Posted in Whathaveyou on January 8th, 2015 by JJ Koczan
Just in case you thought Roadburn 2015 might be done, the fest has gone and added a fifth stage. I never actually got around to making the list that would’ve expressed the sentiment, but seeing Netherlands-native droners Mühr at Cul de Sac was one of the high points of my entire 2014 in terms of live shows. It’s a separate club from 013, but basically right across the street in Weirdo Canyon, still very much within the fest’s purview. I can’t imagine it will remain standing after Goatwhore play, but it was nice while it lasted.
Other lineup additions for Roadburn 2015 today from Mount Salem, Downfall of Gaia, Fistula, Minsk and more. By way of a cheap plug, if you click the links to the info for Fistula and Minsk, I wrote those. Nonetheless, it all came down the PR wire like such:
New additions and fifth stage confirmed for Roadburn Festival 2015
Roadburn Festival is pleased to kick off the new year with a handful of new confirmations, plus the addition of a fifth stage. Tickets for the 20th edition of the festival are on sale now.
Minsk, Mount Salem and Worm Ouroboros have been added to the line up at the 013 for Thursday April 9. Having previously performed at the 2009 edition of the festival, Minsk return to Roadburn, bringing their trademark atmospheric, meditative ambience, offset by raging thrust. Look out for plenty of canyon-sized riffs, trippy sounding keyboards and enchanting vocals when Mount Salem conjur a crushing windstorm to blow through Roadburn, whilst Worm Ouroboros will be spinning their diaphanous webs of the most delicate chamber doom.
For more information on these bands please clickHEREfor Minsk,HEREfor Mount Salem, andHEREfor Worm Ouroboros.
New Orleans heavyweights, Goatwhore lead the charge, followed by Germany’s Downfall of Gaia, noise-hardcore trio Cortez, and a dual-pronged sludge attack from both Fister, and Moloch as the first bands announced for the intimate Cul de Sac venue. As with the 2014 edition, Roadburn’s fifth stage will be at Cul de Sac – small music café located across from the 013 venue at 48 Heuvel, which is the street lined with bars and restaurants (also affectionately known as “Weirdo Canyon”). Four bands will perform at Cul de Sac on each day of the festival, Thursday – Sunday. Entry to these shows is sure to be in high demand, so attendees are advised to arrive early to secure access.
Fister, Cortez, and Moloch will perform on Thursday April 9. For more information please clickHERE.
For information on Goatwhore clickHERE, and Downfall of Gaia clickHERE, both will perform on Friday April 10.
With regret, we have to announce that Lord Mantis will no longer be performing at Roadburn 2015. Having witnessed their incredible performance at the 2011 festival, we at Roadburn HQ were all really excited to have them perform at our 20th edition this coming April. Sadly, the band are unable to make it over to Europe due to personal reasons; as a result their performance at Roadburn and any shows around that will be cancelled. The vacant slot on the line up will be taken by Ohio sludge titans, Fistula who will bring their perfect blend of blasphemy and assaulting volume to Het Patronaat on Saturday April 11. For more information on Fistula, please clickHERE.
In December, day tickets were released on sale alongside the remaining weekend and Afterburner only tickets. To view ticketing options for Roadburn Festival clickHERE.
Chicago doom rock newcomers Mount Salem are headed to Europe this fall for an impressive festival run that will include Dutch Doom Days and Hammer of Doom. There are others, of course, but let that be indicative of the theme with which the four-piece are working: Doom. Their initially self-released debut, Endless, got picked up by Metal Blade, and Mount Salem haven’t looked back since. Today, they premiered a new video for the track “Lucid” from the album.
Knowing next to nothing about the band at the time, other than they were from Chicago and they were doomed out, I was fortunate enough to catch Mount Salem live last fall in Rhode Island (review here), and they’ve hit the road at least twice since then, so they’re working quick to get their songs in front of as many people as possible. I’d expect that momentum to only continue to build as they move into and beyond this first European incursion.
The video for “Lucid” is directed by Dave Skwarczek (http://www.skwarczek.com) and is followed by the tour dates. Please enjoy:
Mount Salem, “Lucid” official video
Recently, Mount Salem confirmed their first European tour in support of their album “Endless”. The band will be making their UK debut at The Black Heart in London on November 2, 2014. The following dates are confirmed by now and can be announced. More dates to be confirmed soon!
MOUNT SALEM European Tour 25/10/14 NL – Leeuwarden – Into The Void Festival 26/10/14 DE – Hamburg – Rock Club St. Pauli 30/10/14 DK – Copenhagen – Stengade 31/10/14 DE – Paderborn – Thumbs Up Fest 01/11/14 NL – Rotterdam – Dutch Doom Days 02/11/14 UK – London – Our Black Heart 07/11/14 ES – Zaragoza – Arrebato 10/11/14 IT – Milan – Lo-Fi 11/11/14 IT – Bologna – Freakout Club 12/11/14 AT – Wien – Arena 15/11/14 DE – Würzburg – Hammer of Doom Festival 16/11/14 DE – Leipzig – Plaque
Mount Salem comments: “We are very excited to be coming overseas for our first time. Traveling is a hobby for all of us so we’re thrilled to be able to see new countries, meet new people, and of course, play some music.”
MOUNT SALEM is: Emily Kopplin – vocals & organ Cody Davidson – drums Mark Hewett – bass Kyle Morrison – guitars
Posted in Whathaveyou on April 16th, 2014 by JJ Koczan
I dug Chicago’s Mount Salem pretty well when I saw them last fall with Uzala and Mike Scheidt at the gotta-get-back-there-soon Dusk in Providence, RI (review here), and have since enjoyed getting the vibe of their debut EP, Endless, which seems to touch on a lot of the tenets of modern heavy — vintage this and that, cultish this and that, doomly heres and theres — without giving over to one side or the other completely. That only makes Mount Salem a harder act to trace and thus, all the more interesting. We all like a good puzzle every now and again, and the nascent Windy City troupe came with an already steady hold on an aesthetic that one hopes only becomes even more their own over time.
Touring will help in that regard, and Mount Salem have just announced they’ll head west out of Chicago next month for two weeks-plus on the road that include a couple of dates alongside Saint Vitus‘ on the legendary doomers’ 35th anniversary tour. If you want to get yourself schooled in doom, that’s an efficient way to do it. Pretty much a Masters class.
The PR boils forth from its cauldron:
MOUNT SALEM: Chicago Psychedelic Doom Conjurors Announce Headlining Tour
Chicago psychedelic doom rock conjurors and recent Metal Blade signees, MOUNT SALEM, will embark on a full headlining tour this May! The trek will pillage its way through select cities between Chicago and Los Angeles, and includes one-off shows in New Mexico and Arizona opening up for doom legends, Saint Vitus! MOUNT SALEM will be touring in support of their Endless EP.
MOUNT SALEM 5/01/2014 Township – Chicago, IL 5/02/2014 Dragonfly Lounge – Madison, WI 5/03/2014 JB’s Speakeasy – La Crosse, WI 5/04/2014 Chesterfield – Sioux City, IA 5/05/2014 The Bourbon – Lincoln, NE 5/06/2014 Larimer Lounge – Denver, CO w/ Speedwolf 5/08/2014 Launch Pad – Albuquerque, NM w/ Saint Vitus, Sons Of Huns 5/09/2014 Club Red – Tempe, AZ w/ Saint Vitus, Sons Of Huns 5/10/2014 TBA – Los Angeles, CA 5/11/2014 The Makeout Room – San Francisco, CA 5/12/2014 Witch Room – Sacramento, CA 5/13/2014 Slabtown – Portland, OR 5/15/2014 The Shred Shed – Salt Lake City, UT 5/16/2014 Future Shock – Frisco, CO 5/17/2014 Kung Fu Tap And Taco – Des Moines, IA
MOUNT SALEM is a four-piece psychedelic rock/doom metal band. They started writing music together in the summer of 2012 and released their first debut EP, Endless, in the Spring of 2013. Taking influence from the likes of Black Sabbath and Pentagram, MOUNT SALEM play loud, heavy rock ‘n’ roll using all vintage gear. Throwing their own twist of dark, mysterious doom into their summonings, MOUNT SALEM systematically pull listeners into their sinister realm of sound; their lyrical imagery serving as a ride all its own. Metal Blade Records signed the band in the Summer of 2013 and recently released an extended version of Endless containing two additional, brand-new tracks.
Posted in Reviews on October 24th, 2013 by JJ Koczan
It was a weird kind of night, but I like weird. Uzala were coming from the other side of the country — Boise, Idaho, and Portland, Oregon — and had brought YOB‘s Mike Scheidt along for the tour, also picking up still-nascent Chicago outfit Mount Salem on the way. The three acts weren’t exactly lacking variety between them, with Scheidt playing acoustic, Mount Salem indulging Korg-inclusive cult rock and Uzala crushing with plodding noise, but the show, which took place at Dusk in Providence, Rhode Island, was rounded out by local black metal shredders Bog of the Infidel. So yeah, kind of all over the place with a sphere of underground heavy, but still definitely a good time.
Providence is about an hour away from me. It still took me less time to get to Dusk than it ever took me to get across Manhattan and into Brooklyn from New Jersey, though, and I suspect that once I get used to the drive, I won’t find it at all unpleasant. I had Druglord‘s new tape (review forthcoming) along for the ride to set the mood and was excited to see Uzala particularly. The flyer for the show listed Scheidt at the bottom, so thinking there was a chance he’d be going on first, I took it as an instruction to get there fairly early. He did indeed wind up playing before any of the others, but even so, his set didn’t start until a little before 10PM. It was going to be a late night.
Sure enough, that’s how it played out. To get things moving and make up for lost time from the late kickoff, Scheidt played a shorter set, starting with a Townes van Zandt cover — pretty sure it was “Rake,” but don’t quote me on it — and part of a new song before going into two from last year’s solo debut, Stay Awake(review here), including the churning set-closer “Stay Awake,” which has only proved more of a landmark in Scheidt‘s songwriting in the year since the album was released and with a couple tours like this one under his belt. In that time, he’s clearly gotten more comfortable with the form of playing by himself. His set was loose, casual and relaxed, but still conveying emotion and the sense of purpose behind the songs. It looked like something he was doing because he enjoyed it, rather than an experiment in something new, and when he fucked up the new song, he laughed it off like it didn’t matter at all, and so it didn’t.
Mount Salem formed in 2012 in Chicago, and I was going to say something about how in another couple years they’d be ready to hook up with Metal Blade‘s current cult rock fetish, but it appears they already have, so kudos. Money’s tight, but I will at least admit to picking up a CD of their self-released debut EP, Endless, and since I’d seen their name around over the last few months, I was eager to see what they had on offer. Vocalist Emily Kopplin started the set alone on stage setting a mood with keys and vocals before being joined by bassist Mark Hewett, guitarist Kyle Morrison and drummer Cody Davidson for a round of songs mostly culled from that EP. Everything sounds likeSaint Vitus to me lately, but the stomp at the beginning of “Hysteria” seemed specifically indebted to “Born too Late,” though Morrison was sure to toss in lead notes and add personality to the familiar rhythm, and I found that though I had a pretty clear understanding of where Mount Salem were coming from in terms of their influences — taking that Vitus pace and offsetting it with strong cult/stoner blues chug while Kopplin topped with her powerful, versatile voice — they delivered everything I could have reasonably asked for such a new band on the road.
They had the tone, the vibe, and the approach pretty much down — not to mention the songs — and considering a lot of bands never get to that point, it’s all the more impressive that Mount Salem would essentially start out that way. The overall feel of “Good Times” was familiar within the genre, but the song nonetheless lived up to its name, and it seemed in watching them that all Mount Salem really needed to do was continue to put in work touring to refine their take. I’ll look forward to getting to know their EP, which came out earlier this year, and to finding out where their next batch of songs brings their sound. When they were done, they quickly loaded their gear off stage so that double-guitar five-piece Bog of the Infidel could get started.
My opinions on black metal vary widely depending on mood. Sometimes it’s all pretenders to the throne of two or three bands (what genre isn’t?) or dudes trying their best to sound Norwegian without thinking about why, and other times it’s ripping good fun, the brutality and extremity of something like Dark Funeral or Averse Sefira or any number of others providing its own excuse for being within a style that at this point has had three decades of development. Bog of the Infidel were tight and fast with some underpinnings of brutal groove amid a few showings of technicality — also armbands — and though I wondered why they, as the locals on an already late night, wouldn’t take the closing slot of the show and let Uzala play to what would almost certainly be the bigger crowd while also making more sense sonically coming after Mount Salem, they were solid at what they were doing and we should all enjoy anything in life as much as drummer Wraitheon seemed to delight in each blastbeat. Midnight came quickly as they ran through their set, as one imagines it would have no matter what time they’d gotten going.
After they were finished, Scheidt helped Bog of the Infidel load their gear out and Uzala set up on the quick, their logos cut into steel frontplates for their backlined cabinets. They’ve been too easy a band for me to let slide, frankly. Their 2012 split 7″ with Mala Suerte was streamed here, as was a bonus track from the cassette version of their 2011 self-titled debut full-length, but seeing them, I still didn’t feel like I’d ever really dug into what they were doing. Now a trio after parting ways with bassist Nick Phit (Graves at Sea), they split the guitar signals of Darcy Nutt and Chad Remains (whose name sounds even more like “charred remains” when said with a proper New England accent) through bass amps so the set lacked nothing for low end. Their new album, Tales of Blood and Fire, was released last week on King of the Monsters Records and they had both the tape and CD on hand and kept the setlist focused heavily on that material, only delving back to the self-titled to open with “Death Masque” and otherwise playing exclusively new cuts.
I hadn’t heard Tales of Blood and Fireyet, but it didn’t make a difference. Uzala‘s grooves were immersive on the immediate, and the periodic onslaughts of noise that came with Remains‘ solos only added to the overarching gnarl of their doom. They were, as so few bands are, an example of the difference a great drummer can make, as Chuck Watkins (also of Graves at Sea) alternately propelled and lumbered songs like “Burned” and “Dark Days,” the band hitting their own Vitus moment in the noisier wash of the former. Highlight moments came later into their set though, as the extended “Countess” proffered choice tempo shifts and a particularly right on performance from Nutt on vocals to go with the slowly unfolding riffs, and the subdued later stretches of “Tenement of the Lost” closed their set and Dusk alike. The house lights came up as Nutt, Remains and Watkins continued the quiet trance of what would be their last song (the image of the three of them continuing to pursue the demons in that song I expect will be what stays with me longest about this show), and as soon as they were done, one of the bartenders stood in the big, open window from outside and told the crowd in no uncertain terms to fuck off right out the door if they weren’t buying merch or in one of the bands. It was past one in the morning and I’ve always had a knack for following simple instructions.
