Posted in Whathaveyou on February 15th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Released in the waning hours of 2022, Time//Wounds (review here) feels like an especially bold album for Mos Generator in terms of style. Yeah, the Port Orchard heavy rockers led by prolific madman guitarist/vocalist/producer Tony Reed have long since delved into progressive sounds, but never with such a surety of purpose as they do on their latest work. It’s not about “going prog” or something like that, like it’s 1974 and all of a sudden a what had been blues band sounds like Yes or some such, but about incorporating a new range of scope to Mos Generator‘s well established penchant for songcraft and melody. Not the kind of record a band would make out of the gate, rather, it is the beneficiary of the years and decades of experience of Reed in and out of the band as well as the chemistry he shares with bassist Sean Booth and drummer Jono Garrett.
They’ve settled down touring for the last several years, even since such a thing became possible again, and fair enough for how hard they went from around 2014-2018, but as they take more chances on this record, it’s satisfying in a way to see them meet with success on the listener end. That would seem to be what’s underlying this announcement of a second pressing of Time//Wounds since, inevitably, the reason they’re making more records is because they sold through the first pressing and think people will continue to buy. No doubt that’s the case, and bonus for fixing typos in the lyric sheet. As someone who regularly corrects spelling and grammatical errors from, say, a decade ago, on this site, I find it easy to appreciate that kind of thing, frustrating as it is that there’s no shortage of them wanting correction.
In any case, good for Mos Gen, and though it’s only been about three months since the record came out, you know Reed will have something new on tap for this year as well, whatever form that might take.
Here’s the band’s update:
Hello friends. For those of you who didn’t get a copy of Time//Wounds on vinyl before it sold out or you just like to collect different versions of the same record…the second pressing of Time//Wounds arrived at my door yesterday and I’ve put it up in the store. 200 copies on black vinyl.
It has the same audio as the 1st pressing but there are many changes to the artwork layout of the second edition (including the fixing of MANY typos on the lyric sheet). We’ve been getting some amazing feedback on this album and we truly appreciate the support of people buying it and letting us (and the social media public) know how they feel about it.
Mos Generator: Tony Reed: guitar/vocals/mellotron Jono Garrett: drums Sean Booth: bass
Posted in Reviews on December 2nd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Time//Wounds is the fifth album since Port Orchard, Washington’s Mos Generator returned from the ether of hiatus with 2012’s Nomads(review here). The second era of the band is now longer than the first, as and as six tracks of Time//Wounds — issued through Music Abuse and Pale Wizard Records following a trilogy on Listenable Records in 2014’s Electric Mountain Majesty(review here), 2016’s Abyssinia (review here) and 2018’s Shadowlands (review here) — time matters.
Accompanying this return to activity in terms of full studio LPs has been a glutton’s delight of short releases, splits, self-bootlegs, unearthed demos, one offs, a solo album from founding guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist/producer Tony Reed, as well as several other Reed-inclusive side-projects, including Big Scenic Nowhere, Constance Tomb, Hot Spring Water, in-depth work with Australia’s Seedy Jeezus as producer and player, and more besides. As stretches of time go, it’s been a good one to be a Mos Generator fan.
Since Electric Mountain Majesty and particularly across recent EPs like 2019’s Spontaneous Combustions (review here), 2016’s The Firmament, and even the demos that showed up on their 2020 split with Di’Aul (review here), the band have moved in multifaceted fashion toward a more progressive approach from their foundation in more straightforward classic heavy rock. True, they’ve never lacked ambition, and they’ve done strongly thematic work before such as the concept album The Late Great Planet Earth in 2005, but particularly as Reed has grown more comfortable with various synth instrumentation and worked to flesh out his own vocal arrangements, the direction the band — completed by Sean Booth on bass and Jono Garrett, whose contributions aren’t to be minimized in how these recordings sound; I don’t know their dynamic in the studio, but it’s safe to say nothing is ending up on a Mos Generator record that Reed didn’t approve even if for diplomacy — but 20 years on from their self-titled debut (reissue review here), Time//Wounds seems to complete a turn toward a vision of performance-rooted progressive heavy rock that is both classic in substance and very much Mos Generator‘s and Reed‘s own.
Influenced by a deeper knowledge of original-era heavy and prog than one could ever aspire to amass, as well as his own roots as a player in more punkish fare — looking at you, “Getting Good at Revenge,” which reminds of bit of Mos Generator doing Fu Manchu at their own most punk — and indeed the work Reed has done as a songwriter to bring the band to this point, the 43 minutes of Time//Wounds carry something of an exploratory feel for the finished versions being created using what were the demo tracks for the songs.
This process has been a more than a year long front to back, and accompanying the rawer underpinnings is, instrumentally and vocally, the most complex material Mos Generator have released. To wit, the Opethian bridge(s) of partially-acoustic second cut “(Don’t) Wait Until Tomorrow” or the 14-minute finale “Until We Meet Again (Parts I-IV),” which indeed plays out structurally in movements flowing one into the next. That these moves take place alongside the prog-funky keyboard in “Burn Away the Years,” which is almost garage rock in its strum, is emblematic of the stylistic sprawl brought to bear under the heading of Time//Wounds. King Crimson, Motorpsycho, MC5, Beatles and who else? It doesn’t even matter since it all comes out as Mos Generator anyhow.
That, as it happens, is a major unifying factor throughout the songs. Another is an abiding sense of melancholy — certainly present in the cover photo by singer-songwriter Conny Ochs as well — that’s present from the less-than-thrilled-sounding opening verse of “Aja-Minor” (premiered here), “…Don’t lose your time/You ain’t got none…,” onward. Immediately, the engagement with time is at the forefront, and by the time the hook comes around with layers of Reed almost taunting himself, “Time wounds/What you got what you got in your head/N-n-nothing,” the inevitable connection between temporality and mortality is writ large without being said at all. If this is Mos Generator confronting death, they do so in almost manic but inherently still plotted fashion.
Time is almost everywhere throughout — “(Don’t) Wait Until Tomorrow,” “Burn Away the Years,” the also-linear-structured just-under-eight-minute penultimate track “Only Yesterday,” which likely starts the side B stretch-out that continues in “Until We Meet Again (Parts I-IV)” and feels born of a similar process. Shadowlands was likewise not without its darker streak, and I suppose one might say the same of the preceding records in this era of the band too, to some degree or other, but the contrast born with Time//Wounds is striking. Some of these melodies, tones and grooves are bright and near-soaring, and they carry with them an existential weight that goes even beyond the more intense shove of “Getting Good at Revenge.”
It’s not necessarily a pall this casts over Time//Wounds, but it’s a shadow in the tapestry. And as Mos Generator adventure into new ideas in terms of their sound as a unit and in Reed‘s songwriting, the seemingly lighthearted strum of “Burn Away the Years” — “Never give in and never look back at the smoke” — and the churning layers of synthesizer and guitar that ensue want nothing for clarity of purpose. It is Mos Generator growing older, weirder, but maintaining the surefootedness of craft that has always been a an essential component of the band’s work. Time wounds and time heals in “Aja-Minor,” and the lyrics of “Burn Away the Years” seem reluctantly reconciled to being “another birthday song,” but even if the album holds a scope that can feel disjointed at first glance, there’s always a course charted beneath the surface, and on the most fundamental level, the songs are too thoughtful and intricately made to be anything other than progressive rock.
I expect some listeners won’t know what to make of it — even longtime followers might be surprised — but those who find themselves able to invest properly in the mission and the message here, a record that seems to describe the urgency of its own making even before the first track is done while also stretching out in ways the band never has before, will find it nothing but a triumph. That won’t be everybody, but it will definitely be some, and with what Reed, Booth and Garrett conjure in these tracks, I feel like Mos Generator have never been less predictable for what might come next. Especially given their history, let alone the fleeting nature of all things, that in itself seems worthy of appreciating. This is the output of a master of the form refusing to not challenge himself. In other words, the way art moves forward.
Mos Generator will release their awaited full-length, Time//Wounds, on Dec. 16 through Music Abuse Records and Pale Wizard Records. And as I tell you it’s been four years since the Tony Reed-led, Port Orchard, Washington-based heavy rock trio released their last album, 2018’s Shadowlands (review here), understand that the count of years comes with the caveat of a steady stream of EPs, remasters, compilation appearances, live recordings, side-projects from Reed and sundry other one-offs. I’ve said on multiple occasions that Tony Reed — joined on Time//Wounds by bassist Sean Booth and drummer Jono Garrett after briefly reuniting the original lineup of the band this year for a couple live shows; wonder if they were recorded — has a work ethic that I consider deeply inspiring on a personal level in that he wakes up each morning and hits it. These are the levels of productivity to which one aspires.
Time//Wounds states its central themes plainly, and “Aja-Minor” (premiering below) arrives as the opening track and the leadoff for a deeply progressive and intricately arranged collection of progressive but classically structured heavy rock. Songs like the acoustic-led “(Don’t) Wait Until Tomorrow” and the subsequent melodic roller “Burn Away the Years” lay out the premise in lines like, “Until it’s over, never look behind,” etc., amid intricate fuzz and fluidly arranged keyboard/Mellotron. I’d be surprised if “Getting Good on Revenge” isn’t released as a single after “Aja-Minor” since it’s a rocker and the component barn-burner, setting up the more extended reach of “Only Yesterday” and the 14-minute “Until We Meet Again,” parts of which, if they came from Belgium, would probably be hailed as groundbreaking post-black metal but are nonetheless a grand unfolding that is distinctly the band’s own in that it is executed with a surprising lack of pretense for something that’s both so long and so grandiose in style.
This is basically an album announcement — SO HEY, there’s an album coming! Here’s a song off it! I sincerely hope you enjoy and look forward to having Time//Wounds as a late highlight for 2022, because that’s exactly what it’s gonna be.
Some comment from Reed follows the song below:
Mos Generator, “Aja-Minor” track premiere
Tony Reed on “Aja-Minor”:
Like many of the songs on the Time//Wounds album, Aja-Minor is about time and the decisions that are made as the years pass by. I feel like the lyrics are a message to the young telling them not to waste a moment in this life. Musically, the track goes through many changes and it’s hard for me to pinpoint direct influences, but I think the initial spark for the song comes from the fact that I am using a tuning that Joni Mitchell uses on her Hejira album. Using that tuning allowed for chord voicings I wouldn’t normally use and helped to create a piece of music I’m very satisfied with. I think it’s a condensed representation of the rest of the album. Progressive rock with pop elements.
From the album “Time//Wounds”. Coming December 16th on Music Abuse Records (vinyl) & Pale Wizard Records (cd)
Mos Generator: Tony Reed: guitar/vocals/mellotron Jono Garrett: drums Sean Booth: bass
Posted in Reviews on September 22nd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
On occasion, throughout the last eight years or so that I’ve been doing this kind of Quarterly Review roundup thing, I’ve been asked how I do it. The answer is appallingly straightforward. I do it one record at a time, listening to as much music as possible and writing as much as I can. If you were curious, there you go.
If, more likely, you weren’t curious, now you know anyway. Shall we?
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Russian Circles, Gnosis
You wanna know how big a deal Russian Circles are? I didn’t even get a promo of this record. Granted, I’m nobody, but still. So anyway, here I am like a fucking sucker, about to tell you Gnosis is the heaviest and most intense thing Russian Circles — with whose catalog I’m just going to assume you’re familiar because they’re that big a deal and you’re pretty hip; bet you got a download to review, or at least an early stream — have ever done and it means literally nothing. Just makes me feel stupid and lame. I really want to like this album. That chug in “Conduit?” Fuck yeah. That wash in “Betrayal?” Even that little minimalist stretch of “Ó Braonáin.” The way “Tupilak” rumbles to life at the outset. That’s my shit right there. Chug chug crush crush, pretty part. So anyway, instead of sweating it forever, I’ll probably shut Gnosis off when I’m done here and never listen to it again. Thanks. Who gives a shit? Exactly. Means nothing to anyone. Tell me why I do this? Why even give it the space? Because they’re that big a deal and I’m the nerdy fat kid forever. Total fucking stooge. Fuck it and fuck you too.
Are not all gods mere substitutes for the power of human voices united in song? And why not tonight for finding the grace within us? As Brother Bill, Sister Caroline and their all-colours Septaphonic congregation of siblings tell us, we’re only one step away. I know you’ve been dragged down, wrung out, you’ve seen the valleys and hills, but now’s the time. Church of the Cosmic Skull come forward again with the message of galactic inner peace and confronting the unreality of reality through choral harmonies and progressive heavy rock and roll, and even the Cosmic Mother herself must give ear. Come, let us bask in the light of pure illumination and revolutionary suicide. Let us find what we lost somewhere. All gods die, but you and I can live forever and spread ourselves across the universe like so much dust from the Big Bang. We’ll feel the texture of the paper. We’ll be part of the team. Oh, fellow goers into the great Far Out, there’s reverence being sung from the hills with such spirit behind it. Can you hear? Will you? There’s nothing to fear here, nothing sinister. Nothing to be lost except that which has held you back all along. Let it all move, and go. Open your eyes to feel all seven rays, and stand peeled like an onion, naked, before the truth being told. Do this. Today.
Saarbrücken duo Pretty Lightning follow 2020’s stellar Jangle Bowls (review here) with a collection of 14 instrumental passages that, for all their willful meandering, never find themselves lost. Heady, Dead Meadowy vibes persist on ramblers like “Sediment Swing” and “Splinter Bowl,” but through spacious drone and the set-the-mood-for-whatever “Glide Gently (Into the Chasm),” which is both opener and the longest track (immediate points) at just over five minutes, the clear focus is on ambience. I wouldn’t be the first to liken some of Dust Moves to Morricone, and sure, “Powdermill” has some of that Dollars-style reverb and “The Secret is Locked Inside” lays out a subtle nighttime threat in its rattlesnake shaker, but these ideas are bent and shaped to Pretty Lightning‘s overarching purpose, and even with 14 songs, the fact that the album only runs 43 minutes should tell you that even as they seem to head right into the great unknown wilderness of intent, they never dwell in any single position for too long, and are in no danger of overstaying their welcome. Extra kudos for the weirdness of “Crystal Waltz” tucked right into the middle of the album next to “The Slow Grinder.” Sometimes experiments work.
Combining burly modern heavy riffage, progressive flourish and a liberal dose of chicanery, Montana’s Wizzerd end up in the realm of Howling Giant and a more structurally-straightforward Elder without sounding directly like either of them. Their Fuzzorama Records label debut, the quizzically punctuated Space‽: Issue No. 001 echoes its title’s obvious nods to comic book culture with a rush of energy in songs like “Super Nova” and “Attack of the Gargantuan Moon Spiders,” the swinging “Don’t Zorp ‘n’ Warp” space-progging out in its second half as though to emphasize the sheer delight on the part of the band doing something unexpected. So much the better if they’re having fun too. The back half of the outing after the duly careening “Space Chase” is blocked off by the noisy “Transmission” and the bleep-bloop “End Transmission” — which, if we’re being honest is a little long at just under five minutes — but finds the band establishing a firm presence of purpose in “Doom Machine Smoke Break” and the building “Diosa del Sol” ahead of the record’s true finishing moment, “Final Departure Part 1: The Intergalactic Keep of the Illustrious Cosmic Woman,” which is both an adventure in outer space and a melodic highlight. This one’s a party and you’re invited.
Desert 9 is one of several projects founded by synthesist Peter Bell through a collective/studio called Mutaform in the Brindisi region of Southern Italy (heel of the boot), and the seven-song/63-minute Explora II follows quickly behind June’s Explora I and works on a similar theme of songs named for different deserts around the world, be it “Dasht-e Margo,” “Mojave,” “Gobi” or “Arctic.” What unfolds in these pieces is mostly long-ish-form instrumental krautrock and psychedelic exploration — “Arctic” is an exception at a somewhat ironically scorching three and a half minutes; opener “Namib” is shorter, and jazzier, as well — likewise immersive and far-outbound, with Bell‘s own synth accompanied on its journeys by guitar, bass and drums, the former two with effects to spare. I won’t take away from the sunburn of “Sonoran” at the finish, but the clazzic-cool swing of “Chihuahuan” is a welcome respite from some of the more thrust-minded fare, at least until the next solo starts and eats the second half of the release. The mix is raw, but I think that’s part of the idea here, and however much of Explora II was improvised and/or recorded live, it sounds like the four-piece just rolled up, hit record and went for it. Not revolutionary in aesthetic terms, but inarguable in vitality.
Originally pressed to tape in 2019 through Fuzz Ink and brought to vinyl through Sound Effect Records, Greek sludgers Gagulta begin their self-titled debut with an evocation of the Old Ones before unfurling the 13-minute assault of “Dead Fiend/Devil’s Lettuce,” the second part of which is even slower than the first. Nods and screams, screams and nods, riffs and kicks and scratches. “Late Beer Cult” is no less brash or disaffected, the Galatsi-based trio of ‘vokillist’ Johny Oldboy, baritone bassist Xen and drummer Jason — no need for last names; we’re all friends here — likewise scathing and covered in crust. Side B wraps with the 10-minute eponymous “Gagulta” — circle pit into slowdown into even noisier fuckall — but not before “Long Live the Undead” has dirty-steamrolled through its four minutes and the penultimate “War” blasts off from its snare count-in on a punk-roots-revealing surge that plays back and forth with tortured, scream-topped slow-riff madness. I don’t know if the Old Ones would be pleased, but if at any point you see a Gagulta backpatch out in the wild, that person isn’t fucking around and neither is this band. Two years after its first release, it remains monstrous.
Some 20 years removed from their debut album, Accidentally Making Enemies, and 13 past their most recent, 2009’s Eye Tree Pi (review here), London’s Obiat return at the behest of guitarist/keyboardist Raf Reutt and drummer Neil Dawson with the duly massive Indian Ocean, an eight-song collection spanning an hour’s listening time that brings together metallic chug and heavy post-rock atmospherics, largesse of tone and melody central to the proceedings from opener “Ulysses” onward. Like its long-ago predecessor, Alex Nervo‘s bass (he also adds keys and guitar) is a major presence, and in addition to vocalist Sean Cooper, who shines emotively and in the force of his delivery throughout, there are an assortment of guests on “Eyes and Soul,” “Nothing Above,” “Sea Burial” and subdued closer “Lightness of Existence,” adding horns, vocals, flute, and so on to the wash of volume from the guitar, bass, drums, keys, and though parts were recorded in Wales, England, Australia, Sweden, Norway and Hungary, Indian Ocean is a cohesive, consuming totality of a record that does justice to the long wait for its arrival while also earning as much volume as you can give it through its immersive atmospherics and sheer aural heft that leads to the ambient finish. It is not a minor undertaking, but it walks the line between metal and post-metal and has a current of heavy rock beneath it in a way that is very much Obiat‘s, and if they’re really back to being a band again — that is, if it’s not another 13 years before their next record — watch out.
Vienna five-piece Maunra enter the fray of the harsher side of post-metal with Monarch, their self-released-for-now debut full-length. With throaty growling vocals at the forefront atop subtly nuanced double-guitars and bouts of all-out chugga-breakdown riffing like that in “Wuthering Seas,” they’re managing to dare to bring a bit of life and energy to the generally hyper-cerebral style, and that rule-breaking continues to suit them in the careening “Embers” and the lumbering stomp-mosh of the title-track such that even when the penultimate “Lightbreather” shifts into its whispery/wispy midsection — toms still thudding behind — there’s never any doubt of their bringing the shove back around. I haven’t seen a lyric sheet, so can’t say definitively whether or not opener “Between the Realms” is autobiographical in terms of the band describing their own aesthetic, but their blend of progressivism and raw impact is striking in that song and onward, and it’s interesting to hear an early ’00s metal influence creep into the interplay of lead and rhythm guitar on that opener and elsewhere. At seven tracks/41 minutes, Monarch proffers tonal weight and rhythmic force, hints toward more melodic development to come, and underscores its focus on movement by capping with the especially rousing “Windborne.” Reportedly the album was five years in the making. Time not wasted.
Still mostly instrumental, formerly just-Ohio-based progressive heavy rockers Brujas del Sol answer the steps they took in a vocalized direction on 2019’s II (review here) with the voice-as-part-of-the-atmosphere verses of “To Die on Planet Earth” and “Myrrors” on their third album, Deculter, but more importantly to the actual listening experience of the record is the fact that they’ve never sounded quite this heavy. Sure, guitarist Adrian Zambrano (also vocals) and bassist Derrick White still provide plenty of synth to fill out those instrumentalist spaces and up the general proggitude, and that’s a signal sent clearly with the outset “Intro,” but Joshua Oswald (drums/vocals) pounds his snare as “To Live and Die on Planet Earth” moves toward its midsection, and the aggression wrought there is answered in both the guitar and bass tones as 12-minute finishing move “Arcadia” stretches into its crescendo, more about impact than the rush of “Divided Divinity” earlier on, rawer emotionally than the keyboardier reaches of “Lenticular,” but no less thoughtful in its construction. Each piece (even that intro) has an identity of its own, and each one makes Deculter a stronger offering.
A definite 2LP at nine songs and 68 minutes, Sergeant Thunderhoof‘s fifth full-length, This Sceptred Veil, is indeed two albums’ worth of album, and the songs bear that out in their complexity and sense of purpose as well. Not to harp, but even the concluding two-parter “Avon/Avalon” is a lot to take in after what’s come before it, but what Bath, UK, troupe vary their songwriting and bring a genuine sense of presence to the material that even goes beyond the soaring vocals to the depth of the mix more generally. There’s heavy rock grit to “Devil’s Daughter” (lil eyeroll there) and progressive reach to the subsequent “Foreigner,” a lushness to “King Beyond the Gates” and twisting riffs that should earn pleased nods from anyone who’s been swept up in Green Lung‘s hooky pageantry, and opener “You’ve Stolen the Words” sets an expectation for atmosphere and a standard for directness of craft — as well as stellar production — that This Sceptred Veil seems only too happy to meet. A given listener’s reaction to the ’80s metal goofery of “Show Don’t Tell” will depend on said listener’s general tolerance for fun, but don’t let me spoil that for them or you. Yeah, it’s a substantial undertaking. Five records in, Sergeant Thunderhoof knew that when they made it, and if you’ve got the time, they’ve got the tunes. Album rocks front to back.
