Day four of five for this snuck-in-before-the-end-of-the-year Quarterly Review, and I’m left wondering if maybe it won’t be worth booking another week for January or early February, and if that happens, is it still “quarterly” at that point if you do it like six times a year? ‘Bimonthly Quality Control Assessments’ coming soon! Alert your HR supervisors to tell your servers of any allergies.

No, not really.

I’ll figure out a way to sandwich more music into this site if it kills me. Which I guess it might. Whatever, let’s do this thing.

Quarterly Review #31-40

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Sergeant Thunderhoof, The Ghost of Badon Hill

A marked accomplishment in progressive heavy rock, The Ghost of Badon Hill is the fifth full-length from UK five-piece Sergeant Thunderhoof, who even without the element of surprise on their side — which is to say one is right to approach the 45-minute six-tracker with high expectations based on the band’s past work; their last LP was 2022’s This Sceptred Veil (review here)  — rally around a folklore-born concept and deliver the to-date album of their career. From the first emergence of heft in “Badon” topped with Daniel Flitcroft soar-prone vocals, Sergeant Thunderhoof — guitarists Mark Sayer and Josh Gallop, bassist Jim Camp and drummer Darren Ashman, and the aforementioned Flitcroft — confidently execute their vision of a melodic riffprog scope. The songs have nuance and character, the narrative feels like it moves through the material, there are memorable hooks and grand atmospheric passages. It is by its very nature not without some indulgent aspects, but also a near-perfect incarnation of what one might ask it to be.

Sergeant Thunderhoof on Facebook

Pale Wizard Records store

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Swallow the Sun, Shining

The stated objective of Swallow the Sun‘s Shining was for less misery, and fair enough as the Finnish death-doomers have been at it for about a quarter of a century now and that’s a long time to feel so resoundingly wretched, however relatably one does it. What does less-misery sound like? First of all, still kinda miserable. If you know Swallow the Sun, they are still definitely recognizable in pieces like “Innocence Was Long Forgotten,” “What I Have Become” and “MelancHoly,” but even the frontloading of these singles — don’t worry, from “Kold” and the ultra Type O Negative-style “November Dust” (get it?), to the combination of floating, dancing keyboard lines and drawn out guitars in the final reaches of the title-track, they’re not short on highlights — conveys the modernity brought into focus. Produced by Dan Lancaster (Bring Me the Horizon, A Day to Remember, Muse), the songs are in conversation with the current sphere of metal in a way that Swallow the Sun have never been, broadening the definition of what they do while retaining a focus on craft. They’re professionals.

Swallow the Sun on Facebook

Century Media website

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Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, The Mind Like Fire Unbound

Where’s the intermittently-crushing sci-fi-concept death-stoner, you ask? Well, friend, Lincoln, Nebraska’s Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships would like to have a word, and on The Mind Like Fire Unbound, there’s a non-zero chance that word will come in the form of layered death metal growls and rasping throatripper screams representing an insectoid species about to tear more-melodically-voiced human colonizers to pieces. The 45-minute LP’s 14-minute opener “BUGS” that lays out this warning is followed by the harsh, cosmic-paranoia conjuration of “Dark Forest” before a pivot in 8:42 centerpiece “Infinite Inertia” — and yes, the structure of the tracks is purposeful; longest at the open and close with shorter pieces on either side of “Infinite Inertia” — takes the emotive cast of Pallbearer to an extrapolated psychedelic metalgaze, huge and broad and lumbering. Of course the contrast is swift in the two-minute “I Hate Space,” but where one expects more bludgeonry, the shortest inclusion stays clean vocally amid its uptempo, Torche-but-not-really push. Organ joins the march in the closing title-track (14:57), which gallops following its extended intro, doom-crashes to a crawl and returns to double-kick behind the encompassing last solo, rounding out with suitable showcase of breadth and intention.

Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships on Facebook

Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships on Bandcamp

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Planet of Zeus, Afterlife

Planet of Zeus make a striking return with their sixth album, Afterlife, basing their theme around mythologies current and past and accompanying that with a sound that’s both less brash than they were a few years back on 2019’s Faith in Physics (review here) and refined in the sharpness and efficiency of its songwriting. It’s a rocker, which is what one has come to expect from these Athens-based veterans. Afterlife builds momentum through desert-style rockers like “Baptized in His Death” and the hooky “No Ordinary Life” and “The Song You Misunderstand,” getting poppish in the stomp of “Bad Milk” only after the bluesy “Let’s Call it Even” and before the punkier “Letter to a Newborn,” going where it wants and leaving no mystery as to how it’s getting there because it doesn’t need to. One of the foremost Greek outfits of their generation, Planet of Zeus show up, tell you what they’re going to do, then do it and get out, still managing to leave behind some atmospheric resonance in “State of Non-Existence.” There’s audible, continued forward growth and kickass tunes. If that sounds pretty ideal, it is.

Planet of Zeus on Facebook

Planet of Zeus on Bandcamp

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Human Teorema, Le Premier Soleil de Jan Calet

Cinematic in its portrayal, Le Premier Soleil de Jan Calet positions itself as cosmically minded, and manifests that in sometimes-minimal — effectively so, since it’s hypnotic — aural spaciousness, but Paris’ Human Teorema veer into Eastern-influenced scales amid their exploratory, otherworldly-on-purpose landscaping, and each planet on which they touch down, from “Onirico” (7:43) to “Studiis” (15:54) and “Spedizione” (23:20) is weirder than the last, shifting between these vast passages and jammier stretches still laced with synth. Each piece has its own procession and dynamic, and perhaps the shifts in intent are most prevalent within “Studiis,” but the closer is, on the balance, a banger as well, and there’s no interruption in flow once you’ve made the initial choice to go with Le Premier Soleil de Jan Calet. An instrumental approach allows Human Teorema to embody descriptive impressions that words couldn’t create, and when they decide to hit it hard, they’re heavy enough for the scale they’ve set. Won’t resonate universally (what does?), but worth meeting on its level.

Human Teorema on Instagram

Sulatron Records store

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Caged Wolves, A Deserts Tale

There are two epics north of the 10-minute mark on Caged Wolves‘ maybe-debut LP, A Deserts Tale: “Lost in the Desert” (11:26) right after the intro “Dusk” and “Chaac” (10:46) right before the hopeful outro “Dawn.” The album runs a densely-packed 48 minutes through eight tracks total, and pieces like the distortion-drone-backed “Call of the Void,” the alt-prog rocking “Eleutheromania,” “Laguna,” which is like earlier Radiohead in that it goes somewhere on a linear build, and the spoken-word-over-noise interlude “The Lost Tale” aren’t exactly wanting for proportion, regardless of runtime. The bassline that opens “Call of the Void” alone would be enough to scatter orcs, but that still pales next to “Chaac,” which pushes further and deeper, topping with atmospheric screams and managing nonetheless to come out of the other side of that harsh payoff of some of the album’s most weighted slog in order to bookend and give the song the finish it deserves, completing it where many wouldn’t have been so thoughtful. This impression is writ large throughout and stands among the clearest cases for A Deserts Tale as the beginning of a longer-term development.

Caged Wolves on Facebook

Tape Capitol Music store

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Anomalos Kosmos, Liminal Escapism

I find myself wanting to talk about how big Liminal Escapism sounds, but I don’t mean in terms of tonal proportion so much as the distances that seem to be encompassed by Greek progressive instrumentalists Anomalos Kosmos. With an influence from Grails and, let’s say, 50 years’ worth of prog rock composition (but definitely honoring the earlier end of that timeline), Anomalos Kosmos offer emotional evocation in pieces that feel compact on either side of six or seven minutes, taking the root jams and building them into structures that still come across as a journey. The classy soloing in “Me Orizeis” and synthy shimmer of “Parapatao,” the rumble beneath the crescendo of “Kitonas” and all of that gosh darn flow in “Flow” speak to a songwriting process that is aware of its audience but feels no need to talk down, musically speaking, to feed notions of accessibility. Instead, the immersion and energetic drumming of “Teledos” and the way closer “Cigu” rallies around pastoral fuzz invite the listener to come along on this apparently lightspeed voyage — thankfully not tempo-wise — and allow room for the person hearing these sounds to cast their own interpretations thereof.

Anomalos Kosmos on Facebook

Anomalos Kosmos on Bandcamp

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Pilot Voyager, Grand Fractal Orchestra

One could not hope to fully encapsulate an impression here of nearly three and a half hours of sometimes-improv psych-drone, and I refuse to feel bad for not trying. Instead, I’ll tell you that Grand Fractal Orchestra — the Psychedelic Source Records 3CD edition of which has already sold out — finds Budapest-based guitarist Ákos Karancz deeply engaged in the unfolding sounds here. Layering effects, collaborating with others from the informal PSR collective like zitherist Márton Havlik or singer Krisztina Benus, and so on, Karancz constructs each piece in a way that feels both steered in a direction and organic to where the music wants to go. “Ore Genesis” gets a little frantic around the middle but finds its chill, “Human Habitat” is duly foreboding, and the two-part, 49-minute-total capper “Transforming Time to Space” is beautiful and meditative, like staring at a fountain with your ears. It goes without saying not everybody has the time or the attention span to sit with a release like this, but if you take it one track at a time for the next four years or so, there’s worlds enough in these songs that they’ll probably just keep sinking in. And if Karancz puts outs like five new albums in that time too, so much the better.

Pilot Voyager on Instagram

Psychedelic Source Records on Bandcamp

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Blake Hornsby, A Village of Many Springs

It probably goes without saying — at least it should — that while the classic folk fingerplucking of “Whispering Waters” and the Americana-busy “Laurel Creek Blues” give a sweet introduction to Blake Hornsby‘s A Village of Many Springs, inevitably it’s the 23-minute experimentalist spread of the finale, “Bury My Soul in the Linville River,” that’s going to be a focal point for many listeners, and fair enough. The earthbound-cosmic feel of that piece, its devolution into Lennon-circa-1968 tape noise and concluding drone, aren’t at all without preface. A Village of Many Springs gets weirder as it goes, with the eight-minute “Cathedral Falls” building over its time into a payoff of seemingly on-guitar violence, and the subsequent “O How the Water Flows” nestling into a sweet spot between Appalachian nostalgia and foreboding twang. There’s percussion and manipulation of noise later, too, but even in its repetition, “O How the Water Flows” continues Hornsby‘s trajectory. For what’s apparently an ode to water in the region surrounding Hornsby‘s home in Asheville, North Carolina, that it feels fluid should be no surprise, but by no means does one need to have visited Laurel Creek to appreciate the blues Hornsby conjures for them.

Blake Hornsby on Facebook

Echodelick Records website

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Congulus, G​ö​ç​ebe

With a sensibility in some of the synth of “Hacamat” born of space rock, Congulus have no trouble moving from that to the 1990s-style alt-rock saunter of “Diri Bir Nefes,” furthering the momentum already on the Istanbul-based instrumentalist trio’s side after opener “İskeletin Düğün Halayı” before “Senin Sırlarının Yenilmez Gücünü Gördüm” spaces out its solo over scales out of Turkish folk and “Park” marries together the divergent chugs of Judas Priest and Meshuggah, there’s plenty of adventure to be had on Göç​ebe. It’s the band’s second full-length behind 2019’s Bozk​ı​r — they’ve had short releases between — and it moves from “Park” into the push of “Zarzaram” and “Vordonisi” with efficiency that’s only deceptive because there’s so much stylistic range, letting “Ulak” have its open sway and still bash away for a moment or two before “Sonunda Ah Çekeriz Derinden” closes by tying space rock, Mediterranean traditionalism and modern boogie together in one last jam before consigning the listener back to the harsher, decidedly less utopian vibes of reality.

Congulus on Facebook

Congulus on Bandcamp

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So here we are. On the verge of two weeks, 100 records later. My message here is the same as ever: I’m tired and I hope you found something worthwhile. A lot of this was catchup for me — still is, see Gaupa below — but maybe something slipped through the cracks for you in 2022 that got a look here, or maybe not and you’re not even seeing this and it doesn’t matter anyway and what even is music, etc., etc. I don’t know.

A couple bands were stoked along the way. That’s fun, I guess. Mostly I’ve been trying to keep in mind that I’m doing this for myself, because, yeah, there’s probably no other way I was going to get to cover these 100 albums, and I feel like the site is stronger for having done so, at least mostly. I guess shrug and move on. Next week is back to normal reviews, premieres and all that. I think March we’ll do this again, maybe try to keep it to five or six days. Two 100-record QRs in a row has been a lot.

But again, thanks if you’ve kept up at all. I’m gonna soak my head in these and then cover it with a pillow for a couple days to keep the riffs out. Just kidding, I’ll be up tomorrow morning writing. Like a sucker.

Winter 2023 Quarterly Review #91-100:

Gaupa, Myriad

Beginning with the hooky “Exoskeleton” and “Diametrical Enchantress,” Myriad is the second full-length from Sweden’s Gaupa (their first for Nuclear Blast), and a bringing together of terrestrial and ethereal heavy elements. Even at its most raucous, Gaupa‘s material floats, and even at its most floating, there is a plan at work, a story unfolding, and an underlying structure to support them. From the minimalist start of “Moloken” to the boogie rampage of “My Sister is a Very Angry Man,” the Swedefolk of “Sömnen,” the tension and explosions of “RA,” with the theatrical-but-can-also-really-sing, soulful vocals of Emma Näslund at the forefront, a proggy and atmospheric cut like “Elden” — which becomes an intense battery by the time it hits its apex; I’ve heard that about aging — retains a distinct human presence, and the guitar work of Daniel Nygren and David Rosberg, Erik Sävström‘s bass and Jimmy Hurtig‘s drums are sharp in their turns and warm in their tones, creating a fluidity that carries the five-piece to the heavy immersion of “Mammon,” where Näslund seems to find another, almost Bjork-ish level of command in her voice before, at 5:27 into the song’s 7:36, the band behind her kicks into the heaviest roll of the album; a shove by the time they’re done. Can’t ask for more. Some records just have everything.

Gaupa on Facebook

Nuclear Blast Records store

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Orango, Mohican

Six albums in, let’s just all take a minute to be glad Orango are still at it. The Oslo-based harmonybringers are wildly undervalued, now over 20 years into their tenure, and their eighth album, Mohican (which I’m not sure is appropriate to take as an album title unless you’re, say, a member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community) is a pleasure cruise through classic heavy rock styles. From opener/longest track (immediate points) “The Creek” twisting through harder riffing and more melodic range than most acts have in their entire career, through the memorable swagger in the organ-laced “Fryin’,” the stadium-ready “Running Out of Reasons,” the later boogie of “War Camp” and shuffle in “Dust & Dirt” (presumably titled for what’s kicked up by said shuffle) and the softer-delivered complementary pair “Cold Wind” and “Ain’t No Road” ending each side of the LP with a mellow but still engaging wistfulness, nobody does the smooth sounds of the ’70s better, and Mohican is a triumph in showcasing what they do, songs like “Bring You Back Home” and the bluesier “Wild River Song” gorgeous and lush in their arrangements while holding onto a corresponding human sensibility, ever organic. There is little to do with Orango except be wowed and, again, be thankful they’ve got another collection of songs to bask in and singalong to. It’s cool if you’re off-key; nobody’s judging.

Orango on Facebook

Stickman Records website

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Onségen Ensemble, Realms

You never really know when a flute, a choir, or a digeridoo might show up, and that’s part of the fun with Onségen Ensemble‘s six-track Realms LP, which goes full-Morricone in “Naked Sky” only after digging into the ambient prog of “The Sleeping Lion” and en route to the cinematic keys and half-speed King Crimson riffing of “Abysmal Sun,” which becomes a righteous melodic wash. The Finnish natives’ fourth LP, its vinyl pressing was crowdfunded through Bandcamp for independent release, and while the guitar in “Collapsing Star” calls back to “Naked Sky” and the later declarations roll out grandiose crashes, the horns of “The Ground of Being” set up a minimalist midsection only to return in even more choral form, and “I’m Here No Matter What” resolves in both epic keys/voices and a clear, hard-strummed guitar riff, the name Realms feels not at all coincidental. This is worldbuilding, setting a full three-dimensional sphere in which these six pieces flow together to make the 40-minute entirety of the album. The outright care put into making them, the sense of purpose, and the individualized success of the results, shouldn’t be understated. Onségen Ensemble are becoming, and so have become, a treasure of heavy, enveloping progressive sounds, and without coming across as contrived, Realms has a painterly sensibility that resonates joy.

Onségen Ensemble on Facebook

Onségen Ensemble on Bandcamp

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Gypsy Wizard Queen, Gypsy Wizard Queen

Chad Heille (ex-Egypt, currently also El Supremo) drums in this Fargo, North Dakota, three-piece completed by guitarist/vocalist/engineer Chris Ellingson and bassist/vocalist Mitch Martin, and the heavy bluesy groove they emit as they unfurl “Witch Lung,” their self-titled debut’s 10-minute opener and longest track (immediate points), is likewise righteous and hypnotic. Even as “Paranoid Humanoid” kicks into its chorus on Heille‘s steady thud and a winding lead from Ellingson, one wouldn’t call their pace hurried, and while I’d like to shake everyone in the band’s hand for having come up with the song title “Yeti Davis Eyes” — wow; nicely done — the wandering jam itself is even more satisfying, arriving along its instrumental course at a purely stoner rock janga-janga before it’s finished and turns over to the final two tracks, “The Good Ride” and “Stoned Age,” both shorter, with the former also following an instrumental path, classically informed but modern in its surge, and the latter seeming to find all the gallop and shove that was held back from elsewhere and loosing it in one showstopping six-minute burst. I’d watch this live set, happily. Reminds a bit of Geezer on paper but has its own identity. Their sound isn’t necessarily innovative or trying to be, but their debut nonetheless establishes a heavy dynamic, shows their chemistry across a varied collection of songs, and offers a take on genre that’s welcome in the present and raises optimism for what they’ll do from here. It’s easy to dig, and I dig it.

Gypsy Wizard Queen on Facebook

Gypsy Wizard Queen on Bandcamp

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Blake Hornsby, A Collection of Traditional Folk Songs & Tunes Vol. 1

It’s not quite as stark a contrast as one might think to hear Asheville, North Carolina’s Blake Hornsby go from banjo instrumentalism to more lush, sitar-infused arrangements for the final three songs on his A Collection of Traditional Folk Songs & Tunes Vol. 1, as bridging sounds across continents would seem to come organically to his style of folk. And while perhaps “Old Joe Clark” wasn’t written as a raga to start with, it certainly works as one here, answering the barebones runs of “John Brown’s Dream” with a fluidity that carries into the more meditative “Cruel Sister” and a drone-laced 13-minute take on the Appalachian traditional song “House Carpenter” (also done in various forms by Pentangle, Joan Baez, Myrkur, and a slew of others), obscure like a George Harrison home-recorded experiment circa Sgt. Pepper but sincere in its expression and cross-cultural scope. Thinking of the eight-tracker as an LP with two sides — one mostly if not entirely banjo tunes between one and two minutes long, the other an outward-expanding journey using side A as its foundation — might help, but the key word here is ‘collection,’ and part of Hornsby‘s art is bringing these pieces into his oeuvre, which he does regardless of the form they actually take. That is a credit to him and so is this album.

Blake Hornsby on Facebook

Ramble Records store

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Turbid North, The Decline

Oof that’s heavy. Produced by guitarist/vocalist Nick Forkel, who’s joined in the band by bassist Chris O’Toole (also Unearth) and drummer John “Jono” Garrett (also Mos Generator), Turbid North‘s The Decline is just as likely to be grind as doom at any given moment, as “Life Over Death” emphasizes before “Patients” goes full-on into brutality, and is the band’s fourth full-length and first since 2015. The 2023 release brings together 10 songs for 43 minutes that seem to grow more aggressive as they go, with “Eternal Dying” and “The Oppressor” serving as the opening statement with a lumber that will be held largely but not completely in check until the chugging, slamming plod of closer “Time” — which still manages to rage at its apex — while the likes of “Slaves,” “Drown in Agony” and “The Old Ones” dive into more extreme metallic fare. No complaints, except maybe for the bruises, but as “The Road” sneaks a stoner rock riff in early and some cleaner shouts in late amid Mastodonny noodling, there’s a playfulness that hints toward the trio enjoying themselves while doling out such punishment, and that gives added context and humanity to the likes of “A Dying Earth,” which is severe both in its ambient and more outright violent stretches. Not for everybody, but if you’re pissed off and feel like your brain’s on fire, they have your back with ready and waiting catharsis. Sometimes you just want to punch yourself in the face.

Turbid North on Facebook

Turbid North on Bandcamp

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Modern Stars, Space Trips for the Masses

A third full-length in as many years from Roman four-piece Modern Stars — vocalist/guitarist/synthesist Andrea Merolle (also sitar and mandolin), vocalist Barbara Margani, bassist/mixer Filippo Strang and drummer Andrea Sperduti — Space Trips for the Masses is maybe less directly space rock in its makeup than one might think. The band’s heavy psychedelia is hardly earthbound, but more ambience than fiery thrust or motorik, and Merolle‘s vocals have a distinctly Mark Lanegan-esque smokiness to which Margani adds bolstering backing presence on the deceptively urbane “No Fuss,” after the opening drift of “Starlight” — loosely post-rock, but too active to be that entirely either, and that’s a compliment — and the echoing “Monkey Blues” first draw the listener in. Margani provides the only voice on centerpiece “My Messiah Left Me Behind,” but that shift is just one example of Modern Stars‘ clear intent to offer something different on every song, be it the shimmer of “Everyday” or the keyboard sounds filling the open spaces early in the eight-minute “Drowning,” which later takes up a march punctuated by, drums and tambourine, devolving on a long synth/noise-topped fade into the six-minute liquid cohesion that is “Ninna Nanna,” a capstone summary of the fascinating sprawl Modern Stars have crafted. One could live here a while, in this ‘space.’

Modern Stars on Facebook

Little Cloud Records store

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Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, Destination Ceres Station: Reefersleep EP

Those who’ve been following the progression of Nebraska’s Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships will find Destination Ceres Station: Reefersleep — their second offering in 2022 behind the sophomore full-length Consensus Trance (review here) — accordingly dense in tone and steady in roll as the three-piece of Jeremy Warner, Karlin Warner and Justin Kamal offer two more tracks that would seem to have been recorded in the full-length session. As “Destination Ceres Station: Reefersleep” open-spaces and chugs across an instrumental-save-for-samples 12:31 and the subsequent “Ice Hauler” lumbers noddily to its 10:52 with vocals incorporated, the extended length of each track gives the listener plenty to groove on, classically stonerized in the post-Sleep tradition, but becoming increasingly individual. These two songs, with the title-track hypnotizing so that the start of the first verse in “Ice Hauler” is something of a surprise, pair well, and Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships add a taste of slow-boogie to lead them out in the slow fade of the latter, highlighting the riff worship at the heart of their increasingly confident approach. One continues to look forward to what’s to come from them, feeling somewhat greedy for doing so given the substance they’ve already delivered.

Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships on Facebook

Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships on Bandcamp

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Borehead, 0002

The current of feedback or drone noise beneath the rolling motion of Borehead‘s “Phantasm (A Prequel)” — before the sample brings the change into the solo section; anybody know the name of that rabbit? — is indeed a precursor to the textured, open-spaced heavy progressive instrumentalism London trio have on offer with their aptly-titled second EP, 0002. Produced by Wayne Adams at the London-underground go-to Bear Bites Horse Studio, the three-song outing is led by riffs on that opener, patient in its execution and best consumed at high volume so that the intricacy of the bass in “Lost in Waters Deep,” the gentle ghost snare hits in the jazzy first-half break of “Mariana’s Lament” after the ticking clock and birdsong intro, and the start-stop declarative riff that lands so heavy before they quickly turn to the next solo, or, yes, those hidden melodies in “Phantasm (A Prequel)” aren’t lost. These aspects add identity to coincide with the richness of tone and the semi-psychedelic outreach of 0002‘s overarching allure, definitely in-genre, but in a way that seems contingent largely on the band’s interests not taking them elsewhere over time, or at least expanding in multiple directions on what’s happening here. Because there’s a pull in these songs, and I think it’s the band being active in their own development, though four years from their first EP and with nothing else to go on, it’s hard to know where they’ll head or how they’ll get there based on these three tracks. Somehow that makes it more exciting.

Borehead on Facebook

Borehead on Bandcamp

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Monolithe, Kosmodrom

With song titles and lyrical themes based around Soviet space exploration, Kosmodrom is the ninth full-length from Parisian death-doomers Monolithe. The band are 20 years removed from their debut album, have never had a real break, and offer up 67 minutes’ worth of gorgeously textured, infinitely patient and serenely immersive death, crossing into synth and sampling as they move toward and through the 26-minute finale “Kosmonavt,” something of a victory lap for the album itself, even if sympathy for anything Russian is at a low at this point in Europe, given the invasion of Ukraine. That’s not Monolithe‘s fault, however, and really at this point there’s maybe less to say about it than there would’ve been last year, but the reason I wanted to write about Kosmodrom, and about Monolithe particularly isn’t just that they’re good at what they do, but because they’ve been going so long, they’re still finding ways to keep themselves interested in their project, and their work remains at an as-high-if-not-higher level than it was when I first heard the 50-minute single-song Monolithe II in 2005. They’ve never been huge, never had the hype machine behind them, and they keep doing what they do anyway, because fuck it, it’s art and if you’re not doing it for yourself, what’s the point? In addition to the adventure each of the five songs on Kosmodrom represents, some moments soaring, some dug so low as to be subterranean, both lush, weighted and beautiful, their ethic and the path they’ve walked deserves nothing but respect, so here’s me giving it.

Monolithe on Facebook

Monolithe on Bandcamp

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Welcome back to the Fall 2022 Quarterly Review. It’s not quite the same as the Mountain of Madness, but there are definitely days where it feels like they’re pretty closely related. Just the same, we, you and I, persist through like digging a tunnel sans dynamite, and I hope you had a great and safe weekend (also sans dynamite) and that you find something in this batch of releases that you truly enjoy. Not really much point to the thing otherwise, I guess, though it does tend to clear some folders off the desktop. Like, 100 of them in this case. That in itself isn’t nothing.

Time’s a wastin’. Let’s roll.

Quarterly Review #51-60:

Boris, Heavy Rocks

One can’t help but wonder if Boris aren’t making some kind of comment on the franchise-ification of what sometimes feels like every damn thing by releasing a third Heavy Rocks album, as though perhaps it’s become their brand label for this particular kind of raucousness, much as their logo in capital letters or lowercase used to let you know what kind of noise you were getting. Either way, in 10 tracks and 41 minutes that mostly leave scorch marks when they’re done — they space out a bit on “Question 1” but elsewhere in the song pull from black metal and layer in lead guitar triumph — and along the way give plenty more thick toned, sometimes-sax-inclusive on-brand chicanery to dive into. “She is Burning,” “Cramper” and “My Name is Blank” are rippers before the willfully noisy relative slowdown “Blah Blah Blah,” and Japanese heavy institution are at their most Melvinsian with the experiment “Nosferatou,” ahead of the party metal “Ruins” and semi-industrial blowout “Ghostly Imagination,” the would-be-airy-were-it-not-crushing “Chained” and the concluding “(Not) Last Song,” which feeds the central query above in asking if there’s another sequel coming, piano, feedback, and finally, vocals ending what’s been colloquially dubbed Heavy Rocks (2022) with an end-credits scene like something truly Marvelized. Could be worse if that’s the way it’s going. People tend to treat each Boris album as a landmark. I’m not sure this one is, but sometimes that’s part of what happens with sequels too.

Boris on Facebook

Relapse Records store

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Mother Bear, Zamonian Occultism

Along with the depth of tone and general breadth of the mix, one of the aspects most enjoyable about Mother Bear‘s debut album, Zamonian Occultism, is how it seems to refuse to commit to one side or the other. They call themselves doom and maybe they are in movements here like the title-track, but the mostly-instrumental six-track/41-minute long-player — which opens and closes with lyrics and has “Sultan Abu” in the middle for a kind of human-voice trailmarker along the way — draws more from heavy psychedelia and languid groove on “Anagrom Ataf,” and if “Blue Bears and Silver Spliffs” isn’t stoner riffed, nothing ever has been. At the same time, the penultimate title-track slows way down, pulls the curtains closed, and offers a more massive nod, and the 10-minute closer “The Wizaaard” (just when you thought there were no more ways to spell it) answers that sense of foreboding in its own declining groove and echo-laced verses, but puts the fuzz at the forefront of the mix, letting the listener decide ultimately where they’re at. Tell you where I am at least: On board. Guitarist/vocalist Jonas Wenz, bassist Kevin Krenczer and drummer Florian Grass lock in hypnotic groove early and use it to tie together almost everything they do here, and while they’re obviously schooled in the styles they’re touching on, they present with an individual intent and leave room to grow. Will look forward to more.

Mother Bear on Facebook

Mother Bear on Bandcamp

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Sonja, Loud Arriver

After being kicked out of black metallers Absu for coming out as trans, Melissa Moore founded Sonja in Philadelphia with Grzesiek Czapla on drums and Ben Brand on bass, digging into a ‘true metal’ aesthetic with ferocity enough that Loud Arriver is probably the best thing they could’ve called their first record. Issued through Cruz Del Sur — so you know their ’80s-ism is class — the 37-minute eight-tracker vibes nighttime and draws on Moore‘s experience thematically, or so the narrative has it (I haven’t seen a lyric sheet), with energetic shove in “Nylon Nights” and “Daughter of the Morning Star,” growing duly melancholy in “Wanting Me Dead” before finding its victorious moment in the closing title-track. Cuts like “Pink Fog,” “Fuck, Then Die” and opener “When the Candle Burns Low…” feel specifically born of a blend of 1979-ish NWOBHM, but there’s a current of rock and roll here as well in the penultimate “Moans From the Chapel,” a sub-three-minute shove that’s classic in theme as much as riff and the most concise but by no means the only epic here. Hard not to read in catharsis on the part of Moore given how the band reportedly came about, but Loud Arriver serves notice one way or the other of a significant presence in the underground’s new heavy metal surge. Sonja have no time to waste. There are asses to kick.

Sonja on Facebook

Cruz Del Sur Music store

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Reverend Mother, Damned Blessing

Seven-minute opener ends in a War of the Worlds-style radio announcement of an alien invasion underway after the initial fuzzed rollout of the song fades, and between that and the subsequent interlude “Funeral March,” Reverend Mother‘s intent on Damned Blessing seems to be to throw off expectation. The Brooklynite outfit led by guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Jackie Green (also violin) find even footing on rockers like “Locomotive” or the driving-until-it-hits-that-slowdown-wall-and-hey-cool-layering “Reverend Mother,” and the strings on the instrumental “L.V.B.,” which boasts a cello guest spot by High Priestess Nighthawk of Heavy Temple, who also returns on the closing Britney Spears cover “Toxic,” a riffed-up bent that demonstrates once again the universal applicability of pop as Reverend Mother tuck it away after the eight-minute “The Masochist Tie,” a sneering roll and chugger that finds the trio of Green, bassist Matt Cincotta and drummer Gabe Katz wholly dug into heavy rock tropes while nonetheless sounding refreshing in their craft. That song and “Shame” before it encapsulate the veer-into-doom-ness of Reverend Mother‘s hard-deliver’d fuzz, but Damned Blessing comes across like the beginning of a new exploration of style as only a next-generation-up take can and heralds change to come. I would not expect their second record to sound the same, but it will be one to watch for. So is this.

Reverend Mother on Instagram

Seeing Red Records store

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Umbilicus, Path of 1000 Suns

The pedigree here is notable as Umbilicus features founding Cannibal Corpse drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz and guitarist/engineer Taylor Nordberg (also visuals), who’s played with Deicide, The Absence and a host of others, but with the soar-prone vocals of Brian Stephenson out front and the warm tonality of bassist Vernon Blake, Umbilicus‘ 10-song/45-minute first full-length, Path of 1000 Suns is a willful deep-dive into modernly-produced-and-presented ’70s-style heavy rock. Largely straightforward in structure, there’s room for proto-metallurgy on “Gates of Neptune” after the swinging “Umbilicus,” and the later melodic highlight “My Own Tide” throws a pure stoner riff into its second half, while the concluding “Gathering at the Kuiper Belt” hints at more progressive underpinnings, it still struts and the swing there is no less defining than in the solo section of “Stump Sponge” back on side A. Hooks abound, and I suppose in some of the drum fills, if you know what you’re listening for, you can hear shades of more extreme aural ideologies, but the prevailing spirit is born of an obvious love of classic heavy rock and roll, and Umbilicus play it with due heart and swagger. Not revolutionary, and actively not trying to be, but definitely the good time it promises.

Umbilicus on Facebook

Listenable Insanity Records on Facebook

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After Nations, The Endless Mountain

Not as frenetic as some out there of a similar technically-proficient ilk, Lawrence, Kansas, double-guitar instrumental four-piece After Nations feel as much jazz on “Féin” or “Cae” as they do progressive metal, djent, experimental, or any other tag with which one might want to saddle the resoundingly complex Buddhism-based concept album, The Endless Mountain — the Bandcamp page for which features something of a recommended reading list as well as background on the themes reportedly being explored in the material — which is fluid in composition and finds each of its seven more substantial inclusions accompanied by a transitional interlude that might be a drone, near-silence, a foreboding line of keys, whathaveyou. The later “Širdis” — penultimate to the suitably enlightened “Jūra,” if one doesn’t count the interlude between (not saying you shouldn’t) — is more of a direct linear build, but the 40-minute entirety of The Endless Mountain feels like a steep cerebral climb. Not everyone is going to be up for making it, frankly, but in “}}}” and its punctuationally-named companions there’s some respite from the head-spinning turns that surround, and that furthers both the dynamic at play overall and the accessibility of the songs. Whatever else it might be, it’s immaculately produced and every single second, from “Mons” and “Aon” to “))” and “(),” feels purposeful.

After Nations on Facebook

After Nations on Bandcamp

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Holy Dragon, Mordjylland

With the over-the-top Danzig-ian vocals coming through high in the mix, the drums sounding intentionally blown out and the fuzz of bass and guitar arriving in tidal riffs, Denmark’s Holy Dragon for sure seem to be shooting for memorability on their second album, Mordjylland. “Hell and Gold” pulls back somewhat from the in-your-face immediacy of opener “Bong” — and yet it’s faster; go figure — and the especially brash “War” is likewise timely and dug in. Centerpiece “Nightwatch” feels especially yarling with its more open riff and far-back echoing drums — those drums are heavy in tone in a way most are not, and it is appreciated — and gives over to the Judas Priestly riff of “Dunder,” which sounds like it’s being swallowed by the bass even as the concluding solo slices through. They cap with “Egypt” in classic-metal, minor-key-sounds-Middle-Eastern fashion, but they’re never far from the burly heft with which they started, and even the mellower finish of “Travel to Kill” feels drawn from it. The album’s title is a play on ‘Nordjylland’ — the region of Denmark where they’re from — and if they’re saying it’s dead, then their efforts to shake it back to life are palpable in these seven songs, even if the end front-to-back result of the album is going to be hit or miss with most listeners. Still, they are markedly individual, and the fact that you could pick them out of the crowd of Europe’s e’er-packed heavy underground is admirable in itself.

Holy Dragon on Instagram

Holy Dragon on Bandcamp

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Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, Consensus Trance

Lincoln, Nebraska, trio Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships are right there. Right on the edge. You can hear it in the way “Beg Your Pardon” unfolds its lumbering tonality, riff-riding vocals and fervency of groove at the outset of their second album, Consensus Trance. They’re figuring it out. And they’re working quickly. Their first record, 2021’s TTBS, and the subsequent Rosalee EP (review here) were strong signals of intention on the part of guitarist/vocalist Jeremy Warner, bassist Karlin Warner and drummer Justin Kamal, and there is realization to be had throughout Consensus Trance in the noisy lead of “Mystical Consumer,” the quiet instrumental “Distalgia for Infinity” and the mostly-huge-chugged 11-minute highlight “Weeping Beast” to which it leads. But they’re also still developing their craft, as opener “Beg Your Pardon” demonstrates amid one of the record’s most vibrant hooks, and exploring spaciousness like that in the back half of the penultimate “Silo,” and the sense that emerges from that kind of reach and the YOB-ish ending of capper “I.H.” is that there’s more story to be told as to what Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships have to offer in style and substance. So much the better since Consensus Trance has such superlative heft at its foundation.

Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships on Facebook

Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships on Bandcamp

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Deer Creek, Menticide

Kind of funny to think of Menticide as a debut LP from Deer Creek, who’ve been around for 20 years — one fondly recalls their mid-aughts splits with Church of Misery and Raw Radar War — but one might consider that emblematic of the punk underpinning the sludgy heavy roll of “(It Had Neither Fins Nor Wings) Nor Did it Writhe,” along with the attitude of fuckall that joins hands with resoundingly dense tonality to create the atmosphere of the five originals and the cover medley closer “The Working Man is a Dead Pig,” which draws on Rush, Bauhaus and Black Sabbath classics as a sort of partially explanatory appendix to the tracks preceding. Of those, the impression left is duly craterous, and Deer Creek, with Paul Vismara‘s mostly-clean vocals riding a succession of his own monolithic riffs, a bit of march thrown into “The Utter Absence of Hope” amid the breath of tone from his and Conan Hultgren‘s guitars and Stephanie Hopper‘s bass atop the drumming of Marc Brooks. One is somewhat curious as to what drives a band after two full-length-less decades to make a definitive first album — at least beyond “hey a lot of things have changed in the last couple years” anyhow — but the results here are inarguable in their weight and the spaces they create and fill, with disaffection and onward and outward-looking angst as much as volume. That is to say, as much as Menticide nods, it’s more unsettling the more attention you actually pay to what’s going on. But if you wanted to space out instead, I doubt they’d hold it any more against you than was going to happen anyway. Band who owes nothing to anyone overdelivers. There.

Deer Creek on Facebook

Deer Creek on Bandcamp

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Riffcoven, Never Sleep at Night

Following the mid-’90s C.O.C. tone and semi-Electric Wizard shouts of “Black Lotus Trance,” “Detroit Demons” calls out Stooges references while burl-riffing around Pantera‘s “I’m Broken,” and “Loose” manifests sleaze to coincide with the exploitation of the Never Sleep at Night EP’s cover art. All of this results in zero-doubt assurance that the Brazilian trio have their bona fides in place when it comes to dudely riffs and an at least partially metal approach; stylistically-speaking, it’s like metal dudes got too drunk to remember what they were angry at and decided to have a party instead. I don’t have much encouraging to say at this juncture about the use of vintage porn as a likely cheap cover option, but no one seems to give a shit about moving past that kind of misogyny, and I guess as regards gender-based discrimination and playing to the male gaze and so on, it’s small stakes. I bet they get signed off the EP anyway, so what’s the point? The point I guess is that the broad universe of those who’d build altars to riffs, Riffcoven are at very least up front with what they’re about and who their target audience is.

Riffcoven on Facebook

Riffcoven on Bandcamp

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The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Jeremy Warner of Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships

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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

I create music with the goal to make (myself) one feel elevated via a sonic physical-mental puzzle, construction, resolution and dissolution. My hope is that it creates and displays and conveys a bit of the AWE-FULL-ness of everything. Basically, we make a big low distorted sound and push it and rotate it, slowly, through space.

I started playing guitar at 13. Initially I was obsessed with Slayer and Guns and Roses, Danzig and the Black Crowes, and I spent a lot of time trying to learn their songs. In 2000 I saw Six Feet Under and that made a big impression on me. In 2003 someone gave me a Relapse compilation CD and it opened a new vision in me of what metal could be. Since then, every week or so I would turn on my amp and tune down to D or B and write riffs, trying to figure out a recipe. I was always in a band, some punk, some metal, and played a lot of local shows, but I didn’t take the steps to build a doom band.

Over the years my wife continued to get more and more into heavy music. We went to a High on Fire show in 2008 and she was completely captivated by it. Instead of slowly going away from music, as many people I know have as they get older, we got more and more into it, going to more shows, and practicing more and more. We endlessly discussed starting a doom band. Finally, we found our drummer and put TTBS together.

Describe your first musical memory.

Listening to ABBA. It was the only tape we had. I still love “Fernando.” I think I’ll put it on now.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

I think the most moving and emotional experience I’ve had recently was seeing Royal Thunder at Psycho in 2019. They played first on the small stage in the middle of the casino. It was noon. Something about it was magical. On the last song Mlny Parsonz kept singing, alone, and jumped off the stage, belting it out. I saw someone crying and I started crying. It was a moment when music took over for me, total emotion and the high of sound.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

I started a business, and it was a failure. My belief that doing it from the heart, as honestly and as well as I could, working every hour of the day, for years — that these were the primary things needed to make a business grow and succeed. It just wasn’t true in this case. I guess I believed that was ALL that was needed.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

We are here and awake. We have something in us that we feel and want to express. Some may have more of it or a clearer path to it. Some dig a well to it. They uncover it. A way to express it finds us. Others discover a different part of it. We let it out, clumsy at first. If we are really lucky we get a chance to refine it and grow it, others find it. It approaches and recedes from an apex of different dimensions, it is successful in different ways at different times. It is polished. It is. Eventually, it is destroyed and forgotten.

How do you define success?

Success is having someone be moved — engrossed — disrupted, en-Hightened, lightened — by your music. Success is talking shop, music structure, sound, guitars, amps, pedal boards, cowboy boots, gossip, with a fellow awkward weirdo at a show. True instant friendship of music.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

I saw three small raccoons near our house crossing the road, in a line, late at night. An oncoming car hit the last one. We stopped in the road and in the headlights the two unharmed raccoons kept going off to the side of the highway. The last one’s back legs didn’t work but it crawled on its front legs toward the others, slowly.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

I’d like to create mantra meditation songs.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

For me, art resets something inside my mind, gives me something different to contemplate. It gives me a different place to stand and look at everything, and relieves something in me.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

I’m looking forward to winter.

https://www.facebook.com/trilliontonberylliumships/
https://www.instagram.com/trilliontonberylliumships/
https://twitter.com/ttbstheband
https://trilliontonberylliumships.bandcamp.com/

Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, Rosalee EP (2021)

Okay. Day Three. The halfway point. Or the quarter point if you count the week to come in January. Which I don’t. Feeling dug in. Ready to roll. Today’s a busy day, stylistically speaking, and there’s two wolf bands in there too. Better get moving.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

Duel, In Carne Persona

Duel seem to be on a mission with In Carne Persona to remind all in their path that rock and roll is supposed to be dangerous. Their fourth album and the follow-up to 2019’s Valley of Shadows (review here) finds the Austin four-piece in a between place on songs like “Children of the Fire” (premiered here) and “Anchor” and the especially charged gang-shout-chorus “Bite Back,” proffering memorable songwriting while edging from boogie to shove, rock to metal. They’ve never sounded more dynamic than on the organ-inclusive “Behind the Sound” or the tense finale “Blood on the Claw,” and cuts like “The Veil” and the particularly gritty “Dead Eyes” affirm their in-a-dark-place songwriting prowess. They’re not uneven in their approach. They’re sure of it. They turn songs on either side of four minutes long into anthems, and they seem to be completely at home in their sound. They’re not as ‘big’ as they should be by rights of their work, but Duel serve their reminder well and pack nine killer tunes into 38 minutes. Only a fool would ask more.

Duel on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Mastiff, Leave Me the Ashes of the Earth

Fading in like the advent of something wicked this way coming until “The Hiss” explodes into “Fail,” Hull exports Mastiff tap chug from early ’00s metalcore en route to various forms of extreme bludgeonry, whether that’s blackened push in “Beige Sabbath,” grind in “Midnight Creeper” or the slow skin-crawling riffage that follows in “Futile.” This blender runs at multiple speeds, slices, dices, pummels and purees, reminding here of Blood Has Been Shed, there of Napalm Death, on “Endless” of Aborted. Any way you go, it is a bleak cacophony to be discovered, purposefully tectonic in its weight and intense in its conveyed violence. Barely topping half an hour, Leave Me the Ashes of the Earth knows precisely the fury it manifests, and the scariest thing about it is the thought that the band are in even the vaguest amount of control of all this chaos, as even the devolution-to-blowout in “Lung Rust” seems to have intent behind it. They should play this in art galleries.

Mastiff on Facebook

MNRK Heavy website

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Wolftooth, Blood & Iron

Melody and a flair for the grandeur of classic NWOBHM-style metal take prominence on Wolftooth‘s Blood & Iron, the follow-up to the Indiana-based four-piece’s 2020 outing, Valhalla (review here), third album overall and first for Napalm Records. As regards trajectory, one is reminded of the manner in which Sweden’s Grand Magus donned the mantle of epic metal, but Wolftooth aren’t completely to that point yet. Riffs still very much lead the battle’s charge — pointedly so, as regards the album’s far-back-drums mix — with consuming solos as complement to the vocals’ tales of fantastical journeys, kings, swords and so on. The test of this kind of metal should ALWAYS be whether or not you’d scribble their logo on the front of your notebook after listening to the record on your shitty Walkman headphones, and yes, Wolftooth earn that honor among their other spoils of the fight, and Blood & Iron winds up the kind of tape you’d feel cool telling your friends about in that certain bygone age.

Wolftooth on Facebook

Napalm Records on Bandcamp

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Illudium, Ash of the Womb

Another argument to chase down every release Prophecy Productions puts out arrives in the form of Illudium‘s second long-player, Ash of the Womb, the NorCal project spearheaded by Shantel Amundson vibing with emotional and tonal heft in kind on an immersive mourning-for-everything six tracks/47 minutes. Gorgeous, sad and heavy in kind “Aster” opens and unfolds into the fingers-sliding-on-strings of “Sempervirens,” which gallops furiously for a moment in its second half like a fever dream before passing to wistfully strummed minimalism, which is a pattern that holds in “Soma Sema” and “Atopa” as well, as Amundson brings volatility without notice, songs exploding and receding, madness and fury and then gone again in a sort of purposeful bipolar onslaught. Following “Madrigal,” the closing “Where Death and Dreams Do Manifest” finds an evenness of tempo and approach, not quite veering into heavygaze, but gloriously pulling together the various strands laid out across the songs prior, providing a fitting end to the story told in sound and lyric.

Illudium on Facebook

Prophecy Productions store

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Ascia, Volume 1

Ascia takes its name from the Italian word for ‘axe,’ and as a solo-project from Fabrizio Monni, also of Black Capricorn, the 20-minute demo Volume 1 lives up to its implied threat. Launched with the instrumental riff-workout “At the Gates of Ishtar,” the five-tracker introduces Monni‘s vocals on the subsequent “Blood Axes,” and is all the more reminiscent of earliest High on Fire for the approach he takes, drums marauding behind a galloping verse that nonetheless finds an overarching groove. “Duhl Qarnayn” follows in straight-ahead fashion while “The Great Iskandar” settles some in tempo and opens up melodically in its second half, the vocals taking on an almost chanting quality, before switching back to finish with more thud and plunder ahead of the finale “Up the Irons,” which brings two-plus minutes of cathartic speed and demo-blast that I’d like to think was the first song Monni put together for the band if only for its metal-loving-metal charm. I don’t know that it is or isn’t, but it’s a welcome cap to this deceptively varied initial public offering.

Ascia on Bandcamp

Black Capricorn on Facebook

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Stone From the Sky, Songs From the Deepwater

France’s Stone From the Sky, as a band named after a Neurosis singularized song might, dig into heavy post-rock aplenty on Songs From the Deepwater, their fourth full-length, and they meet floating tones with stretches of more densely-hefted groove like the Pelican-style nod of “Karoshi.” Still, however satisfying the ensuing back and forth is, some of their most effective moments are in the ambient stretches, as on “The Annapurna Healer” or even the patient opening of “Godspeed” at the record’s outset, which draws the listener in across its first three minutes before unveiling its full breadth. Likewise, “City/Angst” surges and recedes and surges again, but it’s in the contemplative moments that it’s most immersive, though I won’t take away from the appeal of the impact either. The winding “49.3 Nuances de Fuzz” precedes the subdued/vocalized closer “Talweg,” which departs in form while staying consistent in atmosphere, which proves paramount to the proceedings as a whole.

Stone From the Sky on Facebook

More Fuzz Records on Bandcamp

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The Brackish, Atlas Day

Whenever you’re ready to get weird, The Brackish will meet you there. The Bristol troupe’s fourth album, Atlas Day brings six songs and 38 minutes of ungrandiose artsy exploration, veering into dreamtone noodling on “Dust Off Reaper” only after hinting in that direction on the jazzier “Pretty Ugly” previous. Sure, there’s moments of crunch, like the garage-grunge in the second half of “Pam’s Chalice” or the almost-motorik thrust that tops opener “Deliverance,” but The Brackish aren’t looking to pay homage to genre or post-thisorthat so much as to seemingly shut down their brains and see where the songs lead them. That’s a quiet but not still pastoralia on “Leftbank” and a more skronky shuffle-jazz on “Mr. Universe,” and one suspects that, if there were more songs on Atlas Day, they too would go just about wherever the hell they wanted. Not without its self-indulgent aspects by its very nature, Atlas Day succeeds by inviting the audience along its intentionally meandering course. Something something “not all who wander” something something.

The Brackish on Facebook

Halfmeltedbrain Records on Bandcamp

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Wolfnaut, III

Formerly known as Wolfgang, Elverum, Norway’s Wolfnaut offer sharp, crisp modern heavy rock with the Karl Daniel Lidén mixed/mastered III, the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Kjetil Sæter (also percussion), bassist Tor Erik Hagen and drummer Ronny “Ronster” Kristiansen readily tapping Motörhead swagger in “Raise the Dead” after establishing a clarity of structure and a penchant for chorus largesse that reminds of Norse countrymen Spidergawd on “Swing Ride” and the Scorpions-tinged “Feed Your Dragon.” They are weighted in tone but emerge clean through the slower “Race to the Bottom” and “Gesell Kid.” I’m going to presume that “Taste My Brew” is about making one’s own beer — please don’t tell me otherwise — and with the push of “Catching Thunder” ahead of the eight-minute, willfully spacious “Wolfnaut” at the end, the trio’s heavy rock traditionalism is given an edge of reach to coincide with its vitality and electrified delivery of the songs.

Wolfnaut on Facebook

Wolfnaut on Bandcamp

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Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, Rosalee EP

Having released their debut full-length, TTBS, earlier in 2021 as their first outing, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Lincoln, Nebraska’s Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships still seem to be getting their feet under them in terms of sound and who they are as a band, but as the 34-minute-long Rosalee EP demonstrates, in terms of tone and general approach, they know what they’re looking for. After the thud and “whoa-oh” of “Core Fragment,” “Destroyer Heart” pushes a little more into aggression in its back end riffs and drumming, and the chugging, lurching motion of “URTH Anachoic” brings a fullness of distortion that the two prior songs seemed just to be hinting toward. It’s worth noting that the 16-minute title-track, which closes, is instrumental, and it may be that the band are more comfortable operating in that manner for the time being, but if there’s a confidence issue, no doubt it can be worked out on stage (circumstances permitting) or in further studio work. That is, it’s not actually a problem, even at this formative stage of the project. Quick turnaround for this second collection, but definitely welcome.

Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships on Facebook

Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships on Bandcamp

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Closet Disco Queen, Stadium Rock for Punk Bums

Their persistently irreverent spirit notwithstanding, Closet Disco Queen — at some point in the process, ever — take their work pretty seriously. That is to say, they’re not nearly as much of a goof as they’d have you believe, and on the quickie 16-minute Stadium Rock for Punk Bums, the Swiss two-piece-plus, their open creative sensibility results in surprisingly filled-out tracks that aren’t quite stadium, aren’t quite punk, definitely rock, and would probably alienate the bum crowd not willing to put the effort into actively engaging them. So the title (which, I know, is a reference to another release; calm down) may or may not fit, but from “Michel-Jacques Sonne” onward, bring switched-on heavy that’s not so much experimentalist in the fuck-around-and-find-out definition as ready to follow its own ideas to fruition, whether that’s the rush of “Pascal à la Plage” or the barely-there drone of “Lalalalala Reverb,” which immediately follows and gives way to the building-despite-itself finisher “Le Soucieux Toucan.” If these guys aren’t careful they’re gonna have to start taking themselves seriously. …Nah.

Closet Disco Queen on Facebook

Hummus Records website

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