Posted in Radio on December 10th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Last episode was looking ahead to 2022. The one before that was looking back at 2020. That really just leaves 2021, huh? Well, here we are.
This I think is the third year I’ve done a ‘Some of the Best of the Year’ spacial on Gimme Metal, and at least the second year it’s been a two-parter. What can I say? I like a lot of music. And I think if you take the time to check out any of this stuff on the playlist, whether that’s by actually listening to the show (I hope) or just glancing through the playlist (I hope less), you might like it too.
This is only half, yes, but it’s still two hours of some of the best heavy stuff that came out this year. Should be plenty for one sitting, and the next episode — already turned in because of the impending holiday — should round this one out nicely. More to come. Then a whole new year.
Thanks for listening if you do.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at: http://gimmemetal.com.
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 12.10.21
Green Lung
Leaders of the Blind
Black Harvest
Monolord
I’ll Be Damned
Your Time to Shine
Greenleaf
Bury Me My Son
Echoes From a Mass
VT
Heavy Temple
The Maiden
Lupi Amoris
Maha Sohona
Leaves
Endless Searcher
Domkraft
Into Orbit
Seeds
Spelljammer
Among the Holy
Abyssal Trip
Samsara Blues Experiment
Massive Passive
End of Forever
IAH
Arce
Omines
Genghis Tron
Alone in the Heart of the Light
Dream Weapon
Spidergawd
Black Moon Rising
VI: At Rainbows End
Thunderchief
King of the Pleistocene
Synanthrope
Spaceslug
Follow This Land
Memorial
King Buffalo
Acheron
Acheron
Weedpecker
Fire Far Away
IV: The Stream of Forgotten Thoughts
VT
Temple Fang
Let it Go/When We Pray
Fang Temple
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is Dec. 24 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 26th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Holy shit.
I’m at a loss here. I recently posted about an Earthless tour saying I’d like to go an write a book about the experience, but Truckfighters, Greenleaf and Asteroid for 15 dates in Europe? Three Swedish bands who know each other as well as bands possibly could, with Asteroid having released through Truckfighters‘ label Fuzzorama Records and Greenleaf and Truckfighters having shared members in the past? Shit, I’d love to see this. I’d love to do the whole tour. I’ll fly myself over if I need to, I don’t even care. This is unreal.
Do you even understand what’s happening here? These are seasoned acts. None of them is undertaking this lightly, and aside from all three being killer on stage, they each bring something different in doing so. These shows are going to be incredible. God damn that’s a good tour. Sound of Liberation with the winning package. Whoever thought of this gets the prize.
This isn’t the last post I’m putting up today, but it’s the last one I’m writing and I think enough of this tour to post about it instead of properly closing out the week, so yeah.
From social media:
TOUR ANNOUNCEMENT: TRUCKFIGHTERS + GREENLEAF + ASTEROID
We’re stoked to announce this ABSOLUTE KILLER Swedish heavy rock package that will roll over Europe next Spring!
Okay folks, they really don’t need an introduction anymore…
For more than 20 years, the legendary fuzz kings Truckfighters from Örebro have been conquering the world with their outstanding heavy riffing (#128165#)
For their 2022 European tour, they have now invited some very special guests:
No other than the mighty Greenleaf are along for the ride and you all know what that means! 100% energetic live shows, delivered by riff master Tommi Holappa and his gang ⚡️
But that’s not all by any means! We’re stoked that the newly reformed Asteroid with their heavy, bluesy psych sound are on board as well (#128640#)
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 14th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Do you want to dream with me for a while, or will it be too much of a downer? It’s okay. This one hits particularly bittersweet for me. I haven’t been to every Høstsabbat, but I’ve been to enough to see how the Oslo-based festival has grown and is growing, and the thought of not being there in a few weeks for this one is that much harder to take as the lineup is revealed today. Imagine the existential payoff of being engulfed in Mars Red Sky‘s melodic wash on the first night and obliterated by Conan the second, or seeing Greenleaf bring the blues of their latest album to life.
I’ve never seen Causa Sui. I’ve never seen Øresund Space Collective. These are bands I think and write about all the time. And newcomers like Slomosa, Jointhugger, Superlynx, Saint Karloff and Kryptograf, Hymn and Kite and Suncraft — these are some of the best up and coming acts the Norwegian heavy underground has to offer. Imagine being able to say you’ve seen Besvärjelsen. The thought of this happening and my not being there makes me genuinely sad.
It’s just a Fredag and a Lørdag, right? I could go! It could happen. It’s not a huge festival. I’ll mask up, of course… After a year and a half of so much bullshit, fear, sadness, ongoing, don’t I have to eventually just accept that this is what life is now and some things are worth the risk? That this is something I need to be the person I am? Who am I without live music?
And there you go. Bitter because I’m forced to reconcile myself to not seeing it. Sweet because I know in my heart these are good, passionate people who make this happen and because I believe in what they do, and even if I can’t/won’t be there to see it, it’s happening. I’m sorry to make this one about me. Really it’s about awesome bands and a righteous bill. If you’re going, enjoy. Live.
Full Høstsabbat 2021 lineup — though I’m hearing rumors about a Torsdag to-do as well — follows here:
HØSTSABBAT 2021 FULL LINE-UP ANNOUNCEMENT
In the spirit of optimistic caution and with safety precautions at the forefront of our minds, we step forward in preparation for our stages to resonate with the heavy once again! The riffs will rise from our home at Kulturkirken Jakob and our Norwegian stage at Verkstedet on Friday the 8th and Saturday the 9th of October.
Today we proudly release the full lineup and hope you are as excited as we are to come together again in celebration of the riff and all things heavy.
Daypasses and program will be out on Friday. Until then, get your festival ticket asap!
They were kids having fun, and they sound like it. Before you dive into the stream above of Greenleaf‘s 2000 self-titled debut EP, you should note that the version above is the 2015 remaster by Karl Daniel Lidén, who played drums on the original 10″ and was also in Demon Cleaner at the time. His since-then production/mixing credits at his own Tri-Lamb Studios and elsewhere are myriad: Switchblade, Dozer, yes, Greenleaf, Yodok, Draconian, A Swarm of the Sun, Crippled Black Phoenix, Katatonia, Lowrider, on and on and on. While it was bassist BengtBäcke who originally engineered, one could hardly think of someone more appropriate to handle the updated version.
I put up a brag post to this effect the other day, but this record has been a holy grail release for me to own on vinyl; I said as much as recently as last month when I reviewed Greenleaf‘s new album, Echoes From a Mass (review here). It exists, you can chase it down, but only 500 copies of the original pressing were made through Molten Universe, and especially one in good shape is should-be-in-a-museum-under-glass-surrounded-by-lasers kind of stuff. I was gifted a copy by a good friend who told it was from his collection. I have my doubts, but welled up with tears just the same at the gesture of someone-who-actually-knows-you affection.
Timeline-wise, Greenleaf‘s Greenleaf is contemporary to Dozer‘s 2000 debut, In the Tail of a Comet (featured here; discussed here), which came out through Man’s Ruin Records, and considering the way founding guitarist and lone-remaining original member Tommi Holappa talked about the origins of the group in the video interview that went up earlier this week — I know, lots of Greenleaf around here lately; please address all complaints to my butt — where he said it was a side-project, kind of a toss-off without being a toss-off, a way to pay tribute to the heavy ’70s, that vibe comes across more in the five songs/24 minutes of the 10″ than even in the band’s subsequent 2001 debut album, Revolution Rock (discussed here).
With Holappa on guitar, Bäcke on bass, and Lidén drumming, vocals were handled by Lowrider‘s Peder Bergstrand and Dozer‘s own Fredrik Nordin, the latter joining Bergstrand on second cut “Sold My Lady (Out the Back of an Oldsmobile)” and fronting side B opener “Smell the Green” on his own. The influences of Sweden’s November and bands like Leaf Hound are rampant through the swinging “Kvinna Du Ger Mig Ingen Kärlek” (on which Bergstrand also plays guitar and bass) and the more brash opener “Get Your Love Outta Here,” which sounds like they wrote it on the spot even 21 years after the fact. And I wouldn’t doubt it. It’s a righteous jam and a two-minute speedster, and while I’m not about to defend the sexual politics of the record — dudes writin’ about ladies on side A, even in Swedish — side B, with “Smell the Green,” the seven-minute highlight “Land of Lincoln” and the half-psych, more Queens of the Stone Age than Budgie “Status: Hallucinogenic” show that even in their infancy, Greenleaf showed sonic aspirations beyond homage, or at very least a take of their own on what they were putting into their ears.
By their own admission, Greenleaf had no idea what they were setting in motion with this EP, but it says a lot about the nature of their work that even as their lineup would continue to shift for a decade and a half afterward, they maintained a consistent quality of songwriting and managed to push forward, gradually making their way toward prominence as more than a side-project, as the main vehicle for Holappa‘s songwriting, and as one of Swedish heavy’s foremost purveyors. It says something that listening to Greenleaf, one song into the next, produces that kind of vague nostalgia and carefree sense that the photo on the cover art has as well, though that picture could’ve been decades old at the time. Greenleaf, in trying to capture that spirit on their own, now convey that same feeling these decades later. Simpler times.
Greenleaf would operate opposite Dozer for the better part of 10 years after this. Their first LP showed up the same year as Dozer‘s second, and even as Dozer hit the road as a full-on touring band, Greenleaf produced albums on the semi-regular, with 2003’s Secret Alphabets (discussed here) following behind Revolution Rock and beginning an alliance with Small Stone Records that would see Greenleaf through their next three LPs: 2007’s Agents of Ahriman (vinyl reissue review here), 2012’s Nest of Vipers (review here) and 2014’s Trails and Passes (review here), the first two of which were fronted by Oskar Cedermalm of Truckfighters and the latter which introduced Arvid Hällagård on vocals.
Following in the significant footsteps of Bergstrand, Nordin, and Cedermalm is no easy task, but now with four records under his belt, Hällagård is the longest-tenured Greenleaf singer and has brought his own melodic stamp to the band. That’s not to take away from the others, of course, but from Trails and Passes on through 2016’s Rise Above the Meadow (review here), 2018’s Hear the Rivers (review here) and last month’s Echoes From a Mass, one can follow a clear progression of his collaboration with Holappa, and the two have as much chemistry together as, say, Holappa and Nordin ever did in Dozer to-date. Understand, that is not a statement I make lightly.
But of course, all of that would be years and adulthoods away from the band Greenleaf were when they made this EP, and I consider myself not only fortunate to have the vinyl and the chance to hear it as it was first pressed, but on a more basic level the excuse to revisit it in the context of who and what Greenleaf have become. These songs are loose, unbridled, charming in their way and crafted feeling almost in spite of themselves. It’s the kind of collection that, were you to hear it now for the first time, might sound like a band that had some potential to make cool things happen. Go figure.
As always, I hope you enjoy.
—
I’m apparently a mess today, which, you know, fair enough. Desertfest London doing their lineup announcement kind of threw me off — knew it was coming but forgot at the same time because I exist in a semi-conscious haze of permanent distraction brought on by lack of sleep, toddler motion and feeling overwhelmed by tasks basic and complex — and then the whole thing yesterday with Will Mecum from Karma to Burn having died and then not, because the internet and social media and someone said he was dead and then I’m still seeing posts that he’s dead but as of me writing this, 9:12AM on Friday, April 30, I have it on good authority he’s still on life support. But yeah, that whole thing took off — no thanks to me, I shared a RIP post from Instagram as well, soon enough took it down — and I feel like I’ve been thrown ever since.
My email is brutal. I have so much shit I need to get back to people on. I’m sorry if that’s you. I’ve been pretty burnt the last couple weeks. I guess I got thrown off this week too earlier on, because the Cool Thing that I said was gonna happen this past Monday did, but I was forbidden from discussing same. And the band’s rationale makes sense. I’ll post about it probably later in June, and that’s a while to sit on a Cool Thing, but in context it’s reasonable. I’m not about to be a dick and undercut someone’s promo plan because I’m excited about a thing. Professionalism is a joke, but that’s just being an asshole.
See? I just put up the Wax Mekanix questionnaire and got pulled away from sharing it by a new At the Gates single. This is my life.
Sounds pretty good.
I wonder if I can go shower and get back in time to put up the Severant premiere that needs posting at 10AM. Gives me about half an hour. I bet I can do it.
Made it, plenty of time. Not sure if that’s gonna make the ultimate difference one way or the other on my day, but it never hurts to get cleaned up. I’ve got a pretty decent nearly-every-day streak going, which is much better than where I was a year ago at this time when it was “if I get in the shower this kid is gonna stab me I better just sit on the couch and be afraid to leave the house.”
Whatever. I could go on. I won’t. New Gimme show at 5PM. Please listen. Please like the tracks. Tell them I’m good. Thanks.
Great and safe weekend. Hydrate. Watch your head. Stay safe. Get some time outside if you can. Back Monday.
Swedish heavy rockers Greenleaf released their eighth full-length, Echoes From a Mass (review here), on March 26 through Napalm Records. At 20 years removed from their debut album, 2001’s Revolution Rock (discussed here), it is only their second full-length in their career to be made with an entirely consistent lineup. With founding guitarist Tommi Holappa as ever at the core, Echoes From a Mass brings him together again with vocalist Arvid Hällagård and drummer Sebastian Olsson, who both arrived with 2014’s Trails and Passes (review here), and bassist Hans Frölich, who made his first appearance on 2018’s Hear the Rivers (review here). What started and was for more than its first decade a classic, heavy ’70s-style side-project for Holappa from his main outfit at the time, Dozer, has now been a working, touring band for seven years, consistent now in a way they’ve never been before.
Tommi Holappa, in addition to being one of his generation’s foremost heavy rock songwriters, has a smile that is infectious. We’ve spoken any number of times over the years between Dozer and Greenleaf, and it was a pleasure to do so again. He’s a nice guy, and when he talks about writing music for Greenleaf as an increasingly complex process of chasing what feels right, it’s easy to believe it. There has always been an organic sensibility to his craft. Not that the songs aren’t worked on — he talks about hammering out the tracks on Echoes From a Mass in jams with Olsson from which Frölich was excluded due to pandemic restrictions; former bassist/producer Bengt Bäcke stepped in for some — but that even for being thought through, they hold onto the inspired spark out of which they flourished.
I was particularly interested to talk about Greenleaf as a full, stable-lineup band with Holappa not only for the novelty, but for his being able to put material together with these players in mind, the trust that must inherently emerge from working together over a longer stretch of time. I don’t think Greenleaf‘s lineup — fluid as it’s been — has ever included outright strangers as opposed to friends and peers in other bands, up to and including Dozer, Lowrider, Truckfighters and others, but that’s different than being in the same band with someone for years, and you can hear that difference in the space Holappa gives Hällagård‘s vocal melodies on the opener “Tides” and other songs from the record. That trust is there. And also some jazz, apparently.
It was Friday afternoon after a long week, but great to chat just the same. I hope you enjoy and thanks for watching.
Greenleaf, Echoes From a Mass Interview with Tommi Holappa, April 23, 2021
Greenleaf‘s Echoes From a Mass is out now on Napalm Records. More info available at the links below.
Good stuff, almost entirely new. Hell, three of these records came out on the same day last Friday, so yeah, it’s fresh stuff one way or the other, even if I think I’ve played Genghis Tron three times now since they announced the release of their Dream Weaponalbum. And Yawning Sons definitely more than once too. Whatever. Call me repetitive. I like doom. “Repetitive” is a compliment to me.
The show opens and closes north of 10 minutes, but only hits that mark one other time, which is in “Fawn” by Body Void. Fair enough for the ultra-sludge charred-black morass that track elicits. With new King Buffalo, Somnuri and Domkraft singles and that hidden gem by Alastor tucked in ahead of Acid Mothers Temple-offshoot Mainliner’s massive jam at the end, this is a good god damn show. If I’d heard the new Heavy Temple in time to include that, I probably would have. Note to self for the next one.
Thanks for listening and/or reading. As always I hope you enjoy.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmemetal.com
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 04.02.21
Chamán
Concreto
Maleza
VT
Lammping
Other Shoe
New Jaws EP
Domkraft
Seeds
Seeds
King Buffalo
Hebetation
The Burden of Restlessness
DVNE
Court of the Matriarch
Etemen AEnka
Jess and the Ancient Ones
Summer Tripping Man
Vertigo
Greenleaf
Bury Me My Son
Echoes From a Mass
VT
Yawning Sons
Gravity Underwater
Sky Island
Genghis Tron
Great Mother
Dream Weapon
Arepo
Nonmaterial
Arepo
Body Void
Fawn
Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth
Somnuri
Beyond Your Last Breath
Nefarious Wave
Alastor
Death Cult
Onwards and Downwards
VT
Mainliner
Hibernator’s Dream
Dual Myths
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is April 16 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
Posted in Reviews on March 25th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Behold Greenleaf in their element. The Swedish heavy rockers date back to the turn of the century with their someday-I-will-own-that-vinyl self-titled EP, and Echoes From a Mass is their eighth album and third for Napalm Records. It arrives some 20 years on from their 2001 debut, Revolution Rock (discussed here), and finds them a more stable band than perhaps founding guitarist Tommi Holappa, also of Dozer, ever expected them to be.
Crucially, this is the fourth offering since Arvid Hällagård came aboard as vocalist, and like each of its predecessors, it finds the Holappa/Hällagård dynamic growing in exciting ways that are only bolstered by the rhythm section of bassist Hans Frölich and drummer Sebastian Olsson. Holappa has always been a songwriter as the catalogs of Greenleaf and Dozer both demonstrate, but with Echoes From a Mass even more than 2018’s Hear the Rivers (review here), the guitar parts sound as though they were constructed with the vocal accompaniment in mind.
From opener “Tides” onward through the 10-track/46-minute release, Greenleaf and longtime-associate/producer Karl Daniel Lidén create a world with these songs that is at once contemplative as the boldly-chosen leadoff is, and also decidedly blues-based, as cuts like “Good God I Better Run Away,” “Bury Me My Son” and “Hang On” demonstrate. Hear the Rivers and 2016’s Rise Above the Meadow (review here) before it seemed to reach for the same kind of spaciousness in sound — Hällagård‘s first record with the band, 2014’s Trails and Passes (review here), was somewhat more earthbound in its production — and Echoes From a Mass pushes further in inhabiting that space, with melodies floating in vocals echoes above even what in other contexts might be a driving straightforward riff on “Love Undone” or a hook conjured by lead guitar in early cut “Needle in My Eye.”
As one would expect, it’s not all atmospherics and moody sounds, with Olsson leading the way into “Good God I Better Run Away” and the title-line there making for one of the album’s most memorable impressions — there’s stiff competition — or (presumed) side B opener “A Hand of Might” with its classic and signature Holappa boogie, each riff cycle seeming to try to push the one before it out of its way en route to the listener. The tradeoffs throughout between loud and quiet, faster and subdued, etc., bring to light the chemistry in the band at this point.
This is Frölich‘s second long-player with Greenleaf, Olsson‘s fourth, and, as noted, Hällagård‘s fourth. For a band who throughout the last 20 years has seen players come and go, come and go and come and go, the solidified lineup feels like a novelty, but it’s one that allows for a new kind of development in the band’s sound and purpose. It’s not just about Holappa paying homage to classic ’70s rock anymore — in fact it hasn’t been for some time — but about what this whole group brings to the material.
To wit, the near-proggy rhythmic tension coinciding with the chug of “Needle in My Eye” and the thickened stomp in the penultimate “On Wings of Gold,” which suitably enough seems to take flight ahead of closer “What Have We Become,” that quieter, purposefully understated finish a key-laced showpiece for Hällagård and an occasion to which he every bit rises.
The same could be said of everyone throughout, and though one doesn’t necessarily go to ‘album number eight’ as a landmark happening in the tenure of a given group, Greenleaf engage a somewhat fraught emotional perspective — see titles like “Good God I Better Run Away,” “Needle in My Eye,” “Love Undone” and “Bury Me My Son” — early on and answer with a bit of hope in “Hang On” and “On Wings of Gold” before finally looking back to ask “What Have We Become” at the end. The answer to that question is, at least as far as the album is concerned, that Greenleaf have become a full band with an increasingly complex perspective and a greater depth of sound than they’ve ever had before.
Considering the places Greenleaf have gone stylistically in their time — still under an umbrella of heavy rock, but ever more characteristically so — that’s not saying nothing, but to hear even the downer sway in “Bury Me My Son” as it moves into the bell-of-the-ride hits that start the creeping-into-surge intro of “A Hand of Might,” the subtle turn of defeat to persistence isn’t lost, and the rush of that track helps the band build momentum as they move through Echoes From a Mass‘ second half, with “March on Higher Grounds” arriving not with fanfare but as a melodic highlight nonetheless. Its riff careens deceptively forward and and where one might expect Hällagård to belt it out in the hook à la “Bury Me My Son,” the decision otherwise speaks to how able Greenleaf are at this point to see the bigger picture of what the album needs at any given point.
The flow continues through “Hang On” and “On Wings of Gold” as one would hope, with the latter the longest track at 6:28 and the crescendo for the LP as a whole, bringing together the blues and the heft and the space and putting everything in its proper place without losing the emotional force behind it — that force only getting further prevalence on “What Have We Become,” which seems to call back to “Tides” even as it refuses the temptation to hit into the same kind of largesse. Or maybe that’s just me going back to the start and playing the record again.
Either way, as a fan of Greenleaf, Echoes From a Mass excites not only in the continued quality of its songwriting — Holappa is name-brand as far as that goes — but in the increasing cohesion of its performance and how the production seems to highlight the band simply melting together as a single unit. It is immersive and progressive in a way Greenleaf have not always sought to be, and that too stands as testament to just how special they are, to be trying and achieving new things and building on their past in this manner some 21 years on. One of 2021’s best in heavy rock, no question.
Back to normal, such as it is, for The Obelisk Show. I did two songs in two hours last time and though it seemed to go over decently well in the chat, it was less welcomed by the station itself. Fair. I’ll readily admit that two hours of psychedelic improv is not going to be everybody’s cup of tea, even in a setting that supports extreme fare as a central ethic. I’m lucky they decided to air it. I’m lucky they let me do another episode.
In here you’ll find some more rocky stuff like Greenleaf and Formula 400. I’ve yet to really dig into the new Domkraft, so I wanted to give that a roll, and then the show gets into some heavier industrial stuff. Godflesh were talked about here last week, and Trace Amount, but some Sanford Parker and Author & Punisher too. I’ve had an itch lately that stuff has helped scratch. After that and Yawning Sons is my little homage to the Live in the Mojave Desert stream series. Mountain Tamer are on that this weekend and it’s well worth your time to search out. Of course, Earthless started that series so they’ll end the show here. Only fitting.
Thanks for listening and/or reading.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmemetal.com
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 03.05.21
Greenleaf
Love Undone
Echoes From a Mass
Genghis Tron
Ritual Circle
Dream Weapon
Sunnata
A Million Lives
Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth
VT
Sonic Demon
Black Smoke
Vendetta
Formula 400
Messenger
Heathens
Domkraft
Dawn of Man
Seeds
Kauan
Raivo
Ice Fleet
VT
Godflesh
Avalanche Master Song
Godflesh
Author & Punisher
Ode to Bedlam
Beastland
Trace Amount ft. Body Stuff
Concrete Catacomb
Concrete Catacomb
Sanford Parker
Knuckle Crossing
Lash Back
VT
Yawning Sons
Cigarette Footsteps
Sky Island
Spirit Mother
Space Cadets
Cadets
Nebula
Let’s Get Lost
Holy Shit
Mountain Tamer
Black Noise
Psychosis Ritual
Brant Bjork
Stardust & Diamond Eyes
Brant Bjork
VT
Earthless
Violence of the Red Sea
From the Ages
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is March 19 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
