Posted in Whathaveyou on November 7th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Salem’s The Freqs have been pushing toward a debut full-length for a couple years now, so as they unveil the new single “Tag Maggot” with word that their first album is on the way for 2026, this indeed strikes as good news. No release date yet or any such formalities, but if they told you it was March would you be like, “No way that’s too crazy long.” It’s their first record, and by all accounts that I’ve seen, they’re putting it out themselves. These things take time to coordinate.
I feel you on the impatience though, and it seems appropriate for a restless elbow-thrower like “Tag Maggot” as well, with its sub-three-minute run and the heaping dose of crunch dealt out thereby. Here. Go dance with your friends. Awesome:
THE FREQS: Salem, Massachusetts Psych/Noise Rock Trio Drops “Tag Maggot” Single; Debut LP To See Release In 2026
Salem, Massachusetts’ raging noise/psych rock crew THE FREQS present the gnarled new single “Tag Maggot.”
In August, THE FREQS dropped their first new music since the 2023-released Poachers EP with the new single, “Jellyfish Cadaver,” featuring Nicholas Pentabona of Bedtimemagic on guest vocals. The band now delivers their second new single of the year with “Tag Maggot.” The track was produced, recorded, and mixed by Alex Allinson at The Bridge Sound & Stage in Cambridge (Lesotho, Miracle Blood, Bedtimemagic), mastered by Keith Gentile at Labyrinth Audio in Peabody (Fórn, Hellhorse, American Midnight), and completed with artwork by Ellis Roundy of The P.A.’s.
THE FREQS’ guitarist/vocalist Seth Crowell states, “‘Tag Maggot’ is generally about how it feels to work a shit job that barely pays for rent. How uneven the exchange of your time for a meager living can be. The title and artwork are meant to represent life’s impermanence.”
Stream THE FREQS’ “Tag Maggot” at Bandcamp RIGHT HERE, and watch for the song to hit all digital streaming services at midnight, linked HERE:https://thefreqs.hearnow.com/tag-maggot-2
THE FREQS will deliver their long-awaited debut LP in the first half of 2026, with further details to drop early in the year.
In the meantime, the band continues to shiv eardrums across the Northeast, joining their allies in Miracle Blood on stage in Worcester tomorrow as the new single drops.
THE FREQS Live: 1/31/2026 Auspicious Brew – Dover, NH w Knock Over City, Cold Signal Fires
Formed in 2019, THE FREQS trio sees guitarist/vocalist Seth Crowell, bassist/vocalist Ian Mandly, and drummer Zack Fierman crafting a distinctive sound at the intersection of genres, taking influence from bands like Melvins, Queens Of The Stone Age, and The Jesus Lizard to deliver loud, riff-heavy, fuzzed-out, noise/psych/stoner-infused rock. Nominated for Best Rock Artist Of The Year at the Boston Music Awards in 2021, the power trio continues to lash eardrums with their bombastic live set across New England and beyond.
The Freqs: Seth Crowell – Guitar/vox Ian Mandly – Bass/backing vox Zack Fierman – Drums/backing vox
Posted in Reviews on October 10th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
This isn’t the end of the Quarterly Review — it wraps up on Monday — but it is the end of the week, and I’m ready for it. The music’s been good though and that’s something of a salvation for times where it seems like the strange and terrifying are in competition with each other to make life more awful. That doesn’t end on the weekend, of course, but at least I’ll have two days to put together the last post of this QR, and when you’ve been writing 10 reviews a day all week, half that counts as respite. Something like it, anyhow.
So before we wrap up the week with whatever on earth I’ll actually pick to close it out (any requests?), here’s one more batch, with my thanks for your valuable time and attention. Hope you find something cool.
Quarterly Review #51-60:
P+A+G+E+S, No More Can Be Done
No More Can Be Done is the debut album from South Africa’s P+A+G+E+S, but the Cape Town trio spent five years in the 2010s together as Morning Pages, so that their first record would hold so much intention behind it shouldn’t necessarily be a shocker. The reason behind the name change? An apparent change in their project, which is to say the band got way, way darker, way, way heavier and nasty in that sharp-toothed-thing-you-can’t-see-but-you-know-is-there-also-there-are-no-lights kind of way. The 15-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “The Passage” leads the way down into the bleak, extreme sludge that follows, but as the careful linear build of “Shine On” later demonstrates, P+A+G+E+S are more methodical than the noise and outwardly chaotic feel would seem to indicate. Atmosphere plays a central role in what they do, and that’s consistent from their run as Morning Pages, but No More Can Be Done is about what’s lurking and lurching in the bleakness.
Following the intro “Chasm,” Bask launch their fourth album, The Turning, with minor-key mystique and subsequent crush via “In the Heat of the Dying Sun” and “The Traveler,” piling triumph upon triumph in a way that is indicative of the progressive songwriting at work. “The Cloth” is slower, but neither less weighted nor less gorgeous for that, and as “Dig My Heels” works in some of the Southern/Americana pastoralism the Asheville, North Carolina, outfit have always been known for, the melody proves a standout, setting up another life-affirming payoff in the seven-minute “Unwound,” the mellower turn for the build of “Long Lost Light” and the somewhat wistfully twanging undertones of the title-track, which closes with grace and poise rare enough in heavy anything. Clearly a band who have worked to and been successful in transcending their root influences, and an identity that’s been hard-forged over their decade-plus. The Turning sees them actively bring their approach to another level.
A 15-minute two-songer from Lima, Peru’s Matus, as the psychedelic weirdo sometimes-cultists of long standing offer “El Aullido” (8:45) and “Planetario” (6:55) as their first outing since 2021’s Espejismos II (review here). Both processions — and they are that — feel built out from jams, but the recordings have guitarist Manolo Garfias and keyboardist Richard Nossar (both also alternate bass duties) at their core, along with Roberto Soto‘s drumming, Veronik‘s theremin in the deep-freakout section of “Planetario,” Úrsula Inga‘s vocals on “El Aullido,” and so on with other guests (including Camilo Uriarte, who co-produced and mixed, along solo artist Chino Burga on guitar, and Cristóbal Pérez on sax for “Planetario”) adding to the movement. “El Aullido” pairs shoegaze with a roll informed by South American folk, perfect for Inga‘s vocals, while “Planetario” carries more of its melody in the keyboards and surrounding ambience. It’s a welcome check-in from Matus as they celebrate the 20th anniversary of the band.
Where New England bizarropsych rockers November’s Fire‘s 2024 album, Through a Mournful Song, took an approach to its material like some of earliest Monster Magnet‘s underproduced kitchen-sink quirk, the two-song EP 2025 presents two different faces, and that turns out to be because the songs included are over 30 years old. “2025” and “Somnia” — the latter which brings in original guitarist Greg Brosseau for a guest spot that includes clean lead vocals — were allegedly written in the early 1990s, and if you told me the root of the title-track was a teenaged thrash riff, they make that easy enough to believe in the modernized, thickened chug of the song as it stands now. That is to say, they’ve brought it into the sludgy experimentalist context of the work now, but it remains dark. As it inevitably would. “Somnia” is shorter, has some backing chants, and feels meditative even as the guitar holds to its restlessness. Weird band staying weird, screwing around with their old stuff and getting something out of it. Sometimes an experiment works.
Bergen, Norway, four-piece Goatmilker don’t really leave you with much choice other than to call them progressive, though that hardly says boo about the reach of their self-titled debut, which is as much psychedelic punk as it is black metal in its rhythms, but remains a work of heavy rock and roll nonetheless, grooving, catchy on “Devils on My Tail,” aggro-weird on “Time… Tearing Apart,” all-in on tonal overwhelm for “Mountains” and cheekily grandiose in the finale “Storm” only after they’ve seen fit to take on Journey‘s “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart),” which given the goes-where-it-wants succession leading up to it hardly feels out of place at all. While at no risk of overstaying its welcome at eight songs and 34 minutes, Goatmilker does make for a challenging listen at times, but the rewards for actually paying attention to what they’re doing are worth whatever effort is required. That is to say, engage actively for best results.
If Grin sound a little different on Incantation, a two-track 7″ with a digital bonus cut in the flatteningly heavy “Echoes in the Static,” that might be because the duo of drummer/vocalist Jan Oberg and bassist Sabine Oberg didn’t record themselves as usual, but instead tracked live at Wave Akademie in their native Berlin with Anton Urban (Jan Oberg co-produced, mixed and mastered, so still had a hand for sure). So, rather than the studio leftovers one might expect mere months after the band’s last full-length, Acid Gods (review here), the songs may have their origins as such but arise from different circumstances. There’s some more of a wash to “Incantation” and “The Color of Ghosts,” and “Echoes in the Static” is consumed by its titular noise toward its finish, but “The Color of Ghosts” dares some melodic vocals amid all that bombast, and as usual, Grin forge their own take on metal, sludge and intense atmospheric heavy.
A collection of bangers on the second LP through Glory or Death Records from San Diego rockers Mezzoa, TON 618 plays out over the course of a taut 13 songs and 39 minutes, careening desert style in “Hard to Hear,” punking up the groove in “Chump” before basking in Sabbath worship for “Wasted Universe” (think “Symptom” thereof), building crunching tension in “Uncle Cho” only to release it in the second half of the song with a grunge melody, carrying that melody into “Smiles for Everyone,” and then slamming all that momentum into the fuzzed radness of the lead tone and Alice in Chainsy vocal of “How You Been.” That’s not the end, I’m just less efficient than the band and so I’m running out of space. “Blessing” attains inner Nirvana while “Desert Snakes” sounds like it’s ready for a John Garcia guest spot, “Chachi Liberachi” echoes the sharper corners of “Wasted Universe,” “Goin’ Down” has that riff that every New York hardcore song ever (yes, all of them. don’t @ me.) has but goes somewhere completely different with it, and closer “How Are We” highlights the craft that’s let them do it all in the first place. Hey kid, you like rock music? Well get a load of this.
Beginning with its longest track in the nine-minute “Biting In,” Orsak:Oslo‘s Silt and Static finds the Norwegian/Swedish outfit somewhat outgrown from their dronier foundations, harnessing a psychedelia that moves with krautrocking purposes, while retaining the band’s previously-established ambient instrumentalist approach. “Days Adrift” is an even thicker roll, with ebbs and flows that give precedent to the shove that results in “Salt Stains,” which follows, while “Petals” dips momentarily into minimalism. But the story here is the fullness of sound, with pieces like the subdued-but-building “Resonance in Ash” or “Petals” in conversation with Pelican/Russian Circles-style heavy, while “The Onward Stride” and “Time Leak” bring prog more to the forefront and “Bread and Sink” lets the rumble bring it all together. In these ways, Silt and Static rewrites the story of Orsak:Oslo as a band, and their reach has never seemed so broad.
Modder, Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun
The hypnotic drone finish of “Type 27” that ends side A of Modder‘s second album, Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun, is just one way the band incorporate ambience as a key element in their trades between loud and quiet, tense and open, and crushing and spacious. These different sides come together in various combinations across the six cuts on the Belgian instrumentalist five-piece’s 41-minute run, which sets out in oppressive and blasting fashion with “Stone Eternal,” as heavy as whatever doom you want to put it next to and still able to hit with the precision of Gojira. The shorter “Mather” is more angular, glitchy and mirrored by “Chaoism” on the album’s second half, and though they lead off with their longest track (immediate points) in “Stone Eternal,” the heavy djenty chug that comes to fruition on “In the Sun” is unmistakable as anything but the closer, building, receding, tossing in what sure sounds like a human voice chanting and surging in intensity to round out with a keyboard-overlaid bludgeoning. By then you’re pretty much pulp anyway.
Past Warnings of Present Futures tells you a lot about its point of view in the title, but electronic experimentalists Futuredrugs push the meaning deeper still, opening with a barely recognizable take on “What a Wonderful World” with “Skies of Blue” and revamping Tom Waits‘ “Dirt in the Ground” on “…And the Gallows Groaned.” The cinematic, dark synth/programmed backdrop of these and the sampled “No Home” blur the line between originality and reinterpretation/manipulation, and I won’t claim to know whether pieces like “Ice Age Coming” or “When the Last Tree Falls” are similarly sourced, but maybe. In any case, in a time when remembering things like “nothing matters anyway” is a comfort, there is space for the open-minded listener to dwell among these seven tracks, which when taken as a whole succeed in embodying the apocalyptic hellscape of recent years. I don’t know if they’re offering sanctuary so much as a snapshot, but as that, it sure feels like an accurate depiction.
Buzzard‘s new EP, Everything is Not Going to Be Alright, will be released on Nov. 7. For Christopher Thomas Elliott, the project’s sole denizen, it (probably?) tops off a busy year that began with a full-length release called Satiricus Doomicus Americus (review here) and that this Spring brought new levels of tonal weight and metallic intention to the established ‘doom folk’ sound — Doom Folk (review here) was also Buzzard‘s mostly-acoustic-guitar-based 2024 debut — and in Spring, another full album, Mean Bone (review here), followed. That’s three records in about 13 months’ time from the Massachusetts-based solo outfit, and with the seven tracks/30 minutes of Everything is Not Going to Be Alright — fair enough for it to be billed as an EP since the other outings are longer, but it’s also still definitely longer than other full-length releases I’ve encountered in the last week — Elliott continues the thread of growing progressively heavier each time out, pushing himself to see how far into doom metal he can go while retaining the clear-voiced Americana aspect of his songwriting, which is likewise growing more malleable around a foundation in verse/chorus and (duh) folk traditionalism.
Whatever it’s billed as in your head-canon — it’s ‘short-album’ in mine, in part for the flow between songs and the implication of narrative cast across the lyrics to all of them. And if the title didn’t give it away, Everything is Not Going to Be Alright is themed around this troubled, fractured moment in United States history. Elliott has a relatable axe to grind with the future his generation was promised and that which has been realized, and beginning with “This Land is Your Land (Until it’s Not),” he lays bare grievances for redress, and whether it’s the role of corporations in fascism or the more personal appeal in “Fever Breaks” (video here), “Together we could save your farms, your hospitals, your schools/I’ll help you quit the cult of klepto-fascist rule,” before laying out a final regime-change riff, Elliott not only stands on the cliffside to summon Yog-Sothoth as “Screaming into the Void” posits but is a witness to the dismantling of the remaining post-Citizens-United vestiges of US democracy seemingly as it happens in maddening, overwhelming real-time. As “Doom Folk Fury” starts out its first, acoustic-led verse, “Ever since 2024, I don’t give a fuck no more,” the rest of the lyrics there (and no, the references don’t end with Clutch) and in the surrounding six pieces reveal that apathy as aspirational. If Elliott didn’t care deeply about his country’s present and future betrayal to the ideals it once touted, his response to it wouldn’t be so passionate.
And passion is a guiding principle here. It’s shown as a kind of fervency that extends to the arrangements of the songs themselves, which from the doomly lumber of “This Land is Your Land (Until it’s Not)” through the three-and-a-half-minute epic finale “Lunatic Lighthouse Keeper” — which becomes a kind of dark-hallucinatory response to everything else happening lyrically before it; an endgame of apocalyptic, swirling, still-melodic heavy metal depicting Lovecraftian universe-death and renewal; it’s also a new pinnacle for outward-facing heaviness in Buzzard‘s sound; atmosphere, impact and craft; it’s perfect because you don’t know what’s real, and while I’m run-on ranting I’ll tell you it’s among the best songs I’ve heard this year, easily, and not the first by Elliott on that list — can convey chaos but is never actually out of control. Elliott keeps a firm grip on his craft, and has enough distance from his subject to not get lost in his messaging. The songs vary accordingly, and on purpose. “Doom Folk Fury” picks up from its beginning with a cathartic sweep of a chorus and follows suit from the opener before it in utilizing a break-and-redirect bridge to foster depth of character, arrangement and narrative in the songs. Later, he’ll use more keys as well, but as “Doom Folk Fury” surges through its second hook (I’ve typed out the lyrics below, from memory; note the reference to “Cockroaches and Weed” from Doom Folk and the Satiricus LP) and passes the three-minute mark, it leaves distortion momentarily behind and sets up an all-the-more satisfying return.
This structure is put to use throughout, in a variety of ways, as “Screaming Into the Void” uses its chorus of “I upload, repost share and BCC a prayer/But the stars at night give zero likes, not a soul says ‘hey there,'” to contrast a verse that’s like half-nerd-rapped, or at least rhymed for rhythmic emphasis while surrounded by a willful overdose of tonal fuzz. The lyrics and one-liners make a it highlight,. Declarations like, “I fought bullies in the kiddie pool/I hated jocks in high school/I did drugs/I still do/I’m doing them now,” are likewise clever and empowering, and the later backing vocal line, “Elliott phone home,” references the movie E.T. with a taunt that, being named Elliott, rings true to kids being shitty to each other. A bit of autobiography amid essaying; not a complaint, especially leading to a ’90s Bowie call and response ending. “Terms and Conditions Apply” speaks with a broader stroke in calling out the asterisks of American social progress. “You’re free to speak your mind/Terms and conditions apply,” and such. The repeated title line grounds the proceedings, but as “Screaming Into the Void” used its soothing hook melody as its departure from the full heft of its layered guitar, “Terms and Conditions Apply” more directly employs loud/quiet tradeoffs between its verse and chorus, and so Elliott does kind of the same thing in a different way. This creates an album-style flow across the EP, which, again, culminates in “Lunatic Lighthouse Keeper” with a new level of stately aural force.
It wouldn’t be possible if there weren’t two sides of Buzzard‘s sound to dynamically oppose each other. In so doing, “Terms and Conditions Apply” is very much the centerpiece of Everything is Not Going to Be Alright, but Elliott is an apt enough songwriter to break his own rules, and the prior-standalone-single “Fever Breaks” does that, pushing the guitar down in the mix to give the vocals more space but keeping largely to its central level of intensity. The guitar becomes a clarion and there’s a takeoff later, but “Fever Breaks” feels more folkish for its comparative straightforwardness, and it pairs fluidly with the imagined better future of “Take the Tyrant Down” that follows, the penultimate track being acoustically-based on balance, save for the somewhat theatrical chugging departure in its second half, an urging procession as repetitions of “Down down down” are complemented by the reminder “Sic semper tyrannis” (“ever thus to tyrants”), the obvious reference there to the US’ history of political violence — you might say it’s how the country started and it never really stopped — can only be called relevant, though I suppose if you wanted to say “unsubtle,” that would also apply to its righteous rage. Mellotron provides an epilogue to “Take the Tyrant Down,” which like “Fever Breaks” is a classic protest song, if varied in its manifestation.
If we — that is, the speaker in the lyrics and the audience carried along with the (at least partially pretend) storyline — are trying to see a future beyond oppression and bootlicking, “Take the Tyrant Down” is hopeful. “Lunatic Lighthouse Keeper,” on the other hand, is crushing. The present it sees is the title-character crashing ships against the shoreline, “Just to see the sailors drown,” and is driven by omens and voices in his head to consume all light with some dark magic and, in the end, using that same power on himself to start creation over. “Turning the mirror on himself, he explodes with the light of a trillion suns” leads into the last chorus, “Golden fire/Devoid of form/There never was nor shall there be safe harbor from this storm.” The description in the second verse as “Obsidian beams of nothingness swallow the passing cars/douse the lights of cities/Snuff out the moon and smother the stars” is no less immersive than the downer chugging riff around which the song is based, and the bleak triumph of “Lunatic Lighthouse Keeper” seems to underscore the idea that perhaps the best future of all, as regards the universe more broadly, is one free of humanity. The notion of ‘burn it all down’ writ on a cosmic scale. Heavy fucking metal.
Is Elliott screaming into the void? Maybe. To some degree or other, everyone is. But what I’ll tell is that I got sent this EP maybe a month ago and I’ve sat with it more than I’ve sat with anything else I’ve listened to this year save for Satiricus Doomicus Americus, which came out in January, and that in the anthemic defiance of “Doom Folk Fury,” I’ve found both catharsis and comfort, and felt a little less alone in the inflicted terrors of this moment for that. While free speech lasts, I can hardly think of a better use to put it toward. The end of the line in “This Land is Your Land (Until it’s Not)” is “Everything is not going to be alright… unless we fight every little thing.” So maybe it’s not so hopeless as one thinks.
“Doom Folk Fury” premieres on the player below, followed by the lyrics and Elliott‘s own, far-more-concise summary of the EP’s mission.
Please enjoy, and keep your head up. We’re all we have and we need each other. You’re not crazy for feeling crazy and you’re not the only one. Thanks for reading.
Buzzard, “Doom Folk Fury” track premiere
“Doom Folk Fury” lyrics:
Ever since 2024, I don’t give a fuck no more I faced the facts and the fact I faced is the fucked up face of the human race. Hockey teams compete for the Cup as couples smack each other up. Holy yahoos take up arms as chickens cry on factory farms.
Oh-oh-oh Pure fuckin’ Doom Folk Fury Whoa-oh-oh Pure fuckin’ Doom Folk Fury Fight a fascist, fight a bully, fight the church Get out of the country Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh Pure fuckin’ Doom Folk Fury
So much fury, so much sound, so much love to go around No thank you, I do not comply with POTUS, ICE or the FBI I try to see things from all sides but I end up gouging out my eyes Truth hits me like a firehose when I can’t see what’s right under my nose (yeah, here it comes…)
Singin’ oh-oh-oh Pure fuckin’ Doom Folk Fury Whoa-oh-oh Pure fuckin’ Doom Folk Fury The way we shit on each other and smile Makes me sad, it’s fucking vile Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh Pure fuckin’ Doom Folk Fury
See the new beginning — viruses and cockroaches evolve! Monuments erected for time immemorial dissolve! Smell the forest flowers, hear the mountain choirs in the air! It’s beautiful! It’s brutal! It’s real! And none of us are there! None of us are there.
I used to check my phone but now I don’t I used to follow the blow-by-blow of the constant news like a fiend for dope I used to care but something broke Something broke I don’t know what In my head, in my heart, in my gut.
Whoa, whoa Well Pure fuckin’ Doom Folk Fury Singin’ whoa-oh-oh Pure fuckin’ Doom Folk Fury I can’t believe what we did to the great white shark What a world we wasted Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh Pure fuckin’ vegan Doom Folk Fury
My hopes were high And so was I The higher the dream The farther you fall All we can do Is to help each other muddle through
Politically charged 7-song EP pulls zero punches. Artwork by Jari Tanduk.
Tracklisting 1. This Land Is Your Land (Until It’s Not) 2. Doom Folk Fury 3. Screaming Into the Void 4. Terms and Conditions Apply 5. Fever Breaks 6. Take the Tyrant Down 7. Lunatic Lighthouse Keeper
Created by Christopher Thomas Elliott: vocals, electric and acoustic guitars, bass, drum programming, dobro, keyboards.
Buzzard, Everything is Not Going to Be Alright (2025)
Posted in Questionnaire on September 2nd, 2025 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: Christopher Thomas Elliott of Buzzard
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
A lone guitar and a point of view. My elevator pitch is “What if Bob Dylan listened to Black Sabbath and read H.P. Lovecraft?” because it’s 100% true and authentic to who I am.
As a kid, I bonded with Sabbath’s We Sold Our Soul… via a Columbia House mail-order subscription. “Wicked World” and “War Pigs” were the first socially conscious songs that resonated with me. To this day, I spin Sabbath on the regular, including my collection of original Vertigo pressings. Iommi worship runs through my veins.
I also wasn’t the first teenager to become entranced by the bleak cosmology of Lovecraft. Growing up in rural upstate New York, I would stare up at the stars, imagining the vast expanses. Lovecraft was the first writer who reported back what terrors might be lurking. His stories felt relevant to the way I saw the world, where religion and other human endeavors were failing rather spectacularly.
In college, Dylan is the musician who opened up the world of narrative songwriting and Americana music. Beyond every official Dylan release, I’ve collected over 300 bootlegs of live shows and outtake collections. Lyrics-forward songwriting was where I started finding my voice.
The first songs I wrote were purely humorous and satirical (examples, “The Minuteman” about premature ejaculation and “Your Dog Is Dead” about, well, the death of your dog, like Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch). However, I never felt comfortable being called merely “clever,” as that to me connotes superficiality and smugness. In my 20s, my first modest successes on stage were making audiences laugh, to both my joy and my chagrin.
Over the years, I’ve worked on improving my musicianship and writing chops to add soul, guts, and heart to my songs. Buzzard is one of the most exciting creative periods in my life because I’m finding a way to bring together all of these musical and literary interests, and the possibilities feel endless. YYMV on all counts, but that’s my story.
Describe your first musical memory.
The first music I bought were 45s of “Back in Black” and “Staying’ Alive.” I have a vivid sense memory of listening to that AC/DC song on headphones in my quiet, remote country home. I can see it now: motes of dust falling from the sunlight as the riff exploded out of the silence. It was revelatory. An entire world of possibilities came to life. The electricity of that guitar lick and groove rewired my brain with drive and imagination. That may sound hyperbolic, but that’s how the sense memory sits in my mind.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
That’s tough – so many to choose from. As an audience member, I’ve managed to see some of my favorite bands up close in small venues: Trouble, Candlemass, Zeal and Ardor, Opeth, Blue Oyster Cult, Kreator. One Dylan highlight was seeing him perform for the first and last time the obscure deep cut “10,000 Men.” Not a great song necessarily, but it was a fantastic on-off performance. Historic, to a Dylanologist.
If I had to pick my one favorite show, it might have to be non-musical: Mitch Hedberg. I saw him in his prime in Boston. There’s a reason he’s a legend we still talk about. It was one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen. The recordings you find online are great but don’t quite capture the magic he conjured. Every joke killed. Pure joy.
Speaking of comedy, as a performer some of my favorite memories come from Club Passim in Cambridge, where I had the opportunity to play humorous songs in front of packed crowds. While I like the music I make now better than the music I made then, I do sometimes miss the rush of making audiences laugh. And I mean explosive guffaws, not tepid chuckles. I had a few songs that killed comedically, but I just never had the talent or drive to create a full-on musical comedy act–my ultimate ambitions were different. I’m envious of stand-up comics who have that gift.
Besides that, so many of my favorite music memories are not on stage or in public, but playing my heart out alone in a room, recording in my studio, or composing songs for hours.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
That’s an interesting question. One answer is, “every day, when another current event chips away at any hope I might have for humanity.”
Another answer is “How firm are my beliefs, anyway?” My understanding of the world is like that of an ant crawling on a superconductor. (And that may be doing the ant a disservice, as we humans know little about insect consciousness.)
As Bertrand Russell once said, “I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.” This sounds about right when it comes to political ideology.
Other answers that come to mind are personal enough that they feel more appropriate to discuss on a psychologist’s couch rather than in a Google doc. So, I’ll leave that stone unturned, except to say that evolving from a child into an adult entails shedding illusions about the nature of family, personal identity, and culture. (Isn’t it odd that the word “disillusioned” carries a negative connotation, when it should be considered a good thing to discard illusions?)
To deliver one concrete answer in regards to allowing our beliefs to evolve, I’ll say this. In my journey to becoming vegetarian, there was a tipping point. I was visiting a farm and a pig walked up to the fence separating the two of us, laid down, and looked at me. We made eye contact. So acutely and deeply did I sense the presence of a sentient mind capable of reason, joy, and sorrow, that I knew I could never eat an animal again.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
To finding your own unique voice. You ask yourself, “What can I do creatively that nobody else can do?” An artist starts as derivative and progresses towards self-actualization.
To paraphrase the self-help books, there will always be a better guitarist or drummer than you, but there can never be a better you than you. None of us can (or should) agree on what is good or bad art, but the least subjective aspect might be whether the audience perceives a fully-formed expression of the artist as an individual. You know it when you see it: art that has fully manifested a one-of-a-kind vision (like it or not).
Artistic progression reaches its apotheosis when your name becomes a shorthand for an entire aesthetic. When a reviewer describes a new artist by comparing them to you, you know you’ve arrived.
The ultimate achievement is to become such a singular figure that your name becomes an adjective: Dylanesque, Orwellian, Kafkaesque. Only a handful of artists arrive there in popular culture, but within niches and genres, it’s possible to establish an identity distinct enough to serve as a touchstone.
How can we evolve? Progression is not just a matter of becoming a better player or composer, but also becoming a better human being. This includes expanding your experiences, questioning your assumptions, deepening your empathy, freeing your imagination, connecting with your community, and so on. To play with the famous Walt Whitman quote, you should contradict yourself more often in order to contain more multitudes. That’s how you grow.
How do you define success?
Narrowly defined, success means reaching a goal, however small or grand. Professional success could mean completing a job for a client, marital success could mean reaching a 20-year anniversary, and artistic success could mean selling 20 or 20,000 records or simply pressing the publish button for a song on Bandcamp.
But rather than focusing on success, it might be more useful to think in terms of purpose. A purpose-filled life can bring greater meaning and satisfaction than a success-obsessed existence. Emphasizing quantifiable success can set up feelings of frustration and failure, since so much remains out of our control. Instead of a success/failure binary, I try to reframe things in terms of curiosity, community building, and creative growth.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
I’m stumped. I can’t think of anything I wish I hadn’t seen. Is it because my life has been sheltered from war and trauma? Or because I’m grateful when I do see terrible and ugly things because the truth dispels illusions?
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
Outside of art, in the “if I won the lottery” category, I’d like to create a wildlife refuge or animal sanctuary.
In terms of music, I’d be curious to explore heavy music in a band setting, some kind of Buzzard ensemble, however that might become a realistic possibility. I do have a picture in my mind of how this music might look on stage, with visual projections and lights.
Most realistically, I’d like to publish my lyrics in book form, both as illustrated chapbooks of select albums and a hefty omnibus volume of lyrics from across my career. This might coincide with a curated re-release/re-recording of the best previously released songs that have sunk into the void over the decades.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
To make each of us feel less alone. A book can make us think, “Oh good, I’m not the only person who sees things this way,” or a song can make us feel “I’m just as excited about this riff as the person who came up with it.” Art depicts the unique interior life of its creator, with whom we may commiserate.
Small talk, daily relationships, and may bring us together in their own ways, but art is where individuals can connect across space and time intimately about truths both terrible and terrific.
Say something positive about yourself.
I have been told that I’m a generally kind, patient, and agreeable person, and I won’t argue with that assessment.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
The fact I’m struggling to come up with an answer here tells me something. I need to get out more!
Recently I visited Portland, Oregon for the first time, and absolutely fell in love with the old growth forests. I look forward to planning another trek, driving up the coast from Northern California to the Olympic Peninsula, stopping for long hikes and West Coast IPAs along the way. Bucket list right there. Deep in a forest and near waterfalls, I feel at peace.
In the extreme short term, tonight a buddy of mine is going to come over to smoke cigars and sip Blue Note bourbon in the barn. That feels like an appropriately Buzzard-esqe way to end this questionnaire.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 1st, 2025 by JJ Koczan
When I lived in New England, the fires in November were from people burning leaves in metal drums in their back yards. It smelled nice and felt like something people where we were in Massachusetts had probably been doing since before their barrels were manufactured. Not the best for the atmosphere maybe, but on the scale of damages thereupon, pretty light. To wit, I drove past in a gas-powered automobile, so not like I’m not also on board with killing the planet, whether I like it or not. I guess there’s also a Samhain semi-reference there, if they want it to be.
It’s a neat story that November Fire‘s “2025” was first written in 1991. Of course, the intervening 34 years have brought new perspective to the piece and its recording, but you can hear the original thrashy chug at the song’s foundation around which the band’s swirling darksludge is built up. Its five-minute run resolves in a Slayery wash of howling noise, and the shorter “Somnia” follows, with an almost psychedelic-folk impression, echoing vocals over a space left purposefully part-empty. Two songs, two vibes, and I’m not sure if they’re actually putting it out as a cassingle, but if they are, I entirely support doing so. Imagine you’re at a gig and somebody hands you this tape. Right on.
The band’s 2024 debut album, Through a Mournful Song, streams below, as “2025” hasn’t yet been posted. The PR wire brought the following:
Psychedelic sludge rockers November Fire announce new single “2025”, out September 19th
After releasing the acclaimed “Through A Mournful Song” full-length in 2024, the heavy psychedelic sludge band November Fire is back with a brand new single, titled “2025”.
“2025, the year we all come to die!” Those words and riffs were written in November Fire’s infancy in the summer of 1991, and back then we couldn’t have imagined that the song would see the light of day over 33 years later.
“2025 was one of the very first songs we wrote in the summer of 1991. Back then, it seemed so far in the future”, says guitarist Dave. “It was influenced by a lot of thrash metal and post-apocalyptic art that was around at the time, especially Sepultura.” Although the song was quickly dropped, the song title became an inside joke within the band.
“I’d like to go to Japan someday.”
“Well, you better hurry, 2025 is only 12 years away!”
With the actual year 2025 fast approaching, the band started playing around with the riff again and realized what a cool song it was. But, it needed some work; the lyrics of the second verse were unintelligible from the old hissy tape they had. Plus, the song was short in its punkish, crossover roots.
“2025 was one of the very first songs we played, so the lyrics were pretty straightforward, basically ‘We’re all going to die!’,” says Terry Aubie, bass player and vocalist. “We had yet to get into writing about societal ills, so this time around, I evolved the lyrics to the greed of mankind driving climate change along with the ‘We’re all going to die!’ parts. We also extended the bridge and added a crazy psychedelic ending.
The second song on the release, “Somnia”, features O.G. November Fire guitarist Greg Brosseau on guitars and lead vocals and keeps with the theme of reviving old material. “Back in 1992, ‘Somnia’ was a jam that me and Greg used to tinker with at 3 in the morning. We had a bunch of these little cool, weaving guitar lines.” Much like ‘2025’, the song was revived with new lyrics and an expanded arrangement. “It’s a song of awakening, and reflection on where we’ve been, what we’ve learned, and where it will lead,” adds Brosseau on the lyrics.
Like their debut album, “2025” was recorded and mixed 100% D.I.Y. by the band in basements and cars. The cover art was self-produced and drawn by the band as well, featuring a retro cassette card, evoking those summer nights in 1991, when anything was possible…
November Fire – 2025 Single out September 19th, 2025 Self-released (Digital) New England, US
Tracklist: 1. 2025 (5:22) 2. Somnia (2:31)
All songs written by November Fire
November Fire is: Terry Aubie: Bass, Vocals, Lyrics on Track 1 Dave Hubai: Guitars Jim Kelley: Drums Greg Brosseau: Guitars, Vocals, Lyrics on Track 2
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 29th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
The blend of noise and heavy rock on The Freqs‘ new single “Jellyfish Cadaver” puts me in mind of Whores., that kind of big-riffs-chucked-directly-at-you thing without giving up the groove that keeps you there to have the riffs chucked at you in the first place. It’s aggro, but you can handle it. These are dark times. You should be pissed off anyway. So maybe they’re already meeting you where you are.
Their 2023 EP, Poachers (review here), was my first exposure to the band, and I dug it, which is why I’m posting about the follow-up single a week after the fact. The band have been doing local shows and have more live activity coming over the next few months — I don’t know if there’s a bigger release coming, but there’s no mention of one below which makes me think it’s a standalone for now — but it remains to be seen if they’re the types to hit the road and hand-deliver this urgency.
Again, this news came in last week. I’m not claiming to be on top of it, or competent, or whatever. But if you see music that’s been streaming for seven days as too old to enjoy, clearly you have spent too much time on the internet of late. Put down your phone and drink some water or something. Come back to it later, as you inevitably will anyway.
From the PR wire:
THE FREQS: Salem, Massachusetts-Based High-Powered Psych/Noise Rock Trio Drops New “Jellyfish Cadaver” Single, With Additional New Material On The Way
“Jellyfish Cadaver” is the slamming new single from Salem, Massachusetts-based high-octane outfit THE FREQS, now streaming on all digital platforms.
Formed in 2019, THE FREQS trio sees guitarist/vocalist Seth Crowell, bassist/vocalist Ian Mandly, and drummer Zack Fierman crafting a distinctive sound at the intersection of genres, taking influence from bands like Melvins, Queens Of The Stone Age, and The Jesus Lizard to deliver loud, riff-heavy, fuzzed-out, noise/psych/stoner-infused rock. Nominated for Best Rock Artist Of The Year at the Boston Music Awards in 2021, the power trio continues to lash eardrums with their bombastic live set across New England and beyond.
In 2023, THE FREQS released the gnarly fourth EP, Poachers, to critical acclaim from around the globe. Following a couple years of silence since Poachers, THE FREQS now arrive with their first single of 2025, “Jellyfish Cadaver,” featuring Nicholas Pentabona of Bedtimemagic on guest vocals. The song is about the grim reality of life forever slipping away. At night with shadows creeping in, the mind is untethered and adrift. Slowly going mad with each passing hour. THE FREQS channel their inner dread with wild abandon on this latest single, which was produced, recorded, and mixed by Alex Allinson at The Bridge Sound & Stage in Cambridge (Lesotho, Miracle Blood, Bedtimemagic), mastered by Keith Gentile at Labryinth Audio in Peabody (Fórn, Hellhorse, American Midnight), and completed with artwork by Ellis Roundy of The P.A.’s.
Folks in the Northeast can catch the band ripping it up live on November 1st at Halloween Hangover in Worcester, with more shows to be announced shortly.
THE FREQS Live: 11/01/2025 Halloween Hangover @ Electric Haze – Worcester, MA w/ Nicholas Burgess, Sapling, Miracle Blood
THE FREQS: Seth Crowell – guitar, vocals Ian Mandly – bass Zack Fierman – drums
“Mount Din” is the second new track from Massachusetts solo outfit Buzzard in as many months, and like “Fever Breaks” (posted here), it’s a heavied-up take on some of the ideas that songwriter/sole-denizen Christopher Thomas Elliott has been exploring over the course of this year — Buzzard‘s second full-length, Mean Bone (review here), came out in April and was preceded in January by the self-titled debut from a maybe-side-project called Satiricus Doomicus Americus (review here) — and, as he notes in the video info below, working in a not-dissimilar lyrical frame to Mean Bonecloser “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century” (video premiere here).
That album finale told the story of future archeologists looking back on the titular ruins left behind by the present day; a shopping mall interpreted as the religious site capitalism made it, and so on. “Mount Din” changes that somewhat so that it’s aliens coming to investigate the aftermath of human wreckage. The ‘Din,’ as an unpleasant and/or abrasively loud noise, was human society. There’s less precise critique in “Mount Din” than “Ancient Ruins of the 21st Century,” and in the last verse, the speaker in the song says, “I light a spark in a lump of carbon to start the experiment of life on Earth again,” which, yes, in 2025 absolutely does qualify as a hopeful ending.
I have it on decent authority that the trickling-out of new material from Buzzard is leading toward a new EP release sometime (maybe?) before the end of the year. That’s nothing concrete, mind you, so don’t go looking for a release date yet, but the underlying message is there’s more coming and I continue to spend a potentially-embarrassing amount of time thinking about the course of the interpretation of folk via doom and doom via folk happening in Elliott‘s songwriting.
There’s not a lot in “Mount Din” that sounds outwardly folkish, for example, and yet the roots of the lyrical style and the method of storytelling are unquestionably derived therefrom, and Elliott‘s clear vocal approach — even in the layers with which one finds him working in the chorus — is a tie there as well. As focused as the latest material has found him on pushing limits to see just how heavy Buzzard can get and not collapse under its own weight — so far, pretty heavy — in doing so, he’s also broadening the project’s palette as a whole for the future. Thus far, the blend of earthy melody and emergent, consuming heft has resulted in a sound that is immediately identifiable as Elliott‘s own. In terms of ‘starts,’ a better one would be tough to come by.
The lyric video for “Mount Din” follows, with more beyond about the comp it comes from, and the aforementioned Buzzard-and-adjacent 2025 LPs.
Enjoy:
Buzzard, “Mount Din” lyric video
Hello, all. I’m pleased to announce that a new Buzzard song “Mount Din” appears on the latest compilation by Santa Sangre Magazine, the Sixth Configuration, available here:
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 4th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Boston’s Gozu have already had a pretty busy summer, touring around their stopthrough at Rhüne Mountain Festival and taking part in the band-affiliated hometown underground fest Grub, Sweat & Beers last month. This past weekend, though, the four-piece entered Mad Oak Studios to begin recording their sixth album and the follow-up to 2023’s Remedy (review here), which the band have spent much of the last two years supporting live.
If it feels like a quick turnaround, that’s probably because the crater from Remedy is still steaming, but Gozu aren’t ones to let momentum slip or miss a chance to move forward. It’s particularly interesting that they’ve returned to Mad Oak Studios to work with Benny Grotto. Gozu‘s last three full-lengths — Remedy, 2018’s Equilibrium (review here) and 2016’s Revival (review here) — were recorded by Dean Baltulonis at Wild Arctic Studios in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Grotto helmed the two prior, 2013’s The Fury of a Patient Man (review here), 2010’s Locust Season (discussed here; review here). Considering the hard-edged style they’ve taken on over the course of the last decade working with Baltulonis, and the warmth both of Gozu‘s earliest LPs and Mad Oak‘s output more generally, I’ll be looking forward to how this re-pairing between band and producer works out.
The band have been doing updates on the socialwebs. They finished drums on Saturday. I don’t know how long they’ll actually be in or what the timeline is on the release, but the process has started. Here’s what they had to say:
“We are very excited to get in the studio at Mad Oak with Benny Grotto to record 8 songs for Metal Blade / Blacklight Media. Heavy AF and catchy as leprosy—this batch is loaded with riffs that stick and grooves that crush. Let’s get weird.”
– First day conquered. 3 songs down. Tomorrow we ride.
– Drums complete and @sethdeebo absolutely destroyed it!
GOZU is: Marc Gaffney – guitar and vocals Joe Grotto – bass Doug Sherman – lead guitar Seth Botos – drums
