The second full-length from Indiana-based solo artist Roy Waterford, aka Watchman, is titled The End of All Flesh, and it’s being released on vinyl and digitally this coming Saturday through Wet Records and Glory or Death Records. The project has worked quickly across the last two years, issuing the debut EP, Behold a Pale Horse (review here), in 2020 before following up with last year’s Doom of Babylon debut long-player. The sophomore outing begins with its longest track (immediate points) in the just-under-six-minute “Pour Out the Vials,” and the hazy psych-driven stoner lurch is palpable in the nodding undulations, like if Electric Wizard decided momentarily to give it a rest on watching old VHS horror tapes and mellowed out a bit on the cultistry. Not to say that “Fire and Brimstone,” the hookier drawl of “Death is Coming” — a roughed-up take on doomgaze made more vital by the solo performance — or the fuzz swinger “The Smoke,” which appears right ahead of the closing title-track as The End of All Flesh wraps in suitably melancholic, misanthropic fashion, the drums barely there behind the gruel-fed guitar and slow lurching groove.
All told, the album runs seven songs and 36 minutes. It is largely unipolar in its point of view, willfully dug in to its own riffing and able accordingly to convey a due sense of trance. There are full-band progressions happening, mind you. These are songs, constructed and executed in layers and put together at the behest of one person, but it’s Waterford‘s vision that most unites the material throughout. What if Six Organs of Admittance was also Sleep at their most miserable? It is a somewhat troubled sonic blend, but that’s very obviously the intention, to bring that sense of bedroom folk intimacy to something no less personal but manifest in an outwardly heavier way. Familiar elements resound, but Waterford‘s doom is ultimately his own.
And if you can’t hang with a half-hour-plus of wretchedness and riffs, I humbly suggest that perhaps doom isn’t the thing after all and that The End of All Flesh may be overwhelming despite and in part because of its empty and manipulated spaces. What I’ll say though is that while this second Watchman album was clearly designed or at least arranged after the fact to maximize an overarching flow, the individual songs that comprise it nonetheless are pointed in the impressions they make. The only thing stopping Waterford is nothing, and left to his own devices, one wonders how much deeper into the doomed psyche he might plunge as a forward step coming off this release. Eventually there’s a floor down there, you know.
Enjoy the album and thanks for reading:
Watchman, The End of All Flesh album premiere
After the very well-received “Doom Of Babylon”, the creation of multi-instrumentalist and producer Roy Waterford (Indiana), Watchman returns once again with his second album “The End Of All Flesh”.
Through its slow and mesmerizing riffs, and distant and mysterious vocals, listeners are pulled into a mystical and chaotic journey.
Watchman echoes a dark and outstanding atmosphere. Roy tells us that he taps into the gritty, fuzzy 70s sound, combined with his Stoned Doomed inspirations mentioning the names Electric Wizard and Sleep. Amidst the monolithic riffs, we are engulfed in strong psychedelic touches.
The fantastic Album Art for “The End Of All Flesh” was created by Enrico Zappalà Castorina (MontDoom)
About vinyl:
Watchman is teaming up with Wet Records once again to bring their second album, “The End Of All Flesh” into this world on vinyl and digitally. Which happens next Saturday, June 11th.
Well then, here we are. Day two of the Spring 2022 Quarterly Review brings a few records that I really, really like, personally, and I hope that you listen and feel similar. What you’ll find throughout is a pretty wide swath of styles, but these are the days of expanded-definition heavy, so let’s not squabble about this or that. Still a lot of week to go, folks. Gotta keep it friendly.
Deep breath in, and…
Quarterly Review #11-20:
Arð, Take Up My Bones
Hard to know at what point Winterfylleth‘s Mark Deeks decided to send his historically-minded solo-project Arð to Prophecy Productions for release consideration, but damned if the six-song Take Up My Bones doesn’t feel quintessential. Graceful lines of piano and strings give way to massively-constructed lumbering funeralia, vocals adding to the atmosphere overall as the story of St. Cuthbert’s bones is recounted through song, in mood perhaps more than folk balladeering. Whatever your familiarity with that narrative or willingness to engage it, Deeks‘ arrangements are lush and wondrously patient, the sound of “Boughs of Trees” at the outset of side B building smoothly toward its deathly sprawl but unrelentingly melodic. The longer “Raise Then the Incorrupt Body” and “Only Three Shall Know” come across as more directly dramatic with their chants and so on, but Arð‘s beauty-through-darkness melancholy is the center around which the album is built and the end result is suitably consuming. While not incomplete by any means, I find myself wondering when it’s over what other stories Deeks may have to tell.
Oh, Seremonia. How I missed you. These long six years after Pahuuden Äänet (review here), the Finnish troupe return to rescue their cult listenership from any and all mundane realities, psych and garage-fuzz potent enough to come with a warning label (which so far as I know it doesn’t) on “Neonlusifer” and the prior opener “Väärä valinta” with the all-the-way-out flute-laced swirl of “Raskatta vettä,” and if you don’t know what to make of all those vowel sounds, good luck with the cosmic rock of “Kaivon pohjalla” and “Unohduksen kidassa,” on which vocalist Noora Federley relinquishes the lead spot to new recruit Teemu Markkula (also Death Hawks), who also adds guitar, synth, organ and flute alongside the guitar/synth/vocals of Ville Pirinen, the drums/guitar/flute/vocals of Erno Taipale and bass/synth/vocals of Ilkka Vekka. This is a band who reside — permanently, it seems — on a wavelength of their own, and Neonlusifer is more than welcome after their time out of time. May it herald more glorious oddness to come from the noisy mist that ends “Maailmanlopun aamuna” and the album as a whole.
Swedish heavy rockers The Quill mark 30 years of existence in 2022 (actually they go back further), and while Live, New, Borrowed, Blue isn’t quite an anniversary release, it does collect material from a pretty broad span of years. Live? “Keep it Together” and an especially engaging take on “Hole in My Head” that closes. New? The extended version of “Keep on Moving” from 2021’s Earthrise (review here), “Burning Tree” and “Children of the Sun.” Borrowed? Iron Maiden‘s “Where Eagles Dare,” November‘s “Mount Everest,” Aerosmith‘s “S.O.S.” and Captain Beyond‘s “Frozen Over.” Blue? Certainly “Burning Tree,” and all of it, if you’re talking about bluesy riffs, which, if you’re talking about The Quill, you are. In the narrative of Sverige heavy rock, they remain undersung, and this compilation, in addition to being a handy-dandy fan-piece coming off their last record en route to the inevitable next one, is further evidence to support that claim. Either you know or you don’t. Three decades on, The Quill are gonna be The Quill either way.
Though it’s just 20 minutes long, the six-song debut from Ohio’s Dark Worship offers dark industrial heft and a grim psychedelic otherworldliness in more than enough measure to constitute a full-length. At the center of the storm — though not the eye of it, because it’s quiet there — is J. Meyers, also of Axioma, who conjures the spaces of “Culling Song” and “We’ve Always Been Here” as a bed for a selection of guest vocalists, including Nathan Opposition of Ancient VVisdom/Vessel of Light, Axioma‘s Aaron Dallison, and Joe Reed (To Dust, Exorcisme). No matter who’s fronting a given track — Reed gets the lion’s share, Dallison the title-track and Opposition the penultimate “Destroy Forever (Death of Ra)” — the vibe is biting and dark in kind, with Meyers providing backing vocals, guitar, and of course the software-born electronic beats and melodies that are the core of the project. Maybe hindsight will make this nascent-feeling, but in terms of world construction, Flesh of a Saint is punishing in its immersion, right up to the howling feedback and ambience of “Well of Light” at the finish. Conceptually destructive.
More Experience, Electric Laboratory of High Space Experience
Nature sounds feature throughout More Experience‘s 2021 third album, Electric Laboratory of High Space Experience, with birdsong and other naturalist atmospheres in opener “The Twilight,” “Beezlebufo,” closer “At the Gates of Dawn,” and so on. Interspersed between them is the Polish troupe’s ’60s-worship psych. Drawing on sonic references from the earliest space rock and post-garage psychedelics — think Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, King Crimson’s “Epitaph” is almost remade here as the penultimate title-track — band founder Piotr Dudzikowski (credited with guitars, organs, synthesizers, backing vocals, harmonium, tambura, and cobuz) gets by with a little help from his friends, which means in part that the vocals of extended early highlight “The Dream” are pulled back for a grain-of-salt spoken word on “The Trip” and the later “Fairy Tale.” The synthy “The Mind” runs over nine minutes and between that, “The Dream” and the title-track (9:56), I feel like I’m digging the longer-form, more dug-in songs, but I’m not going to take away from the ambient and more experimental stuff either, since that’s how this music was invented in the first place.
Young Indonesian riffers Jawless get right to the heart of heavy on their debut album, Warrizer, with a raw take on doom rock that’s dead-on heavy and classic in its mindset. There’s nothing fancy happening here other than some flourish of semi-psych guitar, but the self-produced four-piece from Bandung kill it with a reverence of course indebted to but not beholden to Sabbathian blues licks, and their swing on “Deceptive Events” alone is enough proof-of-concept for me. I’m on board. It’s not about progressive this or that. It’s not about trying to find a genre niche no one’s thought of yet. This is players in a room rocking the fuck out. And they might have a bleak point of view in cuts like “War is Come,” and one does not have to look too far to get the reference in “The Throne of Tramp,” but that sense of judgment is part and parcel to originalist doom. At 50 minutes, it’s long for an LP, but as “Restrained” pays off the earlier psychedelic hints, “Metaphorical Speech” boogie-jams and “G.O.D.” rears back with each measure to spit its next line, I wouldn’t lose any of it.
Adding a guest guitar solo from Earthless‘ Isaiah Mitchell wasn’t going to hurt the cause of Indianapolis duo The Heavy Co., and sure enough it doesn’t. Issued digitally in 2020 and premiered here, “Shelter” runs a quick three minutes of psych-blues rock perfectly suited to the 7″ treatment Rock Freaks Records gives it and the earlier digi-single “Phoenix” (posted here), which had been the group’s first offering after a six-year break. “Phoenix,” which is mellower and more molten in its tempo throughout its six minutes, might be the better song of the two, but the twang in “Shelter” pairs well with that bluesy riff from guitarist/vocalist Ian Daniel, and Jeff Kaleth holds it down on drums. More to come? Maybe. There’s interesting ground here to explore in this next phase of The Heavy Co.‘s tenure.
All that “Witch Boogie” is missing is John Lee Hooker going “boom boom boom” over that riff, and even when opener “Strange Fruit” or “Dreamin'” is indebted to the Rolling Stones, it’s the bluesier side of their sound. No problem there, but Freiburg, Germany, four-piece Sound of Smoke bring a swagger and atmosphere to “Soft Soaper” that almost ’70s-style Scorpions in its beginning before the shuffling verse starts, tambourine and all, and there’s plenty of pastoral psych in “Indian Summer” and 10-minute “Human Salvation,” the more weighted surges of which feel almost metallic in their root — like someone between vocalist/keyboardist Isabelle Bapté, guitarist Jens Stöver, bassist Florian Kiefer and drummer Johannes Braunstein once played in a harder-focused project. Still, as their debut LP after just a 2017 EP, the seven-song/43-minute Tales shows a looser rumble in “Devil’s Voice” behind Bapté, and there’s a persona and perspective taking shape in the songs. It’ll be hard work for them to stand out, but given what I hear in these tracks, both their psych edge and that sharper underpinning will be assets in their favor along with the sense of performance they bring.
Coming off their 2020 full-length, The Path to the Deathless (review here), Albuquerque-based trio Red Mesa — guitarist/vocalist Brad Frye, bassist/vocalist Alex Cantwell, who alternates here with Frye, and drummer/backing vocalist Roman Barham, who may or may not also join in on the song’s willfully lumbering midsection — take a stated turn toward doom with the 5:50 Forest Cathedral single. The grittier groove suits them, and the increasing sharing of vocals (which includes backing), makes them a more complex act overall, but there’s not necessarily anything in “Forest Cathedral” to make one think it’s some radical shift in another direction, which there was enough of on The Path to the Deathless to warrant a guest appearance from Dave Sherman of Earthride. Still, they continue to do it well, and honing in on this particular sound, whether something they do periodically to change it up, never touch again after this, or see as a new way to go all-in, I’m content to follow along and see where it goes.
In keeping with the tradition of over-the-top weed-doom band names, Margarita Witch Cult crawl forth from the birthplace of sonic weight, Birmingham, UK, with their debut two-songer cassingle-looking CD/DL Witchfinder. That’s not the only tradition they’re keeping. See also the classic riffer doom they capture in their practice space on the not-tape and the resulting rawness of “The Witchfinder Comes” and “Aradia,” bot nodders preaching Iommic truths. There’s a bit more scorch in the solo on “Aradia,” but that could honestly mean the microphone moved, and either way, they also keep the tradition of many such UK acts with goofball monikers in actually being pretty right on. Of course, they’re in one of the most crowded heavy undergrounds anywhere in the world, but there’s a lot to be said for taking doom rock and stripping it bare as they do on these tracks, the very least of which is that it would probably work really well on tape. If I was at the gig and I saw it on the merch table, I’d snag and look forward to more. I’ll do the same with the Bandcamp.
Posted in Questionnaire on March 15th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Steve Janiak of Devil to Pay, Apostle of Solitude & The Gates of Slumber
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I just spin my wheels, wondering if there’s a point to it all. I got here by years and years of self-delusion. As a kid I wanted to be a drummer, but my parents bought me a toy kit and I knew it was a toy so I hated it. I think I poked a hole in the bass drum and stuck it in the closet. One day a friend was over and we saw a commercial for Arthur’s Music’s year end sale. He said something about wanting a guitar and I replied “Me too, but my parents would never buy me one” and Mom overheard. I ended up with my first acoustic guitar on my 11th birthday.
Describe your first musical memory.
Either singing songs with my Mom in the car, or wearing little tiger sunglasses and singing Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “Southern Nights” for my babysitter or maybe sneaking my Dad’s records into my room like The Ventures and Johnny Horton. Listening to 8-tracks of Paul Anka and the Fifth Dimension’s “Age of Aquarius,” which I thought was dark and ominous. I remember hearing Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2” on the radio and thinking it was evil. The first record I bought was Boston’s “Don’t Look Back”, obviously because it had a cool UFO on the cover.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Probably the Gates of Slumber 2020 Euro Tour, or when Apostle played Hammer of Doom in Germany. Or in college, the Pub Sigs endless jamming. But maybe when I first heard myself on the radio, WTTS played a Neurotic Box song, “Open.” We sent them a reel-to-reel copy. That was 30 goddamned years ago.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
In 2020 when I lost both of my parents in a stupid pandemic full of hypocrites, idiots and fuckwits.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
I think it leads everyone to wherever they expect it will lead them, down a rabbit hole that ends somewhere between worldwide success and bankruptcy.
How do you define success?
When you make a connection and someone tells you how your art or music has inspired them, or maybe if you could pay a single bill from something you’ve spent your entire life trying to do, that would be something.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Animal abuse. Human cruelty and stupidity. Family members turning on each other over politics. Mac Sabbath at Psycho Las Vegas.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I would love to paint some giant paintings or make my own line of Tiki mugs.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Expression. Being able to express yourself through music or art is pretty vital and I think everyone should try it. Good or bad, just getting what’s inside and getting it out.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Traveling again. Putting down the phone and reading more. Hoping like a fool that we can move past this age of bullshit soon.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 25th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
I wasn’t at this show, but I was reading guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon‘s Bandcamp info about The Gates of Slumber‘s Live in Tempe, Arizona, and it occurred to me I did see them on this tour. The Indianapolis trio, then Simon, bassist Jason McCash and drummer J. Clyde Paradis, were on the road in Spring 2011 supporting their new-at-the-time album The Wretch (review here), which would turn out to be their final record with just the Scion A/V-sponsored Stormcrow EP (review here) following in 2013 until this Live in Tempe, Arizona, came along in 2020. They’d been to Europe and were back in the States touring with Orange Goblin for the UK outfit’s 15th anniversary. Here’s what Simon remembers about it:
2011 was a very good year for The Gates of Slumber, we had come off a run of great shows with Cathedral and the amazing experience of recording The Wretch in London with Jaime Gomez in December of 2010, and we were fresh off touring with Place of Skulls and our headliner set at Roadburn when we got the call that Orange Goblin was wanting us to support them as they tried to get a full US tour in 13 days… 13 grizzly days where we had no air conditioning in the van as we trekked across the deep south… the realities of touring in the US vs Europe were laid bare on this one, there was the infamous decided lack of everything that we were dealing with as we confronted blown out tires, a lack of sleep, a lack of food and mostly a lack of time.
Make no mistake, I have a few good memories (and a few hazy ones; it was a different, much drunker time) of seeing The Gates of Slumber live, but hot damn, I loved The Wretch. Produced by Jaime Gomez Arellano as noted above, the record used negative space — empty space in the mix — to create a downtrodden, lonely, depressive feel that was as pure and classic American doom as Saint Vitus‘ best work. It was clear in its message and perspective, its songs were intentionally grueling, and in departing from the more epic-minded fare of LP’s like 2008’s Conqueror and 2009’s Hymns of Blood and Thunder (review here), the band took up the mantle of forerunners of a kind of doom that very, very few acts have been able to capture in the decade-plus since. No one I’ve heard has been able to do this thing, this way, so well.
The New York show was Orange Goblin, The Gates of Slumber, Naam and Kings Destroy (review here), on May 27, 2011, which according to the original list of dates puts it 10 days before they hit Tempe — after Albuquerque, New Mexico, it should be noted given the album cover for the live record (click the image above to enlarge) — and what a night. Even first night of the tour, they delivered, and listening back to Live in Tempe, Arizona, it brings to mind just how on-fire they were at this point. If you’re wondering just what the hell I’m talking about with “negative space” above, take a listen to “Coven of Cain” on the live record. That (not really) empty pause as Simon drudges through the early verses, the slow march so pointedly undramatic in its execution. The song itself doesn’t need to be massive because the impact comes from the atmosphere and the emotion behind it.
It’s raw in a way that distortion-obsessed riff-doom — and hey, I like plenty of that too — can’t possibly be, and feels braver for that, for being more up front. The Gates of Slumber in this era had plenty of forward push, as “Day of Farewell” here demonstrates, and the dynamic was fluid, which is to say that they were able to shift between the quieter and louder, more weighted stretches with apparent ease owing to the strength of the songwriting and the performances, not just of Simon in fronting the band and embodying the miseries the songs were about, but McCash and Paradis bringing density and a just-about-to-fall-off-the-track rolling nod to the material. Even as they chug through “Ice Worm” from Conqueror here and finish out with “The Jury” from their 2004 debut, …The Awakening (discussed here), the quiet intensity keeps up with the surge of volume. And I know the early days of the band have engendered a loyalism among the band’s fans, but for my money, this was as doomed as The Gates of Slumber got.
Listening to it, there’s no question as to why The Gates of Slumber would want to eventually release Live in Tempe, Arizona. Even 11 years after the fact, the downer aspects of these six songs — the set opener “The Scovrge ov Drvnkeness” wasn’t recorded according to Simon — comes through with marked resonance, and the barebones-but-clean sound with which the songs are captured ties everything together with remarkable effectiveness. That is to say, it’s doom as fuck. The tragedy of McCash‘s death in 2014 ensured that The Wretch — or Stormcrow, for that matter — never got a proper follow-up from The Gates of Slumber, but Simon continued forward in the band Wretch, whose 2016 self-titled debut (review here) answered the call that the album after which they were named seemed to put forth. It wasn’t the same — nothing is — but it was a worthy continuation of Simon‘s former outfit and a beginning of something new.
In 2019, The Gates of Slumber announced a reunion of sorts. With the occasion of the 2020 Hell Over Hammaburg Festival — which actually happened! — as the driving factor, Simon brought on Chuck Brown on drums and Steve Janiak on bass (both also guitarist/vocalists in Apostle of Solitude), the band went to Europe for a few shows and captured some prime live and rehearsal footage in the process. The new incarnation of the band has released some of that stuff through their Patreon, as well as some footage of the group’s first run, studio behind-the-scenes stuff, and so on, but I don’t know if they’re writing or working toward a new The Gates of Slumber album or not. I wouldn’t mind being surprised by one one of these days, in the way of sudden Bandcamp drops, but in the meantime, revisiting what was so clearly a special time for them makes me wonder all the more what the Simon, Janiak and Brown lineup might have to offer.
As always, I hope you enjoy.
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So, I guess war, huh? The tribes of Europe, who’ve been fighting and redrawing maps for over a thousand years, are at it again. And young and old, military and civilian, men, women and children will die, land will be scorched. Everybody’s got their WWIII boner up. I’m not trying to be glib about it — it’s a genuine tragedy, most of all for the people of Ukraine, including friends of mine — but if humanity was ever going to learn not to wage war against itself, I think it probably would have by now, and failing that, what’s really left to say about us as a species? We’re awful and someday there won’t be any of us left. Maybe who/whatever comes along next and claims earth as its dominion (which, come to think of it, is part of the problem in the first place, so hopefully who/whatever’s next doesn’t make that claim to start with) will do better.
On more domestic questions of diplomacy and battle, The Pecan — aged four and four months as of today — and The Patient Mrs. worked out some weeks ago that today, Feb. 25, would be the day he peed on the potty. He’s done it once before, after sitting on the toilet for a literal eight hours, and I kind of think that might be where today is headed as well. School was canceled owing to freezing rain and other wintry whathaveyou, and when I woke up, it was his yelling and crying about being on the toilet that did it.
I’m in the bathroom now, having spelled The Patient Mrs. so she can go upstairs and get work done, and I’ve hidden the diapers so he can’t go find one and put it on (I told him diapers would come back after he peed on the potty, so he’s not freaking out that they’re gone forever), and after trying every bribe in the known universe and giving him buy-in by picking the day, I guess it’s just a matter of making it happen. He’s physically uncomfortable from having to pee so badly. He holds in his poop for days on end. This is something that needs to happen. He knows when he has to go. They’ve tried at school and he just refuses all bribes and continues to hold it in until he gets home. It’s a thing. A whole thing. It’s been a thing for over a year and it’s only gotten worse. Do I think there’s a freezing rain’s chance in hell that the issue will be solved today? No, I do not. It’ll happen when it happens. But if we come out of the day celebrating even a drop or a trickle going in the toilet, that will ultimately give us a win from which to move forward. That win will have been worked for.
He’s currently watching Doc McStuffins on my phone. We did Bluey for a bit too and we may or may not get to Muppets as the day plays out. He’ll be hungry in a bit, so I anticipate a lunch break and then, yeah, probably back for more of this. That’s real life. Happening right now.
Thanks if you checked out the YOB review yesterday. That show was incredible.
No Gimme show this week, but next week it’ll happen if you’re looking for it, which I doubt you are. I’m slowly making my way toward 100 episodes of that, which I’ll hit later this year provided they don’t cancel it in the meantime. Fingers crossed. I enjoy that.
Fuck. All Them Witches just posted a new song. Why does this crap have to happen on Fridays?
Alright, gonna go post that, then do lunch for the kid. Have a great and safe weekend. Watch your head, hydrate, don’t forget to use the potty before you leave the house. All that stuff.
Posted in Reviews on December 15th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Okay. Day Three. The halfway point. Or the quarter point if you count the week to come in January. Which I don’t. Feeling dug in. Ready to roll. Today’s a busy day, stylistically speaking, and there’s two wolf bands in there too. Better get moving.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Duel, In Carne Persona
Duel seem to be on a mission with In Carne Persona to remind all in their path that rock and roll is supposed to be dangerous. Their fourth album and the follow-up to 2019’s Valley of Shadows (review here) finds the Austin four-piece in a between place on songs like “Children of the Fire” (premiered here) and “Anchor” and the especially charged gang-shout-chorus “Bite Back,” proffering memorable songwriting while edging from boogie to shove, rock to metal. They’ve never sounded more dynamic than on the organ-inclusive “Behind the Sound” or the tense finale “Blood on the Claw,” and cuts like “The Veil” and the particularly gritty “Dead Eyes” affirm their in-a-dark-place songwriting prowess. They’re not uneven in their approach. They’re sure of it. They turn songs on either side of four minutes long into anthems, and they seem to be completely at home in their sound. They’re not as ‘big’ as they should be by rights of their work, but Duel serve their reminder well and pack nine killer tunes into 38 minutes. Only a fool would ask more.
Fading in like the advent of something wicked this way coming until “The Hiss” explodes into “Fail,” Hull exports Mastiff tap chug from early ’00s metalcore en route to various forms of extreme bludgeonry, whether that’s blackened push in “Beige Sabbath,” grind in “Midnight Creeper” or the slow skin-crawling riffage that follows in “Futile.” This blender runs at multiple speeds, slices, dices, pummels and purees, reminding here of Blood Has Been Shed, there of Napalm Death, on “Endless” of Aborted. Any way you go, it is a bleak cacophony to be discovered, purposefully tectonic in its weight and intense in its conveyed violence. Barely topping half an hour, Leave Me the Ashes of the Earth knows precisely the fury it manifests, and the scariest thing about it is the thought that the band are in even the vaguest amount of control of all this chaos, as even the devolution-to-blowout in “Lung Rust” seems to have intent behind it. They should play this in art galleries.
Melody and a flair for the grandeur of classic NWOBHM-style metal take prominence on Wolftooth‘s Blood & Iron, the follow-up to the Indiana-based four-piece’s 2020 outing, Valhalla (review here), third album overall and first for Napalm Records. As regards trajectory, one is reminded of the manner in which Sweden’s Grand Magus donned the mantle of epic metal, but Wolftooth aren’t completely to that point yet. Riffs still very much lead the battle’s charge — pointedly so, as regards the album’s far-back-drums mix — with consuming solos as complement to the vocals’ tales of fantastical journeys, kings, swords and so on. The test of this kind of metal should ALWAYS be whether or not you’d scribble their logo on the front of your notebook after listening to the record on your shitty Walkman headphones, and yes, Wolftooth earn that honor among their other spoils of the fight, and Blood & Iron winds up the kind of tape you’d feel cool telling your friends about in that certain bygone age.
Another argument to chase down every release Prophecy Productions puts out arrives in the form of Illudium‘s second long-player, Ash of the Womb, the NorCal project spearheaded by Shantel Amundson vibing with emotional and tonal heft in kind on an immersive mourning-for-everything six tracks/47 minutes. Gorgeous, sad and heavy in kind “Aster” opens and unfolds into the fingers-sliding-on-strings of “Sempervirens,” which gallops furiously for a moment in its second half like a fever dream before passing to wistfully strummed minimalism, which is a pattern that holds in “Soma Sema” and “Atopa” as well, as Amundson brings volatility without notice, songs exploding and receding, madness and fury and then gone again in a sort of purposeful bipolar onslaught. Following “Madrigal,” the closing “Where Death and Dreams Do Manifest” finds an evenness of tempo and approach, not quite veering into heavygaze, but gloriously pulling together the various strands laid out across the songs prior, providing a fitting end to the story told in sound and lyric.
Ascia takes its name from the Italian word for ‘axe,’ and as a solo-project from Fabrizio Monni, also of Black Capricorn, the 20-minute demo Volume 1 lives up to its implied threat. Launched with the instrumental riff-workout “At the Gates of Ishtar,” the five-tracker introduces Monni‘s vocals on the subsequent “Blood Axes,” and is all the more reminiscent of earliest High on Fire for the approach he takes, drums marauding behind a galloping verse that nonetheless finds an overarching groove. “Duhl Qarnayn” follows in straight-ahead fashion while “The Great Iskandar” settles some in tempo and opens up melodically in its second half, the vocals taking on an almost chanting quality, before switching back to finish with more thud and plunder ahead of the finale “Up the Irons,” which brings two-plus minutes of cathartic speed and demo-blast that I’d like to think was the first song Monni put together for the band if only for its metal-loving-metal charm. I don’t know that it is or isn’t, but it’s a welcome cap to this deceptively varied initial public offering.
France’s Stone From the Sky, as a band named after a Neurosis singularized song might, dig into heavy post-rock aplenty on Songs From the Deepwater, their fourth full-length, and they meet floating tones with stretches of more densely-hefted groove like the Pelican-style nod of “Karoshi.” Still, however satisfying the ensuing back and forth is, some of their most effective moments are in the ambient stretches, as on “The Annapurna Healer” or even the patient opening of “Godspeed” at the record’s outset, which draws the listener in across its first three minutes before unveiling its full breadth. Likewise, “City/Angst” surges and recedes and surges again, but it’s in the contemplative moments that it’s most immersive, though I won’t take away from the appeal of the impact either. The winding “49.3 Nuances de Fuzz” precedes the subdued/vocalized closer “Talweg,” which departs in form while staying consistent in atmosphere, which proves paramount to the proceedings as a whole.
Whenever you’re ready to get weird, The Brackish will meet you there. The Bristol troupe’s fourth album, Atlas Day brings six songs and 38 minutes of ungrandiose artsy exploration, veering into dreamtone noodling on “Dust Off Reaper” only after hinting in that direction on the jazzier “Pretty Ugly” previous. Sure, there’s moments of crunch, like the garage-grunge in the second half of “Pam’s Chalice” or the almost-motorik thrust that tops opener “Deliverance,” but The Brackish aren’t looking to pay homage to genre or post-thisorthat so much as to seemingly shut down their brains and see where the songs lead them. That’s a quiet but not still pastoralia on “Leftbank” and a more skronky shuffle-jazz on “Mr. Universe,” and one suspects that, if there were more songs on Atlas Day, they too would go just about wherever the hell they wanted. Not without its self-indulgent aspects by its very nature, Atlas Day succeeds by inviting the audience along its intentionally meandering course. Something something “not all who wander” something something.
Formerly known as Wolfgang, Elverum, Norway’s Wolfnaut offer sharp, crisp modern heavy rock with the Karl Daniel Lidén mixed/mastered III, the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Kjetil Sæter (also percussion), bassist Tor Erik Hagen and drummer Ronny “Ronster” Kristiansen readily tapping Motörhead swagger in “Raise the Dead” after establishing a clarity of structure and a penchant for chorus largesse that reminds of Norse countrymen Spidergawd on “Swing Ride” and the Scorpions-tinged “Feed Your Dragon.” They are weighted in tone but emerge clean through the slower “Race to the Bottom” and “Gesell Kid.” I’m going to presume that “Taste My Brew” is about making one’s own beer — please don’t tell me otherwise — and with the push of “Catching Thunder” ahead of the eight-minute, willfully spacious “Wolfnaut” at the end, the trio’s heavy rock traditionalism is given an edge of reach to coincide with its vitality and electrified delivery of the songs.
Having released their debut full-length, TTBS, earlier in 2021 as their first outing, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Lincoln, Nebraska’s Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships still seem to be getting their feet under them in terms of sound and who they are as a band, but as the 34-minute-long Rosalee EP demonstrates, in terms of tone and general approach, they know what they’re looking for. After the thud and “whoa-oh” of “Core Fragment,” “Destroyer Heart” pushes a little more into aggression in its back end riffs and drumming, and the chugging, lurching motion of “URTH Anachoic” brings a fullness of distortion that the two prior songs seemed just to be hinting toward. It’s worth noting that the 16-minute title-track, which closes, is instrumental, and it may be that the band are more comfortable operating in that manner for the time being, but if there’s a confidence issue, no doubt it can be worked out on stage (circumstances permitting) or in further studio work. That is, it’s not actually a problem, even at this formative stage of the project. Quick turnaround for this second collection, but definitely welcome.
Their persistently irreverent spirit notwithstanding, Closet Disco Queen — at some point in the process, ever — take their work pretty seriously. That is to say, they’re not nearly as much of a goof as they’d have you believe, and on the quickie 16-minute Stadium Rock for Punk Bums, the Swiss two-piece-plus, their open creative sensibility results in surprisingly filled-out tracks that aren’t quite stadium, aren’t quite punk, definitely rock, and would probably alienate the bum crowd not willing to put the effort into actively engaging them. So the title (which, I know, is a reference to another release; calm down) may or may not fit, but from “Michel-Jacques Sonne” onward, bring switched-on heavy that’s not so much experimentalist in the fuck-around-and-find-out definition as ready to follow its own ideas to fruition, whether that’s the rush of “Pascal à la Plage” or the barely-there drone of “Lalalalala Reverb,” which immediately follows and gives way to the building-despite-itself finisher “Le Soucieux Toucan.” If these guys aren’t careful they’re gonna have to start taking themselves seriously. …Nah.
Indiana shenanigans-cannon heavy punks Milquetoast release their debut album, Caterwaul, on Jan. 28 through Wise Blood Records. And like much of what surrounds on songs such as “Space Force” or “Fake News” or even the earlier punk-into-sludge pummeler “Recognition,” the lead single “Step Off” is not without its purpose of statement. As frenetic as the Indianapolis trio’s fuzz might get — Andy Bowerman‘s bass is wielded as a weapon of mass destruction — from the moment their intro gives way to “Dead Inside,” their swaggering rawness is underscored by a hold-my-beer sense of chaos and an expressive mission in kind. They’re in and out of Caterwaul in just under 35 minutes, and in “Matapacos” and “Stoner Safari” it’s a blast of a party that ensues, their post-modern approach being to take the hell we’re all living in and make it dance.
They’re as heavy as they are punk, maybe a little bit of metal thrown in there on the thrashier end, and really, if you need a disclaimer about the social context of lyrics at this point — some kind of “they talk about politics but it’s okay” — grow up. I haven’t seen a lyric sheet or anything, but after the slow-motion decay that wraps “Stoner Safari,” the shift into the speedier push of “Step Off” — reportedly about unwanted physical contact — feels positively clearheaded without actually being so, and I don’t care where you were on Jan. 6, “Space Force” makes a better deathsludge tune than branch of the military, surfy solo included. Garage punk meets nodding noise riffery for “Fake News,” “The Wall” boasts the highlight line “Ignorance is bliss until you eat shit” while rocking in near-grunge mode, while closer “Forgotten Death” starts out like a goth sendup and spends its and the album’s final moments deconstructing itself around more rumbling bass and a winding progression of lead guitar leading to not-quite-last crashes in succession. Brutal, dudes.
They sound mean and all, but these guys would probably be friends with you and stuff if you wanted to hang out. Don’t take that as permission to grab or anything — “Step Off” is pretty straight-up on that point — but I’m just saying. Might be a good hang.
Album’s out next month, but you can dig “Step Off” right here and now, followed by the badass cover art and more info on the release courtesy of the PR wire.
You only need a single unhinged howl from MILQUETOAST’s punked-up party sludge to get sucker-punched by the band name’s irony. The Indiana trio describe themselves as “Minutemen and Fu Manchu wearing Celtic Frost t-shirts,” or “a bunch of stoner doom metal nerds attempting to play punk.” From the deranged album art to the knockout mastering by Chris Fielding (of the mighty Conan), this is a singular barbaric yawp of fuzz and scuzz. Get loud and get weird with Milquetoast.
Mostly written during the pandemic and the last turbulent presidency, Caterwaul’s lyrical focus is a snapshot of political incompetence and social decay. Despite grim subjects ripped from the headlines, Milquetoast laugh through the absurdity. The cover art by Ellie Shvaiko captures that dichotomy of grimy heaviness and pastel-pink levity. The recording was tracked by band ally Tucker Thomasson of Throne of Iron in one insane day to achieve fast ‘n’ loose performances true to the band’s manic stage energy. Because at the end of the day, Milquetoast is first and foremost about the live spectacle.
Vocalist/guitarist Ty Winslow on “Step Off”:
“The lyrics were inspired by a Space Ghost Coast to Coast character, Brak. But the idea is pretty straightforward. I thought about anecdotes that I’ve heard from friends, mostly femmes and some masc, about unwanted and unwarranted touching from strangers. Like grabbing someone’s arm to look at their tattoos or touching the small of a woman’s back when walking by them. The music was inspired by modern garage rock, such as Ty Segall. Nick and Andy got involved with the outro and molded it from basically one riff into the manic clusterfuck it has become.”
“Our approach to live shows is all about having fun,” Winslow confirms. “Fans can expect over-the-top outfits, some light-hearted razzing of the other bands, and loud rock ‘n’ roll.”
Once Covid stops being such a menace, Milquetoast may troll a town near you. Until then, Wise Blood Records will release “Caterwaul” on January 28th, 2022. Get weird. Get wild. Get ready for Milquetoast.
1) Intro (00:00) 2) Dead Inside (00:32) 3) Recognition (03:07) 4) Matapacos (07:34) 5) Stoner Safari (10:15) 6) Step Off (15:06) 7) Space Force (18:44) 8) Fake News (23:10) 9: The Wall (26:29) 10) Forgotten Death (29:55)
Recorded and Mixed by Tucker Thomasson (Throne of Iron) Mastered by Chris Fielding (Conan) Album artwork by Ellie Shvaiko (illustrator of the Wise Blood logo)
Milquetoast is: Ty Winslow – Vocals, Guitar Andy Bowerman – Vocals, Bass Nick James – Drums
[Click play above to stream Apostle of Solitude’s Until the Darkness Goes in full. Album is out this week in Europe and next week in North America through Cruz Del Sur Music.]
Don’t let the crawling tempos fool you, there’s no time to waste on Apostle of Solitude‘s fifth full-length, Until the Darkness Goes. At a here-and-gone 36 minutes, the six-song — five plus the penultimate instrumental “Beautifully Dark” — answers its own mournfulness in its runtime, seeking to create not a willful slog through melodic melancholia so much as a sense of its own fleeting nature. A moment, then over. So be it. The long-running Indianapolis outfit, which now shares two members with the reignited The Gates of Slumber in guitarist/vocalists Chuck Brown and Steve Janiak (the latter also of Devil to Pay) and boasts the rhythm section of bassist Mike Naish (also of Shroud of Vulture) and drummer Corey Webb, continue a fruitful collaboration with producer Mike Bridavsky at Russian Recording in Bloomington, Indiana.
And in so doing, they harness a spaciousness in their sound further broadened through an increased use of reverb and echo on cuts like “The Union” and the later “Deeper Than the Oceans,” which while not as hooky or immediate as the initial salvo of “When the Darkness Comes,” “The Union” and “Apathy in Isolation,” nonetheless carries across a singularly satisfying payoff before its seven minutes are done, leading into the mellow and wistful flow of “Beautifully Dark” before the mindful repetitions of “Relive the Day” serve to draw the listener down into the depressive waters gorgeously depicted on the WÆIK-painted album cover and on-theme with “Deeper Than the Oceans.”
Like that between the band and Bridavsky — who has helmed records for them going back to 2008’s Eyes Like Snow debut, Sincerest Misery (discussed here) — the collaboration with WÆIK is an element held over from 2018’s From Gold to Ash (review here), but as with the striking use of color here where the prior outing’s scheme was murkier, so too has Apostle of Solitude‘s sound been further refined and focused. This is a process that one way or another has been going on since Sincerest Misery and its 2010 follow-up, Last Sunrise (review here), but particularly since Janiak joined ahead of the band signing to Cruz Del Sur for 2014’s Of Woe and Wounds (review here) — admittedly, he had been in the band for a couple years by the time that record came out — the progression of Apostle of Solitude has been one of increasingly focusing on strengths of craft and performance as a means of moving forward between one release and the next.
To wit, where From Gold to Ash led off with three-plus minutes of introductory riffing in “Overlord” ahead of the memorable “Ruination Be Thy Name” — and no doubt part of why it was memorable was because you just heard that riff for three-plus minutes — “When the Darkness Comes” is about as close to immediate as Apostle of Solitude get. One guitar begins, another joins, bass and drums follow soon after and they’re rolling into the first verse by the time they’re 40 seconds into the song, Brown and Janiak quickly working in harmonized form as they will throughout, usually with Brown as the lead vocalist, but Janiak taking the forward part in the early going of “Deeper Than the Oceans,” the respective approach of each having grown into each other over the last decade of working together. Comfortable but not at all stagnant creatively.
The combination of their voices has never been as prevalent, as rich, or as engrossing as it is across Until the Darkness Goes, yet the album isn’t at all overproduced. The chorus of “Apathy in Isolation” is a fervently doomed march, with a tonal thickness in the guitar and bass striking dark chords in chugs and strains beneath the semi-soaring title-line, and the call-and-response that emerges in the second half of the track proves the case for their attention to arrangement that much more. Even “Beautifully Dark,” with its quiet guitar contemplation and subdued drumming, feels placed right where it needs to be, not too much, not too little in coming between “Deeper Than the Oceans” and “Relive the Day” as a crucial part of a side B structure that broadens the atmosphere from “When the Darkness Comes,” “The Union” and “Apathy in Isolation” while holding together the mood and the pivotal heaviness wrought by Naish and Webb together.
As the four-piece make their way into the crawling distortion wash of “Relive the Day,” offsetting the low lows with a dual-guitar lead before the next dive under those waters, the summary of Apostle of Solitude‘s accomplishments could hardly be easier to read. They are a band who know what their sound is, know how to make it happen in a studio setting, how to capture an emotive performance from Janiak and Brown without being either melodramatic or affected, and how to couple that with ever-sharper songwriting and a sonic weight that emphasizes the doomed traditionalism from out of which their aesthetic has been shaped.
I consider myself a fan of the band and I approach Until the Darkness Goes from that frame. As such, I won’t decry what they’ve done before, whether on From Gold to Ash or anything previous. What I will say is that Apostle of Solitude‘s prioritization of efficiency in their execution of these tracks, from “When the Darkness Comes” through “Relive the Day,” makes Until the Darkness Goes feel spare even as Naish, Webb, Janiak and Brown conjure a pervasive, resonant sense of loss that defines the work. That they could come across as so dug in with such minimal actual self-indulgence even with an uptick in dual-vocal parts is a new standard they’ve set for themselves, and while I’d hardly begrudge them their next record running over 40 minutes if it does, the fact that they can make an outing like this one, that says so much, so clearly, dynamically structured, flowing and with so little that might be called an “aside,” is and should be a lesson for others who would attempt to follow their influence, even as it seems to make Apostle of Solitude a singular outfit in doom. One of 2021’s best, no question.
Apostle of Solitude, “When the Darkness Comes” lyric video
Posted in Bootleg Theater on November 3rd, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Just go on and let this get stuck in your head.
Next Tuesday, ahead of the Nov. 12 European release date for Apostle of Solitude‘s impending fifth long-player, Until the Darkness Goes, I’ll be hosting the full stream of the album with a proper review. This is something I booked out months in advance, and not to get too personal, it’s something to which I’ve very much looked forward since I first heard the mixes of the record. There’s a lot to talk about. I’ll do my best not to go on too long in doing so, but I do still expect it to be fun to write about.
I’ve made no secret that I’m a fan of the band — I’ve got three active shirts and am kind of lazily working my way to a point where I can go an entire week wearing Apostle of Solitude merch if I so choose — and that very much remains true as the Indianapolis four-piece unveil the opening track of Until the Darkness Goes in a new lyric video. The hook is likewise melodic and maddening in its catchiness, and the central riff works much the same. On the album, it’s met head-on by what follows in “The Union” and “Apathy in Isolation,” but it stands well on its own to be sure, the band’s continuing association with Mike Bridavsky at Russian Recording in Bloomington, IN, resulting in a sound that does much to highlight their strengths in craft and performance.
More next week.
Enjoy this one in the meantime:
Apostle of Solitude, “When the Darkness Comes” lyric video
Doom titans APOSTLE OF SOLITUDE have released a lyric video for “When The Darkness Comes,” a song from forthcoming album Until The Darkness Goes.
APOSTLE OF SOLITUDE will release their fifth studio album, Until The Darkness Goes, on November 19 in North America via Cruz Del Sur Music. (The album will be released in Europe on November 12).
APOSTLE OF SOLITUDE — featuring vocalist/guitarist Chuck Brown, guitarist/vocalist Steve Janiak, bassist Mike Naish and drummer Corey Webb — initially planned to record the album in late 2020, but health and safety concerns over the global pandemic pushed the start date to May 17 of this year. Once again, the band hunkered down in Russian Recording in Bloomington, Indiana, with long-time producer/engineer Mike Bridavsky at the helm.
APOSTLE OF SOLITUDE is: Corey Webb – drums Chuck Brown – guitars, vocals Steve Janiak – guitars, vocals Mike Naish – bass
Apostle of Solitude, Until the Darkness Goes (2021)
mind you. These are songs, constructed and executed in layers and put together at the behest of one person, but it’s Waterford‘s vision that most unites the material throughout. What if Six Organs of Admittance was also Sleep at their most miserable? It is a somewhat troubled sonic blend, but that’s very obviously the intention, to bring that sense of bedroom folk intimacy to something no less personal but manifest in an outwardly heavier way. Familiar elements resound, but Waterford‘s doom is ultimately his own.
