Alright, I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I’ve watched the complete five-and-a-half-hour, two-part span of the Mutants of the Monster 2020 Virtual Festival. That’s just not where my life is at. It was the Hull reunion that brought me to the Arkansas-based fest’s digital incarnation, and even conducted in separate spaces via Zoom, it was great to see that band again — guitarist/vocalist Nick Palmirotto splurged for the green-screen-style Zoom backgrounds and made the most of it in the clip of “Viking Funeral,” but the whole five-piece ripped in a way that only made me wish all the more they had done a third record before calling it quits in 2015.
But though Hull were the hook, once I was in, it was easy to stay that way. Two nights’ worth of viewing, with L.A. aggro-sludgemasters -(16)- headlining one evening and The Body unleashing their apocalyptic destruction the next, sets from Windhand‘s Dorthia Cottrell (joined by bandmate Parker Chandler), Philly’s Heavy Temple, as well as the likes of Memphis’ Dirty Streets — who played in someone’s very nice living room (I noted the Edison turntable, with speaker horn, behind bassist Thomas Storz), the joy-to-behold Little Rock hometown team Deadbird, hardcore pushers SixKillsNine, the noise crush of Eye Flys — who advocated at the outset for dismantling and defunding the police — as well as ex-Kylesa guitarist Phillip Cope‘s new project Oakskin, who were an atmospheric sludge highlight, spoken introductions, between-band videos, and a ton more. Put together by Christopher Farris Terry — of Rwake, Iron Tongue, Deadbird and the Slow Southern Steel documentary — it not only raised funds for worthy causes, but celebrated a diverse range of sounds and styles and creativity that, while it could never be the same as being in a place and witnessing it all in-person for two nights, utilized the visual medium in an intelligent and exciting way that a lot of live streams simply haven’t been able to do. It had a flow, and for all the geography it drew upon — aesthetically and literally — it was not clumsy in its shifts or nonsensical in its progressions from one set to the next.
Some performed with masks on, some didn’t — even in the same band, as seen with Wvrm — and Heavy Temple played en rouge. I don’t think any of it happened live as it was airing, but the sense of it as a premiere and a presented-live event came through fine. While we’re talking about things I don’t know — there’s so much — I also don’t know how long these streams are going to stay up, and it’s entirely possible that by the time this is posted they’ll be taken down in order to emphasize the ephemeral, it’s-over-now nature of the virtual festival. I hope that’s not the case, and not just because I’d feel dumb posting empty YouTube embeds. Wouldn’t be the first time.
But the bottom line is that while you can you should check out what you can. I’m not gonna try and claim five and a half hours outright from your busy day and your busy life, but, well, maybe I am. Even if it takes you more than two days to get through as you peruse one brief set into the next, the reward is easy justification for the effort.
And maybe next year, in person.
Enjoy:
Mutants of the Monster 2020 Part I
Mutants of the Monster, a Central Arkansas festival helmed by Chris Terry (Rwake, Deadbird, Iron Tongue) that has championed heavy sounds for years, is going virtual in 2020.
We are also raising funds and awareness for two local organizations that support transgender rights and immigrants here in Arkansas. Please take some time to learn about their stories and support the good cause,
Lineup for Part I: Dorthia Cottrell Heavy Temple Barishi Redbait Rebelmatic Hull Wvrm – (16) –
Speakers: Laina Dawes (Music Journalist/ “What Are You Doing Here?”), Michael Alago (Music Producer/ “Who The F**k Is That Guy”), Chris Terry (Rwake, Deadbird, Iron Tongue).
Mutants of the Monster 2020 Part II
Lineup for Part II: Dirty Streets SixKillsNine Oakskin Eye Flys Deadbird Terminal Nation The Body
Speakers: Jason McMaster (Dangerous Toys), Madeline/Rebecca (Redbait), Nate Garrett (Spirit Adrift), Matt Besser (Actor/Comedian), Elliott Fullam (Little Punk People), Ashlie Atkinson (“BlacKkKlansman,” “Mr. Robot”).
Posted in Features on April 14th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
The statistics of COVID-19 change with every news cycle, and with growing numbers, stay-at-home isolation and a near-universal disruption to society on a global scale, it is ever more important to consider the human aspect of this coronavirus. Amid the sad surrealism of living through social distancing, quarantines and bans on gatherings of groups of any size, creative professionals — artists, musicians, promoters, club owners, techs, producers, and more — are seeing an effect like nothing witnessed in the last century, and as humanity as a whole deals with this calamity, some perspective on who, what, where, when and how we’re all getting through is a needed reminder of why we’re doing so in the first place.
Thus, Days of Rona, in some attempt to help document the state of things as they are now, both so help can be asked for and given where needed, and so that when this is over it can be remembered.
Thanks to all who participate. To read all the Days of Rona coverage, click here. — JJ Koczan
Days of Rona: Patrick Forrest of Eye Flys (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
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How are you dealing with this crisis as a band? Have you had to rework plans at all? How is everyone’s health so far?
As a band, Eye Flys has had a few things happen because of this crisis. Our planned Euro tour with Full of Hell and Primitive Man was cancelled, which included an appearance at Roadburn Festival. Our touring was limited as it was this year already because of prior obligations, so it definitely hurt us. Future short touring plans we were squeezing in for early summer are in question right now also. Not sure how it will play out, or when we’ll be able to get out again. Our LP Tub of Lard was released just before that tour was to happen, and at the beginning of the subsequent lockdown. So that effected our LP release also. As far as personally, we are all doing okay in lockdown in our homes right now, and are safe with our significant others/loved ones.
What are the quarantine/isolation rules where you are?
There is a “Shelter in Place” and order for “non-essential” businesses to close, social distancing, and to stay inside unless you need to go out in Philadelphia. Locally, people here are starting to take it more seriously I think maybe, but not everyone unfortunately. There are still people hanging in parks and stuff like it’s another day off. Everyone needs to take this more seriously and stay the fuck inside if we want to help. Me and my girlfriend are safe and healthy in my small West Philly apartment right now with my five cats. I have a porch here, so we try to give each other space and time to do other things to stay occupied. I’ve been trying to stay busy with music, playing drums and skateboarding. Take walks close by if it’s safe, etc.
How have you seen the virus affecting the community around you and in music?
I’m a union stagehand in Philadelphia so, the impact has been tremendous. I typically work in the field of events, concerts/rock shows, A/V, etc. I have a house job at a local venue here that was gearing up for its busiest season ever. Things started to slowly get cancelled and around the 13th of March, then all the work for us literally vaporized overnight. I’m very fortunate to have a union job and organization in place to help me, and able to collect unemployment and keep health benefits. I am worried about the effects it will have on the industry when we do come out of this. Will it hit the ground running and be crazy busy to make up for lost time? Will people be too unsure to come out to events? It is effecting music for sure. People’s ability to tour, record, or just play music together, and write. The one positive I see is musicians at home using this time to stay in and focus on writing and creating. So maybe when this is all over we’ll have a ton of new great music to check out.
What is the one thing you want people to know about your situation, either as a band, or personally, or anything?
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 14th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
David Eugene Edwards. Solo. Acoustic. Every year I’ve been fortunate enough to go, there’s been one keeps-you-alive-until-April Roadburn set, from Saint Vitus with Wino in 2009 and Garcia Plays Kyuss in 2010 to Sleep playing Sleep’s Holy Mountain this year. There’s always one. At least. In 2020, for me, that’s David Eugene Edwards of Wovenhand and 16 Horsepower playing by himself on stage. Whatever else gets added, whoever else is playing, hell, even if Wovenhand end up playing, this is the one that got me. Well done, Roadburn 2020.
Also featured in this massive lineup addition are PH (whose announcement I wrote), Elizabeth Colour Wheel, familiar faces Primitive Man and a host of other, of course widely varied, incarnations of badassery. I’m not trying to take away from anyone else or anything like that, or anything that might still come by saying the above, you understand. Roadburn 2020’s already primed to push well beyond the common bounds of heavy. It was before this announcement, frankly. But from here on in, my schedule already has its circle, and whether we do the Weirdo Canyon Dispatch or not (every year I kind of wait for the shoe to drop on that like it’s something we’ve been getting away with for the last six editions), I’m there, and I don’t care who he’s up against or who’s on next on what stage. If I have to sleep in the gutter of Weirdo Canyon in order to be there, I’m not missing a minute of David Eugene Edwards‘ set. Period.
From the fest:
Roadburn 2020: new announcements, more curator picks, and a showcase!
– Less than 10% of 4 day tickets remain – David Eugene Edwards joins Emma Ruth Rundle’s curated event – James Kent picks a special collaboration for his curation – The Flenser will present a label showcase
Less than 10% of 4-day tickets remain for Roadburn 2020, and single-day tickets will go on sale on December 10.
Artistic Director, Walter Hoeijmakers comments: “As we edge closer towards selling out Roadburn 2020, I am excited that we still have so much more to announce. This year we are putting an emphasis on the context and creativity of the artists we’re announcing and knowing that we have still more up our sleeves means I am delighted to see where Roadburn 2020 is heading.”
EMMA RUTH RUNDLE’S THE GILDED CAGE:
DAVID EUGENE EDWARDS At Roadburn, David Eugene Edwards has graced us with his presence on two occasions as part of Wovenhand. Each performance pulsated with energy and elevated the sets to be highlights of each respective edition of the festival – in no small part due to David’s electrifying presence. We’re delighted to bring him back to Roadburn, this time as part of Emma Ruth Rundle’s curation, The Gilded Cage. David will perform an acoustic, solo set that promises to showcase the diversity of his delivery and the nuances of his craft. Emma comments:
“It’s been a secret wish to see DEE playing solo and delivering his songs in their most bare forms. This was the very first thing that came to mind when I was asked to co-curate Roadburn and it’s going to be a rare and precious jewel of a performance.”
JAMES KENT’S CURATION: REGARDE LES HOMMES TOMBER A product of the burgeoning French underground scene that has produced so much incredible music in the past few years, over the course of two records so far, Regarde Les Hommes Tomber have used scraps from the most sinister subgenres, from black metal to sludge to build up truly frightening epics. Always apocalyptic in feeling, emotional and ruthless in equal measures, drenched in religious imagery and references, and creating a sonic depiction of the fall of mankind… and its subsequent rising to replace the cruelty of the established gods. Not only will we be expecting all of this maelstrom of fiery feelings, but also a healthy measure of the unexpected as well, since Regarde Les Hommes Tomber will be playing their new not-quite-announced-yet album in its entirety.
HANGMAN’S CHAIR X REGARDE LES HOMMES TOMBER Regarde Les Hommes Tomber will join forces with Hangman’s Chair for a collaboration at Roadburn 2020. Hellish, sludgy black metal will clash horns-first with cold, despondent doom, and the result will surely transcend even the most delirious of descriptions that we can come up with at this point. Originally commissioned by Red Bull, this unholy collaboration has occurred just once previously, in Paris. That performance lasted 45 minutes, but for Roadburn an additional 15 minutes of material will be debuted just for us.
PLEBEIAN GRANDSTAND Plebeian Grandstand are a band that have morphed from a core of quite technical, hardcore charged metal to be the hulking beast of black metal fury we see before us today. The creative journey they have been on has led to an infusion of influences from outside the black metal sphere, resulting in nuance and depth that can sometimes be hard to find within the genre. On top of that, they eschew the cartoonish elements of extreme black metal – you’ll find no burning churches here – in favour of something rooted more firmly in reality. After all, what’s more nightmarish than the real world?
TRUE BODY With a calculated sense of tension and just enough human touch to cut through their own cold post-punk atmospheres, Virginia’s True Body has built a following with their urgent and impassioned music. Instead of falling into melodramatic excess or disconnected affectations, the band manages to bring the best of each realm for something that leaves audiences rapt and thrilled. With this masterful take on such a beloved sound, we’re honored to announce that True Body will be performing at Roadburn 2020 as part of James Kent’s curation.
THE FLENSER SHOWCASE In 2020, The Flenser will celebrate the tenth anniversary of the label’s first release. The San Francisco based label has been committed to releasing experimental, avant-garde music for a whole decade – which – naturally – has not escaped our notice here at Roadburn HQ. To celebrate this milestone and to acknowledge the impact that The Flenser has had on our record collections and the broader musical landscape we have invited several of the label’s current artists to perform at Roadburn 2020.
The Flenser label manager, Jonathan Tuite comments: “Roadburn is my absolute favorite festival in the world. The lineup is always diverse, the audience enthusiastic, and the curation is second to none. I can’t think of a more appropriate place for The Flenser to celebrate our ten years of existence.”
GILES COREY For over ten years Dan Barrett has been cementing his role as a visionary in dark music history.Perhaps none of this work has resonated with more intimacy than Giles Corey, his acoustic guitar led, ghost noise-soaked songwriting vessel. While on paper an acoustic led-project sounds like a potentially low-key affair, Giles Corey is bursting with electric energy–recordings are awash in swirling organs, reverberating choirs, striking horns, and blown out drums. While Giles Corey has performed as a solo-act, Roadburn 2020 will mark the project’s first appearance as a full-band. Members of Have a Nice Life, including central figure Tim Macuga, will help bring the album’s haunted sounds to life: expect the stage and audience to be left in a scorched earth state of desolation.
ELIZABETH COLOUR WHEEL “Otherworldly” is a description often applied to artists that evoke the ethereal, and whilst that is occasionally applicable to Elizabeth Colour Wheel, the otherworldliness they invoke is more to do with the fact that it’s not always clear if they really inhabit the same world as we do. Their debut album, Nocebo, laughs in the face of genre descriptors, forging a new path that may be tricky to describe but that offers a wildly enticing prospect.
DROWSE Drowse is an outlet for Kyle Bates to explore his place in the world; his music echoes what he experiences on the varied paths of this internal-reflection. Sometimes those paths lead to extraordinary places – this year’s Light Mirror LP was inspired by an isolated trip to northern Iceland where he took up an artistic residency in 2018. The melancholic results are the sonic equivalent of a sliver of sunlight permeating an otherwise bleak and drizzly morning. The weight of Bates’ reflections is mighty, but it never quite succeeds in suffocating the shards of harmonious hope that glint in the winter sun.
MAMALEEK Mamaleek have been unearthing truly uncategorizable sounds from the catacombs of black metal since 2008. Founded by two anonymous brothers, the Bay Area project has become known for both its wild experimentation and aesthetic cohesion. The use of left-field samples threads their discography together, with sound sources growing more bizarre with each release. The current lineup mixes childhood friends and total strangers. Their participation is an outgrowth of the core duo, an experiment in a live setting, using instruments and sounds that highlight experimentation and flout genre conventions. Who knows how long this iteration will last before the next metamorphosis.
MIDWIFE As a multi-instrumentalist, Madeline Johnson AKA Midwife has sculpted a fuzzy take on experimental dream pop, drenched in melody and punctuated with distortion. Despite a central theme of “devastation” Midwife makes for nuanced and evocative easy listening that can’t help but feel like something of an audio honey trap. We’ll have to wait until April to find out exactly what lurks beneath the surface…
ALSO ANNOUNCED…
PRIMITIVE MAN It is with great anticipation that we’re delighted to announce that Primitive Man will be playing twice at Roadburn. One set will be a business-as-usual, throat-ripping, bone crushing display of what makes them a must-watch band. And one set will be a run through of their 2017 album, Caustic. This is the kind of endurance test we relish – an audio pummelling so intense that there’s no way to come out the other side without a shift in our worldview.
LANKUM When The Livelong Day – the latest offering from Dublin four piece, Lankum – passed over our desks, our ears pricked up and we knew we had to invite them to Roadburn next year. It’s not uncommon to find us feeling effusive about noise, drone and ambient projects in the Roadburn world, but it’s a much rarer prospect to find such tonal qualities on what is undoubtedly, most definitely a folk album. Uilleann pipes and harmonium come together to create a cinematic soundscape that many Roadburners will feel right at home with. The album makes for an appropriate gateway for those attending Roadburn, regardless of which side you’re approaching from – a folk fan heading towards darker territories, or a heavy music fan lured by the promise of a genre steeped in history and countless traditional flourishes.
HILARY WOODS Hilary Woods wrote her debut full length, Colt, alone – before before taking her recordings to Berlin to work with James Kelly (Wife, Altar of Plagues). The solitude is palpable, and listening to what she has made feels like a cautious invitation into a quiet place that she has created. Imagine a soft cocoon of sound, enveloping you as you step through into the netherworld of her making.
FÖLLAKZOID AND ATOM TM Spearheading Chile’s vibrant psych scene, Föllakzoid will transport Roadburn 2020 on an all-encompassing voyage. Joined once again by German electronic artist and producer, Atom TM, the band will make their Roadburn debut, aiming to, “modulate the gravitational waves in order to alter the temporality perception and get sucked into the timeless space continuum,” as guitarist/singer Domingæ Garcia-Huidobro aptly puts it.
TORPOR Rhetoric Of The Image showcases Torpor’s confidence; lengthy post-metal tracks smoulder whilst shorter, more experimental cuts punctuate the album. The three piece will expand a little for Roadburn in order to do justice to the full fifty one minutes that make up Rhetoric Of The Image as they perform it in full for us at Roadburn.
SUM OF R The current incarnation of Sum of R already sees Reto teamed up with Jukka Rämänen (Dark Buddha Rising, Hexvessel, Waste Of Space Orchestra), which has allowed them to forge even more adventurous paths from their dark ambient/drone of yore, but now yet another figure from that particular Finnish scene will be adding his own very particular twist to the proceedings and giving them a new voice, quite literally, as it is none other than vocalist Marko Neuman (Dark Buddha Rising, Waste Of Space Orchestra, Convocation, Ural Umbo).
PH Earlier this year, PH released Osiris Hayden, their second offering through Svart Records and fifth overall in their prolific decade together. Their latest work finds them embracing new reaches of the cosmic infinite, taking on electronic charge as they never have before and exploring the connection between organic and inorganic audio experiences.
MANY BLESSINGS Those of you familiar with Ethan McCarthy will know him as the formidable frontman for Primitive Man. Under the banner of Many Blessings, Ethan performs a much less frenzied kind of music – and yet somehow it manages to be no less disturbing and spine-chilling. Many Blessings has seeped into our consciousness – a slow, creeping threat of sonic menace. Whilst the ferocity we are are perhaps more accustomed to is not present, the wordless missives are brooding and visceral.
EYE FLYS After listening to their blistering debut album Context, and considering the fact that guitarist Spencer Hazard was already roped in for Roadburn 2020 as a member of one of our artists in residence, the wonderful Full Of Hell, how could we ever pass on Eye Flys? The Backslider rhythm section of Jake Smith – here on guitar and vocals – and Patrick Forrest plus Triac’s Kevin Bernsten complete the line-up.
ROADBURN 2020 TICKETS
Weekend tickets for Roadburn are on sale now (3-day tickets are sold out, 4-day tickets remain on sale). Single day tickets will be on sale on December 10. More information about tickets and accommodation options can be found HERE.
Already announced for Roadburn 2020 is: Emma Ruth Rundle and James Kent as curators, commissioned projects from James Kent & Johannes Persson, Jo Quail, and Vile Creature & Bismuth, the return of Julie Christmas, Red Sparowes, Russian Circles, Torche, Brutus, Bada, Dool, Health, Hide, She Past Away, and two Artists In Residence: Full of Hell and Lingua Ignota. Check the full line up HERE.
EUROPEAN FESTIVAL AWARD NOMINATION
Roadburn has been nominated in the best small festival category (less than 10,000 visitors) at the European Festival Awards 2019. Votes can be cast HERE. Votes and spreading the word are appreciated as it would be a huge honour for us to win such recognition.
