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The Obelisk Presents: The Top 20 Debut Albums of 2016

Posted in Features on December 15th, 2016 by JJ Koczan

the obelisk top 20 debut albums of 2016

Please note: This post is not culled in any way from the Year-End Poll, which is ongoing. If you haven’t yet contributed your favorites of 2016 to that, please do.

Of all the lists I do to wrap up or start any given year, this is the hardest. As someone obviously more concerned with first impressions than I am and thus probably better-dressed once said, you only get one chance at them. For bands, that can be a vicious bite in the ass on multiple levels.

To wit, you put out a great debut, fine, but there’s a whole segment of your listeners who’re bound to think you’ll never live up to it again. You put out a meh debut, you sell yourself short. Or maybe your debut is awesome but doesn’t really represent where you want to be as a band, so it’s a really good first impression, but a mistaken one. There are so many things that can go wrong or go right with any LP, but with debuts, the stakes are that much higher because it’s the only time you’ll get the chance to engage your audience for the first time. That matters.

And when it comes to putting together a list of the best debuts of the year, how does one begin to judge? True, some of these acts have done EPs and singles and splits and things like that before, and that’s at least something to go on, but can one really be expected to measure an act’s potential based on a single collection of songs? Is that fair to anyone involved? Or on the other side, is it even possible to take a debut entirely on its own merits, without any consideration for where it might lead the band in question going forward? I know that’s not something I’ve ever been able to do, certainly. Or particularly interested in doing. I like context.

Still, one presses on. I guess the point is that, like picking any kind of prospects, some will pan out and some won’t. I’ve done this for enough years now that I’ve seen groups flame or fade out while others have risen to new heights with each subsequent release. It’s always a mix. But at the same time, it’s important to step back and say that, as of today, this is where it’s at.

And so it is:

KING BUFFALO ORION

The Obelisk Presents: The Top 20 Debut Albums of 2016

1. King Buffalo, Orion
2. Elephant Tree, Elephant Tree
3. Heavy Temple, Chassit
4. Holy Grove, Holy Grove
5. Worshipper, Shadow Hymns
6. Vokonis, Olde One Ascending
7. Wretch, Wretch
8. Year of the Cobra, In the Shadows Below
9. BigPig, Grande Puerco
10. Fuzz Evil, Fuzz Evil
11. Bright Curse, Before the Shore
12. Conclave, Sins of the Elders
13. Pale Grey Lore, Pale Grey Lore
14. High Fighter, Scars and Crosses
15. Spirit Adrift, Chained to Oblivion
16. Bellringer, Jettison
17. Church of the Cosmic Skull, Is Satan Real?
18. Merchant, Suzerain
19. Beastmaker, Lusus Naturae
20. King Dead, Woe and Judgment

Honorable Mention

There are many. First, the self-titled from Pooty Owldom, which had so much weirdo charm it made my head want to explode. And Iron Man frontman Dee Calhoun‘s acoustic solo record was technically a debut. And Atala‘s record. And Horehound. And Mother Mooch. And Domkraft. And Spaceslug. And Graves at Sea? Shit. More than a decade after their demo, they finally put out a debut album. And Second Grave‘s full-length would turn out to be their swansong, but that doesn’t take away from the quality of the thing. There were a lot of records to consider in putting this list together. As always, it could’ve been a much longer list.

For example, here are 20 more: Swan Valley Heights, Arctic, Blues Funeral, Teacher, Psychedelic Witchcraft, Nonsun, Duel, Banquet, Floodlore, Mindkult‘s EP, Mountain Dust, Red LamaRed Wizard, Limestone Whale, Dunbarrow, Comacozer, Sinister Haze, Pants Exploder, Akasava, Katla and No Man’s Valley. That’s not even the end of it. I could go on.

Notes

It was a fight to the finish. There’s always one, and as late as yesterday I could be found kicking back and forth between King Buffalo and Elephant Tree in the top spot. What was it that finally put King Buffalo‘s Orion over Elephant Tree‘s self-titled? I don’t know. Ask me tomorrow and the answer might be completely different.

They had a lot in common. Not necessarily in terms of style — King Buffalo basked in spacious Americana-infused heavy psych jams while Elephant Tree proffered more earthbound riffing and melodies — but each executed memorable songs across its span in a way that would be unfair to ask of a debut. The potential for what both bands can turn into down the line played a part in the picks, but something else they share between them is that the quality of the work they’re doing now warrants the top spots. Orion and Elephant Tree were great albums, not just great first albums.

From there, we see a wide swath of next-generation encouragement for the future of heavy rock, whether it’s coming from Sweden’s Vokonis or Philadelphia’s Heavy Temple, or London’s Bright Curse, or Los Angeles duo BigPig. The latter act’s punkish fuzz definitely benefited from guitarist/vocalist Dino von Lalli‘s experience playing in Fatso Jetson, but one hopes that as the years go on his own multifaceted songwriting style will continue to grow as well.

A few offerings weren’t necessarily unexpected but still lived up to the anticipation. High Fighter‘s EP prefaced their aggro sludgecore well. Ditto that for the grueling death-sludge of Massachusetts natives Conclave. The aforementioned Bright Curse, Merchant, Fuzz Evil, Atala, Bellringer, Holy Grove, Wretch and Worshipper all had offerings of one sort or another prior to their full-length debuts — in the case of Bellringer, it was just a series of videos, while Wretch had the entire The Gates of Slumber catalog to fall back on — but each of those albums offered surprises nonetheless.

It would’ve been hard not to be taken by the songwriting on display from the likes of Holy Grove, Year of the Cobra, Pale Grey Lore and Beastmaker, who between them covered a pretty broad variety of atmosphere but found ways to deliver high-quality crafted material in that. Those albums were a pleasure to hear. Put Boston’s Worshipper in that category as well, though they were just as much a standout from the pack in terms of their performance as what they were performing. Speaking of performance, the lush melodies from Church of the Cosmic Skull and classic progressive flourish were enough to make me a believer. Simply gorgeous. And one-man outfit Spirit Adrift shined, if in that matte-black doom kind of way, on an encouraging collection of modern melancholic heavy that seemed to hint at sprawl to come.

As we get down to the bottom of the list we find Pennsylvania ambient heavy post-rockers King Dead. Their Woe and Judgment was released digitally last year (2015) but the LP came out earlier this year, so I wasn’t quite sure where to place them ultimately. I know they got some mention on the 2015 lists somewhere, but while they’re an act who’ve flown under a lot of people’s radar as yet, I have good feelings about how they might continue to dig into their sound and the balance of bleakness and psychedelic color they bring to their material. They’re slated for a follow-up in 2017, so this won’t be the last list on which they appear in the next few weeks.

Like I said at the outset, putting out a debut album is a special moment for any band. Not everyone gets to that point and not everyone gets beyond it, so while a list like this is inherently bound to have some element of speculation, it’s still a worthy endeavor to celebrate the accomplishments of those who hit that crucial moment in their creative development. Hopefully these acts continue to grow, flourish, and build on what they’ve thus far been able to realize sonically. That’s the ideal.

And before I go, once again, let me reinforce the notion that I recognize this is just a fraction of the whole. I’d like it to be the start of a conversation. If there was a debut album that kicked your ass this year and you don’t see it here, please drop a note in the comments below. I’m sure I’ll be adding more honorable mentions and whatnot over the next couple days, so if you see glaring omissions, let’s have ’em.

Thanks for reading.

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Review & Track Premiere: Church of the Cosmic Skull, Is Satan Real?

Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on August 4th, 2016 by JJ Koczan

church of the cosmic skull is satan real

Embed for Watch it Grow

[Click play above to stream the premiere of ‘Watch it Grow’ from Church of the Cosmic Skull’s Is Satan Real?, out Sept. 16 on Bilocation Records.]

I don’t know how many people it takes to constitute a “church” by UK standards, but Nottingham’s Church of the Cosmic Skull most likely hit that standard. The newcomer band brings together seven players from different groups — guitarist/lead vocalist Bill Fisher was in Mammothwing, others come from Pilgrim Fathers, Hellset Orchestra, Iron Swan, Polymath, Club AC30, and so on — and together they take the band beyond clear aesthetic vision into a near-conceptual level of execution. That is, their mission is so firmly in their grasp, their control held so definitively throughout the seven songs/38 minutes of their Bilocation Records debut, Is Satan Real?, that it becomes easy to imagine the band took shape as an idea before anyone actually came on board.

Fisher is joined by vocalists Caroline Cawley and Jo Joyce, electric cellist/vocalist Amy Nicholson, bassist/vocalist Sam Lloyd, Hammond organist/vocalist Michael Wetherburn and drummer Loz Stone, and as one might expect, the album makes its primary impression in lush sounds. Deeply indebted to classic prog rock, it is immediately distinguished by its multi-part vocal harmonies and overall melodic flourish, working with an unabashed poppiness that some will no doubt attribute to Ghost, especially with the underlying Satanic theme of the title, but Church of the Cosmic Skull‘s heavy psychedelic clarity almost can’t help but be distinct, from the opening bounce of “Mountain Heart” through nine-minute progstravaganza closer “Evil in Your Eye.”

And if you’re thinking this might just be another British band with a cumbersome or otherwise silly name, I’d say each work in Church of the Cosmic Skull‘s moniker earns its place. “Cosmic” for the swirling psychedelic aspects of a cut like “Movements in the Sky,” “skull” for the darker aspects in “Black Slug,” minimalist centerpiece “Answers in Your Soul” and the almost Opethian prog (or, more likely, Magma) of the title-track, and “church” for the sense of reverence that emerges from the lush arrangements of vocals, keys and/or cello throughout “Mountain Heart,” album highlight “Watch it Grow” and the aforementioned closer, for how crisp the songs sound and how each manages to establish its own personality while also adding to the overall breadth of the whole work. Is Satan Real?, as a title, also evokes late-’60s cult interest, like Anton Lavey on the cover of Look magazine.

church of the cosmic skull

This all feeds into a comprehensive aesthetic ideal to which the band ascribes, “Mountain Heart” and “Black Slug” setting up a play back and forth between lighter and darker sounds while maintaining a steady thread through them of complexity and textured prog rock, the rolling riff of “Black Slug” coming about as close as they ever do to a doomed vibe. That threat does a lot of work in the subsequent tracks, as “Movements in the Sky” picks up with quiet guitar and organ and brings an underlying chug to a brief but effective three-and-a-half-minute linear build, the vibe has clearly switched back toward brighter fare, but the context has shifted, expanded, and that’s something Church of the Cosmic Skull continue to toy with as the album proceeds forward. After the lustrous finish of “Movements in the Sky,” “Answers in Your Soul” picks up with subdued acoustic guitar and Fisher‘s voice alone — a stark contrast to the rest of the record before and after, but obviously intended to be just that. The relative minimalism and still-on-point melody only further highlight just how broad the spectrum at play in Church of the Cosmic Skull‘s sound can be and can continue to become.

I suppose their potential going forward is a major appeal of this first outing, and for a first outing, that’s fair — it’s easy to be excited about a band starting what seems like it could be a fruitful creative progression — however, in the case of Is Satan Real?, that excitement shouldn’t be taken as a knock on the current accomplishment. As “Is Satan Real” serpentines through a winding prog structure, largely instrumental for the first three-plus of its total four minutes save for some whispers, then dives at 3:31 into organ-laced gospel verse, the sense of realization the band brings to their work already is palpable, and in its engagement and confidence, their material soars when it wants to soar, broods when it wants to brood, and in “Watch it Grow,” kind of engages all sides with a max-efficiency hook, gorgeous arrangement, heavy thud and fluid build. With a foundation of bass and drums, the band construct a landmark chorus and continue to add depth to it as they move forward, dedicating the second half of the song to pure revelry that provides an absolute standout moment leading into “Evil in Your Eye,” which answers back with the most complex structure on hand, keys emphasizing urgency early but the vocal chorus taking hold with next to no backing before the push resumes.

Near the halfway point, they shift into a more subdued psychedelic jam and loosen some of the structural reins for what feels like genuine exploration. Naturally, they bring it back to the chorus for a final build before they’re done, but it’s a welcome moment of play and speaks to the possibility of structural changes being as fluid as mood and vibe are all across the record. A quiet hidden track finds Fisher accompanied by piano — perhaps in answer to “Answers in Your Soul” — and once more underscores just how wide open Church of the Cosmic Skull have thrown the doors with this debut full-length. The fact that their range comes with a corresponding cohesion of sound and purpose makes Is Satan Real? even more impressive. Its shining moments blind and its darker moments pull downward, but it’s in being able to pull off both and craft such seamlessness between the two sides that the band truly begin to make their mark.

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