Posted in Whathaveyou on December 31st, 2021 by JJ Koczan
I like how normalized this kind of thing is. Yeah, a bunch of dudes who play death metal, turns out they like the ol’-style heavy rock and roll? Well that’s not so weird, right? In the US and Europe alike, it’s been the case that a fair number of players known for extreme bludgeonry come together around a more rocking sound. Firebird, Mannhei, and half the rock bands in Norway come to mind immediately, though they’re by no means the only examples.
And in the first streaming teaser from Umbilicus, you can hear some of that purposeful releasing of precision of death metal in favor of more languid, classically inspired grooves. It’s not about just playing fast or slow or nodding instead of a windmill headbang. You can hear a different technique taking shape here.
Plus I like it when metal goes rock since that’s kind of the path I followed as well. Ask me about it sometime. I’m happy to run my mouth.
Album out sometime in 2022. From the PR wire:
CANNIBAL CORPSE, INHUMAN CONDITION members team up for 70’s rock band UMBILICUS; teaser available
While the abundance of death metal is a plus in 2021, there is still plenty of room for some rock and roll. Today, UMBILICUS is introduced to the world. Featuring drummer and lyricist of CANNIBAL CORPSE, Paul Mazurkiewicz on drums, Taylor Nordberg (INHUMAN CONDITION, THE ABSENCE, FORE) on guitar, Vernon Blake (ANARCHUS, NAPALM DEATH [live]) on bass, and vocalist Brian Stephenson (FORE, OLD JAMES), the quartet has turned down the violence and gore, and turned up the peace and love.
Mazurkiewicz says: “UMBILICUS was formed in the summer of 2020 and driven by our love of rock and roll from the late 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s. I’ve been listening to well-known bands like Grand Funk, Bad Company and Steppenwolf and not-so-well-known bands like Sir Lord Baltimore and Lucifer’s Friend for the last 20 years or so now. The more I listened to these bands the more I wanted to play music like this. It is just so much fun to sit back and groove out and play by complete feel without beating my body down. To just play some pure hard rock! We composed 10 very cool songs throughout 2020 but the one piece of the puzzle was missing: an awesome voice to tie it all together. Enter Brian Stephenson! An amazing vocalist and lyricist that completed the lineup! I am so proud of what we have written and I can’t wait for the world to hear what we have to offer!”
The band is currently finishing up their debut album, yet-untitled, to be released in 2022. More details regarding track-listing, artwork, and release date will be announced soon. A teaser video is available below which features a short demo mix of a new song.
UMBILICUS is: Brian Stephenson – vocals Paul Mazurkiewicz – drums Vernon Blake – bass Taylor Nordberg – guitar
Posted in Reviews on December 13th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Doing things a little differently this time. Yes, it’s still 10 records per day for a total of 50 between today and Friday, but with the utter glut — glutter! — of releases coming out and recently released, I’m doubling up on the Winter Quarterly Review and will be putting together another week of 50 records for January, after the holidays and all the year-end hullabaloo. So it’s 50 now and 50 later. I’ve never done it that way before, and I reserve the right to completely change my mind after this week, but as of right this second, that’s where I’m at. Talk to me again on Friday.
I guess we’d better get started, either way.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Enslaved, Caravans to the Outer Worlds
With a relatively brief 18-minute excursion that pushes yet-deeper into their particular brand of progressive extreme metal, Norway’s Enslaved continue to walk the increasingly melodic and decreasingly genre-dependent path in following-up 2020’s Utgard (review here). Their affinity for krautrock experimentalism is well established but has never been so forwardly presented as on “Intermezzo I – Lönnlig. Gudlig.,” and the thrust of the opening title-track sets Caravan to the Outer Worlds off with a due sense of motion later complemented by the keyboard-heavy “Ruun II – The Epitaph,” an apparent 15-years-later sequel to the title-cut from 2006’s Ruun (discussed here). Rounding out with “Intermezzo II – The Navigator,” with its almost-motorik space-but-still-somehow-Norwegian-space rock vibe, Enslaved‘s short offering for 2021 demonstrates plainly that they can be whatever and do whatever the hell they want. 30 years from their beginning, they keep growing. Such bands are likewise rare and precious.
It’s not quite what-you-see-is-what-you-get, but the Discos Macarras split Mallorca Stoner Vol. 1 that brings together two tracks each from Spanish outfits Bisonte — also written Bis·nte — and Milana certainly lays out its mission in representing the Mediterranean island’s heavy underground, and Bisonte aren’t through the nine-minute doomer “Unbalanced” before I’m curious just how many volumes the label might be able to put together from Mallorcan acts. Nonetheless, Bisonte‘s wizardly march on “Involuntary Act” flows organically around its downtrodden vibe, and in the more psychedelic “White Buffalo” and burl-lumbering “Forest Tale,” Milana work even quicker to acquit themselves well with an underlying current of noise. However much of a scene there may or may not be in Mallorca, Mallorca Stoner Vol. 1 is a welcome means through which to begin exploring both these acts more and others with whom they might share local stages. One will await Vol. 2 with interest.
New York’s Leeds Point seem on a doomed course with their Mother of Eternity EP on the opener “High Strangeness,” but they shake it up late with some cowbell boogie, and “The Summoning” further deepens the plot with layered in acoustics and a more lush melody as the trio builds out from their basic guitar-bass-drums configuration. Likewise, the shorter “Long Way Down” is a more straight-ahead ’70s rocker, and the closing title-track meets its initial prog rock melody first with driving riffs and later with more angularity and harsher barking vocals… before bringing it all back around at the end. With Eternal Black out of commission, NYC needs someone to champion traditional doom, but that’s not who these Long Islanders are. Their sound — set forth on their debut full-length some seven years ago; their most recent prior outing was 2019’s Equinox Blues (review here) — is more purposefully diverse. If they’re championing anything here, it’s their individuality. And that suits them.
The second full-length from Santiago, Chile’s Ocultum, Residue, was first issued by the band independently in 2019. Picked up for a vinyl release through Interstellar Smoke Records, the four-song/49-minute long-player (bong)rips into filthy-fuzz doom and scabbed-over sludge, the lumbering coming in one longform nod after another in “The Acid Road” and “Residue” itself — which might be the most densely-toned inclusion of the bunch, but it hardly matters when the 16-minute “Ascending With the Fumes of the Dead” and the 12-minute “Reflections on Repulsiveness” and you’re either on board with Ocultum‘s periodically-deathly-always-fucked style by then or you’ve probably been so grossed out that you’ve gone and gotten yourself a job, decided you were never really so misanthropic to start with, and that what you thought was the inner scum of your existential makeup was just you needing to have lunch or take a shower or some shit. Meanwhile, Ocultum are over here shrooming up and worshiping decay. Different league entirely. Even the quietest moments of Residue are heavy. There’s just no escape from it.
Cruel Curses, Fables, Folklore & Other Assorted Fever Dreams
If Tampa, Florida, heavy progressive rockers Cruel Curses decided to approach their third full-length, Fables, Folklore & Other Assorted Fever Dreams, with the goal of writing the entire album as a single-song, well, they did that. Though cumbersome in its title, “Fables, Folklore & Other Assorted Fever Dreams” is 36 minutes of linear-charted fare, twisting through parts both hard-hitting and airy, acoustic and electric and probably what could’ve been different songs if otherwise broken up in some places. Does it really matter? Nah. The finished piece, which is a departure from the four-piece and an impressive achievement in itself, makes its point with prog’s affection for funk propelling as many of its parts as metal’s more aggressive shred. Yet, Fables, Folklore & Other Assorted Fever Dreams does not merely trade between quiet and loud parts so much as fluidly bring the listener along its ebbs and flows, and though not without its element of self-indulgence, the album earns its swagger.
Give me the raw swing, echoing gurgles and unabashed fuzz of Green Hog‘s “Luck of the Devil” any day of the week. The Brooklynite trio released their Dogs From Hell full-length last year and follow it with the also-sung-entirely-in-Russian sophomore outing, not without its sense of ambience in “Dark Territory” and “Desert King,” the biker-in-space instrumental capper “Ric Moto,” but perhaps even more about the impact of its crashes than the spaces being created. Whatever definition of the word you might want to apply, Devil’s Luck is fucking heavy. And grim, to boot. Still, one could only call “Long Smoke” some kind of stoner rock, even if it is an especially crusty take thereupon, and the novelty of gurgled-out vocals sung in another language, complemented by samples in classic sludgy fashion, isn’t to be understated. If my man’s voice can hold out for a whole set, these guys must put on a killer show.
There are a few different plot threads one might follow along as Vobrazy weaves through its six component tracks, but the debut full-length from Belarusian five-piece bring their varied fare together around a central idea of progressive, metallic doom. Sometimes that manifests as a post-metallic chug as one hears in “Apošni raz,” which leads off, or it can be the growls and black-metal-squibblies-gone-airy of the early going in “Žyvy.” Such shifting arrangements in vocals (in Belarusian) between guitarist Uladzimir Burylau and singer Kate Sidelova add to the unpredictable nature of the band, but there’s no question that melody wins the day, and given how Vobrazy plays out across its 41 minutes, one gets the feeling that the extremity of “Naščadkam” and the more-patient-before-they-hit-the-payoff closer “Bol na sercy” do not coexist by happenstance. The band — completed by guitarist Ignat Pomazkov, bassist Roman Petrashkevich and drummer Artem Voronko — are not light on ambition, aesthetically-speaking, but I like the fact that I have zero guess what their next record will sound like.
While not barebones by any means, with solos aplenty and variety in their tempos readily established between the first two cuts “Slow Wisdom Coming” and “Hot Girl Summer,” there’s still something about Buffalo Tombs‘ aptly-titled second long-player, Two, that comes across as wholly unpretentious, not trying to overstate its own argument or draw the audience away from the riffs and grooves central to its purpose. Wholesome, if not always humble. The six-songer is done in under half an hour, so if you wanted to call it an EP, you could, but even as Eric Stuart brings in a bit of synth for “Dream Breather” and “The Beheading of John the Baptist” in its later percussion-meet-drift-out finish, the Denver instrumentalists maintain a straightforward underpinning, with Stuart‘s guitar/keys/bass met with Joshua Lafferty‘s basslines and Patrick Haga‘s drumming in easily-digested-but-not-earth-shattering fashion, the low end hitting a particular note of righteousness in rolling out “Al Khidr” without being too showy in doing so. I’d be interested to hear them explore their psychedelic side further, but there’s plenty of vibe here in the meantime.
Though understated in the fullness of its production, BroodMother‘s The Third Eye EP leaves little doubt as to where the Worcester, UK, five-piece are coming from after having issued their first album, Sin, Myth, Power, in 2019. Jay Clark, who produced that outing, drums on and mixed this one, and its four songs readily serve as a sampler for an audience to be introduced to the band’s take on heavy rock and roll. “Spiritual Shakedown” and “Killing for Company” are midtempo riffers, with the latter touching slightly on Acrimony-style hookmaking and chug, while “(The Ballad of) Anti-Matter Man” gets trippy in its intro and shuffles into an apex in its second half before finishing mellow, and closer “The Trick of the Journey” hints toward ’90s crunch but marries it to a bluesier stretch of lead solo guitar. Still, it’s rock and roll, however you want to cut it — straight-up but not lifeless — and BroodMother proudly carry its banner.
From the almost-if-not-entirely-instrumental unfolding of “From Hell to Horizon” and “Kelper-452B” to the black metal vocals on “Psychosis (In a Vacuum),” the harsh sax of “Black Hole Viscera” and the drone-laden 10-minute finisher “Succumb to the Void,” the debut full-length from Stony Brook, New York’s King Bastard, It Came From the Void, seems wilfully bent toward disorienting those who’d dare to take it on. The breadth and spaciousness of its “From Hell to Horizon” isn’t to be understated — neither the percussion chill in its midsection — but the weight that corresponds there and in “Kelper-452B” and through “Bury the Survivors/Ashes to Ashes,” with its Aliens samples and dug-in-its-own-head proggy chaos is no less a factor in making the album as striking a first impression as it is. Jammy, heavy psych, black metal, doom, sludge — you could call King Bastard any of these and not be wrong, but it’s in how fluidly they unite them that their potential shines through.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 23rd, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Honestly, you had me at the phrase ‘behind the door of the sepulchre of pain.’ I’m a simple creature, after all, and drama-laced downer doom suits me just fine, feeling feelings and all that. Orlando, Florida, solo-project Somnent‘s second album, Gardens From Graves, alternates between shorter and longer tracks and has plenty of deathly bludgeon to go with its beauty-in-darkness resonance, and oh, I do like the title-track, throaty growls, softer, post-Opeth/Katatonia cleans and all. Giovanni Antonio Vigliotti, who made his debut as Somnent in 2015, has a dry-throat growl that sounds like it genuinely hurts, and the instrumental constructs he places behind it are fluid and purposeful, patient and encompassing. This isn’t everyone’s kind of metal, but even down to its acoustic bonus tracks, it’s a microgenre within doom that’s expressive unto itself.
It’s amazing to think it comes from someplace so warm. The 2017 debut LP, Sojourn, is streaming below. The new record — no public audio yet — refines melody and production alike, just for context.
The PR wire has release details. Gardens From Graves is out Oct. 25 on GS Productions:
Somnent to release second album, Gardens From Graves, on October 25th
Beneath the soil of scars and tears, nestled within a loam of lonely, silent nights and days blighted by cold stares and barbed words lie the patient seeds of fresh hope. A kernel of strength, a tiny heart of iron hidden within the darkness, waiting for the sun. Within the boneyard of loss and spite, behind the door of the sepulchre of pain, small eyes wait and watch for the memories to fade and the clouds of oppression to part…
The pain of emotional abuse and the determination to overcome its lasting wounds, the days of despair along the path to recovery, the suffocating darkness that threatens to overwhelm and that desperate, agonising but wonderful breath of hard fought for air; all of these infuse the intensely melancholic but utterly beautiful melodic death doom metal of Somnent’s new album. Gardens From Graves has the power to carry your heart through each step of this journey and it’s a listening experience that will leave you breathless. There is an honesty and integrity of emotion within these songs that goes far beyond any form of artistry or artifice. The sheer weight of sorrow can at times leave you frantic to escape the gloom, a living thing buried in its sleep, clawing through the earth. Yet the moments of peace, the beautiful melodies woven by the guitar and vocals are sublime. The greatest art is that which makes the listener or beholder feel – deeply and passionately – and the chalice of Gardens From Graves is overflowing with emotion. The rhythms align with your heartbeat, the lead work carries your spirit and the voice immerses your soul in a lake of tears – of pain, of sadness and hope.
Gardens From Graves is the realisation of all the potential displayed on Somnent’s previous releases, the Eventide EP of 2015 and the full length debut album, Sojourn, which came out in 2017. Featuring a guest appearance from Jari Lindholm (Enshine, Exgenesis) and evocative artwork created by Augusto Peixoto (Sinister Realm, In Solitude etc) this exquisite tome of doomed, melancholic metal will be released on October 25th by GS Productions. As winter draws in, clouds will cover the sky and your hearts will be forged anew in the cold flames of grief.
“This sorrow won’t last forever, even if some scars remain”
Tracklisting: 1. Silhouette 2. Acquiescence 3. Despite the Scourge 4. Fragments 5. Gardens from Graves 6. Blackened Heart feat. Jari Lindholm 7. Withered to a Shadow 8. Resolve [Bonus Track] 9. Fragments Acoustic [Bonus Track]
Line-up: Giovanni Antonio Vigliotti – All music and vocals
Florida’s The Electric Mud return on Sept. 25 with the independently-issued Black Wool EP, pairing two original tracks with two fairly bold covers. At four songs and 24 minutes, with its makeup what it is, Black Wool is squarely in the EP category; a quick showcase of where the band’s at rather than a full-length follow-up to 2020’s sophomore LP, Burn the Ships (review here), which came out through Small Stone and Kozmik Artifactz. The Fort Myers four-piece did well with that significant backing, and with a tour upcoming (!), Black Wool should sit nicely alongside on any number of merch tables as they head out from the desantis-infested swamps and coastlines of their home state and as far outward as Wisconsin on a two-week run. Have fun out there, kids. Everybody be safe.
The Electric Mud is guitarists Constantine Grim and Peter Kolter (the latter also vocals), bassist Tommy Scott and drummer Pierson Whicker, and across “Ordinary Men,” “Black Wool,” “Albatross” (premiering below) and “Whipping Post,” they offer Southern heavy rock tied to traditional songwriting, no shortage of twang, and a flourish of modern heavy in the guitar work. Scott and Whicker, on the originals as well as the covers of Corrosion of Conformity and The Allman Brothers Band — which both feel like they’re probably sacred ground to the band The Electric Mud have become since making their debut 2018’s Bull Gator — are solid from the word go, as “Ordinary Men” starts out with the bassline bouncing and snare popping beneath deceptively intricate riffwork. They’re in the first verse quick and the tension runs high, but the chorus is here for it and so is the guitar-forward winding finish, and Kolter‘s gruff vocal delivery is in control the entire time.
The title-track, which follows directly, could be a country song if you replaced the fuzz with… whatever they make country songs with these days. Nonetheless, the ‘Southern’ runs heavy in ‘Southern heavy,’ and shortly before they’re halfway through the song’s total seven minutes, they break into a different movement that branches out instrumentally led by the two guitars. The band have talked about Black Wool as being their most progressive work yet, and in “Ordinary Men” and “Black Wool,” those instrumental pushes are where it’s most evident. “Black Wool” jams its way back to a play on its central line with standalone guitar, somewhere out there in the cool evening alongside Clutch‘s “The Regulator” staring at an open field at dusk. You know how it goes.
As for the covers, well, they’re classics. The Allman Brothers Band helped invent Southern rock and Deliverance-era C.O.C. almost singlehandedly made it heavy. The Electric Mud‘s reverence for both is plain, and likewise their desire to make the songs their own, which they do tonally as well as in Kolter‘s vocals. “Whipping Post,” like “Black Wool,” is longer and provides more room for the band to branch out and jam, but Whicker gives Reed Mullin his due on “Albatross” as one would hope, and the last shove captures the building urgency of the original well. They finish with the Allmans though, because if you’re going to play that song, it’s probably best practice to put it last. And it works there, with its hook offset by the over-the-top guitar shenanigans that have inspired multiple generations toward their own interpretations of shred.
For a quick outing to coincide with a tour through this plague-addled land, Black Wool brings persona and craft together in a way that answers the prior LP and hints at forward movement without spoiling that still-never-been-played-out offering. If I saw the CD on a merch table, it’d be an easy pickup.
“Albatross” follows here, with PR wire info below.
Please enjoy:
Captured at Farmadelica Sound in Bokeelia, Florida with tracking, mixing, and mastering done by Howard Wulkan, the EP represents a heavier and proggier turn for the band with a pair of new, original tracks as well as and an homage to the seedy, sordid Sunshine State bar circuit where they cut their teeth with covers of Corrosion Of Conformity and The Allman Brothers Band.
In conjunction with the release of Black Wool, THE ELECTRIC MUD will kick off a near-two week run of live dates beginning September 25th in Cape Coral, Florida. See all confirmed dates below.
THE ELECTRIC MUD: 9/25/2021 Rackem – Cape Coral, FL 10/01/2021 Burns Alley Tavern – Charleston, SC 10/02/2021 TBA 10/06/2021 Tribbles – Piedmont, SC 10/08/2021 Skylark Social Club – Raleigh, NC 10/09/2021 Riffhouse – Chesapeake, VA 10/11/2021 The Empty Glass – Charleston, WV 10/12/2021 Westside Bowl – Youngstown, OH 10/13/2021 Legends – Mt. Vernon, OH 10/14/2021 Metal Monkey Brewing – Romeoville, IL 10/15/2021 Lyric Room – Green Bay, WI 10/16/2021 Polack Inn – Wausau, WI
THE ELECTRIC MUD: Constantine Grim – guitar Pierson Whicker – drums, percussion Peter Kolter – vocals, guitar Tommy Scott – bass
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 13th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
When Constantine Grim of Floridian heavy rockers The Electric Mud took the Obelisk Questionnaire, the non-musical thing he said he was looking forward to was the birth of his first daughter in July 2021. Good to know that amid the tumult and upending-of-life that is welcoming a new child into the family, he and the band have nonetheless found time to record a new EP, complete with C.O.C. and Allman Brothers, and to schedule a round of tour dates that will take them as far out as Wisconsin — provided they happen — this Fall. Hey, want to get out ahead of both that Delta Variant and that four-month sleep regression? Yeah, I get that for sure.
Congratulations though to Grim on what my wife and I still refer to as an “additional factor,” and to the band on the new release. The Electric Mud‘s 2020 album, Burn the Ships (review here), was on Small Stone and Kozmik Artifactz, but I believe the EP is independent, though I might be wrong there. In any case, it’ll be up through their Bandcamp, where there’s also the opening track streaming now (also at the bottom of this post).
Details from the PR wire:
THE ELECTRIC MUD: Florida Stoner/Retro Rock Unit To Release Black Wool EP September 25th, New Track Streaming + Tour Dates Announced
Florida-based stoner/retro rock unit THE ELECTRIC MUD returned to the studio earlier this year to record their brand new EP, Black Wool, now completed and confirmed for release on September 25th.
Captured at Farmadelica Sound in Bokeelia, Florida with tracking, mixing, and mastering done by Howard Wulkan, the EP represents a heavier and proggier turn for the band with a pair of new, original tracks as well as and an homage to the seedy, sordid Sunshine State bar circuit where they cut their teeth with covers of Corrosion Of Conformity and The Allman Brothers Band.
In advance of the release of Black Wool, today the band is streaming EP opener, “Ordinary Men,” noting of the track, “Opening the EP is ‘Ordinary Men,’ a rollicking slab of riffs and grooves that takes us through some of our heaviest and most intricate paces to date, alongside lyrics that implore the listener to make the most of the time they’re given.”
Black Wool EP Track Listing: 1. Ordinary Men 2. Black Wool 3. Albatross (Corrosion Of Conformity cover) 4. Whipping Post (The Allman Brothers Band cover)
In conjunction with the release of Black Wool, THE ELECTRIC MUD will kick off a near-two week run of live dates beginning September 25th in Cape Coral, Florida. See all confirmed dates below.
THE ELECTRIC MUD: 9/25/2021 Rackem – Cape Coral, FL 10/01/2021 Burns Alley Tavern – Charleston, SC 10/02/2021 TBA 10/06/2021 Tribbles – Piedmont, SC 10/08/2021 Skylark Social Club – Raleigh, NC 10/09/2021 Riffhouse – Chesapeake, VA 10/11/2021 The Empty Glass – Charleston, WV 10/12/2021 Westside Bowl – Youngstown, OH 10/13/2021 Legends – Mt. Vernon, OH 10/14/2021 Metal Monkey Brewing – Romeoville, IL 10/15/2021 Lyric Room – Green Bay, WI 10/16/2021 Polack Inn – Wausau, WI
Floriffian two-piece Dizygote will issue their new EP, Fathoms, on Aug. 6 as their first outing for Desert Records. The duo’s debut full-length, Freedom, Incorporated, was issued in 2020 and the band recently announced their signing with all due stoked-ness. Comprised of the father and son pair of Ned and Ethan DuRant, who respectively handle guitar/vocals and drums/backing vocals, the band weave various forms of hard and heavy through their grooving context, a song like “Children of Talos” from the last album neither shying away from thrash nor fully committing at the expense of the later feedback-soaked sludgery.
To go with the announcement of Fathoms, the band are premiering the track “Drowning,” and they were kind enough to provide the lyrics with it as well as some comment from Ned giving a track-by-track through the impending four-song release. Note Steven Yoyoda cover, if only because it rules.
Enjoy:
Dizygote, “Drowning” track premiere
Ned DuRant on Fathoms:
Stuck in the mire of the goddamned pandemic, fighting boredom and depression we needed an outlet so we wrote and wrote and wrote. With no idea when we’d be able to play out again, we decided to experiment writing songs with more parts than we had players. In the studio we both layered guitar tracks like stacks of roast beef through lots of different amp and cab combinations. You can hear Ethan’s seven string work here and there. I (Ned) think we flipped a coin to see who’d play bass on one of the tracks… it’s all fuzzy and we can’t remember exactly how that went down.
These are the first songs we’ve written with actual guitar solos and we kinda dig it. When I recorded the solo for Poison Garden, I wanted a classic-sounding tone, so I went straight into the amp and cranked the gain… no pedals.
“Fathoms” is our antidote for the pandemic blues. Poison Garden is a reflection on why America ain’t so great. Drowning was inspired by accounts I’ve read about near-death experiences. Keeping things experimental, we added a metalcore breakdown in the middle of Stimulate Me! – a song inspired by the boneheaded madness surrounding the pandemic. Finally, Ethan released his inner demons on Out For Blood… another nod to the early days of punk rock.
Drowning Lost in the open raging sea Dark as the ink on the page A cold only known by the sage
Terrified by the thrashing unleashed The lightning is Zeus in a rage Battered by sheer crashing waves
Choking and hoping your god hears your plea Your prayers have you locked in a cage Drowning in sins that you’ve waged
Panicking wild, you have to breathe Your lungs fill so quickly you drift of to sleep
The body knows which way’s down It’s a memory the moment you drown
DIZYGOTE are a father and son loud and heavy metal duo from Cape Coral, FL. Ned plays guitar and sings, while Ethan smashes the drums and handles backup vocals. Ned is a disciple of classic punk rock and all things loud and heavy, while Ethan dabbles with the technicalities of prog and newer metal genres. Their sound is a riot of sludge, doom, punk, thrash and prog.
Produced by Howard “Merlin” Wulkan at Farmadelica Sound, Bokeelia, FL during the goddamned pandemic. Cover & CD artwork by Steven Yoyada Inside photo by Ned Back cover still shot from video produced by Liam & Cameron Wright
Dizygote is: Ned DuRant: Guitar/Bass/Vocals Ethan DuRant: Drums/Guitar/Bass/backing vocals
Posted in Reviews on March 30th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Hello Day Two of the Quarterly Review. It started by oversleeping by about an hour, but so it goes. Yesterday went about as smoothly as I can ask a QR day to go, so I’m hoping that today follows suit despite the rough start. There’s nothing like building some momentum once you get going with these writeups. It’s about as close to ‘in the zone’ as I get. Trance of productivity.
As always, I hope you find something here you dig. Today’s round is good and all over the place, so maybe everyone’ll get lucky. Here goes.
Quarterly Review #11-20:
Jess and the Ancient Ones, Vertigo
More than a decade on from their founding, Finland’s Jess and the Ancient Ones are an established brand when it comes to cult psych rock, and their fourth full-length, issued through Svart, is gleeful to the point of witch-cackling on “Talking Board” (think Ouija) and offers rousing classically-stylized hooks on fellow early cuts like opener “Burning of the Velvet Fires” and “World Paranormal” as well as side B’s “Born to Kill,” the Dr. Strangelove-sampling “Summer Tripping Man” and the organ-washed “What’s on Your Mind” ahead of an 11-minute prog rock grand finale in “Strange Earth Illusion” that feels very much like the impetus toward which the album has been driving all along. Relax, you’re in the hands of professional mystics, and their acid rock vibes are made all the more grand by Jess‘ soulful delivery atop the ever-clever arrangements of guitar, organ, bass, drums, samples, and so on. This kind of cultish lysergic fare has never been and never will be for everyone. Listening to Vertigo, you can only really wonder why that is.
Metallic overload! Irish assault supreme! All sentences end with exclamation points! A new Dread Sovereign record doesn’t come along every day, or year, but the Dublin trio certainly make it count when one does. Alchemical Warfare is the third LP from the Alan Averill-fronted outfit, and with Johnny “Con Ri” King (also Conan) on drums and guitarist Bones Huse (also Wizards of Firetop Mountain), the band tear through nine tracks and 51 minutes of doom-colored metallurgy, throwing unrepentant fists in the air under darkened, irony-free skies. By the time 10-minute post-intro opener “She Wolves of the Savage Season” is over, if you’re not ready to quit your job and join the legion about to set march to “The Great Beast We Serve,” it’s no fault of the band’s. “Nature is the Devil’s Church” was the lead single and is a standout hook, but the grandiosity of “Ruin Upon the Temple Mount”‘s Candlemassy riffing is too good to be ignored, and they finish with a Bathory cover, because fucking a, that’s why.
The debut EP from Brazilian instrumentalist trio Space Smoke runs all of 12 minutes, but that’s long enough for Aurora Dourada to give an impression of where the band are coming from. Three distinct tracks — “Magia Cerimonial,” “Interludio” and “Corpo Solar” — comprise the outing, and the middle one is indeed an interlude, so it’s really the opener and closer doing the heavy lifting. “Magia Cerimonia” starts off with a sense of foreboding but makes its way instead into hypnotic repetition, bordering on a meditative lumber that doesn’t stick around long enough to be redundant, and with the interlude as a breath between, the eight-minute “Corpo Solar” rounds out as the most substantial piece of the outing, drifting guitar over languid drums and bass, dreamy and sopping wet with reverb. They push it heavier than its quiet beginning, of course, but even the howling lead work near the finish maintains the inviting and immersive vibe with which they set out. Might be a blip of things to come, but it’s a blip worth checking out. Mini-trip.
Infinite Hum is the striking debut LP from Bakersfield, California, post-hardcore heavy three/four-piece If it Kills You, who along with the periodic charred guest vocals on half the six tracks, bring together a quick assemblage for a 12″ that readily alternates between melodic sway and shoutier roll. They groove despite unpredictable turns, and their blend of hefted tones and punker-grown-up melodies makes a welcome impression on opener “We Don’t Belong Here” or “Moving Target.” Starts and stops and a bit of winding lead work give “Repeat Resolve” an edge of noise rock — more than an edge, actually; kind of like the flat side of a brick — but If it Kills You never push to one side or the other entirely, and as the screams return for later in “Repeat Resolve” and closer “Projections,” charged every time with and succeeding at pushing a crescendo over the top, the band manage to bring sincerity and structure together with what sounds like experienced hands. Don’t be fooled by “first album”; they know what they’re doing.
I’m not sure if anyone still calls this kind of thing “neo-folk,” but I am sure I don’t care. The sense of atmosphere Clara Engel puts into her latest album, A New Skin, beginning with the shift between minimal guitar and keyboard on “Starry Eyed Goat,” uses negative space no less effectively than does the mostly-black cover art, and the eight-song/46-minute outing that ensues alternates between emotive and wondrously ambient, suited to the home recording done during (presumed) isolation in Fall 2020. Engel handles all instrumentation herself and remains indelibly human in her sometimes-layered vocal delivery all the while, speaking to a building-out process of the material, but one does not get the sense in listening to “Night Tide” and the sparse “Thieves” back-to-back that the foundation of all the songs is the same, which is all the more representative of an exploratory songwriting process. A New Skin as a whole feels likewise exploratory, a reflection inward as much as out.
Long-running Italian trio Maya Mountains issued Era through Go Down Records in 2020 as their first album in some six years, readily engaging with desert rock on cuts like “San Saguaro” and closer “El Toro,” working in a bit of post-Queens of the Stone Age riffy quirk to go along with less bouncing and chunkier fare on “Vibromatic” and “Baumgartner,” or “Extremely High,” which makes its speedier tempo feel organic ahead of the finish. All told, it’s 44 minutes of solid heavy rock, with variation between songs of what each is working toward doing that does nothing to pull away from the vibe as a whole, whether that’s in a more aggressive moment like “Vibromatic” or the spacier playfulness at the start of “Raul,” the band clearly unafraid of letting a little funk hold sway for a minute or two. Engaging without being revolutionary, Era knows its craft and audience alike, and offers one to the other without pretense or presumption. It’s rock for rockers, but what’s wrong with that?
An awaited first long-player from Miami duo Cave of Swimmers — vocalist/guitarist/synthesist Guillermo Gonzalez and drummer/percussionist/vocalist Arturo Garcia — packages epic metal in tight-knit bursts of heavy rock tonality. Choruses in “The Sun” and “Double Rainbow” are grand affairs not because their tones are so huge, but because of the melodies that top them, and at the same time, with riffs at the forefront of the verses, the duo make progressive shifts sound classic in the vein of Iron Maiden or Dio with a still-prevailing fuzzy topcoat. Centerpiece “My Human” is a love song that slams, while “Looking Glass” leans deeper into prog metal but brings the listener along with a another sweeping hook, a pattern of tension and release that carries over to “Dirt” as well, which leaves “C.S” to close out with its “Sign of the Southern Cross” keyboard-and-harmonies intro en route to a poised but still thrashing finish. There’s life in heavy metal, and here it is.
Straight out of Sheffield, UK, Blind Monarch first released their What is Imposed Must Be Endured four-song/56-minute full-length on Black Bow Records in 2020 and it’s been picked up for a 2LP vinyl pressing by Dry Cough Records. There’s something to be said for splitting up these tracks each onto its own side, making the whole release more manageable despite getting up to do a side or platter flip, but any way you go, “Suffering Breathes My Name” (13:45), “My Mother, My Cradle, My Tomb” (10:47), “Blind Monarch” (14:10) and closer “Living Altar” (17:54) are geared toward sharp-toothed death-sludge consumption, extreme in thought and deed. Feedback is strewn about the place like so much flayed skin, and even in the quiet moments at the start and laced into “Living Altar,” the atmosphere remains oppressive. Yet, endure one must. Blind Monarch, even among the UK’s ultra-packed underground, are a standout in how maddeningly heavy they manage to be, and on their debut outing, no less. If you missed it last year, be ready to pay extra for shipping.
Each track on Italian instrumentalist trio Cancervo‘s debut album, titled simply 1, is intended to represent an area near their home in the mountainous region of Lombardy, Italy. Their tones are duly thick, their presentation patient and their cast is broad in terms of its landscape. From “Averara,” one might see kilometers, in other words. Whether or not you’re familiar with Cancervo‘s locale, their tonal warmth and heavy psychedelic expanse resonates immersively, letting each of the two sides develop on its own from the beginnings in “Cancervo” and “Darco,” both the longest cuts on their respective halves. The fuller fuzz of “SWLABR” and the punch of bass that accompanies the tom hits on closer “1987” are subtle shifts emblematic of Cancervo‘s creative progression getting underway, and the task to which they set themselves — portraying place in sound — is no less admirable than their accomplishment of same would see to be. I’ve never been there, so can’t confirm 100 percent if that’s what it sounds like, but in repeat listens, I’m happy to take the band’s word (or riffs) for it.
Its four cuts run 17 minutes with the last of them an instrumental title-track that’s under three, but I don’t care — the entire thing is so righteously raw and garage nasty that I’m on board with however much Argentina’s Sahara want to bring to The Curse. “Gallows Noose” sounds like it was taped, and then re-taped, and then re-taped again before finally being pressed (to tape), and there’s no mistaking that’s an aesthetic choice on the part of the band, who probably have phones that could make something with clearer audio, but the in-room demo feel of “Hell on Earth” and “Altar of Sacrifice,” the rootsy metal-of-doom feel of it hits on its own level. Sometimes you just want something that comes across barebones and mean, and that’s what The Curse does. Call it retro, call it unproduced, call it whatever you want, it doesn’t matter. Sahara (bring looks that) kill it on that Sabbath-worshiping altar and sound dirt-coated all the while, making everything everything else in the universe seem more complicated than it needs to be.
Posted in Questionnaire on March 19th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Constantine Grim of The Electric Mud
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I’d say pretty definitively I have the best job in the world. I get to write and play music that means the world to me with three dudes that mean the world to me. I picked up a guitar early in my teens as a lot of kids do, as a means of self expression at an age when it’s tough to do that on your own, and it’s been really good to me as an art and a discipline.
Describe your first musical memory.
My earliest memory in general that I can recall is riding around with my mom while she listened to the Graceland album by Paul Simon. She emigrated to the states from east Africa in the mid ’80s, and even though the musicians on that album are predominantly South African, it was an album she really connected with, and to this day it’s what I throw on if I’m trying to really check in with myself and relax. My dad is also a monster steering wheel drummer, so watching him thump out all of Led Zeppelin 1 and At Fillmore East by The Allman Brothers from the car seat really drilled into me how much fun rock and roll is.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
That first tour is the dragon I’m still chasing haha. I love it, the traveling, the bonds you build not just amongst the guys in the van but the bands you meet and the folks that show up in some dive on a Tuesday on faith that you’re gonna bring the goods.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
You really don’t have to look farther than the last year to find that answer. To be coming off signing to a label you really dig and have a record coming out that you’re excited about, to be geared up and rehearsed and ready to play SXSW for the first time as an official act and have that all get iced overnight, frankly was fucking gnarly.
We’ve got the motor idling, and when we get the green light we’re gonna come out swinging with a ton of new tunes spread out over a couple releases, but yeah I mean you don’t go through something so jarring with such an open ended timeline for a return to normalcy without some serious gut check moments with the dude in the mirror.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
It’s a very liberating experience, for me personally. I love the process of writing a record, doing the best you can, putting it out, and then turning that page and sitting down and trying to top it. It’s this cross section of art and effort and holding yourself accountable to really get the most out of yourself both as one of the writers but also as a bandmate whose vision is a piece of a larger thing we’re all trying to realize together.
How do you define success?
Payin the light bill doing something that makes you happy.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
I have seen a Buffalo chicken gyro, and as a Greek boy that is something that is an unholy creation that needs to go back to whatever circle of hell created it.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
A perfect album.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
It’s a way for me to reach out and connect with people in a universal language, but also on my terms. I love the ambiguity of being a guitar player who writes music and plays lead but doesn’t have to mess with lyrics or singing. I can say whatever I want, about whatever I want, without saying anything specific that I’ll be poked and prodded about. I live just to the left of the spotlight, and I love it.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
The birth of my daughter! MaryAnn Emmanuel Grim, comin July 2021.
