Posted in Whathaveyou on May 8th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Having just wrapped the US portion of their tour celebrating the 10th anniversary of their third album, Lore (review here), Elder are about to pick up with the tour in Europe. They’ll be at Desertfest Oslo this week — see you there — and play Desertfest London, Desertfest Berlin, Sonic Whip, Mystic Festival on the run. They’re no strangers to hitting the road hard, and that seems to have been the plan for much of this year.
They’d previously announced the Fall dates below supporting (co-headlining with?) All Them Witches, who I’m thinking will have a new record out by the time they make the trip from their home in Nashville. In addition to that, Elder have a handful of newly-announced shows in Iberia leading them to the Westill Fest in France. You’ll find all of the above, below, as per socials:
We’re extremely stoked to be supporting one of our favorite current bands All Them Witches in Europe this October.
Following that, we’ll be playing a few headline shows in Portugal, Spain and France. Tickets for these gigs will go on sale this Friday at 11AM local time.
Supporting All Them Witches 06.10.25 Glasgow (UK), The Garage 07.10.25 Manchester (UK), Manchester Academy 2 08.10.25 Leeds (UK), Leeds Beckett Students’ Union 09.10.25 London (UK), O2 Forum Kentish Town 11.10.25 Paris (FR), Le Bataclan 12.10.25 Brussels (BE), Ancienne Belgique 14.10.25 Utrecht (NL), Tivoli/Vredenburg 15.10.25 Tilburg (NL), 013 Poppodium 17.10.25 Copenhagen (DK), Amager Bio 19.10.25 Berlin (DE), Tempodrom 20.10.25 Warsaw (PL), Progresja 21.10.25 Prague (CZ), Roxy 22.10.25 Vienna (AT), Gasometer 23.10.25 Milan (IT), Alcatraz 24.10.25 Berne (CH), Bierhübeli 26.10.25 Barcelona (ES), Razzmatazz 27.10.25 Madrid (ES), La Riviera
Elder Headlining Shows 28.10.25 Lisbon (PT), RCA Club 29.10.25 Porto (PT), Mouco 30.10.25 Bilbao (ES), D8 Sorkuntza 31.10.25 Toulouse (FR), La Cabane 01.11.25 Vallet (FR), Westhill Festival Artwork by Adam Hill
ELDER “Lore” 10th Anniversary Tour Spring 2025: 08.05.2025 Hamburg (DE), Bahnhof Pauli 09.05.2025 Copenhagen (DK), A Colossal Weekend 10.05.2025 Oslo (NO), Desertfest Oslo 11.05.2025 Stockholm (SE), Hus 7 13.05.2025 Esch-Alzette (LU), Kulturfabrik 14.05.2025 Tourcoing (FR), Le Grand Mix 15.05.2025 Brussels (BE), Le Botanique 16.05.2025 London (UK), Desertfest London 17.05.2025 Nijmegen (NL), Sonic Whip Festival 18.05.2025 Savigny-Le-Temple (FR), Grand Sludge Fest 20.05.2025 Wiesbaden (DE), Schlachthof – Kesselhaus 21.05.2025 Lyon (FR), L’Epicerie Moderne 22.05.2025 Lucerne (CH), Sedel 23.05.2025 Munich (DE), Feierwerk 24.05.2025 Jena (DE), Kuba 25.05.2025 Berlin (DE), Desertfest Berlin 05.06.2025 Gdańsk (PL), Mystic Festival
Elder is: Nick DiSalvo – Guitars, Vocals Mike Risberg – Guitars, Keys Jack Donovan – Bass Georg Edert – Drums
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 6th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
A lot happening in the Fuzz Sagrado camp at just this moment. Last week, the Brazil-based solo-outfit of Samsara Blues Experiment founding guitarist/vocalist Christian Peters, both released a comp of the project’s first two EPs, Strange Daze, and were announced as appearing in the US in early 2026 at Planet Desert Rock Weekend VI in Las Vegas. By my count, that’s Peters‘ first time in the States with a band since SBE came over in 2015 for a Psycho California and Austin Psych Fest. Fuzz Sagrado will likely have other shows around the fest appearance, as some international acts did for PDRW this year, and they’ve newly unveiled the lineup that will be playing any and all of the band’s gigs to be announced.
Members of Blackbox Massacre, Coogans Bluff, a four-piece incarnation — back to Samsara Blues Experiment‘s roots in that regard — and an intended mix of new material from the new band and some classics from the old, all make for an enticing proposition when it comes to ‘Fuzz Sagrado live.’ Of course, Samsara Blues Experiment was put to rest with 2020’s End of Forever (review here), though the years since have seen a few posthumous outings of live sets, demos and such. To wit, the latest collection under the band’s name, Time Wizardry, brings together material from their earliest self-released stuff and some others along the way. It also came out this past Friday, concurrent to Fuzz Sagrado‘s Strange Daze.
So, Samsara Blues Experiment, though not a band anymore, are still a presence here, and Fuzz Sagrado, with Peters steering, plans to acknowledge the legacy by playing those songs. That feels right, to be honest. Clearly there’s been some dispute about the name — Peters says below he can’t use the other one, and I have to think if he could he would if only for the ease of branding — but, frankly, Peters should be playing those songs if that’s what he wants to do. I’m not going to discount any former member of his band’s impact on that band, but nobody here is claiming to be that band, so it shouldn’t be a problem.
But, also being honest, if Peters had gotten to call this band a new version of Samsara Blues Experiment, I’d be looking forward to that too. Turns out the music is good whatever you want to call it. Don’t tell that to genre heads like me though.
From social media:
FUZZ SAGRADO – NEW LIVE BAND 💥
Simply because I can’t contain my own excitement any longer. The new FUZZ SAGRADO live band consists of a number of legends from the German Heavy Psych – scene …
With me are Steffen Schneider (formerly of SPACESHIP LANDING on additional guitar duty), Charlie Paschen (also drummer of COOGANS BLUFF) and young gun Raphael Nigbur (bass). All three also play as BLACKBOX MASSACRE (new album coming soon).
On a personal note: We already had this band in 2023 – but the last few years have brought some confusion. A proposed former band name can and will no longer be used. We will continue as FUZZ SAGRADO for now, being very aware of my own musical heritage and the wishes of so many fans.
In short, among new songs we will continue to play a few SBE songs too. In a way, this is the long awaited sequel and we are all very excited about it!
Thank you to ALL former band mates. I am not perfect, will never be – I hope one day everyone can understand it all from a relaxed perspective.
Thank you Lorrayne Castro for the picture, and good vibes!
And this is the point: We all deserve good things!
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 5th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
If you’re feeling like it hasn’t been that long since Coltaine‘s previous album, Forgotten Ways (review here), came out in Sept. 2024, you’re right. By the time Sept. 2025 gets here though and their next record, Brandung sees its release on Sept. 5 through Lay Bare Recordings, a year will have passed. Given the anti-genre-or-may-be-all-genre urgency of the prior LP’s expression, and how much Coltaine give the listener to dig through with their at-times-devastating post-sludge complexity, it’s reasonable to think they’d want to get back in the studio quickly. This ground ain’t gonna break itself.
I haven’t heard Brandung yet — September is four months off — but the band have summer fests including Hoflärm in Germany and a newly-announced release tour to coincide with the record’s arrival that also includes stops at a Lay Bare Fest being put on by their label at the venerated The Black Heart in London, and as well as other fests and a couple TBAs that I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re confirmations waiting to be announced. If you have a way to help though, be sure to offer.
More on the record when I hear it. I’ll go ahead and look forward to that while you peruse the following from socials:
‘Brandung’ Album Release Tour 2025. To celebrate the release of our second album Brandung, we’ll be hitting the road for a series of shows starting this September. But before the tour kicks off, you can already catch us at these festivals:
Festival Summer 2025:
07/06/2025 🇮🇹 Piacenza · Desert Fox Fest 02/08/2025 🇩🇪 Burgbrand Open Air 14/08/2025 🇩🇪 Hoflärm Festival
‘Brandung’ Album Release Tour 2025
02/09/2025 🇩🇪 Mannheim – Alter Open Air 03/09/2025 🇩🇪 Berlin · Tommy-Haus 04/09/2025 🇩🇰 Copenhagen · Lytgens Kro 05/09/2025 🇳🇴 Oslo · Blitz 06/09/2025 ⚡️ To be announced 07/09/2025 🇩🇪 Hamburg · Prinzenbar 08/09/2025 🇨🇿 Prague · Club 007 Strahov 09/09/2025 🇸🇰 Bratislava · Koncerty na Garážach 10/09/2025 🇭🇺 Budapest · Gólya 11/09/2025 🇸🇮 Ljubljana · Klub Gromka 12/09/2025 ⚡️ To be announced 13/09/2025 🇩🇪 Freiburg · ArTik 26/09/2025 🇧🇪 Ghent · Kinky Star 27/09/2025 🇬🇧 London · Lay Bare Fest · Black Heart 23/10/2025 🇩🇪 Oberhausen · Helvete 24/10/2025 🇩🇪 Ulm · Hemperium 25/10/2025 🇩🇪 Karlsruhe · Jubez 08/11/2025 🇩🇪 Nuremberg · Sonus Obscura Festival 14/11/2025 🇩🇪 Stuttgart · Juha West 15/11/2025 🇩🇪 Neunkirchen · Gloomaar Festival
Artwork by @missfelidaeillustration
‘Brandung’ will be released on September 5th via Lay Bare Recordings.
Coltaine: Julia Frasch – vocals Moritz Berg – guitar Benedikt Berg – bass Amin Bouzeghaia – drums
Posted in Reviews on April 15th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
I won’t keep you long here. Today is the last day of this Quarterly Review. It’ll return in July, if all goes according to my plans. I hope in the last seven days of posts you’ve been able to find a release, a band, a song, that’s hit you hard and made your day better. Ultimately that’s why we’re here.
No grand reflections — this is business-as-usual by now for me — but I’ll say that most of this QR was a pleasure to mine through and I’ve added a few releases to my notes for the Best of 2025 come December. If you have too, awesome. If not, there’s still one more chance.
Quarterly Review #61-70:
Daevar, Sub Rosa
While Sub Rosa still basks in the murky sound with which Köln-based doomers Daevar set forth not actually all that long ago — they’re barely an earth-year removed from their second LP, Amber Eyes (review here), and just two from their debut, 2023’s Delirious Rites (review here) — there’s an unquestionable sense of refinement to its procession. “Wishing Well” moves but isn’t rushed. Opener “Catcher in the Rye” feels expansive but is four minutes long. It goes like this. Through most of the 31-minute seven-songer, including the “Hey Bacchus” strum at the start of “Siren Song,” Daevar seem to be working to strip their approach to its most crucial elements, and when they arrive at the seven-minute finale “FDSMD,” there’s a purposeful shift to a more patient roll. But the flow within and between tracks is still very much an asset for Daevar as they take full ownership of their sound. This is not a minor moment for this band, and feels indicative of future direction. Something tells me it won’t be that long before we find out if it is.
The follow-up to Rainbows Are Free‘s impressive 2023 outing, Heavy Petal Music (review here), Silver and Gold is the Norman, Oklahoma, six-piece’s fifth album since 2010 and second through Ripple Music. With nine songs that foster psychedelic breadth and tonal largesse alike, the album still has room for frontman Brandon Kistler to lend due persona, and in pairing sharp-cornered progressive lead work on guitar with lower-frequency grooves, Rainbows Are Free feel ‘classic’ in a very modern way. They remain capable of being very, very heavy, as crescendos like “Sleep” and “Hide” reaffirm near the record’s middle, but emphasize aural diversity whether it’s the garage march of “Fadeaway,” the barer thrust of “Dirty” or “Runnin’ With a Friend of the Devil” earlier on, of which the reference is only part of the charm being displayed. Rarely does a band so obviously mature in their craft still sound so hungry to find new ideas in their music.
The pedigreed spacefaring trio Minerall — guitarist Marcel Cultrera (Speck), bassist/synthesist Dave “Sula Bassana” Schmidt (Sula Bassana, Zone Six, etc.), and drummer Tommy Handschick (Kombynat Robotron, Earthbong) — return with two more side-long jams on Strömung, captured at the same two-day 2023 session that produced their early-2024 debut, Bügeln (review here). If you find yourself clenching your stomach in the first half of “Strömung” (19:35) on side A, don’t forget to breathe, and don’t worry, opportunity to do so is coming as the three-piece deconstruct and rebuild the jam toward a fuzzy payoff, only to raise “Welle” (20:24) from its minimalist outset to what seems like the apex at the midpoint only to blow it out the airlock in the song’s back half. That must have been one hell of a 48 hours.
By the time its five minutes are up, “Resources 2.0” has taken its title word and turned it into an insistent, chunky, noise-rocking sneer, still adjacent to the chicanery-laced psych of the song’s earlier going, but a definite fuck-you to modernity, evoking ideas of exploitation of people, places and everything. Philadelphia duo Deathbird Earth — first names only: BJ (Dangerbird, Hulk Smash) and Dave (Psychic Teens, etc.) — offer three songs on Mission, which has the honesty to bill itself as a demo, and from “Resources 2.0” they move into the sub-two-minute “Mission 1.0,” more ambient and laced with samples. The only song without a version number in its title, “Dead Hands” finds the duo likewise indebted to Chrome and Nirvana for a burst-prone, keyboardier vision of gritty spacepunk, vocal bite and all, but honestly, Mission feels like the tip of an experimentalism only beginning to reveal its destructive tendencies. Looking forward to more.
Approaching the 20th anniversary of the band next year, now-more-upstate New York heavy rockers Thinning the Herd return after 12 years with Cull, their third album. Guitarist/vocalist Gavin Spielman in 2023 recruited drummer Rob Sefcik (Begotten, Kings Destroy, Electric Frankenstein, etc.), and as a trio-sounding duo with Spielman adding bass, they dig into 11 raw, DIY rockers that, as one makes their way through the opening title-track, “Monopolist” and “Heady Yeti” and “Burn Ban” — themes from not-in-the-city-anymore prevalent throughout, alongside weed, beer, life, getting screwed over, and so on — play out in fuzzbuzz-grooving succession. Two late instrumentals, “Electric Lizard of Gloom” and the lush, unplugged “Acustank,” provide a breather from the riffs and gruff vibes, the latter with a pickin’-on-doom kind of feel, but across the whole it’s striking how atmospheric Cull is while presenting itself as straightforward as possible.
Let The Edge of Oblivion stand for the righteousness of anti-trend doom. You know what I’m talking about. Not the friendly doom that’s out there weed-worshiping and making friends, but the crunching doom metal proffered by the likes of Cathedral and Saint Vitus. Doom that wore is Sabbathianism as a badge of honor all the more for the fact that, at the time they were doing it, it was so much against the status quo of cool. Phantom Druid‘s fourth album is similarly strident and sure of its approach, and yeah, if you want to say some of the chug in “The 5th Mystical Assignment” sounds like Sleep, I won’t argue. Sleep liked Sabbath too. But the crawl in “Realms of the Unreal” and the dirge in instrumental “The Silent Observer” tell it. This is doom that knows and believes in this form, and is strident and reverential in its making. That “Admiration of the Abyss” caps could hardly be more appropriate. Hail the new truth.
Some context may apply. Kodok is the third long-player from adventurous Cambridge, UK, heavy post-rock/metallers The Grey, as well as their first outing through Majestic Mountain Records, and though much of what the band has done to this point is instrumental and that’s still a big part of who they are as 11:45 opener/longest track (immediate points) “Painted Lady” readily demonstrates, there’s a clear-eyed partial divergence from the norm as guitarist Charlie Gration, bassist Andy Price and drummer Steve Moore welcome guests throughout like Grady Avenell, who adds post-hardcore scathe to “Sharpen the Knife” ahead of the crushing “CHVRCH,” also released as a single, or fattybassman and Ace Skunk Anasie, who appear on the duly textural “AFG,” which also rounds out with a dARKMODE remix. Not a typical release, maybe, but not not either as the band do more than haphazardly insert these guests into their songs; there is a full-length album flow from front to back here, and while they purposefully push limits, the underlying three-piece serve as the unifying factor for the material as perhaps they inevitably would.
With a forward lumber marked by rigorous crash and suitably dense tone, Sun Below‘s apparently-standalone 12-minute single Mammoth’s Tundra tells the story of a wooly mammoth being reborn — I think not through techbro genetic dickery, unlike that dire-wolf story that was going around last week — and laying waste to the ecosystem of the tundra, remaking the food change in its aggro image. Fair enough. The Toronto trio likely recorded “Mammoth’s Tundra” at the same Jan. 2023 sessions that produced their Sept. 2023 split, Inter Terra Solis (review here), and whether you’re here for the immersive groove that rises from the gradual outset, the shred emerging in the second half, or that last meme-ready return of the riff at the end, complete with final slowdown — what? you thought they’d leave you hanging? — they leave the Gods of Stone and Riff smiling. Worship via volume, distortion, and nod.
It’s been nine years since Montreal’s Tumbleweed Dealer released their third album, but as the fourth, Dark Green offers instrumentalist narrative and a range of outside contributions to expand the sound and maybe make up for lost time. Across 10 tracks and 39 minutes, bassist/guitarist Seb Painchaud, synthesist/producer Jean-Baptiste Joubaud and drummer Angelo Fata broaden their arrangements to include Mellotron, Hammond, Wurlitzer, Rhodes and other keys as well as what basically amounts to a horn section on several tracks, the first blares in “Becoming One with the Bayou” somewhat jarring but coming to make their own kind of sense there and in the subsequent “Dragged Across the Wetlands,” the sax in “Body of the Bog,” and so on. These elements seem to be built around the core performances of the trio, but the going is remarkably fluid despite the range, and though it seems counterintuitive to think of a band who might end a record with a song called “A Soul Made of Sludge” as being progressive and considered in their craft, that’s very clearly what’s happening here.
Electronic dub, pop, death metal, glitchy electronics, krautrock synth, malevolent distortion, some far-off falsetto and some throatgurgling crust — it can only be the always-busy anti-genre activist Collyn McCoy (Unida, High Priestess, Circle of Sighs, etc.) mashing together ideas and making it work. To wit, “Alkahest” (17:36) and “Witchchrist” (16:03) both engage in sound design and worldmaking, take on pop, industrial and metallic aspects, and are an album unto themselves, hypnotic and experimental, the latter marked by a darker underlying drone that lasts until the whole song dissipates. “Necrotic Prayer” (7:28) feels more like collage by the time it gets to its surprise-here’s-a-ripper-guitar-solo-over-that-circa-’92-industrial-beat, but it still has a groove, and “Plutonic” (8:30) moves through static drone and seen-on-TV sampling through death-techno (god I love death techno) to croon, churn out with a sci-fi overlord, and finish with piano and voice; a misdirected contemplative turn worthy of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. McCoy is a genius and the world will never be ready for these sounds. That’s as plain as I can say it.
Posted in Whathaveyou on April 11th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Progressive heavy rock masters Elder are on tour now celebrating the 10th anniversary of their 2015 third full-length, Lore (review here). A worthy cause, indeed. After this US run — they were in Brooklyn last week; my wife had a Board of Ed. meeting — they’ll do Spring fests and club dates in Europe. Their summer looks to be open thus far — a break would be well earned, but I wouldn’t put it past them to sneak in work on their next record if that’s actual downtime — but newly announced is a Fall run, also in Europe, with All Them Witches.
That’s a one-two bill of two of their generation’s best bands, and accordingly, I don’t need to sell you on it, so I won’t. All Them Witches also announced US dates with King Buffalo yesterday, which tells me to expect their next record sometime around the Fall. Fingers crossed, anyhow.
From the PR wire:
ELDER Announce European Tour Dates With ALL THEM WITCHES!
This year marks the 10th anniversary of “Lore”, the ground-breaking, third studio album released in 2015 on Stickman Records by progressive psych-rock spearheads ELDER. In support, the band is currently touring North America followed by Europe in May, including much-awaited festival appearances at such as Desertfest London, Berlin and Oslo, Sonic Whip and many more, playing the album in its entirety!
The band states: “Lore is turning 10 years old. This album marked a point of departure for Elder upon a path which the band is still walking now. For us, this is the record where the band came into its own as a unique voice in the heavy rock underground. As we approach our second decade as a band, we feel it’s appropriate to look back on this landmark for us and acknowledge it properly, which is why we’re doing a tour performing the entire album along with some other tracks from our earlier catalog; we’ll give this era of the band a proper celebration before turning our attention once again toward the future and the next album, currently being written.”
Furthermore, ELDER have just announced to join neo-psychedelic blues rock masters ALL THEM WITCHES on their House of Mirrors Tour in Europe this October, with many more headlining dates around the tour to be revealed soon! Visit https://beholdtheelder.com/tour/ for tickets & more concert info.
ELDER “Lore” 10th Anniversary Tour 2025:
11.04.2025 Columbus (OH), Ace Of Cups 12.04.2025 Chicago (IL), Reggies 13.04.2025 Detroit (MI), Sanctuary 14.04.2025 Buffalo (NY), Rec Room 15.04.2025 Toronto (ON), Axis 17.04.2025 Montreal (QC), Theatre Fairmount 18.04.2025 Hamden (CT), Space Ballroom 19.04.2025 Boston (MA), Middle East 08.05.2025 Hamburg (DE), Bahnhof Pauli 09.05.2025 Copenhagen (DK), A Colossal Weekend 10.05.2025 Oslo (NO), Desertfest Oslo 11.05.2025 Stockholm (SE), Hus 7 13.05.2025 Esch-Alzette (LU), Kulturfabrik 14.05.2025 Tourcoing (FR), Le Grand Mix 15.05.2025 Brussels (BE), Le Botanique 16.05.2025 London (UK), Desertfest London 17.05.2025 Nijmegen (NL), Sonic Whip Festival 18.05.2025 Savigny-Le-Temple (FR), Grand Sludge Fest 20.05.2025 Wiesbaden (DE), Schlachthof – Kesselhaus 21.05.2025 Lyon (FR), L’Epicerie Moderne 22.05.2025 Lucerne (CH), Sedel 23.05.2025 Munich (DE), Feierwerk 24.05.2025 Jena (DE), Kuba 25.05.2025 Berlin (DE), Desertfest Berlin 05.06.2025 Gdańsk (PL), Mystic Festival
With ALL THEM WITCHES: Oct 6: Glasgow, UK – The Garage Oct 7: Manchester, UK – Manchester Academy 2 Oct 8: Leeds, UK – Leeds Beckett Students’ Union Oct 9: London, UK – O2 Forum Kentish Town Oct 11: Paris, FR – Le Bataclan Oct 12: Brussels, BE – Ancienne Belgique Oct 14: Utrecht, NL – Tivoli/Vredenburg Oct 15: Tilburg, NL – 013 Poppodium Oct 17: Copenhagen, DK – Amager Bio Oct 19: Berlin, DE – Tempodrom Oct 20: Warsaw, PL – Progresja Oct 21: Prague, CZ – Roxy Oct 22: Vienna, AT – Gasometer Oct 23: Milan, IT – Alcatraz Oct 24: Berne, CH – Bierhübeli Oct 26: Barcelona, ES – Razzmatazz Oct 27: Madrid, ES – La Riviera
Elder is: Nick DiSalvo – Guitars, Vocals Mike Risberg – Guitars, Keys Jack Donovan – Bass Georg Edert – Drums
Posted in Reviews on April 10th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
A lot going on today, not the least of which is the Spring 2025 Quarterly Review passing the halfway mark. Normally this would’ve happened yesterday, but half of 70 records is 35 and unless I’ve got the math wrong that’s where we’re at here. It’s a decent time to check and see if there’s anything you’ve missed over the last couple days. You never know how something will hit you the next time.
The adventure continues…
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Messa, The Spin
Now signed to Metal Blade — which is about as weighty as endorsements get for anything heavy these days — Italy’s Messa emerge from the pack as cross-genre songwriters working at a level of mastery across their fourth album, The Spin, elevating riff-led songs with vocal melodicism and aesthetic flexibility. “Fire on the Roof” is a hook ready to tattoo itself to your brain, while “The Dress” dwells in its ambience before getting intense and deceptively technical — just because a band dooms out doesn’t mean they can’t play — ahead of the Iommi-circa-’80 solo’s payoff. It’s all very grand, very sweeping, very encompassing, very talented and expensive-sounding. “At Races” and “Reveal” postulate a single ‘Messa sound’ that someone more important than me will come up with a clever name for, and the band’s ascent of the last nine years will continue unabated as they’re heralded among the foremost stylistic innovators of their generation. You won’t be able to say they didn’t earn it.
Kansas-based heavy djent instrumentalists After Nations offer their fifth full-length, Surface | Essence, with a similar format to 2023’s The Endless Mountain (review here), and, fortunately, a similarly crushing ethic. Where the prior album explored Buddhist concepts, the band seem to have traded that for Hinduist themes, but the core approach remains in a mix of sounds churning and progressive. Meshuggah are a defining influence in the heavier material, but each ‘regular’ song (about four minutes) is offset by a shorter (about a minute) ambient piece of one sort or another, and so while Surface | Essence gives a familiar core impression, what the band add to that — including in short, Between the Buried and Me-ish quiet breaks like in “Yāti” and “Vīrya” — is their own. Not to harp on it, but the last record played out the same way and it worked there too. Eventually, one assumes, the two sides will bleed together and they’ll lay waste with that all their mathy interconnected atmospheric assault. As-is, the gigantism of their heaviest parts serves them well.
Taking its chiaroscuro thematic to a meta level, The Complicate Path to the Multiverse breaks its eight-song procession in half, with four heavy rockers up front followed by four acoustic-based cuts thereafter. It’s not a hard and fast rule — there’s still some funky wah in the penultimate “When it’s All Over,” for example — but it lets the Roman troupe give a sense of build as they make their way to “Cradle of Madness” in drawing the two sides of light and dark together. The lyrics do much of the heavier lifting in terms of the theme — that is, the heavier material isn’t overwhelmingly grim despite being the ‘darker’ side — but they let tonal crunch have its say in that regard as well, and side A brings to mind heavy rockers with a sense of progressivism like Astrosoniq while side B pays that off with a creative turn. If you don’t know what you’re getting going into it, the songwriting carries the day anyhow, and as laid back as the groove gets, there’s an urgency of expression underlying the delivery.
Likely no coincidence that London instrumentalist guitar/drum duo Bident — get it, bi-dent? two teeth? there are two of them in the band? ah forget it — launch their debut album, Blink, with “Psychological Raking.” That opener lives up to its billing in its movement between parts and sets up the overarching quirk and delight-in-throwing-a-twist that the subsequent eight tracks provide, shenanigans abound in “Calorina Leaper,” “Thhinking With a Moshcap On” and “Blink,” which renews the drum gallop at the end. With a noteworthy character of fuzz, Blink can accommodate the push of “Two-Note Pony” — which sure sounds like there’s bass on it — the nod in “Bovine Joni” and the sprint that takes hold in the second half of “That Sad,” and their use of the negative space where other instruments or vocals might be is likewise purposeful, but they don’t sound like they’re lacking in terms of arrangements thanks to the malleability of tone and tempo throughout. They operate in a familiar sphere, but there’s persona here that will come to fruition as they proceed.
Death-sludge and post-metallic lumber ooze forth from the five songs of Harvest of Ash‘s second full-length, Castaway, which keeps its atmospheric impulses in check through grounded riffing and basslines as the whole band takes straightforward nod and extreme metal methodologies and smashes them together in a grueling course like that of “Embracing.” Remember in like 1996 when a band like Skinlab or Pissing Razors could just make you feel like you needed to take a shower? There’s a bit of that happening on Castaway as well in the opening title-track or the nine-minute “Constellation” later on, what with its second-half murk and strident riff, but a turn to quieter contemplations or a flash of brighter tone, whatever it is that offsets the churn in a given song, gives breadth to all that misanthropic plodding and throaty gurgle. Accordingly, Harvest of Ash end up both aggressive and hypnotic. I’m not sure it is, at least entirely, but Castaway positions itself as post-metal, and if it is, it is its own interpretation of the style’s tropes.
Berlin’s Vlimmer — the solo-project of multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, label head and producer Alexander Leonard Donat — return on a not-surprising quick turnaround from late-’24’s full-length, Bodenhex (review here) with six new tracks that include a Super Furry Animals cover of “It’s Not the End of the World?” and quickly establish a goth-meets-new-wave electro dance melancholy in “Firmament” that gives over to the German-language “Ungleichgewicht,” residing stylistically somewhere between The Cure and krautrock experimentalism. Guitar comes forward in “Friedhofen,” but Donat keeps the mood consistent on Diskomfort where the album ranged more freely, and even as the title-track moves into its finishing wash, the bumout remains. And I don’t know if that’s an actual harpsichord on “Nachleben,” but it’s a reminder that the open arrangements are part of what keeps me coming back to Vlimmer, along with the fact that they don’t sound like anything else out there that I’ve heard, the music is unpredictable, and they take risks in craft.
When Duskhead posted “Two Heads” in December from their The Messenger four-songer EP, it was the first new music from the Netherlands-based rockers in a decade. Fair enough to call it a return, then, as the band — which features members culled from Tank86 and The Grand Astoria — unfurl a somewhat humble in everything but the music 15 minutes of new material. “My Guitar Will Save the Day” answers the Elder-ish vocal melody with a fervent Brant Bjork-style roll, while “Kill the Messenger” cuts the tempo for a more declarative feel and “Searchlights” takes that stomp and makes it swing to round out, some layering at the end feeling like it’s dropping hints of things to come, though one hesitates to predict momentum for a band who just got back after 11 years of silence. Still, if they’re going for it, there’s life in this material and ground to be explored from here. Concept proven. Back to work.
Plenty to hear in The Watcher‘s Cruz Del Sur-issued late-2024 debut Out of the Dark as the Boston unit — not to be confused with San Fran rockers The Watchers — unfurl the Trouble-and-Pentagram-informed take on traditionalist metal. The title-track opens and makes an energetic push while calling to mind ’80s metal in the hook, where “Strike Back” and the lead-heavy “Burning World” emphasize the metal running alongside the doom in their sound. Time for a big slowdown? You guessed it. They fall off the edge the world with “Exiled,” but rather than delve into epic Sabbathianism right then, they break into to the thrashier “The Revelator,” which only gets grittier as it goes. “Kill or Be Killed” and “The Final Hour” build on this vitality before the capper “Thy Blade, Thy Blood” saves its charge for the expected but still satisfying crescendo. Fans of Crypt Sermon and Early Moods will want to take particular note.
Each of the six inclusions on Weed Demon‘s cleverly-titled third long-player, The Doom Scroll, adds something to the mix, so while one might look at the front cover, the Columbus, Ohio, band’s moniker and general presentation and think they’re only basking in weed-worshipping dirt-riffed sludge, that’s not actually the case. Instead, “Acid Dungeon” starts off with dungeon synth foreboding before the instrumental “Tower of Smoke” lulls you into sludgenosis before “Coma Dose” brings deathlier vibes and, somewhere, a guest appearance from Shy Kennedy (ex-Horehound), “Roasting the Sacred Bones” strips back to Midwestern pummel circa 2002 in its stoned Rustbelt disaffection, “Dead Planet Blues” diverges for acoustics and the vinyl-only secret track “Willy the Pimp,” a Frank Zappa cover, closes. By the end of the record, Weed Demon are revealed as decidedly more complex than they seem to want to let on, but I suppose if you’re numbed out on whichever chemical derivative of THC it is that actually does anything, it’s all riffs one way or the other. You want THC-P, by the way. THC-A, the ‘a’ stands for “ain’t about shit.” I’m gonna guess Weed Demon know the difference.
The one-man solo-project of Jon Weisnewski (also of Sandrider, formerly of Akimbo), Nuclear Dudes released the rampaging full-length Boss Blades (review here) in 2023, glorious in both its extremity-fueled catharsis and its anti-genre fuckery. Weisnewski described the seven-song EP Compression Crimes 1 as “a synthwave album, probably,” and he might be right about that, but it’s definitely not just that. “Death at Burning Man” brings unruly techno until it lands in Mindless Self Indulgence pulsations, where “Tomb Crawler” surges near its end with metallic lashing. “Skyship” is so good at being electro-prog it’s almost obnoxious, and that too feels like the point as Weisnewski sees through creative impulses that are so much his own. Sleeper outfit, maybe. Never gonna be huge. But if you can find someone else making this kind of noise, you’re better at the internet than I am.
Good first day yesterday. Good second day today. I’ve been doing Quarterly Reviews for over a decade now, and I’ve kind of learned over time the kind of thing I should be writing about. It might be a record that has a ton of hype or one that has none, and it might be any number of styles — I also like to sneak some stuff in here that doesn’t ‘fit’ once in a while — but in my mind the standard is, “is this something I’ll want to have heard and/or written about later?”
For all the terrors of our age, the glut of good music coming out means there’s more than ever I want to write about, and in a weird way, I look forward to Quarterly Reviews as a way for me to dig in and get caught up a bit. I’ve already been blindsided this QR and it’s the second day. I call that a win.
Quarterly Review #11-20:
Kal-El, Astral Voyager Vol. 1
There are few acts the world over who so succintly summarize so much of the appeal of modern heavy rock. Norway’s Kal-El offer big riffs, big hooks, big melodies, songwriting, and still manage heavy-mellow vibes thanks to an ongoing cosmic thematic that brings desert rock methods to more ethereal places. Is “Cloud Walker” the best song they’ve yet written? It’s on the list for sure, but don’t discount nine-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “Astral Voyager” or the hey-that’s-a-Star-Trek-reference “Dilithium” with its dug-in low-distortion verses and the Captain‘s vocal outreach. All along, it’s never quite felt like Kal-El were reshaping heavy, but as time passes and they unveil Astral Voyager Vol. 1 with immediate promise of a follow-up, it’s curious how much Kal-El and notions of ‘peak genre’ align. Those of you who proselytize for riffs: even before you get to riding that groove in “Cosmic Sailor,” Kal-El are primed for ambassadorship.
North Carolinian sludgethrowers Bronco take their name from their bassist/vocalist, who also goes by Bronco, and who in the 2010s cut a tone-worshiping generational swath through the Southern wing of the style as a member of Toke, proffering heavy riffs, harsh-throat vocals, and a disaffection that can only be called classic. With eight songs rolling out over 45 minutes, Bronco‘s Bronco picks up the thread where Toke left off with pieces like “Ride Eternal,” which crawls, or the declarative riffing of “Legion” (eerie guest vocals included amid all the pummel), or the closer “TONS,” which I’m going to assume isn’t titled after the Italian sludge-band, though if those guys wanted to put out a song called “Bronco” on their next record, they’d be well within their rights. A remarkably cohesive debut for something that’s so loudly telling you to fuck yourself. These guys’ll be opening for High on Fire in no time.
Although one wouldn’t listen to Santiago, Chile’s Ocultum and be likely to have “refined” top the list of impressions given by the raw, rot-coated sludge of their third album and Heavy Psych Sounds debut, Buena Muerte, the grim-leaning atmosphere, charge later in the title-track, cultish presentation and the atmosphere emergent both from guitar-wail and yelling interlude “Fortunato’s Fortune” and from the material that surrounds, whether that’s the title-track or the just-under-12-minute “Last Weed on Earth.” The record finds the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Sebastián Bruna, bassist Pablo Cataldo and drummer Ricardo Robles dug in, stoned and malevolent. They’re not as over-the-top as many in cult rock, but one does get a sense of ceremony from “Last Weed on Earth” and subsequent capper “Emki’s Return” — the latter galloping in its first half and willfully devolved from there into avant noise — even if that’s more about the making of the songs than the performance of genre tropes.
The grunge crunch of “Running With Secrets” and the Cantrell-y acoustics of “Push” are barely the beginning of the story as regards Fidel A Go Go‘s meld of sounds, which ranges from the willfully desert rocking “Sandstorm” to the proggy “Lil Shit,” the transposed blues of “Rainy Days” and the penultimate “Psychedelicexistentialcrisisalidocious,” which is serene in its melody and troubling in the words, as one would hope, and while the moniker and the punny album title speak to shenanigans, the Brisbane four-piece offer a point of view both instrumentally and lyrically that is engaging and draws together the stylistic range. There’s little doubt left to whom “A Stench of Musk” and “Barely an Adversary” are about, but even that’s not the extent of the perspective resonant in these 11 songs. There’s enough fuzz here for desert heads, but Fidel A Go Go are broader in attitude and craft, and Diss Engaged makes a point of its artistic freedom.
Like their 2023 debut EP, Lady Cadaver, Tumble‘s second short offering, Lost in Light sees the trio of guitarist/vocalist Liam Deak, bassist Tarun Dawar and drummer Will Adams working with producer/engineer Ian Blurton (Ian Blurton’s Future Now, etc.) to hone and sharpen a classic, proto-metallic sound without seeing a dip in recording quality. As such, the five songs/20 minutes of Lost in Light are duly brash — looking at you, “Dead by Rumour” and the Radio Moscow-esque “The Less I Know” — but crisp in tone and execution. The mid-tempo “Sullen Slaves” picks up in its solo section later for a bit of boogie, and the slightly-slower metallic lurch of “Laid by Fear” sets up a contrast with the swinging closer “Wings of Gold” that makes the ending of the EP an absolute strut. They aren’t even asking a half-hour of your time, and the rewards are more than commensurate for getting down. They continue to be one to watch as they position themselves for a full-length debut in the next couple years.
Normally I might consider it a hindrance to have no clue what’s going on, but if you’ve never before encountered Italy/France semi-industrial duo Putan Club you might just find yourself in better position going into Filles d’Octobre as the avant garde radfem troupe unfurl a live set recorded at Portugal’s Amplifest, presumably in 2022. But if you don’t know it’s a live record, what’s coming musically, or that Filles d’Octobre is derived from their 2017 debut album, Filles de Mai, there’s a decent change your contextless self will be scrathing your head in wonder of just what’s going on with the bouncy lurch and maybe xylophone of “Filippino,” and that seems to suit Putan Club just fine. If you have to break something to remake it, Putan Club are set to the task of manifesting a rock and roll that is dangerous, new, unrepentantly socially critical, and ready to dance when you are. That they meet these significant ambitions head on shouldn’t be discounted. Not for everybody, but definitely for everybody who thinks they’ve heard it all.
The first live offering from Argentinian prog-heavy instrumentalists IAH follows behind the band’s most expansive studio LP to-date, 2023’s V (review here), and brings into emphasis the group’s dynamic. It’s not just about being able to make a part sound floaty or to make the part next to it crush, but the character of a piece like the 24-minute “Noboj pri Uaset” (which might be new) is as much about the journey undertaken in their builds and the smoothness of the shifts between parts. They dip back to their earlier going for “Sheut” at the start of the set and “Ourboros” and “Eclipsum” the latter of which closes, and the bass in “Sentado en el Borde de una Pregunta” is worth the price of admission alone, never mind as a complement to the extended progression of “Noboj pri Uaset,” which is something of the buried lede here. So be it. On stage or on record, IAH offer immersion unto themselves. A little more tonal edge as a result of the live recording doesn’t hurt that one bit.
Before the Dawn of Time is upwards of the seventh full-length from Swedish vintage-style heavy rockers Gin Lady, and in addition to seeing them make the jump from Kozmik Artifactz to Ripple Music, the sans-pretense 11-songer invents its own moment. It’s like the comedown era (from 1968-1974, roughly) happened, but happened differently. It’s another path to a heavy rock future. There’s ’70s vibes in “Tingens Sanna Natur” a-plenty, and if it’s boogie or push or hooky melodic wash you want, “Mulberry Bend” has you covered for that and then some, never mind the down-home strum of “Bliss on the Line” or the pastoral contemplation of “The Long Now,” as Gin Lady put a classy stamp of their own on classic aural ideologies, as what are no doubt hyperspecific keyboards make the production smooth and let “Ways to Cross the Sky” commune with Morricone while capper “You’re a Big Star” drops a melody that can really only be called “arena ready.” As it stands, it’ll probably go over killer at festivals across Europe.
Duly apocalyptic for being the band’s first full-length release since 2019, Adrift‘s fourth album, Dry Soil, elicits an overarching doom that makes its tonal claustrophobia all the more affecting. The long-running Madrid outfit offer six songs that veer between the contemplative and the caustic as throatrippers worthy of Enslaved add an element of the extreme to the post-metallic intensity of “Edge” and “Restart” in the record’s middle. There are heavy rock underpinnings — that is, somebody here still likes Sabbath — but Adrift are well at home in all the bludgeonry, and “Bonfire” finishes by tying black metal, sludge, noise and darkly thrashing metal together with a suitably severe ambience. Are they torching it at the end? Kind of, but just replace “it” with “everything” and you’ll have a better idea perhaps of where they’re coming from on the whole. But for regionalist discrimination, Adrift would’ve conquered Europe a long time ago.
Berlin trio Black Sadhu — guitarist/vocalist Max Lowry (also synth, effects), bassist Alex Glimm and drummer Martin Cederlund — employ atmosphere to a point of cinematics on their second full-length, Ashes of Aether, following up the post-doom wash of 2021 standalone single “Mindless Masses” with plays back and forth between full-heft nod and take-a-breather meanderings. This cuts momentum less than one might think as the keyboard and drone and sample of “Tumors of Light” lend experimentalist verve to “Descent,” the next of the nine-track outing’s more-complete-song songs, as the latter unfolds with a shine on the crash that continues to cut through the surrounding rumble as the procession unfurls. Patience, then. So long as you know the payoff is coming — and it is; looking at you, “Electric Death” — and don’t mind being stretched and contorted on a molecular level between here and there, you should be good to go.
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 31st, 2025 by JJ Koczan
I just got the new Grin album, Acid Gods, and though it’s only been 13 months since the band last released a full-length — that being Feb. 2024’s Hush (review here) — there’s an immediately apparent twist in approach as the committed-DIY partnered duo of Jan Oberg and Sabine Oberg move past the willfull rawness of their fourth LP toward a fuller interpretation of sludge in their fifth.
So just what the hell does “fuller” mean here? I’m listening to Acid Gods for the first time as I write this — opener “Black Dye” just ended, “Nocturno” hits a stride moving into its middle, etc. — and in addition to Jan easing on the harshness of his vocals ever so slightly and the tones and sounds growing more atmospheric. It’s not a stark change in direction upending their work to-date. They’re plenty forceful throughout and they cap with the two-minutes-each pairing of “Nebulas,” which is more psych, and “Heavy Dew,” which has more crunch, as if to emphasize where they’re at and what’s still at the core of their sound.
In addition to doubling as Earth Ship and that pandemic-era kindness they did as Slowshine, in addition to recording themselves at Hidden Planet Studio and releasing their own material through The Lasting Dose Records, which is also home to Daevar (whose new LP came out Friday, hoping to review), Caffeine and a growing roster of others, Grin also aren’t shy about getting out and touring, so you should probably expect European dates to come.
Meanwhile, I’m gonna go back and dig into the album, which seems like it’s going to offer plenty for the digging.
Here’s PR wire info:
GRIN – NEW ALBUM ALERT!
“Acid Gods” drops on May 30, 2025, via The Lasting Dose Records.
„With their continuously evolving sound, GRIN are a beacon of boundless creativity in the scene and “Acid Gods” is new testament to their artistry. On “Acid Gods” everything is just more. The intensity of the riffs, the boldness of the vocals, the heaviness of the bass and the detailed crunch of the production. Every GRIN album will have you wondering if this band can get any heavier (or better) and the answer is always YES.“ – R. Westerveld
Tracklisting: 1. Black Dye 2. Nocturno 3. Drag Me Down 4. Beneath The Altar 5. Crystals 6. Unshut 7. Slivers 8. Wild Eyes 9. Nebulas 10. Heavy Dew
All music written and performed by GRIN Recorded at HIDDEN PLANET STUDIO / Berlin Produced, mixed and mastered by J. Oberg
Drawings by Dawid M. Piprek Design & Layout by Caspar Orfgen (DAEVAR) 📸 @vrohdo47
07.10.25 Manchester (UK), Manchester Academy 2
