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Quarterly Review: Thief, Rise to the Sky, Birth, Old Horn Tooth, Solemn Lament, Terminus, Lunar Ark, Taxi Caveman, Droneroom, Aiwass

Posted in Reviews on September 29th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

the-obelisk-fall-2016-quarterly-review

According to my notes, today is Day Three of the Fall 2021 Quarterly Review. Are you impressed to have made it this far? I kind of am, but, you know, I would be. I hope you’ve managed to find something you dig over the course of the first 20 records, and if not, why not? I’ve certainly added to a few year-end lists between debut albums, regular-old albums and short releases. Today’s no different. Without giving away any secrets ahead of time, this is a pretty wacky stylistic spread from the start and that’s how I like it. Maybe by next Tuesday it’ll all make a kind of sense, and maybe it won’t. In any case, this is apparently my idea of fun, so let’s have fun.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

Thief, The 16 Deaths of My Master

Thief The 16 Deaths of My Master

Someone used the phrase “techno for metalheads” in an email to me the other day (about something else) and I can’t get it out of my head concerning Thief‘s The 16 Deaths of My Master. From the swelling distortion of opener “Underking” to the odd bit of harpsicord that shows up in “Scorpion Mother” to the bassy rumble underscoring “Fire in the Land of Endless Rain,” the post-everything “Lover Boy,” droning “Life Clipper,” lazyman’s hip-hop on “Gorelord” and “Crestfaller” and Beck-on-acid finale in “Seance for Eight Oscillators,” there’s certainly plenty of variety to go around, but in the dance-dream “Apple Eaters” and goth-with-’90s-beatmaking “Bootleg Blood” and pretend-your-car-ride-is-a-movie-soundtrack “Wing Clipper,” the metallic underpinning of Dylan Neal (also Botanist) is still there, and the lyrical highlight “Teenage Satanist” rings true. Still, songs like the consuming washer “Night Spikes and subsequent drum’n’bass-vibing “Victim Exit Stage Left” are inventive, fascinating, short and almost poppy in themselves but part of a 16-track entirety that is head-spinning. If that’s techno for metalheads, so be it. Horns up for dat bass.

Thief on Facebook

Prophecy Productions website

 

Rise to the Sky, Per Aspera Ad Astra

rise to the sky per aspera ad astra

The album’s title is kind of another interpretation of the band’s name, the idea behind the Latin phrase Per Aspera Ad Astra being moving through challenges to the stars and the Santiago, Chile, one-man death-doom outfit being Rise to the Sky. Multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Sergio González Catalán reportedly wrote and arranged the title-track in the days following his father’s funeral, and the grand, flowing string sounds and engrossing heft that ensues feel genuinely mournful, capping with a progression of solo piano before “End My Night” seems to pick up where “The Loss of Hope” left off. The lyrics to closer “Only Our Past Remains” derive from a poem by Catalán‘s father, and the sense of tribute is palpable across the album’s 46 minutes. I’m not sure how the Russian folk melody bonus instrumental “Horse” might tie in, but neither is it out of place among “Deep Lament” and “Bleeding Heart,” the latter of which dares some clean vocals alongside the gutturalism, and in context, the rest of the album seems to answer with loss what opener “Life in Suspense” is waiting for.

Rise to the Sky on Facebook

GS Productions website

 

Birth, Demo

birth birth

Those familiar with Brian Ellis and Conor Riley‘s work in Astra should not be surprised to find them exploring ’70s-style progressive rock in Birth, and anybody who heard Psicomagia already knows that bassist Trevor Mast and drummer Paul Marrone (also Radio Moscow) are a rhythm section well up to whatever task you might want to set before them. Thus Birth‘s Demo arrives some four years after its recording, with “Descending Us” (posted here) leading off in dramatic Deep Purple-y fashion backed by the jammier but gloriously mellotroned and Rhodes’ed “Cosmic Wind” and “Long Way Down,” which digs itself into a righteous King Crimson payoff with due class even as it revels in its rough edges. Marrone‘s since left the band and whoever replaces him has big shoes to fill, but god damn, just put out a record already, would you?

Birth on Facebook

Bad Omen Records website

 

Old Horn Tooth, True Death

old horn tooth true death

Wielding mighty tonality and meeting Monolordian lurch with an aural space wide enough to contain it, Old Horn Tooth follow their 2019 debut LP, From the Ghost Grey Depths, with the single-song EP True Death, proffering a largesse rarely heard even from London’s ultra-populated heavy underground and working their way into, out of, back into, out of and through a nod that the converted among riff-heads likely find irresistible and hypnotic in kind. To say the trio of guitarist/vocalist Chris, bassist/keyboardist Ollie and drummer Mark ride out the groove is perhaps underselling it, but as my first exposure to the band, I’m only sorry to have missed out on both the orange tapes and the limited flash drives they were selling. So it goes. Slow riffs, fast sales. I’ll catch them next time and drown my sorrows in the interim in this immersive, probably-gonna-get-picked-up-by-some-label-for-a-vinyl-release offering. And hey, maybe if you and I both email them, they’ll press a few more cassettes.

Old Horn Tooth on Facebook

Old Horn Tooth on Bandcamp

 

Solemn Lament, Solemn Lament

Solemn Lament Solemn Lament

Pro-shop-level doom from an initial public offering by Solemn Lament, bringing together the significant likes of vocalist Phil Swanson (ex-Hour of 13, Vestal Claret, countless others), drummer Justin DeTore (Magic Circle and more recently Dream Unending) as well as Blind Dead‘s Drew Wardlaw on bass and Adam Jacino on lead guitar, and Eric Wenstrom on rhythm guitar. These personages cross coastlines to three tracks and intro of grand and immersive doom metal, willfully diving into the Peaceville-three legacy on “Stricken” to find the beauty in darkness after the lumber and chug of the nine-minute “Celeste” resolves with patient grace and “Old Crow” furthers the Paradise Lost spirit in its central riff. Geography is an obvious challenge, but if Solemn Lament can build on the potential they show in this debut EP, they could be onto something really special.

Solemn Lament on Facebook

Solemn Lament on Bandcamp

 

Terminus, The Silent Bell Toll

Terminus The Silent Bell Toll

A stunning third full-length from Fayetteville, Arkansas, trio Terminus, The Silent Bell Toll bridges doomed heft and roll, progressive melodicism and thoughtful heavy rock construction into a potent combination of hooks and sheer impact. It’s worth noting that the 10-minute closer of the nine-song/40-minute outing, “Oh Madrigal,” soars vocally, but hell, so does the 3:18 “Black Swan” earlier. Guitarist Sebastian Thomas (also cover art) and bassist Julian Thomas share vocal duties gorgeously throughout while drummer Scott Wood rolls songs like “The Lion’s Den” and “The Silent Bell Toll” — that nod under the solo; goodness gracious — in such a way as to highlight the epic feel even as the structure beneath is reinforced. With three instrumentals peppered throughout to break up the chapters as intro, centerpiece and penultimate, there’s all the more evidence that Terminus are considered in their approach and that the level of realization across The Silent Bell Toll is not happenstance.

Terminus on Facebook

Terminus on Bandcamp

 

Lunar Ark, Recurring Nightmare

Lunar Ark Recurring Nightmare

Clearly named in honor of its defining intent, Recurring Nightmare is the three-song/48-minute debut full-length from Boston-based charred sludge outfit, who take the noisy heft of ultra-disaffected purveyors like Indian or Primitive Man and push it into a blackened metallic sphere further distinguished by harshly ambient drones. One can dig Neurosis-style riffing out of the 19:30 closer “Guillotine” or opener “Torch and Spear,” but the question is how much one’s hand is going to be sliced open in that process. And the answer is plenty. Their tones don’t so much rumble as crumble, vocals are willfully indecipherable throat-clenching screams, and the drums duly glacial. There is little kindness to be had in 16:43 centerpiece “Freedom Fever Dream” — originally broken into two parts as a demo in 2019 — which resolves itself lyrically in mourning a lost ideal over a dense lurch that’s met with still-atmospheric churning. Their established goal, if that’s what it is, has been met with all appropriate viciousness and extremity.

Lunar Ark on Facebook

Trepanation Recordings on Bandcamp

Lunar Seas Records on Bandcamp

Realm and Ritual on Bandcamp

 

Taxi Caveman, Taxi Caveman

taxi caveman self titled

An ethic toward straight-ahead riff rock is writ large throughout Taxi Caveman‘s self-titled debut full-length, the Warsaw trio offering a face-first dive into fuzz of varying sizes and shaping their material around the sleek groove of “Prisoner” or the more aggressively bent vinyl-side-launchers “Building With Fire” and “Asteroid.” There’s a highlight hook in “I, the Witch” and the instrumental “426” leads into the Dozer-esque initial verse of 10-minute closer “Empire of the Sun,” but the three-piece find their own way through ultimately, loosening some of the verse/chorus reins in order to affect more of a jammed feel. It’s a departure from the crunch of “Asteroid” or “Prisoner” and the big, big, big sound that starts “Building With Fire,” but I’m certainly not about to hold some nascent sonic diversity against them. They’re playing to genre across these 33 minutes, but they do so without pretense and with a mind toward kicking as much ass as possible. Not changing the world, but it’s not trying to and it’s fun enough in listening that it doesn’t need to.

Taxi Caveman on Facebook

Piranha Music on Bandcamp

 

Droneroom, Negative Libra

Droneroom Negative Libra

“Negative Libra” runs 36:36 and is the lone track on the album that bears its name from Las Vegas-based solo-project Droneroom. The flowing work of Blake Conley develops in slow, meditative form and gradually introduces lap steel to shimmer along with its post-landscape etherealities, evocative of cinema as they are without exactly playing to one or the other film-genre tropes. That is to say, Conley isn’t strictly horror soundtracking or Western soundtracking, and so on. Perhaps in part because of that, “Negative Libra” is allowed to discover its path and flourish as it goes — I’m not sure as to the layering process of making it vis-à-vis what was tracked live and put on top after — but the sense of exploration-of-moment that comes through is palpable and serene even as the guitar comes forward just before hitting the 27-minute mark to begin the transition into the song’s noisier payoff and final, concluding hum.

Droneroom on Facebook

Somewherecold Records website

 

Aiwass, Wayward Gods

Aiwass Wayward Gods

Blown-out vocals add an otherworldly tinge to Arizona-based one-man-band Aiwass‘ debut full-length, Wayward Gods, giving the already gargantuan tones a sense of space to match. Opener “Titan” and closer “Mythos” seem to push even further in this regard than, say, the centerpiece “Man as God” — the last track feeling particularly Monolordly in its lumbering — but by the time “Titan” and the subsequent, 10-minute inclusion “From Chains,” which ends cold with a guest solo by Vinny Tauber of Ohio’s Taubnernaut and shifts into the cawing blackbird at the outset of “Man as God” with a purposefully jarring intent. Despite the cringe-ready cartoon-boobs cover art, the newcomer project finds a heavy niche that subverts expectation as much as it meets it and sets broad ground to explore on future outings. As an idea, “gonna start a heavy, huge-sounding band during the pandemic,” is pretty straightforward. What results from that in Aiwass runs deeper.

Aiwass on Facebook

Aiwass on Bandcamp

 

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Rise to the Sky Premiere Title-Track of Let Me Drown With You; Album out March 12

Posted in audiObelisk on February 9th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

rise to the sky

Chilean one-man death-room unit Rise to the Sky will release Let Me Drown With You on March 12 through Russia’s GS Productions. It has not been that long since the project spearheaded by
vocalist/multi-instrumentalist/engineer Sergio Gonzalez Catalan — aka Sergio G. — got its start; the debut album, Moonlight, came out in 2019. Along with a slew of periodically collected singles and two EPs, a second album, Death Will Not Keep Us Apart (discussed here), arrived later in 2020 — it was a good year for self-recording — and Let Me Drown With You will serve as the third full-length now in three years. Obviously there’s plenty of misery to go around, but that’s still an impressive rate for a project with such a lush sound, weeping guitar setting an atmosphere throughout topped by likewise morose growls recalling Paradise Lost of old, but not without a dynamic of their own, as the song “Let Me Drown With You,” premiering below, demonstrates.

Compared to some of what surrounds on the nine-track/54-minute outing, “Let Me Drown With You” might be considered uptempo, but it’s kind of a moot designation. As the album’s two segments play through, there are certainly moments of distinction likerise to the sky let me drown with you the string sounds on “Liebestod,” the is-that-keys-or-guitar amid the ferocious death growls on opener “See Me Fall Down” or the weight that even the acoustic-led interlude “Passion” still seems to bear as the record makes ready to answer the central progression there with the full-brunt complement in “Turn Us into Stone.” Themes of love, life and death pervade in self-aware fashion as Sergio G. uses a graceful hand to guide listeners through the flowing intro to “Leaving This World” and the weighted lumber that takes hold thereafter, while pre-epilogue finale “Bury Me in Your Heart” calls to mind mid-period Amorphis, if slower, in its skillful winding of guitar melody around a central, forward but still contemplative-feeling melody. To be fair, even some of these nuances are emblematic of the genre to which Rise to the Sky is working, but in the combination of elements and particular movements throughout the work, Let Me Drown With you is stirring and consuming without being entirely hopeless.

That last notion might best be represented in the fact that “Transformation (Postlude)” caps the album with a shimmering melody in the vein of later Anathema and not only brings symmetry to the proceedings with “Passion (Interlude)” in ending the first half of the album, but makes a purposefully optimistic turn following so much expression of sorrow. Prolific as Rise to the Sky is, the quantity of material Sergio G. puts out seems to do little to dull the emotional impact of a record like this one — passion to spare, perhaps. All the better, since the sincerity of purpose that seems to drive Let Me Drown With You meets head on with the performative aspects of style, adding heft and impact to each moment of delivery, whether that particular moment is tonally ‘heavy’ or not. Likewise, though as a band Rise to the Sky has come together with some measure of speed — three albums in three years and then some, etc. — the flow constructed across this third full-length’s span is every bit as patient and thoughtfully realized as one would hope for an outfit with two records already under its belt.

With the album out in March, “Let Me Drown With You” follows “Liebestod” as the second single, and can be heard on the player below, followed by preorder links and PR wire info.

Please enjoy:

Rise to the Sky new album “Let Me Drown With You” releases March 12, 2021 through Russian Doom Metal label GS Productions
Preorder CD at https://gsproduction.bandcamp.com/
Preorder Digital at https://risetothesky.bandcamp.com/

“Romance only comes into existence where love is fatal, frowned upon and doomed by life itself” (Denis de Rougemont, 1983).

Conceived in a time of fear and isolation, this album conveys deep reflections about life and death.

This album is released in loving memory of my father, who passed away suddenly on Jan 6, 2021. He was passionate about the people he loved and about everything he did, this music is a clear reflection of our way of life.

Track list:
Chapter I: Life, Dreams, and Passion
1. See Me Fall Down
2. Dream the Pain is Gone
3. Let Me Drown with You
4. Liebestod
5. Passion (Interlude)

Chapter II: Death, Grief, and Transformation
6. Turn Us into Stone
7. Leaving This World
8. Bury Me in Your Heart
9. Transformation (Postlude)

Music and Lyrics by Rise to the Sky
Production, drum composition, mixing and mastering by Filippos Koliopanos
Artwork by Gogo Melone
Special participation by Andreia Alves in: “Let Me Drown with You”
Recorded in Sergio´s Castle. Santiago, Chile

Rise to the Sky on Thee Facebooks

Rise to the Sky on Instagram

Rise to the Sky on Bandcamp

GS Productions on Bandacmp

GS Productions on Thee Facebooks

GS Productions website

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Rise to the Sky Stream “When Death Comes”; Death Will Not Keep Us Apart out Oct. 9

Posted in Whathaveyou on August 19th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

rise to the sky

What we’re learning here is that when death comes, it won’t keep us apart. It’ll join us. Then maybe we’ll be dancing? I’m not really clear on it, but to be fair, I haven’t heard the whole record. Chilean one-man death-doom outfit Rise to the Sky will make its dystopian-themed full-length debut in October through Moscow-based GS Production with Death Will Not Keep Us Apart, and, well, I continue to maintain that if 2020 has a single sound, it’s death-doom. Well, that or “WAP.” One or the other.

In any case, this one came my way via the PR wire and brought the single “When Death Comes” along, and golly that’s heavy. And lurching. And down. I dig it. As wretched as this year has been, it has produced some glorious doom, and as Rise to the Sky build on two initial EPs — the latest of which arrived in June and both of which are coupled with the album in a limited 2CD digipak — the potential here for longer-term progression is as exciting as the tempo is grueling.

Sign me up:

rise to the sky death will not keep us apart

Rise To The Sky – Death Will Not Keep Us Apart

Atmospheric death doom from Chile – Releases October 9th, 2020

“In a post-apocalyptic world, not long away from now, a couple run away from death, which takes the form of many creatures wandering this devastated world. They run around to many places, trying to avoid death, until they find a high cliff where they would be safe. Unfortunately, only he can make it up, while she is not able to climb up, facing certain death in the open land below the cliff. Upon this dilemma, he looks down the cliff towards his beloved one, and chooses to descend only to face death along her, hoping for eternal life together after they die. This was my dream and it is the inspiration for the album you are about to hear.” – Rise to the Sky

The album was produced along music producer Filippos Koliopanos (Ocean of Grief), who crafted a powerful yet profoundly emotional sound. The cover artwork and booklet were done by design artist Gogo Melone, who translated the music and album concepts into a genuine piece of art.

Tracklisting:
1. From the Distance
2. Pain and Blood
3. Together in the Grave
4. When Death Comes
5. High up Above
6. The Final Choice
7. Death Will Join Us
8. We are not Mourning
9. Dancing in the Dark (Death)

https://www.facebook.com/RIsetotheSkyBand
https://www.instagram.com/risetotheskyband
https://risetothesky.bandcamp.com/
https://gsproduction.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/GSP-Magazine-671740502863277/
http://gsp-music.com/

Rise to the Sky, Death Will Not Keep Us Apart (2020)

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