Posted in Whathaveyou on April 5th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Belgian melodic heavy noise rockers My Diligence will release their fourth album next year as their first offering through Listenable Records. The signing announcement — and in an indictment of my diligence, this news is a couple weeks old — came through posted by the Brussels trio, who in addition to Century Festival and others in their home country have been confirmed for a spot in June at Hellfest in France with more sure to follow, and who were heard from last year with their ripper of third record, The Matter, Form and Power (review here). They played Desertfest Belgium last Fall to support that LP, which was issued like the two before it through Mottow Soundz.
They’ve been doing shows steadily since The Matter, Form and Power came out in June, and it will be interesting to see if they hit the road even more with Listenable behind them, but as of now and like a lot of Belgian acts, they remain something of a well-kept secret, despite the loud-at-any-volume sensibility imbued into their work. I could go on here, but the bottom line is congrats to the band and best wishes on the upcoming dates and making the next record. I’ll look forward to (hopefully) hearing how it comes out when the time is right.
Their post and shows for the next few months follow here, snagged from socials:
We have some exciting news to share: we have joined the esteemed talent at Listenable Records. We look forward to making great sounds together – starting with a new album to be released in spring 2024.
We would like to express our thanks and deep appreciation for the nurturing and support Mathias Widtskiöld at Mottow Soundz has shown us over the past decade. We made 3 great albums together, each of which we are extremely proud.
We owe Jean-Michel Labadie of Gojira a HUGE THANKS for connecting us with Laurent Merle and Listenable Records. We are grateful for your mentoring.
Last but not least a shout out to Christophe Dillen aka Denis Daniel our manager whose steady hand ensures we never lose our sense of humour and love for the music.
MY DILIGENCE live: 29.04.23 MOUSCRON (BE) – CENTURY FESTIVAL 06.05.23 IZEGEM (BE) – Headbanger’s Balls Fest 13.05.23 DURBUY (BE) – Durbuy Rock Festival 21.05.23 BÉTHUNE (FR) – Le Poche Béthune 16.06.23 CLISSON (FR) – Hellfest Open Air Festival 08.07.23 TOURNAI (BE) – La Crypte 15.07.23 NOISEUX (BE) – NoiZ’Rock 13.08.23 KORTRIJK (BE) – ALCATRAZ MUSIC
MY DILIGENCE: Cédric Fontaine – Guitars, Vocals François Peeters – Guitars Gabriel Marlier – Drums
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 31st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Yo, not for nothing, but you could go see Incantation and Bongripper and Naxatras on the same lineup if you go to Antwerp. Or how about Alunah, Gozu and Suma? Cities of Mars and Stygian Bough? Slomatics and Somali Yacht Club and Polymoon? Sasquatch and Weedpecker? God damn.
If I had cash and time, I — well, I’d do a lot of things — but I’d be at this one. I know sometimes in the grand scheme of things looking at a bunch of names on a poster your eyes can glaze over, but if you can stop that from happening here, it’s worth looking at the stylistic sprawl that’ll take place over the course of the weekend. It is far more in terms of aural landscaping than simply desert, which has been true of the various Desertfest-branded events over the last, I don’t know, six years-plus, but is only emphasized here.
Plus, just about anytime Slomatics do anything it makes me happy. Those guys are great.
From the PR wire:
DF 2022 ANTWERP: WEEDPECKER, WUCAN, SLOMATICS, AND MORE!
This is the final batch of names that completes the DF Antwerp line-up, and we’ve definitely saved up some fine morsels for last. All sizes and shapes is the name of the game, so get hyped and dig in.
For those of you who like their stoner music to truly widen the senses, WEEDPECKER and SOMALI YACHT CLUB definitely fit the bill. Both incorporate many psychedelic influences in their jams, taking you on a killer trip.
On the more brutal side of things, we welcome New York’s death metal pioneers INCANTATION who come to celebrate their ‘Tricennial of Blasphemy’. With SLOMATICS, we present you with the heaviest of heavy in sludge doom. No messing about – just pummelling wall-to-wall riffage.
WUCAN and ROSY FINCH enrich our line-up with two kick-ass women that deal in idiosyncratic and highly original rock. Wucan’s Francis Tobolsky still rocks a flute like nobody’s business, and speaking of unconventional instruments in stoner bands: meet MY DILIGENCE who traded their bass player for a Moog keyboard!
As an unfortunate side-note: we have been mercifully spared of cancellations this year.. until now. We are sad to let you know that MOTHERSHIP will not be appearing at this year’s Desertfest Belgium. Their slot has already been filled in above, but still… it’s a bummer.
But hey! We’re still looking at one seriously sumofagun line-up for three days of delicious fuzztastic wreckage… So if it wasn’t before NOW is the time to secure your tickets. Especially because those Reduced Price Combi Tickets are going fast and be gone before you know it.. Don’t let it happen! Don’t do it! By which we mean: do it!
Well, in the aftermath of reviewing 100 albums over the span of 10 days, there was just about no way I wouldn’t have enough to fill out a Gimme Metal playlist, and hey guess what? I was only like six days late turning it in! At least the playlist. Voice tracks I think I cut on Tuesday. I honestly have no idea.
But in any case, it didn’t feel as late as last time because it wasn’t, and I’m glad to be featuring a smattering of some of what stood out to me from the finished-today QR, plus a new Dreadnought track that I got excited about because the album announcement came in while I was putting the playlist together and I couldn’t not include it. Probably won’t be the last time.
But if you see/hear/want to dig more on any of this stuff, you can either look for the review or just tap and Google that shit. I think there were maybe two (maybe) bands who weren’t on Bandcamp easily accessible, so everyone else, it’s all right there for you. Plus here, all newly written up in my typical turnt-brain-to-goo Quarterly Review style.
Thanks if you listen and thanks for reading.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at: http://gimmemetal.com.
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 07.08.22 (VT = voice track)
Witchfinder
The Maze
Endless Garden
0N0
Clay Weight
Unwavering Resonance
Church of the Sea
Odalisque
Odalisque
Dreadnought
Midnight Moon
The Endless
VT
Faeries
Fresh Laces
Faeries
My Diligence
Celestial Kingdom
The Matter, Form and Power
Supplemental Pills
Freedom March
Volume 1
Kaleidobolt
Ultraviolent Chimpanzee
This One Simple Trick
Black Lung
Hollow Dreams
Dark Waves
The Cimmerian
Silver and Gold
Thrice Majestic
Astral Pigs
Our Golden Twilight
Our Golden Twilight
Carson
Dirty Dream Maker
The Wilful Pursuit of Ignorance
Kadavermarch
1,000 Yard Stare
Into Oblivion
Electric Mountain
A Fistful of Grass
Valley Giant
VT
Øresund Space Collective
Deep Breath for the EARTH
Oily Echoes of the Soul
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is July 22 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
Oh we’re in the thick of it now, make no mistake. Day one? A novelty. Day two? I don’t know, slightly less of a novelty? But by the time you get to day three in a Quarterly Review, you know how far you’ve come and how far you still have to go. In this particular case, building toward 100 records total covered, today passes the line of the first quarter done, and that’s not nothing, even if there’s a hell of a lot more on the way.
That said, let’s not waste time we don’t have. I hope you find something killer in here, because I already have.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
My Diligence, The Matter, Form and Power
The Matter, Form and Power is the third long-player from Brussels’ My Diligence, whose expansive take on melodic noise rock has never sounded grander. The largesse of songs like the Floor-esque “Multiversal Tree” or the choruses in “On the Wire” and the layered post-hardcore screams in “Sail to the Red Light” — to say nothing of the massive nod with which the title-track opens, or the progressively-minded lumbering with which the 10-minute “Elasmotherium” closes — brims with purpose in laying the atmospheric foundation from which the material soars outward. With “Celestial Kingdom” as its centerpiece, the heavy starting far, far away and shifting into an earliest-Mastodon chug as drift and heft collide, there are hints of Cave In in form if not all through the execution — that is, My Diligence cross similar boundaries but don’t necessarily sound the same — such that the growling that populates that song’s second half isn’t so much a surprise as it is a slamming, consuming, welcome advent. Music as a force. As much volume as you can give it, give it.
Their moniker derived from the initials of the three members — bassist/vocalist/synthesist Pietro Brunetti, guitarist/vocalist Claudio Banelli and drummer Carlo Forgiarini — Italian troupe BBF aren’t through I Will Be Found‘s five minute opener “Freedom” before they’ve transposed grunge vibes onto a go-where-it-wants psychedelia from out of an acoustic, bluesy beginning. Garage rock in “Cosmic Surgery,” meditative jamming in “Rise,” and a vast expanse in “T-Rex” that delivers the album’s title line while furthering with even-the-drums-have-echo breadth the psych vibe such that the synthy take of the penultimate “Wake Up” becomes just another part of the procession, its floating guitar met with percussion real and imagined ahead of the bookending acoustic-based closer “Supernova,” which dedicates its last 90 seconds or so to a hidden track comprised entirely of sweet acoustic notes that might’ve otherwise ended up as an interlude but work just as well tucked away as they are. Here’s a band who know the rules and seem to take a special joy in bending if not outright breaking them, drawing from various styles in order to make their songs their own. To say they acquit themselves well in doing so is an understatement.
Progressive and melodic, the fourth album from Iowan trio Druids is nonetheless at times crushingly heavy, and in a longer piece like “Ide’s Koan,” the band demonstrate how to execute a patient, dynamic build, beginning slow and spaced out and gradually growing in intensity until they reach a multi-layered shouting apex. Drew Rauch (bass), Luke Rauch (guitar) and Keith Rich (drums) all contribute vocals at one point or another, and whether it’s in the plodding rock of “Dance of Skulls” or the not-the-longest-track-but-the-farthest-reaching closer “Cloak/Nior Bloom,” their modern prog metal works off influences like Baroness, Mastodon, Gojira, etc., while retaining character of its own through both rhythmic intricacy and its abiding use of melody, both well on display in “Othenian Blood” and the subsequent, drum-intensive “Traveller” alike. “Path to R” starts Shadow Work mellow after the ceremonial build-up of “Aether,” but the tension is almost immediate and Druids‘ telegraphing that the heavy is coming makes it no less satisfying when it lands.
Though it’s spread across two LPs, don’t think of Kandodo4‘s Burning the (Kandl) as an album. Or even a live album, though technically it’s that. You might not know, you might not care, but it’s a historical preservation. ‘The time that thing happened,’ where the thing is Simon Price of The Heads leading a jam under the banner of his Kandodo side-project featuring Robert Hampson of Loop, and bassist Hugo Morgan and drummer Wayne Maskell — who play in both The Heads and Loop — as part of The Heads‘ residency at Roadburn Festival 2015 (review here). I tell you, I was there, and I’ve seen few psychedelic rituals that could compare in flow or letting the music find its own shape(lessness) as it will. Burning the (Kandl) not only has the live set, but the lone rehearsal that the one-off-four-piece did prior to taking stage at Het Patronaat in Tilburg, the Netherlands, that evening. Thus, history. Certainly for the fest, for the players and those who were there, but I like to think in listening to these side-long stretches of expanse upon expanse that all of our great-grandchildren will worship at the altar of this stuff in a better world. Maybe, maybe not, but better to have Burning the (Kandl) ready to go just in case.
The second EP in about nine months from Los Angeles’ Spencer Robinson — operating under the moniker of Into the Valley of Death — the seven-song Ruthless feels very much like a debut album despite a runtime circa 25 minutes. The songs are cohesive in bringing together doom and grunge as they do, and as with the prior Space Age, the lo-fi aspects of the recording become part of the overarching character of the material. Guitars are up, bass is up, drums are likely programmed, vocals are throaty and obscure at least until they declare you dead on “Ghost,” and the pieces running in the three-to-four-minute range have a kind of languid drawl about them that sound purely stoned even as they seem to reach out into the desert after which the project is seemingly named. Robinson, who also played bass in The Lords of Altamont and has another outfit wherein he fronts a full backing band, is up to some curious shit here, and whether or not it was, it definitely sounds like it was recorded at night. I’m not sure where it’s going, and I’m not sure where it’s been, but I know I’ll look forward to finding out.
Enköping, Sweden’s Stuck in Motion issued their 2018 self-titled debut (review here) to due fanfare, and Still Stuck (changed from the working title ‘Ut på Tur,’ which translates, “on tour”) arrives with a brisk reminder why. Jammy in spirit, early singles “Höjdpunkternas Land,” “Lucy” and “På Väg” brim with vitality and a refreshing take on classic heavy rock, not strictly retro, not strictly not, and all the more able to jam and offer breadth around traditional structures as in “I de Blå” for that, weaving their way into and out of instrumental sections with a jazzy conversation between guitars and keys, bass and drums, percussion, and so on. Combined with the melodies of “Tupida,” the heavier tone underlying “Fisken” and the organ-and-synth-laced shuffle of the penultimate “Tung Sol,” there’s a balance between psych and prog — and, on the closing title-track, horns — which are emblematic of an organic style that couldn’t be faked even if the band wanted to try. I don’t know the exact release date for Still Stuck — I thought it was already out when I slated this review — but its eight songs and 40 minutes are like the kind of afternoon you don’t want to end. Sunshine and impossible blue sky.
A blurb posted by Spanish instrumentalists Sageness — also written SageNESS — with the release of Tr3s reads as follows: “The future seen from the past, where another current reality is possible, follow us and we will transfer to a new dimension. (Tr3s),” and fair enough. One could hardly begrudge the trio a bit of escapism in their work, and listening to the 36 minutes across four songs that comprises Tr3s, they do seem to be finding their way into the ‘way out.’ Though if where they’re ending up is 12-minute finale “Event Horizon,” in which the very jam itself seems to be taffy-pulled on a molecular level until the solid bassline and drums dissipate and what takes hold is a freakout of propulsive, drift-toned guitar, I’m not sure if they do or don’t ultimately make it to another dimension. Maybe that’s on the other side? Either way, after the scope of “Greenhouse” and the more plotted-seeming stops of “Spirit Machine,” that end is somewhat inevitable, and we may be stuck in reality for real life, but Sageness‘ fuzzy and warm-toned heavy psychedelic rock makes a reasoned argument for daydreaming the opposite.
You think you’re up for Kaleidobolt, and that’s adorable, but let’s be honest. The Finnish trio — whose head-spinning, too-odd-not-to-be-prog heavy rock makes This One Simple Trick laughable as a title — are on another level. You and me? They’re running circles around us in “Fantastic Corps” and letting the truth about humans be known amid the fuzz of “Ultraviolent Chimpanzee” after the alternately frenetic and spaced “Borded Control,” momentarily stopping their helicopter twirl to “Walk on Grapes” at the album’s finish, but even then they’re walking on grapes on another planet yet to be catalogued by known science. 2019’s Bitter (review here) boasted likewise self-awareness, but This One Simple Trick is a bolder step into their individuality of purpose, and rest assured, they found it. I don’t know if they’re a “best kept secret” or just underrated. However you say it, more people should be aware. Onto the list of 2022’s best albums it goes, and if there are any simple tricks involved here, I’d love to know what they are.
It probably wouldn’t fit on a 7″, but The Tazers‘ Outer Space EP isn’t much over that limit at four songs and 13 minutes. The Johannesburg trio’s melodicism is striking nearly at the outset of the opening title-track, and the fuzz guitar that coincides is no less right on as they touch on psychedelia without ever ranging so much as to lose sight of the structures at work. “Glass Ceiling” boasts a garage-rocking urgency but is nonetheless not an all-out sprint in its delivery, and “Ready to Die” hits into Queens of the Stone Age-esque rush after an acoustic opening and before its fuzzy rampage of a chorus, while “Up in the Air” is a little more psych-funk until solidifying around the repeated lines, “Give me a reason/Show me a sign,” which culminate as the EP’s final plea, like Witch played at 45RPM or your favorite stoner band’s cooler cousin. Four songs, it probably took more effort to put together than they’d like you to think, but the casual cool they ooze is as infectious as the songs themselves.
Bong-worship sludge from London. It’s hard to know the extent to which Obelos — which for some reason my fingers have trouble typing correctly — are just fucking around, but their dank, lurching riffs, throaty screams and slow-motion crashes certainly paint a picture anyhow. Paint it green, with maybe some little orange or purple flecks in there. Interludes “Paranoise” and “Holy Smokes” bring harsh noise and a kind of improvised-feeling, also-quite-noisy chicanery, but the primary impression in Green Giant‘s six tracks/27 time-bending minutes is of nodding, couchlocked stoner crush, and I wouldn’t dare ask anything more of it than that. Neither should you. I’d argue this is an album rather than the EP it’s categorized as being, since it flows and definitely gets its point across in a full-length manner, but I’m not even gonna fight the band on that because they might break out a 50-minute record or some shit and, well, I’m just not sure I’m ready to get that high this early in the morning. Might have to reserve an entire day for that. Which might be fun, too.
Posted in Whathaveyou on April 13th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
After their self-titled debut in 2015 and 2019’s Sun Rose (review here), Brussels-based now-three-piece My Diligence will release their third album, The Matter, Form and Power, on June 3 through Mottow Soundz. The streaming track below/first single is called “On the Wire” — and if they’re talking about the PR wire, which of course they are, I’ll note that indeed, that’s where this news came from — and it’s a bright-toned heavy progressive rocker that’s catchy and broad-reaching in kind. Not apparently content to sit out the pandemic resting on laurels, the band harness new largesse of tone in part thanks to the recording job of Francis Caste, and encompassing melody. I haven’t heard the full thing yet, but I’d like to.
Preorders are up, song’s at the bottom of the post, album cover and info follow here, right off the aforementioned wire.
Here you go:
Belgian Heavy Psych Trio MY DILIGENCE Return with New Album on MOTTOW SOUNDZ | Stream New Single ‘ON THE WIRE’
The Matter, Form and Power will be released 3rd June via Mottow Soundz
Rising from the streets of Brussels, My Diligence is a band that in recent years have come to transcend rock in their native Belgium with a skill and ease reminiscent of their transatlantic peers.
The success of their 2019 album, Sun Rose, helped raise the band even higher, securing new fans who instantly recognised in their sound the huge, progressive rock aplomb of established acts like Torche, Helmet and Elder. Big, bold, and charged with intensity, the Belgian trio delivered a non-stop, ass kicking brand of no-nonsense rock ‘n’ roll that scorched the sky and levelled the playing field.
This June, their eagerly awaited follow-up will be released worldwide on Mottow Soundz. Produced by Francis Caste (Hangman’s Chair, Regarde les Hommes Tomber) and mastered by Raphaël Bovey (Gojira, Dirge, Monkey3), The Matter, Form and Power features a heavier mix of riffs – bigger and more imposing than ever – interwoven with intense, immersive, and spontaneous compositions that truly capture the trio’s exciting ideas around how they believe rock should be.
“While the world as we knew it ground to a halt, we started to explore new horizons,” explains drummer, Gabriel Marlier. “Taking advantage of the vacuum of ‘normal’ life, we started to conceive an album informed by hope and the unknown.”
Fully realised and an unquestionable return to their power-trio origins exploring psychedelic doom; The Matter, Form and Power is a remarkable take on twenty-first century rock ‘n’ roll and one that will capture the hearts and ears of those seeking more.
The Matter, Form and Power by My Diligence will be released on 3rd June 2022 and can be pre-ordered via Mottow Soundz here: https://www.mottowsoundz.com/md-the-matter-form-and-power
Stream new single ‘On the Wire’ here: https://snd.click/OnTheWire
Album art by Elzo Durt (http://www.elzodurt.com)
TRACK LISTING: 1. The Matter, Form and Power 2. On the Wire 3. Sail to The Red Light 4. Celestial Kingdom 5. Multiversal Tree 6. Embers 7. Elasmotherium
MY DILIGENCE: Cédric Fontaine – Guitars, Vocals François Peeters – Guitars Gabriel Marlier – Drums
Posted in Bootleg Theater on December 23rd, 2019 by JJ Koczan
On its surface, the track in question is an odd choice for My Diligence‘s new video. The Belgium-based studio trio/live four-piece have hooks a-plenty throughout the entirety of their Sun Rose LP, released this past January through Mottow Soundz. No shortage thereof. And the structures of songs like opener “Resentful” or the speedy “Flying Poney” (sic) are relatively straightforward, the latter owing its speed-into-crash-with-major-key-melody almost purely to Torche. By contrast, “An Asteroidal Arrow” is an atmospheric linear build, departing from the swaying chug of an earlier piece like “Backstabber” or the bounce of the later “So Pretty So Cruel” or even the surging wash of the penultimate “Serpentine” to do its own thing. It doesn’t really represent the rest of the record, which is their second behind 2015’s self-titled, at all. The vocals don’t even come in until, what, after three minutes into a four-minute song?
But then I think maybe that’s the point. And once you actually watch the clip, it makes a little more sense. There’s a story being told with the “An Asteroidal Arrow” video through the actual visuals themselves. Don’t expect a lot of flashing lights with this one — it’s more cinematic, and we see a young dancer failing time and again and eventually finding her way through the routine she’s trying to do. It’s more movie montage than rock video, to put it another way, but “An Asteroidal Arrow” is definitely suited to that kind of presentation, and it makes the alignment between the visual story — there’s no dialogue and none really needed — and the song itself all the more satisfying. My Diligence worked with director Paul Thoreau and dancer Hanne Vand Driessche on the piece and I have to think if there was a vision they started out with, it’s been entirely realized. Story and song each work to enhance the other. You can’t really ask more from a video than that.
Clip follows here, tailed by the credits and more info on the album, which you can also stream toward the bottom of the post.
Please enjoy:
My Diligence, “An Asteroidal Arrow” video premiere
A Lullabies Prod production. Réalisé avec le soutien de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles
Dancer – Choreographer . Hanne Vand Driessche Writer – Director – Editor . Paul Thoreau Production manager . Robin Paul Director of photography – Colorist . Edouard Chandelle Set Design – Swiss Army Human . Mathilde Pepinster Location Manager . Frederic Delescaille Make up Artist . Kim Glineur Stylist . Chloe Thielemans Catering . Pueblo Latino
Rising up from the streets of Brussels, My Diligence is a band that in recent years have come to transcend rock in their native Belgium with a skill and ease reminiscent of their transatlantic peers. For fans already in the know, the progressive rock aplomb of established acts like Torche, Helmet and Elder resonate wildly in their sound. Big, bold and high in intensity, the Belgian trio deliver a non-stop, ass kicking brand of no-nonsense rock ‘n’ roll that scorches the sky, while leveling the playing field.
The success of their 2014 EP, Who Killed The Driver, along with their self-titled debut album from 2015 showcased as much, and at the same time laid down the foundations for Sun Rose, their eagerly awaited follow-up album, due for release this January on Mottow Soundz. Recorded at Studio Pyramide by producer François Vincent (Romano Nervoso, Thot), Sun Rose features a heavy mix of riffs – bigger and more bombastic than ever – interwoven with sincere lyrics and unforgettable grooves, and capture the trio’s fresh and exciting ideas around how they feel rock should sound.
MY DILIGENCE: John Sailor – Vocals, Guitars François Peeters – Guitars Gabriel Marlier – Drums Romain Lafuite – Moog (live)
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 22nd, 2018 by JJ Koczan
I was listening to the new streaming My Diligence track just now as I was getting ready to write this post. I’ve never heard the Belgian band before. They had an EP out in 2014 and a self-titled LP in 2015 — where was I on it? well, I suck, so I was probably around here somewhere and just missed them — but my out-loud response to “Resentful” was to nod my head and say the word “solid.” You’ll hear why about two and a half minutes into the song.
“Resentful” opens the full-length Sun Rose, which will be released Jan. 25 on Mottow Soundz, and sets up a pretty broad cast of influences they’re working from, so this is the part where I tell you I’m interested to hear the rest of the record. If you are too, preorders are up now, and I’m quite sure there will be more audio unveiled before the record itself, so, you know, keep an eye out.
Here’s info from the PR wire:
Belgian heavy psych trio MY DILIGENCE to release new album on Mottow Soundz | Stream and share new song ‘Resentful’ now!
Rising up from the streets of Brussels, My Diligence is a band that in recent years have come to transcend rock in their native Belgium with a skill and ease reminiscent of their transatlantic peers.
For fans already in the know, the progressive rock aplomb of established acts like Torche, Helmet and Elder resonate wildly in their sound. Big, bold and high in intensity, the Belgian trio deliver a non-stop, ass kicking brand of no-nonsense rock ‘n’ roll that scorches the sky, while leveling the playing field.
The success of their 2014 EP, Who Killed The Driver, along with their self-titled debut album from 2015 showcased as much, and at the same time laid down the foundations for Sun Rose, their eagerly awaited follow-up album, due for release this January on Mottow Soundz. Recorded at Studio Pyramide by producer François Vincent (Romano Nervoso, Thot), Sun Rose features a heavy mix of riffs – bigger and more bombastic than ever – interwoven with sincere lyrics and unforgettable grooves, like those found on ‘Resentful’, and capture the trio’s fresh and exciting ideas around how they feel rock should sound. As drummer Gabriel Marlier explains:
“‘Resentful’ was actually the first song we wrote when we started writing our second album. We wanted to push things forward and become heavier than ever and this song in particular signals a rebirth of My Diligence. My Diligence Mk. II. After our previous bassist’s departure we just wanted to two guitarists, one drummer and a chance to get rid of the past and focus on the future. The song is about addiction and we had no doubt about it, it had to open Sun Rose.”
Fully realised and breath-taking in its execution, Sun Rose is a remarkable take on twenty-first century rock ‘n’ roll and one that will capture the hearts and ears of those seeking more.
