Welcome to Wednesday of the Quarterly Review. If you’ve been here before — and I do this at least four times a year, so maybe you have and maybe you haven’t — I’m glad you’re back, and if not, I’m glad you’re here at all. These things are always an undertaking, and in a vacuum, I’m pretty sure busting out 10 shorter reviews per day would be a reasonably efficient process. I don’t live in a vacuum. I live vacuuming.

Metaphorically, at least. Looking around the room, it’s pretty obvious ‘vacuum life’ is intermittent.

Today we hit the halfway mark of this standard-operating-procedure QR, and we’ll get to 30 of the 50 releases to be covered by the time Friday is done or die trying, as that’s also the general policy. As always, I hope you find something in this batch of 10 that you dig. Doesn’t have to be any more of a thing than that. Doesn’t need to change your life, just maybe take the moment you’re in and make it a little better.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

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Deadpeach, The Cosmic Haze and the Human Race

A new full-length from Italian cosmic fuzz rockers Deadpeach doesn’t come along every day. Though the four-piece here comprised of guitarist/vocalist Giovanni Giovannini, guitarist Daniele Bartoli, bassist Mrsteveman and drummer Federico Tebaldi trace their beginnings back to 1993, the seven-song/37-minute exploration The Cosmic Haze and the Human Race is just their fourth full-length in that span of 31 years, following behind 2013’s Aurum (review here), though they haven’t been completely absent in that time, with the 2019 unplugged offering Waiting for Federico session (review here), 2022’s Live at Sidro Club, etc. But whether it’s the howling-into-the-void guitar over the methodical toms in the experimental-vibing closer “Loop (Set the Control to Mother Earth),” the mellower intro of “Madras” that leads both to chunky-style chug and the parade of classic-heavy buzz that is “Motor Peach,” what most comes through is the freedom of the band to do what they want in the psychedelic sphere. “Man on the Hill (The Fisherman and the Farmer)” tells its tale with blues rock swing while the subsequent “Cerchio” resolves Beatlesian with bouncy string and horn sounds and is its own realization at the center of the procession before the languid roll of “Monday” (so it goes) picks up its tempo later on. A mostly lo-fi recording still creates an atmosphere, and Deadpeach represent who they are in the weirdo space grunge of “Rust,” toying with influences from a desert that’s surely somewhere on another planet before “Loop (Set the Controls for Mother Earth)” turns repetition into mantra. They might be underrated forever, but Deadpeach only phase into our dimension intermittently and it’s worth appreciating them while they’re here.

Deadpeach on Facebook

Deadpeach website

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SÂVER, From Ember and Rust

In or out of post-metal and the aggressive end of atmospheric sludge, there are few bands currently active who deliver with the visceral force of Oslo’s SÂVER. From Ember and Rust is the second LP from the three-piece of Ole Ulvik Rokseth (guitar), Markus Støle (drums) and Ole Christian Helstad (bass/vocals), and while it signals growth in the synthy meditation worked into “I, Evaporate” after the lead-with-nod opener “Formless,” and the intentionally overwhelming djent chug that pays off the penultimate “The Object,” it is the consuming nature of the 43-minute entirety that is most striking, dynamic in its sprawl and thoughtful in arrangement both within and between its songs — the way the drone starts “Eliminate Distance” and returns to lull the listener momentarily out of consciousness before the bassy start of centerpiece “Ember and Rust” prompts a return ahead of its daring and successful clean vocal foray. That’s a departure, contextually speaking, but noteworthy even as “Primal One” lumbersmashes anything resembling hope to teeny tiny bits, leaving room in its seven minutes to catchy its breath amid grooving proggy chug and bringing back the melodic singing. As much as they revel in the caustic, there’s serenity in the catharsis of “All in Disarray” at the album’s conclusion, and as much as SÂVER are destructive, they’re cognizant of the world they’re building as part of that.

SÂVER on Facebook

Pelagic Records website

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Ruben Romano, The Imaginary Soundtrack to the Imaginary Western Twenty Graves Per Mile

Departing from the heavy psychedelic blues rock proffered by his main outfit The Freeks, multi-instrumentalist and elsewhere-vocalist Ruben Romano — who also drummed for Fu Manchu and Nebula in their initial incarnations — digs into Western aural themes on his cumbersomely-titled solo debut, The Imaginary Soundtrack to the Imaginary Western Twenty Graves Per Mile. To be clear, there is no movie called Twenty Graves Per Mile (yet), and the twice-over-imaginary nature of the concept lets Romano meander a bit in pieces like “Sweet Dream Cowboy” and “Ode to Fallen Oxen,” the latter of which tops its rambling groove with a line of delay twang, while “Chuck Wagon Sorrow” shimmers with outward simplicity with a sneaky depth to its mix (to wit, the space in “Not Any More”). At 10 songs and 27 minutes, the collection isn’t exactly what you’d call ‘feature length,’ but as it hearkens back to the outset with “Load the Wagon (Reprise)” bookending the opener, it is likewise cohesive in style and creative in arrangement, with Romano bringing in various shakers, mouth harp, effects and so on to create his ‘soundtrack’ with a classic Western feel and the inevitable lysergic current. Not as indie or desert chic as Spindrift, who work from a similar idea, but organic and just-came-in-covered-with-dust folkish just the same. If the movie existed, I’d be interested to know which of these tracks would play in the saloon.

Ruben Romano on Facebook

Ruben Romano on Bandcamp

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Kosmodrom, Welcome to Reality

With the seven-minute “Earth Blues” left off the vinyl for want of room, German heavy psychedelic instrumentalists Kosmodrom put a color filter on existence with Welcome to Reality as much as on the cover, shimmering in “Dazed in Space” with a King Buffalo‘ed resonance such that the later, crunchier fuzz roll of “Evil Knievel” feels like a departure. While the three-piece are no doubt rooted in jams, Welcome to Reality presents finished works, following a clear plot in the 10-minute “Quintfrequenz” and the gradual build across the first couple minutes of “Landstreicher” — an intent that comes more into focus a short while later on “Novembersong” — before “Earth Blues” brings a big, pointed slowdown. They cap with “OM,” which probably isn’t named after the band but can be said to give hints in their direction if you want to count its use of ride cymbal at the core of its own build, and which in its last 40 seconds still manages to find another level of heft apparently kept in reserve all along. Well played. As their first LP since 2018, Welcome to Reality feels a bit like it’s reintroducing the band, and in listening, seems most of all to encourage the listener to look at the world around them in a different, maybe more hopeful way.

Kosmodrom on Facebook

Kosmodrom on Bandcamp

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The Endless, The Endless

Heads experienced in post-metal will be able to pick out elements like the Russian Circles gallop in The Endless‘ “Riven” or the Isis-style break the Edmonton-based instrumental unit veers into on “Shadows/Wolves” at the center of their self-titled debut, but as “The Hadeon Eon” — the title of which references the planet’s earliest and most volatile geological era — subtly invites the listener to consider, this is the band’s first recorded output. Formed in 2019, derailed and reconstructed post-pandemic, the four-piece of guitarists Teddy Palmer and Eddy Keyes, bassist James Palmer and drummer Jarred Muir are coherent in their stylistic intent, but not so committed to genre tenets as to forego the sweeter pleasure of the standalone guitar at the start of the nine-minute “Reflection,” soon enough subsumed though it is by the spacious lurch that follows. There and throughout, the band follow a course somewhere between post-metal and atmospheric sludge, and the punch of low end in “Future Archives,” the volume trades between loud and quiet stretches bring a sense of the ephemeral as well as the ethereal, adding character without sacrificing impact in the contrast. Their lack of pretense will be an asset as they continue to develop.

The Endless on Facebook

The Endless on Bandcamp

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Our Maddest Edges, Peculiar Spells

Kudos if you can keep up with the shifts wrought from track to track on Our Maddest Edges‘ apparent first long-player, Peculiar Spells, as the Baltimorean solo-project spearheaded by Jeff Conner sets out on a journey of genuine eclecticism, bringing The Beatles and Queens of the Stone Age stylistically together and also featuring one of the several included duets on “Swirl Cone,” some grunge strum in “Hella Fucky” after the remake-your-life spoken/ambient intro “Thoughts Can Change,” a choral burst at the beginning of the spoken-word-over-jazz “Slugs,” which of course seems to be about screwing, as well as the string-laced acoustic-led sentimentality on “Red Giant,” the Casio beat behind the bright guitar plucks of “Frozen Season,” the full-tone riffs around which “I Ain’t Done” and “St. Lascivious” are built, and the sax included with the boogie of “The Totalitarian Tiptoe,” just for a few examples of the places its 12 component tracks go in their readily-consumable 37-minute runtime. Along with Conner are a reported 17 guests appearing throughout, among them Stefanie Zaenker (ex-Caustic Casanova). Info is sparse on the band and Conner‘s work more broadly, but his history in the punkish Eat Your Neighbors accounts for some of the post-hardcore at root here, and his own vocals (as opposed to those of the seven other singers appearing) seem to come from somewhere similar. Relatively quick listen, but not a minor undertaking.

Jeff Conner on Bandcamp

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Saint Omen, Death Unto My Enemy

Rolling out with the ambient intro before beginning its semi-Electric Wizardly slog in “Taken by the Black,” Death Unto My Enemy is the 2023 debut from New York City’s Saint Omen. Issued by Forbidden Place Records, its gritty nod holds together even as “Evolution of the Demon” threatens to fall apart, samples filling out the spaces not occupied by vocals, communicating themes dark, violent, and occult in pieces like the catchy-despite-its-harsher-vocal “Destroyer” or the dark swirl of “Sinners Crawl.” Feeling darker as it moves through its 10 songs, it saves a particular grim experimentalism for closer “Descent,” but by the time Death Unto My Enemy gets there, surely your mind and soul have already been poisoned and reaped, respectively, by “The Seventh Gate,” “The Black Mass” and the penultimate title-track, that deeper down is the only place left to go. So that’s where you go; a humming abyss of anti-noise. Manhattan has never been a epicenter of cultish doom, but Saint Omen‘s abiding death worship and bleakness — looking at you, “Sleepness” — shift between dramaturge and dug-in lumber, and the balance is only intriguing for the rawness with which it is delivered, harsher in its purpose than sound, but still plenty harsh in sound.

Saint Omen on Facebook

Forbidden Place Records store

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Samsara Joyride, The Subtle and the Dense

The psychedelic aspects of Samsara Joyride‘s The Subtle and the Dense feel somewhat compartmentalized, but that’s not necessarily a detriment to the songs, as the solo that tops the drearily moderated tempo of “Too Many Preachers” or the pastoral tones that accompany the bluesier spirit of “Who Tells the Story” emphasize. The Austrian outfit’s second full-length, The Subtle and the Dense seems aware of its varied persona, but whether it’s the swaggering stops of “No One is Free” calling to mind Child or the sax and guest vocals that mark such a turn with “Safe and Sound” at the end, Samsara Joyride are firm in their belief that because something is bluesy or classic doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be simple. From the layer of acoustic guitar worked into opener “I Won’t Sign Pt. 1” — their first album also had a two-parter, the second one follows directly here as track two — to the gang chorus worked in amid the atmospheric reach of “Sliver,” Samsara Joyride communicate a progressive take on traditionalist aesthetics, managing as few in this end of the heavy music realm ever do to avoid burly masculine caricature in the process. For that alone, easily worth the time to listen.

Samsara Joyride on Facebook

Samsara Joyride on Bandcamp

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That Ship Has Sailed, Kingdom of Nothing

Like a check-in from some alternate-universe version of Fu Manchu who stuck closer to their beginnings in punk and hardcore, Californian heavy noise rockers That Ship Has Sailed tap volatility and riffy groove alike through the five songs of their Kingdom of Nothing EP, with an admirable lack of bullshit included within that net-zero assessment amid the physical push of riffs like “One-Legged Dog” or “Iron Eagle II” when the drums go to half-time behind the guitar and bass. It’s not all turn-of-the-century disaffection and ‘members of’ taglines though as “Iron Eagle II” sludges through its finish and “I Am, Yeah” becomes an inadvertent anthem for those who’ve never quite been able to keep their shit together, “Sweet Journey” becomes a melodic highlight while fostering the heaviest crash, and “Ready to Go” hits like a prequel to Nebula‘s trip down the stoner rock highway. Catchy in spite of its outward fuckall (or at least fuckmost), Kingdom of Nothing is more relatable than friendly or accessible, which feels about right. It’s cool guys. I never got my shit together either.

That Ship Has Sailed on Instagram

That Ship Has Sailed on Bandcamp

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Spiral Guru, Silenced Voices

The fourth EP in the 10-year history of Brazi’s Spiral Guru, who also released their Void long-player in 2019 and the “The Fantastic Hollow Man” single in 2021, Silenced Voices is distinguished immediately by the vocal command and range of Andrea Ruocco, and I’d suspect that if you’re already familiar with the band, you probably know that. Ruocco‘s voice, in its almost operatic use of breath to reach higher notes, carries some element of melodic metal’s grandeur, but Samuel Pedrosa‘s fuzz riffing and the fluid roll of bassist José Ribeiro and drummer Alexandre H.G. Garcia on the title-track avoid that trap readily, ending up somewhere between blues, psych, and ’70s swing on “Caves and Graves” but kept modern in the atmosphere fostered by Pedrosa‘s lead guitar. Another high-quality South American band ignored by the gringo-dude-dominant underground of Europe and the US? Probably, but I’m guilty too a decade after Spiral Guru‘s start, so all I can say is I’m doing my best out here. This band should probably be on Nuclear Blast by now. Stick around for “The Cabin Man” and you’d best be ready to dance.

Spiral Guru on Facebook

Spiral Guru on Bandcamp

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New Year, new label samplers. I’ve seen a few coming out, as one will, as record labels begin to look forward at the year to come, celebrate recent releases and herald their 2024 to be. I’ve found over the last couple years that when I want something weird or different, Forbidden Place Records can reliably intrigue and, even if a given record doesn’t change your life, a rabbit hole to go down isn’t nothing, and the Escape to Weird Mountain Vol. 9 comp. — you’ll note that it’s ‘escape to‘ rather than ‘escape from‘; we’re leaving everything and going to the mountain — has a whopping 19 tracks. If you can’t find something in that for even a momentary distraction, maybe go back to the start and try again.

Let’s go through:

1. RUNT, “The Void” — I think the kids call this style industrial punk. Either way, there are a fair amount of solo dudes-as-bands out there now on either side of the country between RUNT, N8NOFACE, Trace Amount, King Yosef, and so on. The shout reminds of Negative Reaction, and as to “where’s my god now,” he’s in the same place he’s always in: the cheese drawer. Clearly a priority for the label and an immediate ‘something different’ to start. Win.

2. Cani Sciorii, “Ringhia” — Sharply punctuated heavy/noise rock boogie. Reminds a bit of Sandrider in the early going but the vocals take it elsewhere. Brash. Gets trippy in the second half but they bring the sway back around.

3. Tojo Yamamoto, “The Mongolian Stomper” — An apparent homage to Archie Gouldie, who was a professional wrestler, the low start-stop fart-fuzz gets quirky complement by the lead guitar and rough-delivered verses. I don’t know if the song is actually about Gouldie, but there are two old wrestling samples and it ends talking about the stomper, and it’s the tone either way.

4. Death Spa, “Make it Hurt” — Weirdo electronica becomes kind of a thread through Escape to Weird Mountain Vol. 9, as the label has more than dabbled by now in multiple spheres. Death Spa are rawer than RUNT, more intense, with a bridge that sounds Mediterranean and screams to complement that call out the title with an especially pleading sensibility.

5. Molefunken, “Suck Your Thumb” — Starts with a set of ‘na-na-na-na’s that is the hook. Big early Funkadelic vibe here in the gang vocals, ’70s swing, and dance-your-ass-off intent. It’s lo-fi, but it’s a party.

6. Prosthetic Bung, “Breaking the Bung Curse” — Avant vibes and echoing fantasy-epic storytelling captured barebones but with enough echo to give an atmospheric impression either. A bit of hi-hat chicanery behind the vocals, which are mostly spoken and partially decipherable, but which add to the ambience amid all the freak-rock swirl and effects-born chaos. Four weird-ass minutes. Ends with “the end.”

7. Saint Omen, “Destroyer” — Another spoken vocal ties it to the prior bung curse, but Saint Omen are more pointedly riffy, with a hook delivered in harsh vocals after a verse low-rumbled like Mark Lanegan, a sample and a lurching nod with buzzsaw-tone soloing and vibrant crash.

8. Sign of the Sorcerer, “Black Night” — You ain’t gonna hear me complain about the nod. Clearly moving into cult rock territory, “Black Night” is slow, foggy and fuzzed, modern in its ancient cavernousness, and almost cruelly stoned. A record to look for, and not the first so far.

9. Oopsy Dazey, “Regrets” — The grunge sidestep from LáGoon‘s Anthony Gaglia and Jamie Yeats of Wizzerd ticks any ’90s nostalgia box you might have while keeping a foot in the drug-cult spirit. Yeah, it sounds like The Dandy Warhols circa 1996, but it lives in a world where drugs and murder are legal, so look out.

10. Your Gaze, “IDK” — Pretty obviously self-aware, if the name is anything to go by. “IDK” feels like the next stage of post-. Like, it’s post-post-punk. Post-post-heavy, post-Joy Division, with just enough heavy slog underneath all that morose, emotionally-goth float to give it presence when the ‘drums’ speed up at the finish. I promise you it sounds cooler than my description.

11. Land Whales, “Dias de Martes” — Cuba’s Land Whales self-released their Null Days LP in November and were picked up by Forbidden Place no doubt for the strong ’90s alt vibes, not quite retro since the shimmer is so modern, but that way it kind of drifts off at the end then circles back to a fuller hook puts the lie to any lackadaisical positioning.

12. Brunsten, “Gamechanger” — A proggy two and a half minutes with semi-spoken lyrics and a so-British-it’s-British-even-if-it-isn’t vibe, but it turns jet-engine buzz and shoutier in its second half and makes its short-ass runtime count for every second. Builds like this take some bands three times as long.

13. NAQOY (vs. planetDAMAGE), “White Rat” — Low volume, moody, drity techno, heavy in its underpinning but actively not trying to be rock and roll, and so not. The beats are hypnotic in their pulsation and the song establishes itself and remains on a linear course for its four minutes, almost like an aside to another dimension coming out of Brunsten, but sharing an exploratory aspect with a lot of what’s included here.

14. Veuve Scarron, “MMDCN” — Something about the gang chorus here reminds me of some ancient Marilyn Manson hook, and I can’t quite place it. Once the hook takes off circa 1:15, the way it’s both caustic and melodic. The whole spirit in this one is pretty despondent, malevolent, but I’d have to dig further to know if it’s the standard self-loathing or what thematically. There’s nothing else here that sounds like this though, so “dig further” absolutely will happen.

15. Under the Clothesline, “Speed Only” — You’re sitting there thinking “Wow this has really gone on for a long time. When’s the garage rock gonna show up?” Here you go.

16. Dark Shaman, “Horror Night” — Rolling out cultish nod with full, classic doom riffing and a groove that goes from Black to Sabbath in scope, I’m calling this one a victory outright and keeping that bass buzz in the second half shuffle all for myself, thank you very much. I don’t know this band but I like them now, so that’s what a label sampler gets you.

17. Buskas, “Desiderium” — Be it heretofore known that Buskas are not fucking around. “Desiderium” is the longest song on this compilation at 6:46 and it fills that time building into a rumbling assault of distortion and aggression. Vocals are harsh-throated and positioned to cut through the mix, but the nastiness infects even the nod itself, so that even the crash cymbal hits mean. Don’t be surprised when you hear about this band again.

18. Ash Eater, “Any Port in the Storm” — I’m apparently doing a track premiere for this Portland band next week. Timing is everything. Quicker than it seems, their “Any Port in the Storm” shouts in echo and twists itself up mightily without losing its course. At least until it decides to shred itself into oblivion, that is. Fair enough. See you Wednesday, bruhs.

19. Basic Shapes, “A Quiet Place” — Well clearly not. Bringing together electronica and a stark, punkish riff, Basic Shapes underscore the curated feel of Escape to Weird Mountain Vol. 9 by bringing together multiple sides shown across various bands prior. That’s context rather than their artistic intent, but true nonetheless. Basic Shapes‘ obvious bent toward individualism is no less a vital representation.

Well, that’s it. Used to be I’d get label samplers in CD sleeves in parking lots at club shows, or like band demos, or whathaveyou. It’s not quite the same being on Bandcamp — don’t have to pay for parking — but I’ll be curious to see a few years from now which of these bands and who else under the Forbidden Place banner I might be covering more in-depth in a few years’ time. Either way, you could do far worse than being the go-to when someone wants something fresh, and I hope you find something in here you never heard before that you dig, because that’s the point of the whole thing to start with.

Thanks for reading.

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After avoiding the cold that ransacked the house for the last two weeks passed back and forth between my wife and daughter, I would seem to have succumbed. Or at least I seem to be succumbing. I’ve been developing a cough over the last 36 hours like it’s a finely-tuned prog metal riff, and have been feeling generally like what an old friend once referred to as a, “bag of bashed assholes.” So be it.

But it was a week. It had ups, it had downs. I’m going to see Elder tonight at Madison Square Garden. That kind of rocks. I think I’ll have a photo pass? I hope I will? But even if not, it’ll be a trip to be in the building when that happens. Will write about it of course blah blah.

Monday is a day off from school, so kid’s home. MLK. Legit. That’ll make writing for Tuesday a challenge, but the week is packed so I’ll need to figure it out. Pyramid, Saturna, Ash Eater, Kungens Man, maybe something next Friday. Then the week after is more of the same. This thing just keeps going.

Have a great and safe weekend. Have fun, watch your head. I’ll be posting on Monday, because what’s a holiday anyhow, and seemingly into perpetuity thereafter. Thank you for reading and being part of it.

FRM.

The Obelisk Collective on Facebook

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

No, this is not the first post I’ve done with dates lined up around a band or bands playing Rocky Mountain Riff Fest 2023 this weekend. You know what? I don’t give a shit. Maybe I believe very, very strongly in the heavy of the Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwestern regions. Maybe I want to go to Montana some day because Wyoming is the most beautiful landscape I’ve ever seen and I think Montana might stand a chance of beating it in that regard. Maybe I dig underground heavy rock and roll and if I post this and share it then it’s one more thing they can post and that’s how you catch eyes and man we’re all just trying to hit that algorithm right isn’t that what life is now? Maybe?

Portland, Oregon’s Tigers on Opium, who have attitude the way major urban centers have electricity, and Twin Void, whose Free From Hardtimes was killer enough that even though I didn’t get to review it I snuck in a video premiere with Nathan Bidwell‘s Obelisk Questionnaire — that’s a good way to know I’m desperate to cover something — set out tomorrow together from the latter’s native Spokane, Washington, and will proceed through the aforementioned Rocky Mountain Riff Fest and on from there, doing three more shows in Montana because, and this is my own understanding, Montana is fucking huge, and looping back around through Idaho and Utah to finish in WA.

It’s a tidy tour worth taking the week off and making a thing out of it. If you get to see it, good on yas:

Tigers on Opium and Twin Void hit the road for a week of face smashing riff carnage. Peep the dates/locations below and get ready to come out and party with us. This will be an absolute ripper!

4/21 Spokane, WA Mootsys Bar
4/22 Kalispel, MT Rocky Mountain Riff Fest
4/23 Bozeman, MT Haufbrau House
4/24 Bozeman, MT The Filling Station
4/25 Missoula, MT Monks Bar
4/26 SLC, UT Aces High Saloon
4/27 Boise, ID Neurolux
4/28 Pullman, WA Another Round Brewing

https://www.facebook.com/twinvoidband/
https://www.instagram.com/twin_void/
https://twinvoid.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/tigersonopium/
https://www.instagram.com/tigersonopium/
https://tigersonopium.bandcamp.com/

Twin Void, Free From Hardtimes (2022)

Tigers on Opium, 503.420.6669.vol_two (2022)

The shape of sludge to come, one hopes. It Thrives in Darkess is the follow-up to Sky Pig‘s impressive 2020 four-songer EP, Hell is Inside You, issued through Forbidden Place Records, and it charts a course forward for dirt-coated heavy that feels particularly bold for being the band’s first album. The apparently-need-a-drummer Sacramento, California, two-piece of Rob Sneddon (guitar/vocals) and Jude Croxford (bass) — Chelsea Wright plays drums on the recording — cast an ambient impression over the course of their six-track/41-minute debut full-length, with echoing vocals and fluid loud/quiet transitions that make their more subdued stretches not an aside from the more weighted shove, but actually part of the proceedings and buildups. This distinguishes them in both atmospheric sludge and post-metal, and though they’re leaned more toward the former than the latter, they further draw on psychedelia, drone of various sorts, and a range of other styles.

Their methods might be likened to Neurosis, YOB or even younger Kylesa on paper, but these comparisons all fall short in capturing the full breadth of Sky Pig‘s output here. Throwing elbows all the while and having absorbed the knowledge of what worked on the prior short release, It Thrives in Darkness harness individualism from familiar murk, extend their grim aesthetic to the Droned Artworks cover art and twist listener expectation to suit their progression, so that whether it’s the watery clean vocals topping the quiet-but-tense drums in the verse of “Motionless” — calling out Black Sabbath‘s “Black Sabbath” without actually calling it out before surging into a shouted chorus — or the intense crunch that arises from the long build in the second half of the penultimate “In Light of Your Death,” they are able to do what they want when they want by simply doing it.

If it’s post-metal — and I’m not convinced it is, at least not entirely — it is a decisively American take, feeling more gut-born than hyper-cerebral in its roots despite a clear plan at work across its span that lets each half of the tracklisting start with a song about half the length of what follows. That is, on side A, the record launches with “State of Anger,” a rawer push that’s heavy enough to be called lumber and is immediate and intense in a way that becomes more a tool in the band’s shed than the sum total of what they can do, but is striking at the outset nonetheless, and telling in the echoing reach of Sneddon‘s solo of some of the swirling underpinnings that will show themselves throughout, as well as a touch of noise rock in the later groove.

But there’s less of a break than a rearing-back, and that’s a distinguishing feature that allows the subsequent “Larva” and side A capper “Motionless” to expand the context of the album as a whole in an organic-feeling way. I wouldn’t call it subtle perhaps because there’s so much tonal grit involved and when It Thrives in Darkness hits hard it feels like it’s leaving dents in the skull, but it is emblematic of a considered presentation just the same. Side B works similarly, with “Sinning Time” picking up from a second of silence with a persistent chug, a vocal-drone chant verse and shoutier tension offset, broader-feeling but shorter solo and consuming, head-down wrenching that never seems to fully let go in the drums, despite the roll that emerges in the last of its four and a half minutes, leaving a residually-heavy quiet from which the mellow and otherworldly-weirdo-effected guitar intro of “In Light of Your Death” takes hold.

Surrounding these shorter works, pieces like “Larva” — on which the returning Patrick Hills, who also engineered, mixed and mastered at Sacramento’s seemingly aptly-named Earthtone Studios, adds Mellotron in the midsection break to help set up the mellow, plotted guitar solo that follows before the crushing resumes — and the 9:47 longest-song/finale “It Thrives in Darkness” are likewise graceful and pummeling. “Motionless” begins with a stretch of standalone guitar in proto-YOB style that transitions smoothly into its full-toned thud but maintains the earlier contemplative vibe in its verse (which, if there isn’t more Mellotron there, sure has something that sounds like one), and seems to up the back-and-forth quotient in its volume trades, but never loses the pattern in doing so or comes across as confused about where it’s ultimately going.

In contrast, “In Light of Your Death” proves out a middle-ground for the extremes in “Motionless,” mean enough by the time it’s done, to be sure, but adding a deep-mixed melodic layer of either guitar or keys in its later reaches before the solo hits just past the six-minute mark and gives over to the last swell of riff-led volume, and those kinds of atmospheric noises do much to add to a spirit if not of improvisation than at very least of openness to experiment outside the normal confines of genre — to screw with their own sound, essentially, and follow through on ideas that end up enriching it significantly. The subsequent title-track is no less mindful as it layers vocals over the drifting passage that ends its first half, sparse-feeling guitar, complementing bass and far-off drums all lurking and waiting for the next moment to strike as an effective stop and start brings the louder line of guitar to announce the next round of churn to come.

They’ll cycle through again in that title-track before it’s done, with the drums more at the forefront, mix-wise, resulting in a kind of catharsis of reeling swing before the last push, and It Thrives in Darkness culminates with a deep-breath last shout and final crash that feels somehow suitably unceremonial given the dug-in passages before. Like much of the record, that ending makes a great strength of its lack of pretense, as both the production and the songwriting itself come through with due anguish and a focus on natural tone and rawness of its echoing shouts and plods rather than attempting any kind of stateliness this first time out.

Again, this works only in Sky Pig‘s favor, as even their very moniker seems to gnash teeth on an existential level. I do not know what their plans are in terms of touring or composing — It Thrives in Darkness was recorded between 2021 and 2022, so they had time to work on it and flesh it out, to be sure — but it marks a significant arrival in how it brings together often divergent underground styles and creates something fresh (if rotted-sounding) from them. There are a lot of variables between here and there — not the least a drummer — but if they are able to find a solid lineup and really get out and deliver this cacophony to listeners in-person, they have a real chance to become something the US underground definitely needs in their willingness to bend and break the rules of genre. It’ll be two or three more records before that tale is told either way, but the potential here is massive in keeping with the music itself.

Sky Pig, It Thrives in Darkness (2022)

Sky Pig on Instagram

Sky Pig on Facebook

Sky Pig on Bandcamp

Sky Pig on Spotify

Forbidden Place Records website

Forbidden Place Records on Bandcamp

Forbidden Place Records on Facebook

Forbidden Place Records on Twitter

Australian duo DEAD — stylization intentional — release their new album, The Laughing Shadow, this Friday, Oct. 14, through We Empty Rooms (also stylized all one word), Forbidden Place Records and Wantage USA. The follow-up to 2021’s Up Yours and the Victoria-based bass/drums — that’s Jace and Jem, respectively — outfit’s umptieth offering overall, its 38 minutes are marked by a persistent feeling of melancholy that, once you understand the context in which it was made, makes total sense. While recalling Earth and a rawer early Crippled Black Phoenix as they layer in guest saxophone from Jenny Divers and swap out guitar from Jace on “Riding Shadows” and others, DEAD hereby present the work they did together after entering pandemic lockdown.

Which one? I don’t know. Not the first, seemingly. They already put out the last show they played before the first one — the aforementioned Up Yours; also apt in context — and below Jem discusses writing as a two-piece while social-distancing across the room from each other, so clearly they were under restrictions self-imposed or otherwise at the time. Probably they’re lucky they were able to be in the same place at all. That wasn’t the case everywhere. But you hear the standalone sax that closes the T2-esque dirge “Death,” or the foreboding distorted lurch in opener “The Cowboy” — yes, a bit of Morricone there, but not overblown compared to many — and the open space in “Riding Shadows” before the slower-King Crimson-y finish, and the abiding mournfulness wants nothing for justification. They call The Laughing Shadow a ‘pandemic album,’ which has become an acknowledged cliché, something people are ashamed of now, as though processing trauma and grief through art was in some way not one of the most beautiful things human beings can do just because other people are doing it too.

Divers‘ sax plays a significant role throughout, whether it’s that full-sounding finish to “Riding Shadows” or the quiet, improv-feeling “Light, Flicker, Dark” that rounds out side A of the LP or the massive second swell in the subsequent “Disgraced Former Detective,” which ends in a jazzy subdued interplay of bass and drums that hints at a live recording process while also transitioning ultra-smooth into “The Cracking Façade,” represented by a linear build of noise — not even sure what that is — that cuts suddenly to a stretch of quiet bass and drums reminiscent of Neurosis circa The Eye of Every Storm and succeeds in being more than just an epilogue for the loud part prior. DEAD do volume trades particularly well, and perhaps in part because there’s so much room in the recording, their dynamic has all the more space for such fluidity. Jem and Jace have been playing together for 15 years, so that The Laughing Shadow comes across as exploratory as it does is itself a triumph of anti-formula creative spirit, but their experience is bled as much into those minor-seeming-but-not-really-minor stretches as the more outwardly consuming lumber behind the free-jazz crashdown of the penultimate “Bastard Return.”

They close with the rumbling title-track, a bass distortion answering back to “The Cowboy” while also portraying the obvious looming threat that defines (defined? do we even know anymore? did we ever?) the pandemic era. A groove is locked in and pursued with steadily increasing intensity until feedback-as-weapon starts at 3:48 and the tension finally lets up somewhat going into the thud-marked crescendo, followed simply by air-push low end and some final punctuation from the drums; an understated conclusion given some of the plod conjured previously, but appropriately meditative considering, again, the subject at hand and the times being lived through. Therapy for all? At least in an ideal world, yes, and covered by insurance. In our wretched, capitalism-fueled dimension, take your catharsis where you can get it.

It’s my pleasure to host The Laughing Shadow streaming in its entirety below, followed by the already-noted comment from Jem and more PR wire-style details.

Please enjoy:

Jem (drums) on The Laughing Shadow:

This album is the first time we removed our tongues from our collective cheek for a moment. We used it to process our grief and to deal with the uncertainty and anguish of lockdowns. While writing it we lost friends and family to the virus, suicide and more. For the most part funerals or gatherings of any kind were not possible. I clung onto this music like a kid does to their teddy.

As a band who toured nonstop for 10 years it hit hard suddenly not being able to do what we love most. We were determined to make something positive from it. The opening track is the oldest song we have – written some years before we formed DEAD. We decided to build an album around this song that would be one long form piece made up of smaller “scenes”. We pretended we had an orchestra. We wrote the bulk of it in Alex’s barn/recording studio in Campbells Creek – masked up, at opposite ends of the room. We’ve never gone so long without hugging each other.

Our friend Mike Deslandes recorded it in that same barn – it felt significant to be able to do that. We did one take of each scene, in order and the warts are very much left in there for your benefit. The sounds you hear are the sounds of the instruments in that space.

I mixed the record with Mike at his house. I’m grateful we had him working with us. Every part of the process had a different kind of weight to it than before. I wanted it to be over and to never end at the same time. At some point I told Jace that I might have to never play these songs again. So, like a million other bands this is our pandemic album.

Tracklisting:
1. The Cowboy
2. Riding Shadows
3. Death
4. Light, Flicker, Dark
5. Disgraced Former Detective/Silence
6. The Cracking Facade
7. Bastard Return
8. The Laughing Shadow

Recorded by Mike Deslandes at Sound Recordings – Winter MMXXI. Assisted by Alex Bennett | Mixed by Mike and Jem. Mastered by Lachlan Carrick. Released on WeEmptyRooms, Wantage USA (Vinyl Only), Forbidden Place Records (CD Only).

DEAD:
Jace: Bass & Guitars
Jem: Drums & Metal Percussion
Jenny Divers: Sax

DEAD on Instagram

DEAD on Facebook

DEAD on Bandcamp

We Empty Rooms Records on Facebook

We Empty Rooms Records on Bandcamp

We Empty Rooms Records website

Forbidden Place Records website

Forbidden Place Records on Bandcamp

Forbidden Place Records on Facebook

Forbidden Place Records on Twitter

Wantage USA on Instagram

Wantage USA on Facebook

Wantage USA on Bandcamp

See you back here Monday, huh? Yeah. If onslaughts of new music are your thing and you’ve been following along throughout this week — first, thank you — and second, we’ll pick up after the weekend with another 50 albums in this double-wide Fall 2022 Quarterly Review. This was a good week though. Yesterday had some genuine killers, and I’ve added a few to my best-of lists for the end-of-year stuff to come. There’ll be another Quarterly Review then too. Never any trouble filling slots with new releases. I’ve already started, in fact.

Madness. Didn’t I say something yesterday about one thing at a time? Ha.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

Crippled Black Phoenix, Banefyre

There are times where I wonder if Crippled Black Phoenix aren’t just making fun of other bands, their audience, themselves, and everything, and then there are times when I’m pretty sure they are. To wit, their latest outing for Season of Mist, Banefyre, is nearly an hour into its 90-plus-minute runtime before they offer up the 10-minute “Down the Rabbit Hole,” and, well, if we’re not down it by then, where the hell are we? See also “Wyches and Basterdz” near the outset. Whatever else they may be, the long-running, dynamic, progressive, dark heavy rock troupe surrounding founding songwriter and guitarist Justin Greaves are like nothing else. They offer shades of influences, discernable elements from this or that style, this or that band — “The Reckoning” has a bit of The Cure, “Blackout77” filters that through Katatonia, etc. — but are never working to be anyone but themselves. Accordingly, the thoroughly British depressive triumphs throughout Banefyre — looking at you, “I’m OK, Just Not Alright” — are part of an ongoing narrative of creative development that will hit its 20th year in 2024 and has offered listeners an arc of emotive and stylistic depth that, in whatever genre you want to try to confine it, is only ever going to escape. The only real tragedy of Banefyre is that they’ll probably have another record out before this one can be properly digested. That’ll take a few years at least.

Crippled Black Phoenix on Facebook

Season of Mist website

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Chat Pile, God’s Country

An Oklahoma hardcore-born circus of sludge-toned tragedies personal, cultural and socioeconomic played out across nine songs/42 minutes held together at times seemingly most of all by their disenchantment, Chat Pile‘s debut album, God’s Country is arthouse angularity, raw aggression and omnidirectional intensity. As the UK’s post-industrial waste once birth’d Godflesh, so now come vocalist Raygun Busch, guitarist Luther Manhole, bassist Stin and electronic-drummer Cap’n Ron with brilliantly constructed tales of drugs, murder, suicide, loss, violence, misery, and general wretchedness of spirit, presented instrumentally with quick turns that draw from hardcore as noted, but also death metal, sludge, industrial doom, and so on. The lyrics are masterful drug poetry and delivered as such, semi-spoken, shouted, some singing, some acting out, such that you never know from what direction the next punch is coming. “Why” tackles homelessness, “Pamela” demonstrates the impossibility of coping with loss, “Slaughterhouse” is what it says, and closer “Grimace_Smoking_Weed.jpeg” resolves its nine minutes in long-held feedback and crashes as Busch frantically screams with decreasing intelligibility until it’s even words anymore. A perfect finish to a stunning, terrifying, moving first album. Don’t go into it expecting listenability. Even as “I Don’t Care if I Burn” offers some respite, it does so while describing a murder fantasy. It’s not the only one.

Chat Pile on Instagram

The Flenser store

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Early Moods, Early Moods

Fuck yes Gen-Z doom. Yes. Yes. Yes. Show the old men how it’s done. Please. Not a gray hair in the bunch, or a bullshit riff, or a lazy groove. Early Moods got their influences in line with their 2020 debut EP, Spellbound (review here), and you can still hear some Candlemass in “Broken,” but their self-titled debut LP stamps its foot to mark their arrival as something new and a fresh take on classic ideas. Vocalist Alberto Alcaraz is a distinct presence atop the hard-distorted guitars of Eddie Andrade and Oscar Hernandez, while Elix Feliciano‘s bass fuzz-rumbles through the interlude “Memento Mori” and Chris Flores‘ big-room-ready kick counts in the Trouble‘d early highlight “Live to Suffer.” Later on, “Curse of the Light” leans into the metal end of classic doom metal ahead of the chugging roll of “Damnation” and the finisher “Funeral Macabre,” but Early Moods have already put these things in play by then, as demonstrated with the eponymous title-track. Songs are tight, crisply produced, and executed to style with a promise of more growth to come. It’s an easy record to get excited about, and one of 2022’s best albums. I might just buy the tape and the CD.

Early Moods on Facebook

RidingEasy Records store

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Larman Clamor, With a Deadly Hiss

Less than a year after a return born of celebrating the project’s 10th anniversary with the Ink fo’ Blood (review here) full-length, prolific visual artist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and singer Alexander von Wieding returns with Larman Clamor‘s latest, With a Deadly Hiss. As ever, formalities are dispensed with in favor of deceptively intricate arrangements of slide acoustic and electric guitar, whatever’s-around-style percussion and von Wieding‘s telltale throaty vocals, which on “Swamp Jive” and even a bit of the six-minute finale “Eleventh Spell to Cast” draw back the throaty grit in favor of a more melodic, somewhat less performative delivery that suits the material well. Songs are mostly short — there are 11 of them and the aforementioned closer is the longest by about three minutes — but each is a blinking glimpse into the humid, climbing-vine world of von Wieding‘s creation, and in instrumentals like the manic percussion of “Monkey and the Trash Goblins” and the distortion-backed algae-delica of “Iguana at the Fountain,” the brashness of “Tortuga” and the playful falsetto of the leadoff title-track are expanded in such a way as to hint of future paths to be explored. One way or the other, Larman Clamor remains an entity unto itself in concept, craft and delivery, and if With a Deadly Hiss is just another forward step en route to the next stop on down the road, even better.

Larman Clamor on Facebook

Larman Clamor on Bandcamp

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The Necromancers, When the Void Rose

Recorded in 2021, The Necromancers‘ third album would seem to have a mind toward picking up where the Poitiers, France-based four-piece left off pre-pandemic with 2018’s Of Blood and Wine (review here). Can hardly blame them, frankly. Now self-releasing (their first two albums were on Ripple), the semi-cult heavy rockers bring an air of classic metal to the proceedings but are remarkably cohesive in their craft, with guitarist/vocalist Basile Chevalier-Coudrain fronting the band even in the studio as demonstrated on the ’80s metal roller “The Needle,” which follows the eight-minute doom-adjacent unfolding of “Crimson Hour” — and that “adjacent” is a compliment, by the way; The Necromancers are less concerned with playing to genre than with it — wherein guitarist Robin Genais adds a short but classy solo to underscore the willful grandiosity. Bassist Simon Evariste and drummer Benjamin Rousseau underscore the grooves, prominent in the verse of the title-track, and while it’s guitars up front in traditionalist fashion, the truth is all four players are critical here, and it’s the overarching affect of the whole that makes When the Void Rose such an engaging listen, rather than the individual parts. That is to say, listen front to back for best results.

The Necromancers on Facebook

The Necromancers on Bandcamp

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Les Lekin, Limbus

Though instrumental across its vast stretches, Les Lekin‘s Limbus — their first full-length since 2017’s Died with Fear, also on Tonzonen, and third overall — begins with a verbal message of hope, lyrics in German, in the beginning intro “Licht.” That gives a specifically covid-era context to the proceedings, but as the subsequent three massive sans-vocal pieces “Ascent” (14:14), “Unknown” (8:18) and closer “Return” (22:00), unfold, they do so with a decidedly otherworldly, deeply-weighted psychedelic verve. The narrative writes itself in the titles, so I’ll spare you the pretense of insight (on my part there), but note that if it was escapism through music being sought on the part of the meditative Salzburg three-piece, the richness of what’s on offer throughout Limbus is generous enough to share that experience with the audience as well. “Ascent” swells and builds as it moves duly upward, and in “Unknown,” the trio explores post-metallic atmospherics in a crunching midsection without ever losing sight of the ambience so central to what they’re doing, while it would be hard for “Return” not to be the highlight, drums and initial bass rumble giving way to a huge sounding, engrossing procession of atmospheric density. Les Lekin have been a critical favorite for a while now, and it’s easy to hear why, but their work here holds far more than academic appeal or to-genre conformity. They embody the release they would seem to have sought and still carry an exploratory spirit despite the clearly charted course of their songs.

Les Lekin on Facebook

Tonzonen Records store

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Highbay, LightShower

LightShower is the fourth session from Hungarian jammers Highbay to see release in the last year-plus, and it arrives with the immediately noteworthy backing of Psychedelic Source Records. In the vein of many of that collective’s offerings, it is live recorded, probably improvised, and wholly instrumental, the trio vibing their way into a groove early on “Walking on Bubbles” and holding gently to that locked-in, entranced feel across the following five jams. The shimmering guitar tone, particuly as “Miracle Under Water” moves into the more extended “Spaceship” and the pleasantly funky “FunKing Dragons Above Fissure Mountains,” is a highlight, but the intention here is a full set, and I won’t take away from the fuzzier, riffier emergence later on in “FunKing Dragons” either, or, for that matter, the ready-to-wander post-rock float of closer “3D(ays) Trippin’.” It’s a big universe, and Highbay have their work cut out for them if they want to feel their way through all of it, but “Spaceship” mellows its way off into a greater beyond, and even “Hungover Sadness (’90s Romance)” manages to not be a drag as filtered through the trio’s chemistry. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t be the last time Highbay are heard from this year, but they’re yet another name to add to the list of Psychedelic Source-associated acts whose jammy sensibilities are helping manifest a new generation of Eastern European lysergic rock and roll.

Psychedelic Source Records on Facebook

Psychedelic Source Records on Bandcamp

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Sound Animal, Yes, Yes, You

Think of this as less of a review and more of a general reminder to throw a follow in the direction of Berkeley, California’s dug-in-as-hell Sound Animal, or at very least let your ears pay a visit every now and again to soak up some of the weirdo drone, dance, psych electronics and whatever else might be had on any given afternoon from the prolific solo-project. “Yes, Yes, You” is the latest single, but likely not for long, and it plays out across 3:33 of keyboardian ambience and recitations of the titular reassurance that would be soul-pop were they not so definitively experimental and part of such an ongoing creative splurge. Tucked away in a corner of the Bandcamp dimension, Sound Animal comes across as an outlet for ideas as much as sonics, and with the persistent thud of a beat beneath, one, two, three, four, the melodic serenity of the wash feels like direct conversation, with the listener, the self, or, more likely, both. It is beautiful and brief, as I’m told life also is, and it may just be the thing that came after one thing and before the next, but if you stop for a minute or three and let it sink in, you just might find a more substantial place to reside. Not gonna be for everyone, but the fact that “Yes, Yes, You” is so vague and yet so clearly encouraging rather than accusatory speaks to the artistic purpose writ large throughout Sound Animal‘s e’er expanding catalog. Wouldn’t be surprised or sad to find a subsequent single going somewhere else entirely, but again, just a reminder that it’s worth finding that out.

Sound Animal on Facebook

Sound Animal website

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Warcoe, The Giant’s Dream

Somewhere between classic metal and doom, heavy rock’s riff-led impulses and cultish atmospheres there resides the Pesaro, Italy, trio Warcoe and their debut album, The Giant’s Dream. Led by guitarist/vocalist Stefano — who also plays bass on some of the later tracks — with bassist Carlo and drummer Francesco proffering thickened roll and punctuating rhythm all the while save for the early acoustic interlude “Omega Sunrise,” the band nestle smoothly into a modern-via-not-at-all-modern sphere, yet neither are they retro or aping ’70s methodologies. Maybe that moment has passed and it’s the ascent of the ’80s metal and doom we’re seeing here — or maybe I just slated Warcoe and Early Moods the same day and both bands dig Trouble and Death Row/Pentagram, I won’t pretend to know — but the bass in “Fire and Snow” is more of a presence than bass was pretty much ever 40 years ago, so to call The Giant’s Dream anything but ‘now’ is inaccurate. They lean into rock on “Thieves, Heretics and Whores” and manifest grim but stately lurch before the fade of the penultimate “Scars Will Remain,” but wherever each piece might end up, the impression is abidingly dark and offers a reminder that Italy’s history of cult doom goes farther back than most. Paul Chain, Steve Sylvester, your legacy is in good hands.

Warcoe on Facebook

Forbidden Place Records on Bandcamp

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DONE, Aged and Untreated

Hard to find info on the Boston or Boston-adjacent extreme-metal-inflected, sludge-toned dark hardcore outfit DONE — and that may just as well be anti-social-media mystique creation as the fact that their name is ungooglable — but the tape slays. Aged and Untreated hammers 15 scathing tracks into its 28 minutes, and dies on a hill of wintry black metal and barking hardcore mostly but not completely summarized in the turns of “Soulsplitter.” The fun part is when they bounce back and forth, throw in some grind on “To Curt on Waverly,” scratch your eyes out with “Dance for Them” — the second cut behind says-it-all-in-a-minute opener “Nah” — and willfully crash into a wall on the comparatively sprawling 2:35 “I Fucking Hate Thinking About You.” Haven’t seen a lyric sheet and probably won’t if my success rate in tracking down relevant factoids is anything to go by, but shit, I lived on the South Shore for seven years, including the record-breaking winter of 2014, and it sure felt a lot like this. Maybe they’re from Arizona, and if they are, I’m sure some hack would say the same thing, but hell’s bells Aged and Untreated is an intense listen, and its wreck-your-shit violence is meted out such that even the slightly-slower punch in the first half of “Hope Trickle” makes the song feel sarcastic. I wouldn’t put it on every day, but yeah. Righteously pissed.

Tor Johnson Records on Bandcamp

Tor Johnson Records store

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This week, Italian heavy rockers Warcoe release their new single ‘Pyramid of Despair’ ahead of their second full-length, to be issued next year. In March, the Pesaro-based three-piece issued their debut album, The Giant’s Dream, and “Pyramid of Despair” also serves as a quick follow-up to that, building on the tonal grit and loosely cultish melodymaking fostered there, their fuzz light in the high end, the first-name-only three-piece of guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Stefano (also bass on some tracks), bassist Carlo and drummer Francesco finding a space where proto-heavy meets doom but the two aren’t necessarily the same. The single builds on this methodology and demonstrates ready growth in its four-and-a-half-minute push, a Sabbathian central riff brought to a charge like The Sword with an edge of Uncle Acid‘s recording technique and penchant for layering. From a completely different angle, if you told me Green Lung were an influence here, I’d believe it.

What does that mean? It means Warcoe are deceptively multifaceted. Stefano takes an impressive solo late, but even before that, “Pyramid of Despair” digs itself into a niche that opens itself to audience interpretation. It’s not about dogwhistling influences, like, ‘hey man we like Sleep too pretty rad huh?,’ so much as pulling pieces from different sides and mixing them together like taking purple and green and orange and whatever other colors the fuzzy stuff on weed comes in, melting it altogether using technology I won’t pretend to understand, and turning it an ultra-potent brown. I guess maybe they make hash rock? Whatever you want to call it, that stylistic specificity — their thing being their own thing — is set against a straightforward structure of verses and choruses, such that “Pyramid of Despair,” like “Cats Will Follow” or “Thieves, Heretics & Whores” and “Scars Will Remain” from The Giant’s Dream, is catchy while both familiar and not.

The difference, in part, between what Warcoe recorded this year (the single) and last year (the album), is one of confidence. Francesco‘s leads are plenty swaggering throughout The Giant’s Dream, but the vocals on “Pyramid of Despair” feel more confident in their willingness to not directly follow the pattern of the riff during verses, allowing both melody and rhythm to breathe more and giving the sheer heft of “Pyramid of Despair” — something else that would seem to have been upgraded since the record, at least for this song if not whatever else might follow — an appropriate amount of room to make its impact. Which, I’m glad to say, it does. In other words, they’re showing quickly that lessons have been learned coming off their first full-length, and as they head into a sophomore LP sometime in 2023, the portents for that are only encouraging if this is where they’re headed.

Maybe you heard the album, maybe you didn’t. Either way, “Pyramid of Despair” is 4:31 out of your busy day and I don’t think you’ll regret checking it out or I wouldn’t be hosting it. As always, I hope you dig.

Enjoy:

Warcoe, “Pyramid of Despair” track premiere

Warcoe release a new single “Pyramid of Despair” on September 15th. A new album will follow in spring 2023.

Warcoe has released a Ep with Evil noise recordings and a full length “The Giant’s Dream” on Cd with Forbidden Place Records and on tape with Morbid and Miserable Records, and it will be released in Japan on October 19th by Unforgiven Blood Records.

The golden pyramid is standing still
The banished land has a violent past
I’ve travelled so far across the land
I’ve travelled so far across the land

“Pyramid of Despair” was recorded in May 2022 at Avangarage recording studio (Italy) and mastered by sir Craig Thomas (from Preyer, Uk)

Warcoe is:
Stefano: guitars, vocals and songwriting
Carlo: bass
Francesco: drums

Warcoe, The Giant’s Dream (2022)

Warcoe on Bandcamp

Warcoe on Instagram

Warcoe on Facebook

Morbid and Miserable Records on Bandcamp

Forbidden Place Records on Bandcamp

Unforgiven Blood Records on Instagram

I said the other day I was going to do a little unofficial series about records that came out in 2020 that I didn’t get to cover for various reasons — be it lack of time, lack of brainpower, distraction by the looming specter of imminent viral death, or whathaveyou — and that begins here, with the debut full-length from Portland, Oregon’s Charley No Face. Following hot on the release of their early 2020 debut EP, The Green Man, the full-length — wait for it… — The Green Man first arrived in April, on the 10th according to Bandcamp. Forbidden Place Records had a version out with its backing by July and a vinyl release followed in December.

The four-piece at the time were comprised of guitarist/vocalist Nick Wulforst, guitarist/vocalist Stephen Cameron, bassist Brad Larson and drummer Tim Abel, and from the EP, they carried over the duly shimmering melodies of “Prism,” the Quest for Fire-ish dream-drift-into-melodic-wash of “Gatekeeper” and “Endless Dream,” which earns its place as the centerpiece of the album’s nine-song tracklist with its second half’s gone-for-a-walk fuzz-drenched swing ‘n’ strut. Around these they pepper a collection of songs totally 45 minutes that only makes me think they had even more than that composed when they entered the studio.

Why? Because at 45 minutes, The Green Man feels spare. Perhaps not the 40-second backwards-guitar whathaveyou of the intro “Bring Me the Heads of the Kings: Parts I-IV,” about which I thought long and hard about doing an in-depth examination with each 10-second interval as another of the four component “parts” of the obviously tongue-in-cheek whole, but no one but me would get the joke and that gets to be kind of sad after a while. But still, that 40 seconds at the outset notwithstanding, you wouldn’t call the bulk of the material urgent so much as patient in its delivery — the open verses of “Red Room,” which follows the intro, and the casual noodling solo work at the end of “Gatekeeper” send that message early, and it’s not long in being affirmed by the mellow vibes in much of the rest — but if you were sitting at Trash Treasury in Portland where the album was made with producer Cameron Spies and you were in Charley No Face working on the final incarnation of the album, I’m not sure what song you’d drop At 45 minutes, The Green Man is maybe six or seven minutes longer than one would expect a modern LP of its heavy psychedelic stripe to be, but every piece here earns its place, and whether it’s the languid march of “Prism” or the turn-to-proto-doom-riffing in “Endless Dream” there isn’t one of these tracks you could lose and make the record stronger. It is what it needs to be.

In large part, that’s serene. By no means are Charley No Face‘s songs lazy, but they do a good job of making you want to be. The mix is vast enough to let Wulforst‘s vocals stand out with the Pacific-Northwest-enough-to-remind-me-of-Snail melody on “Red Room” and still able to deliver the punker-rooted message of the later “Wasted Youth” without any trouble, that sudden burst of speed leading the way into the back end of the tracklisting — side B, as it were – with the ultra-Witch-y riff of “Weight of the Sun” offering primo nod at cut rate discounts while “Yellow Belly” lysergically reminds us we’re all complicit while the mood calls back to “Gatekeeper” but establishes its own righteous chorus swell and delivers on its payoff every time, and the eight-minute closer “Master of Light” creeps at the outset and morphs into post-Uncle Acid harmony-topped garage boogie, jams out over that central rhythm and circles back to the hook like it ain’t even a thing to finish before dedicating the better part of its last minute to residual noise. All of these are united in purpose with the first half of The Green Man by the consistency of mood, tone and melody. Charley No Face veer into and out of conversation with traditional psychedelia, heavy rock, ’70s-vintageism, indie chic and doomly march, but they bring everything — even the Ramones on “Wasted Youth” — under their own particular sonic umbrella like running it through a haze filter set to reverse.

As James Carville once definitely did not say, “It’s the fuzz, stupid.” Charley No Face have it in droves here, and it’s the warmth of their tones that make the most striking first impression, with the vocal melodies not far behind. Coupled as those are largely by the laid back, grooving drums — the occasional breakout or punk track aside, though “Wasted Youth” hits into a massive slowdown following the last drawn-out intonation of its title line and crawls all the way back into grungegaze wash until its last wobbles fade out — the material gives a cohesive and engaging, welcoming spirit. This and the flow of one song into another — those wobbles giving way to the clarion opening guitar figure of “Weight of the Sun,” for example — show a clarity of vision and purpose on the part of the band. If I was writing about this as a debut album that just came down the wire and was about to hit, I’d be going on and on about the potential here and how much I hoped the band would be able to maintain the warmth of The Green Man and the quality of their songcraft while continuing to move forward as songwriters.

But that already happened. In February of this year, Charley No Face released their second album, Eleven Thousand Volts (review here), working again with Cameron Spies (and Mike Nolte, who mastered) and bringing in keyboardist/vocalist Carina Hartley, bidding farewell to Stephen Cameron somewhere in that process and moving forward with only Wulforst‘s guitar. That shift in dynamic, as well as the added breadth of keys and the combination of Wulforst and Hartley on vocals — a burgeoning pairing that indeed might have one ranting about further potential — has made it one of my go-tos in the couple months since and invariably secured it a place among the best outings of 2022 both in my brain and on the actual list I keep all year to post in December. I could go on here, but the point is if you want to find out how Charley No Face moved forward from here, you can. Here you go.

That said, I’m only glad to have finally dug into these songs deeper than just listening in the car. As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

I checked the monitor at 5:50 and the kid was up. He makes himself a lump in his blanket until either The Patient Mrs. or I go upstairs to get him, and there he was, lumping it up. That’s early even for him.

Later now, 8:30AM instead of 6:30. That OHHMS post just went up, for context. Dude’s been downstairs for that two hours, which, again, is early for him, had breakfast and is building his Lego cement mixer while facing the other way, so I’m taking advantage of the quiet moment to write this on my phone.

He didn’t have school this week, you understand. He was off last Friday for Easter and this week has been Spring Break, so yeah. The Patient Mrs. had signed him up for a week-long soccer camp put on for little kids by the Red Bulls, who practice about 10 minutes from the house where we live, right down Rt. 10, but when we went on Monday to check in for the first day, it turns out we had the wrong week. We’d been talking it up to him and everything and he was upset, justifiably so, but recovered quickly enough once we went to Barnes and Noble and bought some new books and some more Legos, including the aforementioned truck. Also a plane that’s been a big hit.

Without that hour and a half every day this week, it’s been a crunch to get stuff done, but I’m glad to note that I didn’t have anything slated these last five days that didn’t get done, and I even filled most of the slate for the next Quarterly Review, which I have the feeling is going to end up being two weeks in July catching up on releases from the first half of this year. I want to write more regular old reviews. Ridiculous that I haven’t covered that Naxatras yet. It’s been out since February and I’ve had the back end of the review set to go for like three weeks. It keeps getting bumped for now-or-never-type premieres. I’m glad to do those, and I wouldn’t be doing them if they weren’t also things I wanted to write about, but I need to find a better balance at least for now. And more hours on the day. I’d like that too, thanks.

Speaking of, I owe The Patient Mrs. thanks for allowing me some time this week off the parenting clock to write. I think she felt guilty about the soccer camp thing since she booked it, but I could’ve just as easily read that email. Not like I know what the date is, ever. In any case, between that and waking up at 5AM with the alarm if not earlier on my own, I have been able to finagle the week. She took him for a walk yesterday with a friend though and I both set up this post and showered, and that felt pretty special. As I’ve said for at least the last several weeks, we’re in survival mode until the end of the semester. I also have no idea when that is. Before June, I figure.

Mental health check-in. I’m definitely not the craziest I’ve ever been. Good weather and being able to get out of the house with the kid more helps for sure. I’ve been wearing ankle and wrist weights though and doing little bits of exercise now and then throughout the day and I can feel compulsion edging in on it. Do I realize that, stay aware of it and step back, or do I just keep going the way I am now, get full-blown crazy like I did going running two summers ago, hurt myself, get frustrated and retreat into months of shame-bingeing hazelnut butter or pesto, putting on yet more weight in the interim and continuing to feel terrible about myself? STAY TUNED TO FIND OUT!

But today I’m okay and that’ll do. The Pecan and I didn’t have the week we planned, but we had a really good time the last few days. Not hiccup-less by any stretch, but by and large a win. I’ve tried not to do too much of this — sitting with my face buried in the screen while he does something else, but at least I’m sitting on the floor nearby and I’m present if he needs or wants something. He says, “Do you want to play with me?” now though in a way that makes resistance basically futile.

I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Have fun, hydrate, watch your head. Gimme show next week. Might do another all-request one since the last was so much fun. We’ll see. Thanks for reading.

FRM.

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