Day 1 of the Spring 2026 Quarterly Review starts now. I know you’ve had it on your calendar just like I’ve had it on mine, and I’ll just say that if you’re new to the process or don’t know what this thing is all about, that’s cool too. A Quarterly Review, or QR if I’m feeling saucy, is a review roundup I do every few months for however long, always with 10 releases covered per day. The bare minimum for a QR is 50, and sometimes that actually happens. More often these days, it’s more than a five-day run, and that’s true this time as well.

This Quarterly Review will go seven days and cover a total of 70 works from bands and artists all over the world. It’s always a little nervewracking to start one of these, but it’s a special kind of deluge of music for me and I’ve been looking forward to it. Accordingly, it’s time to get this show on the road, as my dear wife might say.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

The Cosmic Dead, Beyond the Beyond

Four one-word titles on what I read somewhere is The Cosmic Dead‘s 10th album since 2010? That’s not even ridiculous. In any case, Beyond the Beyond strikes as advertised — the Glasgow-based heavy cosmic rockers are indeed far, far out. The 16-minute longest-track “Further” opens (immediate points), and even though the last song is called “Aether” (it bookends at 12 minutes), they’re pretty ethereal across the board as Luigi Pasquini‘s synth and Calum Calderwood‘s effects-laden fiddle lead the way into an obscure, semi-Eastern-scaled modern psychedelic krautrock, Omar Aborida‘s guitar (he also plays bass, mixed, and did the cover art) running deep in wah in shorter second cut “Stronger” as Tommy Duffin‘s drums both ground the procession and help push — wait for it — further. The immersion factor is high, and when “Aurora” gives over to “Aether,” there is a sense of having now arrived at the place you’ve been going all along, the long drone intro seeing a jangly movement rise up and recede again before it’s done, righteously imperfect and expanded of mind. If you could do this kind of thing all the time maybe you’d have 10 albums too.

The Cosmic Dead website

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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SÖNUS, Planes of Torment

If you might hear opening cut “Pagan Woman” and think The Cult, SÖNUS drive the point home by covering “Phoenix” penultimate to the closing title-track of Planes of Torment, so yes. Elsewhere on the David Wachsman-led heavy rock/classic metal trio’s third LP, “Heart of Stone” touches on Danzig and the flute-inclusive “Scorpio” touches on Middle Eastern-influenced progressivism and “Sisyphus Stomp” enacts a bluesier course. The seven-song release is tied together by Wachsman‘s vocals and the apparently-at-least-mostly-live-recorded energy of the performances around them, and though the prevailing atmosphere even in the classic rocking “Saturation Driver” is moody, by the time they come around to the grandiosity of “Planes of Torment”‘s 10-minute sequence, the stage has been duly set for such a dramatic finish. They are no strangers to the perils of living between styles, but the songwriting remains firm and SÖNUS are sure in their purposes across Planes of Torment, which pushes them forward in sound and construction and continues to refine the persona, craft and intent behind the project.

SÖNUS website

SÖNUS on Bandcamp

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Uzio, Uzio

A hard-hitting Dec. 2025 self-released and self-titled full-length debut from this Richmond, Virginia, trio, Uzio‘s Uzio hits with force from the outset as they open up the groove in “And When it Doesn’t Break Your Fall” before giving burlier ’90s vibes in “Lantern Fly” — somewhere between C.O.C. and Ugly-era Life of Agony (see also “Wandering Eye”), with Chris Sundstrom‘s guitar and vocals leading the way with Ed Fierro on bass and Erik Larson (Thunderchief, ATP, Avail, etc.) drumming. They find a noteworthy fervency of chug in “Katabasis” and loose a “Hole in the Sky” of swing in “No One Sacred” before “Leeches” thrashes out and “Dissolve” throws big-riff elbows and “Dark Empath” caps with a more metallic crux, distant from the punk of “Familiars” earlier but subtly so with a continuity of structure throughout. One to watch if you feel like getting roughed up, as everybody does from time to time.

Uzio on Bandcamp

Uzio on Instagram

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Mount Palatine, Wormholy World

There is a strong meditative current built up around the apparent root jams of Finland’s Mount Palatine. The Helsinki outfit’s six-song/53-minute debut on Argonauta imprint Octopus Rising, Wormholy World is rife with texture and expanse as 10-minute opener “The Sands” casts a vast landscape of intertwining guitar lines and a slow march through the desert hinted at by its title. “Whispers of the Holy Land” grows more aggressive in its midsection, preceding a solidification of groove in the back end of the song that’s both satisfying and consistent in ambience with the opener. That crunch proves essential to “The Dreaming” and “Panther Eyes” as well, and the balance and blend of urgency and warmth keeps Wormholy World united but not staid in approach as their pilgrimage takes them through the outreach of lead guitar in “Ethereal” and into “Newborn Sun,” which closes out as less an arrival than a next departure point. So one hopes, anyhow. They’re not the first to work in this style, but there’s burgeoning perspective to be found here.

Mount Palatine website

Argonauta Records website

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Death of Manfish, Desert Cuttlefish

Smooth boogie alert as Perth, Australia’s Death of Manfish — who accrue weirdo points before you even get to the shufflefunk of “Sync” just based on the name — unfurl the five-track/16-minute Desert Cuttlefish with “Brunt,” a rollout that would make Brant Bjork smile and a hint of intent at things to come. “Sync” makes a rousing centerpiece to the short instrumental outing, which is furthers its outsiderism with “Manfish Folk 4” and “Manfish Folk 2,” the first of which is wistful with accordion sounds and the latter of which has acoustic guitar at its core but is more urbane, preceding the space-jammier finish in “Fritz.” So what you get is five instrumentalist pieces, each kind of operating in a different style, drawn together by rhythmic fluidity but more celebrating their differences than trying to convince you it’s all part of the same thing, which it is anyhow. Good fun, purposefully and effectively oddball, and backed up by chops and groove to spare. There’s more going on here than the 16 minutes imply, but the brevity of the format suits the showcase aspect of Death of Manfish‘s sound.

Death of Manfish on Bandcamp

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Ralph Penegun, Who the Fuck is Ralph Penegun?

Ralph Penegun ask and waste precious little time answering the operative question on their apparent debut, Who the Fuck is Ralph Penegun?, released in early January. The answer is they’re a band, not a person, and with the record, they offer a driving and aggressive heavy-hardcore punk sound. “Choose Your Poison” feels positively expansive at 3:54, and that’s as close as the Turin, Italy, unit come to expanse, as most of the album is given to the shove of cuts like “Epitaph” or “Working Class Idiot,” the latter of which follows the title-track intro and feels complemented by the head-down, fist-throwing “New Level Slave,” which closes, though those are hardly the only two on a sociopolitical bent. The earlier “Sickness” brings up tonal largesse and pays off its push with a nodder of a groove, and “Caught in a Trap” ends with a sample of Elvis Presley‘s “Suspicious Minds,” so there’s some deviation from the genre norm happening, but know that if you’re going to take it on, you should be ready to keep up. That’s who Ralph Penegun are.

Ralph Penegun on Bandcamp

Ralph Penegun on Instagram

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Winds of Neptune, Winds of Neptune

Longtime stoner rockers will recall Winds of Neptune bassist/vocalist Ross Westerbur from 500 Ft. of Pipe. He, guitarist Kevin Roberts (The Meatmen) and drummer Mike Alonso (Flogging Molly) foster an expansive take on classic heavy rock with Winds of Neptune‘s Small Stone-issued self-titled debut, bringing what began as a pandemic project to a place of embodying post-grunge heavy rock with an even deeper classic sense of reach. There’s some psychedelia to be had in the first half of “The Fitz,” where “Temporal Mutant” is more boogie, and the eight-song/hour-long album welcomes listners with a bright sensibility on “The Faun’s Rhyme,” but make no mistake, once they dig in, they stay dug. “La Cacciata” shimmies like Scorpions while “U.S.L.” gives breadth to grounded roll, but the real deal is the closing trilogy of “So Sayeth the Mouth of the Void” (9:09) “The Fitz” (9:02) and “Queen of Sumatra” (10:21), which are basically a record unto themselves. Bluesier Roadsaw-style heavy with just an edge of spaceblast? Ready for it.

Winds of Neptune on Instagram

Small Stone Records website

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Nero Kane, For the Love, the Death and the Poetry

Let’s pretend you were raised to believe in god. Doesn’t matter which one or denomination; any world-creating, all-powerful/wise/comforting/afterlife-bringing deity will do. Nero Kane‘s third (maybe fourth?) album, For the Love, the Death and the Poetry, hits like the moment you realized that god you were brought up to trust and put faith in isn’t real, and that out there in the void, there is neither guiding hand nor salvation. That is to say, it might make you feel empty and crushed, but it has the unmistakable ring of truth about it. The Italian songwriter makes use of empty space in the mix and darker neofolk mystique, working with producer Matt Bordin and collaborator Samantha Stella to craft a sound that is organic, mostly sad, indebted to Americana without being Americana, and encompassing in mood. The organ drones of “Land of Noting” are full and the strum and intertwining voices of “The World Heedless of Our Pain” feed into the melancholic ambience, and the closer “Until the Light of Heaven Comes” has the smack of ritual as it closes. That light is never coming.

Nero Kane website

Nero Kane on Bandcamp

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Giant Lungs, Praise the Laze

Can’t help but feel like Augsburg, Germany’s Giant Lungs are selling themselves short by calling their debut full-length Praise the Laze, particularly since there’s very little lazy about it in either craft or presentation. Taking influence from the likes of Lowrider, Truckfighters, and the shoegazier end of modern heavy melodymaking, in neither tempo nor tone are they lax, and, what, you’re gonna tell me that “Crab Riders” doesn’t move? The artwork is somewhat severe for the sound, which is fuzzier in its riffing than one might be led to believe and marked by the breathy vocal delivery, but the vibe is right on, and as they make their way toward the big-rolling 11-minute capper “Tourists,” they hone a depth and appeal that the finale effectively and purposefully encapsulates. I’m trying to figure out where “laze” comes in, unless they all quit their dayjobs to hang out and follow fuzzriffs, in which case, double kudos.

Giant Lungs on Bandcamp

Giant Lungs on Instagram

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Yeast Machine, Bad Milk

A creative and cohesive follow-up to the Tübingen-based five-piece’s debut, Sleaze, the 10-song/34-minute Bad Milk never stays in one place too long, but finds its path in thickened desert-style heavy songwriting, a strong current of Queens of the Stone Age present in the style of riffing early, though again, Yeast Machine find distinction in tone, as well as in their vocals. The acoustic-led (at least most of it) “Dust on the Radio” precedes the atmospheric heft of “Feeding Poison to the Spiders Was Never Really My Thing,” and the emotive wisp in the penultimate “Wobbly Wizard” puts me in mind of forgotten Eurodesert rockers Elvis Deluxe, and that’s a comparison I very much intend as a compliment to the song. They finish with largesse in “The Golden Cage,” but there too are mindful of the mood they’re fostering as they go. Bad Milk is my introduction to the band, and it is an intriguing one.

Yeast Machine website

Noisolution website

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Day two. Normally this is time for hubristic gibberish about how easy the QR will be, the overconfidence of one whose trees rarely appear as forests. But we persist anyhow, and today looks pretty good from where I’m sitting now, so despite the ‘Day 2 on a Monday’ weirdness, which I’m pretty sure makes no one other than myself even raise an eyebrow, things are rolling and one hopes will continue to be fluid. I wouldn’t say Day 1 came together easily, since it took me like two and a half days to get done, but neither was out unpleasant. Hoping for more of the same here, plus efficiency.

Quarterly Review #11-20:

Queens of the Stone Age, Alive in the Catacombs

Something of an identity crisis in Queens of the Stone Age perhaps that sees the long-running highest commercial export of desert rock shift from the cloying pop of their last two albums to a comparatively stripped down live recording in — you guessed it — catacombs, where apparently the acoustics are pretty sweet. Anybody remember when Tenacious D went into ‘the cave’ on the Tribute EP? No? Didn’t think so. Frontman Josh Homme, who carries the minimal arrangements on vocals largely with ease, and his ever-ace band filmed the whole thing; it’s all sepia, all very artsy, and they do “Kalopsia” and dip back 20 years to finish with “I Never Came” after “Suture Up Your Future,” which is the second inclusion by then from 2007’s Era Vulgaris. All told it’s five songs and 27 minutes, and whether you hear it as a cringe hyperindulgence of unaware self-parody or as an expression of human artistry in organic form surrounded by memento mori probably depends on how deep you run with the band. But they’re not hurting anybody either way.

Queens of the Stone Age website

Matador Records website

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Breath, Brahman

Between recording and then remixing/remastering their 2021 debut Primeval Transmissions (review here) and signing to Argonauta Records, Portland meditative duo Breath, comprised of Ian Caton and Steven O’Kelly, expanded the lineup with Lauren Hatch on keys and their second album, Brahman, brings Rob Wrong (Witch Mountain) into the fold on guitar as well as helming the recording. The sense across the eight songs/42 minutes is still of exploring the reaches of consciousness, very post-Om in the foundational basslines and dry vocals, but having Wrong rip out a solo in each break of “Awen” sure doesn’t hurt, and hearing the full band come together around the culmination of “Hy-Brasil,” keys, guitar, bass, drums all-in tonally, is emblematic of their expanding horizons. As for those, “Sages” pushes toward its own vision of psych rock in conversation with the opener, and “Cedars of Lebanon” demonstrates malleability and balance that one hopes portend more to come as the band continues to grow and gel.

Breath Linktr.ee

Argonauta Records website

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Johan Langquist The Castle, Johan Langquist The Castle

Kind of an awkward moniker grammatically for the solo-band fronted by original/once-again/maybe-erstwhile Candlemass vocalist Johan Langquist. Is it possessive? Is he The Castle? I don’t quite understand, but from the operatic complement of Emelie Lindquist‘s backing vocals on opener “Eye of Death” through the litany of compiled singles Johan Langquist The Castle dropped over the course of 2024, there’s no mistaking the classic nature of the doom. “Castle of My Dreams” flows keyboardier on balance, while “Where Are the Heroes” gives riffers shelter in its chug, while “Raw Energy” and “Revolution” toy with the balance between the two sides, with “Freedom” as a classic-metal epic and “Bird of Sadness” as the comedown epilogue. Langquist, absent decades between fronting the first Candlemass LP in 1986 and rejoining the band circa 2011, would seem to be making up for lost time, and the ideas he’s exploring here warrant the investigation. I’m curious where this leads, which I think I’m supposed to be, so right on.

Johan Langquist The Castle on Instagram

I Hate Records website

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Maliciouz, Tortoise

From Joshua Tree, California, Maliciouz is the solo-outfit of Michael Muckow, who handles guitar, bass and drums for the molasses-thick instrumentalist proceedings. Tortoise arrives beating you over the head with its tone and metaphor alike; eight songs and 58 minutes of lumbering density wrought with dug-in purpose, harnessing heaviness-of-place as riffs and often melancholic drone metal crash. It’s an art project, but without pretense of being anything other than it is, and Muckow — who makes a point of noting his age (67) in the press material — composes for flow and immersion as each slow march gives way to the next, culminating in the semi-acoustic “The End,” which is no less on-the-nose than calling the album Tortoise to start with. No grand reflections, no sweeping statement. Tortoise lets the riffs do the talking and they say plenty about the grit and expanse Muckow is trying to conjure. Be careful out there. He makes it easy to get lost.

Maliciouz on Bandcamp

Maliciouz on Instagram

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Steve Von Till, Alone in a World of Wounds

The former co-guitarist/vocalist of Neurosis has come a long way since his guy-and-guitar beginnings as a solo artist, and Alone in a World of Wounds reaps the textural fruit of Steve Von Till‘s willful artistic progression in a piece like the leadoff “The Corpse Road” or “Distance,” which caps side A fluidly with the only use of drums on the record, reminiscent of The Keening‘s awareness of sonic weight and atmospheric sidestep. The cello, synth and field recordings build out what would be minimalist arrangements without them and remain early-morning quiet, the piano on the spoken-word-topped “The Dawning of the Day (Insomnia)” and flirtations with lushness on “Horizons Undone” softly shaping the album’s world with the electronics of “Old Bent Pine” ahead of the guitar-based “River of No Return,” which closes with what feels like an updated take on Von Till‘s earlier woodsfolk craft, reminding that ‘heavy’ is just as much existential as it is aural.

Steve Von Till website

Neurot Recordings store

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Mrs Frighthouse, Solitude Over Control

Solitude Over Control is as much a confrontation as an album, and that’s very clearly the intention behind Glasgow’s Mrs Frighthouse for their Lay Bare-issued debut LP, Solitude Over Control. Its 11 songs foster a bleak gamut of industrial sounds, portraying dark and inflicted sexual violence as part of the band’s expression. Slaying rapists, then, and fair enough. Intertwining layers of vocals and experimentalist pieces like “Seagulls (Part 1)” give an avant-garde air to the crush of “DIY Exorcism” and the lurching, abrasive finish of “White Plaster Roses,” soprano vocals and electronic noise externalizing the unsettled in a way that can only really be thought of as ‘extreme’ in a musical sense. “My body has never been mine,” confess the lyrics of “Our Culture Without Autonomy” with horror-style keyboard behind them; there’s a show being put on here, but it’s visceral just the same, and the later “My Body is a Crime Scene” turns the accusation direct: “My body is a crime scene/He did this to me/My body is a crime scene/You did this to me” in a moment that lands powerfully unless you’re a fucking sociopath.

Mrs Frighthouse Linktr.ee

Lay Bare Recordings website

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Droid & I Am Low, Eroded Forms/Inertia

A joint release between Majestic Mountain and Copper Feast Records, Eroded Forms/Inertia presents as a double-EP split release between Melbourne, Australia, melodic heavy post-metallic rockers Droid, who dare toward aggression on “Reverence” and the sludgier shouts of “Ruin” after leading off with “Khaki” without giving away the plot such that the blastbeats of “Resonance” still hit as a surprise, and Sweden’s I Am Low, who answer the fullness of tone with careening on “Sweet M16” before the grunge melody of “Greed” makes that song a highlight, “Waves” flows with less emotional baggage and a subtle hook, and “Inertia” wraps as a landing point with duly vibrant crash. Grunge and a hairy kind of fuzz are shared between the bands, but each has their own purpose. I don’t know if it’s a release of convenience to make it a split, but it makes for an engaging showcase, and if you’ve never come across either of them, the best arguments for digging in are right there in the songs.

Droid Linktr.ee

I Am Low on Bandcamp

Copper Feast Records website

Majestic Mountain Records store

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Tar Pit, Scrying the Angel Gate

Portland five-piece doomly flamekeepers Tar Pit begin their second full-length (on Transylvanian) with the 10-minute three-parter “Dagon, Dark Lord Dwelling Beneath,” the longest inclusion (immediate points) at 10:15 and bookended with the title-cut at the record’s end. Between, from the more rocking aspects of “Coven Vespers” to the downtrodden roll of “Blessed King of Longing,” the five-piece remind of doom at the turn of the century, when ‘traditionalism’ in doom metal was something of a defiance against modernity instead of an aesthetic unto itself. More than 20 years, The Gates of Slumber, Reverend Bizarre, and what was then the Church of True Doom would seem to have evolved into Tar Pit‘s Eldritch Doom Syndicate, and that’s nothing to complain about as “Blue Light Cemetery” accounts for Candlemass and Cathedral after the dim-blues of “Jubilee” secures the band’s place in the heavy morose. If you were just getting into doom, this kind of thing might make you want to start a band, and yes, that’s a compliment.

Tar Pit website

Transylvanian Recordings on Bandcamp

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GRGL, Horror-Bloated Ouroboros

Dirt-coated riffing leads the way on GRGL‘s Horror-Bloated Ouroboros six-song EP, as Jake‘s guitar, Hal‘s bass and Nick‘s drumming in the first-names-only Salt Lake City trio align around a chug in the opening “Horror-Bloated Ouroboros (An Overview),” that, despite the dry-throated barks that top it, remains among the more accessible moments of the churning sludge-doom outfit’s 23-minute outing. To wit, “Born Again” and the even more gurgley (hey wait a minute!) “My Skeleton” takes roughly the same elemental formula and slows it the frick down, thereby becoming immediately more tortured. The overarching impression is unipolar — raw, heavy, miserable — and the vocals are part of that, but the dynamic between those first two songs is answered for in the uptick of pace that arrives with “My Pie Hole” and the angularity of the shorter instrumental “Absorption/Secretion,” while the plodding reprise “Born Again (Again)” closes so as to make sure everybody ultimately gets where they need to be, i.e., hammered into the ground. Eat dust shit sludge. Hard to get away from thinking of this as the true sound of our times. Maybe it’s the title.

GRGL on Bandcamp

GRGL on Instagram

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Grusom, III

It’s a clear and classic style across Grusom‘s aptly-titled third album, III, which arrives some seven years after they were last heard from with 2018’s II (review here), the band who’ve become a low-key staple of the Kozmik Artifactz roster demonstrating in no uncertain terms what’s gotten them there. Vintage-heavy heads will find plenty to dig in the organ-laced flow of “Shadow Crawler,” “Hell Maker,” the later “Fatal Romance” and the more open finale “Mortal Desire,” and while “Le Voyage” has many of the same aspects at work, it shows the Danish six-piece as flexible enough in their approach to convey a range of emotions, ditto the wistful Graveyard-y “Memories” and the interlude “Euphoria,” making sure that among the places III might take a given listener, there’s nothing to remove them from the procession carried along by the band.

Grusom website

Kozmik Artifactz store

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For being 11 years old, if you’d expect the self-recorded debut full-length from Glaswegian duo Lucid Sins to sound out of date, well, that was kind of the whole idea in the first place. Occultation runs all of 28 minutes and is comprised of six songs, one of which is a cover, so it’s probably fair to call it unassuming — as opposed to grandiose — as a first statement, and that becomes part of the personality of the outing.

It’s organic to a smell-dirt degree, and traditional in its approach to heavy rock, incorporating elements of British folk that the two-piece of Andreas Jönsson (guitar, lead vocals, keys, etc.), and Ruaraidh Sanachan (drums, backing vocals, bass, guitar, maybe more keys, etc.) would go on to flesh out over subsequent releases, and short enough to leave the listener feeling like they just listened to some lost private-press LP known only to the most diligent of cultist crate-hunters, while at the same time being unmistakably of its retroist moment. If you hear shades of earliest Kadavar, Graveyard, Witchcraft, and so on — the heavy ’10s picking up from the heavy ’70s — that’s a factor in the presentation here as well, production-wise and in terms of the structure of the songs.

But, mostly, Occultation is chasing its own ends, and the Britfolk aspects of their sound are a distinguishing feature even in this comparatively nascent state. Swinging second cut “Hidden in the Dark” has some of that vibe, as does “Reason for My Living,” but especially at the outset, the album is about movement. Lead track “The Witcher” (it was a book before it was a game before it was a tv series) has a sleek, classic-style shuffler of a groove that immediately makes itself familiar to the listener if it isn’t to start with, and a hook that speaks to the more modern impulse that, in terms of sequencing, takes care of business up front so the back end can party. I’ve called it a mullet sequence on many occasions. Here’s another, though it’s not like “Wasting Time,” their take on Medusa‘s “Black Wizard” and the subsequent closer “Reason for My Living” are so far out and distant from where they set out with “The Witcher.” I’ll gladly argue, however, they dig in deeper as they go, and on the most superficial level of consideration, I’ll note that “Reason for My Living” is the longest inclusion at 5:40.

At the time, there was a generational blossoming of sound in what became known as garage-doom. Raw, often cult or exploitation-leaning (not really in this case) songs with stripped-down structures and proto-metallic nod of the sort that Lucid Sins take up so naturally. The elephant in the room as regards “Wasting Time” or even some of the later reaches in “Hidden in the Dark” is Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, who would seem to be an influence in terms of the layered vocals, but that isn’t the extent either of what Lucid Sins get up to on the short album, but rather a piece of their subtly complicated sound made accessible through craft.

The fact that they did it DIY in terms of the recording is another distinguishing consideration, if mostly on paper, but it speaks to the sense of purpose behind the record and the component material. That they kept it comparatively brief as well feels like an aesthetic choice, and while I don’t know that it was and it may be that they just didn’t have or didn’t want to write another piece as filler, it becomes a part of the persona just the same. It’s a quick glimpse of another time or place, but too grounded in the songwriting to really be escapist or psychedelic, though there are certainly flashes of trippier takes, including the vocal arrangement that caps “Reason for My Living” and the quiet break in “Hidden in the Dark.” But a relative straightforwardness of intent doesn’t negate the progressive aspects of their sound either, and Lucid Sins are as likely to be found in the pastoral, maybe-Mellotron-infused flow in the back half of “Wasting Time” as they are doing an aural softshoe at the start of “The Witcher.”

Wherever the album goes, it maintains its character of tone and melody, and as one would expect, that draws a thread through the material, uniting it — not that, working with just 28 minutes of your busy day, Lucid Sins are in danger of veering too far off course. But this too is a strength that makes the production relevant, and Jönsson and Sanachan have continued to record Lucid Sins outings as time has gone on. Their exclamatory second album, Cursed! (review here), would arrive in 2021, issued like Occultation through Totem Cat Records, and a third LP, Dancing in the Dark (review here), followed on a notably quicker turnaround in 2023. Both are longer, cleaner in the recording, and have further developed the folk and progressive elements on display throughout Occultation, showcasing a growth that one dares to presume is ongoing in the band and greater ambition in terms of style, though if you want to take it all at its root, it’s still an individual perspective on genre, just a broader perspective in the first place.

This isn’t a band that’s ever been super-hyped so far as I know, but in my mind they’re an example of an act who came into making this first album with a definite idea of what they wanted to do, then learned from that and continued to move forward. Perhaps their goals have become more amorphous with time, or perhaps not — I don’t know them personally, so it’s hard to say — and from their point of view the trajectory has always been the same. In either case, Occultation marks a vivid outset, and for all its hyper-unpretentiousness, it stands apart from both the vintage stylizations of the era in which it landed and the crux of indie-style proto-doom for its intelligence, cohesion and poise. As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

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Okay. I didn’t close out last week, though by Friday morning I’d already long since started this post. The Pecan started school after Labor Day and it’s been mostly a wreck since. We’ve had a ton of meetings with the school, and I’m back and forth to that building three times a day minimum anyhow — that’s drop-off, lunchtime meds boost, and pickup — and they seem to be largely out of ideas and/or the will to try new things at out suggestion. In addition, a bunch of the I-think-eight evaluations we had done over the course of July/August for various hearing/seeing deficiencies have turned up relevant data, resulting in even more suggestions for how to support this kid in getting through her day.

Last Friday we had a call with her teacher, who was like, “She gets a three-minute break and then doesn’t want to do her work,” and the answer there is that then she’s not ready to be doing the work and don’t force it or she’ll melt down. What she needs there is likely what she’s telling you: a longer break and less demands on her. That’s a lot to ask of a young woman leading a class of 27 students, however, even when The Pecan has a para assigned to help her stay on task and regulated throughout her day. Bottom line, though, ‘her day’ as a thing that happens, isn’t working. She’s stressed, sad, and on-edge all the time. It is no way to live and certainly not the kind of experience of school or of fucking anything that I want her to have.

We’ve begun to consider advocating for out-of-district placement and I have the name of a volunteer lawyer to reach out to who will hopefully be able either to help us with that or point us in the direction of someone who can. The school she’s at did right a decade ago by my nephew, who’s deeper on the autism spectrum and will require assistance and care his whole life, but it was largely a different team at that point, and little I’ve seen over the last two years — apart from her relationship with her first-grade teacher last year, which was special in itself — has given me confidence they can or are willing to support her in the ways she needs throughout the day/week/year. Mostly they seem either to be out of ideas or just generally done with her, and that’s also sad. That’s not to say there aren’t also members of the team who care. We had a full-team bring-in on Wednesday, however, and the fact that I had to leave and actually take The Pecan home because she saw us there, burst in on the meeting, and then wouldn’t go back to class, says to me that they either can’t handle her or they’re finished trying.

There’s a school nearby that specializes in twice-exceptional kids — that is smart-but-complicated — and I don’t know how long a process that even is, but it seems worth it to me to get the ball rolling, even if just to pursue the idea of putting her in a smaller classroom, let alone whatever else a program like that might offer.

In any case, I gave her the day off today. She’s been invited to a birthday party this evening — the mom in question is friendly with The Patient Mrs. and it feels like that’s a factor since the kids aren’t in the same class this year, but I’ll take it however it comes — and is going to that at the same time I have a different familial obligation for the other side of the family (my sister’s husband’s sister’s kid kind of thing), so that will be the lead-in to our weekend, and hopefully we can find something fun and not-stressful that doesn’t cost $300 to do. I don’t think those things exist anymore either.

But hey, at least there’s one fewer willfully ignorant nazi motherfucker still walking the planet making it less safe for my family and families like mine. I’d call it a decent start, and I hope they find the person who did it only so I can spend the rest of my life praising their name.

If you’re not a fascist, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Next two weeks are slammed, but I’m prioritizing review-writing, so if there’s less news or three posts a day instead of four, I’m doing my best with the time and brainpower I have. I appreciate your understanding.

FRM. Heads up, Facebook is run by a bootlicking oligarch, there’s no Obelisk merch and I’m pretty sure the Radio stream is still broken. Nonetheless…

The Obelisk Collective on Facebook

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

 

Good morning and heavy riffs. Today is day 7 of the Quarterly Review. It’s already been a lot, but there are still 30 more releases to cover over the next three days, so I assure you at some point I’ll have that nervous breakdown that’s been ticking away in the back of my brain. A blast as always, which I mean both sincerely and sarcastically, somehow.

But when we’re done, 100 releases will have been covered, and I get a medal sent to me whenever that happens from the UN’s Stoner Rock Commission on Such Things, so I’ll look forward to that. In the meantime, we’re off.

Quarterly Review #61-70:

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Ufomammut, Hidden

Italian cosmic doomers Ufomammut celebrate their 25th anniversary in 2024, and as they always have, they do so by looking and moving forward. Hidden is the 10th LP in their catalog, the second to feature drummer Levre — who made his debut on 2022’s Fenice (review here) alongside bassist/vocalist Urlo and guitarist Poia (both also keyboards) — and it was preceded by last year’s Crookhead EP (review here), the 10-minute title-track of which is repurposed as the opener here. A singular, signature blend of heft and synth-based atmospherics, Ufomammut roll fluidly through the six-tracker check-in, and follow on from Fenice in sounding refreshed while digging into their core stylistic purposes. “Spidher” brings extra tonal crush around its open verse, and “Mausoleum” has plenty of that as well but is less condensed and hypnotic in its atmospheric midsection, Ufomammut paying attention to details while basking in an overarching largesse. The penultimate “Leeched” was the lead single for good reason, and the four-minute “Soulost” closes with a particularly psychedelic exploration of texture and drone with the drums keeping it moving. 25 years later and there’s still new things to discover. I hear the universe is like that.

Ufomammut website

Supernatural Cat website

Neurot Recordings website

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Insect Ark, Raw Blood Singing

Considering some of the places Dana Schechter has taken Insect Ark over the project’s to-date duration, most of Raw Blood Singing might at times feel daringly straightforward, but that’s hardly a detriment to the material itself. Songs like “The Hands” bring together rhythmic tension and melodic breadth, as soundscapes of drone, low end chug and the drumming of Tim Wyskida (also Khanate, Blind Idiot God) cast a morose, encompassing atmospheric vision. And rest assured, while “The Frozen Lake” lumbers through its seven minutes of depressive post-sludge — shades of The Book of Knots at their heaviest, but still darker — and “Psychological Jackal” grows likewise harsher and horrific, the experimentalist urge continues to resonate; the difference is it’s being set to serve the purposes of the songs themselves in “Youth Body Swayed” or “Cleaven Hearted,” which slogs like death-doom with a strum cutting through to replace vocals, whereas the outro “Ascension” highlights the noise on its own. It is a bleak, consuming course presented over Raw Blood Singing‘s 45 minutes, but there’s solace in the catharsis as well.

Insect Ark website

Debemur Murti Productions website

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Heath, Isaak’s Marble

Laced through with harmonica and organic vibes, Netherlands-based five-piece Heath make their full-length debut with the four extended tracks of Isaak’s Marble, reveling in duly expansive jams keyed for vibrancy and a live sound. They are somewhat the band-between as regards microgenres, with a style that can be traced on the opening title-cut to heavy ’70s funk-boogie-via-prog-rock, and the harmonica plays a role there before spacing out with echo over top of the psychedelia beginning of “Wondrous Wetlands.” The wetlands in question, incidentally, might just be the guitar tone, but that haze clears a bit as the band saunters into a light shuffle jam before the harder-hitting build into a crescendo that sounds unhinged but is in fact quite under control as it turns back to a softshoe-ready groove with organ, keys, harmonica, guitar all twisting around with the bass and drums. Sitar and vocal harmonies give the shorter-at-six-minutes “Strawberry Girl” a ’60s psych-pop sunshine, but the undercurrent is consistent with the two songs before as Heath highlight the shroomier side of their pastoralism, ahead of side B capper “Valley of the Sun” transitioning out of that momentary soundscape with clear-eyed guitar and flute leading to an angular progression grounded by snare and a guitar solo after the verse that leads the shift into the final build. They’re not done, of course, as they bring it all to a rousing end and some leftover noise; subdued in the actual-departing, but still resonant in momentum and potential. These guys might just be onto something.

Heath website

Suburban Records store

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The Cosmic Dead, Infinite Peaks

The Cosmic Dead, releasing through Heavy Psych Sounds, count Infinite Peaks as their ninth LP since 2011. I’ll take them at their word since between live offerings, splits, collections and whatnot, it’s hard sometimes to know what’s an album. Similarly, when immersed in the 23-minute cosmic sprawl of “Navigator #9,” it can become difficult to understand where you stop and the universe around you begins. Rising quickly to a steady, organ-inclusive roll, the Glaswegian instrumental psilocybinists conjure depth like few of their jam-prone ilk and remain entrancing as “Navigator #9” shifts into its more languid, less-consuming middle movement ahead of the resurgent finish. Over on side B, “Space Mountain” (20:02) is a bit more drastic in the ends it swaps between — a little noisier and faster up front, followed by a zazzy-jazzy push with fiddle and effects giving over to start-stop bass and due urgency in the drums complemented by fuzz like they just got in a room and this happened before the skronky apex and unearthly comedown resolve in a final stretch of drone. Ninth record or 15th, whatever. Their mastery of interstellar heavy exploration is palpable regardless of time, place or circumstance. Infinite Peaks glimpses at that dimensional makeup.

The Cosmic Dead website

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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The Watchers, Nyctophilia

Perhaps telegraphing some of their second long-player’s darker intentions in the cover art and the title Nyctophilia — a condition whereby you’re happier and more comfortable in darkness — if not the choice of Max Norman (Ozzy Osbourne, Death Angel, etc.) to produce, San Francisco’s The Watchers are nonetheless a heavy rock and roll band. What’s shifted in relation to their 2018 debut, Black Abyss (review here), is the angle of approach they take in getting there. What hasn’t changed is the strength of songwriting at their foundation or the hitting-all-their-marks professionalism of their execution, whether it’s Tim Narducci bringing a classic reach to the vocals of “Garden Tomb” or the precise muting in his and Jeremy Von Epp‘s guitars and Chris Lombardo‘s bass on “Haunt You When I’m Dead” and Nick Benigno‘s declarative kickdrum stomping through the shred of “They Have No God.” The material lands harder without giving up its capital-‘h’ Heavy, which is an accomplishment in itself, but The Watchers set a high standard last time out and Nyctophilia lives up to that while pursuing its own semi-divergent ends.

The Watchers on Facebook

Ripple Music website

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Juke Cove, Tempest

Leipzig’s Juke Cove follow a progressive course across eight songs and 44 minutes of Tempest, between nodding riffs of marked density and varying degrees of immediacy, whether it’s the might-just-turn-around-on-you “Hypnosis” early on or the shove with which the duly brief penultimate piece “Burst” takes off after the weighted crash of and ending stoner-rock janga-janga riff of “Glow” and precedes the also-massive “Xanadu” in the closing position, capping with a fuzzy solo because why not. From opener “The Path” into the bombast of “Hypnosis” and the look-what-we-can-make-riffs-do “Wait,” the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Mateusz Pietrzela, bassist/vocalist Dima Ogorodnov and drummer Maxim Balobin mine aural individualism from familiar-enough genre elements, shaping material of character that benefits from the scope wrought in tone and production. Much to its credit, Tempest feels unforced in speaking to various sides of its persona, and no matter where a given song might go — the watery finish of “Wait” or the space-blues drift that emerges out of psych-leaning noise rock on “Confined,” for example — Juke Cove steer with care and heart alike and are all the more able to bring their audience with them as a result. Very cool, and no, I’m not calling them pricks when I say that.

Juke Cove on Facebook

Juke Cove on Bandcamp

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Laurel Canyon, East Side EP

A little more than a year out from their impressive self-titled debut LP (review here), Philly three-piece Laurel Canyon — guitarist/bassist/vocalist Nicholas Gillespie, guitarist/vocalist Serg Cereja, drummer Dylan DePice — offer the East Side three-songer to follow-up on the weighted proto-grunge vibes therein. “East Side” itself, at two and a half minutes, is a little more punk in that as it aligns for a forward push in the chorus between its swaggering verses, while “Garden of Eden” is more directly Nirvana-schooled in making its well-crafted melody sound like something that just tumbled out of somebody’s mouth, pure happenstance, and “Untitled” gets more aggressive in its second half, topping a momentary slowdown/nod with shouts before they let it fall apart at the end. This procession takes place in under 10 minutes and by the time you feel like you’ve got a handle on it, they’re done, which is probably how it should be. East Side isn’t Laurel Canyon‘s first short release, and they’re clearly comfortable in the format, bolstering the in-your-face-itude of their style with a get-in-and-get-out ethic correspondingly righteous in its rawness.

Laurel Canyon on Facebook

Agitated Records website

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Tet, Tet

If you hadn’t yet come around to thinking of Poland among Europe’s prime underground hotspots, Tet offer their four-song/45-minute self-titled debut for your (re-)consideration. With its lyrics and titles in Polish, Tet draws on the modern heavy prog influence of Elder in some of the 12-minute opener/longest track (immediate points), “Srebro i antracyt,” but neither that nor “Dom w cieniu gruszy,” which follows, stays entirely in one place for the duration, and the lush melody that coincides with the unfolding of “Wiosna” is Tet‘s own in more than just language; that is to say, there’s more to distinguish them from their influences than the syllabic. Each inclusion adds complexity to the story their songs are telling, and as closer “Włóczykije” gradually moves from its dronescape by bringing in the drums unveiling the instrumentalist build already underway, Tet carve a niche for themselves in one of the continent’s most crowded scenes. I wonder if they’ve opened for Weedpecker. They could. Or Belzebong, for that matter. Either way, it will be worth looking out for how they expand on these ideas next time around.

Tet linktr.ee

Tet on Bandcamp

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Aidan Baker, Everything is Like Always Until it is Not

Aidan Baker, also of Nadja, aligns the eight pieces of what I think is still his newest outing — oh wait, nope; this came out in Feb. and in March he had an hour-long drone two-songer out; go figure/glad I checked — to represent the truism of the title Everything is Like Always Until it is Not, and arranges the tracks so that the earlier post-shoegaze in “Everything” or “Like” can be a preface for the more directly drone-based “It” “Is” later on. And yes, there are two songs called “Is.” Does it matter? Definitely not while Baker‘s evocations are actually being heard. Free-jazz drums — not generally known for a grounding effect — do some work in terms of giving all the float that surrounds them a terrestrial aspect, but if you know Baker‘s work either through his solo stuff, Nadja or sundry other collaborations, I probably don’t need to tell you that the 47 minutes of Everything is Like Always Until it is Not fall into the “not like always” category as a defining feature, whether it’s “Until” manifesting tonal heft in waves of static cut through by tom-to-snare-to-cymbal splashes or “Not” seeming unwilling to give itself over to its own flow. I imagine a certain restlessness is how Aidan Baker‘s music happens in the first place. You get smaller encapsulations of that here, if not more traditional accessibility.

Aidan Baker on Facebook

Cruel Nature Recordings on Bandcamp

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Trap Ratt, Tribus Rattus Mortuus

Based in the arguable capitol of the Doom Capitol region — Frederick, Maryland — the three-piece Trap Ratt arrive in superbly raw style with the four-song/33-minute Tribus Rattus Mortuus, the last of which, aptly-titled “IV,” features Tim Otis (High Noon Kahuna, Admiral Browning, etc.), who also mixed and mastered, guesting on noise while Charlie Chaplin’s soliloquy from 1940’s The Dictator takes the place of the tortured barebones shouts that accompany the plod of 13-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “The Sacred Skunk,” seemingly whenever they feel like it. That includes the chugging part before the feedback gets caustic near the song’s end, by the way. “Thieving From the Grieving” — which may or may not have been made up on the spot — repurposes Stooges-style riffing as the foundation for its own decay into noise, and if from anything I’ve said so far about the album you might expect “Take the Gun” to not be accordingly harsh, Trap Ratt have a word and eight minutes of disaffected exploration they’d like to share with you. It’s not every record you could say benefits aesthetically from being recorded live in the band’s rehearsal space, but yes, Tribus Rattus Mortuus most definitely does.

Trap Ratt on Facebook

Trap Ratt on Bandcamp

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This is deeply admirable work, especially as a first edition. Sword of Damocles is a new festival taking place Oct. 19, 2024, in Glasgow, Scotland. An all-dayer, also with a pre-show the night before, so it doesn’t seem impossible they might expand at some point, but you gotta get through the first one first.

To do so, the DIY-style fest has put together a seven-band lineup with six of the included acts — Yuri Gagarin, Wet Cactus, Maha Sohona, Five the Hierophant, The Lunar Effect and Troy the Band — making their Scottish debuts, while the seventh is headliner Mars Red Sky, who’ll perform with special guest Helen Ferguson (aka Queen of the Meadow) who was so much a part of what made their Dawn of the Dusk LP (review here) such a highlight late last year.

An immediate sense of curation, a breadth of styles covered, and a show that Scotland has never seen before, all in one package. The ambition is noteworthy, but even more, it looks like it’s going to be a great time for those who make it out. May it be the first of many to come:

Tickets: https://damoclesfest.com/tickets/

From the centre of Glasgow, SoD is bringing 7 of the best stoner/alt rock bands to your door, Saturday, October 19th.

Featuring an incredible line-up with Mars Red Sky (plus special guest Helen Ferguson of Queen of the Meadow) headlining the Saturday night, accompanied by Yuri Gagarin, Wet Cactus, Maha Sohona, Five The Hierophant, The Lunar Effect, and Troy The Band. Six of whom are performing in Scotland for the very first time, welcome to the Sword of Damocles.

Independently run, underground at heart, Sword of Damocles offers a new experience to the Glasgow music scene.

Featuring an array alternative acts, from stoner rock to avant-garde, we hope to offer a little something to everyone who’s in Glasgow, and is in to all things heavy!

Expect stoner, psych, and desert vibes as these incredible acts come to grace the stage at Glasgow’s iconic Classic Grand.

Mars Red Sky (excl. set)
Yuri Gagarin (SCO debut)
Wet Cactus (SCO debut – excl. set)
Maha Sohona (UK debut)
Five The Hierophant (SCO debut)
The Lunar Effect (SCO debut)
Troy The Band (SCO debut)

Prices:
1x Adult Ticket – £49 + payment fees
Ticket price on the door: TBD
(Pre-Show: Info coming soon)

Artwork credits: Gravelord Deathworks – Arts & Designs

https://www.facebook.com/swordofdamoclesfest/
https://www.instagram.com/damoclesfest/
https://damoclesfest.com/

I was pretty stoked last week when word came through that Glasgow’s The Cosmic Dead had signed to Heavy Psych Sounds for their next record, and at that point I didn’t even know the album announcement would be here. Turns out the LP-to-come is called Infinite Peaks, and it’s got at least one entire-side-consuming jam, from which the video-premiering-below “Space Mountain Part I: Desert Djilo” has been carved out as an initial single.

A longer-form modus isn’t new for The Cosmic Dead, for whom Infinite Peaks serves as their ninth full-length as noted by the PR wire below. The band’s most recent outing, 2021’s split with Giöbia, The Intergalactic Connection – Exploring The Sideral Remote Hyperspace (review here), also came out on Heavy Psych Sounds, so it’s not the first time the band and label have worked together, and by adding the Scottish space racers to their roster, the Italian imprint only further cements its position at the forefront of heavy consciousness within and beyond Europe’s borders.

And if I told you “Space Mountain Part I: Desert Djilo” was a scorcher, would you believe it? How could you not? The Cosmic Dead‘s contribution to the Giöbia split was the 19-minute “Crater Creator,” and it doesn’t take them long to nestle into a groove on the new single, with threads of cosmic synth coursing along with the central outward nod; vibes and tones heavy, aimed at the sun, launch’d. There’s a lot of space rocking this and that out there right now. What distinguishes The Cosmic Dead from the glut of chic cosmic whatnot is the low end. It’s where heavy lives, and where bass is an afterthought in so much psych as there’s barely room on stage with guitar pedal boards the size of neighborhoods, The Cosmic Dead have always been able to hone a sound with float as well as heft. They’re heavier.

That’s what I’m hearing in “Space Mountain Part I: Desert Dijlo,” anyhow, and five years after 2019’s Scottish Space Race (review here), I’m glad for the reminder of what I thought was so badass about these guys to start with. The track is six minutes long, so more than a teaser, but you can still expect to be left hanging as the segment of the longer jam cuts out. The band comments on the piece under the player below, where you’ll also find the ever-crucial preorder links.

V-i-b-e:

The Cosmic Dead, “Space Mountain Part I: Desert Djilo” video premiere

THE COSMIC DEAD – New album “Infinite Peaks” out April 12 on Heavy Psych Sounds

“Infinite Peaks” is the long awaited ninth full length album from tumultuous Glaswegian astral travellers The Cosmic Dead. The album features two extended incantations recorded and mixed at Glasgow’s 16 Ohm Recording Studio. About the new single: “‘Desert Djilo’ is the opening section of our 20-minute instrumental track ‘Space Mountain’, completely improvised and recorded live in the studio, it was in itself part of a larger jam. This is a jam within a jam, synth follows bass follows drums follows fiddle. The sound of the radioactive desert.”

ALBUM PRESALE: https://www.heavypsychsounds.com/

USA PRESALE: https://www.heavypsychsounds.com/shop-usa.htm

The Cosmic Dead is:
Omar Aborida – Bass, Guitars, Wah
Tommy Duffin – Drums, Wah
Calum Calderwood – Fiddle, Wah
Luigi Pasquini – Synthesizer, Wah

The Cosmic Dead on Facebook

The Cosmic Dead on Instagram

The Cosmic Dead on Bandcamp

The Cosmic Dead website

Heavy Psych Sounds website

Heavy Psych Sounds on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds on Instagram

Heavy Psych Sounds on Bandcamp

After releasing the expansive-of-title-and-sound split LP The Intergalactic Connection – Exploring The Sideral Remote Hyperspace (review here) in 2021 through Heavy Psych Sounds and partnering for that release with their now-labelmates in Italy’s Giöbia, Glasgow heavy psych explorers The Cosmic Dead have made it official with the same label for their next full-length. And I know there’s been a lot happening in space rock the last couple years with your King Gizzards and your Slifts and Pigsx7, etc., but it’s been a half-decade since The Cosmic Dead released their last LP, 2019’s Scottish Space Race (review here), so you might need a refresher on just how righteous their interstellar slop actually is. All good. I’m sure by the time the record shows up — April? late March? — the hype will have us all up to date.

The PR wire hurled this in the direction of my eyeballs a bit ago, and it seemed fitting to share. True to established methodology, Heavy Psych Sounds next week will follow this announcement with the album details and first single:

Heavy Psych Sounds to announce THE COSMIC DEAD signing for their upcoming new album !!!

We’re incredibly stoked to announce that the Glasgow space rock band THE COSMIC DEAD is coming back with a brand new album !!!

NEW ALBUM PRESALE + FIRST TRACK PREMIERE
January 24th

BIOGRAPHY

The Cosmic Dead are an amorphous blob of space rock energy hailing from Glasgow, Scotland. Their exploratory compositions often reach levels of sonic destruction through reflective repetition and visceral harmony.

The band has taken many forms since forming in 2010 and has been declared ‘The loudest psychedelic rock band on the planet.” by legendary compere Kozmik Ken. At the base of the current sonic obliteration team is a rhythm section of Tommy Duffin and Omar Aborida, a thunderous and cohesive unit which is then further propelled into the outer realms by Luigi Pasquini providing frantic italo synthesized electronics along with Calum Calderwood’s mind bending, sky-shattering fiddle acrobatics.

The Cosmic Dead is:
Omar Aborida – Bass, Guitars, Wah
Tommy Duffin – Drums, Wah
Calum Calderwood – Fiddle, Wah
Luigi Pasquini – Synthesizer, Wah

https://www.facebook.com/thecosmicdead/
https://www.instagram.com/the_cosmic_dead/
https://thecosmicdead.bandcamp.com/
http://cosmicdead.com/

heavypsychsoundsrecords.bandcamp.com
www.heavypsychsounds.com
https://www.facebook.com/HEAVYPSYCHSOUNDS/
https://www.instagram.com/heavypsychsounds_records/

Giöbia & The Cosmic Dead, The Intergalactic Connection – Exploring the Sideral Remote Hyperspace (2021)

Glasgow duo Lucid Sins — joined in the cause by a host of friends and collaborators — release their third album, Dancing in the Dark, this week through Totem Cat Records. Deeply informed by classic progressive rock, with more than a flash of Canterbury folk in “Sanctuary Stone” but a broad enough scope that when the two-piece of multi-instrumentalists Andreas Jönsson (lead vocals, guitar bass, organ, synth) and Ruaraidh Sanachan (backing vocals, drums, bass, recorder and so on) jam out with returning collaborator Stuart Coleman on sax at the end of closer “Catch the Wild,” indeed they seem to have done just that, but more to the point it’s not out of place. The record begins with “Jack of Diamonds” and within two minutes is basking in dappled sunshine through leaves of classic, organic melody.

Through the entirety of its 10 songs and 37 minutes — which you can and probably should hear premiering on the player below — Lucid Sins‘ Dancing in the Dark unfurls (sometimes not) subtle breadth and craft a sound that’s heavy at its root but that can grow expansive enough to account for the harpsichord of “In the Woods (The Drifter),” which follows the storytelling of “Jack of Diamonds” with an outright promotion of a naturalist ethos; the character of The Drifter is, you guessed it, in the woods. “Some call him crazy and some call him weird/But his is a life without burden or fear/So spare him your pity, for he carries no shame/And who is the lord of his own domain if not he who lives free as the wind and the rain?” And the lines in the fadeout, “In the woods/Life is good,” reinforce the message. Still light-touch and ’70s warm in tone, “The Dance” blends acoustic and electric guitar, leaving room for handclap flourish in its shuffle, lush vocals over top, and the party continues in “Take Me With You,” which brings Dunbarrow‘s Espen Anderson in for a duet and Coleman again on organ.

Shifts in arrangement and guests coming and going are part of the personality of Dancing in the Dark, but by no means are they the substance of it. The above-quoted lyrics from “In the Woods (The Drifter)” lay out a position and perspective against modernity, and the aesthetic follows through on that, but somehow Lucid Sins aren’t retro. Production might have something to do with that, but what they seem to envision across Dancing in the Dark is a malleable heavy folk, inherently progressive rather than consciously showy in terms of technique, and in “Take Me With You” they push about as far into rhythmic urgency as they’ll go, and it’s not so much that it’s faster than “The Dance” just before — “The Dance,” by the way, is the best gothic post-punk boogie I’ve ever heard from an ostensibly psychedelic folk-prog Scottish two-piece; admittedly not a lot of competition, and yes, that’s a compliment — which makes it exceptionally well positioned to lead into the soft guitar harmonies and all-in folk cultism of presumed side A capper “Sanctuary Stone.”

Multi-media artist and experimentalist Hanna Tuulikki contributes the first of two guest vocal spots to “Sanctuary Stone,” taking on the lead role with backing from Jönsson to mark Dancing in the Dark‘s turning point. On the most basic, superficial level, at this point the listener has had “The Dance,” and side B will bring “A Call in the Dark” to fulfill the title’s promise. While remaining consistent in tone — in other words, it’s still the same record — Lucid Sins lean into proto-doom through “A Call in the Dark” while nonetheless bouncing almost maddeningly through repetitions of “A call in the dark/A call in the darkness” like some woodland satyr about to cast a spell to make your face fall off.

A brooding, creeping riff matches the lyrical narrative, and the song almost seems to be teasing as it moves through the catchy-if-intentionally-disorienting hook. Though it has plenty of stops as it loops around, “A Call in the Dark” gives over to the organ melancholy and watery verse vocals of “The Toll,” a quiet dirge that rises in the chorus and recedes again from there. “The Toll” is the shortest cut on Dancing in the Dark at 2:55, and one can’t help but wonder if we’re meeting the same character from “In the Woods (The Drifter),” whose potential unceremonious end is marked by, yes, a bell, and the final lines, “He’s frozen and his eyes are turning blind/He starts to stumble and he falls/The final words that no one will recall/Now lying still without the strength to crawl.”

It’s not a minor jump from there to the handclaps in the second half of “From the Bough,” but side B centerpiece is a masterclass in how to sound angular without being inaccessible, proto-doom in form and progressive in construction. With shades of some of earlier Hexvessel‘s stately delivery and folkish base, organ or synth runs alongside the guitar and gives some melodic shimmer to the distortion, mixed for complement rather than contrast. When that song — which is kind of a dance, if we’re being honest — finishes, the penultimate “The Raven’s Eye” marks the return of Tuulikki, this time sharing a duet with Jönsson over a languid procession of contemplative heavy folk. With the relative blowout still to come in “Catch the Wild,” Lucid Sins can afford to really dig into “The Raven’s Eye,” and they seem to do just that, with what starts as a richly arranged waltz shifting toward chime-inclusive soothing psych-rock. They drop out for a last verse, Jönsson alone at first, then with Tuulikki and organ as they gently let go.

As they have been all along, the band remains clever, classy and thoughtful in “Catch the Wild,” setting out with an acoustic/electric guitar blend and cycles through medieval-ish intro twists before smoothing out and suggesting someone open a window. Like in “From the Bough,” there’s tension in the groove of “Catch the Wild” pulling the listener forward through the measures of the verse, and there’s a chorus that takes hold just once before they’re into the instrumental ending, sax and all, but the entire five-minute span (the longest inclusion here) is about the linear trajectory more than anything, and Lucid Sins seem to be finding their way back to the bit of swagger in “Jack of Diamonds” as they wrap “Catch the Wild.” Fitting somehow for the record to follow a full-circle trajectory as so much of it feels rounded at the edges and it derives the bulk of its heaviness not from tonal manipulation, but atmosphere, then mood, and yes, the lyrics throughout, which should be considered an essential facet of engaging the whole of Dancing in the Dark‘s almost counterintuitively vibrant realization. The album is gorgeous the way moss on wood can be art.

Please enjoy:

LUCID SINS “Dancing In The Dark” Out October 27th on Totem Cat Records

The story goes as follows… You stumble through the forest. Alone and far from home. All paths have returned you to this place. Lost in a world of green. Hidden in the dark. As the light fades you glimpse flickering flame and catch the scent of smoke. In a tiny clearing, shadows cast by a dying fire take human-esque forms. Leaning in for warmth, they share ten tales of hope and betrayal, magic and madness, love and death. Whispered words mingle with distant memories, and as the fire grows higher, your sense of self is scorched and burned. One by one now, the figures begin to dance and spin as occult psychedelic sounds drift through the trees. Caught in the maelstrom, suspended high in a swirling mesh of leaves and perception, you release your grip on space and time… On the forest floor, stirred by dawn, you try to make sense of the mist within your mind. To recall where you have been. To know who you once were. Around a glowing fire, deep in the woods, LUCID SINS are Dancing In The Dark… Will you dance with them?

TRACKLIST:
1. Jack Of Diamonds
2. In The Woods (The Drifter)
3. The Dance
4. Take Me With You
5. Sanctuary Stone
6. A Call In The Dark
7. The Toll
8. From The Bough
9. The Raven’s Eye
10. Catch The Wild

LUCID SINS on “Dancing in the Dark”
Andreas Jönsson – Vocals, guitars, bass, organ, synthesizer
Ruaraidh Sanachan – Drums, bass, percussion, organ, mellotron, recorder, backing vocals

with guests
Espen Andersen, Vocals (track 3)
Stuart Coleman, Hammond Organ (track 3)
Hanna Tuulikki, Vocals (tracks 5 & 9)
Alex Ward, Clarinet (track 10)
+++ Cover art by David V. D’Andrea

Lucid Sins, “Jack of Diamonds” official video

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