Posted in Whathaveyou on September 9th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
I dig this band. Made of Stone Recordings — which earlier this year reissued Maha Sohona‘s 2014 self-titled debut — hit me up and asked if I wanted this site to be involved in presenting the tour. It would be convenient narrative to tell you I had my Maha Sohona t-shirt on at the time, but no, I didn’t. I do, however, have it on today as the announcement comes through that the Umeå, Sweden, three-piece will head out on a run from Nov. 17-27 in support of both the aforementioned reissue and 2021’s second album, Endless Searcher (review here), which still gets spins around these parts, including right now. Do I feel like a nerd wearing the shirt of the band I’m listening to and writing about at this very moment? Yes, I do. Does it matter even in the teeniest, tiniest bit of the slightest? Nope. That’s what happens with me and good bands. I’ll be a nerd for this shit any day of the week, as long as the shirt’s been through the wash.
Curious what their plans for next year might be, in terms of perhaps receiving invites to the busy Spring heavy-festival season in Europe, but we’ve got time before we get there, so maybe we’ll find out and maybe we won’t. In the meantime, the reissue of the first record and the regular-ol’-issue of the second one are both streaming below, so have at it. I’m proud and thrilled to have an Obelisk logo on this poster, not the least for the artwork that accompanies. Damn, Maciej Kamuda.
And indeed, damn, one and all:
MAHA SOHONA TOUR ANNOUNCEMENT
The latest sensation in psych rock n roll out of Sweden is on the road in the autumn of 2022.
Following the great success of the “Endless Searcher” album, Maha Sohona has booked a series of shows throughout Europe.
Starting from November 11th in Poznan, until the 27th when the tour is concluded in Berlin, the groove masters from Umeå will get to know their loyal fanbase, deliver some exciting shows and get ready for an ever more promising season ahead.
Maha Sohona – European Tour – November 2022
• 17.11 Klub pod Minogą , Poznan (#127477#)(#127473#) • 18.11 Klub Hydrozagadka , Warsaw (#127477#)(#127473#) • 19.11 Klub Alchemia , Krakow (#127477#)(#127473#) • 20.11 Klub Muzyczny Liverpool , Wroclaw (#127477#)(#127473#) • 21.11 Kulturák , Bratislava (#127480#)(#127472#) • 22.11 MANYI – Kulturális Műhely , Budapest (#127469#)(#127482#) • 23.11 Kramladen , Vienna (#127462#)(#127481#) • 24.11 Ballonfabrik Augsburg – Fabrik Unique , Augsburg (#127465#)(#127466#) • 25.11 Kulturfabrik Löseke Hildesheim KUFA , Hildesheim (#127465#)(#127466#) • 26.11 Kronensaal , Hamburg (#127465#)(#127466#) • 27.11 TBC , Berlin (#127465#)(#127466#)
° artwork by Maciej Kamuda Art ° powered by Made Of Stone Recordings ° supported by The Obelisk
Maha Sohona are: Guitar/Vocals – Johan Bernhardtson Bass – Thomas Hedlund Drums – David Lundsten
Oh my breaking heart as we move into day seven of the Summer 2021 Quarterly Review and I am reminded that the wages of hubris are feeling like a dumbass later. I was loading up my laptop on Saturday — so pleased with how ahead-of-the-game I was able to stay all last week — when the thing decided it was gonna give itself some time off one way or the other.
I dropped it for repair about 20 minutes before the guy I’ve come to trust was closing shop. He said he’d be in touch on Monday. Needless to say, I’m on my backup cheapie Chromebook, reviewing off Bandcamp streams, eagerly awaiting that call which I can only hope has come in by the time this is posted. I’ll keep you in the loop, of course, but putting together the reviews for yesterday? That was not pretty.
I expressly thank The Patient Mrs., through whom all things are possible.
Onward.
Quarterly Review #61-70:
Geezer, Solstice
Geezer‘s ambition could hardly be clearer in their 17-minute “Solstice” jam. It was the Solstice — Winter 2020, to be specific — and the Kingston, New York, trio jammed. Guitarist/vocalist Pat Harrington (who doesn’t sing on the track) added some dreamy synth after the fact, and the affect is all the more hypnotic for it. Harrington, bassist Richie Touseull and drummer Steve Markota are no strangers to exploratory fare, as they showed on 2020’s righteous Groovy (review here), and as a Bandcamp Friday-era stopgap offering, “Solstice” brings a sampling of who they are in the rehearsal space, willing to be heavy, willing to not, ready to go where the music leads them. If Geezer wanted to do a whole full-length like this, I wouldn’t fight them, so you most definitely will not find me arguing against a digital single either. With jams this tasty, you take what you can get.
Issued less as a stopgap, which a digital-only single might normally be, than as a response to the band having lost gear in a practice space flood, the 8:52 single-song outing The Event Horizon was recorded at the same time as Spaceslug‘s late 2020 EP The Leftovers (review here) and in a way acts to bridge the melancholy beyond-genre push of that release with the more weighted, spacious roll that has typified the Polish outfit’s work to-date — their latest full-length was 2019’s Reign of the Orion (review here), and they recently finished a new one. So perhaps “The Event Horizon,” with its hypnotically languid rhythm and concluding drift, is a stopgap after all, but between helping the band recoup their losses and thinking of what might be coming next, it’s an exciting if not-unalloyed listening experience, and the three-piece move deeper into a signature sound even as they continue to bring the definition of what that means to new places.
Creating sometimes-scorching, droning psychedelic soundtracks to all your favorite classic sci-fi films that never existed, Kansas City’s Expo Seventy offer a call to worship for freaks and converted heads on their new album, Evolution. Still headed by guitarist James Wright as on late-2016’s America Here and Now Sessions (review here), the band offer new glories celestial and terrestrial instrumental chemistry throughout the six tracks (seven on the CD) of Evolution, lumbering away on “Echoes of Ether” only after floating in brass-section antigrav conditions on “The Slow Death of Tomorrow.” Can you hang? You’ll know one way or the other as the culminating duo “Second Vision, First Sight” and “First Vision, Second Sight” are done with you, having altered dimensions so thoroughly that the ethereal will either come to feel like home or you will simply have melted. In any case, lash yourself to it. Own that shit.
Peak-era Faith No More reborn in progressive heavy fuzz? What stoner rock might’ve been if it went to college instead of spending all that time hanging around talking about old cars? I don’t know where UK four-piece Boss Keloid ultimately stand on their admirable fifth LP, Family the Smiling Thrush — the follow-up to 2018’s also-well-received Melted on the Inch (review here) — but they most certainly stand on their own. Across seven tracks, the band careen, crash, lumber, rush and ponder — lyrics no less worth a close read than any other component — and from opener/longest track (immediate points) “Orang of Noyn” on, they make it abundantly clear that their style’s unpredictability is an asset, and that just because you might not know where they’re going next doesn’t mean they don’t. Melodic, complex and cerebral, there’s still a human presence here, a sense of a plan unfolding, that makes the album seem all the more masterful.
Though it’s ultimately less electric-kool-aid than endless-churning-abyss-with-psychdelic-saxophone-screaming-up-at-you-like-free-jazz-trapped-in-the-downward-tonal-spiral, Bong-Ra‘s four-tracker Antediluvian is duly experimentalist in being born out of the mind of Jason Köhnen, whose work on this project not only extends more than 20 years, but who has been a part of landmark Dutch outfits like Celestial Season, The Kilmanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble and The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, among scores of others. The procession on this full-length, originally released in 2018 through Svart Lava, is wild times indeed, but immersive despite feeling at times like a litmus for how much you can take, with Köhnen‘s bass/keys/etc. and Balazs Pandi‘s drums meeting with Colin Webster‘s saxophone and Chloe Herrington‘s bassoon, willfully plodding through long-ish form improv-seeming movements of atmospheric heft creation.
A coherent and forceful debut full-length, Reek of the Parvenu quickly shows the metallic undercurrent from Athens-based four-piece Zebu on opener “The Setting Dust,” and pushes from there in groove metal fashion, taking some impulses from heavy rock but holding largely to a central aggressive stance and tension in the rhythm that is a backdrop even as the later “Nature of Failure” breaks from its chugging shove for a quieter stretch. That is to say, the next punch is always coming, and Zebu‘s blows are effectively delivered — looking at you, “Burden” — though some of the slower, sludgier cuts like “Our Shame” or the doomier finale “The City” bring a welcome atmosphere to go with the coinciding burl. I’m not sure if “People Under the Stairs” wants to kick my ass or crack a beer, but the songwriting is air tight and the thrashy threat only contributes to the immediacy of the release on the whole. They’re not screwing around.
It’s been 11 years since France’s Los Disidentes del Sucio Motel debuted with Soundtrack From the Motion Picture (review here), an engaging, kind of silly play on stoner rock and B-movie tropes. Beneath that, however, it was also a concept album, and the band — who now seem to prefer LDDSM for a moniker — still work from that foundation on their fourth full-length, Polaris. The difference scope and sonic maturity. Rife with vocal harmonies and progressive flourish, the 10-track answer to 2016’s Human Collapse (review here) smoothly shifts between the patient and the urgent, the intimate and the grand — and that’s in the first two minutes of “Blue Giant” alone — finding their way into a proggy post-heavy rock that’s too clearheaded to be psychedelic, but that balances the crunch of “Horizon” with a sense of the otherworldly just the same.
With their fourth long-player, guitarist/vocalist Anthony Gaglia and drummer Brady Maurer of Portland, Oregon’s LáGoon welcome bassist Kenny Combs to the fold and dive as a trio — their first three-piece outing was last year’s Father of Death EP — headfirst into murky riffing and heady heavy rock, made all the more spacious through cavern echo and the garage doom vocals Gaglia brings on the title-track, as well as the synth that surfaces on the subsequent interlude “Buried” and elsewhere throughout. The earlier “Beyond the Trees” is particularly bleak and otherworldly, but I won’t take away from the further-down procession of “Hill Bomb” and “The Slow Down” into “Final Ride,” the last of which closes out with scummer doom that’s familiar but distinct enough to be their own. There are moments on Skullactic Visions where, for as much as they could sound like Electric Wizard given the ingredients, I’m all the gladder they don’t.
Maha Sohona‘s second album comes some seven years after their self-titled debut, but who cares about time when you’ve got your headphones on and you’re surrounded by the richness of tone on offer throughout Endless Searcher‘s five rolling tracks? Heavy and laid back, the trio of guitarist/vocalist Johan Bernhardtson, bassist Thomas Hedlund and drummer David Lundsten finding some kinship with Polish three-piece Spaceslug in their post-Sungrazer blend of weight and flow, a jam like “Luftslot” nodding and conjuring depth even as it soars. Can’t argue with the quicker push of “A Black Star” or the purposefully straightforward “Scavengers” (where the title-line is delivered) but some of the mellow moments in opener “Leaves” and especially the building instrumental finisher “Orbit X” are even more satisfying for how effectively they move you place to place almost without your realizing it. I’ve got nothing for you if you can’t dig this vibe.
Keen observers will recognize The Bad Sugar Rush vocalist René Hofmann from his work with Wight, but the work here alongside guitarist Josko Joke-Tovic, bassist Minyeong Fischer and drummer Peter Zettl is distinct from that other unit here, even as the Humble Pie-esque “Push Me” and semi-sleeze “Liar” both have some shade of funk to their procession. Both cuts circa four minutes makes for a suitable debut 7″ with respected purveyor H42 Records doing the honors, and the results are an encouragingly catchy display of what a first full-length might accomplish when and however such a thing emerges. There’s classic heavy rock as the foundation, but more than outright ’70s worship — though some of that too — it’s the organic feel of the songs that leaves an impression on the listener, though the background singers on “Push Me” don’t hurt in that regard, certainly. An auspicious and intriguind first showing.
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 28th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Umeå, Sweden, trio Maha Sohona released their first album in seven years — just their second overall — digitally on June 18, and I’ve been trying to find an excuse and the time to dig into the record for real ever since. With the news that Endless Searcher, which was preceded by the single “Leaves” just two weeks before, will be issued on vinyl through Greece’s Made of Stone Recordings, I feel pretty satisfied at finally having my chance. They’re not wrong when they talk about things like mellow heavy and atmospheric compositions. You get plenty of that across the five-song outing, and it’s an easy one to lose yourself in, whether you heard the band’s 2014 self-titled debut or not. To wit, I didn’t.
That’s still on their Bandcamp as well, of course, and you can stream Endless Searcher at the bottom of the post here. If the style of the cover art looks familiar, you might recognize the hand of Maciej Kamuda from his work for Spaceslug, Weedpecker, Sunnata, Scorched Oak and a slew of others. I just went down a 20-minute rabbit-hole on his Facebook page and don’t regret it in the least.
But I digress. The vinyl. Here’s PR wire info:
Maha Sohona release “Endless Searcher” via Made Of Stone Recordings
The overall vision behind Johan Bernhardtson’s power trio is not an easy task to describe. Hailing from Umeå, Sweden and with a mission to reach as far out as possible, the 3 musicians use the compelling power of riffing and the creation of translucent atmospheres as a vehicle that can easily become a weapon. Their dynamic stoner/desert/space rock is equally explosive and laid back, depending on the dynamics of each moment.
Having enough experience to channel the creative energy into well-crafted compositions, the energy of the band finds a way into the listener’s heart and mind, through meticulous rock n roll outtakes with a distinct character and identity.
All songs written and arranged by Maha Sohona Recorded December 5-6th 2020 at Järnhjälmen Studio Mixed by Stefan Johansson at Järnhjälmen Studio Mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege Cover artwork and layout by Maciej Kamuda
Made of Stone Recordings presents the analogue vinyl editions of “Endless Searcher”:
– The splatter transparent 180gr in 100 limited copies – The double coloured 180gr in 200 copies – The all-time classic black LP 180gr in 200 copies,
With a release date of November 10, 2021.
Tracklisting: 1. Leaves 09:41 2. Luftslott 07:59 3. A Black Star 08:24 4. Scavengers 03:58 5. Orbit X 07:22
Maha Sohona are: Guitar/Vocals – Johan Bernhardtson Bass – Thomas Hedlund Drums – David Lundsten
