Welcome to the second week of the Quarterly Review. Last week there were 50 records covered between Monday and Friday, and barring disaster, the same thing will happen this week too. I wish I could say I was caught up after this, but yeah, no. As always, I’m hearing stuff right and left that I wish I’d had the chance to dig into sooner, but as the platitude says, you can only be in so many places at one time. I’m doing my best. If you’ve already heard all this stuff, sorry. Maybe if you keep reading you’ll find a mistake to correct. I’m sure there’s one in there somewhere.

Winter 2023 Quarterly Review #51-60:

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, Doom Wop

Powered by eight-string-guitar and bass chug, Austin heavy party rockers Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol offer markedly heavy, Steve Brooks-style weight on “Doom Wop,” the title-track of their second album, and prove themselves catchy through a swath of hooks, be it opener “Heel,” “Chew” or “I’m the Fucking Man,” which, if the finale “Jesus Was an Alien” — perhaps the best, also the only, ‘Jesus doing stuff’ song I’ve heard since Ministry‘s “Jesus Built My Hotrod”; extra kudos to the band for making it about screwing — didn’t let you know the band didn’t take themselves too seriously, and their moniker didn’t even before you hit play, then there you go. Comprised of guitarist Leo Lydon, bassist Aaron Metzdorf and drummer Sean St. Germain, they’re able to tap into that extra-dense tone at will, but their songs build momentum and keep it, not really even being slowed by their own massive feel, as heard on “Chew” or “The Bog” once it kicks in, and the vocals remind a bit of South Africa’s Ruff Majik without quite going that far over the top; I’d also believe it’s pop-punk influence. Since making their debut in 2020 with Burger Babes… From Outer Space!, they’ve stripped down their songwriting approach somewhat, and that tightness works well in emphasizing the ’90s alt rock vibe of “The Room” or the chug-fuzzer “Fly Super Glide.” They had a good amount of hype leading up to the Sept. 2022 release. I’m not without questions, but I can’t argue on the level of craft or the energy of their delivery.

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol on Facebook

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol on Bandcamp

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DoctoR DooM, A Shadow Called Danger

French heavy rock traditionalists DoctoR DooM return following a seven-year drought with A Shadow Called Danger, their late 2022/early 2023 follow-up to 2015’s debut, This Seed We Have Sown (review here). After unveiling the single “What They Are Trying to Sell” (premiered here) as proof-of-life in 2021, the three-piece ’70s-swing their way through eight tracks and 45 minutes of vintage-mindset stylizations, touching on moody Graveyardian blues in “Ride On” and the more uptempo rocker “The Rich and the Poor” while going more directly proto-metallic on galloping opener “Come Back to Yourself and the later “Connected by the Worst.” Organ enhances the sway of the penultimate “In This Town” as part of a side B expansion that starts with tense rhythmic underlayer before the stride of “Hollow” and, because obviously, an epilogue take on Händel‘s “Sarabande” that closes. That’ll happen? In any case, DoctoR DooM — guitarist/vocalist Jean-Laurent Pasquet, guitarist Bertrand Legrand, bassist Sébastien Boutin Blomfield and drummer Michel Marcq — don’t stray too far from their central purpose, even there, and their ability to guide the listener through winding progressions is bolstered by the warmth of their tones and Pasquet‘s sometimes gruff but still melodic vocals, allowing some of the longer tracks like “Come Back to Yourself,” “Hollow” and “In This Town” to explore that entirely imaginary border where ’70s-style heavy rock and classic metal meet and intertwine.

DoctoR DooM on Facebook

Ripple Music website

Black Farm Records store

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Stones of Babylon, Ishtar Gate

Clearly when you start out with a direct invocation of epic tales like “Gilgamesh (…and Enkidu’s Demise),” you’re going big. Portugal’s Stones of Babylon answer 2019’s Hanging Gardens (review here) with Ishtar Gate, still staying in Babylon as “Annunaki,” “Pazuzu,” the title-track, “The Fall of Ur,” and “Tigris and Euphrates” roll out instrumental embodiment of these historical places, ideas, and myths. There is some Middle Eastern flourish in quieter stretches of guitar in “Anunnaki,” “Pazuzu,” “The Fall of Ur,” etc., but it’s the general largesse of tone, the big riffs that the trio of guitarist Alexandre Mendes, bassist João Medeiros and drummer Pedro Branco foster and roll out one after the other, that give the sense of scale coinciding with their apparent themes. And loud or quiet, big and rolling or softer and more winding, they touch on some of My Sleeping Karma‘s meditative aspects without giving up a harder-hitting edge, so that when Ur falls, the ground seems to be given a due shake, and “Tigris and Euphrates,” as one of the cradles of civilization, caps the record with a fervency that seems reserved specifically for that crescendo. A few samples, including one at the very end, add to the atmosphere, but the band’s heart is in the heavy and that comes through regardless of a given moment’s volume.

Stones of Babylon on Facebook

Raging Planet website

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Alconaut, Slugs

Released on Halloween 2022, Alconaut‘s “Slugs” is a six-minute roller single following-up their 2019 debut album, Sand Turns to Tide, and it finds the Corsican trio fuzz-grooving their way through a moderate tempo, easy-to-dig procession that’s not nearly as slime-trail-leaving as its title implies. A stretch building up the start-stop central riff has a subtle edge of funk, but then the pedal clicks on and a fuller tone is revealed, drums still holding the same snare punctuation behind. They ride that stretch out for a reasonably unreasonable amount of measures before shifting toward the verse shortly before two minutes in — classic stoner rock — backing the first vocals with either organ or guitar effects that sound like one (nobody is credited for keys; accept the mystery) and a quick flash of angularity between lines of the chorus are likewise bolstered. They make their way back through the verse and then shift into tense chugging that’s more straight-ahead push than swinging, but still friendly in terms of pace, and after five minutes in, they stop, the guitar pans channels in re-establishing the riff, and they finish it big before just a flash of feedback cuts to silence. Way more rock and way less sludge than either their moniker or the song’s title implies, their style nonetheless hints toward emergent dynamic in its tonal changes even as the guitar sets forth its own hooks.

Alconaut on Facebook

Alconaut on Bandcamp

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Maybe Human, Ape Law

Instrumental save for the liberally distributed samples from Planet of the Apes, including Charlton Heston’s naming of Nova in “Nova” presented as a kind of semi-organic alt-techno with winding psychedelic guitar over a programmed beat, Maybe Human‘s Ape Law is the second long-player from the Los Angeles-based probably-solo outfit, and it arrives as part of a glut of releases — singles, EPs, one prior album — issued over the last two years or so. The 47-minute 10-songer makes its point in the opening title-track, and uses dialogue from the Apes franchise — nothing from the reboots, and fair enough — to fill out pieces that vary in their overarching impression from the heavy prog of “Bright Eyes” and the closing “The Killer Ape Theory” to the experimentalist psych of “Heresy.” If you’re looking to be damned to hell by the aforementioned Heston, check out “The Forbidden Zone,” but Ape Law seems to be on its most solid footing — not always where it wants to be, mind you — in a more metal-leaning guitar-led stretch like that in the second half of “Infinite Regression” where the guitar solo takes the forward role over a bed that seems to have been made just for it. The intent here is more to explore and the sound is rawer than Maybe Human‘s self-applied post-rock or pop tags might necessarily imply, but the deeper you go there more there is to hear. Unless you hate those movies, in which case you might want to try something else.

Maybe Human on Facebook

Maybe Human on Bandcamp

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Heron, Empires of Ash

Beginning with its longest track (immediate points) in the nine-minute “Rust and Rot,” the third full-length from Vancouver’s Heron, Empires of Ash, offers significant abrasive sludge heft from its lurching outset, and continues to sound slow even in the comparatively furious “Hungry Ghosts,” vocalist/noisemaker Jamie having a rasp to his screams that calls to mind Yatra over the dense-if-spacious riffing of Ross and Scott and Bina‘s fluid drumming. Ambient sections and buildups like that in centerpiece “Hauntology” allow some measure of respite from all the gnashing elsewhere, assuring there’s more to the four-piece than apparently-sans-bass-but-still-plenty-heavy caustic sludge metal, but in their nastiest moments they readily veer into territory commonly considered extreme, and the pairing of screams and backing growls over the brooding but mellower progression on closer “With Dead Eyes” is almost post-hardcore in its melding aggression with atmosphere. Still, it is inevitably the bite that defines it, and Heron‘s collective teeth are razor-sharp whether put to speedier or more methodical use, and the contrast in their sound, the either/or nature, is blurred somewhat by their willingness to do more than slaughter. This being their third album and my first exposure to them, I’m late to the party, but fine. Empires of Ash is perfectly willing to brutalize newcomers too, and the only barrier to entry is your own threshold for pain.

Heron links

Heron on Bandcamp

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My Octopus Mind, Faulty at Source (Bonus Edition)

A reissue of their 2020 second LP, My Octopus Mind‘s Faulty at Source (Bonus Edition) adds two tracks — “Here My Rawr,” also released as a single, and “No Way Outta Here Alive” — for a CD release. Whichever edition one chooses to take on, the range of the Bristol-based psych trio of guitarist/vocalist/pianist Liam O’Connell, bassist Isaac Ellis and drummer Oliver Cocup (the latter two also credited with “rawrs,” which one assumes means backing vocals) is presented with all due absurdity but a strongly progressive presence, so that while “The Greatest Escape” works in its violin and viola guest appearances from Rebecca Shelley and Rowan Elliot as one of several tracks to do the same, the feeling isn’t superfluous where it otherwise might be. Traditional notions of aural heft come and go — the riffier and delightfully bass-fuzzed “No Way Outta Here Alive” has plenty — while “Buy My Book” and the later “Hindenburg” envision psychedelic noise rock and “Wandering Eye” (with Shelley on duet vocals as well) adds mathy quirk to the proceedings, making them that march harder to classify, that much more on-point as regards the apparent mission of the band, and that much more satisfying a listen. If you’re willing to get weird, My Octopus Mind are already there. For at least over two years now, it would seem.

My Octopus Mind on Facebook

My Octopus Mind on Bandcamp

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Et Mors, Lifeless Grey

Having become a duo since their debut, 2019’s Lux in Morte (review here), was released, Et Mors are no less dirgey or misery-laden across Lifeless Grey for halving their lineup. Wretched, sometimes melodic and almost universally deathly doom gruels out across the three extended originals following the shorter intro “Drastic Side Effects” — that’s the near-goth plod of “The Coffin of Regrets” (9:45), “Tritsch” (16:13), which surprises by growing into an atmosludge take on The Doors at their most minimalist and spacious before its own consumption resumes, and “Old Wizard of Odd” (10:29), which revels in extremity before its noisy finish and is the ‘heaviest’ inclusion for that — and a concluding cover of Bonnie “Prince” Billy‘s “I See a Darkness,” the title embodied in the open space within the sound of the song itself while showcasing a soulful clean vocal style that feels like an emerging distinguishing factor in the band’s sound. That is, a point of growth that will continue to grow and make them a stronger, more diverse band as it already does in their material here. I’d be interested to hear guitarist/vocalist Zakir Suleri and drummer/vocalist Albert Alisaug with an expansive production able to lean more into the emotive aspects of their songwriting, but as it is on Lifeless Grey, their sound is contrastingly vital despite the mostly crawling tempos and the unifying rawness of the aural setting in which these songs take place.

Et Mors on Facebook

Et Mors on Bandcamp

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The Atomic Bomb Audition, Future Mirror

Future Mirror is The Atomic Bomb Audition‘s first release since 2014 and their first studio album since 2011’s Roots into the See (review here), the returning Oakland-based four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Alee Karin, bassist/vocalist Jason Hoopes, drummer Brian Gleeson and synthesist/engineer The Norman Conquest reigniting their take on pop-informed heavy, sometimes leaning toward post-rock float, sometimes offering a driving hook like in “Night Vision,” sometimes alternating between spacious and crushing as on “Haunted Houses,” which is as much Type O Negative and Katatonia darkness as the opener “Render” was blinding with its sweet falsetto melodies and crashing grandeur. Two interludes, “WNGTIROTSCHDB” and “…Spells” surround “Golden States, Pt. 1” — note there is no second part here — a brief-at-three-minutes-but-multi-movement instrumental, and the linear effect in hearing the album as whole is to create an ambient space between the three earlier shorter tracks and the two longer ones at the finish, and where “Dream Flood” might otherwise be a bridge between the two, the listening experience is only enhanced for the flourish. Future Mirror won’t be for everybody, as its nuance makes it harder to categorize and they wouldn’t be the first to suffer perils of the ‘band in-between,’ but by the time they get the payoff of closer “More Light,” tying the heft and melody together, The Atomic Bomb Audition have provided enough context to make their own kind of sense. Thus, a win.

The Atomic Bomb Audition on Facebook

The Atomic Bomb Audition on Bandcamp

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Maharaja, Aviarium

Maharaja‘s new EP, Aviarium (on Seeing Red), might be post-metal if one were to distill that microgenre away from its ultra-cerebral self-indulgence and keep only the parts of it most crushing. The downer perspective of the Ohio trio — guitarist Angus Burkhart, bassist Eric Bluebaum, drummer Zack Mangold, all of whom add vocals, as demonstrated in the shouty-then-noisy-then-both second track — is confirmed in the use of the suffix ‘-less’ in each of the four songs on the 24-minute outing, from opener “Hopeless” through “Soulless,” into the shorter, faster and more percussively intense “Lifeless” and at last arriving in the open with the engrossing roll of 10-minute finisher “Ballad of the Flightless Bird,” which makes a home for itself in more stoner-metal riffing and cleaner vocals but maintains the poise of execution that even the many and righteous drum fills of “Hopeless” couldn’t shake loose. It is not an easy or a smooth listen, but neither is it meant to be, and the ambience that comes out of the raw weight of Maharaja‘s tones as well as their subtle variation in style should be enough to bring on board those who’d dare take it on in the first place. Can be mean, but isn’t universally one thing or the other, and as a sampler of Maharaja‘s work it’s got me wanting to dig back to their 2017 Kali Yuga and find out what I missed.

Maharaja on Facebook

Seeing Red Records store

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The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Jason Hoopes of The Atomic Bomb Audition

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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

Great question that I almost never want to answer! It’s all circumambulatory. We’re a rock band with eclectic interests and influences. We write songs. We try to do the best work we possibly can by our own standards. That’s usually definition enough for me. So many beautiful things in life are ruined with attempts at definition. Poetry is ruined this way. Spirit, too. What is it? It is what it is. We follow our instincts. They push us toward quiet, loud, heavy, light…whether we borrow from Bowie or Cocteau Twins, Sleep or Badalamenti, Prince or Scott Walker…makes no difference to us. Whatever activates us emotionally, whatever sound makes us excited to play, is good and pursued. We get a sense of what we want to hear and off we go into the work. We analyze and overthink with the best of them, but the process is not a linear path toward a fixed destination. We feel and love the poetry and irrational drama of life. That’s where our faith and trust as artists ultimately lie.
We try to keep our analytic skills in service to the emotive qualities of our music. We want to move you in some way. We don’t want to just be “interesting”. At the same time, we don’t want to sound like anyone else. We don’t sound like anyone else. We love vulnerable love songs. We love loud heavy guitars. We love surprises and subverted expectations, and we also crave grounded unisons. We love chaotic noise and we love a 3min G-major 4/4 pop hook. It doesn’t matter how it’s best said, but it matters absolutely that we feel we’ve said something real, personal. I agree with Tarantino when he says about scriptwriting, “it should embarrass you a little to share it”. That’s how personal the work should be. How did we come to this place? I don’t care to define that so much either. We found each other. We began working together. Here we are, approaching 20 years on the clock and apparently we still have things to say. What is it? It’s beautiful and alive. That’s enough for me.

Describe your first musical memory.

I have a couple musical memories competing for the “earliest” slot. One is my mother playing acoustic guitar and singing – her own songs, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fleetwood Mac, misc gospel tunes. She was a gifted songwriter and vocalist. Her and my aunts also loved listening and dancing to Motown and Little Richard et al so that was in there. Another memory is my dad playing his country music records early on Sunday mornings. Some of the first records I heard include George Jones, Tom T Hall, Charley Pride, Hank Snow, Jim Reeves. There were plenty others. My grandfather singing along to Marty Robbins albums is in there. Johnny Cash’s “Bitter Tears” record made a deep haunting storyteller impression on me from those days. And playing my small drum kit to Buddy Holly records when I was maybe 4 or 5 years old. That was my first go at an instrument.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

I’m going to pick two out of many. The first is of being on tour in 2017 with Fred Frith and Jordan Glenn (as Fred Frith Trio). We were in Warsaw, Poland. After the show we walked back out to play an encore and when I stepped on stage and waved to acknowledge applause, time suddenly suspended and I felt for a flash of a second that I was floating in stillness and silence. I felt a deep calm personal validation, something I knew I’d been seeking most all my life to that point. I say, seeking validation due to certain relational dysfunctions I experienced as a child. I felt in that moment that I had done at least some of the important things in life well and was living a life I was meant to live. A deep grounding pivot point in my life. Reminds me to continue striving to do what seems to be the right thing even if I don’t completely understand it at the time. The second memory is again of being on tour in 2012 as the drum / bass duo Satya Sena (with drummer Peijman Kouretchian). We played 16 shows in a whirlwind 14 days, all over the west coast from the SF Bay Area down to San Diego, over to Reno and Las Vegas, up into the PNW all the way to Vancouver, BC. The whole tour and that short lived band were a massive shift for me musically, in what I understood to be possible professionally, and personally in terms of my character. All the shows on that tour were powerful, but after one of the shows in the PNW a guy about my age walked up to the stage right after we played, shook my hand and with tears in his eyes just said, “thank you, brother.” That exchange and memory have brought tears to my own eyes several times since. When we honor our work as it deserves, and pour our souls and hearts into it, there is never any telling who we can affect and how. There’s just no telling. We make the right sacrifices and trust that the light breaks through. And it does. Someone will see it. It’s totally worth doing.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

Tested, and destroyed. In the first few years following a suicidal breakdown / hospitalization and divorce. Coming out of that experience I was confronted with an existential demand to reexamine everything, how I viewed the world and myself, top to bottom. North is now South. Up is now down. Yes is now no. I had to consider the possibility that everything I had been putting my faith in up to that point was now “wrong” or insufficient as a set of navigation tools going forward. I had to face realizing I had spent a significant amount of time living falsely. I began striving passionately to un-politicize my mind. I am a deeply liberal person, radically open. Boundaries seem to dissolve just by looking at them. I embraced this for years in a deeply ideological and naive way. After such a radical breakdown, I saw in my rejection of all things “conservative” some grave errors. For many years I harbored deep ideological criticisms of all sorts of social institutions and phenomena of human nature – religion, government, masculinity, many things… tradition itself. But I was broken down to a place where the only language that made any sense when trying to understand the vision I had was religious language. As my ideological perceptions shattered, I began to see the truth in my projected enemies, and the lies in my own familiar objects of faith and trust. I dared myself to re-approach religion, government, masculinity, tradition…all of those things I had ideologically rebelled against, at least internally… with a more innocent and now violently humbled beginner’s mind, to find redeemable qualities in them all. Because I also had to find redeemable qualities in myself, to find a way out of self destruction. To locate and understand the falseness in my own immature rebellion and the mature truth and wisdom of tradition itself. To learn to separate wheat from chaff. Because of this experience, I now believe deeply in the personal work of recalling one’s own shadow projections, our ideological demonization of the Other. All of us do it, no matter our station in life. Not that we all have to agree or share the same values. We don’t.
But disagreement does not inevitably lead to war between “right and wrong”. We’re losing the ability to constructively navigate disagreement. We move so immediately and dangerously to using war language when we encounter someone who does not share the values we deem most important. For me, this work extended all the way to “the Other” being literally my own reflection in the mirror. I hated what I saw with passionate rage. Because he wasn’t what I thought he should be and he was everything I rejected. I wanted to destroy him. In some important ways I did. But I’m glad I didn’t die in body. I love being alive. I am glad I died in personal wrong-mindedness. There’s a line in “Dream Flood”, one of the tracks from our new album FUTURE MIRROR – “dry is my faith / above us the dream is a fist unfurling”. This lyric comes from somewhere close to what I’m describing here. Firmly held beliefs. Letting go. Tested. Destroyed. Reborn. Such is the way. Thanks for the good question.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

Hopefully somewhere approximating the desired vision, with a few exciting and unexpected surprises. It depends how you define your terms. “Artistic progression”…it’s a little different for everyone, no? It depends what the artist wants. It’s the scariest question – “what do you want?” As soon as we define what we want we clarify our terms for failure. And who wants to see their own personally determined terms for failure?! Well, the best answer is to raise your hand and say “Me! I want to see them!” We should want to clarify terms of failure so that we know when we’re going off the rails. Unless ignorance is truly bliss. And if it is then fuck bliss. As an artist I feel I am a hunter. I pursue an idea along the trail of instinct. It leads me into the unknown wilderness, where I encounter familiar things with fresh faces, where I find myself again, my bones, my wildness, after being lost for so long in the grids of civilized living. I feel an honest artist is venturing into the unknown not because they want to explore the void per se, but because exploring the void is a means to an end, which is to return to an ordered defined reality with fresh information. That’s full circle. I like that. Where an artist ends up in their own pursuits or “artistic progression” depends greatly on how honest their heart and soul are while working. By “artistic progression” we often assume, I think, to mean something like “the civilizing function of human creative nature”. That somehow an artist progresses “forward” toward something better, helps us define and understand our so-called higher natures more clearly. But that sometimes seems a bit too suspiciously self-congratulatory and self-aggrandizing to me. What if “progress” also sometimes means something like “resisting unnatural change”? What if “progress” is to be found in staying within the circle built by ancestors, resisting the shiny new innovations, and steadfastly maintaining a fire that has been burning for generations? What if “progress” is more to do with absorbing and retelling the old stories over again with fresh voices? Do we even know what we mean by “progress”? I’m not so sure. All that to say, if we assume we all understand the same thing when we say “artistic progress”, then I would say it leads us to somewhere better than where we were when we began the creative journey. Even if that better place is new knowledge of somewhere we don’t want to go. The artist also shows us this. Even if it’s simply to find ourselves where we started from, seen through new eyes. Where does artistic progression lead? To something we didn’t see before, or did see before and for whatever reason forgot.

How do you define success?

Success: The experience of living a life in which what I feel, believe, think, say and do are in harmonic alignment. If I can achieve this sort of an aligned state of being, the particulars of the work in front of me become secondary. Whatever work I do from that place I trust will be good. Add to this – when the energy you put out to the public through the work is digested and returned to you in forms of societal support…this also smells of success.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

This is the best and most disturbing interview question I’ve ever encountered. I like where I am in my life right now. Everything I have seen in my life has contributed to my current position. So I regard everything I have seen as, in some big picture way, necessary and I accept them. Having said this, here is a short list of answers to the question “I wonder if I would have been just as well off not seeing this?”
– video of an Isis beheading / snuff film
– a friend’s bedroom after a break-in & gunshot suicide on his bed
– the Lars von Trier film “Dancer in the Dark”

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

A school.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

The poetic revealing of truth.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

Getting into my painting studio. I have 5 large blank canvases waiting for me currently. The solitude…the beautiful solitude of painting…the dynamic ritual of painting…the sacred private physical dialogue of painting…the dance of it…aside from making love, it’s hard to name something more therapeutic.

Photo of The Atomic Bomb Audition, by Rex Mananquil

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The Atomic Bomb Audition, Future Mirror

(2022)