You know how I know Doomed Gatherings III has its shit together? Yeah, they’ve got Elder, Crowbar, Trouble, Monolord, Egypt, Ramesses, Mantar and so on confirmed to play over the course of the three-night event in Paris this May, and that’s super. Not arguing against any of that. But how you really know is that not only are Toner Low playing the thing, but they’re playing a set all three nights. That’s right: a Toner Low residency. I don’t know about you, but from where I sit there’s nothing about that concept that isn’t badass.

Details and ticket links follow for the big to-do, for which there are reportedly more band announcements to come. Makes sense, as May’s still a ways off. The following came down the PR wire:

Crowbar, Ramesses, Trouble and more confirmed to play third DOOMED GATHERINGS festival in Paris!

The third edition of France’s only doom, sludge and filth-oriented festival DOOMED GATHERINGS is taking up residence again at Glazart venue in Paris, for three days of crushing, highly grooving and undoubtedly smoke-filled performances. The lineup is now almost complete with a total of twenty-one bands, among which Crowbar, Ramesses, Trouble, Monolord and Elder. Let there be doom.

DOOMED GATHERINGS III
May 14-16th at Glazart – Paris, France
3-day pass (55€) and day tickets (25€) on sale HERE

The current lineup is as follows, with two more bands remaining to be announced. Hotel deals will come up soon along with next announcement.

DAY 1 ? Saturday 14th May ?
Ramesses (UK) ? Toner Low (NL) ? Mantar ? Egypt (USA) ? Demonic Death Judge (FIN) ? The Lumberjack Feedback (FR) ? NNRA ? Bathsheba (BE)

DAY 2 ? Sunday 15h May ?
Crowbar (USA) ? Trouble (USA) ? Toner Low (NL) ? Samothrace (USA) ? Hang The Bastard (UK) ? Throw Me in the Crater (NL) + 2 more bands TBA

DAY 3 ? Monday 16h May ?
Elder (USA) ? Monolord (SWE) ? Toner Low (NL) ? Electric Moon (DE) ? Chaos E.T. Sexual (FR) ? DDENT (FR) ? Carousel (USA)

Doomed Gatherings is the first festival in France for everything doom, sludge, filthy and psyched out. Taking place for the third year at Glazart in the 19th district of Paris, the festival is powered by national heavy promoters Stoned Gatherings and assembles a fine selection of international headliners and breakthrough acts, for the sheer love of Heavy.

Glazart is an indoor/outdoor club located in the north-east of Paris, near reknown architectural unit of La Villette, a venue that is easily reachable from the underground and tramway lines.

? Getting to Glazart ?
7-15 avenue de La Porte de la Villette, 75019 Paris
? Metro 7 (Porte de la Villette station)
or Tram 3b (Porte de la Villette station)

https://www.facebook.com/events/1717007591852526
https://www.weezevent.com/doomed-gatherings
https://www.facebook.com/doomed.gatherings
https://twitter.com/StonedGathering

The Body, Live at Doomed Gatherings 2014

The British trio’s second release of 2011, Ramesses’ Possessed by the Rise of Magik follows the Chrome Pineal EP (review here) released earlier this year and 2010’s stunningly bleak second full-length, Take the Curse. Issued, like the Dorset unit’s two prior documents, on their own Ritual Productions, Possessed by the Rise of Magik pushes the three-piece even deeper into the ether-soaked rag of darkened ceremonial psychedelia. At seven tracks/51 minutes, it is Ramesses at their most atmospherically coherent yet, and it seems that with the prolific stage they entered last year has come a full command of their sound and aesthetic. Possessed by the Rise of Magik is as lethal for its eerie ambience as for the abrasion in the music itself.

First and foremost, Possessed by the Rise of Magik is fucked. Taking some of black metal’s lo-fi approach and transposing it onto their dreary, spaced-out riffing, bassist/vocalist Adam Richardson, guitarist Tim Bagshaw and drummer Mark Greening have truly come into their own, but the record was captured live and it sounds like it. There’s a visceral energy in what they’re doing, and an energy in the tracks that’s almost unspeakable in its potency, but it listening, it sounds like everything’s pushed back in the mix. It’s a hard listen. Richardson’s “clean” vocals on opener “Invisible Ritual” have a desperate howl, and they’re offset by a torrent of riffs and screams that only add to the mash of noise the track presents. It is among the more actively-paced songs on Possessed by the Rise of Magik, and nearly half the length of everything else at 3:38, and, like with Take the Curse, as the album develops, it only moves farther and farther out.

That, too, is a part of Ramesses’ development as a band. Where Chrome Pineal was comprised half of studio material and half of live tracks, Possessed by the Rise of Magik is unquestionably a full-length, and not just for its runtime. Though they provide landmarks along the way – memorable bits for the listener to grasp onto, as with the huge undulating riff that takes hold of “Towers of Silence”’s second half, or the militaristic snare from Greening that sets the rhythm in the opening movement of “Plague Beak,” or even the blatant groove in Richardson’s bass that leads “Duel” while Bagshaw plucks ambient notes behind – it’s easy to hear Possessed by the Rise of Magik as a morass of noise, which I think is just what the band wanted from it. Their sound has grown into this. It’s what their earlier work on 2007’s Misanthropic Alchemy was hinting at. But yeah, completely and totally fucked.

Read more »

The third batch of audio streams from Roadburn 2011 might be the best one yet. I don’t think I’ve stopped raving about how good Ramesses (above) and Sungrazer were since I got back from the fest, and with the chance to hear some bands I missed over there — my head hangs in New Jerseyan shame for not catching The Atomic Bitchwax — it’s good to at least hear what I didn’t see. You know the drill by now — here are the links:

The Atomic Bitchwax
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/44747228#ondemand.44747228

Carlton Melton
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/44747232#ondemand.44747232

Pharaoh Overlord
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/44747236#ondemand.44747236

Ramesses
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/44747240#ondemand.44747240

Sungrazer
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/44747252#ondemand.44747252

Yakuza
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/44747256#ondemand.44747256

Zoroaster
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/44747263#ondemand.44747263

Scorn
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/44747248#ondemand.44747248

As always, these streams were captured live at Roadburn at the 013 Popcentrum in Tilburg, Netherlands, by Marcel van de Vondervoort and his Spacejam Recording team. Special thanks to Walter and Roadburn for letting me host the links on this site.

The further British doom trio Ramesses delve into their own darkened rites and ritualistic sonics, the less relevant their connection to Electric Wizard becomes. Indeed, as that act has gone on to embrace pop structures and classic songwriting approaches, Ramesses – drummer Mark Greening, guitarist Tim Bagshaw and vocalist/bassist Adam Richardson – have moved in what feels like the opposite direction, culling their hypnotic power not from catchy choruses and riffy hooks, but from backpatch-worthy bleakness, dirges caked in sonic filth and abrasive feedback, and an ambience that seems to bubble up from some kind of primordial mud. Their 2010 offering, Take the Curse (review here), was the first release through their own Ritual Productions imprint, and in 2011, they follow it with both the Chrome Pineal 12” vinyl/digital release and the Possessed by the Rise of Magik full-length. The 12” reaches 40 minutes and is comprised half of new studio tracks and half of live material (three cuts of each), and comes off feeling more like an EP than a complete album, especially given how vivid Ramesses have become in honing a cohesive atmosphere when they want to.

The EP Chrome Pineal is named for its opening song, a nine and a half minute instrumental excursion into subdued but still creepy psychedelic jamming. Considering the abrasive ethic noted above and the fact that Take the Curse was practically death metal at times, “Chrome Pineal” is something of a surprise, but it’s nonetheless well performed, and listening to it, one can begin to get a sense of how these influences also show up in Ramesses’ “heavier” material. The live tracks, recorded in 2007 in Denmark, display some of the same bent toward repetition and open soundscaping. Shorter and more akin to what’s come to be expected of Ramesses is “Blazoned Fauna,” which finds Richardson playing clean vocals and throaty growls off each other in a more lamenting atmosphere. The transition between “Chrome Pineal” and “Blazoned Fauna” is awkward, but Chrome Pineal being an EP, it still works. There seems to be more continuity between “Blazoned Fauna” and sample-laden side A closer “Men of Horror,” which is perhaps the most ceremonial-feeling of all the songs here present. The trio’s long-maintained fascination with classic horror cinema is well noted, and the darkness they bring out of the music – slow, punishing, peppered with mysterious incantations and sludgy screams – is thick enough to drown in. It’s only five minutes long, but that’s more than enough time for Ramesses to make it hurt.

Read more »

The headline pretty much says it all, but I’ll back it up with the enclosed Acid King flier and the notion that if you’re going to book a flight over to The Netherlands for Roadburn 2011, now is probably the time to do it. Shaping up to be quite a year for the festival.

The grimmest doom I’ve heard yet this year has come from Ramesses. The UK trio boasting ex-members of Electric Wizard have tapped the mainline of cult horror and turned it into Take the Curse (review here), a startlingly heavy crusher of an album that feels pulled straight from the nightmares of Yvonne Monlaur. Even in its quiet moments, it is furious and foreboding in equal measure.

Ramesses is comprised of bassist/vocalist Adam Richardson, guitarist Tim Bagshaw and drummer Mark Greening. Take the Curse is their second album (first through their management’s label, Ritual Productions), and the band has previously done splits with the likes of Negative Reaction and Unearthly Trance. Their last full-length, 2007’s Misanthropic Alchemy, was also a monster, and it’s no surprise they call themselves The Ram Family — which I imagine is like The Manson Family, except instead of peace, love and murder, it’s Hammer horror, the occult and weed — when you take into account how much this music feels like it’s brainwashing you to obey it.

Since Ramesses recently played the album release show for Take the Curse at Rough Trade East in London, that seemed an appropriate-as-any place to start my email exchange with Adam Richardson, who was kind enough to enlighten me on how Take the Curse came together, how the band captured such aural sickness, their tour plans, relationship with Electric Wizard and more.

You’ll find the Q&A after the jump. Please enjoy.

Read more »

Quit your day job and sacrifice a lemur, Ramesses have a new album! And a brutal, disgusting slab of doomed madness it is. Titled Take the Curse and released through the band’s own Ritual Productions, the second Ramesses full-length follows 2007’s Misanthropic Alchemy, splits with Unearthly Trance (2009) and Negative Reaction (2004), and two EPs, 2005’s We Will Lead You to Glorious Times and 2009’s Baptism of the Walking Dead, all three tracks from which appear here as well. The Dorset band play the kind of doom your mother warned you about, the kind of doom that you lose friends over, the kind of doom where your woman leaves you because you refuse to trim your beard.

The kind of doom where one backpatch just doesn’t seem to cut it.

You get the point.

Originally an offshoot of Electric Wizard, from which guitarist Tim Bagshaw and drummer Mark Greening split following the 2002 Let us Prey album, Ramesses definitely have elements of droning riffery in common with Jus Oborn’s influential outfit, but theirs is a dirtier, grittier, nastier sound. The death metal growling of bassist/vocalist Adam Richardson (who was also in Electric Wizard predecessor Thy Grief Eternal with Oborn), layered with cleaner sub-melodic shouting, gives Ramesses songs a different atmosphere entirely. A sense of ritual is maintained, but it’s more like the ceremony is taking place out back behind the pub than on some altar out of an early-‘70s horror flick. “Black Hash Mass” backs me up on this, with Greening working in blastbeats amid Satanic sampling and horrific wails from Richardson.

Read more »

Mark it a “yes.” Ramesses, the English trio born out of a restructuring of Electric Wizard in 2003, have announced that they’ll unleash their new slab, Take the Curse, on June 21. Two tracks are up for sampling on the YouzTube, including closer “Khali Mist,” which you’ll find the tripped out psycho-delic video for below. It’s riff-tastic. The PR wire has the details on the album:

The psychedelic doom trio Ramesses were spawned in the woodland of Dorset, England in 2003, and have been brutalizing their devoted fanbase ever since, unleashing a rash of EPs and demos, one full-length release, splits with Negative Reaction and Unearthly Trance and more over the past seven years. They’ve ripped a wound in the UK and across Europe with brutalizing live shows alongside some of the best and heaviest names in the extreme metal world.

2010 brings the next slab of raging doom from Ramesses, in the form of their second mammoth full-length release Take the Curse, which is set to infect the general public on the 2010 Summer Solstice, June 21st. Releasing the album is new label Ritual Productions; the label formed by the band’s management. The beast will see worldwide release on CD and digital download formats through Ritual, as well as a 2xLP version to be released by Scottish label At War with False Noise.

On Take the Curse, mournful harmonies are the backdrop to the ever-increasing influence of The Occult on the band. Although a riff tsunami remains the centerpiece, the Ramesses sound is refracted through even more circles of hell; of dirge-sludge, of rhythm, of Lucifer himself. Grim melodies, blistering spaced-out guitar solos and atmospheric samples add depth to the tracks and display the band’s eclectic traits and ‘70s influences.

Take the Curse track listing:
1. Iron Crow
2. Terrasaw
3. Black Hash Mass
4. Take the Curse
5. Vinho dos Mortos
6. Baptism of the Walking Dead
7. Another Skeleton
8. Hand of Glory
9. The Weakening
10. Khali Mist

Take the Curse is a shattering expression of cruelty where Ramesses’ bleak sound finds an accurate counterpart in UK artists Jake and Dinos Chapman (website here) and their grand vision of suffering; the Chapman’s controversial art piece “Fucking Hell” has become the front cover art of Take the Curse. The pieces of this masterpiece used for the album’s art have never been released to the public until now. The CD version of the album will come with two alternative covers, and first 200 orders through the label website will receive a limited edition collector’s art card set featuring the two alternative covers. The music and the artwork dredge the turpitude of humanity and explore the utter horror of possibility. Prepare to be engulfed by torrential riffing!