Posted in Whathaveyou on July 30th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
Roman trio Fvzz Popvli will head out this November on a round of touring in celebration of their 10th anniversary as a band, and they’ve also got room on a weekender in September, prefacing that celebration and following their appearance at the Roma Stone Fest Sept. 8 where they’ll take part alongside Fu Manchu, Stoned Jesus, L’Ira del Baccano and others. The band’s most recent album, Melting Pop (review here), was released in early 2025 and was their fourth full-length, so for marking a decade they’ve been pretty productive during their time, all while maintaining a punkish laissez-faire attitude.
They spent much of last year on the road and did at least three legs of touring to support the album, and though to my knowledge 2026 has been less busy, clearly they’re still heralding the newest offering as they take the time this Fall to look back on how far they’ve come. Nothing like celebrating work by doing more work.
Heavy Psych Sounds sent the dates (including open slots; always help if you can) down the PR wire:
*** FVZZ POPVLI – X Anniversary Tour ***
– the Italian fuzz riffers will tour Europe in September and November 2026 –
We are very stoked to announce that our Italian fuzz wizards FVZZ POPVLI will rock Europe soon !!
FVZZ POPVLI – X Anniversary Tour 08.08.2026 – I – Roma – Roma Stone Fest w/Fu Manchu 18.09.2026 – I – OPEN SLOT 19.09.2026 – I – Bozen – Platza Open 20.09.2026 – I – Porto San Giorgio – CSA Officina Trenino 05.11.2026 – I – Verona – TBA 06.11.2026 – CH – Baden – Werkstatt 07.11.2026 – CH – St Gallen – Rümpeltum 08.11.2026 – CH – St Iimier – Espace Noir 09.11.2026 – F – Barberaz – Brin De Zinc 10.11.2026 – F – Clermont-Ferrand – Le Fotomat 12.11.2026 – F – Strasbourg – La Peniche Mecanique 13.11.2026 – B – Namur – Creed 14.11.2026 – NL – Heerlen – T’ Duuvelke 15.11.2026 – B – Herent – Loft 17.11.2026 – B/F/D – OPEN SLOT 18.11.2026 – F – Lyon – La Pente 19.11.2026 – D – Stuttgart – Schlampazius 20.11.2026 – L – Luxembourg – Bonne Nouvelle 21.11.2026 – CH – Zurich – Safari Bar 22.11.2026 – I – Conegliano – LZO
Founded in Rome by Pootchie and Datio in A.D. MMXVI, the idea was to build a powertrio with a direct and rough way to deliver heavy fuzzy riffs. Their sound melts Black Sabbath-style heavy riffs with the roughest garagepunk bands attitude -like The Stooges-, adding the psychedelia from the 70’s to create their own style!
In November 2024 the band signed a new agreement with Heavy Psych Sounds and released a brand new album called Melting Pop in early 2025.
Fvzz Popvli: Pootchie – Gvitar and Voice Alex – Bass George – Drvms
Day two, feeling good after coming in hot yesterday after the weekend of writing. Have I ever told you about my fantasy QR? No? I write reviews of stuff all along, every day, then when it’s QR time I just roll it all out and take an actual week off. Wouldn’t it enhance your enjoyment knowing that somewhere, sometime, I’m sitting on ass and not frantically trying to finish the next day’s reviews?
I haven’t ever been able to manifest that reality, so here I am, yesterday, maybe two days before, trying to put it together. Same as every other QR I’ve done in the past 12 or 13 years, however long I’ve been doing these. Long enough to know when one feels good. Yesterday was cool. I have high hopes accordingly for today’s batch. I try to do myself favors in putting these together as best I can.
Quarterly Review #11-20:
Spirit Adrift, Infinite Illumination
Led for the last decade by Nate Garrett initially as a solo-project and then as a full, touring and working band, Spirit Adrift come to a reported close with Infinite Illumination, the Austin outfit’s sixth album. Melancholia and metal intertwine on songs like “Window Within,” the chuggy ’90s groover “Born in a Bad Way,” and “White Death,” which resolves with a massive nod. The band have always tipped the balance of metal and doom, so these are fitting sounds on which to go out, if in fact Garrett (also Neon Nightmare) is done with it. “Where Once There Was an Ocean” unfolds slowly at the end of the album, and stately in its intro and very much in that place between, what with the shredding solo and chugging center riff progression, but it’s all part of the identity the band carved during their time, keeping ’90s Hellhound Records-style doom alive and carried forward for the next generation. Excited for what Garrett does next, but Spirit Adrift earned this farewell in the interim.
‘Embrace’ doesn’t necessarily mean accessibility as Ufomammut‘s Urlo puts the finishing stamp on the two-LP ‘Embrace the Abandon’ cycle with his solo-project The Mon‘s Songs of Embrace. What he calls ’embrace,’ I would generally consider immersion. Drone is a big part of it through this 10-track answer to 2025’s Songs of Abandon (review here), textures of synth and guitar, some jangling keys before the static push in “Ritual of Night Violence.” There’s beauty to be had, whether it’s in the more direct guitar of “Incantation” or “Embers of Calendula,” but neither is “Ritual of Night Violence” the only foray into abrasion, with the penultimate “Echoes of the Drowned” and opener “Invocation of the Abyss” also harnessing these textures. “Embrace the Abandon,” a title-track for two records, closes with shimmery synth, noise, a machine that goes ‘bing!’ and other echoing noises. Texture, in other words. You knew it was going to be out there. Hoping Urlo keeps developing this project as an outlet for such weirdness.
The fourth album from Sweden’s dramatic progressive kraut rockers Hällas — also their first self-release through Äventyr Records — Panorama opens with its longest track (immediate points) in the 21-minute, side-A-consuming “Above the Continuum,” and as a single track, it indeed goes down like the half an album it is. Packed with twists, vocal and tonal changes, shifts in arrangement, that spoken piece in the second half and each new part seeming like a different stage in the dynamic procession leading toward a somehow-not-overblown finish, it’s a triumph of their craft, to say the least of it. Side B brings four cuts starting with “Face of an Angel,” which might be yacht prog but for the Nazgûl wails, while “The Emissary” is more sweeping in its scope and works into a headspinning tizzy before it’s done, giving over to the penultimate “Bestiaus,” which in itself is voice and keyboard but also has a waveform static intro to closer “At the Summit,” begun with classical guitar as they make ready to blow-out a six-minute finish that feels duly epic in its reach. This is a band who’ve made their own place by fitting nowhere else. Panorama feels earned.
London heavy rockers Okay You Win give a couple different looks on their debut album, End of Days, on Blues Funeral. Underlying it all across the eight-song/52-minute offering is a sense of songwriting and intention in how each track unfolds, but to that, there is a longform modus and what feels like a complementary immediacy to offset some of the digging in of songs like “Beat Me Down” or “The Greatest Lie.” End of Days somewhat turns expectation on its head by putting the more expansive material up front, and cuts like “This Damned Place,” closer “Own It” and the abovementioned — all of which top seven minutes in length — present a scope informed by desert heavy and dual-guitar metal, feeling a bit like a complement to labelmates Solace in that regard. The shorter (sub-five minutes) title-track and “Red Flag” land with a more direct take, and what comes across most of all is a nascent malleability between the two sides that feels like it will eventually be bridged in their sound. Taken as a whole, the album is elemental, which is to say, this is a strong and ambitious initial showing, and how they grow from here will be the ultimate story of the band.
You would not call Bong Voyage subtle in opening cut “Saturday Rite Special” (get it?) as they quickly toss out “Hail Satan and Iron Maiden!” among the fervent declarations of self and purpose. That’s not the last time they’ll make that rhyme. The Oslo heavy party rockers, true to form, have plenty of metal in their foundations and the namedrops to prove it, but are here for a good time, and even a comparative letup like “UFOria” or the ’80s-tastic take on Billy Idol in “Enabler” ahead of the big-roller “Wizard of Ozlo” stand testament to the point, never mind the shouty shenanigans of “Large and In Charge,” “Outer Space Freebase” or “In Possession” at the finish. If you’re at the show, they’ve already spilled (poured?) beer on you, but that’s to be expected for material of such physicality, songs written with movement and audience engagement central to their ideology. They’re not reinventing the wheel, but they’re bending the frames to make it roll like it’s drunk and never hungover.
Unflinching in their exploration of the darker side of heavy rock and roll and dungeon-style metal, Fasano, Italy’s King Potenaz follow 2025’s Arcane Desert Rituals Vol. 1 (review here) as the core trio of guitarist/vocalist Giuseppe Guarini, bassist Francesco Pensato and drummer Piero Schiavone mirror that album’s structure in a likewise adventurous complement. Whether it’s the grim desert expanse of “Sumerian Nights” or the lumbering psychedoomic jam “A Crack in the Void (The Empty Hand Pt. 2),” King Potenaz remain unto themselves in intention, fostering a fuzzy but still post-punk shove in “Lord of the Rust” — think stonergoth — while “The Nothingness” feels as much like a ritual as a song, the band putting the listener into the proceedings as much as itself. Not redundant of the prior album, but pushing farther from it, Arcane Desert Rituals Vol. 2 reaffirms the individual nature of what King Potenaz do. They aren’t quite like anything else out there, and more, they seem to know it.
Celebrating their 30th anniversary in 2026, Cowboys & Aliens unveil Finis Temporum, a front-to-back six-song/32-minute banger that’s as righteous an argument in favor of classic-style, turn-of-the-century European heavy rock as one could ask from a band who was there and part of making it. Closer “Asteroid Blast” reminds of that, remade as it was from 2000’s A Trip to the Stonehenge Colony, but I’ll be damned if the opening salvo of “Life Tree” and “Rabbit Hole” doesn’t kick ass out of the gate, backed by the reachout in “Vengeance of the Weird” and the big hook in “Ordinary Bliss” ahead of the fuzzstrutter “Icy Grip.” I suppose that’s to say momentum gets on their side early and the shove that ensues is rad. Melodies soar over tonally and rhythmically vibrant riffing, and though they’re never far removed from the root verse/chorus trades of the material, the excitement level runs high across the span without sounding redundant at any point. If you’re not on board by the end of “Life Tree,” consult your primary care physician.
Endless Floods retain an experimentalist feel despite the outward solidity of their post-metallic take on Passages. With resonant vocals from Louise Dehaye (also sax), the largesse and sway of the full-band sound behind conjured by Stéphane Miollan (bass, guitar, vocals, synth) and Benjamin Sablon (drums, guitars, vocals, percussion) feels expansive and puporseful in a way that ‘experimental’ rarely captures. What’s happening across the four mostly-extended inclusions on the 37-minute outing, however, is a construction of form that is Endless Floods‘ own, able to slide or lumber or crunch through a piece like “Visions” or the lead single “Dieuxième Monde,” which are lush and gorgeous and still feel like a setup for the glory reached in the 10-minute linear build of “Liminal” and the synthy bleed toward closer “Primordial,” wherein the onslaught one might expect is subverted in favor of heavy post-rock ambience, contemplative melody and expansive soundscaping. If you never believed heavy metal could be beautiful, first of all, what are you doing here, and second, Passages serves as a convincing argument. It is engrossing.
Wooden clackychimes mark the beginning of Duncan Park‘s “Chöd” at the outset of the four-song Prana EP, soon complemented by resonant hand-drumming that gradually comes forward as the clacky-clacky recedes. This subdued moment is not misspent, but rather essential to the procession, shifting to standalone guitar on “BEBEBe” in the flavor of something Ben Chasny might elicit from the instrument in serene pastoralism, exploratory but grounded and accessible. Voice is an instrument in “Surfing the Bardo,” and that presence isn’t to be underestimated, but it’s still the guitar in focus, and the way the movement comes apart (before realigning) in the second half reminds of Beatles Esher demos and is correspondingly organic. Same could be said of the tape hiss behind the guitar of the title-track, which noodles around its central figure and sounds joyful in the doing, without getting lost even as it seems to rewind itself back for another listen. A quiet embrace from the Johannesburg-based Park, whose work remains evocative and escapist.
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Luxury Weapons, The Light in a Low Place
Richmind, Virginia’s Luxury Weapons is the trio of Trevor Thomas (Human Thurma, etc.), Bill Badgley (Federation X, etc.) and Erik Josephson (Hex Machine, etc.), and you can just take all that ‘etc.’ as meant to convey lifetimes’ worth of experience making music and playing in bands. The songwriting here is noise rock-sharp, but where the aggression to coincide with the chug might otherwise be is a rousing melodic sensibility, bolstered by the Kyle Spence (Harvey Milk) recording job and present in the spacious “Surrender” and the precision turns of “Been Gone” or “All We Knew.” This record came out over a year ago — yeah, it’s damn near June and I’m still sneaking in 2025 releases; wait until you hear about the decades of recorded music that existed before last month — so if you want to take this is me making a note to myself on something cool, I’m fine with that. There’s enough character in Luxury Weapons‘ sound to stand them out regardless of the last 13 months, and I certainly don’t hear anything on their debut that sounds like it’s about to expire now. If you haven’t heard it — and I know you have because you’re cooler than me — perhaps a word to the wise.
Roman heavy psych instrumentalists L’Ira del Baccano issue their fifth full-length, The Praise of Folly, tomorrow, Feb. 20, through Subsound Records. It follows behind 2025’s split with Yama, Tempus Deorum (review here) and the increasingly progressive four-piece’s 2023 outing, Cosmic Evoked Potentials (review here), comprising four tracks splitting with longest-then-shortest symmetry across two sides for a total 42-minute run keyed on immersion and dynamic.
The latter is showcased quickly amid the resonant tonality of “The Praise of Folly (Pt. 1),” which in its first half enacts a fully realized linear build brought from silence to a howling clarion set to the slow march of Gianluca Giannasso‘s drumming before, shortly past the six-minute mark, the lead cut breaks to mostly-standalone guitar exploration from Alessandro Santori and Roberto Maldera, with newcomer bassist Gabriele Montemara renewing the heft gradually as they go. They finish big, as one frankly would hope, but “The Praise of Folly (Pt. 1)” is more about getting there than resting upon arrival, and the transition to “The Praise of Folly (Pt. 2)” introduces more synth to the proceedings, ending up somewhere along the lines of a sharper-cornered, earlier My Sleeping Karma, deceptively heavy and delivered with remarkable poise.
You can see in the tracklisting below that each half of The Praise of Folly breaks down to a song around 13 minutes long and one in the eight-minute range. I don’t know how the writing process goes for L’Ira del Baccano, but 12 years on from their debut, Terra 42 (review here), the band have never lost their sense of purpose or forward progression. The patience across side A here speaks to that, with side B for reinforcement as “Stigma” grows from its initial guitar line to answer the synthery of “The Praise of Folly (Pt. 2)” while also getting very, very heavy in a way that satisfies for both immersion and impact even before you get to the first solo — nearly but not quite three minutes into the song. It doesn’t meander from there, but neither does it take such a clear structural approach, feeling fluid as it lumbers, twists for a time and then floats on the other side of its midpoint, gradually shaping itself around the guitar line, which hits into a more solidified payoff riff after 10 minutes in and rides that to an engaging finish just in time for “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” — sharing its title with the Tom Stoppard play turned into a 1990 film based around the Hamlet characters — to slam in with immediate, purposeful heft.
That transition isn’t to be understated, as it speaks to the ways in which the material is in conversation with itself throughout The Praise of Folly, one part complementing the next, referencing what’s come before without repeating, and so on. They don’t exactly finish “Stigma” light, but even a momentary drop of the roll is enough for “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” to feel monolithic. They soon enough shift to dreamier fare, and that raw heft doesn’t show up again, but a rumbling threat persists as they delve toward proggier atmospheres topped with liberally-strewn shred, resolving clearheaded as they nod into the last fadeout, encompassing and expansive in kind. Like the record as a whole, those last moments are rife with energy despite a moderated tempo, and they feel likewise thoughtful and explorational. This is where L’Ira del Baccano have come to reside in terms of style, and the level of craft on The Praise of Folly is one at which the band have likewise arrived organically over time.
Live shows to support the record start this weekend, appropriately enough, and will continue through next month with more reportedly to come. On the player below, The Praise of Folly premieres in full. Subsequent info came down the PR wire.
Please enjoy:
Doomdelic Instrumental Space Prog Rockers L’IRA DEL BACCANO are back with their official 5th full length album on Subsound Records “The Praise of Folly”. Out on February 20th 2026.
Rome based L’IRA DEL BACCANO melt doom & stoner rock influences such as Black Sabbath, Kyuss, Monster Magnet ; the psychedelia of Pink Floyd & Hawkwind; the heavy-prog vibes of early Rush; modern bands like Motorpsycho, Elder, Monolord and the italian progressive heritage. Since 2014, the collaboration with the Italian label Subsound Records has led to the release of four full-lengths and one split album : ‘Terra 42’ (2014), ‘Paradox Hourglass’ (2017), ‘Si non Sedes is Live’ (2018), ‘Cosmic Evoked Potentials’ (2023) & ‘Tempus Deorum” (2025).
In february 2026, the fifth album, “The Praise of Folly”, will be released. L’IRA DEL BACCANO has toured intensely in Europe and participated in festivals as Dome Of Rock , Psychedelic Network Festival, Pietrasonica Fest… Thanks to the broad and heterogeneous kind of listeners, who goes from metalheads to progressive rock fanatics and Stoner-Doom fan the band played in different kinds of venues and shared the stage also with different types of bands. (Church of Misery, Ozric Tentacles, Ufomammut, Zu, Nebula, Orange Goblin, Samsara Blues Experiment and more).
Power, dynamics, psychedelic sounds layers and a love for improvisation are the defining features of the Italian combo’s live shows. The long tracks that have always characterized L’Ira Del Baccano are in constant evolution and motion during every concert.
Tracklisting: 1. The Praise of Folly (Pt.1) (12:55) 2. The Praise of Folly (Pt. 2) (8:08) 3. Stigma (13:04) 4. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (8:45)
The band will begin the live promotion of the album immediately after its release with an initial series of concerts across Germany and Austria :
The road to Folly 2026 part 1 22/02 Bologna – Freakout Club 25/02 Salzburg – Rockhouse 26/02 Wien – Venster 99 27/02 Bayreuth – Glashaus 28/02 Berlin – Neue Zukunft – Blues Bumps Fest 01/03 Dresden – Chemiefabrik 03/03 Weimar – C. keller 04/03 Nuremberg – Kunstverein 05/03 Recklinghausen – Backyard Club 06/03 Würzburg – Immerhin 07/03 Erlangen – Transfer 27/03 Rome – Defrag More TBA
Production & Mix: Alessandro Santori Main Instruments recorded LIVE in one take Music by: A. Santori & R. Malerba Arrangements: Santori with Malerba, Giannasso & Montemara’ Mastering by Claudio Gruer at Pisistudio Artwork by Michele Carnielli
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 27th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
The Mon‘s upcoming LP, Songs of Embrace, is the second of a two-part cycle that began with 2025’s Songs of Abandon (review here) called ‘Embrace the Abandon’ (get it?) that the solo-project of Ufomammut‘s Urlo is overseeing through their affiliated Supernatural Cat imprint. The first single, “Incantation,” is streaming now, and the cyclical waves of drone that build around the central exploratory figure speak to the solidification of purpose behind Urlo‘s work as The Mon through experiments in action. That is to say, surely trying new things is te idea, but there’s direction here enough that the material was carved into two separte, complementary releases. I’m curious how the two will play side by side.
The PR wire sent the following info, and the video for “Incantation” is at the bottom of the post:
THE MON: Ufomammut Solo Project To Issue Songs Of Embrace – The Second In A Two-Album Series, Embrace The Abandon – March 6th On Supernatural Cat Records; “Incantation” Video And Preorders Posted
Embrace The Abandon is the two-album series by THE MON, the solo vision of Urlo, vocalist/bassist of the long-running Italian heavy-psychedelic trio Ufomammut, as well as the co-founder of the internationally renowned poster art collective Malleus Rock Art Lab and of the independent label Supernatural Cat.
Where Ufomammut projects massive, otherworldly soundscapes, THE MON offers a more vulnerable and introspective experience. The music moves through shadowy electronic landscapes, ambient textures, and hypnotic dark folk, always guided by an emotional core that searches for meaning, balance, and transformation.
The name THE MON evokes several layers of meaning: a contraction of “demon,” “monk,” and the Japanese word 門 (mon, meaning “gate”), a symbolic passage toward altered states of consciousness and inner truth. This duality of light and dark, sacred and profane, runs through the entire project.
THE MON’s Embrace The Abandon is structured in two complementary chapters – Songs Of Abandon and Songs Of Embrace – the project depicting a journey of duality: loss and surrender on one side, acceptance and rebirth on the other.
Following the November 2025 release of the somber, acoustic guitar-driven Songs Of Abandon – perhaps the most intimate and vulnerable work Urlo has ever created – its companion album Songs Of Embrace is now ready to be heard. Songs Of Embrace is an instrumental counterpart – darker, ambient, and ritualistic – expands the emotional landscape of the series, rather than closing it. While the first part explored abandonment and loss, this one focuses on presence, proximity, and the physical act of staying. It is the answering breath, the inner voice. The album avoids resolution and comfort, embracing slowness, repetition, and bodily tension. It is not just music, it is a stream of consciousness, an inner search, a way of inhabiting what weighs without letting go.
While Songs Of Abandon is a collection of songs, nine tracks written in nine days, Songs Of Embrace is a continuous musical flow. It is a movement that changes, grows, erupts, slows down, settles, and rises again. Like the sea, it’s calm and still one moment, then moved by a simple breath of wind, suddenly breaking into a storm. The pieces are deeply interconnected, like embraces: some bring comfort, others carry pain; Compositions meant to be listened to in one continuous breath, allowing yourself to be held, rocked, and sometimes pushed away, just like in an embrace.
Songs Of Embrace was written, performed, produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Urlo at The Howl, Italy, and as with all Supernatural Cat releases, completed with artwork and videos by the Malleus Rock Art Collective.
Urlo reveals, “Songs Of Embrace was conceived more like a work of classical music, a suite: Different parts unfolding one into the next, each a continuation of the previous one, finding meaning only as a whole. For this reason, choosing individual tracks to represent the album is difficult. The pieces are deeply interconnected, like embraces: some bring comfort, others carry pain. These are compositions meant to be listened to in one continuous breath, allowing yourself to be held, rocked, and sometimes pushed away, just like in an embrace.
“‘Incantation’ is the first piece I chose to introduce Songs Of Embrace. It acts as a bridge to the previous record: a repeating guitar pattern that, like a spell, an incantation, slowly unfolds through sounds and reverbs, opening the path into the album’s inner journey.”
Songs Of Embrace will be released March 6th, on digital platforms, digisleeve CD, and LP. The vinyl will be issued in a standard pressing on 180-gram White/Black marble vinyl, and an extremely limited version in a run of 100 copies pressed on 180-gram Black/White blob effect vinyl in a hand-printed silkscreen cover, crafted by Malleus Rock Art Lab on high-quality paper, with a digital download and CD included. A bundle option including both Songs Of Abandon and Songs Of Embrace is also available.
Songs Of Embrace Track Listing: 1. Invocation Of The Abyss 2. Three Nails, One Heart 3. Incantation 4. The Sigil 5. A Pearlescent Pulse Of Light 6. Ritual Of Night Violence 7. Sovereign Of Silence 8. Embers Of Calendula 9. Echoes Of The Drowned 10. Embrace The Abandon
THE MON + kariti – European Tour 2026
18/3 — HR — Zagreb — Mochvara 19/3 — AT — Vienna — Arena 22/3 — DE — Berlin — K19 24/3 — DE — Halle — Hühnermanhattan 25/3 — DE — Bremen — TBA 26/3 — DK — Copenhagen — Lygtens Kro 27/3 — SE — Stockholm — Nalen Klubb 28/3 — NO — Oslo — Mausoleum Vigeland 31/3 — DE — Hannover — Stumpf 01/4 — BE — Kortrijk — The Pit’s 02/4 — BE — Leuven — Chapel Of Our Lady Of Fever 03/4 — NL — Eindhoven — Effenaar at ’t Rozenknopje 04/4 — NL — Utrecht — Black Earth at Moira 05/4 — DE — Karlsruhe — P8
Posted in Whathaveyou on December 31st, 2025 by JJ Koczan
This is one of those pairings that’s an absolute head-slapper; so obvious once it’s said out loud, like duh, how could you not see that coming? The Mon, which is Urlo from Ufomammut‘s let’s-get-even-weirder experimentalist outfit, and semi-solo atmospheric singer-songwriter Kariti pairing up for a tour makes rare sense, especially right now.
The Mon‘s 2025 release, Songs of Abandon (review here), may only have been one piece of a two-parter still to be concluded, but its being based around acoustic songwriting makes the material well-suited to complement Kariti, whose Still Life (review here), retained a singular identity while conjuring ambient depth to coincide with the emotional weight of the expressive voice at its center. You’re telling me these two are gonna end up doing songs together?
Well, uh, that sounds awesome. Here’s where it’s gonna happen:
In Spring 2026, I’ll finally bring Embrace The Abandon on the road.
After having to cancel the December shows with a heavy heart, being able to announce these dates now feels like a quiet victory, a return to something that needed time to grow.
I’ll join forces with kariti, an artist I deeply admire and a friend for many years, to present our new records: Embrace The Abandon, my two-part journey out on Supernatural Cat, and Still Life by kariti, out on Lay Bare Recordings.
Two different voices, two personal paths moving in parallel, meeting on stage each night.
A shared space where sound, silence, vibration, and emotion can unfold freely, shaping each performance in a unique and unrepeatable way.
This tour exists thanks to months of work, trust, and genuine human connection, and to all the promoters, venues, and people who believed in this idea from the very beginning. I’m deeply grateful to finally make this happen, and I truly look forward to sharing these moments with you.
We’re currently working on the final dates and confirmations.
If you’re a promoter or venue curator and feel this journey could resonate with your space and audience, I’d be very happy to hear from you and explore the possibility of building something together.
THE MON + kariti – European Tour 2026
18/3 — HR — Zagreb — Mochvara 19/3 — AT — Vienna — Arena 22/3 — DE — Berlin — K19 24/3 — DE — Halle — Hühnermanhattan 25/3 — DE — Bremen — TBA 26/3 — DK — Copenhagen — Lygtens Kro 27/3 — SE — Stockholm — Nalen Klubb 28/3 — NO — Oslo — Mausoleum Vigeland 31/3 — DE — Hannover — Stumpf 01/4 — BE — Kortrijk — The Pit’s 02/4 — BE — Leuven — Chapel Of Our Lady Of Fever 03/4 — NL — Eindhoven — Effenaar at ’t Rozenknopje 04/4 — NL — Utrecht — Black Earth at Moira 05/4 — DE — Karlsruhe — P8
Posted in Reviews on December 19th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
The first thing to know is that The Mon‘s acoustic-strum-folk-meets-psychedelic-drone offering, Songs of Abandon, is part one of a two-part cycle, with the intention that a darker, reportedly more ritualistic instrumental complement titled Songs of Embrace to follow in 2026. Between those two titles, one might imagine Songs of Abandon to be somehow colder or starker in some way, and while I won’t discount the lone human presence of Urlo (also of Ufomammut, the Malleus graphic arts collective, and the Supernatural Cat record label behind this release) at the foundation of this material, the experimentalism behind his songwriting in this project, resulting in moments like the intertwining vocal layers of “Hourglass” or the synth-infused (I think) classical-but-foreboding shimmer of “Little Bird,” doesn’t necessarily sound as lonely as one might expect. Or perhaps it’s a more cosmic kind of loneliness.
That is, while Songs of Abandon has been posited as composed during a darker period for the artist making it, Urlo‘s search for catharsis, comfort, whatever it might’ve been, in these songs lends them a fullness of sound and an immersive aspect that resonates beyond the intimacy of a solo, guy-with-guitar singer-songwriter. While not at all without its quiet spaces from the organ line and tapping cymbals of the introduction “Smiling Dog” and the surprisingly straight-ahead acid folk of “Two Stones” — and onward from there — the 10-song/35-minute collection is never entirely still, and it never loses that human presence and sense of expression.
There’s a balance being struck between those sides, surely, but it’s a malleable thing as well, and the guitar gets used differently between a chord-strummer like the first half of “The Hidden Ghost,” which shortly gives over to a distorted amplifier hum for a different kind of echoing, ethereal noise that brings an almost sneaky hypnotic aspect ahead of the fading in guitar strum of “Hourglass,” and the subsequent “The Moon and the Devil,” where the guitar and keys hold sway together for a darker atmospheric affect.
If you caught wind of the grim mystique that pervaded The Mon‘s 2023 LP, EYE (review here), or the ceremonial drone of the earlier-2025 single “Major Arcana” that coincided with a tarot series by Malleus, then Songs of Abandon will likely be a departure. While never quite as Eastern-tinged as, say, Lamp of the Universe — there’s no sitar, for example — there is communion with something beyond the self happening in the material, but it happens in a grounded way.
I don’t know the recording process for a piece like “Two Stones” or the later “The Fluorescent Sand,” which has a keyboardy intro but is so much more about the vivid emotional expression of Urlo‘s vocals that despite being just two and a half minutes long, it stands out from what surrounds, but I’d imagine it varies. Songs of Abandon was put together over a couple years, and so it seems likely that during that time, different songs would have different instrumental foundations. That said, on balance for the record as a whole, it’s Urlo‘s seeking voice and questioning guitar doing the underscoring.
Or so it feels to the listener, anyhow. It’s not that the running water, the synth or certainly not the electric guitar figure throughout and at the end of the penultimate “Beautiful Star” are somehow superfluous to the song itself. That is not, not, not what I’m saying. But even for a self-recording multi-instrumentalist, the practical reality is that one’s hands can only be doing so much at one time, and if Songs of Abandon became a repository for Urlo during the time of its making of this kind of acoustic-guitar-based material, then that doesn’t mean what’s been built up around that isn’t essential.
Especially for a work and a project that is so committed to ambience and to realizing expanded definitions of heavy in its arrangements, these elements are more than the finer details they might otherwise be. As much as the tag ‘experimental’ implies throwing sounds at a wall and seeing what sticks, Songs of Abandon finds its solace in both the human outreach and in the otherworldly vibes pervading around it. Those looking for some glimmer of Ufomammut‘s crush may be able to transpose some likeness to the layered-in shouts of “Mayhem,” but if anything, this record sees The Mon step further into itself than did EYE or Urlo‘s prior output under the moniker.
At very least, it’s operating in a different way, and with a more direct focus on folkish human expression. As to what this might portend for Songs of Embrace, it’s more fun to speculate than it is useful, especially since that second-of-two release is impending and likely not years off and not such a long wait. Urlo has used three descriptors for the answer to this outing, and they are “darker, ambient, and ritualistic,” so that’s what I’m going on.
That would be a shift in sound from much of Songs of Abandon, naturally, but if those characteristics are providing the ’embrace’ in that title, then one can only say it will function similarly to how Songs of Abandon seems to dwell in the aftermath of abandonment, seeking and maybe even finding some relief in the writing and playing. In that way, Songs of Abandon is the most personal work The Mon has yet conjured and that also retains its ambient/experimental mindset makes it that much more individualized.
Posted in Reviews on November 17th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Happy Monday, and welcome to the Quarterly Review. Or welcome back, anyhow. I said last month that I might try to sneak another one of these weeks in before the end of November, and I’m honestly not prepared to say this’ll be it for the year. There’s a lot out there to keep up with, and this is the most efficient means I have for ‘keeping up,’ as best as I can do that anyhow. I don’t know, man. I’m just trying to get through the day.
This QR is 50 releases — I was slating them right up to yesterday, so some of it’s pretty fresh — and will go from today through Friday. It will be most, if not all, of what is posted this week. I hope you find something you enjoy. Let’s go.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Beastwars, The Ship // The Sea
At nearly 15 years’ remove from their self-titled debut (review here), New Zealand’s Beastwars have been through ringers in life and music alike, but their sound on their sixth full-length, they’ve never sounded quite so refined. Understand, it’s Beastwars, so I still mean immersive and crushing riff-heavy rock, which the band have honed to a point of bordering on noise rock in pieces like “The Storm” or the later “You Know They’re Burning the Land.” “Rust” and “The Howling” maintain a sense of the epic with Matt Hyde‘s shouts alternately into and out from the abyss, but the band have grown in the six years since their last album of originals, 2019’s IV (review here), and for the blowout in “The Devil” and the weight of chug in “Guardian of Fire,” their impact feels all the more craterous for it.
I won’t take away from the shorter bangers here, whether it’s the wah-on immediacy of “Listen Close” or “Weird Scenes” with its stick-click immediacy, but each half(-ish) of Lacertilia‘s third LP (first for Majestic Mountain), Transcend, ends with a more extended cut, with “Nothing Sacred” (10:34) and “The Sun is the Key” (7:13) rounding out their respective sides, and the band are right to take the time when they take it. Of course, it’s symptomatic of the broader variety brought to the Cardiff five-piece’s craft, and they make Transcend a showcase of their reach, be it into acoustic strum and emergent bluesier scorch on “Over and Out,” the twisting lead guitar progressivism of “Deviate From the Plan,” which meets the grandeur halfway, or the percussion-laced instrumentalist build of the semi-title-track “Transcending.” They end up offering something different with each of the 10 songs, and balance raucousness and expressive purpose as they go in malleable and distinctive style.
With their debut album, Turin three-piece Dune Aurora draw together disparate ideas from across the modern riffy pastiche such that garage-style sway and more traditonalist stoner chug combine with at-times-ethereal melody, desert push, psychedelia and, in the case of “Trapdoor,” a poppier take entirely. There’s cohesion in the songwriting to match the aesthetic ambition, though, and Dune Aurora don’t come off as haphazard so much as multifaceted. The reworked prior single “Fire” demonstrates a fuzzy drive waiting in the wings as part of their approach, but the nod in “Burning Waters” is more dug in, and “Sunless Queen” reveals a patience underlying their builds that might come out more on subsequent outings, but the shove of “Crocodile” and that Nirvana riff in “Dune Chameleon” are vital to Ice Age Desert too, and it’s still just a sampling of the elements Dune Aurora use to ensnare the listener. As much as they have going on, that they don’t come across as confused seems to give them all the more potential.
Ghost Pain is the debut two-songer from Almeria, Spain, post-metallic four-piece Khayrava, who present “Red Hot Sun” (7:04) and “Ghost Pain” (10:32) with a marked sense of texture as part of their intention. Both tracks crush, but both also offer a moment of departure from that, and the latter plays off the impact of the former with a keyboardier air and its later divergence into floating melody and crash before, just past the eight-minute mark, they torch the whole thing with a worthy and minutes-long crescendo. “Red Hot Sun” is huge, but its midsection gives over to a break of Tool-y groove met with heavy post-rock flourish from the guitar. That also, of course, comes back around to the pummel, but it’s in the getting there that Khayrava begin to reveal the character of the band, and with the depth of mix they bring to Ghost Pain and the clear intent toward nuance of style, I’ll be on the lookout for where they go from here.
“Who invented 9-5,” River Cult ask on “Fast Crash.” “They should be shot dead,” is the answer the lyrics give. Fair. The third long-player from the heretofore undervalued New York-based disgruntled fuzzbringers manages to make a mental health crisis swing like desert rock on “Smoke Break,” the sixth of the seven inclusions on the 38-minute offering, seeming to answer the crash-in, warm tone and lyrical fuckall of the opening title-track in the process. They’re not wrong, and if you’re gonna say the world sucks, at least “Feels Good to Scream” has a density of distortion to hold up to the message, vocals biting through like early-metal’s cultist inheritor, cavernous and obscure ahead of centerpiece “Mind the Teeth” start-stop chugging as the lore of ‘The Wolf’ is cast. The trio of guitarist/vocalist Sean Forlenza, bassist Anthony Mendolia and drummer Eli Pizzuto (ex-Naam) find a niche for themselves in downtrodden fuzz, ending with “New Song,” which even having been tracked at Brooklyn’s Studio G sounds fresh off the stage.
In the soaring vocals of Kate Prokop and the riffs behind them chugging away at the verses of “The Dead Follow” and the moodier surge into the layered hook of “Witch Hunt,” Omaha, Nebraska’s Beast Eagle answer their 2024 self-titled debut EP with five more songs of metal-rooted heavy groove, clear and fluid in “Sharp Tongue” but not without aggression underlying. The bass in “The Dead Follow” is mixed the way I feel bass should always be — forward — and that gives even the mellower stretch as they move into the ending a different sense of presence than it might otherwise have, but in the galloping verse and sprawling chorus of “The Demonstration” and the rush of “Send Me Down,” the latter of which, admittedly, is more of a rocker, speaking to a burgeoning dynamic in their sound, they retain a feeling of charge, and that defines Sorceress‘ 19-minute run as much as the taut chug in “Sharp Tongue.”
Having relocated from Denver to Asbury Park, New Jersey, The Munsens are no less vicious or crushing on their second album, Degradation in the Hyperreal. “Eternal Grasp” starts the procession as much death metal as it is sludge, which is an ethic that “Supreme Death” will bring to gorgeously extreme fruition a short time later, while pieces like the melancholic, minimalist instrumental “Vesper” and the blistering megasludger “Sacred Ivory” and the outro “I Avow” offset the onslaught of “The Knife,” “Scaling Ceausescu’s Balcony” and the lumber-into-double-kick of “Drauga,” vocals offering precious little comfort for the downward journey of the record’s 46 minutes. That “The Knife” finishes, specifically, ahead of “I Avow,” stands as testament to just how far The Munsens have pushed into extremity over the course of their decade-plus, but they are not entirely unforgiving either, despite having grown only more gnashing over the course of their decade-plus tenure.
They’re not thrash, but thrash is part of what Dayton, Ohio’s Rattlesnake Venom Trip get up to on their new four-song EP, Eclipse the Sun, with a sharp edge to the riffing on lead cut “Hollowed Eyes” that tells the tale. The second half of that track subsides some in terms of forward thrust, setting up the still-chugging-but-slower “Ablaze Set I,” with a more resonant hook, and “Brushstrokes/Eclipse the Sun,” which in its first half is as far as Rattlesnake Venom Trip go in divergence from the burl and push, but in its second answers for the metal and the nod both that it seems to have inherited from the opener. Punchy bass’ed reinforcement takes place over the five minutes of “Cold Winds Blow,” and the four-piece maintain a clear-eyed sense of identity through whatever turns the material makes, somewhere between heavy rock, Southern metal, thrash and stoner idolatry. You could sit and parse it, but the band make it pretty easy to trust where they’re headed as they go.
For their third long-player, The Craft of Pain (on Glory or Death), Brazil’s Pesta offer a take on doom born of traditional metal. They’re not aggro, or outwardly depressive, but “Masters of the Craft of Pain” and the swinging “Marked by Hate” find a route from Sabbath and the NWOBHM to doom just the same. A guest appearance from Scott “Wino” Weinrich (The Obsessed, etc.) on vocals for “Mirror Maze” is a departure, but not so radical as to be out of place, especially backed by the depth of groove in the subsequent rocker “In the Drive’s End.” On side B, the pair of “The Inquisitor Pt. I” and the initially-acoustic-based “The Inquisitor Pt. II” provide a more theatrical reach, but the acoustic-and-key-strings “Canto XXI” brings in Rodrigo Garcia (Diffuse Reality) for another curve before “Shadows of a Desire” returns to ground to finish out not so far from where “Marked by Hate” left off. At no point do Pesta feel like they’ve diverged from where they want to be.
The lyrics posted with the cumbersomely-titled “J.I.B.B.E.R.I.S.H. (John Inflates Balloons Because Every Remote Island Starts Hallucinating)” are wrong, and the level of psychedelic tricksterism and playfulness across Atom Lux‘s debut, Voidgaze Dopamine Salad is such that I’m not sure if that’s on purpose or not. Rest assured, different references to “I Am the Walrus” are being made. The self-recording solo-project of Roman multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Lucio Filizola is a garden of weirdo delights, with the keyboardy bounce of “Death by Small Talk” giving away none of the subversively easy garage swing of “Spaghettification Apocalypse” and “Stoned Monkey Heritage” bashing away like it’s an alternate-reality 1964, which by the way I’m no longer convinced it isn’t. It’s from gleeful oddities like “Dance Plague Delirium” that progressive rock first emerged in the comedown era. The same trajectory may or may not be in store for Atom Lux long term, but right now any kind of ‘comedown’ still feels a good ways off.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 16th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
So the deal is this. The Mon, which is the experimental/arthouse solo-project of Ufomammut bassist/vocalist Urlo, is set to release two albums. The first, Songs of Abandon, is out Nov. 7 and there’s a video up from it now at the bottom of this post. You’ll find it mellow, psychedelic and melancholic in a resigned kind of way. That’s on purpose. The second, Songs of Embrace, will be out in Spring 2026 and promises a somewhat brighter point of view. The two together form a (Voltron! no it’s not Voltron) duology titled ‘Embrace the Abandon,’ seemingly intended to showcase both perspectives through Urlo‘s layered solocraft.
That’s an easy sign-me-up as the video for “Your Eyes” finds Urlo taking a walk in an alternate dimension, subdued acid folk resulting in a sprawl of atmosphere in which the ebow-ish sounds and acoustic strum reside. At three and a half minutes, it’s over before you know it, but the sense of exploration remains resonant from The Mon, and I wouldn’t expect things to be so light/dark binary between the records in terms of the actual listening. If you’ve, say, been alive for five minutes or so, you know these things are rarely so cut and dry.
Info and vibe came courtesy of the PR wire:
THE MON: Ufomammut Solo Project To Release Songs Of Abandon – The First Of A Two-Album Series, Embrace The Abandon – November 7th On Supernatural Cat Records; “Your Eyes” Video And Preorders Posted
Embrace The Abandon is the new project by THE MON, the solo vision of Urlo, vocalist/bassist of the long-running Italian heavy-psychedelic trio Ufomammut, as well as the co-founder of the internationally renowned poster art collective Malleus Rock Art Lab and of the independent label Supernatural Cat.
Where Ufomammut projects massive, otherworldly soundscapes, THE MON offers a more vulnerable and introspective experience. The music moves through shadowy electronic landscapes, ambient textures, and hypnotic dark folk, always guided by an emotional core that searches for meaning, balance, and transformation.
The name THE MON evokes several layers of meaning: a contraction of “demon,” “monk,” and the Japanese word 門 (mon, meaning “gate”), a symbolic passage toward altered states of consciousness and inner truth. This duality of light and dark, sacred and profane, runs through the entire project.
THE MON’s Embrace The Abandon is structured in two complementary chapters – Songs Of Abandon and Songs Of Embrace – the project depicting a journey of duality: loss and surrender on one side, acceptance and rebirth on the other.
The first chapter of this journey, Songs Of Abandon is perhaps the most intimate and vulnerable work Urlo has ever created. Born in a moment of solitude and personal darkness, the album originated from a radical exercise: writing one song a day, for nine consecutive days, using only acoustic guitar and voice. Later, these sketches were shaped into fully realized tracks, with lyrics and subtle layers of sound – not to overwhelm, but to underline the fragile, raw atmosphere that pervades them. The result is a stripped-down, emotionally charged collection that embodies an inner search: the power of music as a tool to face abandonment, to dig into oneself, and ultimately to glimpse the possibility of an embrace.
Songs Of Abandon was written, performed, produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Urlo at The Howl, Italy, between 2023 and 2025, and as with all Supernatural Cat releases, completed with artwork by the Malleus Rock Art Collective.
The first preview of this project arrives through a video for “Your Eyes.” Urlo states with its unveiling, “‘Your Eyes’ closes Songs Of Abandon and was among the very first pieces I wrote for the project. It was 2021 and I set myself the task of writing one song a day for nine days, armed only with my acoustic guitar. Those sketches became the nine acoustic tracks that form Songs Of Abandon. Shaping them into their final form was far from easy. When the mix was finally complete, ‘Your Eyes’ revealed itself as the perfect ending, the closing of a circle. It marked a time when abandonment became a confrontation with myself, a way to re-embrace those eyes through my own gaze. From that darkness, the second part of the album would eventually rise.”
With Embrace The Abandon, THE MON reaffirms itself as one of the most personal and uncompromising projects. It is a body of work that fuses vulnerability and strength, speaking directly to the listener with sincerity, leading them through shadow towards light. An intimate yet powerful sound experience, intertwining the minimalism of acoustic folk with the dark, visionary tension that has always defined Urlo’s artistic path.
The second chapter, Songs Of Embrace, is an instrumental counterpart – darker, ambient, and ritualistic – and it will be unveiled in the Spring of 2026.
Songs Of Abandon will be released digitally, on CD, and on vinyl – with both a standard LP pressing and a limited pressing of 100 copies – on November 7th. Those who preorder the limited edition of Songs Of Abandon will have early access to an advance preorder of Songs Of Embrace as well. Find preorders at the Supernatural Cat webshop HERE:https://www.supernaturalcat.com/home/?s=the+mon&post_type=product
1. Smiling Dog 2. Two Stones 3. The Hidden Ghost 4. Hourglass 5. The Moon & The Devil 6. Mayhem 7. Little Bird 8. The Fluorescent Sand 9. Beautiful Star 10. Your Eyes
