Posted in Whathaveyou on March 21st, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Watch out for when that trumpet hits in “Opal.” Nobody ever expects the funky trumpet and then — wham! Trumpetfunk all over the floor of the place. Good luck getting that stain out.
As the title suggests, Psychedelic Riffage From Under the Ground of Budapest Vol. 2 is the second installment to be issued in the series. It follows behind last week’s Psychedelic Riffage From Under the Ground of Budapest Vol. 1 (discussed here) and follows that outing’s three-track format, though as noted below, the two sets — two of four; stay tuned next week — have different personalities between them. “Hold” follows “Opal” and reminds with its synth line and jazzy rhythm of something Causa Sui might conjure, while “White Falcon” feels all safe in its drift until ending up surprisingly heavy in its push for something made up on the spot. Its last crashout after nearly 16 minutes of sprawl is a welcome relief of the tension they’ve built.
Like I said, there are two more sets on the way, but this is something to dig into while you make your way through next week en route to Vol. 3. See you there:
Psychedelic Riffage From Under the Ground of Budapest Vol. 2
Happened on 21 and 22 February: Parahobo organized a double gig for Great Rift and Black Flamingo at Riff Budapest, one of the last bastions of the real underground in Hungary.
Asked us to jam instead of a simple support band. So we set the gear up, played and recorded 4 sets in this 2 days. All sessions turned out nice, so we decided to release all of them.
From 14 of March we load a session up to bandcamp every week.
For the second session on friday, Miki joined to us also, we set up the trumpet and the moog, it took some time but came out beautifully irregular. Behind the drums we got Sanya from TPSRPRT/ Jaikogian, this session is more post-rock and kraut.
Tracklisting; 1. Opal 07:56 2. Hold 10:38 3. White Falcon 15:51
released March 21, 2025
Bass – Robert Kranitz Drums – Sandor Nagy Guitars – Akos Karancz and Bence Ambrus Trumpet and keys – Miklos Kerner Art – Parahobo
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 17th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Released this past Friday and recorded a scant four weeks ago, Psychedelic Riffage From Under the Ground of Budapest Vol. 1 marks the beginning of a four-part series of offerings to come from Psychedelic Source Records. The next one, as I understand it, will be out this Friday, with volumes three and four out March 28 and April 4, respectively. If you think a four-part weekly series of releases is a lot, you’re right, but as it’s all already been recorded and as this is by no means Psychedelic Source Records‘ first time at the dance of being prolific, there’s little doubt of their completing the set as they’ve laid it out.
This first volume, though, brings three extended jams carved out of longer excursions that brim with improvisational exploring, tripped-out effects sprawl and in the case of “Neddy Lows,” a whole shoegazey bluesy stretch before the second half lines up behind a more forward riff, the conversation between players seeming to be such that everybody knew where they were headed before actually knowing. As far as brand names you can trust, Psychedelic Source Records are second to none in my mind for the individual nature of the collective and the consistent quality of the jams they put out. Three more weeks of this, you say? See you on Friday.
Much to their credit, PSR is off most social media at this point, but the Bandcamp link lets you follow and that’s three recommended play here as far as I’m concerned. Like everything they put out, this is name-your-price. Recording details, links and the audio follow, taken from that same Bandcamp page:
Psychedelic Riffage From Under the Ground of Budapest Vol. 1
Happened on 21 and 22 February: Parahobo organized a double gig for Great Rift and Black Flamingo at Riff Budapest, one of the last bastions of the real underground in Hungary.
Asked us to jam instead of a simple support band. So we set the gear up, played and recorded 4 sets in this 2 days. All sessions turned out nice, so we decided to release all of them.
From 14 of march we’re gonna load a session up to Bandcamp every week.
The original plan for the first session was that Robi will play the Bass but they swapped with Strausz in the last min, so it became a secret :nepaal gig at the beginning. You’ll hear signs of it.
released March 14, 2025
Tracklisting: 1. Caves of Glass 11:15 2. Neddy Lows 18:55 3. The Fall of the Great Protanopian 12:18
Bass – David Strausz Drums – Krisztian Megyeri Guitars – Akos Karancz and Bence Ambrus Art – Parahobo
Posted in Reviews on December 12th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Day four of five for this snuck-in-before-the-end-of-the-year Quarterly Review, and I’m left wondering if maybe it won’t be worth booking another week for January or early February, and if that happens, is it still “quarterly” at that point if you do it like six times a year? ‘Bimonthly Quality Control Assessments’ coming soon! Alert your HR supervisors to tell your servers of any allergies.
No, not really.
I’ll figure out a way to sandwich more music into this site if it kills me. Which I guess it might. Whatever, let’s do this thing.
Quarterly Review #31-40
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Sergeant Thunderhoof, The Ghost of Badon Hill
A marked accomplishment in progressive heavy rock, The Ghost of Badon Hill is the fifth full-length from UK five-piece Sergeant Thunderhoof, who even without the element of surprise on their side — which is to say one is right to approach the 45-minute six-tracker with high expectations based on the band’s past work; their last LP was 2022’s This Sceptred Veil(review here) — rally around a folklore-born concept and deliver the to-date album of their career. From the first emergence of heft in “Badon” topped with Daniel Flitcroft soar-prone vocals, Sergeant Thunderhoof — guitarists Mark Sayer and Josh Gallop, bassist Jim Camp and drummer Darren Ashman, and the aforementioned Flitcroft — confidently execute their vision of a melodic riffprog scope. The songs have nuance and character, the narrative feels like it moves through the material, there are memorable hooks and grand atmospheric passages. It is by its very nature not without some indulgent aspects, but also a near-perfect incarnation of what one might ask it to be.
The stated objective of Swallow the Sun‘s Shining was for less misery, and fair enough as the Finnish death-doomers have been at it for about a quarter of a century now and that’s a long time to feel so resoundingly wretched, however relatably one does it. What does less-misery sound like? First of all, still kinda miserable. If you know Swallow the Sun, they are still definitely recognizable in pieces like “Innocence Was Long Forgotten,” “What I Have Become” and “MelancHoly,” but even the frontloading of these singles — don’t worry, from “Kold” and the ultra Type O Negative-style “November Dust” (get it?), to the combination of floating, dancing keyboard lines and drawn out guitars in the final reaches of the title-track, they’re not short on highlights — conveys the modernity brought into focus. Produced by Dan Lancaster (Bring Me the Horizon, A Day to Remember, Muse), the songs are in conversation with the current sphere of metal in a way that Swallow the Sun have never been, broadening the definition of what they do while retaining a focus on craft. They’re professionals.
Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, The Mind Like Fire Unbound
Where’s the intermittently-crushing sci-fi-concept death-stoner, you ask? Well, friend, Lincoln, Nebraska’s Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships would like to have a word, and on The Mind Like Fire Unbound, there’s a non-zero chance that word will come in the form of layered death metal growls and rasping throatripper screams representing an insectoid species about to tear more-melodically-voiced human colonizers to pieces. The 45-minute LP’s 14-minute opener “BUGS” that lays out this warning is followed by the harsh, cosmic-paranoia conjuration of “Dark Forest” before a pivot in 8:42 centerpiece “Infinite Inertia” — and yes, the structure of the tracks is purposeful; longest at the open and close with shorter pieces on either side of “Infinite Inertia” — takes the emotive cast of Pallbearer to an extrapolated psychedelic metalgaze, huge and broad and lumbering. Of course the contrast is swift in the two-minute “I Hate Space,” but where one expects more bludgeonry, the shortest inclusion stays clean vocally amid its uptempo, Torche-but-not-really push. Organ joins the march in the closing title-track (14:57), which gallops following its extended intro, doom-crashes to a crawl and returns to double-kick behind the encompassing last solo, rounding out with suitable showcase of breadth and intention.
Planet of Zeus make a striking return with their sixth album, Afterlife, basing their theme around mythologies current and past and accompanying that with a sound that’s both less brash than they were a few years back on 2019’s Faith in Physics (review here) and refined in the sharpness and efficiency of its songwriting. It’s a rocker, which is what one has come to expect from these Athens-based veterans. Afterlife builds momentum through desert-style rockers like “Baptized in His Death” and the hooky “No Ordinary Life” and “The Song You Misunderstand,” getting poppish in the stomp of “Bad Milk” only after the bluesy “Let’s Call it Even” and before the punkier “Letter to a Newborn,” going where it wants and leaving no mystery as to how it’s getting there because it doesn’t need to. One of the foremost Greek outfits of their generation, Planet of Zeus show up, tell you what they’re going to do, then do it and get out, still managing to leave behind some atmospheric resonance in “State of Non-Existence.” There’s audible, continued forward growth and kickass tunes. If that sounds pretty ideal, it is.
Cinematic in its portrayal, Le Premier Soleil de Jan Calet positions itself as cosmically minded, and manifests that in sometimes-minimal — effectively so, since it’s hypnotic — aural spaciousness, but Paris’ Human Teorema veer into Eastern-influenced scales amid their exploratory, otherworldly-on-purpose landscaping, and each planet on which they touch down, from “Onirico” (7:43) to “Studiis” (15:54) and “Spedizione” (23:20) is weirder than the last, shifting between these vast passages and jammier stretches still laced with synth. Each piece has its own procession and dynamic, and perhaps the shifts in intent are most prevalent within “Studiis,” but the closer is, on the balance, a banger as well, and there’s no interruption in flow once you’ve made the initial choice to go with Le Premier Soleil de Jan Calet. An instrumental approach allows Human Teorema to embody descriptive impressions that words couldn’t create, and when they decide to hit it hard, they’re heavy enough for the scale they’ve set. Won’t resonate universally (what does?), but worth meeting on its level.
There are two epics north of the 10-minute mark on Caged Wolves‘ maybe-debut LP, A Deserts Tale: “Lost in the Desert” (11:26) right after the intro “Dusk” and “Chaac” (10:46) right before the hopeful outro “Dawn.” The album runs a densely-packed 48 minutes through eight tracks total, and pieces like the distortion-drone-backed “Call of the Void,” the alt-prog rocking “Eleutheromania,” “Laguna,” which is like earlier Radiohead in that it goes somewhere on a linear build, and the spoken-word-over-noise interlude “The Lost Tale” aren’t exactly wanting for proportion, regardless of runtime. The bassline that opens “Call of the Void” alone would be enough to scatter orcs, but that still pales next to “Chaac,” which pushes further and deeper, topping with atmospheric screams and managing nonetheless to come out of the other side of that harsh payoff of some of the album’s most weighted slog in order to bookend and give the song the finish it deserves, completing it where many wouldn’t have been so thoughtful. This impression is writ large throughout and stands among the clearest cases for A Deserts Tale as the beginning of a longer-term development.
I find myself wanting to talk about how big Liminal Escapism sounds, but I don’t mean in terms of tonal proportion so much as the distances that seem to be encompassed by Greek progressive instrumentalists Anomalos Kosmos. With an influence from Grails and, let’s say, 50 years’ worth of prog rock composition (but definitely honoring the earlier end of that timeline), Anomalos Kosmos offer emotional evocation in pieces that feel compact on either side of six or seven minutes, taking the root jams and building them into structures that still come across as a journey. The classy soloing in “Me Orizeis” and synthy shimmer of “Parapatao,” the rumble beneath the crescendo of “Kitonas” and all of that gosh darn flow in “Flow” speak to a songwriting process that is aware of its audience but feels no need to talk down, musically speaking, to feed notions of accessibility. Instead, the immersion and energetic drumming of “Teledos” and the way closer “Cigu” rallies around pastoral fuzz invite the listener to come along on this apparently lightspeed voyage — thankfully not tempo-wise — and allow room for the person hearing these sounds to cast their own interpretations thereof.
One could not hope to fully encapsulate an impression here of nearly three and a half hours of sometimes-improv psych-drone, and I refuse to feel bad for not trying. Instead, I’ll tell you that Grand Fractal Orchestra — the Psychedelic Source Records 3CD edition of which has already sold out — finds Budapest-based guitarist Ákos Karancz deeply engaged in the unfolding sounds here. Layering effects, collaborating with others from the informal PSR collective like zitherist Márton Havlik or singer Krisztina Benus, and so on, Karancz constructs each piece in a way that feels both steered in a direction and organic to where the music wants to go. “Ore Genesis” gets a little frantic around the middle but finds its chill, “Human Habitat” is duly foreboding, and the two-part, 49-minute-total capper “Transforming Time to Space” is beautiful and meditative, like staring at a fountain with your ears. It goes without saying not everybody has the time or the attention span to sit with a release like this, but if you take it one track at a time for the next four years or so, there’s worlds enough in these songs that they’ll probably just keep sinking in. And if Karancz puts outs like five new albums in that time too, so much the better.
It probably goes without saying — at least it should — that while the classic folk fingerplucking of “Whispering Waters” and the Americana-busy “Laurel Creek Blues” give a sweet introduction to Blake Hornsby‘s A Village of Many Springs, inevitably it’s the 23-minute experimentalist spread of the finale, “Bury My Soul in the Linville River,” that’s going to be a focal point for many listeners, and fair enough. The earthbound-cosmic feel of that piece, its devolution into Lennon-circa-1968 tape noise and concluding drone, aren’t at all without preface. A Village of Many Springs gets weirder as it goes, with the eight-minute “Cathedral Falls” building over its time into a payoff of seemingly on-guitar violence, and the subsequent “O How the Water Flows” nestling into a sweet spot between Appalachian nostalgia and foreboding twang. There’s percussion and manipulation of noise later, too, but even in its repetition, “O How the Water Flows” continues Hornsby‘s trajectory. For what’s apparently an ode to water in the region surrounding Hornsby‘s home in Asheville, North Carolina, that it feels fluid should be no surprise, but by no means does one need to have visited Laurel Creek to appreciate the blues Hornsby conjures for them.
With a sensibility in some of the synth of “Hacamat” born of space rock, Congulus have no trouble moving from that to the 1990s-style alt-rock saunter of “Diri Bir Nefes,” furthering the momentum already on the Istanbul-based instrumentalist trio’s side after opener “İskeletin Düğün Halayı” before “Senin Sırlarının Yenilmez Gücünü Gördüm” spaces out its solo over scales out of Turkish folk and “Park” marries together the divergent chugs of Judas Priest and Meshuggah, there’s plenty of adventure to be had on Göçebe. It’s the band’s second full-length behind 2019’s Bozkır — they’ve had short releases between — and it moves from “Park” into the push of “Zarzaram” and “Vordonisi” with efficiency that’s only deceptive because there’s so much stylistic range, letting “Ulak” have its open sway and still bash away for a moment or two before “Sonunda Ah Çekeriz Derinden” closes by tying space rock, Mediterranean traditionalism and modern boogie together in one last jam before consigning the listener back to the harsher, decidedly less utopian vibes of reality.
Posted in Reviews on October 11th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I got a note from the contact form a bit ago in my email, which happens enough that it’s not really news, except that it wasn’t addressed to me. That happens sometimes too. A band has a form letter they send out with info — it’s not the most personal touch, but has a purpose and doesn’t preclude following-up individually — or just wants to say the same thing to however many outlets. Fair game. This was specifically addressed to somebody else. And it kind of ends with the band saying to send a donation link, like, “Wink wink we donate and you post our stuff.”
Well shit. You mean I coulda been making fat stacks off these stoner bands all the while? Living in my dream house with C.O.C. on the outdoor speakers just by exploiting a couple acts trying to get their riffs heard? Well I’ll be damned. Yeah man, here’s my donation link. Daddy needs a new pair of orthopedic flip-flops. I’ma never pay taxes again.
Life, sometimes.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
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Alunah, Fever Dream
The seventh full-length from UK outfit Alunah, Fever Dream, will be immediately noteworthy for being the band’s last (though one never knows) with vocalist Siân Greenaway fronting the band, presiding over an era of transition when they had to find a new identity for themselves. Fever Dream is the third Alunah LP with Greenaway, and its nine songs show plainly how far the band has come in the six-plus years of her tenure. “Never Too Late” kicks off with both feet at the intersection of heavy rock and classic metal, with a hook besides, and “Trickster of Time” follows up with boogie and flute, because you’re special and deserve nice things. The four-piece as they are here — Greenaway on vocals (and flute), guitarist Matt Noble, bassist Dan Burchmore and founding drummer Jake Mason — are able to bring some drama in “Fever Dream,” to imagine lone-guitar metal Thin Lizzy in the solo of the swaggering “Hazy Jane,” go from pastoral to crushing in “Celestial” and touch on prog in “The Odyssey.” The finale “I’ve Paid the Price” tips into piano grandiosity, but by the time they get there, it feels earned. A worthy culmination for this version of this band.
Swiss heavy post-hardcore unit Coilguns‘ fourth LP and the first in five years, though they’ve had EPs and splits in that time, Odd Love offers 11 songs across an adventurous 48 minutes, alternately raw or lush, hitting hard with a slamming impact or careening or twisting around, mathy and angular. In “Generic Skincare,” it’s both and a jet-engine riff to boot. Atmosphere comes to the fore on “Caravel,” the early going of “Featherweight” and the later “The Wind to Wash the Pain,” but even the most straight-ahead moments of charge have some richer context around them, whether that’s the monstrous tension and release of capper “Bunker Vaults” or, well, the monstrous tension and release of “Black Chyme” earlier on. It’s not the kind of thing I always reach for, but Coilguns make post-hardcore disaffection sound like a good time, with intensity and spaciousness interwoven in their style and a vicious streak that comes out on the regular. Four records deep, the band know what they’re about but are still exploring.
Subconscious Awakening is Robot God‘s second album of 2024 and works in a similar two-sides/four-songs structure as the preceding Portal Within, released this past Spring, where each half of the record is subdivided into one longer and shorter song. It feels even more purposeful on Subconscious Awakening since both “Mandatory Remedy” and “Sonic Crucifixion” both hover around eight and a half minutes while side A opens with the 13-minute “Blind Serpent” and side B with the 11-minute title-track. Rife with textured effects, some samples, and thoughtful melodic vocals, Subconscious Awakening of course shares some similarity of purpose with Portal Within, which was also recorded at the same time, but a song like “Sonic Crucifixion” creates its own sprawl, and the outward movement between that closer and the title-track before it underscores the progressivism at work in the band’s sound amid tonal heft and complex, sometimes linear structures. Takes some concentration to wield that kind of groove.
Especially for an experimentalist, drone-based act who relies on audience theater-of-the-mind as a necessary component of appreciating its output, Pittsburgh solo outfit Fuzznaut — aka guitarist Emilio Rizzo — makes narrative a part of what the band does. Earlier this year, Fuzznaut‘s “Space Rock” single reaped wide praise for its cosmic aspects. “Wind Doula” specifically cites Neil Young‘s soundtrack for the film Dead Man as an influence, and thus brings four minutes more closely tied to empty spread of prairie, perhaps with some filtering being done through Earth‘s own take on the style as heard in 2005’s seminal Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method. One has to wonder if, had Rizzo issued “Wind Doula” with a picture of an astronaut floating free on its cover, it would be the cosmic microwave background present in the track instead of stark wind across the Great Plains, but there’s much more to Fuzznaut than self-awareness and the power of suggestion. Chalk up another aesthetic tryout that works.
Trad metal enthusiasts will delight at the specificity of the moment in the history of the style Void Moon interpret on their fourth album, Dreams Inside the Sun. It’s not that they’re pretending outright that it’s 1986, like the Swedish two-piece of guitarist/bassist Peter Svensson and drummer/vocalist Marcus Rosenqvist are wearing hightops and trying to convince you they’re Candlemass, but that era is present in the songwriting and production throughout Dreams Inside the Sun, even if the sound of the record is less directly anachronistic and their metallurgical underpinnings aren’t limited to doom between slowed down thrash riffs, power-metal-style vocalizing and the consuming Iommic nod of “East of the Sun” meeting with a Solitude Aeturnus-style chug, all the more righteous for being brought in to serve the song rather than to simply demonstrate craft. That is to say, the relative barn-burner “Broken Skies” and the all-in eight-minute closer “The Wolf (At the End of the World,” which has some folk in its verse as well, use a purposefully familiar foundation as a starting point for the band to carve their own niche, and it very much works.
Best known for slinging his six-string alongside brother Kyle Juett in Texas rockers Mothership, Kelley Juett‘s debut solo offering, Wandering West pulls far away from that classic power trio in intention while still keeping Juett‘s primary instrument as the focus. Some loops and layering don’t quite bring Wandering West the same kind of experimental feel as, say, Blackwolfgoat or a similar guitarist-gonna-guitar exploratory project, but they sit well nonetheless alongside the fluid noodling of Juett‘s drumless self-jams. He backs his own solo in centerpiece “Breezin’,” and the subsequent “Electric Dreamland” seems to use the empty space as much as the notes being cast out into it to create its sense of ambience, so if part of what Juett is doing on Wandering West is beginning the process of figuring out who he is as a solo artist, he’s someone who can turn a seven-minute meander like “Lonely One” (playing off Mos Generator?) into a bluesy contemplation of evolving reach, the guitar perfectly content to talk to itself if there’s nobody else around. Time may show it to be formative, but let the future worry about the future. There’s a lot to dig into, here and now.
With vocalists Kristian Eivind Espedal (Gaahls Wyrd, Trelldom, ex-Gorgoroth, etc.) and Lindy-Fay Hella (Wardruna, solo, etc.), guitarist Ronny “Valgard” Stavestrand (Trelldom) and drummer/bassist/keyboardist/producer Iver Sandøy (Enslaved, Relentless Agression, etc.), who also helmed (most of) the recording and mixed and mastered, Whispering Void easily could have fallen into the trap of being no more than the sum of its pedigree. Instead, the seven songs on debut album At the Sound of the Heart harness aspects of Norwegian folk for a rock sound that’s dark enough for the lower semi-growls in the eponymous “Whispering Void” to feel like they’re playing toward a gothic sentiment that’s not out of character when there’s so much melancholy around generally. Mid-period Anathema feel like a reference point for “Lauvvind” and the surging “We Are Here” later on, and by that I mean the album is intricately textured and absolutely gorgeous and you’ll be lucky if you take this as your cue to hear it.
You know how sometimes in a workplace where there’s a Boss With Personality™, there might be a novelty sign or a desk tchotchke that says, “The beatings will continue until morale improves?” Like, haha, in addition to wage theft you might get smacked if you get uppity about, say, wage theft? Fine. Orme sound like what happens when morale doesn’t improve. The 24-minute single-song No Serpents, No Saviours EP comes a little more than a year after the band’s two-song/double-vinyl self-titled debut (review here) and finds them likewise at home in longform songwriting. There are elements of death-doom, but Orme are sludgier in their presentation, and so wind up able to be morose and filthy in kind, moving from the opening crush through a quiet stretch after six minutes in that builds into persistent thuds before dropping out again, a sample helping mark the transitions between movements, and a succession of massive lumbering parts trading off leading into a final march that feels as tall as it is wide. I like that, in a time where the trend is so geared toward lush melody, Orme are unrepentantly nasty.
Budapest instrumentalist duo Azutmaga make their full-length debut with the aptly-titled Offering, compiling nine single-word-title pieces that reside stylistically somewhere between sludge metal and doom. Self-recorded by guitarist Patrik Veréb (who also mixed and mastered at Terem Studio) and self-released by Veréb and drummer Martin Várszegi, it’s a relatively stripped-down procession, but not lacking breadth as the longer “Aura” builds up to its full roll or the minute-long “Orca” provides an acoustic break ahead of the languid big-swing semi-psychedelia of “Mirror,” informed by Eastern European folk melodies but ready to depart into less terrestrial spheres. It should come as no surprise that “Portal” follows. Offering might at first give something of a monolithic impression as “Purge” calls to mind Earth‘s steady drone rock, but Azutmaga have a whole other level of volume to unfurl. Just so happens their dynamic goes from loud to louder.
After trickling out singles for over a year, including the title-track of the album and, in 2022, an early version of the instrumental “The Freaks Come Out at Night” that may or may not have been from before vocalist Virginie D. joined the band, the hashtag-named #chaleurhumaine delights in shirking heavy rock conventions, whether it’s the French-language lyrics or divergences into punk and harder fare, but nothing here — regardless of one’s linguistic background — is so challenging as to be inaccessible. Catchy songs are catchy, whether that’s “Fada Fighters” or “La Diable au Corps,” which dares a bit of harmonica along with its full-toned blues rock riffing. Likewise, nowhere the album goes feels beyond the band’s reach, and while “La Ligne” doesn’t sound especially daring as it plays up the brighter pop in its verse and shove of a chorus, well made songs never have any trouble finding welcome. I’m not sure why it’s a hashtag, but #chaleurhumaine feels complete and engaging, at once familiar and nothing so much as itself.
Posted in Reviews on October 7th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Oh hi, I didn’t see you there. Me? Oh, you know. Nothing much. Staring off a cliffside about to jump headfirst into a pool of 100 records. The usual.
I’m pretty sure this is the second time this year that a single Quarterly Review has needed to be two weeks long. It’s been a busy year, granted, but still. I keep waiting for the tide to ebb, but it hasn’t really at all. Older bands keep going, or a lot of them do, anyhow — or they come back — and new bands come up. But for all the war, famine, plague and strife and crisis and such, it’s a golden age.
But hey, don’t let me keep you. I’ve apparently been doing QRs since 2013, and I remember trying to find a way to squeeze together similar roundups before it. I have no insight to add about that, it’s just something I dug back to find out the other day and was surprised because 11 years of this kind of thing is a really long gosh darn time.
On that note, let’s go.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
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Agusa, Noir
The included bits of Swedish dialogue from the short film for which Agusa‘s Noir was written to serve as a soundtrack would probably ground the proceedings some if I spoke Swedish, admittedly. As it is, those voices become part of the dream world the Malmö-based otherwise-instrumentalist adventurers conjure across 15 at times wildly divergent pieces. In arrangement and resultant mood, from the ’70s piano sentimentality of “Ljusglimtar” to the darker church organ and flute workings of “Stad i mörker,” which is reprised as a dirge at the end, the tracks are evocative across a swath of atmospheres, and it’s not all drones or background noise. They get their rock in, and if you stick around for “Kalkbrottets hemlighet,” you get to have the extra pleasure of hearing the guitar eat the rest of the song. You could say that’s not a thing you care about hearing but I know it’d be a lie, so don’t bother. If you’ve hesitated to take on Agusa in the past because sometimes generally-longform instrumental progressive psychedelic heavy rock can be a lot when you’re trying to get to know it, consider Noir‘s shorter inclusions a decent entry point to the band. Each one is like a brief snippet serving as another demonstration of the kind of immersion they can bring to what they play.
With an assembled cast of singers that includes Mikko Kotamäki (Swallow the Sun), his Amorphis bandmates Tomi Koivusaari and Tomi Joutsen, Petri Eskelinen of Rapture, and Barren Earth bandmate Jón Aldará, and guests on lead guitar and a drummer from the underappreciated Mannhai, and Barren Earth‘s keyboardist sitting in for good measure, bassist Olli Pekka-Laine harnesses a spectacularly Finnish take on proggy death-psych metal for Octoploid‘s first long-player, Beyond the Aeons. The songs feel extrapolated from Amorphis circa Elegy, putting guttural vocals to folk inspired guitar twists and prog-rock grooves, but aren’t trying to be that at all, and as ferocious as it gets, there’s always some brighter element happening, something cosmic or folkish or on the title-track both, and Octoploid feels like an expression of creative freedom based on a vision of a kind of music Pekka-Laine wanted to hear. I want to hear it too.
The Obscure River Experiment, as a group collected together for the live performance from which The Ore has been culled, may or may not be a band. It is comprised of players from the sphere of Psychedelic Source Records, and so as members of River Flows Reverse, Obscure Supersession Collective, Los Tayos and others collaborate here in these four periodically scorching jams — looking at you, middle of “Soul’s Shiver Pt. 2” — it could be something that’ll happen again next week or next never. Not knowing is part of the fun, because as far out as something like The Obscure River Experiment might and in fact does go, there’s chemistry enough between all of these players to hold it together. “Soul Shiver Pt. 1” wakes up and introduces the band, “Pt. 2” blows it out for a while, “I See Horses” gets funky and then blows it out, and “The Moon in Flesh and Bone” feels immediately ceremonial with its sustained organ notes, but becomes a cosmic boogie ripper, complete with a welcome return of vocals. Was it all made up on the spot? Was it all a dream? Maybe both?
Way underhyped South Carolinian progressive heavy rockers Shun arrive at the sound of their second LP, Dismantle, able to conjure elements of The Cure and Katatonia alongside Cave In-style punk-born groove, but in Shun‘s case, the underlying foundation is noise rock, so when “Aviator” opens up to its hook or “NRNS” is suddenly careening pummel or “Drawing Names” half-times the drums to get bigger behind the forward/obvious-focal-point vocal melodies of Matt Whitehead (ex-Throttlerod), there’s reach and impact working in conjunction with a thoughtful songwriting process pushed forward from where on their 2021 self-titled debut (review here) but that still seems to be actively working to engage the listener. That’s not a complaint, mind you, especially since Dismantle succeeds to vividly in doing so, and continues to offer nuance and twists on the plot right up to the willful slog ending with (most of) “Interstellar.”
No Man’s Valley, Chrononaut Cocktail Bar/Flight of the Sloths
Whether it’s the brooding Nick Cave-style cabaret minimalism of “Creepoid Blues,” the ’60s psych of “Love” or the lush progressivism that emerges in “Seeing Things,” the hook of “Shapeshifter” or “Orange Juice” coming in with shaker at the end to keep things from finishing too melancholy, the first half of No Man’s Valley‘s Chrononaut Cocktail Bar/Flight of the Sloths still can only account for part of the scope as they set forth the pastoralist launch of the 18-minute “Flight of the Sloths” on side B, moving from acoustic strum and a repeating title line into a gradual build effective enough so that when Jasper Hesselink returns on vocals 13 minutes later in the spaced-out payoff — because yes, the sloths are flying between planets; was there any doubt? — it makes you want to believe the sloths are out there working hard to stay in the air. The real kicker? No Man’s Valley are no less considered in how they bring “Flight of the Sloths” up and down across its span than they are “Love” or “Shapeshifter” early on, both under three minutes long. And that’s what maturing as songwriters can do for you, though No Man’s Valley have always had a leg up in that regard.
Dallas’ Land Mammal defy expectation a few times over on their second full-length, with the songwriting of Will Weise and Kinsley August turning toward greater depth of arrangement and more meditative atmospheres across the nine songs/34 minutes of Emergence, which even in a rolling groove like “Divide” has room for flute and strings. Elsewhere, sitar and tanpura meet with lap steel and keyboard as Land Mammal search for an individual approach to modern progressive heavy. There’s some shades of Elder in August‘s approach on “I Am” or the earlier “Tear You Down,” but the instrumental contexts surrounding are wildly different, and Land Mammal thrive in the details, be it the hand-percussion and far-back fuzz colliding on “The Circle,” or the tabla and sitar, drums and keys as “Transcendence (Part I)” and “Transcendence (Part II)” finish, the latter with the sounds of getting out of the car and walking in the house for epilogue. Yeah, I guess after shifting the entire stylistic scope of your band you’d probably want to go inside and rest for a bit. Well earned.
Released through Majestic Mountain Records, the debut full-length from Forgotten King, The Seeker, would seem to have been composed and recorded entirely by Azul Josh Bisama, also guitarist in Kal-El, though a full lineup has since formed. That happens. Just means the second album will have a different dynamic than the first, and there are some parts as in the early cut “Lost” where that will be a benefit as Azul Josh refines the work laying out a largesse-minded, emotively-evocative approach on these six cuts, likewise weighted and soaring. The album is nothing if not aptly-named, though, as Forgotten King lumber through “Drag” and march across 10 minutes of stately atmospheric doom, eventually seeing the melodic vocals give way to harsher fare in the second half, what’s being sought seems to have been found at least on a conceptual level, and one might say the same of “Around the Corner” or “The Sun” taking familiar-leaning desert rock progressions and doing something decisively ‘else’ with them. Very much feels like the encouraging beginning of a longer exploration.
Branched off from drummer/synthesist Paul Williams‘ intermittent work over the decades with Quarkspace, the mostly-solo-project Church of Hed explores progressive, kraut and space rock in a way one expects far more from Denmark than Columbus, Ohio — to wit, Jonathan Segel (Øresund Space Collective, Camper Van Beethoven) guests on violin, bass and guitar at various points throughout the nine-tracker, which indeed is about an hour long at 57 minutes. Church of Hed‘s last outing, 2022’s The Father Road, was an audio travelogue crossing the United States from one coast to the other. The Fifth Hour is rarely so concerned with terrestrial impressionism, and especially in its longer-form pieces “Pleiades Waypoint” (13:50), “Son of a Silicon Rogue” (14:59) or “The Fifth Hour” (8:43), it digs into sci-fi prog impulses that even in the weird blips and robot twists of the interlude “Aniluminescence 2” or the misshapen techno in the closing semi-reprise “Bastard Son of The Fifth Hour” never quite feels as dystopian as some other futures in the multiverse, and that becomes a strength.
Like the Melvins on an AC/DC kick or what you might get if you took ’70s arena rock, put it in a can and shook it really, really hard, Italian duo Zolle are a burst of weirdo sensation on their fifth full-length, Rosa. The songs are ready for whatever football match stadium P.A. you might want to put them on — hugely, straight-ahead, uptempo, catchy, fun in pieces like “Pepe” and “Lana” at the outset, “Merda,” “Pompon,” “Confetto” and “Fiocco” later on, likewise huge and silly in “Pois” or closer “Maialini e Maialine,” and almost grounded on “Toffolette e Zuccherini” at the start but off and running again soon enough — if you can keep up with guitarist/vocalist Marcello and drummer Stefano, for sure they make it worth the effort, and capture some of the intensity of purpose they bring to the stage in the studio and at the same time highlighting the shenanigans writ large throughout in their riffs and the cheeky bit of pop grandiosity that’s such a toy in their hands. You would not call it light on persona.
Thicker in tone than much of modern black metal, and willing toward the organic in a way that feels born of Cascadia a little more to the northwest as they blast away in “Era of Ash,” Boise, Idaho’s Shadow and Claw nonetheless execute moody rippers across the five songs/41 minute of their debut, Whereabouts Unknown. Known for his work in Ealdor Bealu and the solo-project Sawtooth Monk, guitarist/vocalist Travis Abbott showcases a rasp worthy of Enslaved‘s Grutle Kjellson on the 10-minute “Wrath of Thunder,” so while there are wolves amid the trio’s better chairs, to be sure, Shadow and Claw aren’t necessarily working from any single influence in or out of char-prone extreme metals, and as the centerpiece gives over to the eponymous “Shadow and Claw,” those progressive aspirations are reaffirmed as Abbott, drummer/backing vocalist Aaron Bossart (also samples) and bassist/backing vocalist Geno Lopez find room for a running-water-backed acoustic epilogue to “Scouring the Plane of Existence” and the album as a whole. Easy to imagine them casting these songs into the sunset on the side of some pointy Rocky Mountain or other, shadows cast and claws raised.
Posted in Reviews on September 4th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Confirmed: hemp and goats. There were plenty of both the day a crew of no fewer than 12 players in the sphere of Psychedelic Source Records — something like a collective, but looser, more casual — jammed in a field at the bottom of a small hill. Hemp behind and goats running around on the hillside further back. As I understand it, there was also a very large pig, but I didn’t get to see it. Can’t have everything, and it was already a full day of players switching in and out, trading instruments, stopping for a drink and then picking back up when somebody decided it was time — sometimes that was Bence Ambrus, who organized the get-together-and-jam I was fortunate enough to be hanging around for in Páty, Hungary, last month, sometimes it was someone else — to start playing again.
Released now as the 12-track/two-hour-and-19-minute Recorded at the Goatfarm, the day would seem to have been a success. Obviously unnamed while they were being made up on the spot, songs have been given titles like “Goats on the Horizon” (12:35), “Sungarden” (6:29) and “Heavy Hemping” (7:10) — also “Mercat Encants” (19:52), “Slagamite” (9:56) and “Voids” (10:37), so not everything is strictly farm-relevant — and carved out of the live-captured, improvised pieces played in the grass under the summer sun with the breeze blowing around during the early August afternoon.
I won’t pretend to be impartial about it. It was incredible and humbling to be there while it happened, and hearing Márton Havlik‘s flute amid the languid heavy drift on “Wopila” (10:18), Krisztina Benus‘ vocals and synth on “Goat No. 8” (12:46) and the jazzy drumming — the day boasted three drummers in Máté Varga, Sándor Nagy and Krisztián Megyeri — behind the flowing lead guitar of “Blues From the Field to Mass Customers” (8:35), it’s hard to think of the endeavor as anything other than a success. The fact that Psychedelic Source — and you’ll note on the cover here the ‘Records‘ is dropped — got more than a 2LP’s worth of material from it and have already hosted a similar happening-style jam less than four weeks after the fact would seem to hint toward agreement.
Whether it’s the walking bassline of “Sungarden” (6:29) or the extended cosmic build and float of “You and Me and the Goat Makes Three” (17:00), and no matter who’s playing where — on bass throughout: Ambrus, Barna Bartos, Dávid Strausz, Gergely Szabó, Róbert Kránitz; on guitar: Ákos Karancz, Dávid Nagy, Balázs Tavaszy, also Ambrus — the sound of the recording is alive and organic, exploratory as “You and Me and the Goat Makes Three” reaches into its last two minutes of standalone drone guitar meditation and in the banjo-style saunter of “Hamaku,” with what might be Havlik on zither in the mix alongside the lighter-strummed guitar, and duly broad for having been cast into the open air. Given its near-20-minute reach, it’s not necessarily any great surprise “Mercat Encants” is especially encompassing, but it gets there through likewise expansive and patient flow, a resonant echo of effects tying together movements through and down the other side of its builds. Was that Karancz on guitar? Could be, but from the wash at its most fervent circa 11 minutes in through the will-to-meander course taken from there on, the entrancing aspects of what Psychedelic Source Records does remain at the fore for the duration.
It’s hard to know where my always-spotty memory ends and the actual listening experience of Recorded at the Goatfarm begins, but there is some very fortunate overlap between the two as the extended release plays out. To wit, the wah-drenched pastoralism of “Voids” and the openness in terms of style. Under the vast blue sky depicted on the cover from over to the side of where the jams were happening, seen through tall grasses creating an easily surmountable barrier between where the van was and where instruments were being played — it was an easy walkaround if you didn’t feel like going in the grass — the sounds didn’t have the same kind of immersion as they do on headphones in the after-the-fact, but they complemented the sunshine and warm air gorgeously, and they still do when put in that context.
Varying in length, personnel and intent, each jam finds its own way. “Voids” noodles out like slow-motion Earthless as it heads to its shimmering-tone midpoint where flute-inclusive closer “The Last Goat Was Capricorn” feels more expansive with a current of effects or synth running beneath the main guitar ramble and set atop a vital percussive pulse. In spirit and execution, the material is meditative, and depending on who’s doing what where, it can get pretty far-out if you want to start mixing metaphors between the terrestrial setting and the ever-expanding cosmos just on the other side of the blue sky noted above, but if the music takes you someplace other than where it was made, I think that’s valid. As much as Havlik‘s flute and Benus‘ voice might provide an intermittent folkish tie, there’s plenty on Recorded at the Goatfarm that comes across as otherworldly and ethereal, including those elements.
Ultimately, Recorded at the Goatfarm fits in with the mellow sprawl of many Psychedelic Source Records releases. Less pointed than some of what the likes of Pilot Voyager or River Flows Reverse put together in terms of songwriting, but harnessing something of the primordial energy that lies beneath that craft. As with the best of improv-based heavy psychedelia, there’s appeal in concept and audio alike — that is, you’re not sacrificing listenability to either experimentalist concepts, and there’s no one indulgence taking away from the impression of the whole. Aspects stand out, be it a guitar or bassline, a drum progression, flute, voice, synth or whathaveyou, but the entirety is bolstered by all participation in the process including — one likes to think — that of the after-the-fact listener.
I guess what I’m trying to say is Recorded at the Goatfarm represents something special about Psychedelic Source in a way that much of what comes out through their Bandcamp also does, and that however special it might have been to be there while these sounds were being made, there’s more on offer here sound-wise than my own sentimentality. I may not be there to witness it, but I hope the next goatfarm session produces such vibrant results.
Psychedelic Source Records, Recorded at the Goatfarm (2024)
Posted in Features on August 6th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
The plan changed a couple times before the thing actually happened, which wasn’t necessarily a surprise. With fewer than 100 hours left in the country, I was to meet up with the crew — or some of the crew, anyhow — from Psychedelic Source Records, who had a plan to make an album this past Saturday that seemed as much like a get together as a recording session.
One could not ask for a more perfect day to do such a thing. Sunny, 25C, comfortable breeze. I got picked up at the apartment where I’ve been staying by Ákos Karancz from Pilot Voyager, and we picked up Robi Kránitz of Satorinaut and various others, who plays bass, and they, their partners and I stopped off at a Spar to pick up some food on the way out of the city through a part of Budapest I’d not yet seen: namely where it keeps the trees and rich-people houses. I don’t know at what point Budapest-proper gave way to not, but the car soon enough was rolling down a wooded hillside and we were headed to a farm in Páty where the recording would happen and where Bence Ambrus, who seems to be the organizing principal behind a lot of what the “label” Psychedelic Source Records does, and a few others had been setting up gear since earlier in the morning.
Up and down hills with light dappled in roadside forest, there were some houses and roads but he we were clearly out of the city. I could’ve asked, but I’m insecure. A big field of corn that I assume would soon end up in all kinds of salads in ways that continue to seem strange to me, but whatever, and then pavement giving way to dirt. Still warehouses in the distance — it wasn’t like doing the trail ride in Moab or wherever the hell that was, but it was more open space than I’d seen in a few weeks, at least, and the smell coming in the car window was cedar-spiced dirt. Also there was construction equipment.
This was the farm in question: not just a place out in the country but an actual, working farm. The original plan had been a studio session — i.e., in a building — in the city. I was not about to complain about the opposite. I was given a spot in the shade and some coffee, which is pretty much what you need to do what I do, and met Krisztina Benus, Barna Bartos and various others, drummers Krisztián Megyeri, Sándor Nagy and Kundi, all of whom have contributed to various PSR projects and who spoke better in English than I can ever reasonably hope to do in Hungarian. A little girl — maybe two but not three years old, and that’s still a point where months matter — gave me one of the tiny crunchy pretzels she was eating, which was very generous, and there was a younger baby crawling around here and there and being passed around. Family atmosphere. I was a bit the sore thumb, but that’s hardly a new experience for me.
The music started after a few minutes and the sound filled part of the open air but left room for the breeze through the trees over by where a white van — somebody’s van, with a homemade couch — was parked. Goats on the hill behind, a jam taking a doomier turn then twisting back around to psych with tambourine to add to the movement, sunshine, chlorophyll pumping out green like it was getting paid per pigment, and an easy vibe. Beers casually consumed, funk in the wah. Stuff of life. I was both sorry to have not brought my actual-camera and happy to not have to deal with it.
That jam lasted about 20 minutes, maybe, and went where it was going to go, then wrapped up easily, a fleeting thing. In the various groupings, projects and bands around Psychedelic Source Records, I feel like some of this idyllic atmosphere has carried into the music, but exploration is part of it too. Where the recording gear — mics, a board, laptop, etc. — was set up, they were in the sun while they played. Short breaks were decided upon as the solution, which seemed fair enough.
More people came so there were maybe 20 total, including a bassist in his 60s named Wes Brinson, who was from — wait for it — Middlesex County, New Jersey. The NJ diaspora is incredible. He was local enough to me at home that we went back and forth naming highways; 287, Rt. 10 & 202, the numbers of home. Dude was on Motown, met a Hungarian woman and settled here, had stories to tell about being in Junior Walker and the All-Stars, knowing the Parliament cats, the alligators in Florida, and so on. History in a lawnchair. The next jam started, this one with two guitars and a blanket in front for folks to sit and watch, which was about right in terms of the general vibe.
Wind in the tall grass pushed the floating guitar into a kind of spread and all was resonance for a bit, but the underlying groove stayed grounded, Bence on bass doing cycles along with the drums, a nod with nuance for the guitars to work around; a familiar dynamic for a jam but cool to see and hear the moment being felt out as it was happening. The heavy in that low end was greeted by a wash of noise from Ákos’ guitar, and there were a couple times where it seemed like it was coming apart, but a bluesy solo met up with the bassline and allowed the moment’s four-piece to realign. It occurs to me I don’t know if this is a ‘band’ or not, if it has a name. I don’t know how they got this space on the farm. I don’t know how or when I’m getting back to the apartment. On a certain level, it matters less than being here.
It was after 4PM when that jam wrapped. As good a time as any. A quicker changeover this time, with a swapout of drummers, a switch from bass to guitar, a couple more beers and the kids getting ready to take off on a bike that someone wisely brought along. All of a sudden, quiet guitar started up in a dreamier tone, sticks were clicked, and they were off again to do the thing. A little more active this time around, a little louder and more immediate. Builds that felt a more out of the Earthless school, but were more even in their ebbs and flows and about more than just the guitar, with synth going at the same time, fluid bass and sharp pops in the snare. Sounded good over in the shade, not 15 feet away, loud enough that the kids had ear protection on but not so much that I felt compelled. The jam worked itself up and came back down, easy, casual, and was chill however loud it was. When it was done, I sat for a stretch and chatted with Wes, who was talking about knowing God Forbid and a bunch of others from Jersey; small world stuff. There was a longer break and so we talked for a while. I hope someday if I make it to 70 and I break my back someone will be interested to hear my stories about music. This might be one of them.
The afternoon was getting on, and the air was decidedly cooler by 6PM or so, but they set up a P.A. so Krisztina could sing. There were a few pops and cracks early in the speaker, but with two guitars, bass, drums, hand percussion and keys, the circa-18.00 jam was the fullest and most elaborate yet, with a little tension in the guitar strum that was soon redirected into a mellow-out by the drums as Bence dropped guitar to fix some technical issue. Tambourine and hand percussion and drums, it was inevitable that it would start to move and the bass player, who Wes introduced as Joe, would be having a good time. The remaining guitar went jangly and it stopped but they weren’t ready to let it go for real yet, and they were right to pick it back up, as what came next was pretty special in a pastoral-prog kind of way, with the second guitar back and a roll in the low end, a little louder and still right on on the way to a more natural stop.
The next break was also short, but when they came back there was lap steel in addition to everything else, then Marci Havlik’s flute, some more defined vocals, percussion and such and sundry, thick with vibe in the early evening shadow. Both of the day’s drummers were going — just one kit, but sticks on hand drums — and as both guitars tripped off into the watery unknown, Joe’s bass hit a stride. Flowing groove. The tambourine came out again between vocal parts and it got more intense, more cosmic, but nestled quickly into a swing with that flute in back ethereal in its purpose cutting through the wash of distortion and synth. They brought it back to ground for another few lines of vocals, lyrics read off the phone, and I don’t know if a signal was given or what, but they were soon under way at full-volume for a bridge. Another car-load of people showed up, some others were dancing.
Total personnel swap after that last jam with Krisztina’s vocals — and I had to work hard not to nerd out about River Flows Reverse when we were introduced, but I managed — and the lap steel. The new band was a five-piece with a different drummer and two additional percussionists, Ákos out front on effects guitar and some contemplative notes accompanying from a seven-string. Every jam has been different somehow, or found some way to do its own thing, and this did too. I stood in front (I’d been off to the side) and it was a bit fuller immersion for a while, which suited where my head was at. The flute was gone and the drift of the guitar gave a kind of spaced backdrop while bass, drums and percussion pushed deeper. They never actually stopped, but it was drone for a bit before the bass, drums and other guitar rejoined, the latter still more terrestrial in tone in a way that grounded without really being on the ground, where longer shadows were being cast.
It was 7:30 by then — time doesn’t matter, but my understanding that was sundown was a kind of natural time limit — and the flute was soon to come back in amid a more lysergic meditation, the effect of reachout in the sharper notes folkish and jazzy in kind with the bass, liquid guitar and riff. They took it to space rock for a while and let it down smoothly in a way that was particularly satisfying, guitar again holding the residual noise until Bence stepped in for Ákos and the bassists did a swap for another stretch that started off super-fluid and got a bit more active before an organic finish. The bass player started playing a riff that the rest picked right up and rolled with, a little more classic blues rock, met with a vibrancy of effects-laced strum. It built up quickly, as that kind of thing will, and the seven-string was ready for it, as people started donning hoodies that they thought better than I did to bring. In my defense, I had earplugs, which I didn’t really need until that last group got going.
When they were done, Ákos picked up the guitar again, grabbed a drummer and went on a subdued post-space trip. Bence joined in on bass, the other guitar came back, along with the flute, and once more they dug in. It was like it just happened. And then there was another jam, and it was 8:30, and it was getting dark, and colder — something of a novelty on this trip, as The Patient Mrs. pointed out — and there was some talk of calling a cab to get back. The Bolt app I’ve been using here didn’t work, but I think the same driver was on Über and that went through, so fair enough. I said a few goodbyes. The sun was down, and it was closer to nine than not as the taxi came down the dirt road. I ended up going with Joe and Wes in the car, which took my old man ass a while to figure out since I’ve used Uber like twice in my life. I think what was probably the last jam of the day was done by then — man, Ákos can go; I guess that’s how you wind up with a prolific one-man outfit — and everybody was kind of hunkered down in a wrapping-up mode, putting instruments away and such. My didn’t turn out to be terrible on departure, and by then it was legitimately chilly.
I’ve been lucky in my life to see some things that, if it was a different life or if I spent my time in some other way, I wouldn’t see. Days like today feel special to me because they are special. Not everybody gets to do this — go to an open field in Páty, Hungary, and watch a live-recorded jam session for like six hours; if more people did, it would’ve been crowded — and I realize how fortunate I am. I put my work in, but a lot of people work really hard at an lot of shit and don’t end up down on the farm with Psychedelic Source Records, and I am grateful and humbled to have had the chance to spend the day as I did. I still don’t know if it’ll be an album or what, or if so, when, but even if that’s never, I’m thankful to have been there while the music was made and cast into the hills surrounding.
Posted in Reviews on August 5th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I knew when I saw the dude in the Trouble shirt that I was on the right bus. It wasn’t as hot today, some rain, but still humid enough to sweat on the way to Dürer Kert, which has tables enough outside for probably a couple hundred people, though there weren’t that many about a half-hour before the listed 7PM show time. A couple food trucks around. A bar playing music with a beat, including a lounge-techno version of “Imagine.” A small, now-empty, stage that would be perfect for a DJ. Dürer Kert (the ‘kert’ means ‘garden,’ I think as in beer garden) looked ready for a party. It got one.
I wouldn’t have fretted about arriving early — that’s a total lie; yes I would — but the prompt start the other night made me want to play it safe. That, despite two more bands on the bill as locals Red Swamp — whose metal-tinged soundcheck I heard walking up — and Shapat Terror were opening. On some levels, I guess that’s the difference between a Monday and a Friday night gig. I’m nervous either way. For everything. All the time. Won’t matter when the music starts.
This being my first time seeing Stoned Jesus made it something of an event in my mind. Nothing against Dopelord, just that I’ve watched them play before, though the advent of 2023’s Songs for Satan (review here) put them at another level in my mind. I’ll say I was looking forward to both and mean it for more than diplomacy’s sake, but I’ve enjoyed and written about both for over a decade, and this would be my first live experience with Stoned Jesus. I was nervous for that too, even with a fair amount of night to go before I got there.
Doors were at 7, so that’s when I went in. It was just me in the nagyterem (“big room”) for a while, but they were playing good music and it was cooler than outside and I’m a fucking misanthrope, so I sat on the floor and waited. Green Lung, Dozer, Kyuss, etc. Me and security. I didn’t know there was a photo pit or I’d have tried to get a pass. I messaged Igor from Stoned Jesus, whom I was looking forward to meeting, working under the kind-of-a-bummer assumption that dude had better things to do a couple hours before showtime than get me sorted. So it goes, in my mind. In real life, he came through in like five minutes, I met the promoter and got to take pictures no problem without having to stand in one spot all night and feel like a jerk. That turnaround, that kindness (thank you, Zsanett), kind of made my night.
But there was a show. Here’s how it went:
Red Swamp
Pretty discouraging to have studied the magyarul language for over a year now and barely be able to pick up a word of Red Swamp’s between-song banter apart from “thanks very much” (köszönöm szépen) and other syllables here and there. Long way to go if I actually want to speak it, I guess. Their lyrics were in English to follow suit from their moniker and their style of riff metal more broadly, in which influences from the likes of Lamb of God and Pantera could be heard in addition to the odd metalcore breakdown, vocals capably shifting between cleans and harsher screams/growls. Their opener, “Stoned,” made a hook of a line that was something approximate to “Cuz I’m already stoned,” and that was a bit of charm, and when they hit a slowdown, the Crowbarian nod was there for sure, but their baseline level of aggression would’ve been a surprise if I hadn’t cheated and checked out their newest single “Born to Bleed” this afternoon. They took a photo together on stage when they were done — the last song had the biggest (“a legnagyobb,” which I learned this week) groove of the bunch — and left to the start of “Sweet Leaf” over the P.A. Maybe not my kind of metal all the way, but they were good at what they were doing, having fun and nobody got hurt, so I’m not complaining. The room almost completely cleared when they were done as people went to sit outside with their drinks. I looked up from writing on my phone and there were like six dudes left. Suppose that’s how it’s done at Dürer Kert. I dig it.
Shapat Terror
While both their name and the animated logo on the screen behind them gave a nastier superficial impression, Shapat Terror won me over quickly with their not-emo-but-post-hardcore-rooted melody and noise-rock-but-grown-up sway. Big Soundgarden influence in the vocals, and that’s not a comparison I’m wont to break out unless it’s a compliment. I’d checked them out for a cursory listen before the show too, and I liked that enough to pick up the tape they had at the merch table, but the way the punch of bass from the stage set alongside the major-key reach and the summery groove, well, I wish I’d heard of them before this gig but they’re a band I’m glad to have seen. Nothing too fancy arrangement-wise, but no chestbeating either, and no pretense in a down-to-earth stage presence despite sounding as a group like they probably listen to seven different kinds of punk I’ve never heard of, including whichever kind has chug. Everybody who had gone outside and then some came back in, and by the time they were wrapping up, I legitimately wished they would do a longer set. A couple backing screams near the end were a surprise but not out of place. Good band. Sometimes you luck out.
Dopelord
Their Satanic majesties rolled from start to finish, opening with “The Chosen One” from Songs for Satan, which, yes, has absolutely been playing nonstop in my brain since I found out this show was happening while I was in Hungary. That, “Addicted to Black Magick,” and everything else was a highlight as the Polish four-piece found a consuming level of volume and used it to proliferate a stoner idolatry with a lumber all their own. Great pairing, their being out with Stoned Jesus. Two bands who can break out a massive groove when they need to but have much more to offer than just that, however much the sense of worship — volume, riff, devil, whathaveyou — is central to the character of Dopelord’s music. They played in front of grainy horror footage and the plod was thick until they thrashed out “Headless Decapitator,” which felt like a long way removed from the stage-intro “It Is So Nice to Get Stoned,” but was a hell of a way to spend a couple minutes just the same. Singularly stoned and pummelingly heavy, it was a celebration for the converted, and watching Dopelord, it’s rarely such a raw pleasure to be among that number. They closed with “Reptile Sun” and “Doom Bastards.” Beers were raised. Hoots were hollared. Ar last one couple I saw was making out. Not so much for the latter, though, you know, whatever, but I was really, really glad to have left the apartment to witness Dopelord’s absolutely uncompromising vision of Sabbathian stoner doom, which has only become more their own over time.
Stoned Jesus
I met Igor Sydorenko, Andrew Rodin and Yurii Kononov during Dopelord’s set. The latter two, also brothers, are newcomers in the rhythm section of the band celebrating their 15th — or XVth, as they put it on the poster — anniversary with this tour and their upcoming Fall run. But if you want to know anything about Stoned Jesus, know this: Igor’s no dummy. He’s got a new lineup, but if they weren’t full-baked, or ready, or something was off, they wouldn’t be out on a tour like this at all. Instead, as the band has relocated to Germany as wartime expats following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and are pivoting from the originally intended follow-up to 2023’s Father Light (review here) — that album was slated to be part of a duology with Mother Dark, now shelved as understand it with the band moving forward in the current incarnation and new new material — while also doing catalog reissues through Season of Mist, the band were airtight through material new and old. “Thoughts and Prayers” from the new album was a highlight, and the set brought into focus for me just how much Stoned Jesus like a blues lick, sure, but how they’re able to shift between a mellow boogie and outright crush without making either feel out of place in the song. Igor is a better singer than I’ve ever seen him get credit for, and the band’s emphasis is exactly where they want it to be, where Igor wants it to be. They auctioned off an original vinyl of Seven Thunders Roar to go to their Ukraine fund. It went for 33,000 HUF, which is about US $90. Worth every penny all the more since they went into “I’m the Mountain” after. The classic. It wasn’t the last song they played, but an inevitable crescendo anyhow, and the crowd was right there for it with he band. The nod of “Get What You Deserve” followed, then “Buried Alive by Love” and “Here Come the Robots” for a lively finish.
—
Not gonna lie, by the time Stoned Jesus were done rocking out, I was all rocked out. Out-rocked, even. I leaned on the wall in the back, sore, tired and ready to be done with a day that was going on 19 hours ahead of another early start in the morning. I hobbled my plantar fasciitis self through the parking lot and out to the road to meet up with the taxi I called for in the Bolt app (the last bus back had been at 11:36), my phone at 23 percent battery and my body no less in need of a charge.
The taxi driver, Tamás, was a hero with chill techno and no conversation. I saw him glance in the back seat a couple times, presumably to make sure I was still alive. It had been another night I felt lucky to be so — and here I acknowledge The Patient Mrs., through whom all thigs are possible — and the subsequent crash-out was proportional to the joy of the experience. Thank you, Budapest. I’ll always remember that the first time I saw Stoned Jesus — and I very much hope not the last — it was here.
