Feeling dug in, which I take as a good sign. There’s been a decent portion of this QR that’s catching up from last Fall onward, and I would’ve liked to cover some of that sooner, but honestly I struggled to find a week-plus to do this and lost an additional month by the time I did. So if you’re like ‘duh this is old’ to some of it — there are also releases that aren’t out yet — I apologize. In 10 years it won’t matter that whatever it was came out last October.

On that happy note, back to it.

Quarterly Review #31-40:

Witchcraft, A Sinner’s Child

Sweden’s Witchcraft follow their 2025 full-length, Idag (review here), with the five-song EP A Sinner’s Child, which runs a similar, if condensed, gamut, from founding frontman Magnus Pelander‘s solo acoustic folk to lumbering, heavy doom and points between. Pelander plays all the instruments on rolling opener “Drömmen Om Död Och Förruttnelse,” the minimal guy-and-guitar “Even Darker Days,” and the morosely weighted “Själen Reser Sig,” while the full-band title-track “A Sinner’s Child” and its closing alternate-lyrics companion-piece “Sinner’s Clear Confusion” are defined as much by the emotive blues of the vocals as by the wistfully strummed electric guitar that accompanies. “A Sinner’s Child” is between the two sides of “Själen Reser Sig” and “Even Darker Days,” sound-wise (it’s before them in the tracklisting) and underscores that it’s not just the extremes that Pelander/Witchcraft inhabit, but the intricate places between as well. I don’t know if it’s leftovers from the record or filler or what, and I don’t care. Just happy it exists and the band are making music, thanks.

Witchcraft website

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Perfect Buzz, Happy Trails

Well, Portland and post-punk, so yes, Dead Moon are a factor, but PDX trio Perfect Buzz keep the songwriting tight and headed in their own, vividly rocking direction. The punk roots come out in “Here Come the Cowgirls,” with a shimmer in the guitar that’s unexpected, particularly after “You’re Wrong” was so sure of itself pounding its titular chorus into your head, but the heavier opener “Mess Around” sets a heavy-alternative expectation, and even the proto-grunge riffing of “Gonna Make U Sweat” is drawn under that umbrella. If you see them compared to Mudhoney, that’s probably why. But “Gonna Make U Sweat” is also the longest song at 3:28, and nothing else tops three minutes, so it’s not like Happy Trails is wasting anyone’s time. Instead, Perfect Buzz‘s debut EP showcases varied intent brought together by sharp, clearly-nobody’s-first-time-at-the-dance craft. Each of the four tracks sets out to do, and does, something different, while adding depth to the persona of the band, still being shaped but already a good time.

Perfect Buzz on Bandcamp

Perfect Buzz on Instagram

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Smoke Rites, Eager Eyes of Talion

Raw sludge metallers Smoke Rites offer visceral and disaffected doom on their second full-length, Eager Eyes of Talion, marked by the forward-in-the-mix gritty vocals of Tomasz Mielnik, whose harsh-throated shouts, growls and divergences into clearer singing top the weighted, rolling processions of guitarist Łukasz Borawski, bassist Adam Ziółkowski and drummer Michał Kamiński, resulting in a suitably filthy sound. It’s dark-themes-for-dark-times in “Golden Road,” the title-track and the chugging “Nothing Never,” and certainly “Death is a Five Letter Word” and “Wind of Most Cruel Kind” aren’t offering much in terms of comfort. Even the interlude “Charas Drift” is brought to a harsh place, but Eager Eyes of Talion stays grounded in the muddy shove of “10ft. Dread” and the comparative loll of “Devil’s Advocate,” and doesn’t feel like it’s hading out any more punishment than is due. In a mad world, madness feels reasonable. Here we are.

Smoke Rites on Bandcamp

Smoke Rites on Instagram

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Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean, Let Us Not Speak of Them But Look and Pass On

Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean uphold a long Massachusetts legacy of extreme sludge, and the four-song EP, Let Us Not Speak of Them But Look and Pass On, is duly facepeeling. Obviously “An Abundance of Mercy,” the nine-minute opener, is ironically titled. Mercy doesn’t really apply in the post-deity gnashing void the band portray, abrasive and churning. The lead cut is a slower assault where “Upheaval” is faster and more outwardly violent. “An Adornment of Light” might take home the prize for the lyric “I can show you/Just how broken/A wing can be,” if not for its seven-minute succession of massive lumber and throatripping screams or the ping ride in the last minute, like it’s marking the steps to where you jump in the volcano. Speaking of, “Execution” closes with a summary made more volatile for smashing elements together, but across the board, it’s a litmus test for how much noise you can take, which, since you’re alive today, is obviously more than any people at any other time in history could, so yes, have at it.

Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean on Bandcamp

Redscroll Records website

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Slow Draw, Is it Death Metal or Sadness

This might be genius. Hurst, Texas, solo experimentalist Mark Kitchens (also Stone Machine Electric) offers 11 sub-minute-long — the longest track is Hugging Curbs at 41 seconds — snippets, song ideas, root melodies, and tossoffs on Is it Death Metal or Sadness. Most are voice-based, but like opener “Big Dipper Little Dipper,” “Lynda and Her Celery,” “Almonds and Pistachios” and “Steven Lee Hall Junior” and “In the Pharmacy,” most have some synth or percussive accompaniment, and for most the lyrics are basically the titles. Maybe the most telling of all, centerpiece “Banana Time” — the lyric, “It’s banana time in the kitchen” — sounds like it was probably thought up while Kitchens was getting a banana. Five-second closer “Season My Eggs” — “I forgot to season my eggs, yeah-heah,” in a rocker voice — is likewise true to life. The reason this might be genius is because it reflects the ways music interacts with your daily life. Maybe you do sing a little song while you’re getting a banana, or get a hook in your head like the multi-layered “3 and 7” out of nowhere. It’s the sense of spontaneity captured. It turns out neither to be death metal nor sadness, and that could hardly be more fitting for the project.

Slow Draw website

Slow Draw on Bandcamp

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Capacopter, Capacopter

Once they start rolling out that fuzz, there’s little stopping (and why would you?) German heavy rockers Capacopter who, working under influence from early Queens of the Stone Age via modern forerunners Slomosa, present their self-titled first LP with all due electricity and grooving intent. Hooks abound as in opener “600 Years” and the desert-airy “Caravan,” and they keep structures pretty straightforward for the eight-song duration — has Noisolution heard this? — but there’s some branching out in “Half’n Inch” at the start of side B, and “JP’s Horse” and closer “Wandering Stones” take time for atmospherics as well, while “Kings and Crowds” and “Temple Son” are, on balance, more direct, though songwriting is a factor front-to-back. The album ends up being a mix, and there are highlight stretches in the quieter moments as well, but as a statement of intent, Capacopter posits them as rockers, and fair enough. An encouraging and promising debut album. There’s growing into themselves to do, but there’s also time to do it.

Capacopter website

Capacopter on Bandcamp

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Monovoth, To Live in the Breath of Worship

Dense to a point of opaqueness at its heaviest, but able as well to shift into and through ambient passages, Monovoth‘s To Live in the Breath of Worship feels emotive without words and finds the despondent post-metallic Buenos Aires solo-project exploring tense and grimly progressive reaches. The third LP in five years from multi-instrumentalist Lucas Wyssbrod, it doesn’t shy from extremity in “Crimson Red Wound” or the blastbeaten-until-it-drones-in-apology 16-minute closer “To Drown in the Tears of God” (there is a human voice there), but is no more defined by that than the subdued bleakness of its stillest moments, nor is it overly predictable in the movements between those two sides, or unipolar in how it executes one or the other. This variability, flexibility, allows “Cosmically Orphaned” and earlier opener “From a Dying Star” to tell a similar story in different ways, and makes the album as a whole a more complete, immersive experience. It’s also noisy as hell, and that helps too.

Monovoth website

Monovoth on Bandcamp

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Pimeyden Harha, Aika

Opening cut “Kronologia” (8:32) is the shortest of the three inclusions on Pimeyden Harha‘s severe-cast, wholly-doomed full-length debut, Aika, by about half. The subsequent “Rauha” (16:01) and “Entisöijä” (19:27) render the opener as lead-single fare, but rest assured, the solo outfit has plenty of doom to go around, whether it’s longform or, you know, sorta-longform. Lyrics, and somehow also the instruments, are in Finnish, and most of what keeps Aika from being death-doom is the melodic chant of sole-denizen/multi-instrumentalist J. LaCoin‘s vocals. Tempos are mostly a crawl, but “Rauha” lets you know up front it’s going to thrash out at the finish, and yes, it does, and there’s a bit of pickup in the later reaches of “Entisöijä” as well, but the bulk of the record is willed as a morose plod, and the atmosphere is accordingly grey. To its credit, however, Aika holds firm to its intent and doesn’t veer from its path as the songs play out; the most divergence happens in “Koronologia,” and it’s brief. That’s not to say Pimeyden Harha comes across as unipolar, just that it’s a sound crafted with a goal in mind. As a debut, one might call it foreboding.

Pimeyden Harha on Bandcamp

Pimeyden Harha at Mikseri

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Wild Fuzz Trip, Fuzz Transmissions

The only real question going into this debut album by Spain’s Wild Fuzz Trip is whether or not the five tracks on Fuzz Transmissions live up to the billing. Are they, in fact, a wild fuzz trip? Well, yes. Whether you’re dug into the mellow midsection of “Big Grey” or the more uptempo boogie into meatier riffing that happens over the course of centerpiece “Galactican Twilight,” the double-guitar troupe — here guitarists Miguel A. Marañón and Diego López (also keys), bassist Andy Shardlow (Josiah) and drummer Suso Valcárcel and Martin Ludl on the sax in closer “Nebula Groove” — are right there with you, and though they’ve been a band for eight years and this is apparently their first LP, the surety of their going speaks to the slew of EPs and single releases leading up to it. They neither wasted their time nor waste yours as the listener, bringing their ambition to life in an expansive sound one hopes will continue to flesh out.

Wild Fuzz Trip on Bandcamp

Wild Fuzz Trip on Instagram

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Gavran, The One Who Propels

Breadth and crush, expressive human intimacy and instrumental expanse, post-metallic chiaroscuro, etc., however you want to frame Gavran‘s The One Who Propels, the Rotterdam four-piece find their niche in style with a sound that basks in its multifaceted nature across five longer-form cuts, each of which plays out with a balance between two-plus sides, melodically sung here and abrasively screamed there, conveying emotion in the lulls of “Brod” as much as the next-level-obliteration that kicks in for (about) the final minute of “Okreni.” “Zora” and “Pogon” both start very, very heavy, but even there, a change in the vocals provides distinction amid tonal consistency, and Gavran are served across the 59-minute span by their attention to detail in terms of arrangement as well as the depth of mix which sometimes they seem to occupy to a point of spilling out, only to recede again and let the next melodic contemplation hold sway. The resulting entirety is viciously affirming as it leads to 16-minute capper “Plutaju,” which methodically encapsulates the course of the album while continuing to carve its own place.

Gavran on Bandcamp

Dunk!Records website

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You know what? We’re through the first week of the Quarterly Review as of this post. Not too bad. I feel like it’s been smooth going so far to such a degree that I’m even thinking about adding an 11th day comprised purely of releases that came my way this week and will invariably come in next week too. Crazy, right? Bonus day QR. We’ll see if I get there, but I’m thinking about it. That alone should tell you something.

But let me not get ahead of myself. Day five commence.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

Howling Giant, Alteration

Let the story be that when the pandemic hit, Nashville’s Howling Giant took to the airwaves to provide comfort, character and a bit of ‘home’ — if one thinks of live performance as home — to their audience. With a steady schedule of various live streams on Twitch, some playing music, some playing D&D, the band engaged their listenership in a new and exciting way, finding a rare bright point in one of the darkest years of recent history. Alteration, a crisp four-song/20-minute EP, is born out of those streamed jams, with songs named by the band’s viewers/listeners — kudos to whoever came up with “Luring Alluring Rings” — and, being entirely instrumental from a band growing more and more focused on vocal arrangements, sound more like they’re on their way to being finished than are completely done. However, that’s also the point of the release, essentially to showcase unfinished works in progress that have emerged in a manner that nobody expected. It is another example from last year-plus that proves the persistence of creativity, and is all the more beautiful for that.

Howling Giant on Facebook

Blues Funeral Recordings website

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Rose City Band, Earth Trip

Vaguely lysergic, twanging with a non-chestbeating or jingoistic ’70s American singer-songwriter feel, Rose City Band‘s Earth Trip brings sentiment without bitterness in its songs, engaging as the title hints with nature in songs like “Silver Roses,” “In the Rain,” “Lonely Planes,” “Ramblin’ with the Day,” “Rabbit” and “Dawn Patrol.” An outlet for Ripley Johnson, also of Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo, the “band” isn’t so much in Rose City Band, but there is some collaboration — pedal steel here and there, as on “Ramblin’ with the Day” — though it’s very much Johnson‘s own craft and performance at the core of this eight-song set. This is the third Rose City Band long-player in three years, but quickly as it may have come about, the tracks never feel rushed — hushed, if anything — and Johnson effectively casts himself in among the organic throughout the proceedings, making the listener feel nothing if not welcome to join the ramble.

Rose City Band on Facebook

Thrill Jockey Records website

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The Tazers, Dream Machine

Johannesburg, South Africa’s The Tazers are suited to a short-release format, as their Dream Machine EP shows, bringing together four tracks with psychedelic precociousness and garage rock attitude to spare, with just an edge of classic heavy to keep things grooving. Their latest work opens with its languid and lysergic title-track, which sets up the shove of “Go Away” and the shuffle in “Lonely Road” — both under three and a half minutes long, with nary a wasted second in them, despite sounding purposefully like tossoffs — and the latter skirts the line of coming undone, but doesn’t, of course, but in the meantime sets up the almost proto-New Wave in the early going on “Around Town,” only later to give way to the band’s most engaging melody and a deceptively patient, gentle finish, which considering some of the brashness in the earlier tracks is a surprise. A pleasant one, though, and not the first the three-piece have brought forth by the time they get to the end of Dream Machine‘s ultra-listenable 16-minute run.

The Tazers on Facebook

The Tazers on Soundcloud

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Kavrila, Rituals III

Pressed in an ultra-limited edition of 34 tapes (the physical version also has a bonus track), Kavrila‘s Rituals III brings together about 16 minutes of heavy hardcore and post-hardcore, a thickened undertone giving something of a darker mood to the crunch of “Equality” as guitars are layered in subtly in a higher register, feeding into the urgency without competing with the drums or vocals. Opener “Sunday” works at more of a rush while “Longing” has more of a lurch at least to its outset before gradually elbowing its way into a more careening groove, but the bridge being built is between sludge and hardcore, and while the four-piece aren’t the first to build it, they do well here. If we’re picking highlights, closer “Elysium” has deft movement, intensity and atmosphere in kind, and still features a vocal rawness that pushes the emotional crux between the verses and choruses to make the transitions that much smoother. The ending fades out early behind those shouts, leaving the vocals stranded, calling out the song’s title into a stark emptiness.

Kavrila on Facebook

The Chinaskian Conspiracy on Bandcamp

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Gateway, Flesh Reborn

Brutal rebirth. Robin Van Oyen is the lone figure behind Bruges, Belgium-based death-doom outfit Gateway, and Flesh Reborn is his first EP in three years. Marked out with guest guitar solos by M., the four-track/25-minute offering keeps its concentration on atmosphere as much as raw punishment, and while one would be correct to call it ‘extreme’ in its purpose and execution, its deathliest aspects aren’t just the growling vocals or periods of intense blast, but the wash of distortion that lays over the offering as a whole, from “Hel” through “Slumbering Crevasses,” the suitably twisting, later lurching “Rack Crawler” and the grandeur-in-filth 12-minute closing title-track, at which point the fullness of the consumption is revealed at last. Unbridled as it seems, this material is not without purpose and is not haphazard. It is the statement it intends to be, and its depths are shown to be significant as Van Oyen pulls you further down into them with each passing moment, finally leaving you there amid residual drone.

Gateway on Facebook

Chaos Records website

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Bala, Maleza

Admirably punk in its dexterity, Bala‘s debut album, Maleza, arrives as a nine-track pummelfest from the Spanish duo of guitarist/vocalist Anx and drummer/vocalist V., thickened with sludgy intent and aggression to spare. The starts and stops of opener “Agitar” provide a noise-rock-style opening that hints at the tonal push to come throughout “Hoy No” — the verse melody of which seems to reinvent The Bangles — while the subsequent “X” reaches into greater breadth, vocals layered effectively as a preface perhaps to the later grunge of “Riuais,” which arrives ahead of the swaggering riff and harsh sneer of “Bessie” the lumbering finale “Una Silva.” Whether brooding in “Quieres Entrar” or explosive in its shove in “Cien Obstaculos,” Maleza offers stage-style energy with clarity of vision and enough chaos to make the anger feel genuine. There’s apparently some hype behind Bala, and fair enough, but this is legitimately one of the best debut albums I’ve heard in 2021.

Bala on Facebook

Century Media Records website

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Tremor Ama, Beneath

French prog-fuzz five-piece Tremor Ama make a coherent and engaging debut with Beneath, a first full-length following up a 2017 self-titled EP release. Spacious guitar leads the way through the three-minute intro “Ab Initio” and into the subsequent “Green Fire,” giving a patient launch to the outing, the ensuing four songs of which grow shorter as they go behind that nine-minute “Green Fire” stretch. There’s room for ambience and intensity both in centerpiece “Eclipse,” with vocals echoing out over the building second half, and both “Mirrors” and “Grey” offer their moments of surge as well, the latter tapping into a roll that should have fans of Forming the Void nodding both to the groove and in general approval. Effectively tipping the balance in their sound over the course of the album as a whole, Tremor Ama showcase an all-the-more thoughtful approach in this debut, and at 30 minutes, they still get out well ahead of feeling overly indulgent or losing sight of their overarching mission.

Tremor Ama on Facebook

Tremor Ama on Bandcamp

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The Crooked Whispers, Dead Moon Night

Delivered on multiple formats including as a 12″ vinyl through Regain Records offshoot Helter Skelter Productions, the bleary cultistry of The Crooked Whispers‘ two-songer Dead Moon Night also finds the Los Angeles-based outfit recently picked up by Ripple Music. If it seems everybody wants a piece of The Crooked Whispers, that’s fair enough for the blend of murk, sludge and charred devil worship the foursome offer with “Hail Darkness” and the even more gruesome “Galaxy of Terror,” taking the garage-doom rawness of Uncle Acid and setting against a less Beatlesian backdrop, trading pop hooks for classic doom riffing on the second track, flourishing in its misery as it is. At just 11 minutes long — that’s less than a minute for each inch of the vinyl! — Dead Moon Night is a grim forecast of things to come for the band’s deathly revelry, already showcased too on last year’s debut, Satanic Whispers (review here).

The Crooked Whispers on Facebook

Regain Records on Bandcamp

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No Stone, Road into the Darkness

Schooled, oldschool doom rock for denim-clad heads as foggy as the distortion they present, No Stone‘s debut album, Road into the Darkness, sounds like they already got there. The Rosario, Argentina, trio tap into some Uncle Acid-style garage doom vibes on “The Frayed Endings,” but the crash is harder, and the later 10-minute title-track delves deeper into psychedelia and grunge in kind, resulting in an overarching spirit that’s too weird to be anything but individual, however mmuch it might still firmly reside within the tenets of “cult.” If you were the type to chase down a patch, you might want to chase down a No Stone patch, as “Devil Behind” makes its barebones production feel like an aesthetic choice to offset the boogie to come in “Shadow No More,” and from post-intro opener “Bewitched” to the long fade of “The Sky is Burning,” No Stone balance atmosphere and songcraft in such a way as to herald future progress along this morose path. Maybe they are just getting on the road into the darkness, but they seem to be bringing that darkness with them on the way.

No Stone on Facebook

Ruidoteka Records on Bandcamp

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Firefriend, Dead Icons

Dead Icons is the sixth full-length from Brazilian psychedelic outfit Firefriend, and throughout its 10 songs and 44 minutes, the band proffer marked shoegaze-style chill and a sense of space, fuzzy and molten in “Hexagonal Mess,” more desert-hued in “Spin,” jangly and out for a march on “Ongoing Crash.” “Home or Exile” takes on that question with due reach, and “Waves” caps with organ alongside the languid guitar, but moments like “Tomorrow” are singular and gorgeous, and though “Three Dimensional Sound Glitch” and “666 Fifth Avenue” border on playful, there’s an overarching melancholy to the flow, as engaging as it is. In its longest pieces — “Tomorrow” (6:05) and “One Thousand Miles High” (5:08) — the “extra” time is well spent in extending the trio’s reach, and while it’s safe to assume that six self-recorded LPs later, Firefriend know what they want to do with their sound, that thing feels amorphous, fleeting, transient somehow here, like a moving target. That speaks to ongoing growth, and is just one of Dead Icons‘ many strengths.

Firefriend on Facebook

Cardinal Fuzz store

Little Cloud Records store

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