Posted in Reviews on October 31st, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Most bands get one debut. Here’s Hippie Death Cult‘s second. It’s been an interesting few years in the life of the Portland, Oregonian heavy rockers, who with their third full-length, Helichrysum, mark a new path forward. In the two years between 2019’s 111 (review here) and 2021’s Circle of Days (review here), the then-four-piece built remarkable momentum for a time that at least in part included pandemic shutdowns, and as they resumed domestic and international touring — fests, headlining dates, support slots, the whole thing — later in 2021 they bid farewell to vocalist/organist Ben Jackson. A change up front is always significant, and the departure of the keyboard that had up to then been a likewise formidable presence and distinguishing feature in their sound would probably derail some acts, but Hippie Death Cult not only kept going as a trio, they also faced the departure of drummer Ryan Moore this past January.
Helichrysum, then, represents a kind of going to ground. With Jackson and Moore gone, the band held fast with the core duo of bassist and now-lead vocalist and lyricist Laura Phillips and guitarist/riffmaker Eddie Brnabic (who also produced and mixed here, with assistance from Ben Barnett and Jeremy Romagna engineering) bringing in the classic-styled Harry Silvers (also Robots of the Ancient World) on swing-drums. Tours continued, songwriting and recording obviously happened or we wouldn’t be talking about a new record, and they even managed to get it released in time to keep a two-year interval between albums — whether or not that was a goal, I don’t know, but it’s impressive, considering — while reimagining their sound.
And there’s the crucial point. With Phillips up front and the organ gone, and with Silvers on drums in place of Moore — I’d imagine drummers could opine on their respective styles based solely on the builds of their respective kits on stage; rack cymbals out, soon-to-be-busted crash and big kick in — Hippie Death Cult aren’t trying to deny things are different this time, and that’s about more than just no-keys or the gender of their lead vocalist. They’re diving headfirst into it. In the brooding chug of on-theme opener “Arise,” the rawness of the punch in the bass and the corresponding currents of prog and metal that were in Brnabic‘s guitar to start with are highlighted from the outset, and while the dynamic and the chemistry of Hippie Death Cult has shifted — Phillips letting out the first of the album’s several righteous screams as they transition to the guitar solo at about four minutes into the six-minute piece; a sample about a minute later brings more with the lava-flow finish; not a complaint — both are accounted for in the new incarnation of their sound. It’s a little different, and that can be scary, I know, but the lesson of Helichrysum is that sometimes it’s worth starting over.
From “Arise” on through the smooth-boogie, maybe-written-later-in-the-process “Shadows,” which follows, and into the mellower psych-doom of “Better Days,” Phillips owns the role taken on in the material, and she, Silvers and Brnabic seem to revel in the subsequent centerpiece “Red Giant” and the subsequent hippies-go-metal “Toxic Annihilator,” the two shortest inclusions on the album and, at least as applies to the latter, the most aggressive output they’ve had to-date, in case you were concerned that just because Hippie Death Cult have never thrashed before that might mean they couldn’t do it. They do, and make it their own. Bolstered by the tension of Brnabic‘s speedy chug in “Red Giant” — hard-boogieing through its layered solo with a willful recklessness that, frankly, rules, they set up “Toxic Annihilator” not only with more vocal screams (as opposed to the tubes in their amps, likely also screaming) but a swagger they’ve never really shown before in a brief, stage-minded series of stops as well as the riff parade preceding — the energy at the start of “Toxic Annihilator” is electric, palpable.
The last time Hippie Death Cult made a three-minute song it was the acoustic interlude “Mrtyu” on 111. In its production, “Toxic Annihilator” isn’t metal, but in its actual construction and purposes, it most definitely is, and it’s easy to imagine that what feels so much like it was written for the stage is duly flattening in a live setting. Atop a torrent of guitar, Phillips shouts her way through the early verse with Silvers‘ crash for complement, then croons through the build up to an almost Slayer-ish growl (thinking Tom Araya at the end of the intro to “Angel of Death,” minus the high note preceding) at the transition point to a headspinning, hypnotic digging in marked by another scream at the start of the next cycle through before the making-sure-the-barn-is-all-the-way-burnt solo finishes.
For anyone missing keys, the penultimate “Nefilibata” is introduced by organ before it nestles quickly into its midtempo groove, and all seems business as usual — amazing how effectively ‘usual’ is redefined here while staying true to a high standard of what that means — until a layered arrangement of melodic vocals marks it out from its surroundings, emblematic perhaps of a reconstructed band trying something new that might or might not further manifest in their sound as they move forward, but it makes “Nefilibata” a late highlight, and with the reorientation of that initial organ line, there’s no interruption to the flow that has carried them really from “Arise” without any more hitches than they’ve seemingly wanted there to be as they turn to “Tomorrow’s Sky” to close, the by-now familiar thud of the drums, a spacious guitar, and yes, a little more keys, coming about as close as Hippie Death Cult might to drift with the guitar floating above, mirroring the lower-frequencies of the drums and bass holding the rhythm while feeling bright and engaging in the doing.
Fluid front-to-back, “Tomorrow’s Sky” wants nothing for angularity as its early melancholy gives over to a verse with a lightly progressive feel and the band oozes toward the somewhat-understated winding finish with a grace that’s both familiar from what they’ve done in the past while also distinct from it in form. New, in other words. It’s not just that Hippie Death Cult went through lineup changes before they made their third LP. They took advantage of the opportunity those changes represented to bring new perspectives to what they do, and so while Helichrysum is more outwardly raw in its sound than they’ve been before, the songs that comprise it benefit from the vitality that becomes so much of the album’s focus. They will, one hopes, continue to grow organically as they settle further into this modus over the next few years, but the efforts they’ve made and the resilience they’ve shown already have their payoff here.
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 26th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Remaining reliably too weird for the planet, Megaton Leviathan will issue an all-instrumental LP called Magick Helmet on Dec. 8. The band, if it wasn’t always, seems at this point to be a solo outlet at least in terms of composition for founding frontman Andrew James Costa Reuscher, below mentioned only by his surname, though the PR wire notes a live trio in the sentence before listing Reuscher as the only person in the lineup, so maybe one needs to be less uptight in definitions of things like ‘who’s in the band’ and ‘what are songs anyhow.’
The latter I’d count among the most essential questions Megaton Leviathan have been asking since their groundbreaking 2010 debut, Water Wealth Hell on Earth (review here), and that Reuscher and various others haven’t found a definitive answer is only to their credit. I’d expect Magick Helmet to be cosmic, ritualistic in its making, and expansive in its reach if perhaps raw in presentation, but those are broad generalizations on purpose, because this is a band who’ve pushed themselves into an individualistic exploratory place and have made it plain they can and will do whatever the hell they want. Right on.
Info from the PR wire:
MEGATON LEVIATHAN Announces Instrumental Album ‘Magick Helmet’
The Magick Helmet is demanding of the listener pushing them to their limits. Armed to the teeth with face-melting fuzz and Godzilla delays courtesy of the Doomgazer Pedal (a collaboration between Emmergy FX UK and MEGATON LEVIATHAN). It’s an album that you don’t just listen too in enjoyment but endure. Begging the question who is this rhythm section extemporaneously pulsing deep within the thrall of the MEGATON LEVIATHAN. The Magick Helmet will be unleashed on December 8th, 2023.
Reuscher comments:
“Outside inside, dawn the Magick Helmet and take her for a ride. It is available free on the band website and band camp, for the friends, fans and supporters of MEGATON LEVIATHAN. Thank you.”
Succumb to the immersive soundscapes of The Magick Helmet. “The Final Form Of Nothing Is Final” exudes wailing guitars, driving percussion and rumbling bass melodies. The unceasing momentum keeps you hooked – it’s a constant, while soaring, banshee-like wails freely spiral above. Taking a haunting and twisting turn, “The Final form Of Nothing Is Final (A Slight Return)” makes for an eerie sequel as the familiar returns feeling not quite so familiar. Harsher, darker, the sound begins to warp at times feeling sharp like a razor’s edge. Dissonance, noise, screeching shrills, all lay waiting in “The Belly Of The Beast”. The discordant textures take prominence, while dynamic percussion and bass add depth in the instrumental layers beneath. The final offering is the epic “Helios Creeds Magick Helmet”, the track emerges with a touch of the theatrical through enticing rhythms and dramatic gong hits. The music gradually builds with subtle hints of dissonance intermittently revealed, and soon wailing leads return. “Helios Creeds Magick Helmet” traverses through different realms each with their own atmospheres, styles and moods; it ebbs and flows.
About MEGATON LEVIATHAN:
Creating a sound that would stump critics and come to be described as Doomgaze. In the late 2000s, Reuscher, in a gritty Gateway basement of Portland, OR, committed the shoegaze of MY BLOODY VALENTINE, SPACEMEN 3, LOOP, and SLOWDIVE, to the heavy prodigiousness of SUNN O))), GODFLESH/JESU, SWANS, and CORRUPTED in a chemical wedding. Reuscher further mutated the genome of the Mega-Beast by coalescing the industrial experimentations of CHROME and THROBBING GRISTLE into the Kosmische minimalism of TANGERINE DREAM, FAUST, and CLUSTER. All made indelible in the DNA of the narcotic, primal, cinematic vibe of MEGATON LEVIATHAN.
In the 5 years plus since MEGATON LEVIATHAN’s critically acclaimed album Mage, the band has undergone an overhaul. From being signed to Outrun and label Blood Music and having a wrecking crew of musicians, MEGATON LEVIATHAN is now completely independent on Reuschers own Volatile Rock Recordings, with a maximum Doomgaze and minimalist approach embracing change and employing his love for things gritty, CVLT and mind-altering. With a new line up, in a new town (Astoria Or.) consisting of a power trio, pounding out primitive, subversive, and psychedelic Doompop hooks before re-committing to the ecstasy of becoming once again, half machine.
MEGATON LEVIATHAN is: Reuscher
Credits: Recorded by Reuscher in his Psychedelic Inner Fortress Studios
Portland heavy rockers Robots of the Ancient World will release their second album for Small Stone Records, 3737, on Nov. 17. The five-piece issued their first record for the label, Mystic Goddess (review here), in 2021, and have gone from tracking with Jack Endino to producing themselves with Billy Anderson as an engineer, so pretty clearly they’re not looking to waste time in the recording process. Their actual-debut was 2019’s Cosmic Riders, and especially considering the years between, they’ve managed productivity where others have stagnated or disappeared altogether, which is something to be commended.
As one would hope, one of the aspects carried over from Mystic Goddess to the newer six-tracker is a lack of pretense. Dudes aren’t trying to be anything other than the fuzz-toned weirdos they are, and with the returning lineup of vocalist Caleb Weidenbach, guitarists Nico Schmutz and Justin Laubscher, bassist Trevor Berecek and drummer Harry Silvers (now also in Hippie Death Cult), that particular brand of quirk is all the more identifiable as the band swings, sways and swaggers toward and through the organ-laced culmination of 10-minute apex finale “Silver Cloud,” which ends the procession with all due ceremony without losing sight of the fact that even in those last moments, they’re headed somewhere.
Lest you doubt their stonerly bona fides, “Hindu Kush” leads off with a rising buzz of amp noise that becomes the riff — feedback still there until the crash-in — and proceeds to unveil the roll. Mellow, not hitting too hard and certainly not quiet, the two guitars, bass and drums leave room for Weidenbach‘s vocals, though honestly he sounds like he wouldn’t necessarily have trouble cutting through anyhow. Circa-’75 Ozzy and first-two-LPs Danzig might be touchstones there, but one way or the other, Weidenbach is the source of a lot of the attitude of 3737, and with “Hindu Kush,” the record gets a classic-feeling (those backing vocals in the chorus) fuzz rocker that leans into doom and psych in the spirit of the modern underground.
Opening catchy was clearly a priority between “Hindu Kush,” which is the shortest of the non-interludes at 4:45, and “Creature,” which follows, and after its own quiet guitar intro sweeps into full-brunt tonality chugs into its verse with subtle pace and genuinely seems to shove its chorus forward through the speakers. They throw some jabs in the bridge in the second half, and rally around that one more time after the last hook, and then they’re quickly onto the “Children of the Grave”-esque start of “Holy Ghost.” Feels like fair enough use of that chug. I’m pretty sure everyone on the planet who didn’t wishes they wrote that song.
“Holy Ghost” takes off with due thrust and a sharper edge to its riff. The guitars split in the verse, one channel chugging, the other strumming, but they align in the chorus to emphasize the message being sent about songwriting — namely that Robots of the Ancient World are on it — and find their way back with renewed vigor, Silvers in back pushing the entire thing forward. While maybe not as outwardly catchy as “Hindu Kush” or “Creature,” “Holy Ghost” pulls the listener deeper into 3737 and maintains the standard of craft, the mix of influences at work showing metallic flashes in the solo, some maybe-organ in there maybe-prefacing the closer, scorch and toms building to a head, pushing, pushing, finally crashing. Side A over.
The personality shifts somewhat as they move into “Moustache” — a love song? for a moustache? I haven’t seen lyrics, so I’m going with ‘yes’ with lines like “I miss you so bad,” and so on — and top the seven-minute mark for the first time, some of that additional minute-ish as compared to “Creature” or “Holy Ghost” no doubt due to the trippy outro that bookends with the subdued beginning. The methodology would seem to be ‘hypnotize, punch, hypnotize again’ for “Moustache,” but it’s also got a hook as the guitars wait then don’t to solo, and when it shifts back to the intro part to finish, they just kind of drop everything, which one can appreciate. “Screw it, we’re doing this now.” Right on.
Turn up the volume near the end and you can hear a TV in the penultimate acoustic interlude “Apollo,” which for sure gives a recorded-at-home vibe, whether or not it was. But while the 2:26 purposeful-meander is intended to lead into the direct-to-riff start of “Silver Cloud,” which is a crescendo even before the already-noted big finish. What might be an extra, semi-backward cymbal is worked into the mix after about two minutes in, both adding psychedelic flair and grounding the march for a few measures as a precursor to the classic-style dual soloing that Robots of the Ancient World have been apparently holding in reserve.
That looseness of swing is a misdirect — “Silver Cloud” would come apart were it not so sharply performed — but the 10:49 cut begins its build by going to ground at around four minutes in. Some Doors-y ranting in a sparsely-guitared midsection jam — somewhat ironically it’s the bass that holds it together — carries them through the next stage, and then it’s all-in, all-go, where’s-the-tambourine-oh-good-I-think-it’s-in-there-somewhere until the last strains of keys fade out. In 37 minutes, 3737 has come farther than it might at-first seem, and the level of control and balance in Robots of the Ancient World‘s approach makes difficult moments in songcraft sound easy.
Being their third album overall, one expects a certain level of realization to take place. It’s reasonable to think that nearly five years after their first record, the band collectively has an idea of their sound and what they want their songs to do. If that’s not the case, and the actual-math of 3737 is these dudes rolled out of bed and these jams just magically happened, well, I’m glad someone got it on a hard drive because that’s a pretty special moment right there. But more likely is this material has been worked on and thought through, and in that, the organic nature of its presentation is doubly striking.
“Holy Ghost” premieres on the player below, and more info follows from the PR wire.
Please enjoy:
Portland psychedelic stoner doom outfit ROBOTS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD will release their 3737 full-length via Small Stone Recordings on November 17th.
ROBOTS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD released their Mystic Goddess full-length in 2021. The high-octane recording offered up a hallucinatory sound excursion through a wide range of styles that kept listeners engaged while never losing focus or sacrificing flow.
Two years later, the band is back and more potent than ever. With the assistance of renowned engineer, Billy Anderson, ROBOTS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD delivers a relentless rock ‘n’ roll album spanning thirty-seven minutes and thirty-seven seconds. But the title is more than just the duration of the recording, and the band took notice of the number’s significance. There exists a theory in numerology that guardian angels attempt to communicate through divine numbers – specifically the repetition in numbers, and this one specifically is to remind us that, “magic and manifestation are knocking at your door,” and that, “you are about to attract your inner most desires.” Emerging from the pandemic and coping with the loss of loved ones, heartache, and mental anguish, the band decided to harness this energy and pour it into 3737.
As a result, we are left with an album rich with addictively heavy riffing complemented by pummeling drums, groovy bass lines, and Caleb Weidenbach’s raw and commanding vocals. ROBOTS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD intended to deliver something meaningful, not only to the band but to the world. 3737 is the answer.
3737 was written and recorded by the band, mastered by Justin Weis, and comes wrapped in the cover art of Zaiusart.
The record will be released on CD and digital formats via Small Stone Recordings and on limited edition vinyl by Kozmik Artifactz. For preorders, visit THIS LOCATION: https://smallstone.bandcamp.com/album/3737
3737 Track Listing: 1. Hindu Kush 2. Creature 3. Holy Ghost 4. Moustache 5. Apollo 6. Silver Cloud
ROBOTS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD: Caleb Weidenbach – vocals Nico Schmutz – guitar Justin Laubscher – guitar Trevor Berecek – bass Harry Silvers – drums
Posted in Reviews on October 3rd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
I broke my wife’s phone yesterday. What a mess. I was cleaning the counter or doing some shit and our spare butter dish — as opposed to the regular one, which was already out — was sitting near the edge of the top of the microwave, from where I bumped it so that the ceramic corner apparently went right through the screen hard enough that in addition to shattering it there’s a big black spot and yes a new phone has been ordered. In the meantime, she can’t type the letter ‘e’ and, well, I have to hand it to Le Creuset on the sturdy construction of their butter dishes. Technology succumbing to the brute force of a harder blunt object and gravity.
Certainly do wish that hadn’t happened. What does it have to do with riffs, or music at all, or really anything? Who cares. I’m about to review 10 records today. I can talk about whatever the hell I want.
Quarterly Review #11-20:
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Samsara Blues Experiment, Rock Hard in Concert
10 years after releasing 2013’s Live at Rockpalast (review here), and nearly three after they put out their 2021 swansong studio LP, End of Forever (review here), German heavy psych rockers Samsara Blues Experiment offer the 80-minute live 2LP Rock Hard in Concert, and while it’s not their first live album, it gives a broader overview of the band from front to (apparent) back during their time together, as songs opening salvo of “Center of the Sun,” “Singata Mystic Queen” and “For the Lost Souls” from 2010’s debut, Long-Distance Trip (review here), melds in the set with “One With the Universe” and “Vipassana” from 2017’s One With the Universe (review here), End of Forever‘s own title-track and “Massive Passive,” and “Hangin’ on a Wire” from 2013’s Waiting for the Flood (review here) to become a fan-piece that nonetheless engages in sound and presentation. If you were there, it’s likely must-own. For the rest of us, who maybe did or didn’t see the band during their time — glad to say I did — it’s a reminder of how immersive they could be, especially in longer-form material, and how much influence they had on the last decade-plus of jam-based heavy psych in Europe. Recorded in 2018 at a special gig for Germany’s Rock Hard magazine, Rock Hard in Concert follows behind 2022’s Demos & Rarities (review here) in the band’s posthumous catalog, and it may or may not be Samsara Blues Experiment‘s final non-reissue release. Whether it is or not, it summarizes their run gorgeously and puts a light on the chemistry of the trio that led them through so many winding aural paths.
Sounding modern and full and in opening cut “Marrow” almost like the fuzz is about to swallow the rest of the song, Restless Spirit step forward with their third long-player, Afterimage, and establish a new level of craft for themselves. In 2021, the Long Island heavy/doom rock trio offered Blood of the Old Gods (review here), and their guitar-led energetic surges continue here in Afterimage riffers like the chug-nod “Shadow Command” and “Of Spirit and Form,” which seems to account for the underlying metallic edge of the band’s execution with its sharper turns. Their first album for Magnetic Eye Records, its eight tracks fit smoothly into the label’s roster, which at its baseline might be said to foster modern heavy styles with a particular ear for songwriting and melody, and Restless Spirit dig into “All Furies” like High on Fire galloping into a wall of Slayer records, only to follow with the 1:45 instrumental reset “Brutalized,” which is somehow weightier. They touch on the ethereal with the guitar in “The Fatalist,” but the vocals are more post-hardcore and have a grounding effect, and after starting with outright crush, “Hell’s Grasp” offers respite in progressive flourish and midtempo meandering before resuming the double-plus-huge roll and pointed riff and noodly offsets, the huge hook coming back in a way that makes me miss doing a radio show. “Hell’s Grasp” is the longest piece on the collection at 6:25, but “From the Dust Returned” closes, mindful of the atmospherics that have been at work all along and no less huge, but clearly saving a last push for, well, last. I’ll be interested in how it holds up over the long term, but Magnetic Eye has become one of the US’ most essential labels in heavy music and releases like this are exactly why.
When did Graham Clise from WitchLecherous Gaze, etc. — dude used to be in Uphill Battle; I remember that band — move to Australia? Doesn’t matter. It happened and Stepmother is the raw, garage-ish fuzz rock outfit the now-Melbourne-residing Clise has established, with Rob Muinos on bass and vocals and Sam Rains on drums. With Clise on guitar/vocals peppering hard-strummed riffs with bouts of shred and various dirtier coatings, the 12-tracker goes north of four minutes one time for “Do You Believe,” already by then having found its proto-Misfits bent in the catchy “Scream for Death.” But whether they’re buzz-overdosing “Waiting for the Axe” or digging into the comedown in “Signed DC” ahead of the surf-informed rager of a finale “Gusano,” Planet Brutalicon is a debut that presents fresh ideas taking on known stylistic elements. And it’s not a showcase for Clise‘s instrumental prowess on a technical level or anything — he’s not trying to put on a clinic — but from the sound of his guitar to the noises he gets from it in “The Game” (that middle part, ultra-fuzz) and at the end of “Stalingrad,” it is very much a guitar-centered offering. No complaints there whatsoever.
Pilot Voyager, The Structure is Still Under Construction
WARNING: Users who take even a small dose of Pilot Voyager‘s The Structure is Still Under Construction may find themselves experiencing euphoria, or adrift, as though on some serene ocean under the warm green sky of impossibly refracted light. The ethereal drones and melodic textures of the 46-minute single-song LP may cause side effects like: momentary flashes of inner peace, the quieting of your brain that you’ve been seeking your whole life without knowing it, calm. Also nausea, but that’s probably just something you ate. Talk to your doctor about whether this extended work from the Hungarian collective Psychedelic Source Records (szia!) is right for you, and if it is, make sure to consume responsibly. Headphones required (not included or covered by insurance). Do not be afraid as “The Structure is Still Under Construction” leaves the water behind to float upward in its midsection, finally resolving in intertwining drones, vague sampled speech echoing far off somewhere — ugh, the real world — and birdsong someplace in the mix. Go with it. This is why you got the prescription in the first place. Decades of aural research and artistic movement and progression have led you and the Budapesti outfit to this moment. Do not operate heavy machinery. Ever. In fact, find an empty field, take off your pants and run around for a while until you get out of breath. Then drink cool water and giggle. This could be you. Your life.
Philadelphia has become the East Coast US’ hotbed for heavy psychedelia, which must be interesting for Northern Liberties, who started out more than two decades ago. The trio’s self-released, 10-song/41-minute Self-Dissolving Abandoned Universe — maybe their eighth album, if my count is right — with venerated producer Steve Albini, so one might count ‘instant-Gen-X-cred’ and ‘recognizably-muddy-toms’ among their goals. I wasn’t completely sold on the offering until “Infusorian Hymnal” started to dig a little further into the genuinely weird after opener “The Plot Thickens” and the subsequent “Drowned Out” laid forth the crunch of the tones and gave hints of the structures beneath the noise. “Crucible” follows up the raw shove of “Star Spangled Corpse” by expanding the palette toward space rock and an unhinged psych-noise shove that the somehow-still-Hawkwindian volatility of “The Awaited” moves away from while the finale “Song of the Sole Survivor” calls back to the folkish vocal melody in “Ghosts of Ghosts,” if in echoing and particularly addled fashion. Momentum serves the three-piece well throughout, though they seem to have no trouble interrupting themselves (can relate), and turning to follow a disparate impulse. Distractable heavy? Yeah, except bands like that usually don’t last two decades. Let’s say maybe their own kind of oddball, semi-spaced band who aren’t afraid to screw around in the studio, find what they like, and keep it. And whatever else you want to say about Albini-tracked drums, “Hold on to the Darkness” has a heavier tone to its snare than most guitars do to whole LPs. Whatever works, and it does.
“Good Night, Ophelia” is the first single from the forthcoming debut full-length from semi-goth Portland, Oregon, heavy rock four-piece Nyxora. There are worse opening shots to fire than a Hamlet reference, I suppose, and if one regards Ophelia’s character as an innocent driven to suicide by gender-based oppression, then her lack of agency is nothing if not continually relevant. Nonetheless, for Nyxora — Vox on, well, vox, guitarist E.Wrath, bassist Luke and drummer Weatherman — she pairs with dark-boogie riff recorded for edge with Witch Mountain‘s Rob Wrong at his Wrong Way Studio. There are some similarities between Nyxora and Wrong‘s own outfit — I double-checked it wasn’t Uta Plotkin singing some of the higher-reaching lines of “Good Night, Ophelia,” which is a definite compliment — but I get the sense that fuller atmosphere of Nyxora‘s first LP isn’t necessarily encapsulated in this one three-and-a-half-minute song. That is, I’m thinking at some point on the album, Nyxora will get more morose than they are here. Or maybe not. Either way, “Good Night, Ophelia” is an enticing teaser from a group who seem ready to dig their niche when the album is released, I’ll assume in 2024 though one never knows.
I hate to do it, but I’m calling bullshit right now on Sydney, Australia’s Old Goat Smoke. Sorry gents. To be sure, your Bongzilla-crusty, ultra-stoned, Church of Misery-esque-in-its-madcap-vocal-wails, goat weed metal is only a pleasure to behold. But that’s the problem. How’re you gonna write a song called “Old Goat Smoke” and not post the lyrics? I shudder to think of the weed puns I’m missing. Fortunately, it’s not too late for the newcomer band to correct the mistake before the entire project is derailed. In that eponymous one of three total tracks included, Old Goat Smoke cast themselves in the mold of the despondent and disaffected. “Return to Dirt” shifts fluidly in and out of screams and harsher fare while radioactive-dirt tonality infects the guitar and bass that have already challenged the drums to cut through their morass. So that there’s no risk of the point not being made, they cap this initial public offering with “The Great Hate,” and eight-and-a-half-minute treatise on feedback and raw scathe that’s likewise a show of future nastiness to manifest. Quit your job, do all the drugs you can find, engage the permanent fuck-off. Old Goat Smoke may not have ‘bong’ in their moniker, but that’s about all they’re missing. And those lyrics, I guess, though by the time the 20 minutes of Demo have expired, they’ve made their caustic point regardless.
German transport-themed heavy rock and rollers Van Groover — as in, one who grooves in or with vans — made a charming debut with 2021’s Honk if Parts Fall Off (review here), and the follow-up five-song EP, Back From the Shop, makes no attempt to fix what isn’t broken. That would seem to put it at odds with the mechanic speaking in the intro “Hill Willy’s Chop Shop,” who runs through a litany of issues fixed, goes on long enough to hypnotize and then swaps in body parts and so on. From there, the motor works, and Van Groover hit the gas through 21 minutes of smells-like-octane riffing and storytelling. In “A-38″ — the reference being to the size of a sheet of paper in Europe; equivalent but not the same as the US’ 8.5″ x 11” — they either get arrested, which would seem to be the ending of “The Bandit” just before,” or are at the DMV, I can’t quite tell, but it doesn’t matter one you meet “The Grizz.” The closer has an urgency to its push that doesn’t quite sound like I’d imagine being torn apart by a bear to feel, but the Lebowski-paraphrased penultimate line, “Some days you get eaten by the bear, some days the bear eats you,” underscores Van Groover‘s for-the-converted approach, speaking to the subculture from within. Possibly while driving. Does look like a nice van, though. The kind you might write a song or two about.
Facts-wise, there’s not much more I can tell you about Hotel Lucifer than you might glean from looking at the New York four-piece’s Bandcamp page. Their self-released and self-titled debut runs 43 minutes and eight tracks, and its somewhat bleak, not-obligated-to-heavy-tonalism course takes several violent thematic turns, including (I think.) in opener “Room 222,” where Katie‘s vocals seem to talk about raping god. This, “Murderer,” “Torquemada,” “The Ultimate Price,” “Picking Your Eyes Out” and 12-minute horror noisefest closer “Beheaded” — only the classic metaller “Training the Beast” and the three-minute acoustic-backed psychedelic voice showcase “Echidna” seem to restrain the brutaller impulses, and I’m not sure about that either. With Jimmy on guitar, Muriel playing bass and Ed on drums, Hotel Lucifer are defined in no small part by the whispers, rasps and croons that mark their verses and choruses, but that becomes an effective means to convey character and mood along with the instrumental ambience behind, and so Hotel Lucifer find this strange, almost willfully off-putting cultish individualism, and it’s not hooks keeping your attention so much as the desire to figure it out, to learn more about just what the hell is going on on this record. I’ll wish you good luck with that as I continue my efforts along similar lines.
Its five songs broken into two sections along lines of “Obscure Fire” pairing with “Of Silence” and “Descending” leading to “Into the Depths” with “Of Eternal Doom” answering the question that didn’t even really need to be asked about which depths the Russian stoner sludge rollers were talking about. The Sleep-worshiping three-piece of guitarist/vocalist SAA, bassist KKV and drummer PAN — whose credits are worth reading in the band’s own words — lumber with purpose as they make that final statement, each side of Obscure Fire working shortest to longest beginning with the howling guitar and drum thud of the title-track at nine minutes as opposed to the 10 of “Of Silence.” At two minutes, “Descending” is barely more than feedback and tortured gurgles, so yes, very much a fit with the concrete-toned plod of the subsequent “Into the Depths” as the band skirt the line between ultra-stoner metal and cavernous atmospheric sludge without necessarily committing to one or the other. That position favors them, but after a certain point of being bludgeoned with huge riffs and slow-nodding, deeply-weighted churn, your skull is going to be goo either way. The route Megalith Levitation take to get you there is where the weed is, aurally speaking.
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 30th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Portland-based psych-turned-heavygaze outfit Blackwater Holylight will launch a month of European touring at Desertfest Belgium in the company of Amsterdam’s Iron Jinn. The band presented a comparatively grim thesis with 2021’s Silence/Motion (review here), taking the atmospheric penchant of their first two albums and, in part, using it as a means to explore the drear of its time, not that either the time or the drear are necessarily over.
I finally got to see the band after wanting to since their debut about a year ago at Psycho Las Vegas (review here), and they took to the main stage there with according mastery of their sound and approach. The latest album put them on their first US headlining tour, and they’re headliners internationally now too, their outward growth in sound greeted with a corresponding uptick in listenership. Well met, and all that.
If you didn’t hear it, Iron Jinn‘s 2023 self-titled debut (review here) is a dark-prog smorgasbord, which makes this a good pairing. Plus, Iron Jinn will have just been out in September supporting Alain Johannes and doubling as his backing band, so they should be plenty warmed up.
Blackwater Holylight posted the dates as follows:
BLACKWATER HOLYLIGHT- (#128165#)EUROPE(#128165#) WE COMING FOR YA(#128165#)
Cannot wait to return to so many countries and friends we’ve missed dearly. Please join us and @iron_jinn for a month a mayhem LETS GO!
@doomstarbookings and BWHL present CHAPEL OF ROSES TOUR: 20.10.23 Antwerpen (BE) – Trix / Desertfest 23.10.23 Paris (FR) – Supersonic 24.10.23 Nijmegen (NL) – Merleyn 25.10.23 Eindhoven (NL) – Stroomhuis 26.10.23 Bochum (DE) – Die Trompete 27.10.23 Dresden (DE) – Chemiefabrik / Heavy Psych Sounds Festival 28.10.23 Berlin (DE) – Urban Spree / Heavy Psych Sounds Festival 29.10.23 Malmö (SE) – Plan B 30.10.23 Gothenburg (SE) – Skeppet GBG 31.10.23 Stockholm (SE) – Bar Brooklyn 02.11.23 Helsinki (FI) – Kuudes Linja / Sonic Rites Fall Fest 03.11.23 Tallinn (EE) – Hungr 04.11.23 Riga (LV) – Vagonu Hall 05.11.23 Vilnius (LT) – Narauti 06.11.23 Warsaw (PL) – Chmury 07.11.23 Krakow (PL) – Zascianek 08.11.23 Prague (CZ) – Modra Vopice 09.11.23 Vienna (AT) – Arena 10.11.23 Budapest (HU) – Instant 11.11.23 Ljubljana (SI) – Channel Zero 13.11.23 Munich (DE) – Feierwerk 14.11.23 Zürich (CH) – Klub Komplex 15.11.23 Frankfurt (DE) – Nachtleben 16.11.23 Lille (FR) – La Bulle Café
* Ljubljana date has been changed to Channel Zero.
Welcome back to the Summer 2023 Quarterly Review. I hope you enjoyed the weekend. Today we dig in on the penultimate — somehow my using the word “penultimate” became a running gag for me in Quarterly Reviews; I don’t know how or why, but I think it’s funny — round of 10 albums and tomorrow we’ll close out as we hit the total of 70. Could easily have kept it going through the week, but so it goes. I’ll have more QR in September or October, I’m not sure yet which. It’s a pretty busy Fall.
Today’s a wild mix and that’s what I was hoping for. Let’s go.
Quarterly Review #51-60:
Weite, Assemblage
Founded by bassist Ingwer Boysen (also High Fighter) as an offshoot of the live incarnation of Delving, of which he’s part, Weite release the instrumental Assemblage as a semi-improv-sounding collection of marked progressive fluidity. With Delving and Elder‘s Nick DiSalvo and Mike Risberg in the lineup along with Ben Lubin (Lawns), the story goes that the four-piece got to the studio with nothing/very little, spent a few days writing and recording with the venerable Richard Behrens helming, and Assemblage‘s four component pieces are what came out of it. The album begins with the nine-minutes-each pair of the zazzy-jazzy mover “Neuland,” while “Entzündet” grows somewhat more open, a lead guitar refrain like built around drum-backed drone and keys, swelling in piano-inclusive volume like Crippled Black Phoenix, darker prog shifting into a wash and more freaked-out psych rock. I’m not sure those are real drums on “Rope,” or if they are I’d love to know how the snare was treated, but the song’s a groover just the same, and the 14-minute “Murmuration” is where the styles unite under an umbrella of warm tonality and low key but somehow cordial atmosphere. If these guys want to get together every couple years into perpetuity and bang out a record like this, that’d be fine.
The fourth album from Portland, Oregon’s Mizmor — the solo-project of multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer, vocalist, etc.-ist A.L.N. — arrives riding a tsunami of hype and delivers on the band’s long-stated promise of ‘wholly doomed black metal.’ With consuming distortion at its heart from opener/longest track (immediate points) “Only an Expanse” onward, the record recalls the promise of American black metal as looser in its to-tenet conformity than the bulk of Europe’s adherents — of course these are generalizations and I’m no expert — by contrasting it rhythmically with doom, which instead of fully releasing the tension amassed by the scream-topped tremolo riffing just makes it sound more miserable. Doom! “No Place to Arrive” is admirably thick, like noisy YOB on charred ambience, and “Anything But” draws those two sides together in more concise and driving style, vicious and brutal until it cuts in the last minute to quiet minimalism that makes the slam-in crush of 13-minute closer “Acceptance” all the more punishing, with plenty of time left for trades between all-out thrust and grueling plod. Hard to call which side wins the day — and that’s to Mizmor‘s credit, ultimately — but by the end of “Acceptance,” the raging gnash has collapsed into a caldera of harsh sludge, and it no longer matters. In context, that’s a success.
With a couple quick drum taps and a clearheaded strum that invokes the impossible nostalgia of Bruce Springsteen via ’90s alt rock, Netherlands-based The Whims of the Great Magnet strolls casually into “Same New,” the project’s first outing since 2021’s Share My Sun EP. Working in a post-grunge style seems to suit Sander Haagmans, formerly the bassist of Sungrazer and, for a bit, The Machine, as he single-track/double-tracks through the song’s initial verse and blossoms melodically in the chorus, dwelling in an atmosphere sun-coated enough that Haagmans‘ calls it “your new summer soundtrack.” Not arguing, if a one-track soundtrack is a little short. After a second verse/chorus trade, some acoustic weaves in at the end to underscore the laid back feel, and as it moves into the last minute, “Same New” brings back the hook not to drive it into your head — it’s catchy enough that such things aren’t necessary — but to speak to a traditional structure born out of classic rock. It does this organically, with moderate tempo and a warm, engaging spirit that, indeed, evokes the ideal images of the stated season and will no doubt prove comforting even removed from such long, hot and sunny days.
German instrumentalists Sarkh follow their 2020 full-length, Kaskade, with the four-song/31-minute Helios EP, issued through Worst Bassist Records. As with that album, the short-ish offering has a current of progressive metal to coincide with its heavier post-rock affect; “Zyklon” leading off with due charge before the title-track finds stretches of Yawning Man-esque drift, particularly as it builds toward a hard-hitting crescendo in its second half. Chiaroscuro, then. Working shortest to longest in runtime, the procession continues with “Kanagawa” making stark volume trades, growing ferocious but not uncontrolled in its louder moments, the late low end particularly satisfying as it plays off the guitar in the final push, a sudden stop giving 11-minute closer “Cape Wrath” due space to flesh out its middle-ground hypothesis after some initial intensity, the trio of guitarist Ralph Brachtendorf, bassist Falko Schneider and drummer Johannes Dose rearing back to let the EP end with a wash but dropping the payoff with about a minute left to let the guitar finish on its own. Germany, the world, and the universe: none of it is short on instrumental heavy bands, but the purposeful aesthetic mash of Sarkh‘s sound is distinguishing and Helios showcases it well to make the argument.
A 2LP second long-player from mostly-traditionalist doom metallers Spiritual Void, Wayfare seems immediately geared toward surpassing their 2017 debut, White Mountain, in opening with “Beyond the White Mountain.” With a stretch of harsher vocals to go along with the cleaner-sung verses through its 8:48 and the metal-of-eld wail that meets the crescendo before the nodding final verse, they might’ve done it. The subsequent “Die Alone” (11:48) recalls Candlemass and Death without losing the nod of its rhythm, and “Old” (12:33) reaffirms the position, taking Hellhound Records-style methodologies of European trad doom and pulling them across longer-form structures. Following “Dungeon of Nerthus” (10:24) the shorter “Wandering Doom” (5:31) chugs with a swing that feels schooled by Reverend Bizarre, while “Wandersmann” (13:11) tolls a mournful bell at its outset as though to let you know that the warm-up is over and now it’s time to really doom out. So be it. At a little over an hour long, Wayfare is no minor undertaking, but for what they’re doing stylistically, it shouldn’t be. Morose without melodrama, Wayfare sees Spiritual Void continuing to find their niche in doom, and rest assured, it’s on the doomier end. Of doom.
Even when The River make the trade of tossing out the aural weight of doom — the heavy guitar and bass, the expansive largesse, and so on — they keep the underlying structure. The nod. At least mostly. To explain: the long-running UK four-piece — vocalist Jenny Newton, guitarist Christian Leitch (formerly of 40 Watt Sun), bassist Stephen Morrissey and drummer Jason Ludwig — offer a folkish interpretation of doom and a doomed folk on their fourth long-player, the five-song/40-minute A Hollow Full of Hope taking the acoustic prioritizing of a song like “Open” from 2019’s Vessels into White Tides (review here) and bringing it to the stylistic fore on songs like the graceful opener “Fading,” the lightly electric “Tiny Ticking Clocks” rife with strings and gorgeous self-harmonizing from Newton set to an utterly doomed march, or the four-minute instrumental closer “Hollowful,” which is more than an outro if not a completely built song in relation to the preceding pieces. Melodic, flowing, intentional in arrangement, meter, melody. Sad. Beautiful. “Exits” (9:56) and “A Vignette” (10:26) — also the two longest cuts, though not by a ton — are where one finds that heft and the other side of the doom-folk/folk-doom divide, though it is admirable how thin they make that line. Marked progression. This album will take them past their 25th anniversary, and they greet it hitting a stride. That’s an occasion worth celebrating.
Sons of Froglord is the fourth full-length in three years from UK amphibian conceptualist storytellers Froglord, and there’s just about no way they’re not making fun of space rock on “Road Raisin.” “Collapse” grows burly in its hook in the vein of a more rumbling Clutch — and oh, the shenanigans abound! — and there’s a kind of ever-present undercurrent sludgy threat in the more forward push of the glorious anthem to the inanity of career life in “Wednesday” (it doesn’t materialize, but there is a tambourine on “A Swamp of My Own,” so that’s something), but the bulk of the latest chapter in the Froglord tale delivers ’70s-by-way-of-’10s classic heavy blues rock, distinct in its willingness to go elsewhere from and around the boogie swing of “Wizard Gonk” and the fuzzy shuffling foundation of “Garden” at the outset and pull from different eras and subsets of heavy to serve their purposes. “Froglady” is on that beat. On it. And the way “A Swamp of My Own” opens to its chorus is a stirring reminder of the difference drumming can make in elevating a band. After a quick “Closing Ceremony,” they tack on a presumably-not-narrative-related-but-fitting-anyway cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival‘s “Born on the Bayou,” which complements a crash-laced highlight like “The Sage” well and seems to say a bit about where Froglord are coming from as well, i.e., the swamp.
Released digitally with the backing of Abraxas and on CD through Smolder Brains Records, the Cult of Devil Sounds split EP offers two new tracks each from São Paulo, Brazil’s Weedevil and Veraruz, Mexico’s Electric Cult. The former take the A side and fade in on the guitar line “Darkness Inside” with due drama, gradually unfurling the seven-minute doom roller that’s ostensibly working around Electric Wizard-style riffing, but has its own persona in tone, atmosphere and the vocals of Maureen McGee, who makes her first appearance here with the band. The swagger of “Burn It” follows, somewhat speedier and sharper in delivery, with a scorcher solo in its back half, witchy proclamations and satisfying slowdown at the end. Weedevil. All boxes ticked, no question. Check. Electric Cult are rawer in production and revel in that, bringing “Rising From Hell” and “Esoteric Madness” with a more uptempo, rock-ish swing, but moving through sludge and doom by the time the seven minutes of the first of those is done. “Rising From Hell” finishes with ambient guitar, then feedback, which “Esoteric Madness” cuts off to begin with bass; a clever turn. Quickly “Esoteric Madness” grows dark from its outset, pushing into harsh vocals over a slogging march that turns harder-driving with ’70s-via-Church–of–Misery hard-boogie rounding out. That faster finish is a contrast to Weedevil‘s ending slow, and complements it accordingly. An enticing sampler from both.
When I read some article about how the James Webb Space Telescope has looked billions of years into the past chasing down ancient light and seen further toward the creation of the universe than humankind ever before has, I look at some video or other, I should be hearing Dr. Space. I don’t know if the Portugal-based solo artist, synthesist, bandleader, Renaissance man Scott “Dr. Space” Heller (also Øresund Space Collective, Black Moon Circle, etc.) has been in touch with the European Space Agency (ESA) or what their response has been, but even with its organ solo and stated watery purpose, amid sundry pulsations it’s safe to assume the 20-minute title-track “Suite for Orchestra of Marine Mammals” is happening with an orchestra of semi-robot aliens on, indeed, some impossibly distant exoplanet. Heller has long dwelt at the heart of psychedelic improv and the three pieces across the 39 minutes of Suite for Orchestra of Marine Mammals recall classic krautrock ambience while remaining purposefully exploratory. “Going for the Nun” pairs church organ with keyboard before shimmering into proto-techno blips and bloops recalling the Space Age that should’ve had humans on Mars by now, while the relatively brief capper “No Space for Time” — perhaps titled to note the limitations of the vinyl format — still finds room in its six minutes to work in two stages, with introductory chimes shifting toward more kosmiche synth travels yet farther out.
The debut from Santa Fe-based solo drone project Ruiner — aka Zac Hogan, also of Dysphotic, ex-Drought — is admirable in its commitment to itself. Hogan unveils the outfit with The Book of Patience (on Desert Records), an 80-minute, mostly-single-note piece called “Liber Patientiae,” which if you’re up on your Latin, you know is the title of the album as well. With a willfully glacial pace that could just as easily be a parody of the style — there is definitely an element of ‘is this for real?’ in the listening process, but yeah, it seems to be — “Liber Patientiae” evolves over its time, growing noisier as it approaches 55 or so minutes, the distortion growing more fervent over the better part of the final 25, the linear trajectory underscoring the idea that there’s a plan at work all along coinciding with the experimental nature of the work. What that plan might manifest from here is secondary to the “Liber Patientiae” as a meditative experience. On headphones, alone, it becomes an inward journey. In a crowded room, at least at the outset it’s almost a melodic white noise, maybe a little tense, but stretched out and changing but somehow still solid and singular, making the adage that ‘what you put into it is what you get out’ especially true in this case. And as it’s a giant wall of noise, it goes without saying that not everybody will be up for getting on board, but it’s difficult to imagine the opaque nature of the work is news to Hogan, who clearly is searching for resonance on his own wavelength.
Posted in audiObelisk on July 20th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Spirit Mother release their new 7″ Locust/Dead Cells on Aug. 1, timed to coincide with their first European touring. The Cali-born outfit presently residing in Oregon will be on the road starting Aug. 1 — hey, that’s when the 7″ is out! — and play 11 shows in 12 days spread between Metal Days in Sweden and SonicBlast in Portugal, the festivals bookending club dates and an appearance at PALP Fest in Switzerland before the band return home to launch a September US tour (plus some Canada) in the company of Hippie Death Cult, built around stops at Lose Yr Mind in Portland and RippleFest Texas in Austin.
All that’s great, don’t get me wrong. I am unsarcastically, unironically and almost universally in favor of a band like Spirit Mother — relatively young, heading toward a follow-up to an impressive debut album in 2020’s Cadets (review here), cool, varied sound that has the potential to grow into something even more their own; I could go on — touring hard and often. But when you have a minute or seven to spare, take a listen to Locust/Dead Cells — also stylized with two slashes: Locust//Dead Cells — and catch a glimpse of where Spirit Mother are actually headed.
Especially if you were introduced to the band through their 2021 ‘Live in the Mojave Desert’ stream (review here) and live album (review here), the heft they proffer in “Locust” and “Dead Cells” might not be such a shocker, but set next to their last studio work — i.e. Cadets — it’s a striking turn Spirit Mother make toward heavier tones and impact. Still texturally influenced by psychedelic rock, they’ve mined immediacy out of meander and are fast finding their place in and around the style, with flourish of heavy Americana and grunge to make their sound all the more three-dimensional.
“Locust” feels like the catchiest track they’ve had on out yet until “Dead Cells” comes on with its All Them Witches-via-the-West-Coast slither and the shared vocals of bassist/principal songwriter Armand Lance and violinist SJ, but “Locust” also stands out for its urgency and for what comes across as a decisive focus on atmosphere. In discussing the tracks below, Lance notes that these songs were played live and workshopped on the road before being put to tape in a manner more representative of Spirit Mother‘s live sound than perhaps the debut, righteous as it was, turned out to be. Both offer palpable mood and the kind of atmosphere you feel like you can reach out and touch in front of you, but they move in a way that’s accessible and reaching out toward perhaps a broader audience than (only) genre heads.
Their having now fostered this approach in such a context, one can only hope they’re able to take the lessons from this two-songer, from all the touring at home and on foreign soil, and indeed from Cadets and use it to move forward with a new LP next year. Guess we’ll find out when we get there.
Until then, if you thought you had some idea of what Spirit Mother were about, feel free to delight in the correction:
Armand Lance on Locust/Dead Cells:
If you’ve seen us live, you know that we don’t play our songs “exactly” as they were recorded on Cadets. Part of that is because in our case, the record came before the band. But also, we believe that the live show should be a unique experience and we take pride in our doctored-up live arrangements. We still fuck with them to this day.
With these recordings, we did the opposite. We wrote it, and then they lived with us, grew with us, toured with us, partied with us, argued with us, crashed on floors, broke down, experienced straight up miracles, and everything in between that comes with being on the road. We recorded THAT version.
And we did it at the same studio we recorded Cadets – Jazzcats in Long Beach, CA. Our good friend and producer for this project, Jonny Bell, used his studio like an instrument and we were able to capture exactly what we wanted to, and then some. Working with someone you know, trust, and knows your music makes it easy to do that.
We decided to put this 7″ together to coincide our first European Tour. We set up a preorder for our fans in the states to reserve one before we leave, and our physical release date is 8/1 at Metal Days Festival in Slovenia. We’ll be taking them across Europe as we make our way to PALP Fest in Switzerland, and cap off our run at Sonic Blast Fest in Portugal. After that we have a couple weeks til we hit the road with Hippie Death Cult for a US/Canada tour.
Originally formed by lead singer, songwriter, and bassist Armand Lance and violinist, SJ; their line-up solidified with guitarist Sean McCormick and drummer Landon Cisneros. This quartet often performs as a quintet with the use of two violins. Violinist, Camille Getz, has become integral to their live performances. Initially from Long Beach, CA, the band relocated due to the pandemic and is now headquartered in the high-desert of Eastern Oregon.
Shows:
07/26 Bamboo Club – Long Beach, CA (kickoff show)
Europe 01/08 Metal Days Fest – Velenje, SE 02/08 Kulturbahnhof – Lollar, DE 03/08 P8 – Karlsruhe, DE 04/08 Supersonic – Paris, FR 05/08 Terminus – Saarbrucken, DE 06/08 Cafe The Jack – Eindhoven, NL 07/08 Mcp-Apache – Fontaine L Évêque, BE 09/08 Brin De Zinc – Barberaz, FR 10/08 Cascina Bellaria – Sezzadio, IT 11/08 PALP Fest – Val De Bagnes, CH 12/08 Sonic Blast Fest – Àncora, PT
US/Canada w/Hippie Death Cult 9/8 Lose Yr Mind Fest – Portland, OR 9/9 El Corazón – Seattle, WA 9/10 The Wise – Vancouver, BC 9/12 Palomino Smokehouse – Calgary, AB 9/15 Pyramid Cabaret – Winnipeg, MB 9/16 Turf Club – St. Paul, MN 9/17 High Noon Saloon – Madison, WI 9/18 Reggies – Chicago, IL 9/19 Growlers – Memphis, TN 9/20 Freetown Boom Boom Boom – Lafayette, LA 9/21 Division Brewing – Arlington, TX 9/23 Black Magic Social Club – Houston, TX 9/24 Ripple Fest – Austin, TX 9/26 Sister Bar – Albuquerque, NM* 9/27 Yucca Taproom – Tempe, AZ* 9/28 The Usual Place – Las Vegas, NV* 9/29 Permanent Records – Los Angeles, CA 9/30 Ivy Room – Albany, CA 10/1 Kilowatt – San Francisco, CA *w/ Brant Bjork
Been a trip so far, has this Quarterly Review. It’s been fun to bounce from one thing to the next, drawing imaginary lines between releases that have nothing more to do with each other than being written up on the same day, and seeing the way the mind reels in adjusting from talking about one thing to the next. It’s a different kind of challenge to write 150-200 words (and often more than that; these reviews are getting too long) about a record than 1,000 words.
Less room to make your argument means you need to say what you want to say how you want to say it and punch out. If you’ve read this site with any regularity over the last however many years, or perhaps if you’re reading this very sentence right now, right here, you might guess that such efficiency isn’t a strong suit. This assessment would be correct. Fact is I suck at any number of things. A growing list.
But we’ve made it to Thursday anyhow and today this 70-record Quarterly Review passes its halfway point, and that’s always a fun thing to mark. If you’ve been digging it, I hope you continue to do so. If nothing’s hit, maybe today. If this is the first you’re seeing of any of it, well, that’s fine too. We’re all friends here. You can go back and dig in or not, as you prefer. I’ll keep going either way. Speaking of…
Quarterly Review #31-40:
The Howling Eye, List Do Borykan
I don’t often say things like this, but List Do Borykan is worth it for the opening jam of “Space Dwellers, Episode 1.” That does not mean that song’s languid flow, silly stoned space-adventure spoken word narrative, and flashes of dub and psych and so on, are all that Poland’s The Howling Eye have to offer on their third full-length. It’s not. The prior single “Medival” (sic) has a thoughtful arrangement led by post-Claypool funky bass and surf-style guitar, which are swapped out for hard-riff cacophony metal in the second half of the song’s 3:35 run. That pairing sets up a back and forth between longer jams and more structured material, but it’s all pretty out there when you hear the seven song/44 minutes of the entire record, as the 10-minute “Brothers” builds from silence to organ-laced classic rock testimony and then draws itself down to let the funkier/rolling (depending on which part you’re talking about) “Space Dwellers, Episode 2” provide a swaying melodic highlight, and “Caverns” drones into jazz minimalism for nine minutes before “Space Dwellers, Episode 3” goes full-on over-the-top 92-second dance party. Finally. That leaves the closer, “Johnny,” as the landing spot where the back and forth jams/songs trades end, and they’re due a jam and provide one, but “Johnny” also follows on theme from “Space Dwellers, Episode 3” and the start of “Medival” and other funk-psych stretches, so summarizes List Do Borykan well. Again, worth it for the first song, but is much more than just that as a listening experience.
Toronto-based folk experimentalist, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Avi C. Engel starts off the 10-song Sanguinaria with the first of its headphone-ready arrangements “Sing in Our Chains” assessing modernity and realizing, “We were better off in the trees.” In addition to Engel‘s actual voice, which is well capable of carrying records on its own, with a distinctive character, part soft and breathy in delivery but resilient with a kind of bruised grace and, as time goes on, grown more adventurous. In “Poisonous Fruit” and “The Snake in the Mirror,” folk, soul and organically-cast sprawl unfold, and where “A Silver Thread” brings in electric guitar and lap steel, “Deathless” — the longest cut at 6:33, arriving paired with the subsequent, textural “I Died Again” — is sparse at first but builds around whatever stringed instrument Engel (slow talharpa?) is playing and Paul Kolinski‘s banjo, standout vocal harmonies and a subdued keeping of rhythm. Along with Kolinski, Brad Deschamps adds lap steel to the opener and the more-forward-in-percussion “Extasis Boogie,” which is listed as an interlude but nearly five minutes long, and Lys Guillorn contributes lap steel to “A Silver Thread,” with all due landscape manifestation. Sad, complex, and beautiful, the 52-minute long-player isn’t a minor undertaking on any level, and “Personne” and the penultimate “Bridge Behind the Sun” emphasize the point of intricacy before the looping “Larvae” masterfully crafts its resonance across the last six minutes of the album.
Begun in 1993 as Peach, London heavy prog rockers Suns of the Tundra celebrate 30 years with the encompassing hour-long The Only Equation, their fifth album, which brings back past members of the band, has a few songs with two drummers, and is wildly sprawling across 10 still-accessible tracks that shimmer with purpose and melody. The title-track seems to harken to a ’90s push, but the twisting and volume-surging back half stave redundancy ahead of the patient drama in the 10-minute “The Rot,” which follows. On the other side of the metal-leaning “Run Boy Run,” with its big, open, floating, thudding finish representing something Suns of the Tundra do very well throughout, the three-part cycle of “Reach for the Inbetween” could probably just as easily have been one 15-minute cut, but is more palatable as three, and loses nothing of its fluidity for it, the build in the third piece giving due payoff before “The Window is Wide” caps in deceptively hooky style. Whether one approaches it with the context of their decades or not, The Only Equation is deeply welcoming. And no, its proggy prog progness won’t resonate universally, but nothing does, and that doesn’t matter anyhow. Without giving up who they are creatively, Suns of the Tundra have made it as easy as they can for one to get on board. The rest is on the listener.
Natskygge sneak a little “Paranoid” into “Delir,” the instrumental opener/longest track (immediate points) of their second album, Eskapisme, and that’s just fine as dogwhistles go. The Danish classic psych rockers made a well-received self-titled debut in 2020 and look to expand on that outing’s classic vibe with this 34-minute eight-tracker, which is rife with creative ambition in the slower “Lys på vej” and the piano-laced “Fjern planet,” which follows, as well as in a mover/shaker like “Titusind år,” the compact three-minute strutter “Frit fald” or what might be the side B leadoff “Feberdrøm” with its circa-1999 Brant Bjork casual groove and warm fuzz, purposefully veering into psychedelia in a way that feels like a preface for the closing duo “Livet brænder,” an organ/keyboard flourish, grounded verse and airy swirls over top leading smoothly into the likewise-peppered but acoustically-based “Den der sidst gik ud,” which conveys patience without giving up the momentum the band has amassed up to that point. I’ll note that my ignorance of the Danish language doesn’t feel like it’s holding me back as “Fjern planet” holds forth its lush melancholy or “Titusind år” signals the band’s affinity for krautrock. Not quite vintage in production, but not too far off, Eskapisme feels like it was made to be lived with, the songs engaged over a period of years, and I look forward to revisiting accordingly.
Portland’s Last Giant reportedly had a bit of a time recording their fourth long-player, Monuments, in a months-long process involving multiple studios and a handful of producers, among them Adam Pike (Holy Grove, Young Hunter, Red Fang, Mammoth Salmon, etc.) recording basic tracks, Paul Malinowski (Shiner, Open Hand) mixing and three different rounds of mastering. Complicated. Working as the three-piece of founder, principal songwriter, guitarist and vocalist RFK Heise (ex-System and Station), bassist Palmer Cloud and drummer Matt Wiles — it was just Heise and Wiles on 2020’s Let the End Begin (review here) — the band effectively fill in whatever cracks may have been apparent to them in the finished product, and the 10-track/39-minute offering is pop-informed as all their output to-date has been and loaded with heart. Also a bit of trumpet on “Saviors.” There’s swagger in “Blue” and “Hell on Burnside,” and “Feels Like Water” is about as weighted and brash as I’ve heard Last Giant get — a fun contrast to the acoustic “Lost and Losing,” which closes — but wherever a given track ends up, it is deftly guided there by Heise‘s sure hand. Sounds like it was much easier to make than apparently it was.
Growth is either the second or third full-length from Polish heavy psych doomers Moonstone depending on what you count, but by the time you’re about three minutes into the 7:47 of second cut “Bloom” after the gets-loud-at-the-end-anyway atmospheric intro “Harvest” — which establishes an undercurrent of metal that the rest of the six-song/36-minute LP holds even in its quietest parts — ordinal numbering won’t matter anyway. “Bloom” and “Sun” (8:02), which follows, are the longest pieces on Growth, and that in itself speaks to the band stripping back some of their jammier impulses as compared to, say, late 2021’s two-song 12″ 1904 (discussed here), but while the individual tracks may be shorter, they give up nothing as regards largesse of tone or the spaces the band inhabit in the material. Flowing and doomed, “Sun” ends side A and gives over to the extra-bass-punch meditativeness of “Night,” the guitar building in the second half to solo for the payoff, while the six-minutes-each “Lust” and “Emerald” filter Electric Wizard haze and the proggy volume trades of countrymen like Spaceslug, respectively, close with due affirmation of purpose in big tone, big groove, and a noteworthy dark streak that may yet come to the fore of their approach.
It’s not quite the centerpiece, but in terms of the general perspective on the world of the record from which it comes, there’s little arguing with Sonic Demon‘s “F.O.A.D.” as the declarative statement on Veterans of the Psychic War. As with Norway’s Darkthrone, who released an LP titled F.O.A.D. in 2007, Sonic Demon‘s “F.O.A.D.” stands for ‘fuck off and die,’ and that seems to be the central ethic they’re working from. Like most of what surrounds on the Italian duo’s follow-up to 2021’s Vendetta (review here), “F.O.A.D.” is coated in tonal dirt, a nastiness of buzz in line with the stated mentality making songs like swinging opener “Electric Demon” and “Lucifer’s the Light,” which follows, raw even by post-Uncle Acid garage doom standards. There are moments of letup, as in the wah-swirling second half of “The Black Pill,” a bit of psych bookending in “Wolfblood,” or the penultimate (probably thankfully) instrumental “Sexmagick Nights,” but the forward drive in “The Gates” highlights the point of Sonic Demon hand-drilling their riffs into the listener’s skull, and the actually-stoned-sounding groove of closer “To Hell and Back” seems pleased to bask in the filth the album has wrought.
If you’re taking on From the Ages‘ deceptively-titled first full-length, II — the trio of guitarist Paul Dudziak, bassist Sean Fredrich and drummer David Tucker issued their I EP in 2021, so this is their second release overall — it is perhaps useful to know that the only inclusion with vocals is opener/longest track (immediate points) “Harbinger.” An automatic focal point for that, for its transposed Sleep influence, and for being about four minutes longer than anything else on the album, it draws well together with the five sans-vox cuts that follow, with an exploratory sensibility in its jam that feels like it may be from whence a clearly-plotted song like “Maelstrom” or the lumbering volume trades of “Tenebrous” originate. Full in tone and present in the noisy slog and pre-midpoint drift of “Epoch” as well as Dudziak‘s verses in “Harbinger,” From the Ages seem willful in their intention to try out different ideas, whether that’s the winding woe of “Obsolescence” or the acoustilectric standalone guitar of closer “Providence,” and while that can make the listener less sure of where their development might take them in stylistic terms, that only results in their being more exciting to hear in the now.
Not only is Astral Magic‘s Cosmic Energy Flow — released in May of this year — not the first outing from the Finnish space rock outfit led by project founder and spearhead Santtu Laakso in 2023, it’s the eighth. And that doesn’t include the demo short release with a live band. It’s also not the latest Astral Magic about two months after the fact, as Laakso and company have put out two full-lengths since. Unrealistic as this level of productivity is — surely the work of dimensional timeporting — and already-out-of-date as the eight-song/42-minute LP might be, it also brings Laakso into collaboration with the late Nik Turner of Hawkwind, who plays sax on the opening title-track, as well as guitarists Ilya Lipkin of Russia’s The Re-Stoned and Stefan Olesinski (Nuns on Napalm), and vocalists Christina Poupoutsi (The Higher Craft, The Meads of Asphodel, etc.) and Kev Ellis (Dubbal, Heliotrope, etc.), and where one might think so many personnel shifts around Laakso‘s synth-forward basic tracks would result in a disjointed offering, well, anything can happen in space and when you throw open doors in such a way, expectations broaden accordingly. Maybe it’s just one thing on the way to the next, maybe it’s the record with Nik Turner. Either way, Astral Magic move inextricably deeper into the known and unknown cosmos.
Until the solo hits in the second half of “The Barrens,” you almost don’t realize how much space there is in the mix on Green Inferno‘s Trace the Veins. The New Jersey trio like it dank and deathly as they answer the rawness of their 2019 demo with the six Esben Willems-mastered tracks of their first album, porting over “Spellcaster” and “Unearth the Tombs” to rest in the same mud as malevolent plodders like “Carried to the Pit” and the penultimate “Vultures,” which adds higher-register screaming to the already-established low growls — I doubt it’s actually an influence, but I’m reminded of Amorphis circa Elegy — that give the whole outing such an extreme persona if the guitar and bass tones weren’t already taking care of it. The tortured feel there carries into closer “Crown the Virgin” as the three-piece attempt to stomp their own riffs into oblivion along with everything else, and one can only hope they get there. New songs or the two older tracks, doesn’t matter. At any angle you might choose, Green Inferno are slow-churned extreme sludge, death-sludge if you want, fully stoned, drenched in murk, disillusioned, misanthropic. It’s the sound of looking at the world around you and deciding it’s not worth saving. Did I mention stoned? Good.
