This gets pretty heavy, pretty nasty. Then it kind of gets pretty. What happened was I knew I wanted to start with Basalt Shrine because that’s just too killer a beginning to pass up. But I was barely two days into the Quarterly Review and I knew I didn’t want to do a whole show based on that, so I just kind of went from Basalt Shrine forward on a line of extreme sludge of varying kinds, and that was fun for a while. When I started stumbling coming up with inclusions off the top of my head, I decided to switch gears.
That’s where you see the second voice break. I was going to put it at the top of the second hour but figured screw it. I wanted to play Indian and Wren and KVLL, so I did. And then I jump on, announce the change happening, and jump off. I didn’t even really end the show, just “here’s something else” and done. That was a little liberating, if I’m honest. I feel like I have to say hi, thanks, thanks to Gimme, explain what The Obelisk is to anyone who doesn’t know (which I assume is everyone), then thanks again and see you in two weeks. Felt good to skip even a little of that formality/formula.
I don’t think I’ll be rewriting how I do the show entirely, but I apparently needed something different, and that’s what I got.
Thanks for listening if you make it. Thanks for reading if you see this.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at: http://gimmemetal.com.
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 01.06.23 (VT = voice track)
Basalt Shrine
In the Dirt’s Embrace
From Fiery Tongues
Bongzilla
Free the Weed
Weedsconsin
Come to Grief
Death Can’t Come Soon Enough
When the World Dies
VT
Seum
Snowbird
Snowbird
Grales
All Things are Temporary
Remember the Earth but Never Come Back
Gg:ull
Hoisting Ruined Sails
Ex Est
Nomadic Rituals
The Burden
Tides
Belzebong
Pot Fiend
Light the Dankness
Wren
Chromed
Groundswells
Indian
Directional
From All Purity
KVLL
Suffocation
Suffocation
VT
DUNDDW
VII Part 4
Flux
Aktopasa
Agarthi
Journey to the Pink Planet
Mister Earthbound
Wicked John
Shadow Work
Amon Acid
Death on the Altar
Cosmogony
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is Jan. 6 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 14th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
God damn that’s massive. Last heard from with 2020’s Death//Sacrifice (review here), all-caps Melbourne ultra-crush slaughter-sludgers KVLL return unrepentant with “Suffocation,” a six-minute deathly bludgeon that heralds the release next year of an EP that goes by the same name. The song starts big even through its speedier chug, and slows down to get even more tectonic by the time it’s done, and clearly has eyes for your skull. I’ve listened through twice now, and it sounds like my leg feels after having surgery last week — like torn flesh and old bones rubbing against each other. It is brutal.
And oh, the breakdown riff. You’ll slam into the brick wall in front of you at 1:40 and spend the rest of the song trying to escape as the wall on the other side begins to move closer with intent to crush. Good luck with that. A droney backing layer assures the threat is real as even the pummel starts to come apart to noise, and a few last guttural grunts before the final stretch of loops and feedback and whatever else begins its casually destructive exit. Shit. I know they’re doing a three-songer — because that’s what they say they’re doing and they have no reason to lie — but I’ll take full-length from the duo-turned-trio whenever they’re ready to roll one out. If this is the kind of force they’re putting behind their stuff in the meantime though, right on.
Art, info, links:
The song is the first single off our upcoming EP titled Suffocation. Out early 2023. The 3-track EP features another KVLL song, truly sticking to our roots of caveman battle-axe swingin doom. The other song is a cover.
Suffocation was recorded in Early 2022 by Josh Bills at Vagabond Studios. Mixed and Mastered by Josh Bills too. Suffocation is accompanied by a Music Video, shot by Jayden Hauptberger at a factory in the north of Victoria, AUS.
Posted in Reviews on December 23rd, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Day III of the Inexplicably Roman Numeralized Winter 2020 Quarterly Review, commence! I may never go back to actual numbers, you should know. There’s something very validating about doing Day I, Day II, Day III — and tomorrow I get to add a V for Day IV! Stoked on that, let me tell you.
You have to make your own entertainment these days, lest your brain melt like wax and drip from your nostrils.
Plurp.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Fuzz, III
Plenty of heavy rockers can come across sounding fresh. Most of the time all it takes is being young. In the case of III, the third long-player from Fuzz — Charles Moothart, Ty Segall and Chad Ubovich — they sound like they just invented it. Dig the hard-Bowie of “Time Collapse” or the made-for-the-stage opener “Returning,” or the surf-cacophony of “Mirror.” Or hell, any of it. The combination of this band and producer Steve Albini — aka the guy you go to when you want your album to sound like your live show — is correct. That’s all you can say about it. From the ’70s snarl in “Nothing People” to the triumphant melody in the second half of “Blind to Vines” and the back and forth between gritty roll and fragile prog of “End Returning,” it’s an energy that simply won’t be denied. If Fuzz wanted to go ahead and do three or four more albums with Albini at the helm in the next five years, that’d be just fine.
The narrative (blessings and peace upon it) goes that when after lineup shifts left Crippled Black Phoenix without any singers, founder Justin Greaves (ex-Iron Monkey, Earthtone9, Electric Wizard, etc.) decided to call old mates. Look. I don’t care how it happened, but Ellengæst, which is the likewise-brilliant follow-up to the band’s widely-lauded 2018 outing, Great Escape, leads off with Anathema‘s Vincent Cavanagh singing lead on “House of Fools,” and, well, there’s your new lead singer. Anathema‘s on hiatus and a more natural fit would be hard to come by. Ryan Patterson (The National Acrobat, a dozen others), Gaahl (Gaahls Wyrd, ex-Gorgoroth), solo artist Suzie Stapleton and Jonathan Hultén (Tribulation) would also seem to audition — Patterson and Stapleton pair well on the heavy-Cure-style “Cry of Love” — and there are songs without any guests at all, but there’s a reason “House of Fools” starts the record. Make it happen, Crippled Black Phoenix. For the good of us all.
Copenhagen’s Bethmoora served notice in a 2016 split with Dorre (review here) and their debut full-length, Thresholds hone destructive lumber across four low-toned tracks that begin with “And for Eternity They Will Devour His Flesh” and only get nastier from there. One imagines being in a room with this kind of rumbling, maddeningly repetitive, slow-motion-violence noise wash and being put into a flight-or-fight panic by it, deer in doomed headlights, and all that, but even on record, Bethmoora manage to cull, and when their songs explode in tempo, as the opener does late in its run, or “Painted Man” does, that spirit is maintained. Each side of the LP is two tracks, and all four are beastly, pile-driver-to-the-core-of-the-earth heavy. “Keeper”‘s wash of noise has willful-turnoff appeal all its own, but the empty space in the middle of “Lamentation” is where they go in for ultimate consumption. And yeah. Yeah.
Khan‘s second album, Monsoons is a departure in form from 2018’s Vale, if not necessarily in substance. Heavy, psychedelic-infused post-rock is the order of business for the Melbourne trio either way, but as guitarist Josh Bills gives up playing synth and doing vocals to embark on an instrumental approach with bassist Mitchell Kerr (also KVLL) and drummer Beau Heffernan on this four-track/31-minute offering, the spirit is inescapably different. Probably easier to play live, if that’s a thing that might happen. Monsoons still has the benefit, however, of learning from the debut in terms of the dynamic among the three players, and Bills‘ guitar reaches for atmospheric float in “Orb” and attains it easily, as the midsection rhythm of the closing title-track nods at My Sleeping Karma and the back end of the prior “Harbinger” manages to shine and not sound like Earthless in the process, and quite simply, Khan make it work. The vocals/synth might be worth missing — and they may or may not be back — but to ignore the breadth Khan harness in little over half an hour would be a mistake.
Jammy, psychedelic in parts, Sabbathian in “Peavey Marshall (and the Legendary Acoustic Sunn Band)” and good fun from the doomly rollout of 11-minute opener and longest cut (immediate points) “In the Cemetery” onward, the second full-length from Idaho’s The Acid Guide Service, Denim Vipers, brings considerable rumble and nod, but these guys don’t want to hurt nobody. They’ve come here to chew bubblegum and follow the riff, and they’re all out of bubblegum. Comprised on average of longer songs than 2017’s debut, Vol. 11 (review here), the four-tracker gives the trio room to branch out their sound a bit, highlighting the bass in the long middle stretch of the title-track while the subsequent “Electro-Galactic Discharge” puts its guitar solo front and center before sludge-rocking into oblivion, letting “Peavey Marshall (and the Legendary Acoustic Sunn Band)” pick up from there, which is as fine a place as any to begin a gallop to the end. Genre-based shenanigans ensue. One would hope for no less.
Based in Illinois, Vexing Hex make their debut on Wise Blood Records with Haunt, and yes, playing catchy, semi-doomed, organ-laced cult rock with creative and melodic vocal arrangements, you’re going to inevitably run into some Ghost comparisons. The newcomer three-piece are distinguished by a harder edge to their impact, a theremin on “Planet Horror” and a rawer production sensibility, and that serves them well in “Build Your Wall” and the buildup of “Living Room,” both of which play off the fun-with-dogma mood cast by “Revenant” following the intro “Hymn” at the outset of Haunt. Not quite as progressive as, say, Old Man Wizard, there’s nonetheless some melodic similarity happening as bell sounds ensue on “Rise From Your Grave,” the title of which which may or may not be purposefully cribbed from the Sega Genesis classic Altered Beast. There’s a big part of me that hopes it is, and if Vexing Hex are writing songs about retro videogames, they sound ready to embark on a Castlevania concept album.
Proffering grueling deathsludge as though it were going out of style — it isn’t — the Melbourne duo KVLL is comprised of bassist/vocalist/guitarist Mitchell Kerr (also Khan) and drummer Braydon Becher. It’s not without ambient stretches, as the centerpiece “Sacrifice” shows, but the primary impression KVLL‘s debut album, Death//Sacrifice makes is in the extremity of crash and heavy landing of “The Death of All That is Crushing” and “Slow Death,” such that by the time “Sacrifice” ‘mellows out,’ as it were, the listener is punchdrunk from what’s taken place on the prior two and a half songs. There’s little doubt that’s precisely KVLL‘s intention here, as the cavernous screams, mega-lurch and tense undercurrent are more than ably wielded. If “Sacrifice” is the moment at which Death//Sacrifice swaps out one theme for another, the subsequent “Blood to the Altar” and nine-minute closer “Beneath the Throne” hammer the point home, the latter with an abrasive noise-caked finale worthy of standard-bearers Primitive Man.
Not that the initial droning wash of “Deep is the Air” or the off-blasted “Zeta Potential” and warp-drive freneticism in “Cato” don’t have their appeal — oh, they do — but when it comes to UK lords-o’-space Mugstar‘s latest holodeck-worthy full-length, GRAFT, it’s the mellow drift-jazz of the 12-minute “Ghost of a Ghost” that feels most like matter dematerialization to me. Side B’s “Low, Slow Horizon” answers back later on ahead of the motorik linear build in the finale “Star Cage,” but the 12-minute vibe-fest that is “Ghost of a Ghost” gives GRAFT a vastness to match its thrust, which becomes essential to the space-borne feel. It’s 41 minutes, still ripe for an LP, but the kind of album that has a genuine affect on mood and mindset, breaking down on a molecular level both and remolding them into something hopefully more evolved on some level through cosmic meditation. Fast or slow, up or down, in or out, it doesn’t ultimately matter. Nothing does. But there’s a moment in GRAFT where the one-skin-on-another thing becomes apparent and all the masks drop away. What’s left after that?
Hooks abound in power-stoner fashion throughout Indiana four-piece Wolftooth‘s second album, Valhalla, which roughs up NWOBHM clarity in early-Ozzy fashion without going overboard to one side or the other, riffs winding and rhythms charging in a way not entirely unlike some of Freedom Hawk‘s more recent fare, but with a melodic reach of its own and a dynamism of purpose that comes through in the songwriting. Grand Magus‘ metallic traditionalism might be an influence on a song like “Fear for Eternity,” but “Crying of the Wolfs” has a more rocking swagger, and likewise post-intro opener “Possession.” With tightly constructed songs in the four-to-five-minute range, Valhalla never feels stretched out more than it wants to, but “Molon Labe” pushes the vocals deeper into the mix for a bigger, more atmospheric sound, and subtle shifts like that become effective in distinguishing the songs and making them all the more memorable. Recently signed to Napalm after working with Ripple, Ice Fall, Cursed Tongue and Blackseed, they seem to be poised to pay off the potential here and in their 2018 self-titled debut (review here). So be it.
Parisian riff-blaster trio Starmonger have been piecemealing tracks out for the last five years as a series of EPs titled Revelation, and the full-length debut, Revelations, brings these nine songs together for a 49-minute long-player that even in re-recorded versions of the earliest cuts like “Tell Me” and “Wanderer” show how far the band has come. It’s telling that those two close the record out while “Rise of the Fishlords” and “Léthé” from 2019’s Revelation IV open sides A and B, respectively, but older or newer, the band end up with a swath of stylistic ground covered from the more straightforward and uptempo kick of the elder tracks to the more progressive take of the newer, with plenty of ground in between. Uniting the various sides are strong performances and strong choruses, the latter of which would seem to be the thread that draws everything together. Whether or not it takes Starmonger half a decade to put out their next LP, one can hardly call their time misspent while listening to Revelations.
Posted in Radio on October 30th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Seriously, nothing personal if that’s your thing, but I’m just not a big Halloween guy. I know it’s like supposed to be a whole heavy metal blah blah holiday and paganism and skulls and Samhain and witches are hot and all that kind of stuff, but it’s really not my vibe. So while there was a part of me that was tempted to play Type O Negative’s October Rust in its entirety as a part of this episode of The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal, I opted instead to stow that notion and focus on new music instead. If you’re into dressing up and carving pumpkins and all that, awesome. I wish I could rock that way. It looks like fun. But it’s just not me.
Right around KVLL and Celestial Season this episode gets pretty heavy — heavier than I knew it was going to until I started to put it together — but it shifts back I hope with some sense of flow thanks to Grayceon and Pallbearer and Kind ahead of the two-long-songs closeout that’s kind of become tradition. Weird to think of approaching 50 episodes here, but I guess time does what time does, which is fly. In any case, if you listen, don’t miss Alien Mustangs at the start and don’t miss BleakHeart in the middle. Those are two records I haven’t really had the chance to cover that are both excellent, though really any of this stuff you felt inclined to dig further into, it’s not like I’d fight you on the impulse.
Either way, thanks for listening if you do. I hope you enjoy the show.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmemetal.com
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 10.30.20
Alien Mustangs
Fairy Meadows
Beat of the Earth*
Paul Holden
Cawongla Dreaming
Worn Boot Tread*
Brass Hearse
Dusty Graves
Red Into Rivulets*
Kings of the Fucking Sea
Arcade Atlantis
In Concert*
VT1
Uncle Woe
A Map of Dead Stars
Phantomescence*
BleakHeart
Dream Griever
Dream Griever*
KVLL
Beneath the Throne
Death//Sacrifice*
Celestial Season
Long Forlorn Tears
The Secret Teachings*
Grayceon
Diablo Wind
Mothers Weavers Vultures*
Pallbearer
Silver Wings
Forgotten Days*
Kind
Helms
Mental Nudge*
VT2
Moths & Locusts
Exoplanets
Exoplanets*
Burn the Ship
Dead Guy
Burn the Ship*
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is Nov. 13 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
