Posted in Whathaveyou on May 13th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Lay Bare Recordings will present the first-to-my-knowledge Lay Bare Fest in London on Sept. 27, with the five-so-far acts playing The Black Heart to be joined by I don’t know how many more. The forward-thinking Netherlands-based label will showcase acts from its international roster of artists including Germany’s Coltaine — whose new album is set to release through Lay Bare in September — as well as Rosy Finch from Spain, the industrialist Mrs Frighthouse from Scotland, and the dark folk of Kariti and the post-metallic The Answer Lies in the Black Void, making for a lineup-thus-far that’s as broad stylistically as it is geographically.
And I guess even if you’re not going to be traveling to Camden Town to check out the show at The Black Heart, the underlying message here is that digging into these acts — each for different reasons, each offering something of their own — is advisable. Lay Bare consistently backs bands who prize their creative individuality across genre lines, and it seems accordingly like the show’s ‘Frequencies Across Borders’ subtitle — which is awesome; more unity, less division — will likewise transcend methodologies. If you’re curious to know who else will be added, the label’s roster is something of a weirdo dream-team, so take your pick. I’ll forego speculation so as not to feel silly later.
But this is awesome and worth knowing about whether you will see it or not. That’s all. It came from social media:
Tickets are now live for Lay Bare Fest – Frequencies Across Borders at The Black Heart!
Line-up so far:
Coltaine (DE)
Rosy Finch (SP)
Mrs Frighthouse (UK)
kariti (RU/IT)
The Answer Lies In The Black Void (HU/NL)
The label showcase festival will feature exclusive album release shows from some of the Lay Bare Recordings roster. More announcements coming soon…
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 5th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
If you’re feeling like it hasn’t been that long since Coltaine‘s previous album, Forgotten Ways (review here), came out in Sept. 2024, you’re right. By the time Sept. 2025 gets here though and their next record, Brandung sees its release on Sept. 5 through Lay Bare Recordings, a year will have passed. Given the anti-genre-or-may-be-all-genre urgency of the prior LP’s expression, and how much Coltaine give the listener to dig through with their at-times-devastating post-sludge complexity, it’s reasonable to think they’d want to get back in the studio quickly. This ground ain’t gonna break itself.
I haven’t heard Brandung yet — September is four months off — but the band have summer fests including Hoflärm in Germany and a newly-announced release tour to coincide with the record’s arrival that also includes stops at a Lay Bare Fest being put on by their label at the venerated The Black Heart in London, and as well as other fests and a couple TBAs that I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re confirmations waiting to be announced. If you have a way to help though, be sure to offer.
More on the record when I hear it. I’ll go ahead and look forward to that while you peruse the following from socials:
‘Brandung’ Album Release Tour 2025. To celebrate the release of our second album Brandung, we’ll be hitting the road for a series of shows starting this September. But before the tour kicks off, you can already catch us at these festivals:
Festival Summer 2025:
07/06/2025 🇮🇹 Piacenza · Desert Fox Fest 02/08/2025 🇩🇪 Burgbrand Open Air 14/08/2025 🇩🇪 Hoflärm Festival
‘Brandung’ Album Release Tour 2025
02/09/2025 🇩🇪 Mannheim – Alter Open Air 03/09/2025 🇩🇪 Berlin · Tommy-Haus 04/09/2025 🇩🇰 Copenhagen · Lytgens Kro 05/09/2025 🇳🇴 Oslo · Blitz 06/09/2025 ⚡️ To be announced 07/09/2025 🇩🇪 Hamburg · Prinzenbar 08/09/2025 🇨🇿 Prague · Club 007 Strahov 09/09/2025 🇸🇰 Bratislava · Koncerty na Garážach 10/09/2025 🇭🇺 Budapest · Gólya 11/09/2025 🇸🇮 Ljubljana · Klub Gromka 12/09/2025 ⚡️ To be announced 13/09/2025 🇩🇪 Freiburg · ArTik 26/09/2025 🇧🇪 Ghent · Kinky Star 27/09/2025 🇬🇧 London · Lay Bare Fest · Black Heart 23/10/2025 🇩🇪 Oberhausen · Helvete 24/10/2025 🇩🇪 Ulm · Hemperium 25/10/2025 🇩🇪 Karlsruhe · Jubez 08/11/2025 🇩🇪 Nuremberg · Sonus Obscura Festival 14/11/2025 🇩🇪 Stuttgart · Juha West 15/11/2025 🇩🇪 Neunkirchen · Gloomaar Festival
Artwork by @missfelidaeillustration
‘Brandung’ will be released on September 5th via Lay Bare Recordings.
Coltaine: Julia Frasch – vocals Moritz Berg – guitar Benedikt Berg – bass Amin Bouzeghaia – drums
My current read on Coltaine is they’re a way better band than people necessarily realize. To wit, the below live session — the band in a room playing “Mogila” and “Dans un Nouveau Monde” from last year’s Forgotten Ways (review here) — seamlessly brings together post-metal, sludge, the cultistry of The Devil’s Blood and the black metal that that band always seemed to hint toward more than manifest. While they’re by no means just doing one thing on the album — the player’s at the bottom of this post — as someone who’s never had the chance to see them live (though I’ve met members in-person), the session below is both an immersive and an encouraging sampling.
As with the LP, which opens with “Mogila,” ambience is a significant part of the impression Coltaine make. The music is both soothing and crushing in its repetitions in a way that invariably touches on what Amenra do, but that later on finds its apex not at its most extreme moment, but its most melodic. In the video, the shift from “Mogila” to “Dans un Nouveau Monde” happens just before the eight-minute mark, and the latter’s outreach into open spaces is resonant from the initial build onward, an eventual comedown marked with tambourine calling to mind a chime to close the ritual the band have just undertaken.
This video came out to coincide with a tour that started yesterday. I dig it, and maybe if you’re feeling like giving something a little out there a chance it’ll hit you just right, so I’m posting it. Pretty simple math.
Production info and tour dates follow, as per the internet. Enjoy:
Coltaine, Full Performance (Monkey Moon Sessions)
We’ve just released a live session where we perform two songs from Forgotten Ways – “Mogila” and “Dans Un Nouveau Monde.”
Production: Menny Leusmann & Jens Vetter
Bock auf eine Live-Session? Dann schreibt uns an info@monkeymoonrecordings.de
Iberia Tour 2025 kicks off [March 18] in Paris-Montreuil! We’ve also added a show in Portugal on Saturday, March 22nd. We’re excited to visit many new places for the first time. See you there!
18/03 🇫🇷 PARIS – Les Nouveaux Sauvages 19/03 🇫🇷 BORDEAUX – Salem Bar 20/03 🇪🇸 LA CORUÑA – Mardigrass 21/03 🇪🇸 VIGO – Transylvania Club 22/03 🇵🇹 PAREDES DE COURA – Xapas Sessions 23/03 🇪🇸 VALLADOLID – Sala Porta Caeli 25/03 🇪🇸 MADRID – Sala Rockville 26/03 🇪🇸 SANTANDER – Rock Beer The New 27/03 🇪🇸 BILBAO – Estudios Groobe 28/03 🇪🇸 BARCELONA – Freedonia 29/03 🇪🇸 ZARAGOZA – Sala Utopia 30/03 🇫🇷 TOULOUSE – La Mécanique des Fluides
Belgium atmospheric heavy noise rockers Dorre will issue their second album, Fortress, on Friday through Lay Bare Recordings. It is a first full-length some years in arriving as the band follow their 2019 debut, Fall River (review here) with a sound that’s changed enough to show just how much time has passed.
The band itself is mostly the same — three-fifths, and having a fifth is new — as lead guitarist Erik Heysns (who also recorded and mixed here), rhythm guitarist Adriaan De Raymaeker, and drummer Wolf Overloop return. But first appearances from bassist Jan Greveraars and vocalist Brecht De Rooms and a generally-upped quotient of twisting noise rock in the songs, a due quotient of crunch laid over progressivism such that the post-Earth psychedelic-leaning outset of “Two Crawled Up the Mountain” feels spacious but not over-the-top in terms of effects wash. As they make their way up that mountain, they’ll find extra push from a earliest-Tool-style shove, and where the only vocals on Fall River were featured on one track in a guest capacity, De Rooms feels like essential personnel on Fortress as the album establishes its mood, somewhere between the Melvins and the regular universe, but with a little niche carved out for itself there.
“Two Crawled Up the Mountain” isn’t screwing around trying to evoke a journey. It becomes one, and the march-into-burst of “Ender” bookending on the record’s B-side reveals a hidden strength in a drinking-song-style chorus and some later melodic outreach in the guitar. Since it’s lumbering, let’s call it a hardcore influence, but not really, and especially not when “Ender” lumbers its way from its noisier, scream-topped finish to swing jazz, somehow inevitably. “Human Condition” and “Carbonite” are shorter and might inherently give a more direct impression than the longer songs, but the truth is more complex and still plenty weird. At 5:29, “Human Cyborg Relations” goes full-Melvins jab in the verse, but there’s Voivodian unreast in the sound as well as it moves to and through the chorus, and when they get to the big riff-out before they tear it down and stomp out a more aggro ending, the sense of space is palpable. Hmm, a reord that ebbs and flows willfully, not in telegraphed hackneyed post-metallic volume trades, but with intention beyond genre and individualized nuance of tone and rhythm? No, I’m not surprised I think it’s good either.
But how Fortress sounds — the overall affect of the thing — is something of a surprise. Certainly Fall River had its more intense stretches, but this is something that Dorre have refined to a point of weaponization. “Human Cyborg Relations” ends shouty and mathy and turns right to the chug of “Carbonite,” with Greveraars proffering highlight bass runs alongside and a take that’s like art rock without the component of takes-itself-too-seriously that defines that designation. “Carbonite” also spaces out in the middle, and pushes into broader atmospherics in its second half, seeming to chase a thread farther and farther away from where the song started until at last you just get to an ending of kinda-pretty hits on a long fade before Overloop sets the pattern at the start of “Ender,” guitars soon to join. Like the rest of Fortress, the finale both is and isn’t expansive in its presentation, and even when it’s time for the hep cats to come in daddy-o because this is the whim we’re following right now, momentum remains on Dorre‘s side. If it’s not the kind of party you expected it would be, I think that’s on purpose.
The thing of it is, though — of course it’s a performative choice being made when and how “Ender” ends. That’s part of the idea. But even that moment, which is a whole different kind of far out than goes “Carbonite” or the Sabbathian roll later in “Two Crawled Up the Mountain,” Dorre aren’t pushing past what the scope of their material can accommodate. That is to say, none of the weirdness that’s pervasive in various forms throughout this long-player is unjustified, and given the multifaceted nature of said weirdness, that’s not nothing. In light of the new lineup configuration, it might not be inappropriate to file Fortress in your mind as their second debut, but there’s no question that Dorre‘s clarity on what they want to be doing has benefitted from the progressive course of their their tenure to this point. This isn’t first-album chemistry, in other words, but it is newly refined in its focus. And kickass besides.
To find that out for yourself, you’re invited to listen to Fortress in its entirety ahead of the release Friday. It goes places, but you can make the trip. I believe it. You should too.
Dorre’s latest album, Fortress, set for release in February 2025, showcases their most ambitious work yet. Dorre sounds like if ISIS were to be reanimated by The Necromancers, combining heavy riffs with a haunting, psychedelic edge. Evolving from an instrumental duo to a quintet with vocals, Dorre has maintained their distinctive style and creative growth. Prepare yourself for Dorre’s latest sonic odyssey: Fortress, a masterpiece of psychedelic post-metal infused with crushing riffs and atmospheric soundscapes.
Tracklisting: 1. Two Crawled Up The Mountain (9:38) 2. Human Cyborg Relations (5:29) 3. Carbonite (7:49) 4. Ender (10:40)
Produced and performed by Dorre Recorded and mixed by Erik Heyns Mastered by James Plotkin Artwork by Giliam Schroyen Vinyl release by Lay Bare Recordings.
Doore: Adriaan De Raymaeker – Rhythm guitars Wolf Overloop – Drums Erik Heyns – Lead guitars Jan Greveraars – Bass Brecht De Rooms – Vocals
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 19th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
I missed the 2023 second album from the cumbersomely named atmospheric, melancholic doom metal duo The Answer Lies in Black Void, with Martina Horváth (Mansur, Thy Catafalque, etc.) on vocals and Jason Köhnen (Celestial Season, Bong-Ra, Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, etc.) handling the instruments backing, but I did dig the first one well enough to remember it when I saw word that the project had been picked up by Lay Bare Recordings to release a third long-player later this year. That should give me a little bit of time to get caught up. If you’re in the same boat, I put the Bandcamp player for Thou Shalt, that 2023 sophomore outing, at the bottom of the post. One likes to be thorough in sharing news that’s like a week old at this point. Sorry kids, I’m doing my best and it turns out that still kind of sucks.
Nonetheless, the news here is good and don’t let my unkind self-talk stop you from vibing positive accordingly. The following comes from Lay Bare on socials:
Oh My Word, New Signing!!
Lay Bare Recordings is honoured and elated to welcome The Answer Lies In The Black Void The Answer Lies in the Black Void to the Lay Bare Family!
An authentic and genuine voice that touches the soul, weaving magic on stage and transmitting raw emotion with every note. Their music is a journey—dark, immersive, and deeply moving.
We’re absolutely thrilled about this signing and even more excited to announce that a new album is on the horizon, set for release in the autumn.
We are already excited at the thought of sharing with you more of our journey with The Answer Lies in The Black Void as they finish work on their astonishing new album!
Posted in Reviews on December 13th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
It’s been almost too easy, this week. Like, I was running a little later yesterday than I had the day before and I’m pretty sure it was only a big deal because — well, I was busy and distracted, to be fair — but mostly because the rest of the week to compare it against has been so gosh darn smooth. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is the last day. The music’s awesome. Barring actual disaster, like a car accident between now and then or some such, I’ll finish this one with minimal loss of breath.
Set against the last two Quarterly Reviews, one of which went 10 days, the other one 11, this five-dayer has been mellow and fun. As always, good music helps with that, and as has been the case since Monday, there’s plenty of it here. Not one day has gone by that I didn’t add something from the batch of 50 releases to my year-end list, which, again, barring disaster, should be out next week.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
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Cosmic Fall, Back Where the Fire Flows
After setting a high standard of prolific releases across 2017 and 2018 to much celebration and social media ballyhooing, Berlin jammers Cosmic Fall issued their single “Lackland” (review here) in mid-2019, and Back Where the Fire Flows is their first offering since. The apparently-reinvigorated lineup of the band includes bassist Klaus Friedrich and drummer Daniel Sax alongside new guitarist Leonardo Caprioli, and if there was any concern they might’ve lost the floating resonance that typified their earlier material, 13-minute opener and longest track (immediate points) “Lucid Skies Above Mars” allays it fluidly. The more straightforwardly riffed “Magma Rising” (4:31) and the tense shuffler “Under the Influence of Gravity” (4:38) follow that leadoff, with a blowout and feedback finish for the latter that eases the shift back into spacious-jammy mode for “Chant of the Lizards” (12:26) — perhaps titled in honor of the likeness the central guitar figure carries to The Doors — with “Drive the Kraut” (10:34) closing with the plotted sensibility of Earthless by building to a fervent head and crashing out quick as they might, and one hopes will, on stage. A welcome return and hopefully a preface to more.
It doesn’t seem inappropriate to think of Weather Systems as a successor to Anathema, which until they broke up in 2020 was multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Daniel Cavanagh‘s main outlet of 30 years’ standing. Teamed here with Anathema drummer/producer Daniel Cardoso and producer Tony Doogan, who helmed Anathema‘s 2017 album, The Optimist (review here), Cavanagh is for sure in conversation with his former outfit. There are nuances like the glitchy synth in “Ocean Without a Shore” or the post-punk urgency in the rush of highlight cut “Ghost in the Machine,” and for those who felt the Anathema story was incomplete, “Are You There? Pt. 2” and “Untouchable Pt. 3” are direct sequels to songs from that band, so the messaging of Weather Systems picking up where Anathema left of is clear, and Cavanagh unsurprisingly sounds at home in such a context. Performing most of the instruments himself and welcoming a few guests on vocals, he leads the project to a place where listening can feel like an act of emotional labor, but with songs that undeniably sooth and offer space for comfort, which is their stated intention. Curious to hear how Weather Systems develops.
Assembled by bassist Ron Holzner and his The Skull bandmate, guitarist Lothar Keller, Legions of Doom are something of a doom metal supergroup with Henry Vasquez (Saint Vitus, Blood of the Sun) on drums, Scott Little (Leadfoot) on guitar alongside Keller, and vocalists Scott Reagers (Saint Vitus) and Karl Agell (Leadfoot, Lie Heavy, C.O.C.‘s Blind LP) sharing frontman duties. Perhaps the best compliment one can give The Skull 3 — which sources its material in part from the final The Skull session prior to the death of vocalist Eric Wagner — is that it lives up to the pedigree of those who made it. No great shocker the music is in the style of The Skull since that’s the point. The question is how the band build on songs like “All Good Things” and “Between Darkness and Dawn” and the ripping “Insectiside” (sic), but this initial look proves the concept and is ready and willing to school the listener across its eight tracks on how classic doom got to be that way.
The first offering from Netherlands mellow psych-folk two-piece Myriad’s Veil brims with sweet melody and a subtly expansive atmosphere, bringing together Utrecht singer-songwriter Ismena, who has several albums out as a solo artist, and guitarist Ivy van der Meer, also of Amsterdam cosmic rockers Temple Fang for a collection of eight songs running 44 minutes of patiently-crafted, thoughtfully melodic and graceful performance. Ismena is no stranger to melancholia and the layers of “When the Leaves Start Falling” with the backing line of classical guitar and Mellotron give a neo-Canterbury impression without losing their own expressive edge. Most pieces stand between five and six minutes each, which is enough time for atmospheres to blossom and flourish for a while, and though the arrangements vary, the songs are united around acoustic guitar and voice, and so the underpinning is traditional no matter where Pendant goes. The foundation is a strength rather than a hindrance, and Ismena and van der Meer greet listeners with serenity and a lush but organic character of sound.
Never short on attitude, “I Only Play 4 Money” — “If you take my picture/Your camera’s smashed/You write me fan mail/I don’t write back,” etc. — leads off Michael Rudolph Cummings‘ latest solo EP, the four-track Money with a fleshed out arrangement not unlike one might’ve found on 2022’s You Know How I Get (review here), released by Ripple Music. From there, the erstwhile Backwoods Payback frontman, Boozewa anti-frontman and grown-up punk/grunge troubadour embarks on the more stripped down, guy-and-guitar strums and contemplations of “Deny the World” and “Easier to Leave,” the latter with more than a hint of Americana, and “Denver,” which returns to the full band, classic-style lead guitar flourish, layered vocals and drums, and perhaps even more crucially, bass. It’s somewhere around 13 minutes of music, all told, but that’s more than enough time for Cummings to showcase mastery in multiple forms of his craft and the engaging nature of what’s gradually becoming his “solo sound.”
Basking in a heavygaze float with the lead guitar while the markedly-terrestrial riff chugs and echoes out below, Moon Destroy‘s “The Nearness of June” is three and a half minutes long and the first single the Atlanta outfit founded by guitarist Juan Montoya (MonstrO, ex-Torche, etc.) and drummer Evan Diprima (also bass and synth, ex-Royal Thunder) have had since guitarist/vocalist/synthesist Charlie Suárez joined the band. Set across a forward linear build that quickly gets intense behind Suárez‘s chanting intertwining vocal lines, delivered mellow with a low-in-mouth melody, it’s a tension that slams into a slowdown in the second half of the song but holds over into the solo and fadeout march of the second half as well as it builds back up, the three-piece giving a quick glimpse of what a debut full-length might hopefully bring in terms of aural largesse, depth of mix and atmospheric soundscaping. I have no idea when, where or how such a thing would or will arrive, but that album will be a thing to look forward to.
Billed as Coltaine‘s debut LP — the history of the band is a bit more complex if I recall — Forgotten Ways is nonetheless a point of arrival for the Karlsruhe, Germany, four-piece. It is genuinely post-metallic in the spirit of being over genre completely, and as Julia Frasch makes the first harsh/clean vocal switch late in opener “Mogila,” with drummer Amin Bouzeghaia, bassist Benedikt Berg and guitarist Moritz Berg building the procession behind the soar, the band use their longest/opening track (immediate points) to establish the world in which the songs that follow take place. The cinematic drone of “Himmelwärts” and echoing goth metal of “Dans un Nouveau Monde” follow, leading the way into the wind-and-vocal minimalism of “Cloud Forest” at the presumed end of side A only to renew the opener’s crush in the side B leadoff title-track. Also the centerpiece of the album, “Cloud Forest” has room to touch on German-language folk before resuming its Obituary-meets-Amenra roll, and does not get less expansive from that initial two minutes or so. As striking as the two longest pieces are, Forgotten Ways is bolstered by the guitar ambience of “Ableben,” which leads into the pair of “Grace” and “Tales of Southern Lands,” both of which move from quieter outsets into explosive heft, each with their own path, the latter in half the time, and the riff-and-thud-then-go 77 seconds of “Aren” caps because why the hell not at that point. With a Jan Oberg mix adding to the breadth, Coltaine‘s declared-first LP brims with scope and progressive purpose. It is among the best debuts I’ve heard in 2024, easily.
Zagreb-based veteran heavy rockers Stonebride — the four-piece of vocalist/guitarist Siniša Krneta, bassist/vocalist Matija Ljevar, guitarist Tješimir Mendaš and drummer Stjepan Kolobarić — give a strong argument for maturity of songwriting from the outset of Smiles Revolutionary, their fourth long-player. The ease with which they let the melody carry “In Presence,” knowing that the song doesn’t need to be as heavy as possible at all times since it still has presence, or the way the organ laces into the mix in the instrumental rush that brings the subsequent “Turn Back” to a finish before the early-QOTSA/bangin’-on-stuff crunch of “Closing Distance” tops old desert tones with harmonies worthy of Alice in Chains leading, inexorably, to a massive, lumbering nod of a payoff — they’re not written to be anything other than what they are, and in part because of that they stand testament to the long-standing progression of Stonebride. “Shine Hard” starts with a mosh riff given its due in crash early and late with a less-shove-minded jam between, part noise rock, answered by the progressive start-stop build of “March on the Heart” and closer “Time and Tide,” which dares a little funk in its outreach and leaves off with a nodding crescendo and smooth comedown, having come in and ultimately going out on a swell of vocals. Not particularly long, but substantial.
Toad Venom will acknowledge their new mini-album, Jag Har Inga Problen Osv…, was mixed and mastered by Kalle Lilja of Welfare Sounds studio and label, but beyond that, the Swedish weirdo joy psych rock transcendentalists offer no clue as to who’s actually involved in the band. By the time they get down to “Dogs!” doing a reverse-POV of The Stooges‘ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” in classic soul style, they’ve already celebrated in the rushing bliss and Beatles-y Mellotron break of opener “Jag har verkligen inga problem (så det måste vara du),” taken “One Day You Will Be Perfect” from manic boogie to sunny Californian psych/folk rock, underscoring its chorus with a riff that could easily otherwise be black metal, dwelled in the organ and keyboard dramaturge amid the rolling “Mon Amour” — the keys win the day in the end and are classy about it afterward, but it’s guitar that ends it — and found a post-punk gothy shuffle for “Time Lapse,” poppish but not without the threat of bite. So yes, half an album, as they state it, but quite a half if you’re going by scope and aesthetic. I don’t know how much of a ‘band’ Toad Venom set out to be, but they’ve hit on a sound that draws from sources as familiar as 1960s psychedelia and manages to create a fresh approach from it. To me, that speaks of their being onto something special in these songs. Can’t help but wonder what’s in store for the second half.
Following up on the organ-and-fuzz molten flow of “Radio Radiation” with the more emotive, Rolling Stones-y-until-it-gets-heavy storytelling of “Antihero,” Berlin’s Sacred Buzz carve out their own niche in weighted garage rock, taking in elements of psychedelia without ever pushing entirely over into something shroomy sounding — to wit, the proto-punk tension of quirky delivery of “Revolution” — staying grounded in structure and honoring dirt-coated traditionalism with dynamic performances, “No Wings” coming off sleazy in its groove without actually being sleaze, “Make it Go Wrong” revealing a proggy shimmer that turns careening and twists to a finish led by the keys and guitar, and “Rebel Machine” blowing it out at the end because, yeah, I mean, duh. Radio Radiation is Sacred Buzz‘s first EP (it’s more if you get the bonus track), and it seems to effortlessly buck the expectations of genre without sounding like it’s trying to push those same limits. Maybe attitude and the punk-born casual cool that overrides it all has something to do with that impression — a swagger that’s earned by the time they’re done, to be sure — but the songs are right there to back that up. The short format suits them, and they make it flow like an album. A strong initial showing.
Posted in Reviews on October 16th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I’m pretty sure this is day eight. Like, not 100 percent or anything, but without looking I feel pretty good about saying that today would be the day we hit three-quarters of the way through the Fall 2024 Quarterly Review — if it was actually going to end on Friday. Yeah, turns out I have enough stuff I want to write about to add an 11th day, so it’s going to go to 110 releases instead of 100 and end Monday instead. It’s gotta stop at some point and I have a premiere set for next Tuesday, so that’s as good a time as any, but while I can sneak the extra QR day in, it makes sense to do so on any level except the practical, on which none of it makes any sense so that doesn’t do us any good anyway.
We — you and I — march on.
Quarterly Review #71-80:
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Trigona & IO Audio Recordings, Split LP
Doing a shortform review of a split sometimes works out to have all the depth of insight of “Hey this thing exists,” but hey, this thing exists. Bringing together California’s IO Audio Recordings and Australia’s Trigona — both solo outfits with their controls set for the heart of the heretofore sonically unknown; they collaborate on a vinyl-only bonus track called “Space Sickness” — the 39-minute digital form of the release further breaks down to three Trigona tracks in the first half and two from IO Audio Recordings (whose moniker is also styled all-lowercase: io audio recordings), and any way you go at any given point throughout, it’s pretty gone. Trigona‘s “Spectra,” “Andaman Sky” and “Vespicula” have a full-band heavy psych shimmer and a thread of drone that works well to transition into IO Audio Recordings‘ “Paranormal Champion” and “Ascend and Return,” the former of which pushes into a wash in its middle that seems to be in the spirit of Sonic Youth, getting duly noisy at the long-fading end, and the latter moving from a darker industrial rock into hypnotic ambience to round out. Both of these entities have other fairly recent releases out — to say nothing of the labels standing behind them — but so much the better for those who find this split to bask in the warmth of “Andaman Sky” and find a personal space within the sounds. If it’s obscure, so be it. It exists.
Aussie rockers Emu promise on the opening track of their self-titled debut that, “A new age is coming,” and they sound like they’re trying to push it along all by themselves. Like much of what follows on the six-track/41-minute long-player, “New Age” offers a blend of in-your-face classic-style heavy rock and roll — not quite boogie, but they’re not opposed to it as the ZZ Toppish middle of “Desert Phoenix” shows — and raucous jamming. “Sittin’ Here Thinkin'” is a couple minutes shorter and thus more direct feeling, while apparent side B opener “The Hatching” is a three-minute acoustic-led interlude before the solidifying-from-the-ether “Once Were Gums” and the bigger-swinging “Will We Ever Learn?” renew the dig-in, the latter diverging near its halfway point to a finishing build that serves the entire record well. The Sunshine Coast trio’s energy and modernized ’70s-isms call to mind some of what was coming from San Diego starting about a decade ago, but ambition is plain to hear in the longer tracks and the material wants neither for expanse or movement. The very definition of an encouraging start.
Multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Phil Howlett (Lucifer’s Fall, Rote Mare, etc.) is the driving force behind Adelaide’s Solemn Ceremony, and on Chapter III, he and lead guitarist Kieran Provis capture a rare spirit of raw 1980s doom with a glee that, thankfully, doesn’t undercut all the misery on display in the songs themselves. Howlett also plays guitar, bass and drums, and seems to have engineered at least part of the recording, and his vocals are a big part of what so much characterizes the doom Solemn Ceremony proffer. In his throatier moments, he has a push that reminds distinctively of Scott Reagers from Saint Vitus, and while the music is by no means limited to this influence — “Chapter III” is more morose emotionally and the uptempo movements of “The King of Slaves” and “Skull Smasher” clearly have broader tape collections — it is the rawer side of traditionalist doom that Howlett is harnessing, and since he wields it less like a precious thing than the anti-punk lifeblood it was at the time, it works. Doom from doom, by doom, for doom.
As was the case with their 2019 outing, No Light Ever (review here), Boston post-metallic instrumentalists Glacier make a priority of immersing the lister in the proceedings of their five-track/46-minute A Distant, Violent Shudder. Five years later, they continue to take some influence from Red Sparowes in terms of presentation and how the songs are titled, etc., but as the full crux of second cut “‘The Old Timers Said They’d Never Seen Nothin’ Like That'” comes forward at around three minutes in, Glacier are outright heavier, and they go on to prove it again and again as the album plays out. Fair enough. From “Grief Rolled in Like a Storm” to “Sand Bitten Lungs,” which seems to be making its way back to its start the whole time but ends up in an even heftier churning repetition, Glacier remain poised as they sculpt the pieces that comprise the record, the semi-title-track “Distant/Violent” doing much to build and tear down the world it makes. Heavy existentialism.
Like a reminder that the cosmos is both impossibly cold and hot enough to fuse hydrogen atoms, the third full-length from Finnish progressive blackened sludge rockers DÖ sets its own frame of reference in “Call of the Supervoid.” That lead cut doesn’t lay out everywhere Unversum goes throughout its contemplative eight songs and 45 minutes, but it does establish the tonal reach, the vocal rasp and the heft the trio foster throughout, so that by the time they’re nestled into the nodding second half of “Melting Gaze of the Origin,” en route to the explosive and suitably gravitational roll that would seem to begin side B in “Ode to the Dark Matter,” they’ve laid out the tenets by which Unversum operates and can proceed to add to that context. That they’re flexible enough to spend the early going of “Faster Than Light” in a psychedelic holding pattern should be seen as emblematic of their breadth on the whole, never mind the crush and seethe of “Nuclear Emperor” or “Moldy Moon,” but their extremity is tempered cleverly by their slower pacing, and that lets their individualized craft come across organically as Unversum carries the listener deeper into its expanse.
In 2022, when Raf Ruett (guitar, keys), Alex Nervo (bass, keys) and Neil Dawson (drums) were part of what might’ve been the final Obiat album, Indian Ocean (review here), it was an expansive, years-in-the-making culmination of that band’s time together, with recordings taking place across continents, guest vocals and arrangements for horns. As Ruett, Nervo and Dawson reemerge in Aeternal Chambers, there have clearly been a few aspects redirected. For starters, the band’s first four songs to be made public on their self-titled debut EP are instrumental, and so are able to breathe and develop differently. Each half of the 30-minute EP is comprised of a nine-minute and a six-minute track, and even the shorter ones clue the listener into the intense focus on ambience, hitting harder à la post-metal in “Drive Me to Ruin” but keeping a brighter tone in the lead guitar to contrast any sense of plunge, saving the biggest for last in “Glitch in the Mist.” More of this will do just fine, thanks.
From the non-cartoon butt on the front cover to quoting Lord of the Rings at the end of the album-intro “The Pact,” to catchy hooks throughout “Spells,” “Tungs” and the speedier “My Coven,” OmenBringer would seem to have a firm grasp on the audience demographic they’re aiming for, but there’s more happening in the tracks than plying the male gaze as the Nasheville four-piece make their self-released full-length debut. And that’s fortunate, because the record is 53 minutes long. I’m sorry, nobody needs to be putting out a 53-minute album in 2024 (I get it, first album, self-release, you might never get another chance; I’ve been there), but vocalist Molly Kent, guitarists Cory Cline (lead, also bass) and Spookie Rollings and drummer Tyler Boydstun mitigate this by making the late-arriving title-track an empowerment anthem — plus banjo? is that a banjo? — and fostering keyboardy drama in the hypnotic interlude “The Long Walk,” which follows. Ups and downs throughout, but a solid underpinning of metal gives the songs a foundation on which to build, and the penultimate “Stake” even hints at cinematic growth to come.
The declarative, 16-worthy sludge-metal chug of closer “Thera II (Embers of Descent)” is honestly worth the price of admission alone here, if you’re desperate for impetus, and Bristol’s Urzah bring the earlier “Of Decay” to a head like Amenra at their undulating finest, and The Scorching Gaze, which is the band’s first album, resounds with scope. Bolstered by guest vocal appearances by Eleanor Tinlin spread across opening duo “I, Empyrean” and “Lacrimare (Misery’s Shadow)” as well as the subdued “The Aesthetic” after the appropriately tumultuous “A Storm is Ever Approaching,” Urzah are able to foster aural textures that are about more than just the physicality of the music itself, correspondingly spacious and complex, but never lack immediacy, not the least for the post-hardcore shouts from guitarist Ed Fairman, who’s joined in the band by drummer James Brown, bassist Les Grodek and guitarist Tom McElveen. It doesn’t feel like Urzah‘s style is a settled issue — it’s their first LP; that’s not at all a dig on the band — and as the march of “Thera II (Embers of Descent)” gives way to its fade, one can only hope they stay so open-minded in their craft.
Whatever the narrative you want to put to Goat Generator‘s self-titled debut, whether you want to hone in on the cultish doom-prog boogie of “Black Magik,” the more modern synthy prog-psych of “Waving Around” and “Dreamt by the Sea,” the four-minute desert-rocking homage to wildlife in “Honey Badger” or the tambourine-inclusive spoken-word verses build of “Everyday Apocalypse Blues” or the way they take 11 minutes well spent to tie it all together in the subsequent closer “Far From Divine/Kingdom Gone” — whatever your angle of approach — there’s no getting around the story of the band being how much better they are than their name. The Leipzig-based four-piece offer songs varied in purpose and mood, speaking to genre from within and showcasing the vocals of Tag Hell without shortchanging the instrumental impact of Patrick Thiele‘s guitar, Martin Schubert‘s bass and Götz Götzelmann‘s drums, and they called it Goat Generator, which isn’t quite over-the-top enough to be righteously ridiculous as a moniker and reminds of nothing so much of the Stoner Rock Band Name Generator, feeling bland in a way that the music very much is not. It’s their first LP after a 2022 demo, and I’m not gonna sit here and tell a band to change their name, so I’ll tell you instead that if you’re put off by that kind of thing in this case, it’s to your own detriment to let it keep you from hearing the songs.
Rife with a languid pastoralism and threads of traditionalist folk guitar (not entirely acoustic), synth enough to make the procession that emerges behind the finishing “Candlelight Vigil” no more out of place than it wants to be in its casual, snap-along, out-for-a-walk vibe soon met with low end fuzz and a wash of keyboard melody, Head Shoppe‘s self-titled debut lets each of its six component pieces find its own way, and the result is a malleability that extends less to form — these are guitar and synth-based instrumental works of sometimes weighted psychedelia — than to the intangible nature of the creative spirit being manifest. I know nothing in terms of the process through which Head Shoppe‘s Eric Von Harding composes, but his style is able to incorporate field recordings that are emotionally evocative while also giving the otherwise sprawling “Saunders Meadow” the conceptualist ground above which it drifts. The also-eight-minute “Gracias a la Vida” uses cymbals and even manipulated voice to conjure memory before delving into flamenco stylizations, and is as much about the transition from one to the other as just what might’ve brought them together in the first place. An escape, maybe.
Posted in Reviews on September 10th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
A lot of what you need to know about the aptly-titled second Tranquonauts album, 2 — on Lay Bare Recordings and Blown Music, distro through Echodelick in the US — they tell you in listing the lineup on the front cover. It’s Seedy Jeezus, from Melbourne, Australia, partnered with Isaiah Mitchell, guitar hero of voidbound heavy psych plungers Earthless, who is based (I think) in San Francisco, and Mos Generator figurehead Tony Reed (who can now count being in Pentagram among the many impressive lines of his CV), tucked up in the top left corner of the US in Port Orchard, Washington, working as mixing/mastering engineer as well as a this-time contributor to the material on vocals, synth, programming and Mellotron.
The former two parties — that’s Mitchell and Seedy Jeezus, which is drummer Mark Sibson, bassist Paul Crick (also Mellotron) and guitarist Lex Waterreus (also credited with vocals, bass and theremin) — released the first, self-titled Tranquonauts album (review here) in 2016, and recorded the basic tracks on which 2 is based in 2022, with Waterreus editing the material together to get the extended pieces that respectively comprise sides A and B, “Fugitives From the Void Pts. 1-3” (20:29) and “Ground Control” (17:11), as well as the worth-seeking-out non-vinyl bonus tracks “Drown” (6:37) and “Drop” (4:54) while on a 2023 trip to New York, before sending the stems to Reed, to mix/master and, ultimately, add his vocals, synth, and so on.
For Reed, it’s somewhat akin to the role he plays in the band Big Scenic Nowhere, and his ability to find the spaces a verse might occupy in an otherwise amorphous pool of liquid audio comes into play. That he brings a heart-on-sleeve crux to the early going of “Fugitives From the Void Pts. 1-3” greatly deepens the impression of the album as a whole, coming after the fact of the initial recording, but for the listener hearing the finished version, giving the longform jam and solo that follows a sense of direction and expression beyond the creative exploration happening on the instruments. In the open-spaced introduction of the 20-minute track, he starts as a single voice over light guitar strum and (perhaps his own, I don’t know) swirling synth, but is soon in harmony with himself finding the right niche to bolster the mood and ambience surrounding.
As the organ strikes circa 3:30 into “Fugitives From the Void Pts. 1-3,” his voice in layers is contemplative and present in the moment. Soon enough, though, what I assume is the shift between the first and second parts of the song happens and the guitar takes over the lead position. The abiding sense of melancholy remains — there will only ever be one “Maggot Brain,” but Mitchell and Waterreus are both well able to convey emotionality through their instrument — and is informed by Reed‘s lines in a way that likely couldn’t have been anticipated when the original recordings were done. For the one on the hearing end of Tranquonauts 2, this span of time flattens in a way that is fascinating, and is likely the result of lyrics written for or applied to what feelings were evoked by “Fugitives From the Void Pts. 1-3” in its original, instrumental form. The opener/longest track (immediate points), like the subsequent “Ground Control,” is mostly instrumental, but even the momentary presence is enough to affect how one engages with what follows.
I won’t take away from the appeal of what Mitchell and Seedy Jeezus accomplished on the first Tranquonauts LP, but in most cases a band with words is going to sound like they have more to say, and the experience of “Fugitives From the Void Pts. 1-3” as a whole is that much richer for Reed‘s involvement, vocally as well as instrumentally. It wouldn’t be fair to call the jam grounded by the time guitars start turning backwards around seven minutes in, building gradually to a crescendo at the behest of Sibson‘s drums past the 10-minute mark before deconstructing and shifting presumably into ‘Pt. 3’ with a sonically obscured sample from either NASA ground control or an old sci-fi flick a short while later after some patient, we’ll-get-there-type meander, but its far-outbound sprawl is hypnotic even as the emotive undertone is maintained by Mellotron under the scorching, concluding guitar solo.
“Ground Control” is immediately bound on a different pursuit. The 17-minute cut is perhaps even more exploratory than the preceding, longer one, with a more direct line drawn to krautrock and get-spaced impulses. An abiding, deceptively funky wah on the guitar is built around with live drums and a programmed beat that’s speaking to early electronic music, and in combination with the cosmos-minded synth and effects on guitars, it almost sounds like an alternate-reality version of pre-2000 techno, like Hawkwind produced by Dust Brothers in 1996. Boldly, willfully uneven in concept, it nonetheless works as a droning vocal from Waterreus arrives amid the interstellar tumult to tie it together through the pervasively weird twists, ebbs and flows. What is shared with “”Fugitives From the Void Pts. 1-3,” aside from basics like personnel, etc., is a sense of the unknown being engaged. Tranquonauts are hardly the first to meld electronic and organic instrumentation even in a psychedelic context, but they do so with a vibrancy of persona that maintains the unflinching creative spirit of the song prior even while departing from it in sound and mood.
Will there be a third Tranquonauts? Was there always going to be a second? I don’t know. While there are plenty of bands out there who work remotely to overcome being geographically spread out, having at least the Mitchell/Seedy Jeezus core in the same room seems to be a priority — otherwise 2 might have already happened years ago and surely would’ve taken a different shape — and fair enough for the distinctive roots from which these songs spring in their now-completed forms. I would not hazard to predict when logistics will again align to put Mitchell in Melbourne when both the three members of Seedy Jeezus and a room at Studio One B with engineer David Warner (who has now helmed both Tranquonauts LPs) are available, but it’s happened at least twice to-date, so neither is it outside the apparent realm of possibility.
When and if such a thing happens, one can only hope for Reed‘s continued involvement as well, even if that’s after the fact, as his contributions broaden the scope of 2 in ways that are both meaningful and resonant. As it stands, 2 makes Tranquonauts sound like more of an actual-band than perhaps even the component players expected it to be. Mark that a win for those who either heard the first one eight years ago or will take them on now.
