Posted in Bootleg Theater on January 24th, 2017 by JJ Koczan
After issuing their third album through Go Down Records earlier last year on CD/DL, Italian cosmic grungers Pater Nembrot oversaw in December a vinyl release through Vincebus Eruptum Recordings for Nusun (review here). It was their first record in five years since 2011’s Sequoia Seeds (review here), and a welcome, warm-toned arrival to be sure. The track “Architeuthis,” at a whopping 10 minutes and boasting a guest appearance from Christian Peters of Samsara Blues Experiment on synth, was the longest cut on Nusun and a definite highlight, capturing the vibe of the whole album and giving the four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Philip Leonardi, guitarist Ramona March, bassist Jack Pasghin and drummer Clarence Casoni room to flesh out their sound.
They, of course, took fluid advantage of the opportunity. You don’t get the full 10-minute sprawl in the video version of “Architeuthis,” but as you’ll see and hear below, that’s still plenty enough time for the song’s resonant hook to embed itself in your brain. Like the track itself, the clip — directed by Pietro Bondi — blends the real and the unreal, and trips out performance footage and a narrative from Leonardi as music, visuals and storyline all meet. It’s molten, it’s immersive, it’s psychedelic, but the underlying structure proves effective as well — hence that part about the hook — and it’s in setting the two sides forth together that Pater Nembrot make their impact, here as well as on Nusun in its entirety.
The LP is pressed in limited numbers and available through Vincebus Eruptum now, and Pater Nembrot are looking to book Spring/Summer festival dates — they note they’re available — so look for more to come throughout 2017, but if you haven’t yet been introduced to Nusun, this is a good way to go and I’m glad to be able to host the premiere.
Check out Pater Nembrot‘s “Architeuthis” below, followed by more info on its making, and please enjoy:
Pater Nembrot, “Architeuthis” official video
Architeuthis is a song written by PATER NEMBROT featured in NUSUN, the 3rd official album of the band, released in cd/mp3 by Go Down Records on February 2016 and recently reissued on vinyl on December 2016 by Vincebus Eruptum Records. Architeuthis is the most representative track of the album “NUSUN” and it’s been chosen to be the soundtrack of the videoclip filmed and directed by Pietro Bondi, a young Italian videomaker and photographer, on a story by Philip Leonardi.
THE STORY As long as the song is about Nimrod, the architect of the Babel Tower, the video tells a weird story that unravel itself around one of the most popular communication form of our time: photography. A 70’s head has some bad sleeping and after his tired awakening, he picks his cam-era up and drives fast to his dark chamber, where something wicked this way comes.
THE OCCASION This video has been published to celebrate and promote the release of the Vinyl version of NUSUN, strongly suported by Vincebus Eruptum Records: “Pater Nembrot are a great band and great friends of mine since 2009… I always work with friends for my label – says Davidew, owner at VER – and to publish Nusun is a way to enforce our friendship”. The LP printed in 300 limited copies (200 purple, 100 transparent blue) features all the electric songs of the album digital version plus a download code that allows the full download of the whole tracklist and it’s available online on the official VER shop here:http://vincebuseruptum.bigcartel.com/product/pater-nembrot-nusun-in-cludes-association-fee-donation
We continue today to make our way through The Obelisk’s Summer 2016 Quarterly Review. Yesterday we passed the halfway point, always pivotal, and today brings another batch of 10 albums from the realms of doom, heavy rock, heavy psych, boogie rock, and beyond that I’m looking forward to digging into. I’ve been waking up early mornings all week to put these together — in bed circa 10PM, out of bed at 6AM — but it’s been worth it to see the response the posts have gotten so far and, I’ll say it once again, I hope you’ve found something you dig in what’s already out there, or if not, that by the time we wrap tomorrow something piques your interest. Let’s do it.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
The Order of Israfel, Red Robes
Swedish double-guitar four-piece The Order of Israfel make their second offering in Red Robes. Issued, like its 2014 predecessor, Wisdom, by Napalm Records, the new collection tops out at 59 minute/eight tracks of classically rolling doom. Guitarist/vocalist Tom Sutton (also Horisont, ex-Church of Misery) leads the charge for the Gothenburg-based unit, and along with guitarist Staffan Björck, bassist Patrik Andersson Winberg and drummer Hans Lilja, he brings to light a trad doom not so far removed in some of its impulses from some others throughout Northern Europe in the post-Reverend Bizarre sphere, but showing a personality of its own in the layered vocals of “Von Sturmer” and the acoustic “Fallen Children,” which follows, the choral arrangement in the earlier “The Red Robes” and the speedier “A Shadow in the Hills,” which precedes the crawling 16-minute closer “The Thirst,” its slow-nodding finish underscoring what The Order of Israfel bring of themselves to the classic form in songwriting and overall cohesion of purpose.
It’s a little bit of everything. Landskap’s aptly-titled third album, III, brings out ‘70s vibe with the organ and underlying shuffle of opener “Wayfarer’s Sacrifice,” but offers a doomier feel in the vocals and guitar, and the band go on to execute Doors-gone-prog moodiness on centerpiece “The Trick to Letting Go” and more psychedelic fuzz on the subsequent “The Hand that Takes Away.” So yeah, the London five-piece of vocalist Jake Harding, guitarist George Pan, bassist Christopher West (ex-Trippy Wicked, Groan), drummer Paul Westwood and keyboardist Kostas Panagiotou cover a good bit if ground in just five tracks, tying it all together via Harding’s vocals and a comfortable pace across the board, even on the more insistent “Awakening the Divide,” though that consistency gets toyed with some as nine-minute closer “Mask of Apathy” moves from its dreamy, spacious initial stretch into more uptempo push as payoff for the album as a whole. All the better to have Landskap shift their own methods as fluidly as they meld different styles across III’s engaging span.
If I have a speed at this point, Pooty Owldom is pretty much it. The Virginia-based duo of Matt “Big Jim” Shively and Walter Barry – also two-thirds of the trio Olson/Shively/Barry, which released their debut, Teirra del Fuego Blues (review here), in 2014 – cross the lines between psychedelia, krautrock, folk, weirdo prog and funk with the carefree fluidity of pre-jam-band Ween on their self-titled first outing under their new moniker, and hopefully it’s not the last one, because whether it’s the soap-opera daydream keys of “The Owlet” or any number of the other owl-themed cuts here – “Fuzzy Pellet” is a personal favorite, but who could argue with the bassline/piano tap of “Owls with Big Donuts?” – there’s a considerable creative breadth at work in kind with what sounds like a really good time in progress. Not one for everybody, but for me, I’d love to hear Shively and Barry flesh these ideas out further over longer pieces – “Torus Landing” goes furthest here at 4:53 – and bring the jazzy rhythmic sunbathing of “Target: Mouse” to even greater experimental realization. However it comes, more please.
A guitar/drum duo based in Cherkasy, Ukraine, Celophys issued their third album, Ammonite, last year through Robust Fellow Records. The CD arrives as yet another example of the Ukraine’s burgeoning heavy scene, along with Kiev acts like Stoned Jesus, Bomg, Soom, Mozergush, Ethereal Riffian and others, and brings a noteworthy sense of lumbering across its mostly-extended seven tracks, beginning with 12-minute opener and longest cut (immediate points) “Baron,” which melds slow-grind sludge riffing with deathly growls and rasp, which the charmingly-named “Spaceburger” and the later drumless drone-feast “Caveman Ritual” continue to build out in atmosphere and snail’s-pace intensity. Feedback, massive tonality, plodding groove – these are hardly unfamiliar elements, but drummer/vocalist Alexander Beregovoy and guitarist Miroslav Kopeyka bring about a fervent bludgeoning across Ammonite that should have even the jaded among those who approach it nodding approval. Also noteworthy is the limited-to-53 “Nautilus Pack” which comes in a hand-carved, custom-designed oversized wood case with special graffiti art, a sticker and a pin, as well as the digipak version of the album.
Dunbarrow’s self-titled debut hits at a curious moment. They might be a few years ahead of their time in returning to the roots of vintage-style heavy rock, but in so doing, they basically take up the mantle that groups like Witchcraft, Graveyard, Kadavar and Blues Pills have left behind in favor of more modern production styles. Specifically, the Norwegian four-piece, who had a handful of shorter digital releases out before, come across in direct conversation with the self-titled Witchcraft debut from 2004. Strange to think that a record with an aesthetic so bent on looking backward could actually be forward-thinking — portrait of what goes around, coming around — but Dunbarrow offer persuasive argument in favor of retro orthodoxy in the swaying “You Knew I was a Snake” and the subdued brooding of “Guillotine.” Whether their bet pays off will be something to find out over the next couple years and as their sound continues to develop, but for their first full-length, they show clever songcraft, a clear idea of what they want to do, and the potential to move that forward in intriguing ways.
I’ll rarely hone in on one instrument throughout an album, but the bass tone on Brutus’ third LP, Wandering Blind (on Svart), has to be heard to be believed. With a goodtime take on ‘70s shuffle, there’s plenty of room for the low end to wind its way around the guitar, and it does. Of course, that’s not all the Swedish/Norwegian five-piece have going for them in these nine live-sounding tracks, as shown in the swaying solo section of “Whirwind of Madness” or the stomp of “Blind Village.” They’re not through the opening title-track before multiple Sabbath references are dropped in the lyrics, and indeed they’re a touchstone, but the more upbeat feel of “The Killer” and the back and forth of closer “Living in a Daze” play to deeper influences from classic heavy rock and its modern incarnations, culminating in a multi-layer guitar solo backed by tambourine, bass, and drums that really seems to sum up the friendly and unpretentious vibe Brutus elicit.
Finnish trio Vallihauta make their self-titled debut on Future Lunch with eight raw tracks that span between the hardcore punk/death ‘n’ roll of “Puoliverinen” and the doomed churn in the early going of “Reviiri.” One can basically tell looking at the runtimes of the cuts where Vallihauta are headed with each song, and they adjust their songwriting capably to coincide with the given tempo shifts, resulting in a back and forth as playful as it is aggressive in its sound and harsh low-end buzz, but to their credit, they bring the two approaches together effectively on closer “Ote,” shifting from the record’s most gurgling rumble and tortured plod to increasingly intense punkishness that hits headfirst into a final slowdown to end the album. A multi-faceted approach is rarely something to complain about, and it certainly isn’t here, but the challenge going forward for Vallihauta will be to build on that bridging of gaps in “Ote” without losing either the ferocity of their faster material or the weight of the slower.
The third Pater Nembrot album, Nusun (on Go Down Records), follows five years behind 2011’s Sequoia Seeds (review here), and for Italian heavy rock, it’s been a hell of a half-decade. Now recognized as one of the strongest scenes in Europe, Italy has become a hotbed and Pater Nembrot’s return couldn’t be better timed. The nine-track outing brings some genuinely expansive moments, as with the 10-minute “Architeuthis” for which Christian Peters (Samsara Blues Experiment) guests on synth, or the wah-soaked second half of “The Rich Kids of Teheran,” but even shorter pieces like “Young Rite” effectively bring together grunge and heavy psych influences. The piano-laced opener “Lostman” and acoustic-strummed closer “Dead Polygon” seem to be speaking right to each other and are somewhat at remove with the rest of the record, perhaps the minute-long bass interlude “Uknap” aside (perhaps not), but the four-piece know their game by this point and just when a song like “Overwhelmed” seems like it’s going to lose its course, they bring it around to Nusun’s most satisfying instrumental build.
Almost immediately upon the band starting “Device,” the sense of ambition in Floodlore’s debut album, When it was Written, is palpable. A psych-infused trio from Northern Virginia, they range freely between the classic-minded “Justice” and fuzzy push of “Bars” before heading back to jammier fare for “Release,” which calls to mind All Them Witches for its meandering blues, and into harder-edged winding riffs for “Evening.” Both “Peace” and “Glow” continue to flesh out one side or the other, but an obvious focal point is the three-part/28-minute closer “Sun/When the Floodlore was Written/In Praise of Alan Watts,” which starts out nodding at surf rock before space-progging out for about 20 minutes, working into an out of extended solos and culminating in swirl and thrust that lives up to the band’s clear will for exploration. Some smoothing out to do in terms of balancing the mix (vocals came through high, though I’ll allow that could be my speakers), but When it was Written impresses in concept and execution and as Floodlore’s first full-length, it’s remarkably encouraging.
When it starts to feel like maybe you’ve got a given track figured out, that seems to be the moment when Eugene, Oregon, five-piece Red Cloud turn something around on their full-length debut, Ursa Minor, and though their foundation is still very much in heavy rock, they build on that shifting into and out of desert stylizations and psychedelic swirl. The band – here guitarist/vocalist/bassist Aaron Williams, guitarist Dennis Medina, drummer/engineer Lauren Roberts and bassist/guitarist Sean Loos, though Loos seems to have left the band and bassist Mike Nemeth and keyboardist Garrett Davis come aboard – keep the material consistent by going back to that heavy rock foundation and through a clear focus on songwriting. Even in the somewhat lumbering starts and stops of “Smoke Screen,” these tracks feel worked on and carefully arranged, and though they go different places – “Ghost Dance” with its manic shuffle, closer “Sick Eagle” with its Songs for the Deaf-style drive – they universally take an efficient route to get there.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 24th, 2013 by JJ Koczan
Up and coming German imprint Electric Magic Records has unveiled a new digital sampler touting its wares. The 10-track comp features output from recent releases by House of Aquarius and Heat and Samsara Blues Experiment — whose guitarist/vocalist, Christian Peters, also heads the label — among forthcoming acts like Suns of Thyme, whose desert sweetness immediately piqued my interest, and familiar names like Pater Nembrot, who aren’t signed to Electric Magic, but were nonetheless compelled to donate some boogie to the cause. Right on.
Free music is the name of the game. Those so inclined can get out Electric Magic Volume Eight via the link below. Here’s art and info:
FREE SAMPLER: Electric Magic – Volume Eight
This includes highlights of our label´s very recent outputs by House Of Aquarius, Heat and This Is Ghost Country as well as the soon to be released lysergic gems of Soulitude and the Suns Of Thyme. Further we included some very rare demo-versions and amazing contributions by friends of the label like Pater Nembrot, Dunst and others. Not to forget the free version of SBE´s “Midnight Boogie”. All together these 10 bands will (hopefully) deliver you a 66 minute instant high. Oh and this time we also included a full CD-artwork, beautifully drawn by Lori at ParadiseParasite Artworks.
Tracklisting: 1. Suns of Thyme, “Soma (God for Gods)” 2. Heat, “Warhead” 3. The Harvest, “Celebrating Wild Horses” (Excerpt) 4. Samsara Blues Experiment, “Midnight Boogie” 5. House of Aquarius, “Unholy” 6. Soulitude, “Awakening” 7. Pater Nembrot, “Exile” 8. Dunst, “Dhaimahi Prachodayat” 9. This is Ghost Country, “Black Trekker” 10. Juicy Mother, “Mole in the Fry”
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 17th, 2012 by JJ Koczan
The Italian heavy scene continues to earn respect with this news that the digital compilation Desert Sound Vol. IV – In the Mouth of Fuzz has been released. Perkele.it is behind the two-disc outing, and the same week that Vincebus Eruptum had their 12th issue written up and I did a podcast of all comp and tribute tracks, it’s a pleasure to be able to bring you the following info on Desert Sounds, which earns double-kudos for being Vol. IV and not having a silhouette of Ozzy with his arms raised on the cover. Not that I’d hold it against them if it did, but still.
Knowledge is heavy:
The Italian stoner psych doom portal Perkele.it is proud to present:
Desert Sound Vol. IV –In the Mouth of Fuzz The fourth chapter of the trip, a journey through the cosmos, the heavy psych compilation made in Italy!
Aptly distributed by Perkele.it magazine, Desert Sound Vol. IV –In the Mouth of Fuzz packs 25 combustive cuts from the smoke filled scene defined by hot rock’n’roll, chuggin’ guitars, dirty fuzz, psychedelic visions, feedback and cowbell fills. A volcanic trip deep into the Italian heavy stoner psycho doom panorama, with tracks that range straight out of power hittin’ stonerville, to the psychedelic side, as well as the doom mantras and spacey pipe dreams action.
Desert Sound Vol. IV –In the Mouth of Fuzz opens with the mighty PaterNembrot. The intro cut sets the stage for the entire adventurous set, which includes tracks from – among others – Zippo (feat. BenWard from Orange “fuckin’!” Goblin), SpaceParanoids, BlackCapricorn, CannibalMovie, Da Captain Trips, and BlackRainbows.
The album is available as a free digital download (MP3 320 kbps and .iso file for your personal CD) with a deluxe trippy artwork and packaging by ExLab, based on the original paintings of late Renaissance Italian visionary painter and illustrator Jacopo Ligozzi.
Full track-listing for Desert Sound Vol. IV –In the Mouth of Fuzz as follows:
Disc One: Pater Nembrot – The Weaner Kayleth – The Survivor The Whirlings – Calcutta’s Sewers Anuseye – Orb Weavers Manthra Dei – Xolotl Kill the Easter Rabbit – Silent Hour Herba Mate – Imargem Three Eyes Left – La Fee Verthe (The Green Fairy) Muffx – Voices SpaceParanoids – Three Lonely Pines BlackCapricorn – Call of the Goat Choriachi – Birkat Habayit
Disc Two: The Wisdoom – The Wisdoom Zippo – Man of Theory (Feat. Ben Ward) Caronte – Ghost Owl Cannibal Movie – Fame Turbomatt – Kong Ché Da Captain Trips – The Merkfolk Ride The Dallaz – Losers T.H.U.M.B. – Superlover Bones & Comfort – Orange Blossoms & Four Swans Elephante – Toporagno GodwattRedemption – Circles Mr. Bizarro & The Highway Experience – Mastodont Black Rainbows – Mastermind
Posted in Reviews on March 25th, 2011 by JJ Koczan
The Italian stoner scene continues to flourish as Longiano natives Pater Nembrot release Sequoia Seeds, their second album through Go Down Records. The hour-long, nine-track collection (plus a hidden cut called “Dark Age Dawn”) embarks on a systematic exploration of the varied sides of the stonerly genres, elements of space rock, psychedelia, drone and crunchier doom coming out of their surprisingly varied material. It may not sound like much on first listen, but subsequent sessions find the trio demonstrating a melodic awareness and an underlying ‘90s-style grunge feel that sets Pater Nembrot apart from those who simply worship the fuzz (not that there’s anything wrong with that, provided it’s done well). Guitarist, vocalist synth-specialist and occasional flautist Philip Leonardi seems to shift his tone to match whatever a given song is trying to evoke, coming across on opener “The Weaner” with a semi-doomed groove that’s a hook before the chorus even arrives.
It’s not track-by-track genre defiance by any stretch, but Pater Nembrot does stave off redundancy across Sequoia Seeds, varied track lengths from about two to about 10 minutes adding to the apparent complexity of their songwriting formula as much as bassist Jack Pasghin’s thickness provides the foundation for the stoner bop of “H.a.a.r.p.,” on which producer Enrì (Mondo Cane) contributes guest organ work following a dead stop. Leonardi doesn’t shred, but neither is he shy in his leads, bridging verses and choruses fluidly and adding an element of continuity to whatever turn Pater Nembrot might be looking to take. Drummer Alfredo “Big J” Casoni is similarly adaptable, adjusting his fills to best suit Leonardi’s Soundgarden-esque vocalizing toward the end of the track. In this way, Pater Nembrot’s playing off each other makes Sequoia Seeds work. “Supercell,” which is probably as fuzz-caked as they get, includes a Pasghin-led space-inflected break. All hail the bass solo, short though it may be. Waves and swirls of psychedelic noise fill out the background and the song proves to be one of Sequoia Seeds’ several high points.
