Posted in Whathaveyou on May 13th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
I’ll be honest, I’ve been kicking around the idea of doing an Obelisk All-Dayer in Stockholm, Sweden, sometime in summer 2020. Basically whenever wouldn’t conflict with Sweden Rock, which as I understand it, is massive. Oddly enough, in Europe, Sweden is not the hugest market despite the glut of bands from there, and Debaser is a club that had come up in conversation. The thought that Truckfighters are doing a fest there — let alone one with Greenleaf involved — might just shoot that idea in the ass. We’ll see. Either way, even with half the lineup unveiled, what’s been dubbed Fuzz Festival #1 already looks like a damn good time. Truckfighters will headline playing Gravity X in full — back to front, as I understand it, so they can close with “Desert Cruiser”; only fair — and there’s the aforementioned Greenleaf, as well as Motorowl from Germany and Swedish hard rockers Deville, who’ll represent Truckfighters‘ Fuzzorama Records imprint well.
Speculation as to the rest of the lineup? I have to think Asteroid will be involved, schedule permitting, but I don’t know that. As to the rest, it’s pretty wide open. Maybe Skraeckoedlan, if they’re looking for more Swedish representation? We’ll see June 5 when they make their next announcement, I guess. In the meantime, I’d go. I’ll leave it at that.
From the PR wire:
Truckfighters presents Fuzz Festival #1, Stockholm
Get your ticket now! Early birds for just 330 SEK (ca 30 EUR)
You know what’s disheartening? When someone goes ‘thanks dudes.’ You know, I share a review or something, the band reposts and goes ‘thanks to the crew at The Obelisk blah blah.’ What fucking crew? If I had a crew, I’d put up 10 reviews every single day of the year. “Crew.” Shit. I am the crew. In the description of this site, the very first thing it says is “One-man operation.” It’s a fucking solo-project. That’s the whole point of it. It’s like me looking at your bass and going, “Sweet guitar, thanks for the solos brah.” I’m happy people want to share links and this and that, but really? It’s been nine years. Give me a break.
Oh yeah, that’s right. Nobody gives a shit. Now I remember. Thanks for reading.
And while we’re here, please remember the numbers for these posts don’t mean anything. This isn’t a countdown. Or a countup. It’s just me keeping track of how much shit I’m reviewing. The answer is “a lot.”
Grump grump grump.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Lucifer, Lucifer II
Recorded as the trio of vocalist Johanna Sardonis (ex-The Oath), guitarist Robin Tidebrink (Saturn) and guitarist/drummer Nicke Andersson (Death Breath, ex-Entombed, ex-TheHellacopters), Lucifer’s second album, Lucifer II (on Rise Above), follows three years after its numerical predecessor, Lucifer I (review here), and marks its personnel changes with a remarkable consistency of mission. Like Mercyful Fate gone disco, the formerly-Berlin/London-now-Stockholm group bring stage-ready atmospheres to songs like “Phoenix” and the riff-led “Before the Sun,” while unleashing a largesse of hooks in “Dreamer” and the boogie-pushing “Eyes in the Sky.” “Dancing with Mr. D” brings nod to a Rolling Stones cover, and “Before the Sun” reaffirms a heavy ‘70s root in their sound. I can’t help but wonder if the doomier “Faux Pharaoh” is a sequel to “Purple Pyramid,” but either way, its thicker, darker tonality is welcome ahead of the bonus track Scorpions cover “Evening Wind,” which again demonstrates the ease with which Lucifer make established sounds their own. That’s pretty much the message of the whole album. Lucifer are a big band. Lucifer II makes the case for their being a household name.
Lifa is the audio taken from the live video that brought Denmark’s Heilung to prominence. Captured at Castlefest in The Netherlands in last year, the impression the expansive Viking folk group made was all the more powerful with elaborate costuming, bone percussive instruments, antlers, animal-skin drums, and so on. Their debut studio album, Ofnir, came out in 2015 and like LIFA has been issued by Season of Mist, but the attention to detail and A/V experience only adds to the hypnotic tension and experimentalist edge in the material. Does it work with just the audio? Yes. The 12-minute “In Maijan” and somehow-black-metal “Krigsgaldr” maintain their trance-out-of-history aspect, and the 75-minute set blends multi-tiered melodies and goblin-voiced declarations for an impression unlike even that which Wardruna bring to bear. Whether it’s the drones of “Fylgija Futhorck” or the chants and thuds of “Hakkerskaldyr,” LIFA is striking from front to back and a cohesive, visionary work that should be heard as well as seen. But definitely seen.
Eight years after their founding, an EP and several splits, Chico, California, atmosludge extremists Amarok make their full-length debut with Devoured on Translation Loss. If it’s been a while in the making, it’s easy enough to understand why. The album is rife with brutalist and grueling sensibilities. Comprised of just four tracks, it runs upwards of 70 minutes and brings a visceral churn to each cut, not forgetting the importance of atmosphere along the way, but definitely focused on the aural bludgeoning they’re dealing out. Tempos, duh, are excruciating, and between the screams and growls of bassist Brandon Squyres (also Cold Blue Mountain) and guitarist Kenny Ruggles – the band completed by guitarist Nathan Collins and drummer Colby Byrne – Amarok make their bid for Buried at Sea levels of heft and rumble their way across a desolate landscape of their own making. Eight years to conjure this kind of punishment? Yeah, that seems about right. See you in 2026.
Here’s a curious case: T.G. Olson, founding guitarist and vocalist of Across Tundras, is a prolific experimental singer-songwriter. His material ranges from psychedelic country to fuller-toned weirdo Americana and well beyond. He’s wildly prolific, and everything goes up on Bandcamp for a name-your-price download, mostly unannounced. It’s not there, then it is. Olson’s latest singe, Ode to Lieutenant Henry, was there, and now it’s gone. With the march of its title-track and a complementary cover of Townes van Zandt’s “Silver Ships of Andilar,” I can’t help but be curious as to where the tracks went and if they’ll be back, perhaps in some other form or as part of a different release. Both are plugged-in and coated in fuzzy tones, with Olson’s echoing vocals providing a human presence in the wide soundscape of his own making. The original is shorter than the cover, but both songs boast a signature sense of ramble that, frankly, is worth being out there. Hopefully they’re reposted at some point, either on their own as they initially were or otherwise.
If space is the place, Sun Dial feel right at home in it. The long-running UK psychedelic adventurers collect two decades’ worth of soundtrack material on Science Fiction, their new release for Sulatron Records. Made with interwoven keyboard lines and a propensity to periodically boogie on “Mind Machine,” “Airlock,” “Infra Red,” etc., the experimentalist aspect of Science Fiction is all the more remarkable considering the album is compiled from different sources. One supposes the overarching cosmos is probably what brings it together, but with the samples and synth of “Saturn Return” and the lower end space-bass of pre-bonus-track closer “Starwatchers” – that bonus track, by the way, is a 15-minute version of opener “Hangar 13” – and though the vast majority of the Science Fiction relies on synth and keys to make its impression, it’s still only fair to call the proceedings natural, as the root of each one seems to be exploration. It’s okay to experiment. Nobody’s getting hurt.
There are three songs on Lucid Grave’s first outing, the aptly-titled Demo 2018, and the first of them is also the longest (immediate points), “Star.” It presents a curious and hard to place interpretation of psychedelic sludge rock. It is raw as a demo worthy of its name should be, and finds vocalist Malene Pedersen (also Lewd Flesh) echoing out to near-indecipherable reaches atop the feedback-addled riffing. Quite an introduction, to say the least. The subsequent “Desert Boys” is more subdued at the start but gets furious at the end, vocals spanning channels in an apparent call and response atop increasingly intense instrumental thrust. And as for “Ride the Hyena?” If I didn’t know better – and rest assured, I don’t – I’d call it doom. I’m not sure what the hell the København five-piece are shooting for in terms of style, but I damn sure want to hear what they come up with next so I can find out. Consider me enticed. And accordingly, one can’t really accuse Demo 2018 of anything other than doing precisely what it’s supposed to do.
Comprised of four-tracks of heavy psychedelic vibes led by the scorch-prone guitar of Belwil, Domadora’s third album, Lacuna, follows behind 2016’s The Violent Mystical Sukuma (discussed here) and taps quickly into a post-Earthless league of instrumentalism on opener “Lacuna Jam.” That should be taken as a compliment, especially as regards the bass and drums of Gui Omm and Karim Bouazza, respectively, who hold down uptempo grooves there and roll along with the more structured 14-minute cut “Genghis Khan” that follows. Each of the album’s two sides is comprised of a shorter track and a longer one, and there’s plenty of reach throughout, but more than expanse, even side B’s “Vacuum Density” and “Tierra Last Homage” are more about the chemistry between the band members – Angel Hidalgo Paterna rounds out on organ – than about crafting a landscape. Fortunately for anyone who’d take it on, the Parisian unit have plenty to offer when it comes to that chemistry.
That’s a big “fuck yes, thank you very much” for the debut album from Indonesian stoner metallers Klandestin. Green Acid of the Last Century arrives courtesy of Hellas Records and is THC-heavy enough that if they wanted to, they could probably add “Bong” to the band’s name and it would be well earned. Eight tracks, prime riffs, watery vocals, dense fuzz, stomp, plod, lumber, shuffle – it’s all right there in homegrown dosage, and for the converted, Green Acid of the Last Century is nothing short of a worship ceremony, for the band itself as well as for anyone taking it on. With the march of “Doomsday,” the unmitigated rollout of “Black Smoke,” and the swirling green aurora of “The Green Aurora,” Klandestin wear their holding-back-a-cough riffage as a badge of honor, and couldn’t be any less pretentious about it if they tried. From the hooded weedian on the cover art to the Sleepy nod of closer “Last Century,” Green Acid of Last Century telegraphs its intent front-to-back, and is all the more right on for it.
You get what you pay for with “Rock’n’Roller,” which leads off the self-titled debut EP from Bern, Switzerland-based Poor Little Things. Around the core duo of vocalist Tina Jackson and multi-instrumentalist Dave “Talon” Jackson (also of Australia’s Rollerball) on guitar, bass, synth and percussion is Talon’s The Marlboro Men bandmate Fernando Marlboro on drums, and together the band presents five tracks of remember-when-rock-rocked-style groove. Fueled by ‘70s accessibility and a mentality that seems to be saying it’s okay to play big rooms, like arenas, cuts like “Drive” seem prime for audience participation, and “Break Another Heart” gives a highlight performance from Tina while “About Love” showcases a more laid back take. They close with the 6:37 “Street Cheetah,” which struts appropriately, and end with a percussive finish on a fadeout repeating the title line. As a showcase of their style and songwriting chops, Poor Little Things shows significant promise, sure, but it’s also pretty much already got everything it needs for a full-length album.
Every now and then you put on a record and it’s way better than you expect. Hello, Motorowl’s Atlas. The German troupe’s second for Century Media, it takes the classic stylizations of their 2016 debut, Om Generator, and pushes them outward into a vast sea of organ-laced progressive heavy, soaring in vocal melodies and still modern despite drawing from an array of decades past. The chug in “The Man Who Rules the World” would be metal for most bands, but on Atlas, it becomes part of a broader milieu, and sits easily next to the expansive title-track, as given to post-rocking airiness in the guitar as to synth-laden prog. That mixture of influences and aesthetics would be enough to give the five-piece an identity of their own, but Atlas is further characterized by Motorowl’s ambitious songwriting and benefits greatly from the melodic arrangements and the clear intention toward creative development at work here. Those who take on its seven-track/45-minute journey will find it dynamic, spacious and heavy in kind.
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 18th, 2016 by JJ Koczan
The fall festival season kicks off in Europe before fall even starts. It’s like car companies rolling out next year’s models before we’re halfway through this year (though we are that now as well; you get my point). It seems like between August and November there isn’t a week when one if not multiple nations is playing host to a swath of quality bands, and Setalight Festival 2016 throws itself into the heart of the fray on Oct. 21 and 22, hosting an already-packed two-day lineup at the these-are-German-words Zukunft am Ostkreuz venue in Berlin.
I’m not sure if this is the complete lineup or not. It could be, easily. As of now, jam-prone Dutch trio The Machine, and Germany’s own Mother Engine — veterans of Freak Valley and Desertfest Berlin, no doubt among others — will also take part, as well as East-meets-West groovers Samavayo (based in Berlin), French mostly-instrumentalists Glowsun, uptempo rockers Phiasco and a host of others, some familiar — looking at you, Motorowl — and some less so. A couple names to investigate below, since if Setalight Records — which of course is putting on the festival — knows anything it’s how to pick bands.
The particulars came down the PR wire:
The Berlin based music label SETALIGHT presents the 4th time bands out of Stonerrock, Heavy & Hard Rock, Doom, Noise and Psychedelic Rock. Beside known bands of the scene, we will also present new or unknown bands.
For the lineup, we picked some great bands out of the dust, such as:
THE MACHINE MOTHER ENGINE SAMAVAYO NEUME OUZO BAZOOKA PHIASCO GLOWSUN THIEVES BY THE CODE BALG MOTHERBRAIN SWEDENBORG RAUM KALAMAHARA MOTOROWL and many more.
When / where:
The SETALIGHT FESTIVAL will take place from 21st to 22nd of October 2016 in Berlin, (Club: Zukunft am Ostkreuz). The pre-sale just started. Get more information at the links:
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 15th, 2016 by JJ Koczan
Next-gen German fivesome Motorowl first issued their debut full-length, Om Generator this past April. You can stream it in full below. The band have been picked up by Century Media to give the album an official release on Aug. 26. Their style is pretty fluid in its play between doom and classic metal and heavy rock, but between the band’s relative youth and the obvious performance potential shown in the record — look out, every Euro metal fest in 2017 — there’s little mystery in why Century Media might pick Motorowl as their next foray into the heavier end of the spectrum behind the rocking The Shrine and the weighted gloom-pop of Hexvessel‘s latest. Plenty of possibilities here.
The PR wire made it official:
MOTOROWL sign worldwide deal with Century Media Records!
True talent can be found anywhere: from black metal in China, NWOBHM worship in Peru, to crushing death in Indonesia. However, brilliant psychedelic doom rock that easily competes with today’s high international standards from Thuringia, a state in eastern Germany, is still quite a surprising discovery though the region is renowned for its diverse music scene. Now, Century Media Records proudly presents the young quintet, MOTOROWL! Formed in 2014 when most of its band members were not even twenty years old, MOTOROWL quickly developed a heavy sound blessed with fabulous riffs, great vocal melodies, and a grinding Hammond organ on top. Think SPIRITUAL BEGGARS or Uriah Heep on a bad acid trip. Think 70’s inspired, damn heavy hard rock with a contemporary, gloomy twist.
Created with pure passion and incredible, mature song-writing skills, the band’s debut, Om Generator was co-produced by Fabian Hildebrandt (of label mates DESERTED FEAR) and the mighty Dan Swanö handling mix and mastering duties.
Dan Swanö: “Amazing mixture of stoner and 70’s hard rock executed with finesse. I had an amazing time mixing their songs, that always seemed to take a turn towards the unexpected.”
Fabian Hildebrandt: “Congratulations to my buddies from Motorowl! It does say something, when a band goes from a rancid rehearsal room in Gera straight away to touring with Bombus, and even manages to convince a label as renowned as Century Media . I still remember vividly, how they asked me to record their album. Initially, I was rather critical, but after I saw them live I immediately knew that I HAD TO. Stunning… extremely young, no idea about nothing, yet insanely talented! Motorowl are a true rock band and I am curious to see, where the future journey of Daniel, Martin, Max, Tim and Vinz will take them.”
MOTOROWL has shared the stage with Jex Thoth, Path Of Samsara, and toured with Sweden’s BOMBUS, perfecting their unique live experience and even catching the attention of Germany’s Visions Magazine who predicted early on it would not take long until they got signed.
Om Generator will be released worldwide through Century Media Records on August 26th, 2016.
More updates including live tour dates will be announced soon!
MOTOROWL live: 07.08.2016 – Halle, Germany – MACH Festival
MOTOROWL is: Max Hemmann – Guitar/Vocals Vinzenz Steiniger – Guitar Martin Scheibe – Drums Tim Camin – Bass Daniel Dettlev – Keys
