I won’t keep you long here. Today is the last day of this Quarterly Review. It’ll return in July, if all goes according to my plans. I hope in the last seven days of posts you’ve been able to find a release, a band, a song, that’s hit you hard and made your day better. Ultimately that’s why we’re here.

No grand reflections — this is business-as-usual by now for me — but I’ll say that most of this QR was a pleasure to mine through and I’ve added a few releases to my notes for the Best of 2025 come December. If you have too, awesome. If not, there’s still one more chance.

Quarterly Review #61-70:

Daevar, Sub Rosa

While Sub Rosa still basks in the murky sound with which Köln-based doomers Daevar set forth not actually all that long ago — they’re barely an earth-year removed from their second LP, Amber Eyes (review here), and just two from their debut, 2023’s Delirious Rites (review here) — there’s an unquestionable sense of refinement to its procession. “Wishing Well” moves but isn’t rushed. Opener “Catcher in the Rye” feels expansive but is four minutes long. It goes like this. Through most of the 31-minute seven-songer, including the “Hey Bacchus” strum at the start of “Siren Song,” Daevar seem to be working to strip their approach to its most crucial elements, and when they arrive at the seven-minute finale “FDSMD,” there’s a purposeful shift to a more patient roll. But the flow within and between tracks is still very much an asset for Daevar as they take full ownership of their sound. This is not a minor moment for this band, and feels indicative of future direction. Something tells me it won’t be that long before we find out if it is.

Daevar on Bandcamp

The Lasting Dose Records on Bandcamp

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Rainbows Are Free, Silver and Gold

The follow-up to Rainbows Are Free‘s impressive 2023 outing, Heavy Petal Music (review here), Silver and Gold is the Norman, Oklahoma, six-piece’s fifth album since 2010 and second through Ripple Music. With nine songs that foster psychedelic breadth and tonal largesse alike, the album still has room for frontman Brandon Kistler to lend due persona, and in pairing sharp-cornered progressive lead work on guitar with lower-frequency grooves, Rainbows Are Free feel ‘classic’ in a very modern way. They remain capable of being very, very heavy, as crescendos like “Sleep” and “Hide” reaffirm near the record’s middle, but emphasize aural diversity whether it’s the garage march of “Fadeaway,” the barer thrust of “Dirty” or “Runnin’ With a Friend of the Devil” earlier on, of which the reference is only part of the charm being displayed. Rarely does a band so obviously mature in their craft still sound so hungry to find new ideas in their music.

Rainbows Are Free website

Ripple Music website

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Minerall, Strömung

The pedigreed spacefaring trio Minerall — guitarist Marcel Cultrera (Speck), bassist/synthesist Dave “Sula Bassana” Schmidt (Sula Bassana, Zone Six, etc.), and drummer Tommy Handschick (Kombynat Robotron, Earthbong) — return with two more side-long jams on Strömung, captured at the same two-day 2023 session that produced their early-2024 debut, Bügeln (review here). If you find yourself clenching your stomach in the first half of “Strömung” (19:35) on side A, don’t forget to breathe, and don’t worry, opportunity to do so is coming as the three-piece deconstruct and rebuild the jam toward a fuzzy payoff, only to raise “Welle” (20:24) from its minimalist outset to what seems like the apex at the midpoint only to blow it out the airlock in the song’s back half. That must have been one hell of a 48 hours.

Minerall on Bandcamp

Sulatron Records website

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Deathbird Earth, Mission

By the time its five minutes are up, “Resources 2.0” has taken its title word and turned it into an insistent, chunky, noise-rocking sneer, still adjacent to the chicanery-laced psych of the song’s earlier going, but a definite fuck-you to modernity, evoking ideas of exploitation of people, places and everything. Philadelphia duo Deathbird Earth — first names only: BJ (Dangerbird, Hulk Smash) and Dave (Psychic Teens, etc.) — offer three songs on Mission, which has the honesty to bill itself as a demo, and from “Resources 2.0” they move into the sub-two-minute “Mission 1.0,” more ambient and laced with samples. The only song without a version number in its title, “Dead Hands” finds the duo likewise indebted to Chrome and Nirvana for a burst-prone, keyboardier vision of gritty spacepunk, vocal bite and all, but honestly, Mission feels like the tip of an experimentalism only beginning to reveal its destructive tendencies. Looking forward to more.

Deathbird Earth on Bandcamp

Deathbird Earth at SRA Records

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Thinning the Herd, Cull

Approaching the 20th anniversary of the band next year, now-more-upstate New York heavy rockers Thinning the Herd return after 12 years with Cull, their third album. Guitarist/vocalist Gavin Spielman in 2023 recruited drummer Rob Sefcik (Begotten, Kings Destroy, Electric Frankenstein, etc.), and as a trio-sounding duo with Spielman adding bass, they dig into 11 raw, DIY rockers that, as one makes their way through the opening title-track, “Monopolist” and “Heady Yeti” and “Burn Ban” — themes from not-in-the-city-anymore prevalent throughout, alongside weed, beer, life, getting screwed over, and so on — play out in fuzzbuzz-grooving succession. Two late instrumentals, “Electric Lizard of Gloom” and the lush, unplugged “Acustank,” provide a breather from the riffs and gruff vibes, the latter with a pickin’-on-doom kind of feel, but across the whole it’s striking how atmospheric Cull is while presenting itself as straightforward as possible.

Thinning the Herd website

Thinning the Herd on Bandcamp

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Phantom Druid, The Edge of Oblivion

Let The Edge of Oblivion stand for the righteousness of anti-trend doom. You know what I’m talking about. Not the friendly doom that’s out there weed-worshiping and making friends, but the crunching doom metal proffered by the likes of Cathedral and Saint Vitus. Doom that wore is Sabbathianism as a badge of honor all the more for the fact that, at the time they were doing it, it was so much against the status quo of cool. Phantom Druid‘s fourth album is similarly strident and sure of its approach, and yeah, if you want to say some of the chug in “The 5th Mystical Assignment” sounds like Sleep, I won’t argue. Sleep liked Sabbath too. But the crawl in “Realms of the Unreal” and the dirge in instrumental “The Silent Observer” tell it. This is doom that knows and believes in this form, and is strident and reverential in its making. That “Admiration of the Abyss” caps could hardly be more appropriate. Hail the new truth.

Phantom Druid on Bandcamp

Off the Record Label store

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The Grey, Kodok

Some context may apply. Kodok is the third long-player from adventurous Cambridge, UK, heavy post-rock/metallers The Grey, as well as their first outing through Majestic Mountain Records, and though much of what the band has done to this point is instrumental and that’s still a big part of who they are as 11:45 opener/longest track (immediate points) “Painted Lady” readily demonstrates, there’s a clear-eyed partial divergence from the norm as guitarist Charlie Gration, bassist Andy Price and drummer Steve Moore welcome guests throughout like Grady Avenell, who adds post-hardcore scathe to “Sharpen the Knife” ahead of the crushing “CHVRCH,” also released as a single, or fattybassman and Ace Skunk Anasie, who appear on the duly textural “AFG,” which also rounds out with a dARKMODE remix. Not a typical release, maybe, but not not either as the band do more than haphazardly insert these guests into their songs; there is a full-length album flow from front to back here, and while they purposefully push limits, the underlying three-piece serve as the unifying factor for the material as perhaps they inevitably would.

The Grey on Bandcamp

Majestic Mountain Records store

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Sun Below, Mammoth’s Tundra

With a forward lumber marked by rigorous crash and suitably dense tone, Sun Below‘s apparently-standalone 12-minute single Mammoth’s Tundra tells the story of a wooly mammoth being reborn — I think not through techbro genetic dickery, unlike that dire-wolf story that was going around last week — and laying waste to the ecosystem of the tundra, remaking the food change in its aggro image. Fair enough. The Toronto trio likely recorded “Mammoth’s Tundra” at the same Jan. 2023 sessions that produced their Sept. 2023 split, Inter Terra Solis (review here), and whether you’re here for the immersive groove that rises from the gradual outset, the shred emerging in the second half, or that last meme-ready return of the riff at the end, complete with final slowdown — what? you thought they’d leave you hanging? — they leave the Gods of Stone and Riff smiling. Worship via volume, distortion, and nod.

Sun Below on Bandcamp

Sun Below’s Linktr.ee

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Tumbleweed Dealer, Dark Green

It’s been nine years since Montreal’s Tumbleweed Dealer released their third album, but as the fourth, Dark Green offers instrumentalist narrative and a range of outside contributions to expand the sound and maybe make up for lost time. Across 10 tracks and 39 minutes, bassist/guitarist Seb Painchaud, synthesist/producer Jean-Baptiste Joubaud and drummer Angelo Fata broaden their arrangements to include Mellotron, Hammond, Wurlitzer, Rhodes and other keys as well as what basically amounts to a horn section on several tracks, the first blares in “Becoming One with the Bayou” somewhat jarring but coming to make their own kind of sense there and in the subsequent “Dragged Across the Wetlands,” the sax in “Body of the Bog,” and so on. These elements seem to be built around the core performances of the trio, but the going is remarkably fluid despite the range, and though it seems counterintuitive to think of a band who might end a record with a song called “A Soul Made of Sludge” as being progressive and considered in their craft, that’s very clearly what’s happening here.

Tumbleweed Dealer on Bandcamp

Tumbleweed Dealer on Instagram

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NYTE VYPR, Plutonic

Electronic dub, pop, death metal, glitchy electronics, krautrock synth, malevolent distortion, some far-off falsetto and some throatgurgling crust — it can only be the always-busy anti-genre activist Collyn McCoy (Unida, High Priestess, Circle of Sighs, etc.) mashing together ideas and making it work. To wit, “Alkahest” (17:36) and “Witchchrist” (16:03) both engage in sound design and worldmaking, take on pop, industrial and metallic aspects, and are an album unto themselves, hypnotic and experimental, the latter marked by a darker underlying drone that lasts until the whole song dissipates. “Necrotic Prayer” (7:28) feels more like collage by the time it gets to its surprise-here’s-a-ripper-guitar-solo-over-that-circa-’92-industrial-beat, but it still has a groove, and “Plutonic” (8:30) moves through static drone and seen-on-TV sampling through death-techno (god I love death techno) to croon, churn out with a sci-fi overlord, and finish with piano and voice; a misdirected contemplative turn worthy of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. McCoy is a genius and the world will never be ready for these sounds. That’s as plain as I can say it.

NYTE VYPR on Bandcamp

Owlripper Recordings on Bandcamp

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In the spirit of the album’s honesty, I’ll tell you flat-out I love Clamfight. I’ve known them as people and as a group for nigh on 20 years, and from doing shows together in the long-long ago to joining Steve Murphy of Kings Destroy in doing guest vocals for the eponymous “Clamfight” on this record and editing the bio, there are few acts out there to whom I feel closer. Maybe none.

So I’m not going to feign impartiality here or whatever. I’ve followed along as the band started putting this record together, through covid, losing engineer Steve Poponi after they were done, and I’ve seen and heard how they’ve pushed themselves, dug deeper into what they do, and come up with the best material they’ve ever written. And I say that as a dude who helped put out one of their record. Clamfight‘s Clamfight is the kind of record you make after you realize how lucky you are to still be making records at all, let alone with people you love. It is the truest declaration of self Clamfight have ever made.

I also can’t help but love the fact that their first single has been up since the end of January, is 11 minutes long and it’s four minutes in before you hear the first vocals — that Clamfight music industry acumen strikes again! In all seriousness, “The Oar” is at the bottom of this post and is obviously more about immersion more than trying to beat you over the head with an immediate chorus. The rest of the album follows suit in variable mood and intensity, but remains affected by the atmosphere of “The Oar,” so it’s a good place to start before you push further.

It was an honor to be involved in this in the small way I was.

From the PR wire:

CLAMFIGHT: New Jersey Sludge/Doom Metal Quartet Prepares To Release Eponymous Fourth LP On May 16th; “The Oar” Streaming + Preorders Posted

New Jersey/Philly sludge beasts CLAMFIGHT are prepared to self-release their eponymous fourth full-length release this Spring, unveiling the cover art, track listing, preorders, and lead single, “The Oar.”

The members of CLAMFIGHT are childhood friends who played their first show together in the Fall of 2005. The band’s lineup has remained the same ever since, with bassist Louis Koble, guitarists Joel Harris and Sean McKee, and drummer/vocalist Andy Martin. Over the past twenty years, the band has played shows along the entire East Coast and beyond, having shared a lot of laughs and shenanigans as well as loss and heartache together along the way. Having released three albums to date – Vol. I in 2010, I vs. The Glacier in 2013, and III in 2018 – the band now presents their most somber yet victorious record yet with Clamfight.

CLAMFIGHT began work on album number four right as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. With only drum tracks finished the weekend before the lockdowns began, the sudden downtime gave the band the opportunity to broaden their sound. With their longtime friend, mentor, and producer Steve Poponi, the band expanded the sonic range of the new material and brought more dynamics and intricacy to the seven new songs.

The pandemic also changed the record lyrically and thematically. Lyrically, Clamfight became a sort of diary or memoir, but not about masks and temperature checks at the grocery store, but about how the love and friendship between the band helped get them all through those dark times. If there’s a central theme to Clamfight it’s that life is short and precious, but that the people around you – the people that you love and that love you back – are the ones that make it worth savoring.

Now, Clamfight is ready to see the light of the day. “To us, this is easily the most personal and important record that we’ve ever done. It was part of why we wanted to self-release it. We didn’t want to be beholden to anyone else on this one, and we wanted to push it as much or as little as we pleased without feeling like we were letting anyone down. We’ve got all the respect for Argonauta and some of the other folks we talked to about this one, but for a record that was so personal going at it alone felt right.”

Clamfight was recorded by Steve Poponi and Matt Weber at The Gradwell House in Haddon Heights, New Jersey where it was also mixed by Steve Poponi and Dave Downham and mastered by Dave Downham, and the album’s cover art and layout was handled by Morgan E Russell. The record features guest vocals on “Brodgar” by Sam Marandola and on “Clamfight” by Stephen Murphy and JJ Koczan.

The lead single from Clamfight arrives with the album’s opening track, “The Oar.” Andy Martin reveals with the song, “In making this record we leaned on each other and our collaborators more than ever before. I never write lyrics until we’re in the studio, and as recording was happening, I found myself writing about where we were in our lives, the people we loved, the mistakes we made, and about how much I love these guys, so when it came time to name the record, the choice was obvious. This is the last record we were privileged to make with our brother Steve Poponi. You’ll hear him at the end of the track. Words fall short when it comes to expressing how much we miss him, so for and now always, we’ll just say Poponi Forever. Take care of yourselves gang.”

Stream “The Oar,” CLAMFIGHT’s lead single from the powerful new Clamfight, now playing RIGHT HERE: https://clamfight.bandcamp.com/album/clamfight

The band will self-release Clamfight digitally and on CD on May 16th. Preorders are now live at Bandcamp HERE: https://clamfight.bandcamp.com/album/clamfight

Clamfight Track Listing:
1. The Oar
2. Brodgar
3. Dragonhead
4. FRH
5. Drinking Tooth
6. Clamfight
7. Redtail

CLAMFIGHT is also booking regional tour dates and live events supporting the new album. They will play Brooklyn on June 20th and a benefit show for their late friend Steve Poponi in Philadelphia on June 21st. A record release show and additional dates are also in the works. Watch for updates to post alongside additional previews of the album over the weeks ahead.

CLAMFIGHT Live:
5/31/2025 Kung Fu Necktie – Philadelphia, PA *record release show
6/20/2025 Goldsounds – Brooklyn, NY w/ Hollow Leg, Florist, End Of Hope
6/21/2025 Poponipalooza ’25: D.I.L.F.@ Underground Arts – Philadelphia, PA

CLAMFIGHT:
Louis Koble – bass
Joel Harris – guitar
Sean McKee – guitar
Andy Martin – drums/vocals

https://www.facebook.com/Clamfight
https://www.instagram.com/clamfight
https://clamfight.bandcamp.com/

Clamfight, Clamfight (2025)

Guitarist Shane Trimble of High Reeper has produced all three of the band’s albums to-date, so if you want an example of his work, you don’t have to look farther than the bottom of this post for their most recent outing, 2024’s metal-tinged rager Renewed by Death (review here), released in continued alliance with Heavy Psych Sounds. As High Reeper have been around for a bit — and Trimble‘s production/engineering isn’t limited to his own projects, as you can see below — I think what makes this a “launch” for Sletner Sound is the fact that now there’s a physical, dedicated recording studio, instead of helming recordings in the DIY/homemade style.

Wilmington, Delaware, is where the spot is located, so adjacent to any number of metropolitan areas. I know a fair amount of the people who might visit this site on a day-to-day are artists as well as fans. In a literal sense, it might be news you actually can use. There are equipment lists and such on the studio’s site, should you want to investigate further.

From the PR wire:

Shane Trimble of High Reeper Launches New Recording Studio, Sletner Sound, in Wilmington, DE

After nearly 30 years in the audio industry, producer and engineer Shane Trimble — guitarist of High Reeper — has officially opened Sletner Sound, a new recording studio in Wilmington, Delaware.

Trimble, who worked closely with legendary engineer and mentor Mike Tarsia, carries forward the Sigma Sound legacy, honoring Tarsia’s influence following his passing. With an extensive portfolio that includes mixing records for Bongzilla, Black Rainbows, The Pilgrim, High Reeper, and more, Trimble has cultivated a sound that blends classic techniques with modern production.

“I wanted to create a space that continues the tradition of the studios I grew up working in — where artists can push creative boundaries while getting the best possible sound,” says Trimble.

Sletner Sound is now booking for 2025. Artists and producers looking for a professional recording and mixing environment can visit www.sletnersound.com for more details.

For media inquiries, interviews, or studio bookings, please contact:
Shane Trimble
shane@sletnersound.com

About Sletner Sound

Founded by Shane Trimble, Sletner Sound is a professional recording studio in Wilmington, DE, dedicated to high-quality audio production. With decades of experience in engineering, mixing, and recording, Sletner Sound provides a space where artists can create music with expert guidance and top-tier sound.

https://www.instagram.com/sletner_sound_studio/
https://www.sletnersound.com/

High Reeper, Renewed by Death

It happens maybe once, maybe twice a year that a video will come along and some switch will flip in my sillybrain and I’ll put it on the tv to enjoy in its entirety. You see where this is going, of course. It’s been a crappy morning, and you should note that I say “morning” at like 1:30 in the afternoon. Yeah, I’ve done some laundry and wrote a review, got the kid out to school and this and that, but productivity on all fronts has been like pulling teeth and I’ve got way more to do at this point than I have time to do it. Sad to say the difference is today I answered email.

Anyhow, the point. With overwhelm looming, a full 40-minute Stinking Lizaveta concert set — captured at Milkboy in the long-running instrumentalist trio’s Philadelphia hometown and set to release on SRA Records as a live album on March 7 along with a host of catalog reissues — is a welcome excuse for escape. I’m not gonna pretend this is a review of the live album or anything more than me sitting in front of my tv enjoying Stinking Lizaveta instead of being stressed out about not getting shit done I was hoping to. Cheshire getting on mic after “The Heart” tells me I was right.

And as regards heart, there’s plenty of it there and in the subsequent “Sherman’s March,” which Yanni shouts out in the memory of Dave Sherman — a labelmate to Stinking Lizaveta when Spirit Caravan released their first album through Tolotta Records — to go along with the charm and chicanery that begins the set in “Serpent Underfoot” and “Electric Future,” a joy no less resonant than the wistful soloing of “Sherman’s March,” with Alexei’s bass locked in step with the drums for the sans-vocal chorus that follows.

Oh man, that sounds an awful lot like a review.

I’ll allow for the fact that if Stinking Lizaveta are inspiring, it’s not the first time. This clip landed in my email (also my DMs, also my social timelines, etc.) at a particularly welcome moment. I’ll get the laundry changed over. I’ll get the rest of the day done. And maybe tomorrow will be easier for the time I took to share the obvious delight Stinking Lizaveta bring to the breakdown in “L.B.J.” — Yanni laughing before they start about how it’s the “extended version” — with Alexei free-jazzing it on the electric standup; a definition of cool that didn’t exist until he made it — and a bit of freakout to boot before they charge, stop, goof off for a minute and then make a rocking return. Fucking hell this is a great band.

The latest-I’ve-seen confirmations for Stinking Lizaveta‘s upcoming European tour with Darsombra are included with the video info and live-album/reissues preorder link below, and if that all seems like a lot and you just want to put on the video and chill out for a little bit with it, I can tell you it definitely worked for making my day better.

Please enjoy:

Stinking Lizaveta, Live 2023 concert video

Stinking Lizaveta “Live 2023” full concert movie streaming now

Limited vinyl available in the pre-order packages for the Stinking Lizaveta reissues

Preorder the super limited SRArecords.com exclusive vinyl here at SRA Records: https://srarecords.com/shop/sra/stinking-lizaveta-reissues1/

Tracklisting:
1. Serpent Underfoot
2. Electric Future
3. Daily Madness
4. Nomen Est Omen
5. Shock
6. The Heart
7. Sherman’s March
8. L.B.J.
9. Let Live

Recorded August 31st 2023 at Milkboy in Philadelphia
Live sound by Mike Moffitt
Recording by Joe Smiley
Mixed and Mastered at Red Planet by Joe Smiley
Video by Mark ‪@trimungus8653‬
Thanks Dysrythmia and Countdown From Ten

STINKING LIZAVETA / DARSOMBRA SUMMER EU TOUR 2025
updates here: DARSOMBRA.COM
23 – 24 May – GERMANY/CZECH REPUBLIC/POLAND
25 May – Berlin GERMANY @ Desertfest Berlin CONFIRMED
*26 – 27 May – CZECH REPUBLIC/POLAND/GERMANY
28 May – Warsaw POLAND @ Mlodsza Siostra CONFIRMED
29 May – Wroclaw POLAND @ Kalambur CONFIRMED
30 May – Krakow POLAND CONFIRMED
31 May – Kosice SLOVAKIA @ Collosseum CONFIRMED
1 June – Budapest HUNGARY @ Auróra CONFIRMED
*2 June – SLOVAKIA/HUNGARY
3 June – Vienna AUSTRIA @ Arena CONFIRMED
4 June – Linz AUSTRIA @ Kapu CONFIRMED
5 June – Nuremberg GERMANY @ Kunstverein Hintere Cramergasse e.V. CONFIRMED
6 June – Potsdam GERMANY @ Archiv CONFIRMED
7 June – Dresden GERMANY @ Veränderbar CONFIRMED
*8 June – CZECH REPUBLIC/GERMANY
9 June – Prague CZECH REPUBLIC @ Eternia CONFIRMED
*10 June – CZECH REPUBLIC
11 June – Brno CZECH REPUBLIC @ Kabinet Muz CONFIRMED
12 June – Berlin GERMANY @ Schokoladen CONFIRMED
13 June – Brandenburg GERMANY CONFIRMED
*14 – 19 June – WEST GERMANY/BELGIUM/NETHERLANDS
20 June – Herzberg GERMANY CONFIRMED
*21- 24 June – GERMANY/DENMARK/BELGIUM/NETHERLANDS
25-29 June – Lärz GERMANY CONFIRMED
*to be confirmed

Stinking Lizaveta is Yanni Papadopoulos on guitar, Alexi Papadopoulos on upright electric bass, and Cheshire Agusta on drums.

Stinking Lizaveta, Live 2023 (2025)

Stinking Lizaveta on Facebook

Stinking Lizaveta on Instagram

Stinking Lizaveta website

Stinking Lizaveta on Bandcamp

SRA Records on Facebook

SRA Records on Instagram

SRA Records on Bandcamp

SRA Records website

Comprised of 10 tracks that bring harmony-topped not-quite-gazing grunge contemplations, deep running tonal heft and an abiding sense of quirk that makes the material all the more expansive and multifaceted, inMake Money From Home‘s self-recorded, self-released and self-titled debut — in addition to sounding huge; Will Mellor (Heavy Temple) mixed at Red Water Recording — is nothing if not dug in. Running a total of 53 minutes, the album signals its course early in the moody and subdued verses of “Lumber,” carried by James Udinski‘s ride cymbal, light strum of bass from Emily Brown (also vocals and cover design) and the guitar and vocals of Bill O’Sullivan.

One might recall O’Sullivan from his prior band, the Brooklyn-based Eggnogg, who also had a penchant for gosh-darn-heavy riffing, the occasional cosmos-scorching blues solo, and personality. Based in Philadelphia, Make Money From Home are distinguished certainly in atmosphere from O’Sullivan‘s previous outfit, and the vocal interplay with Brown on pieces like “Frozen Over,” the brief and semi-twanged “The Evening Ball,” “Stable,” the chorus of “What is it For,” and so on, is a noteworthy strength that’s apparently at root in the band; Make Money From Home seems to have started out acoustically circa 2020 with O’Sullivan and Brown singing together.

A certain folkishness persists in what they do now — certainly in the wit of the lyrics and the occasionally lush vocal melodies — but Make Money From Home sound intentional in their weighted distortion. Accordingly, folk is only part of it, alongside grunge, classic mid-paced stonerly roll and even a bit of Electric Wizard as second/longest cut “Alarum” (8:34) reinvents the riff to “The Chosen Few” toward its own ends in languid post-Nirvana drawl.

“Alarum” is one of two songs over eight minutes, and the other, “Pistols at Dawn” manifests the Western edge hinted at in its title, serving as one of several diversions around the heavy-grunge crux of Make Money From Home, the movement changing from a ‘lumber’ — derp see what I did there? — to a sway in “Pistols at Dawn,” a rockabilly-style swing in “Ever and More” and ’90s-nerd-rock bounce in “Flew the Coop.”

These shifts in intent, coupled with the consistency of performance from O’Sullivan and Brown — whose basslines make “Ever and More” one of the best examples of a heavy jazz-swing I’ve come across; it’s a tough balance to strike — result in a record that sounds like it knows where it wants to be and how it wants to explore around that. That this isn’t O’Sullivan‘s first time leading a band on guitar and lead vocals is apparent in the confidence of his voice throughout; a bluesy, low register that’s able to slip into more guttural but still clean delivery as called for in a given song.

And the album very much plays out as a collection of songs. Flow between them, with methodical tempos from the outset in “Lumber” and “Alarum,” rampant melody and varied structures from one piece to the next assuring that the trio don’t seem to linger anywhere for longer than they want to. True, the listening experience isn’t a minor investment — a runtime north of the 50-minute line feeling in itself like a reference to the 1990s; but who knows if or when Make Money From Home will do anything else, so I’m not holding it against them — but the rewards are there for repeat listens, as a lyric like, “Some sleep afloat, I’ll drown awake” belted out at the end of “Lumber” or the sheepishness in O’Sullivan‘s voice as he stops all that shouting in “Flew the Coop” and apologizes in the verse croon, “Pardon me, I didn’t mean to raise my voice so loud/Threw back a bunch of meds floating on a cloud/Gotta hand it to you, doc, it really shuts it out/I really shouldn’t talk so proud/Should’ve shut my mouth…” and continues a balladeering-type story of what might’ve been a mental health invervention and in any case is way more fun as a song than it probably was to live through. So it goes. “Flew the Coop” is a standout, and so is “Stable” and “Frozen Over” (that layered shred! for ambience no less!), “Lumber,” “The Evening Ball,” “What is it For,” “Alarum,” “New Clown,” “Pistols at Dawn,” and “Ever and More.” That’s the whole record, in no particular order.

It’s telling that some of the most resonant stretches are the quietest. Maybe that’s Brown and O’Sullivan in the hook of “What is it For,” a sleek groove there that “Flew the Coop” of all songs will answer back to later, vulnerable and trying to be silly to cover it, or maybe it’s O’Sullivan laying out oddball connections in “Pistols at Dawn,” the bridge lines, “I’m content with four blank walls/What’s a reader to do?” prompting any number of potential answers. Read? I don’t know. In any case, while there’s no doubt Make Money From Home revel in the outright crush of “Lumber” when it kicks in, even as a first record, these songs offer more realization than a single idea or genre designation wants to convey.

There’s an adventurousness of songwriting that O’Sullivan has to some degree carried over from his last band, but Make Money From Home sounds more like a beginning than a continued thread, and the direction the material takes is its own thing, rooted in a bluesy style that still somehow lets the solo later in “Pistols at Dawn” sound like Jerry Cantrell as the jam starts to come apart, only to have “Ever and More” sweep in, not quite as manic as “Flew the Coop,” where ‘manic’ is the point, but a toe tapper just the same. And in “Flew the Coop,” like “The Evening Ball,” “Stable” and even arguably the develops-more-each-time hook of “Frozen Over,” storytelling lets the band make an impression in persona and craft alike.

I could sit here and bloviate uninformed on where Make Money From Home‘s progression might take them in the future — it might even be fun — but I don’t know anything, wouldn’t want to hazard a prediction when diversity of songwriting is so much at play, and generally feel like these pieces and the front-to-back entirety merit consideration on their own terms in the now. This is one of the best debut albums I’ve heard thus far into 2025, and one of the best albums, period, and I look forward to hearing how its character develops over the rest of this year and beyond.

Make Money From Home, Make Money From Home (2025)

Make Money From Home on Instagram

Make Money From Home on Bandcamp

In troubling times, Stinking Lizaveta are a reminder of the good humans can do. As they close in on the 30th anniversary of their first album, 1996’s Hopelessness and Shame, the venerable Philadelphia-based instrumental doomjazz innovators will undertake an even more massive European tour in 2025 than they did in 2024, again keeping company with Maryland-based experimentalists Darsombra — a damn good pairing — and embark on a no less sprawling reissue campaign with SRA Records, the same label that put out their latest album, Anthems and Phantoms (review here), in 2023.

To commence said campaign, SRA will stand behind new editions of the aforementioned Hopelessness and Shame and its 1997 follow-up, Slaughterhouse, as well as two new outings, a live record, Live 2023, captured at Milkboy in their hometown fresh off tour, and 1994 Steve Albini Demo, which was cut prior to recording the first record, also with the legendary producer at the helm. That’s not new music, being 31 years old, but it’s apparently never been released. Oh, and the second record was tracked by Steve Austin from Today is the Day. What is it with artsy noise dudes named Steve?

Anyhow, there’s a ton of information here, but since it’s Stinking Lizaveta, I expect all details to be fully memorized, preorders to be deployed, and so on and so forth. Stinking Lizaveta remain a band to tell your friends about, so here’s me telling you. The PR wire backs me up:

On March 7th, Philadelphia Legends Stinking Lizaveta & SRA Records Kick Off Massive Reissue Project With Debut, Sophomore Album, & More

Legendary Philadelphia Instrumental Rock Trio Stinking Lizaveta Kicks Off Massive Reissue Project with Steve Albini–Recorded Debut, Hopelessness and Shame, Second Record, Slaughterhouse, Recorded with Steve Austin (Today Is the Day), Plus Early Albini Demo and 2023 Live Record — All Available on Vinyl for the First Time

• Albini recorded debut and demo is an essential document for Stinking Lizaveta fans and Albini enthusiasts

• Massive 2025 European Tour

• Pre-orders available now at http://srarecords.com

Three decades ago, a thunderous roar emerged from the West Philadelphia punk underground. Stinking Lizaveta assembled, a rock ‘n’ roll powerhouse fronted by the ferocious screaming of guitarist Yanni Papadopoulos’ black Les Paul and propelled by the growling electric upright bass of his brother, Alexi, and the pummeling assault of drummer Cheshire Agusta. Rocking with extreme abandon, they were iconoclasts, delivering instrumental music that matched the intensity of their hardcore forebears.

The band followed the template provided by Greg Ginn’s Gone—as well as the guitarist’s vocal-less explorations within Black Flag (The Process of Weeding Out and Family Man)—a rare precedent for instrumental guitar-driven rock in the heavy music scene. “We were just trying to find our place on the shoulders of giants,” recalls Yanni. “I was copying the previous generation, as was Greg—he was copying Mahavishnu Orchestra and other stuff from the ’70s that he dug.” The guitarist cites other influences, notably stoner-rock stalwarts The Obsessed and the Bad Brains’ I Against I. “That’s stuff you can’t escape that influenced the whole generation,” the guitarist says. “Anyone who started playing guitar in the ’80s, you just hear [Bad Brains guitarist] Dr. Know in there. Is it metal? Is it punk?” The same questions would apply to Stinking Liz.

“We had two identities as a band at the time,” says Papadopoulos, recalling Stinking Lizaveta’s early days. “We had this overdriven guitar identity and this cleaner guitar identity. We used all the overdriven stuff for the first record and put the cleaner stuff on the shelf.” While on tour supporting their debut, they spent a night at Steve Austin’s house, who invited them to take advantage of his home studio. “We just recorded a bunch of stuff, and he’s such a creative person, he was able to capture this vibe in one night of unexpected recording.”

Austin’s recordings make more than half of their sophomore release, Slaughterhouse. These moody, bluesy excursions capture the late-night atmosphere. Effectively pre-dating the prevalent doomy jazz of Bohren & Der Club of Gore, or the proliferation of the slow-as-an-aesthetic guitar riffage in the hands of Earth, Slaugherhouse adds a new dimension to the band’s sound and reputation. On the record, the Austin recordings are mixed and matched with material recorded along the way at other sessions, which show the band’s rock focus was still firmly intact.

Newly remastered by Dave Eck, this reissue reconstitutes these tracks into a more cohesive-sounding form than ever before, delivering this necessary document in its highest fidelity. Along with Slaughterhouse—which will be pressed on gold vinyl—the first 100 copies purchased directly from SRA Records will include a copy of Live 2023, an all-new exclusive live recording of the trio performing a set of material culled from 2023’s Anthems and Phantoms at the height of their powers, fresh off a tour with Telekinetic Yeti, where they shared a bill with fellow instrumental underground rock legends and longtime compatriots Dysrhythmia at Philadelphia’s Milkboy.

Stinking Lizaveta’s trajectory is notably long and varied, but Live 2023 offers somewhat of a full-circle experience. Papadopoulos points out that much of the formula remains the same: Not only are they the same lineup, but they’re essentially all using the same tools—the guitarist has burned through a trio of Les Pauls but has not ventured from the model, and his brother continues on with the same electric upright. Yanni has gone through phases of heavier pedal exploration in his guitar sound but is back once again to using an elemental direct-into-the-amp approach as is heard on the first two records.

Following the band’s earliest demo recordings, capturing their sound in its infancy, to the big bang of their debut, through the sonic explorations of Slaughterhouse, hearing Live 2023 continues to deliver the same vitality and thrill that Stinking Lizaveta have become known for.

STINKING LIZAVETA / DARSOMBRA SUMMER EU TOUR 2025
updates here: DARSOMBRA.COM
23 – 24 May – GERMANY/CZECH REPUBLIC/POLAND
25 May – Berlin GERMANY @ Desertfest Berlin CONFIRMED
*26 – 27 May – CZECH REPUBLIC/POLAND/GERMANY
28 May – Warsaw POLAND @ Mlodsza Siostra CONFIRMED
29 May – Wroclaw POLAND @ Kalambur CONFIRMED
30 May – Krakow POLAND CONFIRMED
31 May – Kosice SLOVAKIA @ Collosseum CONFIRMED
1 June – Budapest HUNGARY @ Auróra CONFIRMED
*2 June – SLOVAKIA/HUNGARY
3 June – Vienna AUSTRIA @ Arena CONFIRMED
4 June – Linz AUSTRIA @ Kapu CONFIRMED
5 June – Nuremberg GERMANY @ Kunstverein Hintere Cramergasse e.V. CONFIRMED
6 June – Potsdam GERMANY @ Archiv CONFIRMED
7 June – Dresden GERMANY @ Veränderbar CONFIRMED
*8 June – CZECH REPUBLIC/GERMANY
9 June – Prague CZECH REPUBLIC @ Eternia CONFIRMED
*10 June – CZECH REPUBLIC
11 June – Brno CZECH REPUBLIC @ Kabinet Muz CONFIRMED
12 June – Berlin GERMANY @ Schokoladen CONFIRMED
13 June – Brandenburg GERMANY CONFIRMED
*14 – 19 June – WEST GERMANY/BELGIUM/NETHERLANDS
20 June – Herzberg GERMANY CONFIRMED
*21- 24 June – GERMANY/DENMARK/BELGIUM/NETHERLANDS
25-29 June – Lärz GERMANY CONFIRMED
*to be confirmed

HOPELESSNESS AND SHAME
Stinking Lizaveta’s 1996 debut album
First time on vinyl
Recorded by Steve Albini
Mastered from original analog master reels by James Plotkin
Red vinyl
Yellow vinyl

SLAUGHTERHOUSE
Stinking Lizaveta’s 1997 second album
First time on vinyl
Recorded by Steve Austin, Les Lentz and Aaron Levinson
Remastered by Dave Eck at Lucky Mastering
Gold vinyl

1994 STEVE ALBINI DEMO
SRA Records Exclusive – only available here!
First time available
Recorded by Steve Albini
Limited to 100 copies
Remastered from the master reels
Black vinyl

LIVE 2023
SRA Records Exclusive – only available here!
Stinking Lizaveta’s first live album
Recorded live in Philadelphia after returning from a US tour
Multitrack recording done by Joe Smiley
Mixed at Red Planet
Limited to 100 copies
Black vinyl

Stinking Lizaveta is Yanni Papadopoulos on guitar, Alexi Papadopoulos on upright electric bass, and Cheshire Agusta on drums.

https://www.facebook.com/Stinking-Lizaveta-175571942466657/
https://www.instagram.com/stinking_lizaveta/
http://www.stinkinglizaveta.com/
https://stinkinglizaveta.bandcamp.com

https://www.facebook.com/SRArecords
https://www.instagram.com/srarecords/
https://srarecords.bandcamp.com/
https://srarecords.com/

Stinking Lizaveta, Hopelessness and Shame (1996)

Stinking Lizaveta, Slaughterhouse (1997)

Stinking Lizaveta, 1994 Steve Albini Demo (2025)

Stinking Lizaveta, Live 2023 (2025)

11 minutes of new Clams is a big ‘yes please’ this morning as the Philly-ish riff-crunchers unveil “The Oar” as the first single from their impending self-titled follow-up to 2018’s III (review here). The four-piece who are a veteran presence both on stages up and down the Eastern Seaboard and in my heart have been working on Clamfight for years now — I know because I sing guest vocals on it (different song) and I recorded like two years ago — and as drummer/vocalist Andy Martin notes below, it will be their last collaboration with Steve Poponi, who passed away last year.

Bittersweet, then, certainly for the band. “The Oar” is big and lumbering, not without a reach in its melody and linear in its trajectory, build and flow. When it hits the comedown, you’ll be surprised the 11 minutes hare gone. If you’ve seen them live since the pandemic, I’m pretty sure they’ve been doing this one live for the last however long, epic solos and all. Plus gang vocals. Little something for everyone here.

I don’t have any idea on the release plan for Clamfight‘s Clamfight because, uh, I don’t, but I’ll keep an eye/ear for more, and there’s plenty here to dig into in the meantime. Enjoy:

In Andy’s words:

It’s very hard to sum up what this record means to us, or what the process of making it was like. The drum tracks were laid down as Lock Down was beginning and now we’re releasing it during another very dark and uncertain time. In the intervening years we lost close friends and family and gained new ones.

In making this record we leaned on each other and our collaborators more than ever before. I never write lyrics until we’re in the studio and as recording happened I found myself writing about where we were in our lives, the people we loved, the mistakes we made, and about how much I love these guys. So when it came time to name the record, the choice was obvious.

Submitted for your listening pleasure, this is “The Oar” the first song off the record “Clamfight” by the band Clamfight.

This is the last record we were privileged to make with our brother Steve Poponi. You’ll hear him on the end of the track. Words fall short when it comes out to expressing how much we miss him, so for and now always, we’ll just say Poponi Forever.

Take care of yourselves gang.

https://www.facebook.com/Clamfight
https://www.instagram.com/clamfight
https://clamfight.bandcamp.com/

Clamfight, “The Oar”

Caught Between Worlds turned 20 this year. A decade prior to its 2004 release through At a Loss Recordings, Philadelphia instrumentalists Stinking Lizaveta were putting together their first demos, so if we’re talking anniversaries, the band being 30 years old certainly warrants note. Their first album, the Steve Albini-produced Hopelessness and Shame, was came out in 1996. This was their fourth, following behind 2001’s III, which came out via Tolotta Records (run by Joe Lally of Fugazi), and the first of three that the lineup of guitarist Yanni Papadopoulos, bassist Alexi Papadopoulos and drummer Cheshire Agusta would do for At a Loss, which in a catalog of nine full-lengths and various splits and 7″s is a long as they’ve stayed with anybody. Hazards of this level of restlessness, perhaps.

And as for that level? Call it “characteristic,” though the persona of the band is something that’s evolved into itself over time as well. From a punkier, rawer foundation, Stinking Lizaveta have evolved a studio ideal of performance as a moral ethic. True to the very tail end of the CD era, it runs 61 minutes long and features 16 tracks, most under four minutes each. It shifts from place to place and its slowdowns don’t so much feel like they’re there to let the listener catch up as to throw down a gauntlet of instrumentalism. Stinking Lizaveta even two decades ago were no less clear in their purposes than the paragons of sans-vocals heavy riffing, Karma to Burn, but the Philly trio’s structures are quirkier, the turns brazenly angular, the stops and starts willfully unpredictable. The tense chugging and crashes of “I Denounce the Government” — at least as relevant in 2024 as 2004 — unfold with their own language of squeals in Yanni‘s guitar, answering the twisted depths conjured by Alexi‘s bass at the finish of “Beyond the Shadows” with a more animalian howl than the riffer title-track provided in the wistful melody of its shred and ensuing doomly march.

Parts are fast, parts are slow, ideas take shape in and around building cycles of riffs and are soon vaporized by impulsive-but-not-random redirects. “Out of Breath” seeming to hit a wall before pivoting to a creep before it’s halfway though, “Over the Edge” proffering a jammier, open and melancholic jazz fluidity, less manic than the crux of the record from which it comes but essential to it just the same, “Staying Here” getting its own acoustic intro before unfurling a Southern-style nostalgic sentiment, gradually flowing into improv-sounding meander but managing not to lose the plot by the finish, and so on. The focus throughout is less on atmosphere than one might expect having heard their more recent output — last year’s Anthems and Phantoms (review here) was born of the same roots as Caught Between Worlds, but the band have never stopped evolving or exploring — but the trade for that is a markedly live feel in the sound resulting from Ben Danaher and Joe Smiley‘s recording and mix, and Caught Between Worlds conveys its vitality in a way that, if it wasn’t all tracked with everyone in the same room playing at the same time, having that musical conversation and shaping the dynamic as it happened, is perhaps doubly impressive for sounding so much like it.

Granted this wasn’t a new band at the time — four records in 10 years isn’t nothing, however much they’ve done since — but in both their connections to punk in the drums, to jazz in the bass and to classic heavy rock via the guitar, the deep individualism of their writing style, and the verve with which even the urbane, largely mellow “Someone’s Downstairs” seems to soundtrack an invisible cartoon of someone walking tiptoe carrying a lamp with their shadow projected on the wall behind them — did it just move on its own? — is palpable and defining. Parts are fast, parts are slow, as noted, but Stinking Lizaveta remain unflinchingly themselves. It is a combination of elements that works simply because it does, and in the frenetic elbow-thrower “Stop Laughing” and the chunkier-style groove of “Last Wish” — still a live staple — and the greater tonal threat issued by “Side Naked,” which is even more striking for the human voice captured in its sample, the chemistry is plain to hear. It’s not about showing off, or maybe it is just a little, but each piece of Caught Between Worlds brings something to the complex picture of the whole.

That’s going to be most heard by those who put something into it. That is to say, Stinking Lizaveta have never been light on challenge when it comes to listening, and Caught Between Worlds — which front-to-back does what it says in presenting the band as drawing strength from existing in the spaces betwixt one style and another — is no exception, either in runtime or the various shifts in sound, tempo and mood put forth. They bring it back to ground near the finish for “Day of Dust” after “Someone’s Downstairs,” “Staying Here” (plus its intro) and the prior “Prayer for the Living” push into various oddball niches, and “Man Day” provides an insistent finish that feels well placed in providing a convincing closing argument. The more you put into it attention-wise, the more you’re going to get out of it, but as dug in as the band are throughout, it’s accordingly an easier dive for the listener to make at the outset, and once you’re in it, you might as well forget whatever else you had on for the day as you’ll be too busy trying to convince your head to stop spinning to get anything else done. This might make it distracting if you’re not committed to giving their songs the attention due, but if you can get on board, Stinking Lizaveta are good for the soul in a way few acts could ever hope to be and many don’t care enough to try to become. I promise you this is restorative music.

I already mentioned it, but the band’s latest LP, Anthems and Phantoms, is hardly a distant memory. I was lucky enough to catch them over the summer in Germany at Freak Valley (review here), and to absolutely no surprise, they were stellar. If you can see them, do. If not, they’ve got nine records for your plunge. Do it up.

Good luck, and as always, I hope you enjoy this one. Thanks for reading.

—

I was back and forth on whether to close out the week — it’s after noon now, which is later in the day than I’d prefer to be doing so, for sure — but I won’t regret it. In like an hour and a half I’m going to leave the comfort of my home and drive to I-don’t-know-where in Brooklyn to the TV Eye venue, try to find a place to park for however many hours and sit in my car rather than wait to drive in. I’m doing this because traffic and because it’s that much easier to get out of the house before school pickup, which is a little after 3. Traffic’s going to suck either way; going in or coming out of New York, that’s just a condition of life, but yeah. It’s Mars Red Sky and Howling Giant, and I swore up and down I was going, and I want to go, so I am.

The intervening time I’ll spend at least part of putting together the back end of the Quarterly Review I’ll be doing next week. Sneaking one in before year-end list time, and absolutely part of that is me trying to keep up with releases before I close out the year around here. It’s just one week — 50 releases, as opposed to 110, which we did, I don’t know, like four weeks ago, maybe? — but there’s some good stuff in there from the whole year, in addition to new releases. Things like Gnome, Fuzz Sagrado, Hermano, Thou, Sergeant Thunderhoof, Cortez (which I wrote the bio for but haven’t reviewed yet) Cosmic Fall and Coltaine — I don’t want to let these slip before 2025 hits and I start yet another year of listening at a deficit. Not that music has an expiration date, not that any of it matters in the first place, blah blah you get the point.

But doing the QR next week will help me finalize the shape of my own year-end list, and I’d feel awfully triumphant if I could get that out the week before the Xmas holiday — when I’ll almost certainly have a ton of other crap going on — rather than the week of. There was one year it was Xmas Eve it went up, which is ridiculous. I’ll do my best, but while I’m working on that it means I’ll be doing fewer reviews, so yeah, having just banged out 50 and needing to get caught up on news anyway — there was so much this week; anyone remember when the music industry shut down in December? — should put me in good position to start wrapping my head around what I think are the best releases of the year. I also feel like I need a special section to mention that I haven’t heard either the Opeth or the Blood Incantation records, but I can plot all that out as I get closer.

So that’s the plan for the rest of the month. Quarterly Review, list as soon as I can and whatever news and reviews I can fill in around it. There are less premieres, which is fine. That frees me up to chase down stuff on my own rather than follow what comes in for PR pitches, and that’s not a hardship when there’s a lot to do. If I get through it in a timely manner — I never know how much I have to say until I start saying it with these things, and sometimes it’s a lot — and have the week of New Year’s open, I’ll see where I’m at and what I want to do writing-wise with that time. I’ll do as much as I can, when I can. If you see me in my car this afternoon in Brooklyn typing out a 180-word review of the new Space Shepherds outing, perhaps you’ll have some semblance of the truth of that.

Whatever you’re up to this weekend — 16 are also in town but I can’t commit to driving to the city twice given how much I both hate it, it takes time away from duties at home, and I have a fair amount of travel set for the end of next month; Morris County, North Jersey needs a 200-cap venue on the underground circuit so god damn bad; anyone want to open one with me? — I hope you have a great and safe time. Have fun, maybe relax a bit, and enjoy the break if you get one. I’ll have the review of tonight up either over the weekend or on Monday, depending on when I have time to sort photos. Ugh, photos.

Okay, here I go.

FRM.

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