Well, I have just about a full week’s worth of news to catch up on, so we must be coming down to the end of the Quarterly Review. “Planets align. A king is born. Dodge Swinger.” Etc.

It’s been real, though. Again, I didn’t go one day without putting something in my notes for end-of-year list time, and that includes today as well. If you’ve come along for the ride on these 50 release, thank you. I hope you’ve found something new to listen to, or at least had your opinions of what you’ve already heard confirmed, which always feels good on some level. I will say it’s been a pleasure to dig into this stuff, and I don’t know who slates these things — that’s a joke, I do; there’s nobody else here; sometimes I feel like I need to say that even after 17 years because I’m both insecure and irrelevant — but they did alright on this one because at no point in this process was I like, “omg what is mah life,” and it’s always a relief to not get there.

Bottom line, as always, thanks for reading. I’ll be back with another of these in October, probably.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, The Disappearing Man

Word on the street — by that I mean their Linktree — is that Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol release their new single “Ca$h Grab” Aug. 18. That’s also the title-track of their next full-length, reportedly, but the low-string charmer Austin trio have been eeking out singles since Spring, and the resultant three-songer, The Disappearing Man, is a welcome keep-momentum interim outing for those who’ve been chasing the dragon of 2024’s Big Dumb Riffs (review here) and need something new for their reels-addled attention spans. All three tracks — “The Disappearing Man,” “Bough Down” and “Peaches” — are two minutes long but each gives a different look between the sneer of “Peaches,” the post-grunge heavy rock of “Bough Down” and the harder-hitting pummeling fuckery of the title cut. Is it a holdover? Yeah, probably. Will it even exist when the album comes out and likely features the same tracks? I don’t know. But it’s here now and the songs rule, so maybe get it while it’s there to get got and worry about the rest later, hmm?

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol website

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol Linktr.ee

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Tidal Wave, Volume Tree

The rock is by no means gone from Tidal Wave‘s sound on Volume Tree, but a shift has taken place as well since 2023’s The Lord Knows (review here) such that the first half of the new record seems to draw more from classic heavy metal than desert rock. On “The Orb,” “Hangman,” “Earth” and “Temple of Humanity,” that finds the Swedish foursome more in league with Dio-era Sabbath or Johan Langquist-fronted Candlemass, which is a compliment to vocalist Alexander “Sunkan” Sundqvist. The back half of the album, with “Sideburns,” “Shapeshifter,” “Manuscript 512” and “Skitliv,” complicates the narrative in the yachty experiment of the closer and the penultimate cut drawing the two sides together, but “Sideburns” and “Shapeshifter” have desert-style push, and the latter reminds particularly of late-1900s outfits like The Awesome Machine in its crunch and buzz. Either way they go, the songs hit their marks, so mark it a win for the complexity.

Tidal Wave on Bandcamp

Ripple Music website

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Thunderchief, With Hatchet, Pike or Morning Star…

With six songs likewise furious and welcome, Richmond, Virginia’s Thunderchief are only right to name their latest EP after ways they might possibly kill you. The charred heavy thrash-doom of from the two-piece of guitarist/screamer Rik Surly and drum-pummeler Erik Larson does not shy away from the caustic, and whether it’s a roll like “Entrance of the Devil” or the gallop-over-your-head “Chintzy,” or the concluding noisefest in “Slurpee,” to which nine of the EP’s 23 minutes are dedicated, their penchant for aural slaughter shows itself in Surly‘s unflinching rasp, in Larson‘s corresponding pounding — looking at you, “Malaise” — and in the disaffected shove of “Lie Nation,” the band packing a full album’s worth of aggression into the abbreviated runtime. This is Thunderchief‘s wheelhouse, and hardly their first excursion into listener-abuse, but as impressive as the raw sustained ferocity is — not that the world doesn’t provide constant reasons to stay angry — it’s the fact that the material holds together and bears the weight they put to it that makes their approach so lethal. That’s on full and punishing display here.

Thunderchief website

Thunderchief on Instagram

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Umma, Kosmovisionen

A multinational collaboration between Peruvian psychheads Chino Burga and Pepe Abad (both veterans of La Ira de Dios) and Scott “Dr. Space” Heller (Øresund Space Collective and adjacent projects), Umma resonate psychedelic meditation across their four-song debut, Kosmovisionen, with layers of intersecting guitar drones, percussion, and synth. “Monts” sets the stage for the unfolding free/freak jazz of “Procesio,” and while “Aeparatio” feels grounded by comparison, its float of guitar remains transcendant ahead of the finale “Ogon,” which is a dream of experimentalist tone and cymbal wash. I don’t know how much of a band Umma are going to be, sending files back and forth between Peru and Portugal, but they tap into something spiritual here in just 35 minutes, and Kosmovisionen sounds more like the beginning of a broader exploration rather than a one-off collab. They create so much space, it’d be a shame if they didn’t grow and flesh out their arrangements accordingly.

Umma on Bandcamp

Echodelick Records website

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Rifle, Bound to a Psychotic Cycle

Intended as a 7″ complement to the DHU Records vinyl pressing of Rifle‘s 2025 album, Beyond Paranoia, this two-songer plays out for 11 minutes across “Incarnation” and “Twisted Death,” vibing like rote jams with mellow vocals overtop like Endless Boogie or something like that, with an unpredictable edge and underlying tension. Apparently there were lineup issues? I’m not sure on the story, but the resultant vibe is off-kilter in a fascinating way — it’s not necessarily holding back the songs, I mean — and the low-key chaos they capture in the recordings, with mad swirls of guitar behind the mostly-whisper vocals, builds on what the album was doing in pieces like “Beyond Paranoia” and “Gipsy Spell” while feeling less tethered to a classic-heavy/vintage songwriting methodology. That may be indicative of a future direction, or these may just be leftovers from the album sessions, I don’t know, but it’s weird and dug in and sounds like it doesn’t care in the slightest how you classify it.

Rifle on Bandcamp

DHU Records store

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Brass Hearse, Can’t Get No

This year has brought new productivity from Boston experimentalists Brass Hearse, who’ve released three singles in 2026 in addition to this 17-track/51-minute ambient film soundtrack; their first new offerings in six years. The penultimate “Destroyer of the Breach” runs nearly nine minutes, but most of Can’t Get No — titled after the movie — is made up of shorter pieces one to three minutes long, with drones and guitar, keys and various washes of tone, some cogent progressions, some purposefully not, evoking a feeling of loneliness and foreboding. Presumably the title is a Rolling Stones reference — “Drifting Through the Void” might build on the song in question as well, though I might be imagining it — and I haven’t seen the movie, but from what I read it’s shorter than the soundtrack, so yes, that would be emblematic of the new creative delve on the part of the Boston band. On its own, the album makes for a meditative, atmospheric listen but don’t take that to mean Brass Hearse lack dynamic or are doing the same thing all the time. They just happen to be really effective in conjuring a world.

Brass Hearse on Bandcamp

Brass Hearse on Instagram

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Svindel, Drömfeber

Tucked away in the northeast of Sweden, the Umeå-based three-piece Svindel strike an immediately classic impression on their Ripple-issued debut album, Drömfeber, channeling boogie rock’s sense of motion and, in the title-track and elsewhere, calling to mind psychedelic reach without actually veering too far from the underlying structures of their material. Somebody’s playing organ on opener “Jupiterbarn,” and I’d swear I hear keyboards elsewhere too, but none among guitarist/vocalist Jan Lindblad, bassist Daniel Forsberg and drummer/backing vocalist Johannes Braf is credited with the contribution, so maybe I’m the one in a fever dream. In any case, as “Tunga Ögon” hints toward blues and “Ta Mig Tillbaka Till Världen Nu” embarks in the direction of pastoralia, the stylistic book hardly seems closed in terms of how Svindel might progress, but the fact that they are able to cover this swath without sacrificing cohesive songwriting makes their debut impressive even for someone like me who speaks not a lick of Swedish.

Svindel on Instagram

Ripple Music website

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Dirtmother, Dirtmother Live

The abrasive sludge excoriation of Dirtmother Live makes a fitting companion-piece for the Fayetteville, Arkansas, local-legend/cryptid outfit’s 19-years-later 2025 self-titled debut (review here), presenting five songs across a rasping, willfully confrontational half-hour set captured from the board at the American Legion Hall in their hometown in true punker fashion, and let’s say probably mixed thereafter. In this material — most of which comes from the record; “Reversal” seems to be “Reverse Cowgirl” under a different name and “Cult of Suzie Everett” does not appear on the studio LP — the nodding fuzz and the impact-density of their low end comes though in full-punch glory, stage banter is preserved, and “Trucker” is even nastier in its bite than it already was, which should be read as a high compliment to the achievement. If you don’t come out of this wanting to start a sludge band, consult a physician.

Dirtmother on Bandcamp

Dirtmother on Instagram

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Hijss, Hijss

Italy’s Hijss return after 2024’s Stuck on Common Ground (review here) with a self-titled eight-song/39-minute LP that’s an even deeper dive into krautisms and cosmic heavy rock, volatile in “Vicious Cycle” and “Parasite,” daring to soothe before they walk into the wash of “S.W.A.N.” and getting full-on electro-dance-mode in the penultimate “Fatal Attraction” before the moody distortion swell of “Outro” rounds out. Opener and longest track (immediate points) “Drain of Thoughts” establishes precedent in the motorik-roll-turned-heavy-shove progression, but the ultimate product of the album is that Hijss have gotten weirder and more individualized in the last two years, they’re ready to tour with labelmates Giöbia like yesterday, and the experimentalism in bringing together acoustics and synthesized textures of “Underwater” and the throb/fuzz banger “Dopamine” present a fresher take than I’ve yet seen the band credited for honing.

Hijss on Linktr.ee

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Deley Sound System, Unsync 001

Deley Sound System is the techno alter-ego of Budapesti psychedelic improvisationalist Deley, and if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, their earlier-2026 live recording Unsync 001 captures them bringing their spontaneity-fueled creative process to a style of music that, considering it’s programmed, is often classified as more staid. Psychedelia persists across genre here as the band weave together samples and different layers to carve an affect that’s all the more immersive and hypnotic not in spite of the steady beat that might underpin a track like “Sun 001” or the 18-minute “BBM 001” but rather because of it. The dub techno and synthesizer aspects, playing off influences from jams and generally more guitar-led (or -inclusive at all, for that matter) fare, are fascinating academically, but it’s satisfying as well to hear a band so willing to step beyond their comfort zone and a crucial reminder that the boundaries of creativity are far more imaginary than the sitar sounds on “Sun 002” and that the most dangerous thing to any status quo is a mind brave enough to look beyond it as these minds do here.

Deley on Bandcamp

Deley Linktr.ee

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Today is the traditional passing-the-midpoint of the Quarterly Review — hump day, if you need it on humping terms — and indeed, this 50-release QR keeps with that tradition. It’s been almost absurdly easy so far to get through, as the best of them are, and not one day — including this one — has passed without me adding at least two releases from each batch of 10 to my notes for year-end list time. That’s a pretty impressive rate, even for an old softy like me, but the bottom line always is that I hope you find something you enjoy even as I do the same. I think maybe I needed this kind of dig-in more than I realized when I started slating what I was going to be writing about. I guess that happens sometimes.

Let’s keep the thing going.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

Warning, Rituals of Shame

Some 20 years after releasing their landmark second album, Watching From a Distance, Patrick Walker-led emotive doom metal pioneers Warning return with a potentially landmark third, Rituals of Shame. The band’s first outing in that long — though Walker has divided his time with 40 Watt Sun and issued solo material as well — is no less grueling of tempo or willfully emotionally laborious for that, and Walker‘s voice remains singularly wrenching such that the 12-minute opening title-track (also the longest; immediate points) feels like it’s pulling you down into the melancholic world that the rest of the 45-minute LP goes on to make, from the plodding “Stations” to, well, the also-plodding “Teacher,” never veering from its purpose or lifting the tonal or melodically-depressive weight once applied. Rituals of Shame is an odd fit for being tagged as ‘brutal,’ but it is its own kind of extremity-of-form nonetheless, and a challenge that sets its terms early and (quietly) dares you to follow the path its songs lay out.

Warning on Instagram

Relapse Records website

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Mike Bee & The Acid Fuzz Trio, White Noise Sound

Cambodia-via-UK outfit Mike Bee & The Acid Fuzz Trio follows the psychedelic leaning adventures of its namesake songwriter/guitarist/vocalist Mike Bee (also Last Bee on Earth, Deep Sky Revival, etc.) across White Noise Sound from the blinding garage tone-bite of its leadoff title-cut through mellowstoner and dub of “Goodbye Mary Jane” and “Beyond the Wheel,” riffing bluesier on “Hey Bong!” and getting fuzzy and Bowie-gone-desert-contemplative in “Johnny The Living Star” to set up the fierce groove of “Rise Like a Phoenix” at the end, the seven-song/26-minute album — it’s short, but feels like an LP more than an EP, so I’m making the call myself — has hooks a-plenty and gets playful on “Lion, Sword and Sun” without sounding like a ’60s put-on or something like that, each inclusion establishing its own atmosphere while adding to the admittedly understated breadth of the whole. It’s a weird one, to be sure, but for those who can make their way to its wavelength, the songs will stick to whatever membranes you got.

Mike Bee & The Acid Fuzz Trio website

Mike Bee & The Acid Fuzz Trio on Instagram

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Teké Collective, Remember and Hope

Teké Collective would seem to be one of several projects under the operating umbrella of Milan, Italy, producer Marino-Angelo Scordilis, and on the new single “Remember and Hope” (7:18), the Collective features no fewer than seven other contributors, including True Canyon‘s spoken word in the second half and a variety of synth and percussion. It is exploratory but aware of the influences from which it draws, and winds up as a kind of world-prog rock. There are psychedelic aspects but it’s too clearheaded to be lysergic, and with all the tight funk in the first half of the song, reminds a bit of earlier P-Funk‘s ability to go anywhere it wants, though the stylistic context here is different. Texture in the two guitars and synth take hold early, but it’s the bass that carries it through the midsection into the slowdown, and the story — a narrative about the power of memory to overcome oppression — is fluidly told with a sense of joy rather than mourning something lost, even though it is that too. There’s a lot packed into one seven-minute single, but it works.

Marino-Angelo Scordilis on Bandcamp

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Carson, When Gods Know Why

This record came out almost a year ago, so what am I doing reviewing it now? Well, here’s a friendly reminder that music doesn’t have an expiration date, and that I’m only one person and I’m a human being, some stuff is gonna slip by. But with Carson bringing enough hooks and fuzz for the whole class, it seemed like engaging with the eight songs of their confident, strident third full-length, When Gods Know Why, was its own excuse for doing, so there you go. Following 2022’s The Willful Pursuit of Ignorance (review here) with memorable burners like “Engine Down” and the melody-forward grungier twist of “Snow White,” the careening desert rocker “Marion Morrison,” the post-Truckfighters shove of “Drip,” and so on, the Lucerne, Switzerland, three-piece are a reminder of the moving power of heavy rock and roll, and I mean that both physically and in the energetic atmosphere wrought throughout the album all the way up to the blowout at the end of “Only for the Scorned.” Increasingly, they’re a name you can trust. Sorry to have missed this last September. Not sorry to be caught up now.

Carson on Bandcamp

Sixteentimes Music website

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Buzzard, Hillbilly Fuckery b/w Appalachian Blood Bourbon

Polling social media to effect a vox populi, Massachusetts doom folker Buzzard asks the query of our times — “what the fuck?” — over and over again in “Hillbilly Fuckery,” presented in the original and extra-crispy extended versions on this three-songer two-songer, joined with the narrative “Appalachian Blood Bourbon” as the heavy fuzz flows with Christopher Elliott in call and response verses carrying the energy of the song prior (and after), more than filler as complements go, but shorter and somewhat overtaken by all the voices surrounding. The banjo — a regular feature in Buzzard‘s work as the project has taken shape over the last couple years — carries the rhythm along with slide guitar and lumbering, weighted tone, and “Appalachian Blood Bourbon” pairs well for that, its lyrics calling out Hungarian vampires moving to Kentucky and founding an LLC. Buzzard has already announced a Fall LP release, Hush Now, and this as well as other recent singles will feature as CD bonus tracks, which is reasonable considering how much obviously went into their making, answering as well as asking that central question.

Buzzard on Bandcamp

Buzzard on Instagram

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Illwind, The Unfolding at the End of Light

Beginning with the 10-minute atmospheric doom clarion “Crimson Skies,” The Unfolding at the End of Light is the debut album from Peruvian four-piece Illwind, which features current and former members of Reino Ermitaño, Arcada, Argul and Death Invoker, and it arrives with a sense of self accordant to the storied pedigree of its component players. Heavy as buildings and modernly grim of mood, the six-song/47-minute paean finds a balance with (relatively) uptempo fare like the shorter, daring-toward-swing “Portal” before digging back in for “God of Sleep” — note the dreamy part in the second half — and 13-minute finale “Lucifer’s Mule,” which shifts from its acoustic guitar/sample intro to a lumbering procession that’s as spacious as it is consuming. But the inclusion of a bonus cover of The Stooges ultra-classic “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog” — inarguably one of the greatest riffs of all riffy time — bringing it into their established-by-then stylistic context, blowing it out, and capping with an assault of feedback and noise. Lifesblood, this is.

Illwind on Instagram

Personal Records website

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Spiral Galaxy, II

Forgive me speaking personally for a bit, but there are some records that I just feel lucky to have heard. I don’t think you get to be a blogger for 17-plus years without making some seriously questionable life decisions, but I feel validated in the slacker-stoner/domestic-boheme lifepath I’ve apparently chosen hearing II from Chicago terracosmos explorers Spiral Galaxy, whose bridge between effects drone and organic elements reminds of pocket highlights like Montibus Communitas while singing praise to nature with otherworldly sounds. Wholly immersive, welcoming and warm, even with the building thud of “Wir Fur Sea,” II comes across as ceremonial for more than just the rampant flute, and unflinching in the beauty it captures, with “Future Fauna” taking place across its own bed of psych drone and the brief conclusion “Umbra” as a goodbye that feels all too soon. I missed this band’s 2020 debut. Clearly I need to go back and rectify that, but first I’ll just go ahead and put II on my list of this year’s best albums, with the acknowledgement that any kind of temporal placement is selling short its reaches.

Spiral Galaxy on Instagram

Cardinal Fuzz store

Feeding Tube Records website

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Gurt, Survival of the Shittest

If you’ve ever wondered what Gurt‘s pummeling party sludge might sound like adopting grooves from Powerman 5000 and collaborating with a rapper — and if you have, kudos on your hyperspecific curiosity — the three-and-a-half-minute “No Limit” on the London outfit’s three-song Survival of the Shittest has your answer. The purposeful-in-their-yuck troupe have been at this at least 15 years now and they know with what they’re fucking. EP opener “Live Nation, Dead Scene” (2:49) feels rooted in extreme metal but still finishes with a massive, rolling riff, and the centerpiece title-track — you know they’re English because “shit” is a relative noun, as in “a bit shit”; in US English that’s “Shittiest,” which is clearer but doesn’t sound as fun — takes the violence-of-impact up another notch ahead of the playful-if-you-know-they’re-goofballs nu-metal delve. Gurt don’t owe anyone anything at this point musically — no doubt they’re racked with actual-debt like everyone else — but they’re pretty obviously still having fun crushing and gnashing as they are. Does that make them survivors? Are they the shittest? I don’t know, but they go upside your head hard enough to make you forget to ask.

Gurt on Bandcamp

Gurt on Instagram

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Crumbling Ghost, Four

As to what’s stopping Four — the first release in a decade from UK five-piece Crumbling Ghost — from being neofolk, the answer I think is mostly down to the lack of pretense and the heavier tones surrounding the rootsy vocal melodies. The seven-track offering finds itself embracing shades, hues, spirits, whatever-you-want-to-call-them from post-heavy and the ambience is crucial as “Bows of London” and “Bill Norrie” set the 36-minute LP forth, the latter bringing in the max-heft end of their dynamic range that the later “The Unquiet Grave” will use as a whole-album crescendo, but while “Wassail” is noisier and “Lovely Joan” is like a medieval heavy strut, the key is in their ability to change their approach from one piece to the next without letting go of the folkish vocals overarching. Thus they can get as heavy as they want — and do — and “Last of All Sleep” doesn’t have to feel discordant in its move from acoustics to a grunge wash and “Valtz Efter Tor Lohne” resonates as cohesive even as an instrumental. I don’t know their history or where they’ve been for 10 years, but the combination of atmospheric heavy and folk they harness here is markedly their own.

Crumbling Ghost on Bandcamp

New Heavy Sounds on Bandcamp

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Purest Form, Resistance

Danceable and violent in kind, Los Angeles industrial metal trio Purest Form present the six-song/15-minute Resistance EP ahead of appearing at Chicago’s Cold Waves Festival next month. “Beyond Terror” hints in its “Reptile”-y procession toward some underlying Nine Inch Nails influence, but there’s some aspect of retroism about the band’s aggressive take, vocalist Story providing the bite corresponding to the chug of “Animal” and the otherwise drum’n’bass-ish shove of “Bass Resistance” a short time later. This ’90s-informed take finds its ultimate fruition in the concluding cover of The Prodigy‘s “Breathe,” which from what I read is a staple of live sets. Fair enough, but its in the frenetic charge of “Move” that Purest Form demonstrate more what they’re bringing of themselves to push beyond their influences, and as brash as their sound is, one hopes that continues to evolve as they move forward. Intensity and immediacy are assets working in their favor, though, here and on their past EPs.

Purest Form on Instagram

Dais Records on Bandcamp

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You know I like a 10-minute single, and Argul‘s “Ritual” bodes remarkably well for the Peruvian doom rockers’ debut album, Soledad y Orgullo, which would seem to have been in the making for some time. To wit, the band have been around since 2014, and have done shows all the while and had a demo out in 2023, but that’s it. Soledad y Orgullo is out Aug. 21 on Personal Records, and “Ritual” has organic warmth and classic-derived riffing, but not at the sacrifice of either space or presence in the song, which gets righteously noisy as it heads toward the finish.

The PR wire sent copious details:

ARGUL set release date for PERSONAL RECORDS debut, reveal first track – features members of ILLWIND, LA GARÚA, LIGHTNING, ARCADA+++

On August 21st internationally, Personal Records is proud to present Argul’s highly anticipated debut album, Soledad & Orgullo, on CD format.

Argul are a doom metal band formed by guitarist Mauricio Guerrero and drummer Jose María Venturi in Lima, Peru, in 2014. Initially, their sound leaned more towards the roots of metal and stoner rock, drawing inspiration from contemporary bands such as Orange Goblin, Witchcraft, and Reverend Bizarre. Over time, as the rest of the members joined, with bassist Jian Holmes and drummer Alonso Guerrero, Argul’s sound has evolved into the more distinct style it is today: slower, heavier, and more introspective.

Despite having just one demo to their name prior, the members of Argul are veterans of the Peruvian scene, doing or having done time in such bands as La Garúa, Arcada, Lightning, and now-labelmates Illwind. Over the years, Argul have been shaping their sound into something epic and immersive. The band has shared the stage with bands from the Latin American scene such as Reino Ermitaño, La Ira de Dios, King Heavy, Mortajas, Mephistofeles, Kranium, and Satánicos Marihuanos and had the opportunity to open for Candlemass in Lima on their 2016 tour.

Now, at long last, Argul’s debut album is upon us: Soledad & Orgullo (English: “Solitude & Pride”). Bringing the past into the present, this first full-length presents a blend of the band’s early days – that is, a raw stoner sound – with the Argul of today, where heavier atmospheres are moving between crushing weight and quieter, thoughtful moments without losing intensity. As such, the band’s influences span a spectrum where doom and traditional heavy rock meet the ’60s, prog, and classical composers, with influences ranging from Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep, Pentagram, and Thin Lizzy to Warning, Yob, Death in June, Camel, Genesis, and Stravinsky, forming a sound that feels both grounded in tradition and open to density, contrast, and concentration. What’s more, Argul mostly utilizing their native tongue imparts a particularly unique aspect to the album, highlighting those contrasts whilst never losing a focused consistency – Soledad & Orgullo indeed!

The primordial is wrapped in a gloomy heaviness. The essence is the obscure and the inevitable. This is Argul’s Soledad & Orgullo!

In the meantime, hear the brand-new track “Vigil” HERE at Personal Records’ Bandcamp: https://www.personal-records.com/product/pre-order-argul-soledad-orgullo-cd/

Preorder info can be found HERE: https://www.personal-records.com/product/pre-order-argul-soledad-orgullo-cd/

Tracklisting for Argul’s Soledad & Orgullo
1. Ritual [10:08]
2. Engendro [5:04]
3. Hor Hodin [5:47]
4. Animal Dog [10:15]
5. Kamog [14:20]

https://argul.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/argul__doom/

https://www.personal-records.com/
https://personal-records.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/personalrecords666/
https://www.facebook.com/personalrecords666/

Argul, Soledad & Orgullo (2026)

This isn’t the end of the Quarterly Review — it wraps up on Monday — but it is the end of the week, and I’m ready for it. The music’s been good though and that’s something of a salvation for times where it seems like the strange and terrifying are in competition with each other to make life more awful. That doesn’t end on the weekend, of course, but at least I’ll have two days to put together the last post of this QR, and when you’ve been writing 10 reviews a day all week, half that counts as respite. Something like it, anyhow.

So before we wrap up the week with whatever on earth I’ll actually pick to close it out (any requests?), here’s one more batch, with my thanks for your valuable time and attention. Hope you find something cool.

Quarterly Review #51-60:

P+A+G+E+S, No More Can Be Done

No More Can Be Done is the debut album from South Africa’s P+A+G+E+S, but the Cape Town trio spent five years in the 2010s together as Morning Pages, so that their first record would hold so much intention behind it shouldn’t necessarily be a shocker. The reason behind the name change? An apparent change in their project, which is to say the band got way, way darker, way, way heavier and nasty in that sharp-toothed-thing-you-can’t-see-but-you-know-is-there-also-there-are-no-lights kind of way. The 15-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “The Passage” leads the way down into the bleak, extreme sludge that follows, but as the careful linear build of “Shine On” later demonstrates, P+A+G+E+S are more methodical than the noise and outwardly chaotic feel would seem to indicate. Atmosphere plays a central role in what they do, and that’s consistent from their run as Morning Pages, but No More Can Be Done is about what’s lurking and lurching in the bleakness.

P+A+G+E+S Linktr.ee

P+A+G+E+S on Bandcamp

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Bask, The Turning

Following the intro “Chasm,” Bask launch their fourth album, The Turning, with minor-key mystique and subsequent crush via “In the Heat of the Dying Sun” and “The Traveler,” piling triumph upon triumph in a way that is indicative of the progressive songwriting at work. “The Cloth” is slower, but neither less weighted nor less gorgeous for that, and as “Dig My Heels” works in some of the Southern/Americana pastoralism the Asheville, North Carolina, outfit have always been known for, the melody proves a standout, setting up another life-affirming payoff in the seven-minute “Unwound,” the mellower turn for the build of “Long Lost Light” and the somewhat wistfully twanging undertones of the title-track, which closes with grace and poise rare enough in heavy anything. Clearly a band who have worked to and been successful in transcending their root influences, and an identity that’s been hard-forged over their decade-plus. The Turning sees them actively bring their approach to another level.

Bask on Bandcamp

Season of Mist website

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Matus, El Aullido b/w Planetario

A 15-minute two-songer from Lima, Peru’s Matus, as the psychedelic weirdo sometimes-cultists of long standing offer “El Aullido” (8:45) and “Planetario” (6:55) as their first outing since 2021’s Espejismos II (review here). Both processions — and they are that — feel built out from jams, but the recordings have guitarist Manolo Garfias and keyboardist Richard Nossar (both also alternate bass duties) at their core, along with Roberto Soto‘s drumming, Veronik‘s theremin in the deep-freakout section of “Planetario,” Úrsula Inga‘s vocals on “El Aullido,” and so on with other guests (including Camilo Uriarte, who co-produced and mixed, along solo artist Chino Burga on guitar, and Cristóbal Pérez on sax for “Planetario”) adding to the movement. “El Aullido” pairs shoegaze with a roll informed by South American folk, perfect for Inga‘s vocals, while “Planetario” carries more of its melody in the keyboards and surrounding ambience. It’s a welcome check-in from Matus as they celebrate the 20th anniversary of the band.

Matus on Bandcamp

Matus on Facebook

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November Fire, 2025

Where New England bizarropsych rockers November’s Fire‘s 2024 album, Through a Mournful Song, took an approach to its material like some of earliest Monster Magnet‘s underproduced kitchen-sink quirk, the two-song EP 2025 presents two different faces, and that turns out to be because the songs included are over 30 years old. “2025” and “Somnia” — the latter which brings in original guitarist Greg Brosseau for a guest spot that includes clean lead vocals — were allegedly written in the early 1990s, and if you told me the root of the title-track was a teenaged thrash riff, they make that easy enough to believe in the modernized, thickened chug of the song as it stands now. That is to say, they’ve brought it into the sludgy experimentalist context of the work now, but it remains dark. As it inevitably would. “Somnia” is shorter, has some backing chants, and feels meditative even as the guitar holds to its restlessness. Weird band staying weird, screwing around with their old stuff and getting something out of it. Sometimes an experiment works.

November Fire Linktr.ee

November Fire on Bandcamp

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Goatmilker, Goatmilker

Bergen, Norway, four-piece Goatmilker don’t really leave you with much choice other than to call them progressive, though that hardly says boo about the reach of their self-titled debut, which is as much psychedelic punk as it is black metal in its rhythms, but remains a work of heavy rock and roll nonetheless, grooving, catchy on “Devils on My Tail,” aggro-weird on “Time… Tearing Apart,” all-in on tonal overwhelm for “Mountains” and cheekily grandiose in the finale “Storm” only after they’ve seen fit to take on Journey‘s “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart),” which given the goes-where-it-wants succession leading up to it hardly feels out of place at all. While at no risk of overstaying its welcome at eight songs and 34 minutes, Goatmilker does make for a challenging listen at times, but the rewards for actually paying attention to what they’re doing are worth whatever effort is required. That is to say, engage actively for best results.

Goatmilker Linktr.ee

Goatmilker on Instagram

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Grin, Incantation

If Grin sound a little different on Incantation, a two-track 7″ with a digital bonus cut in the flatteningly heavy “Echoes in the Static,” that might be because the duo of drummer/vocalist Jan Oberg and bassist Sabine Oberg didn’t record themselves as usual, but instead tracked live at Wave Akademie in their native Berlin with Anton Urban (Jan Oberg co-produced, mixed and mastered, so still had a hand for sure). So, rather than the studio leftovers one might expect mere months after the band’s last full-length, Acid Gods (review here), the songs may have their origins as such but arise from different circumstances. There’s some more of a wash to “Incantation” and “The Color of Ghosts,” and “Echoes in the Static” is consumed by its titular noise toward its finish, but “The Color of Ghosts” dares some melodic vocals amid all that bombast, and as usual, Grin forge their own take on metal, sludge and intense atmospheric heavy.

Grin on Bandcamp

The Lasting Dose Records on Bandcamp

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Mezzoa, TON 618

A collection of bangers on the second LP through Glory or Death Records from San Diego rockers Mezzoa, TON 618 plays out over the course of a taut 13 songs and 39 minutes, careening desert style in “Hard to Hear,” punking up the groove in “Chump” before basking in Sabbath worship for “Wasted Universe” (think “Symptom” thereof), building crunching tension in “Uncle Cho” only to release it in the second half of the song with a grunge melody, carrying that melody into “Smiles for Everyone,” and then slamming all that momentum into the fuzzed radness of the lead tone and Alice in Chainsy vocal of “How You Been.” That’s not the end, I’m just less efficient than the band and so I’m running out of space. “Blessing” attains inner Nirvana while “Desert Snakes” sounds like it’s ready for a John Garcia guest spot, “Chachi Liberachi” echoes the sharper corners of “Wasted Universe,” “Goin’ Down” has that riff that every New York hardcore song ever (yes, all of them. don’t @ me.) has but goes somewhere completely different with it, and closer “How Are We” highlights the craft that’s let them do it all in the first place. Hey kid, you like rock music? Well get a load of this.

Mezzoa on Bandcamp

Glory or Death Records website

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Orsak:Oslo, Silt and Static

Beginning with its longest track in the nine-minute “Biting In,” Orsak:Oslo‘s Silt and Static finds the Norwegian/Swedish outfit somewhat outgrown from their dronier foundations, harnessing a psychedelia that moves with krautrocking purposes, while retaining the band’s previously-established ambient instrumentalist approach. “Days Adrift” is an even thicker roll, with ebbs and flows that give precedent to the shove that results in “Salt Stains,” which follows, while “Petals” dips momentarily into minimalism. But the story here is the fullness of sound, with pieces like the subdued-but-building “Resonance in Ash” or “Petals” in conversation with Pelican/Russian Circles-style heavy, while “The Onward Stride” and “Time Leak” bring prog more to the forefront and “Bread and Sink” lets the rumble bring it all together. In these ways, Silt and Static rewrites the story of Orsak:Oslo as a band, and their reach has never seemed so broad.

Orsak:Oslo website

Vinter Records website

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Modder, Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun

The hypnotic drone finish of “Type 27” that ends side A of Modder‘s second album, Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun, is just one way the band incorporate ambience as a key element in their trades between loud and quiet, tense and open, and crushing and spacious. These different sides come together in various combinations across the six cuts on the Belgian instrumentalist five-piece’s 41-minute run, which sets out in oppressive and blasting fashion with “Stone Eternal,” as heavy as whatever doom you want to put it next to and still able to hit with the precision of Gojira. The shorter “Mather” is more angular, glitchy and mirrored by “Chaoism” on the album’s second half, and though they lead off with their longest track (immediate points) in “Stone Eternal,” the heavy djenty chug that comes to fruition on “In the Sun” is unmistakable as anything but the closer, building, receding, tossing in what sure sounds like a human voice chanting and surging in intensity to round out with a keyboard-overlaid bludgeoning. By then you’re pretty much pulp anyway.

Modder Linktr.ee

Lay Bare Recordings website

Consouling Sounds store

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Futuredrugs, Past Warnings of Present Futures

Past Warnings of Present Futures tells you a lot about its point of view in the title, but electronic experimentalists Futuredrugs push the meaning deeper still, opening with a barely recognizable take on “What a Wonderful World” with “Skies of Blue” and revamping Tom Waits‘ “Dirt in the Ground” on “…And the Gallows Groaned.” The cinematic, dark synth/programmed backdrop of these and the sampled “No Home” blur the line between originality and reinterpretation/manipulation, and I won’t claim to know whether pieces like “Ice Age Coming” or “When the Last Tree Falls” are similarly sourced, but maybe. In any case, in a time when remembering things like “nothing matters anyway” is a comfort, there is space for the open-minded listener to dwell among these seven tracks, which when taken as a whole succeed in embodying the apocalyptic hellscape of recent years. I don’t know if they’re offering sanctuary so much as a snapshot, but as that, it sure feels like an accurate depiction.

Futuredrugs on Bandcamp

Futuredrugs on Instagram

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Day four of five puts the end of this Quarterly Review in sight, as will inevitably happen. We passed the halfway point yesterday and by the time today’s done it’s the home stretch. I hope you’ve had a good week. It’s been a lot — and in terms of the general work level of the day, today’s my busiest day; I’ve got Hungarian class later and homework to do for that, and two announcements to write in addition to this, one for today one for tomorrow, and I need to set up the back end of another announcement for Friday if I can. The good news is that my daughter seems to be over the explosive-vomit-time stomach bug that had her out of school on Monday. The better news is I’ve yet to get that.

But if I’m scatterbrained generally and sort of flailing, well, as I was recently told after I did a video interview and followed up with the artist to apologize for my terribleness at it, at least it’s honest. I am who I am, and I think that there are places where people go and things people do that sometimes I have a hard time with. Like leaving the house. And parenting. And interviewing bands, I guess. Needing to plow through 10 reviews today and tomorrow should be a good exercise in focusing energy, even if that isn’t necessarily getting the homework done faster. And yeah, it’s weird to be in your 40s and think about homework. Everything’s weird in your 40s.

Quarterly Review #31-40:

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Monkey3, Welcome to the Machine

What are Monkey3 circa 2024 if not a name you can trust? The Swiss instrumental four-piece are now more than 20 years removed from their 2003 self-titled debut, and Welcome to the Machine — their seventh album and fourth release on Napalm Records (three studio, one live) — brings five new songs across 46 minutes of stately progressive heavy craft, with the lead cut “Ignition” working into an early gallop before cutting to ambience presumably as a manifestation of hitting escape velocity and leaving the planetary atmosphere, and trading from there between longer (10-plus-minute) and shorter (six- and seven-minute) pieces that are able to hit with a surprising impact when they so choose. Second track “Collision” comes to crush in a way that even 2019’s Sphere (review here) didn’t, and to go with its methodical groove, heavy post-rock airiness and layered-in acoustic guitar, “Kali Yuga” (10:01) is tethered by a thud of drums that feels no less the point of the thing than the mood-aura in the largesse that surrounds. Putting “Rackman” (7:13, with hints of voice or keyboard that sounds like it), which ends furiously, and notably cinematic closer “Collapse” (12:51) together on side B is a distinct immersion, and the latter places Monkey3 in a prog-metal context that defies stylistic expectation even as it lives up to the promise of the band’s oeuvre. Seven records and more than two decades on, and Monkey3 are still evolving. This is a special band, and in a Europe currently awash in heavy instrumentalism of varying degrees of psychedelia, it’s hard to think of Monkey3 as anything other than aesthetic pioneers.

Monkey3 on Facebook

Napalm Records website

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The Quill, Wheel of Illusion

With its Sabbath-born chug and bluesy initial groove opening to NWOBHM grandeur at the solo, the opening title-track is quick to reassure that Sweden’s The Quill are themselves on Wheel of Illusion, even if the corresponding classic metal elements there a standout from the more traditional rock of “Elephant Head” with its tambourine, or the doomier roll in “Sweet Mass Confusion,” also pointedly Sabbathian and thus well within the wheelhouse of guitarist Christian Carlsson, vocalist Magnus Ekwall, bassist Roger Nilsson and drummer Jolle Atlagic. While most of Wheel of Illusion is charged in its delivery, the still-upbeat “Rainmaker” feels like a shift in atmosphere after the leadoff and “We Burn,” and atmospherics come more into focus as the drums thud and the strings echo out in layers as “Hawks and Hounds” builds to its ending. While “The Last Thing” works keyboard into its all-go transition into nodding capper “Wild Mustang,” it’s the way the closer seems to encapsulate the album as a whole and the perspective brought to heavy rock’s founding tenets that make The Quill such reliable purveyors, and Wheel of Illusion comes across like special attention was given to the arrangements and the tightness of the songwriting. If you can’t appreciate kickass rock and roll, keep moving. Otherwise, whether it’s your first time hearing The Quill or you go back through all 10 of their albums, they make it a pleasure to get on board.

The Quill on Facebook

Metalville Records website

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Nebula Drag, Western Death

Equal parts brash and disillusioned, Nebula Drag‘s Dec. 2023 LP, Western Death, is a ripper whether you’re dug into side ‘Western’ or side ‘Death.’ The first half of the psych-leaning-but-more-about-chemistry-than-effects San Diego trio’s third album offers the kind of declarative statement one might hope, with particular scorch in the guitar of Corey Quintana, sway and ride in Stephen Varns‘ drums and Garrett Gallagher‘s Sabbathian penchant for working around the riffs. The choruses of “Sleazy Tapestry,” “Kneecap,” “Side by Side,” “Tell No One” and the closing title-track speak directly to the listener, with the last of them resolved, “Look inside/See the signs/Take what you can,” and “Side by Side” a call to group action, “We don’t care how it gets done/Helpless is the one,” but there’s storytelling here too as “Tell No One” turns the sold-your-soul-to-play-music trope and turns it on its head by (in the narrative, anyhow) keeping the secret. Pairing these ideas with Nebula Drag‘s raw-but-not-sloppy heavy grunge, able to grunge-crunch on “Tell No One” even as the vocals take on more melodic breadth, and willing to let it burn as “Western Death” departs its deceptively angular riffing to cap the 34-minute LP with the noisy finish it has by then well earned.

Nebula Drag on Facebook

Desert Records store

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LLNN & Sugar Horse, The Horror bw Sleep Paralysis Demon

Brought together for a round of tour dates that took place earlier this month, Pelagic Records labelmates LLNN (from Copenhagen) and Sugar Horse (from Bristol, UK) each get one track on a 7″ side for a showcase. Both use it toward obliterating ends. LLNN, who are one of the heaviest bands I’ve ever seen live and I’m incredibly grateful for having seen them live, dig into neo-industrial churn on “The Horror,” with stabbing synth later in the procession that underscores the point and less reliance on tonal onslaught than the foreboding violence of the atmosphere they create. In response, Sugar Horse manage to hold back their screams and lurching full-bore bludgeonry for nearly the first minute of “Sleep Paralysis Demon” and even after digging into it dare a return to cleaner singing, admirable in their restraint and more effectively tense for it when they push into caustic sludge churn and extremity, space in the guitar keeping it firmly in the post-metal sphere even as they aim their intent at rawer flesh. All told, the platter is nine of probably and hopefully-for-your-sake the most brutal minutes you might experience today, and thus can only be said to accomplish what it set out to do as the end product sounds like two studios would’ve needed rebuilding afterward.

LLNN on Facebook

Sugar Horse on Facebook

Pelagic Records website

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Fuzzter, Pandemonium

Fuzzter aren’t necessarily noisy in terms of playing noise rock on Pandemonium, but from the first cymbal crashes after the Oppenheimer sample at the start of “Extinción,” the Peruvian outfit engage an uptempo heavy psych thrust that, though directed, retains a chaotic aspect through the band’s willingness to be sound if not actually be reckless, to gang shout before the guitars drift off in “Thanatos,” to be unafraid of being eaten by their own swirl in “Caja de Pandora” or to chug with a thrashy intensity at the start of closer “Tercer Ojo,” doom out massive in the song’s middle, and float through jazzy minimalism at the finish. But even in that, there are flashes, bursts that emphasize the unpredictability of the songs, which is an asset throughout what’s listed as the Lima trio’s third EP but clocks in at 36 minutes with the instrumental “Purgatorio,” which starts off like it might be an interlude but grows more furious as its five minutes play out, tucked into its center. If it’s a short release, it is substantial. If it’s an album, it’s substantial despite a not unreasonable runtime. Ultimately, whatever they call it is secondary to the space-metal reach and the momentum fostered across its span, which just might carry you with it whether or not you thought you were ready to go.

Fuzzter on Facebook

Fuzzter on Instagram

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Cold in Berlin, The Body is the Wound

The listed representation of dreams in “Dream One” adds to the concrete severity of Cold in Berlin‘s dark, keyboard-laced post-metallic sound, but London-based four-piece temper that impact with the post-punk ambience around the shove of the later “Found Out” on their The Body is the Wound 19-minute four-songer, and build on the goth-ish sway even as “Spotlight” fosters a heavier, more doomed mindset behind vocalist Maya, whose verses in “When Did You See Her Last” are complemented by dramatic lines of keyboard and who can’t help but soar even as the overarching direction is down, down, down into either the subconscious referenced in “Dream One” or some other abyss probably of the listener’s own making. Five years and one actual-plague after their fourth full-length, 2019’s Rituals of Surrender, bordering on 15 since the band got their start, they cast resonance in mood as well as impact (the latter bolstered by Wayne Adams‘ production), and are dynamic in style as well as volume, with each piece on The Body is the Wound working toward its own ends while the EP’s entirety flows with the strength of its performances. They’re in multiple worlds, and it works.

Cold in Berlin on Facebook

Cold in Berlin website

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The Mountain King, Apostasyn

With the expansive songwriting of multi-instrumentalist/sometimes-vocalist Eric McQueen at its core, The Mountain King issue Apostasyn as possibly their 10th full-length in 10 years and harness a majestic, progressive doom metal that doesn’t skimp either on the doom or the metal, whether that takes the form of the Type O Negative-style keys in “The White Noise From God’s Radio” or the tremolo guitar in the apex of closer “Axolotl Messiah.” The title-track is a standout for more than just being 15 minutes long, with its death-doom crux and shifts between minimal and maximal volumes, and the opening “Dødo” just before fosters immersion after its maybe-banging-on-stuff-maybe-it’s-programmed intro, with a hard chug answered in melody by guest singer Julia Gusso, who joins McQueen and the returning Frank Grimbarth (also guitar) on vocals, while Robert Bished adds synth to McQueen‘s own. Through the personnel changes and in each piece’s individual procession, The Mountain King are patient, waiting in the dark for you to join them. They’ll probably just keep basking in all that misery until you get there, no worries. Oh, and I’ll note that the download version of Apostasyn comes with instrumental versions of the four tracks, in case you’d really like to lose yourself in ruminating.

The Mountain King on Facebook

The Mountain King on Bandcamp

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Witchorious, Witchorious

The self-titled debut from Parisian doomers Witchorious is distinguished by its moments of sludgier aggression — the burly barks in “Monster” at the outset, and so on — but the chorus of “Catharsis” that rises from the march of the verse offers a more melodic vision, and the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Antoine Auclair, bassist/vocalist Lucie Gaget and drummer Paul Gaget, continue to play to multiple sides of a modern metal and doom blend, while “The Witch” adds vastness and roll to its creeper-riff foundation. The guitar-piece “Amnesia” serves as an interlude ahead of “Watch Me Die” as Witchorious dig into the second half of the album, and as hard has that song comes to hit — plenty — the character of the band is correspondingly deepened by the breadth of “To the Grave,” which follows before the bonus track “Why” nod-dirges the album’s last hook. There’s clarity in the craft throughout, and Witchorious seem aware of themselves in stylistic terms if not necessarily writing to style, and noteworthy as it is for being their first record, I look forward to hearing how they refine and sharpen the methods laid out in these songs. The already-apparent command with which they direct the course here isn’t to be ignored.

Witchorious on Facebook

Argonauta Records website

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Skull Servant, Traditional Black Magicks II

Though their penchant for cult positioning and exploitation-horror imagery might lead expectations elsewhere, North Carolinian trio Skull Servant present a raw, sludge-rocking take on their second LP, Traditional Black Magicks II, with bassist Noah Terrell and guitarist Calvin Bauer reportedly swapping vocal duties per song across the five tracks while drummer Ryland Dreibelbis gives fluidity to the current of distortion threaded into “Absinthe Dreams,” which is instrumental on the album but newly released as a standalone single with vocals. I don’t know if the wrong version got uploaded or what — Bauer ends up credited with vocals that aren’t there — but fair enough. A meaner, punkier stonerism shows itself as “Poison the Unwell” hints at facets of post-hardcore and “Pergamos,” the two shortest pieces placed in front of the strutting “Lucifer’s Reefer” and between that cut and the Goatsnake-via-Sabbath riffing of “Satan’s Broomstick.” So it could be that Skull Servant, who released the six-song outing on Halloween 2023, are still sorting through where they want to be sound-wise, or it could be they don’t give a fuck about genre convention and are gonna do whatever they please going forward. I won’t predict and I’m not sure either answer is wrong.

Skull Servant on Facebook

Skull Servant on Bandcamp

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Lord Velvet, Astral Lady

Notice of arrival is served as Lord Velvet dig into classic vibes and modern heft on their late 2023 debut EP, Astral Lady, to such a degree that I actually just checked their social media to see if they’d been signed yet before I started writing about them. Could happen, and probably will if they want it to, considering the weight of low end and the flowing, it’s-a-vibe-man vibe, plus shred, in “Lament of Io” and the way they make that lumber boogie through (most of) “Snakebite Fever.” Appearing in succession, “Night Terrors” and “From the Deep” channel stoned Iommic revelry amid their dynamic-in-tempo doomed intent, and while “Black Beam of Gemini” rounds out with a shove, Lord Velvet retain the tonal presence on the other end of that quick, quiet break, ready to go when needed for the crescendo. They’re not reinventing stoner rock and probably shouldn’t be trying to on this first EP, but they feel like they’re engaging with some of the newer styles being proffered by Magnetic Eye or sometimes Ripple Music, and if they end up there or elsewhere before they get around to making a full-length, don’t be surprised. If they plan to tour, so much the better for everybody.

Lord Velvet on Facebook

Lord Velvet website

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Last day, this one. And probably a good thing so that I can go back to doing just about anything else beyond (incredibly) basic motor function and feeling like I need to start the next day’s QR writeups. I’m already thinking of maybe a week in December and a week or two in January, just to try to keep up with stuff, but I’m of two minds about it.

Does the Quarterly Review actually help anyone find music? It helps me, I know, because it’s 50 records that I’m basically forcing myself to dig into, and that exposes me to more and more and more all the time, and gives me an outlet for stuff I wouldn’t otherwise have mental or temporal space to cover, so I know I get something out of it. Do you?

Honest answers are welcome in the comments. If it’s a no, that helps me as well.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

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AAWKS & Aiwass, The Eastern Scrolls

Late on their 2022 self-titled debut (review here), Canadian upstart heavy fuzzers AAWKS took a decisive plunge into greater tonal densities, and “1831,” which is their side-consuming 14:30 contribution to the The Eastern Scrolls split LP with Arizona mostly-solo-project Aiwass, feels built directly off that impulse. It is, in other words, very heavy. Cosmically spaced with harsher vocals early that remind of stonerkings Sons of Otis and only more blowout from there as they roll forth into slog, noise, a stop, ambient guitar and string melodies and drum thud behind vocals, subdued psych atmosphere and backmasked sampling near the finish. Aiwass, led by multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Blake Carrera and now on the cusp of releasing a second full-length, The Falling (review here), give the 13:00 “The Unholy Books” a stately, post-metallic presence, as much about the existential affirmations and the melody applied to the lyrics as it moves into the drumless midsection as either the earlier Grayceon-esque pulled notes of guitar (thinking specifically “War’s End” from 2011’s All We Destroy, but there the melody is cello) into it or the engrossing heft that emerges late in the piece, though it does bookend with a guitar comedown. Reportedly based around the life of theosophy co-founder and cult figure Madame Helena Blavatsky, it can either be embraced on that level or taken on simply as a showcase of two up and coming bands, each with their own complementary sound. However you want to go, it’s easily among the best splits I’ve heard in 2023.

AAWKS on Facebook

Aiwass on Facebook

Black Throne Productions store

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Surya Kris Peters, Strange New World

The lines between projects are blurring for Surya Kris Peters, otherwise known as Chris Peters, currently based in Brazil where he has the solo-project Fuzz Sagrado following on from his time in the now-defunct German trio Samsara Blues Experiment. Strange New World is part of a busy 2023/busy last few years for Peters, who in 2023 alone has issued a live album from his former band (review here) and a second self-recorded studio LP from Fuzz Sagrado, titled Luz e Sombra (review here). And in Fuzz Sagrado, Peters has returned to the guitar as a central instrument after a few years of putting his focus on keys and synths with Surya Kris Peters as the appointed outlet for it. Well, the Fuzz Sagrado had some keys and the 11-song/52-minute Strange New World wants nothing for guitar either as Peters reveals a headbanger youth in the let-loose guitar of “False Prophet,” offers soothing and textured vibes of a synthesized beat in “Sleep Meditation in Times of War” (Europe still pretty clearly in mind) and the acoustic/electric blend that’s expanded upon in “Nada Brahma Nada.” Active runs of synth, bouncing from note to note with an almost zither-esque feel in “A Beautiful Exile (Pt. 1)” and the later “A Beautiful Exile (Part 2)” set a theme that parts of other pieces follow, but in the drones of “Past Interference” and the ’80s New Wave prog of the bonus track “Slightly Too Late,” Peters reminds that the heart of the project is in exploration, and so it is still very much its own thing.

Fuzz Sagrado on Facebook

Electric Magic Records on Bandcamp

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Evert Snyman, All Killer Filler

A covers record can be a unique opportunity for an artist to convey something about themselves to fans, and while I consider Evert Snyman‘s 12-track/38-minute classic pop-rock excursion All Killer Filler to be worth it for his take on Smashing Pumpkins‘ “Zero” alone, there is no mistaking the show of persona in the choice to open with The Stooges‘ iconic “Search and Destroy” and back it cheekily with silly bounce of Paul McCartney‘s almost tragically catchy “Temporary Secretary.” That pairing alone is informative if you’re looking to learn something about the South African-based songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and producer. See also “The Piña Colada Song.” The ’90s feature mightily, as they would, with tunes by Pixies, Blur, Frank Black, The Breeders and Mark Lanegan (also the aforementioned Smashing Pumpkins), but whether it’s the fuzz of The Breeders’ 1:45 “I Just Wanna Get Along,” the sincere acoustic take on The Beatles “I Will” — which might as well be a second McCartney solo cut, but whatever; you’ll note Frank Black and Pixies appearing separately as well — or the gospel edge brought to Tom Waits‘ “Jesus Gonna Be Here,” Snyman internalizes this material, almost builds it from the ground up, loyal in some ways and not in others, but resonant in its respect for the source material without trying to copy, say, Foo Fighters, note for note on “The Colour and the Shape.” If it’s filler en route to Snyman‘s next original collection, fine. Dude takes on Mark Lanegan without it sounding like a put on. Mark Lanegan himself could barely do that.

Evert Snyman on Facebook

Mongrel Records website

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Book of Wyrms, Storm Warning

Virginian heavy doom rockers Book of Wyrms have proved readily in the past that they don’t need all that long to set up a vibe, and the standalone single “Storm Warning” reinforces that position with four-plus minutes of solid delivery of craft. Vocalist/synthesist Sarah Moore Lindsey, bassist Jay “Jake” Lindsey and drummer Kyle Lewis and guitarist Bobby Hufnell (also Druglord) — the latter two would seem to have switched instruments since last year’s single “Sodapop Glacier” (premiered here) — but whatever is actually being played by whoever, the song is a structurally concise but atmospheric groover, with a riff twisting around the hook and the keyboard lending dimension to the mix as it rests beneath the guitar and bass. They released their third album, Occult New Age (review here), in 2021, so they’re by no means late on a follow-up, and I don’t know either when this song was recorded — before, after or during that process — but it’s a sharp-sounding track from a band whose style has grown only  more theirs with time. I have high expectations for Book of Wyrms‘ next record — I had high expectations for the last one, which were met — and especially taken together, “Storm Warning” and “Sodapop Glacier” show both the malleable nature of the band’s aesthetic, the range that has grown in their sound and the live performance that is at their collective core.

Book of Wyrms on Facebook

Desert Records store

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Burning Sister, Get Your Head Right

Following on from their declarative 2022 debut, Mile High Downer Rock (review here), Denver trio Burning Sister — bassist/vocalist Steve Miller (also synth), guitarist Nathan Rorabaugh and drummer Alison Salutz — bring four originals and the Mudhoney cover “When Tomorrow Comes” (premiered here) together as Get Your Head Right, a 29-minute EP, beginning with the hypnotic nod groove and biting leads of “Fadeout” (also released as a single) and the slower, heavy psych F-U-Z-Z of “Barbiturate Lizard,” the keyboard-inclusive languid roll of which, even after the pace picks up, tells me how right I was to dig that album. The centerpiece title-track is faster and a little more forward tonally, more grounded, but carries over the vocal echo and finds itself in noisier crashes and chugs before giving over to the 7:58 “Looking Through Me,” which continues the relatively terrestrial vibe over until the wall falls off the spaceship in the middle of the track and everyone gets sucked into the vacuum — don’t worry, the synthesizer mourns us after — just before the noted cover quietly takes hold to close out with spacious heavygaze cavern echo that swells all the way up to become a blowout in the vein of the original. It’s a story that’s been told before, of a band actively growing, coming into their sound, figuring out who they are from one initial release to the next. Burning Sister haven’t finished that process yet, but I like where this seems to be headed. Namely into psych-fuzz oblivion and cosmic dust. So yeah, right on.

Burning Sister on Facebook

Burning Sister on Bandcamp

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Gévaudan, Umbra

Informed by Pallbearer, Warning, or perhaps others in the sphere of emotive doom, UK troupe Gévaudan scale up from 2019’s Iter (review here) with the single-song, 43:11 Umbra, their second album. Impressive enough for its sheer ambition, the execution on the extended titular piece is both complex and organic, parts flowing naturally from one to the other around lumbering rhythms for the first 13 minutes or so before a crashout to a quick fade brings the next movement of quiet and droning psychedelia. They dwell for a time in a subtle-then-not-subtle build before exploding back to full-bore tone at 18:50 and carrying through a succession of epic, dramatic ebbs and flows, such that when the keyboard surges to the forefront of the mix in seeming battle with the pulled notes of guitar, the ensuing roll/march is a realization. They do break to quiet again, this time piano and voice, and doom mournfully into a fade that, at the end of a 43-minute song tells you the band could’ve probably kept going had they so desired. So much the better. Between this and Iter, Gévaudan have made a for-real-life statement about who they are as a band and their progressive ambitions. Do not make the mistake of thinking they’re done evolving.

Gévaudan on Facebook

Meuse Music Records website

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Oxblood Forge, Cult of Oblivion

In some of the harsher vocals and thrashy riffing of Cult of Oblivion‘s opening title-track, Massachusetts’ Oxblood Forge remind a bit of some of the earliest Shadows Fall‘s definitively New Englander take on hardcore-informed metal. The Boston-based double-guitar five-piece speed up the telltale chug of “Children of the Grave” on “Upon the Altar” and find raw sludge scathe on “Cleanse With Fire” ahead of finishing off the four-song/18-minute EP with the rush into “Mask of Satan,” which echoes the thrash of “Cult of Oblivion” itself and finds vocalist Ken McKay pushing his voice higher in clean register than one can recall on prior releases, their most recent LP being 2021’s Decimator (review here). But that record was produced for a different kind of impact than Cult of Oblivion, and the aggression driving the new material is enhanced by the roughness of its presentation. These guys have been at it a while now, and clearly they’re not in it for trends, or to be some huge band touring for seven months at a clip. But their love of heavy metal is evident in everything they do, and it comes through here in every blow to the head they mete out.

Oxblood Forge on Facebook

Oxblood Forge on Bandcamp

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High Brian, Five, Six, Seven

The titular rhythmic counting in Austrian heavy-prog quirk rockers High Brian‘s Five, Six, Seven (on StoneFree Records, of course) doesn’t take long to arrive, finding its way into second cut “Is it True” after the mild careening of “All There Is” opens their third full-length, and that’s maybe eight minutes into the 40-minute record, but it doesn’t get less gleefully weird from there as the band take off into the bassy meditation of “The End” before tossing out angular headspinner riffs in succession and rolling through what feels like a history of krautrock’s willful anti-normality written into the apocalypse it would seemingly have to be. “The End” is the longest track at 8:50, and it presumably closes side A, which means side B is when it’s time to party as the triplet chug of “The Omni” reinforces the energetic start of “All There Is” with madcap fervor and “Stone Came Up” can’t decide whether it’s raw-toned biker rock or spaced out lysergic idolatry, so it decides to become an open jam complete people talking “in the crowd.” This leaves the penultimate “Our First Car” to deliver one last shove into the art-rock volatility of closer “Oil Into the Fire,” where High Brian play one more round of can-you-follow-where-this-is-going before ending with a gentle cymbal wash like nothing ever happened. Note, to the best of my knowledge, there are not bongos on every track, as the cover art heralds. But perhaps spiritually. Spiritual bongos.

High Brian on Facebook

StoneFree Records website

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Búho Ermitaño, Implosiones

Shimmering, gorgeous and richly informed in melody and rhythm by South American folk, Búho Ermitaño‘s Implosiones revels in pastoralia in opener “Herbie” before “Expolosiones” takes off past its midpoint into heavy post-rock float and progressive urgency that in itself is more dynamic than many bands even still is only a small fraction of the encompassing range of sounds at work throughout these seven songs. ’60s psych twists into the guitar solo in the back half of “Explosiones” before space rock key/synth wash finishes — yes, it’s like that — and only then does the serene guitar and, birdsong and synth-drone of “Preludio” announce the arrival of centerpiece “Ingravita,” which begins acoustic and even as it climbs all the way up to its crescendo maintains its peaceful undercurrent so that when it returns at the end it seems to be home again at the finish. The subsequent “Buarabino” is more about physical movement in its rhythm, cumbia roots perhaps showing through, but leaves the ground for its second half of multidirectional resonances offered like ’70s prog that tells you it’s from another planet. But no, cosmic as they get in the keys of “Entre los Cerros,” Búho Ermitaño are of and for the Earth — you can hear it in every groove and sun-on-water guitar melody — and when the bowl chimes to start finale “Renacer,” the procession that ensues en route to the final drone is an affirmation both of the course they’ve taken in sound and whatever it is in your life that’s led you to hear it. Records like this never get hype. They should. They are loved nonetheless.

Búho Ermitaño on Facebook

Buh Records on Bandcamp

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Octonaut, Intergalactic Tales of a Wandering Cephalopod

In concept or manifestation, one would not call Octonaut‘s 54-minute shenanigans-prone debut album Intergalactic Tales of a Wandering Cephalopod a minor undertaking. On any level one might want to approach it — taking on the two-minute feedbackscape of “…—…” (up on your morse code?) or the 11-minute tale-teller-complete-with-digression-about-black-holes “Octonaut” or any of their fun-with-fuzz-and-prog-metal-and-psychedelia points in between — it is a lot, and there is a lot going on, but it’s also wonderfully brazen. It’s completely over the top and knows it. It doesn’t want to behave. It doesn’t want to just be another stoner band. It’s throwing everything out in the open and seeing what works, and as Octonaut move forward, ideally, they’ll take the lessons of a song like the mellow linear builder “Hypnotic Jungle” or nine-minute capper “Rainbow Muffler Camel” (like they’re throwing darts at words) with its intermittent manic fits and the somehow inevitable finish of blown-out static noise. As much stoner as it is prog, it’s also not really either, but this is good news because there are few better places for an act so clearly bent on individualism as Octonaut are to begin than in between genres. One hopes they dwell there for the duration.

Octonaut on Facebook

Octonaut’s Linktr.ee

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Between scorched-earth boogie and classic heavy rock, just the tiniest undercurrent of sludge-punk impulse, and South American folk-prog — and that’s just on “Ritual por la Eternidad” — Rito Verdugo‘s second full-length, Kamikaze Boom, lives up to its title when it comes to intensity. Much of the eight-song/34-minute Necio Records long-player finds the Peruvian four-piece bashing away with speed and impressive control, following their four-song 2020 EP, Post-Primatus (review here), and 2018’s Cosmos long-player with a collection that’s no less about breadth than rush when taken in balance.

Songs like the opener “El Despertar,” “Apocalyptus” and the later “Viento Divino” careen around deceptively thick riffing, the middle of them head-spinning in the vein of modern prog metal, but as the title-track departs its sprint in favor of a jazzier buildup, twists and turns with purpose while helping to build the momentum that carries Rito Verdugo from one end of the outing to the other, it is brash in the doing but backed by enough chops in terms of technique to pull it off. They’re the kind of band other bands watch on stage and either hate or admit to being impressed by.

Comprised of guitarists Rodrigo Chávez (also vocals) and Alvaro Gonzales del Valle, bassist Carlos del Castillo and drummer Luis Rodríguez, they aren’t rushed so much in the execution — that is, the album doesn’t sound cheap or unconsidered — but in the tempos of the material itself, they play heavy and they play fast. Particularly coming after the EP, which was made during covid lockdown, it is a full-sounding, linear listening experience. Each song will leave individual bruises, sure, but the album is meant to be taken as a whole, front to back, as presented.

And realizing that underscores the intention behind the entire affair, which in combination with the roughness of some of the fuzz — as “El Despertar” bulls in the china shop of riff rock at the start of the record, it does so with a tonal thickness and character that wouldn’t have been out of place coming from mid-’90s C.O.C. — and while Peru and greater South America generally have a rich history of heavy and underground music scenes, doom, stoner, psych, garage and the like, Rito Verdugo seem to be going too fast to care one way or the other about where they fit stylistically. That suits the songs well too, as “Kamikaze Boom” almost can’t help take some influence from surf in its lead guitar spacing out circa three minutes — just before the break — and noodling in that break with vocals overtop like ‘here’s this peaceful moment isn’t it nice’ with only the drums foretelling the slam back to speed that’s about to take place.

The title-track and others benefit widely from what comes through as a relatively open creative process, not just to weirdo sounds outside the heavy norm — there actually isn’t a lot of experimentalism as regards arrangements; guitars, bass, drums, vocals; there aren’t even keyboards — but to exploring where a given part actually wants to go, as in the galloping verse of “Ataque Shimpu,” with the falsetto vocal from Chávez like his voice is trying to dance on top of the angular progression it’s topping. Fuzzy, hooky, all-go, “Ataque Shimpu” picks up from the still-rousing but slower “Apocalyptus,” which puts the vocals forward in its first half amid dizzying turns that would make The Atomic Bitchwax proud and ends with a crash sample that might be from Contra or something else of the 8-bit era, maybe Atari rather than NES. I don’t know, but that brief split lets “Ataque Shimpu” begin its shuffle with a clear head and chorus push, fading at its conclusion into “Ritual por la Eternidad,” which is the longest inclusion at 5:36, the fifth of eight tracks, and the first time Rito Verdugo genuinely slow down on the record.

Airy notes of guitar strum out beneath an initial layered verse, the nod rising in volume behind as the open verse solidifies into the chorus — in Spanish like the rest but easier to follow when it’s slower — turning back to make a melodic highlight of the second verse before a shout marks the transition into the gallop that takes hold for the remainder of the track. It was not quite half a song, then, that the speed was set aside. It’s not much, but it’s enough to call it dynamic, especially — again — when taking on the album in its entirety. “Viento Divino” breezes in with hints of NWOBHM in its guitar intro that stretches into a nod before sprawling out echoing layers of verse lyrics, bursting, bouncing and pivoting to a degree that must have been overwhelming even in the making since they shift into a quieter midsection before the shout-topped onslaught in the second half leads to the quiet finish, which feels long on a song that’s under four minutes, but is important in what it brings to the atmosphere of Kamikaze Boom, so much emphasis otherwise placed on the explosiveness of the songs.

To wit, the penultimate “Vagabundo” answers “Viento Divino” with gusto and full fuzz, nestling into a comfortable groove that on many albums would still count as fast, and injecting a bit more fun into the proceedings ahead of the bikerism that closes with “Aplastando a las Ratas,” one last barnburner to get the point across that Rito Verdugo really hate that barn. Where “Vagabundo” had shades of cosmic acceleration commonly attributed to an influence from Slift or King Gizzard, the finale makes that charge more terrestrial, building up to its speed-at-night verse riff with classic metal poise and riding that riff headfirst (helmet on; please listen responsibly) into a section of last solo shred that caps with a sudden stop.

Because I guess when you’ve torn ass around for the last half-hour plus, maybe the big rock finish becomes superfluous. Fair enough as Rito Verdugo leave nothing unsaid or wanting by the time they’re done, letting the physicality of spirit of their work stand for itself. Which it does. And then it runs around in circles for a few minutes — purposefully, mind you — because it needs the sensory engagement. They’re not speed rock, that’s a different thing. But speed is a major asset across Kamikaze Boom, and put to riotous use.

Rito Verdugo, Kamikaze Boom (2023)

Rito Verdugo on Facebook

Rito Verdugo on Instagram

Rito Verdugo on Bandcamp

Necio Records on Facebook

Necio Records on Instagram

Necio Records on Bandcamp

Oh, hello. I didn’t see you come in. What’s going on? Not much. You? Well, you see, it’s just another 10 records for the Quarterly Review, you know how it goes. Yup, day seven. That’s up to 70 records, and it’ll keep going for the rest of this week. Have I mentioned yet I was thinking about adding an 11th day? What can I say, some cool stuff has come along this last week and a half since I’ve been doing this. Better now than in a couple months, maybe. Anyway, make yourself comfortable. Hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading.

Winter 2023 Quarterly Review #61-70:

Jason Simon, Hindsight 2020

What this sweetly melodic and delicately arranged 2022 collection lacks in marketing — the title Hindsight 2020 is accurate in that that’s when it was mostly recorded, but ‘let’s remember an awful time’ is hardly a way to pitch an audience on a vinyl — but as Jason Simon (also Dead Meadow) languidly meanders through covers of Tom Petty (“Crawling Back to You” becomes ethereal post-rock), Jody Reynolds & Bobbie Gentry, The Gun Club, Jackson C. Frank, Bert Jansch and John Prine, the latter of whom passed away after contracting covid-19, without the lockdown from which this record probably wouldn’t exist as it does. Probably not a coincidence. On banjo for three peppered-in originals starting with a relaxed mood-setting intro, as well as guitar, vocals, Moog, bass, Juno-60, and mandolin throughout, Simon and a few companions dig into these folk roots, making them his own and creating a whole-album flow for what might in less capable hands be a hodgepodge of competing influences. As it stands, by the time the melancholy strum of “October” takes hold, Simon has long since succeeded in creating a vibe that rightly has “Ghosts Gather Now” as its centerpiece, pulling as it does from these spirits to make something of its own. 2020 sucked; nobody’s arguing. But at least in hindsight something beautiful can come out of it.

Jason Simon on Bandcamp

Piaptk store

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Smoke, Groupthink

Virginian trio Smoke cast an eye toward the trailblazing heavy psych of Sungrazer on “Temple” from their early 2022 debut album, guitarist Dalton handling the melodic vocals that will soon enough grow throatier in their passionate delivery, but even more than this, Groupthink sees the band — Dalton, guitarist Ben and drummer Alex; first names only — digging full-on into turn-of-the-century-style nodding heavy, shades of Man’s Ruin-era classics from the likes of Acid King, maybe even some of Sons of Otis‘ bombed-out largesse, showing themselves filtered through a next-generational execution, varied enough so as not to be single-minded in idolatry as “Davidian” picks up energy in its late solo, the 18-minute “One Eyed King” earns its lumbering payoff and lines of floating guitar, “The Supplication of Flame” arrives based around acoustic guitar forward in the mix ahead of the electrics (at least at first) and closer “Telah” basks in a righteous stomp that underscores the point. At 58 minutes, Groupthink isn’t a minor undertaking, but it is one of 2022’s most impressive debut albums and laced with potential for what may develop in their sound. It is stronger in craft than one might initially think, and has to be to hold up all that heft in its fuzz.

Smoke on Facebook

Smoke on Bandcamp

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Rifle, Repossessed

Not so much ’70s-style retroism as tapping into a kind of raw, ’90s heavy rock vision — Nebula, Monster Magnet, as well as Peru and greater South America’s own storied history of fuzzmaking — Rifle‘s Repossessed is relatively rough in its production, but as in the best of cases, that becomes a part of its appeal as the Lima-based three-piece of guitarist/bassist/vocalist Alejandro Suni, guitarist Magno Mendoza and drummer Cesar Araujo ride their riffs down the highway and into a fog of tonal buzz, fervent, butt-sized low end and druggy, outsider vibes. “The Thrill is Back” struts coated in road dirt as it is, and that thrill is found likewise in the scorch-psych of “Demon Djinn” and the earlier blowout “Fiend” that follows opener “Seven Thousand Demons” and sets a bluesy lyrical foundation so that six-minute finale “Spirit Rise” seems to offer some sense of realization or, if not that, then at least acceptance of this well-baked way of life. As the band’s first release, this late-2022 seven-song/32-minute offering feels ready to be pressed up on vinyl by some discerning purveyor, if not for the underlying desert rock drive of “Madness” then surely for the swing in “Sonic Rage,” and it’s one of those records that isn’t going to speak to everyone, but is going to hit just right for some others, dug as it is into a niche between what’s come before and its own encapsulation of a red-eyed stoner future.

Rifle on Instagram

Rifle on Bandcamp

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Mother of Graves, Where the Shadows Adorn

If there should be any doubt that Indianapolis’ Mother of Graves are schooled in the sound they’re shooting for, let the fact that Dan Swanö (Katatonia, Opeth, on into infinity) mastered the recording/mix by the band’s own Ben Sandman make it clear where their particular angle on melancholic death-doom is coming from in its grim, wintry soul-dance. Where the Shadows Adorn follows 2020’s likewise-dead-on debut, In Somber Dreams (discussed here), but the stately, poised rollout of a song like “Rain” and the subdued sections before “Of Solitude and Stone” enters its last push, has all the hallmarks of forward growth in songwriting as well as in confidence on the part of the band. Front to back, Where the Shadows Adorn is deathly in its consumption, a fresh interpretation of a moment in history when the likes of Katatonia especially but also acts like My Dying Bride and others of the Peaceville ilk were considered on the extreme end of metal despite their sometimes-grueling tempos. The question remains whether this is where Mother of Graves will reside for the duration or if, like their influences, their depressive streak will grow more melodic with age. As it stands, adorned in shadow, their emotional and atmospheric weight is darkly majestic.

Mother of Graves on Facebook

Wise Blood Records site

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Swarm, Swarm

This self-titled four-songer is the first release from Helsinki, Finland’s Swarm, and though it’s billed as an EP, its 28 minutes are wrought with a substantial flow and unifying melodic complexity due both to the depth of vocal complementary arrangements between singer Hilja Vedenpää and guitarist Panu Willman, as well as the intertwining of Willman and Einari Toiviainen‘s guitars atop the rolling grooves of Leo Lehtonen‘s bass and Dani Paajanen‘s drumming; the whole band operating together with a sense of purpose that goes beyond the standard ‘riff out and see what happens’ beginning of so many bands. A line of rhythmic notes atop the riff in “Nevermore” around five minutes is emblematic of the flourish the band brings to the release, and one would note the grungier float in “There Again,” and the moodier acoustics of “Frail” and the more full-on duet in the verses of closer “We Should Know” — never mind the pre-fade chug that caps or the consuming heft offsetting those verses — as further distinguishing factors. Self-released in June 2022, Swarm‘s Swarm carries the air of a precursor, and though it’s not known yet to precisely what, the note to keep eyes and ears open is well received. To put it another way, they sound very much like they know what they want to be and to accomplish as a group. If they’re heading into a debut album next, they’re ready to take on the task.

Swarm on Facebook

918 Records on Facebook

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Baardvader, Foolish Fires

The self-titled-era Alice in Chains-style vocals on Baardvader‘s second LP, Foolish Fires, make them a ready standout from the slew of up and coming European heavy rollers, but the Den Haag trio have a distinct blend of crunch in their tone and atmosphere surrounding that make a song such as “Understand” memorable for more than just the pleading repetitions of its title in the hook. Opener “Pray” sets a hard-hitting fluidity in motion and “Illuminate” answers back as it caps side A with (dat) bass and airy guitar in an open soundscape soon to be filled with a wall o’ fuzz and more dug-in grunge spirit. As they make their way toward the louder, vocally-layered, highlight-solo finish that the 10-minutes “Echoes” provides, there’s some trace of The Machine‘s noisier affinity in their tones on “Blinded Out,” including the solo, and “Prolong Eternity” culminates with intensity leading into the already-noted closer, but “Echoes” has the throatier shouts — like “Illuminate” before it — to back its case as the destination for where they’ve been headed all along, and works to send Foolish Fires out as a triumphant demonstration of Baardvader‘s appeal, which is relatively straightforward considering how much they nod along the way, their sound sharing grunge’s ability to be aggressive without being metal, heavy without being aggressive, and something of their own that still rings familiar. They’re just beginning to realize their potential, and this record is an important step in that process.

Baardvader on Facebook

Baardvader on Bandcamp

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Love Gang, Meanstreak

Rest easy, you’re in capable hands. And even if you didn’t hear Love Gang‘s 2020 debut, Dead Man’s Game (review here), the fact that the Denver four-piece went down to Austin, Texas, to record with Gian Ortiz of Amplified Heat producing tells you what you need to know about their boogie on Meanstreak. And what you need to know is largely that you want to hear it. As one might expect, ’70s vibes pervade the eight-tracker, which puts the guitars forward and de-emphasizes some of the organ and flute one might’ve encountered on their first LP, saving it for side B’s “Shake This Feelin’,” the six-minute stretchout “Headed Down to Mexico,” and the closing “Fade Away,” where it ties together with the thrust of earlier cuts like the circuitous “Blinded by Fear” (not an At the Gates cover, though that would be fun), or “Deathride” and the title-track, which shove shove shove as the opening pair so “Bad News” can complete the barnburning salvo. Tucked away before the finale is “Same Ol’ Blues,” a harmonica-laced acoustic cut dug out of your cool uncle’s record collection so that some day, if you’re lucky, some shitbird younger relation of yours may come along and find it here in your own record collection, thus perpetuating the cycle of boogie into perpetuity. Humanity should be so lucky.

Love Gang on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds store

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Astral Magic, We Are Stardust

The first and probably not last Astral Magic release of 2023, We Are Stardust, finds project-spearhead Santtu Laakso — songwriting, synth, bass, vocals, mixing, cover art, etc. — working mostly in solo fashion. Jonathan Segel of Camper Van Beethoven/Øresund Space Collective adds guitar and violin (he also mastered the recording), and Samuli Sailo plays guitar on “Drop It,” but the 11-song/60-minute space rocker bears the hallmarks of Laakso‘s Hawkwindian craft, the songs rife with layers of synth and effects behind the forward vocals, programmed drums behind bolstering the krautrock feel. There’s a mellower jam like “Bottled Up Inside,” which puts the guitar solo where voice(s) might otherwise be, and “Out in the Cold” touches loosely on Pink Floyd without giving over entirely to that impulse or meandering too far from its central progression, letting the swirling “Lost Planet” and “Violet Sky” finish with a return to the kosmiche of the opening title-track and “The Simulacra,” which feels almost like a return to ground after the proto-New Wave-y “They Walk Among Us,” though “ground” should be considered on relative terms there because by most standards, Astral Magic start, end, and remain sonically in the farther far out.

Astral Magic on Facebook

Astral Magic on Bandcamp

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Thank You Lord for Satan, Thank You Lord for Satan

Self-recorded exploratory songcraft is writ large across the Buh Records self-titled debut from Thank You Lord for Satan — the Lima, Peru, two-piece of Paloma La Hoz (ex-Mitad Humana) and Henry Gates (Resplandor) — and the effect throughout the born-during-pandemic-lockdown eight-song offering is a kind of poised intimacy, artsy and performative as La Hoz handles most of but not all the lead vocals with Gates joining in, as on the moody shoegazer “Wet Morning” ahead of the pointedly Badalamenti-esque “Before EQ1.” Opener “A Million Songs Ago” is a rocker, and “Wet Morning” too in at least its including drums, but that’s only a piece of what Thank You Lord for Satan are digging into, as “Isolation” feels duly empty and religious and “Conversations al Amanecer” and “When We Dance” has a kind of electronic-inflected pop-psych at its core, willfully contrasting the folkish “Sad Song” (with Gates‘ lead vocal) and “Devine Destiny,” a side B counterpart to “Isolation” that reveals the hidden structure beneath all this go-wherever-ism, or at very least ends the album on a suitably contemplative note, some electronic snare-ish sound there rising in the mix before being cast off into the ether with the rest of everything.

Thank You Lord for Satan on Facebook

Buh Records on Bandcamp

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Druid Stone, The Corpse Vanishes

Consider this less a review of The Corpse Vanishes, which is but a single Dec. 2022 three-songer among a glut of releases — including at least one more recent — from Herndon, Virginia’s Druid Stone available through their Bandcamp. The ethic of the band, as led by guitarist Demeter Capsalis, would seem to be as bootleg as possible. Shows are recorded and presented barebones. Rehearsal room demos like “The Corpse Vanishes” and “Night of the Living Dead” — which jams its way into “What Child is This” — here are as raw as raw gets, and in the 20-minute included jam on Electric Wizard‘s “Mother of Serpents,” which was recorded live on Dec. 2 and issued four days later, the power goes out for about three of the first five minutes and Capsalis, who has already explained that most of the band had other stuff to do and that’s why the band is jamming with two friends for the full set, has to keep it going on stage banter alone. Most bands would never release that kind of thing. I respect the shit out of it. Not just because I dig bootlegs — though I do — but because in this age of infinite everything, why not release everything? Don’t you know the fucking planet’s dying? Why the hell would you keep secrets? Who has time for that? Fuck it. Put it all out there. Absolutely. Whether you dig into The Corpse Vanishes or any other of the slew, you might just find that whatever you listen to afterward seems unnecessarily polished. And maybe it is.

Druid Stone on Facebook

Druid Stone on Bandcamp

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