Posted in Whathaveyou on February 23rd, 2026 by JJ Koczan
Two exclusive shows from Ed Mundell‘s The Ultra Electric Mega Galactic. Slomosa. Causa Sui, who are tops at this point on my list of bands to see before I die. Lydsyn, which is Uffe Lorenzen from Baby Woodrose‘s current trio. Naxatras‘ expanses and Needlepoint‘s folk-prog intimacy. And then you have Atomic fucking Rooster. The outright rush of Pothamus. MaidaVale. Gros Coeur. And I don’t know who Gender Reveal Atomic Bomb are, but I’d be keen to find out.
Down the Hill 2026’s lineup is complete. I will tell you flat out; I see a lot of these announcements. More even than I post, and I post plenty of them. It’s a pleasure to see something like this, which not only undebatably kicks ass, but is emblematic of the specific curation of the event in question. The Belgian festival over the last few years has peppered its lineups with classic prog and heavy rock, and that’s here too, but the growth in reach, the blend of modern and legacy and up-and-coming. It’s gorgeous, and in a sea of festivals on the summer circuit, it stands out as its own thing in its own way. The lineup is now complete and it is the very definition of fucking rad. Much respect.
From social media:
THE HILL IS CALLING – THE FULL 2026 LINE-UP IS HERE!
The wait is finally over. We’ve completed the puzzle for Down The Hill 2026, and it’s shaping up to be a legendary trip. We are adding a massive wave of new talent to the bill, bringing everything from desert grooves to cosmic explorations.
Leading the charge of new names, prepare for a deep space odyssey with the legendary Ozric Tentacles, followed by the sun-drenched mastery of Causa Sui. We have the tundra-rock kings Slomosa bringing the heavy fuzz, alongside the cinematic, analog psych-sounds of Naxatras. We’re also diving into the sophisticated prog-jazz textures of Needlepoint, the gritty rock ‘n’ roll of Lydsyn, and the high-voltage experimental madness of Tschaika 21/16. The storm continues with the crushing riffs of Huracán, the fuzzy garage vibes of Bikini Beach, the raw energy of Feedy, and the sonic explosion that is Gender Reveal Atomic Bomb.
In a very special turn of events, we are witnessing a monumental return. After a 12-year absence from the continent, The Ultra Electric Mega Galactic (featuring Ed Mundell) is finally coming back to Europe! They will be taking over the hill for not one, but TWO unique sets, performing on both Friday and Saturday. This is a truly rare occasion, as these will be their only two European shows in 2026. You do not want to miss this historic comeback!
These new additions join our previously announced favorites: the classic rock legends Atomic Rooster, the heavy psych of Maidavale, and the atmospheric power of Pothamus, along with Black Flower, Gros Coeur, Aufhebung, Waste, and The Moondig.
Day tickets are NOW officially on sale! Whether you’re coming for one day of madness or the full weekend experience, now is the time to secure your spot. To make your festival experience even smoother, token tickets are also available for purchase starting today.
On Friday the 21st (Doors 14h), prepare for a heavy ride with Slomosa, Causa Sui, The Ultra Electric Mega Galactic, Pothamus, Tschaika 21/16, Huracan, Aufhebung, Feedy, Waste, and The Moondig.
The trip continues on Saturday the 22nd (Doors 12h) with Ozric Tentacles, Atomic Rooster, a second exclusive set by The Ultra Electric Mega Galactic, Maidavale, Lydsyn, Naxatras, Needlepoint, Black Flower, Bikini Beach, Gros Coeur, and Gender Reveal Atomic Bomb.
As always, we keep the fire burning late into the night with Afterparties & DJs on both days.
Don’t miss out on the most immersive weekend of the year.
Posted in Reviews on December 11th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Wow. This is a pretty good day. I mean, I knew that coming into it — I’m the one slating the reviews — but looking up there at the names in the header, that’s a pretty killer assemblage. Maybe I’m making it easy for myself and loading up the QR with stuff I like and want to write about. Fine. Sometimes I need to remind myself that’s the point of this project in the first place.
Hope you’re having an awesome week. I am.
Quarterly Review #21-30
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Thou, Umbilical
Even knowing that the creation of a sense of overwhelm is on purpose and is part of the artistry of what Thou do, Thou are overwhelming. The stated purpose behind Umbilical is an embrace of their collective inner hardcore kid. Fine. Slow down hardcore and you pretty much get sludge metal one way or the other and Thou‘s take on it is undeniably vicious and has a character that is its own. Songs like “I Feel Nothing When You Cry” and “The Promise” envision dark futures from a bleak present, and the poetry from which the lyrics get their shape is as despondent and cynical as one could ever ask, waiting to be dug into and interpreted by the listener. Let’s be honest. I have always had a hard time buying into the hype on Thou. I’ve seen them live and enjoyed it and you can’t hear them on record and say they aren’t good at what they do, but their kind of extremity isn’t what I’m reaching for most days when I’m trying to not be in the exact hopeless mindset the band are aiming for. Umbilical isn’t the record to change my mind and it doesn’t need to be. It’s precisely what it’s going for. Caustic.
The fourth full-length from Boston’s Cortez sets a tone with opener “Gimme Danger (On My Stereo)” (premiered here) for straight-ahead, tightly-composed, uptempo heavy rock, and sure enough that would put Thieves and Charlatans — recorded by Benny Grotto at Mad Oak Studios — in line with Cortez‘s work to-date. What unfolds from the seven-minute “Leaders of Nobody” onward is a statement of expanded boundaries in what Cortez‘s sound can encompass. The organ-laced jamitude of “Levels” or the doom rock largesse of “Liminal Spaces” that doesn’t clash with the prior swing of “Stove Up” mostly because the band know how to write songs; across eight songs and 51 minutes, the five-piece of vocalist Matt Harrington, guitarists Scott O’Dowd and Alasdair Swan, bassist Jay Furlo and sitting-in drummer Alexei Rodriguez (plus a couple other guests from Boston’s heavy underground) reaffirm their level of craft, unite disparate material through performance and present a more varied and progressive take than they’ve ever had. They’re past 25 years at this point and still growing in sound. They may be underrated forever, but that’s a special band.
Writing a catchy song is not easy. Writing a song so catchy it’s still catchy even though you don’t speak the language is the provenance of the likes of Uffe Lorenzen. The founding frontman of in-the-ether-for-now Copenhagen heavy/garage psych pioneers Baby Woodrose digs into more straightforward fare on the second full-length from his new trio Lydsyn, putting a long-established Stooges influence to good use in “Hejremanden” after establishing at the outset that “Musik Er Nummer 1” (‘music is number one’) and before the subsequent slowdown into harmony blues with “UFO.” “Nørrebro” has what would seem to be intentional cool-neighborhood strut, and those seeking more of a garage-type energy might find it in “Du Vil Have Mere” or “Opråb” earlier on, and closer “Den Døde By” has a scorch that feels loyal to Baby Woodrose‘s style of psych, but whatever ties there are to Lorenzen‘s contributions over the last 20-plus years, Lydsyn stand out for the resultant quality of songwriting and for having their own dynamic building on Lorenzen‘s solo work and post-Baby Woodrose arc.
The popular wisdom has had it for a few years now that retroism is out. Hearing Baltimorean power trio Magick Potion vibe their way into swaying ’70s-style heavy blues on “Empress,” smoothly avoiding the trap of sounding like Graveyard and spacing out more over the dramatic first two minutes of “Wizard” and the proto-doomly rhythmic jabs that follow. Guitarist/vocalist/organist Dresden Boulden, bassist/vocalist Triston Grove and drummer Jason Geezus Kendall capture a sound that’s as fresh as it is familiar, and while there’s no question that the aesthetic behind the big-swing “Never Change” and the drawling, sunshine-stoned “Pagan” is rooted in the ’68-’74 “comedown era” — as their label, RidingEasy Records has put it in the past — classic heavy rock has become a genre unto itself over the last 25-plus years, and Magick Potion present a strong, next-generation take on the style that’s brash without being willfully ridiculous and that has the chops to back up its sonic callouts. The potential for growth is significant, as it would be with any band starting out with as much chemistry as they have, but don’t take that as a backhanded way of saying the self-titled is somehow lacking. To be sure, they nail it.
Oase is the second full-length from Berlin’s Weite behind 2023’s Assemblage (review here), also on Stickman, and it’s their first with keyboardist Fabien deMenou in the lineup with bassist Ingwer Boysen (Delving), guitarists Michael Risberg (Delving, Elder) and Ben Lubin (Lawns), and drummer Nick DiSalvo (Delving, Elder), and it unfurls across as pointedly atmospheric 53 minutes, honed from classic progressive rock but by the time they get to “(einschlafphase)” expanded into a cosmic, almost new age drone. Longer pieces like “Roter Traum” (10:55), “Eigengrau” (12:41) or even the opening “Versteinert” (9:36) offer impact as well as mood, maybe even a little boogie, “Woodbury Hollow” is more pastoral but no less affecting. The same goes for “Time Will Paint Another Picture,” which seems to emphasize modernity in the clarity of its production even amid vintage influences. Capping with the journey-to-freakout “The Slow Wave,” Oase pushes the scope of Weite‘s sound farther out while hitting harder than their first record, adding to the arrangements, and embracing new ideas. Unless you have a moral aversion to prog for some reason, there’s no angle from which this one doesn’t make itself a must-hear.
Big on tone and melody in a way that feels inspired by the modern sphere of heavy — thinking that Hum record, Elephant Tree, Magnetic Eye-type stuff — Florida’s Orbiter set forth across vast reaches in Distorted Folklore, a song like “Lightning Miles” growing more expansive even as it follows a stoner-bouncing drum pattern. Layering is a big factor, but it doesn’t feel like trickery or the band trying to sound like anything or anyone in particular so much as they’re trying to serve their songs — Jonathan Nunez (ex-Torche, etc.) produced; plenty of room in the mix for however big Orbiter want to get — as they shift from the rush that typified stretches of their 2019 debut, Southern Failures, to a generally more lumbering approach. The slowdown suits them here, though fast or slow, the procession of their work is as much about breadth as impact. Whatever direction they take as they move into their second decade, that foundation is crucial.
As regards genre: “dark arts?” Taking into account the 44 minutes of Vlimmer‘s fourth LP, which is post-industrial as much as it’s post-punk, with plenty of goth, some metal, some doom, some dance music, and so on factored in, there’s not a lot else that might encompass the divergent intentions of “Endpuzzle” or “Überrennen” as the Berlin solo-project of Alexander Donat harnesses ethereal urbanity in the brooding-till-it-bursts “Sinkopf” or the manic pulses under the vocal longing of closer “Fadenverlust.” To Donat‘s credit, from the depth of the setup given by longest/opening track (immediate points) “2025” to the goth-coated keyboard throb in “Mondläufer,” Bodenhex never goes anywhere it isn’t meant to go, and unto the finest details of its mix and arrangements, Vlimmer‘s work exudes expressive purpose. It is a record that has been hammered out over a period of time to be what it is, and that has lost none of the immediacy that likely birthed it in that process.
Indianapolis four-piece Moon Goons cut an immediately individual impression on their third album, Lady of Many Faces. The album, which often presents itself as a chaotic mash of ideas, is in fact not that thing. The band is well in control, just able and/or wanting to do more with their sound than most. They are also mindfully, pointedly weird. If you ever believed space rock could have been invented in an alternate reality 1990s and run through filters of lysergism and Devin Townsend-style progressive metal, you might take the time now to book the tattoo of the cover of Lady of Many Faces you’re about to want. Shenanigans abound in the eight songs, if I haven’t made that clear, and even the nod of “Doom Tomb Giant” feels like a freakout given the treatment put on by Moon Goons, but the thing about the album is that as frenetic as the four-piece of lead vocalist/guitarist Corey Standifer, keyboardist/vocalist Brooke Rice, bassist Devin Kearns and drummer Jacob Kozlowski get on their way to the doped epic finisher title-track, the danger of it coming apart is a well constructed, skillfully executed illusion. And what a show it is.
Although it opens up with some element of foreboding by transposing the progression of AC/DC‘s “Hells Bells” onto its own purposes in heavy Canadiana rock, and it gets a bit shouty/sludgy in the lyrical crescendo of “What a Dummy,” which seems to be about getting pulled over on a DUI, or the later “The Castle of White Lake,” much of Familiars‘ Easy Does It lives up to its name. Far from inactive, the band are never in any particular rush, and while a piece like “Golden Season,” with its singer-songwriter vocal, acoustic guitar and backing string sounds, carries a sense of melancholy — certainly more than the mellow groover swing and highlight bass lumber of “Gustin Grove,” say — the band never lay it on so thick as to disrupt their own momentum more than they want to. Working as a five-piece with pedal steel, piano and other keys alongside the core guitar, bass and drums, Easy Does It finds a balance of accessibility and deeper-engaging fare combined with twists of the unexpected.
Progressive stoner psych rockers The Fërtility Cült unveil their fifth album, A Song of Anger, awash in otherworldly soul music vibes, sax and fuzz and roll in conjunction with carefully arranged harmonies and melodic and rhythmic turns. There’s a lot of heavy prog around — I don’t even know how many times I’ve used the word today and frankly I’m scared to check — and admittedly part of that is how open that designation can feel, but The Fërtility Cült seem to take an especially fervent delight in their slow, molten, flowing chicanery on “The Duel” and elsewhere, and the abiding sense is that part of it is a joke, but part of everything is a joke and also the universe is out there and we should go are you ready? A Song of Anger is billed as a prequel, and perhaps “The Curse of the Atreides” gives some thematic hint as well, but whether you’ve been with them all along or this is the first you’ve heard, the 12-minute closing title-track is its own world. If you think you’re ready — and good on you for that — the dive is waiting for your immersion.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 9th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
While the song is catchy in a classic way that goes beyond language, I’ll admit to a bourgeois shame not knowing even how to start counting in Danish, and so Lydsyn‘s new single, “Musik Er Nummer 1,” taught me that “en” is “one.” Never too old to learn. Hopefully at some point they put out a song about the number two.
The Copenhagen heavy rock and rollers will release their second album, Højspændt (“high tension,” according to a major internet company’s translation matrix), on Oct. 25 through Bad Afro Records. A promo clip — maybe a snippet of a larger video for the song yet to be unveiled? — has been posted, along with the song itself, which one can easily imagine frontman Uffe Lorenzen, who’s still perhaps better known as Lorenzo Woodrose of Baby Woodrose, though he has solo material under his own name, has been part of other bands/projects, and so on, delivering the title line at a gig like that depicted. Regardless of my linguistic ignorance, the band’s 2022 self-titled debut (review here) was a jewel of garage and proto-heavy stylization from a master of the form prone to psychedelic leans. Where the next one might go, I haven’t heard it and won’t speculate, but songwriting is songwriting, and “Music Er Nummer En” reaffirms that’s exactly what’s at play here.
No real PR wire announce for this one, but Bad Afro and the band both posted the song/video with some info and confirmed the release on social media, and the below is cobbled together from that and Bandcamp:
Online NOW: “Musik Er Nummer 1” is the first digital single taken from the upcoming Lydsyn album “Højspændt” due out October 25th.
Here is the first single from our upcoming album Højspændt. The pictures come from the two sold out concerts at the Flea in April, where we played all the songs live for the first time. If you were present, there’s a good chance that you can spot yourself in the video. album will be released on the 25th. october.
Camera: Jens Raadal and Claus Michaelsen Klip og grade: Fuzz Cake Film
Posted in Reviews on October 7th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Life can take you to some unexpected places, but if you’re Uffe Lorenzen, a lot of them might be garage rock. The king of Danish garage psych, best known for his work under the nom de plume Lorenzo Woodrose, has spent the last five years developing his solo aesthetic, putting out three full-lengths in 2020’s Magisk Realisme (review here), 2019’s Triprapport (review here) and 2017’s Galmandsværk (review here), departing from where he left his main outfit Baby Woodrose behind with 2016’s Freedom (review here) as though to search out precisely that; to find some kind of freedom that perhaps being Lorenzo Woodrose was not at the time providing.
Lydsyn is very specifically not a return to Baby Woodrose, and those who approach it knowing Lorenzen‘s output either on his own or with that band shouldn’t be expecting one. Heralded by the early singles “Kat Ser Kat” (posted here) and “To Syge Skud” (posted here), Lydsyn‘s self-titled debut album is a return to form for Lorenzen in that he’s fronting a trio — Palle Demant on bass and Jens Eyde on drums — but the end result sounds more like a rock-band-extension of his solo work because… wait for it… that’s exactly what it is.
The narrative (blessings and peace upon it) holds that Lorenzen, Demant and Eyde were assembled as a live act to bring Lorenzen‘s solo material to the stage. There were tour dates booked when the pandemic hit and writing became the outlet for what-the-hell-else-to-do restlessness, and Lydsyn — with production by the esteemed Flemming Rasmussen at Sweet Silence in Copenhagen — arrives as the result of those sessions. For those who’ve tracked Lorenzen through the years in On Trial, Baby Woodrose, Dragontears, and Spids Nøgenhat, the latter of whom are an important touchstone here as regards Lydsyn digging into a classic rock sound born specifically of Denmark’s own history therein.
“Hymne Til Kroppen” is a cover of funky late-’70s curios Splask, and there are revivalist elements at work across Lydsyn from the opening guitar lines of “Jericho” through the atmospheric heavy blues of closer “Bålet,” also the longest track at 6:41 and a moment in which the impact of the power trio is at its most vital (not the only one, mind you), with Demant‘s bass and Eyde‘s crash backing Lorenzen‘s madman-in-tears vocals amid rattlesnake shakers and a steady march that holds even as they shift into and out of a freaked-out, noisy solo after four minutes in.
Though it sounds casual, and there’s no pretense of being anything other than it is as a showcase of songwriting and craft — seven out of the nine included songs start with guitar; they know the kind of impression they’re trying to make — the record is anything but careless, with ’60s detailing of organ in “Tragisk Eskapisme” and a start-stop strut in the earlier “Døde Stamgæster” that is both comfortable in its pace and classic in form despite the only-modern breadth of the actual recording. That is, Lydsyn are informed by the era, not trying to sound like it.
While “To Syge Skud,” which is based around acoustic guitar with electric layered in, is probably the most reminiscent of Lorenzen‘s solo output, even that connection is partial and the song is built out with backing vocals and a fuzzy lead before its 2:44 are done, taking the howling garage jangle of “Jericho” and the thicker fuzz of “Døde Stamgæster” to a more serene place ahead of “Kat Ser Kat,” the strum of which sounds well in anticipation of “Bålet” later on without actually doing the same thing. Each of these first four songs offers something different from the rest that surround it and “Hymne Til Kroppen,” which finishes off side A of the 38-minute LP, follows suit, with a funky underpinning for its fuzz-on tension release, Lorenzen‘s vocals easy-riding that groove and matching his own lead guitar note for note in righteous fashion.
The two solo sections — rippers, both — give an opportunity to make the most of Lydsyn as a power trio, with the rhythm section holding the central motion of the song while the guitar momentarily loses its shit, and they don’t miss that chance, remaining cohesive as they’d almost have to given who they are despite the off-the-rails vibe and heavy payoff of the song. That pickup of energy bleeds into side B as “Abernes Planet” begins with a clarity of strum not entirely dissimilar from “Jericho,” but a more winding verse and chorus/bridge. Demant‘s bass, which, again, will lead the way to the album’s end, makes “Abernes Planet” a highlight with its natural tonal warmth; the track barely touches three minutes long, and not a second is wasted.
Tambourine, the aforementioned organ, and what sounds like acoustic strum alongside the electric make “Tragisk Eskapisme” feel particularly full, but not overly so. Like the rest of what surrounds, it is in balance as its six-minute course fleshed out by a momentary veer into psychedelia leads to the similarly arranged but more pointed “Tårnet” and the finale’s lower turn, but there’s a point — right around “To Syge Skud,” if not sooner — where you realize you’re in good hands and just kind of let it roll, and that’s really how Lydsyn‘s Lydsyn is best heard. With trust.
Maybe you’ve never heard a band Uffe Lorenzen has played in. Maybe you don’t have a museum-grade certification in Danish rock history. Maybe you don’t speak the language. That’s fine. Me neither. The fact is that even for the previously unindoctrinated, the songs are nothing if not listenable, smoothly made with expert and experienced care, and even if you don’t go into Lydsyn with some vague idea of what’s coming, they earn that trust all over again on their own as a kind of mostly-mellow but immersive and at times scorching garage-informed heavy rock record.
It wasn’t the way they planned it, maybe, since they reportedly didn’t plan on being a band separate from Lorenzen‘s solo incarnation, but there’s life here and if Lydsyn is going to be an outlet for Lorenzen to explore these kinds of ideas in the absence of Baby Woodrose or other projects, he makes himself right at home in the material. He makes the listener right at home too.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 20th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Danish heavy rockers Lydsyn today release their new single ‘To Syge Skud,’ and with it enter into the promotional cycle for their upcoming debut album, which will be out on Sept. 23. I don’t know the name of the record yet, but it’ll be out through Bad Afro, the imprint which has long-since been responsible for issuing the work of Uffe Lorenzen, aka Lorenzo Woodrose of Baby Woodrose, Spids Nøgenhat, Dragontears and so on. Lorenzen and the new three-piece released their first two-songer, led by the single “Kat Ser Kat” (posted here), last September, and “To Syge Skud,” which translates to English as ‘two sick shots,’ bears some hallmarks of Lorenzen‘s classic-style songcraft.
For example, it’s short. Drawing from garage rock and ’60s psychedelics, Lorenzen and company — Palle Demant plays bass, Jens Eyde drums — dig into a straight-ahead structure that’s catchy even if you don’t happen to speak Danish, and with a foundation of casually strummed acoustic guitar blended with electric, it’s evocative of Lorenzen‘s solo work over the last few years while, obviously, more built out with the additional players involved.
It’s in and out in under three minutes and that’s plenty enough time to make me look forward to the LP to come, which to be fair I probably would anyhow. But there’s a lyric video at the bottom of this post so you can hear it and links below where you can get it, so I’ll leave you to that with best wishes for the brief but pleasant journey ahead.
Here you go:
LYDSYN – “To Syge Skud”
“To Syge Skud” is taken from the upcoming Lydsyn debut album due out September 23th 2022 on Bad Afro Records.
Lydsyn is Uffe Lorenzen (Baby Woodrose/Spids Nøgenhat) on guitar and vocals, Palle Demant (The Sledge) on bass and Jens Eyde on drums. The band was originally formed out of boredom due to Covid 19 lockdown and was meant as a backing band that would make it possible for Uffe Lorenzen to play songs from his three recent solo albums live. As several tours went down the drain and was postponed also due to Covid 19 the band kept on rehearsing and ended up making their own material.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 6th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Lydsyn is the new trio fronted by Uffe Lorenzen, who’s probably still best known as Lorenzo Woodrose of Baby Woodrose fame. The Danish psych figurehead has spent the last several years doing solo releases, but the classic-style of Lydsyn‘s debut single “Kat Ser Kat” suits his songwriting style, and it’s by no means his first time working with Palle Demant — who plays bass in the band and directed the video you’ll find at the bottom of this post — in one capacity or another.
Good vibes persist in the track, and I haven’t heard the B-side at this point, but the 7″ came out on Bad Afro Records (of course) this past Friday so it’s there if you dig what you hear and want to chase it down. I wouldn’t blame you in the least. Clearheaded rock songcraft, no real need for frills, but there’s still a little edge of the trippy. At least enough to make it a good time.
One assumes an album will follow sooner or later, but the single is a good place to start. It came from the PR wire:
Lydsyn – Kat Ser Kat 7” single
Lydsyn is Uffe Lorenzen (Baby Woodrose/Spids Nøgenhat) on guitar and vocals, Palle Demant (The Sledge) on bass and Jens Eyde on drums. The band was originally formed out of boredom due to Covid 19 lockdown and was meant as a backing band that would make it possible for Uffe Lorenzen to play songs from his three recent solo albums live. As several tours went down the drain and was postponed also due to Covid 19 the band kept on rehearsing and ended up making their own material.
“Kat Ser Kat” is the debut single by Lydsyn and it was recorded, mixed and mastered in 14 hours by Flemming Rasmussen at the Sweet Silence studio in June 2021. Both “Kat Ser Kat” and the b-side “Abernes Planet” are exclusive to this single due out September 3rd.
