Posted in Whathaveyou on May 14th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Well, here we are. The stories are everywhere and varied around the basic theme of ‘Brown person gets illegally disappeared’ and even as the United States postulates to white South African refugees fleeing I’m not sure what for the dickish optics of racism, actual legal residents are having their rights thrown away in favor of harassment and illegal imprisonment. If you were going to travel here for any reason, be it vacation, work, or just to see that big fancy arch in St. Louis, do yourself a favor and stay home. This place is a shithole run by psychopaths who believe in either nothing or nothing other than their own holy ascension and what profit they can make from it. You could easily do better, nation-wise. Canada or Mexico, for example.
Lord Buffalo were ready to go when drummer Yamal Said was grabbed and taken nobody knows where to, let’s assume, catch a ration of bullshit no one has ever needed in their life. Beaten, starved, kept in cages — these are the things the United States does to prisoners. Solitary confinement for days. These are unconscionable acts apart from being immoral, and my greatest fear about this awful moment in US history is that when it’s over — and it will end; all authoritarians die — no one will be held accountable and my countrymen will learn nothing and nothing will get better in any meaningful way.
Because that’s where we are. The fuckups have already happened, are already happening, and to repair trust in basic institutions let alone standing in the rest of the world is going to take decades, probably more than the rest of this century, to happen, if it happens at all. I sincerely doubt I’ll live to see it, not the least from the forward-into-brick-wall trajectory of American foreign and domestic policy, taking institutions that were basically functional and supported the infrastructure of the broader government and axing the people who know how to make them run. An economic approach like bad improv jazz. Still genocide. And at home the roads crumble, the schools get worse, everything gets more expensive and the news blinks when the head of the executive branch takes a $400 million bribe in open public.
We are backward and terrible, and if the experiment of the United States was to coexist and move into the future as a successful multicultural society, that experiment has failed in the face of a few rich white motherfuckers who don’t even have the common decency of past generations to build things like libraries or sculpture gardens. Radical wealth redistribution now. Disband ICE now. Fuck all fascists, including your friends, neighbors, family, cops and local and national government. This is how a halfway decent idea for a country dies and deserves it.
From social media:
[UPDATE 05/15: The word is that Said was picked up for a warrant and taken to local jail, not detained by immigration enforcement. I’m not sure how ‘regular old police state’ is supposed to make me feel better about things, but there you go. The band apparently didn’t know. They did the correct thing and got him a lawyer. People are still being grabbed off the street every day in this country for the purpose of stoking fear and division. It doesn’t just have to happen to someone in a band for you to care.]
We are heartbroken to announce we have to cancel our upcoming European tour. Our drummer, Yamal Said, who is a Mexican citizen and lawful permanent resident of the United States (green card holder) was forcibly removed from our flight to Europe by Customs and Border Patrol at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on Monday May 12. He has not been released, and we have been unable to contact him. We are currently working with an immigration lawyer to find out more information and to attempt to secure his release. We are devastated to cancel this tour, but we are focusing all of our energy and resources on Yamal’s safety and freedom. We are hopeful that this is a temporary setback and that it could be safe for us to reschedule this tour in the future. In our absence, our touring partners Orsak:Oslo will continue to perform the tour. We urge everyone to go see this amazing band and support them over the next couple weeks.
Affected dates:
15.05 – Heerlen, NL – Nieuwe Nor
16.05 – Aachen, DE – Lolaparoli
17.05 – Nijmegen, NL – Sonic Whip Fest
18.05 – Hamburg, DE – Stubnitz
19.05 – København, DK – Råhuset
20.05 – Oslo, NO – Revolver
21.05 – Göteborg, SE – Fyrens Ölkafe
23.05 – Helsinki, FI – Sonic Rites Fest
LORD BUFFALO is: Daniel Pruitt – guitar, bass, piano, vocals, melodica Garrett Hellman – guitar, sub-bass, piano, synths Patrick Patterson – violin Yamal Said – drums, percussion
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 25th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
A lot to like in the batch of new names added to Sonic Whip in the Netherlands this coming May. The 2025 Nijmegen edition of the festival has announced Dutch upstarts Heath will play — reasonable — and brought on Graveyard, who immediately go to the top of the bill and are playing for the first time — and punctuated noise rock masters Whores., the ambient Orsak:Oslo, as well as Utrecht heavy punkers Rats and Daggers and Los Angeles’ own Frankie and the Witch Fingers for those who’d dare a little fun while they have a good time.
As Lord Buffalo are also added, I can’t help but wonder if the Austin-based outfit won’t do a tour around this appearance, and if so, I believe that’s their first European jaunt. Don’t quote me on that, I could be wrong. Either way, I’ll try to keep an eye for dates and, if they’re going to make a run of it, with whom.
The announcement was short and sweet, the lineup is righteous and by all accounts I’ve heard, Sonic Whip is an amazing time. Barring some never-gonna-happen fiscal miracle, I won’t be there to see it, but if you get to go, enjoy. Tickets are available. Here’s what they had to say on socials:
NEW NAMES SONIC WHIP 2025
We’re thrilled to announce Graveyard for Sonic Whip 2025! The appearance of the Swedish band will mark their debut at our festival. Judging by their blistering performances lately they are on fire! Also present on 16 & 17 May; US garage psychrockers Frankie And The Witch Fingers, noise-punk-sludge juggernauts Whores., Norwegian atmospheric kraut-jazz-psychrockers Orsak:Oslo, cinematic & melancholic rockers Lord Buffalo from the US, Dutch psych revelation Heath and upcoming sonic punkrockers of Rats and Daggers.
The line-up is shaping up nicely with Elder, The Devil and the Almighty Blues, Temple Fang and Karkara being announced earlier on and there’s still more to follow! Keep your eyes peeled.
Austin, Texas, heavy Americana four-piece Lord Buffalo will release their third album, Holus Bolus, on July 12 through Blues Funeral Recordings. And as surely as one would never mistake a holus bolus for a rumpus, a ruckus or a hullabaloo, the textures of Lord Buffalo‘s sound across the record’s seven songs and 38 minutes are accordingly recognizable. If you heard 2020’s Tohu Wa Bohu (discussed here), the hard strikes of maybe-piano and low-drawl effects of “Slow Drug” will feel like an inheritor of some of that outing’s ambience, and the swing to which the band set those elements arises to sashay only after the opening title-track has reimagined Wovenhand as fronted by Nick Cave. We are grim, grey, thoroughly American gothic. Violins and violence.
Elsewhere amid the tumult, centerpiece “Malpaisano” tackles a vast dronescape that is not at all minimalist while seeming to be exactly and purposefully that, topped with Daniel Pruitt‘s All Them Witches-y musings, and “Passing Joy” brings together loose-strum acoustic ramble and bowed-string noise in a cinematic culmination that can’t help but resonate troubled times, and “I Wait on the Door Slab” (lyric video premiering below) teases folkish casualness, but is off on a build of layers upon layers in what first feels like manifest destiny trampling skulls forgotten in history’s romance but turns to a shimmer of guitar like it found Jesus meandering through the prairie because he’s always in the last place you look or so I’m told. The melody, the sweep, the underlying somehow-doom groove like the matte painting against which the grainy scene is portrayed — this is the stuff of thoughtful construction and meticulous detailing, maybe cynical but at least it seems to have earned that.
While there are plenty of moments throughout — to wit: the echoing lumber at the start of the penultimate “Cracks in the Vermeer,” soulful vocals soon to join — that feel obscure or perhaps intentionally vague in a way that comes across as more than the sum of their parts partly because you don’t know what the band is actually banging on, it would be a mistake to call Lord Buffalo or this encompassing Holus Bolus experimental, because by the time these songs hit your ears, the experiments have already been conducted. On a scientific level, a progression like “Cracks in the Vermeer,” or indeed “I Wait on the Door Slab” with its fuck-yes second-half heft and nigh on industrial stomp, does not hit its wash by happenstance. The sound of each cut is reasoned, plotted. And like the mix, which has enough going on to have potentially taken much longer than it probably actually did to finalize, the moody vibe of closer “Rowing in Eden” feels broader and deeper in its overarching instrumental severity than the band have yet gone; growth evident in in the vividness of the shapes and silhouettes in their fog.
As to what, if anything Holus Bolus is saying about America itself, I won’t speculate beyond basics like “dark” and “foreboding,” but that’s honestly enough in a culture that can’t stop hatefucking itself with false nostalgia en route to paved-over, luxury-rental, VC-funded obliteration masqueraded as authentic anything. Lord Buffalo aren’t trying to find redemption here, or to paint things as other than they are, but it’s not disgust that makes “Holus Bolus” shine and it’s not hopelessness that lends “I Wait on the Door Slab” such a feeling of rhythmic movement. Perhaps it is the nature of the thing to feel some hope. Perhaps it is desperate. Either way, before the oceans rightly rise to consume all of us, Holus Bolus gives an emotionalist lifeline to the lost and the weird who recognize the post-modernism for what it is — a death of gods and a call to dance. So get your shoes on and go.
Lyric video for “I Wait on the Door Slab” follows, backed by PR wire text in blue.
Please enjoy:
Lord Buffalo, “I Wait on the Door Slab” lyric video premiere
Lord Buffalo is heavy in the way that ghosts are heavy… in the way that billowing dust is heavy.
That is to say, the Austin, TX Psych-Americana band’s music impacts hard, though it seems impossible to touch. Their sound flows through us, it doesn’t invite the Pavlovian response of typical heavy rock music.
Perhaps it’s fitting then that their new album Holus Bolus takes its name from an antiquated term meaning “all at once.” It materializes instantly from the first notes of the opening title track, like a dark grey haze drawing listeners in with the band’s deft juxtapositions of droning violin, guitars, drums and vocals. It draws equally from Morricone and Badalementi as from Sabbath and Swans.
While the quartet trudges the same murky waters as dark emotive brethren David Eugene Edwards/Woven Hand, Chelsea Wolfe, Emma Ruth Rundle, Earth/Dylan Carlson, Echo & The Bunnymen, Nick Cave, etc., their creative interplay of Middle Eastern influence with a distinctly Western feel takes listeners in entirely new directions as the album envelops them.
Lord Buffalo is Daniel Pruitt (guitar, bass, piano, vocals, melodica), Garrett Hellman (guitar, sub-bass, piano, synths), Patrick Patterson (violin), and Yamal Said (drums, percussion). Holus Bolus was recorded by Danny Reisch and Max Lorenzen at Good Danny’s in Lockhart, TX. Mixed by Danny Reisch. Mastered by Max Lorenzen.
“While the making of this record feels a bit like a sleep-deprived hallucination to me,” Pruitt says. “Listening to it now, I find it strangely hopeful — there’s a kind of release that you hit in exhaustion. I think the record knew what it was after, even if we didn’t. It felt very much like the record just appeared one day, holus bolus.”
Posted in Features on August 22nd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Early
Ah, the last day. If last night had been the end, I wouldn’t have been able to complain, but if you’re going to do a thing, do it, so Psycho ends on Sunday. And tonight is Mercyful Fate after High on Fire and Paradise Lost, then Monolord closing out the proceedings. And Witch Mountain with Uta Plotkin and Billy Anderson before that. That would be enough, but that’s not it either. Mothership play Famous Foods later. And I can’t help but imagine them leading the entire room in an Animal House-style food fight. Not saying I think it will happen — they’re a smarter band than that — but it would make sense.
This fest is social-ready in a way that things weren’t a few years ago. There’s stuff just strewn about to take your picture next for TikTok or Instagramming, and from the pool mosh to the black metal up in that airplane hangar of an Event Center, the crowd participation in hype before and during and after is very much factored in. Various algorithms will bring up these pictures in ‘memories’ for years to come. I know this because all my old memories are band photos. Kid stuff too now, which I’ll admit gets me sometimes.
But it goes to show the depth of consideration put into something like this. Someone had to design, render and manufacture that big playing card cartoon character by the Poker Tournament, and it’s not a cheap cardboard cutout, either. Shit lights up. Where’s it gonna go until next year? Would they even reuse it, or is it one and done because next year will need a new design?
A video chat with the kid proves restorative. His grandmother brought him home from Connecticut and he looked pretty wiped out from his weekend. I get that. I won’t see him tomorrow, but will be there Tuesday when he wakes up at some maddeningly early time. My flight leaves Vegas at noon tomorrow, gets into Newark at 8:30. Remember I said I’d get through half the day today without fretting about getting to the airport? Seems that was a bit of wishful thinking. So it goes.
Head upstairs as I finish coffee, just to sit in quiet for a minute. I could go back to bed. Don’t. Instead go back downstairs to where Famous Foods is doing Chessboxing with the Gza. No sign of the Genius, but it’s Mike from Elder and Buddy from Greenbeard right now and it seems like a good game, at least going by the overhead camera on the side. This is one of those things that makes sense because it’s Psycho.
I’m sorry, I think that picture is the funniest shit I’ve seen since I got here. Crazy rock and roll bacchanal, right? And I find the chess tournament. Welcome to the story of me at a party.
Not so terribly later
Man, Psychlona know how to ride a groove. This was the last show of their West Coast tour. Gotta be an interesting thing, coming over to play this fest for multiple sets in the heels of your best album yet. Tomorrow they fly back to the UK. That’s gotta feel like an accomplishment, right?
They finished their set with “Warped” from that new album, one more all-lined-up-and-go outbound groove, not just tight but all even in a way that makes it that much easier to get on board whenever. Like they took off a long time ago and you just walked in but it’s still cool and no worries on catching up, they’re still ready for you. I feel like I saw that happen a couple times during their set, folks wandering in and whatnot, though Psychlona, first band of the day in here, noon start, pulled a good crowd. They’re heavy rock for heavy rockers but I feel like there’s more identity starting to come out in their sound over the last two albums. I’ve seen them twice this summer now, here and Germany, so I’m a total fucking expert, mind you. Totally have every clue what I’m talking about.
Does it count as a confession or complaint that I’m exhausted? Either way, I know it’s not rock and roll. But I got chased off the floor spot I was sitting at in Dawg House, and that felt like a spiritual wound I didn’t need, so I apologize.
I saw the tail end of Mint Field’s set, kind of mellow atmospheric indie but they had a little space-kraut psych thing going at the end, a little bit of fuzz worked in with the programmed backbeat and fluid instrumentation between the duo. Lots of melody, kind of breezy but not checked out mentally. Vibe, in other words. Lord Buffalo are also a vibe band, spacious, heavy Americana, brooding rock and an underlying swell of blues doom — not doom the genre, but more like the apocalypse. I’d never seen them before, and I hope to again. Heavy Western is a hard sell at a Vegas sports bar, but the sound in Dawg House has been really good, and that goes for Lord Buffalo as well.
Today isn’t quite the same crunch for me as yesterday.
This is a good thing, however you want to look at it. More time to appreciate a set, offset by that last-day restlessness, knowing that each show is another step back toward real life. Tonight’s sleep is going to be the worst, because in my heart of hearts I’m ready to be home. That’s nothing against Psycho Las Vegas or any of the bands I’ve seen or will see before my night is up, I’m just good to go. I was tired when I came here. So yeah, give me a relaxed Psycho adventure. In a bit I’ll watch Witch Mountain and then head to the Event Center for Paradise Lost. Won’t be iced tea on the patio, but it’s not three bands in an hour either.
Not that I would expect any of them to ever see it, but shout to the door crew at Dawg House anyway, who’ve been nothing but kind and welcoming in a way that has been appreciated. I told them as much before I came in for what I think will be this last time.
Later. Who cares?
We have perhaps arrived at a moment of spiritual rejuvenation sought. I find myself low stress, sitting in back, not in VIP but around there, having just watched Witch Mountain and Katatonia in succession, a one-two brought on more by happenstance than anything. Witch Mountain finished on time, but Katatonia had started late and went late, so for leaving Dawg House on the quick after Witch Mountain were done, I got to catch at least a decent enough portion of Katatonia’s set to make me feel like I saw them.
That’s a win, damnit.
Not the least because Witch Mountain were incredible. I took pictures, very grateful to have the little barricade there for a photo pit, then moved to a good spot in the middle and just kind of dug in. I have fond memories of seeing Witch Mountain live. Having Uta Plotkin on vocals, who shouted out current singer Kayla Dixon, and Billy Anderson on bass didn’t hurt — it was a 25th bandiversary special celebration; and it indeed was pretty fucking special. Save perhaps for the universal exception that is Stinking Lizaveta, I’d say it was my set of the trip at least to this point. Kings Destroy doing “Smokey Robinson” belongs on that list too, if we’re making a list. But Rob Wrong is an unsung hero of doom riffs, and Nate Carson revels in the plod of his drums with an enjoyment that’s infectious. This was clearly something that meant more to the band than just being on stage in front of people at a cool festival, though sometimes that works too, I guess.
Alas, my magic email’s magic would seem to have worn out; I was denied access to the photo pit for the main stage. Said to the guy I wasn’t trying to make his day harder, I was just there to do what the fest brought me here to do, dude went back and checked and that was that. Okay. I took some pictures from the crowd then went up to sit on a real chair in the VIP section and soothe my unduly battered ego.
For what it’s worth, and I know it’s not much, I’ve shot Paradise Lost before. And High on Fire twice this summer on soil foreign and domestic, not to mention last time I was at this fest and shot them. Mercyful Fate I’ll probably never get the chance to shoot again, but I’ve lived this long without I’m sure I can keep going. The world has enough mediocre photos of King Diamond that I do not worry about mine being missed. I know I’m not like a pro photographer out there taking pictures of bands for the festival and I’m not trying to tell anyone otherwise. But I thought this was what I was brought here to do.
The fleeing nature of joy is what makes it worth trying to hold onto. That’s my last word on it. I’ll try again for Monolord at Rose Ballroom.
Earth spins.
It’s 8:34PM. Bet you thought I was going to say “later.”
Paradise Lost got cut short, maybe, but they played a Paradise Lost show before that, so fair enough. I spent most of their set up and in the back and that was fine if for some weird vocal echoey stuff, but if I’d wanted perfect sound I’d have stood by the soundboard. Most of all I wanted a chair.
I have consistently dug Paradise Lost’s work over the last 15 years solid, minimum, and had an appreciation for their early stuff before that, so I am not about to complain about watching them play. They and Katatonia both put in what seemed like a festival set by practitioners of the form. It’s engaging the room for its size, meeting the whole crowd and not just the people 10 feet in front of the stage. Pro shop, in other words.
High on Fire, on the other hand, do not care where you stand. They are happy to run you over regardless. Kind of surprised they’ve never done a live album here, since they’re pretty much the house band. And they’re playing right before Mercyful Fate, so clearly there’s love there in both sides. High on Fire Live at Psycho Las Vegas would make sense. I mean, it does, pretty much every year.
This was my third time seeing them this summer. Coady Willis wasn’t even a question in drums. Completely took for granted that all parts were going to be well and thoroughly nailed, and they were. I know High on Fire has had a few thinkpieces written about them because, whoa-oa, Nutty Matt Pike is nutty!, but this band dominates heavy like no one else I’ve ever seen. And that’s nothing against the thinkpieces, either. Those are conversations that need to be happening if heavy music is ever going to grow outside its very white, very dude optics. I’m sure Matt Pike reads some fucked up shit. Fine. I’m not cold-calling voters for a senate campaign. I’m trying to enjoy being pummeled by riffs. If I thought dude was a nazi I’d say so.
Later
High on Fire delivered what was promised, and there was an hour break before Mercyful Fate at the Event Center. I didn’t move. I had a chair, a little table, up in back. I put my head down, didn’t quite sleep, but rested my eyes for a while. When I looked back up, the room was fuller than I’ve seen it, though admittedly I haven’t spent a ton of time in there. And the King held court, first wearing a kind of ram’s horns headress to climb up the stairs to his own riser on the bi-level stage, topped as it was by a neon upside down cross. You would not call it subtle. Classic, yes. They played a new song too.
I knew I wanted the closing chapter of my adventure to be Monolord at the Rose Ballroom. I left myself enough time en route for a pitstop upstairs — bathroom, drink water, eat bar, shoes back on, go — on the way, and it occurred to me that I was actually sure of where I was going for perhaps the first time in the last four days. I finally got it. I turned left coming out of the hotel hallway into the casino, then hung a right into the not-mall, and made my way down to the end then up the elevator to the third floor. Monolord were pretty much set up by the time I got there.
And you know, in the end, I’m a simple creature. I’ve never been a huge Mercyful Fate fan — nothing against them; that’s an important band I’m lucky to have seen — but I sure was happy to hear Monolord break into “I’ll Be Damned.” The crowd got a big boost I guess as Mercyful Fate wrapped up, but I was largely oblivious, completely exhausted, taking lousy pictures with the wrong ISO and getting ready to call it a night. No, I didn’t stay the whole time. I’m only one person. But I was glad to have gone, and as I look around the hotel room at all the shit I need to throw in my suitcase upon waking up in about six hours, showering and getting the hell out of town (hopefully; I feel like you never know with flying these days), I’m glad I came. Psycho very obviously didn’t need to let me be here, but I appreciate that they did anyway.
And again, thank you for reading. I’m going to bed.
This one’s been bugging me. On three separate occasions around the time of its 2020 release, I professed an affection for Lord Buffalo‘s second LP, Tohu Wa Bohu. There was the announcement they’d signed to Blues Funeral Recordings, which came with the title-track premiere, a subsequent release date/tour announcement and the unveiling of a live video for “Dog Head” that coincided with the week the album came out. And it was true each time, but I never really felt like I gave Tohu Wa Bohu — the follow-up to the band’s 2017 self-titled debut and a handful of prior short releases dating back to their 2012 self-titled debut EP — its due.
Why not? Timing, mostly. There are only so many hours in a week, a month, and I burn through them at a pretty significant clip. But it’s also the depth of this record, like the space between the piano and the violin on “Dog Head,” or the absolutely-album-defining key stomp of “Wild Hunt,” the dare-to-slow-dance progression of “Heart of the Snake” with its organ like a theremin and the urgency of noise in the subsequent finale “Llano Estacado No. 2,” an apparent sequel to a track from the four-piece’s 2019 split with Ester Drang. Across longer songs like opener/longest track (immediate points) “Raziel” (7:00) and the later, Velvet Undergroundy “Kenosis” (6:58), guitarist/vocalist Daniel Jesse Pruitt, guitarist/organist Garrett Hellman, violinist Patrick Patterson and drummer/percussionist Yamal Said dig low into Americana soil, finding room to commune in influence with the likes of All Them Witches or explore a resonant atmosphere worthy of earliest Wovenhand. Tohu Wa Bohu is the kind of record that doesn’t need to be heavy — that is, to crush you over the head with lumbering fuzz riffs, etc. — in order to be heavy.
For an example, the aforementioned “Dog Head” works handily, with its initially cast-off feel. It’s too active to be cinematic, too evocative to not be, but its jazzy approach makes it all the more stunning when the full breadth of the song kicks in circa 1:45 into the total 3:49, giving Crippled Black Phoenix a run for their melancholy while holding to the Western US folk traditionalism at its foundation, Pruitt‘s voice rural more than country, but with a drawl that gets buried amid howling lead guitar and a swell that you almost don’t realize is rising until you’re under it. Then it ends, sub four minutes. Immediately prior, “Halle Berry” is a different kind of groove, with some relative swagger behind its rhythm and a catchy repetition of “Say hallelujah” — get it? — that never quite tips over to sleaze but isn’t far off as the distortion enters the fray in the second half and whatever prayers made are answered in noise, which clears like fog for a second ahead of the ending. These two cuts together showcase a decent amount of Tohu Wa Bohu‘s reach, and beget the title-track, translating from Hebrew as “formless and empty” and coming from both a Godspeed You! Black Emperor EP cover and the book of Genesis, which functions essentially as a linear forward build but seems nonetheless to work on the flanks, looping around the sides to come at you rather than an all-out frontal assault.
Not everything is so subtle, of course. The key strikes in “Wild Hunt” certainly get their point across, and so too the chanting apex of “Tohu Wa Bohu,” or the manner in which “Llano Estacado No. 2” uses its atmospheric approach to interpret a place through experimentalist sound. Ultimately it is the dynamic on which Tohu Wa Bohu thrives, as Lord Buffalo lure you into turning the volume up with a quiet stretch and then actively turn that on its head with either a gradual or sudden shift to louder sounds. It’s not quite misdirection, but close enough to be called a kind of magic, and while Lord Buffalo are hardly the first to practice it, they do so with a genuine sense of character and mood.
You may have noticed if you’ve been reading reviews lately here — and if you haven’t, it’s fine — I’ve been thinking a lot about how a record acts to build a world of its own to inhabit. Lord Buffalo‘s Tohu Wa Bohu, whether it’s paying homage to the desert or not with its formless emptiness — the story it comes from in the Torah is about the world falling empty because of a wrathful god — captures an expanse gorgeously throughout its eight-song/40-minute procession, the band beginning “Raziel” by communicating their intention toward engulfing their audience in this vision of a place. Maybe it’s Texas. There’s enough of it down there so that’s a fair guess. Maybe it’s somewhere in one or the other of the Dakotas. Maybe it’s nowhere real, like a landscape painting done from memory. I don’t know.
But Tohu Wa Bohu succeeds at being place-evocative in a way that few in any kind of heavy Americana sphere could hope to be, whether one thinks of the band’s heavy psychedelic expanse here as an answer to the likes of the already-mentioned All Them Witches — Pruitt‘s vocals on “Raziel” and periodically throughout bring to mind that band’s Charles Michael Parks, Jr. — or a group like Across Tundras, who, in playing directly off Earth‘s mid-’00s impulses helped craft a subgenre, the central work they are doing is to make it their own. It is in the headphone-ready details of the arrangements throughout as well as in the overarching impact of the atmosphere harnessed by those arrangements that Tohu Wa Bohu is so individually defined.
Lord Buffalo have played fests like Monolith on the Mesa — where my understanding is they made quite an impression — and hither and yon, but Tohu Wa Bohu, with the backing of Blues Funeral, was something of a moment of arrival for the band, or at very least notice served of an arrival still to come. That thought puts a fair amount of pressure on their next record, but as established as the tenets of their sound feel, there’s nothing in Tohu Wa Bohu to indicate Lord Buffalo have any interest in settling sound-wise, and their songwriting is masterful enough to make me think that, yes, it would be a choice on their part.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
—
Easy morning. Kid ate breakfast, read books, got dressed, got on the bus without much of a fight. I don’t think I got bit once, which is amazing considering where we’ve been at in the mornings. It’s all potty-training. Someday this kid will shit in a toilet. I have to keep reminding myself, like a god damned mantra. Someday this kid will shit in a toilet.
I was supposed to be interviewed by Billy Goate of Doomed and Stoned after the bus left, but Billy pushed back by an hour, so I had time to shower, eat an egg and Swiss on chaffles and do this writing. These are things I appreciate more than I can say. I’ve now showered two days in a row for the first time since I had the house to myself for the last two days of Desertfest New York. It is always these little things.
Should I be so lucky, that interview will happen in about seven minutes — unless Billy wised up and is like “this guy’s fulla crap,” but I think they’re too nice on the West Coast for that — and then I’ll probably hop back on here to finish this out.
…
So yeah, that went pretty well. Billy and I had a really good chat last year at some point, but it became less of an interview and more of like a life story thing not necessarily about music — hard to explain, but he felt he wanted to dig into his own background less and talk about writing and blogging more. I’m just about always game to run my mouth, so we were on for about an hour. He said the video would be up next week I said cool. He’s a nice guy. Very clearly a sensitive soul. It was good to talk.
Speaking of blah blah blah, there’s a new Gimme Metal show today at 5PM Eastern. Thanks if you listen.
And since I’m about 10 minutes out now from The Pecan’s bus dropping him off and introducing me to the shape my afternoon will take, I’ll leave it there. I wish you a great and safe weekend. Have fun, watch your head and hydrate. Next week, provided Germany is generous enough to let me in their borders and I have all my “I don’t have the plague (anymore)” paperwork aligned, I’ll be covering Freak Valley Festival if not live then certainly close to it.
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 22nd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Back for its second year and with a fourth day in tow, Ripplefest Texas 2022 confirms its full lineup, a total beast of legends and newcomers. Really, I don’t even know what to say here except that if you’re lucky enough to go, it’s probably the kind of thing you’re going to remember for a long gosh-darn time, and it’s the kind of lineup that serves as lording-over fodder on the part of those who were there to those who weren’t. Well, at least it would if the heavy underground weren’t too cool to each other for that kind of gatekeeping nonsense. In any case, this looks like a massive undertaking to put on, and the roster of assembled acts gets a hearty ‘fucking a’ from my corner of the universe.
Tickets for all four days will run you $150, but I feel like the festival earns that on both quality and quantity of product.
Here’s the announcement, info and links:
RIPPLE FEST TEXAS – The Far Out Lounge – July 21-24
4-day passes available now!
RippleFest Texas 2022 is back and the lineup is as big and hot as Texas itself! 4 days of blistering hot music at Austin’s premier music venue The Far Out Lounge. There will be everything from crushing heavy riffs, to acoustic and banjo picking, to improvisation jam sessions and puppet shows! So many legends and great music that this will be a 4 day weekend you will not want to miss!
FULL LINEUP: Eagles of Death Metal, The Sword, Crowbar, Mothership, Big Business, The Obsessed, Stöner, Spirit Adrift, The Heavy Eyes, Sasquatch, REZN, Fatso Jetson, Heavy Temple, J.D. Pinkus, Lord Buffalo, Lo-Pan, Wino, El Perro, Void Vator, Hippie Death Cult, Howling Giant, Doctor Smoke, Nick Oliveri, High Desert Queen, Destroyer of Light, Ape Machine, High Priestess, Dryheat, Rubber Snake Charmers, Sun Crow, Holy Death Trio, Bone Church, Horseburner, Spirit Mother, Thunder Horse, Mother Iron Horse, The Age of Truth, Salem’s Bend, Las Cruces, All Souls, Kind, Fostermother, The Absurd, Godeye, Ole English, Mr. Plow, Snake Mountain Revival, Blue Heron, Grail, Formula 400, Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, Eagle Claw, Bridge Farmers.
The Far Out Lounge is located at 8504 South Congress. Winner of Best New Venue at the Austin Music Awards 2020.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 24th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
If you’re looking for insight into the Psycho Las Vegas 2021 lineup, I have precious little to offer. What started out being accused of being an American answer to Roadburn has become a spectacle unto itself, operating at a scale that’s more in competition with the likes of a heavy metal Riot Fest or Coachella, and has likewise developed a community of its own. As for what catches my eye here, Cephalic Carnage for sure, as well as a few carryovers from what would’ve been 2020, and the likes of The Sword, who I guess are back together now? Fair enough. Oh, and the GZA, for good measure. Katatonia and Mercyful Fate and Elder and a couple others aren’t making the trip, but there’s certainly plenty here to occupy your weekend. If the Vegas-in-August heat don’t melt your brains, the riffs surely will.
What’s a guy gotta do to get invited to do a DJ set at Psycho Las Vegas? I’m gonna send Nate Carson an email and see if he’s got any tips.
Ty Segall next to Satyricon. Fatso Jetson and Profanatica. Immolation and Dengue Fever. The Flaming Lips and Cannibal Corpse. If you’re asking for it to make sense, you’re doing Psycho wrong. This is an event that defines its own parameters.
Approach thusly:
PSYCHO LAS VEGAS 2021 Lineup
America’s rock n’ roll bacchanal returns to Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino August 20th through August 22nd, with another resort-wide casino takeover unlike any of its kind.
Now approaching its fifth year in the swirling neon decadence of Las Vegas, PSYCHO will feature over seventy artists across four stages including the world-class Events Center, the iconic House Of Blues, Mandalay Bay Beach, and the vintage Vegas-style Rhythm & Riffs Lounge in the center of the casino floor.
PSYCHO LAS VEGAS 2021 will continue to redefine America’s conception of what a festival can be.
Psycho Swim “The Official Psycho Las Vegas Pre-Party” Old Man Gloom, Bongzilla, Death Valley Girls, Polyrhythmics, The Skull, Blackwater Holylight, Here Lies Man, DJ Scott Seltzer
PSYCHO LAS VEGAS 2021 Lineup: Emperor, GZA, Mayhem, Obituary, Ty Segall, Satyricon, Watain, Paul Cauthen, The Sword, Cephalic Carnage, Health, The Bridge City Sinners, MGLA, Intronaut, Exhorder, Pinback, King Dude, Khemmis, Mothership, Toke, Lord Buffalo, Psychlona, Claude Fontaine, Hippie Death Cult, Foie Gras, ALMS, Mother Mercury, DJ Ethan MCCarthy, DJ Scott Seltzer, DJ Nate Carson, DJ Painkiller, Danzig, The Flaming Lips, Thievery Corporation, Cannibal Corpse, Dying Fetus, Red Fang, Cursive, Pig Destroyer, Poison the Well, Eyehategod, Primitive Man, Death by Stereo, Curl Up & Die, Boysetsfire, Fatso Jetson, Profanatica, Adamantium, Silvertomb, Frankie and the Witch Fingers, Withered, Flavor Crystal, Highlands, Vaelmyst, Black Sabbitch, The Tim Dillon Comedy Hour, Down, Exodus, High on Fire, Osees, Amigo the Devil, Drab Majesty, Crippled Black Phoenix, Weedeater, Full of Hell, Midnight, Repulsion, Cult of Fire, Zola Jesus, Tsol, Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, Guantanamo Baywatch, Immolation, Dengue Fever, Creeping Death, Kanga, Warish, Glacial Tomb, Relaxer, Vitriol, DJ Scott Seltzer, “Ask Doc” Q&A with Doc Mcghee
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 29th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Okay, so when I originally posted about Desert Records starting its Legends of the Desert series of splits with Palehorse/Palerider and Lord Buffalo, it was set to release in June. And — get this — it was going to coincide with LIVE SHOWS! Can you imagine living in that world? Well, just about everyone else on the planet is starting to imagine things like that (sorry, Brazil), but apparently an essential component of all things modern Americana is being fucked over unless you’re impossibly wealthy, so here we are. Legends of the Desert Vol. 1 — which rules, by the way — is out Aug. 21, and if you’re holding your breath for live shows, well, I hope you have something soft to land on when you pass out.
Desert Records notes below that the series will run seven LPs over the course of three years. That seems smart to me. Two or three a year max, and it’s probably planned out well in advance. Of course, anyone currently alive knows that plans can change — and these already have if you’re going by release dates — but we can see here Desert Records operating in the spirit of Ripple Music‘s The Second Coming of Heavy, if more specific in its mission.
More on that below, courtesy of the PR wire:
LEGENDS OF THE DESERT Vol. 1 Featuring Palehorse/Palerider & Lord Buffalo Drops August 21st
Desert Records is excited to announce this new compilation series. Spanning seven albums total over the course of three years, the series will include legendary Desert Rock bands (to be announced) mixed in with new and upcoming bands.
“This is the soundtrack to the New West. The focus of the Legends of the Desert is to provide a modern perspective to the antiquated ‘Wild West’ we have etched in our brains. These songs and tales are not told by the same ol’ perspective of the white male Cowboy. These are narratives told by those who never got their stories heard. We will hear from musicians, artists, Natives, outlaws, desert rats, desert dwellers, cactuses and mesas, ravens and roadrunners, snakes and endless skies. Fuck John Wayne, Fuck his lame racist ass, and Fuck the horse he rode in on. This is Legends of the Desert.”
