Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 26th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
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
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.
Posted in Reviews on February 26th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
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.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 6th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
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
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.
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 28th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
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.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on December 6th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
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.
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 8th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
It’s familiar enough ground that Philadelphia’s Rope Trick will cover this month with four dates in their hometown, NYC, Boston and Providence — the two-piece with members of Queen Elephantine did a Northeastern tour this Spring, for example — but following up on their appearance at Somergloom in August, Rope Trick have a new live video out to mark the occasion of getting going on the first of the two weekender-type undertakings. Tomorrow, Nov. 9, they’re at Silk City Diner in Philly, and Sunday is New York. Boston — hey O’Brien’s; been a minute — and Providence follow in about two weeks.
They go supporting earlier-2024’s two-songer Red Tide (discussed here), which is raw in sound but expansive in ideology, and if you can get your head in just the right place, even the short release is a journey with Rope Trick as a guide.
Dates and the “Neptune” live video follow, courtesy of the PR wire:
“Neptune” Live Video + Northeast US shows
Riding into No Hope November like 💥 with a noisy lil northeast loop through Philly, Brooklyn, Boston, and Providence. Join us as we ring in the end times with excellente troublemakers up the coast. Show details below — starting this Saturday in Philly and Sunday in NYC.
We are also excited to share a live video of “Neptune.” Check out the full video at youtube.com/@ropetrickband.
It was recorded in Boston’s Rockwell Theater in April at an epic show with Major Stars, Minibeast, and Endorphins. Huge thanks to Stephen LoVerme (video), Moobly Krew (sound), and to ONCE and Somergloom for having us.
11.09 — PHILADELPHIA Silk City Diner w. Minibeast, Writhing Squares, Bitter Wish
11.10 — NEW YORK Our Wicked Lady w. Yuvees, Loveletter, Big Band
11.22 — BOSTON O’brien’s Pub w. Lunar Ark, Psychic Weight, Cazador
Posted in Reviews on October 18th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
So this is it for the second of two Quarterly Review weeks around here, bringing the total to 100 releases covered since last Monday, with 10 more still to come next Monday.
110 releases, mostly (not all) from about April through November.
That’s insane. More, I’m not in any way prepared to call it or any other Quarterly Review comprehensive. It’s nowhere near everything that’s come out or is coming out. It’s a fraction at best. There’s just so much.
I’m not going to attach a value judgment to that. It’s not good, it’s not bad; it simply is. My processes remain largely unchanged, and whether it’s a net positive that the underground is either sparse and fractured or flooded with bands to such a point that Gen-X reunions underwhelm in the face of so much good, new music being made, I’ll be here regardless. And even if there were a fifth as many bands out there as there are right now, no doubt I still couldn’t keep up.
See you Monday.
Quarterly Review #91-100:
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Elder, Live at BBC Maida Vale Studios
While it’s by no means Elder‘s first captured-live release, as they’ve put out festival sets from Roadburn and Sonic Whip in years past, Live at BBC Maida Vale Studios answers any what’s-all-this-about questions with the sound of the performances themselves. It’s a single LP, somewhere about 40 minutes long, and in Elder terms that translates to three songs — “Merged in Dreams/Ne Plus Ultra” (15:33), “Lore” (13:54) and “Thousand Hands” (9:21) — so by no means is it expansive, or comprehensive in representing this era of Elder‘s presence on stage or scope in songwriting. Why put it out instead of some recorded tour night or a compilation of songs from different shows? Same answer as before: the sound of the performances. For sure Live at BBC Maida Vale Studios is a fan-piece, but it is live, and Elder sound fantastic — and it’s probably a pretty decent memory for the band to celebrate — so you’re not at all going to hear me argue.
Simon Price, now formerly of UK heavy psych forebears The Heads, returns with the first Kandodo outing since 2019’s K3 (review here) and a reoriented focus on intimacy rather than operating in a full-band style. That is to say, the five-track/44-minute release sounds like the solo album it is. That, however, doesn’t stop “Fuzzyoceans” from casting an expanse in its just-under-11 minutes, with a central rhythmic bounce around which layers of synth and guitar conjure a wash of experimentalist flourish. Lo-fi beatmaking starts in “Chamba7,” the opener, and sounds higher budget as “Theendisinpsych Pt. 1” borders on psych techno — “Theendisinpsych Pt. 2” follows immediately and moves from sustained keyboard notes and a sampled David Bowie radio interview to an evocative, shimmering drone; it isn’t arhythmic, but it doens’t have a ‘beat’ per se — and becomes part of the avant garde soundscape (the lightning part) in closer “Freefalling,” which unfolds in stages of variable volume and hum with some howling leads snuck in near the end. It’s a deep dive and at times a challenging listen. So yes, exactly what one would hope.
When High Reeper‘s third LP, Renewed by Death, was announced back in July, it was notable how much the album’s narrative seemed to position them as a metal band rather than heavy/doom rock, which even though 2019’s Higher Reeper (review here) had its harder-hitting moments, is kind of how I’d come to think of them. The eight songs of Renewed by Death aren’t hyper-aggressive — though you wouldn’t call “Torn from Within” ‘chill’ by any means — but they feel sharper in their composition than the last record, and if High Reeper want to say that “Lamentations of the Pale” and “Jaws of Darkness” are their take on doom metal, I’d only emphasize how much that take feels like High Reeper‘s own in being cognizant of the traditional metal and doom aspects of their sound and making them groove as fervently as they do. The Eastern Seaboard is lucky to have them.
A low-key highlight of 2024, the collaboration between Norwegian neofolkers Ævestaden and heavy progressive instrumentalists Kanaan — titled Langt, Langt Vekk and comprising nine songs of varied intent, arrangement and origin — resounds with creative depth. It’s in Norwegian, and plays a lot off of traditional folk instrumentation and vocal styles — not to mention the songs themselves, which are also traditionals — but as the two sides come together even just on a three-minute instrumental piece like “Fiskaren,” there’s an organic forested space rock to be found, and whether it’s the somehow-catchy “Farvel” or “Habbor og Signe,” the cosmic-leaning “Vallåt efter C.G. Färje” or the wistful progeadelia that resolves in “Vardtjenn,” the reverence for the material is palpable, and also the reverence for the process itself, for each of these two entities contributing to something grander than either might be able or inclined to conjure on their own. That the collection worked out to be gorgeous, both worldly and otherworldly, and to cast such a breadth while remaining cohesive in mood is a credit to all involved. It could’ve been an absolute mess. It very much is not.
Slugs are Legal Now contains two live sets from experimental doomers MC MYASNOI, one from Harpa and one from R6013, both venues in the band’s hometown of Reykjavík, Iceland. The setlists are identical at six-per, but the performances are varied in a way that becomes part of the personality of the whole, which is immersive in its droning stretches, sometimes harsher in the noise being made particularly on the rougher R6013 songs, but still able to be heavy in a piece like “Step on Ur Neck” in a way that feels conversant with the likes of Ufomammut or Boris, and neither the moody post-darkjazz of “Nytrogen” nor the drums-and-rumble-do-a-minute-or-two-of-free-psych “lea%rdi%rdx2%rcx” a short time later (watch out for your speakers with that one), do anything to dissuade that impression. “Terror Serpentine” finishes both halves of Slugs are Legal Now with 11 minutes of grim sprawl, and in the culmination, that it’s the keyboard that’s shredding instead of one or the other of the guitars feels suitable to the weirdo nuance MC MYASNOI seem to come by so naturally and pair with a progressive will to grow by screwing with convention. Not going to be for everybody, but those ready to take a risk might find the reward waiting.
Back after two years with further affirmation of their comfort with the EP format, Connecticut two-piece Turkey Vulture run a condensed gamut in the six songs and 12 minutes of On the List, with the duo of vocalist/guitarist/bassist Jessie May and drummer/backing vocalist Jim Clegg giving specifically Misfits-y early punk impressions on “Fiends Like Us,” which “Untitled” takes more of a garage angle on in following before they metal-up for “Dollhouse” and the 48-second grind-punker “Adults Destroy,” which leads to thrashing in “Harvest Moon” offset by doomly swing, and the closing “Jill the Ripper,” going out on a note that toys with goth Americana in the vein of The Bad Seeds and boasts banjo, guitar, percussion and, crucially, accordion from Steve Rodgers in a multifaceted guest spot. The accordion makes it. Turkey Vulture‘s output is generally pretty raw and that’s true with On the List as well, but there’s character in them coinciding with the flow from one aspect of their sound to the next between the songs, and the EP ends up conveying a lot about what works in the band for something that’s 12 minutes long.
Doubly-bassed Brussels longform doom explorers Ghost:Whale certainly don’t get any less consciousness melting on the second disc of Dive:Two, which manifests its plunge across three extended pieces each given the title “Dub:Whale” and assigned a Roman numeral, but by then the five songs of the album’s first 67 minutes (as opposed to the 57 of the concluding trilogy) have already passed in the hypnotic, cosmic-doom push of “Under Pressure” and the synth-laced chug nod in the second half of “Les Danses des Sorcieres” that seems to come to a head in the speedier “Ultimas Palabras.” The shortest inclusion at nine minutes and by its finish spending some time cruising around a Truckfightersian desert, “Ultimas Palabras” gives over to “Godzilla” and “Eye of the Storm,” a kind of second LP within the first CD, led into by the synth of “Godzilla” — not a cover — and arriving at the farthest reach in the electronics-infused expanses of “Eye of the Storm,” for which the drums mostly sit out and the noise spends 21 minutes venturing into the unknown. Ghost:Whale are not fucking around. And obviously the “Dub:Whale” tracks are a divergence in intention, harnessing the power of repetition in a different way, but either it’s a logical extension or my brain has just gone numb from the low-end. Fine in any case, honestly.
Do I really need to tell you these guys are up to some shenanigans? They called the band Sheepfucker and Kraut, for crying out loud. Heavy rock chicanery ensues over eight tracks rife with willful misbehavior, culminating with “Broner” after turning the album’s progression into a kind of playground running between heavy rock, classic and psychedelic instrumentalism, metal and jams. It’s not a little, and I guess a namedrop for Mr. Bungle is somewhat obligatory, but the Bulgarian outfit make themselves welcome in the swath of ground they cover, punkish in their glee on top of everything else in “Bobanei” and the pop-adjacent “Look at Me,” which would seem to have some satire behind its chorus but is a standout hook just the same. They’re not all nonsense, or at least not at the expense of their songwriting in “Rich Man” and “Jolly Roger,” or “Did You Know” mirroring “Look at Me” in the penultimate spot on side B, but if people having fun while making music is a problem for you, I mean, really, you might want to have a good long think on what that’s all about. Yeah, it’s over-the-top. That’s the idea.
In some ways, LungBurner‘s second LP of 2024, Natura Duale, reminds of earliest Yatra in bringing together vicious sludge metal and a breadth of atmosphere, but the Atlanta outfit have more of a post-metallic bent as the solo of “Barren” nonetheless dares to soar, and opener/longest track (immediate points) “Requiem” establishes the first of the album’s nods in a build of standalone guitar in the spirit of YOB, and in combination with a churn that wouldn’t feel out of place on Neurot and a crush in centerpiece “(Prey) Job” that opens to a classic stoner metal swagger in its verse, the righteousness here takes many forms, most of them dark, grueling and heavy — this definitely applies to the Celtic Frosting put on the proceedings by the finale “Astral Projection” — but not without a corresponding reach or purpose. LungBurner are served by the complexity of character, and Natura Duale grows more vivid as it goes.
With their material steeped in fantasy and horror/sci-fi lore, a goodly portion of it being of their own making, Michigan’s Bog Wizard continue to find the thread between tabletop gaming and sometimes monolithic sludge. The bulk of Journey Through the Dying Lands, which is their second release in a row done in collaboration with a game company, is dedicated to opener “I, Mycelium,” which stretches across 19:50 and unfolds in stages that don’t bother to choose between being brutal or fluid, the band winding up coming across as dug-in as one might expect Bog Wizard to be in the endeavor. There are two more studio tracks, in “Dodz Bringare,” which is black metal until it slams into the doom wall, and “Hagfish Dinner,” on which they depart for two minutes of harmonized chant-like vocals over resonant acoustic guitar. They’re not done yet as Ben Lombard (guitar/vocals), bassist Colby Lowman and drummer/vocalist Harlen Linke offer a glimpse at some live-on-stage banter before tearing into the thrasher “Stuck in the Muck” and backing it with another live track, this one a take on “Barbaria” from 2021’s Miasmic Purple Smoke (review here) that by the time it builds to its galloping finish has already long since demanded every bit of volume you can give it.
Posted in Reviews on October 9th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I have to stop and think about what day it is, so we must be at least ankle-deep in the Quarterly Review. After a couple days, it all starts to bleed together. Wednesday and Thursday just become Tenrecordsperday and every day is Tenrecordsperday. I got to relax for about an hour yesterday though, and that doesn’t always happen during a Quarterly Review week. I barely knew where to put myself. I took a shower, which was the right call.
As to whether I’ll have capacity for basic grooming and/or other food/water-type needs-meeting while busting out these reviews, it’s time to find out.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
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Vibravoid, We Cannot Awake
Of course, the 20-minute title-track head rock epic “We Cannot Awake” is going to be a focal point, but even as it veers into the far-out reaches of candy-colored space rock, Vibravoid‘s extended B-side still doesn’t encompass everything offered by the album that shares its name. Early cuts “Get to You” and “On Empty Streets” and “The End of the Game” seem to regard the world with cynicism that’s well enough earned on the world’s part, but if Vibravoid are a band out of time and should’ve been going in the 1960s, they’ve made a pretty decent run of it despite their somewhat anachronistic existence. “We Cannot Awake” is for sure an epic, and the five shorter tracks on side A are a reminder of the distinguished songwriting of Vibravoid more than 30 years on from their start, and as it’s a little less explicitly garage-rooted than their turn-of-the-century work, it further demonstrates just how much the band have brought to the form over time, with ‘form’ being relative there for a style that’s so molten. Some day this band will get their due. They were there ahead of the stoners, the vintage rockers, the neopsych freaks, and they’ll probably still be there after, acid-coating dystopia as, oh wait, they already are.
Taking influence from the earlier-Mastodon style of twist-and-gallop riffing, adding in vocal harmonies and their own progressive twists, West Virginia’s Horseburner declare themselves with their third album, Voice of Storms, establishing a sound based on immediacy and impact alike, but that gives the listener respite in the series of interludes begun by the building intro “Summer’s Bride” — there’s also the initially-acoustic-based “The Fawn,” which delivers the album’s title-line before basking in Alice in Chains-circa Jar of Flies vibes, and the dream-into-crunch of the penultimate “Silver Arrow,” which is how you kill Ganon — that have the effect of spacing out some of the more dizzying fare like “Hidden Bridges” and “Heaven’s Eye” or letting “Diana” and closer “Widow” each have some breathing room to as to not overwhelm the audience in the record’s later plunge. Because once they get going, as “The Gift” picks up from “Summer’s Bride” and sets them at speed, the trio dare you to keep pace if you can.
Some pressure on Dune-themed Montreal heavy rockers Sons of Arrakis as they follow-up their well-received 20222 debut, Volume I (review here) with the 10-track/33-minute Volume II. The metal-rooted riff rockers have tightened the songwriting and expanded the progressive reach and variety of the material, a song like “High Handed Enemy” drawing from an Elder-style shimmer and setting it to a pop-minded structure. Smooth in production and rife with melody, Volume II isn’t without its edge as shown early on by “Beyond the Screen of Illusion,” and after the thoughtful melodicism of “Metamorphosis,” the burst of energy in “Blood for Blood” prefaces the blowout in “Burn Into Blaze” before the outro “Caladan” closes on an atmospheric note. No want of dynamic or purpose whatsoever. I’ve seen less hype on the interwebs about Volume II than I did its predecessor, and that’s just one of the very many things to enjoy about it.
Classic heavy metal is fortunate to have the likes of Crypt Sermon flying its flag. The Philadelphia-based outfit continue on The Stygian Rose to stake their claim somewhere between NWOBHM and doom in terms of style — there are parts of the album that feel specifically Hellhound Records, the likes of “Down in the Hollow” is more modern, at least in its ending — but five years on from their second LP, 2019’s The Ruins of Fading Light (review here), the band come across with all the more of a grasp of their sound, so that when “Heavy is the Crown of Bone” lays out its riff, everybody knows what they’re going for is Candlemass circa ’86, but that becomes the basis from which they build out, and from thrash to ’80s-style keyboard dramaturge in “Scrying Orb” ahead of the sweeping 11-minute closing title-track, which is so endearingly full-on in its later roll that it’s hard to keep from headbanging as I type. Alas.
The kind of undulating riffy largesse Eyes of the Oak proffer on their second full-length, Neolithic Flint Dagger, puts them in line with Swedish countrymen like Domkraft and Cities of Mars, but the former are more noise rock and the latter aren’t a band anymore, so actually it’s a pretty decent niche to be in. The Sörmland four-piece use the room in their mix to veer between more straight-ahead vocal command and layered chants like those in the nine-minute “Offering to the Gods,” the chorus of which is quietly reprised in the 35-second closing title-track. Not to be understated is the work the immediate chug of “Cold Alchemy” and the marching nodder “Way Home” do in setting the tone for a nuanced sound, so that the pockets of sound that will come to be filled by another layer of vocals, or a guitar lead, or an effect or whatever it is are laid out and then the band proceeds to dance around that central point and find more and more room for flourish as they go. Bonus points for the soul in “The Burning of Rome,” but they honestly don’t need bonus points.
A kind of artful post-hardcore that’s outright combustible in “Concrete,” Mast Year‘s sound still has room to grow as they offer their first long-player in the 25-minute Point of View on respected Marylander imprint Grimoire Records, but part of that impression comes from how open the songs feel generally. That’s not to say the nine-minute “Figure of Speech” doesn’t have its crushing side to account for or that “Teignmouth Electron” before it isn’t gnashing in its later moments, but it’s the band’s willingness to go where the material is leading that seems to get them to places like the foreboding drone of “Love Note” and deconstructing intensity of “Erocide,” just as they’re able to lean between math metal and sludge, which is like the opposite of math, Mast Year cover a lot of ground in their extremes. The minor in creeper noisemaking — “Love Note,” closer “Timelessness” — shouldn’t be neglected for adding to the mood. Mast Year have plenty of ways to pummel, though, and an apparent interest in pushing their own limits.
In the span of about 20 minutes, Wizard Tattoo‘s Living Just for Dying EP, which finds project-founder Bram the Bard once again working mostly solo, save for guest vocals by Djinnifer on “The Wizard Who Loved Me” and Fausto Aurelias, who complements the extreme metal surge and charred-rock verse of “Tomorrow Dies” with a suitably guttural take; think Satyricon more than Mayhem, maybe some Darkthrone. Considering the four-tracker opens with the acoustic “Living Just for Dying” and caps with similar balladeering in “Sanity’s Eclipse,” the EP pretty efficiently conveys Wizard Tattoo‘s go-anywhereism and genre-line transgression at least in terms of the ethic of playing to different sounds and seeing how they rest alongside each other. To that end, detailed transitions between “The Wizard Who Loved Me” and “Tomorrow Dies,” between “Tomorrow Dies” and “Sanity’s Ecilpse,” etc., make for a carefully guided listening process, which feels short and complete and like a form that suits Bram the Bard well.
Virginian trio Üga Büga — guitarist/vocalist Calloway Jones, bassist/backing vocalist Niko Cvetanovich and drummer/backing vocalist Jimmy Czywczynski — don’t have to go far to find despondent sludgy grooves, but they range nonetheless as their debut full-length, Year of the Hog unfolds, “Skingrafter” marrying a crooning vocal in contrast to some of the surrounding rasp and burl to a build of crunching heavy riff. The album is bombastic as a defining feature — songs like “Change My Name” and “Rape of the Poor” come to mind — but there’s a perspective being cast in the material as well, a point of view to the lyrics, that comes through as clearly as the thrashy plunder of “Supreme Truth” later on, and I’m not sure what’s being said, but I am pretty sure “Mockingbird” knows it’s doing Phantom of the Opera, and that’s not nothing. They round out Year of the Hog with its eight-minute title-track, and finish with a duly metallic push, leaning into the aggressive aspects that have been malleably balanced all along.
Ultimately, The Moon is Flat‘s methodology on their third album, A Distant Point of Light, isn’t so radically different from how their second LP, All the Pretty Colors, worked in 2021, with longer-form jamming interspliced with structured craft, songs that may or may not open up to broader reaches, but that are definitively songs rather than open-ended or whittled-down jams (nothing against that approach either, mind you). The difference between the two is that A Distant Point of Light‘s six tracks and 52 minutes feel like they’ve learned much from the prior outing, so “Sound the Alarm” starts off bringing the two sides together before “Awestruck” departs into dream-QOTSA and progadelic vibery, and “I Saw Something” and its five-minute counterpart, closer “Where All Ends Meet” sandwich the 11-minutes each “Meanwhile” and “A Distant Point of Light,” The Moon is Flat digging in dynamically through mostly languid tempos and fluid, progressive builds of volume. But when they go, they go. Watch out for that title-track.
Chronicle II: Hypergenesis continues the thread that London instrumentalists began with their debut 2020’s Chronicle I: The Truthseseker and continued on the prequel EP, 2021’s Chronicle: Prologue, exploring heavy progressive conceptualism in evocative post-heavy pieces like opener “Daybreak,” which resolves in a riotous breakdown, or “The Archivist,” which is more angular when it wants to be but feels like a next-generation’s celebration of riffy chicanery in a way that I can only think of as encouraging for how seriously it seems not to take itself. The post-rocking side of what they do is well reinforced throughout — so is the crush — whether it’s “Dead Language” or “Into the Hazel Woods,” but there’s nothing on Chronicle II: Hypergenesis more consuming than the crescendo of the closing “Hypergenesis,” and the band very clearly know it; it’s a part so good even the band with no singer has to put some voice to it. That last groove is defining, but much of Chronicle II: Hypergenesis actively works against that sort of genre rigidity, and much to the album’s greater benefit.
