Thus ends my favorite Quarterly Review since the last one. Yeah, some of my motivation was in bookkeeping, in wanting to cover this stuff before the year’s done, but trying to keep up is always part of the thing, so that’s nothing new. I am grateful to have spent so much time this listening to music. I get asked a lot to listen to stuff and I’m not sure I’ve ever had less time for hearing new music than I presently have. So take a week and do nothing but that has been fulfilling.

As always, I hope you’ve found something cool to check out, and I hope you tune in for the next one, maybe in December, maybe in January, maybe this is low-key evolving into a monthly thing and eventually I’m going to have to rename the feature — and so on.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

Brant Bjork and the Bros., Live in the High Desert

The difference between Brant Bjork and the Bros. and prior Brant Bjork solo incarnations was that it was the first time the desert rock figurehead had stepped into the role of being a genuine live bandleader. He’d of course toured with solo bands, as he’s continued to, but The Bros. as a backing band gave him the space to shine in a different way onstage, and that comes through in classics like “Too Many Chiefs” and the medleys near the finish of the 78-minute set from 2009 captured on Live in the High Desert, recorded at Pappy & Harriet’s in Pioneertown, CA. I saw this band, and they were hot shit. If you don’t believe me, “Low Desert Punk” here makes the point better than I could, while a piece from the era like “Freaks of Nature” emphasizes the chemistry Bjork and his Bros. fostered during their time. As a follow-up to recent studio LP reissues, as an archival fan-piece, and as nearly 80-minutes of blowout heavy dezzy grooves, this should be an absolute no-brainer for Bjork followers or aficionados.

Brant Bjork website

Duna Records website

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Dresden Wolves, Vol. IV

Mexico City heavy rocking two-piece Dresden Wolves named their six-song EP Vol. IV presumably because by some count it’s their fourth release, but that’s not the same as being their fourth full-length album, if that’s what you were thinking. Here they offer 25 minutes of brash, cymbal-and-low-end-heavy crunch. “Tiempo” has some debut to psychedelia, but mostly in the echo, and the density of the prior “ECO” feels more representative, though with the movement of bassfuzz in “Wherter” I’m not sure one is more weighted than the other. They’re in the element stoner punking in “Robin,” and “Pesadilla” rounds out answering the Sabbathism of “Ketamina” with raw shouts and a swirling current of noise laced around a central shove. They’re not reinventing riffery, but they execute with both personality and a sense of craft while simultaneously bashing away in a manner that my silly lizard brain finds utterly delightful. They’ve been around a decade now. Album?

Dresden Wolves on Bandcamp

Dresden Wolves on Instagram

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Sherpa, Alignment

The obscuring-all-else drones of the nine-minute title-, opening and longest track (immediate points) are the major draw to Alignment, as “Alignment” is the only one of the seven inclusions not previously released in some form. Thus can it be said that Italian experimental psych post-rockers Sherpa remained experimental right up to the very end, as Alignment sees issue as a farewell release, comprised most of demos from Matteo Dossena of what would become Sherpa songs featured on their albums, which is fair enough. There’s sun reflecting on “River Nora” and “The Mother of Language,” from 2018’s second LP Tigris and Euphrates (review here), remains hypnotic even in this raw take, samples and/or field recordings seemingly a part of its skeleton. If you didn’t know Sherpa during their time, Alignment probably isn’t the place to start, since the material isn’t finished, but whatever if it gets you to hear the band.

Sherpa on Bandcamp

Subsound Records website

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Barren Heir, Far From

Crushing. Far From is the third full-length from Chicagoan post-sludge tonebearers Barren Heir, and when “Patient” ends and you feel like you can finally breathe after that four-minute assault, know you’re not alone. Uniformly harsh in vocals, intense in impact and aggression alike, and weighed down by copious amounts of distorted concrete, one piece bleeds into the next as Far From builds momentum through the megariffed “Medicine” and the subsequent, slightly more angular “No Roses,” which seems to get eaten by its own chug before it’s done. The remnants fade into the more peaceful beginning of “Abcesstral,” which serves as a quiet interlude creating tension ahead of the start of “Way In,” which scorches. I guess, if you don’t know the band, what you need to take away is they’re very, very heavy, and they know just where on the upside of your head to hit you with it. There’s a thread of noise rock, but I think maybe it’s just the trio being pissed off, and the blasting away, successive slowdowns and residual noise in closer “Inside a Burning Vehicle” are as punishing an end as Far From justifies. You know I never mention Swarm of the Lotus lightly. Well, here we are.

Barren Heir Linktr.ee

Barren Heir on Bandcamp

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Some Pills for Ayala, Dystopia

There’s a moment about five minutes in, before the solo starts, where opening cut “Little Fingers” sort of settles into its groove, and the effect is an immediate chill on the listener. Néstor Ayala Cortés, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and the sole denizen of the project, has long specialized in the heavy and languid, and without lacking either activity or swing — lookin’ at you, “Black Rains” — as the melodies touch on a heavy psychedelia only bolstered by the abiding tonal warmth. Three tracks top eight minutes — “Little Fingers,” “Above and Below” and “Falling Down” — and while these are obvious focal points, both for how they dwell in parts and how they differentiate from the shorter pieces that space them out, a song like “Rise to the Surface” or experiments like “Regrets” and “Flying to Nowhere” use their relative brevity as a strength, and while one might as well hang a big old ‘you are here’ sign on Dystopia, the closing title-track, a subdued instrumental flesh-out into a quick fade and the only song under three minutes long, is arguably the most hopeful sounding of the bunch. Go figure. Cortés, like South American heavy as a whole, remains underappreciated, but his songwriting remains vibrant and forward-looking.

Some Pills for Ayala on Bandcamp

Some Pills for Ayala on Instagram

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Stonebirds, Perpetual Wasteland

Cerebral French post-metallers Stonebirds offer their first new music in five years with Perpetual Wasteland, their fifth full-length. The album is comprised of six tracks that range from minimalist guitar standing alone to an explosive, big-the-way-modern-pop-is-big chorus like that of “Sea of Sorrow” (not a cover). Stonebirds might be aggressive, as on “Circles” at the outset, or they might even delve into a bit of post-black metal in “Croak,” but there’s never a point at which Perpetual Wasteland lacks purpose. Each side is three songs, two between five and six minutes and a closer circa eight; I’m telling you the symmetry is multi-tiered. And as destructive as “So Far Away” feels at its start, “The Last Time” mirrors with a more open-sounding approach, lush in melody in a way they’ve been before by then, and still tense in chug, but pulled back in the delivery. They’re dynamic, they have range, and they craft their material with clear consideration of how every second is going to unfold.

Stonebirds on Bandcamp

Ripple Music website

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Yurt, VI – Rippling Mirrors of the Other

VI – Rippling Mirrors of the Other is indeed the sixth LP from Irish space rockers Yurt, as I remind myself that just because I’d never heard the band before doesn’t mean they haven’t been around over 16 years. So it goes. The keyboard-prone three-piece — Andrew Bushe and drums and then some, Steven Anderson on guitar/vocals and sax, and Boz Mugabe on bass, vocals, keys (plus visuals) — find a way to make a classic-style motorik push feel mellow on “From the Maggot’s Perspective,” where “Shop of the Most Auspicious Frog” is more of a freakout and “Seventh is the Skut” is more about the jazzprog instrumental chase. Those three songs are shorter, but the album has three more extended pieces as well in opener “The Cormorant Tree” (15:33), “Pagpag Variations” (16:28) and “Sun Roasted Rodent” (13:30), which unfurl across multiple movements, bringing heavy doomjazz skronk and more experimentalist space rock together in a way that makes me bummed to be late to the party, but also kind of feel like I’m right on time.

Yurt website

Yurt on Bandcamp

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Evoken, Mendacium

As the band are now past the 30-year mark, it is an honor to once again be drenched in Evoken‘s pouring, grey, cold, wretched visions. Mendacium brings eight songs themed, because obviously, around the slow decline and death of a 14th century Benedictine monk, running 62 dug-in minutes of beauty-in-darkness extremity. It is not universally crawling, as “Lauds” and “Sext” move with a poise that feels kin to modern Paradise Lost, but for sure is defined by and uses that sense of slow, grueling churn to bolster its atmosphere, which is duly wood-churchy for its subject matter. They’re not all-pummel, of course, and never were. The penultimate “Vesper” is a brief organ interlude before closer “Compline” lowers you down into the pit to face whatever it is that takes place in the song after the seven-and-a-half-minute mark, and there is a morose peace to be found in the quiet moments throughout, as with what might be their only album this decade, Evoken land that much harder for the emotional weight the songs carry, whatever metaphor might be applied to them.

Evoken website

Profound Lore Records website

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Mourners & Yanomamo, Mourners & Yanomamo Split EP

Oh that’s nasty. You might think you’re ready for what Mourners and Yanomamo are bringing in gutter-dwelling death-doom and gnashing, crush-prone sludge roll, but that isn’t likely to save you as the two Sydney-based acts align for a three-song/20-minute split EP that wastes not a second in terms of efficiency of infliction. Mourners present “It Only Gets Worse,” with a raw punch in its bass chug, low-deathly growls and a sound that’s so down and dense across 11 minutes that it sounds slower than it actually is. It dies loud in a wash of noise to let Yanomamo‘s feedback-and-sample start “Lifefucker,” pointedly miserable in its unfolding. It and the growl-into-a-void-but-the-void-is-you diagnosing of mankind’s miseries in “Self-Inflicted” are shorter together than “It Only Gets Worse,” but more outwardly aggressive, as if to make sure you got spit out after being so thoroughly chewed up. I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s pretty heavy in that the-world-is-dying-and-nobody’s-coming-to-stop-it kind of way.

Yanomamo on Bandcamp

Mourners on Bandcamp

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Muttering Bog, Sword Axe Wizard Cult

The craggy dark-wizard-giving-soon-to-be-unheeded-warnings vocals of Muttering Bog‘s first release, the sludgy Sword Axe Wizard Cult, become a defining aspect. The Winchester, Virginia, band’s lone member, credited only as Ben, hones a raw-throated rasp that, where parts of the album might otherwise be stoner metal, keep a tether to extremity that feels as much born of black metal as Bongzilla. It is a challenging but not unrewarding listen; a just-out-of-the-dirt basement doom that isn’t afraid of being caustic or harsh in its riffy, weedian homage. And yeah, it comes across as pretty rough. Some of the changes are choppy on the drums and such, but hell’s bells, it’s a fully DIY make-and-release-a-thing from one person that pushes limits, is certain to evoke an emotional response, and is absolutely uncompromising in the identity being carved. None of that makes it listenable, if you’re looking for listenability, but it does make it art.

Muttering Bog on Bandcamp

Muttering Bog on Instagram

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It’s all over now, I’ve got momentum on my side. This is day four of the Quarterly Review. The first three days have been nothing but a pleasure on my end, putting them together, and with just today and tomorrow left, I’m feeling pretty good about the entire endeavor. I’m not sure yet if this will be the end of the year as regards QRs, but if it is, it’s a good one to go out on.

And basically to make that determination, I need to look at next month’s schedule and see what’s coming when, when I’ll do things like the year-end poll and my own big end-of-year post. No idea on any of that yet, but I’ll get there. Getting this done in relatively smooth fashion is a help. Thanks for reading and I hope it’s been a good one for you as well.

Quarterly Review #31-40:

Psychedelic Source Records, The Initiation Outlaws

Set to release through Echodelick in the US and Weird Beard Records in the UK, in addition to Psychedelic Source Records‘ own distribution, The Initiation Outlaws brings eight pieces and a full 98-minute double-LP’s worth of cosmic improvised jamming, with a cast of regulars from the Hungarian collective — Bence Ambrus, Máté Varga, Róbert Kránitz, Krisztina Benus, Gergely Szabó — taking part in collaborative exploration with Go Kurosawa of Kikagaku Moyo, who goes from drums to bass to guitar as the release progresses, sliding right into the amorphous methodology of Psychedelic Source Records while distinguishing the heavier push in “Three Golds Reward II” or the snare work on “The King of Magic Colts and Wands I” earlier. Trance-inducing as ever, these captured moments are gorgeously fluid and immersive, active enough in parts like “The King of Magic Colts and Wands II” to defy mellowpsych-improv expectation, but abiding just the same. If you’re not there yet, it’s time to start thinking of Psychedelic Source among Europe’s finest purveyors of heavy psychedelia.

Psychedelic Source Records on Bandcamp

Echodelick Records store

Weird Beard Records store

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Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin, Stygian Bough Vol. II

The forlorn folkishness in the midsection of “Waves Become the Sky” bring to mind an extrapolation of emotive doom from the likes of Warning, but that’s understandable with Aerial Ruin and Bell Witch renewing their collaboration for Stygian Bough Vol. II, following on from a first volume (review here) in 2020. The album takes place over four extended tracks from the rolling density of the aforementioned opener through the minimalist-till-it-isn’t “King of the Wood” and the longform folk-death-doom of “From Dominion Let Them Bleed” and the melancholy triumph of heft wrought in 19-minute finale “The Told and the Leadened,” which dwells in spaces empty and full and remains conscious enough to end with tense noise and drumming. This is artistry on its own wavelength, working in its own time, and patient to a point of extremity. But they do it to offer comfort, make no mistake. There’s consolation in these songs, in addition to all the mourning.

Bell Witch website

Aerial Ruin website

Profound Lore Records website

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Giöbia, X-ÆON

Unrepentantly cosmic Italian outfit Giöbia are like a fresh coat of antimatter for space rock. The four-piece obviously hunkered down in their secret lab after 2023’s Acid Disorder (review here) and worked hard to refine their chemical compositions, such that “Voodoo Experience” nods grounded even as its synth and guitars surge beyond the thermosphere. The results show everywhere throughout X-ÆON in their outsider cohesion of classic and neo-space rocks, heavy psychedelia and oddball synthscaping, whether you’re doing the sensory thing with the dream-jam “1976” or embroiled in the four-part side B concept piece, “La Mort de la Terre,” which draws a cinematic curtain for life as we know it in “Dans la Nuit Éternelle,” a wordless epilogue that feels half a world removed from the stomp-and-verse of “The Death of the Crows,” but of course, that’s the whole idea.

Giöbia website

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Bone Church, Deliverance

The included acoustic guitar, organ and FM-radio classic rock vibes in the eight-and-a-half-minute closing title-track aren’t a coincidence. They’re part of a stated intention the band had in taking on more of a traditional sound, coming down from some of the harder-hitting doom of 2020’s Acid Communion and working in more of a ’70s-inspired style. That manifests to varying degrees throughout, as leadoff “Electric Execution” feels like it’s working in the vein of “Neon Knights” or “Turn Up the Night” in Dio Sabbathian raucousness (I know that was 1980-81, don’t @ me), and while “Lucifer Rising” has a weighted march, it’s more Scorpions than Sleep, and “Goin’ to Texas” brings in the organ to emphasize the Southern geography of the album’s centerpiece. It’s a striking turn but they pull it off for sure. “Muchachos Muchachin'” has mid-’70s charm to spare, and “Bone Boys Ride Out” seems to bridge the more modern attack of Bone Church-prior with who they are today. Not every progression plays out like you think it will, and if this is the band Bone Church have wanted to be all along, they sound accordingly right to have made the redirect.

Bone Church on Bandcamp

Ripple Music website

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Js Donny, Death Folk

The ‘soft scream’ vocals give Js Donny‘s Death Folk an immediate sense of extremity, but it’s a quiet extremity. The French solo artist — who also plays bass in adventurous Marseilles sludgers Donna Candy — released an EP with a full lineup in 2023, but this six-song/33-minute offering is more intimate. Js Donny dwells in the quiet, creepy spaces the songs create, the vocal gurgle giving shades of otherworldliness and malevolence alike. It’s called Death Folk, but especially with the electrified/distorted wash that takes hold in “Not Like That” and again at the outset of closer “Black Heart” — a biting tone, like harsher blackgaze — I can’t help but wonder if Js Donny isn’t working in a kind of post-death-metallic framing. There are no drums, which is a fair trade for what’s gained in grim ambience, but even without, the album is clear in manifesting both sides of its title, and while Js Donny isn’t the only one laying claim to death-folk as a style, how it happens here sure feels like an act of genre creation.

Js Donny on Bandcamp

Bamboo Shoes on Bandcamp

29Speedway on Bandcamp

Chrüsimüsi Records on Bandcamp

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Nuclear Dudes, Skeletal Blasphemy

In some distant future, when the history is written of our idiotic, persistently awful time, no one will ever say, “and the right-thinking people of the day had no choice but to seek refuge in avant garde cybergrind,” and that’s why history is bullshit. Skeletal Blasphemy is the third album from Nuclear Dudes and second of 2025 behind September’s Truth Paste (review here) — keep ’em coming — and is the solo-project’s most vicious and realized offering to-date. Spearhead Jon Weisnewski (Sandrider, ex-Akimbo) brings powerviolent catharsis on “Victory Pants,” the title-track and assorted others, working in collaboration with guest drummer Coady Willis (High on Fire, Big Business, Melvins), and whether it’s the punker push in “Bad Body” or the slow, undulations of the closing “The Octopus” and the burgeoning thread of progressive melody throughout these songs, it’s exactly the sort of self-bludgeoning that being alive right now requires. Album of the year? Fuck you, fuck the year, and fuck capitalism.

Nuclear Dudes on Bandcamp

The Ghost is Clear Records website

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Kronstad 23, Sommermørket

With an instrumentalist foot in progressive, horn-inclusive jazz, heavy psychedelic fluidity and a resonant warmth of tone alongside a will to meander, Kronstad 23 feel tailor-made for El Paraiso Records, run by members of Denmark’s Causa Sui. Sommermørket is the Norwegian outfit’s debut album and without sounding consumed by its own ambition to do so, it organically nestles the band in a stylistic niche that allows for the explorations in “Caesar” and “Astralreiser,” the latter of which will seem barely there in its early going at low volumes, to exist along the daring-toward-dancey opener “Dølgsmål” and building a kind of dreamy tension between the guitar and drums on “Trosten,” with none of it feeling out of place. They’ll invariably get comparisons to Kanaan, but the foundation is different and the delivery gentler, with “Helgen” finding its way on drum rolls and key/guitar drift into a classic-prog horn section in a payoff that’s somewhat understated until you look back across the five and a half minutes and see how far you’ve come. I can’t wait to hear how they grow.

Kronstad 23 on Instagram

El Paraiso Records website

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Rolls the River, Love of Driving

“Love of Driving” is the debut single from newcomer New Jersey-based krautrock-minded two-piece Rolls the River. The band brings together Dan Kirwan of Pyre Fyre on bass, guitar and vocals, and Victor Marinelli on guitar, synth, drums and vocals for a sub-five-minute cosmic reachout, obviously schooled in where it’s coming from — that is to say, one doesn’t krautrock by accident; it is a form to adopt and refine — but still feeling like an initial exploration of both style and composition. Fading in on an initial keyboardy drone, the guitar and drums come in together and the neospace shuffle is mellow as layers are added, guitar, keys, but the sense of movement brought to “Love of Driving” is enough to explain the title, whatever you might think of the Garden State’s highway system. Rather than get caught up in jughandles, though, Rolls the River harness tonal presence and linear development and still find room to include voice as part of the atmosphere. Formative, and an encouraging start.

Rolls the River on Bandcamp

Rolls the River on Instagram

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Psychonaut, World Maker

Belgium’s Psychonaut may yet teach progressive metal a lesson or two. The post-metal three-piece reach what sure feels in “Endless Currents” like a new level of expression and craft, and while at 11 songs and 60 minutes, World Maker isn’t a minor undertaking — one could easily argue making a world takes time — the utter consumption achieved in “All in Time,” which I won’t spoil any further, the blissful wash of “…Everything Else is Just the Weather” are not to be missed, and worth whatever minor investment of attention span might be required. Exciting as the intermittent metallic surges are, “Endless Erosion” caps in a quiet place, and the atmospherics across the first two and a half minutes of “Origins,” just as one example, help to bring a feeling of place (of ‘world’) to the procession. It is a vivid place Psychonaut have made, and there are listeners for whom the melodies of World Maker will be transcendental.

Psychonaut on Bandcamp

Pelagic Records website

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Cabfighter, The Sea Between Stars

Following an apparent 2024 EP called Anachronist that is below because this debut album isn’t streaming yet that I can find, The Sea Between Stars — a suitably romantic framing of what you might otherwise call ‘the void’ — brings a progressive take to classic-style doom rock. The Oregonian five-piece roll out a genuine feeling of dynamic across the album’s 10 tracks, from the proto-metal shove of “Knightrider” at the outset to the later rush and wail of “Sky Sized Heart,” to the doom-epic ballad reach of “Bridge of Irreconcilable Sorrow” to the acoustic turn in the last movement of “The Words We Don’t Speak” and variable but unifyingly soulful vocal arrangements throughout, up to the minimal voice-and-piano closer “Ghost Notes” or the duet in the crescendo of “Still Breathing.” Ambition set in balance with organic production and songwriting. I don’t know when The Sea Between Stars is coming out, if it’s now-ish, early 2026 or what, but if you want to take this as an early heads up, do.

Cabfighter on Bandcamp

Cabfighter on Instagram

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I was gonna do this whole week, happy Monday, happy Tuesday, happy Wednesday, but I happen to feel like an asshole typing the words “happy Wednesday,” so I’m going to refrain. Hope your week isn’t awful, in any case.

Or if it is, I hope music can help make it better. This Quarterly Review has been a breeze thus far and looking at the lineup for today I expect the trend to continue. Thanks for hanging in with it. We pass the halfway mark today and will wrap up on Friday, with 50 releases covered throughout the week.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

Amorphis, Borderland

Yeah, okay, you can go ahead and cancel the rest of the review. Yup, I know. I’d love to sit here and talk about how Finland’s Amorphis, some 35 years and upwards of 16 full-lengths later, are still refining their processes, conjuring melodic intricacy, and celebrating death metal in kind. I’d love to talk about the progressive strains in Borderland, or about how as recognizable as Amorphis are, they’re still able to find new ways to balance the keys and guitar, or to switch up the vocals, or even just to chug proggier on “Light and Shadow” and “Fog to Fod,” whatever it might be. I’d love to talk about all of that, but you see, the thing is… “Bones.” Specifically, the riff thereof, swept into with crushing majesty and rolled forth with knows-what-it-has certainty of the type one would expect from a long-established pro-shop genre-innovating band like Amorphis. I could go on about all the other stuff, but that riff is gonna be all you need to know ahead of time. I’ll hope to have it in my head for the next year or so.

Amorphis website

Reigning Phoenix Music website

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Joe Hasselvander, Fire on the Mountain

One could spend the rest of this space recounting Joe Hasselvander‘s pedigree, from Death Row to Pentagram to Raven to The Hounds of Haseelvander, with stints in countless others including Blue Cheer besides, but that doesn’t tell you much about the doom of Fire on the Mountain. Hasselvander‘s third solo outing under his name and first in 25 years follows a traditional pattern of Doom Capitol blue-collar riffing that, it has to be acknowledged, Hasselvander had a part in establishing, while the man himself plays all instruments and handles vocals, at time with a bit of a lounge-singer edge with spoken lines, but when he reaches for the higher note in third cut “Holy Water,” a big moment in the song, it’s there for him. “Prodigal Sun” is one of several images taken from the bible and would seem to be autobiographical, and he ends with a fitting apex of nod and shred in “Darkest Before the Dawn.” He’s said he has plans for more, and indeed, Fire on the Mountain sounds more like a beginning than an end.

Joe Hasselvander on Facebook

Savant Guarde Records on Bandcamp

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Kariti, Still Life

A current of crackling, tube-heating distortion begins in “Spine,” which introduces Kariti‘s third album, Still Life, and indeed even amid the The Keening-esque piano of “Nothing” and the title-track a short time later, that hard-toned drone becomes a backbone for the material. It’s not always there — arrangements are fluid around the central guitar/keys/voice — but for an artist working in a style so intentionally mindful of aesthetic, the My Bloody Valentine-esque noise swell of “Suicide by a Thousand Cuts,” the emergence of the static in “Naiznanku” and the rumble behind the closing prayer “Baptism” bring dark avant garde experimentalism to traditionalist melodies. This is what Kariti has been developing since 2020’s Covered Mirrors (review here), working with guitarist Marco Matta on a deepening collaboration. While retaining folkish intimacy thanks to the quiet stretches around this distorted crunch (looking at you, “Purge”), Kariti has never sounded farther-reaching.

Kariti Linktr.ee

Lay Bare Recordings website

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Burning Sister, Ghosts

They don’t make ’em like Burning Sister anymore, and listening to Ghosts, I’m less sure they ever did. Because as much as the Colorado now-twosome of bassist/vocalist/synthesist Steve Miller and drummer Alison Salutz continue to foster a druggy ’90s-type slackerism amid all the crash in opener “Brokedick Icarus” and the drawling march of “No Space or Time,” they’ve also never quite sounded as much themselves. There’s psychedelic shimmer in the noise swirling in the later reaches of “Stellar Ghost,” and “Lethe//Oblivion” (premiered here) is made all the more a ceremony with the thread of synth and/or amplifier hum. Meanwhile, “Swerve (Dead Stars)” would work as a new wave arrangement, I can feel it, and the longest-song-by-a-second “Dead Love” (7:20) closes with a thrilling roll and languid procession, reinforcing the downerism that’s been essential to Burning Sister since their outset. Whatever comes in the future, being a duo suits these songs.

Burning Sister on Bandcamp

Burning Sister on Instagram

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The Lunar Effect, Fortune’s Always Hiding

A quick turnaround third full-length from London’s The Lunar Effect will be nothing to complain about for those who (like me) got on board with the London heavy rock outfit via last year’s Sounds of Green and Blue (review here). Also on Svart, the follow-up brims with cohesion in its songwriting and purpose in its twists, with the opener “Feed the Hand” establishing the command that proves unwavering through “Watchful Eye,” the brash speed-shuffler “Five and Two” and the lonely sway of “My Blue Veins” before “Stay With Me” modernizes Graveyardian soul en route to the grunge-riffed centerpiece “Settle Down.” The dynamic continues to expand with the piano-led “I Disappear” speaking to a burgeoning reach in songwriting, while “A New Moon Rises” regrounds and “Scotoma” smoothly finds a niche in desert rock that probably hundreds of bands wish they could make their own, and “Nailed to the Sky” rounds out by going big on tone and emotionality alike. So far, these guys are a better band than people know. They inject a little drama to these proceedings, and it sounds like there’s more to come.

The Lunar Effect website

Svart Records website

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King Cruel, Sky Eater

While the closing title-track has a thread of prog metal that reminds of mid-period Devin Townsend, Auckland, New Zealand’s King Cruel back their 2023 Creeper three-song EP with a marked sense of atmosphere, the melodies of careening lead track “Haunting Time” calling to mind Boston’s Worshipper in their metallic underpinnings, shred and thoughtful melody. Sky Eater is my first exposure to the band, whose style balances mood and impact smoothly, and whose hooks are inviting without being cloying, as in “Diamond Darya,” which digs in and rides its central riff with a stoner rocker’s dedication and a poise that comes from knowing why they’re doing it. The aforementioned capper is the catchiest of the bunch, but King Cruel, goal-wise, have more in their sights than catchiness, and given the sprawl they lay out here, one can’t help but wonder if a debut album won’t be next.

King Cruel Linktr.ee

King Cruel on Bandcamp

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Angad Berar, Sundae

I won’t claim to know how it was made, between what’s improvised, layered in, overdubbed, conjured from ethereal planes beyond the limits of understanding, and so on, but Angad Berar‘s eight-track/50-minute Sundae is indeed a sweet dish of psychedelic immersion. The Berlin-based solo artist made it in collaboration with guitarist/synthesist/bassist Kartik Pillai, while drummer Siddharth Kaushik sits in on the 10-minute penultimate cut and vocalist Chrisrah guests on the only song that isn’t a numbered jam, the moody mellow liquefier “Driving With You” before “Jam #3” and the horn sounds of “Jam #4” re-immerse the listener in slow-churning fluidity. “Jam #6,” with the live drums and extended runtime, is pointedly hypnotic in its first half, but has some Endless Boogie-type rock angularity later that makes it fun, while the closing “Jam #7” offers a seven-minute drone meditation before handing the listener back over to reality. Serenity abounds if you know where to find it.

Angad Berar on Bandcamp

Stickman Records store

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Trevor’s Head, Fall Toward the Sun // Majesty and Harmony

Admirably celebrating their 15th anniversary in 2025 with touring and new music, UK melodic heavy rockers Trevor’s Head bring the Abbey Road-recorded “Fall Toward the Sun” and “Majesty and Harmony” together, not quite to encapsulate their sound or everything they’ve accomplished in their time, but to typify the ethic of marking the occasion by doing the thing itself; that is, they’re writing music because it’s what they love to do. “Fall Toward the Sun” and “Majesty and Harmony” both have an edge of aired-out ’90s-type noise rock — nothing new for Trevor’s Head in terms of style — but where they hit you with it up front in the first song, the latter holds its payoff in reserve for when they depart the titular harmonies and get to the surge of crunch in the midsection. Running seven minutes total, you wouldn’t accuse Trevor’s Head of overindulging, but instead, they give their fans and followers something new to dig into that in ethic and realization can only serve as a reminder of their appeal in the first place.

Trevor’s Head Linktr.ee

APF Records website

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Ravine, Chaos and Catastrophes

Burl, crunch, lumber, crush, groove and sprawl — the Rob Wrong (Witch Mountain)-recorded debut full-length from Portland, Oregon, riffchucking five-piece Ravine knows from whence it hails. There are some flashes of cosmic intention, but sludgier, earthbound nods pervade the five-track/47-minute outing, which holds its ambition not in a performative stylistic overreach — that is to say, Ravine are who they are musically; there’s no pretense here as they hit you with it straight forward — but in the course each of these tracks takes. Their heaviest onslaught might be in the willfully, almost gleefully grueling “Ennui,” of course the centerpiece, but even there Ravine aren’t content just to doom, or rock, or sludge out, etc., instead working to create a sense of momentum within the songs as each follows its own path, marking out its own place while adding to the whole. They’re not done growing, and I don’t think the balance of their approach is settled, but given what they already lay out, that’s a strength in their favor. This is the kind of debut that makes friends.

Ravine on Bandcamp

Ripple Music store

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Malgomaj, Valfiskens Buk

Sweden’s Malgomaj aren’t through the opening title-track (a bookending two-parter) of Valfiskens Buk before they’ve put forth primo hard boogie and inventive Sabbathry, classic in influence, modern in production/execution, and continuing to brim with movement as “Rembrants Skugga” and the softshow-ready “Hej Hej Malgomaj” back it. I suppose the elephant in the room here is Graveyard, but “Värddjur” has more Motörheaded foundations, and the instrumental “Itera Mot Solnedgången” hints toward Westernism before the seven-minute “Cyklopisk Betong” flattens with its early riff only to redirect to ’60s-ish garage jangle, so one wouldn’t accuse Malgomaj on this apparent debut of being singleminded, but neither are they lacking cohesion or flow between songs. “Stöttingfjället Rämnar” answers the heft of the track prior and “Det Är Nåt Fel På Solen” sets a languid march before “Valfiskens Buk Del 2” reprises the opener to make the album sound all the more complete, whether you speak the language or not.

Malgomaj Linktr.ee

Ostron Records website

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Tell your normie friends you have a doctor’s appointment or something, because the Quarterly Review is back with day two of five, bringing another round of 10 releases to bear in succession rapid enough to be modern without, you know, actually being written by a computer. Unless you consider the entire universe a hologram, in which case, technically, everything is done by a computer. Processor sucks though. That’s why you get lags. And fascism.

But enough of that. More of this.

Quarterly Review #11-20:

Primordial, Live in New York City

A Primordial live album? Fine. Recorded in New York? Fine. Whatever. Just hook it to my veins and be done with it. The stalwart Dublin post-black-metallers have long since established their mastery of form, and frankly, the more examples there are of them doing the thing, so much the better for future generations to learn from. That’s only funny if you think I’m kidding. The 99 minutes of Live in New York City are a document of Primordial not at their most furious or unhinged, or at their most atmospheric, graceful or doomed, but they are stately in “The Golden Spiral,” “As Rome Burns” and the ever-epic “Bloodied Yet Unbowed.” I remain a sucker for “Empire Falls” and “No Grave Deep Enough,” that era, but newer material like “How it Ends” and “Victory Has 1,000 Fathers, Defeat is an Orphan” resonate well alongside what to my mind are classics, emphasizing the vitality and stage presence that remain in Primordial. If it’s a victory lap, or contractually obligated, or whatever, I don’t care. It’s Primordial. There’s no stronger endorsement you could give it than to say that.

Primordial website

Metal Blade Records website

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Cattlemass, Alpha 1128

Cattlemass have a live lineup, but the studio debut from the band was written, played and tracked by Chris Price, and the eight songs of Alpha 1128 (shades of THX 1138 in the title) would seem to be harnessing his vision of a mostly mid-tempo doom metal that’s not afraid to break out and rock a bit or dig into a creeper procession like “Infecticide.” Starting with its longest track in “Chant of Cthulhu,” Price enacts a thickly toned nod that holds even as “Eternal Beast” tosses psych flourish into its midsection. Some of the production reveals a background in metal — the muted stops in “Replicant,” complementing a robotic theme, bring the wavform all the way down; stoner recordings leave the amp hum — but there’s attention to atmosphere around that, both in “Intermission” and the instrumental finale “Exit Oblivion” and in the later reaches of “The Wizard” and the largesse that swells as “Nachthexen” rolls through its midsection. I’ll be curious to discover where Price goes from here, and if Cattlemass‘ next LP might be a full-band affair.

Cattlemass on Bandcamp

Cattlemass on Instagram

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Honeybadger, Let There Be Light

Though the intro guitar on “Before the Crash” seems to call out to original-era Mediterranean psychedelic rock, Athenian four-piece Honeybadger are nothing if not terrestrial. Specifically, grounded in desert-heavy and catchy songwriting, with their second album, Let There Be Light coming five years after their debut, Pleasure Delayer (review here), which they spent years supporting. Queens of the Stone Age remain a primary influence, though “Before the Crash” pushes outside this in its melody and “Filth and Disorder” hits harder and “Empty-Handed” is more fuzzed, and as with the first album, there are personality aspects that shine through as “The Green” answers in its riff the call of the opener and the horn arrangement in the closing title-track plays a dirge. It’s been a minute, and the LP feels short at 32 minutes, but the tradeoff is the songs are tight and sharply delivered and I’ll take that every time. Honeybadger took their time to make it, but what they’ve made is a step forward.

Honeybadger website

SODEH Records website

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Blue Heron, Emulations

Not gonna feign impartiality here, as I consider Blue Heron frontman Jadd Shickler a friend and he’s someone I’ve worked with for over 20 years, but what I will say is that I very much dug 2024’s Everything Fades (review here), and Emulations builds on that with included live versions of “Everything Fades” and “Swansong” (as well as two cuts from the first LP) recorded at KUNM in the band’s native Albuquerque, while pushing ahead with a new original track “Marigold” that’s a highlight, and three covers — Fudge Tunnel‘s “Grey,” Clutch‘s “The House That Peterbilt” and Floor‘s “Find Away” — that emphasize the flexibility of the band around their heavy desert core. “Grey” is vicious at its heaviest, “Find Away” is admirably loyal to the original in its weighted blowout, and the Clutch tune gets a gruff treatment, but the melodies in “Marigold” and the energy in the live takes give a full album’s worth of satisfaction while packaged as an EP to take on tour. Mark it a win.

Blue Heron on Bandcamp

Blues Funeral Recordings website

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Stoned Spirit, Inside Me

Stoned Spirit offer big hooks, thoughtful songcraft, progressive arrangements and a sense of the material as an outreach to the listener. It’s my first experience with the band, who also had an album out in 2016, but from the voicing of all “Mankind” in the opener through the uptick in tonal density as the built-into title-track unfurls its lumber, there doesn’t seem to be a moment on Inside Me that one would call ‘unconsidered.’ This is a strength to the listening experience because the four-piece — vocalist Tony, guitarist Marios (also backing vocals), bassist Titos and drummer Chris — kind of sound like they’ve been hammering out this material for nine years. Or if not all nine, certainly some statistically significant portion of that span. That’s a complement to how dug-in Stoned Spirit are to their approach, satisfying in its atmosphere and movement alike, but mature as the songs feel they remain expressive in the stories they’re telling.

Stoned Spirit on Bandcamp

Stoned Spirit on Instagram

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Ravenswood, Rites of the Let Down

The two-song opening salvo of “Red Eyes in the Hollow” and “Oath of the Stream” doesn’t necessarily set you up for the full scope of Ravenswood‘s six-track debut album, Rites of the Let Down, which from those shorter and punchier pieces unfurls four longer, significantly-more-likely-to-be-called-“slabs” of doom leaning into psychedelia. The pairing of those two isn’t new, obviously, but Ravenswood make it feel dramatic as they reroute “Where You Won’t Be” or the willfully choppy title-track from darker processions into tripped-out jams — stark changes that are executed with remarkable fluidity and, in the case of the title-track, patience. “Holler Knows” might be where they find the middle-ground, but it’ll be another record or two before we know if that’s actually something they’re pursuing, and the post-grunge vocal melody and meme-ready last slowdown in closer “Solid Psychonaut” also bode well if we’re looking for things to bode. There’s room to grow and the production is raw, but Rites of the Let Down operates with individuality as part of its intention.

Ravenswood on Bandcamp

LINK

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Sum of R, Spectral

Maybe it’s somewhat counterintuitive, but in the pushing-out extremity of “Solace,” in the slow cinematic drones of “Cold Signtures,” in the synthy expanse of “Null” and the guitarrier (yeah I said that) reaches of “The Solution,” but what might be Sum of R‘s seventh album can be as stark, grim and desolate as it wants in “Agglomeration” with G. Stuart Dahlquist sitting in, and the penultimate “Violate” can hit a crescendo like what if post-black-metal-and-screamo-but-not-awful and it still to me just sounds like a celebration. There’s no getting away from it. Spectral is dark, and it often feels unremitting across its 49 punishment-prone minutes, but all of it is a celebration nonetheless — of creativity, of outsiderism, otherism, of searching for ideals beyond the mainstream and finding depth in places others would fear to go. It almost can’t help but be beautiful, otherwise consuming as the darkness is.

Sum of R website

Sum of R on Bandcamp

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Atomic Saman, Saman The Doom

Gritty stoner-doom nod pervades the debut release Saman The Doom from Shanghai-based trio Atomic Saman. Opener “Fuzzonaut” is instrumental, but after the Jeff Goldblum sample, “F.L.Y.” has vocals in its rolling, raw-tracked miasma. The grooves are loose as “F.L.Y.” plods into the bassy opening of nine-minute centerpiece “Torture Machine” (sample from A Clockwork Orange there) and the low-mixed stoner-chant is part of what unfolds, but Atomic Saman run deep in the addled ethereal, and “Torture Machine” and the subsequent, tops-10-minutes “Brain COP” keep immersion central, so it works. Closer “Weedsky (Live in CAVE)” is lumbering enough to make you think they actually went to a cave to capture it, and reveals something of an Electric Wizard influence underlying, but Atomic Saman are less horror and more red-eyed paranoia and that suits the exhausted-with-the-world disaffection as well as the trance factor here just fine.

Atomic Saman on Bandcamp

SloomWeep Productions on Bandcamp

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Moonstone, Age of Mycology

By the time they’re most of the way through sub-three-minute opener “A New Dawn” and the command is issued to, “Bow to mycelium cown,” I’m ready. With some rolling fluidity inherited perhaps from their countrymen in Dopelord and mellow vocals over purple-hued doomly fuzz, the lumber is strong with Kraków four-piece, who bring ambience alongside crush with the open spaces (gradually filled via tone) of “Glorious Decay,” the brash shove of “Primordial,” the daring toward ethereality of “This Barren Place,” and so on. “Disco Inferno” moves, but “Primordial” sprints, making for an interesting pair late, where back at the outset “Crooked One” and “Glorious Decay” bring moodier engrossing. It resolves, perhaps inevitably, with a 13-minute title-track that is a journey unto itself with multi-tiered solos, progressive expanse and a little flourish of goth in its verses. “Age of Mycology” fits as a summary for the LP that carries its name, with a speedier crescendo waiting after a murky slog to get there, righteously bleak but not hopeless. Dooming on their own wavelength, they are.

Moonstone on Bandcamp

Interstellar Smoke Records store

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Wooden Tape, Wool

A sampling experiment like “Alpine Pop” and the tuning-in-a-radio on “A Nutty and a Texan Bar Please,” the veering from “Saturday Morning” from serene meditation to harsher drone — these are just examples of the many ways in which Wooden Tape‘s Wool basks in the details. Songs like “The Moroccan House” and “Croxteth Hall,” the five-minute “Beneath the Weeping Willow Tree,” etc., have a foundation in blending often-acoustic guitar and electronics/synth, so there’s basically an infinity of room for UK-based solo artist Tim Maycox to explore whatever reaches he might choose. On “Kirby Market,” he imagines a kind of pastoralia with Mellotron and chimes, a thud behind for percussion, whereas it’s raining on “Laundrette Sunday” and the arrangement becomes a jangle of cascading elements, departing the strum of “Crescent Town” and seeming to cap the weekend conveyed through the tracks’ procession by packing a full day in the final 1:42. Some Sundays are like that.

Wooden Tape on Bandcamp

God Unknown Records Linktr.ee

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Happy Monday, and welcome to the Quarterly Review. Or welcome back, anyhow. I said last month that I might try to sneak another one of these weeks in before the end of November, and I’m honestly not prepared to say this’ll be it for the year. There’s a lot out there to keep up with, and this is the most efficient means I have for ‘keeping up,’ as best as I can do that anyhow. I don’t know, man. I’m just trying to get through the day.

This QR is 50 releases — I was slating them right up to yesterday, so some of it’s pretty fresh — and will go from today through Friday. It will be most, if not all, of what is posted this week. I hope you find something you enjoy. Let’s go.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

Beastwars, The Ship // The Sea

At nearly 15 years’ remove from their self-titled debut (review here), New Zealand’s Beastwars have been through ringers in life and music alike, but their sound on their sixth full-length, they’ve never sounded quite so refined. Understand, it’s Beastwars, so I still mean immersive and crushing riff-heavy rock, which the band have honed to a point of bordering on noise rock in pieces like “The Storm” or the later “You Know They’re Burning the Land.” “Rust” and “The Howling” maintain a sense of the epic with Matt Hyde‘s shouts alternately into and out from the abyss, but the band have grown in the six years since their last album of originals, 2019’s IV (review here), and for the blowout in “The Devil” and the weight of chug in “Guardian of Fire,” their impact feels all the more craterous for it.

Beastwars store

Beastwars on Bandcamp

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Lacertilia, Transcend

I won’t take away from the shorter bangers here, whether it’s the wah-on immediacy of “Listen Close” or “Weird Scenes” with its stick-click immediacy, but each half(-ish) of Lacertilia‘s third LP (first for Majestic Mountain), Transcend, ends with a more extended cut, with “Nothing Sacred” (10:34) and “The Sun is the Key” (7:13) rounding out their respective sides, and the band are right to take the time when they take it. Of course, it’s symptomatic of the broader variety brought to the Cardiff five-piece’s craft, and they make Transcend a showcase of their reach, be it into acoustic strum and emergent bluesier scorch on “Over and Out,” the twisting lead guitar progressivism of “Deviate From the Plan,” which meets the grandeur halfway, or the percussion-laced instrumentalist build of the semi-title-track “Transcending.” They end up offering something different with each of the 10 songs, and balance raucousness and expressive purpose as they go in malleable and distinctive style.

Lacertilia on Bandcamp

Majestic Mountain Records store

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Dune Aurora, Ice Age Desert

With their debut album, Turin three-piece Dune Aurora draw together disparate ideas from across the modern riffy pastiche such that garage-style sway and more traditonalist stoner chug combine with at-times-ethereal melody, desert push, psychedelia and, in the case of “Trapdoor,” a poppier take entirely. There’s cohesion in the songwriting to match the aesthetic ambition, though, and Dune Aurora don’t come off as haphazard so much as multifaceted. The reworked prior single “Fire” demonstrates a fuzzy drive waiting in the wings as part of their approach, but the nod in “Burning Waters” is more dug in, and “Sunless Queen” reveals a patience underlying their builds that might come out more on subsequent outings, but the shove of “Crocodile” and that Nirvana riff in “Dune Chameleon” are vital to Ice Age Desert too, and it’s still just a sampling of the elements Dune Aurora use to ensnare the listener. As much as they have going on, that they don’t come across as confused seems to give them all the more potential.

Dune Aurora on Bandcamp

Argonauta Records website

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Khayrava, Ghost Pain

Ghost Pain is the debut two-songer from Almeria, Spain, post-metallic four-piece Khayrava, who present “Red Hot Sun” (7:04) and “Ghost Pain” (10:32) with a marked sense of texture as part of their intention. Both tracks crush, but both also offer a moment of departure from that, and the latter plays off the impact of the former with a keyboardier air and its later divergence into floating melody and crash before, just past the eight-minute mark, they torch the whole thing with a worthy and minutes-long crescendo. “Red Hot Sun” is huge, but its midsection gives over to a break of Tool-y groove met with heavy post-rock flourish from the guitar. That also, of course, comes back around to the pummel, but it’s in the getting there that Khayrava begin to reveal the character of the band, and with the depth of mix they bring to Ghost Pain and the clear intent toward nuance of style, I’ll be on the lookout for where they go from here.

Khayrava on Bandcamp

Khayrava on Instagram

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River Cult, High Anxiety

“Who invented 9-5,” River Cult ask on “Fast Crash.” “They should be shot dead,” is the answer the lyrics give. Fair. The third long-player from the heretofore undervalued New York-based disgruntled fuzzbringers manages to make a mental health crisis swing like desert rock on “Smoke Break,” the sixth of the seven inclusions on the 38-minute offering, seeming to answer the crash-in, warm tone and lyrical fuckall of the opening title-track in the process. They’re not wrong, and if you’re gonna say the world sucks, at least “Feels Good to Scream” has a density of distortion to hold up to the message, vocals biting through like early-metal’s cultist inheritor, cavernous and obscure ahead of centerpiece “Mind the Teeth” start-stop chugging as the lore of ‘The Wolf’ is cast. The trio of guitarist/vocalist Sean Forlenza, bassist Anthony Mendolia and drummer Eli Pizzuto (ex-Naam) find a niche for themselves in downtrodden fuzz, ending with “New Song,” which even having been tracked at Brooklyn’s Studio G sounds fresh off the stage.

River Cult on Bandcamp

River Cult on Instagram

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Beast Eagle, Sorceress

In the soaring vocals of Kate Prokop and the riffs behind them chugging away at the verses of “The Dead Follow” and the moodier surge into the layered hook of “Witch Hunt,” Omaha, Nebraska’s Beast Eagle answer their 2024 self-titled debut EP with five more songs of metal-rooted heavy groove, clear and fluid in “Sharp Tongue” but not without aggression underlying. The bass in “The Dead Follow” is mixed the way I feel bass should always be — forward — and that gives even the mellower stretch as they move into the ending a different sense of presence than it might otherwise have, but in the galloping verse and sprawling chorus of “The Demonstration” and the rush of “Send Me Down,” the latter of which, admittedly, is more of a rocker, speaking to a burgeoning dynamic in their sound, they retain a feeling of charge, and that defines Sorceress‘ 19-minute run as much as the taut chug in “Sharp Tongue.”

Beast Eagle on Bandcamp

Beast Eagle on Instagram

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The Munsens, Degradation in the Hyperreal

Having relocated from Denver to Asbury Park, New Jersey, The Munsens are no less vicious or crushing on their second album, Degradation in the Hyperreal. “Eternal Grasp” starts the procession as much death metal as it is sludge, which is an ethic that “Supreme Death” will bring to gorgeously extreme fruition a short time later, while pieces like the melancholic, minimalist instrumental “Vesper” and the blistering megasludger “Sacred Ivory” and the outro “I Avow” offset the onslaught of “The Knife,” “Scaling Ceausescu’s Balcony” and the lumber-into-double-kick of “Drauga,” vocals offering precious little comfort for the downward journey of the record’s 46 minutes. That “The Knife” finishes, specifically, ahead of “I Avow,” stands as testament to just how far The Munsens have pushed into extremity over the course of their decade-plus, but they are not entirely unforgiving either, despite having grown only more gnashing over the course of their decade-plus tenure.

The Munsens on Bandcamp

The Munsens on Instagram

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Rattlesnake Venom Trip, Eclipse the Sun

They’re not thrash, but thrash is part of what Dayton, Ohio’s Rattlesnake Venom Trip get up to on their new four-song EP, Eclipse the Sun, with a sharp edge to the riffing on lead cut “Hollowed Eyes” that tells the tale. The second half of that track subsides some in terms of forward thrust, setting up the still-chugging-but-slower “Ablaze Set I,” with a more resonant hook, and “Brushstrokes/Eclipse the Sun,” which in its first half is as far as Rattlesnake Venom Trip go in divergence from the burl and push, but in its second answers for the metal and the nod both that it seems to have inherited from the opener. Punchy bass’ed reinforcement takes place over the five minutes of “Cold Winds Blow,” and the four-piece maintain a clear-eyed sense of identity through whatever turns the material makes, somewhere between heavy rock, Southern metal, thrash and stoner idolatry. You could sit and parse it, but the band make it pretty easy to trust where they’re headed as they go.

Rattlesnake Venom Trip website

Rattlesnake Venom Trip on Bandcamp

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Pesta, The Craft of Pain

For their third long-player, The Craft of Pain (on Glory or Death), Brazil’s Pesta offer a take on doom born of traditional metal. They’re not aggro, or outwardly depressive, but “Masters of the Craft of Pain” and the swinging “Marked by Hate” find a route from Sabbath and the NWOBHM to doom just the same. A guest appearance from Scott “Wino” Weinrich (The Obsessed, etc.) on vocals for “Mirror Maze” is a departure, but not so radical as to be out of place, especially backed by the depth of groove in the subsequent rocker “In the Drive’s End.” On side B, the pair of “The Inquisitor Pt. I” and the initially-acoustic-based “The Inquisitor Pt. II” provide a more theatrical reach, but the acoustic-and-key-strings “Canto XXI” brings in Rodrigo Garcia (Diffuse Reality) for another curve before “Shadows of a Desire” returns to ground to finish out not so far from where “Marked by Hate” left off. At no point do Pesta feel like they’ve diverged from where they want to be.

Pesta on Bandcamp

Glory or Death Records website

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Atom Lux, Voidgaze Dopamine Salad

The lyrics posted with the cumbersomely-titled “J.I.B.B.E.R.I.S.H. (John Inflates Balloons Because Every Remote Island Starts Hallucinating)” are wrong, and the level of psychedelic tricksterism and playfulness across Atom Lux‘s debut, Voidgaze Dopamine Salad is such that I’m not sure if that’s on purpose or not. Rest assured, different references to “I Am the Walrus” are being made. The self-recording solo-project of Roman multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Lucio Filizola is a garden of weirdo delights, with the keyboardy bounce of “Death by Small Talk” giving away none of the subversively easy garage swing of “Spaghettification Apocalypse” and “Stoned Monkey Heritage” bashing away like it’s an alternate-reality 1964, which by the way I’m no longer convinced it isn’t. It’s from gleeful oddities like “Dance Plague Delirium” that progressive rock first emerged in the comedown era. The same trajectory may or may not be in store for Atom Lux long term, but right now any kind of ‘comedown’ still feels a good ways off.

Atom Lux on Bandcamp

Atom Lux on Instagram

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Last day o’ the QR, and that’s always fun, but looking at the calendar and looking at my desktop, I might try to knuckle down for a follow-up edition next month. I know I traditionally do one in December, which is so, so, so stupid, even with the relative dearth of press releases around the holidays, because there’s so much else going on. But maybe in November, before the Thanksgiving holiday. I only have one thing maybe-slated for November now, so now would be the time to slate it. Check back Nov. 10? Roll it out on my sister’s birthday? Maybe.

For now though, one more batch of 10 to round out the 70 total releases covered here, and as ever, I’ve basically packed the final day with stuff I already know I like. That’s nothing against anything on any of the other days, but if you’re a regular around here, you probably already know that I load up the finish to make it easier on myself. Not that any day here was really hard to get through, but for everything else in life that isn’t sitting in front of the laptop and writing about music.

Thanks as always for reading. I hope you found something you dig in this QR. Back to normal tomorrow.

Quarterly Review #61-70:

Elder, Liminality/Dream State Return

Progressive heavy rock spearheads Elder surprise-dropped Liminality/Dream State Return, their first two-songer EP since 2012’s Spires Burn/Release (review here), a couple weeks ago. It’s their first studio outing since 2022’s Innate Passage (review here), and while one might be tempted to read into the melodic wash of “Liminality” (13:10) and the way its vocals become part of the song’s atmosphere, balanced for nuance and texture in the mix, and the keyboardier take on “Dream State Return,” the material was reportedly sourced from pieces of material left over from their last couple albums, rather than written new. Nonetheless, the way these parts are fleshed out underscores just how special a band Elder is, since basically they can take a progression they’ve had laying around for however long and turn into something so majestic. This, in combination with their work ethic, has made them the best band of their generation. They remain such.

Elder on Bandcamp

Stickman Records website

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Hibernaut, Obsidian Eye

Following 2023’s Ingress (review here), brash Salt Lake City four-piece Hibernaut — guitarist/vocalist Dave Jones (Oxcross, Dwellers, ex-SubRosa), lead guitarist Matt Miller, bassist Josh Dupree and drummer Zach Hatsis (Dwellers, ex-SubRosa) — begin to step further out from their influences with their second album, the six-track/47-minute Obsidian Eye. High on Fire remain a central point of inspiration, but you know how that band really kind of announced who they were with Blessed Black Wings and set themselves on their own path? There’s some of that happening in the grooves of “Pestiferous,” “Revenants” and others here, and while the galloping double-kick and dirt-coated declarations might ring familiar, Hibernaut are beginning to put their own stamp on their craft, and one remains curious how that will continue to manifest their persona in their sound. High on Fire never had a song like “Beset,” and that wah on “Engorge Behemoth” has just an edge of Sabbath-via-Electric Wizard, so there’s more here than marauding if you want to hear it.

Hibernaut website

Olde Magick Records on Bandcamp

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The Oil Barons, Grandiose

Titled as though they intended to preempt criticism of their own self-indulgence — a kinder-self-talk version might have been called ‘Expansive’ — the second album from L.A.’s The Oil Barons, Grandiose, is working with an expanded definition of heavy either way. Part desert rock, it’s also Western Americana enough to open with a take on Morricone and while they’re for sure laying it on thick with the gang-chanted version of “John Brown’s Body” worked in between the organ sway of “Gloria” and the nine-minute lap-steel-inclusive expanse of “Shinola.” The later heavy instrumental reacher “Quetzalacatenango” (16:39) and their beefing up of the Grateful Dead regular “Morning Dew” as “Morning Doom” (13:49) are longer, but there’s more going on here than track length, as the melodic twang-pop of “Vivienne” and the light-barroom-swing-into-harmonies-into-riffs of the subsequent “Death Hangs” demonstrate. Top it all off with a purported narrative and Grandiose lives up to its name, but also to its intention.

The Oil Barons on Bandcamp

The Oil Barons on Instagram

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Temple of Love, Songs of Love and Despair

The first Temple of Love full-length, Songs of Love and Despair, feels very much like a willful callout to classic goth rock. The core, partnered founding duo of vocalist Suzy Bravo (Witchcryer) and guitarist/vocalist Steve Colca (ex-Destroyer of Light), as well as the rhythm section of bassist Joseph Maniscalco and drummer Patrick Pascucci (Duel) begin with a string of catchy, uptempo numbers dark in atmosphere with an unmistakable sheen on the guitar tone and by the time the centerpiece instrumental “Paradise Lost” takes hold with a heavier shift leading into the second half of the album, with “Devil” as an obvious focal point, you’re hooked. The vocal trades on “Save Yourself” and the rocker “Joke’s on You,” with Colca growling a bit, distinguish them as modern, but they’re firm in their purpose unto the string sounds that cap “If We Could Fly,” and clearly aesthetic is part of the mission. They didn’t name themselves after a Sisters of Mercy LP by mistake.

Temple of Love website

Temple of Love on Bandcamp

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The Gray Goo, Cabin Fever Dreams

From garage-style heavy and psychedelic jamming, modern space boogie to denser, doomier roll and a stylistically-offbeat quirk that feels ever more intentional, Montana-based trio The Gray Goo are dug into this mini-gamut of style on their third album, Cabin Fever Dreams, with guitarist/vocalist Max Gargasz (who also recorded/produced) giving space in the mix (by Robert Parker) for the melody in Matt Carper‘s bass to come through on 10-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “Intrepid Traveler,” beginning a thread of nuance that emphasizes just how flexible the band’s sound is. Even amid the fuzz and chugging resolution of “Isolation” and the jammed-but-with-a-plan “Floodgates,” there’s a sense of looking beyond genre to internalized individualism, the latter carrying into the marching semi-nerd-rapped title-track, which breaks to let the weirdness persist before coming back around with a shuffle to close, while “Manic” (with Colton Sea on guest vocals) roughs up proto-punk until it hits a midsection of Sabbath blues and gets a little more shove from there. “Manic” brings this to a culmination and some chanting gives over the minimal psych experiment “Someone’s at the Door,” which closes. They’ve let go of some — not all, but some — of their earlier funk, but The Gray Goo remain delightfully on their own wavelength. Someone in this band likes Ween, and they’re better for it.

The Gray Goo Linktr.ee

The Gray Goo on Bandcamp

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Sergio Ch., Shiva Shakti Drama

A decade after his first solo release, the declarative 1974 (review here), former Los Natas guitarist/vocalist Sergio Ch. (né Chotsourian, also of Ararat, Soldati, numerous other projects and collaborations) has only broadened his palette around a central approach to avant folk and intimate experimentalism. “Las Riendas” has been around for a while, unless I’m wrong (always possible) and “Tufi Meme 94” is an unearthed four-track demo of the Los Natas song of the same name, but it’s in the repetitions and slow, fuzz-infused evolution of “Tear Drop,” the vocally-focused “Stairway” and the somehow-ceremonial “Centinelas Bajo el Sol” that Shiva Shakti Drama lays out its most ethereal reaches. The album was reportedly put together following an injury to Chotsourian‘s ear, during a recovery period after his “left ear blew up during a Soldati rehearsal.” So there’s healing to be had in “Little Hands” and the buzzing lead of “Violet,” as well as exploration.

Sergio Chotsourian on Instagram

South American Sludge Records on Bandcamp

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Spectral Fields, Spectral Fields IV

Spectral Fields is the duo of Jason Simon (Dead Meadow) and and Caleb Dravier (Jungle Gym Records), and with IV they present a two-part title-piece “IV A” (20:04) and “IV B” (23:12), with each extended track taking on its own atmosphere. The hand percussion behind “IV A” is evocative of quiet desert Americana, like clopping horseshoes, while “IV B” runs more sci-fi in its keyboard and synthy beat behind the central, malleable-and-less-still-than-it-seems overarching drone. The guitar on “IV A” works with a similar river’s-surface-style deceptive stillness. Immersion isn’t inevitable, and the challenge here is to dwell alongside the band in the material if you can, with the reward for doing so being carried across the gradually-shifting expanse that Simon and Dravier lay out. It’s not a project for everybody, but Spectral Fields shine with meditative purpose and ethereal presence alike.

Jason Simon on Bandcamp

Not Not Fun Records website

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Pink Fuzz, Resolution

The second full-length, Resolution, from Denver-based harmony-prone heavy rockers Pink Fuzz owes much of its impact to tempo and melody — which I think makes it music. The brother/sister duo of John Demitro (guitar) and bassist LuLu Demitro bass share vocal duties and trade lead spots to add variety across the taut, no-time-for-bullshit 10 songs as drummer Forrest Raup lends shove to the buzzing desert riffage of “Coming for Me,” while the title-track shreds into a ’90s-style ticky-ticky-tock of a groove and “Am I Happy?” moves from its standalone-voice beginning to a gorgeously executed build and roll, bolstered by the Alain Johannes mix bringing up the lead guitar alongside LuLu’s voice, but rooted in the performance captured rather than the after-the-fact balancing of elements. “No Sympathy” and “Worst Enemy” stick closer to a Queens of the Stone Age influence, but the desert is a starting point, not the end of their reach. It’d be fair to call them songwriting-based if they didn’t also kick so much ass as players.

Pink Fuzz Linktr.ee

Permanent Teeth Records on Bandcamp

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The Dukes of Hades, Oracle of the Dead

Having the tone is one thing and making it move is another, but Dorset, UK, two-piece The Dukes of Hades bring forth their debut EP, Oracle of the Dead with a pointed sense of push, more so once they’re on the other side of rolling-into-the-slowdown opener “Seeds of Oblivion,” in “Last Rites,” “Pigs” and “Constant Grief,” where the tempo is higher and the bruises are delivered by the measure. Even Gareth Brunsdon‘s snare on “Constant Grief” comes across thick, never mind the buzzing riffs of Steve Lynch, whose guttural vocals top the procession. They save their most fervent shove for the two-minute finale “Death Defying Heights,” but the eight-minute penultimate “Tomahawk” sees them work in more of a middle-paced range while executing trades in volume and even letting go to silence as they hit minute six soon to burst back to life, so they’re already messing with the formula a bit even as they write out what that formula might be. That’s just one of the hopeful portents on this gritty and impressive first outing.

The Dukes of Hades on Bandcamp

The Dukes of Hades on Instagram

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Worse, Misandrist

A noise-infused trio from Vancouver — or maybe it’s just that their logo reminds me of Whores. — the three-piece Worse issued their latest single “Misandrist” in memory of Ozzy, following on from the also-one-songer “Mackinaw” from earlier in the year. The newer cut is more lumbering and establishes a larger tonal presence by virtue of its instrumentalist take, while drummer Matt Wood brought party-time shouts to “Mackinaw,” which of course emphasized and complemented the central riff in a different way. Out front of the stage, guitarist Shane Clark and bassist Frank Dingle offer rumble and spacious distortion, the effect seeming to build up with each new, lurching round as they dirge to the fading ringout. Sludgy in form, the affect presents itself like a half-speed High on Fire, which if you’ve got to end up somewhere, is a more than decent place for “Misandrist” to be. If you’re still reading this, yes, I’m talking about myself as well as the band. They’ve got one LP out. I’d take another anytime they’ve got it ready.

Worse on Bandcamp

http://www.instagram.com/worseband/

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This isn’t the end of the Quarterly Review — it wraps up on Monday — but it is the end of the week, and I’m ready for it. The music’s been good though and that’s something of a salvation for times where it seems like the strange and terrifying are in competition with each other to make life more awful. That doesn’t end on the weekend, of course, but at least I’ll have two days to put together the last post of this QR, and when you’ve been writing 10 reviews a day all week, half that counts as respite. Something like it, anyhow.

So before we wrap up the week with whatever on earth I’ll actually pick to close it out (any requests?), here’s one more batch, with my thanks for your valuable time and attention. Hope you find something cool.

Quarterly Review #51-60:

P+A+G+E+S, No More Can Be Done

No More Can Be Done is the debut album from South Africa’s P+A+G+E+S, but the Cape Town trio spent five years in the 2010s together as Morning Pages, so that their first record would hold so much intention behind it shouldn’t necessarily be a shocker. The reason behind the name change? An apparent change in their project, which is to say the band got way, way darker, way, way heavier and nasty in that sharp-toothed-thing-you-can’t-see-but-you-know-is-there-also-there-are-no-lights kind of way. The 15-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “The Passage” leads the way down into the bleak, extreme sludge that follows, but as the careful linear build of “Shine On” later demonstrates, P+A+G+E+S are more methodical than the noise and outwardly chaotic feel would seem to indicate. Atmosphere plays a central role in what they do, and that’s consistent from their run as Morning Pages, but No More Can Be Done is about what’s lurking and lurching in the bleakness.

P+A+G+E+S Linktr.ee

P+A+G+E+S on Bandcamp

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Bask, The Turning

Following the intro “Chasm,” Bask launch their fourth album, The Turning, with minor-key mystique and subsequent crush via “In the Heat of the Dying Sun” and “The Traveler,” piling triumph upon triumph in a way that is indicative of the progressive songwriting at work. “The Cloth” is slower, but neither less weighted nor less gorgeous for that, and as “Dig My Heels” works in some of the Southern/Americana pastoralism the Asheville, North Carolina, outfit have always been known for, the melody proves a standout, setting up another life-affirming payoff in the seven-minute “Unwound,” the mellower turn for the build of “Long Lost Light” and the somewhat wistfully twanging undertones of the title-track, which closes with grace and poise rare enough in heavy anything. Clearly a band who have worked to and been successful in transcending their root influences, and an identity that’s been hard-forged over their decade-plus. The Turning sees them actively bring their approach to another level.

Bask on Bandcamp

Season of Mist website

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Matus, El Aullido b/w Planetario

A 15-minute two-songer from Lima, Peru’s Matus, as the psychedelic weirdo sometimes-cultists of long standing offer “El Aullido” (8:45) and “Planetario” (6:55) as their first outing since 2021’s Espejismos II (review here). Both processions — and they are that — feel built out from jams, but the recordings have guitarist Manolo Garfias and keyboardist Richard Nossar (both also alternate bass duties) at their core, along with Roberto Soto‘s drumming, Veronik‘s theremin in the deep-freakout section of “Planetario,” Úrsula Inga‘s vocals on “El Aullido,” and so on with other guests (including Camilo Uriarte, who co-produced and mixed, along solo artist Chino Burga on guitar, and Cristóbal Pérez on sax for “Planetario”) adding to the movement. “El Aullido” pairs shoegaze with a roll informed by South American folk, perfect for Inga‘s vocals, while “Planetario” carries more of its melody in the keyboards and surrounding ambience. It’s a welcome check-in from Matus as they celebrate the 20th anniversary of the band.

Matus on Bandcamp

Matus on Facebook

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November Fire, 2025

Where New England bizarropsych rockers November’s Fire‘s 2024 album, Through a Mournful Song, took an approach to its material like some of earliest Monster Magnet‘s underproduced kitchen-sink quirk, the two-song EP 2025 presents two different faces, and that turns out to be because the songs included are over 30 years old. “2025” and “Somnia” — the latter which brings in original guitarist Greg Brosseau for a guest spot that includes clean lead vocals — were allegedly written in the early 1990s, and if you told me the root of the title-track was a teenaged thrash riff, they make that easy enough to believe in the modernized, thickened chug of the song as it stands now. That is to say, they’ve brought it into the sludgy experimentalist context of the work now, but it remains dark. As it inevitably would. “Somnia” is shorter, has some backing chants, and feels meditative even as the guitar holds to its restlessness. Weird band staying weird, screwing around with their old stuff and getting something out of it. Sometimes an experiment works.

November Fire Linktr.ee

November Fire on Bandcamp

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Goatmilker, Goatmilker

Bergen, Norway, four-piece Goatmilker don’t really leave you with much choice other than to call them progressive, though that hardly says boo about the reach of their self-titled debut, which is as much psychedelic punk as it is black metal in its rhythms, but remains a work of heavy rock and roll nonetheless, grooving, catchy on “Devils on My Tail,” aggro-weird on “Time… Tearing Apart,” all-in on tonal overwhelm for “Mountains” and cheekily grandiose in the finale “Storm” only after they’ve seen fit to take on Journey‘s “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart),” which given the goes-where-it-wants succession leading up to it hardly feels out of place at all. While at no risk of overstaying its welcome at eight songs and 34 minutes, Goatmilker does make for a challenging listen at times, but the rewards for actually paying attention to what they’re doing are worth whatever effort is required. That is to say, engage actively for best results.

Goatmilker Linktr.ee

Goatmilker on Instagram

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Grin, Incantation

If Grin sound a little different on Incantation, a two-track 7″ with a digital bonus cut in the flatteningly heavy “Echoes in the Static,” that might be because the duo of drummer/vocalist Jan Oberg and bassist Sabine Oberg didn’t record themselves as usual, but instead tracked live at Wave Akademie in their native Berlin with Anton Urban (Jan Oberg co-produced, mixed and mastered, so still had a hand for sure). So, rather than the studio leftovers one might expect mere months after the band’s last full-length, Acid Gods (review here), the songs may have their origins as such but arise from different circumstances. There’s some more of a wash to “Incantation” and “The Color of Ghosts,” and “Echoes in the Static” is consumed by its titular noise toward its finish, but “The Color of Ghosts” dares some melodic vocals amid all that bombast, and as usual, Grin forge their own take on metal, sludge and intense atmospheric heavy.

Grin on Bandcamp

The Lasting Dose Records on Bandcamp

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Mezzoa, TON 618

A collection of bangers on the second LP through Glory or Death Records from San Diego rockers Mezzoa, TON 618 plays out over the course of a taut 13 songs and 39 minutes, careening desert style in “Hard to Hear,” punking up the groove in “Chump” before basking in Sabbath worship for “Wasted Universe” (think “Symptom” thereof), building crunching tension in “Uncle Cho” only to release it in the second half of the song with a grunge melody, carrying that melody into “Smiles for Everyone,” and then slamming all that momentum into the fuzzed radness of the lead tone and Alice in Chainsy vocal of “How You Been.” That’s not the end, I’m just less efficient than the band and so I’m running out of space. “Blessing” attains inner Nirvana while “Desert Snakes” sounds like it’s ready for a John Garcia guest spot, “Chachi Liberachi” echoes the sharper corners of “Wasted Universe,” “Goin’ Down” has that riff that every New York hardcore song ever (yes, all of them. don’t @ me.) has but goes somewhere completely different with it, and closer “How Are We” highlights the craft that’s let them do it all in the first place. Hey kid, you like rock music? Well get a load of this.

Mezzoa on Bandcamp

Glory or Death Records website

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Orsak:Oslo, Silt and Static

Beginning with its longest track in the nine-minute “Biting In,” Orsak:Oslo‘s Silt and Static finds the Norwegian/Swedish outfit somewhat outgrown from their dronier foundations, harnessing a psychedelia that moves with krautrocking purposes, while retaining the band’s previously-established ambient instrumentalist approach. “Days Adrift” is an even thicker roll, with ebbs and flows that give precedent to the shove that results in “Salt Stains,” which follows, while “Petals” dips momentarily into minimalism. But the story here is the fullness of sound, with pieces like the subdued-but-building “Resonance in Ash” or “Petals” in conversation with Pelican/Russian Circles-style heavy, while “The Onward Stride” and “Time Leak” bring prog more to the forefront and “Bread and Sink” lets the rumble bring it all together. In these ways, Silt and Static rewrites the story of Orsak:Oslo as a band, and their reach has never seemed so broad.

Orsak:Oslo website

Vinter Records website

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Modder, Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun

The hypnotic drone finish of “Type 27” that ends side A of Modder‘s second album, Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun, is just one way the band incorporate ambience as a key element in their trades between loud and quiet, tense and open, and crushing and spacious. These different sides come together in various combinations across the six cuts on the Belgian instrumentalist five-piece’s 41-minute run, which sets out in oppressive and blasting fashion with “Stone Eternal,” as heavy as whatever doom you want to put it next to and still able to hit with the precision of Gojira. The shorter “Mather” is more angular, glitchy and mirrored by “Chaoism” on the album’s second half, and though they lead off with their longest track (immediate points) in “Stone Eternal,” the heavy djenty chug that comes to fruition on “In the Sun” is unmistakable as anything but the closer, building, receding, tossing in what sure sounds like a human voice chanting and surging in intensity to round out with a keyboard-overlaid bludgeoning. By then you’re pretty much pulp anyway.

Modder Linktr.ee

Lay Bare Recordings website

Consouling Sounds store

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Futuredrugs, Past Warnings of Present Futures

Past Warnings of Present Futures tells you a lot about its point of view in the title, but electronic experimentalists Futuredrugs push the meaning deeper still, opening with a barely recognizable take on “What a Wonderful World” with “Skies of Blue” and revamping Tom Waits‘ “Dirt in the Ground” on “…And the Gallows Groaned.” The cinematic, dark synth/programmed backdrop of these and the sampled “No Home” blur the line between originality and reinterpretation/manipulation, and I won’t claim to know whether pieces like “Ice Age Coming” or “When the Last Tree Falls” are similarly sourced, but maybe. In any case, in a time when remembering things like “nothing matters anyway” is a comfort, there is space for the open-minded listener to dwell among these seven tracks, which when taken as a whole succeed in embodying the apocalyptic hellscape of recent years. I don’t know if they’re offering sanctuary so much as a snapshot, but as that, it sure feels like an accurate depiction.

Futuredrugs on Bandcamp

Futuredrugs on Instagram

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Today is Thursday, but it’s day five of the Fall 2025 Quarterly Review because I snuck in that first day last Friday. I cannot convey to you how much that has screwed me up. Turns out when you do one thing precisely one way for like 13 years and then all of a sudden flip it around another way it can be confusing. Stay tuned for more deep-impact life hacks and insights like this.

Or maybe riffs instead. It’s okay. That’s most of what keeps me coming back too.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

Paradise Lost, Ascension

More than 35 years on from their outset, Paradise Lost are an institution. I know they’ve had their stylistic divergences, but since recommitting themselves to their morose take on doom metal more than 15 years ago, they’ve hit a rare echelon of reliability one can only call Kreator-esque. That’s not a sonic comparison, but like the German thrash stalwarts, Paradise Lost have their sound — dark and more malleable in tempo than the thickened tones make it feel across these 10 songs — and within that sphere are able to do basically what they want musically and make it work. Side A’s “Salvation,” the longest inclusion at seven minutes, is a tour de force of the appeal of modern Paradise Lost, and a fitting summary of how encompassing they’ve become while still remaining recognizable as themselves. They even get hooky on “Deceivers,” so yes, still growing, still pushing, still Paradise Lost. A once-a-generation band, even as part of a cohort as they were, and not to be taken for granted.

Paradise Lost website

Nuclear Blast Records store

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The Vintage Caravan, Portals

The sixth full-length from still-younger-than-some-bands-who-haven’t-been-around-as-long Icelandic heavy rockers The Vintage Caravan plays out across 17 tracks and 59 minutes, with groups of songs presumably corresponding to double-vinyl side splits separated by interludes each of which is named “Portal.” So, Portals. The first of them follows “Philosopher,” the lead single which features Mikael Åkerfeldt, who turns out to be one of several guests across the record, but the real headliner is the songwriting. In the big choruses of “Here You Come Again,” “Give and Take,” and others, the band recall a heyday when rock could be heavy and accessible outside its own sphere, while “Electrified” later on builds into a tense boogie hook before “Portal V” transitions to the acoustic-based “My Aurora” and the closer “This Road,” one more uptempo, shred-inclusive, exceptionally well-crafted piece of The Vintage Caravan‘s classic-heavy-informed style, efficient in getting its point across despite allowing itself time to dwell as it does throughout.

The Vintage Caravan website

Napalm Records website

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Spirit Mother, Songs From the Basin

It’s not really a huge surprise that Los Angeles dark heavy psych rockers Spirit Mother would ‘go acoustic’ at some point, given the dynamic they’ve showcased to-date on their definitely-plugged studio albums. The most recent of those, 2024’s righteous, Heavy Psych Sounds-issued Trails (review here), is the source for “Wolves” and “Below,” which feature on this short, stripped-down offering. “Wolves,” which capped the record in memorable fashion, leads off here with its foreboding feeling all the more realized given the state of the world, while “Below” finds violinist SJ pushing into a soft crescendo taking off from Armand Lance‘s guitar and vocals. Recorded live, Songs From the Basin sounds duly organic, and whenever Spirit Mother in any form — that is, the full band or just the duo as they are here — wants to drop a full acoustic set, I’m here for it. Once again, the lesson is once you have well-written songs, you can make them do and be just about whatever you want.

Spirit Mother website

Spirit Mother on Bandcamp

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Nadja, Cut

I’m pretty sure the now-Berlin-based experimentalist duo of Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff are north of 30 full-lengths released since their first one in 2002, and that doesn’t count blurring the lines between one project and another with collaborations or Baker‘s solo work. Prolific as they are, they remain expressive in the hard-drum-machined “It’s Cold When You Cut Me” (15:09), one of the four extended inclusions of Cut, where the sinister undercurrent comes to fruition in the song’s second half of manipulated, noisy drone. “Dark, No Knowledge” (13:26) lays out a distorted landscape and rolls through it, Godflesh in a hand-cranked meat grinder, becoming a swell of apocalyptic noise, while “She Ate His Dreams From the Inside and Spat Out the Frozen Fucking Bones” (15:14) dares to be pretty as it leaves spaces open and fills out later with psychedelic processionmaking, leaving the immediate ritual of “Omenformation” to resonate high before piling on low end frequencies while also freakjazzing and riffing out. The noise swallows all but it turns out there’s salvation in that monster’s stomach, so I’ll take it. One Nadja album may be an inevitable precursor to the next one, but that doesn’t mean they don’t make it a world of its own.

Nadja website

Cruel Nature Recordings on Bandcamp

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Vibravoid, Remove the Ties

Düsseldorf-bred psych rockers Vibravoid belong in a class of undervalued all their own. As they mark their 35th anniversary, they begin their new studio album Remove the Ties with a mischievous redirect of krautrock-style electronics before the garage-wavey “Neustart” and pop-shimmerier “Power of Dreams” dig further into the heart of the record, letting side A round out with the longer, deeper-reverbed “Follow Me Follow You” and its effects barrage play out atop the steady kick drum tasked with holding it together. But nobody who’s been in a band for 35 years is about to actually be sloppy, and there’s no actual danger of off-the-rails on Remove the TiesBaby Woodrose roamed the earth. Vibravoid were there then too. It’s easy to get around when you’re from a different dimension.

Vibravoid on Bandcamp

Tonzonen website

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For Fuck’s Sake, 7-Minute Abs/Lobotomy

Do you have six minutes for a good pummeling? Of course you do. Brooklynite four-piece For Fuck’s Sake offer two tracks like a digital punker 7″ with 7-Minute Abs/Lobotomy, and they make no attempt to hide the fact of their sights being set on destruction. Their sound, rooted in hardcore and sludge in like measure, counting in with the snare on “7-Minute Abs” and daring to cross the three-minutes-long threshold with the fervent chug and bone-on-bone impact of “Lobotomy,” reminds of nothing so much as earlier 16, but with an unmistakable edge of Northeastern confrontationalism. That is, they’ll fuck you up and they know it, so that’s what they’re setting out to do. Barking, gnashing intensity set a harsh backdrop for what’s an engaging groove so long as you’re pissed off enough to process it (which you should be; look around), and the rawness of their delivery, the unabashed assault of it, comes through as genuine. Also punishing.

For Fuck’s Sake on Bandcamp

For Fuck’s Sake on Instagram

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Paralyzed, Rumble & Roar

Classic heavy rock and roll forms the core of Paralyzed‘s approach, with guitarist Michael Binder‘s low, gravelly vocals reminiscent of Jim Morrison at his least hinged, suited to the blues behind second cut “Railroad” and the subsequent march of “Rosie’s Town” on the band’s third LP, Rumble & Roar. To say they — that is, Binder, organist/rhythm guitarist Caterina Böhner, bassist Philipp Engelbrecht and drummer Florian Thiele — make it a party across the nine-song/41-minute outing is perhaps understating the case, but if you’d accuse “Heavy Blues” of being too on the nose, you’re missing the fact that on the nose is the point. There’s no irony here, no sneer to the boogie of “White Paper” or the slow organ-laced fluidity of “The Witch,” just heavy vibes and reaffirmation of the band’s growth as songwriters. I’m not even sure where one would start complaining about such a thing.

Paralyzed on Bandcamp

Ripple Music website

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Friendship Commanders, Bear

Delivered as their label-debut for Magnetic Eye Records, the 10-song/40-minute Bear is the fourth full-length from Nashville two-piece Friendship Commanders, with guitarist/vocalist Buick Audra and drummer/bassist/synthesist Jerry Roe having recorded with Kurt Ballou in addition to doing some at home for an affect accordingly tight in craft and heavy in impact. “Melt” pushes toward a ’90s-style reimagining of heavy rock as both commercially viable and empowering, while “X” pairs its tonal crunch with the keyboardy reach of its midsection, poppish but still heavy even unto the snare hits. Pop becomes another tool in their arsenal, whether it’s the layered ascent and push of “New” or the weighted culmination presented with closer “Dead and Discarded Girls,” and the band don’t seem to shy away from being able to compose at the level they are. At the same time, “Dripping Silver” feels fully cognizant of the radness in the riff it’s riding, so there’s a balance to it as well. They sound like professionals.

Friendship Commanders website

Magnetic Eye Records store

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Dee Calhoun, Angry Old Man

Former Iron Man and, as of recently, former Spiral Grave vocalist “Screaming Mad” Dee Calhoun is pissed. The Maryland-based acoustic metal troubadour sounds resolute on Angry Old Man, and while his past solo work could hardly be said to pull punches, he hits a different level of laying it all out there on “Kill a Motherfucker” late in the procession here. As ever, hollow-bodied-resonance is the foundation throughout, but other elements like the harmonica in “Voodoo Queen” and the tolling bell at the outset of “VVitch (A Chant)” (not really a chant) fill out the reaches when Calhoun‘s powerhouse voice — still his primary instrument, though the guitar work has gotten more complex with time as well — recedes to a softer delivery. But when he belts it out — looking at you, “Rise Up to March” — he can shake the ground, and if you have any prior familiarity with his work, you already know he’s unmistakable in that regard. That remains the case here, even as he positions himself the titular Angry Old Man. Ain’t none of us getting any younger, dude.

Dee Calhoun Linktr.ee

Black Doomba Records Linktr.ee

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Automatism, Sörmland

The narrative of the band getting together after a few years, enjoying each other’s company as they wrote and recorded Sörmland — named for where in Sweden they were — becomes real with the mellowprog delve of “Honey Trap” more than the shorter leadoff “Video,” as pastoralia takes centerstage with organic melodies and a casual groove. Unsurprisingly if you know Twin Peaks, “Laura Palmer’s Theme” is darker, but the real reference it’s making seems to be to “Moonlight Sonata” as regards the keys, but “Neon Lights” answers back by being in no hurry whatsoever with sweet intertwining guitar lines and a subtle build to later movement. At 11 minutes, the title-track that caps is the longest inclusion, but fair enough since they have to make room for that tenor sax and all. I wouldn’t know from experience, but Sörmland is what I imagine it would sound like to be emotionally regulated, ever, and anytime Automatism want to get together out in the woods or by some fields or a lake or whathaveyou, I hope someone has the presence of mind to hit record.

Automatism on Bandcamp

Tonzonen website

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