Finnish heavy rockers Kaiser are set to release their sophomore LP, the aptly-titled 2nd Sound, through Majestic Mountain Records on March 7. And that’s a little ways off, but if you hear a rumble on the horizon, there’s a decent chance (1:) it’s the end of the world, or (2:) that’s just the crawlingly doomed nod in the midsection of 10-minute album-closer “Aftershock.” Either way, the ground shakes beneath the Helsinki trio’s feet, and if there’s any rust as a result of it going on seven years since their wholesomely fuzzed, classically stoner-rocking 1st Sound (discussed here) debut LP came out in 2018 (on Oak Island), you would not know it in the build of tension in “Brotha” at the record’s outset, the consuming roll of “Oversized Load” — perhaps titled for the tonality in which it intermittently basks — or the general uptick in the production level between the two releases that results in a more dynamic, individual and modern sound from Kaiser, with guitarist/vocalist Olli “Otu” Suurmunne (Headless Monarch, Altar of Betelgeuze, etc.), bassist Pekka “Pex” Sauvolainen (ex-Ajattara, Amputory) and drummer Riku “RiQ” Syrjä able to offer an aggressive, noisy charge like “1,5 Dozen” or capture such crunching swagger in “Meteorhead,” dig into more twisting revelry in “Awaken Monster,” conversing with the progressive wing of the current Scandi heavy underground — names like Skraeckoedlan, Vokonis, Craneium, and so on — while undeniably bringing something of themselves to it.

The first record was raw, but held definite potential, and for those who caught it, Kaiser‘s 2022 split with Norway’s Captain Caravan, Turned to Stone Chapter 6 (review here), part of Ripple Music‘s ongoing series serves in hindsight as a rousing preface to the grit in Suurmunne‘s vocals and the breadth that might accompany at any given point, but as “Stood Still” follows “Oversized Load” with a divergence into acoustic strum and hand-percussion, letting the vocals carry the song a little more with psychedelic ambience surrounding in a tidy four-minute package, the band are practically beating you over the head with their growth.

A short while later, “Aftershock” builds on the expanses wrought by “Oversized Load” and its setting of high and low volume markers, but Kaiser aren’t so simple as to be a one-or-the-other kind of band, and 2nd Sound is a richer listening experience than a quickie back and forth can convey. “Brotha,” “Meteorhead” — watch out for the layered shred in the second half — the samples, big hook and shimmering lead work of “Awaken Monster” or the catchy “A Clockwork Green,” which encourages the listener to stick around for when they take the boogie for a walk at the end, Kaiser weave between heavy styles and soundscapes, taking cues from classic desert rock and using that foundation to elbow their way into a niche of their own. As regards progression either of band or the genre they celebrate, you can only really call it a win.

2nd Sound isn’t a revolution and it isn’t trying to be, but its eight songs and 45 minutes present a winding course of satisfying, engaging heavycraft, feeling and being spacious without getting lost in its own reaches. The vocal melodies, shouts, and so on, are a unifying factor, as Suurmunne conjures a real sense of soul in “1,5 Dozen” or the culmination of “Awaken Monster,” which is hypnotic despite also kicking ass en route to “A Clockwork Green” with a flow no less immersive than anything that surrounds, the latter — premiering below, as it happens — blossoming its chorus all the more on repeat visits and emphasizing the balance of loose vibe and taut structure that “Aftershock” soon enough bowls over with its slow Sabbathian march, with Suurmunne‘s blues-via-Mike–Patton harmony in the second verse making for a highlight no less resonant than the rush of “Brother” half a lightyear distant.

Front-to-back, Kaiser execute with distinction more than poise, which is to say the material has heart behind it, and although 2nd Sound has been a while in the making, it sounds focused, directed, and purposeful in accomplishing what it sets out to do. That’s a little dry in terms of description for something as engrossing as “Oversized Load” when they decide to blow it out or the interplay of that same adrenaline with a looser Sleep groove on “A Clockwork Green,” but true just the same. The album isn’t quite a blindside, with Kaiser having made such a statement on the split three years ago, but for many who take it on having not heard the band before, it should serve as a compelling introduction.

In March. Yeah, I know. Stupid early for a review. But you’re savvy and you know how preorders work, so I’m not gonna worry too much about it. “A Clockwork Green” is the second single from the record, behind “Brotha,” and you can hear that one too near the bottom of the post. Between them, you don’t quite get the full picture of everything Kaiser have going on with 2nd Sound, but it’s a start and that’s the point. The band and PR wire offer comment below.

Please enjoy:

Kaiser on “A Clockwork Green”:

This song is about seeing the wholeness after devastation and how things should be in order. What’s useless, what’s important and how everything works like clockwork when you build the puzzle back to the clear green line.

Kaiser, the Finnish stoner rock band that could’ve been named after a particularly enthusiastic emperor of riffs, are set to return with their second album “2nd Sound,” due out on March 7 next year via Majestic Mountain Records.

Formed in the late summer of 2013 when Otu (guitar/vocals) and RiQ (drums) met online, discovered their mutual love for heavy, fuzz-drenched tunes, and decided to make some noise together. They soon roped in Pex, who’d previously played bass with RiQ in another band, and the chemistry was undeniable—let’s just say, it was “outstanding supreme,” as they’d say in Finland.

Kaiser’s sound is a powerful blend of stoner rock, doom, and fuzz. If you imagine the heavy riffs of Black Sabbath meeting the raw intensity of Finnish grit, you’re close. Influenced by Kyuss, Sleep, and a touch of High on Fire, Kaiser has carved out their own path in the Finnish rock scene, bringing a fresh take on the genre.

Their self-titled EP in 2014 was the band’s introduction, a statement saying, “We’re here, and we’re heavy.” Followed by their debut album “1st Sound” in 2018, Kaiser proved they were more than a one-off act—they could deliver a full-length journey of unrelenting power and intensity.

Tracklisting:
1. Brotha
2. 1,5 Dozen
3. Meteorhead
4. Oversized Load
5. Stood Still
6. Awaken Monster
7. A Clockwork Green
8. Aftershock

Kaiser are:
Olli “Otu” Suurmunne – guitar/vocals
Pekka “Pex” Sauvolainen – bass
Riku “RiQ” Syrjä – drums

Kaiser, 2nd Sound (2025)

Kaiser on Facebook

Kaiser on Instagram

Kaiser on Bandcamp

Majestic Mountain Records store

Majestic Mountain Records on Instagram

Majestic Mountain Records on Facebook

Day four of five for this snuck-in-before-the-end-of-the-year Quarterly Review, and I’m left wondering if maybe it won’t be worth booking another week for January or early February, and if that happens, is it still “quarterly” at that point if you do it like six times a year? ‘Bimonthly Quality Control Assessments’ coming soon! Alert your HR supervisors to tell your servers of any allergies.

No, not really.

I’ll figure out a way to sandwich more music into this site if it kills me. Which I guess it might. Whatever, let’s do this thing.

Quarterly Review #31-40

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Sergeant Thunderhoof, The Ghost of Badon Hill

A marked accomplishment in progressive heavy rock, The Ghost of Badon Hill is the fifth full-length from UK five-piece Sergeant Thunderhoof, who even without the element of surprise on their side — which is to say one is right to approach the 45-minute six-tracker with high expectations based on the band’s past work; their last LP was 2022’s This Sceptred Veil (review here)  — rally around a folklore-born concept and deliver the to-date album of their career. From the first emergence of heft in “Badon” topped with Daniel Flitcroft soar-prone vocals, Sergeant Thunderhoof — guitarists Mark Sayer and Josh Gallop, bassist Jim Camp and drummer Darren Ashman, and the aforementioned Flitcroft — confidently execute their vision of a melodic riffprog scope. The songs have nuance and character, the narrative feels like it moves through the material, there are memorable hooks and grand atmospheric passages. It is by its very nature not without some indulgent aspects, but also a near-perfect incarnation of what one might ask it to be.

Sergeant Thunderhoof on Facebook

Pale Wizard Records store

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Swallow the Sun, Shining

The stated objective of Swallow the Sun‘s Shining was for less misery, and fair enough as the Finnish death-doomers have been at it for about a quarter of a century now and that’s a long time to feel so resoundingly wretched, however relatably one does it. What does less-misery sound like? First of all, still kinda miserable. If you know Swallow the Sun, they are still definitely recognizable in pieces like “Innocence Was Long Forgotten,” “What I Have Become” and “MelancHoly,” but even the frontloading of these singles — don’t worry, from “Kold” and the ultra Type O Negative-style “November Dust” (get it?), to the combination of floating, dancing keyboard lines and drawn out guitars in the final reaches of the title-track, they’re not short on highlights — conveys the modernity brought into focus. Produced by Dan Lancaster (Bring Me the Horizon, A Day to Remember, Muse), the songs are in conversation with the current sphere of metal in a way that Swallow the Sun have never been, broadening the definition of what they do while retaining a focus on craft. They’re professionals.

Swallow the Sun on Facebook

Century Media website

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Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, The Mind Like Fire Unbound

Where’s the intermittently-crushing sci-fi-concept death-stoner, you ask? Well, friend, Lincoln, Nebraska’s Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships would like to have a word, and on The Mind Like Fire Unbound, there’s a non-zero chance that word will come in the form of layered death metal growls and rasping throatripper screams representing an insectoid species about to tear more-melodically-voiced human colonizers to pieces. The 45-minute LP’s 14-minute opener “BUGS” that lays out this warning is followed by the harsh, cosmic-paranoia conjuration of “Dark Forest” before a pivot in 8:42 centerpiece “Infinite Inertia” — and yes, the structure of the tracks is purposeful; longest at the open and close with shorter pieces on either side of “Infinite Inertia” — takes the emotive cast of Pallbearer to an extrapolated psychedelic metalgaze, huge and broad and lumbering. Of course the contrast is swift in the two-minute “I Hate Space,” but where one expects more bludgeonry, the shortest inclusion stays clean vocally amid its uptempo, Torche-but-not-really push. Organ joins the march in the closing title-track (14:57), which gallops following its extended intro, doom-crashes to a crawl and returns to double-kick behind the encompassing last solo, rounding out with suitable showcase of breadth and intention.

Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships on Facebook

Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships on Bandcamp

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Planet of Zeus, Afterlife

Planet of Zeus make a striking return with their sixth album, Afterlife, basing their theme around mythologies current and past and accompanying that with a sound that’s both less brash than they were a few years back on 2019’s Faith in Physics (review here) and refined in the sharpness and efficiency of its songwriting. It’s a rocker, which is what one has come to expect from these Athens-based veterans. Afterlife builds momentum through desert-style rockers like “Baptized in His Death” and the hooky “No Ordinary Life” and “The Song You Misunderstand,” getting poppish in the stomp of “Bad Milk” only after the bluesy “Let’s Call it Even” and before the punkier “Letter to a Newborn,” going where it wants and leaving no mystery as to how it’s getting there because it doesn’t need to. One of the foremost Greek outfits of their generation, Planet of Zeus show up, tell you what they’re going to do, then do it and get out, still managing to leave behind some atmospheric resonance in “State of Non-Existence.” There’s audible, continued forward growth and kickass tunes. If that sounds pretty ideal, it is.

Planet of Zeus on Facebook

Planet of Zeus on Bandcamp

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Human Teorema, Le Premier Soleil de Jan Calet

Cinematic in its portrayal, Le Premier Soleil de Jan Calet positions itself as cosmically minded, and manifests that in sometimes-minimal — effectively so, since it’s hypnotic — aural spaciousness, but Paris’ Human Teorema veer into Eastern-influenced scales amid their exploratory, otherworldly-on-purpose landscaping, and each planet on which they touch down, from “Onirico” (7:43) to “Studiis” (15:54) and “Spedizione” (23:20) is weirder than the last, shifting between these vast passages and jammier stretches still laced with synth. Each piece has its own procession and dynamic, and perhaps the shifts in intent are most prevalent within “Studiis,” but the closer is, on the balance, a banger as well, and there’s no interruption in flow once you’ve made the initial choice to go with Le Premier Soleil de Jan Calet. An instrumental approach allows Human Teorema to embody descriptive impressions that words couldn’t create, and when they decide to hit it hard, they’re heavy enough for the scale they’ve set. Won’t resonate universally (what does?), but worth meeting on its level.

Human Teorema on Instagram

Sulatron Records store

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Caged Wolves, A Deserts Tale

There are two epics north of the 10-minute mark on Caged Wolves‘ maybe-debut LP, A Deserts Tale: “Lost in the Desert” (11:26) right after the intro “Dusk” and “Chaac” (10:46) right before the hopeful outro “Dawn.” The album runs a densely-packed 48 minutes through eight tracks total, and pieces like the distortion-drone-backed “Call of the Void,” the alt-prog rocking “Eleutheromania,” “Laguna,” which is like earlier Radiohead in that it goes somewhere on a linear build, and the spoken-word-over-noise interlude “The Lost Tale” aren’t exactly wanting for proportion, regardless of runtime. The bassline that opens “Call of the Void” alone would be enough to scatter orcs, but that still pales next to “Chaac,” which pushes further and deeper, topping with atmospheric screams and managing nonetheless to come out of the other side of that harsh payoff of some of the album’s most weighted slog in order to bookend and give the song the finish it deserves, completing it where many wouldn’t have been so thoughtful. This impression is writ large throughout and stands among the clearest cases for A Deserts Tale as the beginning of a longer-term development.

Caged Wolves on Facebook

Tape Capitol Music store

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Anomalos Kosmos, Liminal Escapism

I find myself wanting to talk about how big Liminal Escapism sounds, but I don’t mean in terms of tonal proportion so much as the distances that seem to be encompassed by Greek progressive instrumentalists Anomalos Kosmos. With an influence from Grails and, let’s say, 50 years’ worth of prog rock composition (but definitely honoring the earlier end of that timeline), Anomalos Kosmos offer emotional evocation in pieces that feel compact on either side of six or seven minutes, taking the root jams and building them into structures that still come across as a journey. The classy soloing in “Me Orizeis” and synthy shimmer of “Parapatao,” the rumble beneath the crescendo of “Kitonas” and all of that gosh darn flow in “Flow” speak to a songwriting process that is aware of its audience but feels no need to talk down, musically speaking, to feed notions of accessibility. Instead, the immersion and energetic drumming of “Teledos” and the way closer “Cigu” rallies around pastoral fuzz invite the listener to come along on this apparently lightspeed voyage — thankfully not tempo-wise — and allow room for the person hearing these sounds to cast their own interpretations thereof.

Anomalos Kosmos on Facebook

Anomalos Kosmos on Bandcamp

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Pilot Voyager, Grand Fractal Orchestra

One could not hope to fully encapsulate an impression here of nearly three and a half hours of sometimes-improv psych-drone, and I refuse to feel bad for not trying. Instead, I’ll tell you that Grand Fractal Orchestra — the Psychedelic Source Records 3CD edition of which has already sold out — finds Budapest-based guitarist Ákos Karancz deeply engaged in the unfolding sounds here. Layering effects, collaborating with others from the informal PSR collective like zitherist Márton Havlik or singer Krisztina Benus, and so on, Karancz constructs each piece in a way that feels both steered in a direction and organic to where the music wants to go. “Ore Genesis” gets a little frantic around the middle but finds its chill, “Human Habitat” is duly foreboding, and the two-part, 49-minute-total capper “Transforming Time to Space” is beautiful and meditative, like staring at a fountain with your ears. It goes without saying not everybody has the time or the attention span to sit with a release like this, but if you take it one track at a time for the next four years or so, there’s worlds enough in these songs that they’ll probably just keep sinking in. And if Karancz puts outs like five new albums in that time too, so much the better.

Pilot Voyager on Instagram

Psychedelic Source Records on Bandcamp

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Blake Hornsby, A Village of Many Springs

It probably goes without saying — at least it should — that while the classic folk fingerplucking of “Whispering Waters” and the Americana-busy “Laurel Creek Blues” give a sweet introduction to Blake Hornsby‘s A Village of Many Springs, inevitably it’s the 23-minute experimentalist spread of the finale, “Bury My Soul in the Linville River,” that’s going to be a focal point for many listeners, and fair enough. The earthbound-cosmic feel of that piece, its devolution into Lennon-circa-1968 tape noise and concluding drone, aren’t at all without preface. A Village of Many Springs gets weirder as it goes, with the eight-minute “Cathedral Falls” building over its time into a payoff of seemingly on-guitar violence, and the subsequent “O How the Water Flows” nestling into a sweet spot between Appalachian nostalgia and foreboding twang. There’s percussion and manipulation of noise later, too, but even in its repetition, “O How the Water Flows” continues Hornsby‘s trajectory. For what’s apparently an ode to water in the region surrounding Hornsby‘s home in Asheville, North Carolina, that it feels fluid should be no surprise, but by no means does one need to have visited Laurel Creek to appreciate the blues Hornsby conjures for them.

Blake Hornsby on Facebook

Echodelick Records website

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Congulus, G​ö​ç​ebe

With a sensibility in some of the synth of “Hacamat” born of space rock, Congulus have no trouble moving from that to the 1990s-style alt-rock saunter of “Diri Bir Nefes,” furthering the momentum already on the Istanbul-based instrumentalist trio’s side after opener “İskeletin Düğün Halayı” before “Senin Sırlarının Yenilmez Gücünü Gördüm” spaces out its solo over scales out of Turkish folk and “Park” marries together the divergent chugs of Judas Priest and Meshuggah, there’s plenty of adventure to be had on Göç​ebe. It’s the band’s second full-length behind 2019’s Bozk​ı​r — they’ve had short releases between — and it moves from “Park” into the push of “Zarzaram” and “Vordonisi” with efficiency that’s only deceptive because there’s so much stylistic range, letting “Ulak” have its open sway and still bash away for a moment or two before “Sonunda Ah Çekeriz Derinden” closes by tying space rock, Mediterranean traditionalism and modern boogie together in one last jam before consigning the listener back to the harsher, decidedly less utopian vibes of reality.

Congulus on Facebook

Congulus on Bandcamp

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Wow. This is a pretty good day. I mean, I knew that coming into it — I’m the one slating the reviews — but looking up there at the names in the header, that’s a pretty killer assemblage. Maybe I’m making it easy for myself and loading up the QR with stuff I like and want to write about. Fine. Sometimes I need to remind myself that’s the point of this project in the first place.

Hope you’re having an awesome week. I am.

Quarterly Review #21-30

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Thou, Umbilical

Even knowing that the creation of a sense of overwhelm is on purpose and is part of the artistry of what Thou do, Thou are overwhelming. The stated purpose behind Umbilical is an embrace of their collective inner hardcore kid. Fine. Slow down hardcore and you pretty much get sludge metal one way or the other and Thou‘s take on it is undeniably vicious and has a character that is its own. Songs like “I Feel Nothing When You Cry” and “The Promise” envision dark futures from a bleak present, and the poetry from which the lyrics get their shape is as despondent and cynical as one could ever ask, waiting to be dug into and interpreted by the listener. Let’s be honest. I have always had a hard time buying into the hype on Thou. I’ve seen them live and enjoyed it and you can’t hear them on record and say they aren’t good at what they do, but their kind of extremity isn’t what I’m reaching for most days when I’m trying to not be in the exact hopeless mindset the band are aiming for. Umbilical isn’t the record to change my mind and it doesn’t need to be. It’s precisely what it’s going for. Caustic.

Thou on Bandcamp

Sacred Bones Records website

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Cortez, Thieves and Charlatans

The fourth full-length from Boston’s Cortez sets a tone with opener “Gimme Danger (On My Stereo)” (premiered here) for straight-ahead, tightly-composed, uptempo heavy rock, and sure enough that would put Thieves and Charlatans — recorded by Benny Grotto at Mad Oak Studios — in line with Cortez‘s work to-date. What unfolds from the seven-minute “Leaders of Nobody” onward is a statement of expanded boundaries in what Cortez‘s sound can encompass. The organ-laced jamitude of “Levels” or the doom rock largesse of “Liminal Spaces” that doesn’t clash with the prior swing of “Stove Up” mostly because the band know how to write songs; across eight songs and 51 minutes, the five-piece of vocalist Matt Harrington, guitarists Scott O’Dowd and Alasdair Swan, bassist Jay Furlo and sitting-in drummer Alexei Rodriguez (plus a couple other guests from Boston’s heavy underground) reaffirm their level of craft, unite disparate material through performance and present a more varied and progressive take than they’ve ever had. They’re past 25 years at this point and still growing in sound. They may be underrated forever, but that’s a special band.

Cortez on Facebook

Ripple Music website

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Lydsyn, Højspændt

Writing a catchy song is not easy. Writing a song so catchy it’s still catchy even though you don’t speak the language is the provenance of the likes of Uffe Lorenzen. The founding frontman of in-the-ether-for-now Copenhagen heavy/garage psych pioneers Baby Woodrose digs into more straightforward fare on the second full-length from his new trio Lydsyn, putting a long-established Stooges influence to good use in “Hejremanden” after establishing at the outset that “Musik Er Nummer 1” (‘music is number one’) and before the subsequent slowdown into harmony blues with “UFO.” “Nørrebro” has what would seem to be intentional cool-neighborhood strut, and those seeking more of a garage-type energy might find it in “Du Vil Have Mere” or “Opråb” earlier on, and closer “Den Døde By” has a scorch that feels loyal to Baby Woodrose‘s style of psych, but whatever ties there are to Lorenzen‘s contributions over the last 20-plus years, Lydsyn stand out for the resultant quality of songwriting and for having their own dynamic building on Lorenzen‘s solo work and post-Baby Woodrose arc.

Lydsyn on Facebook

Bad Afro Records website

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Magick Potion, Magick Potion

The popular wisdom has had it for a few years now that retroism is out. Hearing Baltimorean power trio Magick Potion vibe their way into swaying ’70s-style heavy blues on “Empress,” smoothly avoiding the trap of sounding like Graveyard and spacing out more over the dramatic first two minutes of “Wizard” and the proto-doomly rhythmic jabs that follow. Guitarist/vocalist/organist Dresden Boulden, bassist/vocalist Triston Grove and drummer Jason Geezus Kendall capture a sound that’s as fresh as it is familiar, and while there’s no question that the aesthetic behind the big-swing “Never Change” and the drawling, sunshine-stoned “Pagan” is rooted in the ’68-’74 “comedown era” — as their label, RidingEasy Records has put it in the past — classic heavy rock has become a genre unto itself over the last 25-plus years, and Magick Potion present a strong, next-generation take on the style that’s brash without being willfully ridiculous and that has the chops to back up its sonic callouts. The potential for growth is significant, as it would be with any band starting out with as much chemistry as they have, but don’t take that as a backhanded way of saying the self-titled is somehow lacking. To be sure, they nail it.

Magick Potion on Instagram

RidingEasy Records store

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Weite, Oase

Oase is the second full-length from Berlin’s Weite behind 2023’s Assemblage (review here), also on Stickman, and it’s their first with keyboardist Fabien deMenou in the lineup with bassist Ingwer Boysen (Delving), guitarists Michael Risberg (Delving, Elder) and Ben Lubin (Lawns), and drummer Nick DiSalvo (Delving, Elder), and it unfurls across as pointedly atmospheric 53 minutes, honed from classic progressive rock but by the time they get to “(einschlafphase)” expanded into a cosmic, almost new age drone. Longer pieces like “Roter Traum” (10:55), “Eigengrau” (12:41) or even the opening “Versteinert” (9:36) offer impact as well as mood, maybe even a little boogie, “Woodbury Hollow” is more pastoral but no less affecting. The same goes for “Time Will Paint Another Picture,” which seems to emphasize modernity in the clarity of its production even amid vintage influences. Capping with the journey-to-freakout “The Slow Wave,” Oase pushes the scope of Weite‘s sound farther out while hitting harder than their first record, adding to the arrangements, and embracing new ideas. Unless you have a moral aversion to prog for some reason, there’s no angle from which this one doesn’t make itself a must-hear.

Weite on Facebook

Stickman Records website

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Orbiter, Distorted Folklore

Big on tone and melody in a way that feels inspired by the modern sphere of heavy — thinking that Hum record, Elephant Tree, Magnetic Eye-type stuff — Florida’s Orbiter set forth across vast reaches in Distorted Folklore, a song like “Lightning Miles” growing more expansive even as it follows a stoner-bouncing drum pattern. Layering is a big factor, but it doesn’t feel like trickery or the band trying to sound like anything or anyone in particular so much as they’re trying to serve their songs — Jonathan Nunez (ex-Torche, etc.) produced; plenty of room in the mix for however big Orbiter want to get — as they shift from the rush that typified stretches of their 2019 debut, Southern Failures, to a generally more lumbering approach. The slowdown suits them here, though fast or slow, the procession of their work is as much about breadth as impact. Whatever direction they take as they move into their second decade, that foundation is crucial.

Orbiter on Facebook

Orbiter on Bandcamp

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Vlimmer, Bodenhex

As regards genre: “dark arts?” Taking into account the 44 minutes of Vlimmer‘s fourth LP, which is post-industrial as much as it’s post-punk, with plenty of goth, some metal, some doom, some dance music, and so on factored in, there’s not a lot else that might encompass the divergent intentions of “Endpuzzle” or “Überrennen” as the Berlin solo-project of Alexander Donat harnesses ethereal urbanity in the brooding-till-it-bursts “Sinkopf” or the manic pulses under the vocal longing of closer “Fadenverlust.” To Donat‘s credit, from the depth of the setup given by longest/opening track (immediate points) “2025” to the goth-coated keyboard throb in “Mondläufer,” Bodenhex never goes anywhere it isn’t meant to go, and unto the finest details of its mix and arrangements, Vlimmer‘s work exudes expressive purpose. It is a record that has been hammered out over a period of time to be what it is, and that has lost none of the immediacy that likely birthed it in that process.

Vlimmer on Facebook

Blackjack Illuminist Records on Bandcamp

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Moon Goons, Lady of Many Faces

Indianapolis four-piece Moon Goons cut an immediately individual impression on their third album, Lady of Many Faces. The album, which often presents itself as a chaotic mash of ideas, is in fact not that thing. The band is well in control, just able and/or wanting to do more with their sound than most. They are also mindfully, pointedly weird. If you ever believed space rock could have been invented in an alternate reality 1990s and run through filters of lysergism and Devin Townsend-style progressive metal, you might take the time now to book the tattoo of the cover of Lady of Many Faces you’re about to want. Shenanigans abound in the eight songs, if I haven’t made that clear, and even the nod of “Doom Tomb Giant” feels like a freakout given the treatment put on by Moon Goons, but the thing about the album is that as frenetic as the four-piece of lead vocalist/guitarist Corey Standifer, keyboardist/vocalist Brooke Rice, bassist Devin Kearns and drummer Jacob Kozlowski get on their way to the doped epic finisher title-track, the danger of it coming apart is a well constructed, skillfully executed illusion. And what a show it is.

Moon Goons on Facebook

Romanus Records website

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Familiars, Easy Does It

Although it opens up with some element of foreboding by transposing the progression of AC/DC‘s “Hells Bells” onto its own purposes in heavy Canadiana rock, and it gets a bit shouty/sludgy in the lyrical crescendo of “What a Dummy,” which seems to be about getting pulled over on a DUI, or the later “The Castle of White Lake,” much of Familiars‘ Easy Does It lives up to its name. Far from inactive, the band are never in any particular rush, and while a piece like “Golden Season,” with its singer-songwriter vocal, acoustic guitar and backing string sounds, carries a sense of melancholy — certainly more than the mellow groover swing and highlight bass lumber of “Gustin Grove,” say — the band never lay it on so thick as to disrupt their own momentum more than they want to. Working as a five-piece with pedal steel, piano and other keys alongside the core guitar, bass and drums, Easy Does It finds a balance of accessibility and deeper-engaging fare combined with twists of the unexpected.

Familiars on Facebook

Familiars on Bandcamp

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The Fërtility Cült, A Song of Anger

Progressive stoner psych rockers The Fërtility Cült unveil their fifth album, A Song of Anger, awash in otherworldly soul music vibes, sax and fuzz and roll in conjunction with carefully arranged harmonies and melodic and rhythmic turns. There’s a lot of heavy prog around — I don’t even know how many times I’ve used the word today and frankly I’m scared to check — and admittedly part of that is how open that designation can feel, but The Fërtility Cült seem to take an especially fervent delight in their slow, molten, flowing chicanery on “The Duel” and elsewhere, and the abiding sense is that part of it is a joke, but part of everything is a joke and also the universe is out there and we should go are you ready? A Song of Anger is billed as a prequel, and perhaps “The Curse of the Atreides” gives some thematic hint as well, but whether you’ve been with them all along or this is the first you’ve heard, the 12-minute closing title-track is its own world. If you think you’re ready — and good on you for that — the dive is waiting for your immersion.

The Fërtility Cült on Facebook

The Fërtility Cült on Bandcamp

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Sula Bassana and Skyjoggers both took part in this year’s Dazed and Spaced Festival at Bar 227 in Hamburg, the former headlining the second night on April 27 and the latter playing earlier that same evening, having traveled from their Earthly home in Tampere, Finland, to play. The tracks — recorded by someone named Funcky — are pretty lo-fi, with Skyjoggers starting off side A in ground-torching fashion on “Step One: Breathe/Step Two: Levitate,” building momentum quickly with the lead cut from their 2023 three-songer EP, 37 Steps ’til Sunlight, released on vinyl alongside 2022’s I Am a Stone in Gagaria, the band detailing aurally their adventures on the planet of the same name as they hurtle through the cosmos with an FTL engine apparently powered by reverb, raw distortion mixed by Johannes Latva and mastered by Janne Hakanen, and sheer will.

As this split is my first encounter with the three-piece of guitarist Alexi Belle, bassist Juan Rico and drummer Gabo Sabor, I’ll admit my ignorance of Gagaria, the Kosmonoita or the uncharted solar system where their 2019 LP, Seasons of Uiu, reportedly took place. Nonetheless, the Finnish unit make a joyful racket out amid the void and the dark energy, and “Lightrunner” is careening and swirling alike, vocal echoes cutting through clearly, but buried in echo in classic space rock fashion. But Skyjoggers aren’t necessarily a classic space rock band. Their sound, and their apparent conceptualist ethic, certainly has roots in the style, but “Lightrunner” takes off on a more modern, funkier jam after it hits the halfway mark and before it realigns around the forward-directed, gleefully noisy thrust. It’s a blend that will make it easy for listeners coming into the split expecting a weirdness of character to get on board, but frankly, the ship is loaded and is gonna launch whether you’re on it or not.

The destination, here, for Skyjoggers is the floating “…For Outer Space,” which at nine and a half minutes is nearly as long as the first two songs put together and likewise represents a shift in style. Taken from 2018’s Journeymen full-length, where it’s preceded by “Set Sail…,” “…For Outer Space” initially leaves behind the tumult of “Step One: Breathe/Step Two: Levitate” and “Lightrunner” in favor of mellower cosmic blessings. They bring it up to a wall of noise efficiently enough, but the sense of purposeful meander, the feeling that it all might come crashing apart, remain consistent. It doesn’t, of course, or the set probably wouldn’t see public release at all, but “…For Outer Space” rides that line as it moves deeper into its second half with a this-is-why-it-closes-shows, big-no-bigger nod that, even in this live version so much about the energy the band are bringing to it from the stage still feels immersive.

One could hardly ask a more fitting lead-in for Sula Bassana. The long-running Kassel, Germany, solo-project of Dave “Sula Bassana” Schmidt — who not only is releasing the split through his Sulatron Records label (Echodelick and Cardinal Fuzz also have copies) and mixed his band’s portion (Eroc mastered), but is known for outfits like Electric Moon, Zone Six, Liquid Visions, the way underrated Weltraumstaunen, Moonseeds who released an album earlier this year, and so on — took on a full lineup in 2023. This is the first release I know of to feature it, and as they reinterpret and flesh out “We Will Make It” from Sula Bassana‘s 2022 album, Nostalgia (review here), Schmidt himself fleshing it out on organ and synth/Mellotron while guitarist Adrian Grod adds vocals and bassist Kristina Schmitz and drummer Franz Fesel conjure molten groove, the context feels appropriate.

“We Will Make It” feels more volatile with its shouts past the seven-minute mark, repeating the title line with due insistence, but indeed, the band get where they’re going, which is a quick receding before the harder-hitting finish. As a complement to Skyjoggers‘ closer, “We Will Make It” has moments of heavier kosmiche push, maybe even a bit of grunge in the riffing of guitarist Adrian Grod — which are a novelty on a Sula Bassana release in themselves — alongside Sula‘s Mellotron and declarative vocals, the linear groove of Franz Fesel and the corresponding low-end flow of Kristina Schmitz‘s bass. A full lineup is a turn for Sula Bassana to make, and the amalgam of different players obviously is a shift in dynamic for an outfit that used to just be one person, but “We Will Make It” does, in fact, make it. It makes it clear that a live performance such as one captured here, that the notion of expanding on past ideas and adventuring into new ground yet to be discovered, is the point.

Can’t argue as “We Will Make It” leaves a scorch mark halfway through the solar system and the analog sci-fi, vaguely-Eastern synth sets a backdrop for Grod‘s somehow cultish echoing spoken word intro to “Come With Me.” The destination isn’t clear — that is, I’m not sure where we’re going — but they cover a pretty broad swath in the 13 minutes of the split’s closing track; languid, fluid, druid. It’s not all wash as they dive back to the keys and vibemaking from whence they set out, but when the volume comes back around by about nine minutes in, they sound like they’re rending the fabric of spacetime. Gravity jam. The sense of reaching into the unknown is palpable, and even the residual noise after the drums make their final crash feels immersive. It’s not just that Sula Bassana have become a band, then. They’ve become this band.

A live release is a fascinating way to unveil that, and perhaps not what Schmidt and company originally had in mind for Sula Bassana‘s ‘debut’ as they’ve gotten going over the last year, but “We Will Make It” and, especially “Come With Me,” which is a new song, herald journeys to come. It’s strange to think of Skyjoggers as the more experienced band considering Sula Bassana‘s recently-reissued first album, Dreamer, came out in 2002, but the new lineup is fresh and sounds like it, which if it needs to be said is not a complaint. Psych-heads, Sula-worshipers, or anyone looking for a bit of alt-universe aural escape, here you go.

Sula Bassana & Skyjoggers, Split LP (2024)

Sula Bassana on Bandcamp

Sula Bassana on Facebook

Sula Bassana on Instagram

Sula Bassana website

Skyjoggers on Facebook

Skyjoggers on Instagram

Skyjoggers on Bandcamp

Skyjoggers’ Linktr.ee

Sulatron Records on Facebook

Sulatron Records on Instagram

Sulatron Records website

Craneium have signed to Majestic Mountain Records. The Finnish progressive heavy psychedelic rockers aren’t yet at a full year’s remove from putting out their most vivid realization to-date, Feb. 2024’s Point of No Return (review here), but as is their wont, they’re ready to move forward. Streaming on the player below is a band-made video for “Empty Palaces,” a new, (at-least-for-now) standalone single to mark the occasion as they continue to write for their next outing.

If you know Craneium, having either caught wind of Point of No Return or any of the Turku four-piece’s prior LPs — 2021’s Unknown Heights (review here), 2018’s The Narrow Line (review here), or 2015’s Explore the Void; they also had a split with Black Willows in 2018 (review here) and various singles and odds and ends as fodder for Bandcamp perusal — the new song represents them well. I don’t know if it was tracked at the same time as Point of No Return, but they list a 2022 recording date, and the team of producer Joona Hassinen at Sweden’s Studio Underjord and mixing/mastering engineer Karl Daniel Lidén is consistent across both album and single, so if it’s a leftover from the album sessions, it’s one well chosen to feature by itself.

Point of No Return isn’t short on hooks, with songs like the leadoff “One Thousand Sighs,” the emotive and atmospheric cast of “A Distant Shore” or the side B highlight “Things Have Changed.” “Empty Palaces” works in this vein but is slightly shorter and more direct in doing so. Its verse picks up around a comfortably-paced swinging groove, as the vocals of Andreas Kaján — he stars in the video as the frontman very much not involved in lugging equipment back and forth, which is what guitarist Martin Ahlö, bassist Jonas Ridberg and drummer Joel Kronqvist are up to throughout; to be fair he’s busy playing along to the song — draw the listener toward the melodic catharsis-release of the chorus. There’s nothing too tricky happening structurally, and there doesn’t need to be.

The band have long since proven themselves able to conjure grand expanses of tonal reach, but fuzz rock is still somewhere at the core of that. “Empty Palaces” doesn’t revisit their past even if it’s stripped down in comparison to some of the songs on the record, but it hits in a different way, which, again, makes it work well as a single. See? I knew we’d get back around to the point eventually. One strives for the kind of efficiency Craneium show here.

Enjoy the clip, congrats to the band on joining forces with Majestic Mountain (and to the label on the pickup of a killer band), and here’s looking forward to what comes next:

Craneium, “Empty Palaces” video premiere

Martin Ahlö on “Empty Palaces”:

“A friend of the band gifted us a book on old Egyptian magick, and some of the spells carried really empowering messages. It also inspired the themes that we explored a lot in our music at the moment: the inevitable decay of mankind’s empires and monuments at the hands of nature and time.”

Joel Kronqvist on “Empty Palaces”:

“We’re beyond excited to share a new single called “Empty Palaces” with the world. This track is the perfect blend of our signature 90’s edge mixed with the soulful, retro vibes of the 70’s.”

Craneium is back with a new track ‘Empty Palaces’ and the first to be released on Majestic Mountain Records!

Their latest album, “Point of No Return,” released on February 23, 2024, dives deep into this sonic universe. Tracks like “One Thousand Sighs” and “The Sun” promise an auditory journey through expansive landscapes, both physical and emotional. This album marks a continuation of their evolution since the critically acclaimed “Unknown Heights” in 2021, which was also the start of their venture with The Sign Records.

Video created by Craneium. All music written, arranged and performed by Craneium.

Recorded and produced by Joona Hassinen at Studio Underjord, Finspång, Sweden October 2022
Mixed and mastered by Karl Daniel Lidén.

Craneium are:
Andreas Kaján – vocals, guitar and keys
Joel Kronqvist – drums and percussion
Jonas Ridberg – bass
Martin Ahlö – guitar

Craneium, Point of No Return (2024)

Craneium on Facebook

Craneium on Instagram

Craneium on Bandcamp

Majestic Mountain Records webstore

Majestic Mountain Records on Facebook

Majestic Mountain Records on Instagram

I’m pretty sure this is day eight. Like, not 100 percent or anything, but without looking I feel pretty good about saying that today would be the day we hit three-quarters of the way through the Fall 2024 Quarterly Review — if it was actually going to end on Friday. Yeah, turns out I have enough stuff I want to write about to add an 11th day, so it’s going to go to 110 releases instead of 100 and end Monday instead. It’s gotta stop at some point and I have a premiere set for next Tuesday, so that’s as good a time as any, but while I can sneak the extra QR day in, it makes sense to do so on any level except the practical, on which none of it makes any sense so that doesn’t do us any good anyway.

We — you and I — march on.

Quarterly Review #71-80:

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Trigona & IO Audio Recordings, Split LP

Doing a shortform review of a split sometimes works out to have all the depth of insight of “Hey this thing exists,” but hey, this thing exists. Bringing together California’s IO Audio Recordings and Australia’s Trigona — both solo outfits with their controls set for the heart of the heretofore sonically unknown; they collaborate on a vinyl-only bonus track called “Space Sickness” — the 39-minute digital form of the release further breaks down to three Trigona tracks in the first half and two from IO Audio Recordings (whose moniker is also styled all-lowercase: io audio recordings), and any way you go at any given point throughout, it’s pretty gone. Trigona‘s “Spectra,” “Andaman Sky” and “Vespicula” have a full-band heavy psych shimmer and a thread of drone that works well to transition into IO Audio Recordings‘ “Paranormal Champion” and “Ascend and Return,” the former of which pushes into a wash in its middle that seems to be in the spirit of Sonic Youth, getting duly noisy at the long-fading end, and the latter moving from a darker industrial rock into hypnotic ambience to round out. Both of these entities have other fairly recent releases out — to say nothing of the labels standing behind them — but so much the better for those who find this split to bask in the warmth of “Andaman Sky” and find a personal space within the sounds. If it’s obscure, so be it. It exists.

IO Audio Recordings on Instagram

Trigona on Bandcamp

Echodelick Records website

Weird Beard Records store

Fuzzed Up and Astromoon Records

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Emu, Emu

Aussie rockers Emu promise on the opening track of their self-titled debut that, “A new age is coming,” and they sound like they’re trying to push it along all by themselves. Like much of what follows on the six-track/41-minute long-player, “New Age” offers a blend of in-your-face classic-style heavy rock and roll — not quite boogie, but they’re not opposed to it as the ZZ Toppish middle of “Desert Phoenix” shows — and raucous jamming. “Sittin’ Here Thinkin'” is a couple minutes shorter and thus more direct feeling, while apparent side B opener “The Hatching” is a three-minute acoustic-led interlude before the solidifying-from-the-ether “Once Were Gums” and the bigger-swinging “Will We Ever Learn?” renew the dig-in, the latter diverging near its halfway point to a finishing build that serves the entire record well. The Sunshine Coast trio’s energy and modernized ’70s-isms call to mind some of what was coming from San Diego starting about a decade ago, but ambition is plain to hear in the longer tracks and the material wants neither for expanse or movement. The very definition of an encouraging start.

Emu on Facebook

Black Farm Records store

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Solemn Ceremony, Chapter III

Multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Phil Howlett (Lucifer’s Fall, Rote Mare, etc.) is the driving force behind Adelaide’s Solemn Ceremony, and on Chapter III, he and lead guitarist Kieran Provis capture a rare spirit of raw 1980s doom with a glee that, thankfully, doesn’t undercut all the misery on display in the songs themselves. Howlett also plays guitar, bass and drums, and seems to have engineered at least part of the recording, and his vocals are a big part of what so much characterizes the doom Solemn Ceremony proffer. In his throatier moments, he has a push that reminds distinctively of Scott Reagers from Saint Vitus, and while the music is by no means limited to this influence — “Chapter III” is more morose emotionally and the uptempo movements of “The King of Slaves” and “Skull Smasher” clearly have broader tape collections — it is the rawer side of traditionalist doom that Howlett is harnessing, and since he wields it less like a precious thing than the anti-punk lifeblood it was at the time, it works. Doom from doom, by doom, for doom.

Solemn Ceremony on Facebook

Solemn Ceremony on Bandcamp

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Glacier, A Distant, Violent Shudder

As was the case with their 2019 outing, No Light Ever (review here), Boston post-metallic instrumentalists Glacier make a priority of immersing the lister in the proceedings of their five-track/46-minute A Distant, Violent Shudder. Five years later, they continue to take some influence from Red Sparowes in terms of presentation and how the songs are titled, etc., but as the full crux of second cut “‘The Old Timers Said They’d Never Seen Nothin’ Like That'” comes forward at around three minutes in, Glacier are outright heavier, and they go on to prove it again and again as the album plays out. Fair enough. From “Grief Rolled in Like a Storm” to “Sand Bitten Lungs,” which seems to be making its way back to its start the whole time but ends up in an even heftier churning repetition, Glacier remain poised as they sculpt the pieces that comprise the record, the semi-title-track “Distant/Violent” doing much to build and tear down the world it makes. Heavy existentialism.

Glacier on Facebook

Post. Recordings on Bandcamp

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DÖ, Unversum

Like a reminder that the cosmos is both impossibly cold and hot enough to fuse hydrogen atoms, the third full-length from Finnish progressive blackened sludge rockers DÖ sets its own frame of reference in “Call of the Supervoid.” That lead cut doesn’t lay out everywhere Unversum goes throughout its contemplative eight songs and 45 minutes, but it does establish the tonal reach, the vocal rasp and the heft the trio foster throughout, so that by the time they’re nestled into the nodding second half of “Melting Gaze of the Origin,” en route to the explosive and suitably gravitational roll that would seem to begin side B in “Ode to the Dark Matter,” they’ve laid out the tenets by which Unversum operates and can proceed to add to that context. That they’re flexible enough to spend the early going of “Faster Than Light” in a psychedelic holding pattern should be seen as emblematic of their breadth on the whole, never mind the crush and seethe of “Nuclear Emperor” or “Moldy Moon,” but their extremity is tempered cleverly by their slower pacing, and that lets their individualized craft come across organically as Unversum carries the listener deeper into its expanse.

DÖ on Facebook

Lay Bare Recordings website

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Aeternal Chambers, Aeternal Chambers

In 2022, when Raf Ruett (guitar, keys), Alex Nervo (bass, keys) and Neil Dawson (drums) were part of what might’ve been the final Obiat album, Indian Ocean (review here), it was an expansive, years-in-the-making culmination of that band’s time together, with recordings taking place across continents, guest vocals and arrangements for horns. As Ruett, Nervo and Dawson reemerge in Aeternal Chambers, there have clearly been a few aspects redirected. For starters, the band’s first four songs to be made public on their self-titled debut EP are instrumental, and so are able to breathe and develop differently. Each half of the 30-minute EP is comprised of a nine-minute and a six-minute track, and even the shorter ones clue the listener into the intense focus on ambience, hitting harder à la post-metal in “Drive Me to Ruin” but keeping a brighter tone in the lead guitar to contrast any sense of plunge, saving the biggest for last in “Glitch in the Mist.” More of this will do just fine, thanks.

Aeternal Chambers on Facebook

Aeternal Chambers on Bandcamp

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OmenBringer, Thicc Darkness

From the non-cartoon butt on the front cover to quoting Lord of the Rings at the end of the album-intro “The Pact,” to catchy hooks throughout “Spells,” “Tungs” and the speedier “My Coven,” OmenBringer would seem to have a firm grasp on the audience demographic they’re aiming for, but there’s more happening in the tracks than plying the male gaze as the Nasheville four-piece make their self-released full-length debut. And that’s fortunate, because the record is 53 minutes long. I’m sorry, nobody needs to be putting out a 53-minute album in 2024 (I get it, first album, self-release, you might never get another chance; I’ve been there), but vocalist Molly Kent, guitarists Cory Cline (lead, also bass) and Spookie Rollings and drummer Tyler Boydstun mitigate this by making the late-arriving title-track an empowerment anthem — plus banjo? is that a banjo? — and fostering keyboardy drama in the hypnotic interlude “The Long Walk,” which follows. Ups and downs throughout, but a solid underpinning of metal gives the songs a foundation on which to build, and the penultimate “Stake” even hints at cinematic growth to come.

OmenBringer on Facebook

OmenBringer on Bandcamp

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Urzah, The Scorching Gaze

The declarative, 16-worthy sludge-metal chug of closer “Thera II (Embers of Descent)” is honestly worth the price of admission alone here, if you’re desperate for impetus, and Bristol’s Urzah bring the earlier “Of Decay” to a head like Amenra at their undulating finest, and The Scorching Gaze, which is the band’s first album, resounds with scope. Bolstered by guest vocal appearances by Eleanor Tinlin spread across opening duo “I, Empyrean” and “Lacrimare (Misery’s Shadow)” as well as the subdued “The Aesthetic” after the appropriately tumultuous “A Storm is Ever Approaching,” Urzah are able to foster aural textures that are about more than just the physicality of the music itself, correspondingly spacious and complex, but never lack immediacy, not the least for the post-hardcore shouts from guitarist Ed Fairman, who’s joined in the band by drummer James Brown, bassist Les Grodek and guitarist Tom McElveen. It doesn’t feel like Urzah‘s style is a settled issue — it’s their first LP; that’s not at all a dig on the band — and as the march of “Thera II (Embers of Descent)” gives way to its fade, one can only hope they stay so open-minded in their craft.

Urzah on Facebook

APF Records website

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Goat Generator, Goat Generator

Whatever the narrative you want to put to Goat Generator‘s self-titled debut, whether you want to hone in on the cultish doom-prog boogie of “Black Magik,” the more modern synthy prog-psych of “Waving Around” and “Dreamt by the Sea,” the four-minute desert-rocking homage to wildlife in “Honey Badger” or the tambourine-inclusive spoken-word verses build of “Everyday Apocalypse Blues” or the way they take 11 minutes well spent to tie it all together in the subsequent closer “Far From Divine/Kingdom Gone” — whatever your angle of approach — there’s no getting around the story of the band being how much better they are than their name. The Leipzig-based four-piece offer songs varied in purpose and mood, speaking to genre from within and showcasing the vocals of Tag Hell without shortchanging the instrumental impact of Patrick Thiele‘s guitar, Martin Schubert‘s bass and Götz Götzelmann‘s drums, and they called it Goat Generator, which isn’t quite over-the-top enough to be righteously ridiculous as a moniker and reminds of nothing so much of the Stoner Rock Band Name Generator, feeling bland in a way that the music very much is not. It’s their first LP after a 2022 demo, and I’m not gonna sit here and tell a band to change their name, so I’ll tell you instead that if you’re put off by that kind of thing in this case, it’s to your own detriment to let it keep you from hearing the songs.

Goat Generator on Facebook

Goat Generator on Bandcamp

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Head Shoppe, Head Shoppe

Rife with a languid pastoralism and threads of traditionalist folk guitar (not entirely acoustic), synth enough to make the procession that emerges behind the finishing “Candlelight Vigil” no more out of place than it wants to be in its casual, snap-along, out-for-a-walk vibe soon met with low end fuzz and a wash of keyboard melody, Head Shoppe‘s self-titled debut lets each of its six component pieces find its own way, and the result is a malleability that extends less to form — these are guitar and synth-based instrumental works of sometimes weighted psychedelia — than to the intangible nature of the creative spirit being manifest. I know nothing in terms of the process through which Head Shoppe‘s Eric Von Harding composes, but his style is able to incorporate field recordings that are emotionally evocative while also giving the otherwise sprawling “Saunders Meadow” the conceptualist ground above which it drifts. The also-eight-minute “Gracias a la Vida” uses cymbals and even manipulated voice to conjure memory before delving into flamenco stylizations, and is as much about the transition from one to the other as just what might’ve brought them together in the first place. An escape, maybe.

Head Shoppe on Linktr.ee

Meadows Heavy Recorders on Bandcamp

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Oh hi, I didn’t see you there. Me? Oh, you know. Nothing much. Staring off a cliffside about to jump headfirst into a pool of 100 records. The usual.

I’m pretty sure this is the second time this year that a single Quarterly Review has needed to be two weeks long. It’s been a busy year, granted, but still. I keep waiting for the tide to ebb, but it hasn’t really at all. Older bands keep going, or a lot of them do, anyhow — or they come back — and new bands come up. But for all the war, famine, plague and strife and crisis and such, it’s a golden age.

But hey, don’t let me keep you. I’ve apparently been doing QRs since 2013, and I remember trying to find a way to squeeze together similar roundups before it. I have no insight to add about that, it’s just something I dug back to find out the other day and was surprised because 11 years of this kind of thing is a really long gosh darn time.

On that note, let’s go.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

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Agusa, Noir

The included bits of Swedish dialogue from the short film for which Agusa‘s Noir was written to serve as a soundtrack would probably ground the proceedings some if I spoke Swedish, admittedly. As it is, those voices become part of the dream world the Malmö-based otherwise-instrumentalist adventurers conjure across 15 at times wildly divergent pieces. In arrangement and resultant mood, from the ’70s piano sentimentality of “Ljusglimtar” to the darker church organ and flute workings of “Stad i mörker,” which is reprised as a dirge at the end, the tracks are evocative across a swath of atmospheres, and it’s not all drones or background noise. They get their rock in, and if you stick around for “Kalkbrottets hemlighet,” you get to have the extra pleasure of hearing the guitar eat the rest of the song. You could say that’s not a thing you care about hearing but I know it’d be a lie, so don’t bother. If you’ve hesitated to take on Agusa in the past because sometimes generally-longform instrumental progressive psychedelic heavy rock can be a lot when you’re trying to get to know it, consider Noir‘s shorter inclusions a decent entry point to the band. Each one is like a brief snippet serving as another demonstration of the kind of immersion they can bring to what they play.

Agusa on Facebook

Kommun 2 website

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Octoploid, Beyond the Aeons

With an assembled cast of singers that includes Mikko Kotamäki (Swallow the Sun), his Amorphis bandmates Tomi Koivusaari and Tomi Joutsen, Petri Eskelinen of Rapture, and Barren Earth bandmate Jón Aldará, and guests on lead guitar and a drummer from the underappreciated Mannhai, and Barren Earth‘s keyboardist sitting in for good measure, bassist Olli Pekka-Laine harnesses a spectacularly Finnish take on proggy death-psych metal for Octoploid‘s first long-player, Beyond the Aeons. The songs feel extrapolated from Amorphis circa Elegy, putting guttural vocals to folk inspired guitar twists and prog-rock grooves, but aren’t trying to be that at all, and as ferocious as it gets, there’s always some brighter element happening, something cosmic or folkish or on the title-track both, and Octoploid feels like an expression of creative freedom based on a vision of a kind of music Pekka-Laine wanted to hear. I want to hear it too.

Octoploid on Facebook

Reigning Phoenix Music website

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The Obscure River Experiment, The Ore

The Obscure River Experiment, as a group collected together for the live performance from which The Ore has been culled, may or may not be a band. It is comprised of players from the sphere of Psychedelic Source Records, and so as members of River Flows Reverse, Obscure Supersession Collective, Los Tayos and others collaborate here in these four periodically scorching jams — looking at you, middle of “Soul’s Shiver Pt. 2” — it could be something that’ll happen again next week or next never. Not knowing is part of the fun, because as far out as something like The Obscure River Experiment might and in fact does go, there’s chemistry enough between all of these players to hold it together. “Soul Shiver Pt. 1” wakes up and introduces the band, “Pt. 2” blows it out for a while, “I See Horses” gets funky and then blows it out, and “The Moon in Flesh and Bone” feels immediately ceremonial with its sustained organ notes, but becomes a cosmic boogie ripper, complete with a welcome return of vocals. Was it all made up on the spot? Was it all a dream? Maybe both?

Psychedelic Source Records on Spotify

Psychedelic Source Records on Bandcamp

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Shun, Dismantle

Way underhyped South Carolinian progressive heavy rockers Shun arrive at the sound of their second LP, Dismantle, able to conjure elements of The Cure and Katatonia alongside Cave In-style punk-born groove, but in Shun‘s case, the underlying foundation is noise rock, so when “Aviator” opens up to its hook or “NRNS” is suddenly careening pummel or “Drawing Names” half-times the drums to get bigger behind the forward/obvious-focal-point vocal melodies of Matt Whitehead (ex-Throttlerod), there’s reach and impact working in conjunction with a thoughtful songwriting process pushed forward from where on their 2021 self-titled debut (review here) but that still seems to be actively working to engage the listener. That’s not a complaint, mind you, especially since Dismantle succeeds to vividly in doing so, and continues to offer nuance and twists on the plot right up to the willful slog ending with (most of) “Interstellar.”

Shun on Facebook

Small Stone Records website

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No Man’s Valley, Chrononaut Cocktail Bar/Flight of the Sloths

Whether it’s the brooding Nick Cave-style cabaret minimalism of “Creepoid Blues,” the ’60s psych of “Love” or the lush progressivism that emerges in “Seeing Things,” the hook of “Shapeshifter” or “Orange Juice” coming in with shaker at the end to keep things from finishing too melancholy, the first half of No Man’s Valley‘s Chrononaut Cocktail Bar/Flight of the Sloths still can only account for part of the scope as they set forth the pastoralist launch of the 18-minute “Flight of the Sloths” on side B, moving from acoustic strum and a repeating title line into a gradual build effective enough so that when Jasper Hesselink returns on vocals 13 minutes later in the spaced-out payoff — because yes, the sloths are flying between planets; was there any doubt? — it makes you want to believe the sloths are out there working hard to stay in the air. The real kicker? No Man’s Valley are no less considered in how they bring “Flight of the Sloths” up and down across its span than they are “Love” or “Shapeshifter” early on, both under three minutes long. And that’s what maturing as songwriters can do for you, though No Man’s Valley have always had a leg up in that regard.

No Man’s Valley on Facebook

No Man’s Valley on Bandcamp

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Land Mammal, Emergence

Dallas’ Land Mammal defy expectation a few times over on their second full-length, with the songwriting of Will Weise and Kinsley August turning toward greater depth of arrangement and more meditative atmospheres across the nine songs/34 minutes of Emergence, which even in a rolling groove like “Divide” has room for flute and strings. Elsewhere, sitar and tanpura meet with lap steel and keyboard as Land Mammal search for an individual approach to modern progressive heavy. There’s some shades of Elder in August‘s approach on “I Am” or the earlier “Tear You Down,” but the instrumental contexts surrounding are wildly different, and Land Mammal thrive in the details, be it the hand-percussion and far-back fuzz colliding on “The Circle,” or the tabla and sitar, drums and keys as “Transcendence (Part I)” and “Transcendence (Part II)” finish, the latter with the sounds of getting out of the car and walking in the house for epilogue. Yeah, I guess after shifting the entire stylistic scope of your band you’d probably want to go inside and rest for a bit. Well earned.

Land Mammal on Facebook

Kozmik Artifactz store

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Forgotten King, The Seeker

Released through Majestic Mountain Records, the debut full-length from Forgotten King, The Seeker, would seem to have been composed and recorded entirely by Azul Josh Bisama, also guitarist in Kal-El, though a full lineup has since formed. That happens. Just means the second album will have a different dynamic than the first, and there are some parts as in the early cut “Lost” where that will be a benefit as Azul Josh refines the work laying out a largesse-minded, emotively-evocative approach on these six cuts, likewise weighted and soaring. The album is nothing if not aptly-named, though, as Forgotten King lumber through “Drag” and march across 10 minutes of stately atmospheric doom, eventually seeing the melodic vocals give way to harsher fare in the second half, what’s being sought seems to have been found at least on a conceptual level, and one might say the same of “Around the Corner” or “The Sun” taking familiar-leaning desert rock progressions and doing something decisively ‘else’ with them. Very much feels like the encouraging beginning of a longer exploration.

Forgotten King on Facebook

Majestic Mountain Records store

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Church of Hed, The Fifth Hour

Branched off from drummer/synthesist Paul Williams‘ intermittent work over the decades with Quarkspace, the mostly-solo-project Church of Hed explores progressive, kraut and space rock in a way one expects far more from Denmark than Columbus, Ohio — to wit, Jonathan Segel (Øresund Space Collective, Camper Van Beethoven) guests on violin, bass and guitar at various points throughout the nine-tracker, which indeed is about an hour long at 57 minutes. Church of Hed‘s last outing, 2022’s The Father Road, was an audio travelogue crossing the United States from one coast to the other. The Fifth Hour is rarely so concerned with terrestrial impressionism, and especially in its longer-form pieces “Pleiades Waypoint” (13:50), “Son of a Silicon Rogue” (14:59) or “The Fifth Hour” (8:43), it digs into sci-fi prog impulses that even in the weird blips and robot twists of the interlude “Aniluminescence 2” or the misshapen techno in the closing semi-reprise “Bastard Son of The Fifth Hour” never quite feels as dystopian as some other futures in the multiverse, and that becomes a strength.

Church of Hed on Facebook

Church of Hed website

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Zolle, Rosa

Like the Melvins on an AC/DC kick or what you might get if you took ’70s arena rock, put it in a can and shook it really, really hard, Italian duo Zolle are a burst of weirdo sensation on their fifth full-length, Rosa. The songs are ready for whatever football match stadium P.A. you might want to put them on — hugely, straight-ahead, uptempo, catchy, fun in pieces like “Pepe” and “Lana” at the outset, “Merda,” “Pompon,” “Confetto” and “Fiocco” later on, likewise huge and silly in “Pois” or closer “Maialini e Maialine,” and almost grounded on “Toffolette e Zuccherini” at the start but off and running again soon enough — if you can keep up with guitarist/vocalist Marcello and drummer Stefano, for sure they make it worth the effort, and capture some of the intensity of purpose they bring to the stage in the studio and at the same time highlighting the shenanigans writ large throughout in their riffs and the cheeky bit of pop grandiosity that’s such a toy in their hands. You would not call it light on persona.

Zolle on Facebook

Subsound Records website

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Shadow and Claw, Whereabouts Unknown

Thicker in tone than much of modern black metal, and willing toward the organic in a way that feels born of Cascadia a little more to the northwest as they blast away in “Era of Ash,” Boise, Idaho’s Shadow and Claw nonetheless execute moody rippers across the five songs/41 minute of their debut, Whereabouts Unknown. Known for his work in Ealdor Bealu and the solo-project Sawtooth Monk, guitarist/vocalist Travis Abbott showcases a rasp worthy of Enslaved‘s Grutle Kjellson on the 10-minute “Wrath of Thunder,” so while there are wolves amid the trio’s better chairs, to be sure, Shadow and Claw aren’t necessarily working from any single influence in or out of char-prone extreme metals, and as the centerpiece gives over to the eponymous “Shadow and Claw,” those progressive aspirations are reaffirmed as Abbott, drummer/backing vocalist Aaron Bossart (also samples) and bassist/backing vocalist Geno Lopez find room for a running-water-backed acoustic epilogue to “Scouring the Plane of Existence” and the album as a whole. Easy to imagine them casting these songs into the sunset on the side of some pointy Rocky Mountain or other, shadows cast and claws raised.

Shadow and Claw on Facebook

Shadow and Claw on Bandcamp

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I’ll never forget that my first real show back from the pandemic was to see Finnish melodic death-doomers Swallow the Sun at Dingbatz in Clifton, New Jersey, in November 2021 (review here). Not that they were lacking status in my mind as a sentimental favorite before then, but the truth is I was apprehensive getting back out in the era of plague, and they delivered the reminder that as soon as the music starts and I’m standing in front of the stage — even masked, in sweatpants as I was — everything’s okay. Their early 2025 return to the States in celebration of their new album, Shining (out Oct. 18 on Century Media), will find them hitting Gramercy Theater in NYC, headlining alongside Harakiri for the Sky, Ghost Bath and Snakes of Russia. The first single, the tightly-composed, lushly produced “What I Have Become,” came out a couple weeks back and can be streamed at the bottom of this post.

Hoping to have more to come on the album as we get closer to the release, but here are the tour dates for now so you have an excuse to mark your calendar early:

Finnish Death-Doom Masters SWALLOW THE SUN Announce 2025 North American Headline Tour

New Album ‘Shining’ Out October 18th via Century Media Records — Pre-Order HERE: https://swallowthesun.lnk.to/Shining

Finnish death-doom pioneers SWALLOW THE SUN are set to embark on a highly anticipated North American headline tour supporting their forthcoming album, ‘Shining,’ which drops on October 18th via Century Media Records. The tour features support from Harakiri For The Sky, Ghost Bath, and Snakes of Russia. Kicking off on February 20th in Detroit, MI, the tour will bring the band’s signature blend of despair, beauty, and crushing heaviness to audiences across the continent, wrapping up on March 15th in Chicago, IL. The artist pre-sale is going on now; general tickets go on sale August 30th, at 1:00 PM EDT / 10:00 AM PDT.

“What a great line-up we have on this tour. Join the happiest tour of 2025 and secure your tickets immediately,” says vocalist Mikko Kotamäki

SWALLOW THE SUN
With Harakiri For The Sky, Ghost Bath, and Snakes of Russia
2/20/25 – Detroit, MI – Sanctuary
2/21/25 – Toronto, ON – Velvet Underground
2/22/25 – Montreal, QC – Fouf’s
2/23/25 – Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall
2/24/25 – New York, NY – Gramercy Theater
2/25/25 – Baltimore, MD – Baltimore Soundstage
2/26/25 – Greensboro, NC – Hangar 1819
2/27/25 – Atlanta, GA – The Earl
2/28/25 – Orlando, FL – Conduit
3/1/25 – Pensacola, FL – Handlebar
3/2/25 – Houston, TX – Parish Room @ House of Blues
3/3/25 – Austin, TX – Come And Take It Live
3/4/25 – Albuquerque, NM – Launch Pad
3/5/25 – Phoenix, AZ – Rebel
3/6/25 – San Diego, CA – Brick By Brick
3/7/25 – Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex
3/8/25 – San Francisco, CA – Neck of The Woods
3/9/25 – Portland, OR – Bossanova Ballroom
3/10/25 – Seattle, WA – El Corazon
3/12/25 – Salt Lake City, UT – Metro Music Hall
3/13/25 – Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater
3/14/25 – Omaha, NE – Reverb
3/15/25 – Chicago, IL – Reggies

The tour announcement follows the release of the band’s latest single, “What I Have Become,” a powerful track that delves into themes of transformation and rebirth. Produced and mixed by Dan Lancaster (Bring Me the Horizon, Muse, Enter Shikari), the song showcases SWALLOW THE SUN at their most intense, both sonically and lyrically.

More than two decades of despair, beauty, and heartache have not only shaped but fueled Finnish melancholy torchbearers, the chart-topping and two-time Finnish Grammy nominated SWALLOW THE SUN.

Formed in Jyväskylä in 2000, the quintet has enjoyed numerous fan-lauded music videos (10+ million YouTube views) and streaming dominance (50+ million Spotify plays), while also embarking on a four-continent, 900-show run over the course of their 20-year career.

Their new music, however, is the group’s first step on the new path to the unknown.

SWALLOW THE SUN are:
Juha Raivio – Guitar, Keys
Juho Räihä – Guitar
Mikko Kotamäki – Vocals
Matti Honkonen – Bass
Juuso Raatikainen – Drums

https://www.facebook.com/swallowthesun
https://www.instagram.com/swallowthesunofficial/
http://www.swallowthesun.net/

https://www.facebook.com/centurymedia
https://www.instagram.com/centurymediarecords/
http://www.centurymedia.com/

Swallow the Sun, “What I Have Become” visualizer

Swallow the Sun, “Innocence Was Long Forgotten” official video