Posted in Whathaveyou on March 27th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Fresh off supporting Queens of the Stone Age in their native New Zealand, stopping by SXSW on a string of US shows to play a few unofficial showcases after ditching their official one for the age-old reason — the malignant corporate influence of weapons manufacturers — and looking forward to a Spring that will see them in Europe to feature at Desertfest in Oslo, Berlin and London, Poland’s Red Smoke Festival and others following the summer run they did last year, Earth Tongue have announced their second full-length, Great Haunting, will be released on In the Red Records this June 14. Got all that? Sweet.
They have a video up now for “Bodies Dissolve Tonight!” that leans more heavy than psych but still has plenty of both to offer along with krautrock-informed pop and hard-landing riffery in its under-three-and-a-half-minute span, and if you’d like to get acquainted, it’s at the bottom of this post. It’s got a flying truck, if that helps you get on board.
And maybe it will, but it’s the song itself that’s going to make the difference. Find it and the album announcement below, courtesy of the PR wire:
Announcing second full-length from fuzz-soaked psychedelic rock duo EARTH TONGUE
Drawing inspiration from eerie depths of ’70s and ’80s horror cinema, delivering a sonic concoction of dark and primitive songs with thick layers of fuzz and punchy, compressed drums.
Share new single/video ‘Bodies Dissolve Tonight!’
Earth Tongue, the brainchild of guitarist Gussie Larkin and drummer Ezra Simons, present their second full-length album Great Haunting. The duo, known for their heavy flavor of fuzz-soaked psychedelic rock, are also pleased to unveil their signing to In The Red Records.
Earth Tongue’s partnership with In The Red stems from a run of shows supporting the legendary Ty Segall throughout New Zealand. Larkin explains: “Ty’s band Fuzz was a significant influence for our sound early on. Ezra and I saw them play live in London about nine years ago, long before Earth Tongue existed. We absorbed a lot of music at that time, and in fact many of the bands we saw released records via In The Red.”
Great Haunting sees the duo draw inspiration from the eerie depths of ’70s and ’80s horror cinema, delivering a sonic concoction of dark and primitive songs with thick layers of fuzz and punchy, compressed drums. The album was engineered by Jonathan Pearce from The Beths at his studio on Karangahape road in Auckland.
The ascent of Earth Tongue is testament to their dedication and hard work. They’ve toured relentlessly across Europe and scored support slots for acts like IDLES and Queens Of The Stone Age. They’re consistently selling out headline shows and have featured on festival lineups throughout Aotearoa and Australia. Having just spent last week shredding SXSW, they tour America and then, in May, hit Europe/UK, playing DESERT FEST in London on 18th May!! Amongst a huge EU tour.
EARTH TONGUE GREAT HAUNTING In The Red Records Release date: 14th June 2024
Tracklist: 1. Out Of This Hell 2. Bodies Dissolve Tonight! 3. Nightmare 4. The Mirror 5. Grave Pressure 6. Miraculous Death 7. Sit Next To Satan 8. Reaper Returns 9.The Reluctant Host
Was there at any point in history another band called Fuzz? Probably, I don’t know. But from the minute the Los Angeles trio released their self-titled debut in 2013 through In the Red Recordings — RidingEasy, then known as EasyRider, had the tape — there was no doubt as to who the mountain of hype was talking about. Having the already-an-indie-darling Ty Segall on drums/vocals certainly didn’t hurt them in that regard, allowing for an otherwise unlikely audience crossover, but the salivating critics, the hyperbole, the wax poetry of the response to Fuzz‘s Fuzz was enough to turn me right off. I don’t think I even really listened to it until they put out the follow-up in 2015. And even that I didn’t really cover.
No, I don’t think that makes me cool. I think it makes me a dope, no different than if I’d just blindly followed along with the mass of other reviewers, bloggers — there were more of those then — and whoever else in immediate and what I thought of as unthinking worship. It’s not cool to miss out on good records because someone else said nice things about them. It’s dumb, and it’s a habit I’ve worked hard and continue to work hard to break. “Oh that’s too cool for me.” This record rips and it’s nothing if not inviting. Not to veer too far into pop-psychology, but if I couldn’t bring myself to dig into something because it made me feel insecure that other people were there before me and were super into it, that’s my loss on every level.
So it was. Segall, guitarist Charles Mootheart and then-bassist Roland Cosio offered up this eight-song/36-minute collection just as mobile social media word of mouth was taking hold as a true generational shift, and kaboom, were everywhere. And I won’t take away from the mellower unfolding of “Earthen Gate” at the outset or the way-memorable grunge-that-isn’t hook of “What’s in My Head?,” or even “Loose Sutures” since it manages both to stop the song already in progress to vibe out on a drum solo and then bring it back in explosive fashion, but an all-go blaster like “Preacher,” or “Sleigh Ride” earlier on, or even the more shuffling “Raise,” where Mootheart and Segall trade vocals and the whole thing ends in a wailing cacophony of guitar — that’s where it’s at for me.
The structure of the album is such that each side starts and ends with a longer track. That’s four out of eight songs over five minutes long (three of those near six). Sandwiched between those longer pieces is a short song and a still-short-but-slightly-longer song.
Consider side A:
Earthen Gate (5:01)
Sleigh Ride (3:12)
What’s in My Head? (3:55)
HazeMaze (5:51)
And side B:
Loose Sutures (6:13)
Preacher (2:21)
Raise (3:43)
One (6:06)
Both sides follow the same pattern, though it’s more stark on side B with “Preacher” under three minutes and the bookends over six. Make no mistake, Fuzz‘s tracks go where they want anyway. It’s not like everything long has to be slow or psychedelic and everything short has to be fast — here I’ll cite “What’s in My Head?” and its sun-baked repetitions with a willful sense of drag, as well as the furious instrumental scorch they bring to bear on “One” to close out; Vincebus Eruptum reborn — but from the beginning swell of “Earthen Gate,” Fuzz makes each turn count and the band’s presentation remains thoughtful despite keeping an organic-above-everything vibe. For the first 90 seconds? They are a serene strum, languid groove. Then the first push begins and barely stops, especially with “Sleigh Ride” immediately backing it. The key difference, then, between the five-minute “Earthen Gate” and “Sleigh Ride” — at least in terms of how the band is spending their time; I’m not trying to accuse the songs of sounding the same, which despite consistent production they don’t — is that intro. But it’s positioned perfectly to set the tone of a record less predictable than it would otherwise be, and the rawness of what ensues becomes pure Californian acid rock, conveying volume, heft and, when it chooses, melody, in varied dosages like it’s feeding it to the listener from a dropper. Here, try this.
“What’s in My Head?” is an outlier, but a welcome one. Slower, hookier, it swells and recedes in a way that nothing else on Fuzz quite attempts, and it makes the mid-paced “HazeMaze,” which follows, seem fast by comparison. I don’t know the origin of the song, but its position as a standout is, if nothing else, a demonstration of Fuzz doing whatever the hell they wanted from the outset, and one could say the same of Mootheart‘s meandering guitar in the midsection of “HazeMaze” ahead of the purposeful dive into chaos — or what sounds an awful lot like it — at the finish. “Loose Sutures” isn’t shy about a melody either at the start — that is, before the drum solo and the burning-of-barns that ensues after — but “What’s in My Head?” has the clearest verse/chorus trades Fuzz make on their debut. And if you want to look for the next closest example, the place to go is the mirror spot on side B, “Raise,” where the interplay of vocals between Mootheart in the lead and Segall backing is a novelty compared to the rest of the offering — a standout, again; the spot to change things up — but still also a clearly executed, finished song.
And of course they follow that with a six-minute instrumental tear-a-whole-in-the-cosmic-fabric jam to round out. So it goes. Fuzz have had a steady stream of releases across the eight years since their self-titled. As noted, II followed in 2015, but by then they’d done a handful of singles and Live in San Francisco in 2013. They swapped out Cosio with Chad Ubovich, and last Fall issued III (review here) to general aplomb. They’ve got a Levitation Sessions tape out — affiliated of course with Levitation Festival in Austin, Texas; see also Dead Meadow, Ty Segall & Freedom Band, Slift, Windhand, etc. — this year with what looks to have been a killer set. Golden age for live records, we’re in. You could eat for a week on that irony.
I’m still not sure I’m cool enough for Fuzz, to be honest with you, but I’m trying real hard not to give a shit.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
—
I’ve been waking up at 4:30 for most of this week. That puts me an hour earlier than I was before. The idea is that I’m trying to transition to a workable 4AM alarm in time for the break between daycamp and school starting up after Labor Day. The Patient Mrs.’ semester starts before The Pecan’s school does, and those first weeks are always a clusterfuck before you really get in a rhythm, so yeah, I’m anticipating a bumpier ride starting in about a week and a half. Getting up early will not help my state of being — since it’s not like I’m trading off by going to sleep at 7PM to account for the difference — but it will help me get writing done, and that will.
Next weekend is Psycho Las Vegas. I posted on Facebook earlier this week that I didn’t know I was invited but then heard from the crew out there that I was, and was I going? Well, I’m not going, sad to say. I thought about it long and hard and talked with The Patient Mrs. who was very diplomatic about not applying pressure either way, and when it came to saying yes or no on the deadline, I had to say no. I’m vaccinated, and so is she, but the shot isn’t approved for three year olds yet, so The Pecan isn’t and likely won’t be until the start of next year. A club show? Maybe. A mostly-indoor festival with however many thousand people kicking around in a hotel/casino setting? I wanted to. I did. I still do.
Next year.
Next year Desertfest London. Next year Freak Valley. Next year Roadburn. Next year Psycho. Next year Høstsabbat. Next year everything.
What do you think next year will look like?
I have no idea.
I’m still undecided on Maryland Doom Fest in October. As heavy fests go, that’s not the same scale as Psycho, obviously — what is? — but yeah. I’d like to go to that. Gotta get back into it at some point if I’m ever going to.
Or maybe I’m not going to. Maybe that’s what life is now. Maybe I’m done with live music?
Nah, I still haven’t seen Blackwater Holylight. Or My Sleeping Karma. Not done yet. Okay.
But the bottom line is I’ll regret missing Psycho Las Vegas this year. I know the Euro bands were having visa issues or whatever and some had to drop off. Whatever. Still a packed bill and they added even more to it. If it was just The Patient Mrs. and I in the house, I’d be there. With the kid, and plague variants looming, yeah.
I need to take at least a day off at some point from doing a review of any sort and get PostWax liner notes done. I think that’s what it’s gonna take. Mammoth Volume and The Otolith need doing. My head aches at the thought.
No Gimme show tonight. Next week. Need to do that playlist too.
At least next week I get to write about Lammping. That’ll be awesome. Record is great.
That’s all I got. Thanks for reading, and please have a great and safe weekend. Watch your head, and for the love of anything, please hydrate. Hotter out there all the time.
Posted in Reviews on December 23rd, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Day III of the Inexplicably Roman Numeralized Winter 2020 Quarterly Review, commence! I may never go back to actual numbers, you should know. There’s something very validating about doing Day I, Day II, Day III — and tomorrow I get to add a V for Day IV! Stoked on that, let me tell you.
You have to make your own entertainment these days, lest your brain melt like wax and drip from your nostrils.
Plurp.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Fuzz, III
Plenty of heavy rockers can come across sounding fresh. Most of the time all it takes is being young. In the case of III, the third long-player from Fuzz — Charles Moothart, Ty Segall and Chad Ubovich — they sound like they just invented it. Dig the hard-Bowie of “Time Collapse” or the made-for-the-stage opener “Returning,” or the surf-cacophony of “Mirror.” Or hell, any of it. The combination of this band and producer Steve Albini — aka the guy you go to when you want your album to sound like your live show — is correct. That’s all you can say about it. From the ’70s snarl in “Nothing People” to the triumphant melody in the second half of “Blind to Vines” and the back and forth between gritty roll and fragile prog of “End Returning,” it’s an energy that simply won’t be denied. If Fuzz wanted to go ahead and do three or four more albums with Albini at the helm in the next five years, that’d be just fine.
The narrative (blessings and peace upon it) goes that when after lineup shifts left Crippled Black Phoenix without any singers, founder Justin Greaves (ex-Iron Monkey, Earthtone9, Electric Wizard, etc.) decided to call old mates. Look. I don’t care how it happened, but Ellengæst, which is the likewise-brilliant follow-up to the band’s widely-lauded 2018 outing, Great Escape, leads off with Anathema‘s Vincent Cavanagh singing lead on “House of Fools,” and, well, there’s your new lead singer. Anathema‘s on hiatus and a more natural fit would be hard to come by. Ryan Patterson (The National Acrobat, a dozen others), Gaahl (Gaahls Wyrd, ex-Gorgoroth), solo artist Suzie Stapleton and Jonathan Hultén (Tribulation) would also seem to audition — Patterson and Stapleton pair well on the heavy-Cure-style “Cry of Love” — and there are songs without any guests at all, but there’s a reason “House of Fools” starts the record. Make it happen, Crippled Black Phoenix. For the good of us all.
Copenhagen’s Bethmoora served notice in a 2016 split with Dorre (review here) and their debut full-length, Thresholds hone destructive lumber across four low-toned tracks that begin with “And for Eternity They Will Devour His Flesh” and only get nastier from there. One imagines being in a room with this kind of rumbling, maddeningly repetitive, slow-motion-violence noise wash and being put into a flight-or-fight panic by it, deer in doomed headlights, and all that, but even on record, Bethmoora manage to cull, and when their songs explode in tempo, as the opener does late in its run, or “Painted Man” does, that spirit is maintained. Each side of the LP is two tracks, and all four are beastly, pile-driver-to-the-core-of-the-earth heavy. “Keeper”‘s wash of noise has willful-turnoff appeal all its own, but the empty space in the middle of “Lamentation” is where they go in for ultimate consumption. And yeah. Yeah.
Khan‘s second album, Monsoons is a departure in form from 2018’s Vale, if not necessarily in substance. Heavy, psychedelic-infused post-rock is the order of business for the Melbourne trio either way, but as guitarist Josh Bills gives up playing synth and doing vocals to embark on an instrumental approach with bassist Mitchell Kerr (also KVLL) and drummer Beau Heffernan on this four-track/31-minute offering, the spirit is inescapably different. Probably easier to play live, if that’s a thing that might happen. Monsoons still has the benefit, however, of learning from the debut in terms of the dynamic among the three players, and Bills‘ guitar reaches for atmospheric float in “Orb” and attains it easily, as the midsection rhythm of the closing title-track nods at My Sleeping Karma and the back end of the prior “Harbinger” manages to shine and not sound like Earthless in the process, and quite simply, Khan make it work. The vocals/synth might be worth missing — and they may or may not be back — but to ignore the breadth Khan harness in little over half an hour would be a mistake.
Jammy, psychedelic in parts, Sabbathian in “Peavey Marshall (and the Legendary Acoustic Sunn Band)” and good fun from the doomly rollout of 11-minute opener and longest cut (immediate points) “In the Cemetery” onward, the second full-length from Idaho’s The Acid Guide Service, Denim Vipers, brings considerable rumble and nod, but these guys don’t want to hurt nobody. They’ve come here to chew bubblegum and follow the riff, and they’re all out of bubblegum. Comprised on average of longer songs than 2017’s debut, Vol. 11 (review here), the four-tracker gives the trio room to branch out their sound a bit, highlighting the bass in the long middle stretch of the title-track while the subsequent “Electro-Galactic Discharge” puts its guitar solo front and center before sludge-rocking into oblivion, letting “Peavey Marshall (and the Legendary Acoustic Sunn Band)” pick up from there, which is as fine a place as any to begin a gallop to the end. Genre-based shenanigans ensue. One would hope for no less.
Based in Illinois, Vexing Hex make their debut on Wise Blood Records with Haunt, and yes, playing catchy, semi-doomed, organ-laced cult rock with creative and melodic vocal arrangements, you’re going to inevitably run into some Ghost comparisons. The newcomer three-piece are distinguished by a harder edge to their impact, a theremin on “Planet Horror” and a rawer production sensibility, and that serves them well in “Build Your Wall” and the buildup of “Living Room,” both of which play off the fun-with-dogma mood cast by “Revenant” following the intro “Hymn” at the outset of Haunt. Not quite as progressive as, say, Old Man Wizard, there’s nonetheless some melodic similarity happening as bell sounds ensue on “Rise From Your Grave,” the title of which which may or may not be purposefully cribbed from the Sega Genesis classic Altered Beast. There’s a big part of me that hopes it is, and if Vexing Hex are writing songs about retro videogames, they sound ready to embark on a Castlevania concept album.
Proffering grueling deathsludge as though it were going out of style — it isn’t — the Melbourne duo KVLL is comprised of bassist/vocalist/guitarist Mitchell Kerr (also Khan) and drummer Braydon Becher. It’s not without ambient stretches, as the centerpiece “Sacrifice” shows, but the primary impression KVLL‘s debut album, Death//Sacrifice makes is in the extremity of crash and heavy landing of “The Death of All That is Crushing” and “Slow Death,” such that by the time “Sacrifice” ‘mellows out,’ as it were, the listener is punchdrunk from what’s taken place on the prior two and a half songs. There’s little doubt that’s precisely KVLL‘s intention here, as the cavernous screams, mega-lurch and tense undercurrent are more than ably wielded. If “Sacrifice” is the moment at which Death//Sacrifice swaps out one theme for another, the subsequent “Blood to the Altar” and nine-minute closer “Beneath the Throne” hammer the point home, the latter with an abrasive noise-caked finale worthy of standard-bearers Primitive Man.
Not that the initial droning wash of “Deep is the Air” or the off-blasted “Zeta Potential” and warp-drive freneticism in “Cato” don’t have their appeal — oh, they do — but when it comes to UK lords-o’-space Mugstar‘s latest holodeck-worthy full-length, GRAFT, it’s the mellow drift-jazz of the 12-minute “Ghost of a Ghost” that feels most like matter dematerialization to me. Side B’s “Low, Slow Horizon” answers back later on ahead of the motorik linear build in the finale “Star Cage,” but the 12-minute vibe-fest that is “Ghost of a Ghost” gives GRAFT a vastness to match its thrust, which becomes essential to the space-borne feel. It’s 41 minutes, still ripe for an LP, but the kind of album that has a genuine affect on mood and mindset, breaking down on a molecular level both and remolding them into something hopefully more evolved on some level through cosmic meditation. Fast or slow, up or down, in or out, it doesn’t ultimately matter. Nothing does. But there’s a moment in GRAFT where the one-skin-on-another thing becomes apparent and all the masks drop away. What’s left after that?
Hooks abound in power-stoner fashion throughout Indiana four-piece Wolftooth‘s second album, Valhalla, which roughs up NWOBHM clarity in early-Ozzy fashion without going overboard to one side or the other, riffs winding and rhythms charging in a way not entirely unlike some of Freedom Hawk‘s more recent fare, but with a melodic reach of its own and a dynamism of purpose that comes through in the songwriting. Grand Magus‘ metallic traditionalism might be an influence on a song like “Fear for Eternity,” but “Crying of the Wolfs” has a more rocking swagger, and likewise post-intro opener “Possession.” With tightly constructed songs in the four-to-five-minute range, Valhalla never feels stretched out more than it wants to, but “Molon Labe” pushes the vocals deeper into the mix for a bigger, more atmospheric sound, and subtle shifts like that become effective in distinguishing the songs and making them all the more memorable. Recently signed to Napalm after working with Ripple, Ice Fall, Cursed Tongue and Blackseed, they seem to be poised to pay off the potential here and in their 2018 self-titled debut (review here). So be it.
Parisian riff-blaster trio Starmonger have been piecemealing tracks out for the last five years as a series of EPs titled Revelation, and the full-length debut, Revelations, brings these nine songs together for a 49-minute long-player that even in re-recorded versions of the earliest cuts like “Tell Me” and “Wanderer” show how far the band has come. It’s telling that those two close the record out while “Rise of the Fishlords” and “Léthé” from 2019’s Revelation IV open sides A and B, respectively, but older or newer, the band end up with a swath of stylistic ground covered from the more straightforward and uptempo kick of the elder tracks to the more progressive take of the newer, with plenty of ground in between. Uniting the various sides are strong performances and strong choruses, the latter of which would seem to be the thread that draws everything together. Whether or not it takes Starmonger half a decade to put out their next LP, one can hardly call their time misspent while listening to Revelations.
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 22nd, 2020 by JJ Koczan
The return after some five years of the Ty Segall-fronted heavy rockers Fuzz is only bound to find welcome, and freaks in the know will likewise nod approvingly at their choice of producer for their aptly-titled third record, III. Set to issue via In the Red Records, III is helmed by the esteemed Steve Albini, whose reputation for capturing a band’s live sound is second to none for good reason — for easy reference and to do yourself a favor more generally, go listen to Neurosis or Weedeater or any number of the other countless acts he’s produced whom you might’ve seen on a stage when that was a thing that happened.
As to what Albini might bring to Fuzz, they’re streaming the opening track “Returning” now, so it’s easy enough to get a sampling. Say, at the bottom of this post. All about convenience here.
Fresh off the PR wire:
FUZZ announce new album on In The Red Records
Share new track “Returning”
One only knows one. Two is balanced therefore stagnant. III both active and reactive. Charles Moothart, Ty Segall and Chad Ubovich are FUZZ. FUZZ is three. And III has returned. Songs for all, and music for one.
III was recorded and mixed at United Recording under the sonic lordship of Steve Albini. Keeping the focus on the live sounds of the band, the use of overdubs and studio tricks were kept to a minimum. Albini’s mastery in capturing sound gave FUZZ the ability to focus entirely on the playing while knowing the natural sounds would land. It takes the essential ingredients of “guitar based music” and “rock and roll power trio” and puts them right out on the chopping block. It was a much more honest approach for FUZZ — three humans getting primitive, staying primitive. The goal was never to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes it’s just about seeing how long you can hold on before you’re thrown off.
FUZZ III In The Red
Released 23rd October 2020
Tracklist 1. Returning 2. Nothing People 3. Spit 4. Time Collapse 5. Mirror 6. Close Your Eyes 7. Blind To Vines 8. End Returning
Three points reflected in three Mirrors; a pyramid of sonic destruction and psychic creation. Nothing People feed the roots while the freaks fly free in the treetops – Blind to Vines, Eyes Closed, Stuck in Spit, triumphing the Returning of beginnings and Ends Returning while beginning to see the Time Collapse. Love is the only way to annihilate hate, and Sketchy freaks live to bleed. All shades of color, truth and lies, III is the pillar of unity and singularity. All is nothing, and only nothing can generate everything. Log out, drop thought, turn up.
Engineered by Steve Albini Assistant Engineer Scott Moore Mixed by Steve Albini and Fuzz Recorded and Mixed at United Recording August 22-30 2019 Cover Photography Denée Segall Artwork Tatiana Kartomten Layout Denée Segall All songs written and arranged by Fuzz
