Posted in Whathaveyou on October 27th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Not content to let this most wretched of years end without giving it one last kick in the ass — and all the more admirable for that — North Carolinian sludge institution Weedeater will be back on the road in December, touring around a sold-out Chicago date that also includes High on Fire and the well-managed return of Acid Bath and a date alongside Eyehategod, keeping company with next-gen NC sludgers Bronco, born out of Toke, and The Goddamn Gallows. My big question is whether they’ll play the reignited Emissions From the Monolith next year, but I suppose we’ve got time before finding out.
Oh, and Weedeater‘s still-most-recent LP, Goliathan (review here), turned 10 this year. Happy birthday and such. Strange to think of 2015 as “simpler times,” but yeah.
The PR wire has the latest:
Weedeater Announce Final Tour Dates for 2025
Cape Fear Legends Ending Year on Headlining Run + Dates with Acid Bath, High on Fire and Eyehategod
Fresh off grinding the ol’ dusty trail with Melvins, Napalm Death and Baroness, Weedeater are sending 2025 up in smokes with a December headline tour. The Cape Fear Legends will sling their heavy and colorful strand of weed metal all the way from Belgium to Pennsylvania Dutch Country and the American Midwest before heading back down south. Joining the band for this fresh stash of dates are Rust Belt psychobilly cowpunks The Goddamn Gallows and doomy fellow Cape Fear natives Bronco.
Along the way, Weedeater will join the recently reunited Acid Bath and Grammy winners High on Fire for a sold-out show at Chicago’s Salt Shed, followed by a night in South Carolina with the mighty Eyehategod.
Weedeater December 2025 Tour Dates with The Goddamn Gallows and Bronco
December 6 – Eeklo, Belgium @ Empire of Groove* December 9 – Harrisburg, PA @ Capitol City Music Hall December 10 – Toledo, OH @ Frankies December 11 – Columbus, OH – Skully’s December 12 – Chicago, IL @ Salt Shed w/ Acid Bath + High on Fire [SOLD OUT] December 13 – Murfreesboro, TN @ Hop Springs December 14 – Little Rock, AR @ Whitewater December 16 – Austin, TX @ Lost Well December 17 – New Orleans, LA @ Southport Music Hall December 18 – Panama City Beach, FL @ Moseys December 19 – Piedmont, SC @ Tribbles w/ Eyehategod December 20 – Raleigh, NC @ Chapel of Bones *only Weedeater
Weedeater’s full discography is available now on Season of Mist
Posted in Questionnaire on October 23rd, 2025 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: Eric Aittala of Aittala
—
How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
We are Aittala (pronounced ‘EYE-tah-la’) from Raleigh, North Carolina, USA.
We’re a three-piece all-original band that infuses elements of classic heavy metal, doom, progressive, power, thrash, and hard rock into a cohesive experience.
While we don’t care for classifications (we just call ourselves ‘metal’), we have been classified as ‘Eclectic Doom’ and have come to embrace it.
The original incarnation of Aittala was formed in 1991 while I (Eric) was stationed in the Netherlands with the US military. The band was starting to gain some traction on the Dutch metal scene, but after a couple of years, I had to leave as my military contract ended. After that, the band was inactive for 15 years (by my choice).
In 2008, after relocating to North Carolina, I decided to resurrect the band and have been active ever since, releasing seven full-length albums along with three EPs.
The latest release is the ‘Ill-Gotten Gains’ EP, coming out in November 2025.
The current line-up of AITTALA consists of Gary ‘Zeus’ Smith (joined in 2012) on drums and Dane Taylor (joined in 2025) on bass.
Describe your first musical memory.
It was around 1975. I think it was around New Year’s and we were having some guests, so the living room stereo (back in those days, you had a huge entertainment console that had the 19” color TV and stereo built into it; it was furniture) was tuned to some FM station.
It was some kind of countdown show, and I remember hearing Aerosmith’s “Dream On.”
Describe your best musical memory to date.
I was 14 and went to my first real arena concert, which was Triumph (a huge hard rock band of the late ’70s/early ’80s) and Mountain (more of a ’60s/’70s hard rock band that was opening).
I only knew a handful of Triumph songs from MTV and only knew one Mountain song but it the show was amazing; the lights, the sound, and the energy. It was better than losing my virginity!
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
When I was younger, I really believed some friendships/relationships would last a lifetime, but, as we all know, other people come between those bonds and break them. And once broken, they’ll never be the same.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
If you’re not careful, it leads to insanity.
How do you define success?
It’s just a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment; it doesn’t matter how much money you made (or last for that matter).
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Walking in on my parents fornicating; not enough bleach for my eyes…
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I’m really not sure because if I haven’t created it yet, then I don’t know what I haven’t created. It’s a bit of a paradox.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Art’s essential function is to distract our brains from reality.
If you think about why you listen to music, watch a movie, or view visual art, it takes you to a different place than where you are currently.
Say something positive about yourself.
I feel like I’m a good songwriter/arranger. I let songs develop organically by letting them flow naturally until they’re complete and ready to be recorded and released.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Not to sound grim, but I’m looking forward to seeing what’s on the other side of this existence.
Is there something beyond our life, or just complete nothingness?
Posted in Reviews on October 10th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
This isn’t the end of the Quarterly Review — it wraps up on Monday — but it is the end of the week, and I’m ready for it. The music’s been good though and that’s something of a salvation for times where it seems like the strange and terrifying are in competition with each other to make life more awful. That doesn’t end on the weekend, of course, but at least I’ll have two days to put together the last post of this QR, and when you’ve been writing 10 reviews a day all week, half that counts as respite. Something like it, anyhow.
So before we wrap up the week with whatever on earth I’ll actually pick to close it out (any requests?), here’s one more batch, with my thanks for your valuable time and attention. Hope you find something cool.
Quarterly Review #51-60:
P+A+G+E+S, No More Can Be Done
No More Can Be Done is the debut album from South Africa’s P+A+G+E+S, but the Cape Town trio spent five years in the 2010s together as Morning Pages, so that their first record would hold so much intention behind it shouldn’t necessarily be a shocker. The reason behind the name change? An apparent change in their project, which is to say the band got way, way darker, way, way heavier and nasty in that sharp-toothed-thing-you-can’t-see-but-you-know-is-there-also-there-are-no-lights kind of way. The 15-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “The Passage” leads the way down into the bleak, extreme sludge that follows, but as the careful linear build of “Shine On” later demonstrates, P+A+G+E+S are more methodical than the noise and outwardly chaotic feel would seem to indicate. Atmosphere plays a central role in what they do, and that’s consistent from their run as Morning Pages, but No More Can Be Done is about what’s lurking and lurching in the bleakness.
Following the intro “Chasm,” Bask launch their fourth album, The Turning, with minor-key mystique and subsequent crush via “In the Heat of the Dying Sun” and “The Traveler,” piling triumph upon triumph in a way that is indicative of the progressive songwriting at work. “The Cloth” is slower, but neither less weighted nor less gorgeous for that, and as “Dig My Heels” works in some of the Southern/Americana pastoralism the Asheville, North Carolina, outfit have always been known for, the melody proves a standout, setting up another life-affirming payoff in the seven-minute “Unwound,” the mellower turn for the build of “Long Lost Light” and the somewhat wistfully twanging undertones of the title-track, which closes with grace and poise rare enough in heavy anything. Clearly a band who have worked to and been successful in transcending their root influences, and an identity that’s been hard-forged over their decade-plus. The Turning sees them actively bring their approach to another level.
A 15-minute two-songer from Lima, Peru’s Matus, as the psychedelic weirdo sometimes-cultists of long standing offer “El Aullido” (8:45) and “Planetario” (6:55) as their first outing since 2021’s Espejismos II (review here). Both processions — and they are that — feel built out from jams, but the recordings have guitarist Manolo Garfias and keyboardist Richard Nossar (both also alternate bass duties) at their core, along with Roberto Soto‘s drumming, Veronik‘s theremin in the deep-freakout section of “Planetario,” Úrsula Inga‘s vocals on “El Aullido,” and so on with other guests (including Camilo Uriarte, who co-produced and mixed, along solo artist Chino Burga on guitar, and Cristóbal Pérez on sax for “Planetario”) adding to the movement. “El Aullido” pairs shoegaze with a roll informed by South American folk, perfect for Inga‘s vocals, while “Planetario” carries more of its melody in the keyboards and surrounding ambience. It’s a welcome check-in from Matus as they celebrate the 20th anniversary of the band.
Where New England bizarropsych rockers November’s Fire‘s 2024 album, Through a Mournful Song, took an approach to its material like some of earliest Monster Magnet‘s underproduced kitchen-sink quirk, the two-song EP 2025 presents two different faces, and that turns out to be because the songs included are over 30 years old. “2025” and “Somnia” — the latter which brings in original guitarist Greg Brosseau for a guest spot that includes clean lead vocals — were allegedly written in the early 1990s, and if you told me the root of the title-track was a teenaged thrash riff, they make that easy enough to believe in the modernized, thickened chug of the song as it stands now. That is to say, they’ve brought it into the sludgy experimentalist context of the work now, but it remains dark. As it inevitably would. “Somnia” is shorter, has some backing chants, and feels meditative even as the guitar holds to its restlessness. Weird band staying weird, screwing around with their old stuff and getting something out of it. Sometimes an experiment works.
Bergen, Norway, four-piece Goatmilker don’t really leave you with much choice other than to call them progressive, though that hardly says boo about the reach of their self-titled debut, which is as much psychedelic punk as it is black metal in its rhythms, but remains a work of heavy rock and roll nonetheless, grooving, catchy on “Devils on My Tail,” aggro-weird on “Time… Tearing Apart,” all-in on tonal overwhelm for “Mountains” and cheekily grandiose in the finale “Storm” only after they’ve seen fit to take on Journey‘s “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart),” which given the goes-where-it-wants succession leading up to it hardly feels out of place at all. While at no risk of overstaying its welcome at eight songs and 34 minutes, Goatmilker does make for a challenging listen at times, but the rewards for actually paying attention to what they’re doing are worth whatever effort is required. That is to say, engage actively for best results.
If Grin sound a little different on Incantation, a two-track 7″ with a digital bonus cut in the flatteningly heavy “Echoes in the Static,” that might be because the duo of drummer/vocalist Jan Oberg and bassist Sabine Oberg didn’t record themselves as usual, but instead tracked live at Wave Akademie in their native Berlin with Anton Urban (Jan Oberg co-produced, mixed and mastered, so still had a hand for sure). So, rather than the studio leftovers one might expect mere months after the band’s last full-length, Acid Gods (review here), the songs may have their origins as such but arise from different circumstances. There’s some more of a wash to “Incantation” and “The Color of Ghosts,” and “Echoes in the Static” is consumed by its titular noise toward its finish, but “The Color of Ghosts” dares some melodic vocals amid all that bombast, and as usual, Grin forge their own take on metal, sludge and intense atmospheric heavy.
A collection of bangers on the second LP through Glory or Death Records from San Diego rockers Mezzoa, TON 618 plays out over the course of a taut 13 songs and 39 minutes, careening desert style in “Hard to Hear,” punking up the groove in “Chump” before basking in Sabbath worship for “Wasted Universe” (think “Symptom” thereof), building crunching tension in “Uncle Cho” only to release it in the second half of the song with a grunge melody, carrying that melody into “Smiles for Everyone,” and then slamming all that momentum into the fuzzed radness of the lead tone and Alice in Chainsy vocal of “How You Been.” That’s not the end, I’m just less efficient than the band and so I’m running out of space. “Blessing” attains inner Nirvana while “Desert Snakes” sounds like it’s ready for a John Garcia guest spot, “Chachi Liberachi” echoes the sharper corners of “Wasted Universe,” “Goin’ Down” has that riff that every New York hardcore song ever (yes, all of them. don’t @ me.) has but goes somewhere completely different with it, and closer “How Are We” highlights the craft that’s let them do it all in the first place. Hey kid, you like rock music? Well get a load of this.
Beginning with its longest track in the nine-minute “Biting In,” Orsak:Oslo‘s Silt and Static finds the Norwegian/Swedish outfit somewhat outgrown from their dronier foundations, harnessing a psychedelia that moves with krautrocking purposes, while retaining the band’s previously-established ambient instrumentalist approach. “Days Adrift” is an even thicker roll, with ebbs and flows that give precedent to the shove that results in “Salt Stains,” which follows, while “Petals” dips momentarily into minimalism. But the story here is the fullness of sound, with pieces like the subdued-but-building “Resonance in Ash” or “Petals” in conversation with Pelican/Russian Circles-style heavy, while “The Onward Stride” and “Time Leak” bring prog more to the forefront and “Bread and Sink” lets the rumble bring it all together. In these ways, Silt and Static rewrites the story of Orsak:Oslo as a band, and their reach has never seemed so broad.
Modder, Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun
The hypnotic drone finish of “Type 27” that ends side A of Modder‘s second album, Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun, is just one way the band incorporate ambience as a key element in their trades between loud and quiet, tense and open, and crushing and spacious. These different sides come together in various combinations across the six cuts on the Belgian instrumentalist five-piece’s 41-minute run, which sets out in oppressive and blasting fashion with “Stone Eternal,” as heavy as whatever doom you want to put it next to and still able to hit with the precision of Gojira. The shorter “Mather” is more angular, glitchy and mirrored by “Chaoism” on the album’s second half, and though they lead off with their longest track (immediate points) in “Stone Eternal,” the heavy djenty chug that comes to fruition on “In the Sun” is unmistakable as anything but the closer, building, receding, tossing in what sure sounds like a human voice chanting and surging in intensity to round out with a keyboard-overlaid bludgeoning. By then you’re pretty much pulp anyway.
Past Warnings of Present Futures tells you a lot about its point of view in the title, but electronic experimentalists Futuredrugs push the meaning deeper still, opening with a barely recognizable take on “What a Wonderful World” with “Skies of Blue” and revamping Tom Waits‘ “Dirt in the Ground” on “…And the Gallows Groaned.” The cinematic, dark synth/programmed backdrop of these and the sampled “No Home” blur the line between originality and reinterpretation/manipulation, and I won’t claim to know whether pieces like “Ice Age Coming” or “When the Last Tree Falls” are similarly sourced, but maybe. In any case, in a time when remembering things like “nothing matters anyway” is a comfort, there is space for the open-minded listener to dwell among these seven tracks, which when taken as a whole succeed in embodying the apocalyptic hellscape of recent years. I don’t know if they’re offering sanctuary so much as a snapshot, but as that, it sure feels like an accurate depiction.
Posted in Reviews on October 8th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
If you’ve been keeping up, you already know this Quarterly Review goes through next Monday (because screw weekends anyhow) and will top out at 70 releases covered. Today, then, is when we hit the halfway mark en route to that number. Does it matter? Probably not unless you’re the guy on the other side of the laptop writing it, but maybe you just enjoy having the division done for you.
More of a range of styles today than yesterday, which I need to keep this going, so you’ll pardon me while I dig in in the hope that you do the same. Thanks for reading.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Mountain of Misery, Shades of the Ashes
Somewhat impressively, Mountain of Misery remains the solo-project of Kamil Ziółkowski, who perhaps if he wasn’t also the drummer/vocalist in Spaceslug might’ve put together a full band by now, but seems committed to keeping the band in-house. But it is a band, to be sure. Shades of the Ashes is Ziółkowski‘s third LP under the moniker, and it pushes deeper into a progression distinct from Spaceslug however familiar some of the vocals are, and offers depth of its own, whether that’s tonally in the thickened fuzz of “Follow the Sun” or the way he makes it boogie in “Speed King” (not a cover) while at the same time setting up the lush nod of “From Fall to Rise.” Between “Thornado” at the outset and the eight-minute finale “Blow,” Ziółkowski refines Mountain of Misery‘s sound with a freshness that is metal, grunge, heavy rock and psychedelic all at once, and stronger for that cohesion with his signature mellow vocals over top. It’s kind of surprising at this point he hasn’t been tempted to do it live, but clearly this is working, so I wouldn’t necessarily encourage messing with the process either.
A fresh take on the notion of Southern heavy from Asheville, North Carolina’s Dërro, who put a bit of twang into the post-Alice in Chains harmonies of “Brain Worm” (surely a song for our times) and a bit of emotive soar into “Echo Mountain” in complement to a guitar tone that feels kin to earlier Tool, all while retaining a ‘doing its own thing’ vibe. That is to say, the six-song Halcyon — which is the band’s first outing so far as I know — feels like the credited-as-composers duo of Neal Brewer and Corey Tossas, working with Pat Gerasia on drums, would seem to have come into this debut offering with a firm idea of what they wanted the band to be sound-wise, and unless they’ve secretly been working on it for a decade, the results of that shimmer with intention and feeling alike in the chuggy “Alone” and the drawl-into-power-nod opening title-track. One to watch? Maybe, but way more of a thing to hear now.
The guitar/drum duo of Marco Bianciardi (The Somnambulist, ex-Arte, etc.) and Sara Neidorf (Mellowdeath, Sarattma, ex-Aptera, etc.) apparently recorded their six-track/36-minutes self-titled debut in a day. That implies much of it was done live, though it doesn’t account for the keyboards that show up in “Spectral Swell” and “Countershading,” or the lead layering in “Talking Moonshine,” but it’s not unlikely that after showing up and banging it out they had a little time for overdubs. Fair enough. The pieces are varied and prone to getting weirder toward their respective ends, rooted in doomjazz but groove-conscious just the same, and the garage-y strum in “Gruttling From Outer Space” bends and twists as it goes in a way that surely defines what ‘gruttling’ might be, while “Edge of Forthcoming Rain” hints at more peaceful ideas without giving up its restlessness and “The Cosmonaut’s Secret” turns out to be the shove into its own finish. They close with a saunter in “Talking Moonshine” and that feels as right as anything for a collection that’s so casually eclectic while minimizing the actual elements involved in its making.
Melbourne three-piece VVarp — also stylized all-caps: VVARP — seem to imagine a universe wherein the thickened tones and keyboard flourish of Slomatics meets with more traditionalist doom riffing, but that’s still just half the story as bassist Claudia Sullivan and guitarist/keyboardist John Bollen share lead vocals in harmonized style over the voluminous roll of “Druid Warfare,” the cavernous and lumbering “A Path Through the Veil,” assuring there’s beauty to coincide with all the crush that surrounds. Running 34 minutes and five tracks, Power Held in Stone follows 2020’s First Levitations and is accordingly their second full-length, given ethereal, almost-chanting presence through the vocals on centerpiece “Equinox Portal” where “Iron Cloak” is more resolved to its own heads-down-all-go bombast fueled by drummer Scott McLatchie as the song shoves into the residual keys that carry to the rumble at the outset of 10-minute capper “Stone Silhouette,” likewise gorgeous, immersive and encompassing.
Easily among the best debut albums I’ve heard in 2025 comes this modernized-classic psychedelia outreach from Poland’s Atom Juice, who would seem to have some relation to meloproggers Weedpecker through guitarist/vocalist Bartek Dobry, but who take a different path to get to bright and melodic fruition. The five-piece outfit’s self-titled debut (on Heavy Psych Sounds) runs shortest to longest on each of its component sides, with copious Beatles influence in “Gooboo” (circa ’70) and delves elsewhere into modern space rock (“Dead Hookers”), the most engaging funk-psych I’ve heard since Wight on “Sexi Frogs,” and an identity in the doing conjured through a blend of influences older and new. As closer “Honey” gives a bit of push in its first half, there’s nowhere Atom Juice wind up on the record that they don’t make themselves welcome, and with rare warmth, they give hopeful hints at the shape of heavy psychedelia to come. I haven’t seen a lot of hype for this one. If you’re reading this, don’t skip it.
The 15 tracks of Hooveriii‘s Manhunter have a foundation in garage rock and an according off-the-cuff feel, but at the same time, interludes and exploratory instrumentals like “In the Rain,” “Night Walks in Montreaux,” the spacey title-track and the penultimate organ soundscaper “Awful Planet” assure that nothing actually comes across as haphazard in a way that undercuts the dynamic. “Melody” and “Tin Lips” open in rocking style, while the fuzz grows more fervent in “Westside Pavilion of Dreams” and “Heaven at the Gates” before “Cul-de-Sac” marks the transition to the next phase with the forceful shuffle of “The Fly,” answered a short while later by the heft of “Question.” It goes like this, flowing except where it doesn’t want to, and with the jazzy “Me King” and the aforementioned mellow-vocalized “Awful Planet” for setup, “Stage” reroutes into pastoralism and feels pointedly kind in so doing. Clearly a band for whom genre takes a secondary role to their own craft, and one whose appeal is broader for that.
Fluidity is part of the nature of what Sweden’s Gaupa do, as the Falun-based troupe have established over their two-to-date LPs and other sundry outings. The five-song/35-minute Fyr finds them working with producer Karl Daniel Lidén — which was a very good idea that somebody had — and is billed as a mini-album, which I think is to account for its being only one minute shorter than their most recent LP, 2022’s Myriad (review here). Vocalist Emma Näslund remains a focal point in the songs, but the balance of the mix is malleable as “Heavy Lord” demonstrates, and “Elastic Sheep” finds the entire band aligned around a fullness that one only hopes is emblematic of their third to come. Plus a big ol’ slowdown, and while we’re talking bonuses, the 11-minute live take on “Febersvan” from their first EP is a welcome glimpse at how far they’ve progressed to this point to complement the potential still so obvious in their sound. They’re the kind of band you hope never stop growing.
With multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Paul Holden still at the center of the project — Mathias Dowle is also credited with playing on and co-engineering the album with Holden and Ryan Fallis — Melbourne psych-grunge rockers Foot seem to pick up where they left off with 2022’s You Are Weightless, tapping into a style that’s grounded in terms of structure and committedly straightforward but that still lends a feeling of scope and space to the nine cuts on the 45-minute Copper Feast-issued LP. The fuzz is prevalent, perhaps nowhere more so than “Walking Into Walls All Week,” where “Intensify” is more of a vocal showcase until its later heavy sweep. Holden does a cover of Marcy Playground‘s “Sex and Candy”… for… some reason… and but for that, as one would both expect and hope for the band at this point, they remain a songwriting-based unit, able to present a diversity of ideas and moods without ever making it feel like a departure at all.
Enter Diagram with a ready definition for ‘dug in’ on their second album, Short Circuit Control. The Berlin duo of founder Hákon Aðalsteinsson and Fred Sunesen offer heady listeners a heady listen with nine inclusions that commune with the history of electronics in krautrock while still keeping both a modern and a psychedelic affect. Is that neo-kraut? I honestly don’t know, but cuts like “This is How We Lead Our Lives” transcend their outward poppiness through repetition and exploration, and the abiding lesson seems to be that just because something is dancey doesn’t also mean it can’t be purposefully building an atmosphere — “Close Your Eyes” walks by and waves (not that you can see it with your eyes closed). The single “Dub Boy” answers the New Wave aspects of opener “Breath in Your Fire,” and a ’90s electro finale awaits in “Through the Wall of Sound” for anybody adventurous enough to take it on.
Brookynite heavy progressive rockers The Phantom Eye offer blend across Cymatic Waves‘ four tracks that feels metallic at its root but has grown and redirected to more complex fare. Between the volume trades of “Circuit Rider,” the noise baked into the finish of “Palindrome,” the synth adding drama to “Black Hotel” and the intricate balancing of guitar layers in “Silent Symphony,” the focus is never purely on just being heavy, but ‘heavy,’ as a musical ideal, is a piece of the puzzle here, framing a broad melodic reach and giving shape to the structures underlying. I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to what they might sound like in five years, but as they’re following 2021’s Chromesthesia EP (review here) with this second short release, it’s even more difficult to pin them down as any one thing. This could hardly feel more intentional than it does in the songs. There’s a plan at work here. It’s just starting to pan out.
Posted in Questionnaire on September 30th, 2025 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: Garrett Garlington of Cosmic Reaper
—
How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
It’s a release of energy, raw aggression transmitted through an instrument.
Outside of having fun with a group of people (what a band is really about).
This is pretty subjective, so I can only tell you what it’s like for me. People have compared being in a band to being in a marriage, but I think it’s closer to a gang. It’s a group of individuals acting with purpose and intent for a common goal, whatever that goal may be. Long surviving bands that last are on the same page with their goals, and seeing their bandmates as brothers/sisters. Going about it any other way, you’re likely to miss out on the best moments of being in a band.
Describe your first musical memory.
There was a band called Sukay, they were this high-energy folk music from the Andes of South America. At one point they were relatively known worldwide. My parents took me to see them perform, beside the river in Sacramento, CA when I was probably 6 years old. Planned or by accident, I’m not sure. That very well may have been the moment that set me on the path of chasing music my entire life. I highly recommend Sukay, not only is it a truly unique style of folk, but one album cover has them on top of a fucking mountain wearing robes and their holding instruments. Your average metal band dreams about doing stuff like that.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
We were lucky enough to perform in Joshua tree, CA as part of Heavy Psych Sounds Fest. Performing that far from home, (in the middle of a desert no less) was pretty surreal. It was also a really stacked bill with some staples of the genre. Windhand, Brant Bjork, Weedeater. It also just happened to be the first time my father had ever seen me play music of any genre.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Basically everyday, anything we were taught about our US government has turned out to be a fabrication or propaganda stretching back at least 100 years. See the lyrics to “Hammer” and “Wasteland II.”
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
It typically progresses with artists’ tastes, which of course change with time. Sometimes the progression comes from trying to fit into a certain mold, to achieve a certain level of success. Ultimately Progression leads to two things, simultaneously, gaining a new fan base and losing another one.
How do you define success?
Most people probably look at success as arbitrary numbers, data involving streams or monetary figures. To me, it’s always been much more about critical acclaim, and a lasting fanbase of whatever you do. Whether that makes money or not.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Children rummaging for food in the trash, in this country or any other. There’s no reason any human shouldn’t have access to the most basic necessity to survive.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I’d eventually like to get into some kind of leather working, creating physical objects that serve a purpose. Wallets, gun holsters, cool stuff of that sort. It’s really just a matter of free time, and getting started.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
The most essential, is self expression. The secondary is having that (expression) resonate with another.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
I’ve been trying to make a trip down to Key West, FL. I’ve never been and driving over the ocean that far seems like it would be really peaceful.
[Ed. Note 09/29: I don’t know who took the photo above. If it was you, I’m glad to give credit. Please let me know without being a dick about it.]
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 23rd, 2025 by JJ Koczan
I mean, it’s free to stream, but it’s also a cover of the band Free. Corrosion of Conformity — operating as the four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Pepper Keenan, guitarist/backing vocalist Woodroe Weatherman, bassist Bobby Landgraf and drummer Stanton Moore — have posted a take on Free‘s “Fire and Water” as a herald for something called ‘Riffissippi Studio Jam Sessions.’ Keenan gives some of the preliminaries below, but the gist is that the cover is separate from the band’s awaited next album, which as of last month was a 2LP coming next year on Nuclear Blast, and is apparently one of a series. Note in the cover art/promotional image below the part where it says “Vol. 1.” Obviously the implication is there’s more.
So be it. If that becomes a pressed-to-CD covers EP or LP over the next however-many months either to precede or follow the actual record of original songs, what, I’m gonna complain? And if it’s just videos of the band jamming to keep content algorithms happy and their name in the forebrain of their fanbase for when said record starts its promo cycle? Not arguing with that either. Ain’t none of us getting any younger. The more the merrier.
Video’s at the bottom of the post. Here’s what Nuclear Blast had to say about it, plus the dates of the band’s current tour with Judas Priest and Alice Cooper from the PR wire:
CORROSION OF CONFORMITY – “Fire and Water”
CORROSION OF CONFORMITY are back with a special rendition of ‘Fire And Water’ by English rock band, Free! The classic track was originally released in 1970 on the album of the same name. CORROSION OF CONFORMITY’s version came spontaneously in the studio during some downtime while recording their forthcoming new full-length, set for release next year, and serves as the first of the Riffissippi Studio Jam Sessions, a special collection of jammed out interpretations of songs by some of the band’s favorite artists.
Comments guitarist/vocalist Pepper Keenan, “When we were tracking this record, we had a very cool space set up where we would essentially hang in the large room with everything mic’d and everything we needed, including a turntable and a bunch of our favorite records, which we would play and chill out between takes. We were hanging together, and I pulled out a Free album and ‘Fire And Water’ popped up. [Drummer] Stanton [Moore] jumped up immediately and said, ‘Who the fuck is that!?.’ He had never heard it before. We were baffled, but it was awesome to us that he had never heard it. He said, ‘let’s cut that!’ I said, ‘man, that’s friggin’ Free and kind of like holy ground that you don’t fuck with.’ But we started thinking about it and damn Stanton charted it out like the drum wizard he is. I said, ‘I can’t sing like that, man. He’s the king.’ Someone in the room said, ‘just sing it like you,’ so we went for it and had a blast doing it. It was a nice fun break from the recording. It’s nothing too serious, just a bunch of fellas leaning into it, loving the rock. It’s an exercise in restraint. Hope y’all dig it.”
CORROSION OF CONFORMITY w/ Judas Priest, Alice Cooper: 9/23/2025 Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater – Bridgeport, CT 9/24/2025 Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater – Virginia Beach, VA 9/25/2025 The Golden Pony – Harrisonburg, VA ** 9/26/2025 PNC Bank Arts Center – Holmdel, NJ 9/27/2025 Broadview Stage at SPAC – Saratoga Springs, NY 9/29/2025 Budweiser Stage – Toronto, ON 9/30/2025 Stan’s Room at Piere’s – Ft. Wayne, IN ** 10/01/2025 The Pavilion At Star Lake – Burgettstown, PA 10/02/2025 Pine Knob Music Theatre – Clarkston, MI 10/04/2025 Riverbend Music Center – Cincinnati, OH 10/05/2025 Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre – Tinley Park, IL 10/06/2025 Wooly’s – Des Moines, IA ** 10/08/2025 Intrust Bank Arena – Wichita, KS 10/09/2025 Warehouse on Broadway – Kansas City, MO ** 10/10/2025 Broadmoor World Arena – Colorado Springs, CO 10/12/2025 Utah First Credit Union Amphitheatre – Salt Lake City, UT 10/14/2025 Shoreline Amphitheatre – Mountain View, CA 10/15/2025 Toyota Amphitheatre – Wheatland, CA 10/17/2025 The Usual Place – Las Vegas, NV ** 10/18/2025 North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre – Chula Vista, CA 10/19/2025 Kia Forum – Inglewood, CA 10/21/2025 Rockhouse Bar & Grill – El Paso, TX ** 10/22/2025 Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre – Phoenix, AZ 10/23/2025 Isleta Amphitheater – Albuquerque, NM 10/25/2025 Germania Insurance Amphitheater – Austin, TX 10/26/2025 The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion – Houston, TX
End Tour 11/08-09/2025 Damnation Fest @ BEC Arena – Manchester, UK 1/10/2026 Foro Alicia – Mexico City, MX 1/12/2026 Sala Métronomo – Santiago, CL 1/14/2026 Club Paraguay – Córdoba, AR ** CORROSION OF CONFORMITY headlining date
Durham, North Carolina’s Tooth will release their self-titled debut album on Oct. 17. And it’s a familiar enough story. Sure, you know how it goes. Band comes out of the gate roaring and gnashing teeth, kicking unbridled ass on a local/regional basis, builds some momentum with early EPs and then 16 years go by and they eventually put out a first album. Wait, that’s how it goes, right?
Okay, fine. So maybe the six songs and 36 minutes of Tooth — led off by “Howl,” which premieres on the player below — require a bit of context, and honestly, knowing they have their roots in the early/mid-aughts codification and ascent of what at the time was called ‘progressive sludge’ very much in the aftermath of Mastodon‘s Remission LP, which is a touchstone for Tooth in the pummel and headturning twists of “Assimilation,” where “Howl” digs in with more volatility and threat in its slowdown — more sludge, in other words. Not a complaint.
Topped off by J-me Guptill‘s mostly but not exclusively high-register, sharptooth screams, the cuts become all the more cutting, one into the next, with “Phineas” sampling Pet Sematary on the way to nestling into angularity in a way that reminds of the lessons Lord Dying learned from Voivod, en route to “Mordrake,” which is more blanketly aggressive in its High on Fire-ry charge and murderous theme; preface there to “Lobotomobile” later on. The going is fluid, often shoved along at a pace that feels fervent without giving up precision, and though I wouldn’t accuse anybody here of pretending it’s 2005 instead of whatever wretched year it is, the fact that these guys were plodding around the sweltering Southeastern Seaboard at the time is evident in their sound today.
And the razor-sharp riffing of Ben Wilson and Richard James (and I don’t feel back using such a hackneyed description; 20 years ago it might’ve been original), with guitars intertwining, splitting up to cover more ground, coming back together for all-the-more-craterous impacts underscored by bassist Ryland Fishel and drummer Noah Kessler like in the early slowdown of “Howl” — don’t worry, the Today is the Day-informed arthouse noise skronk will be back soon — or the post-hardcore charge in closer “Ask the Octavian” that’s actually a swing groove at its root but somewhat harder to recognize while you’re being bludgeoned in the face. Funny how that works.
Along with crushing, the odd bit of stab’n’slice and just plain old running you over, bludgeonry is just one of the selection of methods by which Tooth might kill, but there’s more to the album and its songs than violence. These guys would’ve laid waste on a bill circa 2004 with Zoroaster, for sure. Maybe there’s somebody reading who went to such a show.
If so, that is, if you were there with Tooth during their initial run and the two short releases preceding this, no doubt there’s an extra element of nostalgic warmth to Tooth that just about nobody outside of the heavy underground would ever understand. If that’s you, that’s a good thing, but if not — and I won’t claim at all to have caught them circa ’09, and I was around — if it’s not too late for them to be putting out the record, surely it’s not too late for you to hear them for the first time.
To that end, “Howl” premieres on the player below. Please enjoy:
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 9th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Though it’s been streaming since I don’t know when — May? was it May? — the self-titled sophomore LP (review here) from not-all-Southern-sludge socially conscious four-piece Doomsday Profit will see its real-life arrival next Friday, Sept. 19. The celebration starts early, with shows this weekend in Virginia and the band’s native North Carolina. The weekender is one of a few they’ll do between now and the start of November, as the PR wire informs, and while I know it’s not the farthest-ranging tour ever, at least they’re getting out, and it is another excuse for me to post about the record before it’s released, so I’ll take that happily.
And I guess I did and here we are.
Context and such:
North Carolina sludge metal outfit DOOMSDAY PROFIT announce select Southeast dates in support of their forthcoming self-titled album
North Carolina’s Doomsday Profit have announced a run of Southeast shows for the Fall, promoting the band’s self-titled album, out September 19. Dates include a double-header in Virginia and North Carolina with D.C. grind ‘n’ roll veterans Drugs of Faith, as well as a mini-tour to Tampa Doom & Gloom Fest II with stops in Columbia, SC, Athens, GA, Gainesville, FL, and Tampa.
Full dates and album promos below.
Upcoming Shows
Sep. 12 – Lynchburg, VA – Super Rad Arcade (with Drugs of Faith, Septic Vomit, Palladists) Sep. 13 – Winston-Salem, NC – Hoots Beer Co. (with Drugs of Faith, Valletta, And I Become Death) Oct. 17 – Durham, NC – TBA Oct. 30 – Columbia, SC – The Space (with Prosperity Gospel, Zyphoid) Oct. 31 – Athens, GA – Cine (with Lungburner, False Gods) Nov. 1 – Gainesville, FL – The Atlantic (with Grave Filth, Seeker) Nov. 2 – Tampa, FL – Deviant Libation (Tampa Doom & Gloom Fest II)
There’s no time to waste. At least that’s how Doomsday Profit seems to be operating. After making their debut with the gritty stoner-sludge of 2021’s In Idle Orbit, the Durham, N.C.-based band issued 2024’s psych-leaning split with Virginia-based Smoke, and has kept the momentum going ever since. With their forthcoming self-titled album, Doomsday Profit now has embedded an even wider array of influences into their acerbic, dystopian sludge. Particles of monolithic doom, grisly death ‘n’ roll grooves, driving punk rock and scathing black metal all flash in the band’s raw self-titled LP.
Doomsday Profit: Ryan Sweeney – bass guitar Kevin See – lead guitar Bryan Reed – vocals & guitar David Ruiz – drums
