Posted in audiObelisk on September 1st, 2021 by JJ Koczan
This Friday marks the release of the debut EP Coma (review here) from Welsh newcomers Lurcher through Trepanation Recordings. And thinking of a band’s first short release as showcasing their initial forward potential, the release of Coma is an occasion worth marking. Produced and mixed by guitarist/vocalist Joe Harvatt with engineering by Owain Fleetwood Jenkins and mastering by the esteemed Jaime Gomez Arellano, with Harvatt joined by bassist Tom Shortt and drummer Simon Bonwick, the four-song outing runs 26 minutes — one more track would make it an album, really — and works outward from the immediacy of its opening title-track into more spacious proceedings, its successively longer pieces each giving a more complex picture of the whole.
Harvatt leads the way, and not just on the shred-fest that emerges in the second half of the penultimate “All Now is Here” before the song gives way to about a minute and a half of quiet, sustained tone (though I suppose he’s leading the way there too, since it’s just guitar), but Shortt‘s bass and Bonwick‘s all-in drumming are crucial from the outset. “Coma” itself is a relatively straight-ahead riffer of the Sasquatchian tradition — in the prior review I likened the opener to Cave In for some of its punk-born melodic aspects and I stand by that as well — but it’s the quite-insistent snare of the verse that both tips it over into a more progressive mindset and provides the tension to be contrasted and paid off in the chorus, making the whole track work.
Likewise, the density of low end in “Remove the Myth From the Mountain” is where it gets its crunch, and while the Hendrixy vibe that launches and eventually comes back around in “All Now is Here” is obviously a focal point, it’s Shortt, especially in the hook, that adds the corresponding grunge feel and holds the song together as the guitar goes on its merry, impressive this-fret-and-this-one-and-this-one bluesy jaunt. That’s the stuff of classic power trios, but it’s a formula that isn’t close to being broken as used by Lurcher, and forms just part of what they present on Coma, which transitions smoothly into “All Now is Here” with the aforementioned coda drone, and at nearly nine minutes long, has plenty of room to give each element a chance to shine — multi-channel guitar solo included as keyboard wash adds drama — while emphasizing the songwriting that unites them.
As part of that summary, the heft of “Remove the Myth From the Mountain” returns as part of “Cross to Bear”‘s crescendo as well, but they end with a brief reprise of the softer guitar figure from earlier in the song, offering a more complete picture of the whole. I’ll be frank: I like spending money. And I like spending your money too. But even if you don’t take the jump and preorder one of the woefully limited CDs (50 of them) or tapes (20, with three left as of this writing), take a listen to the stream below, because where one can hear Lurcher have room to grow in terms of chemistry as bands hopefully do with time, the fact that they not only establish an aesthetic here — quickly — but begin to toy with the balance of the characteristics that comprise it is remarkably encouraging. Band to watch in the future? Maybe. Definitely a band to listen to now though.
In my hubris of adding an 11th day to this Summer 2021 Quarterly Review — why not just do the whole month of July, bro? what’s the matter? don’t like riffs? — I’ve rendered today somewhat less of a landmark, but I guess there’s still some accomplishment to be felt in completing two full weeks of writing about 10 records a day, hitting triple digits and all that. Not that I doubted I’d get here — it’s rare but it’s happened before — and not that I doubt I’ll have the last 10 done for Monday, but yeah. It’s been a trip so far.
Quarterly Review #91-100:
Per Wiberg, All Is Well In the Land of the Living But for the Rest of Us… Lights Out
The cumbersome-seeming title of Per Wiberg‘s new solo EP derives from its four component tracks, “All is Well,” “In the Land of the Living,” “But for the Rest of Us…” and “Lights Out.” The flow between them is largely seamless, and when Wiberg (whose pedigree as an organist/keyboardist includes Opeth, Candlemass, Big Scenic Nowhere and more others than I can count) pauses between tracks two and three, it feels likewise purposeful. It’s a dark mood inflected through the melodies of the opener and the atmospheric piano lines of “But for the Rest of Us…,” but Wiberg offers a driving take on progressive heavy rock with “In the Land of the Living” and the build in the subsequent “Lights Out” is encompassing with the lead-in it’s given. Wiberg sounds more comfortable layering his voice than even on 2019’s Head Without Eyes, and his arrangements are likewise expressive and fluid. Dude is a professional. I think maybe that’s part of the reason everybody wants to work with him.
Massive, droning lurch, harsh, biting screams and lumbering, pummeling weight, Body Void‘s third album and first for Prosthetic, Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth, boasts feelgood hits like “Wound” and “Laying Down in a Forest Fire,” bringing cacophonous, Khanate-style extremity of atmosphere to willfully, punishingly brutal sludge. It is not friendly. It is devastating, and it is the kind of record that sounds loud even when you play it quietly — and that’s before you get to “Pale Man”‘s added layers of caustic noise. Front to back in the four songs — all of which top 12 minutes — there’s no letup, no moment at which the duo relent in order to let the listener breathe. This is intentional. A conjuring of aural concrete in the lungs coinciding with striking lines like “Your compromises are hollow monuments to your cowardice” and other bleak, throatripping poetry of dead things and our complicity in making them. Righteous and painful.
Ghorot is the three-piece of bassist/vocalist Carson Russell (also Ealdor Bealu), drummer/vocalist Brandon Walker and guitarist Chad Remains (ex-Uzala), and Loss of Light is a debut album no less gripping for its push into darkness, whether it’s the almost-toying-with-you Sabbath-style riff of “Harbinger” or the tortured atmospherics in the back end of “Charioteer of Fire,” which follows. Competing impulses result in a sense of grueling even through the barks and faster progression of “Woven Furnace,” while “Dead Gods” offers precious little mourning in its charred deathsludge, saving more ambience for the 12-minute closer “In Endless Grief,” which not only veers into acoustics, but nods toward post-metal later on, despite holding firm to cavernous growls and wails. Obscure? Opaque? There isn’t a way in which Loss of Light isn’t heavy. Everywhere they go, Ghorot carry that weight with them. It is existential.
Lush from the outset and growing richer in aural substance as it plays out, the 17:56 longest/opening (immediate points) title-track of Methadone Skies‘ latest work, Retrofuture Caveman, is an obviously intended focal point, and a worthy one at that. Last heard from with 2019’s Different Layers of Fear (review here), the Romanian four-piece break down walls across the bulk of this fifth full-length, with “Retrofuture Caveman” itself setting the standard early in moving instrumentally between warm heavy psychedelia, prog, drone, doom and darker black metal. It’s prog heavy that ultimately wins the day on the subsequent linear build of “Infected by Friendship” and centerpiece “The Enabler,” but there’s room for more lumber in the 11-mminute “Western Luv ’67” and closer “When the Sleeper Awakens” offers playful shove riffing in its midsection before a final stretch of quiet guitar leads to a last-minute volume burst, no less consuming or sprawling than anything before, even if it feels like it finishes too soon.
Stood out by the gotta-hear bass tone of Cam Alford, the ethereal-or-shouting-and-sometimes-both vocals of Lea Reto, the crash of Nick Kervin‘s drums and the encompassing wah of Peter Turik‘s guitar, Toronto’s Witchrot offer a striking debut with their awaited first full-length, Hollow, oozing out through opener/longest track (immediate points) “Million Shattered Swords” before the stomping wash of “Colder Hands” sacrifices itself on an altar of noise, leading to the more directly-riffed “Spiral of Sorrow,” which nonetheless maintains the atmosphere. Things get noisier and harsher in the second half of Hollow, which is presaged in the plod of “Fog,” but as things grow more restless and angrier after “Devil in My Eyes” and move into the pair “Burn Me Down” and “I Know My Enemy,” both faster, like blown-out Year of the Cobra toying with punk rock and grunge, Witchrot grow stronger for the shift by becoming less predictable, setting up the atmospheric plunge of the closing title-track that finishes one of 2021’s most satisfying debut albums.
Omen is the first long-player from Evansville, Indiana, four-piece Rat King, who use rawness to their advantage throughout the nine included tracks, at least one of which — “Supernova” — dates back to being released as a single in 2017. With manipulated horror samples and interludes like the acoustic “Queen Anne’s Revenge” and “Shackleton” and the concluding “Matryoshka” spliced throughout the otherwise deep-toned and weighted fare of “Capsizer” and the chugging, pushing, scream-laced “Druid Crusher,” Omen never quite settles on a single approach and is more enticing for that, though the eight-minute “Vagrant” could well be a sign of things to come in its melodic reach, but the band revel in the grittier elements at work here as well — the thunderplod of “Glacier,” the willful drag of “Nepenta Divinorum,” and so on — and the ambience they create is dreary and obscure in a way that comes across as purposeful. Is Omen a foreshadow or just the name of a movie they dig? I don’t know, but I hope it’s not too long before we find out.
What was Earthling Society continues to evolve into Taras Bulba at the behest of Fleetwood, UK’s Fred Laird. Sometimes the Night (on Riot Season) is a mostly solo affair, and truth be told, Laird doesn’t need much more than his own impulses to conjure a full-sounding record, as he quickly shows on the acid lounge opener “The Green Eyes of Dragon,” but the guest vocals from Daisy Atkinson bring echoing presence to the subsequent “Orphee” and Mike Blatchford‘s late-arriving sax on “The Sound of Waves,” “The Big Duvall” and “House in the Snow” highlight the jazzy underpinnings of the organ-laced “Night Train to Drug Town” and the avant, anti-anything guitar strum and piano strikes of “One More Lonely Angel.” No harm done, in any case, unless we’re talking about the common conception of what a song is, and hey, if it didn’t need to happen, it wouldn’t have. An experiment in vibe, perhaps, in psychedelic brooding, but evocative for that. Laird‘s no stranger to following whims. Here they lead to moodier space.
I’ll admit, there’s a part of me that, when “Intro” hits its sudden forward surge, kind of wishes Opium Owl had kept it mellow. Nonetheless, the Riga, Latvia-based double-guitar (mostly) instrumental heavy psych four-piece offer plenty of serenity throughout the four-song live set Live at Hodila Records, and the back and forth patterning of the subsequent “Echo Slam” is all the more effective at winning conversion, so fair enough. “Stone Gaze” dips into even bigger riffage, while “Tempest Double” dares vocals over its quieter noodling, dispensing with them as it pushes louder toward the finish. For a live recording, the sound is rich enough to convey what would seem to be the full warmth of Opium Owl‘s tonality, and in its breadth and its impact, there’s no lack of studio-fullness for the session-style presentation. Live at Hodila Records may be formative in terms of establishing the methods with which the band — who formed in 2019 — will continue to work, but showcases significant promise in that.
Doled out with chops to spare and the swagger to show them off, Kvasir‘s eight-song debut LP, 4, puts modern heavy rock riffing in blender and sets it on high. Classic, epic heavy in “Where Gods to to Pray” and a more nodding groove in “Authenticity & the Illusion of Enough” meet with the funkier starts-stops of “Slow Death of Life” and the languid Sabbathism of “Earthly Algorithms.” “Chill for a Church” opens side B with trashier urgency and suitable rhythmic twist, and “The Brink” sets its depressive lyric to a ’70s boogie swing, not quite masking it, but working as a flowing companion piece for “The Black Mailbox,” which follows in like-minded fashion, letting closer “Alchemy of Identity” underscore the point with a rawer take on what once made The Sword so undeniable in their groove. There’s growing to do, patience to learn, etc., but Kvasir make it easy to get on board with 4 and their arguments for doing so brook little contradiction. Onto the list of 2021’s best debut albums it goes.
Lurcher might go full-prog before they’re done, but they’re not their yet on their four-song debut EP, Coma, and the songs only benefit from the band’s focus on impact and lack of self-indulgence. The leadoff title-track has an immediate hook that brings to mind an updated, tonally-heavier version of what Cave In innovated for melodic post-hardcore, and the subsequent “Remove the Myth From the Mountain” follows with a broader-sounding reach in its later solo that builds on the heavy rock foundation the first half of the song put forth. Vocalist/guitarist Joe Harvatt — backed by the rhythm section of bassist Tom Shortt and drummer Simon Bonwick — is prone, then, to a bit of shred. No argument as that’s answered with the Hendrix fuzz at the outset of “All Now is Here,” which both gets way-loud and drones way-out in its seven minutes, in turn setting up the lush-and-still-hard-hitting capper “Cross to Bear,” which rounds off the 26-minute release with all the more encouraging shifts in tempo, flowing melody, and mellotron sounds to add to the sweeping drama. I know the UK underground is hyper-crowded at this point, but consider notice served. These cats are onto something.
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 29th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Honestly? This band followed me on Twitter and I had two seconds to check out what they were up to and dug it, so decided to post about their debut EP. Nothing more complicated than that happening here. Welsh trio Lurcher are guitarist/vocalist Joe Harvatt, bassist Tom Shortt and drummer Simon Bonwick, and they bring a sense of weight to a kind of progressive heavy rock — I’m hearing Roadsaw, Cave In and a whole bunch of others, but only in drips and drabs; they don’t seem to be directly aping anybody — not really experienced enough to be full of itself yet and so all the more exciting for that. I haven’t heard all of Coma at this point — it’s out Sept. 3 on Trepanation Recordings; CDs limited to 50 copies, tapes to 20 — but with the label behind it, a mastering job by Jaime Gomez Arellano and the two tracks they have up now, they sound like a band looking to make a splash who might just do it. Worth your time to check out. I’m glad I did.
Side note: if you follow me on Twitter, hey, thanks. Hope you like Star Trek.
Here’s info and audio on Coma:
LURCHER emerge in 2021 from deepest West Wales with their astonishing debut EP ‘Coma’.
Encompassing four tracks of powerfully atmospheric, hook laden heaviness LURCHER’s mind-bending virtuosity is underpinned by riffs and rhythms that swell and crash. Effortlessly combining classic tones and song sensibilities with forward-thinking riff craft.
LURCHER create songs that uplift and tear down in equal measure. Crushing heaviness is entwined with spine tingling melodies, conjuring images of stormy seas and treacherous minds.
LURCHER have forged a fresh and formidable EP, shaped by the influence of grunge giants, 90’s Brit songsmiths, classic rock guitar gods, and sludge metal heavyweights.
Releases September 3, 2021.
1. Coma 2. Remove The Myth From The Mountain 3. All Now Is Here 4. Cross To Bear
Produced and mixed by Joe Harvatt, engineered by Owain Fleetwood Jenkins at Studiowz, Wales and mastered by Jaime Gomez Arellano, at Orgone Studios, England.
LURCHER are: Joe Harvatt – Vocals, Guitar | Tom Shortt – Bass | Simon Bonwick- Drums
Likewise, the density of low end in “Remove the Myth From the Mountain” is where it gets its crunch, and while the Hendrixy vibe that launches and eventually comes back around in “All Now is Here” is obviously a focal point, it’s Shortt, especially in the hook, that adds the corresponding grunge feel and holds the song together as the guitar goes on its merry, impressive this-fret-and-this-one-and-this-one bluesy jaunt. That’s the stuff of classic power trios, but it’s a formula that isn’t close to being broken as used by Lurcher, and forms just part of what they present on Coma, which transitions smoothly into “All Now is Here” with the aforementioned coda drone, and at nearly nine minutes long, has plenty of room to give each element a chance to shine — multi-channel guitar solo included as keyboard wash adds drama — while emphasizing the songwriting that unites them.
