Posted in Whathaveyou on December 11th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
Kudos to UK two-piece Bismuth on their signing to Prosthetic Records. I was fortunate enough to catch their set at the skate park at Roadburn this past April (review here), and in addition to being insanely jealous of bassist/vocalist Tanya Byrne‘s Khanate t-shirt, it was readily apparent from watching them play that they were onto something special in terms of sound and perspective. Their 2018 LP, The Slow Dying of the Great Barrier Reef (discussed here), certainly bore that out as well, and earlier this year, they followed that with a reissue of the 16-minute single “The Eternal Marshes,” which was originally released in 2012.
They’ll tour the UK and do two shows in Ireland in January alongside Body Void, and they’re reportedly writing new stuff, so maybe a later 2020 release? They’ll also be back at Roadburn in 2020, doing a commissioned project in collaboration with Vile Creature, who as fate would have it, are also signed to Prosthetic. Funny how these things work out sometimes, isn’t it?
From the PR wire:
BISMUTH SIGN TO PROSTHETIC RECORDS; ANNOUNCE TOUR DATES
Heavy-slow duo BISMUTH have announced their signing to Prosthetic Records, alongside confirmation of a run of tour dates for the new year.
The Nottingham, UK-based two-piece, consisting of Tanya Byrne (bass/ vocals) and Joe Rawlings (drums) released their latest album to great critical acclaim in 2018. The Slow Dying Of The Great Barrier Reef is a two track opus, with the title track clocking in at a hefty 32 minutes. The band has toured consistently with the likes of Primitive Man and Vile Creature as well as performing at festivals such as Roadburn and Supersonic.
Of their signing to the US label, Tanya comments: “We are excited to share that we will working with Prosthetic Records and they will be releasing our music going forward. We are heading into the studio later next year to record album number three!”
E.J. Johantgen of Prosthetic Records adds: “There’s such a rich seam of heavy underground talent in the UK at the moment – and Bismuth are a band that caught our eye for their distinctiveness and passion. We’re really looking forward to working with Tanya and Joe, and supporting them as we see where this journey takes us.”
BISMUTH are currently writing material for their next album, which will be recorded in 2020 and released via Prosthetic. The band will perform at Roadburn 2020 alongside now-labelmates Vile Creature in a specially commissioned collaborative performance under the banner A Hymn Of Loss And Hope. BISMUTH have also just announced a UK and Ireland run of dates for January – full dates can be found below.
BISMUTH w/ Body Void January 9 – Stuck On A Name, Nottingham, UK January 10 – Bello Bar, Dublin, IE January 11 – Fred Zeppelin’s , Cork, IE January 12 – The Kazimier Garden Stockroom, Liverpool, UK January 14 – Nice and Sleazy’s, Glasgow, UK January 15 – Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh, UK January 16 – The Station, Birmingham, UK January 17 – The Old England, Bristol, UK January 18 – The Black Heart, London, UK (Matinee show)
Bismuth are: Bass and vocals: Tanya Byrne Drums: Joe Rawlings
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 19th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
No full songs yet, but we’re about two months out from the release, so we’ll get there. Chicago-style deep-dish post-metallers Snow Burial will offer up their second long-player, Ostrava, as their label debut on Prosthetic Records, and tour to support it. They have a couple weekenders currently listed, and I’m not sure if the actual tour that will follow the Sept. 20 release is properly announced yet or not, but the dates are included in the teaser clip for the record, so there you go. Plus if you watch that you get a little snippet of what I’ll assume is a strobe-laden official video to follow, and of course some music as well, so, you know, they really pack the info into that 30 seconds. One doesn’t generally think of post-metal as having such efficiency.
The band are new to me — I’m sure they’re not new to you; I’ve said this before, but you’re way cooler than I am — so I’ve also included below song from their Bandcamp that featured on a split last year with Aseethe. Bonus points to them for the Richard Nixon sample and the Isis-meets-Souls at Zero-ness all around.
To the PR wire:
Prosthetic Records Sign Snow Burial – New Album & Tours Imminent
Prosthetic Records is thrilled to announce the signing of Chicago’s SNOW BURIAL. The doomy three-piece will release their second full length album – titled Ostrava – on September 20. Pre-orders are now available HERE.
Of the signing, SNOW BURIAL’s Ben Bowman comments:
“We are so excited to team up with Prosthetic Records and release Ostrava on their label. This album means the world to us and to be able to work with this team is a dream come true. Joining a label with so many friends and bands we love makes it all the better.”
SNOW BURIAL will celebrate their signing to the label by hitting the road this week with Aseethe. The two bands released a split EP together last year and their dual pronged trail of audio destruction kicks off this Thursday. Full dates are below.
Recorded in early 2019 at Electrical Audio, Chicago with Shane Hochstetler at the helm, Ostrava maps where life’s beauty and terror collide. Born from their defining experiences at home and on the road the unifying theme of Ostrava is one of duality – failure and triumph, celebration and mourning, isolation and family. Taking inspiration from the likes of Radiohead as much as any metal act; SNOW BURIAL craft polished songs with the whirring machinery hidden just below the surface. Their blend of melody and aggression delivers a sound that dredges the depths of doom and sludge and marries it with rock ‘n’ roll sensibilities.
Ostrava Track List 1. Tyranny 2. Sever The Bloodline 3. The Afterneath 4. T?inec 5. Ostrava 6. Gaping Wounds 7. Burn Down The Crown 8. The Lost 9. The Unforgiven
SNOW BURIAL upcoming live shows: 18 July – Milwaukee, WI @ Walkers Point Music Hall 19 July – Madison, WI @ Barley Pop 20 July – Minneapolis, MN @ Hexagon 08 August – Des Moines, IA @ TBA 09 August – St Louis, MO @ Sinkhole 10 August – Louisville. KY @ Mag Bar (no Aseethe) 11 August – Dubuque, IA @ The Blu Room
Release show: 20 September – Chicago, IL @ Cobra Lounge (w/Scientist + These Beasts)
This is a crucial moment in any Quarterly Review. Today we hit the halfway point one way or the other. I still haven’t decided if this will be a 50- or 60-album edition; kind of playing it by ear, but either way, today’s a landmark in my mind in terms of how far to go vs. how far we’ve come. Uphill vs. downhill to some extent, but I don’t want to give the impression that I’m either half-assing it from here on out or that I don’t enjoy the challenge of reviewing 10 records in a day, one after the next, for (at least) five days in a row. I’ve always been a glutton for a bit of self-flagellation. Ha.
Alright, let’s dive in.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
The Atlas Moth, Coma Noir
If one still wants to consider Chicago’s The Atlas Moth post-metal after hearing Coma Noir, at least do them the courtesy of emphasizing the “metal” part of that equation. For their debut on Prosthetic Records and fourth full-length overall, the five-piece worked with producer Sanford Parker to solidify a progressive metal sound that, whether in the harsh and weighted impact of the opening title-track or the later interplay between guitarists Stavros Giannopoulos and David Kush on screams and cleaner vocals in “Furious Gold,” seems to take cues from groups like a less manic Strapping Young Lad and a less watered-down Mastodon more than Isis or Neurosis. With prominent synth from Andrew Ragin (also guitar), and the solid roll from the rhythm section of bassist Alex Klein and drummer Mike Miczek, the band brings revitalized edge to “The Streets of Bombay,” and even on the slower, more atmospheric closer “Chloroform,” they’ve never sounded more lethal. It suits them.
A collection of odds and ends from Across Tundras, the 10-track/52-minute Tumbleweeds III may or may not sate anyone hoping for a follow-up to 2013’s Electric Relics (review here), but it provides some curio fodder along the way to be sure, from raw opener “Final Breath over Venom Falls” to the acoustic-percussion jam “Bullet in the Butt” to the fuller roll of “Cold Ride” and later demos for “Spinning Through the Cosmic Dust,” “Hijo del Desierto,” “Stone Crazy Horse” and “The Stacked Plain,” which later became “Seasick Serenade” on Electric Relics, it’s at very least something for fans to dig into and a fascinating listen, as Across Tundras’ rambling sound is almost eerily suited to a home-recording vibe, as the “Stone Crazy Horse” demo, featuring vocalist Shannon Allie-Murphy along with frontman Tanner Olson, sounds all the more folksome as a result of its lack of production polish. Closing with Bob Dylan’s “The Ballad of Hollis Brown,” then, could hardly be more appropriate. Still waiting for a proper long-player to surface, but happy at this point to take what comes.
Like a chicanery-laced dusty vinyl with a naked lady on the cover, The Wizards of Delight emerge from the London underground to solidly declare “We’ve got the rock ‘n’ rollz.” And yes, they spell it with a ‘z.’ The presence of frontman Andreas “Mazzereth” Maslen will be familiar to anyone who ever even briefly encountered Groan – dude makes an impression, to be sure – and the four tracks he and the surrounding five-piece of guitarists/backing vocalists Dan Green’s Myth and Lenny Ray, bassist/backing vocalist Eponymous, organist/backing vocalist Henry and drummer Reece bring is both funky and classically heavy, “Gypsy” referencing Dio Sabbath in the first line while “Mountain Woman” brings a heavy ‘70s shuffle to answer the way-un-P.C. “Shogun Messiah,” which seems to be working under the thesis that because it sounds like it’s from 40 years ago, they can get away with it. I’ll give them that the track is, to an unfortunate degree, catchy. As to the rest, give me the groove of “We Got the Rock ‘n’ Rollz” any day. It’s been a while since anyone so brazenly interpreted Mk. II Deep Purple and actually pulled it off.
Hard-touring Detroit heavy rockers Against the Grain are known for speed, and rightly so. When they burst into high gear, as on “Sacrifice,” “No Sleep,” “Last Chance,” “Rolling Stone,” “Enough’s Not Enough,” and “Jaded and Faded” from their latest offering and Ripple Music debut, Cheated Death. The follow-up to 2015’s Road Warriors (review here) sees them no less infectious in their live energy, but it’s hard to ignore the more versatile approach that seems to be growing in their sound, from the classic rocking “Smoke” to the near-centerpiece “Devils and Angels” which ballads-out its boozy regrets before entering into an effective mid-paced build that rounds out in choice dual-soloing. Likewise, though they open at a good clip with the title-track, closer “Into the Light” finds a middle ground between thrust and groove. The truth is Against the Grain have never been just about speed, but they’ve never so directly benefited from a dynamic approach as they do on Cheated Death either.
Immediate kudos to Stockholm-based psychedelic progressive explorers Our Solar System – aka Vårt Solsystem – for opening their third full-length for Beyond Beyond is Beyond, the five-track/41-minute Origins, with the side-consuming 21-minute “Vulkanen.” One could hardly ask for more effective immersion in the band’s world of patiently unfurled, languid psychedelia, and with the accompaniment of “Babalon Rising,” the jazz-prog tracklist centerpiece “En Bit Av Det Tredje Klotet,” the birdsong-laced “Naturligt Samspel” and the semi-freaked-out melodic wash of “Monte Verita” on side B, a full, rich, and mind-expanding cosmos is engaged, free of restriction even as it remains thoroughly lysergic, and adherent to no structural will so much as the will to adventure into the unknown, to find out where one progression leads. As regards the long- and short-form material on Origins, it leads far, far out, and if you don’t come out the other side wanting to own everything the band has ever released, you’re decidedly in the wrong.
Once calling Brooklyn Home, Los Angeles trio Dommengang waste no time in getting down to the business of boogie on their second album for Thrill Jockey, Love Jail. Produced by Tim Green (The Fucking Champs), the 10-track/50-minute long-player has all the room for organ/guitar mashups, righteous West Coast vibes and easy-flowing classic heavy rock one could hope for, and in the opening salvo of “Pastel City,” “Lovely Place” and “Lone Pine,” the three-piece of guitarist Dan “Sig” Wilson, bassist Brian Markham, and drummer Adam Bulgasem reaffirm mellow bluesiness as well on the title-track and dig into ‘90s-style alt bliss on the penultimate “Color out of Space.” There’s a welcoming air throughout that holds steady regardless of tempo, and in heavier moments like the second half of “I’m out Mine,” the band resonates with fuzz and noisy elements that bring just enough danger to the proceedings to keep the listener riveted. Classy, but not too classy, in other words.
It would seem that Wigan, UK, outfit Boss Keloid — newly signed to Holy Roar Records for the release of their third LP, Melted on the Inch – internalized a few crucial lessons from their sophomore outing, 2016’s Herb Your Enthusiasm (review here). At six tracks and 40 minutes, Melted on the Inch is about 20 minutes shorter than its predecessor. Its title isn’t a weed pun. Its cover art conveys a work of dimensionality, and most importantly, the album itself turns to be precisely that. Taking a significant step toward a more progressive sound, Boss Keloid maintain the heft of their prior outing but base it around material that, frankly, is more complex and dynamic. I won’t say that “Tarku Shavel” and “Lokannok” are without their elements of self-indulgence, but neither should they be for the five-piece to do justice to the multifaceted nature of their purpose. They still roar when they want to, but Boss Keloid strike with breadth on Melted on the Inch as well as sheer impact.
After forming in 2015, Philadelphia’s exclamatory Holy Smoke! issued their first three-track release, It’s a Demo! (review here) the next year and showed marked stylistic promise in cuts like “Rinse and Repeat” and “Blue Dreams.” Both of those tracks, as it happens, stand at the opening of the band’s latest EP, the five-song Pipe Dream, and reaffirm the potential in the group. The opener (also the longest track once again; immediate points) is a tale of workaday redundancy, the very sort of monotony that the rest of the offering seems to leave behind in favor of post-grunge heavy rock, marked by the wah-bass on finale “Asch Backwards” and the brooding sensibility of the prior “Golden Retriever,” which surges in its midsection like a lost Alice in Chains demo only to end quiet once again, a departure from the linearity of centerpiece “Missing the Mark” just before. Less psychedelic than their initial impression conveyed, they seem to have undertaken the work of crafting their own sonic niche in Philly’s increasingly crowded scene, and there’s nothing on Pipe Dream to make one think it’s not a realistic possibility they’ll get there.
Sabel know what they want to be and then are that thing. Their third album, Re-Generation, arrives via Oak Island Records as six tracks of to-the-converted stonerism, and from opener/longest track (immediate points) “In the Walls of Eryx,” the Swedish trio do little more than ask their listeners to smell the smoke emanating from their speaker cabinets (oddly sweet), and hone walls of fuzz that each seem to be bigger than the last. There are some elements of earliest Electric Wizard at play in “Atlantean” or the sneering “Voodoo Woman,” but belters like “Interstellar Minddweller” and “Green Priestess” stave off their sounding overly derivative, and though at the end of Re-Generation’s 42-minute run, one might feel as though they need a shower, the record itself proves well worth the dive into the muck. The band would seem to have carved their own descriptor with the title of their self-released 2015 LP, Hard Doom, and that’s as good as anything I could come up with, so let’s roll with it. They seem to.
Cheers to Christian Peters of Samsara Blues Experiment for putting me onto Spokane, Washington’s Blackwater Prophet, who with the seven-track As I Watch it Freeze collect various tracks recorded between 2015 and 2017. Thus something of a compilation, the 40-minute outing wants nothing for overarching flow, “In My Passing Time” leading off with a mellow psych-blues spirit that only grows more classic-feeling through “House of Stone” and the gorgeously pastoral “The Swamp.” The band have two proper full-lengths out, and if they wanted to count As I Watch it Freeze as their third, I don’t think they’d find much argument, as centerpiece “Gold in the Palm” opens like a gateway leading to the increasingly resonant “Careworn Crow,” the fuzzy swing of “Eating the Sun” and finally, the title-track itself, which answers the acoustics of “The Swamp” earlier while adding flourish of volume-swelling and swirling electric guitar and late choral vocals that only make the proceedings seem all the more complete in their engagement.
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 19th, 2018 by JJ Koczan
And so I sip the second cup from my second pot of morning coffee and decide it’s time to put together a post about The Atlas Moth‘s impending tour. The Chicago post-metal veterans head out in support of their new album, the Sandord Parker-produced Coma Noir — released by no less than Prosthetic Records — and though I’ve had the record on my desktop since I don’t know how long and it’s slated to be included in the Quarterly Review at the start of next month, I haven’t yet really dug into it in more than a cursory “yup, that’s The Atlas Moth” kind of way.
So I click a link included with the press release below for “Actual Human Blood” and with its blend of extreme metal clarty, post-sludge atmospherics and richly weighted groove, it’s hard to believe these guys are as underrated as they are. It’s not hard to imagine that if they were from Germany instead of Chi-town, they’d be hailed as progressive overlords — though being Swedish didn’t exactly work for Burst when it came to being improperly valued, so maybe I’m way off — but either way, for as much as they put into what they do in terms of both passion and cerebralism, my coffee and I both think they deserve more love than they get.
Good band, is the point. They’re touring the West Coast with Mustard Gas & Roses and He Whose Ox is Gored, as the PR wire informs:
THE ATLAS MOTH announce tour dates with Mustard Gas & Roses
THE ATLAS MOTH will continue inducing Coma Noir across North America with new tour dates announced. Joined by special guests Mustard Gas & Roses; THE ATLAS MOTH will also share select dates with He Whose Ox Is Gored and a special performance in Los Angeles at Resident DTLA with Of Feather & Bone on June 5th.
Released February 9, 2018 via Prosthetic Records, Coma Noir entered the Billboard charts at the and continues to draw praise from media and fans alike.
Produced by Sanford Parker (Eyehategod, Voivod), Coma Noir simultaneously channels the eclecticism and evolution of THE ATLAS MOTH; resulting in their finest offering of intoxicating psychedelic post metal to date. For deeper insight on the inspiration and creation of Coma Noir, listen and watch what the band has to say about the new album below.
THE ATLAS MOTH tour dates: 5/28 – St. Paul, MN @ Amsterdam Bar * 5/29 – Winnipeg, MB @ The Park Theatre * 5/30 – Regina, SK @ Cloud 9 * 5/31 – Edmonton, AB @ Temple * 6/01 – Vancouver, BC @ The Astoria w/ He Whose Ox Is Gored * 6/02 – Seattle, WA @ Northwest Terror Fest 6/03 – Portland, OR @ Star Theater w/ He Whose Ox Is Gored * 6/04 – Santa Cruz, CA @ The Catalyst * 6/05 – Los Angeles, CA @ Resident DTLA w/ Of Feather & Bone * 6/06 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Rebel Lounge * 6/07 – Las Vegas, NV @ Beauty Bar * 6/08 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Loading Dock * 6/09 – Denver, CO @ Trailside Saloon * 6/10 – Kansas City, MO @ The Riot Room * *w/ Mustard Gas & Roses
THE ATLAS MOTH is: Andrew Ragin – Synth/guitar Alex Klein – Bass Mike Miczek – Drums David Kush- Guitar/Vocals Stavros Giannopoulos – Guitar/Vocals
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 17th, 2017 by JJ Koczan
When Chicago’s The Atlas Moth were announced over the summer as signing to Prosthetic Records, the tentative timeframe for their next album, Coma Noir, was Fall 2017. Okay, so maybe the record will ultimately wind up a little off that mark, but I can’t help but think that’ll ultimately work to its benefit. This past Fall — we’re basically through it now, at least in terms of releases — was utterly slammed with new records. One after the next after the next. Granted, there’s always stuff coming out these days, but even for that, it was overwhelming.
I don’t know what else Feb. 9 will bring, but as The Atlas Moth follow-up 2014’s The Old Believer (discussed here), at least they’re not in such immediate danger of getting lost in the fray of everything coming out. They’ll be on the road at the time with Royal Thunder and Mirrors for Psychic Warfare — the latter whose lineup includes Sanford Parker, who produced Coma Noir (funny how these things work sometimes) — so all the better. The record was one to look forward to before. Still is.
The Atlas Moth will also take part in next year’s Northwest Terror Fest, as the PR wire affirms:
The Atlas Moth announce Coma Noir release date, headlining tour and Northwest Terrorfest appearance
Chicago’s experimental metallers, THE ATLAS MOTH, have set a February 9, 2018 release date for their fourth LP, Coma Noir. The band will kick off a North American tour the following day with Royal Thunder and Mirrors of Psychic Warfare. Full dates are below.
The album marks a few firsts for the band; it’s the first release for LA indie metal, Prosthetic Records, it’s the first to feature Mike Miczik (Broken Hope) on drums, and it’s the first time the band worked with an outside producer. On previous releases, the band’s guitarist/vocalist, Andrew Ragin handled production duties. This time around, longtime friend, Sanford Parker (Eyehategod, Voivod) stepped in to steer the Coma Noir ship. An outside voice, one that the band was comfortable with, was key to channeling all the different elements the band brings to the table and keeping everything cohesive and concise.
More information on Coma Noir will become available in the coming weeks, and plans are already underway for further activity for THE ATLAS MOTH in 2018.
THE ATLAS MOTH w/ Royal Thunder & Mirrors of Psychic Warfare 2/10 Chicago, IL @ The Empty Bottle 2/11 Pontiac, MI @ The Pike Room 2/12 Toronto, ONT @ Hard Luck – Tickets 2/13 Montreal, QUE @ Bar Le Ritz 2/14 Allston, MA @ Great Scott 2/15 Hamden, CT @ Ballroom at the Outer Space 2/16 Brooklyn, NY @Saint Vitus 2/17 Philadelphia, PA @ Voltage Lounge 2/18 Washington, DC @ DC9 2/20 Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506 2/21 Columbia, SC @ New Brookline Tavern 2/22 Atlanta, GA @ 529
5/29-6/02 Seattle, WA @ Northwest Terror Fest
THE ATLAS MOTH is: Andrew Ragin – Synth/guitar Alex Klein – Bass Mike Miczek – Drums David Kush- Guitar/Vocals Stavros Giannopoulos – Guitar/Vocals
Posted in Reviews on September 28th, 2017 by JJ Koczan
Ready for round three of the Fall 2017 Quarterly Review? I hope so, because it’s a doozy. Things get pretty weird and pretty rockin’ in this batch, and at the risk of being completely honest, I much prefer it that way. It’s a varied group — maybe the most diverse in terms of sound throughout the entire week, though there’s stiff competition still to come — and as we hit the 30th review, that brings us to the halfway point of the Quarterly Review itself, which if all keeps proceeding according to plan will wrap up on Monday with a grand total of 60 done. Let’s hope no pianos fall on my head between now and then, literally or figuratively. Onward.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Nibiru, Qaal Babalon
The fourth full-length from Italian sludge ritualists Nibiru, Qaal Babalon (on Argonauta) is an encompassing, 57-minute grind comprised of four extended tracks, the longest of which is opener (immediate points) “Oroch” at 19:07 – a song whose depths run dark and cruel and which, even when the tempo pushes upward from its initial slow crawl, still feels massively slow. Still, the spirit behind “Oroch” as well as the following and much faster “Faboan” (10:51), the buzzsaw noise cutting avant insanity of “Bahal Gah” (16:40) and full-drone rite of “Oxex” (11:05) is less directly about the punishment itself than about the exploration enacted thereby. That is, Nibiru aren’t just heavy for heaviness’ own sake and they’re not just assaulting their listenership without reason. Though I won’t take away from its raw sonic impact, Qaal Babalon’s greatest asset is its atmospheric impression and the experimentalism it brings to bear, which moves Nibiru into a terrifying place sound-wise that they seem to have all to themselves.
Hailing from the unlikely heavy hotbed of Salt Lake City, Utah – though where better for a counterculture to emerge? – sludge rocking trio The Ditch and the Delta made their debut earlier in 2017 with the seven-song Hives in Decline via Battleground Records before being picked up by Prosthetic for this reissue. Comprised of bassist/vocalist Kory Quist (see also: Making Fuck), guitarist/vocalist Elliot Secrist and drummer Charles Bogus, the three-piece pummel handily throughout early cuts like opener and longest track (immediate points) “Hives in Decline” “Fuck on Asphalt” and the nodding “Sleeping Dogs,” but with the instrumental interlude “Dry Land,” they tap into post-Across Tundras heavy Americana and in that brief two-minute stretch deeply affect the mood of the release overall. They’re back to angular noise rock turns soon enough on “Till Body Quits” and the Remission-era-Mastodon-style “Mud” before alternating between lurching crush and airier prog/post-rock on closer “Dread Spectacle,” but by then the secret’s out of their underlying complexity, and rather than offset the sense of drive in the prior cuts, one finds them only enhanced by the later unfolding. Intense, and very much in the process of sorting through these impulses, but loaded with potential.
From Greek dialogue in “Hermes” to the Nick Cave-style piano balladry of “Apollo” to the organ-and-handclaps Mediterranean pop underscoring “Lilith”’s boogie and the spoken verses and explosive hook of “Snake” ahead of moody closer “There will be a Time,” Cyanna Mercury’s debut long-player, Archetypes, seems to leave no sonic stone unturned. The Athens-based five-piece hone a thoroughly progressive approach across the 10-track/40-minute (plus a CD bonus track) outing, touching on heavy psych in opener “Horse Dark as Night” and injecting a darker theatricality into centerpiece “Ode to the Absent Father” and the later “Nothing We Can Do,” but refusing to relegate themselves ultimately to one sound or another. Elements of folk, heavy rock, psychedelia, classic prog, pop and more besides show themselves across what’s a legitimate head-trip of a record, and though it’s hard to get a grip on where Cyanna Mercury are ultimately headed with this sonic brew already so potent and already so much their own, they seem to be completely in control of how it all plays out in arrangement and songwriting, and they work quickly to earn the listener’s trust via a resonant overarching flow that renders Archetypes truly immersive. Will fly under most radar, but a stunningly creative debut.
Numerically-titled three-song EP 2nd Chances is – since we’re going by the numbers – the third release of 2017 from Surya Kris Peters, behind the synth-driven Dream Exit EP digitally-issued this past summer and January’s Holy Holy Holy (review here) full-length. With it, Samsara Blues Experiment frontman Christian Peters further expands the contextual breadth of his solo work, revisiting songs from his prior outfit Terraplane in the Mellotron-infused melancholy of “Smalltown Blues” and the quick, folkish rambling instrumental “Dark Euphoria” while also covering Jefferson Airplane’s “Come up the Years” between. All told, it’s only 10 minutes long, but Peters brings a particularly progressive psychedelic folk vibe to the tracks, and from the shimmering guitar lead that takes hold in “Come up the Years” and the intimate feel of “Smalltown Blues” despite an arrangement of keys, vocals, multiple layers of guitar and effects, an emotional and sonic resonance is still very much achieved. One never wants to guess what Peters will do next, but if he had a full-length of this kind of thing out at some point, you wouldn’t be likely to find me complaining.
An underlying mournfulness pervades Golden Bats’ Residual Dread, or maybe that’s just the Brisbane-based solo-project of multi-instrumentalist/vocalist/engineer Geordie Stafford living up to the title chosen for the album on “Nothing.” Elsewhere, Residual Dread takes on guitar-as-keyboard plotted soloing in 11-minute closer “The Crows Build a Fire” and find a place between black metal and doomly roll, and add piano to tapped Godflesh-style programming on opener “Trouble in the Sewers” and bring organ to the relative bounce of “Eye Juices” as far-back echoing shouts provide the vocal presence. Setting elements against each other would seem to be a core aspect of Stafford’s intent, and the feel on Residual Dread is more about the smashing them together and seeing what happens than trying to gently meld one idea from two or three. That lends a raw, experimentalist sensibility to the lumber of “Outer Body” and “Into the Silver Valley” that serves them well, like a Large Hadron Collider driven by riffs and thickness of tone.
In its first two minutes, Blind Hen’s “As a Monster” moves from electronica-style Euro dance rock to heavy-riffed progressive metal. Then it turns back. This is just the start of the Finnish four-piece’s four-track/21-minute Life EP, and “Titanic” follows stylistic suit with an even more intense thrust early before moving into psychedelia in its second half with an underlying tension in its beat to contrast the melodic wash overtop. The chugging “The Maze” is more guitar-led and straightforward, but even there, Blind Hen find room for nuance in their vocal arrangement, also bringing in acoustics amid the multiple layers of singing, and with a sample at the outset, closer “Catch” moves once again toward the danceability of the earlier fare, if in a via-Mr.–Bungle rhythmic restlessness rather than the fusion beatmaking. Weird, weird, weird. What draws Life together is the fact that Blind Hen cross this aesthetic swath with stuck-in-your-head choruses as a constant, essentially giving the audience something to grasp onto while they go wherever they want in terms of sound. It is appreciated to say the least, and shows the band to be all the more attuned to their craft, even when they seem at their most unhinged.
If you’ve got 68 minutes, Portuguese four-piece The Black Wizards are ready to have a heavy blues shindig on their second 2LP full-length, What the Fuzz!, and I do believe we’re all invited. The nine-song outing emphasizes the vocals of guitarist Joana Brito, who emerges on post-intro opener “Freaks and Geeks” with a prominent kind of trilling in her voice of the sort Parker Griggs brings to Radio Moscow that holds for the duration as a steady presence. Joined by guitarist Paulo Ferreira, bassist/acoustic guitarist B and drummer/backing vocalist Helena Peixoto, Brito leads the way through the fuzzy rollout of the nine-minute “The Story of an Hopeless Drummer” (sic), stepping back to let the guitar/bass have a righteously nodding moment late in the track, but holds firm in a forward position on the short, twanging “Just Not Today” as well as the early going of the prior subdued-blues-smoker highlight “Floating Blues.” “Build Your Home,” “I Don’t Wanna Die” and the particularly-classic-sounding “Fire” revive the classic heavy rock spirit of “Freaks and Geeks,” and 16-minute finale “Everything is Good Until Trouble Comes” uses its extra runtime for a satisfying and patient execution with an expanded arrangement including choral vocals, organ and additional guitar effects. You might be boogied out by the time they’re done, but as The Black Wizards crash through their big finish, they sound like their party’s just getting started.
One might expect that with all the Melvins affiliation going on in the second Magnetic Eye Records full-length from L.A. duo Low Flying Hawks, Genkaku would sound, you know, more like the Melvins, but despite working with bassist Trevor Dunn, drummer Dale Crover and producer Toshi Kasai, and despite bringing in Buzz Osbourne for guest vocal spots on eight-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “Smile” and side B leadoff “Space Wizard,” initials-only multi-instrumentalists EHA and AAL follow their 2016 debut, Kofuku (review here), with a sound even more their own, balancing between thick riffy rollout and post-rock atmospherics. Of course, they weird out a bit on “Smile” and the lumberingly spacious “Uncool” and “Virgin Witch,” but whether it’s the later mournfulness of “Hallucination” or “Twilight” toying with noisy fuckall while seeming to mock heavy rocker burl ahead of the melodic payoff in closer “Sinister Waves,” there’s more EHA and AAL in Low Flying Hawks than the prominent pedigree of their collaborators might lead you to believe. All the better for what becomes a richly satisfying 43-minute listen rife with depth, patience, and yes, personality.
Coherent songwriting rests at the core of what Denver’s Brother Sister Hex bring to their five-song third EP, End Times, which darkens up Queens of the Stone Age-circa-Songs for the Deaf vibing on its title-track (also a bit of Kyuss’ “El Rodeo” in there for good measure) before delving into more ambient fare on the centerpiece “Confessions.” Vocalist/guitarist Colfax Mingo demonstrates SubRosa-style vocal command there, but the context is more rock-based, uptempo and straightforward as she, guitarist Patrick Huddleson, bassist Drew Hicks and guest-drummer Jordan Palmer (Plastic Daggers) meld traditionalist structures with atmospheric moodiness. Opener “Hey” offers a suitable greeting through hook and groove, and the shuffle of “Sweet and Sleazy” and the rumbling fuzz (Hicks makes it a highlight) of closer “News Feed” wraps with another grunge-style QOTSA melody efficiently drawn, shouting the question “what have we done?” as it thuds into its second half. Uh, you’ve made a professional-sounding, excellently-constructed EP that shows you’re more than ready to embark on a debut full-length, permanent drummer or no. So yeah, get on that.
As progressive as it is brutal, Further Nowhere is ostensibly the debut release from Paris’ Cold Insight. The material seems to date back at least to 2013, if not earlier than that, when band-spearhead Sébastien Pierre (also of Enshine, Fractal Gates, and others) first issued what’s now tagged as a “pre-production album” version, but it’s hardly as though the lush, growling, melodeathly doom sounds dated. With sonic likenesses throughout to bands like Amorphis, Dark Tranquility and Paradise Lost, Cold Insight – on which Pierre, who also did the artwork, is joined by drummer Christian Netzell while Jari Lindholm adds lead guitar – hit on a very particular, very European style, and not an unfamiliar one as displayed in the righteously driving “Distance,” but the find-the-beauty-in-darkness spirit behind “Close Your Eyes” and songs like “Even Dies a Sun” and the more uptempo later piece “I Will Rise” help ensure that the formidable 12-song/66-minute run of Further Nowhere never gets too bogged down in its melancholy. It may have been a while in the making, and one hopes a follow-up won’t take as long to arrive, but the precise execution Pierre hones in these songs and the depths to which he can bring a willing audience are a fitting payoff for the years of work that went into their construction.
Posted in Reviews on September 28th, 2017 by JJ Koczan
Day two of the Quarterly Review and feeling groovy so far. Managed to survive yesterday thanks in no small part to good music and good coffee, and looking at what’s coming up in today’s batch, I don’t expect the situation will be much different — though the styles will. I try to keep in mind as I put these weeks together to change up what’s in each round, so it’s not just all psych records, or all doom, or heavy rock or whatever else. This way I’m not burning myself out on anything particular and I hopefully don’t wind up saying the same things about albums that maybe only share vague genre aspects in common — riffs, etc. — in the same way. Essentially trying to trick my brain into being creative. Sometimes it even works. Let’s see how it fares today.
Quarterly Review #11-20:
Spotlights, Seismic
After touring hard with the likes of Melvins, Deftones and Refused, heavy post-rockers Spotlights mark their first release on Ipecac Recordings with their second album, Seismic, which finds the core duo of Mario and Sarah Quintero working with producer Aaron Harris (Isis) to follow-up 2016’s Tidals with 65 minutes/11 tracks of weighted atmospherics and far-spanning melodic textures as shown on emotive heft-bringers like “Ghost of a Glowing Forest.” Heavygaze, I suppose, is the genre tag that’s emerged, but with the opening title-track, the chugging “Learn to Breathe” and the later percussive turns of “A Southern Death,” there’s as much focus on crush as on ambience, though as Seismic makes its way through the pair of eight-minute tracks “Hollow Bones” (wonder if they know the 30 Rock reference they’re making) and “Hang us All” before the minimal subdued drones and melodic effects swirls of closer “The Hope of a Storm,” Spotlights succeed in finding a middle ground that offers plenty of both. In its moments of intensity and its range, Seismic builds cohesion from ether and immediately benefits from the purposeful growth the Quinteros have clearly undertaken over the past year by hitting the road with the dedication they have.
Bay Area rockers War Cloud don’t get too fancy on their self-titled debut, which they make via Ripple Music as the follow-up to their 2016 single Vulture City (discussed here), but as they prove quickly in the dual-guitar Thin Lizzyisms of opener “Give’r” and the later post-Motörhead/Peter Pan Speedrock careening of “Speed Demon,” neither do they necessarily need to. Comprised of guitarists Alex Wein (also vocals) and Tony Campos, bassist Sean Nishi and drummer Joaquin Ridgell, War Cloud offer 31 minutes of brisk, unpretentious asskickery, riffs trading channels at the outset of “Hurricane” as it makes ready to settle into its proto-thrashing rocker groove, and the mood of the release as a whole engaging as much through its reimagining 20-year-old Metallica as a heavy rock band there as on the more grandly riff-led “Divide and Conquer.” Structures are straightforward, and not one of the eight tracks tops five minutes, but they’re more than enough for War Cloud find their place between metal form and heavy rock tone, and cuts like “Chopper Wired” and brazenly charged closer “Vulture City” nail the core message of the band’s arrival.
Rubble Road ain’t hurtin’ nobody. The Orlando-based double-guitar four-piece take two prior singles and put them together with four new tracks as their 29-minute/six-song debut EP, The Clowns Have Spoken, and thereby bring forth straightforward heavy rock that seems to be finding its personality in tone but nonetheless has a strong structural foundation underlying that holds up the material and “The Judge” tosses in a bit of metallic gallop to go with the forward-directed heavy rock proffered on the prior “Galactic Fugitives” and “Gospel (Get it Together).” I won’t say much for the politics of “Truck Stop Hooker,” which caps with the line, “Your mother gives great helmet, baby,” but “Wizard Staff” and “Do it Yourself” broaden the dynamic of the release overall. They’ve got some growing to do, but again, there’s an efficiency in their songwriting that comes through these songs, and as an initial showcase/demo, The Clowns Have Spoken shows Rubble Road with the potential to continue to grow.
You might check out the self-titled debut from Austin, Texas, duo Monte Luna. You might even pick up the digipak or tape version. You might listen to extended tracks like “Nameless City” (12:53) and “6,000 Year March” (17:42) and be like, “Yeah, cool riffs dudes.” You might even then chase down the The Hound EP that guitarist/vocalist/bassist James Clarke and drummer/synthesist Phil Hook put out last year. At some point though, you’re going to put Monte Luna’s Monte Luna on your shelf and leave it there. Fair enough. However – and I’m not going to say when; could be sooner, could be later — then you’re going to find yourself remembering its massive, 71-minute sprawl of riffs, its doomed-out grooves, shouts, screams, growls and the way its builds become so utterly immersive, and you’re going to put Monte Luna on again. And that’s the moment when it will really hit you. It might take some time, and part of that is no doubt that there’s simply a lot of record to wade through, but whether it’s the rumbling start of “Nightmare Frontier” (14:26), the cacophonous stomp of “Inverted Mountain” (12:04) or the righteous crash of “The End of Beginning” (9:42), Monte Luna will have earned that deeper look, and if you allow them to make that deeper impression with their self-titled, they almost certainly will.
Newcomer five-piece High Reeper telegraph Sabbathian heavy rocker intent with their self-released, self-titled debut album. The Delaware-based lineup of Zach Thomas, Napz Mosley, Andrew Price, Pat Daly and Shane Trimble make no bones about their roots in opener “Die Slow,” and as the stoner-swinging “High Reeper,” the doom-swaggering “Reeper Deadly Reeper” and the yo-check-out-this-bassline nodder “Weed and Speed” play out in the record’s midsection, it seems increasingly likely that, sooner or later, some imprint or other will pick up High Reeper for a wider release. As the band demonstrates through the stomping “Soul Taker” and the seeming mission statement “Black Leather (Chose Us)” ahead of closer “Friend of Death,” which breaks its six minutes in half between Judas Priest thrust and an instrumental finish that calls to mind “Heaven and Hell,” they’ve got a keen ear for updating classic elements, and though formative, their first outing is cleverly memorable and an immediately resonant display of songcraft. Now we know High Reeper can engage these stylistic components — the test will be how they develop them into something individualized going forward.
Frozen Planet….1969, From the Centre of a Parallel Universe
From the Centre of a Parallel Universe is the second long-player of 2017 from Sydney/Canberra’s Frozen Planet….1969. It arrives on CD through Pepper Shaker and LP via Headspin with five tracks/43 minutes of improv-style psych jams following suit from the prior Electric Smokehouse (review here) and helps to bring the band’s funk-infused, spacious dynamic all the more into focus. Also out of focus. Like, blurry vision-style. They range far and wide and keep the proceedings delightfully weird in the three extended pieces “Celestial Gambler,” “Through Hell’s Kaleidoscope, Parts I & II” and “Ancient Wings Taking Flight” – all north of 11 minutes – and with “Signals (Channelling…)” and “The Lady and the Archer” leading the way into each LP side, Frozen Planet….1969 take the time to assure they’re bringing their listeners along with them on their potent journey into the cosmically far out. The must-hear bass tone in “Ancient Wings Taking Flight” is but one of many reasons to dig in, but whatever it takes, From the Centre of a Parallel Universe’s invitation to get lost is not one to be missed.
Chicago’s history with instrumentalist post-metal goes back as far as the notion of the subgenre itself with acts like Pelican and Russian Circles providing aesthetic-defining landmarks over the last 15-plus years even as a group like Bongripper embraces darker, more lumbering fare. The four-piece Zaius, who make their full-length debut with Of Adoration on Prosthetic Records after two self-released EPs in 2013 and 2011, position themselves more toward the shimmering airiness of the former rather than the latter’s raw lumber, but there’s heft to be found in the expanses of “Sheepdog” and “Seirenes” all the same, and the second half of “Echelon” and closer “Colin” tighten up some of the ethereality of pieces like opener “Phaneron” and the driftingly progressive “Reformer” or the penultimate, patient rollout of “Anicca” to hone a sense of balance that feels as emotionally driven as it is cerebral in its construction. Hard for a band like Zaius to stand themselves out at this point given the swath of acts working in a similar style in and out of the Windy City, but in its textural approach and held-steady flow, Of Adoration satisfies.
Portuguese post-doomers Process of Guilt hit the 15-year mark with the release of their fourth album, Black Earth (on Division/Bleak Recordings), and with a mix by Brooklyn noise-rock specialist Andrew Schneider, a mastering job by Collin Jordan in Chicago and striking cover art by growler/guitarist Hugo Santos with images by Pedro Almeida, the sense of atmosphere is thick and the mood is aggressive throughout. Santos, along with guitarist Nuno David, bassist Custódio Rato and drummer Gonçalo Correia chug and flow through a linear 42 minutes and five tracks on the suitably darkened offering, touching on progressive nuance but not letting cerebral underpinnings take away from the onslaught feel of “Feral Ground” or the tension mounted early in the 11-minute penultimate title-track, which uses feedback as a weapon throughout no less capably than the subsequent closer “Hoax” affects immediately with its nodding tonal wash. Taken as a whole, Black Earth finds Process of Guilt exploring depths of their sound as much as with it, and the directions they go feel as much inward as out.
The challenge for an outfit like Stockholm’s Sundus Abdulghani & Trunk, whose self-titled debut arrives via respected purveyor Kozmik Artifactz, lies separating themselves from the shadow of fellow Swedes Blues Pills, whose semi-psych heavy-blues-rocking first album has cast a wide influence that can be heard here as well as in any number of other bands currently kicking around the Euro underground proffering as balance of soul and heavy rock as songs like “It Ain’t Love (But Close Enough)” and “Like Water” do here. Where Sundus Abdulghani & Trunk most succeed in doing this is in the harmonies of “Black Magic Man,” which brings to mind classic acid folk while holding to a heavy blues vibe, but there are other moments throughout when individuality flourishes as well. The attitude is laid on a bit thick in “Them Dames,” but the hooks of “Sister Sorrow,” “She Knows,” “The Devil’s Got a Hold on You” and “Stay” and the burgeoning sense of arrangements complementing Abdulghani’s vocals do well in helping cast an identity one hopes will continue to develop.
Conceived by guitarist/vocalist Andrew Spiers, bassist/vocalist Steve Hobson and drummer Damien McKeown, Banbridge trio Owlcrusher conjure three extended, slicing slabs of black-singed sludge extremity on their self-titled Seeing Red Records debut, and it’s enough to make one wonder just what the fuck is going on in Northern Ireland to inspire such outright bleakness. Beginning with the 16-minute “Feeble Preacher” (also the longest inclusion here; immediate points), Owlcrusher’s Owlcrusher lumbers excruciatingly forth with screams and growls cutting through a tonality geared for max-volume consumption, though it remains to be seen who is consuming whom as “Feeble Preacher” gives way to the likewise scorched eponymous “Owlcrusher” (11:30) and 15-minute closer “Spoiler,” the last of which brings the only real moment of letup on the album after about nine minutes in, and even that takes the form of an interlude of Khanate-style minimalist ambience before the rolling megacrush resumes and plods to a somehow-even-heavier finish. Clearly a band pushing themselves toward the superlative, Owlcrusher get there much faster than their crawling tones would have you believe. Madness.
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 14th, 2017 by JJ Koczan
Chicago’s The Atlas Moth are currently dug into the recording process of their fourth album, to be titled Coma Noir. Their first outing since 2014’s righteous The Old Believer (discussed here), it’s being produced by none other than Sanford Parker (Buried at Sea, Mirrors for Psychic Warfare, etc.) and will see release this fall as the band’s debut release through Prosthetic Records.
Solid fit for a band who’ve consistently played outside genre lines and an imprint who’ve taken pains particularly over the last couple years to expand their own aesthetic palette to cover swaths of the heavy and/or doom underground, and when it comes to The Atlas Moth, the likelier bet would be further progression of their densely-weighted, atmospheric sound, since whatever else they’ve done over the course of their three LPs to-date, they’ve never failed to push themselves forward.
One to look forward to in the colder, darker months to come.
From the PR wire:
THE ATLAS MOTH Sign to Prosthetic Records, Recording New Album, “Coma Noir”
In-Studio Now with Sanford Parker (Voivod, Eyehategod) | Release Details Coming Soon
Chicago-based experimental metal band THE ATLAS MOTH have officially announced their signing to Prosthetic Records. The five-piece is augmenting their ever-evolving sound with producer Sanford Parker (Voivod, Eyehategod) at the helm.
Vocalist/guitarist Stavros Giannopoulos comments on the signing, “We have nothing but the best things to say about our time with Profound Lore and we are equally excited to start our next chapter with Prosthetic Records! We are currently tracking our fourth full-length record, Coma Noir, in Chicago with Sanford Parker at the helm! We’ve known Sanford for many years and are stoked to have him be the first to produce a moth record outside of the band. Keep your eyes peeled for in studio updates.”
Coma Noir will be released in the fall of this year. More information will be made available soon.
THE ATLAS MOTH have released three full lengths, A Glorified Piece of Blue Sky (Candlelight Records), An Ache For The Distance (Profound Lore) and The Old Believer (Profound Lore), as well as numerous splits, EPs and singles. They have toured with Gojira, Boris, Between the Buried and Me, The Ocean, Scale The Summit and many more throughout the world.
THE ATLAS MOTH is: Andrew Ragin – Synth/guitar Alex Klein – Bass Mike Miczek – Drums David Kush- Guitar/Vocals Stavros Giannopoulos – Guitar/Vocals
