down, where they are or why. This, of course, is exactly the point. Take that, form and structure! Open your mind and let doom in!
Berlin trio Sheev prove adept at skirting the line of outright aggression, and in fact crossing it, while maintaining control over their direction and execution. Mind Conductor is their debut album, and it works well to send signals of its complexity, samples and obscure sounds on “The Workshop” giving over the riffs of immediate impact on “Well Whined.” The channel-spanning guitar pulls on “Saltshifter,” the harmonies in the midsection of “All I Can,” the going-for-it-Danny–Carey-style drums on the penultimate “Baby Huey” (and bonus points for that reference) — all of these and so much more in the nine-song/53-minute span come together fluidly to create a portrait of the band’s depth of approach and the obvious consideration they put into what they do. Closer “Snakegosh” may offer assurance they don’t take themselves too seriously, but even that song’s initial rolling progression can’t help but wind its way through later angularities. It will be interesting to hear the direction they ultimately take over the course of multiple albums, but don’t let that draw focus from what they accomplish on this first one.
Dudes got riffs. From Medford, Oregon, Elk Witch draw more from the sphere of modern heavy rockers like earlier The Sword or Freedom Hawk than the uptempo post-Red Fang party jams for which much of the Pacific Northwest is known, but the groove is a good time just the same. The six tracks of Beyond the Mountain are born out of the trio’s 2021 debut EP — wait for it — The Mountain, but the four songs shared between the two offerings have been re-recorded here, repositioned and sandwiched between opener “Cape Foulweather” and closer “The Plight of Valus,” so the reworking feels consistent from front to back. And anyway, it’s only been a year, so ease up. Some light burl throughout, but the vocals on “Coyote and the Wind’s Daughters” remind me of Chritus in Goatess, so there’s some outright doom at work too, though “Greybeard Arsenal” might take the prize for its shimmering back-half slowdown either way, and “The Plight of Valus” starts out with a seeming wink at Kyuss‘ “El Rodeo,” so nothing is quite so simply traced. Raw, but they’ll continue to figure out where they’re headed, and the converted will nod knowingly. For what it’s worth, I dig it.
If “evocative” is what New Hampshire post-metallic mostly-instrumentalists KYOTY were going for with their third full-length, could they possibly have picked something better to call it than Isolation? It’d be a challenge. And with opener “Quarantine,” songs like “Ventilate,” “Languish,” “Faith,” and “Rift,” “Respite” and closer “A Fog, A Future Like a Place Imagined,” the richly progressive unit working as the two-piece of Nick Filth and Nathaniel Parker Raymond weave poetic aural tapestries crushing and spacious in kind with the existential dread and vague flashes of hope in pandemic reality of the 2020s thus far. Still, they work in impressionist fashion, so that the rumbling crackle of “Onus” and the near-industrial slog of “Respite” represent place and idea while also standing apart as a not-quite-objective observer, the lighter float of the guitar in “Faith” becoming a wash before its resonant drone draws it to a close. At 70 minutes, there’s a lot to say for a band who doesn’t have lyrics, but spoken lines further the sense of verse, and remind of the humanity behind the programming of “Holter” or the especially pummeling “Rift.” An album deep enough you could listen to it for years and hear something new.
Andalusian storytellers Red Eye make it plain from the outset that their ambitions are significant, and the seven songs of their third full-length play out those ambitions across ultra-flowing shifts between serenity and heft, working as more than just volume trades and bringing an atmospheric sprawl that is intended to convey time as well as place. In 46 minutes, they do for doom and various other microgenres — post-metal, some more extreme moments in “Beorg” and the morse-code-inclusive closer “Æsce” — what earlier Opeth did for death metal, adding shifts into unbridled folk melody and sometimes minimalist reach. Clearly meant to be taken in its entirety, The Cycle functions beautifully across its stretch, and the four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Antonio Campos (also lyrics), guitarist/vocalist Pablo Terol, bassist Antonio Muriel and drummer Ángel Arcas, bear weight of tone and history in kind, self-aware that the chants in “Tempel” brim with purpose, but expressive in the before and after such that they wherever they will and make it a joy to follow.
Originally recorded to come out in 2013, what would’ve been/is the Stoned Horses‘ self-titled debut full-length runs 12 tracks and swaps methodologies between instrumentalism and more verse/chorus-minded sludge rock. Riffs lead, in either case, and there’s a sense of worship that goes beyond Black Sabbath as the later “Scorpions Vitus” handily confirms. The semi-eponymous “A Stoned Horse” is memorable for its readiness to shout the hook at you repeatedly, and lest a band called Stoned Horses ever be accused of taking themselves too seriously, “My Horse is Faster Than Your Bike” is a sub-two-minute riffer that recalls late-’90s/early-’00s stoner rock fuckery, before everyone started getting progressive. Not short on charm, there’s plenty of substance behind it in “Le Calumet” like a northern Alabama Thunderpussy or the last cut, “The Legend of the Blue Pig,” which dares a bit more metal. Not groundbreaking, not trying to be, it’s a celebration of the tropes of genre given its own personality. I have nothing more to ask of it except what happened that it sat for nearly a decade without being released.
Antwerpen’s Gnome make it a hell of a lot of fun to trace their path across King, their second full-length, bringing in The Vintage Caravan‘s Óskar Logi early for “Your Empire” and finding a line between energetic, on-the-beat delivery and outright aggression, letting “Ambrosius” set the tone for what follows as they careen though cuts like the instrumental “Antibeast,” the swinging and catchy “Wencelas” and the crunching “Bulls of Bravik.” How do they do it? With the magic of shenanigans! As King (which “Wencelas” was) plays out, the suitably hatted trio get up to high grade nonsense on “Kraken Wanker” before “Stinth Thy Clep” and the 11-minute we-can-do-whatever-we-want-so-let’s-do-that-yes closer “Platypus Platoon” buries its later march amid a stream of ideas that, frankly, kind of sounds like it could just keep going. They are adventurous throughout the eight songs and 42 minutes, but have a solid foundation nonetheless of tone and consciousness, which are what save King from being a mess. It’s a hard balance to strike that they make sound easy.
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 1st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
On March 11, StoneFly Records will start taking preorders for the vinyl edition of Elk Witch‘s debut full-length, Beyond the Mountain, ahead of a April 15 release. A week later, on March 18, the album will see its digital release, so if you’re not dead-set on hearing it on vinyl first, you’ll have a chance to dig in ahead of time to the natural follow-up built off of the Medford, Oregon, trio’s first EP, 2021’s The Mountain. And if you’re the CD type, well, I just got one in the mail about 10 minutes before writing this, so I know that exists too.
Comprised now of six songs that together run 37 minutes, the new release harnesses vibes from the Freedom Hawkish opener “Cape Foulweather” to the jazzier launch and more grandiose spaciousness of “The Plight of Valus” at the finish, bringing riffs and fuzz a-plenty in between, Deven Andersen‘s vocals pushed under the guitar to emphasize largesse and give a more immersive feel. It works, and that opening and closing bookend, as it happens, are also the two tracks that make the difference between The Mountain and Beyond the Mountain. All the material has also been re-recorded with Andersen helming, so it’s not like there’s a radical shift in sound between the “new” stuff and the “old,” which, mind you, still came out less than a year ago.
Tall trees, lots of rain, heavy riffs. Have at it:
OREGON-BASED STONER ROCK RIFFCRAFTERS ELK WITCH SIGNS TO STONEFLY RECORDS FOR A WORLDWIDE VINYL RELEASE OF THEIR NEW ALBUM BEYOND THE MOUNTAIN ON APRIL 15th, 2022.
StoneFly Records is stoked to announce the signing of Medford, OR stoner rock riffcrafters Elk Witch and look forward to release their first album Beyond The Mountain on 180g vinyl. This album will be the 4th album released by StoneFly Records.
Back in March 2021, I came across Elk Witch first EP called The Mountain. I really loved it and I saw a great deal of potential in this trio. I decided to approach the guys to see if they would be interested in remodeling their EP into a full LP by adding few more songs. They happened to be working on 2 new songs at that moment. A contract was shortly signed between us.
So, for this extended release they went back to the studio for an entirely new production of all the songs from their debut release The Mountain with the addition of two new songs. The songs were recorded in May 2021 and mixed in June by Deven Andersen at Vortex Studios. Later, in July, the songs were mastered for digital, CD and Vinyl by Carl Saff at Saff Mastering.
Elk Witch’s Beyond The Mountain will release digitally on March 18, 2022.
Vinyl will release on April 15th, 2022. Stonefly Records is excited to give this album a blistering vinyl treatment. The vinyl will be available in both Fly-High and Set-In-Stone edition.
We open the doors for the vinyl pre-order on March 11, 2021.
BEYOND THE MOUNTAIN TRACK LISTING: 1. Cape Foulweather 2. The Woodsmen 3. Llao’s Island 4. Coyote and the Wind’s Daughters 5. Greybeard Arsenal 6. The Plight of Valus
Elk Witch is: Deven Andersen: Guitar/ Vocals Darren Wostenberg: Bass Joe Coitus: Drums
