Posted in Whathaveyou on March 21st, 2025 by JJ Koczan
So here’s a moment where I’m just going to be honest with you. I’m pretty sure this lineup has been announced for a bit. If you’ve been to Legalize Lex and you accordingly keep up with the Lexington, Kentucky-based two-dayer set for April 18-19 on social media, maybe you’ve seen that the likes of Horseburner, Lo-Pan, Temple of the Fuzz Witch and Hashtronaut are making the trip. Fine. So maybe it’s not ‘breaking news,’ as much as anything in the heavy underground short of Bobby Liebling memes could hope to be. I haven’t posted the lineup here yet, so even if it’s not new to you, it’s new to me. Thanks for indulging my late-to-the-party ass once again.
Crop are the affiliated act here, and they seem to be setting up the fest as a regional nexus, pulling bands from all cardinal directions to solidify what’s turned out to be a pretty banger bill. Reminds me of an old Emissions lineup, and not just because Rebreather are there, but also in some of the stoner-sludge later down the poster. The day-split is out — you can see the Saturday is more packed than the Friday, as it should be, but the first night is by no means lacking — and the lineups are rad. I won’t be there to see it, but if you get to go, I’d expect it to be a party as much as a festival. Certainly that’s the vibe I’m getting from the poster.
The day-split came down the PR wire as follows:
LEGALIZE Announces Full Lineup and Set Times for its 2nd Annual Festival in Lexington KY!
[Click play above to stream International Space Station Vol. 2 in full. The split is out Aug. 20 on Worst Bassist, Weird Beard and Echodelick Records.]
In addition to being the most expensive thing ever built, the International Space Station is the most resounding proof ever manifest of the potential for what humanity can accomplish when we, in even momentary or compartmentalized fashion, put aside our differences and genuinely collaborate. Human potential, circling the planet above our heads every 90 minutes or so. Worst Bassist Records (Germany/EU), working in conjunction with Weird Beard Records (UK) and Echodelick Records (US), offers the second installment of its split series, International Space Station Vol. 2, both in tribute and in some of the same cooperative spirit. Like its 2022 predecessor, International Space Station Vol. 1 (review here), the assemblage features four bands, including the Americans Verstärker, from Kentucky, as well as Kombynat Robotron (from Germany), Speck (from Austria) and Sarkh (from Germany). It’s not quite the same as Europe, Russia, Canada and America spending billions of dollars to construct the ISS itself, module by module, but as one would hope, each band brings something of their own to the overarching scope of International Space Station Vol. 2, while keeping to the abiding space rock theme, in essence if not necessarily genre tropes. It’s cosmic one way or the other, to be sure.
As with Vol. 1, each band on Vol. 2 is given a side to work with to make a full 72-minute 2LP. Verstärker lead off and bring the first of the split’s delves into krautrock across “Weltraumtraum” (12:16) and “Kvant” (5:46), the latter of which is an immersive, multi-tiered drone that gradually emerges from the second half of “Weltraumtraum.” The two are likewise exploratory, if in different ways, as the first cut starts out with a more urgent gallop on drums and a bassline that keeps it cool but still moves, guitar feeling out the spaces in the swirl. A boogie takes hold until about four and a half minutes in, where the change marked by a stop of drums leads to a heavier outbound thrust. About force more than escape velocity, the next two minutes of push give over to mellower bassy jamming and guitar effects floating overhead, a little ghostly, but there. The drums keep the tension so that when “Weltraumtraum” starts to build back up it makes sense, and even after the crescendo, until just about 10 minutes in, the drums hold out amid the residual synth and guitar echoes. Once they go, it’s the sci-fi drone of “Kvant” all the way — an initial and not at all last hypnotic stretch as International Space Station Vol. 2 broadens its reach.
Kombynat Robotron bring a reset at the start of their lone inclusion “Montan” (15:31) and answer the proggy flow of Verstärker‘s longer piece with an easy movement of their own. Shimmering guitar over a krautrock groove probably shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone familiar with the band, this split series, or the style more generally, but Kombynat Robotron bring a Yawning–Man-in-space sensibility to the guitar work and subtle gotta-go of the rhythm. A crash and stop at five minutes in marks the divergence from where they’ve been to where they’re going, which is to a more actively swirling solo section, with crash cymbal adding to the build as they move further into the maybe-improvised unknown. Howls and wails circa 8:20 preface a pickup in the toms, and the Kiel trio carry their procession in willfully, increasingly noisy style across its back half, such that when it ends with a feedbackscape, it makes sense, feeling all the more vibrant and nebular in their fusing of elements. As the only band with one song here — everyone else does a long one and a short one, like Verstärker — Kombynat Robotron still use their time well to emphasize performance as well as exploration. “Montan” is duly massive as a result.
The immediate impression when Speck set forth with “Flaniergang” (16:03), with “Bes, So Bes” (4:29) following, is cleaner in tone, but it’s the urging motion of the drums that is most consuming. Accompanied by a bassline one might be tempted to call “solid” were it not so utterly liquefied, the drums mark out the path the song will take and give everybody — yes, including you — the chance to get on board before the real takeoff. That comes shortly after three minutes in as the guitar comes forward and the groove opens up with chugging interstellar build. Hints of heavy psych melodicism persist in the guitar, and that’ll do quite nicely, thank you, but Speck bring the proceedings back down for a quick refueling ahead of the next launch, which comes in short order. It’s not the last either — they sneak in a third redirect in the last two minutes that makes “Flaniergang” even more exciting, capping with feedback that leads directly into the cymbal wash of “Bes, So Bes,” a slow-rolling improv-feeling jaunt into low gravity that isn’t shapeless but which is clear in its less-rigid structure, and at this point in the split, calling something “less rigid” is really saying something.
Given the unenviable task of rounding out the final of the 2LP’s four sides, Sarkh flip the script and put the shorter song first, topping “Helios” (6:17) with a sample in its early going and sweeping in with heavier tones and some of the post-metallic expanse they’ve established as well within their reach. By the time they’re three minutes in, “Helios” is crushing and sprawling in kind, and they continue to set airy post-rock guitar against what in context sounds downright pummeling as the song churns to its purposeful ending, a stretch of low hum making the transition between “Helios” and the concluding “Cape Wrath” (11:37). Terrestrial, if not cavernous in its sound, and once again, remarkably heavy, “Cape Wrath” turns from the patterned riff that begins it, drops the drums and resets for a breath around ambient guitar, and thereby sets out on one big, last build, the payoff of which is your explanation for why Sarkh appear last on International Space Station Vol. 2 — once you go in the black hole, there’s no getting back out. It’s okay though, because as gravitational as they get, Sarkh retain enough presence and intentionality to bring “Cape Wrath” to a close with a change to sparse standalone guitar, not unlike that which set out that build to begin with.
And really, who knows where or when that was. On the cosmic-web-defined, impossible-to-comprehend-by-our-bacteria-brains scales of time and space in the universe, International Space Station and the structure that inspired the series in the first are — like everything else human beings have ever done and likely will ever do — small achievements, but they share that aspect of realized potential, and like the different sections of the ISS being assembled in orbit some 255 miles above the surface of the planet, each band’s material adds to the complexity of what’s portrayed by the whole, which is a fresh, multidimensional space rock that speaks no less to an optimistic future. The eons-long course of civilization’s history has wrought little that is more worth celebrating, and International Space Station Vol. 2 feels suitably reverent.
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 24th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I know I’ve said this before, but I continue to believe there’s something extra rad about a four-way split. Two, generally pretty cool, but often leads to a sense of one band competing with the other or at least a tendency on the part of the listener to compare them, which is just the same thing from the other side. Three, well fine as long as you don’t have any intention toward vinyl. But a four-way 2LP split breaks up in a satisfying way, as everybody gets to showcase their aural wares on their own side, and there’s usually enough breadth of personality between the four bands that the listener is more inclined to take everything as it comes. As Worst Bassist Records showed with three first installment of the four-way split series International Space Station (review here) in 2022, ‘take it as it comes’ is precisely the best way to go in hearing it.
Jointly released through Weird Beard Records in the UK and Echodelick Records in the US, and I believe available to preorder from all of them, International Space Station Vol. 2 once again brings together an intercontinental assemblage in Verstärker (from the US, despite the maybe-misleading umlaut), Kombynat Robotron and Sarkh (from Germany), and Speck (from Austria), and everybody but Kombynat Robotron already has a song streaming. And Kombynat Robotron aren’t being jerks or holdouts or whathaveyou, but they’ve only got one song on their side. Fair enough up keep it under wraps for now.
If you do want to hear that — and we both know you do — come back Aug. 19, as I’ll be streaming the album in full that day with what I’m sure will be a duly slobbering review full of obscure Star Trek references and cosmic buzzwords picked up from the PBS S0ace Time science videos my daughter watches with ironically religious fervor. So it’ll be awesome, in other words.
For now, art, info and copious linkage follow. Engage:
The long awaited vol. 2 of the Intrernational Space Station arrives!
2-LP in a fat gatefold cover, colored wax, limited to 500 LP 1: orange wax LP 2: blue wax CD in digisleeve lim. 100
Four international bands (Verstärker, Kombynat Robotron, Speck, Sarkh) contributing 1 LP side each, instrumental, about how to watch the ISS crossing their skies from time to time… or being overwhelmed by the rough beauty of the ocean…
Long and psychedelic tracks pulsating through space and try to follow the way of the space station around our globe and even beyond, to contribute you the opportunity to travel through your inner cosmosis while listening, only interrupted by the needle lifting, which could just be some stops at random interstellar stations, to release and gain passengers.
2-LP in a fat gatefold cover, colored wax, limited to 500 LP 1: orange wax LP 2: blue wax
Out via Worst Bassist (DE+World), Echodelick (USA) and Weird Beird (UK) August 20th 2024 Comes with Download Code
CD out via Worst Bassist on Aug. 20th.
Verstärker
Verstärker from Kentucky, USA, play monotonic motorik sound, surrounded by soundscapes and beautiful noise.
Groove, shifts, scapes, beauty, intensity, it’s all there.
Kombynat Robotron
Germany’s high flying neo-krautrockers continue on side B with their floating and dynamic longtrack.
Speck
Side C kicks off with Austria’s instrumental psychedelic mantra jammers Speck, who created a journey through mind and space until…
Sarkh
… the ISS takes another turn over Germany and brings you a force of nature to end all this, with side D.
You’ll be torn apart and re-built again through the heavy and yet delightful instrumentals.
Posted in Reviews on November 28th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Day two and no looking back. Yesterday was Monday and it was pretty tripped out. There’s some psych stuff here too, but we start out by digging deep into metal-rooted doom and it doesn’t get any less dudely through the first three records, let’s put it that way. But there’s more here than one style, microgengre, or gender expression can contain, and I invite you as you make your way through to approach not from a place of redundant chestbeating, but of celebrating a moment captured. In the cases of some of these releases, it’s a pretty special moment we’re talking about.
Places to go, things to hear. We march.
Quarterly Review #11-20:
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Primordial, How it Ends
Excuse me, ma’am. Do you have 66 minutes to talk about the end of the world? No? Nobody does? Well that’s kind of sad.
At 28 years’ remove from their first record, 1995’s Imrama, and now on their 10th full-length, Dublin’s Primordial are duly mournful across the 10 songs of How it Ends, which boasts the staring-at-a-bloodied-hillside-full-of-bodies after-battle mourning and oppression-defying lyricism and a style rooted in black metal and grown beyond it informed by Irish folk progressions but open enough to make a highlight of the build in “Death Holy Death” here. A more aggressive lean shows itself in “All Against All” just prior while “Pilgrimage to the World’s End” is brought to a wash of an apex with a high reach from vocalist Alan “A.A. Nemtheanga” Averill, who should be counted among metal’s all-time frontmen, ahead of the tension chugging in the beginning of “Nothing New Under the Sun.” And you know, for the most part, there isn’t. Most of what Primordial do on How it Ends, they’ve done before, and their central innovation in bridging extreme metal with folk traditionalism, is long behind them. How it Ends seems to dwell in some parts and be roiling in its immediacy elsewhere, and its grandiosities inherently will put some off just as they will bring some on, but Primordial continue to find clever ways to develop around their core approach, and How it Ends — if it is the end or it isn’t, for them or the world — harnesses that while also serving as a reminder of how much they own their sound.
With a partner in drummer Johnny Kelly (Type O Negative, Danzig, etc.), guitarist/songwriter Dan Lorenzo (Hades, Vessel of Light, Cassius King, etc.) has found an outlet open to various ideas within the sphere of doom metal/rock in Patriarchs in Black, whose second LP, My Veneration, brings a cohort of guests on vocals and bass alongside the band’s core duo. Some, like Karl Agell (C.O.C. Blind) and bassist Dave Neabore (Dog Eat Dog), are returning parties from the project’s 2022 debut, Reach for the Scars, while Unida vocalist Mark Sunshine makes a highlight of “Show Them Your Power” early on. Sunshine appears on “Veneration” as well alongside DMC from Run DMC, which, if you’re going to do a rap-rock crossover, it probably makes sense to get a guy who was there the first time it happened. Elsewhere, “Non Defectum” toys with layering with Kelly Abe of Sicks Deep adding screams, and Paul Stanley impersonator Bob Jensen steps in for the KISS cover “I Stole Your Love” and the originals “Dead and Gone” and “Hallowed Be Her Name” so indeed, no shortage of variety. Tying it together? The riffs, of course. Lorenzo has shown an as-yet inexhaustible supply thereof. Here, they seem to power multiple bands all on one album.
Just because it wasn’t a surprise doesn’t mean it’s not one of the best debut albums of 2023. Bringing together known parties from Boston’s heavy underground Jim Healey (We’re All Gonna Die, etc.), Doug Sherman (Gozu), Bob Maloney (Worshipper) and J.R. Roach (Sam Black Church), Blood Lightning want nothing for pedigree, and their Ripple-issued self-titled debut meets high expectations with vigor and thrash-born purpose. Sherman‘s style of riffing and Healey‘s soulful, belted-out vocals are both identifiable factors in cuts like “The Dying Starts” and the charging “Face Eater,” which works to find a bridge between heavy rock and classic, soaring metal. Their cover of Black Sabbath‘s “Disturbing the Priest,” included here as the last of the six songs on the 27-minute album, I seem to recall being at least part of the impetus for the band, but frankly, however they got there, I’m glad the project has been preserved. I don’t know if they will or won’t do anything else, but there’s potential in their metal/rock blend, which positions itself as oldschool but is more forward thinking than either genre can be on its own.
Based in Oakland and making their debut with the significant endorsement of Small Stone Records and Kozmik Artifactz behind them, atmospheric post-heavy rock five-piece Haurun tap into ethereal ambience and weighted fuzz in such a way as to raise memories of the time Black Math Horseman got picked up by Tee Pee. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. With notions of Acid King in the nodding, undulating riffs of “Abyss” and the later reaches of “Lost and Found,” but two guitars are a distinguishing factor, and Haurun come across as primarily concerned with mood, although the post-grunge ’90s alt hooks of “Flying Low” and “Lunar” ahead of 11-minute closer “Soil,” which uses its longform breadth to cast as vivid a soundscape as possible. Fast, slow, minimalist or at a full wash of noise, Haurun‘s Wilting Within has its foundation in heavy rock groove and riffy repetition, but does something with that that goes beyond microniche confines. Very much looking forward to more from this band.
Its point of view long established by the time they get around to the filthy lurch of “Hesher” — track three of seven — Cabin Fever is the first full-length from cultish doomers Wicked Trip. The Tennessee outfit revel in Electric Wizard-style fuckall on “Cabin Fever” after the warning in the spoken “Intro,” and the 11-minute sample-topped “Night of Pan” is a psych-doom jam that’s hypnotic right unto its keyboard-drone finish giving over to the sampled smooth sounds of the ’70s at the start of “Black Valentine,” which feels all the more dirt-coated when it actually kicks in, though “Evils of the Night” is no less threatening of purpose in its garage-doom swing, crash-out and cacophonous payoff, and I’m pretty sure if you played “No Longer Human” at double the speed, well, it might be human again. All of these grim, bleak, scorching, nodding, gnashing pieces come together to craft Cabin Fever as one consuming, lo-fi entirety, raw both because the recording sounds harsh and because the band itself eschew any frills not in service to their disillusioned atmosphere.
There’s an awful lot of sex going on in Splinter‘s Role Models, as the Amsterdam glam-minded heavy rockers follow their 2021 debut, Filthy Pleasures (review here), with cuts like “Soviet Schoolgirl,” “Bottom,” “Opposite Sex” and the poppy post-punk “Velvet Scam” early on. It’s not all sleaze — though even “The Carpet Makes Me Sad” is trying to get you in bed — and the piano and boozy harmonies of “Computer Screen” are a fun departure ahead of the also-acoustic finish in closer “It Should Have Been Over,” while “Every Circus Needs a Clown” feels hell-bent on remaking Queen‘s “Stone Cold Crazy” and “Medicine Man” and “Forbidden Kicks” find a place where garage rock meets heavier riffing, while “Children” gets its complaints registered efficiently in just over two boogie-push minutes. A touch of Sabbath here, some Queens of the Stone Age chic disco there, and Splinter are happy to find a place for themselves adjacent to both without aping either. One would not accuse them of subtlety as regards theme, but there’s something to be said for saying what you want up front.
Beginning with its longest component track (immediate points) in “Asteroid,” Terra Black‘s All Descend is a downward-directed slab of doomed nod, so doubled-down on its own slog that “Black Flames of Funeral Fire” doesn’t even start its first verse until the song is more than half over. Languid tempos play up the largesse of “Ashes and Dust,” and “Divinest Sin” borders on Eurometal, but if you need to know what’s in Terra Black‘s heart, look no further than the guitar, bass, drum and vocal lumber — all-lumber — of “Spawn of Lyssa” and find that it’s doom pumping blood around the band’s collective body. While avoiding sounding like Electric Wizard, the Gothenburg, Sweden, unit crawl through that penultimate duet track with all ready despondency, and resolve “Slumber Grove” with agonized final lub-dub heartbeats of kick drum and guitar drawl after a vivid and especially doomed wash drops out to vocals before rearing back and plodding forward once more, doomed, gorgeous, immersive, and so, so heavy. They’re not finished growing yet — nor should they be on this first album — but they’re on the path.
Sometimes the name of a thing can tell you about the thing. So enters Musing, a contemplative solo outfit from Devin “Darty” Purdy, also known for his work in Calgary-based bands Gone Cosmic and Chron Goblin, with the eight-song/42-minute Somewhen and a flowing instrumental narrative that borders on heavy post-rock and psychedelia, but is clearheaded ultimately in its course and not slapdash enough to be purely experimental. That is, though intended to be instrumental works outside the norm of his songcraft, tracks like “Flight to Forever” and the delightfully bassy “Frontal Robotomy” are songs, have been carved out of inspired and improvised parts to be what they are. “Hurry Wait” revamps post-metal standalone guitar to be the basis of a fuzzy exploration, while “Reality Merchants” hones a sense of space that will be welcome in ears that embrace the likes of Yawning Sons or Big Scenic Nowhere. Somewhen has a story behind it — there’s narrative; blessings and peace upon it — but the actual music is open enough to translate to any number of personal interpretations. A ‘see where it takes you’ attitude is called for, then. Maybe on Purdy‘s part as well.
A heavy and Sabbathian rock forms the underlying foundation of Spiral Shades‘ sound, and the returning two-piece of vocalist Khushal R. Bhadra and guitarist/bassist/drummer Filip Petersen have obviously spent the nine years since 2014’s debut, Hypnosis Sessions (review here), enrolled in post-doctoral Iommic studies. Revival, after so long, is not unwelcome in the least. Doom happens in its own time, and with seven songs and 38 minutes of new material, plus bonus tracks, they make up for lost time with classic groove and tone loyal to the blueprint once put forth while reserving a place for itself in itself. That is, there’s more to Spiral Shades and to Revival than Sabbath worship, even if that’s a lot of the point. I won’t take away from the metal-leaning chug of “Witchy Eyes” near the end of the album, but “Foggy Mist” reminds of The Obsessed‘s particular crunch and “Chapter Zero” rolls like Spirit Caravan, find a foothold between rock and doom, and it turns out riffs are welcome on both sides.
The closing “Sex on a Grave” reminds of the slurring bluesy lasciviousness of Nick Cave‘s Grinderman, and that should in part be taken as a compliment to the setup through “Black Cat” — which toys with 12-bar structure and is somewhere between urbane cool and cabaret nerdery — and the centerpiece “Bad Day,” which follows a classic downer chord progression through its apex with the rawness of Backwoods Payback at their most emotive and a greater melodic reach only after swaying through its willful bummer of an intro. Last-minute psych flourish in the guitar threatens to make “Bad Day” a party, but the Louisville outfit find their way around to their own kind of fun, which since the release is only three songs long just happens to be “Sex on a Grave.” Fair enough. Rife with attitude and an emergent dynamic that’s complementary to the persona of the vocals rather than trying to keep up with them, the counterintuitively-titled second short release (yes, I know the cover is a Zeppelin reference; settle down) from Bandshee lays out an individual approach to heavy songwriting and a swing that goes back further in time than most.
That’s it. End of the Summer 2023 Quarterly Review and the last round of this kind of thing until, I don’t know, sometime here or there in late September or early October. I feel like I say this every time out — and I readily acknowledge the possibility that I do; I’ve been doing this for a while, and there’s only so much shit to say — but it is my sincere hope you found something in this round of 70 records that hits with you. I did, a couple times over at least. One of the reasons I look forward to the Quarterly Review, apart from clearing off album-promo folders from my desktop, is that my end-of-year lists always look different coming out of one than they did going in. This time is no different.
But, you know, if you didn’t get there this time, that’s okay too. There’s always the next one and one of the fortunate things about living in a time with such an onslaught of recorded music is that there’s always something new to check out. The Quarterly Review is over for a couple months, yeah, but new music happens every day. Every day is another chance to find your new favorite album, band, video, whatever. Enjoy that.
Quarterly Review #61-70:
Monolord, It’s All the Same
After nearly a decade of hard, album-cycle-driven international touring and standing at the forefront in helping to steer a generational wave of lumbering riffage, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think Gothenburg, Sweden’s Monolord might feel stuck, and “Glaive (It’s All the Same)” seems to acknowledge that. Stylistically, though the lead and partial title-track on the roller trio’s new EP, It’s All the Same, is itself a way forward. It is more spacious than crushing, and they fill the single out with guitarist Thomas V. Jäger‘s sorrowful vocal delivery and memorable early lead lines, a steady, organic rhythm from drummer/engineer Esben Willems and bassist Mika Häkki — worth noting that all three have either released solo albums or otherwise explored solo work in the last two years — and Mellotron that adds a classically progressive flair and lets the guitar focus on mood rather than stomp, though there’s still plenty of that in “Glaive (It’s All the Same)” and is more the focus of “The Only Road,” so Monolord aren’t necessarily making radical changes from where they were on 2021’s Your Time to Shine (review here), but as there has been all along, there’s steady growth in balance with the physicality of tone one has come to anticipate from them. After scaling back on road time, It’s All the Same feels reassuring even as it pushes successfully the boundaries of their signature sound.
Raging not at all unthoughtfully for most of its concise-feeling but satisfying 38 minutes, Somnuri‘s third album and MNRK Heavy label debut, the nine-song Desiderium, is a tour de force through metallic strengths. Informed by the likes of Death, (their now-labelmates) High on Fire, Killswitch Engage, Gojira (at whose studio they recorded), thick-toned and swapping between harsh shouts, screams and clean-sung choruses — and yes, that’s just in the first three minutes of opener “Death is the Beginning” — the Brooklynite trio of guitarist/vocalist Justin Sherrell, bassist Mike G. and drummer Phil SanGiacomo brazenly careen and crash through styles, be it the lumbering and impatiently angular doom “Paramnesia,” the rousing sprint “What a Way to Go,” the raw, vocals-rightly-forward and relatively free of effects “Remnants” near the end, or the pairing of the fervent, thrashy shove in “Flesh and Blood” with the release-your-inner-Cave–In “Desiderium,” the overwhelming extremity of “Pale Eyes” or the post-hardcore balladeering that turns to djent sludge largesse in closer “The Way Out” — note the album begins at “…the Beginning” and ends at an exit; happy accident or purposeful choice; it works either way — Somnuri are in the hurricane rather than commanding from the calm center, and that shows in the emotionalism of prior single “Hollow Visions,” but at no point does Desiderium collapse under the weight of its ambitions. After years of touring and the triumph that was 2021’s Nefarious Wave (review here) hinting at what seems in full bloom here, Somnuri sound ready for the next level they’ve reached. Time to spend like the next five years straight on tour, guys. Sorry, but that’s what happens when you’re the kick in the ass heavy metal doesn’t yet know it needs.
Densely distorted Indianapolis heavybringers Void King have stated that their third full-length, the burly but not unatmospheric 36-minute The Hidden Hymnal, is the first of a two-part outing, though it’s unclear whether both parts are a concept record or these six tracks are meant to start a storyline, with opener “Egg of the Sun” (that would happen if it spun really fast) and closer “Drink in the Light” feeling complementary in their increased runtime relative to the four songs between. Maybe it’s an unfinished narrative at this point, or no narrative at all. Fine. Approaching it as a standalone outing, the four-piece follow 2019’s Barren Dominion (review here) with more choice riffing and metal-threatening, weighted doom, “The Grackle” breaking out some rawer-throat gutturalism over its big, big, big tone. The bassline of “Engulfed in Absence” (tell people you love them) caps side A with a highlight, and “When the Pinecones Close Up” (that means it’s going to rain) echoes the volatility of “The Grackle” before “Brother Tried” languidly swings until it’s time for a 100 meter dash at the end, and the aforementioned “Drink in the Light” rounds out mournful and determined. If there’s more to come, so be it, but Void King give their listeners plenty to chew on in the interim.
At the core of ostensibly Switzerland-based Inezona is multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Ines Brodbeck, and on Heartbeat — the fourth LP from her band and the follow-up to 2019’s Now, released as INEZ, and last year’s sans-vocals A Self Portrait — the sound is malleable around its folkish melodicism, with Brodbeck, guitarist/vocalist Gabriel Sullivan, bassist/synthesist Fabian Gisler and drummer Eric Gut comfortably fleshing out atmospheric heavy psychedelia more about mood than effects but too active and almost too expressive to be post-rock, though it kind of is anyhow. Mellow throughout, “Sea Soul” caps side A and meanders into/through a jam building on the smoky vibe in “Stardust” before the title-track strolls across a field of more ’60s-derived folk rock. “Veil” charms with fuzz, while “In My Heart” seems intent on finding the place where Scandinavian folk meets kosmiche synthesizer, and “Midnight Circle” brings Zatokrev‘s Fredryk Rotter for a guest duet and guitar spot that is a whole-album crescendo, with the acoustic-based “Leave Me Alone” and the brief “Sunday Mornings” at the end to manage the comedown. The sound spans decades and styles and functions with purpose as its own presence, and the soothing delivery of Brodbeck throughout much of the proceedings draws Heartbeat together as an interpretation of classic pop ideals with deep roots underground. Proof again that ‘heavy’ is about more than which pedals you have on your board.
It’s odd that it’s odd that Hauch‘s songs are in German. The pandemic-born Waltrop, Germany, four-piece present their first release in the recorded-in-2021, five-song Lehmasche, and I guess so much of the material coming out of the German heavy underground — and there’s a lot of it, always — is in English. A distinguishing factor for the 31-minute outing, then, which is further marked by an attitudinal edge in hard-fuzz riffers like “Es Ist” and the closer “Tür,” the aesthetic of the band at this (or that, depending on how present-tense we want to be) moment drawing strongly from ’90s rock — and no, that doesn’t necessarily mean stoner — in structure and affect, but presenting the almost-eight-minute leadoff “Wind” with due fullness of sound and ending up not too far in terms of style from Switzerland’s Carson, who last year likewise proffered a style that was straightforward on its face but, like Hauch, stood out for its level of songwriting and the just-right nature of its grooves. Lehmasche, the title translating to ‘clay ash,’ evokes something that can change shape, and the thrust in “Komm Nach Hause” and the hard-landing kick thud of centerpiece “Quelle” bear that out well enough. Keeping in mind it’s their debut, it seems likely Hauch will continue to grow, but they already sound ready to be picked up by some label or other.
Setting its nod in a manner that seems to have little time to waste on opener “The Mountain and the Feather” before breaking out with the dense, chugging swing of “The Corenne and the Prophecy Fulfilled,” Kentucky heavybringers El Astronauta bring a nuanced sound to what might be familiar progressions, but the mix is set up in three dimensions and the band dwells in all of them, bringing character to the languid reach of the mini-album Snakes and Foxes, bolstered by the everybody-might-sing approach from guitarist/keyboardist Seth Wilson, bassist Dean Collier and pushed-back drummer Cory Link, who debuted in 2021 with High Strangeness and who dude-march through “The Gambler and the General” as if the tempo was impeded by the thickness of the song itself. Through a mere 17 Earth minutes, El Astronauta carve out this indent for themselves in the side of a very large, very heavy style of rock and roll, but “The Axe or the Hammer,” which bookends topping five minutes in answer to “The Mountain and the Feather,” has a more subdued verse to go along with the damn near martial shouts of its impact-minded chorus, and fades out with surprising fluidity to leave off. The one-thing-and-another-thing titles give Snakes and Foxes a thematic feel, but the real theme here is the barebones greed-for-volume El Astronauta display, their material feeling built for beery singalongs.
With their third full-length behind 2021’s Chosen One (review here) and their 2018 self-titled debut (review here), Texan riff rollers Thunder Horse grow accordingly more atmospheric in their presentation and are that much more sure of themselves in leaning into founding guitarist/vocalist Stephen Bishop‘s industrial metal past in Pitbull Daycare. The keys give “Requiem” an epic feel at the finish, and even if the opening title-track is like what Filter might’ve been if they’d been awesome and “New Normal” and “Monolith” push further with semi-aggro metallurgical force, the wall-of-tone remains thusly informed until the two-minute acoustic “The Other Side” tells listeners where to go when it’s over (you flip the record, duh). “Monolith” hinted at a severity that manifests in the doomed “Apocalypse,” a preface in its noise and breadth for the finale “Requiem,” finding a momentum that the layered-vocal hook of “Inner Demon” capitalizes upon with its tense toms and that the howls of the penultimate “Aberdeen” expand on with Thunder Horse‘s version of classic boogie rock. They don’t come across like they’re done exploring the balances of influence in what they do — and I hope they’re not — but Thunder Horse have never sounded more certain as regards the rightness of their path.
The title “Vīrya” is Sanskrit and based on the Hindu concept of vitality or energy, often in a specifically male context. Fair enough ground for Kansas instrumentalists After Nations to explore on their single following last year’s impressive, Buddhism-based concept LP, The Endless Mountain (review here). In the four-minute standalone check-in, the four-piece remind just how granite-slab heavy that offering was as they find a linear path from the warning-siren-esque guitar at the start through the slower groove and into the space where a post-metallic verse could reside but doesn’t and that’s just fine, turning back to the big-bigger-biggest riff before shifting toward controlled-cacophony progressive metal, hints of djent soon to flower as they build tension through the higher guitar frequencies and the intensity of the whole. After three minutes in, they’re charging forward, but it’s a flash and they’re dug into the whatever-time-signature finishing movement, a quick departure to guitar soon consumed by that feeling you get when you listen to Meshuggah that there’s a very large thing rising up very slowly in front of you and surely you’ll never get out alive. Precise in their attack, After Nations reinforce the point The Endless Mountain made that technique is only one part of their overarching brutality.
There’s some incongruity between the intro “Introspection” (I see what you did there) leading into “Weightless Again” as it takes the mood from a quiet buildup to full-bore tonality and only then gives over to the eight-minute second track, but Ockra‘s Argonauta-delivered debut long-player thrives in that contradiction. Melodic vocals float over energetic riffing in “Weightless Again,” but even that is just a hint of the seven-songer’s scope. To wit, the initially acoustic-based “Tree I Planted” is recognizably parental in its point of view with a guest vocal from Stefanie Spielhaupter, and while centerpiece “Acceptance” is more doomed in its introductory lead guitar, the open strum of its early verses and the harmonies in its second half assure an impression is made. The Gothenburg-based trio grow yet more adventurous in the drone-and-voice outset of “We Who Didn’t Know,” which unfolds its own notions of what ‘heavy prog’ means, with guitarist Erik Björnlinger howling at the finish ahead of the start of the more folk-minded strum of “Imorgon Här,” on which drummer Jonas Nyström (who also played that acoustic on “We Who Didn’t Know” and adds Mellotron where applicable) takes over lead vocal duties from bassist Alex Spielhaupter (also more Mellotron). The German-language closer “Tage Wie Dieser” (‘days like these’) boasts a return from Stefanie Spielhaupter and is both quiet grunge and ambient post-rock before the proggy intensity of its final wash takes hold, needing neither a barrage of effects or long stretches of jamming to conjure a sense of the far out.
What’s another 20 minutes of music to Erik Larson, I wonder. The Richmond-based songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist has a career and a discography that goes back to the first Avail record three decades ago, and at no point in those decades has he ever really stopped, moving through outfits like (the now-reunited) Alabama Thunderpussy, Axehandle, The Mighty Nimbus, Hail!Hornet, Birds of Prey, Kilara, Backwoods Payback, Thunderchief, on and on, while building his solo catalog as well. Fortsett, the 20-minute EP in question, follows 2022’s Red Lines and Everything Breaks (both reviewed here), and features Druglord‘s Tommy Hamilton (also Larson‘s bandmate in Omen Stones) on drums and engineer Mark Miley on a variety of instruments and backing vocals. And you know what? It’s a pretty crucial-sounding 20 minutes. Larson leads the charge through his take that helped define Southern heavy in “Cry in the Wind,” the nodder “My Own,” and the sub-two-minute “Electric Burning,” pulls back on the throttle for “Hounder Sistra” and closes backed by drum machine and keys on “Life Shedding,” just in case you dared to think you know what you were getting. So what’s that 20 minutes of music to Erik Larson? Going by the sound of Fortsett, it’s the most important part of the day.
Posted in Reviews on October 1st, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Welcome to Friday. I’m glad to have come this far in the Quarterly Review, and even knowing that there are two days left to go — next Monday and Tuesday, bringing us to a total of 70 for the entire thing — I feel some measure of accomplishment at doing this full week, 10 reviews a day, for the total of 50 we’ll hit after this batch. It has mostly been smooth sailing as regards the writing. It’s the rest of existence that seems intent to derail.
But these are stories for another time. For now, there’s 10 more records to dive into, so you’ll pardon me if I do precisely that.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
Carcass, Torn Arteries
The original progenitors of goregrind return in gleeful fashion with their first full-length since 2013’s Surgical Steel. They’ve toured steadily over the intervening years, and Torn Arteries would seem to arrive timed to a return to the road, though it also follows the 2020 EP, Despicable, so make of that what you will. One way or the other, the 10-track/50-minute offering is at very least everything one could reasonably ask a Carcass record to be in 2021. That’s the least you can say of it. Point of fact, it’s probably much more. Driven by Bill Steer‘s riffs and solos — which would be worth the price of admission alone — as well as the inimitable rasp of bassist Jeff Walker, Carcass sound likewise vital and brutal, delighting in the force of “Kelly’s Meat Emporium” and the unmitigated thrash of “The Scythe’s Remorseless Swing,” while scalpel-slicing their way through “Eleanor Rigor Mortis” and the 10-minute “Flesh Ripping Sonic Torment Limited,” which, yes, starts out with acoustic guitar. Because of course it does. After serving as pioneers of extreme metal, Carcass need to prove nothing, but they do anyway. And bonus! Per Wiberg shows up for a guest spot.
Some concerned citizen needs to file assault charges against Copenhagen crushers LLNN for the sheer violence wrought on their third full-length, Unmaker. Comprised of 10 songs all with single-word titles, the Pelagic Records release uses synth and tonal ultra-heft of guitar and bass to retell Blade Runner but starring Godzilla across 39 minutes. Okay so maybe that’s not what the lyrics are about, but you’d never know it from the harsh screams that pervade most of the outing — guitarist Christian Bonnesen has a rare ability to make extreme vocals sound emotional; his performance here puts the record on another level — which renders words largely indecipherable. Still, it is their combination of whiplash-headbang-inducing, bludgeoning-like-machines-hitting-each-other, air-moving weight and keyboard-driven explorations evocative enough that LLNN are releasing them on their own as a companion-piece that makes Unmaker the complete, enveloping work it is.
I’m not sure it’s fair to call something that was apparently recorded five years ago forward thinking, but Smiling‘s melding of post-punk urgency, violin flourish, the odd bit of riot-style aggression, psychedelia and poppy melodic quirk in varying degrees and at various points throughout the debut album, Devour, is that anyway. Fronted by guitarist/songwriter Annie Shaw, Smiling makes a cut like even the two-minute “Other Lives” feel dynamic in its build toward a swelling-rumble finish, immediately shifting into the dreamier psych-buzz of “Forgetful Sam” and the melancholy-in-the-sunshine “Do What You Want.” Yeah, it goes like that. It also goes like the rager title-track though, so watch out. The earlier “Lighthouse” swings like Dandy Warhols, but the closing trilogy of “FPS,” “Take Your Time” and “Duvall Gardens” — also the three longest songs included — showcase a more experimentalist side, adding context and depth to the proceedings. So yeah, forward thinking. Time is all made up anyway.
The track itself, “Flood,” runs all of three minutes and 18 seconds, and I do mean it runs. The Taunton, UK, four-piece of guitarist/vocalists Charlie Dowzell and Tim Kazer, bassist/harsh-vocalist Kynan Scott and drummer Tom Coles offer it as a standalone piece and the track earns that level of respect with its controlled careening, the shouted verses giving way to a memorable clean-sung chorus with zero sense of trickery or pretense in its intention. That is to say, “Flood” wants to get stuck in your head and it will probably do precisely that. Also included in the two-songer digital outing — that’s Flood, the release, as opposed to “Flood,” the song — is “Flood (Young Bros Remix),” which extends the piece to 4:43 and reimagines it as more sinister, semi-industrial fare, but even in doing so and doing it well, it can’t quite get away from the rhythm of that hook. Some things are just inescapable.
Austin’s Holy Death Trio have the distinction of being the first band signed as part of the collaboration between Ripple Music and Rob “Blasko” Nicholson (bassist for Ozzy Osbourne, etc.), and Introducing…, the three-piece’s debut, is enough of a party to answer any questions why. Gritty, Motörheadular riffs permeate from post-intro leadoff “White Betty” — also some Ram Jam there, I guess — underscored by Sabbathian semi-doomers like “Black Wave” and the near-grim psychedelia of closer “Witch Doctor” while totaling an ultra-manageable 33 minutes primed toward audience engagement in a “wow I bet this is a lot of fun live” kind of way. It would not seem to be a coincidence that the centerpiece of the tracklist is called “Get Down,” as the bulk of what surrounds seems to be a call to do precisely that, and if the bluesy shuffle of that track doesn’t get the job done, something else is almost bound to.
Having put Samsara Blues Experiment to rest following the release earlier this year of the swansong End of Forever (review here), relocated-to-Brazil guitarist/vocalist Christian Peters (interview here) debuts the instrumental solo-project Fuzz Sagrado with a three-song self-titled EP, handling all instruments himself including drum programming. “Duck Dharma,” “Two Face” and “Pato’s Blues” take on a style not entirely separate from his former outfit, but feel stripped down in more than just the lack of singing, bringing together a more concise vision of heavy psychedelic rock, further distinguished by the use of Mellotron, Minimoog and Hammond alongside the guitar, bass and drum sounds, complementing the boogie in “Pato’s Blues” even as it surges into its final minute. Where Peters will ultimately take the project remains to be seen, but he’s got his own label to put it out and reportedly a glut of material to work with, so right on.
It’s 10PM, do you know where your head is? Wolves in Haze might. The Gothenburg-based three-piece of vocalist/guitarist Manne Olander, guitarist Olle Hansson and drummer/bassist/co-producer Kalle Lilja set about removing that very thing with their second record, Chaos Reigns, working at Welfare Sounds with Lilja and Per Stålberg at the helm in a seeming homage to Sunlight Studios as reinvented in a heavy rock context. Still, “In Fire” and “The Night Stalker” are plainly sinister in their riffs — the latter turning to a chorus and back into a gallop in a way that reminds pointedly of At the Gates, never mind the vocals that follow — and “Into the Grave” is as much bite as bark. They’re not without letup, as “Mr. Destroyer” explores moodier atmospherics, but even the lumbering finish of the title-track that ends the album is violent in intent. They call it Chaos Reigns, but they know exactly what the fuck they’re doing.
They work a bit of NWOBHM guitar harmony into the solos on “Rehash” and “At Wit’s End,” and the centerpiece “Interlude” is a willful play toward strum-and-whistle Morricone-ism, but for the most part, Louisville’s Shi are hell-bent on destructive sludge, with the rasp of guitarist Bael — joined in the effort by guitarist Jayce, bassist Zach and drummer Tyler — setting a Weedeater-style impression early on “Best Laid Plans” and letting the rest unfold as it will, with “Lawn Care for Adults” and “We’ll Bang, OK?” and the chugging fuckery of the title-track sticking largely to the course the riffs lay out. They make it mean, which is exactly the way it should be made, and even the sub-two-minute “Trough Guzzler” finds its way into a nasty-as-hell mire. Sludge heads will want to take note. Anyone else will probably wonder what smells like rotting.
Oh, that’s just disgusting. Come on now. Be reasonable, Churchburn. This third LP from the Providence, Rhode Island, extremists brings them into alignment with Translation Loss Records and though it’s just five songs — plus the intro “Toll of Annihilation” — and 33 minutes long, that’s plenty of time for guitarist/vocalist Dave Suzuki and company to pull you down a hole of blistering, vitriolic terrors. Where does the death end and the doom begin? Who gives a shit? Suzuki, bassist/vocalist Derek Muniz, guitarist Timmy St. Amour and drummer Ray McCaffrey take a duly mournful respite with “Unmendable Absence,” but after that, the onslaught of “Scarred” and the finale “Sin of Angels” — with Incantation‘s John McEntee sitting in on vocals — is monstrous and stupefyingly heavy. You’ll be too busy picking up teeth to worry about where the lines of one microgenre ends and another begins.
Have riffs, will plod. Voidscapes, the three-song second EP from Las Vegas’ Sonolith lets the listener know quickly where it’s coming from, speaking a language (without actually speaking, mind you) that tells tales of amplifier and tonal worship, the act of rolling a massive groove like that central to nine-minute opener “Deep Space Leviathan” as much about the trance induced in the band as the nod resultant for the listener. Close your eyes, follow it out. They complement with the shorter “Pyrrhic Victory,” which moves from a subdued and spacey opening line into post-High on Fire chug and gallop, effectively layering solos over the midsection and final payoff, and “Star Worshipers,” which slows down again and howls out its lead to touch on Electric Wizard without being so overt about it. At about three minutes in, Sonolith kick the tempo a bit, but it’s the more languid groove that wins the day, and the concluding sample about traveling the universe could hardly be more appropriate. Asks nothing, delivers 21 minutes of riffs. If I ever complain about that, I’m done.
Posted in Reviews on September 29th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
According to my notes, today is Day Three of the Fall 2021 Quarterly Review. Are you impressed to have made it this far? I kind of am, but, you know, I would be. I hope you’ve managed to find something you dig over the course of the first 20 records, and if not, why not? I’ve certainly added to a few year-end lists between debut albums, regular-old albums and short releases. Today’s no different. Without giving away any secrets ahead of time, this is a pretty wacky stylistic spread from the start and that’s how I like it. Maybe by next Tuesday it’ll all make a kind of sense, and maybe it won’t. In any case, this is apparently my idea of fun, so let’s have fun.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Thief, The 16 Deaths of My Master
Someone used the phrase “techno for metalheads” in an email to me the other day (about something else) and I can’t get it out of my head concerning Thief‘s The 16 Deaths of My Master. From the swelling distortion of opener “Underking” to the odd bit of harpsicord that shows up in “Scorpion Mother” to the bassy rumble underscoring “Fire in the Land of Endless Rain,” the post-everything “Lover Boy,” droning “Life Clipper,” lazyman’s hip-hop on “Gorelord” and “Crestfaller” and Beck-on-acid finale in “Seance for Eight Oscillators,” there’s certainly plenty of variety to go around, but in the dance-dream “Apple Eaters” and goth-with-’90s-beatmaking “Bootleg Blood” and pretend-your-car-ride-is-a-movie-soundtrack “Wing Clipper,” the metallic underpinning of Dylan Neal (also Botanist) is still there, and the lyrical highlight “Teenage Satanist” rings true. Still, songs like the consuming washer “Night Spikes and subsequent drum’n’bass-vibing “Victim Exit Stage Left” are inventive, fascinating, short and almost poppy in themselves but part of a 16-track entirety that is head-spinning. If that’s techno for metalheads, so be it. Horns up for dat bass.
The album’s title is kind of another interpretation of the band’s name, the idea behind the Latin phrase Per Aspera Ad Astra being moving through challenges to the stars and the Santiago, Chile, one-man death-doom outfit being Rise to the Sky. Multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Sergio González Catalán reportedly wrote and arranged the title-track in the days following his father’s funeral, and the grand, flowing string sounds and engrossing heft that ensues feel genuinely mournful, capping with a progression of solo piano before “End My Night” seems to pick up where “The Loss of Hope” left off. The lyrics to closer “Only Our Past Remains” derive from a poem by Catalán‘s father, and the sense of tribute is palpable across the album’s 46 minutes. I’m not sure how the Russian folk melody bonus instrumental “Horse” might tie in, but neither is it out of place among “Deep Lament” and “Bleeding Heart,” the latter of which dares some clean vocals alongside the gutturalism, and in context, the rest of the album seems to answer with loss what opener “Life in Suspense” is waiting for.
Those familiar with Brian Ellis and Conor Riley‘s work in Astra should not be surprised to find them exploring ’70s-style progressive rock in Birth, and anybody who heard Psicomagia already knows that bassist Trevor Mast and drummer Paul Marrone (also Radio Moscow) are a rhythm section well up to whatever task you might want to set before them. Thus Birth‘s Demo arrives some four years after its recording, with “Descending Us” (posted here) leading off in dramatic Deep Purple-y fashion backed by the jammier but gloriously mellotroned and Rhodes’ed “Cosmic Wind” and “Long Way Down,” which digs itself into a righteous King Crimson payoff with due class even as it revels in its rough edges. Marrone‘s since left the band and whoever replaces him has big shoes to fill, but god damn, just put out a record already, would you?
Wielding mighty tonality and meeting Monolordian lurch with an aural space wide enough to contain it, Old Horn Tooth follow their 2019 debut LP, From the Ghost Grey Depths, with the single-song EP True Death, proffering a largesse rarely heard even from London’s ultra-populated heavy underground and working their way into, out of, back into, out of and through a nod that the converted among riff-heads will likely find irresistible and hypnotic in kind. To say the trio of guitarist/vocalist Chris, bassist/keyboardist Ollie and drummer Mark ride out the groove is perhaps underselling it, but as my first exposure to the band, I’m only sorry to have missed out on both the orange tapes and the limited flash drives they were selling. So it goes. Slow riffs, fast sales. I’ll catch them next time and drown my sorrows in the interim in this immersive, probably-gonna-get-picked-up-by-some-label-for-a-vinyl-release offering. And hey, maybe if you and I both email them, they’ll press a few more cassettes.
Pro-shop-level doom from an initial public offering by Solemn Lament, bringing together the significant likes of vocalist Phil Swanson (ex-Hour of 13, Vestal Claret, countless others), drummer Justin DeTore (Magic Circle and more recently Dream Unending) as well as Blind Dead‘s Drew Wardlaw on bass and Adam Jacino on lead guitar, and Eric Wenstrom on rhythm guitar. These personages cross coastlines to three tracks and intro of grand and immersive doom metal, willfully diving into the Peaceville-three legacy on “Stricken” to find the beauty in darkness after the lumber and chug of the nine-minute “Celeste” resolves with patient grace and “Old Crow” furthers the Paradise Lost spirit in its central riff. Geography is an obvious challenge, but if Solemn Lament can build on the potential they show in this debut EP, they could be onto something really special.
A stunning third full-length from Fayetteville, Arkansas, trio Terminus, The Silent Bell Toll bridges doomed heft and roll, progressive melodicism and thoughtful heavy rock construction into a potent combination of hooks and sheer impact. It’s worth noting that the 10-minute closer of the nine-song/40-minute outing, “Oh Madrigal,” soars vocally, but hell, so does the 3:18 “Black Swan” earlier. Guitarist Sebastian Thomas (also cover art) and bassist Julian Thomas share vocal duties gorgeously throughout while drummer Scott Wood rolls songs like “The Lion’s Den” and “The Silent Bell Toll” — that nod under the solo; goodness gracious — in such a way as to highlight the epic feel even as the structure beneath is reinforced. With three instrumentals peppered throughout to break up the chapters as intro, centerpiece and penultimate, there’s all the more evidence that Terminus are considered in their approach and that the level of realization across The Silent Bell Toll is not happenstance.
Clearly named in honor of its defining intent, Recurring Nightmare is the three-song/48-minute debut full-length from Boston-based charred sludge outfit, who take the noisy heft of ultra-disaffected purveyors like Indian or Primitive Man and push it into a blackened metallic sphere further distinguished by harshly ambient drones. One can dig Neurosis-style riffing out of the 19:30 closer “Guillotine” or opener “Torch and Spear,” but the question is how much one’s hand is going to be sliced open in that process. And the answer is plenty. Their tones don’t so much rumble as crumble, vocals are willfully indecipherable throat-clenching screams, and the drums duly glacial. There is little kindness to be had in 16:43 centerpiece “Freedom Fever Dream” — originally broken into two parts as a demo in 2019 — which resolves itself lyrically in mourning a lost ideal over a dense lurch that’s met with still-atmospheric churning. Their established goal, if that’s what it is, has been met with all appropriate viciousness and extremity.
An ethic toward straight-ahead riff rock is writ large throughout Taxi Caveman‘s self-titled debut full-length, the Warsaw trio offering a face-first dive into fuzz of varying sizes and shaping their material around the sleek groove of “Prisoner” or the more aggressively bent vinyl-side-launchers “Building With Fire” and “Asteroid.” There’s a highlight hook in “I, the Witch” and the instrumental “426” leads into the Dozer-esque initial verse of 10-minute closer “Empire of the Sun,” but the three-piece find their own way through ultimately, loosening some of the verse/chorus reins in order to affect more of a jammed feel. It’s a departure from the crunch of “Asteroid” or “Prisoner” and the big, big, big sound that starts “Building With Fire,” but I’m certainly not about to hold some nascent sonic diversity against them. They’re playing to genre across these 33 minutes, but they do so without pretense and with a mind toward kicking as much ass as possible. Not changing the world, but it’s not trying to and it’s fun enough in listening that it doesn’t need to.
“Negative Libra” runs 36:36 and is the lone track on the album that bears its name from Las Vegas-based solo-project Droneroom. The flowing work of Blake Conley develops in slow, meditative form and gradually introduces lap steel to shimmer along with its post-landscape etherealities, evocative of cinema as they are without exactly playing to one or the other film-genre tropes. That is to say, Conley isn’t strictly horror soundtracking or Western soundtracking, and so on. Perhaps in part because of that, “Negative Libra” is allowed to discover its path and flourish as it goes — I’m not sure as to the layering process of making it vis-à-vis what was tracked live and put on top after — but the sense of exploration-of-moment that comes through is palpable and serene even as the guitar comes forward just before hitting the 27-minute mark to begin the transition into the song’s noisier payoff and final, concluding hum.
Blown-out vocals add an otherworldly tinge to Arizona-based one-man-band Aiwass‘ debut full-length, Wayward Gods, giving the already gargantuan tones a sense of space to match. Opener “Titan” and closer “Mythos” seem to push even further in this regard than, say, the centerpiece “Man as God” — the last track feeling particularly Monolordly in its lumbering — but by the time “Titan” and the subsequent, 10-minute inclusion “From Chains,” which ends cold with a guest solo by Vinny Tauber of Ohio’s Taubnernaut and shifts into the cawing blackbird at the outset of “Man as God” with a purposefully jarring intent. Despite the cringe-ready cartoon-boobs cover art, the newcomer project finds a heavy niche that subverts expectation as much as it meets it and sets broad ground to explore on future outings. As an idea, “gonna start a heavy, huge-sounding band during the pandemic,” is pretty straightforward. What results from that in Aiwass runs deeper.
Posted in Questionnaire on September 15th, 2021 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: Blake Conley of Droneroom
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
Well, the easiest way to describe it is instrumental guitar music. It, at this point is predominantly improvised, though before it was composed, and loop-based. This shift happened at the end of a couple of years of hard work and a feeling of having painted myself into a corner. I decided to remove the corner and just see where my brain and fingers would take me if left to their own devices, so to speak. Initially it was all electric guitar based and pedal heavy, but I’ve been attempting to shed as many things as possible to really focus on the root idea and see how deeply I can explore it with the fewest number of extras. This has unexpectedly led me to incorporate more acoustic instrumentation and occasional dips into lap steel even as a means of simplifying
Describe your first musical memory.
Probably riding with my father across the country in an eighteen-wheeler listening to Marty Robbins. Going from Tennessee to California, the twang blaring and nothing, but a road and open landscapes has really seemed to seep into my psyche.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Hmm… I always find the satisfaction of hearing back what you played and feeling like it really landed to be one of the most satisfying. Hearing how it may have changed for the better. Absorbing the full picture after only having the pieces is always one of the best things.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Um…as a libra, I feel like my beliefs try to remain flexible to different points of view. I really try to never say never on a creative level because there are so many directions music can go and saying you won’t do something is generally what makes you end up doing it.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Hopefully to becoming a more well-rounded player/performer. Any project or performance or interaction with anyone should lead to progress. You learn a new trick or idea. You experience a feeling you may not have before. Maybe it helps reaffirm something you already felt. The idea is always to improve and get further down to the core of your own voice. That doesn’t mean to shed yourself of influences necessarily, but maybe understand better how to work those influences into yourself. Even if improvements or adjustments are minimal or unnoticeable, they are there and should be embraced.
How do you define success?
That’s a funny one. Success for me is just… having something made and hopefully feel like it has been heard. Money is nice, but not necessarily the goal.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
A documentary involving a live birth.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I suppose being in an avant garde country band or a krautrock band…or some combination of that. There is so much music that one could create, and I’d feel amiss if I didn’t at least try to see how what I do fits into that. I’d also love to score a film sometime, but I feel like most instrumental musicians would say that.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
I think it serves several. It can sooth you, it can excite you. I often enjoy music that feels anxious as that can often serve to cancel out my own feelings of anxiety. Music can be the forefront of an experience or work as the background/underpinning to life and its myriad of activities. Books can rearrange your thinking as well as film. And these ideas can then seep back into your music. Art should give you a feeling and that feeling can carry over to everything else in your life
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
For me personally, a relocation. Otherwise just whatever new book, film, or conversation I may stumble into. Every day you can learn something new or feel some way you haven’t before and that is what makes living livable.
