Posted in Whathaveyou on February 14th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
As Ripple Music continues its ‘Beneath the Desert Floor’ series exploring the heavy underground of the turn of the century era, let’s say roughly ’97-’05, that New Orleans Suplecs would end up included feels inevitable. Still absolute killers on stage as the attendees of Ripplefest Texas 2025 will find out thanks to a recent confirmation, their 14-years-running studio absence, and the fact that 2011’s Mad Oak Redoux (review here) was comprised of tracks being re-recorded, while the album prior, 2005’s Powtin’ on the Outside Pawty on the Inside landed concurrent to Hurricane Katrina, and yeah let’s say it’s been a long time since Suplecs were last on track to get their due for being so gosh darn kickass.
A new record, a real Suplecs studio album with heart, groove and fuzz poured into it in like measure, would surely go a long way to alleviating that, and you can see the phrase below: “new music.” It’s right there. That’s not the same as a date, however, and I’ll note that even last Spring the band let it be known they were writing. I’ve no word on whether or not recording has happened or if and when it might. But those first two records, 2000’s Wrestlin’ With My Lady Friend and 2001’s Sad Songs… Better Days (discussed here), are classics by now and should be back out there, however terrible the band’s luck has been for the last quarter-century.
When I see more on either the reissue or reissues, or a fifth Suplecs album, I’ll say something:
Last week we had some great announcements for Ripple family, so let’s keep the love flowing. How’s this? Please welcome the one and only SUPLECS to the Ripple family! Look for reissues of their past Man’s Ruin catalog and, damn straight, new music. Psyched!!
Posted in Features on February 7th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Hi guys,
First of all, wow, it was great to see you this weekend. Both getting the chance to say a quick hello can getting to watch you play six or seven years after the last time that happened were standouts in a weekend full of thrills. I’m pretty sure Karl said the name of the band onstage at some point during the set, and I wanted to talk with you guys about that for a minute.
It’s not my interest here to tell anyone how to live their life, or to tell a band they’re ‘wrong’ about a thing. It’s art. That kind of ‘wrong’ doesn’t exist. You guys have been around well over 15 years, have been through shortening your moniker from Jeremy Irons and the Ratgang Malibus (which you were still called last time I saw you) and JIRM, and you’re well aware of who you are as artists and performers. That was clear from the stage, certainly clear on The Tunnel, the Well and Holy Bedlam, and has been a typifying factor of your artistic growth all along..
After the name change, when the leap was made from Spirit Knife (11 years ago now) to Surge Ex Monumentis, it seemed like you really were beginning to explore a new path. The band became more progressive, more melodically centered, and more intricate in terms of style. As a listener outside the band, it was almost like becoming JIRM set you free from genre in a way that Jeremy Irons and the Ratgang Malibus maybe couldn’t or weren’t ready to be.
You should know that when I wrote that last sentence above just now and I said the name of the band, I said the word “germ.” Karl had it as J-I-R-M the other day, and that’s what I wanted to reach out about.
I don’t want to be telling anybody what to do, but I do feel kind of surprisingly strong about this, that JIRM should be the word and not the acronym.
Why?
A few reasons. First and foremost, it fits better. As JIRM, you guys are a heavy progressive, forward-thinking and forward-songwriting unit. Your songs are expansive and atmospheric, but you’re still able on stage to back, pull out an old song and riff away when you want. It’s a beautiful thing.
Calling yourselves J-I-R-M acknowledges where you’ve come from, sure, but I’d be to bet that the majority of your listenership already knows you were Jeremy Irons and the Ratgang Malibus, and for those who don’t, well, it might be a cool thing to found out that this band you just heard called JIRM who’ve been around for a while used to be called something else and that their name, which, again, you pronounce like “germ,” actually stands or used to stand for this long band name, kind of absurd but still cool. It makes the old name lore, and part of the journey, which of course it is.
JIRM, as name-not-acronym, is less alienating to new fans in this way. You’re not immediately telling people there’s something they don’t know, which can be off-putting, and in evoking a germ, a thing that spreads disease, one is reminded yuck-factor classic prog and krautrock, records with gross covers and so forth.
Tying yourselves to this opens up a world of potential exploration, and you’re already there, so it’s wonderful, but JIRM instead of J-I-R-M keeps the focus on who you are now, where you’re going. It sounds weird. It’s short. It’s spelled funny. It’s counterintuitive to the fluidity of your music in a way that ties right in with decades of underground progressive heavy rock, and it’s memorable and no one else has it. To let that go seems like missing an opportunity to express part of who you are with your identity in a way that as J-I-R-M you simply can’t do.
Plus, JIRM rolls off the tongue in a way an acronym never can. There’s something to be said for efficiency.
Please know that I’m not being a smartass or trying to take the piss. I’m not, and I hope that with 16 years of doing this site behind me, you’ll trust me when I say that. I write to you as someone who genuinely enjoys and has enjoyed your music, and someone who apparently cares enough about the course of your ongoing progression to do something like this.
I hope you’ll consider the above, and if not, it’s cool, I get it. Do your thing. Thanks either way for the time and attention.
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 28th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Once upon a 2015, Washington D.C. heavy rockers Borracho shared a split with Geezer called The Second Coming of Heavy (review here) that became the start of a series that, while the name has changed, continues a decade later. But none of Borracho‘s five-to-date long-players are on Ripple. The sixth one, it turns out, will be.
I’ve seen Borracho drop ‘big things coming’-type word about a new record this year. It hasn’t been egregiously long since 2023’s Blurring the Lines of Reality (review here), but if you’ve got momentum on your side, use it. If the album’s done (and it might be since Borracho record with Frank “The Punisher” Marchand and his reputation is to suffer no fools), it might be a late-Spring release. Otherwise, depending on the label’s schedule, it could be summer or fall before it’s out. Either way, it’s Borracho so the safer bet is it’ll be light on BS and heavy on heavy.
When and if I see something about the upcoming Borracho album — current status, what it’s called, when it’s out, singles, artwork, themes, other details, etc. — I’ll let you know. But Todd Severin from Ripple posted the following on socials and I got excited about a thing, so here it is:
Let’s kick this week into gear! How’s this for some killer news to start with. Please welcome to the Ripple family, the amazingly talented gents of Borracho!
Now, you know we’ve worked with the band before, the first Chapter of Second Coming of Heavy springs to mind, but never fully had them onboard as ripple family with a new album in the works. And let me tell you, it’s heavy!
Please welcome them everybody!
BORRACHO: Steve Fisher – Guitar, Vocals Mario Trubiano – Drums, Percussion Tim Martin – Bass, Backing Vocals
[Click play above to stream Dunes’ Land of the Blind in its entirety. It’s out Jan. 17 on Ripple Music.]
Newcastle-based heavy rock trio Dunes will release their third full-length, Land of the Blind, tomorrow, Jan. 17, through Ripple Music. If at no point in its history to come, famed London venue The Black Heart isn’t packed to the brim with a crowd shouting along to the line, “The devil’s upstairs and the god’s below,” from the stop in “Voodoo” on side B, it might be time to start thinking of England as a failed nation. That song, and nearly the entirety of the nine-track/43-minute follow-up to 2022’s Gargoyles, lands its hook with subtle confidence and expansive melody, giving Dunes — here the core of guitarist/vocalist John Davies, bassist/vocalist Ade Huggins and drummer/producer Nikky Watson, along with engineer Adam Forster and guest vocalists Ryan Garney of High Desert Queen on the aforementioned “Voodoo” and Nick Carter (Crane) who adds a blown-out, tired-in-the-North-UK (which is a specific tired) spoken word to “Northern Scar” — their broadest reaching and most resonate showcase to date.
On paper, Land of the Blind isn’t necessarily anything revolutionary: heavy rock band with a desert-proggy lean writing songs that stick with you when the record’s over. But that doesn’t account for the fluidity Dunes bring to the songs here or the purpose behind the album’s construction, which is designed to steer the listener along the dynamic course of the material. A key tell is right at the start with opener “Cactus.” At 6:26, only “Northern Scar” is longer, and in classic stoner rock fashion, the first two and a half minutes are a build-up intro. But the thing is, once it gets going, “Cactus” doesn’t looks back. The first thickened roll won’t be the last, and the steadiness of groove comes by the time they get around to the shove of the penultimate “Fields of Grey” to bolster the atmosphere wrought by the tones, effects, and overarching echo.
There are more immediate songs that could’ve led off. Just as an example, two follow immediately in “Tides” and “One Eyed Dog,” the latter of which brings the album’s title-line: “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed dog is king.” But that intro in “Cactus” is serving the whole album, similar to the three-minute ambient-strum outro “Riding the Slow” reprising the riff (riffprising?) from centerpiece/side A capper “Riding the Low” to give a feeling of symmetry at the finish. These more atmospheric moments don’t have the same kind of impact as, say, “Riding the Low” itself, which will have you waxing nostalgic for early Truckfighters as it tattoos the lyrics of its chorus on your frontal lobe, but they’re purposeful in what they do, and it’s not an accident that “Cactus” starts the proceedings. One wonders if, over time, those quieter moments might not prove as standout as “One-Eyed Dog” or “Tides” earlier on.
That pairing picks up from “Cactus” with a decisive down-to-business impression, and indeed they get to the heart of some what works best throughout Land of the Blind. It’s not a full accounting, but they summarize the band’s thoughtfulness of construction, their ability to harness a flow between pieces of different tempo, their depth of tone, and the vocal arrangements in “Tides” as Davies and Huggins join forces at the repeated line, “Can’t tell where the water’s coming from anymore,” or in “One-Eyed Dog,” with, “Time keeps tick-tick-tick-tick-ticking away,” where the one backs the other with “ahh”s as something of a preface for the etherbound outreach of “Fields of Grey.”
“Northern Scar” is slower at the outset, the quiet bass and guitar there reminding of Elektrohasch circa 2010, but growing to something entirely more massive and nodding, and giving over to the fuzzy realignment around careening Kyussian riffery in “Riding the Low,” which completes a kind of back and forth while having stayed mostly consistent in structure, the long ending of “Northern Scar” with Carter repeating, “Lying face down in a northern town,” as feedback rings out alongside, is a diversion, but one which the surrounding material is strong enough to hold up, and which adds to rather than detracting from the scope of the entire work, picking up with “How Real is Real” with complementary push initially that opens up in the verse before asking the question, “How real is real for you?”
Depending on the answer, this might be a valid consideration. Side B plays out with according smoothness of craft, but while Dunes herald an emergent stateliness and songwriting mastery in these songs, and Land of the Blind runs front to back with no dip in quality or anything so egregiously out-of-place as to remove the listener from the experience. “Riding the Slow” takes its time in closing out, but provides a welcome exhale after “Fields of Grey” and “Voodoo,” and wherever they go, Dunes touch on heavy prog with no pretense of wanting anything more than to write their songs their way, honor their influences and engage their listenership. All of these are accomplished with righteousness across Land of the Blind, and the album would seem to be an arrival point for Dunes within the busy UK heavy underground. Whatever familiar traces one might hear in their sound, Dunes take ultimate ownership of the shape those take, and Land of the Blind feels declarative of who they are.
Maybe most of all, the abiding feel in Land of the Blind is that Dunes are laying it all out and putting everything they have into the material. These efforts are very much not misspent, and one hopes they speak of a continued growth that will carry them from here, but as the band’s third long-player, Land of the Blind doesn’t shy away from feeling like it’s what Dunes have been building toward up to this point, and the clarity of its execution — again, front-to-back — represents a strong collective voice. That is to say, the statement they’re making, they’re making together. With that behind them and enough hooks to spare that they could loan them out to other bands and charge interest, Dunes kick off what’s sure to be a busy year for Ripple and the heavy underground more generally with class and swim-in-it fuzz.
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 9th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Eclectic heavy progressives Rainbows Are Free are set to make their label debut on Ripple Music as winter thaws, with a March 7 release lined up for Silver and Gold. I count it as their fifth record overall and the PR wire below puts it at their fourth, but either way, the band reach 15 years since their debut EP, and in that time, they’ve fostered an expansive sound with a clear mind toward adventure in songwriting. You can hear that in the semi-lurch chug that resolves “Sleep,” the album’s first single. It’s a cool, casual flow, semi-psych but not too tripped out, soul in the vocals, and I’m sure represents only a fraction of what the band have in store throughout the LP.
They’ve been somewhat undervalued up to this point — their last album was 2023’s Heavy Petal Music (review here) — so I’m curious to see how Ripple‘s built-in listenership takes to them and where the band go with their sound. Part of the appeal for me to this point in their work is the fact that you can’t really predict it and the band are able to build trust in their audience regardless. It’s not an inconsiderable accomplishment.
Info from the PR wire:
RAINBOWS ARE FREE to issue new album “Silver and Gold” on Ripple Music this spring; watch new video “Sleep” now.
US heavy psychedelic and progressive rockers RAINBOWS ARE FREE announce the upcoming release of their fourth studio album “Silver and Gold” this March 7th on Ripple Music, and present their new video for “Sleep” today.
Rainbows Are Free’s sonic pedigree appears on the rock n’ roll family tree at the point where proto-metal and heavy psychedelia shared a common apocryphal ancestor before branching off into their own distinct lineages. Their fourth studio record “Silver and Gold” is a dark-tinged, heavy offering that immediately conjures a sense of foreboding right out of the gates – a comforting dreariness that the band embraces to channel their sonic attack. They are at peace here, if not at home.
The sonic assault continues as the band pummels the listener with crunchy guitars erupting into explosive leads that ride upon a driving rhythm section, held together by a lattice of spacey synth and guitar atmospherics. Rainbows Are Free’s soundscape is further cemented by lead singer Brandon Kistler’s soaring, crooning, and at times snarling, vocal fury. In all, the heavy psych alchemy at work on the album is apparent in their multi-faceted sound that spins proggy riffs, sexy groove magick, garage surf-rock, and even a death metal inspired ripper into “Silver and Gold” as a varied, but cohesive listening experience.
About the new single “Sleep”, vocalist Brandon Kistler comments: “Lyrically, it’s pretty straight ahead, and I’m most proud of the chorus for its honesty about society today and how we perceive it. It’s very relatable to how I felt at the time. My favorite line is, “We can’t let it break, no it can’t be broke.” I’m referring to society as a whole, and I was thinking about my children and the future of that society when I ad-libbed that line… we have to make it work.”
Often appearing in costumed stage dress, the band, fronted by the soaring and snarling nigh 7-foot cyclone of weirdness that is Brandon Kistler, continues to shock and amaze fans by introducing an element of good- humored theatrics to accompany their live sonic assault. This is achieved in no small part due to the guitar prowess and songwriting of Richie Tarver, joined by the ambient soundscapes of Joey Powell on rhythm guitar and Josh Elam on spacey synth, and rounded out by the thunderous low end of Jason Smith on bass and Bobby Onspaugh on drums.
Rainbows Are Free continue to bring their unique brand of psychedelic heaviness on tour as they support the release of their upcoming studio album, Silver and Gold, due out Spring of 2025 on Ripple Music.
RAINBOWS ARE FREE is Brandon Kistler – Vocals Richie Tarver – Lead Guitar Jason Smith – Bass Joey Powell – Rhythm Guitar Bobby Onspaugh – Drums Josh Elam – Synths
If you’re the type who’s sensitive to flashing lights — I get a headache; I’m not mocking anyone, I promise you — you might want to forego the full six minutes of Aptera‘s video for the new single “Hellbender” below in favor of the audio stream down by the bottom of the post. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that the strobe effects and bright-dark contrasts of “Hellbender” aren’t suitable to the song’s atmosphere, born largely out of darkthrash and black metal, but with an edge of psychedelia showing through in its middle.
Like Aptera‘s 2022 album, You Can’t Bury What Still Burns (review here), it is uncompromising metal born out of a honed songwriting process. It calls to mind early thrash at its root — when the tape hiss of the end product seemed to be a part of the recording itself — but takes a progressive view of genre, finding angles of attack as each part unfolds.
I do not know if “Hellbender” is a harbinger of a new Aptera album or what, but the band was on tour in Europe this past Fall still behind the 2022 release, so it seems likely that if/whenever a follow-up arrives, it too will be well supported. As in, you’ll hear about it. Some songs are made to be hammered into the listener’s consciousness.
On that merry note, enjoy the video:
Aptera, “Hellbender” official video
Music by Aptera Video by Tekla Valy
Recording by Alexander Meurer, Stella Sesto Mix & Master by Marcus Ferreira at @nomastersvoice1899No Master’s Voice Studio Photos: Javier S. Sañudo
“The song Hellbender takes inspiration from the eponymous movie by Toby Poser (2021), where the Hellbenders are an all-female, matriarchal clan of supernatural beings: “a cross between a witch, a demon, and an apex predator.” Their magic is rooted in fear, particularly the fear of death, which a Hellbender absorbs when she eats a living thing.
The video was directed and shot by Finnish visual artist Tekla Valy in the woods near Berlin, partially at night during the so-called “hour of the wolf,” as referenced in the lyrics. This is the hour between night and dawn, when most people die, sleep is deepest, and nightmares feel most real. It is the hour when the sleepless are tormented by their worst anguish and when ghosts and demons are at their most powerful. It is also the hour when most babies are born.”
APTERA is Michela Albizzati – guitar, vocals Celia Paul – bass, vocals Renata Helm – guitar Sara Neidorf – drums
Posted in Reviews on December 11th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Wow. This is a pretty good day. I mean, I knew that coming into it — I’m the one slating the reviews — but looking up there at the names in the header, that’s a pretty killer assemblage. Maybe I’m making it easy for myself and loading up the QR with stuff I like and want to write about. Fine. Sometimes I need to remind myself that’s the point of this project in the first place.
Hope you’re having an awesome week. I am.
Quarterly Review #21-30
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Thou, Umbilical
Even knowing that the creation of a sense of overwhelm is on purpose and is part of the artistry of what Thou do, Thou are overwhelming. The stated purpose behind Umbilical is an embrace of their collective inner hardcore kid. Fine. Slow down hardcore and you pretty much get sludge metal one way or the other and Thou‘s take on it is undeniably vicious and has a character that is its own. Songs like “I Feel Nothing When You Cry” and “The Promise” envision dark futures from a bleak present, and the poetry from which the lyrics get their shape is as despondent and cynical as one could ever ask, waiting to be dug into and interpreted by the listener. Let’s be honest. I have always had a hard time buying into the hype on Thou. I’ve seen them live and enjoyed it and you can’t hear them on record and say they aren’t good at what they do, but their kind of extremity isn’t what I’m reaching for most days when I’m trying to not be in the exact hopeless mindset the band are aiming for. Umbilical isn’t the record to change my mind and it doesn’t need to be. It’s precisely what it’s going for. Caustic.
The fourth full-length from Boston’s Cortez sets a tone with opener “Gimme Danger (On My Stereo)” (premiered here) for straight-ahead, tightly-composed, uptempo heavy rock, and sure enough that would put Thieves and Charlatans — recorded by Benny Grotto at Mad Oak Studios — in line with Cortez‘s work to-date. What unfolds from the seven-minute “Leaders of Nobody” onward is a statement of expanded boundaries in what Cortez‘s sound can encompass. The organ-laced jamitude of “Levels” or the doom rock largesse of “Liminal Spaces” that doesn’t clash with the prior swing of “Stove Up” mostly because the band know how to write songs; across eight songs and 51 minutes, the five-piece of vocalist Matt Harrington, guitarists Scott O’Dowd and Alasdair Swan, bassist Jay Furlo and sitting-in drummer Alexei Rodriguez (plus a couple other guests from Boston’s heavy underground) reaffirm their level of craft, unite disparate material through performance and present a more varied and progressive take than they’ve ever had. They’re past 25 years at this point and still growing in sound. They may be underrated forever, but that’s a special band.
Writing a catchy song is not easy. Writing a song so catchy it’s still catchy even though you don’t speak the language is the provenance of the likes of Uffe Lorenzen. The founding frontman of in-the-ether-for-now Copenhagen heavy/garage psych pioneers Baby Woodrose digs into more straightforward fare on the second full-length from his new trio Lydsyn, putting a long-established Stooges influence to good use in “Hejremanden” after establishing at the outset that “Musik Er Nummer 1” (‘music is number one’) and before the subsequent slowdown into harmony blues with “UFO.” “Nørrebro” has what would seem to be intentional cool-neighborhood strut, and those seeking more of a garage-type energy might find it in “Du Vil Have Mere” or “Opråb” earlier on, and closer “Den Døde By” has a scorch that feels loyal to Baby Woodrose‘s style of psych, but whatever ties there are to Lorenzen‘s contributions over the last 20-plus years, Lydsyn stand out for the resultant quality of songwriting and for having their own dynamic building on Lorenzen‘s solo work and post-Baby Woodrose arc.
The popular wisdom has had it for a few years now that retroism is out. Hearing Baltimorean power trio Magick Potion vibe their way into swaying ’70s-style heavy blues on “Empress,” smoothly avoiding the trap of sounding like Graveyard and spacing out more over the dramatic first two minutes of “Wizard” and the proto-doomly rhythmic jabs that follow. Guitarist/vocalist/organist Dresden Boulden, bassist/vocalist Triston Grove and drummer Jason Geezus Kendall capture a sound that’s as fresh as it is familiar, and while there’s no question that the aesthetic behind the big-swing “Never Change” and the drawling, sunshine-stoned “Pagan” is rooted in the ’68-’74 “comedown era” — as their label, RidingEasy Records has put it in the past — classic heavy rock has become a genre unto itself over the last 25-plus years, and Magick Potion present a strong, next-generation take on the style that’s brash without being willfully ridiculous and that has the chops to back up its sonic callouts. The potential for growth is significant, as it would be with any band starting out with as much chemistry as they have, but don’t take that as a backhanded way of saying the self-titled is somehow lacking. To be sure, they nail it.
Oase is the second full-length from Berlin’s Weite behind 2023’s Assemblage (review here), also on Stickman, and it’s their first with keyboardist Fabien deMenou in the lineup with bassist Ingwer Boysen (Delving), guitarists Michael Risberg (Delving, Elder) and Ben Lubin (Lawns), and drummer Nick DiSalvo (Delving, Elder), and it unfurls across as pointedly atmospheric 53 minutes, honed from classic progressive rock but by the time they get to “(einschlafphase)” expanded into a cosmic, almost new age drone. Longer pieces like “Roter Traum” (10:55), “Eigengrau” (12:41) or even the opening “Versteinert” (9:36) offer impact as well as mood, maybe even a little boogie, “Woodbury Hollow” is more pastoral but no less affecting. The same goes for “Time Will Paint Another Picture,” which seems to emphasize modernity in the clarity of its production even amid vintage influences. Capping with the journey-to-freakout “The Slow Wave,” Oase pushes the scope of Weite‘s sound farther out while hitting harder than their first record, adding to the arrangements, and embracing new ideas. Unless you have a moral aversion to prog for some reason, there’s no angle from which this one doesn’t make itself a must-hear.
Big on tone and melody in a way that feels inspired by the modern sphere of heavy — thinking that Hum record, Elephant Tree, Magnetic Eye-type stuff — Florida’s Orbiter set forth across vast reaches in Distorted Folklore, a song like “Lightning Miles” growing more expansive even as it follows a stoner-bouncing drum pattern. Layering is a big factor, but it doesn’t feel like trickery or the band trying to sound like anything or anyone in particular so much as they’re trying to serve their songs — Jonathan Nunez (ex-Torche, etc.) produced; plenty of room in the mix for however big Orbiter want to get — as they shift from the rush that typified stretches of their 2019 debut, Southern Failures, to a generally more lumbering approach. The slowdown suits them here, though fast or slow, the procession of their work is as much about breadth as impact. Whatever direction they take as they move into their second decade, that foundation is crucial.
As regards genre: “dark arts?” Taking into account the 44 minutes of Vlimmer‘s fourth LP, which is post-industrial as much as it’s post-punk, with plenty of goth, some metal, some doom, some dance music, and so on factored in, there’s not a lot else that might encompass the divergent intentions of “Endpuzzle” or “Überrennen” as the Berlin solo-project of Alexander Donat harnesses ethereal urbanity in the brooding-till-it-bursts “Sinkopf” or the manic pulses under the vocal longing of closer “Fadenverlust.” To Donat‘s credit, from the depth of the setup given by longest/opening track (immediate points) “2025” to the goth-coated keyboard throb in “Mondläufer,” Bodenhex never goes anywhere it isn’t meant to go, and unto the finest details of its mix and arrangements, Vlimmer‘s work exudes expressive purpose. It is a record that has been hammered out over a period of time to be what it is, and that has lost none of the immediacy that likely birthed it in that process.
Indianapolis four-piece Moon Goons cut an immediately individual impression on their third album, Lady of Many Faces. The album, which often presents itself as a chaotic mash of ideas, is in fact not that thing. The band is well in control, just able and/or wanting to do more with their sound than most. They are also mindfully, pointedly weird. If you ever believed space rock could have been invented in an alternate reality 1990s and run through filters of lysergism and Devin Townsend-style progressive metal, you might take the time now to book the tattoo of the cover of Lady of Many Faces you’re about to want. Shenanigans abound in the eight songs, if I haven’t made that clear, and even the nod of “Doom Tomb Giant” feels like a freakout given the treatment put on by Moon Goons, but the thing about the album is that as frenetic as the four-piece of lead vocalist/guitarist Corey Standifer, keyboardist/vocalist Brooke Rice, bassist Devin Kearns and drummer Jacob Kozlowski get on their way to the doped epic finisher title-track, the danger of it coming apart is a well constructed, skillfully executed illusion. And what a show it is.
Although it opens up with some element of foreboding by transposing the progression of AC/DC‘s “Hells Bells” onto its own purposes in heavy Canadiana rock, and it gets a bit shouty/sludgy in the lyrical crescendo of “What a Dummy,” which seems to be about getting pulled over on a DUI, or the later “The Castle of White Lake,” much of Familiars‘ Easy Does It lives up to its name. Far from inactive, the band are never in any particular rush, and while a piece like “Golden Season,” with its singer-songwriter vocal, acoustic guitar and backing string sounds, carries a sense of melancholy — certainly more than the mellow groover swing and highlight bass lumber of “Gustin Grove,” say — the band never lay it on so thick as to disrupt their own momentum more than they want to. Working as a five-piece with pedal steel, piano and other keys alongside the core guitar, bass and drums, Easy Does It finds a balance of accessibility and deeper-engaging fare combined with twists of the unexpected.
Progressive stoner psych rockers The Fërtility Cült unveil their fifth album, A Song of Anger, awash in otherworldly soul music vibes, sax and fuzz and roll in conjunction with carefully arranged harmonies and melodic and rhythmic turns. There’s a lot of heavy prog around — I don’t even know how many times I’ve used the word today and frankly I’m scared to check — and admittedly part of that is how open that designation can feel, but The Fërtility Cült seem to take an especially fervent delight in their slow, molten, flowing chicanery on “The Duel” and elsewhere, and the abiding sense is that part of it is a joke, but part of everything is a joke and also the universe is out there and we should go are you ready? A Song of Anger is billed as a prequel, and perhaps “The Curse of the Atreides” gives some thematic hint as well, but whether you’ve been with them all along or this is the first you’ve heard, the 12-minute closing title-track is its own world. If you think you’re ready — and good on you for that — the dive is waiting for your immersion.
Posted in Reviews on December 9th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Welcome to the Quarterly Review. Oh, you were here last time? Me too. All door prizes will be mailed to winning parties upon completion of, uh, everything, I guess?
Anywhazzle, the good news is this week is gonna have 50 releases covered between now — the 10 below — and the final batch of 10 this Friday. I’m trying to sneak in a bunch of stuff ahead of year-end coverage, yes, but let the urgency of my doing so stand as testament to the quality of the music contained in this particular Quarterly Review. If I didn’t feel strongly about it, surely I’d find some other way to spend my time.
That said, let’s not waste time. You know the drill, I know the drill. Just don’t be surprised when some of the stuff you see here, today, tomorrow, and throughout the week, ends up in the Best of 2024 when the time comes. I have no idea what just yet, but for sure some of it.
We go.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
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Gnome, Vestiges of Verumex Visidrome
Some bands write songs for emotional catharsis. Some do it to make a political statement. Gnome‘s songs feel specifically — and expertly — crafted to engage an audience, and their third full-length, Vestiges of Verumex Visidrome, underscores the point. Hooks like “Old Soul” and “Duke of Disgrace” offer a self-effacing charm, where elsewhere the Antwerp trio burn through hot-shit riffing and impact-minded slam metal with a quirk that, if you’ve caught wind of the likes of Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol or Howling Giant in recent years, should fit nicely among them while finding its own sonic niche in being able to, say, throw a long sax solo on second cut “The Ogre” or veer into death growls for the title line of “Rotten Tongue” and others. They make ‘party riff metal’ sound much easier to manifest than it probably is, and the reason their reputation precedes them at this point goes right back to the songwriting. They hit hard, they get in, get out, it’s efficient when it wants to be but can still throw a curve with the stop and pivot in “Rotten Tongue,” running a line between punk and stoner, rock and metal, your face and the floor. It might actually be too enjoyable for some, but the funk they bring here is infectious. They make the riffs dance, and everything goes from there.
The lone studio track “Breathe” serves as the reasoning behind Hermano‘s first new release since 2007’s …Into the Exam Room (discussed here), and actually predates that still-latest long-player by some years. Does it matter? Yeah, sort of. As regards John Garcia‘s post-Kyuss career, Hermano both got fleshed out more than most (thinking bands like Unida and Slo Burn, even Vista Chino, that didn’t get to release three full-lengths in their time), and still seemed to fade out when there was so much potential ahead of them. If “Breathe” doesn’t argue in favor of this band giving it the proverbial “one more go,” perhaps the live version of “Brother Bjork” (maybe the same one featured on 2005’s Live at W2?) and a trio of cuts captured at Hellfest in 2016 should do the trick nicely. They’re on fire through “Senor Moreno’s Plan,” “Love” and “Manager’s Special,” with Garcia, Dandy Brown, David Angstrom, Chris Leathers and Mike Callahan treating Clisson to a reminder of why they’re the kind of band who might get to build an entire EP around a leftover studio track — because that studio track, and the band more broadly, righteously kick their own kind of ass. What would a new album be like?
Almost on a per-song basis, Stahv — the mostly-solo brainchild of multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Solomon Arye Rosenschein, here collaborating on production with John Getze of Ako-Lite Records — skewers and melds genres to create something new from their gooey remnants. On the opening title-track, maybe that’s a post-industrial Phil Collins set to dreamtime keyboard and backed by fuzzy drone. On “Lunar Haze,” it’s all goth ’80s keyboard handclaps until the chorus melody shines through the fog machine like The Beatles circa ’64. Yeah that’s right. And on “Bossa Supernova,” you bet your ass it’s bossa nova. “The Calling” reveals a rocker’s soul, where “Plainview” earlier on has a swing that might draw from The Birthday Party at its root (it also might not) but has its own sleek vibe just the same with a far-back, lo-fi buzz that somehow makes the melody sound better. “Aaskew” (sic) takes a hard-funkier stance musically but its outsider perspective in the lyrics is similar. The 1960s come back around in the later for “Circuit Crash” — it would have to be a song about the future — and “Leaving Light” seems to make fun of/celebrate (it can be both) that moment in the ’80s when everything became tropical. There’s worlds here waiting for ears adventurous enough to hear them.
I mean, look. The central question you really have to ask yourself is how mellow do you want to get? Do you think you can handle 12 minutes of “Transmigration?” Do you think you can be present in yourself through that cool-as-fuck, ultra-smooth psychedelic twist Space Shepherds pull off, barely three minutes into the the beginning of this seven-track, 71-minute pacifier to quiet the bad voices in your (definitely not my) brain. What’s up with that keyboard shuffle in “Celestial Rose” later on? I don’t know, but it rules. And when they blow it out in “Got Caught Dreaming?” Yeah, hell yeah, wake up! “Free Return” is a 15-minute drifter jam that gets funky in the back half (a phrase I’d like on a shirt) and you don’t wanna miss it! At the risk of spoiling it, I’ll tell you that the title-track, which closes, is absolutely the payoff it’s all asking for. If you’ve got the time to sit with it, and you can just sort of go where it’s going, Cycler is a trip begging to be taken.
It is all very big. All very grand, sweeping and poised musically, very modern and progressive and such — and immediately it has something if that’s what you’re looking for, which is super-doper, thanks — but if you dig into King Botfly‘s vocals, there’s a vulnerability there as well that adds an intimacy to all that sweep and plunges down the depths of the spacious mix’s low end. And I’m not knocking that part of it either. The Portsmouth, UK-based three-piece of guitarist/vocalist George Bell, bassist Luke Andrew and drummer Darren Draper, take on a monumental task in terms of largesse, and they hit hard when they want to, but there’s dynamic in it too, and both has an edge and doesn’t seem to go anywhere it does without a reason, which is a hard balance to strike. They sound like a band who will and maybe already have learned from this and will use that knowledge to move forward in an ongoing creative pursuit. So yes, progressive. Also tectonically heavy. And with heart. I think you got it. They’ll be at Desertfest London next May, and they sound ready for it.
Are Last Band a band? They sure sound like one. Founded by guitarists Pat Paul and Matt LeGrow (the latter also of Admiral Browning) upwards of 15 years ago, when they were less of an actual band, the Maryland-based outfit offer 13 songs of heavy alternative rock on The Sacrament in Accidents, with some classic metal roots shining through amid the harmonies of “Saffire Alice” and a denser thrust in “Season of Outrage,” a rush in the penultimate “Forty-Four to the Floor,” and so on, where the title-track is more of an open sway and “Lidocaine” is duly placid, and while the production is by no means expansive, the band convey their songs with intent. Most cuts are in the three-to-four-minute range, but “Blown Out” dips into psychedelic-gaze wash as the longest at 5:32 offset by comparatively grounded, far-off Queens of the Stone Age-style vocalizing in the last minute, which is an effective culmination. The material has range and feels worked on, and while The Sacrament in Accidents sounds raw, it hones a reach that feels true to a songwriting methodology evolved over time.
Debuting earlier this decade as a solo-project of Andrew Cox, Seattle’s Dream Circuit have built out to a four-piece for with Pennies for Your Life, which throughout its six-track/36-minute run sets a contemplative emotionalist landscape. Now completed by Anthony Timm, Cody Albers and Ian Etheridge, the band are able to move from atmospheric stretches of classically-inspired-but-modern-sounding verses into heavier tonality on a song like “Rosy” with fluidity that seems to save its sweep for when it counts. The title-track dares some shouts, giving some hint of a metallic underpinning, but that still rests well in context next to the sitar sounds of “Let Go,” which opens at 4:10 into its own organ-laced crush, emotionally satisfying. Imagine a post-heavy rock that’s still pretty heavy, and a dynamic that stretches across microgenres, and maybe that will give some starting idea. The last two tracks argue for efficiency in craft, but wherever Dream Circuit go on this sophomore release, they take their own route to get there.
“All is Light” is the first single from New Paltz bliss-drone meditationalist solo outfit Okkoto since 2022’s stellar and affirming Climb the Antlers and Reach the Stars (review here), and its seven minutes carry a similar scope to what one found on that album. To be clear, that’s a compliment. Interwoven threads of synth over methodical timekeeping drum sounds, wisps of airy guitar drawn together with other lead lines, keys or strings, create a flowing world around the vocals added by Michael Lutomski, also (formerly?) of heavy psych rockers It’s Not Night: It’s Space, the sole proprietor of the expanse. A lot of a given listener’s experience of Okkoto experience will depend on their own headspace, but if you have the time and attention — seven-plus minutes of active-but-not-too-active hearing recommended — but “All is Light” showcases the rare restorative aspects of Okkoto in a way that, if you can get to it, can make you believe, or at least escape for a little while.
Trappist Afterland, Evergreen: Walk to Paradise Garden
Underscored with a earth-rooted folkish fragility in the voice of Adam Geoffrey Cole (also guitar, cittern, tanpura, oud, synth, xylophone and something called a ‘dulcitar’), Melbourne’s Trappist Afterland are comfortably adventurous on this 10th full-length, Evergreen: Walk to Paradise Garden, which digs deeper into psych-drone on longest track “Cruciform/The Reincarnation of Kelly-Anne (Parts 1-3)” (7:55) while elsewhere digs into fare more Eastern-influenced-Western-traditional, largely based around guitar composition. With an assortment of collaborators coming and going, even this is enough for Cole and his seemingly itinerant company to create a sense of variety — the violin in centerpiece “Barefoot in Thistles” does a lot of work in that regard; ditto the squeezebox of opener “The Squall” — and while the arrangements don’t lack for flourish, the human expression is paramount, and the nine songs are serene unto the group vocal that caps in “You Are Evergreen,” which would seem to be placed to highlight its resonance, and reasonably so. As it’s Trappist Afterland‘s 10th album by their own count, it’s hardly a surprise they know what they’re about, but they do anyway.
For a band who went so far as to name themselves after a fuzz pedal, Spain’s Big Muff Brigade have more in common with traditional desert rock than the kind of tonal worship one might expect them to deliver. That landscape doesn’t account for their naming a song “Terre Haute,” seemingly after the town in Indiana — I’ve been there; not a desert — but fair enough for the shove of that track, which on Pi arrives just ahead of closer “Seasonal Affective Disorder,” which builds to a nonetheless-mellow payoff before its fadeout. Elsewhere, the seven-minute “Pierced by the Spear” drops Sleepy (and thus Sabbathian) references in the guitar ahead of creating a duly stonerly lumber before they even unfurl the first verse — a little more in keeping with the kind of riff celebration one might expect going in — but even there, the band maintain a thread of purposeful songcraft that can only continue to serve them as they move past this Argonauta-delivered debut and continued to grow. There is a notable sense of outreach here, though, and in writing to genre, Big Muff Brigade show both their love of what they do and a will to connect with likeminded audiences.