Quarterly Review: Massive Hassle, Iress, Magmakammer, Evel, Satan’s Satyrs, Whoopie Cat, Earth Tongue, Las Historias, Aquanaut, Ghost Frog
Posted in Reviews on October 15th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I’ll be honest, I don’t even want to talk about how well this Quarterly Review is going because I worry about screwing it up. It’s always a lot of work to round up 10 records per day, even if there’s a single or and EP snuck in there, but it’s been a long time now that I’ve been doing things this way — sometimes as a means of keeping up, sometimes to herald things to come, usually just a way to write about things I want to write about regardless of timeliness — and it’s always worth it. I’ve had a couple genuinely easy days here. Easier than expected. Obviously that’s a win.
So while I wait for the other shoe to drop, let’s keep the momentum going.
Quarterly Review #61-70:
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Massive Hassle, Unreal Damage
Brotherly two-piece Massive Hassle, comprised of brothers Bill Fisher and Marty Fisher — who played together in Mammothwing and now both feature in Church of the Cosmic Skull — get down with another incredibly complex set of harmonized ’70s-style soul-groovers, nailing it as regards tone and tempo from the big riff that eats “Lost in the Changes” to the strums and croons early in the penultimate “Tenspot,” hitting a high note together in that song that gives over to stark and wistful standalone guitar meander that with barely a minute ago gorgeously becomes a bittersweet triumph of nostalgic fuzz reminiscent of Colour Haze‘s “Fire” and having the sheer unmitigated gall to tell the world around them it’s no big deal by naming the band Massive Hassle and stating that as the thing they most want to avoid. When they did Number One (review here) in 2023, it felt like they were proving the concept. With Unreal Damage, they’re quietly pushing limits.
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Iress, Sleep Now, In Reverse
Iress are the Los Angeles-based four-piece of Michelle Malley (vocals), Michael Maldonado (bass), Glenn Chu (drums) and Graham Walker (guitar). Sleep Now, In Reverse is their fourth full-length in nearly 15 years of existence. As a record, it accomplishes a lot of things, but what you need to understand is that where it most succeeds and stands itself out is in bringing together a heavy post-rock sound — heavygaze, as the kids don’t say because they don’t know what it is — with emotive expression on vocals, a blending of ethereal and the most human and affecting, and when Malley lets loose in the payoff of “Mercy,” it’s an early highlight with plenty more to follow. It’s not that Iress are reinventing genre — evolving, maybe? — but what they’re doing with it is an ideal unto itself, taking those aspects from across an aesthetic range and incorporating them into a whole, at times defiantly cohesive sound, lush but clearheaded front to back.
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Magmakammer, Before I Burn
When the band put the shimmying “Apocalypse Babes” up as a standalone single last year, it was some five years after their debut full-length, 2018’s Mindtripper (review here) — though there was a split between — so not an insignificant amount of time for Norway’s Magmakammer to expand on their methods and dig into the songs. To be sure, “Doom Jive” and “Zimbardo” still have that big-hook, Uncle Acid-style dirty garage buzz that lends itself so well to cultish themes but thankfully here is about more than murder. And indeed, the band seems to have branched out a bit, and the eight-song/43-minute Before I Burn is well served by divergences like the closing “I Will Guide Your Hand” or the way “Cult of Misanthropy” sounds like a studio outtake on a bootleg from 1969 until they kick it open around a build of marching guitar, even as it stays loyal to Magmakammer‘s core stylistic purposes. A welcome return.
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Evel, Omen EP
The kind of sludge rock Ohio’s Evel play, informed by Mondo Generator‘s druggy, volatile heavy punk and C.O.C.‘s Southern metal nod, maybe a bit of High on Fire in “Alaska,” with a particularly Midwestern disappointment-in-everything that would’ve gone over well at Emissions From the Monolith circa 2003, isn’t what’s trendy. It’s not the cool thing. It doesn’t care about that, or about this review, or about providing social media content to maximize its algorithmic exposure. I’m not knocking any of that — especially the review, which is going swimmingly; I promise a point is coming — but if Evel‘s six-songer debut EP, Omen, is a foretell of things to come, the intention behind it is more about the catharsis of the writing/performance than trying to play to ‘scene’-type expectations. It is a pissed-off fuckall around which the band — which features guitarist/vocalist Alex Perekrest, also of Red Giant — will continue to build as “Dust Angel” and the swinging “Dawn Patrol” already find them doing. The going will likely be noisy, and that’s just fine.
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Satan’s Satyrs, After Dark
Some six years and one reunion after their fourth album, 2018’s The Lucky Ones (review here), Virginia-born classic heavy barnburners Satan’s Satyrs are back with a fifth collection beating around riffs from Sabbath and the primordial ooze of heavy that birthed them, duly brash and infectious in their energy. Founding bassist/vocalist Clayton Burgess and guitarist Jarrett Nettnin are joined in the new incarnation of the band by guitarist Morgan McDaniel (also Mirror Queen) and drummer Russ Yusuf — though Sean Saley has been with them for recent live shows — and as they strut and swing through “Saltair Burns” like Pentagram if they’d known how to play jazz but were still doom, or the buzzy demo-style experimentation of “Genuine Turquoise,” which I’m just going to guess came together differently than was first expected. So much the better. They’ve never been hugely innovative, but Satan’s Satyrs have consistently delivered at this point across a span of more than a decade and they have their own spin on the style. They may always be a live band, but at least in my mind, there’s not much more one would ask that After Dark doesn’t deliver.
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Whoopie Cat, Weight in Gold
Delivered through Kozmik Artifactz, Weight in Gold is the second long-player from Melbourne, Australia’s Whoopie Cat, and it meets the listener at the intersection of classic, ’70s-style heavy blues rock and prog. Making dynamic use of a dual-vocal approach in “Pretty Baby” after establishing tone, presence and craft as assets with the seven-minute opening title-track, the band are unflinchingly modern in production even as they lean toward vintage-style song construction, and that meld of intention results in an organic sound that’s not restricted by the recording. Plus it’s louder, which doesn’t hurt most of the time. In any case, as Whoopie Cat follow-up their 2018 debut, Illusion of Choice, they do so with distinction and the ability to convey a firm grasp on their songwriting and convey a depth of intention from the what-if-Queen-but-blues “Icarus” or the consuming Hammondery of closer “Oh My Love.” Listening, I can’t help but wonder how far into prog they might ultimately go, but they’ve found a sweetspot in these songs that’s between styles, and they fit right in it.
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Earth Tongue, Great Haunting
Cheeky, heavy garage punk surely will not be enough to save the immortal souls of Earth Tongue from all their devil worship and intricate vocal patterning. And honestly the New Zealand two-piece — I could’ve sworn I saw something about them moving to Germany, but maybe they just had a really good Berlin show? — sound fine with that. Guitarist Gussie Larkin and drummer Ezra Simons benefit from the straightforward outward nature of their songs. That is, “Out of This Hell,” “The Mirror,” “Bodies Dissolve Tonight!” and any of the other nine inclusions on the record that either were or could’ve been singles, are catchy and tightly written. They’re not overplayed or underplayed, and they have enough tonal force in Larkin‘s guitar that the harder churn of closer “The Reluctant Host” can leave its own impression and still feel fluid alongside some of Great Haunting‘s sweeter psych-punk. Wherever they live, the two-piece make toys out of pop and praise music so that even “Miraculous Death” sounds like, and is, fun.
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Las Historias, House of Pain (Demos)
The collection House of Pain (Demos) takes its title from the place where guitarist/vocalist Tomas Iramain recorded them alongside bassist Matias Maltratador and drummer Jorge Iramain, though whether it’s a studio, rehearsal space, or an actual house, I won’t profess to know. Tomas is the lone remaining member carried over from the band’s 2020 self-titled LP, and the other part of what you need to know about House of Pain (Demos) can also be found in the title: it’s demos. Do not expect a studio sound full of flourish and nuance. Reportedly most of the songs were tracked with two Shure SM57s (the standard vocal mic), save for “Nomad” and “The Way I Am,” I guess because one broke? The point is, as raw as they are — and they are raw — these demos want nothing for appeal. The bounce in the bonus-track-type “Mountain (Take 1)” feels like a Dead Meadowy saunter, and for all of its one-mic-ness, “Nomad” gives a twist on ’50s and early ’60s guitar instrumentals that’s only bolstered by the recording. I’m not saying Las Historias should press up 10,000 LPs immediately or anything, but if this was the record, or maybe an EP and positioned as more substantial than the demos, aside from a couple repeated tracks, you could do far worse. “Hell Bird” howls, man. Twice over.
Electric Valley Records website
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Aquanaut, Aquanaut
Certainly “Come With Me” and others on Aquanaut‘s self-titled debut have their desert rocking aspects, but there’s at least as much The Sword as Kyuss in what the Trondheim, Norway, newcomers unfurl on their self-titled, self-released debut, and when you can careen like in “Gamma Rays,” maybe sometimes you don’t need anything else. The seven-track/35-minute outing gets off to a bluesy, boozy start with “Lenéa,” and from there, Aquanaut are able to hone an approach that has its sludgier side in some of the Eyehategod bark of “Morality” but that comes to push increasingly far out as it plays through, so that “Living Memories” soars as the finale after the mid-tempo fuzzmaking of “Ivory,” and so Aquanaut seem to have a nascent breadth working for them in addition to the vigor of a young band shaping a collective persona. The generational turnover in Norway is prevalent right now with a number of promising debuts and breakouts in the last couple years. Aquanaut have a traditionalism at their core but feel like they want to break it as much as celebrate it, and if you’re the type to look for ‘bands to watch,’ that’s a reason to watch. Or even listen, if you’re feeling especially risk-friendly.
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Ghost Frog, Galactic Mini Golf
While I would be glad to be writing about Ghost Frog‘s quirky heavy-Weezerism and psychedelic chicanery even if their third album, Galactic Mini Golf didn’t have a song called “Deep Space Nine Iron” on it, I can’t lie and say that doesn’t make the prospect a little sweeter. It’s an interlude and I don’t even care — they made it and it’s real. The Portland, Oregon, four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Quinn Schwartz, guitarist/synthesist Karl Beheim, bassist Archie Heald and drummer Vincent LiRocchi (the latter making his first appearance) keep somewhat to a golfy theme, find another layer’s worth of heavy on “Shadow Club,” declare themselves weird before you even press play and reinforce the claim in both righteous post-grunge roll of “Burden of Proof” and the new wave rock of “Bubble Guns” before the big ol’ stompy riff in “Black Hole in One’ leads to a purposeful whole-album finish. Some things don’t have to make the regular kind of sense, because they make their own kind. Absurd as the revelry gets, Ghost Frog make their own kind of sense. Maybe you’ll find it’s also your kind of sense and that’s how we learn things about ourselves from art. Have a great rest of your day.
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