Like their two preceding shared releases — 1998’s Demon Cleaner vs. Dozer (discussed here) and 1999’s follow-up Hawaiian Cottage (discussed here) — the split 7″ Domestic Dudes was released through Molten Universe, the label helmed by Dozer guitarist Tommi Holappa. And because it’s the last of the three, it’s easy enough to think of these four songs and 13 minutes as a springboard that sent both of these outfits toward releasing their debut full-lengths in 2000 — that’s Dozer‘s In the Tail of a Comet (featured here, discussed here) and Demon Cleaner‘s The Freeflight (discussed here); note that Lowrider also had their first album and Greenleaf, who pulled members and guests from all three bands, had their first EP in 2000; good living in Sweden at the turn of the century (also now) — and sure enough, there are easy-enough-in-hindsight arguments to be made that that’s what’s happening.

I’m not sure there’s actually such a thing as being ‘ready’ to make an album, since plenty of great ones have been put out by people who obviously weren’t ‘ready’ in any convential sense for what would result. It’s a cliché that rock critics throw out there — myself included (at least in the cliché part; I’m not sure I count as a critic anymore) — as a way of saying, “I think this band could make a record I’d think is cool,” and since it’s generally intended as a compliment and is kind of milquetoast, nobody really blinks. Fine.

By the same token, to listen to Demon Cleaner‘s “Taurus” and “45” and Dozer‘s “Octanoid” and “Hail the Dude,” even in comparison to the work they were doing just a year earlier in 1999, I think you can hear a progression of sound and purpose that helped solidify their respective identities going into their 2000 LPs. Neither of these Demon Cleaner tracks would show up on The Freeflight or the band’s subsequent 2002 self-titled swansong, but they’re for sure on the trajectory of where that album was coming from, loosely grooving and plenty brash in the buzz of “45,” taking the desert roll of “Taurus” and the little bit of a jam they throw into the solo section and paring it back to the most essential components, then setting it to run.

Kyuss still very much is a defining influence — for both bands at this stage, really — but by the end of “45,” Demon Cleaner gave a picture of where they were headed, and given the limitations of the 7″ format they were working in for what was either intended as a series from the start or just became one as they went on, the fact that they manage to give a dynamic expression of their sound in just six minutes and two well-paired tracks speaks to how generally underrated Demon Cleaner‘s work is to begin with. That whole stopped-after-the-second-record thing probably has something to do with that. Bottom line though, Demon Cleaner were onto something here, and though they wouldn’t be a band anymore by the time five years passed after Domestic Dudes came out, they did manage to realize at least some of the potential they showed in these three nascent splits.

“Octanoid,” with its standout pottymouth chorus and the emergent distinctive throaty swagger of guitarist Fredrik Nordin, will be recognizable from Dozer‘s second album, 2001’s Madre de Dios (featured here), and I don’t know that “Hail the Dude” is or isn’t about The Big Lebowski, but it’s possible, as that film was also released in 1999. In any case, with a howl of guitar after the drum count-in and a steady stoner-rock-when-it-was-stoner-rock-now-we-call-it-classic janga-janga in the verse, “Hail the Dude” is exactly the kind ‘lost’ track that has for years been begging to show up on a compilation release of some sort, but I’ve harped on that enough these last couple weeks, and the songs themselves make the argument better than I could anyhow.

I’d be curious to know if Dozer and Demon Cleaner — and you’ll notice that they’ve switched back to Demon Cleaner vs. Dozer on the cover art; for Hawaiian Cottage, Dozer had top billing — went into Domestic Dudes knowing it was the last of three, or if there was no plan to start with, or what, because there’s such a palpable sense in listening to it of both acts being all in. On the first split, they’re beginning to get a sense of who they are, but by the third, Demon Cleaner have a firm grip on their intent in “Taurus” and “45,” and while Dozer would move past the desert-fuzzed style after their second record and find a more individualized take, at times aggressive, at times spacious, and still evolving these many years later, their 2023 comeback, Drifting in the Endless Void (review here), boasting a richer sprawl after a 15-year studio absence.

But you knew that, so right on. I know these guys are plenty busy. As previously noted, Demon Cleaner‘s drummer was Karl Daniel Lidén, who not only would go on to play in Dozer and Greenleaf, but would record those bands as well as countless others, his work as producer having no less of an impact on the shape of Swedish heavy across a generation than his contributions as a musician. He continues to produce and/or mix killer records — had a hand in High Desert Queen‘s album last year, which ruled — and this clique of players, from Dozer to Greenleaf, Demon Cleaner, Lowrider, probably a couple others from around then, still exists in terms of collaborating with each other and the friendships that these three platters helped solidify.

And it would just be the bloggiest thing ever for me to tell you that those friendships are what’s most important, that it’s the sense of community and support in the heavy underground that makes it so special in a world that’s come to be defined largely by its cruelties and isolation. All true. But while I’m glad at least some of the relationships here continue on to this day, because it’s nice to have friends or so I’m told, that has little to do with the actual listening experience. As far as a takeaway from the third of the trilogy: understand that Domestic Dudes isn’t really the finish, but barely the beginning of what either of these acts would accomplish. They’re still young, hungry, and yes, both bands also sound ready on whatever level one might think of to take the next step. Obviously they were about to do exactly that.

As always, I hope you enjoy, and I hope you’ve enjoyed all three of these over the last couple weeks. I’ve wanted to write about these forever and it was a lot of fun to dig in. Maybe some day they’ll make a fourth. You never know.

—

Rough week. I’ll be honest, my head’s been elsewhere pretty much since Wednesday. The Pecan’s having trouble at school. She went after a para at lunch who pulled her away from getting into it with another kid, and we had to go pick her up yesterday early. It sucked. The Patient Mrs. and I were an hour away when we got the call, trying to chase down a check so she can buy a car that ended up taking us to a credit union on the campus of (wait for it) West Point, which was surreal even before you get to the gummy I’d eaten. But yeah, that was a long-ass, quiet drive back from West Point to the school. Gut-wrenching.

You feel terrible for the kid. It’s not like she doesn’t know what she’s doing is wrong, she just can’t stop it. She gets overwhelmed and lashes out. The para touched her. I’m sure the kid was doing some goofy shit or calling her names or whatever — there’s a whole set of boys in her class she’s having trouble with the last few weeks and it’s turned her world to shit — but she apparently went after him and then the para and there you go. That was a shitty pickup to live through.

We kept her home today. She’s in the bedroom watching Mark Rober — a new obsession, at least a decent portion of it is science — and will likely be there until hunger makes it untenable. The Patient Mrs. is home today too and the sun looks like it’s daring to come out, so leaving the house might happen at some point. That would probably be advisable, anyhow.

But the kid had a great weekend last weekend, including Monday off, which we spent all day at the arcade at the mall. We even played Super Smash Bros. for N64, which felt like a parenting achievement I didn’t know I’d been waiting for for years, and she got into it deep on some skeeball like the Jersey girl she is, and had a ton of fun. We saw family and family friends and she’d had a decent day last Friday enough that we didn’t get a call and so I thought going into Tuesday maybe upping her meds had helped. Not so much.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were each a wreck and so here we are Friday.

This isn’t our first time in this position as parents. Honestly, after the rough start to kindergarten last year, which was a fucking trauma, I was hoping we were done. Now I’m wondering if this is how it’s going to be and if so, if that’s where we are, how we’re going to move forward. Not only getting her back in school as soon as possible, where she belongs by any measure, but what can be put in place so that the escalation of the last couple weeks stops before somebody gets hurt.

It’s fucking difficult. It’s been a difficult week, and absolutely, I’ve been distracted from what’s going on around here. There’s been a lot of cool shit though, it was a good week. I’m doing my best to keep my head in it, and as usual The Obelisk is a bit of therapy for my brain, even if I’ve come to spend more time complaining about the back-end work of running the site than I used to.

Next week is a Quarterly Review. I’ll start working on it tomorrow. It’s seven days, and then after that I’m going to Roadburn and then I’m taking like a day off after that and that’s basically April. I’ve got premieres set up through the end of the month after the QR and fest coverage, and then we’re into May. It’ll be 2028 before I know it. Shit, she’ll be in fourth grade. That’s almost middle school.

Have a great and safe weekend. Hydrate, watch your head, try and have some fun. Things are hard. Take your moments where and when you can, and if you need to breathe, breathe. Thanks as always for reading.

FRM.

The Obelisk Collective on Facebook

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

I never had to make my own playlist for one of these posts before, but the second of three Dozer and Demon Cleaner demo-type split 7″s, 1998’s Hawaiian Cottage, wasn’t immediately available all together, and the Demon Cleaner tracks included above — “Heading Home” and “Megawheel” — are taken from the Swedish band’s debut album, The Freeflight (discussed here), as my admittedly limited chase-down skills couldn’t find the single’s recordings streaming anywhere. I own this one — not bragging; it was a valued gift from an even more valued friend – but don’t have a way to transfer. If I hear one complaint about it in the comments, I’ll be surprised, but I felt compelled to mention it just the same.

So, we pick up where we left off last time with the Demon Cleaner vs. Dozer split (discussed here), to which Hawaiian Cottage made a quick-turnaround follow-up, releasing the same year. And like both of Demon Cleaner‘s tracks, which I was happy to find at all, some of what Dozer included here wound up on their own Y2K-issued first album, In the Tail of a Comet (featured here, discussed here), namely the ultra-recognizable, ultra-catchy “Riding the Machine.”

Dozer take top billing this time, so that on the cover it’s Dozer vs. Demon Cleaner — whatever rivalry aspect there may have been between these two bands at the time, they were already friends and collaborators; the ‘vs.’ no doubt comes from the epic battles they all undertook as teenagers playing Street Fighter II. At least that’s the narrative I’ve given it. On Hawaiian Cottage, already one can hear how much the two outfits were growing together, each feeling their way through their desert rock influences while setting themselves on the path to being the bands they’d become during their respective times together, Dozer‘s obviously ongoing. I’m reasonably sure both bands at this point where recording with Bengt Bäcke, who also served as the longtime bassist of affiliated outfit Greenleaf, so how much they’re on the same page here shouldn’t really be a shock.

And an early take on “Riding the Machine,” which would not only feature on Dozer‘s LP but was a highlight of it, is nothing to sneeze at here. Its sound is rawer obviously than the ‘finished’ one, and it comes accompanied by “Silverball,” which didn’t make the record but actually does a lot of work in conveying the intensity that would emerge over time in Dozer‘s sound. As much as their later work, whether it’s 2023’s Drifting in the Endless Void (review here) or 2008’s Beyond Colossal (featured here, discussed here, 2009 interview here), took on a dynamic, atmospheric and immersive sound, the thrust so plainly audible in “Silverball” very much remains a part of what Dozer do. It’s just the fuzzed-out baby version of the thing, which also happens to be awesome.

“Heading Home” begins Demon Cleaner‘s B-side, followed by the does-for-Fu–Manchu-what-Dozer-does-for-Kyuss “Megawheel,” the hook of which makes a fitting complement to “Riding the Machine” as they wrap up the split. Starting off with fuzzy, languid wah, it is pure turn-of-the-century stoner rock bliss, cool in the vocal delivery with a bit of shaker in the groove, then the surge of distortion with the vocals cutting through as they hit into the chorus. Smooth, well executed, bare-bones structurally, but it should be. It’s a demo made by 20 year olds who just happened to have a label — Dozer guitarist Tommi Holappa‘s Molten Universe, which also put out The Freeflight — and the capacity to press it up well in advance of the vinyl revival kicking off in earnest.

The repeated lines, “I am slowing down/I am heading home’ in the push of the second half of “Heading Home” give over to a somewhat understated lead and a tempo kick as they decide to tear into it at the end, and “Megawheel” rolls out (get it?) on suitably farty low end and righteous buzz. No disrespect to Dozer, who show up big to be sure, but if it’s a contest of which hook is going to be stuck in your head all day, “Megawheel” is a tough one to get away from.

It is declarative in its stomp but doesn’t stay put as it jumps into the first bridge and stops with a couple hits of cowbell to work back in. The fuzz is warm and there’s plenty for everybody, and where there are times over the course of their two LPs — the second of which was self-titled and issued in 2002; it hasn’t closed a week yet in this fashion but will at some point I’m sure; I keep a list — where they get caught up in the charge and end up more punkish than, say, their side A counterparts on this outing, even when “Megawheel” hits the gas, the sense of control remains firm as they bring it to a head at the finish, a drop-mic moment at the end predating mic drops when it comes down to silence.

There’s a temptation to write a lot into these releases as regards importance-to-genre, and certainly Dozer and Demon Cleaner‘s work warrants that kind of consideration despite the discrepancies between their respective discographies. But the truth of listening, whether you’re putting on your platter that you’ve had since before The Matrix came out and somewhat hilariously codified the 1990s as the peak of civilization, streaming the tracks above or engaging in a little light piracy 27 years after the fact while you wait for the Dozer early-works comp I’ve campaigned for for so long to surface, is so much simpler. It’s not about what Dozer would do over the next decade, or about Demon Cleaner launching the production career of Karl Daniel Lidén, whose work helped directly shape what those of us geographically elsewhere think of as ‘Swedish heavy rock.’ You get that in its quintessential form on this split and its compatriot releases.

But more, it’s about the fact that the bands just went for it. They got in the studio, played the songs, put them out. It’s the joy of creating a thing, of being part of a group creating a thing, of celebrating the sounds you love with your friends. Playing in the truest sense. You can hear all of that on Hawaian Cottage too, and so it seems all the more to capture a special moment in the lifespans of these two acts.

As always, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy.

—

We’ll wrap this informal mini-series next week with 1999’s Domestic Dudes as third of the three. After that, if there’s anyone’s catalog you want to see written up — I did Sabbath at one point last year or the year before, if you’ll recall — I’m open to suggestion if you’d like to leave a comment with one. Kyuss are obvious. Clutch would keep me busy for the rest of the year probably. But I’ve done a fair number of both their records, so that’s a challenge too — stuff where at least most of it hasn’t been already covered. Cathedral would be an interesting one, or Saint Vitus. Colour Haze are one of my favorite bands ever. Might be fun to dig into Chopping Machine or Seven at the start of their catalog.

I just went to change over the load of wash in the basement — speaking of dudely domesticity — and wound up taking a broom to the years’ worth of spider and cobwebs on the ceiling and the walls and everything around the washer and dryer, so let that serve as an indicator of my level of distraction this week. I slept hard last night but woke up at 3AM yesterday morning, so maybe not such a shock, and in terms of quality-of-life, those kinds of days are markedly lower.

Couple that with The Pecan having a harder time in school this week, hitting kids and teachers and yesterday needing to be taken out of an assembly after chasing around a one-armed man wanting to ask him questions about I know not what but I assume his one arm, and a kind of disastrous playdate yesterday where she melted down each time her friend wanted to hang out with the dog — which her friend definitely did, I think in part because my daughter spent so much time losing it — and I upped her meds before sending her in today.

If it wasn’t already a three-day weekend with Monday off, I’d have probably kept her home in an effort to give her a break. As it is, we’ll try and have a quiet-ish day tomorrow while still getting out to do some physical activity — it’s supposed to be nice, so that’ll help — and see where we’re at Sunday and Monday. She’s having issues giving up control of, well, anything, and we fall into arguments of “that’s not your decision” and “you’re not in charge of that” when she starts issuing commands or barking orders. Someday she’ll make an excellent supreme leader of the Terran Empire. Until then, I’d be pretty fucking happy if I could get her out of grade school without her turning the place to rubble.

So yesterday and today kind of become a wait by the phone, which of course helps nothing whether it’s the ambient anxiety of the house or conveying my own disappointing expectations for how things will go. The school’s behaviorist brought me into the office the other day and we sat, The Pecan too, while they talked about everything that’s been going on. It sucked. And they had some plan with some rule sheet that the kid drew up herself or some such — all the therapeutically-designed current things to do to try to get and keep a child on board with the social contract — but she’s burned through so much of that over the years between Early Intervention, OT, DI, speech at home and out, two-and-a-half years of pre-K and Kindergarten that I’m honestly not hopeful anything other than a kick in her dose will see any even medium-term movement in the direction we want. This too is sad. I don’t like drugging my kid. I can’t afford to send her to a school in the woods with a private tutor to teach her mechanical engineering, long division and/or quantum mechanics. If I could, I would. I just want her to be okay and don’t know what to do to help that happen.

In this, as in so many other ways, parenting sucks. She’s got therapy on Monday, which we started for paperwork purposes — insurance stuff, it’s complicated and political so I’m not going to talk about it — and now seems like maybe it’s a good idea to continue.

Am I really gonna leave off on that note? We were doing so well talking about Dozer and Demon Cleaner and here I am with the bumout before I send you packing back to whatever you got distaracted from to read this (hopefully nothing important)?

That’s real life, folks. Sometimes the things that are supposed to make you feel the best make you feel the worst. If that’s harshing a mellow, at least it’s honest. You move on regardless. Another week will come, hopefully better rested and less discouraging. If not, well, Roadburn’s in about two and a half weeks, so a couple days out of my own head are on the horizon, and surely that’s a better place to be as regards the self-talk underlying it all, which grows crueler with the passing of each nervous day.

But if you want something to look forward to, the Lo-Pan album is out next week. I’ll be reviewing that for Monday, I hope. I’ve also got premieres for The Elven, which has Isaiah Mitchell from Earthless involved, as well as Temple Fang and The Summit Fever. So that’s at least two of the best LPs I’ve heard so far in 2025 being written up. Things can’t be that horrible when the music is so good.

Have a great weekend. Don’t forget to hydrate.

FRM.

The Obelisk Collective on Facebook

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

Dozer, Call it Conspiracy (2002)

I think I’ve made my nerddom for Swedish heavy rockers Dozer plain over the years, but if not, let me just reinforce: The band fucking rules. From their early albums on Man’s Ruin, 2000’s In the Tail of a Comet and 2001’s Madre de Dios right on through the harder edged 2002 Molten Universe third outing, Call it Conspiracy, and their Small Stone era, which brought about 2005’s Through the Eyes of Heathens and 2008’s Beyond Colossal. All the splits, EPs, singles, etc., along the way, Dozer simply don’t have a bum release. There was no point at which they didn’t kick ass.

When it comes to Call it Conspiracy, I’ve always thought of it as the transitional moment for the band. Based as ever around the powerhouse riffs and full-speed charge of guitarist Tommi Holappa and Fredrik Nordin (the latter also vocals), Johan Rockner‘s bass and the driving thud of then-drummer Erik Bäckwall, Dozer‘s songwriting always made them a mandatory band, head and shoulders above most acts proffering heavy rock and roll then or now. But Call it Conspiracy stands out in their catalog as the bridge between the first two and the second two albums, moving away from the Kyuss loyalism of their beginnings and at the same time setting up the progression into bigger tones and a more generally bombastic sound on records four and five. It’s the center-point along that line — in output, not time; the first three Dozer albums were released in three years, the last two in twice that — and very much stands up to that stylistically. In that, it’s unlike anything else they’ve ever done. It was a leap from Madre de Dios for sure for arriving the next year, and when Through the Eyes of Heathens showed up three years later, Dozer had moved even further away from desert rock. Call it Conspiracy was a moment captured — like a snapshot of Dozer coming into their own as a band.

And while I already said it, I’ll reiterate that the songs themselves are unfuckwithable. The rush of “Rising,” the swagger of “Man Made Mountain,” the way “Crimson Highway” seems to invite a sing-along even when you’re hearing it for the first time. Dozer have been making periodic live appearances since last spring, and they released the Vultures EP (review here) last year, collecting unused tracks from the Through the Eyes of Heathens sessions, but as Holappa (Obelisk Questionnaire here) has been busy with Greenleaf — whose fifth album, Trails and Passes (review here), came out earlier this year — there’s been no word of a studio return from Dozer. Needless to say I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Hope you enjoy.

—

Up until today, I was doing really well with the rules I’d posted last week that I was trying to live by while The Patient Mrs. is in Athens. It’s 9:30PM and I haven’t left the house in two days. I knew that was gonna be a tough one when I wrote it, but was hoping I’d be able to keep up. Today and yesterday, neither the time nor the desire nor the need to go anywhere has been present. I might get in the car and drive around for 10 minutes when I’m done here, so at least I can say I did something, but otherwise, yeah. Been a lot of the couch, not a lot of not the couch. The little dog likes it.

Next week, reviews of Dunst and Grifter. It’ll probably take me two days (at least) to transcribe it, but I’m going to try to get the Lowrider interview up as well. Look out for another batch of Radio adds, and one way or another, some vinyl’s getting written about. I still need to hook up my stereo. You’d think that would’ve been a day one activity moving into the new place, but all the CDs are still packed away as well.

Trying to find a new high-volume CD storage solution. I was looking at some radio station library racks online and I think something like that might be the way to go, but I have no idea where one acquires such a thing, let alone what it might cost. But yeah, I’m thinking it might just be time to buy a shelf that lets me store 18,000 CDs and then just fill it over the next however many years. In case you’re wondering, I’d probably take up a little more than a third of that now. I don’t know if you knew this, but in addition to the stuff I buy, I keep everything sent to me for this site. I don’t sell promos, or give them away, or anything like that. Every single CD that’s been sent to me, regardless of if it’s a CDR in a slimline or a sleeve or a full-art jewel case, gatefold digipak, whatever, it goes in the archive. I keep it all. Tapes and vinyl too. And not in some random pile either. It’s taken care of. Loved. I can’t nearly write about everything that comes in these days, but I hold onto everything. Even the press releases. Seriously. I’ve got files of them.

Got off on a tangent there. Anyway, I hope you dig the Dozer and that you’ll join me in my letter-writing campaign to Tommi Holappa to get the tracks from their first several singles released as an early works compilation à la Church of Misery. I was thinking about starting one of those White House petitions. Get Obama on the case.

Alright. I’m gonna go get in the car and wander aimlessly for a bit so I can say I did. Hope you have a tremendous and safe weekend. Please check out the forum and the radio stream.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio