Posted in Questionnaire on August 30th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Steve Austin of Today is the Day
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I play music. Music that I feel inside. I was alone a lot as a kid and lived out in the country. A friend of mine showed me AC/DC “Back In Black” and I was hooked the minute I heard it.
Describe your first musical memory.
Going to Square Dances with my Mom and Dad and my Dad jamming out on his Gibson ES-175D and Twin Reverb. I didn’t know that rock music existed until I was around 13 years old.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Playing Hellfest for the second time, in 2023, and bringing both my sons, Hank and Willi with me. It was a dream come true.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Throughout my entire career. Music has its ups and downs. Especially if you stay true to your musical vision. Especially if that musical vision isn’t trendy and goes against the musical norms. Van breakdowns, injuries, music business madness, missing band members that were dear to me.
It’s a tough business to be in and everyone is not cut out for it. I’ve wanted to quit my band probably five times, and like a deranged masochist, I just can’t let it go. It means way too much to me. Music is my life, it’s real and I can’t imagine living life without it.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
You gotta play what you feel in your heart. How you really feel. I always want to make a new song that I have never ever heard before. Life is ever changing. If you are being true in your writing, then your songs should reflect the evolution that you are living through.
How do you define success?
My wife Hanna, my sons Hank and Willi, my dog Abi, my friends, my fans, my home.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
I saw a man that was Dead, sitting behind the wheel of his car yesterday at Home Depot. EMT’s were gently trying to remove his body from the car. He was very old. It made me extremely sad to think that his last moments were by himself in a shitty Home Depot parking lot.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I would like to write and direct a film sometime and then do a score for it.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
To share the human condition with others and hopefully provide shelter from the storm and inspiration to keep moving forward for others and myself.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
I’m looking forward to deer season this year. I hunt every year to provide food for my family. When I am out in the mountains hunting, there is a certain tranquility that really is special. Nature, only nature and me. No bullshit, no problems, no pain or suffering. Just me and all that being in the wilderness holds.
Posted in Questionnaire on April 19th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Finn Akuma of BÜZÊM, Dredge the House Promotions, Ezra Pound and Born on Your Knees
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
Imagine you’ve taken a windowpane. You were contact high from DMT 6hrs before. You now hit a full bowl. Go beyond the gates and meet God. Subsequently you kill them after coitus because well…? You ever seen Hellhaiser, but got turned on? BAM! Fuck it! You are gone man. Beyond the regions and realms of existence and understanding. Oh then Satan somehow appears and is like, “The fuck you doing? Go back and never come here again. You didn’t need to die to find tonality.”………… and out from this intense cascading wall of sound and monolithic riffs we flesh into humming circles of familiarity to when Earth first started. In short if you smoke a lot of pot and trip while listening to grindcore on 33rpm then you’ll dig us.
Describe your first musical memory.
My mother for Christmas bought me a keyboard when I was 5? And so I’d try to play the usual stuff like Mary Had A Little Lamb or whatever. But my mother with this old grand piano would be playing away for days. Expected me to play along with her to stuff like Mozart. Did that for a minute. But my real first one is getting a violin through a school music program. I never practiced, but when i did it was fun to do these like slow dragging strokes like if it’s a bad note or if it sounded like someone dying. Beautiful is its own thing, but for me that was a sound I found later in just some of the most merciless drone and black metal.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
In 2018 I saw The Obsessed and had taken some photos. It’s 2022. Walking past the tour buses for the Ministry / Melvins / COC tour in Portland, ME. This guy with super muttonchops walks by me and we’re talking for a minute. When I realize it’s Reid obviously I got all gitty cuz dude! Fucking RWAKE! Well turns out that a photo I had taken of Reid while with The Obsessed from what he told me was that he still shows people that photo. As someone who is virtually unknown it was a big boost in knowing that I did something that meant something to someone else. And to get recognition alone was huge, but to get that from someone who you look up to? Pretty rad!
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
That being myself wasn’t worth my time. Something I’ve dealt with my whole life. But in the last few months I’ve been shown how foolish I’d been in my early years. All that I’m doing now is because I found the opportunity to do so. As a kid I just had the chances, but was never allowed to really flush it out. As I got older I had to work more to be comfortable existing and wasted so much time never just creating. Because I’ve seen it in little spurts where what I do inspires someone and I was always selfish thinking I’m not doing anything. And come to find out people are doing because I did something because someone else inspired me. Realizing your self worth and actualizing that to make others wanna do the same is a huge struggle to overcome.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
In the sense that an artist is never truly done with what they’re doing? That I do believe.
How do you define success?
Naively I say being able to live off being a musician and not scrubbing dishes. I quit being a cook at one point because I kept wanting to cut my fingers off or wanting to hurt those around me because of the mental abusive world it is. But success I don’t really care for much. Ya I’d like to be seen. Who doesn’t want that? Success is only found through royally fucking it up until you don’t. Worst way to put it. But the more you keep doing something, but always willing to adapt then you’ll achieve a goal I think.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
When I was 12 years old I watched my father slowly die of cancer over 6ms and that image of watching the soul leave the body as you see the eyes go from white to this stained yellow wall color. It’s not pretty. Someone healthy become a skeleton of a human being. The only I can describe what that looked like is seeing photos of holocaust victims. That emaciated appearance as you watch someone slowly accept their death and essentially quit trying to live because at that point you can’t go back. And watching my father have to struggle with death destroyed me for twenty years. There really is no way to describe what that was like.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
Wrote a musical and performance art play two years ago that I’d kill to get off the ground. Very fortunate to be in Portland right now where we’re all trying to just create. There’s no limitations. There’s no overseer or magazine or anything defining what we are right now and I gotta say that is amazing. Sure you could pigeonhole someone into a demographic, but there’s so many people wanting to just do. And I want to bring that all together in a way that someone twenty years from now will take and try to perform that. I’d love to be at some summer outdoor theater and watch a local troupe put on this play, but I just go as participant. Weird to think that I guess, but it makes me strive to wanna do something of value instead of jerk off and waste my time.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Imagination. For it to be whatever you want it to be. Art needs to move you. I get so bored at shows watching bands just play to play. For me that’s what cover bands are so why am I gonna waste my time in this world being boring? You’d hope to wanna inspire the next wave of kids and people your age to get off their asses and make something of themselves. In other words if you’re reading this? Don’t become just another industry band that only plays with the same collective circle of people and then burn out because you never did anything with the gift you’re given.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
It’s weird as everything I center myself around is music. Stopped trying like 8 years ago. Been looking for the time to start up again. Back in 2012 I went to IFC to pitch a TV series, but was so ill-prepared for that and just fucking fucked up the meeting. But eventually I got around to writing out a 10 episode series I’d love to see be out in the world. Alongside that I wrote two features I hope to direct some day about Boston that I don’t feel is ever expressed nor approached before.
Upcoming Shows:
May 6th: Geno’s in Portland, ME with Extinction A.D., Goblet, BÜZÊM, Mankala, Death’s Hand
June 16: Charlie O’s in Montpelier, VT with Komodo VT, Black Axe, BÜZÊM, A River Of Trees
June 20: The Cavern in Portland, ME with Guhts, False Gods, Hollow Leg, BÜZÊM, In The Wind
July 7th: Sammy’s Patio in Revere, MA with Hobo Wizard, BÜZÊM, High’n’Heavy, Going2Hell
July 8th: The Cavern in Portland, ME with Hobo Wiard, BÜZÊM, High’n’Heavy, Mast
July 22: Geno’s in Portland, ME with VRSA, North Star The Wanderer, Afghan Haze, Trash Fire, As Real
Week two, day one. Day six. However you look at it, it’s 10 more records for the Summer 2022 Quarterly Review, and that’s all it needs to be. I sincerely hope you had a good weekend and you arrive ready to dig into new music, most of which you’ve probably already encountered — because you’re cool like that and I know it — but maybe some you haven’t. In any case, there’s good stuff today and plenty more to come this week, so bloody hell, let’s get to it.
Quarterly Review #51-60:
Celestial Season, Mysterium I
After confirming their return via 2020’s striking The Secret Teachings (review here), Netherlands-based death-doom innovators Celestial Season embark on an ambitious trilogy of full-lengths with Mysterium I, which starts with its longest song (immediate points) in the heavy-hitting single “Black Water Rising,” but is more willing to offer string-laced beauty in darkness in songs like “The Golden Light of Late Day,” which transitions fluidly into “Sundown Transcends Us.” That latter cut, third of seven total on the 40-minute LP, provides some small hint of the band’s more rock-minded days, but the affair is plenty grim on the whole, whatever slightly-more-uptempo riffy nod might’ve slipped through. “This Glorious Summer” hits the brakes for a morose slog, while “Endgame” casts it lot in more aggressive speed at first, dropping to strings for much of its second half before returning to the deathly chug. The pair “All That is Known” and “Mysterium” close in massive and lurching form, and not that there was any doubt about this group 30 years on from the band’s founding, but yeah, they still got it. No worries. The next two parts are reportedly due before the end of next year, and one looks forward to knowing where the rest of the story-in-sound goes from here. If it’s down, they’re already there.
Post. Metal. Also post-metal. The third full-length from Koln-based instrumental four-piece Noorvik, Hamartia, glides smoothly between atmosphere and aggression, the band’s purposes revealed as much in their quiet moments as in those where the guitar comes forward and present a more furious face. In the subdued reaches of “Ambrosia” (10:00) or even opener “Tantalos” (6:55), the feeling is still tense, to where over the course of the record’s 68 minutes, you’re almost waiting for the kick to come, which it reliably does, but the form that takes varies in subtle ways and the bleeding of songs into each other like “Omonoia” into “Ambrosia” — which crushes by the time it’s done — the delving into proggy astro-jazz on “Aeon” and the reaching heights of “Atreides” (which TV tells me is a Dune reference) assure that there’s more than one path that gets Noorvik to where they’re going. At 15:42, “The Feast” is arguably the most bombastic and the most ambient both, but if that’s top and bottom, the spaces in between are no less coursing, and in their willingness to be metal while also being post-metal, Noorvik bring excitement to a style that’s made a trope of its hyper-cerebral nature. This has that and might also wreck your house, and if you don’t think that’s a big difference, ask your house.
Wait. What? You mean to tell me that right now there are some people in the world who aren’t about to dig on 78 minutes’ worth of improvised psychedelic synth and guitar drones? Like, real people? In the world? What kind of terrible planet is this? Obviously, for Doctors of Space — Scott “Dr. Space” Heller (Øresund Space Collective) on synth, Martin Weaver (Wicked Lady) on guitar — this planet is nowhere near cool enough, and while it’s fortunate for the cosmos at large that once shared, these sounds have launched into the broader reaches of the solar system where they’ll travel as waves to be interpreted by some future civilization perhaps millions of years from now that evolved on a big silly rock a long, long way from here and those people will finally be the audience Doctors of Space richly deserve. But on Earth? Beyond a few loyal weirdos, I don’t know. And no, Doctors of Space aren’t shooting for mass appeal so much as interstellar manifestation through sound, but they do break out the drum machine on 23-minute closer “Titular Parody” to add a sense of ground amid all that antigravity float. Nonetheless, Mind Surgery is far out even for far out. If you think you’re up to it, get your head in the right mode first, because they might just open that thing up by the time they’re done.
Pull Astral Pigs‘ second album, Our Golden Twilight, out of the context of the band’s penchant for vintage exploitation horror and porn and the record’s actually pretty cool. The title-track and slower-rolling “Brass Skies/Funeral March” top seven minutes in succession following instrumental opener “Irina Karlstein,” and spend that time in nod-inducement that goes from catchy-and-kinda-slow to definitely-slow-and-catchy before the long stretch of organ starts the at least semi-acoustic “The Sigil” and “Dragonflies” renews the density of lumbering fuzz, the English-language lyrics from the Argentina-based four-piece giving a duly ceremonious feel to the doomly drama unfolding, but long song or shorter, their vibe is right on and well in league with DHU Records‘ ongoing fascination with aural cultistry. The Hammond provided by bassist/producer Fabricio Pieroni isn’t to be ignored for what it brings to the songs, but even just on the strength of their guitar and bass tones and the mood they conjure throughout, Our Golden Twilight, though just 25 minutes long, unquestionably flows like a full-length record.
No question, Carson have learned their lessons well, and I’ll admit, it’s been a while since a basically straightforward, desert-derived heavy rock record hit me with such an impression of songwriting as does their second full-length, The Wilful Pursuit of Ignorance. Issued through Sixteentimes Music, the eight-track/36-minute outing from the Lucerne-via-New-Zealand-based unit plays off influences like Kyuss, Helmet (looking at you, title-track), Dozer, Unida, and so on, and honest to goodness, it’s refreshing to hear a band so ready and willing to just kick ass musically. Not saying that an album with a title like this doesn’t have anything deeper to say, just that Carson make their offering without even a smidgeon of pretense about where they’re coming from, and from opener “Dirty Dream Maker” onward, their melody, their groove, their transitions and sharper turns are right on. It’s classic heavy rock, done impeccably well, made modern. A work of genre that argues in favor of itself and the style as a whole. If you were introducing someone to riff-based heavy, Carson would do the trick just fine.
Comprised of vocalist Hoanna Aragão, guitarist/vocalist Jorge Rabelo (also keys, co-production, etc.), guitarist Guilerme Tanner, bassist Renata Marim and drummer Roberto Tavares, Brazil’s Isaurian adapt post-rock patience and atmospheric guitar methods to a melody-fueled heavy purpose. Production value is an asset working in their favor on their second full-length, Deep Sleep Metaphysics, and seems to be a consistent factor throughout their work since Matt Bayles and Rhys Fulber produced their first two EPs in 2017. Here it’s Muriel Curi (Labirinto) and Chris Common (Pelican, many others), who bring a decided sense of space that’s measurable from the locale difference in Aragão‘s and Rabelo‘s vocal levels from opener “Árida” onward. Their intensions vary throughout — “For Hypnos” has “everybody smokes pot”-esque gang chants near its finish, “The Dream to End All Dreams” is a piano-inclusive guitar-flourish instrumental, “Autumn Eyes” is duly mellow and brooding, “Hearts and Roads” delivers culmination in a brighter melodic wash ahead of a bonus Curi remix of the opener — but it’s the melodic nuance and the clarity of sound that pull the songs together and distinguish the band. They’ve been tagged as “heavygaze” and various other ‘-gaze’ whathaveyou, and they borrow from that, but their drive toward fidelity of sound makes them something else entirely. They should tour Europe asap.
Hints of Kadavermarch‘s metallic origins — members having served in Helhorse, Illdisposed, as well as the Danish hip-hop group Tudsegammelt, and others — sneak into their songs both in the more upfront manner of harsher backing vocals on “The Eschaton” and the subsequent “Abyss,” and in some of the double-guitar work throughout, though their first album, Into Oblivion, sets their loyalties firmly in heavy rock. Uncle Acid may be an influence in terms of vocal melody, but the riffs throughout cuts like “Satanic” and “Reefer Madness” and the galloping “Flowering Death” are bigger and feel drawn in part from acts like The Sword and Baroness, delivered with a sharp edge. It’s a fascinating blend, and the recording on Into Oblivion lets it shine with a palpable band-in-the-room sensibility and stage-style energy, while still allowing enough breadth for a build like that in the finale “Beyond the End” to pay off the record as a whole. Capable craft, a sound on its way to being their own, a turquoise vinyl pressing, and a pedigree to boot — there’s nothing more I would ask of Into Oblivion. It feels like an opening salvo for a longer-term progression and I hope it is precisely that.
The violence implied in the title “Regurgitated Ambition Consuming Itself” takes the form of a harsh wall of noise drone that, once it starts, continues to unfurl for the just-under-eight-minute duration of the first of two pieces on Büzêm‘s more simply named Here EP. The Portland, Maine, solo art project of bassist/anythingelse-ist Finn has issued a range of exploratory outings, mostly EPs and experiments put to tape, and that modus very much suits the avant vibe throughout Here, which is markedly less caustic in the more rumbling “In an Attempt to Become the Creator” — presumably about Jackson Roykirk — the 10 minutes of which are more clearly the work of a standalone bass guitar, but play out with a sense of the human presence behind, as perhaps was the intention. Here‘s stated purpose is meditative if disaffected, Finn turning mindfulness into an already-in-progress armageddon display, and fair enough, but the found recording at the end, or captured footsteps, whatever it is, relate intentions beyond the use of a single instrument. Not ever going to be universally accessible, nonetheless pushing the kind of boundaries of what’s-a-song that need to be pushed.
Can’t mess with this kind of heavy rock and roll. The fuzz runs thick, the groove is loose (not sloppy), and the action is go from start to finish. Electric Mountain‘s second LP, Valley Giant digs on classic desert-style heavy vibes, with “Vulgar Planet” riffing on Kyuss and Fu Manchu only after “Desert Ride” has dug headfirst into Nebula via Black Rainbows and cuts like “Outlanders” and the hell-yes-wah-bass of big-nodder “Morning Grace” have set the stage for stoner and rock, by, for and about being what it is. Picking highlights, it might be “A Fistful of Grass” for the angular twists of fuzz in the chorus, but “Vulgar Planet” and the penultimate acoustic cut “At Last Everything” both make a solid case ahead of the eight-plus-minute instrumental closing jam “A Thousand Miles High.” The band’s 2017 self-titled debut (also on Electric Valley Records) was a gem as well, and if they can get some forward momentum going on their side after Valley Giant, playing shows, etc., they’d be well placed at the head of the increasingly crowded Mexico City underground.
Also stylized all-caps with punctuation — perhaps a voice commanding: HUSH. — Hudson, New York, five-piece Hush conjure seven songs and 56 minutes of alternately sprawling and oppressive atmospheric sludge on their third full-length, The Pornography of Ruin, and if you take that to mean the quiet parts are spaced and the heavy parts are crushing, well, that’s true too, but not exclusively the case. Amid lyrical poetry, melodic ranging, slamming rhythms — “There Can Be No Forgiveness Without the Shedding of Blood” walks by and waves, its hand bloody — and harsh shouts and screams, Hush shove, pull, bite and chew the consciousness of their listener, with the 12-minute “By This You Are Truly Known” pulling centerpiece duty with mostly whispers and ambience in a spread-out midsection, bookended by more slow-churning pummel. Followed by the shorter “And the Love of Possession is a Disease with Them,” the keyboard-as-strings “The Sound of Kindness in the Voice” and the likewise raging-till-it-isn’t-then-when-it-is-again closer “At Night We Dreamed of Those We Were Stolen From,” the consumption is complete, and The Pornography of Ruin challenges its audience with the weight of its implications and tones alike. And for whatever it’s worth, I saw these guys in Brooklyn a few years back and they fucking destroyed. They’ve expanded the sound a bit since then, but this record is a solid reminder of that force.
Posted in Questionnaire on May 9th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Jason Ingalls of Echo Response
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I try not to define it inasmuch as I try to get to where I think any piece wants to go naturally. I’m not married to one specific genre or sound so I’m happy to throw it all in there in some way, whether that be with instruments themselves or musically aesthetic choices. I like mixing disparate elements like dub bass and chill Sonic Youth guitars divided by Yes by way of Brazil just to see what I can find. Something could sound like King Crimson meets Jimmy Buffett but the underlying rhythm might be based on my old phone number. The important thing is to just make the stuff. Get it out there. Someone will like it.
As far as how it all came to be, after years of tapping on things with pencils and playing air guitar incessantly, I got my first drum set at age 10, started playing guitar at 15. Even back then I was into very different things like Jane’s Addiction, Anthrax, Bob Marley, Nanci Griffith, Spyro Gyra, Andrew Lloyd Webber. I’ve never really tried to stay in one spot, musically speaking, so wherever I’m at is a point along the way. I feel like when I look back at my writing I can see patterns of influence, when certain doors opened, where different phases and obsessions began or ended. I’ve never wanted to work on one sound to perfection. I’ve always wanted to explore different sounds and let that influence me in whatever way it may.
Describe your first musical memory.
Seeing the Van Halen “So This is Love” live clip from Oakland Coliseum when I was like five. I knew right away that that’s all I wanted to do in life. I remember just being glued to the tv in awe. Been a fan ever since so when I found out the brothers were mixed race of Asian descent like me, as a kid it just made me identify with them even more because I grew up in a very white town and got picked on a lot for being different. Like many of us, I cried like a baby when Eddie died.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
I’m from the east coast and one time on tour I woke up in the morning and we were in the Redwood Forest. We drove in after a gig really late at night so we didn’t really see much. When I opened my eyes first thing in the morning, I just couldn’t believe it. Endor actually exists and I was there! Leaving that place was hard.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
That time I survived a round of layoffs at my desk job last year, I suppose.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
I feel like the more I progress as an artist the more types of things I want to explore creatively so it just feeds on itself. Hopefully that leads towards more opportunities to release even more music play and with other people. I believe there are more creatively open-minded people wanting hear new music, wanting to collaborate and just generally support each other than ever before. That’s a best of times scenario. Other times when you progress you’re like, shit, I have so far to go before whatever I’m working on is deemed listenable. Either that or it just leads to you to simply ignoring all other real world responsibilities until it’s uh-oh time.
How do you define success?
If I’m happy with where I’m at, personally and/or creatively. It always helps to have the approval and support of others, but if you expect nothing in return from your art, everything positive thing that happens after it’s created is a success. Being ok with who you are as a person is the ultimate success. You can always work toward goals and things on top of that. You do have to figure out if you’re an asshole or not from an objective standpoint though. I’d start there. I usually do.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Legends of the Fall.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
A Tele that feels like a Les Paul with the Jaguar style chimey bridge. I don’t use the tremelo arm ever, so there doesn’t need to be an enormous cavity carved out for that. Rosewood fingerboard, darker natural finish but not a sunburst or fade, black oyster mother of pearl inlays and pickguard. Either that or lights on effects pedals that don’t blind me.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Whether art is expression, a reaction, catharsis, proof of concept, anything in between, its most essential function is to just be whatever vessel the creator needed at the time. The end result isn’t always the point. Of course, from the other side of it in viewing said art, everyone is correct in whatever assessment they have of it, and they are all equally wrong as well. So for me, the most essential thing is for the art to exist at all because as it does, it performs the task that it is meant to for the artist. The rest is all squiggly lines on a white screen debating the nature of things.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
The Celtics raising another banner in the rafters.
Posted in Questionnaire on March 4th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Neil Collins of Murcielago
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I play bass, which is the union of rhythm and melody in a rock band that acts as the foundation to the sound. I also the singer so I’m the de facto messenger I guess. Both those musical duties reflect what I do for the band outside of writing and performing as well. I do most of the band business and public facing stuff. I think every band has that one person who deals with all the extra-musical duties. That’s me in Murcielago.
Describe your first musical memory.
My father was a working jazz musician for his entire life, and I grew up going to his gigs from the time I was born. The first actual space in time I can remember was him playing at a dockside restaurant when I was three and having a seagull make off with my grilled cheese while I sat side stage watching him and his band play.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
There are many, many moments onstage that come to mind, but I think my favorite memory to date was just a run of the mill rehearsal soon after Ian Ross joined Murcielago, right after we recorded our first release and were preparing to play in the Boston Rock-N-Roll Rumble.. The sound in the space was that amazing air-moving low tremble, and everyone was playing their best and just grinning and grinning. You could feel the notes and beats like hits to the body.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
My wife was diagnosed with cancer at a young age soon after our kid was born. I’m an athiest, but at the time she was getting treated I really wanted the comfort of faith. As much as I tried I just couldn’t believe in the construct of a christian higher power. I’m not sure this answer makes sense. She’s been cancer-free for a long time, and I thank science.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
I think it leads to self-awareness. It can lead to the power to reinvent yourself as well.
How do you define success?
Not having to worry about rehearsal space rent.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
When I was 17, me and a friend dosed one weekend night. We were wandering around the town I grew up in tripping and were the first people to discover a burning truck in the woods. Inside were three of our classmates. One was dead and on fire pinned in the cab. I can still hear/smell it like I’m right there in my memory.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I’d like to design and build a wood and cane lounge chair. My wife and I buy and sell Scandinavian mid-century furniture, and I’d like to try to make a design I’ve been sketching that owes a lot to the aesthetics of the Scandinavian masters.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
It is to trigger emotion.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
My wife and I just signed a construction loan to build a house and barn. We’re building a farm compound so she can go big with Nigerian goat breeding. We have 6 pregnant goats right now on one acre. We’re building on 23 acres nearby. Hopefully we’ll be moving in at the end of the summer.
Welcome to the penultimate day of the Summer 2020 Quarterly Review. I can only speak for myself, but I know it’s been a crazy couple months on this end, and I imagine whatever end you’re on — unless and probably even if you have a lot of money — it’s been the same there as well. Yet, it was no problem compiling 50 records to review this week, so if there’s a lesson to be taken from it all, it would seem to be that art persists. We may still be painting on cave walls when it comes to the arc of human evolution, but at least that’s something.
Have a great day and listen to great music.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Katatonia, City Burials
Like their contemporaries in My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost, the latter-day period of work from Sweden’s Katatonia veers back toward some measure of direct heaviness, as City Burials showcases in cuts like “Rein,” “Heart Set to Divide” and “Behind the Blood,” but more than either of those others mentioned, the Stockholm outfit refuse to forsake the melody and progressivism they’ve undertaken with their sound in the name of doing so. By the time they get to “Untrodden” at the end of the album’s 50-minute/11-song run, they’ve run a gamut from dark electronica to progressive-styled doom and back again, and with the founding duo of guitarist Anders Nyström and vocalist Jonas Renkse at the helm of the songwriting, they are definitive in their approach and richly emotive; a melancholy that is as identifiable in their songs as it is in the bands working under their influence. Their first work in four years, City Burials is an assurance that Katatonia are in firm ownership and command of all aspects of their sound. As they approach their 30th year, they continue to move forward. That’s a special band.
Boasting production, mixing and percussion from The Golden Grass‘ Adam Kriney, Marmalade Knives‘ debut album, Amnesia, is a delight of freaky-but-not-overblown heavy psychedelia. Oh, it’s headed far, far out, but as the opening narration and the later drones of second cut “Rivuleting” make plain, they might push, but they’re not trying to shove, if you know what I mean. The buzz in “Best-Laid Plans” doesn’t undercut the warmth of the improvised-seeming solo, and likewise, “Rebel Coryell” is a mellow drifter that caps side A with a graceful sense of wandering the soundscape of its own making. The vibe gets spacey on “Xayante,” and “Ez-Ra” touches on a funkier swing before seeming to evolve into light as one does, and the 10-minute “Astrology Domine” caps with noise and a jammed out feel that underscores the outbound mood of the proceedings as a whole. Some of the pieces feel like snippets cut from longer jams, and they may or may not be just that, but though it was recorded in three separate locations, Amnesia draws together well and flows easily, inviting the listener to do the same.
Edinburgh’s King Witch toe the line between classic metal and doom, but whatever you want to call them, just make sure you don’t leave out the word “epic.” The sweeping solo and soaring vocals on the opening title-track set the stage on their second LP, the hour-long Body of Light, and as much mastery as the band showed on their 2018 debut, Under the Mountain (review here), vocalist Laura Donnelly, guitarist Jamie Gilchrist, bassist Rory Lee and drummer Lyle Brown lay righteous waste to lofty expectations and bask in grandiosity on “Of Rock and Stone” and the linear-moving “Solstice I – She Burns,” the payoff of which is a high point of the album in its layered shred. Pieces like “Witches Mark” and “Order From Chaos” act as confirmation of their Euro-fest-ready fist-pumpery, and closer “Beyond the Black Gate” brings some atmosphere before its own headbang-worthy crescendo. Body of Light is a reminder of why you wanted to be metal in the first place.
Eminently listenable and repeat-worthy, Glass Parallels‘ debut LP, Aisle of Light, nonetheless maintains an experimentalist flair. The solo-project of Justin Pinkerton (Golden Void, Futuropaco), covers a swath of ground from acid folk to psych-funk to soul vibes, at times bordering on shoegaze but seeming to find more expressive energy in centerpiece “Asphyxiate” and the airy capper “Blood and Battlegrounds” than any sonic portrayal of apathy would warrant. United by keys, pervasive guitar weirdness and Pinkerton‘s at-times-falsetto vocals, usually coated in reverb as they are, Aisle of Light brings deceptive depth for being a one-man production. Its production is spacious but still raw enough to give the drums an earthy sound as they anchor the synth-laden “March and April,” which is probably fortunate since otherwise the song would be liable to float off and not return. One way or another, the songs stand out too much to really be hypnotic, but they’re certainly fun to follow.
Stonework is the self-aware debut full-length from Portland, Maine, trio Thems That Wait, and it shoulders itself between clenched-teeth metallic aggression and heavier fuzz rock. They’re not the first to tread such ground and they know it, but “Sidekick” effectively captures Scissorfight-style groove, and “Kick Out” is brash enough in its 1:56 to cover an entire record’s worth of burl. Interludes “Digout” and “Vastcular” provide a moment to catch your breath, which is appreciated, but when what they come back with is the sure-fisted “Paragon” or a song like “Shitrograde,” it really is just a moment. They close with “Xmortis,” which seems to reference Evil Dead II in its lyrics, which is as good as anything else, but from “Sleepie Hollow” onward, guitarist/vocalist Craig Garland, bassist Mat Patterson and drummer Branden Clements find their place in the dudely swing-and-strike of riffs, crash and snarl, and they do so with a purely Northeastern attitude. This is the kind of show you might get kicked at.
Complexity extends to all levels of Sojourner‘s third album and Napalm Records debut, Premonitions, in that not only does the band present eight tracks and 56 minutes of progressive and sprawling progressive black metal, varied in craft and given a folkish undercurrent by Chloe Bray‘s vocals and tin whistle, but also the sheer fact that the five-piece outfit made the album in at least five different countries. Recording remotely in Sweden, New Zealand, Scotland and Italy, they mixed/mastered in Norway, and though one cringes at the thought of the logistical nightmare that might’ve presented, Sojourner‘s resultant material is lush and encompassing, a tapestry of blackened sounds peppered with clean and harsh singing — Emilio Crespo handles the screams — keyboards, and intricate rhythms behind sprawling progressions of guitar. At the center of the record, “Talas” and “Fatal Frame” (the shortest song and the longest) make an especially effective pair one into the other, varied in their method but brought together by viciously heavy apexes. The greatest weight, though, might be reserved for closer “The Event Horizon,” which plods where it might otherwise charge and brings a due sense of largesse to the finale.
The order of the day is sprawl on Udyat‘s recorded-live sophomore LP, Oro, as the Argentinian outfit cast a wide berth over heavy rock and terrestrial psych, the 13-minute “Sangre de Oro” following shorter opener “Los Picos de Luz Eterna” (practically an intro at a bit over six minutes) with a gritty flourish to contrast the tonal warmth that returns with the melodic trance-induction at the start of “Los últimos.” That song — the centerpiece of the five-track outing — tops 15 minutes and makes its way into a swell of fuzz with according patience, proceeding through a second stage of lumbering plod before a stretch of noise wash leads pack to the stomp. The subsequent “Después de los Pasos, el Camino Muere” is more ferocious by its end and works in some similar ground, and closer “Nacimiento” seems to loose itself in a faster midsection before returning to its midtempo roll. Oro borders on cosmic doom with its psychedelic underpinnings and quiet stretches, but its movement feels ultimately more like walking than floating, if that makes any sense.
To anyone who might suggest that extreme metal cannot also be forward-thinking, Bismarck submit the thoughtful bludgeon of Oneiromancer, a five-song/35-minute aesthetic blend that draws from doom, death, hardcore and sundry other metals, while keeping its identity in check through taut rhythm and atmospheric departures. Following the chants of opening intro “Tahaghghogh Resalat,” the Chris Fielding-produced follow-up to Bismarck‘s 2018 debut, Urkraft (review here), showcases an approach likewise pummeling and dynamic, weighted in ambience and thud alike. “Oneiromancer” itself starts with blastbeats and a plundering intensity before breaking into a more open midsection, but “The Seer” is absolutely massive. Despite being shorter than either the title-track or “Hara,” both of which top nine minutes, and closer “Khthon” underscores the blood-boiling tension cast throughout with one last consuming plod. Fucking raging. Fucking awesome. Pure sonic catharsis. Salvation through obliteration. If these are dreams being divined as the title hints, the mind is a limitless and terrifying place. Which, yes.
I won’t say it’s seamless or intended to be, but as Albuquerque, New Mexico, two-piece The Gral Brothers make their initial move on Caravan East between cinematic Americana and industrial brood, samples of dialogue on “Cactus Man” and violin in the seven-minute soundscaper “In Die Pizzeria” seem to draw together both a wistfulness and a paranoia of the landlocked. Too odd to fall in line with the Morricone-worship of Cali’s Spindrift, “Crowbar” brings Spaghetti West and desert dub together with a confidence that makes it seem like a given pairing despite the outwardly eerie vibes and highly individualized take, and “Santa Sleeves” is beautiful to its last, even if the lone bell jingle is a bit much, while “Silva Lanes” pushes even further than did “Circuit City” into mechanized experimental noisemaking. They end with the birdsong-inclusive “Ode to Marge,” leaving one to wonder whether it’s sentiment or cynicism being expressed. Either way, it’s being expressed in a way not quite like anything else, which is an accomplishment all on its own.
When you’re at the show and the set ends, Flamingo Graphics is the CD you go buy at the merch table. It’s as simple as that. Recorded this past March over the course of two days, the debut album from Floridian foursome Astral Glide is raw to the point of being barebones, bootleg room-mic style, but the songwriting and straightforward purposes of the group shine through. They’re able to shift structures and mood enough to keep things from being too staid, but they’re never far off from the next heavy landing, as “Devastation” and the closer “Forever” show in their respective payoffs, that latter going all out with a scream at the end, answering back to the several others that show up periodically. While their greatest strength is in the mid-paced shove of rockers like “Space Machine” and “Scarlett” and the speedier “Workhorse,” there are hints of broader intentions on Flamingo Graphics, though they too are raw at this point. Very much a debut, but still one you pick up when the band finishes playing. You might not even wait until the end of the show. Meet them back at the table, and so on.
The ongoing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, the varied responses of publics and governments worldwide, and the disruption to lives and livelihoods has reached a scale that is unprecedented. Whatever the month or the month after or the future itself brings, more than one generation will bear the mark of having lived through this time, and art, artists, and those who provide the support system to help uphold them have all been affected.
In continuing the Days of Rona feature, it remains pivotal to give a varied human perspective on these events and these responses. It is important to remind ourselves that whether someone is devastated or untouched, sick or well, we are all thinking, feeling people with lives we want to live again, whatever renewed shape they might take from this point onward. We all have to embrace a new normal. What will that be and how will we get there?
Thanks to all who participate. To read all the Days of Rona coverage, click here. — JJ Koczan
Days of Rona: Neil Collins of Murcielago (Portland, Maine)
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How have you been you dealing with this crisis as a band? As an individual? What effect has it had on your plans or creative processes?
We in Murcielago have been completely dormant as we figure how to be a band in this new normal. We have a new record titled Casualties completed, and were originally looking at a mid-spring release. Now we are unsure when we will be able to get vinyl pressed, and whether it is worthwhile to self-release something with no gigs on the horizon to sell them at. The few shows we have booked are already postponed until who knows when [UPDATE: The CD has been pressed and will go on sale in September].
As an individual, I have been working straight through since early March. I run a boatyard as my day job and have 20 employees. It’s been a daily worry that by being open I might put one of my people in inadvertent contact with the virus. So far, all have been well. I’m pretty spent by the stress of it by the end of the day, so not much riff writing is happening. When I do get a chance to play I usually sit with an acoustic guitar in some open tuning. Maybe our next record will sound like Fairport Convention….
How do you feel about the public response to the outbreak where you are? From the government response to the people around you, what have you seen and heard from others?
The response from the state of Maine has been very proactive and measured in my opinion. I’ve been impressed with the state officials and their message to us Mainers. The general public seemed initially to embrace the guidelines fully, but as time has passed and the economic toll is being more widely felt many are pushing back and opening when not allowed etc. In my work I see customers who disregard all of our guidelines mandated by the state and I’ve needed to address the issue. It’s not a good position to be in. I do feel lucky to have been at work all through this, though.
What do you think of how the music community specifically has responded? How do you feel during this time? Are you inspired? Discouraged? Bored? Any and all of it?
I have watched many streaming events either by locals or national acts and really appreciate people putting those performances out there for us all. It is encouraging to see people staying on top of their craft while we wait for the what next.
I worry for all the great venues that may never open again after things get back to what we knew before, and what that will do for touring bands and small labels that support them. I feel both inspired and discouraged depending on what minute you ask me, I guess.
I really look forward to playing with the band again and feeling the walls shake. I always do my best writing with us all in the room together. It’s been a huge part of my life for a very long time.
What is the one thing you want people to know about your situation, either as a band, or personally, or anything? What is your new normal? What have you learned from this experience, about yourself, your band, or anything?
On a personal level I feel so grateful for my family and our home, our life in Maine and my close friendship with the other guys in the band. I’ve had many opportunities to appreciate the simple things that pass unnoticed in less trying times. As a band, we look forward to regrouping and making the air move again. We are rearranging our rehearsal space to allow for proper distancing so we can get back to playing again. I could really use that.
[Ogre release Thrice is Strong on Oct. 25 through Cruz Del Sur Music. Stream the album in full on the player above.]
Though their tenure has been interrupted by periods of inactivity and on-again-off-again hiatus, 2019 marks 20 years of Ogre, who celebrate their doom-meets-classic-heavy-rock with the new LP Thrice as Strong. It is their first offering since 2014’s The Last Neanderthal (review here), and as the Maine-based trio of bassist/vocalist Ed Cunningham, guitarist Ross Markonish and drummer Will Broadbent dig into the seven-track/43-minute push-pull of early Sabbathian bluesy purity, they’re likewise unafraid to add touches of ’80s proto-NWOBHM to songs like the centerpiece “Judgement Day” or to find their way along a Motörhead-style swing-and-thrust in the early cuts “Hive Mind” and “Big Man” while saving broader-reaching fare for side B’s longer tracks “Blood of Winter” and the closer “Cyber-Czar,” both over eight minutes.
Thrice as Strong, the full title on the cover of which — with art by Will Broadbent; spoiler alert: their heads are on pikes — is listed as In a Doomed World They Must Remain Thrice as Strong, is the three-piece’s first release through Cruz del Sur Music and though their work has always been concerned with a kind of primitivism across releases like their 2003 debut, Dawn of the Proto-Man (reissue review here), 2006’s Seven Hells (reissue review here) and 2008’s Plague of the Planet (review here), their latest collection finds them no less engaged with the present we’re living in. Certainly there’s plenty of fodder there for doom, and Ogre duly revel in it, with cuts like “The Future,” “Hive Mind,” and even “Cyber-Czar” taking on the modern age and its many futuristic and technological horrors/wonders — the latter with a particular Dehumanizer bent in its later moments closing out the album — even as “Blood of Winter” and the penultimate “King of the Wood” tap into Ogre‘s more classic fare of pulp-style epic comic books and so on. In other words, on Thrice as Strong, Ogre delve into both kinds of lyrics: sci-fi and fantasy. They are no less at home in the one than the other.
That leaves “Big Man” as an outlier, thematically, and maybe it is. I haven’t had the benefit of a full lyric sheet, those familiar with Ogre‘s past albums might consider “Big Man” something of a spiritual successor to “Nine Princes in Amber” from The Last Neanderthal. It is the shortest track on Thrice as Strong at just under four minutes, and the purest of the boogies on offer as well. “The Future” opens melodic and catchy in trad-metallic grandeur — at least relatively — touching on some Iron Maiden influence in Cunningham‘s bassline beneath Markonish‘s solo, and Broadbent adds to the momentum early by double-timing on the hi-hat during the verse, and “Hive Mind” has its shove in the first half before hitting the brakes in the second and picking back up to round out. “Big Man,” by contrast, holds its speedier pace for the duration and is a standout from the surrounding cuts, much as the aforementioned piece from the prior album was in its own context. I don’t think the one song is a direct answer to the other — different themes, different sound — but perhaps on some level manifesting a similar impulse in songwriting toward self-contradiction and flying in the face of “doom needs to be slow” or other such ultimately unnecessary genre tenets.
One way or the other, Ogre sound like they’re having a blast there and elsewhere. Cunningham is a vocalist for all or at least most seasons, singing clean, shouting, screaming occasionally, all with personality, a touch of echo and a classic feel, but at the same time he comes across as natural even in layers on “The Future,” and never sounds like he’s taking the proceedings too seriously, which would only imperil the album as a whole in terms of atmosphere. Recording-wise, part of Ogre‘s traditionalism has always been a relatively barebones production style. They’ve never veered too far from presenting themselves with something close to their live sound, and for what they’re playing that’s always worked. It does on Thrice as Strong too. That would seem to put extra pressure on Cunningham as a singer in fronting the band not only to carry that energy forward to the audience hearing the record, but simply in pulling off changes like those of “Judgement Day” where he goes from growling out one line to soaring in the next, and it seems to be no challenge whatsoever for him. That is only fortunate for all parties involved.
The shift into “Blood of Winter” represents something of a sea change in Thrice as Strong — it’s very likely the start of side B — with a broader and more doomly scope, but Ogre excel at this kind of storytelling, and together with the swing-and-nodder “King of the Wood,” “Blood of Winter” very much plays to their strengths and reminds of how underrated they’ve always been. A languid groove in “King of the Wood” turns to shuffle late and fades to silence ahead of “Cyber-Czar,” signaling a marked turn as Broadbent‘s drums lead the way on a fade-in that’s particularly militaristic. The closer itself is seven-plus minutes long, but there’s a robot-voice spoken part at the end and a howling sirens and other sounds of conflict over the fading final hits, wind and distant explosions, etc., to round out the atmosphere following the track itself, which is a fitting if deceptively speedy summation of the crux of the record.
Of course, no matter where they go, the underlying message of Thrice is Strong is the same, and caveman battles or futuristic warfare, that’s ultimately what the album is about. It’s about them — the band — together. It’s about Ogre looking back on two decades as a group and not just knowing who they are as a band, as one would expect to be a largely settled issue by anyone’s fifth record — at least as much as any band ever settles that issue — but also appreciating the special aspects of the whole that each member brings. The theme of Thrice as Strong may be struggle in terms of the lyrical narrative, but the album is little short of a commemoration of their methods and their accomplishments as songwriters. The arrival of a new Ogre album, any Ogre album, is noteworthy — it’s just not something that happens every day — but with Thrice as Strong, the acknowledgement of a special occasion seems to extend to all levels. Cunningham, Markonish, Broadbent. Ogre. That’s the story here.
