Posted in Whathaveyou on October 4th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Ever prolific and experimental, Sergio Chotsourian — aka Sergio Ch., as I know you know — will digitally release his latest solo album, The Red Rooster, on Oct. 14 through Spotify, Bandcamp, etc. That’s next week, which I also know you know. Vinyl is set to follow for the nine-tracker early next year in continued collaboration with Interstellar Smoke Records, and of course Chotsourian‘s own South American Sludge imprint has a hand in putting it out as well.
As, frankly, it should. You’ll note Chotsourian — who earlier this year surprised with an unexpected fourth Ararat album, Volumen 4 (review here), and whose pedigree includes not only that band and his solo work, but also Brno, Soldati and, once upon a time, South American desert rock trailblazers Los Natas — plays all the instruments on the song “El Manantial” that’s streaming below ahead of the new record’s release, and recorded it. Self-sufficiency is nothing new for him, either in terms of aesthetic or the practicalities of writing, performing and producing music.
“El Manantial” has a pretty bass-heavy sound that puts it in my mind in alliance with Ararat‘s general feel. I don’t think it’s a song that band has done, but it’s tempting to add a “yet” to that, since Chotsourian has certainly bled material over from one project to another, sometimes resulting in a completely different listening experience. I have said “why do I recognize this?” many times through the years. Generally, there’s a reason.
I’ve paid respect to Chotsourian‘s general ouevre over the last, I don’t know, 20 years now?, and no regrets, but I’ll note that especially as he’s opened new avenues for expression in solo work and collaborations, including those with his own family, his breadth as an artist has likewise flourished. One more thing I know you know: the same cannot be said of everybody who was once signed to Man’s Ruin. As an artist, he is unto himself.
So here’s a bit about the track and, of course, the track, which is why we’re here in the first place:
ADELANTO DEL NUEVO DISCO DE SERGIO CH. – “THE RED ROOSTER” GRABADO, MEZCLADO Y MASTERIZADO EN DEATH STUDIOS POR SERGIO CH. ARTWORK POR SERGIO CH. PRODUCIDO POR SERGIO CH.
Oh we’re in the thick of it now, make no mistake. Day one? A novelty. Day two? I don’t know, slightly less of a novelty? But by the time you get to day three in a Quarterly Review, you know how far you’ve come and how far you still have to go. In this particular case, building toward 100 records total covered, today passes the line of the first quarter done, and that’s not nothing, even if there’s a hell of a lot more on the way.
That said, let’s not waste time we don’t have. I hope you find something killer in here, because I already have.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
My Diligence, The Matter, Form and Power
The Matter, Form and Power is the third long-player from Brussels’ My Diligence, whose expansive take on melodic noise rock has never sounded grander. The largesse of songs like the Floor-esque “Multiversal Tree” or the choruses in “On the Wire” and the layered post-hardcore screams in “Sail to the Red Light” — to say nothing of the massive nod with which the title-track opens, or the progressively-minded lumbering with which the 10-minute “Elasmotherium” closes — brims with purpose in laying the atmospheric foundation from which the material soars outward. With “Celestial Kingdom” as its centerpiece, the heavy starting far, far away and shifting into an earliest-Mastodon chug as drift and heft collide, there are hints of Cave In in form if not all through the execution — that is, My Diligence cross similar boundaries but don’t necessarily sound the same — such that the growling that populates that song’s second half isn’t so much a surprise as it is a slamming, consuming, welcome advent. Music as a force. As much volume as you can give it, give it.
Their moniker derived from the initials of the three members — bassist/vocalist/synthesist Pietro Brunetti, guitarist/vocalist Claudio Banelli and drummer Carlo Forgiarini — Italian troupe BBF aren’t through I Will Be Found‘s five minute opener “Freedom” before they’ve transposed grunge vibes onto a go-where-it-wants psychedelia from out of an acoustic, bluesy beginning. Garage rock in “Cosmic Surgery,” meditative jamming in “Rise,” and a vast expanse in “T-Rex” that delivers the album’s title line while furthering with even-the-drums-have-echo breadth the psych vibe such that the synthy take of the penultimate “Wake Up” becomes just another part of the procession, its floating guitar met with percussion real and imagined ahead of the bookending acoustic-based closer “Supernova,” which dedicates its last 90 seconds or so to a hidden track comprised entirely of sweet acoustic notes that might’ve otherwise ended up as an interlude but work just as well tucked away as they are. Here’s a band who know the rules and seem to take a special joy in bending if not outright breaking them, drawing from various styles in order to make their songs their own. To say they acquit themselves well in doing so is an understatement.
Progressive and melodic, the fourth album from Iowan trio Druids is nonetheless at times crushingly heavy, and in a longer piece like “Ide’s Koan,” the band demonstrate how to execute a patient, dynamic build, beginning slow and spaced out and gradually growing in intensity until they reach a multi-layered shouting apex. Drew Rauch (bass), Luke Rauch (guitar) and Keith Rich (drums) all contribute vocals at one point or another, and whether it’s in the plodding rock of “Dance of Skulls” or the not-the-longest-track-but-the-farthest-reaching closer “Cloak/Nior Bloom,” their modern prog metal works off influences like Baroness, Mastodon, Gojira, etc., while retaining character of its own through both rhythmic intricacy and its abiding use of melody, both well on display in “Othenian Blood” and the subsequent, drum-intensive “Traveller” alike. “Path to R” starts Shadow Work mellow after the ceremonial build-up of “Aether,” but the tension is almost immediate and Druids‘ telegraphing that the heavy is coming makes it no less satisfying when it lands.
Though it’s spread across two LPs, don’t think of Kandodo4‘s Burning the (Kandl) as an album. Or even a live album, though technically it’s that. You might not know, you might not care, but it’s a historical preservation. ‘The time that thing happened,’ where the thing is Simon Price of The Heads leading a jam under the banner of his Kandodo side-project featuring Robert Hampson of Loop, and bassist Hugo Morgan and drummer Wayne Maskell — who play in both The Heads and Loop — as part of The Heads‘ residency at Roadburn Festival 2015 (review here). I tell you, I was there, and I’ve seen few psychedelic rituals that could compare in flow or letting the music find its own shape(lessness) as it will. Burning the (Kandl) not only has the live set, but the lone rehearsal that the one-off-four-piece did prior to taking stage at Het Patronaat in Tilburg, the Netherlands, that evening. Thus, history. Certainly for the fest, for the players and those who were there, but I like to think in listening to these side-long stretches of expanse upon expanse that all of our great-grandchildren will worship at the altar of this stuff in a better world. Maybe, maybe not, but better to have Burning the (Kandl) ready to go just in case.
The second EP in about nine months from Los Angeles’ Spencer Robinson — operating under the moniker of Into the Valley of Death — the seven-song Ruthless feels very much like a debut album despite a runtime circa 25 minutes. The songs are cohesive in bringing together doom and grunge as they do, and as with the prior Space Age, the lo-fi aspects of the recording become part of the overarching character of the material. Guitars are up, bass is up, drums are likely programmed, vocals are throaty and obscure at least until they declare you dead on “Ghost,” and the pieces running in the three-to-four-minute range have a kind of languid drawl about them that sound purely stoned even as they seem to reach out into the desert after which the project is seemingly named. Robinson, who also played bass in The Lords of Altamont and has another outfit wherein he fronts a full backing band, is up to some curious shit here, and whether or not it was, it definitely sounds like it was recorded at night. I’m not sure where it’s going, and I’m not sure where it’s been, but I know I’ll look forward to finding out.
Enköping, Sweden’s Stuck in Motion issued their 2018 self-titled debut (review here) to due fanfare, and Still Stuck (changed from the working title ‘Ut på Tur,’ which translates, “on tour”) arrives with a brisk reminder why. Jammy in spirit, early singles “Höjdpunkternas Land,” “Lucy” and “På Väg” brim with vitality and a refreshing take on classic heavy rock, not strictly retro, not strictly not, and all the more able to jam and offer breadth around traditional structures as in “I de Blå” for that, weaving their way into and out of instrumental sections with a jazzy conversation between guitars and keys, bass and drums, percussion, and so on. Combined with the melodies of “Tupida,” the heavier tone underlying “Fisken” and the organ-and-synth-laced shuffle of the penultimate “Tung Sol,” there’s a balance between psych and prog — and, on the closing title-track, horns — which are emblematic of an organic style that couldn’t be faked even if the band wanted to try. I don’t know the exact release date for Still Stuck — I thought it was already out when I slated this review — but its eight songs and 40 minutes are like the kind of afternoon you don’t want to end. Sunshine and impossible blue sky.
A blurb posted by Spanish instrumentalists Sageness — also written SageNESS — with the release of Tr3s reads as follows: “The future seen from the past, where another current reality is possible, follow us and we will transfer to a new dimension. (Tr3s),” and fair enough. One could hardly begrudge the trio a bit of escapism in their work, and listening to the 36 minutes across four songs that comprises Tr3s, they do seem to be finding their way into the ‘way out.’ Though if where they’re ending up is 12-minute finale “Event Horizon,” in which the very jam itself seems to be taffy-pulled on a molecular level until the solid bassline and drums dissipate and what takes hold is a freakout of propulsive, drift-toned guitar, I’m not sure if they do or don’t ultimately make it to another dimension. Maybe that’s on the other side? Either way, after the scope of “Greenhouse” and the more plotted-seeming stops of “Spirit Machine,” that end is somewhat inevitable, and we may be stuck in reality for real life, but Sageness‘ fuzzy and warm-toned heavy psychedelic rock makes a reasoned argument for daydreaming the opposite.
You think you’re up for Kaleidobolt, and that’s adorable, but let’s be honest. The Finnish trio — whose head-spinning, too-odd-not-to-be-prog heavy rock makes This One Simple Trick laughable as a title — are on another level. You and me? They’re running circles around us in “Fantastic Corps” and letting the truth about humans be known amid the fuzz of “Ultraviolent Chimpanzee” after the alternately frenetic and spaced “Borded Control,” momentarily stopping their helicopter twirl to “Walk on Grapes” at the album’s finish, but even then they’re walking on grapes on another planet yet to be catalogued by known science. 2019’s Bitter (review here) boasted likewise self-awareness, but This One Simple Trick is a bolder step into their individuality of purpose, and rest assured, they found it. I don’t know if they’re a “best kept secret” or just underrated. However you say it, more people should be aware. Onto the list of 2022’s best albums it goes, and if there are any simple tricks involved here, I’d love to know what they are.
It probably wouldn’t fit on a 7″, but The Tazers‘ Outer Space EP isn’t much over that limit at four songs and 13 minutes. The Johannesburg trio’s melodicism is striking nearly at the outset of the opening title-track, and the fuzz guitar that coincides is no less right on as they touch on psychedelia without ever ranging so much as to lose sight of the structures at work. “Glass Ceiling” boasts a garage-rocking urgency but is nonetheless not an all-out sprint in its delivery, and “Ready to Die” hits into Queens of the Stone Age-esque rush after an acoustic opening and before its fuzzy rampage of a chorus, while “Up in the Air” is a little more psych-funk until solidifying around the repeated lines, “Give me a reason/Show me a sign,” which culminate as the EP’s final plea, like Witch played at 45RPM or your favorite stoner band’s cooler cousin. Four songs, it probably took more effort to put together than they’d like you to think, but the casual cool they ooze is as infectious as the songs themselves.
Bong-worship sludge from London. It’s hard to know the extent to which Obelos — which for some reason my fingers have trouble typing correctly — are just fucking around, but their dank, lurching riffs, throaty screams and slow-motion crashes certainly paint a picture anyhow. Paint it green, with maybe some little orange or purple flecks in there. Interludes “Paranoise” and “Holy Smokes” bring harsh noise and a kind of improvised-feeling, also-quite-noisy chicanery, but the primary impression in Green Giant‘s six tracks/27 time-bending minutes is of nodding, couchlocked stoner crush, and I wouldn’t dare ask anything more of it than that. Neither should you. I’d argue this is an album rather than the EP it’s categorized as being, since it flows and definitely gets its point across in a full-length manner, but I’m not even gonna fight the band on that because they might break out a 50-minute record or some shit and, well, I’m just not sure I’m ready to get that high this early in the morning. Might have to reserve an entire day for that. Which might be fun, too.
This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you I’m quaking in my flip-flops about doing 100 reviews in the span of two weeks, how worried I am I’ll run out of ways to say something is weird, or psychedelic, or heavy, or whatever. You know what? This time, even with a doublewide Quarterly Review — which means 100 records between now and next Friday — I feel like we got this. It’ll get done. And if it doesn’t? I’ll take an extra day. Who even pretends to give a crap?
I think that’s probably the right idea, so let’s get this show on the road, as my dear wife is fond of saying.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Alunah, Strange Machine
Following on from 2019’s Violet Hour (review here), Birmingham’s Alunah offer the nine songs and 42 minutes of Strange Machine on Heavy Psych Sounds. It’s a wonder to think this is the band who a decade ago released White Hoarhound (review here), but of course it’s mostly not. Alunah circa 2022 bring a powerhouse take on classic heavy rock and roll, with Siân Greenaway‘s voice layered out across proto-metallic riffs and occasional nods such as “Fade Into Fantasy” or “Psychedelic Expressway” pulling away from the more straight-ahead punch. One can’t help but be reminded of Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio — a different, more progressive and expansive take on the same style they started with — which I guess would make Strange Machine their Mob Rules. They may or may not be the band you expected, but they’re quite a band if you’re willing to give the songs a chance.
Skipping neither the death nor the doom ends of death-doom, Los Angeles-based QAALM make a gruesome and melancholic debut with Resilience & Despair, with a vicious, barking growl up front that reminds of none so much as George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher, but that’s met intermittently with airy stretches of emotionally weighted float led by its two guitars. Across the four-song/69-minute outing, no song is shorter than opener “Reflections Doubt” (14:40), and while that song, “Existence Asunder” (19:35), “Cosmic Descent” (18:23) and “Lurking Death” (17:16) have their more intense moments, the balance of miseries defines the record by its spaciousness and the weight of the chug that offsets. The cello in “Lurking Death” adds fullness to create a Katatonia-style backdrop, but QAALM are altogether more extreme, and whatever lessons they’ve learned from the masters of the form, they’re being put to excruciating use. And the band knows it. Go four minutes into any one of these songs and tell me they’re not having a great time. I dare you.
The Traveler is Sterling DeWeese‘s second solo full-length under the banner of Ambassador Hazy behind 2020’s Glacial Erratics (review here) and it invariably brings a more cohesive vision of the bedroom-psychedelic experimentalist songcraft that defined its predecessor. “All We Wanted,” for example, is song enough that it could work in any number of genre contexts, and where “Take the Sour With the Sweet” is unabashed in its alt-universe garage rock ambitions, it remains righteously weird enough to be DeWeese‘s own. Fuller band arrangements on pieces like that or the later “Don’t Smash it to Pieces” reinforce the notion of a solidifying approach, but “Simple Thing” nonetheless manages to come across like Dead Meadow borrowed a drum machine from Godflesh circa 1987. There’s sweetness underlying “Afterglow,” however, and “Percolator,” which may or may not actually have one sampled, is way, way out there, and in no small way The Traveler is about that mix of humanity and creative reaching.
Strange things afoot in Stockholm. Blending classic doom and heavy rock with a clean, clear production, shades of early heavy metal and the odd bit of ’70s folk in the verse of “While the Devil is Asleep,” the five-piece Spiral Skies follow 2018’s Blues for a Dying Planet with Death is But a Door, a collection that swings and grooves and is epic and intimate across its nine songs/43 minutes, a cut like “Somewhere in the Dark” seeming to grow bigger as it moves toward its finish. Five of the nine inclusions make some reference to sleep or the night or darkness — including “Nattmaran” — but one can hardly begrudge Spiral Skies working on a theme when this is the level of the work they’re doing. “The Endless Sea” begins the process of excavating the band’s stylistic niche, and by “Time” and “Mirage” it’s long since uncovered, and the band’s demonstration of nuance, melody and songwriting finds its resolution on closer “Mirror of Illusion,” which touches on psychedelia as if to forewarn the listener of more to come. Familiar, but not quite like anything else.
Almost tragically atmospheric given the moods involved, Wyoming-based industrial metallurgists Lament Cityscape commence the machine-doom of A Darker Discharge following a trilogy of 2020 EPs compiled last year onto CD as Pneumatic Wet. That release was an hour long, this one is 24 minutes, which adds to the intensity somehow of the expression at the behest of David Small (Glacial Tomb, ex-Mountaineer, etc.) and Mike McClatchey (also ex-Mountaineer), the ambience of six-minute centerpiece “Innocence of Shared Experiences” making its way into a willfully grandiose wash after “All These Wires” and “Another Arc” traded off in caustic ’90s-style punishment. “The Under Dark” is a cacophony early and still intense after the fog clears, and it, “Where the Walls Used to Be” and the coursing-till-it-slows-down, gonna-get-noisy “Part of the Mother” form a trilogy of sorts for side B, each feeding into the overarching impression of emotional untetheredness that underscores all that fury.
You got friends? Me neither. But if we did, and we told them about the wholesome exploratory jams of Belfast trio Electric Octopus, I bet their hypothetical minds would be blown. St. Patrick’s Cough is the latest studio collection from the instrumentalist improv-specialists, and it comes and goes through glimpses of various jams in progress, piecing together across 13 songs and 73 minutes — that’s short for Electric Octopus — that find the chemistry vital as they seamlessly bring together psychedelia, funk, heavy rock, minimalist drone on “Restaurant Banking” and blown-out steel-drum-style island vibes on “A2enmod.” There’s enough ground covered throughout for a good bit of frolicking — and if you’ve never frolicked through an Electric Octopus release, here’s a good place to start — but in smaller experiments like the acoustic slog “You Have to Be Stupid to See That” or the rumbling “Universal Knife” or the shimmering-fuzz-is-this-tuning-up “Town,” it’s only encouraging to see the band continue to try new ideas and push themselves even farther out than they were. For an act who already dwells in the ‘way gone,’ it says something that they’re refusing to rest on their freaked-out laurels.
Behold, the sludge of death. Maybe it’s not fair to call When the World Dies one of 2022’s best debut albums since Come to Grief is intended as a continuation by guitarist/backing vocalist Terry Savastano (also WarHorse) and drummer Chuck Conlon of the devastation once wrought by Grief, but as they unleash the chestripping “Life’s Curse” and the slow-grind filthy onslaught of “Scum Like You,” who gives a shit? When the World Dies, produced of course by Converge‘s Kurt Ballou at GodCity, spreads aural violence across its 37 minutes with a particular glee, resting only for a breath before meting out the next lurching beating. Jonathan Hébert‘s vocal cords deserve a medal for the brutality they suffer in his screams in the four-minute title-track alone, never mind the grime-encrusted pummel of closer “Death Can’t Come Fast Enough.” Will to abrasion. Will to disturb. Heavy in spirit but so raw in its force that if you even manage to make it that deep you’ve probably already drowned. A biblical-style gnashing of teeth. Fucking madness.
In the works one way or the other since 2020, the sophomore full-length from Pittsburgh heavy rockers ZOM brings straight-ahead classicism with a modernized production vibe, some influence derived from the earlier days of Clutch or The Sword and of course Black Sabbath — looking at you, “Running Man” — but there’s a clarity of purpose behind the material that is ZOM‘s own. They are playing rock for rockers, and are geared more toward revelry than conversion, but there’s no arguing with the solidity of their craft and the meeting of their ambitions. Their last record took them to Iceland, and this one has led them to the UK. Don’t be surprised when ZOM announce an Australian tour one of these days, just because they can, but wherever they go, know what they have the songs on their side to get them there. In terms of style, there’s very little revolutionary about Fear and Failure, but ZOM aren’t trying to revamp what you know of as heavy rock and roll so much as looking to mark their place within it. Listening to the burly chug of “Another Day to Run,” and the conversation the band seems to be having with the more semi-metal moments of Shadow Witch and others, their efforts sound not at all misspent.
Making their debut through Black Doomba Records, Columbia, South Carolina’s MNRVA recorded the eight-song Hollow in Spring 2019, and one assumes that the three-year delay in releasing is owed at least in to aligning with the label, plus pandemic, plus life happens, and so on. In any case, from “Not the One” onward, their fuzz-coated doom rock reminds of a grittier take on Cathedral, with guitarist Byron Hawk and bassist Kevin Jennings sharing vocal duties effectively while Gina Ercolini drives the march behind them. There’s some shifting in tempo between “Hollow” and a more brash piece like “With Fire” or the somehow-even-noisier-seeming penultimate cut “No Solution,” but the grit there is a feature throughout the album just the same. Their 2019 EP, Black Sky (review here), set them up for this, but only really in hindsight, and one wonders what they may have been up to in the time since putting this collection to tape if this is where they were three years ago. Some of this is straight-up half-speed noise rock riffing and that’s just fine.
The third full-length, Accelerationist, from Easthampton, Massachusetts’ Problem With Dragons is odd and nuanced enough by the time they get to the vocal effects on “Have Mercy, Show Mercy” — unless that’s a tracheostomy thing; robot voice; that’s not the first instance of it — to earn being called progressive, and though their foundation is in more straightforward heavy rock impulses, sludge and fuzz, they’ve been at it for 15 years and have well developed their own approach. Thus “Live by the Sword” opens to set up lumbering pieces like “Astro Magnum” and the finale title-track while “In the Name of His Shadow” tips more toward metal and the seven-minute “Don’t Fail Me” meets its early burl (gets the wurlm?) with airier soloing later on, maximizing the space in the album’s longest track. “A Demon Possessed” and “Dark Times (for Dark Times)” border on doom, but in being part of Problem With Dragons‘ overall pastiche, and in the band’s almost Cynic-al style of melodic singing, they are united with the rest of what surrounds. Some bands, you can just tell when individualism is part of their mission.
[Click play above to stream ‘III’ by 10,000 Years in full. It’s out Friday June 24 on Interstellar Smoke Records (LP), Death Valley Records (CD) and Olde Magick Records (K7).]
Like destructive clockwork, Sweden’s 10,000 Years offer their second full-length and third overall release, III, precisely one day less than a full year from its predecessor, II (review here). It is the final installment of a narrative trilogy that began on the Västerås-based trio’s 2020 self-titled debut EP (review here) — which they might honestly be calling a full-length by now just for the ease of it, I don’t know, but it was an EP at the time — but if a listener is new to the band, hearing them for the first time, that shouldn’t be taken as a barrier to entry. For those looking to catch up, here’s the story as they have it:
“III”
As the crew of the “Albatross” make efforts to repair the ship and prepares to take it out into orbit in order to travel back through the rift in the space-time continuum in an attempt to seal it and restore earth to what it was, the Green King mobilizes his unholy forces to stop them from erasing the latest addition to his interdimensional imperium from existence.
Through unspeakable trials and tribulations, the remaining crew manages to narrowly escape the Green Kings wrath and finally take the “Albatross” back into space. After piloting the damaged ship out of the atmosphere and back to the point of the tear, they take it through the rift once more.
As they once again travel to suns beyond for the fate and future of humanity, they face the terrible uncertainty of oblivion and a destiny unknown…
However it may tie into the entirety of their work to this point, there’s no mistaking III as the richest and most realized output yet conjured by the returning trio of guitarist Erik Palm, bassist/vocalist Alex Risberg and drummer Espen Karlsen. The defining influence to this point has been the furious Matt Pike riffs and marauding gallop/crash of High on Fire, and just in the interest of realism it’s been two years since they started, so is and definitely should still be a strong current across the eight songs and 46 minutes of III, but even in the “Fury-Whip”-ish-but-faster launch of “Cult Axe” and the alternating thrash and nod that ensues across that first track’s 4:57, the sense of the band reaching out creatively comes through.
To wit, the thrash. “Cult Axe” throws a gauntlet down for the band themselves, and feels like the result of a discovery of identity happening early in their overarching progression (maybe fast bands do things faster), with an apparently conscious decision to step back from playing to genre resulted in an inherently more individual take. 10,000 Years — who, yes, are still named after a High on Fire song; it’s not like they’ve ever been trying to get away with anything in terms of letting the listener know where they’re coming from — are raging here. It’s a logical step forward from a year ago in the end result, but it really is the palpable feeling of the three-piece pushing themselves physically as well as creatively that comes through in the material, whether that’s Karlsen‘s creative timekeeping in “Megafauna,” Palm‘s ripping solo late in the track after Risberg lets out a gotta-respect-it “ough” and raw-throats another verse, or the largesse of nod that ensues as “Desert of Madness” is introduced on a sweeping guitar lead and massive undulation.
What ensues there is further evidence of the band’s growth, finding a noise rock style that calls to mind Souls at Zero-era Neurosis while remaining the band’s own in terms of structure and course. There are these moments throughout III, whether it’s the momentary dip into tense, but mellow atmospherics in the instrumental “The Secret of Water,” the memorable hook and fierce cymbal crashes of “The Green King Rises,” or the outright Slayer idolatry on “Il Cattivo” (as opposed perhaps to ‘il bene’ or ‘il brutto?’) that will put the listener subtly in different places and moods. These are enhanced particularly during the most aggressive moments in “Megafauna” and “Il Cattivo” — the second half of which is a highlight bass-wise from Risberg — but it’s also driving toward the closing duo of “Escape From Earth” and “To Suns Beyond,” given all the more import as the final chapters of the story being told through their position.
They’re the two longest cuts at 7:47 and 8:56, respectively, and the point of arrival of a subtle build that’s been taking place since “The Secret of Water,” charged with tying together the varied elements at play throughout the record prior. They do, with Risberg pulling a more than respectable younger-days-Scott–Kelly-style vocal on “Escape From Earth” to coincide with a consuming groove that reminds of the kinship 10,000 Years began to form sound-wise with noisemaking countrymen like Domkraft or Cities of Mars, though like those bands, this one isn’t content to simply repeat what’s been done before. “Escape From Earth” crashes out — a breath; whew — at 4:40 and launches into a build toward a crescendo that, if it had ended III, one probably wouldn’t say anything was missing as it fades to silence, but that also finds a direct continuation in theme in “To Suns Beyond.”
After all the cacophony and onslaught prior, fast, not-as-fast, pummeling, not-as-pummeling, “To Suns Beyond” — the title of which answers the inevitable question asked by “Escape From Earth” — is another instrumental, expanding on what “The Secret of Water” did earlier, with a near-proggy tone in the guitar and an overarching fluidity that holds to the noisy underpinnings of the recording as a whole thanks in no small part to 10,000 Years‘ continued alliance with the famed Sunlight Studio and likewise famed producer/mixer Tomas Skogsberg, who also helmed II and their self-titled. They end big starting about halfway through as one would hope, but as Palm‘s guitar moves past the final shredding solo, there’s an exploratory, open feel to the manner in which the track comes about on a coursing fade of residual effects that could hardly sound more like an ellipse.
Which is to say, “to be continued…?” That last minute or so of “To Suns Beyond” may be a signal of future ground the band will continue to feel out — one wouldn’t be surprised either of a less-full-throttle piece like that or “The Secret of Water” had vocals next time around — and one is of course curious to know where they might go from here in terms of theme, if they’ll continue to tell stories or not or launch a new trilogy or call it quits altogether, their work done. I don’t have those answers for what they might do next as songwriters, but the least likely scenario in my mind is that they’d stop. Momentum like this isn’t easily let go, and as much as they’ve come into their own in III, the beastliness on display is emblematic of the fact that the band have more to say.
And if they should continue to push in multiple directions at once as they do on III, so much the better. As already noted, this is the most refined work 10,000 Years have yet done, and it is no less vicious for that refinement, seeming to build and tear down atmospheres as it goes. If you can manage to keep pace with the band, it’s quite a ride.
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 17th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Announced as completed in January, the upcoming third releases from Sweden’s 10,000 Years has now been granted a June 24 release date through Interstellar Smoke Records (LP), Death Valley Records (CD) and Olde Magick Records (tape, with glitter no less!). The three-piece outfit from Västerås have been following a plot thread described as the ‘Albatross Trilogy’ through their first two outings, their 2020 self-titled EP (review here) and last year’s debut long-player, II (review here), and indeed, III would seem to bring about the ending of that story.
I’m a little bit left wondering what might come next for 10,000 Years, if they’ll simply begin a new story perhaps set in the same reality, abandon the conceptual ethic altogether or find some other way to manifest that impulse in their work. In any case, this conclusion for the ‘Albatross Trilogy’ marks a turning point for them that they’ve worked diligently over the last couple years to set up, so in the spirit of a “big rock finish,” I’m looking forward to hearing this album.
I did the premieres for the self-titled and II. Seems like maybe I should bug the band to see if I can follow-through here as well. They might have other plans, of course, but if not, there’s no sense in leaving the story untold.
First single lands March 21. From the PR wire:
THE TRILOGY ENDS
We are extremely proud to announce that June 24th will see the arrival of our new album “III”.
This is the third record we’ve done in two years and it is the final chapter in what’s become known as the Albatross Trilogy. We firmly believe that this is the crowning achievement of everything we’ve done so far, and we hope that you will enjoy it as well.
The first single, “The Green King Rises”, will be released March 21st with a second single, ”Cult Axe” complete with musicvideo, following in late April.
The album will be released in the following formats: Cosmic Horror Edition vinyl from Interstellar Smoke Records 12″ purple vinyl with black splatter, A3-poster and 2-sided insert
CD from Death Valley Records Limited to 100pcs including exclusive woven patch
Limited Edition cassette tape from Olde Magick Records Clear tape with cosmic glitter housed in a classic-style case
The album will be available on Bandcamp and all the usual streaming services as well
Preorders for CD and digital will start on April 1st (which also happens to be Bandcamp Friday). Vinyl and cassette will be available from the respective labels in due time.
10,000 Years: Erik Palm – Guitars Alex Risberg – Bass/vocals Espen Karlsen – Drums
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 28th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Even if one might accuse Belfast unit Elder Druid of jumping the gun a bit in posting the album art and tracklisting of their new album before they’re finished recording it, mixing or mastering, it’s easy enough to understand why they might be excited-about-a-thing when you look at the Serpent Tusk Studio front cover for the impending release. Factor in as well that it was nearly a year ago that the follow-up to 2020’s Golgotha (review here) was first announced along with their signing to Interstellar Smoke Records, and alright, yeah, fair enough. There’s only so much sitting on hands one can reasonably be expected to do, especially when one is passionate about the work in question, which we already know Elder Druid are. Stick that in your marketing plan.
Carcosa will be out whenever it’s out — I’m told time is a flat circle anyhow, so whatever — and in the interim, an update is welcome. Not quite done, but coming together on multiple fronts, and the cover rules. Until I can actually hear the thing, that’s good enough for me.
From social media:
ELDER DRUID -‘CARCOSA’ TRACKLIST
We thought it was time for another update on our next album, ‘Carcosa’. We’ve had a number of delays in wrapping up the recording but we’re currently nearing the end and are set for a release in 2022.
It will comprise of 6 songs and they are listed below in the order they will appear on record:
1. Armada 2. Carcosa 3. Coffin Dropper 4. Gambit Caster 5. The Ingredient 6. Pandora’s Box
‘Carcosa’ will be released on vinyl via Interstellar Smoke Records and on CD/tape via Galactic SmokeHouse. We will have more information regarding pre-orders once we have the album mixed & mastered.
PERSONNEL: Gregg McDowell: Vocals Jake Wallace: Guitar Mikey Scott: Guitar Dale Hughes: Bass Daniel Zanker Ovalle: Bass Brien Gillen: Drums Album artwork: Serpent Tusk Studio
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 18th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Swedish riffcrunchers 10,000 Years have reportedly finished recording their next full-length, titled III, for release sometime later this year. No fewer than three different labels are on board to back the project, which is the second long-player from the trio behind last year’s II (review here) and their prior self-titled debut EP (review here), which came out in 2020.
To this point, they’ve worked pretty quickly from one outing to the next, as you can tell — for context, the entirety of their discography has come out “post-pandemic” — but if you heard the EP and subsequent album, you don’t need me to tell you there was palpable growth between the first and second releases.
The band announced they were done in a kind of short social media check-in, so I decided to bother bassist/vocalist Alex Risberg to find out more and he was kind enough to elucidate as follows:
The recording of ”III” is officially done. Due out later this year via Death Valley Records, Interstellar Smoke Records & Olde Magick Records.
We recorded the new album over three days in Studio Sunlight with Tomas Skogsberg producing. The material feels like a natural continuation and evolution from the last album. We’ve taken the stuff we feel worked best, like the thrasy High On Fire type stuff and the more epic stuff like ”Dark Side Of The Earth” and expanded on that. And there’s some weird stuff on there too.
As the title suggests its the third and final part of the Albatross trilogy. It ends with the remaining crew taking the ship back out into space back Through the wormhole in order to close it and it ends when they pass through so you never know If they made it or what happens.
CD/digital: Death Valley Records Vinyl: Interstellar Smoke Records Tape: Olde Magick Records
The mastering will be done by Magnus Andersson and the art by Negative Crypt Artwork.
No releasedate yet
We’re extremely happy with How it all came out and its quite an insane Record. Superstoked to get it out and hopefully people will dig it as much as we do.
#10000YearsIII #TheTrilogyEnds
10,000 Years: Erik Palm – Guitars Alex Risberg – Bass/vocals Espen Karlsen – Drums
Posted in Reviews on December 13th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Doing things a little differently this time. Yes, it’s still 10 records per day for a total of 50 between today and Friday, but with the utter glut — glutter! — of releases coming out and recently released, I’m doubling up on the Winter Quarterly Review and will be putting together another week of 50 records for January, after the holidays and all the year-end hullabaloo. So it’s 50 now and 50 later. I’ve never done it that way before, and I reserve the right to completely change my mind after this week, but as of right this second, that’s where I’m at. Talk to me again on Friday.
I guess we’d better get started, either way.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Enslaved, Caravans to the Outer Worlds
With a relatively brief 18-minute excursion that pushes yet-deeper into their particular brand of progressive extreme metal, Norway’s Enslaved continue to walk the increasingly melodic and decreasingly genre-dependent path in following-up 2020’s Utgard (review here). Their affinity for krautrock experimentalism is well established but has never been so forwardly presented as on “Intermezzo I – Lönnlig. Gudlig.,” and the thrust of the opening title-track sets Caravan to the Outer Worlds off with a due sense of motion later complemented by the keyboard-heavy “Ruun II – The Epitaph,” an apparent 15-years-later sequel to the title-cut from 2006’s Ruun (discussed here). Rounding out with “Intermezzo II – The Navigator,” with its almost-motorik space-but-still-somehow-Norwegian-space rock vibe, Enslaved‘s short offering for 2021 demonstrates plainly that they can be whatever and do whatever the hell they want. 30 years from their beginning, they keep growing. Such bands are likewise rare and precious.
It’s not quite what-you-see-is-what-you-get, but the Discos Macarras split Mallorca Stoner Vol. 1 that brings together two tracks each from Spanish outfits Bisonte — also written Bis·nte — and Milana certainly lays out its mission in representing the Mediterranean island’s heavy underground, and Bisonte aren’t through the nine-minute doomer “Unbalanced” before I’m curious just how many volumes the label might be able to put together from Mallorcan acts. Nonetheless, Bisonte‘s wizardly march on “Involuntary Act” flows organically around its downtrodden vibe, and in the more psychedelic “White Buffalo” and burl-lumbering “Forest Tale,” Milana work even quicker to acquit themselves well with an underlying current of noise. However much of a scene there may or may not be in Mallorca, Mallorca Stoner Vol. 1 is a welcome means through which to begin exploring both these acts more and others with whom they might share local stages. One will await Vol. 2 with interest.
New York’s Leeds Point seem on a doomed course with their Mother of Eternity EP on the opener “High Strangeness,” but they shake it up late with some cowbell boogie, and “The Summoning” further deepens the plot with layered in acoustics and a more lush melody as the trio builds out from their basic guitar-bass-drums configuration. Likewise, the shorter “Long Way Down” is a more straight-ahead ’70s rocker, and the closing title-track meets its initial prog rock melody first with driving riffs and later with more angularity and harsher barking vocals… before bringing it all back around at the end. With Eternal Black out of commission, NYC needs someone to champion traditional doom, but that’s not who these Long Islanders are. Their sound — set forth on their debut full-length some seven years ago; their most recent prior outing was 2019’s Equinox Blues (review here) — is more purposefully diverse. If they’re championing anything here, it’s their individuality. And that suits them.
The second full-length from Santiago, Chile’s Ocultum, Residue, was first issued by the band independently in 2019. Picked up for a vinyl release through Interstellar Smoke Records, the four-song/49-minute long-player (bong)rips into filthy-fuzz doom and scabbed-over sludge, the lumbering coming in one longform nod after another in “The Acid Road” and “Residue” itself — which might be the most densely-toned inclusion of the bunch, but it hardly matters when the 16-minute “Ascending With the Fumes of the Dead” and the 12-minute “Reflections on Repulsiveness” and you’re either on board with Ocultum‘s periodically-deathly-always-fucked style by then or you’ve probably been so grossed out that you’ve gone and gotten yourself a job, decided you were never really so misanthropic to start with, and that what you thought was the inner scum of your existential makeup was just you needing to have lunch or take a shower or some shit. Meanwhile, Ocultum are over here shrooming up and worshiping decay. Different league entirely. Even the quietest moments of Residue are heavy. There’s just no escape from it.
Cruel Curses, Fables, Folklore & Other Assorted Fever Dreams
If Tampa, Florida, heavy progressive rockers Cruel Curses decided to approach their third full-length, Fables, Folklore & Other Assorted Fever Dreams, with the goal of writing the entire album as a single-song, well, they did that. Though cumbersome in its title, “Fables, Folklore & Other Assorted Fever Dreams” is 36 minutes of linear-charted fare, twisting through parts both hard-hitting and airy, acoustic and electric and probably what could’ve been different songs if otherwise broken up in some places. Does it really matter? Nah. The finished piece, which is a departure from the four-piece and an impressive achievement in itself, makes its point with prog’s affection for funk propelling as many of its parts as metal’s more aggressive shred. Yet, Fables, Folklore & Other Assorted Fever Dreams does not merely trade between quiet and loud parts so much as fluidly bring the listener along its ebbs and flows, and though not without its element of self-indulgence, the album earns its swagger.
Give me the raw swing, echoing gurgles and unabashed fuzz of Green Hog‘s “Luck of the Devil” any day of the week. The Brooklynite trio released their Dogs From Hell full-length last year and follow it with the also-sung-entirely-in-Russian sophomore outing, not without its sense of ambience in “Dark Territory” and “Desert King,” the biker-in-space instrumental capper “Ric Moto,” but perhaps even more about the impact of its crashes than the spaces being created. Whatever definition of the word you might want to apply, Devil’s Luck is fucking heavy. And grim, to boot. Still, one could only call “Long Smoke” some kind of stoner rock, even if it is an especially crusty take thereupon, and the novelty of gurgled-out vocals sung in another language, complemented by samples in classic sludgy fashion, isn’t to be understated. If my man’s voice can hold out for a whole set, these guys must put on a killer show.
There are a few different plot threads one might follow along as Vobrazy weaves through its six component tracks, but the debut full-length from Belarusian five-piece bring their varied fare together around a central idea of progressive, metallic doom. Sometimes that manifests as a post-metallic chug as one hears in “Apošni raz,” which leads off, or it can be the growls and black-metal-squibblies-gone-airy of the early going in “Žyvy.” Such shifting arrangements in vocals (in Belarusian) between guitarist Uladzimir Burylau and singer Kate Sidelova add to the unpredictable nature of the band, but there’s no question that melody wins the day, and given how Vobrazy plays out across its 41 minutes, one gets the feeling that the extremity of “Naščadkam” and the more-patient-before-they-hit-the-payoff closer “Bol na sercy” do not coexist by happenstance. The band — completed by guitarist Ignat Pomazkov, bassist Roman Petrashkevich and drummer Artem Voronko — are not light on ambition, aesthetically-speaking, but I like the fact that I have zero guess what their next record will sound like.
While not barebones by any means, with solos aplenty and variety in their tempos readily established between the first two cuts “Slow Wisdom Coming” and “Hot Girl Summer,” there’s still something about Buffalo Tombs‘ aptly-titled second long-player, Two, that comes across as wholly unpretentious, not trying to overstate its own argument or draw the audience away from the riffs and grooves central to its purpose. Wholesome, if not always humble. The six-songer is done in under half an hour, so if you wanted to call it an EP, you could, but even as Eric Stuart brings in a bit of synth for “Dream Breather” and “The Beheading of John the Baptist” in its later percussion-meet-drift-out finish, the Denver instrumentalists maintain a straightforward underpinning, with Stuart‘s guitar/keys/bass met with Joshua Lafferty‘s basslines and Patrick Haga‘s drumming in easily-digested-but-not-earth-shattering fashion, the low end hitting a particular note of righteousness in rolling out “Al Khidr” without being too showy in doing so. I’d be interested to hear them explore their psychedelic side further, but there’s plenty of vibe here in the meantime.
Though understated in the fullness of its production, BroodMother‘s The Third Eye EP leaves little doubt as to where the Worcester, UK, five-piece are coming from after having issued their first album, Sin, Myth, Power, in 2019. Jay Clark, who produced that outing, drums on and mixed this one, and its four songs readily serve as a sampler for an audience to be introduced to the band’s take on heavy rock and roll. “Spiritual Shakedown” and “Killing for Company” are midtempo riffers, with the latter touching slightly on Acrimony-style hookmaking and chug, while “(The Ballad of) Anti-Matter Man” gets trippy in its intro and shuffles into an apex in its second half before finishing mellow, and closer “The Trick of the Journey” hints toward ’90s crunch but marries it to a bluesier stretch of lead solo guitar. Still, it’s rock and roll, however you want to cut it — straight-up but not lifeless — and BroodMother proudly carry its banner.
From the almost-if-not-entirely-instrumental unfolding of “From Hell to Horizon” and “Kelper-452B” to the black metal vocals on “Psychosis (In a Vacuum),” the harsh sax of “Black Hole Viscera” and the drone-laden 10-minute finisher “Succumb to the Void,” the debut full-length from Stony Brook, New York’s King Bastard, It Came From the Void, seems wilfully bent toward disorienting those who’d dare to take it on. The breadth and spaciousness of its “From Hell to Horizon” isn’t to be understated — neither the percussion chill in its midsection — but the weight that corresponds there and in “Kelper-452B” and through “Bury the Survivors/Ashes to Ashes,” with its Aliens samples and dug-in-its-own-head proggy chaos is no less a factor in making the album as striking a first impression as it is. Jammy, heavy psych, black metal, doom, sludge — you could call King Bastard any of these and not be wrong, but it’s in how fluidly they unite them that their potential shines through.
