Posted in Questionnaire on July 27th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Alex Awn of Temple of Void
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I’m a creator, a leader, and a challenger. These three aspects manifest themselves differently depending on the realm, whether it’s through art, business, or even family life. I think all three are deep-rooted personality traits that are maybe equal parts nurture and nature.
Describe your first musical memory.
That’s a tough one. I don’t know what my first musical memory is but the first thing that comes to mind is seeing the artwork for Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. I remember seeing the cardboard cutouts in Woolworths in Glasgow. As an eight year old I was really drawn to the fantastical imagery of the album and the accompanying 12″ singles. I spent lots of time looking through the poster racks in the store as I stared at other Maiden artwork like “Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter,” “Stranger in a Strange Land,” and “Aces High.” I was transfixed.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
My favorite musical memories are all about playing live shows. There have been too many exceptional shows to pick one, though. The memory is more of a feeling than a singular event. When I’m able to transcend and really enter a flow-state on stage, that is the best fucking thing in the world. There’s really a oneness that you can achieve when the circumstances are right. Everything feels pure and effortless and connected. It doesn’t happen every show. But when it does it’s magical.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
I’m an atheist. Always have been. On top of that I despise religion. Always have. But I got married in a church. It was a gesture of a couple hours that had a significant return on investment from an emotional perspective. It didn’t mean I hated religion any less. It just meant I loved my wife more than I hated religion. But I had to have confidence in myself and my beliefs to make such a decision.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Hopefully it leads to self-fulfillment and authentic expression.
How do you define success?
Success can be measured in a variety of ways. Simply put, it’s achieving the thing which you set out to achieve. It’s very binary. You either did the thing you wanted to or you didn’t. But success can be held through failure, too. If you learned in your failure then you grew. You moved yourself forward. And that is success in and of itself. I have different measures of success in different realms of my life. They’re all uniquely defined. Sometimes simply trying is a success.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Michael Masi’s ruling in the last race of the 2021 F1 season in which he robbed Lewis Hamilton of his eighth world title. It was criminal.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
A new album from my new band.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Self-expression.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
One assumes that next year, YOB‘s Catharsis will see a duly deluxe reissue for its 20th anniversary, just as the band’s 2011 outing, Atma (review here), was recently re-pressed to mark 10 years, and Catharsis itself saw reissue for its own first decade in 2013 through Profound Lore and Relapse Records (that is the version above). Seems only the Metal Blade albums — 2004’s The Illusion of Motion (discussed here) and 2005’s The Unreal Never Lived (discussed here) — sit untouched. But every 10 years is fair. If it was every five, I doubt I’d complain. If there was a way to just ultimate-forever-preorder and receive a new edition of every record every time one happened, into perpetuity, you would only be able to call it an investment. A debt paid in installments.
This album changed my life. I mean that. I happened into YOB, like so much else at the time, through StonerRock.com’s All That is Heavy store — both of those things are still missed; call me sentimental — and bought the Abstract Sounds jewel case CD as a new release. It reshaped what I understood the word ‘heavy’ could mean. I’d never heard something that managed to be riff-based, psychedelic, metal, doom, beautiful, crushing and fun all at once, and aside from the novelty of the track lengths — three songs on Catharsis: “Aeons” (18:10), “Ether” (7:16) and “Catharsis” (23:39) — I’d never heard a clean/harsh vocal shift like that from Mike Scheidt in my life, despite the turn of the century’s rampant scream-verse-sing-chorus metalcore ethic.
That eerie, effects-soaked voice, complemented by brutal growls or shouts, whispers as in “Aeons” or pure gutturalism near the end of the title-track — helped expand my definition of genre and form. I’d heard long songs, I’d heard weird songs, but YOB took the tenets of sludge via Neurosis and the stoner metal of Sleep, the it’s-doom-at-any-speed attitude of Cathedral and from all of this and more harnessed once-in-a-generation individualism. I didn’t quite understand it, and I’m still not sure I do, to be honest, but I loved that about it. It seemed like no matter how deep you listened, there was always something new. That funky break in “Aeon!” They’re taking it for a walk! 19 years after the fact, I still feel there’s more to find.
I’ve never written about Catharsis like this before in no small part because I feel so strongly about it. I find I’m nervous doing so now, like all the words want to come out of my brain at the same time and none can squeeze through. Whether it’s the lumbering spaciousness of “Aeons,” or the daring of both speed and a hook in “Ether” — there’s more Matt Pike in that riff than I ever realized; even now I hear something I hadn’t heard before — and the outright emotive expanse of “Catharsis” and the way it throws itself open for its chorus, “The tyranny built upon our philosophies/Not for me in solitude again,” the way those lines aren’t about defiance or a middle finger, not even angry, just knowing of place and self, Catharsis speaks to a timeless sense of not belonging, of seeing differently, while creating reaches in which to dwell.
For the trio then comprised of Scheidt, bassist Isamu Sato and drummer Travis Foster — Aaron Rieseberg (Norska, Simple Forms) took over bass when the band came back from a four-year hiatus with 2009’s blistering The Great Cessation(review here; discussed here) — it was formative, part of an ongoing realization of sound that is inarguably still happening in Scheidt‘s songwriting as of the band’s most recent album, 2018’s Our Raw Heart (review here). But the manner in which soul is manifested on Catharsis was legitimately new for heavy-anything at the time, and it turned the weight of the tracks themselves into a ceremony suited to the lyrical searching, that outsider perspective looking in with a kind of resigned disappointment and understanding that something else is needed. This point of view, honest, personal, continues to inform YOB‘s work, and while the band’s prior 2002 debut, Elaborations of Carbon, had spent plenty of time in the cosmos, Catharsis internalized that journey in a manner no one else has since, though plenty have tried.
And “Catharsis” itself would set forth a pattern of ‘the YOB epic’ that spans across their catalog. The Illusion of Motion had its closing title-track, The Unreal Never Lived had “The Mental Tyrant,” The Great Cessation had its closing title-track, Atma disrupted the pattern by making “Adrift in the Ocean” the finale but not the longest song but still followed the quiet-guitar-intro-then-all-hell-breaks-loose modus, while 2014’s Clearing the Path to Ascend (review here) offered the once-in-a-lifetime “Marrow”(discussed here), and Our Raw Heart dared to disrupt, putting “Beauty in Falling Leaves” as fifth of seven cuts. “Catharsis” was the predecessor to them all with its meandering but ever-purposeful procession, its undeniably metal culmination, its drone, thrash ‘n’ bash harvesting of the titular ideal and culmination that seems to find even another level of blast and spiritual release, ending almost while still in progress as if to remind us as listeners that our lives and our worlds will inevitably do the same.
YOB went on after this album to produce some of their generation’s most crucial heavy music, transcending even the cosmic doom that Catharsis helped define, delivering iconic performances in studio and on stage ever driven by passion and correspondingly influential and incomparable. It was by no means the start of the band, preceded by their demo (discussed here) in 2000 and the aforementioned Elaborations of Carbon, but I count Catharsis as the beginning of that process, the Eugene, Oregon, three-piece having discovered their sound and purpose to a degree such that the pursuit and growth across the nearly two decades since has had these three songs at its foundation.
A popular answer to the Obelisk Questionnaire question, “What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?,” is that all life experience is valuable because it has led that individual to become the person they are. Not judging anyone else’s self-assessments — including Scheidt‘s nine years ago — but I don’t agree. I’ve seen and experienced things in my life that I feel like I’d be better off without, whatever ‘character-building’ I might’ve missed out on as a result. When “Catharsis” hits that change as it enters its last seven minutes, though, I’m a believer. I’m ready to accept everything; the good, the bad, the up, the so, so many downs. All of it. To hear that progression, the turns and the push and riff that has just an edge of light coming through all the barrage, feels like a true exhale, low and deep from the center of one’s being. It’s all worth it, if only for a while.
I love this album like family.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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So why now, if I’ve never been able to write about it before? Fair enough.
I was loafing on the couch the other day, broiling in climate change comeuppance, and I suddenly had to ask myself the question of whether these might be the best days of my life.
I am reasonably healthy, physically, at 40 years old, and nowhere near my lowest of lows mentally. I don’t work outside of taking care of my son and doing this, plus odds and ends in other freelance writing/editing. I write for Creem, which feels weird to say. I’m on Gimme Radio — today, 5PM Eastern (playlist here). I finally went to Freak Valley Festival. People say nice things about me on the internet sometimes. My wife still speaks to me. Every now and then we get to make out, which is always nice. My family is close by. My mother is alive. My father is not. My wife’s mother is alive. Her father is not. My wife’s grandmother is alive. My sister and her husband and their two sons, my wife’s sister and her daughter and son are all around, healthy, well, challenging in their tween/teenagerdom, but vibrant people who make any day better and give hope for the future. My own son is four and a half years old and I don’t think we’ve ever spent more time together.
His getting kicked out of camp as part of the all-plans-blown-to-smithereens Summer of Pivot ’22 has resulted in my running point parenting — with about two hours’ break when the don’t-call-her-a-babysitter-she’s-just-his-friend-who-shows-up-to-play-and-gets-paid-for-it comes, that I almost invariably spend writing — more than I ever have. In the last two weeks, he’s gone from swearing he’ll never take off his diapers to playing ‘the cereal game’ aiming his pee in the potty, and he’ll now use a toilet in places that aren’t his house — yesterday at his speech therapist’s and Bed Bath and Beyond, today doing what we call a ‘bush wee’ (that’s what they call it on Bluey) at the nearby park — and he’s amazing and infuriating and just everything all at the same time. He is such, such an asshole, completely overwhelming and hits harder than the riff to Neurosis’ “The Doorway,” but I can’t get away from loving him.
We have this house, in this neighborhood. I eat Jarlsberg cheese like every day. After the kid goes to bed, I can sit on the couch in my garage like a teenager, light up a joint that I bought at the smoke shop right next to the pizza place — pure Jersey — and marvel at the fact that even my next door neighbor who’s a cop can’t do shit about it. That novelty may never go away.
Inside, the air conditioning works. The ice maker works. The shower works. The kitchen isn’t done, but it works too. The coffee pot works, and the Nespresso. I have shit days, often — having one today, in fact — but when was that not the case, and as time goes on into the imperfect stretch of memory, I look back on life events and mundane afternoons of years gone and remember them at least as much positive as negative, times worth being in. I wonder what I’ll say about now if I’m fortunate enough to live another two or three decades, which right now there’s no reason to think I won’t. The world is going to hell. My country is falling apart. Sometimes I need a xanax just to get me over until bedtime. But I’m okay right now, today. When I stand back and look at it, I’m okay. Doesn’t that count too?
I hope that, if these are the best days of my life, if this is the pinnacle, that when I remember them, I remember as well that I tried my best to appreciate them at the time. And that sometimes I even managed to do so.
It was in that spirit that I decided Catharsis was the record to close out this week.
Thank you for reading. Great and safe weekend. Drink water. It’s hot out there.
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 21st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Having missed the debut album from Sumerlands when it was released in 2016, I guess I’m kind of kicking myself hearing the title-track to the forthcoming Dreamkiller — out Sept. 16 on Relapse — and am soon enough to go chase it down to get caught up. Justin DeTore, of Dream Unending, Innumerable Forms and more than a handful of others, and band spearhead Arthur Rizk (also of Eternal Champion and producer of all the metal; yes, all of it) have brought in DeTore‘s bandmate in Magic Circle, Brendan Radigan, to handle vocals in place of Phil Swanson (ex-Hour of 13, Seamount, Vestal Claret, Upwards of Endtime, so many more), and embarked with seeming direct purpose on a course of metallic traditionalism built out from their doomly underpinnings.
With Brad Raub on bass and John Powers — both also of Eternal Champion — joining Rizk on guitar, DeTore drummingand Radigan (who’s also in frickin’ Pagan Altar) singing, it seems fair to call Sumerlands a supergroup if you’re into that kind of designation. Either way, the new song’s a ripper and if you need me I’ll be trying really hard not to get distracted before I get to the self-titled on Bandcamp. Right on.
From the PR wire:
SUMERLANDS RETURN WITH NEW ALBUM DREAMKILLER COMING SEPTEMBER 16 VIA RELAPSE RECORDS
RELEASE ALBUM TITLE TRACK AND VIDEO
SUMERLANDS are back with their hotly anticipated sophomore album. Helmed by the critically acclaimed engineer/producer & lead guitarist Arthur Rizk (Power Trip, Candy, Show Me The Body, Kreator, Eternal Champion & more) – ‘Dreamkiller’ is a triumph of traditional metal fuel!
Sumerlands have returned from the astral plane with another powerful collection of timeless, hooked filled hits: Dreamkiller. In the driver’s seat is renowned producer and guitarist Arthur Rizk who polished these eight metallic gems at Philadelphia’s Redwood Studios with his brothers in Sumerlands. Coming off of recent production credits with Kreator, Candy, Soulfly, and Show Me The Body, Rizk needs no introduction. His past work and expertise behind the boards with Power Trip, Ghostemane, Code Orange’s Grammy nominated album, Forever, Sacred Reich and many others have blown minds for over a decade. But it’s Sumerlands that truly fulfills his dream of melancholic chug.
The Sabbath-inspired haze of their 2016 S/T debut has been turbocharged with bigger riffs, distinct, Jan Hammer worthy synths, and forays into Badlands gone doom. But although doom crackles at the edges of Dreamkiller, this is classic, melodic metal forged with the melodrama of the Scorpions, the emotional heft of Foreigner, with an extra dose of depression.
The album’s galloping lead single and title track “Dreamkiller”, available now, is an uptempo tour de force with an instrumental break and a festival-worthy chorus. Rizk elaborates: “The ‘Dreamkiller’ instrumental section was inspired by Elton John’s ‘Funeral For a Friend’ which has the most evil sounding Bach-like guitar harmonies. I was drawing from the epicness of that song, as well as Judas Priest’s ‘Stained Class’ and Billy Joel’s ‘Movin’ Out’ which to me all typify that big 70s sound.”
The band’s alchemy is on full display throughout Dreamkiller as bassist Brad Raub (Eternal Champion) smirks behind his P-Bass while drummer Justin DeTore (Innumerable Forms, Dream Unending) stares you dead in the face, swinging. New vocalist Brendan Radigan (Pagan Altar, Magic Circle) sings strikingly of lost souls in a world gone mad. Rizk and guitarist John Powers (Eternal Champion) keep their “Strats only” policy intact while wheeling in the full Marshall stacks to douse the record in glorious solos (witness the album closing duel of “Death to Mercy”).
Make no mistake, Dreamkiller is full of traditional metal fuel. After an amicable split with original vocalist Phil Swanson, Sumerlands have dug deeper into their secret well of cathartic riffage to soundtrack a planet “Running in circles as the bells, they chime.” Sing along, dream along, Dreamkiller kills ‘em all!
Dreamkiller sees its release on September 16 via Relapse Records. The physical pre-order is available here and to pre-save or listen on digital platforms, go here.
DREAMKILLER TRACK LISTING: 1. Twilight Points The Way 2. Heavens Above 3. Dreamkiller 4. Night Ride 5. Edge Of The Knife 6. Force Of A Storm 7. The Savior’s Lie 8. Death To Mercy
Sumerlands is: Brendan Radigan (Vocals), Justin DeTore (Drums), John Powers (Guitar), Brad Raub (Bass), Arthur Rizk (Guitar/Synth)
Last day. Maybe I’m supposed to have some grand reflection as we hit 100 of 100 records for the Quarterly Review, but I’ll spare you. I’ve put a few records from the bunch on year-end lists, enjoyed a lot of music, wondered why a few people got in touch with me in the first place, and generally plotzed through to the best of my ability. Thanks as always to The Patient Mrs., through whom all things are possible, for facilitation.
And thank you for reading. I hope you’ve managed to find something killer in all this, but if not, there’s still today to go, so you’ve got time.
Next QR is probably early October, and you know what? I’ve already got records lined up for it. How insane is that?
Quarterly Review #91-100:
Jo Quail, The Cartographer
To list the personnel involved in Jo Quail‘s Roadburn-commissioned five-movement work The Cartographer would consume the rest of this review, so I won’t, but the London electric cellist is at the center of an orchestral experiment the stated purpose of which is to find the place where classical and heavy musics meet. Percussion thuds, there’s piano and electric violin and a whole bunch of trombones, and whatever that is making the depth-charge thud underneath “Movement 2,” some voices and narration at the start by Alice Krige, who once played the Borg Queen among many other roles. Though Quail composed The Cartographer for Roadburn — originally in 2020 — the recording isn’t captured on that stage, but is a studio LP, which lets each headphone-worthy nuance and tiny flash of this or that shine through. So is it heavy? Not really in any traditional sense, but of course that’s the point. Is SunnO))) heavy? Sure. It’s less about conforming to given notions of genre characteristics than bringing new ideas to them and saying this-can-be-that in the way that innovative art does, but heavy? Why the hell not? Think of it as mind-expansion, only classy.
An aptly named second full-length from Buenos Aires trio Experiencia Tibetana greatly solidifies the band’s approach, which of course itself is utterly fluid. Having brought in Gaston Saccoia on drums, vocals and other percussion alongside guitarist/vocalist Walter Fernandez and bassist Leandro Moreno Vila since their recorded-in-2014-released-in-2020 debut, Vol. I (review here), the band take the methodology of meditative exploration from that album and pare it down to four wholly expansive processions, resonant in their patience and earthy psychedelic ritualizing. Each side of the 48-minute LP is comprised of a shorter track and a longer, and they’re arranged for maximum immersion as one climbs a presumably Tibetan mountain, going up and coming back down with the longest material in the middle, the 16-minute pair “Ciudad de latahes” and “(Desde el) Limbo” running in hypnotic succession with minimalism, noise wash, chanting, percussive cacophony, dead space, bass fuzz, spoken word and nearly anything else they want at their disposal. With “El delito espiritual I” (8:18) and the maybe-eBow(?) ghost howls of “El delito espiritual II” (7:19) on either side, Vol. II charts a way forward for the trio as they move into unknown aural reaches.
People of the Black Circle, People of the Black Circle
Not quite like anything else, Athenian conjurors People of the Black Circle plunge deep into horror/fantasy atmospheres, referencing H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Howard within the five tracks of their nonetheless concise 34-minute/five-track self-titled debut. Weighted in tone and mood, almost garage-doom in its production, the synth-backing of “Cimmeria” unfolds after the outward crunch of leadoff “Alchemy of Sorrow” — like Euro doom dramaturge transposed onto a bed of ’80s synths with Om-style bass — and from centerpiece “The Ghoul and the Seraph (Ghoul’s Song II)” through the bookending choral figures and either sampled or synthesized horns over the resolute chug of “Nyarlathotep” and more straight-ahead slow-motion push of closer “Ghosts in Agartha,” which swirls out a highlight solo after a wailing verse lets go and seems to drift away after its payoff for the album as an entirety. While in concept, People of the Black Circle‘s aesthetic isn’t necessarily anything new, there’s no denying the boundaries of dungeon synth and horror/garage doom are being transcended here, and that mixture feels like it’s being given a fresh perspective in these songs, even if the thematic is familiar. A mix of new and old, then? Maybe, but the new wins out decisively. In the parlance of our times, “following.”
It always seems to be a full moon when Black Capricorn are playing, regardless of actual cloud cover or phase. The Sardinian trio of guitarist/vocalist Fabrizio Monni (also production; also in Ascia), bassist Virginia Pras and drummer Rachela Piras offer an awaited follow-up to their 2019 Solstice EP (discussed here). Though it’s their fifth full-length overall, it’s the second with this lineup of the band (first through Majestic Mountain), and it comes packed with references like the doomly “Worshipping the Bizarre Reverend” and “Snake of the Wizard” as distorted, cultish and willfully strange vibes persist across its 44-minute span. Doom. Even the out-there centerpiece kinda-interlude “Godsnake Djamballah” and the feedback-laced lurch-march of the nine-minute “Witch of Endor” have a cauldron-psych vibe coinciding with the largely riff-driven material, though, and it’s the differences between the songs that ultimately bring them together, closer “Uddadhaddar” going full-on ritualist with percussion and drone and chanting vocals as if to underscore the point. It’s been five years since they released Omega (review here), their most recent LP, and Cult of Blood wholly justifies the wait.
The Danish title Skyggekæmper translates to English as “shadow fighter,” and if punk-informed heavy rocking Aarhus three-piece SABOTØR mean it in a political context, then fair enough. I speak no Danish, but their past work and titles here like “2040-Planen” — seemingly a reference to Denmark’s clean energy initiative — the stomping, funky “Ro På, Danmark!” (‘calm down, Denmark’) and even the suitably over-the-top “King Diamond” seem to have speaking about Danishness (Danedom?) as an active element. Speaking of “active,” the energy throughout the nine-song/49-minute span of the record is palpable, and while they’re thoroughly in the post-Truckfighters fuzz rock dominion tonally, the slowdowns of “Edderkoppemor” and the closing title-track hit the brakes at least here and there in their longer runtimes and expand on the thrust of the earlier “Oprør!” and “Arbejde Gør Fri,” the start-stop riffing of which seems as much call to dance as a call to action — though, again, I say that as someone without any actual idea if it’s the latter — making the entire listening experience richer on the whole while remaining accessible despite linguistic or any other barriers to entry that might be perceived. To put it another way, you don’t have to be up on current issues facing Denmark to enjoy the songs, and if they make you want to be afterward, so much the better.
Vocalist/rhythm guitarist Van Bassman, lead guitarist/backing vocalist Benjamin J. Davidow and bassist/backing vocalist/percussionist Charles Wiles are The Buzzards of Fuzz. I’m not sure who that leaves as drummer on the Atlanta outfit’s self-titled Sept. 2021 debut LP — could be producer/engineer Kristofer Sampson, Paul Stephens and/or Nick Ogawa, who are all credited with “additional instrumentation” — and it could be nobody if they’re programmed, but one way or the other, The Buzzards of Fuzz sure sound like a complete band, from the trippin’-on-QOTSA vibe of “Tarantulove” and “Desert Drivin’ (No Radio)” (though actually it’s Kyuss alluded to in the lyrics of the latter) to the more languid psych pastoralia of “All in Your Head” and the spacious two minutes of “Burned My Tongue on the Sun,” the purposeful-feeling twist into Nirvana of “Mostly Harmless” and the nod to prior single “Lonely in Space” that is finale “Lonely in Space (Slight Return).” Sleek grooves, tight, hooky songwriting and at times a languid spirit that comes through no matter how fast they’re playing give The Buzzards of Fuzz, the album, a consistent mood across the 11 songs and 32 minutes that allows the delivery to play that much more of a role in making short pieces feel expansive.
Crawl into Temple of Void‘s deathly depths and you may find yourself duly consumed. Their style is less outright doom than it used to be, but the Detroit extremist five-piece nonetheless temper their bludgeoning with a resilient amount of groove, and even at their fastest in songs like “Hex, Curse & Conjuration” and some of the more plundering moments in “A Sequence of Rot” just prior, the weight behind their aural violence remains a major factor. The keys in “Deathtouch,” which follows down-you-go opener “Behind the Eye” and leads into “Engulfed” branches out the band’s sound with keyboards (or guitar-as-keyboards, anyway) and a wider breadth of atmosphere than they’ve enjoyed previously — “Engulfed” seems to touch on Type O Negative-style tonality as it chugs into its midsection — and the concluding “Dissolution” introduces a quieter, entirely-clean approach for just under three key-string-laced minutes that Temple of Void have legitimately never shown before. Seems doubtful they’ll take that as far as Opeth in putting out Damnation — though that’s just crazy enough to work — but it shows that as Temple of Void move toward the 10-year mark, their progression has not abated whatsoever. And they still kill, so no worries there.
Psych jazz, instrumental save for some found voice samples which, if you were listening on headphones out in the wild, say, might have you wondering if you’re missing the announcement for your train at the station. Based in Thessaloniki, Greece, Anomalos Kosmos brim with experimentalist urgency on the half-hour of Mornin Loopaz, the seven tracks of which are titled playing off the days of the week — “Meinday,” “Chooseday,” “Whensday,” etc. — but which embark each on their own explorations of the outer reaches of far out. The longest of the bunch is “Thirstday” at just over five minutes, and at 30 minutes one could hardly accuse them of overstaying their welcome. Instead, the shimmering tone, fluid tempos and unpredictable nature of their style make for a thrilling listen, “Thirstday” remaining vital even as it spaces out and “Friedday” picking up directly from there with a ready sense of relief. They spend the weekend krautrocking in “Shatterday” and managing to squeeze a drum solo in before the rushing Mediterranean-proggy end of “Sinday,” the crowd noise that follows leaving one wondering if there aren’t more subversive messages being delivered beneath the heady exterior. In any case, this is a band from a place where the sun shines brightly, and the music stands as proof. Get weird and enjoy.
This third full-length from Quebec-based doom outfit Cauchemar brings the band past their 15th anniversary and makes a bed for itself in traditionalist metallurgy, running currents of NWOBHM running through opener “Jour de colère” and “Rouge sang” while “Danger de nuit” takes a more hard rock approach and the penultimate roller “Volcan” feels more thoroughly Sabbathian. With eight songs presumably arranged four per vinyl side, there’s a feeling of symmetry as “Le tombeau de l’aube” tempts Motörhead demons and answers back with wilful contradiction the late-’70s/early-’80s groove that comes late in “Notre-Dame-sous-Terre.” Closer “La sorcière” tolls its bells presumably for thee as the lead guitar looks toward Pentagram and vocalist Annick Giroux smoothly layers in harmony lines before the church organ carries the way out. Classic in its overarching intentions, the songs nonetheless belong to Cauchemar exclusively, and speak to the dead with a vibrancy that avoids the trappings of cultism while working to some of its strengths in atmosphere, sounding oldschool without being tired, retro or any more derivative than it wants to be. No argument here, it’s metal for rockers, doom for doomers, riffs for the converted or those willing to be. I haven’t looked to see if they have patches yet, but I’d buy one if they do.
If you ever wanted to hear Weedeater or Dopethrone hand you your ass with Sons of Otis-worthy tones, Seum‘s Blueberry Cash has your back. The no-guitar-all-bass-and-drums-and-screams Montreal three-piece are just as crusty and weedian as you like, and in “Blueberry Cash,” “John Flag” and the seven-minute “Hairy Muff,” they reinforce sludge extremity with all that extra low end as if to remind the universe where the idea of music being heavy in the first place comes from. Grooves are vital and deathly, produced with just enough clarity to come through laced with what feels like extra nastiness, and “John Flag”‘s blues verse opens into a chasm of a chorus, waiting with sharpened teeth. Rounding out, “Hairy Muff” is a take on a song by vocalist Gaspar‘s prior band, Lord Humungus, and it’s drawn out into a plodding homage to liberation, pubes and the ability of sludge to feel like it’s got its hands on either side of your face and is pressing them together as hard as it can. These guys are a treasure, I mean that, and I don’t care what genre you want to tag it as being or how brutal and skinpeeling they want to make it, something with this much fuckall will always be punk rock in my mind.
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 2nd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Swedish kingpins o’ riff Monolord are headed back to US shores this summer. Following up on their run earlier this year with fellow Gothenburgers Firebreather, the three-piece will be on hand to begin a relatively brief stint at Psycho Las Vegas, making their way to the East Coast for a few dates before looping out to Chicago for Scorched Tundra and finishing at Muddy Roots in Tennessee. Three distinct festivals with three distinct vibes, and no doubt the trio will find welcome as they make their way to all of in continued celebration of last year’s Your Time to Shine (review here).
I’ve been starting to hear more and more bands who sound like Monolord, and it’s becoming interesting to note what that means in terms of a kind of riffing and nodding groove. They have a signature, despite consistently growing from one album to the next. They’ve already put years of road time in to get to this point, and their influence only seems to keep spreading like the fuzz tsunami it is.
They’ll be out with Dorthia Cottrell of Windhand. Dates follow, courtesy of the PR wire:
MONOLORD ANNOUNCE US SUMMER 2022 TOUR DATES
YOUR TIME TO SHINE FULL-LENGTH OUT NOW
Sweden’s MONOLORD announce Summer 2022 tour dates throughout the United States. The 11-date run begins at Psycho Las Vegas and ends at Muddy Roots Fest in Tennessee. Direct support by Dorthia Cottrell (Windhand) on all non-festival dates. A full tour schedule is below.
MONOLORD Comment:
“Now that touring is possible again it feels equally inspiring and unreal to be able to play live for all of you again. To say that we’re stoked to get back to the US for a second round after the world opened up again would be an understatement. See you in August, let’s do this!”
MONOLORD are touring in support of their 2021 full-length Your Time To Shine (physical: https://store.relapse.com/b/monolord; digital: orcd.co/monolord-ytts).
Monolord tour dates:
Sun 8/21 – Las Vegas, NV – Psycho Las Vegas Wed 8/24 – Brooklyn, NY – TV Eye Thu 8/25 – Baltimore, MD – Metro Fri 8/26 – Raleigh, NC – Pour-House Sat 8/27 – Columbia, SC – New Brookland Tavern Sun 8/28 – Atlanta, GA – Bogg’s Tue 8/30 – Columbus, OH – Skully’s Wed 8/31 – Grand Rapids, MI – Pyramid Scheme Thu 9/01 – Chicago, IL – Scorched Tundra Fest @ Empty Bottle Fri 9/02 – Louisville, KY – Portal Sat 9/03 – Cookeville, TN – Muddy Roots Festival
All dates w/Dorthia Cottrell except Psycho & Muddy*
Monolord are: Thomas V Jäger – Guitars & vocals Esben Willems – Drums Mika Häkki – Bass
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 20th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Says new The Obsessed guitarist Jason Taylor (also of Sierra) about joining the band, “Very excited to announce that I’m playing guitar for The Obsessed! One of my favourite bands on the planet. A dream come true. Jamming with them this past week has been unreal.”
According to a post from the doom stalwarts’ founding guitarist/vocalist Scott “Wino” Weinrich, Taylor has been added on second guitar and Chris Angleberger will join on bass, a slot that had been handled previously by Reid Raley, also of Rwake. I have no idea what’s behind the change, but this isn’t the first time Weinrich and drummer Brian Constantino have shifted the other players involved, and it’s not the first incarnation of The Obsessed by a longshot to feature two guitars. I’m not too sure about my man’s rebel flag patch, but I suppose you get what you get. And if you would tell me “history not racism,” I’ll handily reply, “history of racism” and leave it at that, trying and failing not to come off as a smug Northeastern prick. I support anyone’s right to free speech, including my own. We can disagree on stuff. If you want to argue, run your own shitheel blog for 13 years and take me down a peg. I could use it.
I got off track trying to preempt BS. The news here is there’s a new version of The Obsessed and apparently they’ll look to hit the road to and from Ripplefest Texas in July. The band’s 2017 comeback LP, Sacred(review here), turned five years old last month, which is just about long enough to make one wonder if they have any plans for a follow-up.
From social media:
Hello friends, I am proud to announce the new The Obsessed lineup! On bass Chris Angleberger (Tranquilizer), on 2nd guitar Jason Taylor (Sierra, Witches of God), Brian Costantino on drums, Wino on guitar and vocals.
We will be doing a string of shows en route to Ripplefest in Austin, and back. We look forward to seeing you out on the road! Tour dates coming soon.
Check out patreon.com/theobsessed for music, mischief, and original content.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 12th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
I guess this could be the end of the band, and it feels more likely to me that it is than it isn’t, but I don’t know that so I’m not going to say it. All I know is that Torche‘s founding guitarist/vocalist Steve Brooks, known previously as well for his work in the somehow-still-underrated Floor, has said he’ll leave the band following their Fall tour alongside Meshuggah, for which In Flames and Converge will switch out playing support slots as you can see in the poster below.
Torche‘s most recent album is 2019’s Admission (review here), which if you gotta go out is a good note to do it on. Long since in command of their style, Torche — who’ll also play Desertfest in New York this weekend; you might say I’m waiting for the pre-show to start while I type this — nonetheless continued to foster a sound equal parts exciting and their own. No word on what future projects if any Brooks might have in the offing, but for nearly 20 years, Torche have been a staple of the heavy underground, touring hard and bridging pop and heavy rock in a way that still feels pioneering.
If this is the end of the band — it’d be a ballsy move to keep it going without him, but stranger things have happened — there was never a point at which they didn’t kick ass. And if this weekend is the last time I see them, or if this tour is, I’m going to enjoy it all the more for posterity’s sake.
Brooks‘ post follows, backed by the Meshuggah dates from the PR wire:
We’re a few months away from the last tour I’m doing with Torche. We’ve been so very lucky and went far beyond what I imagined. I just don’t have it in me to keep this going living on opposite sides of the country. Much love to my band members and everyone that supported us these 18 years! See y’all this Sept/Oct
MESHUGGAH w/ Torche & Converge/In Flames 9/16/2022 Palladium – Worcester, MA 9/17/2022 Franklin Music Hall – Philadelphia, PA 9/18/2022 Hammerstein Ballroom – New York, NY 9/20/2022 The Fillmore – Silver Springs, MD 9/24/2022 Agora Theatre – Cleveland, OH 9/25/2022 Express Live – Columbus, OH 9/27/2022 Stage AE – Pittsburgh, PA 9/28/2022 Royal Oak Theatre – Detroit, MI 9/29/2022 Radius – Chicago, IL 9/30/2022 Myth Live – Minneapolis, MI 10/02/2022 Fillmore Auditorium – Denver, CO 10/04/2022 The Warfield Theatre – San Francisco, CA 10/08/2022 Riverside Municipal Auditorium – Riverside, CA 10/09/2022 Hollywood Palladium – Los Angeles, CA 10/10/2022 Marquee Theatre – Tempe, AZ 10/12/2022 The Factory In Deep Ellum – Dallas, TX 10/13/2022 Warehouse Live – Houston, TX 10/15/2022 Hard Rock Live – Orlando, FL 10/16/2022 Buckhead Theatre – Atlanta, GA
Monolord recently returned to their native Sweden following their first North American tour since before lockdown. Not a minor advent. Their social media was rife with righteous posts of cities conquered and complaints about gas station coffee — dudes, you can do better; please don’t judge American coffee by Sheetz or Pilot or Flying J, etc. — and in the company of fellow Göteborgers Firebreather, with whom they’ve toured Europe in the past, there was a sense of (one hesitates to say the word) normalcy to the entire affair. It was a tour. They’re a touring band. They toured.
Of course, context makes that a novelty. It’s not the last run that Monolord have planned to support their 2021 album, Your Time to Shine (review here) — which I’m just as happy to tell you is the best work the band has ever done as I was to tell the same to drummer Esben Willems when we talked last week — but even now there’s trepidation in the planning stage. The infrastructure of touring has changed, maybe forever, in some surprising ways, and like anything, it’s a situation for an active outfit like Monolord to navigate. If covid-19 is going to be endemic like the flu, then it will need to be lived with, like the flu.
Willems — who also runs Berserk Audio and is joined in Monolord by guitarist/vocalist Thomas V. Jäger and now-it’s-a-band bassist Mika Häkki (you’ll get it when you watch the interview — talks below about that and about Your Time to Shine, about being on the road for the first time with a crew, about the comfort in the familiarity of having past-Euro-tourmates Firebreather along, about new projects at the studio, his own very drummerly sense of restlessness, and much more. I’ve been fortunate enough now to chat with him a couple times over the years — last time was Jan. 2021 — and it continues to be a pleasure.
Hopefully you enjoy it as well. Thanks for reading and/or watching:
Monolord, Interview with Esben Willems, April 6, 2022
Monolord’s Your Time to Shine is out now on Relapse Records. Tour updates coming soon. More info at the links.
