Posted in Whathaveyou on December 4th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Yeah, I know it’s the opening slot on a four-band bill, but for the rest of their lives, the dudes in Dopelord get to say they went on tour with Napalm Death‘s ‘Campaign for Musical Destruction,’ and that’s pretty god damn cool from where I sit. The gleefully blasphemous, Sabbath-worshipping Polish stoner doomers signed to Season of Mist earlier this year after releasing the catchy powerhouse Songs for Satan (review here) in 2023, and one imagines if you needed an occasion to pound out a follow-up to that hook-filled riff-fest, this tour makes a good one, though even if they’re not supporting a new record at that point, Songs for Satan very much remains a flag worth flying. It’s not like it’s gotten stale, is what I’m saying.
Hear that for yourself on the player at the bottom of this post. The poster was put on socials and I typed out the dates because I’m a nerd and I think it’s important to keep a record of these things. Dopelord are out now celebrating their 15th anniversary as a band, even as they continue to reach new heights and new audiences.
Here you go:
Holy shit! We’re far beyond stoked to be joining this monster of a tour. Sharing the stage with absolute legends is a great honor. Our set won’t be too long so be sure to show up early to check us out! See you very soon!
“There isn´t any tour that survived for decades and remain just as interesting as 36 years before , like the Campaign for Musical Destruction Tour 2026. This successful and extraordinary tour has been running , with Napalm Death leading for decades now. The tour consistently impresses with its blend of creative and extreme underground music.”
Dopelord: Remaining 15th Anniversary Dates 04 December: Prague, CZ @ Subzero 05 December: Dresden, DE @ Chemiefabrik 06 December: Vienna, AT @ Escape 07 December: Innsbruck, AT @ PMK 08 December: Ljubljana, SI @ Menza pri Koritu 09 December: Zagreb, HR @ Vintage Industrial Bar 10 December: Belgrade, RS @ Zappa Baza 11 December: Budapest, HU @ Instant 12 December: Bratislava, SK @ Zalar 13 December: Brno, CZ @ Kabinet Múz
Dopelord: Campaign for Musical Destruction Tour Dates 30.01 Koln DE Essigfabrik 31.01 Paris FR Mondial du Tatouage 01.02 Antwerp BE Trix 03.02 Rennes FR Lantipode 04.02 Pamplona SP Sala Totem Aretoa 05.02 Madrid SP Mon 06.02 Toulouse FR Interference 07.02 Vitry-le-Francois FR L’Orange Bleue 09.02 Grenoble FR La Belle Electrique 10.02 Paderno Dugnano (MI) IT Slaughter Club 11.02 Munchen DE Kulturzentrum Backstage 12.02 Wien AT Arena Wien 13.02 Berlin DE Astra Kulturhaus 12.02 Hamburg DE Grunspan 15.02 Malmo SE Plan B 17.02 Warsaw PL Progresja 18.02 Leipzig DE Felsenkeller 19.02 Herford DE Kulturwerk 20.02 Leer DE Zollhaus Leer 21.02 Drachten NL Iduna 22.02 Lille FR Le Splendid – Salle de Concert 24.02 London UK Electric Ballroom 25.02 Glasgow UK Clyde Room 26.02 Dublin 1 IR The Academy 27.02 Liverpool UK 02 Academy Liverpool 28.02 Torquay UK Arena Torquay 01.03 Birmingham UK 02 Academy Birmingham
DOPELORD is Paweł Mioduchowski – Guitars and Vocals Piotr Ochociński – Drums Grzegorz Pawłowski – Guitars Piotr Zin – Bass, Vocals and Mellotron
Posted in Reviews on December 2nd, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Last year, Palm Desert took part in Electric Witch Mountain Recordings‘ compilation of Polish acts, Deep Seven Vol. 1 (review here), with the nine-minute “Elegy of the Past,” which had room in its expanse to harness a hard-driving desert-derived heavy rock and roll up front and still trip out a bit in the second half with a procession more laid back and psychedelic. Rays of the Gold and Grays, the follow-up LP from the long-running outfit, is either their sixth or third full-length, depending on how you want to count offerings like 2013’s Rotten Village Sessions or the jam-based 2016 LP, Songs From the Dead Seas, but what matters more than the numbers involved — which is something one might feel compelled to say when the numbers are murky — is the presence in the music.
Recorded by drummer Kamil Ziółkowski (also Spaceslug and Mountain of Misery) with a mix/master by Haldor Grunberg at Satanic Audio, the four-piece of Ziółkowski, bassist Jan Rutka (Spaceslug), vocalist Wojciech Gałuszka (who also recorded some vocals in Kettering, UK), and guitarist Piotr Łacny — plus Wojciech Kuczwalski on additional guitar — harness rich desert fuzz with a sense of largesse that should by this point be recognizable in Ziółkowski‘s recordings. The eight-song/43-minute outing has its foundation in rolling, warm distortion, as “In the Breeze” opens by drawing an immediate line to classic European underground heavy rock, whether that’s manifest in the inexplicable airy hugeness of Dozer or the riffy sway of modern practitioners like Kal-El.
In terms of ‘desert,’ you could extrapolate the charge of “Black Hurricane” from the likes of Kyuss, and of course the band are named after the town Kyuss came from, but it’s an effort to hear them with everything else Palm Desert have going on in their sound, and the dynamic that unfurls throughout Rays of the Gold and Grays draws more from the pointed focus on massive tonality than it does from the warm distortion that typifies desert rock. That is to say, Palm Desert bring more to the proceedings than one might anticipate at some 11 years’ remove from their last album-proper, and Rays of the Gold and Grays benefits greatly from that in aesthetic and realization.
As noted, “In the Breeze” launches the album, and it’s quickly dug into the roll that defines it. Gałuszka as a singer is prone to burl, but his voice is well in balance with the guitars, pushed down a bit in the mix so as not to compete with the riffs, and treated with a bit of reverb for good measure. This lets Gałuszka reside a bit more in the nascent swirl that caps “In the Breeze” and which the eight-and-a-half-minute “Lightriders” and the subsequent wah-burner “At the Edge of Time” build upon, and demonstrates a malleability of the mix to highlight various moments throughout. In “Black Hurricane,” which is the shortest track on Rays of the Gold and Grays at 3:33, it’s not all about the fuzzblast, but it’s pretty close, and as the guitar solo pushes over into the crescendo of song, the vocals are very much a part of that cacophony, but the voice doesn’t distract from what’s happening atmospherically there in terms of noise, and that’s a strength Palm Desert show throughout; not something that’s making or breaking your LP, necessarily, but an attention to detail satisfyingly reaffirmed by a mature band.
Paired perhaps for ‘black and blue’ purposes, “Black Hurricane” gives over fluidly to “Blue of the Sky,” with a layered vocal in the verse and a raw, forward trajectory that reminds a bit of Sasquatch in its smoothing out of stark turns before the solo finishes it out. Unsurprisingly, “Lightriders” as the not-quite-centerpiece intentionally has a broader scope — that is, “Blue of the Sky, “Black Hurricane,” etc. aren’t lacking, but different pieces here are written to different expressive ends — and starts quieter with a bit of swagger in the far off lead echoing behind the verse as it builds up before the explosion of tone that shoves it all on the listener, crushing and immersive, then stops, takes a breath, and does it again like 15 seconds later. Fans of London’s Steak will find themselves at home in the midst of all the ensuing big-tone nod, and Palm Desert give due ride to that very, very heavy riff that they’ve stuck in the middle-ish of their record, but diverge in the second half of the song to revisit the intro’s more subdued flow before thickening up the fuzz once more to roll to the end with residual lead echoing before the dreamier start of “At the Edge of Time” tells us the flip has been made to side B. An engine starts.
Hear a purring motor, and sure enough, Palm Desert are ‘burnin’ fuel,’ as the fellow says, in the groovy, wah-drenched crunch of “At the Edge of Time,” a steady, momentum-keeping lead-in for the title-track, which has another softer intro but hits plenty hard from there on, the riff like it’s trying to climb over itself to pull you in. Lower-register vocals in the chorus bring variety at a good moment for it, but there’s plenty of outreach in “Rays of the Gold and Grays,” backed by the immediacy with which “Son of a Wind and Dust” starts and deceptively establishes the riff before the verse actually begins, the band taking their time and staying in-pocket on the groove while it still sounds more straightforward than the title-track because it’s faster. I’d say it’s the little things, but for the fact that it comes across so enormous. The closer, “In My Eyes,” continues that thread while harkening back to some of the softer-landing moments with jammier tradeoff stretches, extra punch seeming to come through the bass even as the layers of guitar drive the album’s apex, finishing with leftover guitar keeping the energy with which it paid off the finale.
And ‘energy’ is a key component here, to be sure, but Rays of the Gold and Grays doesn’t rely simply on fervor to make its point in sound. Though it can feel monolithic at points, and I think it’s supposed to, the movement within and between songs is always there, and Palm Desert steer that momentum with craft and confidence in what they’re doing. In some ways, that’s emblematic of the band’s years, but no question it’s also what lets them bring a feeling of freshness to this material. I won’t predict when Palm Desert might be heard from again, but Rays of the Gold and Grays feels primed to greet new listeners.
Polish progressive heavy psychedelic rockers Weedpecker will release their fifth full-length, called simply V, on Feb. 27, 2026, as their first offering through Heavy Psych Sounds. For those who’ve followed the band’s creative growth across their up-till-now four LPs — the latest of them, IV: The Stream of Forgotten Thoughts (review here), came out in 2021 — the realizations contained in the six songs/40 minutes of the new album will feel like reasonable extrapolations, but I’m not sure Weedpecker have ever been as lush or as purposefully directed as they feel in “Fading Whispers” below.
The post-intro lead cut on Weedpecker‘s V makes a hell of a first single, topping 11 minutes as it does, but Weedpecker have no reason to be cagey about what they’re doing at this point — they know they can hold a listener for that long, and they do it by making the shifting movements immersive and multifaceted. Keys and guitar blend together to create a sprawl that the quieter opening only hints toward, and by the time they’re blowing out the fuzzy chug 10 minutes later in the track’s vital crescendo, they’ve undertaken a journey worthy of prefacing the rest of the record that follows.
And I’ll hope to have a review of that record — “Ash” could be another single; or “Mirrors,” which hits hardest of the bunch on first blush — sometime between now and February, but for today, enjoy “Fading Whispers” on the player below and the album info from the PR wire:
Weedpecker, “Fading Whispers” premiere
Piotr Dobry on V:
“I started writing the songs for V at the beginning of 2023, and the demos were finished by the end of that year. While creating this material, I kept returning to one thought: everything we take for granted — everything that feels stable and permanent — is, in reality, incredibly fragile. Nothing lasts forever, and the sense of things slipping away can hit much sooner than we expect. I tried to translate those feelings into sound. At that time, a lot of difficult things were happening in my life, things I didn’t know how to cope with. Music became a form of therapy — a way to process emotions I couldn’t express in any other way.
“In early 2024, we began working through the songs together as a full band. After finalizing the arrangements, we spent the rest of the year recording them. The process stretched over many months, split into several sessions across different studios. I didn’t want to rush anything. I wanted, as always, to refine every detail the best we possibly could. Soon you’ll be able to hear the result for yourselves. For me, this album is something deeply personal. It’s an act of opening up to anyone who chooses to listen — a glimpse into things I can’t fully describe with words, into what I felt and who I became during that period. I’m incredibly happy that together with my friends from the band, we’ve created another record. What comes next… time will tell.”
Tracklisting: 1. Intro 2. Fading Whispers 3. Ash 4. In the Dark We Shine 5. Mirrors 6. The Last Summer of Youth
Additional guitars: Bartłomiej Dobry Drums recorded at: Sound of Records Studio by Mikołaj Kiciak Guitars & bass recorded at: Wieloślad Studio by Bartłomiej Dobry & Haldor Gruenberg Vocals & synths recorded at: our rehearsal space Mix & Master: Haldor Gruenberg (Satanic Audio) Artwork: Maciej Kamuda All songs composed by Piotr Dobry
Weedpecker: Piotr Dobry – Guitars / Vocals / Synths Zbigniew Promiński – Drums Piotr Kuks – Bass Piotr Sadza – Synths Tomasz Walczak – Synths
Posted in Reviews on November 18th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Tell your normie friends you have a doctor’s appointment or something, because the Quarterly Review is back with day two of five, bringing another round of 10 releases to bear in succession rapid enough to be modern without, you know, actually being written by a computer. Unless you consider the entire universe a hologram, in which case, technically, everything is done by a computer. Processor sucks though. That’s why you get lags. And fascism.
But enough of that. More of this.
Quarterly Review #11-20:
Primordial, Live in New York City
A Primordial live album? Fine. Recorded in New York? Fine. Whatever. Just hook it to my veins and be done with it. The stalwart Dublin post-black-metallers have long since established their mastery of form, and frankly, the more examples there are of them doing the thing, so much the better for future generations to learn from. That’s only funny if you think I’m kidding. The 99 minutes of Live in New York City are a document of Primordial not at their most furious or unhinged, or at their most atmospheric, graceful or doomed, but they are stately in “The Golden Spiral,” “As Rome Burns” and the ever-epic “Bloodied Yet Unbowed.” I remain a sucker for “Empire Falls” and “No Grave Deep Enough,” that era, but newer material like “How it Ends” and “Victory Has 1,000 Fathers, Defeat is an Orphan” resonate well alongside what to my mind are classics, emphasizing the vitality and stage presence that remain in Primordial. If it’s a victory lap, or contractually obligated, or whatever, I don’t care. It’s Primordial. There’s no stronger endorsement you could give it than to say that.
Cattlemass have a live lineup, but the studio debut from the band was written, played and tracked by Chris Price, and the eight songs of Alpha 1128 (shades of THX 1138 in the title) would seem to be harnessing his vision of a mostly mid-tempo doom metal that’s not afraid to break out and rock a bit or dig into a creeper procession like “Infecticide.” Starting with its longest track in “Chant of Cthulhu,” Price enacts a thickly toned nod that holds even as “Eternal Beast” tosses psych flourish into its midsection. Some of the production reveals a background in metal — the muted stops in “Replicant,” complementing a robotic theme, bring the wavform all the way down; stoner recordings leave the amp hum — but there’s attention to atmosphere around that, both in “Intermission” and the instrumental finale “Exit Oblivion” and in the later reaches of “The Wizard” and the largesse that swells as “Nachthexen” rolls through its midsection. I’ll be curious to discover where Price goes from here, and if Cattlemass‘ next LP might be a full-band affair.
Though the intro guitar on “Before the Crash” seems to call out to original-era Mediterranean psychedelic rock, Athenian four-piece Honeybadger are nothing if not terrestrial. Specifically, grounded in desert-heavy and catchy songwriting, with their second album, Let There Be Light coming five years after their debut, Pleasure Delayer (review here), which they spent years supporting. Queens of the Stone Age remain a primary influence, though “Before the Crash” pushes outside this in its melody and “Filth and Disorder” hits harder and “Empty-Handed” is more fuzzed, and as with the first album, there are personality aspects that shine through as “The Green” answers in its riff the call of the opener and the horn arrangement in the closing title-track plays a dirge. It’s been a minute, and the LP feels short at 32 minutes, but the tradeoff is the songs are tight and sharply delivered and I’ll take that every time. Honeybadger took their time to make it, but what they’ve made is a step forward.
Not gonna feign impartiality here, as I consider Blue Heron frontman Jadd Shickler a friend and he’s someone I’ve worked with for over 20 years, but what I will say is that I very much dug 2024’s Everything Fades (review here), and Emulations builds on that with included live versions of “Everything Fades” and “Swansong” (as well as two cuts from the first LP) recorded at KUNM in the band’s native Albuquerque, while pushing ahead with a new original track “Marigold” that’s a highlight, and three covers — Fudge Tunnel‘s “Grey,” Clutch‘s “The House That Peterbilt” and Floor‘s “Find Away” — that emphasize the flexibility of the band around their heavy desert core. “Grey” is vicious at its heaviest, “Find Away” is admirably loyal to the original in its weighted blowout, and the Clutch tune gets a gruff treatment, but the melodies in “Marigold” and the energy in the live takes give a full album’s worth of satisfaction while packaged as an EP to take on tour. Mark it a win.
Stoned Spirit offer big hooks, thoughtful songcraft, progressive arrangements and a sense of the material as an outreach to the listener. It’s my first experience with the band, who also had an album out in 2016, but from the voicing of all “Mankind” in the opener through the uptick in tonal density as the built-into title-track unfurls its lumber, there doesn’t seem to be a moment on Inside Me that one would call ‘unconsidered.’ This is a strength to the listening experience because the four-piece — vocalist Tony, guitarist Marios (also backing vocals), bassist Titos and drummer Chris — kind of sound like they’ve been hammering out this material for nine years. Or if not all nine, certainly some statistically significant portion of that span. That’s a complement to how dug-in Stoned Spirit are to their approach, satisfying in its atmosphere and movement alike, but mature as the songs feel they remain expressive in the stories they’re telling.
The two-song opening salvo of “Red Eyes in the Hollow” and “Oath of the Stream” doesn’t necessarily set you up for the full scope of Ravenswood‘s six-track debut album, Rites of the Let Down, which from those shorter and punchier pieces unfurls four longer, significantly-more-likely-to-be-called-“slabs” of doom leaning into psychedelia. The pairing of those two isn’t new, obviously, but Ravenswood make it feel dramatic as they reroute “Where You Won’t Be” or the willfully choppy title-track from darker processions into tripped-out jams — stark changes that are executed with remarkable fluidity and, in the case of the title-track, patience. “Holler Knows” might be where they find the middle-ground, but it’ll be another record or two before we know if that’s actually something they’re pursuing, and the post-grunge vocal melody and meme-ready last slowdown in closer “Solid Psychonaut” also bode well if we’re looking for things to bode. There’s room to grow and the production is raw, but Rites of the Let Down operates with individuality as part of its intention.
Maybe it’s somewhat counterintuitive, but in the pushing-out extremity of “Solace,” in the slow cinematic drones of “Cold Signtures,” in the synthy expanse of “Null” and the guitarrier (yeah I said that) reaches of “The Solution,” but what might be Sum of R‘s seventh album can be as stark, grim and desolate as it wants in “Agglomeration” with G. Stuart Dahlquist sitting in, and the penultimate “Violate” can hit a crescendo like what if post-black-metal-and-screamo-but-not-awful and it still to me just sounds like a celebration. There’s no getting away from it. Spectral is dark, and it often feels unremitting across its 49 punishment-prone minutes, but all of it is a celebration nonetheless — of creativity, of outsiderism, otherism, of searching for ideals beyond the mainstream and finding depth in places others would fear to go. It almost can’t help but be beautiful, otherwise consuming as the darkness is.
Gritty stoner-doom nod pervades the debut release Saman The Doom from Shanghai-based trio Atomic Saman. Opener “Fuzzonaut” is instrumental, but after the Jeff Goldblum sample, “F.L.Y.” has vocals in its rolling, raw-tracked miasma. The grooves are loose as “F.L.Y.” plods into the bassy opening of nine-minute centerpiece “Torture Machine” (sample from A Clockwork Orange there) and the low-mixed stoner-chant is part of what unfolds, but Atomic Saman run deep in the addled ethereal, and “Torture Machine” and the subsequent, tops-10-minutes “Brain COP” keep immersion central, so it works. Closer “Weedsky (Live in CAVE)” is lumbering enough to make you think they actually went to a cave to capture it, and reveals something of an Electric Wizard influence underlying, but Atomic Saman are less horror and more red-eyed paranoia and that suits the exhausted-with-the-world disaffection as well as the trance factor here just fine.
By the time they’re most of the way through sub-three-minute opener “A New Dawn” and the command is issued to, “Bow to mycelium cown,” I’m ready. With some rolling fluidity inherited perhaps from their countrymen in Dopelord and mellow vocals over purple-hued doomly fuzz, the lumber is strong with Kraków four-piece, who bring ambience alongside crush with the open spaces (gradually filled via tone) of “Glorious Decay,” the brash shove of “Primordial,” the daring toward ethereality of “This Barren Place,” and so on. “Disco Inferno” moves, but “Primordial” sprints, making for an interesting pair late, where back at the outset “Crooked One” and “Glorious Decay” bring moodier engrossing. It resolves, perhaps inevitably, with a 13-minute title-track that is a journey unto itself with multi-tiered solos, progressive expanse and a little flourish of goth in its verses. “Age of Mycology” fits as a summary for the LP that carries its name, with a speedier crescendo waiting after a murky slog to get there, righteously bleak but not hopeless. Dooming on their own wavelength, they are.
A sampling experiment like “Alpine Pop” and the tuning-in-a-radio on “A Nutty and a Texan Bar Please,” the veering from “Saturday Morning” from serene meditation to harsher drone — these are just examples of the many ways in which Wooden Tape‘s Wool basks in the details. Songs like “The Moroccan House” and “Croxteth Hall,” the five-minute “Beneath the Weeping Willow Tree,” etc., have a foundation in blending often-acoustic guitar and electronics/synth, so there’s basically an infinity of room for UK-based solo artist Tim Maycox to explore whatever reaches he might choose. On “Kirby Market,” he imagines a kind of pastoralia with Mellotron and chimes, a thud behind for percussion, whereas it’s raining on “Laundrette Sunday” and the arrangement becomes a jangle of cascading elements, departing the strum of “Crescent Town” and seeming to cap the weekend conveyed through the tracks’ procession by packing a full day in the final 1:42. Some Sundays are like that.
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 14th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
As they make ready to set out on their ‘The Pot and the Pendulum’ tour next week, the Polish worshippers of stone will also be announcing their first new studio LP since 2018, set to release presumably early in 2026 through Heavy Psych Sounds. The Kielce megaweedians and the Italian imprint have a history going back to HPS reissuing the band’s 2011 debut, Sonic Scapes and Weedy Groves (discussed here), in 2022 and following that with their second album, 2015’s Greenferno, just last month.
Belzebong‘s third full-length, 2018’s Light the Dankness (review here) has set the addled crust riffers on a years-long round of touring, and even with a global pandemic break in between, cementing their reputation among the superlatives of sludge. They’ve toured here, there and wheverever to proselytize a dogma that can only properly be measured in milligrams, and if you’re not immediately looking forward to their next record, take an extra couple minutes and really let the news sink into your poor addled brain.
Tour dates (prior posted, so double-check the shows for accuracy before you head out), and the PR wire’s initial announcement follow, to be followed by the first track stream and more details next week:
Heavy Psych Sounds Records to announce Polish bong metal riffers BELZEBONG signing for a brand NEW ALBUM !!
We’re really stoked to announce that the Polish bong metal band BELZEBONG is coming back with a brand new album !!
NEW ALBUM PRESALE + FIRST TRACK PREMIERE: NOVEMBER 19th
BELZEBONG – 💨 THE POT AND THE PENDULUM TOUR 2025 💨 21.11 / GER / Radebeul / barnyard_club 22.11 / GER / Jena / @kuba_jena 23.11 TBA 25.11 / CZ / Brno / @kabinet_muz 26.11 / SK / Bratislava / @zalar666 27.11 / AT / Vienna / @arenawien 28.11 TBA 29.11 / AT / Salzburg / @dome_of_rock_festival_salzburg 30.11 / GER / Munich / @backstagemunich 02.12 / GER / Frankfurt / @ponyhof.club 03.12 / FRA / Paris / @backstagebtm 04.12 / FRA / Nantes / @leferrailleur 05.12 / FRA / Lille / @labullecafe 06.12 / NL / Utrecht / @dbs_utrecht 07.12 / NL / Eindhoven / @effenaar 08.12 / GER / Düsseldorf / @pitcherrocknrollhq 10.12 / GER / Münster / @rare_guitar 11.12 / GER / Hamburg / @hafenklanghamburg 12.12 / GER / Oldenburg / @mts_records 13.12 / GER / Berlin / @wildatheartberlin
BIOGRAPHY
Poland’s loudest riff dealers, Belzebong have been spreading their fuzz-drenched gospel of bong metal since 2008. With no vocals and no compromises, they summon crushing instrumentals soaked in doom, sludge, and psychedelic haze. Their hypnotic live shows and cult-like following have turned them into underground legends, delivering slow, sinister grooves straight from the green abyss. With acclaimed albums like Sonic Scapes & Weedy Grooves, Greenferno, and Light the Dankness, Belzebong have toured extensively across Europe and the U.S., leaving trails of blown minds and smoke-filled venues in their wake. Belzebong is not just a band—it’s a ritual of riff worship for those who live by the fuzz and die by the bong.
Posted in Reviews on October 24th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
With the double-guitar attack of classic doom metal and their sights set on more spacious heavy rocking fare, Wrocław, Poland’s Octotanker make their full-length debut with Voidhopper. The five-piece have their roots in the band Prąd, who released two albums, an EP and a split between 2016-2021. Prąd‘s apparent last outing was 2021’s Octotanker LP, which came out through Galactic Smokehouse, and I don’t know if there was a lineup change or if it’s just a moniker refresh, but if Voidhopper comes across sounding like the work of a band who’ve been together for a decade, that’s probably why.
And with the clarity of intention touching on a range of styles from grunge to spacey stoner pseudo-meander and psychedelia to post-punk, the nine-song/49-minute collection is both poised and expressive, with an approach based on craft that in cuts like “Aghori” puts the vocals of Marcin Gałkowski (who also mixed/mastered) in a forward position alongside the guitars of Rafał Bielski and Wojciech Szelwicki, Tomasz Krymski‘s bass and Piotr Krawczyk‘s drums, complementing the tonal grit of the opening title-track and adding melody to the crunch of the later “The Source and the River Are One.” Those familiar with bands like Iota or earlier Dwellers will find the post-grunge aspects recognizable, but while Octotanker don’t shy from the ethereality in a song like “Starships,” the material throughout Voidhopper remains firmly grounded in terms of structure.
Doing so lets Octotanker hold onto an impression based on their songwriting as a whole while the tracks showcase different facets of their already-complex stylistic persona. It’s not quite ‘no-two-songs-sound-alike’ because tones are consistent and the mellower groove in the first half of “All Suffer” feels like a preface to the midsection break of “The Source and the River Are One,” however heavy the surroundings of the latter get, and as the band demonstrates quickly in “Voidhopper,” part of their intent across the span here is to bring a sense of doom to underscore the proceedings.
The slowdown in the title-track is part of that, but by no means the only example, as even “Starships” finds its way into a lumbering movement eventually within its five-minute run. “All Suffer” sounds grim from the name but isn’t actually darker than either of the two songs before it, but instead weaves through open and, in the middle third, quieter verses to let its final burst carry over with a pointed sense of depth. Almost sneakily, at the same time, Octotanker have already established the flow that lets “All Suffer” shift so easily into “Aghori,” which is the longest inclusion at 7:03 and the presumed capper for side A. Reinforcing some of the dark-metal atmospherics, “Aghori” manifests fluidity in its procession as well, with an effective false ending of guitar before the whole band comes back around to smack you in the face with the song’s actual finish.
A bassy intro to “I Am Sun” begins (again, assuming) side B, soon joined by a jabby riff and echoing vocals. It and “Decomposed and Rotten” are the two shortest pieces on Voidhopper, but certainly Octotanker don’t sound any less dug-into “I Am Sun” than “Aghori” or the title-track, and “Decomposed and Rotten” highlights a post-punk sway that’s just as likely to be taken at this point as coming from black metal, but is individual in its execution either way, and less aggressive in its roll than, say, the ending of “Starships” or some of what’s to come. The point, I suppose, is there’s dynamic unfolding across Voidhopper, and while they sound like they know what they’re doing and these songs have clearly been ironed out, worked on — however you want to say it — over some period of time, they are not at all set in terms of aesthetic.
In any of these nine songs, there seems to be more than one thing happening in a given measure, yet they don’t derail and don’t lose sight of their overarching goals, which, again, vary according to which song you’re hearing but are brought together well through the two-sided structure of the whole album. Gałkowski brings a croon to top off “Decomposed and Rotten,” which drops to silence ahead of the all-go metalogrunge riff that commences with “The Source and the River Are One.” And that seems to be the course of it until it’s dropped about halfway in and they rebuild to the finish, as noted, echoing the resonance of the quieter moments in “All Suffer,” a clever misdirect that could easily have taken momentum away but doesn’t, instead making for a highlight.
Dramatic chug typifies the payoff of “Burning Bodies,” but the penultimate track is no less about keeping the lighter-floating tonality intact, emphasizing the dynamic they’ve laid out all the while and lending it an engaging summary, capping with a crash and residual amp hum on the way to the grounded drum-and-guitar start of “Space Outlaw,” which feels less about mood than some of the material before it but inherently carries that as part of its purpose as well. As to what earned it the closer spot — since it’s not like Octotanker are short on payoffs besides — my guess is the shove and adrenaline-charged solo that begins circa 3:35. Some of the nuance of the lead is lost due to effects on first blush, but repeat listens reveal a richer character in that moment, and the alignment around a more straightforward heavy rock push is satisfying after the band have spent so much time balancing one aspect of their aesthetic off another.
It is not without ambition, and it is not a minor undertaking with a runtime that pushes the limits of what a 12″ vinyl platter will hold, but Voidhopper feels declarative on the part of Octotanker, whose redirect from their days as Prąd would seem to have resulted in the adoption of this sound so divergently evocative and yet based around ultimately familiar genre elements. It’s a hard one to pin down, and given how much intention there is behind that, the potential for growth becomes a central part of the album’s appeal to the listener.
Posted in Reviews on October 8th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
If you’ve been keeping up, you already know this Quarterly Review goes through next Monday (because screw weekends anyhow) and will top out at 70 releases covered. Today, then, is when we hit the halfway mark en route to that number. Does it matter? Probably not unless you’re the guy on the other side of the laptop writing it, but maybe you just enjoy having the division done for you.
More of a range of styles today than yesterday, which I need to keep this going, so you’ll pardon me while I dig in in the hope that you do the same. Thanks for reading.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Mountain of Misery, Shades of the Ashes
Somewhat impressively, Mountain of Misery remains the solo-project of Kamil Ziółkowski, who perhaps if he wasn’t also the drummer/vocalist in Spaceslug might’ve put together a full band by now, but seems committed to keeping the band in-house. But it is a band, to be sure. Shades of the Ashes is Ziółkowski‘s third LP under the moniker, and it pushes deeper into a progression distinct from Spaceslug however familiar some of the vocals are, and offers depth of its own, whether that’s tonally in the thickened fuzz of “Follow the Sun” or the way he makes it boogie in “Speed King” (not a cover) while at the same time setting up the lush nod of “From Fall to Rise.” Between “Thornado” at the outset and the eight-minute finale “Blow,” Ziółkowski refines Mountain of Misery‘s sound with a freshness that is metal, grunge, heavy rock and psychedelic all at once, and stronger for that cohesion with his signature mellow vocals over top. It’s kind of surprising at this point he hasn’t been tempted to do it live, but clearly this is working, so I wouldn’t necessarily encourage messing with the process either.
A fresh take on the notion of Southern heavy from Asheville, North Carolina’s Dërro, who put a bit of twang into the post-Alice in Chains harmonies of “Brain Worm” (surely a song for our times) and a bit of emotive soar into “Echo Mountain” in complement to a guitar tone that feels kin to earlier Tool, all while retaining a ‘doing its own thing’ vibe. That is to say, the six-song Halcyon — which is the band’s first outing so far as I know — feels like the credited-as-composers duo of Neal Brewer and Corey Tossas, working with Pat Gerasia on drums, would seem to have come into this debut offering with a firm idea of what they wanted the band to be sound-wise, and unless they’ve secretly been working on it for a decade, the results of that shimmer with intention and feeling alike in the chuggy “Alone” and the drawl-into-power-nod opening title-track. One to watch? Maybe, but way more of a thing to hear now.
The guitar/drum duo of Marco Bianciardi (The Somnambulist, ex-Arte, etc.) and Sara Neidorf (Mellowdeath, Sarattma, ex-Aptera, etc.) apparently recorded their six-track/36-minutes self-titled debut in a day. That implies much of it was done live, though it doesn’t account for the keyboards that show up in “Spectral Swell” and “Countershading,” or the lead layering in “Talking Moonshine,” but it’s not unlikely that after showing up and banging it out they had a little time for overdubs. Fair enough. The pieces are varied and prone to getting weirder toward their respective ends, rooted in doomjazz but groove-conscious just the same, and the garage-y strum in “Gruttling From Outer Space” bends and twists as it goes in a way that surely defines what ‘gruttling’ might be, while “Edge of Forthcoming Rain” hints at more peaceful ideas without giving up its restlessness and “The Cosmonaut’s Secret” turns out to be the shove into its own finish. They close with a saunter in “Talking Moonshine” and that feels as right as anything for a collection that’s so casually eclectic while minimizing the actual elements involved in its making.
Melbourne three-piece VVarp — also stylized all-caps: VVARP — seem to imagine a universe wherein the thickened tones and keyboard flourish of Slomatics meets with more traditionalist doom riffing, but that’s still just half the story as bassist Claudia Sullivan and guitarist/keyboardist John Bollen share lead vocals in harmonized style over the voluminous roll of “Druid Warfare,” the cavernous and lumbering “A Path Through the Veil,” assuring there’s beauty to coincide with all the crush that surrounds. Running 34 minutes and five tracks, Power Held in Stone follows 2020’s First Levitations and is accordingly their second full-length, given ethereal, almost-chanting presence through the vocals on centerpiece “Equinox Portal” where “Iron Cloak” is more resolved to its own heads-down-all-go bombast fueled by drummer Scott McLatchie as the song shoves into the residual keys that carry to the rumble at the outset of 10-minute capper “Stone Silhouette,” likewise gorgeous, immersive and encompassing.
Easily among the best debut albums I’ve heard in 2025 comes this modernized-classic psychedelia outreach from Poland’s Atom Juice, who would seem to have some relation to meloproggers Weedpecker through guitarist/vocalist Bartek Dobry, but who take a different path to get to bright and melodic fruition. The five-piece outfit’s self-titled debut (on Heavy Psych Sounds) runs shortest to longest on each of its component sides, with copious Beatles influence in “Gooboo” (circa ’70) and delves elsewhere into modern space rock (“Dead Hookers”), the most engaging funk-psych I’ve heard since Wight on “Sexi Frogs,” and an identity in the doing conjured through a blend of influences older and new. As closer “Honey” gives a bit of push in its first half, there’s nowhere Atom Juice wind up on the record that they don’t make themselves welcome, and with rare warmth, they give hopeful hints at the shape of heavy psychedelia to come. I haven’t seen a lot of hype for this one. If you’re reading this, don’t skip it.
The 15 tracks of Hooveriii‘s Manhunter have a foundation in garage rock and an according off-the-cuff feel, but at the same time, interludes and exploratory instrumentals like “In the Rain,” “Night Walks in Montreaux,” the spacey title-track and the penultimate organ soundscaper “Awful Planet” assure that nothing actually comes across as haphazard in a way that undercuts the dynamic. “Melody” and “Tin Lips” open in rocking style, while the fuzz grows more fervent in “Westside Pavilion of Dreams” and “Heaven at the Gates” before “Cul-de-Sac” marks the transition to the next phase with the forceful shuffle of “The Fly,” answered a short while later by the heft of “Question.” It goes like this, flowing except where it doesn’t want to, and with the jazzy “Me King” and the aforementioned mellow-vocalized “Awful Planet” for setup, “Stage” reroutes into pastoralism and feels pointedly kind in so doing. Clearly a band for whom genre takes a secondary role to their own craft, and one whose appeal is broader for that.
Fluidity is part of the nature of what Sweden’s Gaupa do, as the Falun-based troupe have established over their two-to-date LPs and other sundry outings. The five-song/35-minute Fyr finds them working with producer Karl Daniel Lidén — which was a very good idea that somebody had — and is billed as a mini-album, which I think is to account for its being only one minute shorter than their most recent LP, 2022’s Myriad (review here). Vocalist Emma Näslund remains a focal point in the songs, but the balance of the mix is malleable as “Heavy Lord” demonstrates, and “Elastic Sheep” finds the entire band aligned around a fullness that one only hopes is emblematic of their third to come. Plus a big ol’ slowdown, and while we’re talking bonuses, the 11-minute live take on “Febersvan” from their first EP is a welcome glimpse at how far they’ve progressed to this point to complement the potential still so obvious in their sound. They’re the kind of band you hope never stop growing.
With multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Paul Holden still at the center of the project — Mathias Dowle is also credited with playing on and co-engineering the album with Holden and Ryan Fallis — Melbourne psych-grunge rockers Foot seem to pick up where they left off with 2022’s You Are Weightless, tapping into a style that’s grounded in terms of structure and committedly straightforward but that still lends a feeling of scope and space to the nine cuts on the 45-minute Copper Feast-issued LP. The fuzz is prevalent, perhaps nowhere more so than “Walking Into Walls All Week,” where “Intensify” is more of a vocal showcase until its later heavy sweep. Holden does a cover of Marcy Playground‘s “Sex and Candy”… for… some reason… and but for that, as one would both expect and hope for the band at this point, they remain a songwriting-based unit, able to present a diversity of ideas and moods without ever making it feel like a departure at all.
Enter Diagram with a ready definition for ‘dug in’ on their second album, Short Circuit Control. The Berlin duo of founder Hákon Aðalsteinsson and Fred Sunesen offer heady listeners a heady listen with nine inclusions that commune with the history of electronics in krautrock while still keeping both a modern and a psychedelic affect. Is that neo-kraut? I honestly don’t know, but cuts like “This is How We Lead Our Lives” transcend their outward poppiness through repetition and exploration, and the abiding lesson seems to be that just because something is dancey doesn’t also mean it can’t be purposefully building an atmosphere — “Close Your Eyes” walks by and waves (not that you can see it with your eyes closed). The single “Dub Boy” answers the New Wave aspects of opener “Breath in Your Fire,” and a ’90s electro finale awaits in “Through the Wall of Sound” for anybody adventurous enough to take it on.
Brookynite heavy progressive rockers The Phantom Eye offer blend across Cymatic Waves‘ four tracks that feels metallic at its root but has grown and redirected to more complex fare. Between the volume trades of “Circuit Rider,” the noise baked into the finish of “Palindrome,” the synth adding drama to “Black Hotel” and the intricate balancing of guitar layers in “Silent Symphony,” the focus is never purely on just being heavy, but ‘heavy,’ as a musical ideal, is a piece of the puzzle here, framing a broad melodic reach and giving shape to the structures underlying. I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to what they might sound like in five years, but as they’re following 2021’s Chromesthesia EP (review here) with this second short release, it’s even more difficult to pin them down as any one thing. This could hardly feel more intentional than it does in the songs. There’s a plan at work here. It’s just starting to pan out.
Posted in Reviews on September 4th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
As Will Smith said once upon 30 years ago, “Welcome to ERF.” Thankfully, Polish weirdo-specialist psychedelic trio The Howling Eye offer a friendlier context for the welcome than punching an alien in the face, but their four-song/47-minute full-length has its own otherworldly aspects and moments. Issued through Interstellar Smoke, it is the band’s follow-up to 2023’s List Do Borykan (review here), and its 17-minute leadoff title/longest-track (immediate points) has been around longer than that, since it featured on the band’s 2024 live album, Riffields, which was recorded in 2022.
Temporal displacement? Think of it as a multidimensional theme for the record. Comprised of drummer/vocalist Hubert Cebula Lewandowski (also recording), bassist Miłosz Wojciechowski (also guitar) and guitarist/keyboardist Jan Chojnowski (also bouzouki, synth, recording), the latter of whom is listed as producer alongside Jacek Stasiak (who also adds alto sax and guest guitar throughout), the three-piece sound almost from the get-go like they’re working in their own time. A mix of birdsong and synth blips opens backing a pastoralist, King Buffalo-circa-“Orion”-style flow and resonance of guitar. “ERF” will ultimately parse into distinct movements, but as the far-back mellotron enters the mix and the likewise-dreamy first vocals arrive, the procession makes it absolutely clear that the band are in no hurry to go anywhere and, as melodic, drifting and welcoming as the opening few minutes of “ERF” are, that becomes the root of the challenge they issue their audience.
It’s not just about the songs being slow, but about the way The Howling Eye dwell in parts and execute their songs not just as jams or structured pieces, but as manifestations of place and time. As the initial build of “ERF” recedes to set up the next one (with sax) en route to the back-end stretch of speedier boogie-swirl and a return to the subdued to draw it down, the movement is hypnotic, sure, and as immersive as one would expect for a piece that leaves so much open room for the listener to put themselves. But if you come into it restless, or expecting something less molten in the flow that defines it, the gradual nature of their craft is going to test patience. Heavy psychedelia as meditation goal? Maybe. What ultimately makes it work is the inviting sound of “ERF” as the suitably-enough worldmaking lead-in for what follows in the likewise-all-caps “WEED,” “FIRE” and “MOC WIELKIEGO BUCHA,” the latter of which bookends at just under 14 minutes; the fact that as far out as The Howling Eye go, they adjust the context of normalcy to suit their craft.
They make their own kind of sense, in other words. Even the succession of “ERF,” “WEED,” “FIRE” — as opposed to, say Earth, Wind and Fire — plays a part in conveying the personality of the band, obviously not taking themselves too seriously, but at the same time telling a story as well. The stated theme for ERF reportedly derives from the life of Chris McCandless.
Known as the inspiration for the novel/film Into the Wild, McCandless was a ’90s-era offgridder, who left behind what probably would’ve been a mediocre suburban life in order to venture into the wilds of Alaska, where he died of apparent starvation due to a lack of actual survival skills. His story has been romanticized by naturalists, and not without reason. On some level, even if you feel like it’s a question of your own survival, it takes courage to leave behind the life you’ve been told you want for, well, your entire life. That it ended with McCandless dead alone on an abandoned bus in the middle of nowhere is secondary; he went out on his own terms and that’s not nothing.
The lesson The Howling Eye seem to take from this is accordingly working toward their own goals from their own point of view. Rather than sublimate their experience of time or the impulses that drive their songwriting, they portray an honest, unpretentious weirdoism as “ERF” gives over to the acoustic-but-grows-shouty-and-loud-later “WEED,” which leans willfully, rightly, into its guest-harmonica-laced hook in a ’90s-type singalong that’s part MTV Unplugged but that they let get entrancing and psychedelic before they turn it around and click on the clarion distortion, well doomed as it reveals an Electric Wizard lumber that it turns out was in the song the entire time. With this, they flatten and scorch — still distorted in time as well as tone — but as it will also at another, non-human timescale, “FIRE” is a reset, balancing drift and low-end heft across its six and a half minutes such that the restlessness that emerges in the guitar gets smacked with the return of the alto sax and a clear silence precedes the arrival of “MOC WIELKIEGO BUCHA.”
With its title translated to English as ‘The Power of the Big Bang,’ “MOC WIELKIEGO BUCHA” might just be the source of the rest of what’s happening throughout ERF, or at very least, its roomy exploration and heavy repetitions give an appropriate summary of a lot of what has worked best in the other material while enacting a more dramatic build that, as it would, takes time to reside in its minimalist reaches before they arrive at a more traditional payoff toward the conclusion. The returning vocals after “FIRE” have a grounding effect, and lend emotion to that last volume swell and nod as the band make their way toward and into the finish. They let it go all the way to silence and there’s a clip of some laughter echoing, but that’s it.
Imagine being able to have a conversation with trees. The record’s kind of like that. It happens on a wavelength of time that, for many brains, will be pointedly incongruous with modern life. And this, we see, becomes how the band’s theme manifests in the material itself. It is about stepping outside of norms or expectations, maybe even putting your (my) phone down for a minute or 47 in order to have a lived experience, yes, but more to be transposed from one place to another by art. The Howling Eye aren’t without their indulgent aspects — I’m sorry, but that’s the nature of a 17-minute-long song; I don’t make the rules — but the potential rewards for those who can follow where they lead far outstrip the effort required to actually hear what they’re doing.
