Posted in Whathaveyou on October 28th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
This record was originally released through The Music Cartel, which was around only for a relatively brief time at the turn of the century (I looked it up: 1998-2005) but during that time issued a treasure trove of killer albums, including handling the US release of at least most of what Rise Above was doing at the time in the UK. That means bands like Orange Goblin, Electric Wizard, Sheavy, Sally, even Cathedral were The Music Cartel bands at the time, if briefly.
The label was part of the post-Man’s Ruin rescue squad, and so put out Sons of Otis, and had Frank Kozik‘s imprint still been around at the time, there’s a decent chance The Sabians‘ 2003 LP, Shiver, would’ve been on it. The fact that the group featured a between-Sleep-and-OmChris Hakius on drums and were led by guitarist/vocalist Justin Marler (who also was in Sleep before their demo) surely didn’t hurt them. This was a record I heard through — of course — StonerRock.com, and I’d suspect I’m not the only one greeting the forthcoming reissue as part of Ripple Music‘s ‘Beneath the Desert Floor’ series with a little bit of nostalgia for the pre-algorithm days of heavy.
It’s streaming already — I guess they figured with a 21-year-old album there’s no need to keep the secret; can’t argue — but if it’s physicality you’re yearning for, the date is Dec. 9.
As per the PR wire:
THE SABIANS (with former SLEEP members) to reissue “Shiver” album on Ripple Music this December 9th; preorders available now.
Bay Area heavy rock project THE SABIANS (with former Sleep members Justin Marler and Chris Hakius) will reissue their 1993 album “Shiver” this December 9th, as part of Ripple Music’s “Beneath The Desert Floor” vinyl series.
“Shiver” is the sixth chapter of Ripple Music’s “Beneath The Desert Floor” series, which unearths long-lost treasures from the golden days of stoner and desert rock.
Hailing from the San Francisco Bay area, The Sabians feature two former members of doom metal legends Sleep, whose three seminal early 90’s albums were among the most influential of the genre. After taking part in the sessions for Sleep’s first album, 1991’s “Vol. 1”, guitarist Justin Marler quit the band and enlisted with a Russian Orthodox monastery, where he spent the next seven years training to become a monk.
Once he had completed his studies, Marler reunited with Sleep drummer Chris Hakius in 1999 to form The Sabians. With the help of fellow Sleep alumni Matt Pike (by then fronting High on Fire), the duo secured a rehearsal space and began auditioning musicians. Lead guitarist Patrick Huerta soon came on board, but a small army of bassists slipped through their ranks before the arrival of Rachel Fischer in late 2001.
Says Justin Marler about the album: “The music on The Sabians album Shiver is a direct result of my time in the monastery, where I wared with my demons. The album is a musical expression of spiritual warfare, with songs like One by One, Sweet Misery, and Cannibal Machine that dig deep into the fight for one’s soul. A few years before forming The Sabians, I was on a remote island in Alaska living as a monk in a Russian Monastery. I wrote a book called ‘Youth of the Apocalypse’ a couple years after leaving Sleep. The book captures my thoughts about the world, pop culture and religion while I was a monk. It was out of print for decades until a new edition was released by Big White Star.”
“Shiver” was recorded in March 2003 and released in July 2003, featuring nine songs and a hidden track. It was engineered by Masaki Liu. It will be reissued in Burning Red Marbled Limited LP edition, Darkest Before Dawn Black Limited LP edition as well as digital format through Ripple Music, with preorders available below. You can listen to “Shiver” in full on all streaming services.
THE SABIANS “Shiver” reissue (LP/digital) Available December 9th on Ripple Music
Posted in Bootleg Theater on October 26th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
This video of “Sonic Titan” is from October 2019, five years ago. That puts it on the tail end of Sleep‘s live activity as they wound down the band headed into the woefully well-timed early-2020 hiatus — because if you’re gonna take a break from touring and let Al Cisneros, Matt Pike and Jason Roeder go about their other bands, business, and lives, when the entire world is about to spend a year at home is (sadly) a good time to do it — and it was filmed at Melkweg, in Amsterdam, presumably by ‘Amsterdam Metal Scene,’ which is the YouTube account that posted it. The last time I saw the band, who remain one of stoner metal’s most crucial, influential and righteous acts — if they were playing tonight, you’d both know about it and want to go — was at Roadburn 2019, also coincidentally in the Netherlands.
They played two sets (review here and here), and their being there was a victory lap for the reunion Pike and Cisneros had begun a decade earlier, bringing Roeder (also Neurosis, Helen Money, etc.) in to fill the drummer role originally held by Chris Hakius, as well as a celebration of the studio album The Sciences (discussed here, review here), which came out in 2018 as the band’s first release in about 15 years. It was a big deal, and a strong association in my mind with the course of the band. Is it sheer happenstance that Sleep took a break and the entire world once again went to shit? History will tell. Or, more likely, not.
The merits of “Sonic Titan” likely speak for themselves, and I’m not claiming to have unearthed anything landmark here, it’s just a video of Sleep killing it as they did. Riding his own groove, Cisneros is animated in what was a highlight of The Sciences — I mean, it wasn’t “Giza Butler,” but it was up there — and had been issued as a live bonus track for the 2003 Tee Pee Records version of Dopesmoker (discussed here), some five years after they originally disbanded. You could easily do worse for a wakeup call on a Saturday morning, and while I could sit and expound at length — this week someone whose opinions I respect called The Obelisk, ‘Doom’s Home for Longform,’ which made me feel both extra-fancy like peanuts and longwinded — about Sleep‘s legacy, impact on heavy underground everything, and the riffs, riffs, riffs, in the spirit of it being the weekend, I’ll catch the next one. It’s Saturday morning. Shouldn’t we be watching cartoons right now?
Sleep have made a couple appearances since the hiatus, and I assume they’ll do more sooner or later, but as Matt Pike continues to barnstorm with High on Fire, he’s well spoken for time-wise. This year, Cisneros has appeared on the Triptych series of releases from former Neurosis guitarist/vocalist Steve Von Till‘s Harvestman project. Since Neurosis collapsed in 2022, I’m honestly not sure what Roeder‘s been up to due to a minimal social media presence. Fair enough.
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Yesterday was The Pecan’s birthday. She’s seven. It was a very Zelda-centered celebration. The Patient Mrs. and I went to her school to read about space, and my mother painted her a black hole with the accretion disk and radiation jets, bought her new pillows and bedsheets with space on them, but most of her presents from us were Zelda merch. That includes a couple new books to read, Creating a Champion and the strategy guide to Twilight Princess, which we haven’t played (yet) but is cool looking and will be fun to read about I’m sure. I hid the presents around the house (plus one on the back yard trampoline) and gave her a paper with Zelda-style clues to find them like sacred relics. My mother did that a few times for me when I was a kid, but it was clues in poems. I always loved it and The Pecan did too.
Last week we had the big party with kids from her class and Girl Scouts, the bounce house and the whole bit. It was about 50 people at the house, but the weather was good so everyone was outside and it was cool. She had a good time. A breeze blew out her candles and that was a hiccup, but we worked it out. It was a great day.
But between that, the rush to get everything done yesterday before school and Scouts were over, and the Quarterly Review that consumed the site for more than two weeks prior, I didn’t want to let it go any further without properly closing out a week, even if that happens like this. There is precedent, but the last time I did a Saturday Sleep-In was 2015, so if you don’t remember, no sweat. I generally don’t post on the weekend, save for exceptional circumstances.
I’ve also been sick since early this past week, an unfortunate and way-too-soon follow-up to a cold I had a couple weeks ago, and harsher. Tuesday and Wednesday I was just about completely on my ass, and The Patient Mrs. had a multi-day school board thing in Atlantic City, so I was solo-parenting too. It was a difficult, draining few days and I haven’t slept much for the coughing, fever, soreness, sinus pressure, congestion, fatigue, on and on. The good news is the last couple days, Thursday, Friday, today, were better, but even yesterday my energy was pretty shortlived. I had to sit down for a minute a few times hiding those presents. Easily worth it, but not the otherwise norm.
But I’m on the mend, even if it’s slow going.
Next week, look out for a Vokonis review, and a look at some new stuff from the universe of Dr. Space, a full album stream for Deaf Lizard and such and sundry around all that. I hope you have a great and safe rest of the weekend, and I’ll catch you back here Monday for more of this ongoing apparently-longform nonsense. Thanks for reading.
Posted in Reviews on November 28th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Day two and no looking back. Yesterday was Monday and it was pretty tripped out. There’s some psych stuff here too, but we start out by digging deep into metal-rooted doom and it doesn’t get any less dudely through the first three records, let’s put it that way. But there’s more here than one style, microgengre, or gender expression can contain, and I invite you as you make your way through to approach not from a place of redundant chestbeating, but of celebrating a moment captured. In the cases of some of these releases, it’s a pretty special moment we’re talking about.
Places to go, things to hear. We march.
Quarterly Review #11-20:
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Primordial, How it Ends
Excuse me, ma’am. Do you have 66 minutes to talk about the end of the world? No? Nobody does? Well that’s kind of sad.
At 28 years’ remove from their first record, 1995’s Imrama, and now on their 10th full-length, Dublin’s Primordial are duly mournful across the 10 songs of How it Ends, which boasts the staring-at-a-bloodied-hillside-full-of-bodies after-battle mourning and oppression-defying lyricism and a style rooted in black metal and grown beyond it informed by Irish folk progressions but open enough to make a highlight of the build in “Death Holy Death” here. A more aggressive lean shows itself in “All Against All” just prior while “Pilgrimage to the World’s End” is brought to a wash of an apex with a high reach from vocalist Alan “A.A. Nemtheanga” Averill, who should be counted among metal’s all-time frontmen, ahead of the tension chugging in the beginning of “Nothing New Under the Sun.” And you know, for the most part, there isn’t. Most of what Primordial do on How it Ends, they’ve done before, and their central innovation in bridging extreme metal with folk traditionalism, is long behind them. How it Ends seems to dwell in some parts and be roiling in its immediacy elsewhere, and its grandiosities inherently will put some off just as they will bring some on, but Primordial continue to find clever ways to develop around their core approach, and How it Ends — if it is the end or it isn’t, for them or the world — harnesses that while also serving as a reminder of how much they own their sound.
With a partner in drummer Johnny Kelly (Type O Negative, Danzig, etc.), guitarist/songwriter Dan Lorenzo (Hades, Vessel of Light, Cassius King, etc.) has found an outlet open to various ideas within the sphere of doom metal/rock in Patriarchs in Black, whose second LP, My Veneration, brings a cohort of guests on vocals and bass alongside the band’s core duo. Some, like Karl Agell (C.O.C. Blind) and bassist Dave Neabore (Dog Eat Dog), are returning parties from the project’s 2022 debut, Reach for the Scars, while Unida vocalist Mark Sunshine makes a highlight of “Show Them Your Power” early on. Sunshine appears on “Veneration” as well alongside DMC from Run DMC, which, if you’re going to do a rap-rock crossover, it probably makes sense to get a guy who was there the first time it happened. Elsewhere, “Non Defectum” toys with layering with Kelly Abe of Sicks Deep adding screams, and Paul Stanley impersonator Bob Jensen steps in for the KISS cover “I Stole Your Love” and the originals “Dead and Gone” and “Hallowed Be Her Name” so indeed, no shortage of variety. Tying it together? The riffs, of course. Lorenzo has shown an as-yet inexhaustible supply thereof. Here, they seem to power multiple bands all on one album.
Just because it wasn’t a surprise doesn’t mean it’s not one of the best debut albums of 2023. Bringing together known parties from Boston’s heavy underground Jim Healey (We’re All Gonna Die, etc.), Doug Sherman (Gozu), Bob Maloney (Worshipper) and J.R. Roach (Sam Black Church), Blood Lightning want nothing for pedigree, and their Ripple-issued self-titled debut meets high expectations with vigor and thrash-born purpose. Sherman‘s style of riffing and Healey‘s soulful, belted-out vocals are both identifiable factors in cuts like “The Dying Starts” and the charging “Face Eater,” which works to find a bridge between heavy rock and classic, soaring metal. Their cover of Black Sabbath‘s “Disturbing the Priest,” included here as the last of the six songs on the 27-minute album, I seem to recall being at least part of the impetus for the band, but frankly, however they got there, I’m glad the project has been preserved. I don’t know if they will or won’t do anything else, but there’s potential in their metal/rock blend, which positions itself as oldschool but is more forward thinking than either genre can be on its own.
Based in Oakland and making their debut with the significant endorsement of Small Stone Records and Kozmik Artifactz behind them, atmospheric post-heavy rock five-piece Haurun tap into ethereal ambience and weighted fuzz in such a way as to raise memories of the time Black Math Horseman got picked up by Tee Pee. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. With notions of Acid King in the nodding, undulating riffs of “Abyss” and the later reaches of “Lost and Found,” but two guitars are a distinguishing factor, and Haurun come across as primarily concerned with mood, although the post-grunge ’90s alt hooks of “Flying Low” and “Lunar” ahead of 11-minute closer “Soil,” which uses its longform breadth to cast as vivid a soundscape as possible. Fast, slow, minimalist or at a full wash of noise, Haurun‘s Wilting Within has its foundation in heavy rock groove and riffy repetition, but does something with that that goes beyond microniche confines. Very much looking forward to more from this band.
Its point of view long established by the time they get around to the filthy lurch of “Hesher” — track three of seven — Cabin Fever is the first full-length from cultish doomers Wicked Trip. The Tennessee outfit revel in Electric Wizard-style fuckall on “Cabin Fever” after the warning in the spoken “Intro,” and the 11-minute sample-topped “Night of Pan” is a psych-doom jam that’s hypnotic right unto its keyboard-drone finish giving over to the sampled smooth sounds of the ’70s at the start of “Black Valentine,” which feels all the more dirt-coated when it actually kicks in, though “Evils of the Night” is no less threatening of purpose in its garage-doom swing, crash-out and cacophonous payoff, and I’m pretty sure if you played “No Longer Human” at double the speed, well, it might be human again. All of these grim, bleak, scorching, nodding, gnashing pieces come together to craft Cabin Fever as one consuming, lo-fi entirety, raw both because the recording sounds harsh and because the band itself eschew any frills not in service to their disillusioned atmosphere.
There’s an awful lot of sex going on in Splinter‘s Role Models, as the Amsterdam glam-minded heavy rockers follow their 2021 debut, Filthy Pleasures (review here), with cuts like “Soviet Schoolgirl,” “Bottom,” “Opposite Sex” and the poppy post-punk “Velvet Scam” early on. It’s not all sleaze — though even “The Carpet Makes Me Sad” is trying to get you in bed — and the piano and boozy harmonies of “Computer Screen” are a fun departure ahead of the also-acoustic finish in closer “It Should Have Been Over,” while “Every Circus Needs a Clown” feels hell-bent on remaking Queen‘s “Stone Cold Crazy” and “Medicine Man” and “Forbidden Kicks” find a place where garage rock meets heavier riffing, while “Children” gets its complaints registered efficiently in just over two boogie-push minutes. A touch of Sabbath here, some Queens of the Stone Age chic disco there, and Splinter are happy to find a place for themselves adjacent to both without aping either. One would not accuse them of subtlety as regards theme, but there’s something to be said for saying what you want up front.
Beginning with its longest component track (immediate points) in “Asteroid,” Terra Black‘s All Descend is a downward-directed slab of doomed nod, so doubled-down on its own slog that “Black Flames of Funeral Fire” doesn’t even start its first verse until the song is more than half over. Languid tempos play up the largesse of “Ashes and Dust,” and “Divinest Sin” borders on Eurometal, but if you need to know what’s in Terra Black‘s heart, look no further than the guitar, bass, drum and vocal lumber — all-lumber — of “Spawn of Lyssa” and find that it’s doom pumping blood around the band’s collective body. While avoiding sounding like Electric Wizard, the Gothenburg, Sweden, unit crawl through that penultimate duet track with all ready despondency, and resolve “Slumber Grove” with agonized final lub-dub heartbeats of kick drum and guitar drawl after a vivid and especially doomed wash drops out to vocals before rearing back and plodding forward once more, doomed, gorgeous, immersive, and so, so heavy. They’re not finished growing yet — nor should they be on this first album — but they’re on the path.
Sometimes the name of a thing can tell you about the thing. So enters Musing, a contemplative solo outfit from Devin “Darty” Purdy, also known for his work in Calgary-based bands Gone Cosmic and Chron Goblin, with the eight-song/42-minute Somewhen and a flowing instrumental narrative that borders on heavy post-rock and psychedelia, but is clearheaded ultimately in its course and not slapdash enough to be purely experimental. That is, though intended to be instrumental works outside the norm of his songcraft, tracks like “Flight to Forever” and the delightfully bassy “Frontal Robotomy” are songs, have been carved out of inspired and improvised parts to be what they are. “Hurry Wait” revamps post-metal standalone guitar to be the basis of a fuzzy exploration, while “Reality Merchants” hones a sense of space that will be welcome in ears that embrace the likes of Yawning Sons or Big Scenic Nowhere. Somewhen has a story behind it — there’s narrative; blessings and peace upon it — but the actual music is open enough to translate to any number of personal interpretations. A ‘see where it takes you’ attitude is called for, then. Maybe on Purdy‘s part as well.
A heavy and Sabbathian rock forms the underlying foundation of Spiral Shades‘ sound, and the returning two-piece of vocalist Khushal R. Bhadra and guitarist/bassist/drummer Filip Petersen have obviously spent the nine years since 2014’s debut, Hypnosis Sessions (review here), enrolled in post-doctoral Iommic studies. Revival, after so long, is not unwelcome in the least. Doom happens in its own time, and with seven songs and 38 minutes of new material, plus bonus tracks, they make up for lost time with classic groove and tone loyal to the blueprint once put forth while reserving a place for itself in itself. That is, there’s more to Spiral Shades and to Revival than Sabbath worship, even if that’s a lot of the point. I won’t take away from the metal-leaning chug of “Witchy Eyes” near the end of the album, but “Foggy Mist” reminds of The Obsessed‘s particular crunch and “Chapter Zero” rolls like Spirit Caravan, find a foothold between rock and doom, and it turns out riffs are welcome on both sides.
The closing “Sex on a Grave” reminds of the slurring bluesy lasciviousness of Nick Cave‘s Grinderman, and that should in part be taken as a compliment to the setup through “Black Cat” — which toys with 12-bar structure and is somewhere between urbane cool and cabaret nerdery — and the centerpiece “Bad Day,” which follows a classic downer chord progression through its apex with the rawness of Backwoods Payback at their most emotive and a greater melodic reach only after swaying through its willful bummer of an intro. Last-minute psych flourish in the guitar threatens to make “Bad Day” a party, but the Louisville outfit find their way around to their own kind of fun, which since the release is only three songs long just happens to be “Sex on a Grave.” Fair enough. Rife with attitude and an emergent dynamic that’s complementary to the persona of the vocals rather than trying to keep up with them, the counterintuitively-titled second short release (yes, I know the cover is a Zeppelin reference; settle down) from Bandshee lays out an individual approach to heavy songwriting and a swing that goes back further in time than most.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on November 17th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Is it a full-length? No, it is not. But it is Friday, and at 27 minutes, Grayceon‘s 2013 two-songer EP, Pearl and the End of Days, is longer than some LPs, so whatever. The simple truth is that, every now and again, I go on a Grayceon kick. They’re certainly an autumnal-sounding band in my mind, so maybe that’s part of it, but listening to their more charged or thrashing moments, I’d liken their sound to summer scald as well and perhaps spare you stretching that to an all-seasons trope. But the San Francisco trio’s records call me back on the regular for a kind of spiritual recharge. And also, while we’re being honest, I’ve been a little pissed at myself for not writing about Pearl and the End of Days when it came out for the last decade, so I hope you’ll pardon me if I attempt to exorcise that demon as well.
In 2011, Grayceon issued what has become an all-time album for me in All We Destroy (review here; discussed here). “Shellmounds,” the epic-among-epics “We Can,” “Once a Shadow,” and so on. The fury, the atmosphere, the melody, the sadness, the anger, the sense of wondering why the world can’t be a better place. At that point, the US had been at war for over nine years, which sounds like a lot but is still only about half as long as that war would go. But as with 2020’s Mothers Weavers Vultures (review here), which followed 2018’s IV (review here), the three-piece of cellist/vocalist Jackie Perez Gratz (also Brume, Giant Squid, ex-Amber Asylum, Neurosis, etc.), guitarist/vocalist Max Doyle (also Walken) and drummer Zack Farwell (Giant Squid, Walken) worked on a theme with their third full-length and it became a landmark in my mind. I won’t take away from their first two LPs, 2007’s self-titled and 2008’s This Grand Show, or anything they’ve done since, but sometimes a band sounds like they’re playing music for your bones, and that’s me and All We Destroy. For years, I have fantasized about asking the band to play it in full on a West Coast all-dayer bill built up in no small part so I could see them play it. Maybe if I make it to 20 years.
But, Pearl and the End of Days, which, yes, is comprised of “Pearl” (10:11) and “End of Days” (17:21) was the follow-up, and if I didn’t get to know it at any point in the decade since its release, part of that might have been fear on my part that there would be something to undercut how I felt about All We Destroy. These 10 years after the fact, there’s the demonstrable evidence of the subsequent two Grayceon albums as evidence that didn’t happen, but the songs themselves are their own best argument, the former a vague but poetic, personal-feeling lyric that begins with an atmospheric stretch of far-back vocals and watery guitar strum with drum thud until at 1:41 the first scream hits, the guitar sheds the effect in favor of a recognizably pointed tone that seems to emphasize the jabbing style of Doyle‘s riffing and the odd pulled note here and there, tremolo squibblies, galloping, slamming into a wall of doom, whatever it might be.
A wistful harmony holds over tempestuous metal, but Grayceon are never out of control, and they never lose their poise as they build (note the drum fill starting at 4:20 and lasting the next 15 seconds; every member of this band is a beast on their respective instrument) into an increasingly intense nod before mellowing back to the intro — Farwell‘s toms notwithstanding — until another scream marks the change toward the song’s final movement, which slows after the speedup into a graceful vocal melody with answer from the cello and guitar, riding a steady groove to a purposeful finish.
The held-out stops that mark the beginning of “End of Days” are a familiar element from elsewhere before and since — if you can make doom sound like that, you do — but the verse soon enough bursts to life from the flowing intro, the lyrics telling a story about, you guessed it, the world ending. Where IV stripped back some of their longform impulses — perhaps in response in some way to this EP and the album before it — Mothers Weavers Vultures would be similarly apocalyptic thematically around climate change, but “End of Days,” as it seems to unfold instrumentally and get bigger and bigger over its first few minutes until Gratz at 4:50 lays it out: “We will all die.”
Yes, yes, we’re all going to die. So my existential angst tells me. But the twist comes as the giant rock careens — “rolls,” and you see where this is going — toward the eventual crash into Earth, the song calls out for longhairs to unite and rock and roll through the end of all things. The last verse completes the urging: “Play your song and play it loudly for all the world to hear/Long Hairs united — what’s left to fear?/So synchronize, harmonize/Find some peace in our demise/As the rock rolls closer, let’s turn up louder.” They do, incidentally. Grayceon might on occasion break out blastbeats, and they do in “End of Days” as well as part of a multi-tier crescendo that’s headspinning in its solo shred circa the 15-minute mark before — and again the drums are also insane — turning to a more open groove before a well earned and kind of showy finish builds to a full-sounding crush and, having gotten there, cuts to silence.
The point being made, then, is that if you’re gonna go anyway, do what you love, and that’s about as agreeable a message as one might read into a thing. I don’t know that I’ll ever get to see this band, let alone get to see them play any of their offerings in full, but if you believe in a “well kept secret, I have to think Grayceon are an epitome of the idea, and 10 years and several others later, this particular apocalypse continues to resonate. And I don’t always do this, but Grayceon‘s Bandcamp page is here. Do yourself a god damned favor and get on board.
Thanks for reading. As always, I hope you enjoy.
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Aside from all the Grayceon, it was just kind of a regular week. The Pecan has made it through four days of school without an incident bad enough that I had to pick her up and bring her home — and that includes waving scissors in some kid’s face — which I still mark as a triumph even if I’m a little superstitious about doing so since today hasn’t happened yet. It’s 6:34AM now. I got up a few minutes before five, took the dog out, got coffee, settled in, etc. She’s been staying up later so sleeping later as well. It’s a tradeoff, but there are definitely times I just wish she could go to bed when told. Or do anything when told. But there are also times I just wish I could go to bed too, so take that as you will.
We have an eval this morning scheduled with a psychiatrist, which is another avenue toward hopefully getting the ADHD diagnosis on paper as we very desperately need. I have little faith in really any element of the American healthcare system and expect we’ll still be chasing down meds as she’s entering first grade next year. It’s a process, they say. They don’t tell you that 70 percent of the process is jumping through hoops so you can visit every specialist in the Atlantic Health System, basically buying seven different flavors of Coke trying to get to the one you knew you wanted in the first place. I could go on here.
But, oh, that would be political! Politics! I said on Facebook the other day that there should be a general strike — which is absolutely something I believe — and a couple folks got mad about it. “Fuck you I gotta go to work” and so on. The US has done a really good job of reinforcing class structure by making people believe this in their soul. Humans survived thousands of years without capitalism, and an economic system is not an evolutionary product. People, in this case a few rich white men serving their own interests, sat down and decided it was what would best do that. And here we are. I can’t get my kid the help she needs today because the company that owns local doctoring has decided we haven’t been to enough doctors. It all ties together. It is not a conspiracy. It requires no special brain to see. It’s in the fucking newspaper.
While we’re here, active genocide makes a kind of morose backdrop for daily existence, but it’s nothing new, if perhaps additionally sad for my home country’s active role in it. When the US was about to go to war for two decades for basically nothing, France stepped up and was like, “Yo mate, that’s fucking dumb.” And they were right, even if it meant stadiums served “freedom fries” for however many years after. I wish America could have been so good a friend to Israel.
Not enough to do anything about it, though, which blocks me in with just about everyone else on the planet except those doing either the fighting or dying. And you know what? I could go on here too, about all this shit and plenty more, but I gotta go get my kid’s poodle skirt on because it’s the 50th day of school and they’re doing a 1950s theme, of course, and she’ll go after the aforementioned eval. My trajectory today is whatever gets me to rotisserie chicken and as much Zelda as possible, and expect much of the weekend to be spent getting ready for Thanksgiving next week, which we’re hosting as we will. A shower and a Hungarian lesson in the app will be bonuses if I can get there.
I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Have fun, hydrate, watch your head, rock out to the drain around which we’re all swirling. Whatever gets you through the day, just be nice.
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 15th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Abidingly dark and given to furious manic spurts of aggression, it is fair to call Sleepytime Gorilla Museum‘s first single in more than a decade and a half, “Salamander in Two Worlds,” representative of the art-metallers’ experimentalist ur-prog on the whole, right up to its ending seeming like it’s trying to be annoying a little bit. The reformed collective have made their didn’t-know-we-were-waiting-but-we-were fourth album, Of the Last Human Being available to preorder, and their tour will kick off only six days after the Feb. 23 release, on Leap Day, Feb. 29, in Arcata, California. Seems like everything’s lined up pretty neatly. You’d think they’d be out of practice for not putting out an album since 2007, but apparently not. Maybe this is just how long a lead you need to be so weird. I’d make a joke about lessening stress through taking their time, but I have no doubt it would be inaccurate.
The vinyl looks pretty and there’s even a CD for folks like me who’d keep consistent formatting in our shelving. This attention to detail can also be heard in “Salamander in Two Worlds,” which I’m sure is somehow autobiographical on the part of the band. If you’re feeling adventurous, find out how much by listening to it below. The rest of the info here came down the PR wire and was dutifully cut and pasted by yours truly with all required inflated sense of obligation.
Goes like this:
SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM – CD AND VINYL PRE-ORDER IS AVAILABLE TODAY!
After aeons of wondering whether SGM’s fourth studio album was ever gonna burn into light or lango in limbo eternal, what a delight to direct you to our brand-spankin’ new pre-order link for SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM: OF THE LAST HUMAN BEING!
Today at 9am PST / 12pm EST, you can pre-order the LP and CD. You can choose from three scrumptious color variations on VINYL: SLEEPYTIME SPLATTER, ROSE-COLORED ROCK, and GRAND REOPENING GOLD.
Courtesy of dear Nick Ohler et al at AVANT NIGHT —a new imprint facilitated by JOYFUL NOISE— the SGM of the LHB record is scheduled to drop February 23rd of 2024.
February will be here before we can say “LEE IS RON”. In the meantime, please do rock against rock to our first single, “Salamander In Two Worlds”.
You can now listen on your preferred streaming platform as well. “Salamander in Two Worlds” is streaming on several different sites.
02/29 Arcata, CA Humbrews 03/01 Eugene, OR WOW Hall 03/02 Portland, OR Aladdin Theater 03/03 Seattle, WA Crocodile 03/04 Boise, ID Treefort Music Hall 03/05 Salt Lake City, UT Metro Music Hall 03/07 Denver, CO The Bluebird 03/08 Estes Parl, CO The Stanley Hotel 03/09 Estes Parl, CO The Stanley Hotel 03/11 Kansas City, MO Record Bar 03/12 Minneapolis, MN The Fine Line 03/13 Chicago, IL Lincoln Hall 03/14 Indianapolis, IN Irving Theater 03/15 Cleveland, OH Beachland 03/16 Philadelphia, PA Underground 03/17 Cambridge, MA The Sinclair 03/18 Brooklyn, NY Elsewhere 03/19 Baltimore, MD The Ottobar 03/20 Carrboro, NC Cat’s Cradle 03/21-24 Knoxville, TN Big Ears Festival 03/25 Atlanta, GA Terminal West 03/26 Winter Park, FL Conduit 03/27 Tampa, FL Orpheum 03/28- New Orleans, LA 0 Howlin’ Wolf 03/29 Houston, TX Secret Group 03/30 Austin, TX The Mohawk 03/31 Dallas, TX Trees 04/02- Alberquerque, NM Sister Bar 04/03 Phoenix, AZ The Crescent 04/04 Tucson, AZ 191 Toole 04/05 Los Angeles, CA The Fonda 04/06 Berkeley, CA The UC Theatre
From left to right: Dan Rathbun, Nils Frykdahl, Matthias Bossi, Michael Mellender, Carla Kihlstedt. Photo: Olivia Oyama
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 23rd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Well, it looks like the donkey-headed adversary of humanity is reopening the book, reopening the discussion. Born in Oakland, California, and eventually spread over the entirety of this thoroughly unready nation, avant garde theatrical extreme progressive metallers Sleepytime Gorilla Museum raised over $144,000 on Kickstarter last month to complete their new album, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum of the Last Human Being, a half-hour-long short film called The Last Human Being: A Critical Assessment, and a full US tour. Their original goal was $75k. Their stretch was $100k. They got nearly double what they wanted when they launched it. My only regret is that I didn’t find out in time to throw money at it. Obviously they survived.
That was what Sleepytime Gorilla Museum did over the course of three studio albums — the last of them, In Glorious Times, came out in 2007 through The End Records shortly after they moved to Brooklyn — and a live record, a whole mess of tours, side-projects, videos, homemade instruments, costumes, A-R-T art, and so on between the late ’90s and 2011. They survived, thrived even, as if on the sustenance of creative impulse itself. By absolutely bizarre coincidence, their name came up in conversation at my daughter’s sixth birthday party this weekend, and I guess the algorithm was listening since next thing I knew my wife showed me the tour poster. I guess sometimes that whole invading-privacy things works out. Score one for social media ads, I guess.
Bottom line here though is this is a multi-genius band. Carla Kihlstedt, Nils Frykdahl, Mattias Bossi, Dan Rathbun and Michael Mellender would seem to be the current lineup, and each arrives back at Sleepytime Gorilla Museum with a catalog well worth searching out if you feel like your life isn’t weird enough as I know you do. The tour starts on Leap Day, which is cute, in Cali and finishes the first week in April, having looped back to the Golden State to finish. You can see the dates below. Probably don’t need me to tell you the routing.
There’s much more to read and dig into if you want, and the version of this text on Kickstarter — in addition to being a good deal longer and not actually featuring the tour dates written out yet; DIY art! — has links you can click through and all that. Yes, it’s a lot — they agree — but Sleepytime Gorilla Museum have always been a band to dig deep. To wit, I’m about to spend probably way too long reading about John Kane. So here’s that reunion info:
We, the John Kane Society, in partnership with the Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and associated acts, trusting in the stalwart spirit of mutual aid and emboldened by YOUR TUMESCENT ENTHUSIASM, have launched this Kickstarter on behalf of the Museum’s imminent GRAND 2024 REOPENING.
It’s time for SGM to BRING BACK THE APOCALYPSE just when the world needs it most! Namely, with a full-length studio album, a short film, select live appearances, and, once we meet our STRETCH GOAL of 100K…
A NATIONWIDE U.S. TOUR!!! WE DID IT!! WE’RE DOIN IT!!! WE HAVE DEFEATED THE INTERROBANG!!
The Sleepytime quintet on one of their many cross-country tours of the continental U.S. sometime in the late aughts. Big sky country. Summer tans / sunburns. In costume.
Our group has already spent countless hours prepping for SGM’S reunion. The core team hovers around a dozen. That’s including the five curators. We all have day jobs or kiddos or other complex caregiving responsibilities, not to mention other bands to juggle, along with steering a bunch of fidgety behind-the-scenes biz stuff that’s gotta happen pre-Grand rereopening to ensure that whatever final form #SGM2024 takes, it will be a success and a delight for all participating. (Whew!)
We’re committed to paying our full team enough to hold everyone steady over the next few months as we work side by side, rebuilding this complex creative engine.
Please do share this tour flyer far and wide, friends.
02/29 Arcata, CA Humbrews 03/01 Eugene, OR WOW Hall 03/02 Portland, OR Aladdin Theater 03/03 Seattle, WA Crocodile 03/04 Boise, ID Treefort Music Hall 03/05 Salt Lake City, UT Metro Music Hall 03/07 Denver, CO The Bluebird 03/08 Estes Parl, CO The Stanley Hotel 03/09 Estes Parl, CO The Stanley Hotel 03/11 Kansas City, MO Record Bar 03/12 Minneapolis, MN The Fine Line 03/13 Chicago, IL Lincoln Hall 03/14 Indianapolis, IN Irving Theater 03/15 Cleveland, OH Beachland 03/16 Philadelphia, PA Underground 03/17 Cambridge, MA The Sinclair 03/18 Brooklyn, NY Elsewhere 03/19 Baltimore, MD The Ottobar 03/20 Carrboro, NC Cat’s Cradle 03/21-24 Knoxville, TN Big Ears Festival 03/25 Atlanta, GA Terminal West 03/26 Winter Park, FL Conduit 03/27 Tampa, FL Orpheum 03/28- New Orleans, LA 0 Howlin’ Wolf 03/29 Houston, TX Secret Group 03/30 Austin, TX The Mohawk 03/31 Dallas, TX Trees 04/02- Alberquerque, NM Sister Bar 04/03 Phoenix, AZ The Crescent 04/04 Tucson, AZ 191 Toole 04/05 Los Angeles, CA The Fonda 04/06 Berkeley, CA The UC Theatre
Various members of Sleepytime have sustained a long-running creative partnership with gifted storyteller and choreographer Shinichi Iova-Koga, artistic director of the physical theater & dance company inkBoat, for decades now. “Shinichi Iova-Koga’s work is grotesque, beautiful, and funny. As a dancer he is never less than mesmerizing — ephemeral like smoke, limpid like a vernal pool” says Rita Feliciano of the SF Bay Guardian. “He has developed a personal form of mixed-media dance theater that integrates contradictory impulses — the ancient and the technological, the chaotic and the formal, nature and nurture. He might be called a dancer at the edge.”
Shinichi’s work with the curators has resulted in some of the most vividly strange and lovely moments in the Museum’s history. Over time, a cabaret-tinged narrative starring Shinichi in the titular role of “The Last Human Being” was brainstormed and nurtured, workshopped, and toured.
In 2011, Shinichi, the band, and a production team were in the midst of producing a thirty-minute musical film –The Last Human Being: A Critical Assessment– when SGM abruptly disbanded. The quintet had reached a sudden unavoidable crossroads.
There would be no more midnight-hour MacGyvering, not for a good long while. It was beyond time for the enormous, exhausted Art Bear known as Sleepytime to curl up in the back of the curators’ Brockhurst studio and take a long-overdue siesta.
In April of 2011, with their listenership packed into the rafters, SGM played four final live shows in California. Immediately afterward, everything having to do with The Last Human Being project was shelved.
Costumes were folded up and tucked away in cedar trunks and grubby plastic bins. The demos and mixdowns gathered dust on Dropbox. Film footage got stored on a hard drive that would eventually fail, requiring a substantial data recovery investment in 2022 that emptied SGM’s savings account. (And it was worth EVERY PENNY. Just wait’ll ya see Blixa Bargeld’s cameo! The talk show banter! The protest dance sequence!)
Promises were made to the band’s extended creative family and audience; this would NOT be the last we heard or saw of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. The grieving curators reassured their listeners that a comprehensive live DVD compilation was still in the works, as well as The Last Human Being film, plus a final eponymously named album, “nearly done!”
We’ll find our way back to all this, everyone agreed. The collective work was too wonderful and strange, too dear, too much a community-wide effort to be left languishing in cryofreeze forever.
Then, before y’know it, life… happened. Trump happened. Plague happened. Joy and loss happened. The brutal kleptocracy of it all deepened. Years went by. “Sperm swam. Eggs applauded. Babies hatched. Other bands were born. The SGM fields lay fallow for a decade and more,” confirms curator Matthias Bossi. Several beloved friends and family members passed away. Labels and alliances perished. 156 moons, vaporized in a blink by the callous ray gun of linear time! Still, everyone in the band agreed: eventually, one way or another, their exquisite LHB exhibit needed to taste the light of day.
Over the years there were multiple false starts and stalled-out attempts to ‘rouse the Art Bear. Every one of them failed until, in mid 2022, a series of raucous symposiums were instigated both via zoom and in person, bringing together longtime friends and professional music industry wunderkind to work as a team, all of us determined to Bring It Back. Soon the Museum’s outer parlour was full of laughter and song again. Everything that could return would return. All five members of the band were in. It was swiftly determined that past bandmates and satellite projects would also be involved in meaningful ways. A shambolic-but-mighty MUSEUM VOLTRON assembled.
SO. HERE WE ALL ARE.
“It’s a LOT.” confirms Mallory McAvoy, SGM’s Communications Director. “All very much on a shoestring. To pull it off, each member of our team is doing at least three separate jobs.” None of us are “in it for the money”. That doesn’t mean we won’t need a bit more of it to safely whelp this behemoth.
This is 2023. It’s not a DIY-or-die ethos we’re embracing. More like DIY-and-don’t-die.
We are, of course, well aware what a fraught moment in time this is to be attempting a largely self-produced reunion. But it’s like Nils once bellowed at the febrile night sky beside the bus outside a beer hall gig in Santa Cruz way back when:
“BE HERE NOW, BEAST.”
What a precious moment this is, breathing and being together in the lush, green forest of STILL HERE. It’s unlikely we’ll get the chance to invest in SGM’s frabjous wares and workings so cozily again.
The international John Kane Society is resolute about seeing this adventure through. We believe wholeheartedly in these human beings and the music they make, the mentoring they do, the communal art they foster, the robust families they’re raising both together and apart, the PTSD-stricken chums they’ve never given up on, the bridges we’ve all built together spanning decades, and the songs we’re all longing to hear burning to light. It’s now or never. WE MUST KNOW MORE.
If you’re all in, we’re all in. In outlandish solidarity and with irrepressible glee!
Meredith Yayanos Co-founding Editor of Coilhouse (2007 – 2013), creator and director of The Parlour Trick (1999 – present), adjunct member of Faun Fables (2007 – 2010), and Ordained Symposiarch of the John Kane Society (2021-present)
AMBUGATON.
From left to right: Dan Rathbun, Nils Frykdahl, Matthias Bossi, Michael Mellender, Carla Kihlstedt. Photo: Olivia Oyama
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 11th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
A little undercurrent of Afrobeat in “Tirannia Velata,” the new streaming track from Futuropaco that you can hear below, and that fits with the song’s purported protest ethic. Justin Pinkerton (Glass Parallels, ex-Golden Void, etc.) continues Futuropaco‘s instrumentalist exploration, with synthy flourish surrounding wah guitar and jazzy drums and his new album, Fortezza di Vetro Vol. 1, will be out through respected purveyor El Paraiso Records.
It’s trippy either way, and its linear groove got me hooked into that synth thread, so yeah, I’m posting the preorder link. If you’re feeling adventurous or like something that isn’t just riffs (blessings and peace upon riffs), this might be a way to go. I wouldn’t expect “Tirannia Velata” to speak for the whole of Fortezza di Vetro Vol. 1, let alone any subsequent volumes, but it does represent the open nature of the project well and is immersive besides. You don’t lose out by hearing it, is what I’m saying.
Catalog number: EPR074 Formats: CD/LP (1000 LPs on black vinyl, includes download card) Release date: October 13th 2023
First new sounds from Futuropaco in five years. Futuropaco, a.k.a. Justin Pinkerton from Oakland, California creates colourful psychedelic music – a pan-cultural cratedigger’s delight that welcomes in a wide range of elements – from afro-beat and post rock to Italian library music and heavy psych.
The title translates to “The Glass Fortress” and is a reference to the fragility of the superpowers of the world, such as the US: “As we witnessed in the height of the pandemic and its after effects, it doesn’t take much to take down one of these entities that hide behind the facade of power and indestructibility. One tiny crack can trigger an unstoppable catastrophe.” says Pinkerton of the album concept. “Though Futuropaco songs are instrumental I tend to channel my feelings about politics and the world through them. Unfortunately, the world can be a terrible place at times, so there is a sort of dark, at times angry, theme to these songs. But, instead of writing lyrics to convey those feelings, I just let the music do the talking.”
But despite (or perhaps because of) it’s underlying dark inception, Justin’s new album is a terrific ride, from the first notes of earth-shaking opener “Muro Vuoto” to the mysterious and dreamy closer “Omicidio Per Soldi”. Not a second is wasted on this record, every vinyl groove is packed with ideas and sounds that demand attention, whether they originate from Justin’s vintage Moog synthesizers, his Turkish Saz, fuzz guitars or flute layered on top of Pinkerton’s meticulously crafted, yet bone shaking drum fills. You could spend hours analysing what’s going on musically, but that’s beside the point – the nine tracks offered here are simply an invitation to surrender yourself to the head-spinning grooves and mesmerizing timbres. A truly unique psychedelic experience, and this is just volume 1!
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 11th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Marking the 25th anniversary of the band earlier this year with a reissue of their first album, High on Fire have finished their ninth, which will be released early next year on MNRK Heavy. The new record, which will be their first with drummer Coady Willis (Big Business, Melvins), continues the band’s collaboration with producer Kurt Ballou, who has helmed everything they’ve put out since 2012’s rampaging De Vermis Mysteriis (review here) and who most assuredly had a hand in their winning a Grammy a couple years ago.
To complement a slot at this year’s Levitation Fest in Austin, the trio led by Matt Pike will do a quick West Coast jaunt alongside Pallbearer, and you likely don’t need me to tell you that’s a heavy show. They’ve also got two album-teaser videos out now for the coming record that you can see under the PR wire info that follows here:
High on Fire Announces U.S. Tour Dates
Grammy-Winning Rock Band Celebrating 25th Anniversary!
Multiple Studio Teasers Advancing New LP Released
Iconic U.S. rock band, High on Fire, celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2023 and today the GRAMMY Award-winning group, featuring bassist Jeff Matz, guitarist/vocalist Matt Pike, and new drummer Coady Willis (Melvins, Big Business, Murder City Devils) announces U.S. tour dates centered around its showcasing appearance at Austin’s Levitation Festival. The weeklong run will launch on October 26 in Dallas, Texas and hit multiple cities in Colorado and California before wrapping on November 4. Support on the High on Fire tour will be provided by Pallbearer.
High on Fire tour dates:
October 26 Dallas, TX @ The Factory October 27 Austin, TX @ Stubb’s (Levitation Fest with Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats) October 29 Fort Collins, CO @ Washington’s October 30 Denver, CO @ The Summit October 31 Colorado Springs, CO @ The Black Sheep November 2 Garden Grove, CA @ Garden Amp November 3 Fresno, CA @ Fulton 55 November 4 Berkeley, CA @ UC Theatre
“Who is ready to rip it up?!”, said the band in a statement. “High on Fire is primed and ready to rock and continue celebrating our 25th Anniversary with family, friends, and fans. See you at the shows!”
High on Fire has completed work on its new, untitled ninth studio album and successor to 2018’s ‘Electric Messiah’. Recorded in Salem, Massachusetts with longtime producer Kurt Ballou, the new album is the first to feature drummer Willis, who joined High on Fire in 2021. An early 2024 release date is expected via MNRK Heavy. See below for sneak peek looks at the band creating the new LP.
