By way of a confession, Monolord were announced a bit ago as the first band for Freak Valley 2016, the festival set to take place next May 26-28 in Netphen, Germany, so I’m combining that word with the news that Berlin’s Rotor have also joined the lineup. Rotor, now past the 15-year mark as a band, will be supporting their fifth album, Fünf, which was released last week on Noisolution. They’ll also be touring in Nov. on a self-booked run to herald Fünf‘s arrival.

Monolord, meanwhile, are fast working their way toward veteran status. Already they’ve done Roadburn, and next month they play Desertfest Belgium as the latest in a slew of appearances of increasing profile, and almost directly after their Desertfest slot, they’ll make their way over for their first US tour (dates here), supporting no less than Windhand on what’s sure to be one of fall 2015’s heaviest runs.

Both are great pickups for Freak Valley 2016, and I’m sure they’re just the start of more to come.

Announcements follow:

For fifteen years RoToR have been crafting their dry as a bone instrumental sound merging 90s Stoner Rock and 70s Space Rock. From Berlin, founded 1998. First as a trio, now a quartet. Four studio albums and a live album. The fifth chapter now: “Fünf” (English: “Five”) is the title of the new album.

Those who have seen the band live know about the crushing heavyness, the ultra-tight rhythmic changes and the melancholic space trips. The intoxicating energy and radiation is the real quintessence of the band.

Contrasts meet: Stoner and Psychedelic, Kraut and Progressive make encounters and collapse. RoToR’s music has become more sophisticated, more transparent, more diverse, before suddenly the ton-weighing head-shaking part kicks in to take the listener to far away sound-worlds…

Here we go!! Please welcome Swedens doom metal starsailors MONOLORD

Formed in 2013, Monolord are made up of Swedish rockers Thomas Jäger, Esben Willems, and Mika Häkki. Both Jäger and Willems were in the Swedish boogie rock band Marulk and started Monolord as a side project as a way to play some more heavier tunes, they quickly added Häkki (from The Don Darlings, ex Rotten Sound) and realized that they had something very special between the 3 of them. Monolord is for more than just doom-metal fanatics and will satisfy all fans of guitar driven rock, stoner and monolithic riffs.

With all the flavours of an iconic doom classic Empress Rising follows in the footsteps of Sleep’s Holy Mountain, Pallbearer’s Sorrow and Extinction and Electric Wizard’s Witchcult Today with melodic vocals and harmonies that are as mind bending as they are anthemic.

Did we mention that Monolord are heavy? Fuck are they HEAVY!

Freak Valley Festival – 26th-27th-28th May 2016
www.freakvalley.de – www.rockfreaks.de

FVF 3-day tickets – only 69€ incl. camping!!
FREAK VALLEY FESTIVAL: No Fillers – Just Killers
Line-up 2016:
Monolord [RidingEasy Records] – Doom/Sludge
Rotor [Noisolution] – Instrumental StonerRock/Psychedelic

www.freakvalley.de
https://www.facebook.com/freakvalley
https://twitter.com/FreakValley
https://shop.ticketscript.com/channel/web2/start-order/rid/LYSQRABJ/language/en

Rotor, “Volllast”

Monolord, Vænir (2015)

I have good reason to believe this clip of Wino joining Rotor on stage for a rendition of The Obsessed‘s classic “Neatz Brigade” was filmed at the 2010 South of Mainstream festival, which is put on every year by the label Exile on Mainstream — purveyors of such Wino-ly provisions as the Adrift acoustic record and Heavy Kingdom collaboration with Conny Ochs, among others — but I don’t have confirmation on that. For what it’s worth, it’s Rotor‘s YubeTou channel that put it up. Either way, it’s Wino joining the Berlin-native instrumentalists on stage in 2010, and that’s definitely “Neatz Brigade,” so that’s enough for me. The South of Mainstream banner in the background of the clip could also be a clue. Ha.

Rotor are no strangers to the song, having included it on their aptly-titled 2010 fourth album, 4 (review here), on which it was Nico Kozik handling vocal duties. Nothing quite like going to the source, however, and as one might expect, Wino kills it on the track, which comes from The Obsessed‘s 1994 major label flirtation, The Church Within. I’ll be the first to admit the sound is less than optimal here, but the video itself is pretty excellent visually. You won’t often hear me advocate for listening to Obsessed songs with the volume low — or Rotor, for that matter — but that might help too in this case.

Either way, it’s a cool curio for the last Wino Wednesday of 2012, and I hope you dig it:

I may have missed it, but perhaps there was some backlash to Berlin instrumental heavy proggers Rotor after their last album – some kind of, “Yeah, but there’s no way you can do that live,” that caused them to issue Festsaal Kreuzberg (Elektrohasch) in response. Okay, probably not, but either way, if there was any doubt to the natural feel of Rotor’s latter day studio output – thinking particularly of 2007’s 3 and last year’s ultra-progressive 4 – the live album certainly puts it to rest. A solid 45-minute set recorded in their hometown at the venue for which the album is named on Nov. 14, 2009, Festsaal Kreuzberg affirms the chemistry that has developed over the last decade-plus between the three members of Rotor. The nine tracks draw exclusively from 3 and 4 and sound crisp and clear but still definitively live, and the whole of Festsaal Kreuzberg has an organic flow that matches well the band’s balance between progressive structuring and riff-based heaviness. Fans and followers of Rotor who’ve never had the chance to see them live probably won’t find the whole of the experience replicated here – never having seen them (yet), I can’t say for sure either way – but for an instrumental band who has always shown it’s the music that matters, the music continues to be what matters on Festsaal Kreuzberg.

Although 4 was still months away from being released at the time this show was recorded, more than half the material comes from it in a five/four split with songs from 3. They open with “Drehmoment” from 4, the chugging riff of which builds and crashes with stylistic nuance, opening finally into a groove that’s a fitting launch point for Rotor’s set. One of 4’s overall strengths was its sense of atmosphere that came through even its heaviest moments, and Festsaal Kreuzberg loses some of that sensibility – being comprised of different material presented in a different order, it would have to – but the live energy is a more than fair replacement, and the audience rightly cheers as Rotor dives headfirst into the winding groove of “Hart am Wind,” from 3, which also precedes the title-track from that album. “Hart am Wind” breaks momentarily into a cleverly positioned quiet moment, seeming to come to an almost complete rest – though the bass and guitar are miraculously congruous – before picking back up with its heaviness. The momentum built carries through “3,” which was untitled on the album itself but appeared third on the track listing as it does here, and if there’s one frustrating aspect to Festsaal Kreuzberg, it’s that Rotor affect such a heady vibe that one really has to work to not be completely hypnotized by it. The fuzz bass and drum interplay beneath the guitar solo at the end of “3” is jazzed out in its intricacy, but the overarching groove remains paramount. Easy to miss, in other words, but worth not missing.

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Good news today for anyone who’s going to be in London come next Easter. German heavy prog instrumentalists Rotor are the latest band to be added to the lineup of Desertfest 2012, a fraction of which you can see in the banner above. I’ll be having more on the fest as we get closer to next April, leading up to actually covering the thing when the time comes. Can’t friggin’ wait.

Here’ the latest from the Desertfest website:

Desertfest are proud to announce Berlin-based psychedelic, stoner groove beasts Rotor. They are joining the already amazing line up at Desertfest, and we are made up to have these guys back in the UK. They are going to be playing on Friday 6th April.

Not that I needed an excuse, but it’s hard not to be jealous of the entire European continent when stuff like Rotor tours happens there. As it happens, those German instruproggers have teamed up with Croatian outfit Seven That Spells and fellow Berliners Neume for a run of dates that’s been dubbed The Brainbangers’ Ball Tour.

Good fun. Here are the dates and some info from Prog Sphere, who seem to be sponsoring or promoting the tour — or, at very least, was who emailed me about it:

This October is going to see a real stoner/psychedelic rock explosion when on Oct. 14 in Jena, Germany, Rotor, together with Seven That Spells and Neume will start the Brainbangers’ Ball 2011 tour. With motorik grooves and instrumental soul food served by Rotor, with Seven That Spells’ psychedelic rock from the 23^rd century and Neume’s two headed noise hydra, Germany, Austria, Croatia and The Netherlands will be echoing for a while led by the waves of three most unique psychedelic/stoner/noise rock bands at the moment. Check the official tour poster and tour dates below.

There will be given free tickets away (three per city, to be precise) for those who are willing to help in spreading the word out about this tour and the gigs in particular. So if you are fast enough, if you are enthusiastic enough, feel free to drop an email to info@prog-sphere.com and we will discuss further.

Brainbangers’ Ball Tour 2011:
14.10 Jena, Rosenkeller
15.10 Maastricht, Muziekgieterij 
17.10 Hamburg, Molotov 
18.10 Würzburg, Cafe Cairo 
19.10 München, Feierwerk 
20.10 Zagreb, Tvornica 
22.10 Schwäbisch Gmünd, Dusty Brains Fest II
24.10 Freiburg, White Rabbit 
25.10 Innsbruck, PMK
26.10 Wien, Arena
28.10 Solingen, Cobra
29.10 Berlin, Festsaal Kreuzberg

They’ve been in the business of instrumental stoner prog since 1998, and on their aptly-titled fourth album, 4, the Berlin trio Rotor (which might also be found written as RotoR) show no signs of slowing with age or growing lazy in their songwriting. If anything, 4 (released through Elektrohasch Schallplatten) is their most progressive offering yet, with quickly turning riffs and dynamics that run somewhere between raucous and tight-woven, the band themselves sounding remarkably crisp while forgoing almost entirely the bombast that’s associated these days with terms like “prog” and “stoner.” Though many would argue those words are inherently a contradiction, Rotor have no trouble putting them together to create an album that relies on overarching groove even as it indulges technical prowess.

You can hear it on a track like “Karacho/Heizer,” toward the end as the drums do a timing shift under an angular but still nod-worthy riff. Rotor sound confident in all aspects of their approach, and even in the brash starts and stops of “Derwisch,” on which the bass notably takes the fore, there is a balance to be found in what 4 offers. The band has grown over time to embrace their prog side more and more, but neither do they shy away from driving a riff home, as they do both on “Derwisch” and the less-overtly active later cut “Die Weisse Angst.” Guitarist/vocalist André “An3” Dietrich of countrymen noisemakers Dÿse shows up on the chemically-formulated track “An3R4,” donating one of the two vocal appearances to 4 and adding an aggression to the song that’s both surprising and a little undercutting of what Rotor does otherwise, but that’s an effective change from the rest of the record anyway.

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