Hollow Leg hit me up a couple months back and asked if I could write them an intro to the press kit going out to media for their new EP, Dust. That release is coming up May 3 and where I’ve struggled in the task is getting over the initial question of why the hell do I need to introduce Hollow Leg in the first place? Rooted in Jacksonville and based in Orlando, Florida, they’ve been at it for 16 years and have produced four full-lengths in that time, the latest of them being Civilizations (review here) in 2019, each of which has brought a new stage of an ongoing progression around a defined sound of hard-landing tonal weight, undulating sludge grooves led by Brent Lynch‘s riffs backed by Tom Crowther‘s bass and John Stewart‘s drums, and more than an edge of metal in the vocals of Scott Angelacos that cut through the distortion and establish their own aggressive stance.
Do I have to tell you any of this? I don’t think so. If you’ve ever heard them, their consistency of volume hardly seems to be trying to keep their sound a secret. They’ve never been overly hyped, and while they’ve toured their share in the last decade-and-a-half-plus, including along the Eastern Seaboard in 2023 around a third appearance at Maryland Doom Fest, their sound isn’t friendly and I think they’ve been both taken for granted and underappreciated. Civilizations marked a noted progression in their sound — every one of their releases has been a step forward from the one before it — and Dust continues the thread in an emergent lean toward melodic vocals, reminding on the advance single “Poison Bite” that Angelacos was among the small number of singers enlisted to pay homage to Earthride‘s Dave Sherman at that same Maryland Doom Fest last year, and a tunnel-bore nod stately enough to conjure High on Fire‘s slowdown moments, bolstered by a production that allows it all to coexist fluidly for its 3:34.
That’s right. Frickin’ three and a half minutes. Not a major ask. And for a band who’ve plugged away in the heavy underground long enough to be called legit veterans of it and perhaps afforded some semblance of the respect they’ve earned, it feels like even less of a favor. Hollow Leg do more to represent themselves with the feedback, thuds, crash and burst into the verse of “Poison Bite” than I could ever hope to by telling you you should already know them like some jerkwad gatekeeper. So maybe that’s been my problem all along. This shit speaks for itself, and it’s not about some social-media-FOMO urgency of ‘get the new thing while it’s new and move on a week later.’ It’s about the heart so clearly driving the band and the creative pursuit that’ll go as long as it’s gonna go regardless of scene or trend, fire, flood, plague or hyperbole. That’s who Hollow Leg are, if you needed the introduction.
Dust arrives May 3. It’s on the calendar to stream here in full on May 1, so keep an eye out. It’s a two-parter and as of last week, the band was back in the studio to work on the follow-up installment. More on that when we get there.
Here’s the video for “Poison Bite” to tide you over until then, followed by info from the PR wire.
Please enjoy:
Hollow Leg, “Poison Bite” video premiere
Hollow Leg are here for the long haul. The sludge and doom veterans have been crushing skulls and blowing eardrums since 2010, and continue their scorched-earth quest to evolve and eviscerate in 2024.
Legends of the scene, the quartet are four LPs and an EP strong, with their latest album “Civilizations” released in 2019 on Argonauta Records to critical acclaim. Criss-crossing the US to spread their heavy gospel of groove, they brutalized the stage of Psycho Las Vegas in 2017, and are three-time champions of the revered Maryland Doom Fest.
This year, Hollow Leg take another earth-shaking step in their sonic journey with new EP “Dust” out May 3, part one of a two-part EP series.
Coalescing their wide range of musical influences while still maintaining the unmistakable Hollow Leg sound, the band invite you to raise hell and headbang along to the EP’s battering ram of a single “Poison Bite” and its accompanying music video.
Relentless is the name of the game. From the opening sledgehammer of the kickdrum, “Poison Bite” takes no prisoners. The mid-tempo groove is locked-in and rock steady, inevitable in its forward momentum and ceaseless, grinding pummel. True to form, Scott Angelacos’ growling vocals roar over the noise, spitting fire and brimstone. Hollow Leg is back, and it hurts so good.
In the band’s own words: “We’re always writing and playing and working on new music is just what we do, always trying to build on our sound and make the next piece a more clearly defined vision than the last. We have such a wide range of musical and artistic influences that it’s challenging to wrangle them, but we try our best to work within the ‘Hollow Leg’ mainframe and pump out something different than what we’ve done before, but also something that’s still obviously Hollow Leg. Hollow Leg is about freedom though. That’s been the mantra since the first record and we’ve always stuck to that! It’s about pushing ourselves and finding ways to simultaneously party with Metallica, Steely Dan, EyeHateGod, Wu Tang Clan, Stevie Wonder, and Pink Floyd and it somehow makes sense to us!”
Hollow Leg is: Scott Angelacos – vocals Brent Lynch – guitar/backing vocals Tom Crowther – bass John Stewart – drums
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 23rd, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Honestly, you had me at the phrase ‘behind the door of the sepulchre of pain.’ I’m a simple creature, after all, and drama-laced downer doom suits me just fine, feeling feelings and all that. Orlando, Florida, solo-project Somnent‘s second album, Gardens From Graves, alternates between shorter and longer tracks and has plenty of deathly bludgeon to go with its beauty-in-darkness resonance, and oh, I do like the title-track, throaty growls, softer, post-Opeth/Katatonia cleans and all. Giovanni Antonio Vigliotti, who made his debut as Somnent in 2015, has a dry-throat growl that sounds like it genuinely hurts, and the instrumental constructs he places behind it are fluid and purposeful, patient and encompassing. This isn’t everyone’s kind of metal, but even down to its acoustic bonus tracks, it’s a microgenre within doom that’s expressive unto itself.
It’s amazing to think it comes from someplace so warm. The 2017 debut LP, Sojourn, is streaming below. The new record — no public audio yet — refines melody and production alike, just for context.
The PR wire has release details. Gardens From Graves is out Oct. 25 on GS Productions:
Somnent to release second album, Gardens From Graves, on October 25th
Beneath the soil of scars and tears, nestled within a loam of lonely, silent nights and days blighted by cold stares and barbed words lie the patient seeds of fresh hope. A kernel of strength, a tiny heart of iron hidden within the darkness, waiting for the sun. Within the boneyard of loss and spite, behind the door of the sepulchre of pain, small eyes wait and watch for the memories to fade and the clouds of oppression to part…
The pain of emotional abuse and the determination to overcome its lasting wounds, the days of despair along the path to recovery, the suffocating darkness that threatens to overwhelm and that desperate, agonising but wonderful breath of hard fought for air; all of these infuse the intensely melancholic but utterly beautiful melodic death doom metal of Somnent’s new album. Gardens From Graves has the power to carry your heart through each step of this journey and it’s a listening experience that will leave you breathless. There is an honesty and integrity of emotion within these songs that goes far beyond any form of artistry or artifice. The sheer weight of sorrow can at times leave you frantic to escape the gloom, a living thing buried in its sleep, clawing through the earth. Yet the moments of peace, the beautiful melodies woven by the guitar and vocals are sublime. The greatest art is that which makes the listener or beholder feel – deeply and passionately – and the chalice of Gardens From Graves is overflowing with emotion. The rhythms align with your heartbeat, the lead work carries your spirit and the voice immerses your soul in a lake of tears – of pain, of sadness and hope.
Gardens From Graves is the realisation of all the potential displayed on Somnent’s previous releases, the Eventide EP of 2015 and the full length debut album, Sojourn, which came out in 2017. Featuring a guest appearance from Jari Lindholm (Enshine, Exgenesis) and evocative artwork created by Augusto Peixoto (Sinister Realm, In Solitude etc) this exquisite tome of doomed, melancholic metal will be released on October 25th by GS Productions. As winter draws in, clouds will cover the sky and your hearts will be forged anew in the cold flames of grief.
“This sorrow won’t last forever, even if some scars remain”
Tracklisting: 1. Silhouette 2. Acquiescence 3. Despite the Scourge 4. Fragments 5. Gardens from Graves 6. Blackened Heart feat. Jari Lindholm 7. Withered to a Shadow 8. Resolve [Bonus Track] 9. Fragments Acoustic [Bonus Track]
Line-up: Giovanni Antonio Vigliotti – All music and vocals
Posted in Reviews on September 28th, 2017 by JJ Koczan
Day two of the Quarterly Review and feeling groovy so far. Managed to survive yesterday thanks in no small part to good music and good coffee, and looking at what’s coming up in today’s batch, I don’t expect the situation will be much different — though the styles will. I try to keep in mind as I put these weeks together to change up what’s in each round, so it’s not just all psych records, or all doom, or heavy rock or whatever else. This way I’m not burning myself out on anything particular and I hopefully don’t wind up saying the same things about albums that maybe only share vague genre aspects in common — riffs, etc. — in the same way. Essentially trying to trick my brain into being creative. Sometimes it even works. Let’s see how it fares today.
Quarterly Review #11-20:
Spotlights, Seismic
After touring hard with the likes of Melvins, Deftones and Refused, heavy post-rockers Spotlights mark their first release on Ipecac Recordings with their second album, Seismic, which finds the core duo of Mario and Sarah Quintero working with producer Aaron Harris (Isis) to follow-up 2016’s Tidals with 65 minutes/11 tracks of weighted atmospherics and far-spanning melodic textures as shown on emotive heft-bringers like “Ghost of a Glowing Forest.” Heavygaze, I suppose, is the genre tag that’s emerged, but with the opening title-track, the chugging “Learn to Breathe” and the later percussive turns of “A Southern Death,” there’s as much focus on crush as on ambience, though as Seismic makes its way through the pair of eight-minute tracks “Hollow Bones” (wonder if they know the 30 Rock reference they’re making) and “Hang us All” before the minimal subdued drones and melodic effects swirls of closer “The Hope of a Storm,” Spotlights succeed in finding a middle ground that offers plenty of both. In its moments of intensity and its range, Seismic builds cohesion from ether and immediately benefits from the purposeful growth the Quinteros have clearly undertaken over the past year by hitting the road with the dedication they have.
Bay Area rockers War Cloud don’t get too fancy on their self-titled debut, which they make via Ripple Music as the follow-up to their 2016 single Vulture City (discussed here), but as they prove quickly in the dual-guitar Thin Lizzyisms of opener “Give’r” and the later post-Motörhead/Peter Pan Speedrock careening of “Speed Demon,” neither do they necessarily need to. Comprised of guitarists Alex Wein (also vocals) and Tony Campos, bassist Sean Nishi and drummer Joaquin Ridgell, War Cloud offer 31 minutes of brisk, unpretentious asskickery, riffs trading channels at the outset of “Hurricane” as it makes ready to settle into its proto-thrashing rocker groove, and the mood of the release as a whole engaging as much through its reimagining 20-year-old Metallica as a heavy rock band there as on the more grandly riff-led “Divide and Conquer.” Structures are straightforward, and not one of the eight tracks tops five minutes, but they’re more than enough for War Cloud find their place between metal form and heavy rock tone, and cuts like “Chopper Wired” and brazenly charged closer “Vulture City” nail the core message of the band’s arrival.
Rubble Road ain’t hurtin’ nobody. The Orlando-based double-guitar four-piece take two prior singles and put them together with four new tracks as their 29-minute/six-song debut EP, The Clowns Have Spoken, and thereby bring forth straightforward heavy rock that seems to be finding its personality in tone but nonetheless has a strong structural foundation underlying that holds up the material and “The Judge” tosses in a bit of metallic gallop to go with the forward-directed heavy rock proffered on the prior “Galactic Fugitives” and “Gospel (Get it Together).” I won’t say much for the politics of “Truck Stop Hooker,” which caps with the line, “Your mother gives great helmet, baby,” but “Wizard Staff” and “Do it Yourself” broaden the dynamic of the release overall. They’ve got some growing to do, but again, there’s an efficiency in their songwriting that comes through these songs, and as an initial showcase/demo, The Clowns Have Spoken shows Rubble Road with the potential to continue to grow.
You might check out the self-titled debut from Austin, Texas, duo Monte Luna. You might even pick up the digipak or tape version. You might listen to extended tracks like “Nameless City” (12:53) and “6,000 Year March” (17:42) and be like, “Yeah, cool riffs dudes.” You might even then chase down the The Hound EP that guitarist/vocalist/bassist James Clarke and drummer/synthesist Phil Hook put out last year. At some point though, you’re going to put Monte Luna’s Monte Luna on your shelf and leave it there. Fair enough. However – and I’m not going to say when; could be sooner, could be later — then you’re going to find yourself remembering its massive, 71-minute sprawl of riffs, its doomed-out grooves, shouts, screams, growls and the way its builds become so utterly immersive, and you’re going to put Monte Luna on again. And that’s the moment when it will really hit you. It might take some time, and part of that is no doubt that there’s simply a lot of record to wade through, but whether it’s the rumbling start of “Nightmare Frontier” (14:26), the cacophonous stomp of “Inverted Mountain” (12:04) or the righteous crash of “The End of Beginning” (9:42), Monte Luna will have earned that deeper look, and if you allow them to make that deeper impression with their self-titled, they almost certainly will.
Newcomer five-piece High Reeper telegraph Sabbathian heavy rocker intent with their self-released, self-titled debut album. The Delaware-based lineup of Zach Thomas, Napz Mosley, Andrew Price, Pat Daly and Shane Trimble make no bones about their roots in opener “Die Slow,” and as the stoner-swinging “High Reeper,” the doom-swaggering “Reeper Deadly Reeper” and the yo-check-out-this-bassline nodder “Weed and Speed” play out in the record’s midsection, it seems increasingly likely that, sooner or later, some imprint or other will pick up High Reeper for a wider release. As the band demonstrates through the stomping “Soul Taker” and the seeming mission statement “Black Leather (Chose Us)” ahead of closer “Friend of Death,” which breaks its six minutes in half between Judas Priest thrust and an instrumental finish that calls to mind “Heaven and Hell,” they’ve got a keen ear for updating classic elements, and though formative, their first outing is cleverly memorable and an immediately resonant display of songcraft. Now we know High Reeper can engage these stylistic components — the test will be how they develop them into something individualized going forward.
Frozen Planet….1969, From the Centre of a Parallel Universe
From the Centre of a Parallel Universe is the second long-player of 2017 from Sydney/Canberra’s Frozen Planet….1969. It arrives on CD through Pepper Shaker and LP via Headspin with five tracks/43 minutes of improv-style psych jams following suit from the prior Electric Smokehouse (review here) and helps to bring the band’s funk-infused, spacious dynamic all the more into focus. Also out of focus. Like, blurry vision-style. They range far and wide and keep the proceedings delightfully weird in the three extended pieces “Celestial Gambler,” “Through Hell’s Kaleidoscope, Parts I & II” and “Ancient Wings Taking Flight” – all north of 11 minutes – and with “Signals (Channelling…)” and “The Lady and the Archer” leading the way into each LP side, Frozen Planet….1969 take the time to assure they’re bringing their listeners along with them on their potent journey into the cosmically far out. The must-hear bass tone in “Ancient Wings Taking Flight” is but one of many reasons to dig in, but whatever it takes, From the Centre of a Parallel Universe’s invitation to get lost is not one to be missed.
Chicago’s history with instrumentalist post-metal goes back as far as the notion of the subgenre itself with acts like Pelican and Russian Circles providing aesthetic-defining landmarks over the last 15-plus years even as a group like Bongripper embraces darker, more lumbering fare. The four-piece Zaius, who make their full-length debut with Of Adoration on Prosthetic Records after two self-released EPs in 2013 and 2011, position themselves more toward the shimmering airiness of the former rather than the latter’s raw lumber, but there’s heft to be found in the expanses of “Sheepdog” and “Seirenes” all the same, and the second half of “Echelon” and closer “Colin” tighten up some of the ethereality of pieces like opener “Phaneron” and the driftingly progressive “Reformer” or the penultimate, patient rollout of “Anicca” to hone a sense of balance that feels as emotionally driven as it is cerebral in its construction. Hard for a band like Zaius to stand themselves out at this point given the swath of acts working in a similar style in and out of the Windy City, but in its textural approach and held-steady flow, Of Adoration satisfies.
Portuguese post-doomers Process of Guilt hit the 15-year mark with the release of their fourth album, Black Earth (on Division/Bleak Recordings), and with a mix by Brooklyn noise-rock specialist Andrew Schneider, a mastering job by Collin Jordan in Chicago and striking cover art by growler/guitarist Hugo Santos with images by Pedro Almeida, the sense of atmosphere is thick and the mood is aggressive throughout. Santos, along with guitarist Nuno David, bassist Custódio Rato and drummer Gonçalo Correia chug and flow through a linear 42 minutes and five tracks on the suitably darkened offering, touching on progressive nuance but not letting cerebral underpinnings take away from the onslaught feel of “Feral Ground” or the tension mounted early in the 11-minute penultimate title-track, which uses feedback as a weapon throughout no less capably than the subsequent closer “Hoax” affects immediately with its nodding tonal wash. Taken as a whole, Black Earth finds Process of Guilt exploring depths of their sound as much as with it, and the directions they go feel as much inward as out.
The challenge for an outfit like Stockholm’s Sundus Abdulghani & Trunk, whose self-titled debut arrives via respected purveyor Kozmik Artifactz, lies separating themselves from the shadow of fellow Swedes Blues Pills, whose semi-psych heavy-blues-rocking first album has cast a wide influence that can be heard here as well as in any number of other bands currently kicking around the Euro underground proffering as balance of soul and heavy rock as songs like “It Ain’t Love (But Close Enough)” and “Like Water” do here. Where Sundus Abdulghani & Trunk most succeed in doing this is in the harmonies of “Black Magic Man,” which brings to mind classic acid folk while holding to a heavy blues vibe, but there are other moments throughout when individuality flourishes as well. The attitude is laid on a bit thick in “Them Dames,” but the hooks of “Sister Sorrow,” “She Knows,” “The Devil’s Got a Hold on You” and “Stay” and the burgeoning sense of arrangements complementing Abdulghani’s vocals do well in helping cast an identity one hopes will continue to develop.
Conceived by guitarist/vocalist Andrew Spiers, bassist/vocalist Steve Hobson and drummer Damien McKeown, Banbridge trio Owlcrusher conjure three extended, slicing slabs of black-singed sludge extremity on their self-titled Seeing Red Records debut, and it’s enough to make one wonder just what the fuck is going on in Northern Ireland to inspire such outright bleakness. Beginning with the 16-minute “Feeble Preacher” (also the longest inclusion here; immediate points), Owlcrusher’s Owlcrusher lumbers excruciatingly forth with screams and growls cutting through a tonality geared for max-volume consumption, though it remains to be seen who is consuming whom as “Feeble Preacher” gives way to the likewise scorched eponymous “Owlcrusher” (11:30) and 15-minute closer “Spoiler,” the last of which brings the only real moment of letup on the album after about nine minutes in, and even that takes the form of an interlude of Khanate-style minimalist ambience before the rolling megacrush resumes and plods to a somehow-even-heavier finish. Clearly a band pushing themselves toward the superlative, Owlcrusher get there much faster than their crawling tones would have you believe. Madness.
Legends of the scene, the quartet are four LPs and an EP strong, with their latest album “Civilizations” released in 2019 on Argonauta Records to critical acclaim. Criss-crossing the US to spread their heavy gospel of groove, they brutalized the stage of Psycho Las Vegas in 2017, and are three-time champions of the revered Maryland Doom Fest.
