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Quarterly Review: Pike vs. The Automaton, End Boss, Artifacts & Uranium, Night City, Friends of Hell, Delco Detention, Room 101, Hydra, E-L-R, Buffalo Tombs

Posted in Reviews on April 8th, 2022 by JJ Koczan

THE-OBELISK-FALL-2020-QUARTERLY-REVIEW

You have your coffee yet? I’ve got mine. Today’s Friday, which means day five of this six-day Spring 2022 Quarterly Review, and it’s been a hell of a week. Yesterday was particularly insane, and today offers not much letup in that regard. If you’d have it another way, I’m sorry, but there’s too much cool shit out there to write about stuff that all sounds the same, so I don’t. I’ve had a good time over this stretch and I hope you have too if you’ve been keeping up. We’ll have one more on Monday and that’s it until late June or early July, so please enjoy.

And thanks as always for reading.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

Pike vs. the Automaton, Pike vs. The Automaton

matt pike vs the automaton

Matt Pike acoustic? It happened, and YOU were there! Truth is, the strumming foundation on which “Land” is built is just one example of Pike vs. The Automaton‘s singular get-weirdness, and followers of his career arc through Sleep and High on Fire from playing basements to winning a Grammy will recognize pieces of cuts like “Abusive” and “Trapped in a Midcave,” the all-out rager “Alien Slut Mom” (which of course was the lead single), the bombastic expanse of “Apollyon,” the even-more-all-out-rager “Acid Test Zone” and the dug-in get-weirdness of “Latin American Geological Formation” as one of heavy music’s most influential auteurs welcomes (?) listeners into a world of swirling chaos, monsters, conspiracies and, of course, riffs. The album saves its greatest accomplishment for last in the 11-minute “Leaving the Wars of Woe,” but if you’re old enough to remember when Rob Zombie did those off-the-wall cartoons for White Zombie videos and the Beavis and Butt-Head movie, listening to Pike vs. the Automaton is kind of like living in that for a while. So yeah, awesome.

Pike vs. The Automaton website

MNRK Heavy website

 

End Boss, They Seek My Head

End Boss They Seek My Head

Maybe the heaviest sans-bass low end since Floor? That’s not a minor claim, but at very least Wellington, New Zealand’s End Boss put themselves in the running with They Seek My Head, their debut album. The guitars of Greg Broadmore and Christian Pearce are the crushing foundation on which the band is built, and with Beastwars‘ own Nathan Hickey on drums, there’s a reliable base of groove to coincide as all that weight becomes the backdrop for E.J. Thorpe‘s vocals to soar over top on cuts like “Heart of the Sickle” and “Punished.” It’s a wide breadth throughout the eight songs and 33 minutes, allowing “Becomes the Gold” to show some emotive urgency while “Nail and Tooth” seems only to be sharpening knives at the outset of side B, while “The Crawl” just about has to be named after its riff and fair enough. “Lorded Over” hints at an atmospheric focus that may or may not further manifest in the future, but the closing title-track is what it’s all about, and it’s big nod, big melody, big hooks. You can’t lose. Onto the ‘best debuts of 2022’ it goes.

End Boss on Facebook

Rough Peel Records website

 

Artifacts & Uranium, Pancosmology

Artifacts and Uranium Pancosmology

Fred Laird (Earthling Society, Taras Bulba) and Mike Vest (Bong, Blown Out, etc.) released their self-titled debut as Artifacts & Uranium in 2021 as a collection of three massive dronescapes. Their follow-up, Pancosmology, telegraphs being more compositionally-focused even before you put it on, running eight songs instead of three, and indeed, that’s how it turns out. There are still massive waves of exploratory drones, guitar, electric piano, drums programmed and real — Nick Raybould plays on half the tracks, so a potential third in the duo — synth, bass, whatever a Gakken Generator is, it all comes together with an understated splendor and a sense of reaching into the unknown. Witness the guitar and synth lines of “Silent Plains,” and are those vocals buried so deep in that mix? I can’t even tell. It doesn’t matter. The point is that for 37 minutes, Laird and Vest (and Raybould) take you on a psych-as-spirituality trip into, around and through the universe, and by the time they get to “The Inmost Light” noisewashing at the finish, the feeling is like being baptised in a cold river of acid. If this is the birth of the gods, I’m in.

Taras Bulba on Facebook

Echodelick Records website

Weird Beard Records webstore

 

Night City, Kuang Xi

Night City Kuang XI

After the slower rolling opener “Broken Dick,” Night City‘s debut cassette EP, Kuang Xi, works at a pretty intense clip, taking the Godflesh vibe of that lead track, keeping the abiding tonal thickness, and imbuing it with an also-’90s-era Ministry-ish sense of chaos and push. The four-song outing works from its longest track to shortest and effectively melds heavy industrial with brutal chug and extreme metal, and one should expect no less from Collyn McCoy, whose plumbing of the dark recesses of the mind in Circle of Sighs is a bit more purely experimentalist. That said, if “Encryptor/Decryptor” showed up as a Circle of Sighs track, I wouldn’t have argued, but the use of samples here throughout and the explicitly sociopolitical lyrics make for coherent themes separate from McCoy‘s other project. “Steppin’ Razor” uses its guitar solo like a skronky bagpipe while calling out Proud Boy bullshit, and in fewer than three minutes, “Molly Million$” finds another gear of thrust before devolving into so much caustic noise. The version I got also featured the dancier “Tomorrow’s World,” but I’m not sure if that’s on the tape. Either way, a brutalist beginning.

Night City on Facebook

Dune Altar website

 

Friends of Hell, Friends of Hell

friends of hell friends of hell

Rise Above Records signing a band that might even loosely be called doom is immediately noteworthy because it means the band in question has impressed label owner Lee Dorrian, formerly of Cathedral, who — let’s be honest — has some of the best taste in music the world over. Thus Friends of Hell unleash 40 minutes of dirt-coated earliest-NWOBHM-meets-CelticFrost chugging groove, with former Electric Wizard bassist Tasos Danazoglou (currently Mirror) on drums and Sami “Albert Witchfinder” Hynninen (Spiritus MortisReverend BizarreOpium Warlords) on vocals, biting through catchy classic-sounding cuts like “Into My Coffin” and side B’s “Gateless Gate” and “Orion’s Beast.” Unremittingly dark, the nine-song collection ends with “Wallachia,” a somewhat grander take that still keeps its rawness of tone and general purpose with a more spacious vibe. It is not a coincidence Friends of Hell take their name from a Witchfinder General record; their sound seems like prime fodder for patch-on-denim worship.

Friends of Hell on Instagram

Rise Above Records website

 

Delco Detention, What Lies Beneath

Delco Detention What Lies Beneath

The second full-length keeping on a literally-underground theme from 2021’s From the Basement (review here), the 10-song/35-minute What Lies Beneath finds founding Delco Detention guitarist Tyler Pomerantz once again getting by with a little help from his friends, up to and including members of Hippie Death CultEddie Brnabic shreds over instrumental closer “FUMOFO” — The Age of Truth, Kingsnake and others. Angelique Zuppo makes a highlight of early cut “Rock Paper Scissors,” and Dave Wessell of Ickarus Gin brings a performance that well suits the strut-fuzz of “War is Mine,” while instrumentals “What Lies Beneath” and “Velcro Shoes” find Tyler (on bass and guitar) and drummer Adam Pomerantz digging into grooves just fine on their own. The shifts between singers give a compilation-style feel continued on from the first record, but a unifying current of songwriting brings it all together fluidly, and as “A Slow Burn” and “Study Hall Blues” readily demonstrate, Delco Detention know how to take a riff out for a walk. Right on (again).

Delco Detention on YouTube

Delco Detention on Bandcamp

 

Room 101, Sightless

Room 101 Sightless

Put Lansing, Michigan’s Room 101 up there with Primitive Man, Indian and any other extreme-sludge touchstone you want and their debut long-player, Sightless, will hold its own in terms of sheer, concrete-tone crushing force. In answering the potential of 2019’s The Burden EP (review here), the album offsets its sheer bludgeoning with stretches of quiet-tense atmospherics, “Boarded Window” offering a momentary respite before the onslaught begins anew. This balance is further fleshed out on longer tracks like “Dead End,” with a more extended break and the title-cut with its ending guitar lead, but neither the sub-five-minute “Windowlicker” nor “Boarded Window” earlier want for mood, and even the finale “The Innocent, the Ignorant and the Insecure” brings a feeling of cohesion to its violence. This shit is lethal, to be sure, but it’s also immersive. Watch out you don’t drown in it.

Room 101 on Facebook

Room 101 on Bandcamp

 

Hydra, Beyond Life and Death

Hydra Beyond Life and Death

Heralded by the prior single “With the Devil Hand in Hand” (posted here), which is positioned as the closer of the 41-minute five-tracker, Hydra‘s second full-length, Beyond Life and Death, finds the Polish four-piece pushing deeper into doomed traditionalism. Where their 2020 debut, From Light to the Abyss (review here), had a garage-ist edge, and if you work hard, you can still hear some of that just before the organ kicks in near the end of “On the Edge of Time” (if that’s a “Children of the Sea” reference we can be friends), but after the more gallop-prone opener “Prophetic Dreams” and the penultimate “Path of the Dark”‘s whoa-oh backing vocals, the crux of what they’re doing is more NWOBHM-influenced, and blending with the cult horror lyrical themes of centerpiece “The Unholy Ceremony” or the aforementioned closer, it gives Hydra a more confident sound and a more poised approach to doom than they had just two years ago. The adjusted balance of elements in their sound suits them, and they seem quickly to be carving out a place for themselves in Poland’s crowded scene.

Hydra on Facebook

Piranha Music on Bandcamp

 

E-L-R, Vexier

e-l-r vexier

The two 12-minute tracks “Opiate the Sun” and “Foret” bookend Swiss trio E-L-R‘s second LP for Prophecy Productions, Vexier, and the intention would seem to be plain in hooking and immersing the listener in the experience and flow of the album. Like their wildly impressive 2019 debut, Mænad (review here), this collection has plenty of post-metallic elements, and there’s specifically a post-black metal bent to “Three Winds” in its earliest going — by the midsection it’s come apart into broad, open spaces, but the rush comes back — and the centerpiece and shortest track, “Seeds,” which seems to shine even brighter in its melody than the opener, as the vocals are once more presented on a level plane with the rest of the atmospheric elements, far back in the mix but not at all lacking resonance for being vague. “Seeds” is a fitting summary, but “Fleurs of Decay” leans into the expectation of something harsher and “Foret” boasts a more complex linear build, stretches of drone and a broader vocal arrangement before bringing the record to its gentle finish. I liked the first record a lot. I like this one more. E-L-R are doing something with sound that no one else quite has the same kind of handle on, however familiar the elements making it up might be. They are a better band than people yet know.

E-L-R on Facebook

Prophecy Productions store

 

Buffalo Tombs, III

Buffalo Tombs III

Titled Three or III, depending where you look, the third long-player from Denver instrumental heavy rockers Buffalo Tombs follows relatively hot on the heels of the second, Two (review here), which came out last October. Spearheaded by guitarist/bassist Eric Stuart, who also recorded the instrumentation sans Patrick Haga‘s own self-recorded drums (lockdown? depends on when it was) and mixed and mastered — Joshua Lafferty also adds bass to “Ancestors” and “Monument,” which are just two of the six contemplations here as Buffalo Tombs explores an inward-looking vision of heavy sounds and styles, not afraid to shove or chug a bit on “Swarm” or “Gnostics/Haint,” but more consistently mellow in mood and dug into its own procession. “Familiars” hints at aspects of heavy Americana, but the root expression on III comes across as more personal and that feeling of intimacy suits well the mood of the songs.

Buffalo Tombs on Facebook

Buffalo Tombs on Bandcamp

 

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Red Smoke Festival 2022 Adds Mars Red Sky and Kaleidobolt to Lineup

Posted in Whathaveyou on February 25th, 2022 by JJ Koczan

red smoke festival 2022 logo

Poland’s Red Smoke Festival 2022 makes its first lineup announcements, with Mars Red Sky and Kaleidobolt joining the bill. The event is of course part of greater Europe’s summer festival season, but like many of its heavier-minded ilk, seems to have developed a culture of its own, and in addition to bringing in some heavy hitters each year, looks like a good time also, you know, on a human level of existing with other people who aren’t dicks. At least for a couple days.

In 2022, four days, in fact. July 7-10 at the Amphitheatre in Pleszew in Central Poland. Mars Red Sky will be among the headliners, and fair enough for that — dying for new album news from them — and Kaleidobolt will play supporting their 2019 album, Bitter (review here), which was both awesome and released by Svart Records. Amazing how often those two things come together.

There’s about zero chance I’d be able to get to this thing, but as someone who makes a habit out of daydreaming about attending European heavy rock festivals on concurrent weekends oh, say, forever, a couple days of long summer heavy in Poland sounds pretty righteous to me. It’s nice to be able to think something like this will actually happen.

More announcements forthcoming, obviously, but here’s the first two:

Red Smoke Festival 2022

SAVE THE DATE! Red Smoke Festival returns with a 4-day edition! July 7-10th. Amphitheatre in Pleszew.

Ticket sale will start in early March.

Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/300002808790014/

Mars Red Sky and RSF 2022!

Do we all know them? Sure!
Are they great? Of course!
Is this one of the most interesting bands in the genre? You bet!
It will be one of the headliners of RSF2022.

KALEIDOBOLT at RSF2022!

Speed, power & sweat. Endless dance! It might be one of the biggest highlights of the festival.

https://www.facebook.com/events/300002808790014/
https://www.facebook.com/RedSmokeFest
https://instagram.com/redsmokefest
https://redsmokefestival.pl/

Mars Red Sky, “Hollow King” official live video

Kaleidobolt, Bitter (2019)

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Hydra Post “With the Devil Hand in Hand”; Announce Second Album

Posted in Whathaveyou on January 10th, 2022 by JJ Koczan

hydra

For some people, the words ‘Polish doom riffs’ will likely be enough to go on here. Hydra got started in 2019, released their debut album, From Light to the Abyss (review here), in 2020, followed that later in the year with a recorded live session (review here), and are now ready to announce their second full-length to come sometime this year on Piranha Music. Call me crazy, and I’ve looked for it a few times, but I’m not seeing an album title in the below announcement, though certainly if they wanted to roll with the name of the first single “With the Devil Hand in Hand,” that’d work just fine. And they’ve already got the cover art by Dopelord‘s Paweł Mioduchowski, but I’ve been bitten too many times by saying something not 100 percent confirmed, so whether or not Hydra have that set in stone(r), I just don’t know.

Time to figure it out, I suppose. For now, I’ll take the streaming audio of the aforementioned first single, which you can find at the bottom of this pose, and dig on the likewise aforementioned ‘Polish doom riffs’ merrily, thank you very much. At 10 minutes long, there are plenty of them.

DOOM:

hydra with the devil hand in hand

Doom metal band HYDRA to release new album this winter! Listen to first single

Oldschool doom metal act HYDRA have just announced that they will release their second album soon!

“From Light To The Abyss”, which was the band’s debut LP, was released in 2020 and was really highly appreciated in the stoner / doom metal underground scene.

Polish trad doomers HYDRA have just released a new single from their upcoming album! “With the Devil Hand in Hand” is the 10-minutes-long track full of groovy riffs, catchy melodies and – of course – the Devil worship.

They started up in 2019, inspired by early Black Sabbath albums. After releasing their first single, “When the Devil’s Coming Down”, they signed to Piranha Music, an independent label from Toruń (PL), to release their full-length debut album. “From Light to the Abyss” came into being on 21 August 2020 (and then released on vinyl at the end of 2021). The album artwork was designed by Paweł Mioduchowski (of almighty Dopelord).

Hydra are:
Dąbek – voc, git
Mieszko – git
Vanat – bass, voc
Yahoo – drums

https://www.facebook.com/Hydraband666/
https://www.instagram.com/hydra666official/
https://hydra666.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/piranhamusicpl/
https://www.instagram.com/piranha.music/
https://piranhamusicpl.bandcamp.com/

Hydra, “With the Devil Hand in Hand”

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Quarterly Review: Boris, DVNE, Hydra, Jason Simon, Cherry Choke, Pariiah, Saavik, Mountain Tamer, Centre El Muusa, Population II

Posted in Reviews on December 21st, 2020 by JJ Koczan

THE-OBELISK-FALL-2020-QUARTERLY-REVIEW

Kind of a spur of the moment thing, this Quarterly Review. I’ve been adding releases all the while, of course, but my thought was to do this after my year-end list went up, and I realized, hey, if I’ve got like 70 records I haven’t reviewed yet, maybe there’s some of that stuff worth considering. So here we are. I’ve pushed back my best-of-2020 stuff and basically swapped it with the Quarterly Review. Does it matter to you? I seriously, seriously doubt it, but I believe in transparency and that’s what’s up. Thought I’d let you know. And yeah, this is going to go into next week, take us through the X-mas holiday this Friday, so whatever. You celebrate your way and I’ll celebrate mine. Let’s roll.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

Boris, No

boris no

As a general project, reviewing Boris is damn near pointless. One might as well review the moon: “uh, it’s big and out there most of the time?” The only reason to do it is either to exercise one’s own need to hyperbolize or help the band sell records. Well, Boris doesn’t need my push and I don’t need to tell them how great they are. No is 40 minutes of the widely and wildly lauded Japanese heavy rock(s) experimentalists trying to riff away existing in 2020, delving high speed into hardcore here and there and playing off that with grueling sludge, punk, garage-metal and the penultimate “Loveless,” which is kind of Boris being their own genre. Much respect to the band, and I suppose one might critique Boris for, what?, being so Boris-y?, but there really isn’t a ton that hasn’t been said about them because such a ton has. I’m not trying to disparage their work at all — No is just what you’d expect as regards defying expectation — but after 20-plus years, there’s only so many ways one wants to call a band genius.

Boris on Thee Facebooks

Boris on Bandcamp

 

DVNE, Omega Severer

DVNE Omega Severer

Kind of a soft-opening for Edinburgh’s DVNE as an act on Metal Blade Records, unless of course one counts the two songs on the Omega Severer EP itself, which are post-metallic beasts of the sort that would and should make The Ocean blush. Progressive, heavy, and remarkably ‘next-wave’ feeling, DVNE‘s awaited follow-up to 2017’s Asheran may only be about 17 and a half minutes long, but it bodes remarkably well as the band master a torrent of intensity on the 10-minute opening title-cut and answer that with the immediately galloping “Of Blade and Carapace,” smashing battle-axe riffing and progressive shimmer against each other and finding it to be an alchemy of their own. Album? One suspects not until they can tour for it, but if Omega Severer is DVNE serving notice, consider the message received loud, clear, dynamic, crushing, spacious, and so on. Already veterans of Psycho Las Vegas, they sound like a band bent on capturing a broader audience in the metallic sphere.

DVNE on Thee Facebooks

Metal Blade Records website

 

Hydra, From Light to the Abyss

hydra from light to the abyss

There’s no questioning where Hydra‘s heart is at on their debut full-length, From Light to the Abyss. It belongs to the devil and it belongs to Black Sabbath. The Polish four-piece riff hard and straightforward throughout most of the five-track offering (released by Piranha Music), and samples set the kind of atmosphere that should be familiar enough to the converted — “No One Loves Like Satan” reminds of Uncle Acid in its initial channel-changing and swaggering riff alike — but doomly centerpiece “Creatures of the Woods” and the layered vocal melodies late in closer “Magical Mind” perhaps offer a glimpse at the direction the band could take from here. What matters though is where Hydra are at today, and that’s bringing riffs and nod to the converted among the masses, and From Light to the Abyss offers no pretense otherwise. It is doom rock for doom rockers, grooves to be grooved to. They’re not void of ambition by any means — their songwriting makes that clear — but their traditionalism is sleeve-worn, which if you’re going to have it, is right where it should be.

Hydra on Thee Facebooks

Piranha Music on Bandcamp

 

Jason Simon, A Venerable Wreck

jason simon a venerable wreck

Dead Meadow guitarist/vocalist Jason Simon follows 2016’s Familiar Haunts (review here) with the genre-spanning A Venerable Wreck, finding folk roots in obscure beats and backwards this-and-that, country in fuzz, ramble in space, and no shortage of experimentalism besides. A Venerable Wreck consists of 12 songs and though there are times where it can feel disjointed, that becomes part of the ride. It’s not all supposed to make sense. Yet what happens by the time you get around to “No Entrance No Exit” is that Simon (and a host of cohorts) has set his own context broad enough so that the drone reach of “Hollow Lands” and sleek, organ-laced indie of closer “Without Reason or Right” can coexist without any real interruption of flow between them. The question with A Venerable Wreck isn’t so much whether the substance is there, it’s whether the listener is open to it. Welcome to psychedelic America. Please inject this snake venom and turn in your keys when you leave.

Jason Simon on Bandcamp

BYM Records website

 

Cherry Choke, Raising Salzburg Rockhouse

Cherry Choke-Raising Salzburg Rockhouse-Cover

You won’t hear me take away from the opening psych-scorch hook of “Mindbreaker” or the fuzzed-on, boogie-down, -up, and -sideways of “Black Annis” which follows, but there’s something extra fun about hearing Frog Island’s Cherry Choke jam out a 13-minute, drum-solo-inclusive version of “6ix and 7even” that makes Raising Salzburg Rockhouse even more of a reminder of how underrated both they are as a band and Mat Bethancourt is as a player. Look no further than “Domino” if you want absolute proof. The whole band rips it up at the Austrian gig, which was recorded in 2015 as they supported their third and still-most-recent full-length, Raising the Waters (review here), but Bethancourt puts on a Hendrixian clinic in the nine-minute cut from 2011’s A Night in the Arms of Venus (review here), which is actually less of a clinic than it is pure distorted swagger followed by a mellow “cheers, thanks” before diving into “Used to Call You Friend.” A 38-minute set would be perfect for an vinyl release, and anytime Cherry Choke want to get around to putting together a fourth studio album, well, that’ll be just fine too.

Cherry Choke on Thee Facebooks

Cherry Choke on Bandcamp

 

Pariiah, Swallowed by Fog

Pariiah swallowed by fog

It’s a special breed of aggro that emerges as a result of living in the most densely populated state in the union, and New Jersey’s Pariiah have it to spare. Bringing together sludge tonality with elder-style New York hardcore lumbering riffs on their Trip Machine Laboratories tape, Swallowed by Fog, they exude a thickened brand of pissed off that’s outright going to be too confrontation for many who take it on. But if you want a middle finger to the face, this is what it sounds like, and the six songs (compiled into four on the digital version of the release) come and go entirely without pretense and leave little behind except bruises and the promise of more to come. They’re a new band, started in this most wretched of years, but there’s no learning curve whatsoever among the members of Devoid of Faith, The Nolan Gate, Kill Your Idols, Changeörder and others. I’d go to Maplewood to see these cats. I’m just saying. Maybe even Elizabeth.

Pariiah on Bandcamp

Trip Machine Laboratories website

 

Saavik, Saavik

saavik saavik

So you’ve got both members of Holly Hunt in a four-piece sludging out with spacey synth and the band is named after a Star Trek character? Not to get too personal, but that’s going to pique my interest one way or the other. Saavik — and they clearly prefer the Kirstie Alley version, rather than Robin Curtis, going by drummer Beatriz Monteavaro‘s artwork — are damn near playing space rock by the end of “He’s Dead Jim,” the opener of their self-titled debut EP, but even that’s affected by a significant tonal weight in Didi Aragon‘s bass and the guitar of Gavin Perry, however much Ryan Rivas‘ synth and effects-laced vocals might seem to float overhead, but “Meld” rolls along at a steadier nod, and “Horizon” puts the synth more in the lead without becoming any less heavy for doing so. Likewise, “Red Sun” calls to mind Godflesh in its proto-machine metal stomp, but there’s more concern in Saavik‘s sound with expanse than just pure crush, and that shows up in fascinating ways in these songs.

Saavik on Thee Facebooks

Other Electricities on Bandcamp

 

Mountain Tamer, Psychosis Ritual

mountain tamer psychosis ritual

There’s been a dark vibe all along nestled into Mountain Tamer‘s sound, and that’s certainly the case on Psychosis Ritual, with which the Los Angeles-based trio make their debut on Heavy Psych Sounds. It’s their third full-length overall behind 2018’s Godfortune // Dark Matters (review here) and 2016’s self-titled debut (review here), and it finds their untamed-feeling psychedelia rife with that same threat of violence, not necessarily thematically as much as sonically, like the songs themselves are the weapon about to be turned on the listener. Maybe the buzz of “Warlock” or the fuckall echo of the prior-issued single “Death in the Woods” (posted here) aren’t out there trying to be “Hammer Smashed Face” or anything, but neither is this the hey-bruh-good-times heavy jams for which Southern California is known these days. Consider the severity of “Turoc Maximus Antonis” or the finally-released screams in closer “Black Noise,” which bookends Psychosis Ritual with the title-track and seems at last to be the point where whatever grim vibe these guys are riding finally consumes them. Mountain Tamer continue to be unexpected and righteous in kind.

Mountain Tamer on Thee Facebooks

Heavy Psych Sounds on Bandcamp

 

Centre El Muusa, Centre El Muusa

centre el muusa centre el muusa

Hypnotic Estonian psychedelic krautrock instrumentals not your thing? Well that sounds like a personal problem Centre El Muusa are ready to solve. The evolved-from-duo four-piece get spaced out amid the semi-motorik repetitions of their self-titled debut (on Sulatron), and that seems to suit them quite well, thanksabunch. Drone trips and essential swirl brim with solar-powered pulsations and you can set your deflectors on maximum and route all the secondaries to reinforce if you want, there’s still a decent chance 9:53 opener an longest track “Turkeyfish” (immediate points, double for the appropriately absurd title) is going to sweep you off what you used to call your feet when that organ line hits at about six minutes in. That’s to say nothing of the cosmic collision later in “Burning Lawa” or the just-waiting-for-a-Carl-Sagan-voiceover “Mia” that follows. Even the 3:46 “Ain’t Got Enough Mojo” lives long enough to prove itself wrong. Interstellar tape transmissions fostered by obvious weirdos in the great out-there in “Szolnok,” named for a city in Hungary that, among other things, hosts the goulash festival. Right fucking on.

Centre El Muusa on Thee Facebooks

Sulatron Records webstore

 

Population II, À La Ô Terre

Population II a La o Terre

The first Population II album, a 2017 self-titled, was comprised of two tracks, each long enough to consume a 12″ side. Somehow it’s fitting with the Montreal-based singing-drummer trio’s aesthetic that their second long-player, À la Ô Terre, would take a completely different tack, employing shorter freakouts like “L’Offrande” and “La Nuit” and the garage-rocking “La Danse” and what-if-JeffersonAirplane-but-on-Canadian-mushrooms “À la Porte de Demain” and still-more-drifting finisher “Je Laisse le Soleil Briller” amid the more stretched out “Attaction,” the space-buzzer “Ce n’est Réve” while cutting a middle ground in the greaked-out (I was gonna type “freaked out” and hit a typo and I’m keeping it) “Il eut un Silence dans le Ciel,” which also betrays the jazzy underpinnings that somehow make all of À la Ô Terre come across as progressive instead of haphazard. From the start to the close, you don’t know what’s coming next, and just because that’s by design doesn’t make it less effective. If anything, it makes Population II all the more impressive.

Population II on Thee Facebooks

Castle Face Records website

 

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Hydra Premiere From Light to the Abyss Live Session

Posted in Bootleg Theater on November 23rd, 2020 by JJ Koczan

hydra live session

At this point in the pandemic, I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this you’ve watched a ‘live stream’ of one sort or another, whether that’s actually a band playing live as it goes out or a special airing of a prior-recorded performance or set. And I feel safe making that assumption because it’s been 10 months, we’ve all had a lot of time at home, and my social media feed has been filled with people increasingly wistful in their “I miss live shows” posts. Myself included.

Well, Hydra, from Pleszew, Poland, released their first album, From Light to the Abyss, through Piranha Music this past August. Only together for about a year before issuing the five-tracker, the band quickly prove with it that they’ve got their heads together when it comes to knowing what they want to do in doom rock and classic, darker-tinged rolling riffage. Wearing their Iommi on their collective sleeve, the band’s songs move between the catchy, almost Uncle Acid-ic “No One Loves Like Satan” to the more oldschool doom of “Secrets of the Undead,” with guitarist Dabek (there’s an ogonek on the ‘a’ his name I can’t get to show up in WordPress, and for that I apologize) and bassist Vanat sharing vocal duties atop the steady progression filled out by guitarist Mieszko and drummer Yahoo. They ask little of the listener in terms of indulgences, riff righteously and very clearly came into their debut knowing what they wanted to accomplish in terms of sound. If you can’t respect that, I’ve got nothing for you.

hydra from light to the abyssIn addition to the five cuts from From Light to the Abyss itself, the live session premiering in its 47-minute entirety below also includes the new song “The Unholy Ceremony,” which finds the four-piece ranging into including keys for the first time, already showing a propensity for growth and moving forward from the album, which again, has been out for about three months. The video and audio were recorded at their own Acoustic Studio, which might well be named for the tiles of the drop ceiling situated directly above the band as they play. There are three or four cameras working throughout, the audio is pro-shop, and the band are situated with their amps isolated and Yahoo positioned somewhere that I can’t even tell if he’s facing the other three or somewhere else entirely. He gets his own camera and earns it through his play.

So you’ve seen live steams. Fine. Probably you’ve seen one for a band you already know, maybe that you miss seeing on stage. Here’s a chance to do that other great thing that live music lets you do, and that’s discover something cool you might not have encountered before. I’m not about to tell you Hydra are a genre revolution — they’re not — but they’re a band who wanted to make a racket and they’re doing exactly that here. If that doesn’t get you through to the killer nod at the outset of “Magical Mind” in the video below, chances are it’s your own loss.

Because the songs of From Light to the Abyss are presented out of order, and because it’s a cool record, I’ve included the full album stream from Bandcamp at the bottom of this post as well. Some comment from Vanat and more background follows the clip itself.

Please enjoy:

Hydra, From Light to the Abyss live session at Acoustic Studio premiere

Vanat (bass) on From Light to the Abyss live session:

“During the past few months many of our shows have been cancelled. We really missed playing live and so we got inspired to record a live stream. We had many ideas on how to present our material on the web but we finally settled on recording a full show in our studio (Acoustic Studio) where we have also recorded our first album. We wanted it to sound properly which would be hard to achieve without professional support. The space in the studio was quite small but with the help of our friend Szymon we managed to create a nice video.

“Even though we cannot play many concerts right now, we keep on working. We have recently came up with a new single “The Unholy Ceremony” which will probably appear on the next album, but you can already hear this one on the live stream. In this track we maintain our classic style but we also used a synthesizer for the first time to give it a different vibe.”

Recorded at Acoustic Studio by Marcel Kraszkiewicz
https://www.acousticstudio.pl/
Pictures & VFX by Szymon Szpunt
https://www.instagram.com/szpuntoo/

Setlist:
00:00 – Creatures of the Woods
08:10 – No One Loves Like Satan
15:03 – Secrets of the Undead
21:52 – The Unholy Ceremony (NEW!)
30:06 – When the Devil’s Coming Down
38:15 – Magical Mind

HYDRA was formed in 2019 in Pleszew, the hometown of the beautiful stoner doom RED SMOKE FESTIVAL. The band consists of Vanat (bass), Yahoo (drums), Mieszko (guitar) and Dabek (guitar & vocal), who is also well known from another Polish act – Red Scalp.

Piranha Music, an independent label from Toru?, released their full-length debut, “From Light to the Abyss,” on 21 August 2020. The amazing album artwork was designed by Pawel Mioduchowski (of almighty Dopelord).

Hydra is:
Dabek – voc, git
Mieszko – git
Vanat – bass, voc
Yahoo – drums

Hydra, From Light to the Abyss (2020)

Hydra on Facebook

Hydra on Bandcamp

Piranha Music on Facebook

Piranha Music on Bandcamp

Piranha Music on Instagram

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