Thirty years of River Runs Red hardly seems like enough, which I suppose makes it fortunate that the count will keep going. The debut album from Brooklyn four-piece Life of Agony, released in 1993 through a very-much-not-owned-by-a-major-label Roadrunner Records — though I seem to recall getting the CD from Columbia House, so distro was on point — is not shy about showing its age. Produced by Type O Negative‘s Josh Silver with that band’s former drummer, Sal Abruscato, on drums with a sound that will be recognizable to anyone who’s heard Bloody Kisses, which came out a couple months before — August as opposed to October — LOA‘s first record was ahead of its time in a few ways in the manner in which it borrowed toughguy swagger and thud from New York Hardcore (and I capitalized the genre name there because ‘Hardcore’ was a sixth borough back then) and blended it with an emotional fragility that aligned the band in perspective with the then-nascent sing-about-your-crappy-upbringing nü-metal movement as typified by the emergence of Korn‘s debut the next year and the boom it would help inspire through the remainder of the 1990s.
They could be brash like knucklehead forerunners Biohazard with the intense and maddeningly catchy opener “This Time,” “Respect” or the semi-rapped “Method of Groove” — the rap-rock thing, also just getting going back then; words like “cultural appropriation” didn’t exist yet — deeply weighted as in “Words and Music,” with its gang-shout chorus, righteously preaching in “Underground,” or they could showcase some genuine fragility, as also done in “Bad Seed” or “Words and Music” with their barely audible keyboard (a daring inclusion at that point) and soaring, wrenching vocal performances, particularly in respective second-half slowdowns, or “Through and Through,” the chorus of which seems to embody the ethic put forth in “Words and Music,” finding support in community, friendship, and volume. And they did it while remaining consistent with a thickness of sound and aggressive spirit that the band — then comprised of Abruscato, who stuck around for 1995’s brilliant Ugly before departing for 1997’s Soul Searching Sun (he now plays in A Pale Horse Named Death), as well as bassist/principal songwriter Alan Robert (anyone remember Among Thieves?) vocalist/keyboardist Mina Caputo (anyone remember Freax?), guitarist Joey Zampella (anyone remember Stereomud?) — would never have again. It was a one-time thing; a record made by kids that hit enough of a nerve that they came through here like two weeks ago touring it for the anniversary. There’s a big part of me that wishes I’d gone; I was all over River Runs Again in 2003 when they first got back after their breakup. Alas.
Running 13 tracks — 10 songs and three ‘skits’ titled after the weekdays “Monday,” “Thursday” and “Friday” in which an unnamed teenaged protagonist loses his job, girlfriend, gets shit from his nasal-voiced NY-accent mom, and, finally, slits his wrists in a bit of proto-ASMR that’s still jarring to hear — and 50 minutes, River Runs Red is definitely a CD-era progression, but the material invariably holds up as one would hope for a classic album, speaking to the point at which they were written and by now more than a little nostalgic, but still aurally forceful and heavy in its procession. Suicide is the theme, whether it’s in “River Runs Red” itself, or “My Eyes” — “Just give me one reason to live/I’ll give you three to die” — “Through and Through,” “Bad Seed” or pre-“Friday” finale “The Stain Remains.” Opening with its longest track (immediate points) in the 5:41 “This Time,” the language of depression almost immediate in the lyrics as delivered by Caputo, who channeled youthful disaffection into a rousing, dynamic and distinct performance, just as able to dwell in the quiet space of the intros to “Bad Seed” or “The Stain Remains” as the coursing shove of the title-track and the anthemic “calling from the underground” that set so much of the tone for the record. Whether brooding, raging or soaring, River Runs Red is a dense-toned gamut, and it remains visceral these three decades after the fact.
I hear it with different ears as an adult, and different ears as a parent, especially as relates to the conversations happening between the songs themselves, as with “Bad Seed” dealing with the fallout of a parent killing themselves and “My Eyes” a few songs later not seeing the devastating effect the speaker’s own suicide would have on those around them, or in the community celebration of “Underground” and “Words and Music” when taken together, the talk of brotherhood, etc., emblematic of the band’s roots in hardcore while taking at least in part a new direction in sound. Even the way “Bad Seed” and “This Time” form a narrative (reversed order in the tracklisting, but still) of a broken home and a kid who — even before the current teen mental health crisis — needed help and didn’t get it, further conveyed in the three skits, which like “Method of Groove” or “Respect” or even “Underground” are a hallmark of their day but interact with the surrounding material in complementary ways, forming the linear story that ends with “The Stain Remains” seeming to pick up where “Bad Seed” left off lyrically. Therapy for everyone.
I won’t claim to have been on board with it from the time of the release — my only excuse is I was 11 — but I recall as clearly as I can through what was a resoundingly beery fog hearing it with new ears when I got to college and was on staff at the radio station WSOU, where Life of Agony were a mainstay. And amid strong associations there of being a part of something bigger than my own ego, I have loved this album deeply. Between the aforementioned River Runs Again 20 years ago, the major-label flirtation of 2005’s return LP Broken Valley or the seeming acceptance of where they came from in their most recent work — 2017’s A Place Where There’s No More Pain and 2019’s The Sound of Scars — the legacy of their debut looms significantly in the arc of their career as more than just memories of who they were when they started. It’s not timeless and it would be wrong to expect it to be, but there was precious little like it when it came out and 30 years later I’m just thankful it exists at all to be revisited like old friends and, maybe, family.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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A frustrating morning after a frustrating week with which I would be glad to be done if it being the weekend made any difference in terms of relief, which it doesn’t.
And rather than go on, I’m gonna leave it there this time. Thanks for reading, have a great and safe weekend. Next week is full and I’m already behind on news so there you go. Wa. Hoo.
Posted in Questionnaire on February 7th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Morgan Y. Evans of Walking Bombs
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I am a musician and a writer, so in many ways I have to be a listener first. There was or maybe still is the great hip-hop project called Listener who I opened for once in Rosendale, NY, when I was the hype person for my departed rapper friend Bobby Delicious. I always loved that name, Listener. Johnny Cash called his own voice “The Gift” and you have to be able to tap into a place where that can flow. Part of that is absorbing and then channeling and listening to what is both around you and within.
I was encouraged by my family to be creative. As a kid I grew up without electricity for a number of years, so I read hundreds of books in the shadow of the Catskill Mountains. I loved the Bard class in Dungeons and Dragons. I always wanted to be a writer but also ended up a musician as a result. Joined my first band Melancholy in 1993, a grunge and alt-rock hybrid and never looked back. I also played trombone. I stopped for a long time when I was a junkie but then Doc from Bad Brains encouraged me to start again and I slowly have used it on all of my albums in the last half decade here and there. I think it was really tied to self-esteem because I first played it before I went down such an addict’s path as a teen so I felt like I didn’t deserve to play it again.
Now I have two collaborative albums coming out digitally next year for my project Walking Bombs as a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist and it is my own 30th year as an active musician in the world wide music scene. The albums were both recorded with my brilliant friend Ash Umhey and members of Shadow Witch, Geezer, Globelamp, Gridfailure, Chrome Cranks, Taraka, Talon, Failure, Septa, 5 R V L N 5 and more. One Sabbathy song with Steve from Geezer on it was in a crazy lightning storm when he tracked drums and it was insanely epic. I have no label support or money but yolo, yo. Fuck it.
How I came to do this all boils down also to the great people along the way who helped rather than hindered. I wanna say RIP to my old friend Owen Swenson. He just passed away so I wanna talk about Owen, a great man. A wild old punk hippy sound sculptor, now chasing his chickens to the great beyond. He had a mystical studio in the mountains outside of Woodstock called The Turning Mill. It is legendary and is in the Swans documentary. All our bands practiced there for years in the late 90’s-early 00’s. There is a crazy drip painting of Jim Morrison on the wall and many fliers of bands like Dripping Goss and 3 and Conehead Buddha. Owen’s lady growing up was our GED teacher to all the fuck up drop outs from my school Onteora. I always remember her and my ex Polly and our pal Kris Bernard tripping balls in her GED class and I could not do any math and she was like ,”you are having a hard time today, huh?” Hahaha.
Anyway, Owen a long time ago in classic CGBG’s day was in the band Elda and the Stilletos. He always had cool stories about like Paul Stanley. He was always so supportive to us all. I just was driving up La Paz in California (where I just moved) blasting “Riders On The Storm” for Owen. Damn, I am sad. He once called my noisier music a “psychic crevice”, the best compliment ever. One of my fondest memories is playing “12 Oz. Epilogue” by Clutch at a Burton snowboard party in Hunter, NY so wasted with my old band Fuse opening for Orange 9mm and our friends Spin Cycle Lava. I dropped out of college to play this fucking show, hahaha. Ryan Matthew Cohn was actually in the band at the time too. Owen played like dervish fiddle to the cover and there were stippers. Epic times.
Describe your first musical memory.
On a much more wholesome note…my mom would would play acoustic folk songs to my sister Cambria and me in our old farmhouse with kerosene lamps. She also sang for developmentally disabled children at a Children’s Resource Center. Also, my father was a drummer and played with a back up band for The Del-Vikings at one point before I was born (among other adventures). His drums were always around and he would play lots of jazz records. Elvin Jones, Art Blakey, Odetta, etc.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
So many. I don’t know how to narrow them down to one. I mean you have the awe of being a fan and having your cherry popped by a joint and Axis: Bold as Love for the first time. Setting up real DIY shows as a kid in Woodstock, NY and packing them out with my band Melancholy and old school bands like Shabutie, Pitchfork Milita, 3, Vein Feed, SpinCycleLava, Jerk Magnet and a huge variety of styles coming together to make our own alternative regional subculture and space in the early 90’s in Upstate, NY. Everything from Mearth to Perfect Thyroid to Drill Head (this short lived band with Julie who was most recently in Dopethrone).
The thrill of finishing making albums with people you love, as a musician. Like, I listen back to a song “Eyes Forward” on the second Walking Bombs album that has Nate from Spirit Adrift playing guitar atmosphere on it that sounds like the fuckin’ Edge from U2 I pinch myself with gratitude for moments like that. Interviewing some of my favorite bands since 2007 constantly for so many outlets. Like, I got to ask Dave Lombardo about Slayer stuff! Kid me would shit a diaper. Adult me wants to shit a diaper. Seeing a band live after waiting your whole life, like I recently finally saw grunge legends L7. Or I can say I opened for Bad Brains.
One of the best musical memories to recently happen to me was being on the title track to Gridfailure and Megalophobe’s ‘Harbinger Winds’ avant-noise release. I played trombone on a track alongside members of Titan to Tachyons, Vastum, jazz and pop trumpet legend Mac Gollehon and more. To be accepted within a circle of real music heads like that validates all the shitty times as a starving artist. Even just seeing awesome people in the current scene operating from the heart like Escuela Grind, Kris from King Woman, Geezer, Bestial Mouths, Thotcrime, Stormland, Caïna or Dreamwell rekindles my faith in so much.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
I think when you see a lot of people throw you out like dishwater who you supported for years when it becomes popular to kiss someone else’s ass who is way more wealthy in an infinitely bigger band in the scene and and angry at you, instead of a more nuanced zoom out view…that certainly is a test of faith. Whoever gets the most press really does get to define dominant narratives in public consciousness. Sad but true. I dealt with a lot of gatekeeping over the years from very influential people in a not so big scene behind the public’s view. It absolutely rattled my sense of community and trust and broke my heart, though I have tried many times to always fight to uphold a community spirit in the scene and in whatever I do as well as heal bridges with people who I have had conflict with (especially since substance issues and compound trauma has usually been involved between everyone). A lot of that ironed out with maturity from most of the people involved and I am thankful for anyone I have patched things with and love them and thank God for healing with people in this world when possible.
At the end of the day, you still have to carry on regardless of other people’s avoidance issues, one sided blame games or focus shifting revisionism. Mindfulness is so important so you also don’t spiral and make things worse by choosing to be a total asshole. Humility and always trying to do better your own self is important as well as making amends. Never believe your own shit doesn’t need working on or Kali will eventually 100% decapitate you and the ego death is no joke. I have a great many painful regrets I endeavor not to repeat every day. My grandpa was a United Church of Christ minister, so thankfully I have the positive lessons from that to also believe in forgiveness and a strive for growth.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Poverty, hahaha. In all seriousness though, always strive. Painkiller is still so ahead of the game and the ‘Guts Of A Virgin’ record came out how long ago, for example? Like 1991! Chart your own course. At the end of the day nothing is as valuable as knowing you really tried to challenge yourself even if everyone slept on it.
How do you define success?
Not only by money. That is for sure. This is something I struggle with, though. Context matters. Internet troll culture is toxic. I loved diy Fugazi culture growing up. Both zoomers and a lot of adults will all tell you you are a flop now if you can’t buy a house with record sales and it is back to capitalism stan worship. It is scary trying to still do art when you are older and struggling.
My partner is the psych folk singer Globelamp and she used to be in the shitty buzz band Foxygen who drove themselves into the ground being psychos and ripping off ELO if fronted by a sewer brained narcissistic trust fund brat. Like, he had a sub label called Fascist records and thought that was cool and edgy, a total twat. Globelamp/Lizzie had darvo done on her at one point in her musical life, teeth knocked out and was treated like total garbage immediately following the death of her best friend. Friends who knew what was up chose silence as they were bought off by label deals from her abusers label, even. Like, bands a lot of people know. Let’s say a very influential label conglomerate and flying monkeys and super lazy press outlets have really fucked her over. She has been doxxed. I was targeted by trolls at one point for supporting her and they lied online and said she abused me and mocked me for being non binary. People will pave over a lot of shit to protect money or the facade of integrity that really isn’t there. I am proud of Lizzie/Globelamp that she hasn’t given up despite this and continues to make DIY art and music. She just did a dope Pink Floyd cover with Chris Cheveyo from Rose Windows, for example. She also researched her heritage that she didn’t know on her dad’s side and connected to her Puerto Rican ancestry in a nourishing way. That to me is success. Not letting hateful discouraging shit keep you down and picking yourself back up. I am very proud of her for that. She even lost two organs recently in a freak health scare and still is full of a drive to create music and art despite such personal suffering. We just try to laugh and drive around and listen to dumb shit like Smash Mouth and try to stay positive, hahaha.
I had a newspaper column in Kingston, NY for a long time that meant the world to me. To be able to use a platform to give press to someone who maybe never got it before on a local level and promote their activism or craft was awesome. Or to help plug a show when creatives who I love and respect like Hether Fortune or The Bobby Lees or Exhumed were playing around The Hudson Valley was very rad. Success to me is also knowing and learning from when I could have used my platforms more responsibly. I ran the now kaput Metalriot.com for a long time and had a lot of wins but also was a hot mess at times.
Being non-binary on the trans spectrum and an addict in recovery, every day visible and every day sober to me is a win. Being able to say I am organically friends with someone like Tad Doyle means more to me than any gold record, car, status bullshit.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
The dead bodies of multiple friends lying in caskets from hard narcotic overdoses or booze related incidents. The gentrification of Kingston, NY leading to a lot of snobbery in a once fertile DIY punk scene. Warner Bros. fucking Henry Cavill out of a proper Man of Steel sequel. The queerphobia of the shitty Twitter of the chode from Chimaira being glossed over by multiple metal outlets because of some dumb reunion.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I am kind of constipated right now from dehydration, so I will let you all fill in the blanks.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
To converse with our inner and outer Universe. Of course, cold capitalism also can hammer the raw matter of creativity into compromised shapes. In Star Wars you have Grand Admiral Thrawn literally studying the art of different cultures to learn how to best manipulate and conquer them. It can seem like the music industry is similar when ideas from the punk subculture get regurgitated into soda commercials. One of my ex girlfriends makes amazing sculptures or practical art out of found fallen vines from the forest around her home. The art that is for only yourself or that even stays in a sketch book to me is just as valid as that which is consumed by a lot of people. I had a lyric once in a short lived band with Zac from Dead Unicorn called Acid Arrow,…”If a tree falls will the kids still dance?” It represents the idea that even in a scene with mostly fairweather people or an audience of one, it still matters to do what you believe in and value.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Finishing re-binging The Sarah Connor Chronicles and getting my A1C back to a good range. Thanks.
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 30th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
This is some of the biggest news of my year, right here, and precisely some of what I’ve been hoping for since the advent of Desertfest New York in 2019. The NYC branch of Europe’s foremost heavy festival brand is slates do the seemingly impossible this Fall and bring German heavy psychedelic rock progenitors Colour Haze to the States for the second time as well as Greek heavy rock forerunners 1000mods, overcoming the pandemic-interrupted growth after a successful 2022 edition to realize a genuinely world-class event already just with the first reveal. And that’s before you get to the badassery of Lo-Pan, Heavy Temple, bringing Duel back, Boris, and so on.
I mean that. This puts Desertfest New York on a level of scope and reach with Psycho Las Vegas,Monolith on the Mesa or Fire in the Mountains or whoever else you want to namedrop, while maintaining club-show roots in its pre-party and secondary stages. I also wouldn’t surprised if a third stage isn’t added to the fest proper, as Knockdown Center certainly has that space available.
Either way, this is a big fucking deal and I’m excited at the prospect of what’s still to come. Will Steak return? My Sleeping Karma? Perhaps even a Green Lung US debut? The doors are thrown wide here as Desertfest New York 2023 takes it to that next level. The possibilities are that much closer to endless.
From the PR wire:
Desertfest New York returns for 3rd edition this September announcing
Melvins, Boris, Colour Haze, Truckfighters & more
Leading independent stoner rock, doom, psych & heavy rock festival Desertfest returns to New York this September. Hot off the heels of their largest US event to date in May ‘22, the globally renowned festival will return to the unique space of the Knockdown Center in Queens, alongside an exclusive pre-party at heavy metal institution, Saint Vitus Bar from 14th to 16th September 2023.
Headlining the 3rd edition of the festival will be genre-defining trailblazers the MELVINS. With King Buzzo & Dale Crover at the helm ensuring their 40-year status as icons of the underground, Desertfest attendees can expect a MELVINS performance unlike any other, as they are treated to the bands’ expansive & iconic back catalogue.
Joining them on the Knockdown Center main-stage, with a rare New York performance, will be Japan’s own BORIS. An exercise in auditory marksmanship for any whom are lucky enough to bear witness, BORIS continue to redefine heavy on their own terms.
German psychedelic trio COLOUR HAZE will join the festival for a US exclusive, headlining Thursday’s pre-party at Saint Vitus Bar. A band who move beyond a space of labels, their continued evolution propels them out of any current galaxy recognised as ‘stoner rock’. Thursday night will also welcome the infectiously groovy sounds of LO-PAN & Texan goodtimers DUEL to help warm up the gears.
Long-time friends in the Desertfest-sphere, high-octane Swedish rockers TRUCKFIGHTERS join proceedings for their first New York performance in three years.
Greece’s stoner rock heroes 1000MODS also make the jump overseas, ready to bring their ear-worm worthy riffs to revellers. Local legends WHITE HILLS, raucous street doom reapers R.I.P & ‘heavy primal psych’ outfit ECSTASTIC VISION all join the bill.
Elsewhere Desertfest NYC also welcomes HEAVY TEMPLE, CLOUDS TASTE SATANIC, MICK’S JAGUAR, CASTLE RAT, GRAVE BATHERS & SPELLBOOK, with more still to be announced…
3-day passes (incl. access to Saint Vitus Pre-Party) & 2-day passes (Knockdown Center only) are on sale NOW via the following link – https://link.dice.fm/Desertfest_NewYork
Day Tickets will be released in April. There are no individual Day Tickets for Thursday’s Pre-Party.
Full Line-Up Saint Vitus – Sept 14th | Knockdown Center Sept 15th & 16th 2023 Melvins | Boris | Colour Haze | Truckfighters | 1000Mods | White Hills | Lo-Pan | Duel | R.I.P | Ecstatic Vision | Heavy Temple | Clouds Taste Satanic | Mick’s Jaguar | Castle Rat | Grave Bathers | Spellbook
Posted in Bootleg Theater on January 20th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Now pared down to a solo-project from Jihef Garnero, Brooklyn’s Ultra Void herald the coming of their new album with the new single/video “Mother of Doom.” Garnero, who was one of three songwriters and served as bassist/vocalist/mixer on Ultra Void‘s 2021 self-titled debut EP, steps forward as multi-instrumentalist, frontman and auteur, and the sound of the band, which had been a swampy, sludgy kind of heavy rock, groovy but able to veer into and out of screamier and more aggressive sludge, has taken a turn for the dark.
At just under seven minutes, “Mother of Doom” rumbles to life and fades in the slog of its drums. The tones are punchy and fuzzed and layered (obviously), with a solo kicking in hard after the first minute ahead of sampled moans presumably of pleasure. Garnero rides that groove for a bit and brings the first vocals at about 2:05, also layered, a kind of harsh and clean chant combined, cultish, forward in the mix, but fitting the slog vibe of the song as a whole. They may take some getting used to, but if you can go with it, you should. The verse ends and there’s a buried laughing sample, some purely Cathedral-style spoken word lines, and then the title hook is delivered for the first time, another solo coming in behind for the middle section of it.
There’s a bridge and the line “Are we dying?” leads to a longer solo over the central riff, which is hypnotic in kind with the atmosphere of lysergic, somewhat deranged, lurch. “Mother of Doom” cycles through its chorus again at around the six-minute mark, and finishes there with residual noise, cutting to silence where the next song on the album — title TBA — might kick in. One of the aspects that made Ultra Void‘s first outing so engaging was the band’s ability to explore different influences in their songs while tying them together via tone and general atmosphere. I don’t know what the rest of the band’s next release will sound like, but “Mother of Doom” is a roil of psychedelic doom that’s bleaker than anything the prior EP had on offer. What it may foretell remains a mystery for the time being.
Classic horror and B-movie clips compiled together by Spencer Maxwell make up the video, and while Ultra Void aren’t the first to employ the method — also I’m pretty sure I’ve seen at least one of these movies on Mystery Science Theater 3000 — it does fit better and more hypnotically with “Mother of Doom” than for many, and the effects manipulation put on the track make it even more suitable, while familiar. In any case, I don’t think anyone’s claiming to be first on anything here, but it’s a fascinating turn from the EP — not to mention the complete reconstruction of the band — and I’ll be interested to hear the rest of the record when the opportunity may present itself.
Till then, enjoy:
Ultra Void, “Mother of Doom” video premiere
When I originally recorded the song it was only bass and drums. On the verse the chords kept ringing in expanding waves. Hitting the riffs on the 1st and the 4th beat made it sound ominous and disorienting. I had a mental picture of a cracking glacier with the wind blowing ferociously. I knew the theme of nature was the DNA of the song but I didn’t have a clear direction yet.
Then I thought about the ancient pagan tribes and wondered what life would be like if a thunderstorm for instance would be seen as a punishment from the gods. So “Mother Of Doom” is just that. A little horror story of a pagan society trying to survive by way of sacrifice to the mother of us all.
It is a reminder that even though we know better these days we’re still not in charge. Experiencing the lockdown was truly brutal in that regard. It almost happened overnight. All of the sudden you were on your own trying to figure out the best way to survive knowing that the immediate future was a blurry concept at best. Dealing with somber thoughts was expected:
“Are we cursed, are we dying, are we lied to, is this living ?”
The idea of an offrand or sacrifice is also my way of saying too much compromise can kill a man.
You’re trying your best to navigate the ups and downs – “play with us, play against us”, trying your best to make things work and you woke up one day feeling like some “broken souls”.
The video was edited by Spencer Maxwell @orangeechofilms. I am really excited to share it. It’s a work of art. It’s like the doom is pouring out of every frame.
It doesn’t feel like that long since the last time The Golden Grass had an album out until you remember that 2018 was five years ago. That record, Absolutely (review here), seemed to push its more progressive impulses against the band’s established modus of classic heavy rock, sometimes-boogie, sometimes-jammy songwriting. They issued their 100 Arrows EP (review here) in 2019 to take on tour in Europe, but the upcoming Life is Much Stranger is their first offering since then, and can anyone think of anything major that’s happened over the course of those years since? Hmm?
Yeah, you don’t have to go far to find at least an interpretation (if not the interpretation) for the title of The Golden Grass‘ fourth full-length, and while they emerge from the figurative plague-bunker like so many others, take a look around and assess the state of the world around them, the seven songs on Life is Much Stranger sound accordingly like a reset. I’ll spare you the review (for now), but in addition to the album announcement below, you’ll find the premiere of “Howlin’,” which is the opener and longest track (immediate points), on the player below, marrying together upbeat shuffle with bluesier lyrics. Recommend you dig into that and enjoy with the promise of more to come.
Life is Much Stranger is out April 7, 2023, as The Golden Grass‘ first release through Heavy Psych Sounds. Preorder link and more follows, courtesy of the PR wire:
Band quote: “The Golden Grass is thrilled to be an official part of the HPS family one of the best contemporary true underground heavy rock/psych labels! In 2012 while on tour with my old band La Otracina I was high on LSD and I wandered upon a late-night psychedelic Dunajam freakout on the beach in Sardinia Italy and immediately began drumming with them. After the music stopped is when I first met HPS label-head Gabriele who was playing bass in this impromptu supergroup. Since then we have stayed great friends and it has been a pleasure to watch his label grow exponentially and for HPS to become our natural new home! We look forward to growing with HPS and keeping shit weird heavy and boogie-ing into the wild unknowns!” – Adam/The Golden Grass
Band bio: Hard and heavy swinging progressive boogie rock…that’s THE GOLDEN GRASS! This NYC power trio embodies the glory of harmony filled catchy and tough rock n roll of the 60s/70s! But these boys are no revisionists! They are post-modern collagists connecting the dots between heavy glam rock boogie jazzy psychedelia stompin’ proto-metal bluesy prog rock and southern hard rock! They weave a NEW and NOW sonic tapestry a linear and logical aural narrative that pushes beyond and delivers a show stopping feel-good golden sound that is NEEDED in these dark times! Formed in 2013 the band has released an impressive discography on esteemed underground labels such as Svart Records Electric Assault Records Listenable Records and Who Can You Trust? Records. In 2023 they will release their 4th studio LP on Heavy Psych Sounds Records !!
THE GOLDEN GRASS is: Adam Kriney – drums/lead vocals Michael Rafalowich – electric guitar/lead vocals Frank Caira – electric bass guitar/backing vocals
Posted in Reviews on January 4th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
In many ways, this is my favorite kind of Quarterly Review day. I always place things more or less as I get them, and let the days fill up randomly, but there are different types that come out of that. Some are heavier on riffs, some (looking at you, Monday) are more about atmosphere, and some are all over the place. That’s this. There’s no getting in a word rut — “what’s another way to say ‘loud and fuzzy?'” — when the releases in question don’t sound like each other.
As we move past the halfway point of the first week of this double-wide Quarterly Review, 100 total acts/offerings to be covered, that kind of thing is much appreciated on my end. Keeps the mind limber, as it were. Let’s roll.
Winter 2023 Quarterly Review #21-30:
White Hills, The Revenge of Heads on Fire
The narrative — blessings and peace upon it — goes that White Hills stumbled on an old hard drive with 2007’s Heads on Fire‘s recording files on it, recovered them, and decided it was time to flesh out the original album some 15 years after the fact, releasing The Revenge of Heads on Fire through their own Heads on Fire Records imprint in fashion truer to the record’s original concept. Who would argue? Long-established freaks as they are, can’t White Hills basically do whatever the hell they want and it’ll be at the very least interesting? Sure enough, the 11-song starburster they’ve summoned out of the ether of memory is lysergic and druggy and sprawling through Dave W. and Ego Sensation‘s particular corner of heavy psychedelia and space rocks, “Visions of the Past, Present and Future” sounding no less vital for the passing of years as they’re still on a high temporal shift, riding a cosmic ribbon that puts “Speed Toilet” where “Revenge of Speed Toilet” once was in reverse sequeling and is satisfyingly head-spinning whether or not you ever heard the original. That is to say, context is nifty, but having your brain melted is better, and White Hills might screw around an awful lot, but they’re definitely not screwing around. You heard me.
Weaving into and out of spoken word storytelling and lumbering riffy largesse, nine-minute opener and longest track (immediate points) “She Up From the Drombán Hill” has a richly atmospheric impact on what follows throughout Dystopian Future Movies‘ self-issued third album, War of the Ether, the residual feedback cutting to silence ahead of a soft beginning for “Critical Mass” as guitarist/vocalist Caroline Cawley pairs foreboding ambience with noise rocking payoffs, joined by her Church of the Cosmic Skull bandmate Bill Fisher on bass/drums and Rafe Dunn on guitar for eight songs that owe some of their root to ’90s-era alt heavy but have grown into something of their own, as demonstrated in the willfully overwhelming apex of “The Walls of Filth and Toil” or the dare-a-hook ending of the probably-about-social-media “The Veneer” just prior. The LP runs deeper as it unfurls, each song setting forth on its own quiet start save for the more direct “License of Their Lies” and offering grim but thoughtful craft for a vision of dark heavy rock true both to the band’s mission and the album’s troubled spirit. Closer “A Decent Class of Girl” rolls through volume swells in what feels like a complement to “She Up From the Drombán Hill,” but its bookending wash only highlights the distance the audience has traveled alongside Cawley and company. Engrossing.
Though in part defined by the tectonic megasludge of “In the Dirt’s Embrace,” Filipino four-piece Basalt Shrine are no more beholden to that on From Fiery Tongues than they are the prior opening drone “Thawed Slag Blood,” the post-metallic soundscaping of the title-track, the open-spaced minimalism of closer “The Barren Aftermath” or the angular chug at the finish of centerpiece “Adorned for Loathing Pigs.” Through these five songs, the Manila-based outfit plunge into the darker, denser and more extreme regions of sludgy stylizations, and as they’ve apparently drawn the notice of US-based Electric Talon Records and sundry Euro imprints, safe to say the secret is out. Fair enough. The band guide “From Fiery Tongues,” song and album, with an entrancing churn that is as much about expression as impact, and the care they take in doing so — even at their heaviest and nastiest — isn’t to be understated, and especially as their debut, their ambition manifests itself in varied ways nearly all of which bode well for coming together as the crux of an innovative style. Not predicting anything, but while From Fiery Tongues doesn’t necessarily ring out with a hopeful viewpoint for the world at large, one can only listen to it and be optimistic about the prospects for the band themselves.
Post-metallic in its atmosphere, there’s no discounting the intensity Belgium trio Psychonaut radiate on their second album, Violate Consensus Reality (on Pelagic). The prog-metal noodling of “All Your Gods Have Gone” and the singing-turns-to-screaming methodology on the prior opener “A Storm Approaching” begin the 52-minute eight-tracker with a fervency that affects everything that comes after, and as “Age of Separation” builds into its full push ahead of the title-track, which holds tension in its first half and shows why in its second, a halfway-there culmination before the ambient and melodic “Hope” turns momentarily from some of the harsher insistence before it, a summary/epilogue for the first platter of the 2LP release. The subsequent “Interbeing” is black metal reimagined as modern prog — flashes of Enslaved or Amorphis more than The Ocean or Mastodon, and no complaints — and the procession from “Hope” through “Interbeing” means that the onslaught of “A Pacifist’s Guide to Violence,” all slam and controlled plunder, is an apex of its own before the more sprawling, 12-minute capper “Towards the Edge,” which brings guest appearances from Brutus‘ Stefanie Mannaerts and the most esteemed frontman in European post-metal, Colin H. van Eeckhout of Amenra, whose band Psychonaut admirably avoid sounding just like. That’s not often the case these days.
If you’re making your way through this post, skimming for something that looks interesting, don’t discount Sydney, Australia’s Robot God on account of their kinda-generic moniker. After solidifying — moltenifying? — their approach to longform-fuzz on their 2020 debut, Silver Buddha Dreaming, the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Raff Iacurto, bassist/vocalist Matt Allen and drummer Tim Pritchard offer the four tracks of their sophomore LP, Worlds Collide, through Kozmik Artifactz in an apparent spirit of resonance, drawing familiar aspects of desert-style heavy rock out over songs that feel exploratory even as they’re born of recognizable elements. “Sleepwalking” (11:25) sets a broad landscape and the melody over the chugger riff in the second half of “Ready to Launch” (the shortest inclusion at 7:03) floats above it smoothly, while “Boogie Man” (11:24) pushes over the edge of the world and proceeds to (purposefully) tumble loosely downward in tempo from there, and the closing title-track (11:00) departs from its early verses along a jammier course, still plotted, but clearly open to the odd bit of happy-accidentalism. It’s a niche that seems difficult to occupy, and a difficult balance to strike between hooking the listener with a riff and spacing out, but Robot God mostly avoid the one-or-the-other trap and create something of their own from both sides; reminiscent of… wait for it… worlds colliding. Don’t skip it.
Released in June 2022 and given a late-in-the-year vinyl issue seemingly on the strength of popular demand alone, AAWKS‘ debut full-length, Heavy on the Cosmic sets itself forth with the immersive, densely-fuzzed nodder riff and stoned vocal of longest track (immediate points) “Beyond the Sun,” which finds start-with-longest-song complement on side B’s “Electric Traveller” (rare double points). Indeed there’s plenty to dig about the eight-song outing, from the boogie in “Sunshine Apparitions,” the abiding vibe of languid grunge and effects-laced chicanery that pervade the crashouts of “The Woods” to the memorable, slow hook-craft of “All is Fine.” Over on side B, the momentum early in “Electric Traveller” rams headfirst into its own slowdown, while “Space City” reinforces the no-joke tonality and Elephant Tree-style heavy/melodic blend before the penultimate mostly-instrumental “Star Collider” resolves itself like Floor at half-speed and closer “Peeling Away” lives up to its title with a departure of psychedelic soloing and final off-we-go loops. The word-of-mouth hype around AAWKS was and is significant, and the Ontario-based four-piece tender three-dimensional sound to justify it, the record too brief at 39 minutes to actually let the listener get lost while providing multiple opportunities for headphone escapism. A significant first LP.
The core methodology of Polish trio Smokes of Krakatau across their self-titled debut seems to be to entrance their audience and then blindside them with a riffy punch upside the head. Can’t argue if it works, which it does, right from the gradual unfurling of 10-minute instrumental opener “Absence of Light” before the chunky-style riff of “GrassHopper” lumbers into the album’s first vocals, delivered with a burl that reminds of earlier Clutch. There are two more extended tracks tucked away at the end — “Septic” (10:07) and “Kombajn Bizon” (11:37) — but before they get there, “GrassHopper” begins a movement across four songs that brings the band to arguably their most straightforward piece of all, the four-minute “Carousel,” as though the ambient side of their persona was being drained out only to return amid the monolithic lumber that pays off the build in “Septic.” It’s a fascinating whole-album progression, but it works and it flows right unto the bluesy reach of “Kombajn Bizon,” which coalesces around a duly massive lurch in its last minutes. It’s a simplification to call them ‘stoner doom,’ but that’s what they are nonetheless, though the manner in which they present their material is as distinguishing a factor as that material itself in the listening experience. The band are not done growing, but if you let their songs carry you, you won’t regret going where they lead.
Is it the riff-filled land that awaits, or the outer arms of the galaxy itself? Maybe a bit of both on Bellingham, Washington-based trio Carrier Wave‘s four-song self-titled debut, which operates with a reverence for the heft of its own making that reminds of early YOB without trying to ape either Mike Scheidt‘s vocal or riffing style. That works greatly to the benefit of three-piece — guitarist/vocalist James Myers, bassist/vocalist Taber Wilmot, drummer Joe Rude — who allow some raucousness to transfuse in “Skyhammer” (shortest song at 6:53) while surrounding that still-consuming breadth with opener “Cosmic Man” (14:01), “Monolithic Memories” (11:19) and the subsequent finale “Evening Star” (10:38), a quiet guitar start to the lead-and-longest track (immediate points) barely hinting at the deep tonal dive about to take place. Tempo? Mostly slow. Space? Mostly dark and vast. Ritual? Vital, loud and awaiting your attendance. There’s crush and presence and open space, surges, ebbs, flows and ties between earth and ether that not every band can or would be willing to make, and much to Carrier Wave‘s credit, at 42 minutes, they engage a kind of worldmaking through sound that’s psychedelic even as it builds solid walls of repetitive riffing. Not nasty. Welcoming, and welcome in itself accordingly.
With mixing/mastering by Chris Fielding (Conan, etc.), the self-released first full-length from Tel Aviv’s Stash wants nothing for a hard-landing thud of a sound across its nine songs/45 minutes. Through Rose Coloured Glasses has a kind of inherent cynicism about it, thanks to the title and corresponding David Paul Seymour cover art, and its burl — which goes over the top in centerpiece “No Real” — is palpable to a defining degree. There’s a sense of what might’ve happened if C.O.C. had come from metal instead of punk rock, but one way or the other, Stash‘s grooves remain mostly throttled save for the early going of the penultimate “Rebirth.” The shove is marked and physical, and the tonal purpose isn’t so much to engulf the listener with weight as to act as the force pushing through from one song to the next, each one — “Suits and Ties,” “Lie” and certainly the opener “Invite the Devil for a Drink” — inciting a sense of movement, speaking to American Southern heavy without becoming entirely adherent to it, finding its own expression through roiling, chugging brashness. But there’s little happenstance in it — another byproduct of a metallic foundation — and Stash stay almost wholly clearheaded while they crash through your wall and proceed to break all the shit in your house, sonically speaking.
Though it opens serene enough with birdsong and acoustic guitar on “Intro(vert,” the bulk of Lightsucker‘s second LP, Stonemoon is more given to a tumult of heavy motion, drawing together elements of atmospheric sludge and doom with shifts between heavy rock groove and harder-landing heft. And in “Pick Your God,” a little bit of death metal. An amalgam, then. So be it. The current that unites the Finnish four-piece’s material across Stonemoon is unhinged sludge rock that, in “Lie,” “Land of the Dead” and the swinging “Mob Psychosis” reminds of some of Church of Misery‘s shotgun-blues chaos, but as the careening “Guayota” and the deceptively steady push of “Justify” behind the madman vocals demonstrate, Lightsucker‘s ambitions aren’t so simply encapsulated. So much the better for the listening experience of the 35-minute/eight-song entirety, as from “Intro(vert)” through the suitably pointy snare hits of instrumental closer “Stalagmites,” Lightsucker remain notably unpredictable as they throw elbows and wreak havoc from one song to the next, the ruined debris of genre strewn about behind as if to leave a trail for you to follow after, which, if you can actually keep up with their changes, you might just do.
Posted in Reviews on January 3rd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
We roll on in this new-year-smelling 2023 with day two of the Quarterly Review. Yesterday was pretty easy, but the first day almost always is. Usually by Thursday I’m feeling it. Or the second Tuesday. It varies. In any case, as you know, this QR is a double, which means it’s going to include 100 albums total, written about between yesterday and next Friday. Ton of stuff, and most of it is 2022, but generally later in the year, so at least I’m only a couple months behind your no doubt on-the-ball listening schedule.
Look. I can’t pretend to keep up with a Spotify algorithm, I’m sorry. I do my best, but that’s essentially a program to throw bands in your face (while selling your data and not paying artists). My hope is that being able to offer a bit of context when I throw 100 bands in your face is enough of a difference to help you find something you dig. Some semblance of curation. Maybe I’m flattering myself. I’m pretty sure Spotify can inflate its own ego now too.
Winter 2023 Quarterly Review #11-20:
Antimatter, A Profusion of Thought
Project founder, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Mick Moss isn’t through opener “No Contact” — one of the 10 inclusions on Antimatter‘s 54-minute eighth LP, A Profusion of Thought — before he readily demonstrates he can carry the entire album himself if need be. Irish Cuyos offers vocals on the subsequent “Paranoid Carbon” and Liam Edwards plays live drums where applicable, but with a realigned focus on programmed elements, his own voice the constant that surrounds various changes in mood and purpose, and stretches of insularity even on the full-band-sounding “Fools Gold” later on, the self-released outing comes across as more inward than the bulk of 2018’s Black Market Enlightenment, though elements like the acoustic-led approach of “Breaking the Machine,” well-produced flourishes of layering and an almost progressive-goth (proggoth?) atmosphere carry over. “Redshift” balances these sides well, as does fold before it, and “Templates” before that, and “Fools Gold” after, as Antimatter thankfully continues to exist in a place of its own between melancholic heavy, synthesized singer-songwriterism and darker, doom-born-but-not-doom metal, all of which seem to be summarized in the closing salvo of “Entheogen,” “Breaking the Machine” and “Kick the Dog.” Moss is a master of his craft long-established, and a period of isolation has perhaps led to some of the shifting balance here, but neither the album nor its songs are done a disservice by that.
There was a point, maybe 15 years ago now give or take, when at least Manhattan and Brooklyn in New York City were awash in semi-retro, jangly-but-rough-edged-to-varying-degrees rock and roll bands. Some sounded like Joan Jett, some sounded like the Ramones, or The Strokes or whoever. On Salvation, their second LP, Mick’s Jaguar bring some chunky Judas Priest riffing, no shortage of attitude, and as the five-piece — they were six on 2018’s Fame and Fortune (review here) — rip into a proto-shredder like “Speed Dealer,” worship Thin Lizzy open string riffing on “Nothing to Lose” or bask in what would be sleaze were it not for the pandemic making any “Skin Contact” at all a serotonin spike, they effectively hop onto either side of the line where rock meets heavy. Also the longest track at 4:54, “Molotov Children” is a ’70s-burly highlight, and “Handshake Deals” is an early-arriving hook that seems to make everything after it all the more welcome. “Man Down” and “Free on the Street” likewise push their choruses toward anthemic barroom sing-alongs, and while I’m not sure those bars haven’t been priced out of the market and turned into unoccupied investment luxury condos by now, rock and roll’s been declared dead in New York at least 100,000 times and it obviously isn’t, so there.
Long live Finnish weird. More vintage in their mindset than overall presentation, Sammal return via the ever-reliable Svart Records with Aika Laulaa, the follow-up to 2018’s Suuliekki (review here) and their fourth album total, with eight songs and 43 minutes that swap languages lyrically between Finnish, Swedish and English as fluidly as they take progressive retroism and proto-metal to a place of their own that is neither, both, and more. From the languid lead guitar in “Returning Rivers” to the extended side-enders “On Aika Laulaa” with its pastoralized textures and “Katse Vuotaa” with its heavy blues foundation, willfully brash surge, and long fade, the band gracefully skip rocks across aesthetic waters, opening playful and Scandi-folk-derived on “På knivan” before going full fuzz in “Sehr Kryptisch,” turning the three-minute meander of “Jos ei pelaa” into a tonal highlight and resolving the instrumental “(Lamda)” (sorry, the character won’t show up) with a jammy soundscape that at least sounds like it’s filled out by organ if it isn’t. A band who can go wherever they want and just might actually dare to do so, Sammal reinforce the notion of their perpetual growth and Aika laulaa is a win on paper for that almost as much as for the piano notes cutting through the distortion on “Grym maskin.” Almost.
Former Hades guitarist Dan Lorenzo continues a personal riffy renaissance with Cassius King‘s Dread the Dawn, one of several current outlets among Vessel of Light and Patriarchs in Black. On Dread the Dawn, the New Jersey-based Lorenzo, bassist Jimmy Schulman (ex-Attacker) and drummer Ron Lipnicki (ex-Overkill) — the rhythm section also carried over from Vessel of Light — and vocalist Jason McMaster offer 11 songs and 49 minutes of resoundingly oldschool heavy, Dio Sabbath-doomed rock. Individual tracks vary in intent, but some of the faster moments on “Royal Blooded” or even the galloping opener “Abandon Paradise” remind of Candlemass tonally and even rockers like “How the West Was Won,” “Bad Man Down” and “Back From the Dead” hold an undercurrent of classic metal, never mind the creeper riff of the title-track or its eight-minute companion-piece, the suitably swinging “Doomsday.” Capping with a bonus take on Judas Priest‘s “Troubleshooter,” Dread the Dawn has long since by then gotten its point across but never failed to deliver in either songwriting or performance. They strut, and earn it.
Issued on tape through UK imprint Dub Cthonic, the four-extended-tracker Way of the Pilgrim is the second 2022 full-length from South African solo folk experimentalist Seven Rivers of Fire — aka William Randles — behind September’s Sanctuary (review here) and March’s Star Rise, and its mostly acoustic-based explorations are as immersive and hypnotic as ever as the journey from movement to movement in “They are Calling // Exodus” (11:16) sets up processions through the drone-minded “Awaken // The Passenger” (11:58), “From the Depths // Into the Woods” (12:00) and “Ascend // The Fall” (11:56), Randles continuing to dig into his own particular wavelength and daring to include some chanting and other vocalizations in the opener and “From the Depths // Into the Woods” and the piano-laced finale. Each piece has an aural theme of its own and sets out from there, feeling its way forward with what feels like a genuinely unplanned course. Way of the Pilgrim isn’t going to be for everybody, as with all of Seven Rivers of Fire‘s output, but those who can tune to its frequencies are going to find its resonance continual.
Leeds-based psychedelic doomers Amon Acid channel the grimmer reaches of the cosmic — and a bit of Cathedral in “Hyperion” — on their fifth full-length in four years, second of 2022, Cosmogony. The core duo of guitarist/vocalist/synthesist Sarantis Charvas and bassist/cellist Briony Charvas — joined on this nine-tracker by the singly-named Smith on drums — harness stately space presence and meditative vibes on “Death on the Altar,” the guitar ringing out vague Easternisms while the salvo that started with “Parallel Realm” seems only to plunge further and further into the lysergic unknown. Following the consuming culmination of “Demolition Wave” and the dissipation of the residual swirl there, the band embark on a series of shorter cuts with “Nag Hammandi,” the riff-roller “Mandragoras,” the gloriously-weird-but-still-somehow-accessible “Demon Rider” and the this-is-our-religion “Ethereal Mother” before the massive buildup of “The Purifier” begins, running 11 minutes, which isn’t that much longer than the likes of “Parallel Realm” or “Death on the Altar,” but rounds out the 63-minute procession with due galaxial churn just the same. Plodding and spacious, I can’t help but feel like if Amon Acid had a purposefully-dumber name they’d be more popular, but in the far, far out where they reside, these things matter less when there are dimensions to be warped.
The original plan from Germany’s Iron & Stone was that the four-song Mountains and Waters was going to be the first in a sequence of three EP releases. As it was recorded in Fall 2020 — a time, if you’ll recall, when any number of plans were shot to hell — and only released this past June, I don’t know if the band are still planning to follow it with another two short offerings or not, but for the bass in “Loose the Day” alone, never mind the well-crafted heavy fuzz rock that surrounds on all sides, I’m glad they finally got this one out. Opener “Cosmic Eye” is catchy and comfortable in its tempo, and “Loose the Day” answers with fuzz a-plenty while “Vultures” metes out swing and chug en route to an airy final wash that immediately bleeds into “Unbroken,” which is somewhat more raucous and urgent of riff, but still has room for a break before its and the EP’s final push. Iron & Stone are proven in my mind when it comes to heavy rock songwriting, and they seem to prefer short releases to full-lengths — arguments to be made on either side, as ever — but whether or not it’s the beginning of a series, Mountains and Waters reaffirms the band’s strengths, pushes their craft to the forefront, and celebrates genre even as it inhabits it. There’s nothing more one might ask.
To be sure, there shades of are discernible influences in DRÖÖG‘s self-titled Majestic Mountain Records first long-player, from fellow Swedes Graveyard, Greenleaf, maybe even some of earlier Abramis Brama‘s ’70s vibes, but these are only shades. Thus it is immediately refreshing how unwilling the self-recording core duo of Magnus Vestling and Daniel Engberg are to follow the rules of style, pushing the drums far back into the mix and giving the entire recording a kind of far-off feel, their classic and almost hypnotic, quintessentially Swedish (and in Swedish, lyrically-speaking) heavy blues offered with hints of psychedelic flourish and ready emergence. The way “Stormhatt” seems to rise in the space of its own making. The fuller fuzz of “Blodörn.” The subtle tension of the riff in the second half of “Nattfjärilar.” In songs mostly between six and about eight minutes long, DRÖÖG distinguish themselves in tone — bass and hard-strummed guitar out front in “Hamnskiftaren” along with the vocals — and melody, creating an earthy atmosphere that has elements of svensk folkmusik without sounding like a caricature of that or anything else. They’ve got me rewriting my list of 2022’s best debut albums, and already looking forward to how they grow this sound going on from here.
Rare is a record so thoroughly screamed that is also so enhanced by its lyrics. Hello, Remember the Earth but Never Come Back. Based in Montreal — home to any number of disaffected sludgy noisemakers — Grales turn apocalyptic dystopian visions into poetry on the likes of “All Things are Temporary,” and anti-capitalist screed on “From Sea to Empty Sea” and “Wretched and Low,” tying together anthropocene planet death with the drive of human greed in concise, sharp, and duly harsh fashion. Laced with noise, sludged to the gills it’s fortunate enough to have so it can breathe in the rising ocean waters, and pointed in its lurch, the five-song/43-minute outing takes the directionless fuckall of so many practitioners of its genre and sets itself apart by knowing and naming exactly what it’s mad about. It’s mad about wage theft, climate change, the hopelessness that surrounds most while a miserly few continue to rape and pillage what should belong to everybody. The question asked in “Agony” answers itself: “What is the world without our misery? We’ll never know.” With this perspective in mind and a hint of melody in the finale “Sic Transit Mundus,” Grales offer a two-sided tape through From the Urn Records that is gripping in its onslaught and stirring despite its outward misanthropy. It’s not that they don’t care; it’s that they want you to pick up a molotov cocktail and toss it at your nearest corporate headquarters. Call it relatable.
Energetic in its delivery and semi-progressive in its intentions, Half Gramme of Soma‘s second album, Slip Through the Cracks, arrives with the backing of Sound of Liberation Records, the label wing of one of Europe’s lead booking agencies for heavy rock. Not a minor endorsement, but it’s plain to hear in the eight-song/42-minute course the individualism and solidified craft that prompted the pickup: Half Gramme of Soma know what they’re doing, period. Working with producer George Leodis (1000mods, Godsleep, Last Rizla, etc.) in their native Athens, they’ve honed a sound that reaches deeper than the deceptively short runtimes of tracks like “Voyager” and “Sirens” or “Wounds” might lead you to believe, and the blend of patience and intensity on finale-and-longest-song “22:22” (actually 7:36) highlights their potential in both its languid overarching groove and the later guitar solos that cut through it en route to that long fade, without sacrificing the present for the sake of the future. That is, whatever Half Gramme of Soma might do on their third record, Slip Through the Cracks shouldn’t. Even in fest-ready riffers “High Heels” and “Mind Game,” they bleed personality and purpose.
Posted in Reviews on January 2nd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Here we are. Welcome to 2023 and to both the first Quarterly Review of this year and the kind of unofficial closeout of 2022. These probably won’t be the last writeups for releases from the year just finished — if past is prologue, I’ll remain months if not years behind in some cases; you do what you can — but from here on out it’s more about this year than last in the general balance of what’s covered. That’s the hope, anyway. Talk to me in April to see how it’s going.
I won’t delay further except to remind that we’ll do 10 reviews per day between now and next Friday for a total of 100 covered, and to say thanks if you keep up with it at all. I hope you find something that resonates with you, otherwise there’s not much point in the endeavor at all. So here we go.
Winter 2023 Quarterly Review #1-10:
Buddha Sentenza, High Tech Low Life
With a foundation in instrumental meditative heavy psychedelia, Heidelberg, Germany’s Buddha Sentenza push outward along a number of different paths across their third album, High Tech Low Life, as in the second of five cuts, “Anabranch,” which builds on the mood-setting linear build and faster payoff of opener “Oars” and adds both acoustic guitar, metal-impact kick drum and thrash-born (but definitely still not entirely thrash) riffing, and later, heavier post-rock nod in the vein of Russian Circles, but topped with willfully grandiose keyboard. Kitchensinkenalia, then! “Ricochet” ups the light to a blinding degree by the time it’s two and a half minutes in, then punks up the bass before ending up in a chill sample-topped stretch of noodle-prog, “Afterglow” answers that with careening space metal, likewise progressive comedown, keyboard shred, some organ and hand-percussion behind Eastern-inflected guitar, and a satisfyingly sweeping apex, and 12-minute finale “Shapeshifters” starts with a classic drum-fueled buildup, takes a victory lap in heavy prog shove, spends a few minutes in dynamic volume trades, gets funky behind a another shreddy solo, peaks, sprints, crashes, and lumbers confidently to its finish, as if to underscore the point that whatever Buddha Sentenza want to make happen, they’re going to. So be it. High Tech Low Life may be their first record since Semaphora (review here) some seven years ago, but it feels no less masterful for the time between.
Captured raw in self-produced fashion, the Sept. 2022 debut album from Magma Haze sees the four-piece embark on an atmospheric and bluesy take on heavy rock, weaving through grunge and loosely-psychedelic flourish as they begin to shape what will become the textures of their sound across six songs and 42 minutes that are patiently offered but still carry a newer band’s sense of urgency. Beginning with “Will the Wise,” the Bologna, Italy, outfit remind somewhat of Salt Lake City’s Dwellers with the vocals of Alessandro D’Arcangeli in throaty post-earlier-Alice in Chains style, but as they move through “Stonering” and the looser-swinging, drenched-in-wah “Chroma,” their blend becomes more apparent, the ‘stoner’ influence showing up in the general languidity of vibe that persists regardless of a given track’s tempo. To wit, “Volcanic Hill” with its bass-led sway at the start, or the wah behind the resultant shove, building up and breaking down again only to end on the run in a fadeout. The penultimate “Circles” grows more spacious in its back half with what might be organ but I’m pretty sure is still guitar behind purposefully drawn-out vocals, and closer “Moon” grows more distorted and encouragingly fuzzed in its midsection en route to a wisely understated payoff and resonant end. There’s potential here.
Instrumental in its entirety and offered with a companion visual component on Blu-ray with different cover art, The Kybalion is the ambitious, 40-minute single-song debut long-player from Richmond, Virginia’s Future Projektor. With guitarist/vocalist Adam Kravitz and drummer Kevin White — both formerly of sludgesters Gritter; White is also ex-Throttlerod — and Sean Plunkett on bass, the band present an impressive breadth of scope and a sense of cared-for craft throughout their immersive course, and with guitar and sometimes keys from Kravitz leading the way as one movement flows into the next, the procession feels not only smooth, but genuinely progressive in its reach. It’s not that they’re putting on a showcase for technique, but the sense of “The Kybalion” as built up around its stated expressive themes — have fun going down a Wikipedia hole reading about hermeticism — is palpable and the piece grows more daring the deeper it goes, touching on cinematic around 27 minutes in but still keeping a percussive basis for when the heavier roll kicks in a short time later. Culminating in low distortion that shifts into keyboard revelation, The Kybalion is an adventure open to any number of narrative interpretations even beyond the band’s own, and that only makes it a more effective listen.
Berlin duo Grin — one of the several incarnations of DIY-prone power couple Jan (drums, guitar, vocals, production) and Sabine Oberg (bass) alongside EarthShip and Slowshine — grow ever more spacious and melodic on Oct. 2022’s Phantom Knocks, their third full-length released on their own imprint, The Lasting Dose Records. Comprised of eight songs running a tight and composed but purposefully ambient 33 minutes with Sabine‘s bass at the core of airy progressions like that of “Shiver” or the rolling, harsh-vocalized, puts-the-sludge-in-post-sludge “Apex,” Phantom Knocks follows the path laid out on 2019’s Translucent Blades (review here) and blends in more extreme ideas on “Aporia” and the airy pre-finisher “Servants,” but is neither beholden to its float nor its crush; both are tools used in service to the moment’s expression. Because of that, Grin move fluidly through the entirety of Phantom Knocks, intermittently growing monstrous to fill the spaces they’ve created, but mindful as well of keeping those spaces intact. Inarguably the work of a band with a firm sense of its own identity, it nonetheless seems to reach out and pull the listener into its depths.
Though clearly part of Teverts‘ focus on The Lifeblood is toward atmosphere and giving its audience a sense of mood that is maintained throughout its six tracks, a vigorousness reminiscent of later Dozer offsets the post-rocking elements from the Benevento, Italy, three-piece. They are not the first to bring together earthy bass with exploratory guitar overtop and a solid drum underpinning, but after the deceptively raucous one-two of the leadoff title-track and “Draining My Skin,” the more patient unfurling of instrumental side A finale “Under Antares Light” — which boasts a chugging march in its midsection and later reaches that is especially righteous — clues that the full-fuzz stoner rock starting side B with the desert-swinging-into-the-massive-slowdown “UVB-76” is only part of the appeal rather than the sum of it. “Road to Awareness” portrays a metallic current (post-metal, maybe?) in its shouty post-intro vocals and general largesse, but wraps with an engaging and relatively spontaneous-sounding lead before “Comin’ Home” answers back to “The Lifeblood” and that slowdown in “UVB-76” in summarizing the stage-style energy and the vast soundscape it has inhabited all the while. They end catchy, but the final crescendo is instrumental, a big end of the show complete with cymbal wash and drawn solo notes. Bravo.
An engrossing amalgam of lurching extreme doom and blackened metal, the second long-player, Ex Est, by Tilburg, Netherlands’ Ggu:ll is likewise bludgeoning, cruel and grim in its catharsis. The agonies on display seem to come to a sort of wailing head in “Stuip” later on, but that’s well after the ultra-depressive course has been set by “Falter” and “Enkel Achterland.” In terms of style, “Hoisting Ruined Sails” moves through slow death and post-sludge, but the tonal onslaught is only part of the weight on offer, and indeed, Ggu:ll bring dark grey and strobe-afflicted fog to the forward, downward march of “Falter” and the especially raw centerpiece “Samt-al-ras,” setting up a contrast with the speedier guitar in the beginning minutes of closer “Voertuig der Verlorenen” that feels intentional even as the latter decays into churning, harsh noise. There’s a spiritual aspect of the work, but the shadow that’s cast in Ex Est defines it, and the four-piece bring precious little hope amid the swirling and destructive antilife. Because this is so clearly their mission, Ex Est is a triumph almost in spite of itself, but it’s a triumph just the same, even at its moments of most vigorous, slow, skin-peeling crawl.
Fulanno & The Crooked Whispers, Last Call From Hell
While one wouldn’t necessarily call it balanced in runtime with Argentina’s Fulanno offering about 19 minutes of material with Los Angeles’ The Crooked Whispers answering with about 11, their Last Call From Hell split nonetheless presents a two-track sampler of both groups’ cultish doom wares. Fulanno lumber through “Erotic Pleasures in the Catacombs” and “The Cycle of Death” with dark-toned Sabbath-worship-plus-horror-obsession-stoned-fuckall, riding central riffs into a seemingly violent but nodding oblivion, while The Crooked Whispers plod sharply in the scream-topped six minutes of “Bloody Revenge,” giving a tempo kick later on, and follow a steadier dirge pace with “Dig Your Own Grave” while veering into a cleaner, nasal vocal style from Anthony Gaglia (also of LáGoon). Uniting the two bands disparate in geography and general intent is the dug-in vibe that draws out over both, their readiness to celebrate a death-stench vision of riff-led doom that, while, again, differently interpreted by each, sticks in the nose just the same. Nothing else smells like death. You know it immediately, and it’s all over Last Call From Hell.
Not all is as it seems as Mister Earthbound‘s debut album, Shadow Work, gets underway with the hooky “Not to Know” and a riff that reminds of nothing so much as Valley of the Sun, but the key there is in the swing, since that’s what will carry over from the lead track to the remaining six on the 36-minute LP, which turns quickly on the mellow guitar strum of “So Many Ways” to an approach that feels directly drawn from Hisingen Blues-era Graveyard. The wistful bursts of “Coffin Callin'” and the later garage-doomed “Wicked John” follow suit in mood, while “Hot Foot Powder” is more party than pout once it gets going, and the penultimate “Weighed” has more burl to its vocal drawl and an edge of Southern rock to its pre-payoff verses, while the subsequent closer “No Telling” feels like a take on Chris Goss fronting Queens of the Stone Age for “Mosquito Song” on Songs for the Deaf, and yes, that is a compliment. The jury may be out on Mister Earthbound‘s ultimate aesthetic — that is, where they’re headed, they might not be yet — but Shadow Work has songwriting enough at its root that I wouldn’t mind if that jury doesn’t come back. Time will tell, but “multifaceted” is a good place to start when you’ve got your ducks in a row behind you as Mister Earthbound seem to here.
Surely retro sword-bearing theatrics are part of the appeal when it comes to Brooklyn’s potential-rife, signed-in-three-two-one-go doom rockers Castle Rat‘s live presentation, but as they make their studio debut with the four-and-a-half-minute single “Feed the Dream,” that’s not necessarily going to come across to all who take the track on. Fortunately for the band, then, the song is no less thought out. A mid-paced groove that puts the guitar out before the ensuing march and makes way purposefully for the vocals of Riley “The Rat Queen” Pinkerton — who also plays rhythm guitar, while Henry “The Count” Black plays lead, Ronnie “The Plague Doctor” Lanzilotta is on bass and Joshua “The Druid” Strmic drums — to arrive with due presence. With a capital-‘h’ Heavy groove underlying, they bask in classic metal vibes and display a rare willingness to pretend the ’90s never happened. This is to their credit. The sundry boroughs of New York City have had bands playing dress-up with various levels of goofball sex, violence and excess since before the days of Twisted Sister — to be fair, this is glam via anti-glam — but the point with Castle Rat isn’t so much that the idea is new but the interpretation of it is. On the level of the song itself, “Feed the Dream” sounds like a candle being lit. Get your fire emojis ready, if that’s still a thing.
Immediate impact. Mountains‘ Tides End is the London trio’s second long-player behind 2017’s Dust in the Glare (discussed here), and though overall it makes a point of its range, the first impression in opener “Moonchild” is that the band are already on their way and it’s on the listener to keep up. Life and death pervade “Moonchild” and the more intense “Lepa Radić,” which follows, but it’s hard to listen to those two at the beginning, the breakout in “Birds on a Wire,” the heavy roll of “Hiraeth” and the rumble at the core of “Pilgrim” without waiting for the other shoe to drop and for Mountains to more completely unveil their metallic side. It’s there in the guitar solos, the drums, even as “Pilgrim” reminds of somewhat of Green Lung in its clarity of vision, but to their credit, the trio get through “Empire” and “Under the Eaves” and most of “Tides End” itself before the chug swallows them — and the album, it seems — whole. A curious blend of styles, wholly modern, Tides End feels more aggressive in its purposes than did the debut, but that doesn’t at all hurt it as the band journey to that massive finish.
but still aurally forceful and heavy in its procession. Suicide is the theme, whether it’s in “River Runs Red” itself, or “My Eyes” — “Just give me one reason to live/I’ll give you three to die” — “Through and Through,” “Bad Seed” or pre-“Friday” finale “The Stain Remains.” Opening with its longest track (immediate points) in the 5:41 “This Time,” the language of depression almost immediate in the lyrics as delivered by Caputo, who channeled youthful disaffection into a rousing, dynamic and distinct performance, just as able to dwell in the quiet space of the intros to “Bad Seed” or “The Stain Remains” as the coursing shove of the title-track and the anthemic “calling from the underground” that set so much of the tone for the record. Whether brooding, raging or soaring, River Runs Red is a dense-toned gamut, and it remains visceral these three decades after the fact.
