Feel like we’re really getting into it now, and that’s a good thing. I’m not saying I was shaking off rust for the first two days, but I look at the spread of styles across the names above and ‘it’s gonna be a good day’ pops inexorably into my head. I like that feeling, which I guess is how we get here in the first place.

It’s Wednesday of this seven-day QR, so we’re not quite halfway through yet. If you’ve been keeping up, thank you. If not, it’s okay. You’re still welcome to peruse the below and hopefully find something that speaks to you.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

Clayton Burgess, If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home by Now

Self-recorded and just as raw as the day is long, the first solo album from Clayton Burgess (Satan’s Satyrs founder, also ex-Electric Wizard), If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home by Now, is so classic in its substance it can’t help be modern. And I’m not talking about the pop garage indie of the 2000s, like it sounds cheap but also everybody has perfect hair. Songs like “Kerosene” and the Mellotron-laced “Meadowlands” are more in the Rise Above Records mindset of retroism, which is to say doing the thing for real and letting the genres sort themselves out later. Thus the proto-punk of “Little Bat Dreams” and the strut of “Scenic Byway” coexist with the jazzy “Faustine,” and so on. “Signal Fire” and the closer “Golden Age of Volcanism” are a bit darker, maybe a little closer to Burgess‘ work with Satan’s Satyrs, while “Greasy Bangs” lives up to its name for all of its 90 seconds, a heavy garage instrumental of the ’60s tradition. What’s amazing about it is the whole style is based around familiarity and yet the indentity built up throughout is so individual. I haven’t seen a lot of hype about it, but here’s hoping Burgess continues this pursuit.

Clayton Burgess on Bandcamp

Satan’s Satyrs on Bandcamp

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New Mexican Doom Cult, Ziggurat

There have been some personnel shifts in Swedish stoner-doomnodders New Mexican Doom Cult, and their second full-length, Ziggurat, operates mostly in the same volume-worshipping vein of riffing as 2023’s Necropolis (review here), but with a deeper perspective in “Metatron” and the pointedly doomed “Return to Babylon,” among others. The band now is Nils Ahnland on guitar and vocals (also bass), drummer Jonathan Ekvall and Jonas Strömberg on keys/production, and though they’ve given up some tonal impact as a result of dropping to a single guitar (layering notwithstanding; looking at you, “Criosphinx”), the tradeoff is they’re more flexible in sound while remaining plenty heavy from “The Church of Starry Wisdom” onward. Sabbathian roll is a specialty of the house, but the satisfaction when “Sungod” finally kicks in at full volume speaks to a different kind of mastery before the doom-hook in “I Stand Alone” rounds out. Curious where they’ll go from here.

New Mexican Doom Cult on Bandcamp

New Mexican Doom Cult on Instagram

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Lammping/Drew Smith/Marker Starling, Risky

Following on from 2025’s Never Never (review here), Toronto mellow-hangs specialists Lammping continue their four-album cycle of collaborations with this second one, bringing them together with Drew Smith (The Bicycles) and Chris Cummings (Marker Starling), as core Lammping duo Mikhail Galkin (vocals, production, guitar, etc.) and Jay Anderson (drums) slide so smoothly into and out of dub instrumentals and low-key heavy vibes, always fluid, here hinting toward jazz, there shimmering into the techno experiment “Prelude to Never” ahead of the finale “Never Done,” which closes like psychedelic singer-songwriter fare from some lost decade that was never actually real. I guess the update is Lammping remain on their on wavelength of sound and on their own echelon of cool. Spending some time there with them could only be to your greater benefit. Two more LPs coming.

Lammping on Bandcamp

We Are Busy Bodies on Bandcamp

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Mos Eisley Spaceport, Live on Crow Hill

Most of the material on Mos Eisley Spaceport‘s apparently-self-released live album, Live on Crow Hill, comes from their 2023 debut, Further, but with newer two songs at the end in the 12-minute “Interstellar Mantis” and “In Your Mind,” the jam-based classic heavy blues boogie rockers give a glimpse at where they’re headed just the same. And that’s not to take away from “Space Shift” — which starts with the Star Wars sample from whence their moniker hails — or the scope in “Ashes to Ashes” made organic by the fluidity of the band’s performance, I’m just noting the progression underway in their sound. Whether brand new or not, they deliver, and the fact that they’ve added organ to the arrangements in the time since the record came out means these interpretations stand on their own regardless. Most of all, the set is a blast and sounds like they’re having as much fun playing as I am listening, which is plenty. It would feel silly to ask more of it than that, whatever it might portend for them moving forward.

Mos Eisley Spaceport on Bandcamp

Mos Eisley Spaceport on Instagram

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Dome Runner, World Panopticon

How lucky you are that after 40-plus years of industrial sounds depicting dystopian apocalyptic scenarios you finally get to live in one. Dome Runner are the machine punishment humanity deserves in an era where a tech CEO can casually say something about flying drones into people’s heads to kill them and/or licensing common knowledge on a subscription model and not be immediately imprisoned or extrajudicially hanged to the benefit of all. World Panopticon is suitably brutal across a 76-minute span, the Tampere, Finland, troupe keeping one foot in ’90s industrial metal as they did on their 2021 debut, Conflict State Design (review here), but filtering this through modern tonality and horrors. There are breaks, quiet parts in longer songs, interludes, etc., but I don’t know that I’d call any of it a real letup in the looming sense of oppression, and well, get used to that, because the boot on your neck that they’re portraying isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Welcome to the age of it-gets-worse-and-nobody-stops-it. At least you still have the music, for now.

Dome Runner on Bandcamp

Svart Records website

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Basaltic Plateau, Dead Dinosaurs Echoes

While clearly written as individual pieces, the six songs comprising the 36-minute run of Italian heavy psych instrumentalists Basaltic Plateau‘s late-’25 debut LP, Dead Dinosaurs Echoes flow exceedingly well into each other, extrapolating the ebbs and flows within a given track into how it interacts with those around it. In this way, the three-piece build a landscape of sound — some kind of sound… scape! — across the span, warm-toned and so easy enough to liken to a desert rock influence, but heavier in its payoff stretches and up for trippier weirdness in “Summer Dream” and the more technical severity of the closing title-cut, also the longest at nearly nine minutes, and less predictable in its entirety than one might expect going in. As a debut, their self-awareness bodes well, and the psych of “Cuttlefish Galaxy” and progressivism of “Sleep Paralysis” might be careening toward each other like the Milky Way and Andromeda, but if there’s to be a conflict between the two, it’s a ways off. In the meantime, their creative reach serves them in immersing the listener.

Basaltic Plateau on Bandcamp

Electric Valley Records website

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Gjenferd, Black Smoke Rising

Should you find yourself needing a reason to feel hopeful about the future of heavy rock, that Gjenferd might be part of it should more than suffice. The Bergen, Norway, four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Vegard Bachmann Strand, bassist Samuel Robson Gardner, keyboardist/vocalist Jakob Særvoll and drummer/vocalist Sivert Kleiven Larsen present their second album in Black Smoke Rising, and draw a thread back through decades of heavy rock stylization to conjure a sound that is their own and welcoming, unpretentious and progressive in kind. Whether it’s the shuffle of “Bound to Fall” and the hook of “Ride On” or the moodier nod of “Calling Your Name” and the mellow-till-it-ain’t “The Silence,” the band are dynamic, thoughtful in their craft and vital very much in the ‘alive’ sense of the word across the 10 inclusions, further distinguishing themselves among the emergent next generation of heavy rock and rollers. The listenability here can’t and shouldn’t be discounted, which is to say, don’t be surprised when you come back for another round with it.

Gjenferd’s Linktr.ee

Apollon Records website

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Codex Serafini, Mother, Give Your Children Sanity

I feel like it may forever be my fate to feel like I’m trying to catch up to Codex Serafini. Yes, temporally — their second LP, Mother, Give Your Children Sanity, came out last November — but also stylistically, and in this I feel a oneness with the universe, for which the UK outfit are an intentionally odd fit. Spacerocking in their own dimensional phase, the band follow 2023’s The Imprecation of Anima (review here) with a status-quo threatening cohesion that lands heavy with Wayne Adams‘ production but is more about the plunge into the farther far-out, sax and skronk and ritualistic melodies and madness. The title-track brings healing, but not like you’re thinking, whatever you’re thinking, and the subsequent blowout in capper “Marching Like a Toad” (before the drone finish) could hardly be better earned. Bands rarely sound so willing to follow where their whims take them, and the quirk in Mother, Give Your Children Sanity is more appreciable for that.

Codex Serafini on Bandcamp

Riot Season Records website

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Sunbreather, Sunbreather

Airy grunge pervades the self-titled 2025 full-length debut from UK trio Sunbreather, resulting in a tonal richness one can hear in the eponymous “Sunbreather” or the prior “Apricity” as the record gets going, creating a kind of terrestrial psychedelia that vocal effects and an upped fuzz quotient in all-caps centerpiece/side B leadoff “WINE” seems to revel in pushing to one side or another. I like this album a lot; the way it feels like it’s establishing one aspect of the band’s sound or another and then moves on to the next idea without losing itself in indulgence. The organic flow. The closing pair of “Sleep” and “Aubade” emphasize this, with a fuller lumber in “Sleep” that opens atmospherically in “Aubade” while staying dreamy in tempo at least for most of its time. I say all the time that the challenge for UK bands is distinguishing themselves from the constant glut of their home country’s underground. That might be true here as well, on its face, but in actually hearing the songs, Sunbreather come out ahead in terms of identity. I’m pretty sure this was self-released, but I can’t imagine they wouldn’t be able to find a label if they wanted to for it.

Sunbreather’s Linktr.ee

Sunbreather on Instagram

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Konung, Dope Druid

True, the Moscovian plodders don’t have ‘bong’ or ‘weed,’ etc., in their name, but they’re pretty close to bong metal regardless on this initial three-songer, Dope Druid, lumbering through dank megasludge on the opening title-track before rolling noisier into “Wolf Shepherd” and chug-and-feedbacking to a point of near-abrasion (of the willful sort, mind you) on “Tsar of Blood,” making for a solid 19 minutes of damage to eardrums and braincells alike. So much the better a tone on which to break onesself. Imagine drowning in bong water. They aren’t shooting for anything overly complicated, but there is sort of a scope to the onslaught, and the rawness overarching becomes a benefit to the impact of the material — its heft is engrossing and the way the harshness comes through the recording lends aggression to the groove — but I’m not sure that’s aspiration so much as fortunate circumstance. It’s moot, ultimately, because any way you go, Konung have come to crush you into flattened little bits, and the best advice I can give is go with it and deal with the cleanup after.

Konung on Bandcamp

Konung on Instagram

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Mother, Give Your Children Sanity will arrive Nov. 14 as Codex Serafini‘s second full-length issued by Riot Season Records. It follows behind 2023’s The Imprecation of Anima (review here) and is introduced to the normie universe via the first single “Pitying Them for Giving Life,” with a video streaming at the bottom of the post. You know how, scientifically speaking, heat is produced by speeding up the movements of molecules? It kind of sounds like that.

Note the production of Wayne Adams at Bear Bites Horse, audible in both the range and impact of “Pitying Them for Giving Life,” as Codex Serafini once more renew their commitment to sax-laced space-heavy weirdoism. The video is basically a visualizer, but hypnotic for all that, with dynamic in its mix and volume that go well outside common expectations for psychedelia. Oh, it’s gonna get weirder, methinks. So much the better.

The PR wire brought the announcement and video:

CODEX SERAFINI – Mother, Give Your Children Sanity – 14 November 2025

The new album via Riot Season (Acid Mothers Temple/Hibushibire)

Preorder start date: 3rd October 2025
Release date: 14th November 2025

Codex Serafini are proud to announce the release of their second album Mother, Give Your Children Sanity; released physically via Riot Season Records and digitally through Slo Thee Music on 14th November 2025. Their first new music since 2023’s The Imprecation Of Anima, this new release finds them blending the future psych rock of Boris, Goat, and King Gizzard with the avant-garde, art rock of The Mars Volta and Ex Eye to create something more focused and forward thinking than anything they have produced before. The album was recorded and produced earlier this year by Wayne Adams (Big Lad/Petbrick) at Bear Bites Horse Studio (Green Lung/Petbrick/JAAW).

“Its been a total pleasure to produce this album with Codex, everyone brought their A game to the table. Amazing grooves, stunning vocals, rock solid bass lines and skronking sax! Think, The Mars Volta crossed with the Budos Band Via Annette Peacock.” – Wayne Adams (Bear Bites Horse Studio/Big Lad/Petbrick)

To celebrate, check out the first single to be taken from the new album: Pitying Them For Giving Life, out 3rd October created using artwork by Ana-Maria Bordei Terr and video editing by Oli Genn-Bash.

https://linktr.ee/codexserafini
https://codexserafini.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/codexserafini/
https://www.facebook.com/codexserafinimusic

http://www.riotseason.com
https://riotseasonrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/riotseasonrecords/
https://www.facebook.com/riotseasonrecords

Codex Serafini, “Pitying Them for Giving Life” official video

I’ve yet to hear a Black Helium release that didn’t make me think the psychedelic revolution wasn’t right around the corner. From 2018’s Primitive Fuck (review here) right on through to The Animals Are Coming. Like, oh wow man, this is too cool. No way people won’t catch onto this and lose their minds. Etc. I take it as emblematic of the exceptional nature of the band, their continual and continually successful chase toward individuality in their approach, their willingness to freak out, and the fact that while they’re nothing if not dug into the traditions of psychedelia and heavy psych rock as the six-song The Animals Are Coming lays in a course for your cerebral cortex with the lengthy jam that brings 10-minute closer “Inside the Horror Mask” to its culmination, their sound manages to come across as refreshing each time out because they make the going in their songs — long or short — a journey worth undertaking.

Last heard from with 2023’s Um (review here), Black Helium are the London three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Stuart Gray, bassist/vocalist Beck Harvey and drummer Diogo Gomes, and The Animals Are Coming was tracked about a year ago with Ben Turner at Axe and Trap Studios. Needless to say, dust is not an issue for the year the 43-minute long-player sat prior to meeting the sunlight of which parts of it seem to have been made. The album begins with its longest song (immediate points) in the casually drifting early vibery of “Return the Curse” (11:45), which drops its title line often in the mellow/melodic intro but gives over after its first minute to desert-hued crunch-riffed tonality, a terrestrial touchdown that cycles through measures and finds even stronger footing for additional tonal weight before the ‘gazing vocals return and bring human presence to the shove and build underway. At this point, The Animals Are Coming has been on for fewer than three minutes, but the band are wasting no time in teaching their listenership how to read the album, to expect turns like this, and letting anyone within earshot — which, if given the appropriate amount of volume, could include a fair amount of hu-mans — know that there’s a sense of control beneath all that unbridled freakout and blown fuses.

In preface to the finale, “Return the Curse” also departs its structure in favor of a noisy jam, and the freedom cast into the ether circa seven and a half minutes in can’t be faked. It’s not that Black Helium are working against genre, but they’re pointedly open-minded about what constitutes a song and the devolution of “Return the Curse” and the willfully all-in push of “Inside the Horror Mask” into residual guitar and cosmic noise are emblematic of that. They’re not, however, the only instances of it on the record, since dividing the two bookends are four tracks, alternatingly six and four minutes each, from the parade of effects, thud and roll and just-because-it’s-a-shorter-song-doesn’t-mean-it-can’t-have-a-big-payoff of “Saviour Destroyer” through the krautier instrumental exploration of “Worm Vision” with either keys or guitar or some kind of voicebox accompanying later in the procession and Gomes double-timing on the hi-hat for extra funk, and “They Have Bodies” with its fuzz-meets-psych texturizing, a vocal from Harvey echoing overtop a tense riff set in the open space of the mix. The vocals there might put one in mind of Sera Timms, but the movement behind is more classically lysergic, and though it gets danceable too, the repeated title line — again, an element introduced by “Return the Curse” — ensures that the start of side B is in conversation with what Black Helium have already laid out.

The culmination of this stretch, then, is in “Up on a Hill,” which finds its own niche in a modern-feeling psychedelia, resonant in its melody, the patient tone of its vocals and the active-but-not-overbearing rhythm that accompanies, prescient to the heavier unfolding that starts at about 2:40. Black Helium have played with varying notions of density all along, whether that’s departing verses and choruses for a plunge into the aural unknown on “Return the Curse” or finding a poppier post-rock bent in “They Have Bodies,” but with “Up on a Hill,” it’s clearly just time to push a riff, and that’s exactly what the song does. The chorus that ensues is accordingly effective in conveying a sense of crescendo for the proceedings up to that point, but the band don’t go so far out quite yet as to forget their purpose. “Up on a Hill” turns back from the precipice where it otherwise might leap into the void as Black Helium do on the more extended pieces here, which highlights the consciousness underpinning the decisions made both in presentation and craft when it comes to The Animals Are Coming.

If the band are positing themselves as ‘the animals’ in question, that’s not to say they’re unthinking in their work, just that the results are wild, which is fair enough. “Inside the Horror Mask” basks in its swirl and slower-tempo fluidity early and grows brighter as it proceeds through its middle, already by then underway on the last time-to-go instrumentalist voyage the trio will take on. That shimmer becomes blinding eventually in Gray‘s guitar, but Harvey, Gomes and the backing wash of effects/synth/whatever are all there too and everybody collectively holds it together. There’s a plot to it, even if the plot is the blowout. Still counts. And Black Helium don’t waste that last opportunity to revel in some brainmelting, taking advantage of the chance as they have all along while creating and overarching flow through individual tracks united in no small part by their unwillingness to bend to the limits of genre. As Black Helium approach maturity as a group, their fourth long-player brims with the confidence of a band who know what they want their songs to do, but who are nonetheless committed to finding new ideas to incorporate into their modus and growing as artists. Thus The Animals Are Coming is the best of both worlds, plus more than a bit of galaxial adventuring for the discerning weirdo, and Black Helium remain a better band than the underground knows or appreciates.

Black Helium, The Animals Are Coming (2025)

Black Helium on Bandcamp

Black Helium on Instagram

Black Helium on Facebook

Riot Season Records website

Riot Season Records on Bandcamp

Riot Season Records on Facebook

Sleep on this band and it’s your loss. At this point, London’s Black Helium are three-for-three in my mind, and the only reason that’s not four-for-four is I haven’t heard the due-next-month The Animals Are Coming yet. News of its impending, however, I take as an absolute win all the more because it comes with the streaming audio of the penultimate “Up on a Hill,” which is catchy like ’90s keep-it-casual Britgaze but then gets a nasty round of fuzz in its second half to embiggen (a perfectly cromulent word) the riff, the nod, the feeling that you’re melting, and so on. It’s got a little shake to it but is still roilingly tripped out. Very much Black Helium‘s weirdo wheelhouse.

Maybe you know these guys, maybe you don’t. I don’t know if they’re super-hyped in stoner rock circles or what, because I’m not that cool, but I’ve dug everything they’ve done to-date — their latest LP is 2023’s Um (review here) — and if you need something on this wretched planet to look forward to, I find that good music is among the most affirming of options.

Accordingly, this comes from Riot Season‘s Bandcamp page for the record:

Black Helium – The Animals Are Coming

Preorder link: https://riotseasonrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-animals-are-coming

With this, their fourth album Black Helium find themselves widening the parameters of their take on heavy psychedelic rock, with probably their most baked and hook-laden material to date.

From the no-safety-net freak out of ‘Return the Curse’, to the sawtooth groove of ‘Up on a Hill’, ‘The Animals Are Coming’ LP is Black Helium at their most exploratory and focused.

Recorded one sun-drenched week in late June 2024, this time at Axe and Trap Studios with Ben Turner (Hey Colossus, Part Chimp). ‘The Animals Are Coming’ is the band sweating it out in a room, fueled by “party foods “and vintage amps. Digging deeper towards the source, no matter how transcendent, no matter how dark.

Black Helium are a psychedelic power trio, based in London. Never afraid to stray from the beaten path, they traverse aural hallucinatory soundscapes; from detuned Neanderthal rock to deep oceans of introspective blissed out psychedelia.

The band consistently gig across the UK (including a two week tour with Japanese label mates Hibushibire late 2024), and have recently started ventures into mainland Europe. And plan to continue this path.

Tracklisting:
1. Return The Curse
2. Saviour Destroyer
3. Worm Vision
4. They Have Bodies
5. Up On A Hill
6. Inside The Horror Mask

BLACK HELIUM are
Stuart Gray (vocals, guitar)
Beck Harvey (bass, vocals)
Diogo Gomes (drums)

https://www.facebook.com/blackhelium
https://blackheliumband.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/blackheliumband

http://www.riotseason.com
https://riotseasonrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/riotseasonrecords

Black Helium, The Animals are Coming (2025)

Generally I think of Thursday as the penultimate day of a given Quarterly Review. This one I was thinking of adding more days to get more stuff in ahead of year-end coverage coming up in December. I don’t know what that would do to my weekend — actually, yes I do — but sometimes it’s worth it. I’m yet undecided. Will let you know tomorrow, or perhaps not. Dork of mystery, I am.

Today is PACKED with cool sounds. If you haven’t found something yet that’s really hit you, it might be your day.

Quarterly Review #31-40:

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Tortuga, Iterations

From traditionalist proto-doom and keyboard-inflected prog to psychedelic jamming and the Mountain-style start-stop riff on “Lilith,” Poznań, Poland’s Tortuga follow 2020’s Deities (discussed here) with seven tracks and 45 minutes that come across as simple and barebones in the distortion of the guitar and the light reverb on the vocals, but the doom rock doesn’t carry from “Lilith” into “Laspes,” which has more of a ’60s psych crux, a mellow but not unjoyful meander in its first half turning to a massive lumber in the second, all the more elephantine with a solo overtop. They continue throughout to cross the lines between niches — “Quaus” has some dungeon growls, “Epitaph” slogs emotive like Pallbearer, etc. — and offer finely detailed performances in a sound malleable to suit the purposes of their songs. Polish heavy doesn’t screw around. Well, at least not any more than it wants to. Tortuga‘s creative reach becomes part of the character of the album.

Tortuga on Facebook

Napalm Records website

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Spidergawd, VII

I’m sorry, I gotta ask: What’s the point of anything when Spidergawd can put out a record like VII and it’s business as usual? Like, the world doesn’t stop for a collective “holy shit” moment. Even in the heavy underground, never mind general population. These are the kinds of songs that could save lives if properly employed to do so, and for the Norwegian outfit, it’s just what they do. The careening hooks of “Sands of Time” and “The Tower” at the start, the melodies across the span. The energy. I guess this is dad rock? Shit man, I’m a dad. I’m not this cool. Spidergawd have seven records out and I feel like Metallica should’ve been opening for them at stadiums this past summer, but they remain criminally underrated and perhaps use that as flexibility around their pop-heavy foundation to explore new ideas. The last three songs on VII — “Afterburner,” “Your Heritage” and “…And Nothing But the Truth” — are among the strongest and broadest Spidergawd have ever done, and “Dinosaur” and the classic-metal ripper “Bored to Death” give them due preface. One of the best active heavy rock bands, living up to and surpassing their own high standards.

Spidergawd on Facebook

Stickman Records website

Crispin Glover Records website

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Morag Tong, Grieve

Rumbling low end and spacious guitar, slow flowing drums and contemplative vocals, and some charred sludge for good measure, mark out the procession of “At First Light” on Morag Tong‘s third album and first for Majestic Mountain Records, the four-song Grieve. Moving from that initial encapsulation through the raw-throat sludge thud of most of “Passages,” they crash out and give over to quiet guitar at about four minutes in and set up the transition to the low-end groove-cool of “A Stem’s Embrace,” a sleepy fluidity hitting its full voluminous crux after three minutes in, crushing from there en route to its noisy finish at just over nine minutes long. That would be the epic finisher of most records, but Morag Tong‘s grievances extend to the 20-minute “No Sun, No Moon,” which at 20 minutes is a full-length’s progression on its own. At very least the entirety of side B, but more than the actual runtime is the theoretical amount of space covered as the four-piece shift from ambient drone through huge plod and resolve the skyless closer with a crushing delve into post-sludge atmospherics. That’s as fitting an end as one could ask for an offering that so brazenly refuses to follow impulses other than its own.

Morag Tong on Facebook

Majestic Mountain Records store

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Conny Ochs, Wahn Und Sinn

The nine-song Wahn Und Sinn carries the distinction of being the first full-length from German singer-songwriter Conny Ochs — also known for his work in Ananda Mida and his collaboration with Wino — to be sung in his own language. As a non-German speaker, I won’t pretend that doesn’t change the listening experience, but that’s the idea. Words and melodies in different languages take on corresponding differences in character, and so in addition to appreciating the strings, pianos, acoustic and electric guitars, and, in the case of “Welle,” a bit of static noise in a relatively brief electronic soundscape, hearing Ochs‘ delivery no less emotive for switching languages on the cinematic “Grimassen,” or the lounge drama of “Ding” earlier on, it’s a new side from a veteran figure whose “experimentalism” — and no, I’m not talking about singing in your own language as experimental, I’m talking about Trialogos there — is backburnered in favor of more traditional, still rampantly melancholy pop arrangements. It sounds like someone who’s decided they can do whatever the hell they feel like their songs should making that a reality. Only an asshole would hold not speaking the language against that.

Conny Ochs on Facebook

Exile on Mainstream website/a>

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Ritual King, The Infinite Mirror

I’m going to write this review as though I’m speaking directly to Ritual King because, well, I am. Hey guys. Congrats on the record. I can hear a ton going on with it. Some of Elder‘s bright atmospherics and rhythmic twists, some more familiar stoner riffage repurposed to suit a song like “Worlds Divide” after “Flow State” calls Truckfighters to mind, the songs progressive and melodic. The way you keep that nod in reserve for “Landmass?” That’s what I’m talking about. Here’s some advice you didn’t ask for: Keep going. I’m sure you have big plans for next year, and that’s great, and one thing leads to the next. You’re gonna have people for the next however long telling you what you need to do. Do what feels right to you, and keep in mind the decisions that led you to where you are, because you’re right there, headed to the heart of this thing you’re discovering. Two records deep there’s still a lot of potential in your sound, but I think you know a track like “Tethered” is a victory on its own, and that as big as “The Infinite Mirror” gets at the end, the real chance it takes is in the earlier vocal melody. You’re a better band than people know. Just keep going. Thanks.

Ritual King on Facebook

Ripple Music website

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Oldest Sea, A Birdsong, A Ghost

Inhabiting the sort of alternately engulfing and minimal spaces generally occupied by the likes of Bell Witch, New Jersey’s Oldest Sea make their full-length debut with A Birdsong, A Ghost and realize a bleakness of mood that is affecting even in its tempo, seeming to slow the world around it to its own crawl. The duo of Samantha Marandola and Andrew Marandola, who brought forth their Strange and Eternal EP (review here) in 2022, find emotive resonance in a death-doom build through the later reaches of “Untracing,” but the subsequent three-minute-piece-for-chorus-and-distorted-drone “Astronomical Twilight” and the similarly barely-there-until-it-very-much-is closer “Metamorphose” mark out either end of the extremes while “The Machines That Made Us Old” echoes Godflesh in its later riffing as Samantha‘s voice works through screams en route to a daringly hopeful drone. Volatile but controlled, it is a debut of note for its patience and vulnerability as well as its deep-impact crash and consuming tone.

Oldest Sea on Facebook

Darkest Records on Bandcamp

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Dim Electrics, Dim Electrics

Each track on Dim Electrics‘ self-titled five-songer LP becomes a place to rest for a while. No individual piece is lacking activity, but each cut has room for the listener to get inside and either follow the interweaving aural patterns or zone out as they will. Founded by Mahk Rumbae, the Vienna-based project is meditative in the sense of basking in repetition, but flashes like the organ in the middle of “Saint” or the shimmy that takes hold in 18-minute closer “Dream Reaction” assure it doesn’t reside in one place for too much actual realtime, of which it’s easy to lose track when so much krautgazey flow is at hand. Beginning with ambience, “Ways of Seeing” leads the listener deeper into the aural chasm it seems to have opened, and the swirling echoes around take on a life of their own in the ecosystem of some vision of space rock that’s also happening under the ground — past and future merging as in the mellotron techno of “Memory Cage” — which any fool can tell you is where the good mushrooms grow. Dug-in, immersive, engaging if you let it be; Dim Electrics feels somewhat insular in its mind-expansion, but there’s plenty to go around if you can put yourself in the direction it’s headed.

Dim Electrics on Facebook

Sulatron Records webstore

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Mountain of Misery, In Roundness

A newcomer project from Kamil Ziółkowski, also known for his contributions as part of Polish heavy forerunners Spaceslug, the tone-forward approach of Mountain of Misery might be said to be informed by Ziółkowski‘s other project in opener “Not Away” or the penultimate “Climb by the Sundown,” with their languid vocals and slow-rolling tsunami fuzz in the spirit of heavy psych purveyors Colour Haze and even more to the point Sungrazer, but the howling guitar in the crescendo of closer “The Misery” and the all-out assault of “Hang So Low” distinguish the band all around. “The Rain is My Love” sways in the album’s middle, but it’s in “Circle in Roundness” that the 36-minute LP has its most subdued stretch, letting the spaces filled with fuzz elsewhere remain open as the verse builds atop the for-now-drumless expanse. Whatever familiar aspects persist, Mountain of Misery is its own band, and In Roundness is the exciting beginning of a new creative evolution.

Mountain of Misery on Facebook

Electric Witch Mountain Recordings on Facebook

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Aawks, Luna

The featured new single, “The Figure,” finds Barrie, Ontario’s Aawks somewhere between Canadian tonal lords Sons of Otis and the dense heavy psych riffing and melodic vocals of an act like Snail, and if you think I’m about to complain about that, you’ve very clearly never been to this site before. So hi, and welcome. The four-song Luna EP is Aawks‘ second short release of 2023 behind a split with Aiwass (review here), and the trio take on Flock of Seagulls and Pink Floyd for covers of the new wave radio hit “I Ran” and the psychedelic ur-classic “Julia Dream” before a live track, “All is Fine,” rounds out. As someone who’s never seen the band live, the additional crunch falls organic, and brings into relief the diversity Aawks show in and between these four songs, each of which inhabits a place in the emerging whole of the band’s persona. I don’t know if we’ll get there, but sign me up for the Canadian heavy revolution if this is the form it’s going to take.

Aawks on Facebook

Black Throne Productions website

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Kaliyuga Express, Warriors & Masters

The collaborative oeuvre of UK doomsperimental guitarist Mike Vest (Bong, Blown Out, Ozo, 11Paranoias, etc.) grows richer as he joins forces with Finnish trio Nolla to produce Kaliyuga Express‘ Warriors & Masters, which results in three tracks across two sides of far-out cosmic fuzz, shades of classic kraut and space rocks are wrought with jammy intention; the goal seeming to be the going more than the being gone as Vest and company burn through “Nightmare Dimensions” and the shoegazing “Behind the Veil” — the presence of vocals throughout is a distinguishing feature — hums in high and low frequencies in a repetitive inhale of stellar gases on side A while the 18:58 side B showdown “Endless Black Space” misdirects with a minute of cosmic background noise before unfurling itself across an exoplanet’s vision of cool and returning, wait for it, back to the drone from whence it came. Did you know stars are recycled all the time? Did you know that if you drop acid and peel your face off there’s another face underneath? Your third eye is googly. You can hear voices in the drones. Let me know what they tell you.

Kaliyuga Express on Facebook

Riot Season Records store

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Some context required. The common thread between Tomoyuki Trio and Modoki, who are also a trio but apparently didn’t want to advertise, is guitarist Mike Vest and drummer Dave Sneddon. Based in the UK, Vest also mixes here and might be recognized from any number of mostly experimentalist doom-drone and cosmic projects/collaborations, including BONG, Blown Out, Artifacts and Uranium, Drunk in Hell, Ozo, 11Paranoias, etc. (an offering from his Kaliyuga Express project was just announced for October), while Sneddon, in addition to running Flat Earth Records, has played in various punk bands going back to the early 1980s, including Blood Robots, Generic, Boxed In, and the Vest-inclusive collab Mienakunaru for their first two albums.

The go-anywhere lysergic off-the-cuffism of Mienakunaru is a decent place to start understanding Tomoyuki Trio‘s five-song/39-minute debut, Mars and Modoki‘s concurrently-issued eight-song/36-minute second album, Luna to Phobos, but Vest and Sneddon are not the only common elements. Both are released through Riot Season Records (on the same day, no less), both were mastered by John McBain, and both are remote collaborations with Japanese psych guitarists, Modoki featuring Mitsuru Tabata (Zeni Geva and Acid Mothers Temple, among others), and Tomoyuki Trio taking its name from Up-Tight guitarist Tomoyuki Aoki, who also contributes the only vocals to Mars on 15-minute opener and longest track (immediate points) “Voiceless Cry” and who in the gamma-radiation guitar howl in “Metagalactic” freely demonstrates what happens when you arrive after setting controls for the heart of the sun. You incinerate.

With Vest and Sneddon recording in the UK and Tomoyuki in Japan, Mars was clearly built remotely, but that does nothing to hinder its sense of reach. “Voiceless Cry” even dares some vocals as it oozes and churns through its first half, and the wailing solos on guitar set up the more forward riff of “Transcendentem,” which becomes the bed for another lead as the instrumental procession unfolds. There are hints of space and garage and both come into further bloom on “Metagalactic,” but it’s an unimaginably big infinity out there and even between here and Mars there’s plenty to explore, so Vest, Tomoyuki and Sneddon set themselves to that task. “Universum” slows the movement and (while we’re touring the solar system) is like an ice volcano on the moon Enceladus in its somehow molten, definitely frozen lurch, or maybe, on Mars, like staring down into the Valles Marineris, or looking up from the foot of Olympus Mons. Large, stark and otherworldly. By its last minute-plus, it is noise, and that feels appropriate.

Mars capper “Aether” seems to pick up from similar noise but it’s not a direct bleed. Still, the feeling of diving back in from whence one just came is palpable, and the 3:26 of “Aether” is a dark trip-out. After about a minute, it happens into a solo section that reminds of Earthless if they were into ’60s jazz instead of ’70s rock, and the wash of noise returns on the other side to give Mars the avant garde finish it deserves. “Aether” is about half again as short as the next shortest track, so it’s an outlier on Mars, but Luna to Phobos, with Sneddon, Vest and Mitsuru Tabata operating as Modoki, is shorter on the per-piece average.

Part of that might be the effect of having an album already to their credit and being more solidified in their approach, but the two records were reportedly made at more or less the same time, and calling anything on Modoki‘s sophomore LP solid seems like a bit of a misnomer, since although Earth’s moon and Phobos — which alongside Deimos is one of Mars’ two natural satellites, probably captured from the asteroid belt however many millions or billions of years ago — are both rocky formations, there’s an awful lot in opener “Sick Starliner,” “Mud River,” “Those Disruptors” and the half-speed-Hawkwindian volume surge of the title-track that feels more like subsurface magma heating, melting and cooling, turning rock to liquid and liquid to rock in a convective exchange that creates new compounds and conglomerates — the stuff of stirring planets. A raw, organic, contained violence.

One that grows broad in “Non Telepaths” amid piercing synth noise, casts early psych in its own image in “Multiplied From the Old Days,” and lumbers through weirdo noisemaking in “Benefit of Control” before the eight-minute closer/longest track “Zenith” takes airy float and lets it (d)evolve into a careening charge marked by rising synthesizer and the kind of gravity that leads to total dug-in-itude and a dizzying dreaminess. They do eventually reach what would seem to be the titular zenith, and just past eight minutes in, they seem to let the song go to end it, having arrived at their mark and seemingly accomplished what they set out to do in getting there. Modoki‘s cuts feel more structured, but that might honestly be because they’re shorter than Tomoyuki Trio‘s, but putting the two albums next to each other reveals fascinating differences of personality between them, highlighting the character at play in the respective performances of Tomoyuki and Mitsuru.

It should probably go without saying that something shared between Luna to Phobos and Mars is their extremity. Whether you’re listening to them both together, each on its own, whatever, Tomoyuki Trio and Modoki are both putting a challenge before the listener and before conventional craft. At the most basic level, yeah, this is rock music — guitar, bass, drums, synth, keys, occasional vocals, etc. — but it’s been deconstructed and repurposed to suit these expansive, on-their-own-wavelength ends. It is not accessible or overly friendly. At moments either of these collections can be downright harsh, but both resonate with intention.

I won’t claim to know how Mars or Luna to Phobos was pieced together, but whatever that process was, the parties involved — that’s Vest/Sneddon and Mitsuru and the same pair and Tomoyuki — have found a means to convey a whole-group dynamic and, more impressively, embarked on developing a chemistry without being in the same room. That Modoki and Tomoyuki Trio both gel as well as they do is a credit to the open nature of the creative impulses launching them.

Modoki, Luna to Phobos (2023)

Tomoyuki Trio, Mars (2023)

Mike Vest on Bandcamp (55% off code: sale)

Tomoyuki Trio on Facebook

Modoki on Facebook

Riot Season Records on Facebook

Riot Season Records on Instagram

Riot Season Records on Bandcamp

Riot Season Records website

UK-based cosmic freak rockers Codex Serafini weird-willed their debut studio full-length, The Imprecation of Anima, into being last month in conjunction with Riot Season Records, and on Friday they’ll bring their interstellar mycological exploration to Kozfest in Axminster, featuring alongside Lacertilia, Black Helium, Øresund Space Collective and a slew of others on a three-day bill. This terrestrial to-do will lend the generally-multidimensional-plus-sax unit a broad showcase for The Imprecation of Anima, and its four varied excursions into the uncharted void will no doubt prove transportive to those in attendance. Lucky ducks.

The LP/DL release is a moment toward which Codex Serafini have spent the last couple orbital periods building. 2020’s Serpents of Enceladus, 2021’s Invisible Landscape (review here) EPs and the earlier-’23 live record, God’s Spit saw Codex Serafini refining their own math — a base 47 number system — and largely eschewing the thrust one associates with space rock in favor of capturing the slow churn and atomic collisions, fusions and fissions, of nebulae and shapeless gas clouds, the kind of thing usually shown to humans in lush color so that research gets funded. Stellar nurseries. A psychedelia of star formation, processes unfolding over millions of years as giant flaming balls of hydrogen are born, burn unfathomably hot, and are eventually recycled. To state the blanketly obvious: longform songwriting suits their purposes well.

Begun with chimes and shakers to announce the start of mass, “Manzareck’s Secret” (9:40) is playful between ride cymbal and tom punctuation, with sax laced over, vocals echoing out, keyboard drone. It gathers itself after the first two minutes, decides it’s time to go, and looks back not once as it absconds into crashing sulfuric chaos, dissipating for a verse now tenser and a departure into a wormhole wash resolved before six minutes in with a quick bout of bass noodling under a more lumbering riff. But it doesn’t stay long, and like space itself, Codex Serafini‘s material is always changing, always moving even when it doesn’t seem to be, processing time in its own time; a fluid thing. Various shouts are peppered in with the guitar solo and vocals follow the path to the next apex, settling into the feedback from which the 15-minute “Mujer Espritu” (video premiering below) rises, again, at first with a quiet ride cymbal tapping away, but a backing drone swirl and deceptively steady bass are there as well. Have you taken a deep breath yet? Maybe an inhale right at 1:05 as the sax starts to enter? There you go.

A meditative sprawl tells you to let all the distraction drop, and it’s good advice to take. Given the volatile nature of the opening track, there’s an undercurrent of threat in “Mujer Espritu,” but like Dutch cosmopolites Temple Fang before them, Codex Serafini know there’s no need to rush it, and through a midsection that comes across as improvised at least in some part but fully dug-in either way, they slowly build to where the snare taps get harder and volume swells, recedes, pushes, and finally, surges with a larger and solidified rolling riff around which the guitar, bass, keys and saxophone align, unabashedly heavy with vocal incantations alongside. Not missing the opportunity to depart from the departure, the three minutes of “I am Sorrow, I am Lust” are a relatively straightforward interpretation of the band’s sound, the sax growing playful in jabs, drums marking the changes, vocals giving human presence in the freakout, recalling that original era space rock was proto-punk as well, one thing bleeding into another and the idea that they should or would be separate ridiculous in the first place.

“I am Sorrow, I am Lust” cuts out with all its Stooges-via-Hawkwind strut, and the partial title-track “Animus in Decay” (17:15) contrasts “Mujer Espritu” in quickly diving into its first verse. Desert rock guitar and drums circle around the sax, hinting at Eastern scales in a way consistent with what’s come before, but more concerned with movement in the jam, which is brought to a proggy head five minutes in and then breaks to lub-dub heartbeat drums and way, way back vocal lines, guitar strums for emphasis, toms working back. They’re already in the next build before you realize it, and for about the next 10 minutes, Codex Serafini adventure through astrojazz and classic-heavy-informed guitar leads, shouts in the void semi-melodic and vague, but reassuring before the blastoff after the 12-minute mark seems to pull that voice down a tunnel of effects. The weird get weirder.

Do they dare bring back the circular runs from earlier in the song? Oh, they dare, but the riff accompanying is fuller in its distortion and the outward trajectory of the song, album and band will be plain even to novice auralnauts. They pull back ever so slightly and then throw themselves and everyone else into the last wash, consuming as it would have to be and with a residual rumble of low frequency noise left over from its own Big Bang.

And in the tradition of that theory of universe creation — which basically rounds out to, “well, there was a thing and then there was everything” — one hopes Codex Serafini over the next few billion years will grow likewise expansive. The Imprecation of Anima isn’t overly harsh, but it is extreme music and should be appreciated as such. Still, the band’s robe-clad interstellar persona is only just developing, and one looks forward to how it might evolve and to what undiscovered dimensions it might lead.

As noted above, the “Mujer Espritu” video premieres below. More PR wire info and the album stream follow.

Please enjoy:

Codex Serafini, “Mujer Espritu” video premiere

After releasing two EP’s, ‘Serpents of Enceladus’ in 2020 and ‘Invisible Landscape’ in 2021 Codex Serafini embarked on their most immersive journey so far creating what would become ‘The Imprecation Of Anima’ an exploration of the self, the duality of the human existence. The album is heavy, much heavier than their previous output and the albums longest song, ‘Animus in Decay’ is longer than either of the band’s previous EP’s.

It snakes and weaves an epic motif through the wilderness of the sometimes barren lands of the unconsciousness, focusing the mind with it’s almost heavy metal mantra and using this to open up the third eye to the realisation of our mortal existence. The whole album is a pilgrimage into ones inner self and it’s relationship with it’s own shadow in it’s truest form, two parts coming together as a whole.

LP Tracklisting:
1. Manserick’s Secret (9:40)
2. Mujer Espritu (15:33)
3. I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust (3:02)
4. Animus In Decay (17:15)

Live photo: Estie Joy Photography
Album art: Ana Maria Terr

Codex Serafini, The Imprecation of Anima (2023)

Codex Serafini on Facebook

Codex Serafini on Instagram

Codex Serafini on Bandcamp

Codex Serafini on Spotify

Riot Season Records on Facebook

Riot Season Records on Instagram

Riot Season Records on Bandcamp

Riot Season Records website

Here we go day four of the Quarterly Review. I would love to tell you it’s been easy-breezy this week. That is not the case. My kid is sick, my wife is tired of my bullshit, and neither of them is as fed up with me as I am. Nonetheless, we persist. Some day, maybe, we’ll sit down and talk about why. Today let’s keep it light, hmm?

And of course by “light” I mean very, very heavy. There’s some of that in the batch of 10 releases for today, and a lot of rock to go along, so yes, another day in the QR. I hope you find something you dig. I snuck in a surprise or two.

Quarterly Review #31-40:

Dorthia Cottrell, Death Folk Country

Crafted for texture, Death Folk Country finds Windhand vocalist Dorthia Cottrell exploring sounds that would be minimal if not for the lushness of the melodies placed over them. Her first solo offering since 2015 runs 11 tracks and feels substantial at a manageable 42 minutes as delivered through Relapse Records. The death comes slow and soft, the folk is brooding and almost resistant in its Americana traditionalism, and the country is vast and atmospheric, and all three are present in a release that’s probably going to be called ethereal because of layering or vocal reverb but in fact is terrestrial like dry dirt. The seven-minute “Family Annihilator” is nigh on choral, and e-bow or some such droner element fills out the reaches of “Hell in My Water,” expanding on the expectation of arrangement depth set up by the chimes and swells that back “Harvester” after the album’s intro. That impulse makes Death Folk Country kin to some of earlier Wovenhand — thinking Blush Music or Consider the Birds; yes, I acknowledge the moniker similarity between Windhand and Wovenhand and stand by the point as regards ambience — and a more immersive listen than it would otherwise be, imagining future breadth to be captured as part of the claims made in the now. Do I need to say that I hope it’s not 2031 before she does a third record?

Dorthia Cottrell on Bandcamp

Relapse Records website

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Fvzz Popvli, III

It’s been a quick — read: not quick — five years since Italian heavy rockers Fvzz Popvli released their second album, Magna Fvzz (review here), through Heavy Psych Sounds. Aptly titled, III is the third installment, and it’s got all the burner soloing, garage looseness and, yes, the fvzz one would hope, digging into a bit of pop-grunge on “The Last Piece of Shame,” setting a jammy expectation in the “Intro” mirrored in “Outro” with percussion, and cool-kid grooving on “Monnoratzo,” laced with hand-percussion and a bassline so thick it got made fun of in school and never lived down the trauma (a tragedy, but it rules just the same). “Post Shit” throws elbows of noise all through your favorite glassware, “20 Cent Blues” slogs out its march true to the name and “Tied” is brash even compared to what’s around it. Only hiccup so far as I can tell is “Kvng Fvzz,” which starts with a Charlie Chan-kind of guitar line and sees the vocals adopt a faux Chinese accent that’s well beyond the bounds of what one might consider ‘ill-advised.’ Cool record otherwise, but that is a significant misstep to make on a third LP.

Fvzz Popvli on Facebook

Retro Vox Records on Bandcamp

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Formula 400, Divination

San Diegan riffslingers Formula 400 come roaring back with their sophomore long-player, Divination, following three (long) years behind 2020’s Heathens (review here), bringing in new drummer Lou Voutiritsas for a first appearance alongside guitarist/vocalists Dan Frick and Ian Holloway and bassist Kip Page. With a clearer, fuller recording, the solos shine through, the gruff vocals are well-positioned in the mix (not buried, not overbearing), and even as they make plays for the anthemic in “Kickstands Up,” “Rise From the Fallen” and closer “In Memoriam,” the lack of pretense is one of the elements most fortunately carried over from the debut. “Rise From the Fallen” is the only cut among the nine to top five minutes, and it fills its time with largesse-minded riffing and a hook born out of ’90s burl that’s a good distance from the shenanigans of opener “Whiskey Bent” or the righteous shove of the title-track. They’re among the best of the Ripple Music bands not yet actually signed to the label, with an underscored C.O.C. influence in “Divination” and the calmer “Bottomfeeder,” while “In Memoriam” filters ’80s metal epics through ’70s heavy and ’20s tonal weight and makes the math add up. Pretty dudely, but so it goes with dudes, and dudes are gonna be pretty excited about it, dude.

Formula 400 on Facebook

Animated Insanity Records website

No Dust Records website

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Abanamat, Abanamat

Each of the two intended sides of Abanamat‘s self-titled debut saves its longest song for its respective ending, with “Voidgazer” (8:25) capping side A and “Night Walk” (9:07) working a linear build from silence all the way up to round out side B and the album as a whole. Mostly instrumental save for those two longer pieces, the German four-piece recorded live with Richard Behrens at Big Snuff and in addition to diving back into the beginnings of the band in opener “Djinn,” they offer coherent but exploratory, almost-Uncle–Acidic-in-its-languidity fuzz on “Thunderbolt of Flaming Wisdom,” growing near-prog in their urgency with it on the penultimate “Amdest” but never losing the abiding mellow spirit that manifests out of the ether as “Night Walk” rounds out the album with synth and keys and guitar in a jazzy for-a-walk meander as the band make their way into a fuller realization of classic prog elements, enhanced by a return of the vocals after five minutes in. They’re there just about through the end, and fit well, but it demonstrates that Abanamat even on their debut have multiple avenues in which they might work and makes their potential that much greater, since it’s a conscious choice to include singing on a song or not rather than just a matter of no one being able to sing. The way they set it up here would get stale after a couple more records, but one hopes they continue to develop both aspects of their sonic persona, as any need to choose between them is imaginary.

Abanamat on Instagram

Interstellar Smoke Records store

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Vvon Dogma I, The Kvlt of Glitch

Led by nine-string bassist Frédérick “ChaotH” Filiatrault (ex-Unexpect), Montreal four-piece Vvon Dogma I are a progressive metal whirlwind, melodic in the spirit of post-return Cynic but no less informed by death metal, djent, rock, electronic music and beyond, the 10-song/45-minute self-released debut, The Kvlt of Glitch confidently establishes its methodology in “The Void” at the outset and proceeds through a succession marked by hairpin turns, stretches of heavy groove like the chorus of “Triangles and Crosses” contrasted by furious runs, dance techno on “One Eye,” melody not at all forgotten in the face of all the changes in rhythm, meter, the intermittently massive tones, and so on. Yes, the bass features as it inevitably would, but with the precision drumming of Kevin Alexander, Yoan MP‘s backflipping guitar and the synth and strings (at the end) of Blaise Borboën (also credited with production), a sound takes shape that feels like it could have been years in the making. Mind you I don’t know that it was or wasn’t, but Vvon Dogma I lead the listener through the lumbering mathematics of “Lithium Blue,” a cover of Radiohead‘s “2+2=5” and the grand finale “The Great Maze” with a sense of mastery that’s almost unheard of on what’s a first record even from experienced players. I don’t know where it fits and I like that about it, and in those moments where I’m so overwhelmed that I feel like my brain is on fire, this seems to answer that.

Vvon Dogma I on Facebook

Vvon Dogma I on Bandcamp

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Orme, Orme

Two sprawling slow-burners populate the self-titled debut from UK three-piece Orme. Delivered through Trepanation Recordings as a two-song 2LP, Orme deep-dives into ambient psych, doom, drone and more besides in “Nazarene” (41:58) and “Onward to Sarnath” (53:47), and obviously each one is an album unto itself. Guitarist/vocalist Tom Clements, bassist Jimmy Long (also didgeridoo) and drummer Luke Thelin — who’s also listed as contributing ‘silence,’ which is probably a joke, but open space actually plays a pretty large role in the impression Orme make — make their way into a distortion-drone-backed roller jam on “Nazarene,” some spoken vocals from Clements along the way that come earlier and more proclamatory in “Onward to Sarnath” to preface the instrumental already-gone out-there-ness as well as throat singing and other vocalizations that mark the rest of the first half-hour-plus, a heavy psych jam taking hold to close out around 46 minutes with a return of distortion and narrative after, like an old-style hidden track. It’s fairly raw, but the gravitational singularity of Orme‘s two forays into the dark are ritualistic without being cartoonishly cult, and feel as much about their experience playing as the listener’s hearing. In that way, it is a thing to be shared.

Orme on Facebook

Trepanation Recordings on Bandcamp

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Artifacts & Uranium, The Gateless Gate

The UK-based experimentalist psych collaboration between Fred Laird (Earthling Society) and Mike Vest (Bong, et al) yields a third long-player as The Gateless Gate finds the duo branching out in the spirit of their 2021 self-titled and last year’s Pancosmology (review here) with instrumentalist flow and a three-dimensional sound bolstered by the various delays, organ, synth, and so on. Atop an emergent backbeat from Laird, “Twilight Chorus” (16:13) runs a linear trajectory bound toward the interstellar in an organic jam that comes apart before 12 minutes in and gives over to church organ and sampled chants soon to be countermanded by howls of guitar and distortion. Takest thou that. The B-side, “Sound of Desolation” (19:55), sets forth with a synthy wash that gives over to viol drone courtesy of Martin Ash, a gong hit marking the shift into a longform psych jam with a highlight bassline and an extended journey into hypnotics with choral keys (maybe?) arriving in the second half as the guitar begins to space out, fuzz soloing floating over a drone layer, the harder-hit drums having departed save for some residual backward/forward cymbal hits in the slow comedown. The world’s never going to be on their level, but Laird and Vest are warriors of the cosmos, and as their work to-date has shown, they have bigger fish to fry than are found on planet earth.

Artifacts & Uranium on Facebook

Riot Season Records website

Echodelick Records website

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Rainbows Are Free, Heavy Petal Music

What a show to preserve. Heavy Petal Music, while frustrating in that it’s new Rainbows Are Free and not a follow-up to 2019’s Head Pains, but as the Norman, Oklahoma, six-piece’s first outing through Ripple Music, the eight-song/43-minute live LP captures their first public performance in the post-pandemic era, and the catharsis is palpable in “Come” and “Electricity on Wax” early on and holds even as they delve into the proggier “Shapeshifter” later on, the force of their delivery consistent as they draw on material from across their three studio LPs unremitting even as their dynamic ranges between a piano-peppered bluesy swing and push-boogie like “Cadillac” and the weighted nod of “Sonic Demon” later on. The performance was at the 2021 Summer Breeze Music Festival in their hometown (not to be confused with the metal fest in Germany) and by the time they get down to the kickdrum surge backing the fuzzy twists of “Crystal Ball” — which doesn’t appear on any of their regular albums — the allegiance to Monster Magnet is unavoidable despite the fact that Rainbows Are Free have their own modus in terms of arrangements and the balance between space, psych, garage and heavy rock in their sound. Given Ripple‘s distribution, Heavy Petal Music will probably be some listeners’ first excursion with Rainbows Are Free. Somehow I have to imagine the band would be cool with that.

Rainbows Are Free on Facebook

Ripple Music website

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Slowenya, Angel Raised Wolves b/w Horizontal Loops

It’s the marriage of complexity and heft, of melody and nod, that make Slowenya‘s “Angel Raised Wolves” so effective. Moving at a comfortable tempo on the drums of Timo Niskala, the song marks out a presence with tonal depth as well as a sense of space in the vocals of guitarist/synthesist Jan Trygg. They break near the midpoint of the 6:39 piece and reemerge with a harder run through the chorus, bassist Tapani Levanto stepping in with backing vocals before a roar at 4:55 precedes the turn back to the original hook, reinforcing the notion that there’s been a plan at work the whole time. An early glimpse at the Finnish psych-doom trio’s next long-player, “Angel Raised Wolves” comes paired with the shorter “Horizontal Loops,” which drops its chugging riff at the start as though well aware of the resultant thud. A tense verse opens to a chorus pretty and reverbed enough to remind of Fear Factory‘s earlier work before diving into shouts and somehow-heavier density. Growls, or some other kind of noise — I’m honestly not sure — surfaces and departs as the nod builds to an an aggressive head, but again, they turn back to where they came from, ending with the initial riff the crater from which you can still see right over there. The message is plain: keep an ear out for that record. So yes, do that.

Slowenya on Facebook

Karhuvaltio Records on Facebook

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Elkhorn, On the Whole Universe in All Directions

Let’s start with what’s obvious and say that Elkhorn‘s four-song On the Whole Universe in All Directions, which is executed entirely on vibraphone, acoustic 12-string guitar, and drums and other percussion, is not going to be for everybody. The New York duo of Drew Gardner (said vibraphone and drums) and Jesse Sheppard (said 12-string) bring a particularly jazzy flavor to “North,” “South,” “East” and “West,” but there are shades of exploratory Americana in “South” that follow the bouncing notes of the opener, and “East” dares to hint at sitar with cymbal wash behind and rhythmic contrast in the vibraphone, a meditative feel resulting that “West” continues over its 12 minutes, somewhat ironically more of a raga than “East” despite being where the sun sets. Cymbal taps and rhythmic strums and that strike of the vibraphone — Elkhorn seem to give each note a chance to stand before following it with the next, but the 39-minute offering is never actually still or unipolar, instead proving evocative as it trades between shorter and longer songs to a duly gentle finish. Gardner formerly handled guitar, and I don’t know if this is a one-off, but as an experiment, it succeeds in bridging stylistic divides in a way that almost feels like showing off. Admirably so.

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Centripetal Force Records website

Cardinal Fuzz Records BigCartel store

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