Last day o’ the QR, and that’s always fun, but looking at the calendar and looking at my desktop, I might try to knuckle down for a follow-up edition next month. I know I traditionally do one in December, which is so, so, so stupid, even with the relative dearth of press releases around the holidays, because there’s so much else going on. But maybe in November, before the Thanksgiving holiday. I only have one thing maybe-slated for November now, so now would be the time to slate it. Check back Nov. 10? Roll it out on my sister’s birthday? Maybe.

For now though, one more batch of 10 to round out the 70 total releases covered here, and as ever, I’ve basically packed the final day with stuff I already know I like. That’s nothing against anything on any of the other days, but if you’re a regular around here, you probably already know that I load up the finish to make it easier on myself. Not that any day here was really hard to get through, but for everything else in life that isn’t sitting in front of the laptop and writing about music.

Thanks as always for reading. I hope you found something you dig in this QR. Back to normal tomorrow.

Quarterly Review #61-70:

Elder, Liminality/Dream State Return

Progressive heavy rock spearheads Elder surprise-dropped Liminality/Dream State Return, their first two-songer EP since 2012’s Spires Burn/Release (review here), a couple weeks ago. It’s their first studio outing since 2022’s Innate Passage (review here), and while one might be tempted to read into the melodic wash of “Liminality” (13:10) and the way its vocals become part of the song’s atmosphere, balanced for nuance and texture in the mix, and the keyboardier take on “Dream State Return,” the material was reportedly sourced from pieces of material left over from their last couple albums, rather than written new. Nonetheless, the way these parts are fleshed out underscores just how special a band Elder is, since basically they can take a progression they’ve had laying around for however long and turn into something so majestic. This, in combination with their work ethic, has made them the best band of their generation. They remain such.

Elder on Bandcamp

Stickman Records website

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Hibernaut, Obsidian Eye

Following 2023’s Ingress (review here), brash Salt Lake City four-piece Hibernaut — guitarist/vocalist Dave Jones (Oxcross, Dwellers, ex-SubRosa), lead guitarist Matt Miller, bassist Josh Dupree and drummer Zach Hatsis (Dwellers, ex-SubRosa) — begin to step further out from their influences with their second album, the six-track/47-minute Obsidian Eye. High on Fire remain a central point of inspiration, but you know how that band really kind of announced who they were with Blessed Black Wings and set themselves on their own path? There’s some of that happening in the grooves of “Pestiferous,” “Revenants” and others here, and while the galloping double-kick and dirt-coated declarations might ring familiar, Hibernaut are beginning to put their own stamp on their craft, and one remains curious how that will continue to manifest their persona in their sound. High on Fire never had a song like “Beset,” and that wah on “Engorge Behemoth” has just an edge of Sabbath-via-Electric Wizard, so there’s more here than marauding if you want to hear it.

Hibernaut website

Olde Magick Records on Bandcamp

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The Oil Barons, Grandiose

Titled as though they intended to preempt criticism of their own self-indulgence — a kinder-self-talk version might have been called ‘Expansive’ — the second album from L.A.’s The Oil Barons, Grandiose, is working with an expanded definition of heavy either way. Part desert rock, it’s also Western Americana enough to open with a take on Morricone and while they’re for sure laying it on thick with the gang-chanted version of “John Brown’s Body” worked in between the organ sway of “Gloria” and the nine-minute lap-steel-inclusive expanse of “Shinola.” The later heavy instrumental reacher “Quetzalacatenango” (16:39) and their beefing up of the Grateful Dead regular “Morning Dew” as “Morning Doom” (13:49) are longer, but there’s more going on here than track length, as the melodic twang-pop of “Vivienne” and the light-barroom-swing-into-harmonies-into-riffs of the subsequent “Death Hangs” demonstrate. Top it all off with a purported narrative and Grandiose lives up to its name, but also to its intention.

The Oil Barons on Bandcamp

The Oil Barons on Instagram

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Temple of Love, Songs of Love and Despair

The first Temple of Love full-length, Songs of Love and Despair, feels very much like a willful callout to classic goth rock. The core, partnered founding duo of vocalist Suzy Bravo (Witchcryer) and guitarist/vocalist Steve Colca (ex-Destroyer of Light), as well as the rhythm section of bassist Joseph Maniscalco and drummer Patrick Pascucci (Duel) begin with a string of catchy, uptempo numbers dark in atmosphere with an unmistakable sheen on the guitar tone and by the time the centerpiece instrumental “Paradise Lost” takes hold with a heavier shift leading into the second half of the album, with “Devil” as an obvious focal point, you’re hooked. The vocal trades on “Save Yourself” and the rocker “Joke’s on You,” with Colca growling a bit, distinguish them as modern, but they’re firm in their purpose unto the string sounds that cap “If We Could Fly,” and clearly aesthetic is part of the mission. They didn’t name themselves after a Sisters of Mercy LP by mistake.

Temple of Love website

Temple of Love on Bandcamp

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The Gray Goo, Cabin Fever Dreams

From garage-style heavy and psychedelic jamming, modern space boogie to denser, doomier roll and a stylistically-offbeat quirk that feels ever more intentional, Montana-based trio The Gray Goo are dug into this mini-gamut of style on their third album, Cabin Fever Dreams, with guitarist/vocalist Max Gargasz (who also recorded/produced) giving space in the mix (by Robert Parker) for the melody in Matt Carper‘s bass to come through on 10-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “Intrepid Traveler,” beginning a thread of nuance that emphasizes just how flexible the band’s sound is. Even amid the fuzz and chugging resolution of “Isolation” and the jammed-but-with-a-plan “Floodgates,” there’s a sense of looking beyond genre to internalized individualism, the latter carrying into the marching semi-nerd-rapped title-track, which breaks to let the weirdness persist before coming back around with a shuffle to close, while “Manic” (with Colton Sea on guest vocals) roughs up proto-punk until it hits a midsection of Sabbath blues and gets a little more shove from there. “Manic” brings this to a culmination and some chanting gives over the minimal psych experiment “Someone’s at the Door,” which closes. They’ve let go of some — not all, but some — of their earlier funk, but The Gray Goo remain delightfully on their own wavelength. Someone in this band likes Ween, and they’re better for it.

The Gray Goo Linktr.ee

The Gray Goo on Bandcamp

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Sergio Ch., Shiva Shakti Drama

A decade after his first solo release, the declarative 1974 (review here), former Los Natas guitarist/vocalist Sergio Ch. (né Chotsourian, also of Ararat, Soldati, numerous other projects and collaborations) has only broadened his palette around a central approach to avant folk and intimate experimentalism. “Las Riendas” has been around for a while, unless I’m wrong (always possible) and “Tufi Meme 94” is an unearthed four-track demo of the Los Natas song of the same name, but it’s in the repetitions and slow, fuzz-infused evolution of “Tear Drop,” the vocally-focused “Stairway” and the somehow-ceremonial “Centinelas Bajo el Sol” that Shiva Shakti Drama lays out its most ethereal reaches. The album was reportedly put together following an injury to Chotsourian‘s ear, during a recovery period after his “left ear blew up during a Soldati rehearsal.” So there’s healing to be had in “Little Hands” and the buzzing lead of “Violet,” as well as exploration.

Sergio Chotsourian on Instagram

South American Sludge Records on Bandcamp

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Spectral Fields, Spectral Fields IV

Spectral Fields is the duo of Jason Simon (Dead Meadow) and and Caleb Dravier (Jungle Gym Records), and with IV they present a two-part title-piece “IV A” (20:04) and “IV B” (23:12), with each extended track taking on its own atmosphere. The hand percussion behind “IV A” is evocative of quiet desert Americana, like clopping horseshoes, while “IV B” runs more sci-fi in its keyboard and synthy beat behind the central, malleable-and-less-still-than-it-seems overarching drone. The guitar on “IV A” works with a similar river’s-surface-style deceptive stillness. Immersion isn’t inevitable, and the challenge here is to dwell alongside the band in the material if you can, with the reward for doing so being carried across the gradually-shifting expanse that Simon and Dravier lay out. It’s not a project for everybody, but Spectral Fields shine with meditative purpose and ethereal presence alike.

Jason Simon on Bandcamp

Not Not Fun Records website

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Pink Fuzz, Resolution

The second full-length, Resolution, from Denver-based harmony-prone heavy rockers Pink Fuzz owes much of its impact to tempo and melody — which I think makes it music. The brother/sister duo of John Demitro (guitar) and bassist LuLu Demitro bass share vocal duties and trade lead spots to add variety across the taut, no-time-for-bullshit 10 songs as drummer Forrest Raup lends shove to the buzzing desert riffage of “Coming for Me,” while the title-track shreds into a ’90s-style ticky-ticky-tock of a groove and “Am I Happy?” moves from its standalone-voice beginning to a gorgeously executed build and roll, bolstered by the Alain Johannes mix bringing up the lead guitar alongside LuLu’s voice, but rooted in the performance captured rather than the after-the-fact balancing of elements. “No Sympathy” and “Worst Enemy” stick closer to a Queens of the Stone Age influence, but the desert is a starting point, not the end of their reach. It’d be fair to call them songwriting-based if they didn’t also kick so much ass as players.

Pink Fuzz Linktr.ee

Permanent Teeth Records on Bandcamp

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The Dukes of Hades, Oracle of the Dead

Having the tone is one thing and making it move is another, but Dorset, UK, two-piece The Dukes of Hades bring forth their debut EP, Oracle of the Dead with a pointed sense of push, more so once they’re on the other side of rolling-into-the-slowdown opener “Seeds of Oblivion,” in “Last Rites,” “Pigs” and “Constant Grief,” where the tempo is higher and the bruises are delivered by the measure. Even Gareth Brunsdon‘s snare on “Constant Grief” comes across thick, never mind the buzzing riffs of Steve Lynch, whose guttural vocals top the procession. They save their most fervent shove for the two-minute finale “Death Defying Heights,” but the eight-minute penultimate “Tomahawk” sees them work in more of a middle-paced range while executing trades in volume and even letting go to silence as they hit minute six soon to burst back to life, so they’re already messing with the formula a bit even as they write out what that formula might be. That’s just one of the hopeful portents on this gritty and impressive first outing.

The Dukes of Hades on Bandcamp

The Dukes of Hades on Instagram

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Worse, Misandrist

A noise-infused trio from Vancouver — or maybe it’s just that their logo reminds me of Whores. — the three-piece Worse issued their latest single “Misandrist” in memory of Ozzy, following on from the also-one-songer “Mackinaw” from earlier in the year. The newer cut is more lumbering and establishes a larger tonal presence by virtue of its instrumentalist take, while drummer Matt Wood brought party-time shouts to “Mackinaw,” which of course emphasized and complemented the central riff in a different way. Out front of the stage, guitarist Shane Clark and bassist Frank Dingle offer rumble and spacious distortion, the effect seeming to build up with each new, lurching round as they dirge to the fading ringout. Sludgy in form, the affect presents itself like a half-speed High on Fire, which if you’ve got to end up somewhere, is a more than decent place for “Misandrist” to be. If you’re still reading this, yes, I’m talking about myself as well as the band. They’ve got one LP out. I’d take another anytime they’ve got it ready.

Worse on Bandcamp

http://www.instagram.com/worseband/

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Day two. Normally this is time for hubristic gibberish about how easy the QR will be, the overconfidence of one whose trees rarely appear as forests. But we persist anyhow, and today looks pretty good from where I’m sitting now, so despite the ‘Day 2 on a Monday’ weirdness, which I’m pretty sure makes no one other than myself even raise an eyebrow, things are rolling and one hopes will continue to be fluid. I wouldn’t say Day 1 came together easily, since it took me like two and a half days to get done, but neither was out unpleasant. Hoping for more of the same here, plus efficiency.

Quarterly Review #11-20:

Queens of the Stone Age, Alive in the Catacombs

Something of an identity crisis in Queens of the Stone Age perhaps that sees the long-running highest commercial export of desert rock shift from the cloying pop of their last two albums to a comparatively stripped down live recording in — you guessed it — catacombs, where apparently the acoustics are pretty sweet. Anybody remember when Tenacious D went into ‘the cave’ on the Tribute EP? No? Didn’t think so. Frontman Josh Homme, who carries the minimal arrangements on vocals largely with ease, and his ever-ace band filmed the whole thing; it’s all sepia, all very artsy, and they do “Kalopsia” and dip back 20 years to finish with “I Never Came” after “Suture Up Your Future,” which is the second inclusion by then from 2007’s Era Vulgaris. All told it’s five songs and 27 minutes, and whether you hear it as a cringe hyperindulgence of unaware self-parody or as an expression of human artistry in organic form surrounded by memento mori probably depends on how deep you run with the band. But they’re not hurting anybody either way.

Queens of the Stone Age website

Matador Records website

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Breath, Brahman

Between recording and then remixing/remastering their 2021 debut Primeval Transmissions (review here) and signing to Argonauta Records, Portland meditative duo Breath, comprised of Ian Caton and Steven O’Kelly, expanded the lineup with Lauren Hatch on keys and their second album, Brahman, brings Rob Wrong (Witch Mountain) into the fold on guitar as well as helming the recording. The sense across the eight songs/42 minutes is still of exploring the reaches of consciousness, very post-Om in the foundational basslines and dry vocals, but having Wrong rip out a solo in each break of “Awen” sure doesn’t hurt, and hearing the full band come together around the culmination of “Hy-Brasil,” keys, guitar, bass, drums all-in tonally, is emblematic of their expanding horizons. As for those, “Sages” pushes toward its own vision of psych rock in conversation with the opener, and “Cedars of Lebanon” demonstrates malleability and balance that one hopes portend more to come as the band continues to grow and gel.

Breath Linktr.ee

Argonauta Records website

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Johan Langquist The Castle, Johan Langquist The Castle

Kind of an awkward moniker grammatically for the solo-band fronted by original/once-again/maybe-erstwhile Candlemass vocalist Johan Langquist. Is it possessive? Is he The Castle? I don’t quite understand, but from the operatic complement of Emelie Lindquist‘s backing vocals on opener “Eye of Death” through the litany of compiled singles Johan Langquist The Castle dropped over the course of 2024, there’s no mistaking the classic nature of the doom. “Castle of My Dreams” flows keyboardier on balance, while “Where Are the Heroes” gives riffers shelter in its chug, while “Raw Energy” and “Revolution” toy with the balance between the two sides, with “Freedom” as a classic-metal epic and “Bird of Sadness” as the comedown epilogue. Langquist, absent decades between fronting the first Candlemass LP in 1986 and rejoining the band circa 2011, would seem to be making up for lost time, and the ideas he’s exploring here warrant the investigation. I’m curious where this leads, which I think I’m supposed to be, so right on.

Johan Langquist The Castle on Instagram

I Hate Records website

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Maliciouz, Tortoise

From Joshua Tree, California, Maliciouz is the solo-outfit of Michael Muckow, who handles guitar, bass and drums for the molasses-thick instrumentalist proceedings. Tortoise arrives beating you over the head with its tone and metaphor alike; eight songs and 58 minutes of lumbering density wrought with dug-in purpose, harnessing heaviness-of-place as riffs and often melancholic drone metal crash. It’s an art project, but without pretense of being anything other than it is, and Muckow — who makes a point of noting his age (67) in the press material — composes for flow and immersion as each slow march gives way to the next, culminating in the semi-acoustic “The End,” which is no less on-the-nose than calling the album Tortoise to start with. No grand reflections, no sweeping statement. Tortoise lets the riffs do the talking and they say plenty about the grit and expanse Muckow is trying to conjure. Be careful out there. He makes it easy to get lost.

Maliciouz on Bandcamp

Maliciouz on Instagram

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Steve Von Till, Alone in a World of Wounds

The former co-guitarist/vocalist of Neurosis has come a long way since his guy-and-guitar beginnings as a solo artist, and Alone in a World of Wounds reaps the textural fruit of Steve Von Till‘s willful artistic progression in a piece like the leadoff “The Corpse Road” or “Distance,” which caps side A fluidly with the only use of drums on the record, reminiscent of The Keening‘s awareness of sonic weight and atmospheric sidestep. The cello, synth and field recordings build out what would be minimalist arrangements without them and remain early-morning quiet, the piano on the spoken-word-topped “The Dawning of the Day (Insomnia)” and flirtations with lushness on “Horizons Undone” softly shaping the album’s world with the electronics of “Old Bent Pine” ahead of the guitar-based “River of No Return,” which closes with what feels like an updated take on Von Till‘s earlier woodsfolk craft, reminding that ‘heavy’ is just as much existential as it is aural.

Steve Von Till website

Neurot Recordings store

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Mrs Frighthouse, Solitude Over Control

Solitude Over Control is as much a confrontation as an album, and that’s very clearly the intention behind Glasgow’s Mrs Frighthouse for their Lay Bare-issued debut LP, Solitude Over Control. Its 11 songs foster a bleak gamut of industrial sounds, portraying dark and inflicted sexual violence as part of the band’s expression. Slaying rapists, then, and fair enough. Intertwining layers of vocals and experimentalist pieces like “Seagulls (Part 1)” give an avant-garde air to the crush of “DIY Exorcism” and the lurching, abrasive finish of “White Plaster Roses,” soprano vocals and electronic noise externalizing the unsettled in a way that can only really be thought of as ‘extreme’ in a musical sense. “My body has never been mine,” confess the lyrics of “Our Culture Without Autonomy” with horror-style keyboard behind them; there’s a show being put on here, but it’s visceral just the same, and the later “My Body is a Crime Scene” turns the accusation direct: “My body is a crime scene/He did this to me/My body is a crime scene/You did this to me” in a moment that lands powerfully unless you’re a fucking sociopath.

Mrs Frighthouse Linktr.ee

Lay Bare Recordings website

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Droid & I Am Low, Eroded Forms/Inertia

A joint release between Majestic Mountain and Copper Feast Records, Eroded Forms/Inertia presents as a double-EP split release between Melbourne, Australia, melodic heavy post-metallic rockers Droid, who dare toward aggression on “Reverence” and the sludgier shouts of “Ruin” after leading off with “Khaki” without giving away the plot such that the blastbeats of “Resonance” still hit as a surprise, and Sweden’s I Am Low, who answer the fullness of tone with careening on “Sweet M16” before the grunge melody of “Greed” makes that song a highlight, “Waves” flows with less emotional baggage and a subtle hook, and “Inertia” wraps as a landing point with duly vibrant crash. Grunge and a hairy kind of fuzz are shared between the bands, but each has their own purpose. I don’t know if it’s a release of convenience to make it a split, but it makes for an engaging showcase, and if you’ve never come across either of them, the best arguments for digging in are right there in the songs.

Droid Linktr.ee

I Am Low on Bandcamp

Copper Feast Records website

Majestic Mountain Records store

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Tar Pit, Scrying the Angel Gate

Portland five-piece doomly flamekeepers Tar Pit begin their second full-length (on Transylvanian) with the 10-minute three-parter “Dagon, Dark Lord Dwelling Beneath,” the longest inclusion (immediate points) at 10:15 and bookended with the title-cut at the record’s end. Between, from the more rocking aspects of “Coven Vespers” to the downtrodden roll of “Blessed King of Longing,” the five-piece remind of doom at the turn of the century, when ‘traditionalism’ in doom metal was something of a defiance against modernity instead of an aesthetic unto itself. More than 20 years, The Gates of Slumber, Reverend Bizarre, and what was then the Church of True Doom would seem to have evolved into Tar Pit‘s Eldritch Doom Syndicate, and that’s nothing to complain about as “Blue Light Cemetery” accounts for Candlemass and Cathedral after the dim-blues of “Jubilee” secures the band’s place in the heavy morose. If you were just getting into doom, this kind of thing might make you want to start a band, and yes, that’s a compliment.

Tar Pit website

Transylvanian Recordings on Bandcamp

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GRGL, Horror-Bloated Ouroboros

Dirt-coated riffing leads the way on GRGL‘s Horror-Bloated Ouroboros six-song EP, as Jake‘s guitar, Hal‘s bass and Nick‘s drumming in the first-names-only Salt Lake City trio align around a chug in the opening “Horror-Bloated Ouroboros (An Overview),” that, despite the dry-throated barks that top it, remains among the more accessible moments of the churning sludge-doom outfit’s 23-minute outing. To wit, “Born Again” and the even more gurgley (hey wait a minute!) “My Skeleton” takes roughly the same elemental formula and slows it the frick down, thereby becoming immediately more tortured. The overarching impression is unipolar — raw, heavy, miserable — and the vocals are part of that, but the dynamic between those first two songs is answered for in the uptick of pace that arrives with “My Pie Hole” and the angularity of the shorter instrumental “Absorption/Secretion,” while the plodding reprise “Born Again (Again)” closes so as to make sure everybody ultimately gets where they need to be, i.e., hammered into the ground. Eat dust shit sludge. Hard to get away from thinking of this as the true sound of our times. Maybe it’s the title.

GRGL on Bandcamp

GRGL on Instagram

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Grusom, III

It’s a clear and classic style across Grusom‘s aptly-titled third album, III, which arrives some seven years after they were last heard from with 2018’s II (review here), the band who’ve become a low-key staple of the Kozmik Artifactz roster demonstrating in no uncertain terms what’s gotten them there. Vintage-heavy heads will find plenty to dig in the organ-laced flow of “Shadow Crawler,” “Hell Maker,” the later “Fatal Romance” and the more open finale “Mortal Desire,” and while “Le Voyage” has many of the same aspects at work, it shows the Danish six-piece as flexible enough in their approach to convey a range of emotions, ditto the wistful Graveyard-y “Memories” and the interlude “Euphoria,” making sure that among the places III might take a given listener, there’s nothing to remove them from the procession carried along by the band.

Grusom website

Kozmik Artifactz store

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It’s been 11 years since Salt Lake City melodic heavy rockers Dwellers released their second album, 2014’s Pagan Fruit (review here, discussed here) as the follow-up to their 2011 debut, Good Morning Harakiri (review here, vinyl review here). Led by guitarist/vocalist Joey Toscano (here also synth and Rhodes piano), the band’s bluesy, psychedelic sound was a departure from the desert-hued cosmos-bound charge of Toscano‘s prior band, Iota, with a focused songwriting process and regular delves into the ethereal around it.

Corrupt Translation Machine — i.e., a human trying to capture objectivity in a subjective reality is doomed to fail; this is also why authenticity is a myth and gods aren’t real — is the unexpected third album from Dwellers, arriving through Small Stone Records in time for the label’s 30th anniversary with a reconstructed band around Toscano, operating for the first time as a four-piece and welcoming Oz “Inglorious” Yosri (Iota, Bird Eater) on bass, Kellii Scott (Failure) on drums and Chase Cluff on synth and Rhodes. Produced by Toscano with tracking done in Utah and California, the nine-song/51-minute outing offers a debut’s ambitions in laying out a distinctive sound for Dwellers that’s both inherited from and unlike anything they’ve done before.

Now, I called Corrupt Translation Machine a surprise above, and it’s true — until a few months ago, nobody knew it was coming. Toscano wasn’t updating social media as every chord progression or vocal arrangement was hammered out, as the things-are-different-now synth flourished into opening cut “Headlines” or the later “The Sermon” found that riff in the writing process. The band’s been gone. However — and it’s a big however — in 2024, Iota offered up Pentasomnia (review here) as their own back-after-more-than-a-decade return.

In fact, in Iota‘s case, it had been even longer: 16 years since their 2008 debut, Tales (discussed here, discussed here), which I’ll gladly posit among the best records Small Stone has put out in its three decades. Given the challenge of living up to Tales, Iota revealed a style that had grown into adopting many of the bluesy, contemplative elements of Dwellers‘ Pagan Fruit and Good Morning Harakiri, blurring the lines between the two projects. If it was only going to be Iota, Toscano wouldn’t have to answer the question, but in bringing Dwellers back as their own band requires some measure of differentiation. This leads to asking, if Iota now sounds like Iota does, what does Dwellers sound like?

Understand this: I don’t think Joey Toscano — guitar in hand and heart on sleeve as he reveals what would seem to be the emotional crux of much of the album early in centerpiece “Inside Infinity” with the lines, “Falling/I am falling/In love with a girl/Who is dying” — intentionally sat down with this material and said, “okay, now I need to make it sound different from Iota.” To listen to Corrupt Translation Machine, however, is to be given a second glimpse at the kind of evolution Toscano‘s band undertook.

If Dwellers had put out another two or three albums between 2014 and 2025, I’d probably be sitting here telling you Corrupt Translation Machine is the latest forward step in an ongoing incremental growth on the part of the band. That they’d become yet more progressive-rock-leaning, that the synth and Rhodes continued to play a bigger role along with the foundation in the grungey melodies of Toscano‘s vocals, able to conjure a sense of float in the chorus for “The Beast” and croon regretfully in first half of the penultimate 11-minute sweeper “Marigold (Heart of Stone),” “Marigold/marigold/I thought you could learn to love me/Sadly, that just ain’t your thing.” But that context and those two or three albums between Pagan Fruit and Corrupt Translation Machine don’t exist.

Instead, for those who caught onto Dwellers in the ’10s, Corrupt Translation Machine is something of a jump. For those who didn’t know the band before and picked up on Iota‘s return last year, that Toscano succeeds so much in finding a new path forward for Dwellers will no doubt be all the more satisfying. The synth is part of it, as “Headlines” and “Inside Infinity” and the sci-fi sounds building out the psychedelic-drone of closer “Made (Psych Ward Mix),” demonstrate, but Corrupt Translation Machine is also outwardly heavier than Dwellers have been before.

This is held back from the succession of three sub-five-minute rockers at the front, “Headlines,” “Spiral Vision” and the suitably bluesier “Old Ways,” but “The Beast” reveals a bigger low-end tonality, and both “The Maze” and “The Sermon” feel informed by European dark-prog in the blend of creeping lead guitar and roiling lower-frequency heft. Coupled with Toscano‘s capability to handle both sides of the Cantrell/Staley-type harmony on “Spiral Vision,” the proggier, somewhat metallic expanses of “Inside Infinity” and the resolution of “Marigold (Heart of Stone),” and Dwellers circa ’25 have no issue distinguishing themselves from either the band’s past or Toscano‘s other ongoing project.

And as much as the sound of Corrupt Translation Machine is on its own wavelength, the overarching, unifying factor between “Headlines” and “The Maze,” “Spiral Vision” and “Made (Psych Ward Mix)” is in the emotionality portrayed through the songs and performances. Even “Made (Psych Ward Mix),” with its Rhodes-chime sounds and ultra-atmospheric setting, retains a core of human expression, and as severe as “The Beast” might feel in the turns and rearing-backs of its first half, let alone the chug it unfurls from there, the emotive purpose is maintained, kept as a focal point within the breadth of the material.

That lets a song like “Marigold (Heart of Stone)” feel intimate while also being an 11-minute heavyprog epic, a crescendo for both the audio and theme of the album, and unrepentantly aware of itself in the process. If all perspective, all ‘translation’ in the sense of the album’s title, is flawed, then what humans are left with is the sometimes discomfiting goo of our own big feelings as the basis of reality. It’s a more complex vision of existence than ‘there’s one world and we’re living in it,’ but Dwellers‘ argument for intricacy takes place in multiple dimensions.

Dwellers, Corrupt Translation Machine (2025)

Dwellers on Bandcamp

Dwellers on Facebook

Small Stone Records website

Small Stone Records on Bandcamp

Small Stone Records on Instagram

Small Stone Records on Facebook

I wrote the bio that appears below for Dwellers‘ first album in 11 years, Corrupt Translation Machine — starts at “Dwellers’…,” ends at my name — so you’ll pardon me if I don’t pretend to have not heard it. If you caught the righteous return of guitarist/vocalist Joey Toscano‘s other band, Iota, last year, and if you heard the two records Dwellers put out during their initial post-Iota run, in 2012 and 2014, you’ll probably have high expectations going into this third LP.

They’ll be met, if perhaps not in the way one anticipates. Corrupt Translation Machine‘s first single is “The Sermon,” which is a heavy culmination that comes late in the record, but so much more of the material is about the texture and the atmosphere being molded through the songwriting, the soulful melodies, and the emotional expression. The 11-minute finale shows a range Dwellers have never had before, and the entire journey of a record sets the band on a path distinct from Iota while still brimming with progressive construction.

Release date just got posted as May 23. Here’s the info (mostly the aforementioned bio) as hoisted from Bandcamp:

Dwellers’ story has always been one of diversion and redirection. Begun in Salt Lake City by guitarist/vocalist Joey Toscano – also of Iota – the band’s 2012 debut, Good Morning Harakiri, and its 2014 follow-up, Pagan Fruit, helped establish a distinct creative voice in psychedelia and Americana-tinged blues rock, expressive and vulnerable in ways that heavy rock and roll is rarely willing to be.

Corrupt Translation Machine, which brings bassist Oz Inglorious (Iota, ex-Bird Eater), drummer Kellii Scott (Failure) and pianist/synthesist Chase Cluff (Last) to a completely revamped four-piece lineup, is both a reinvention and continuation of Dwellers’ purpose. The album lays claim to the heaviest sounds Dwellers have yet produced, and meets that head on with poppish fluidity and melodicism as the album sets out with “Headlines,” only to take greater risks later. Love and the potential of its loss meet with expansive, sometimes cinematic texturing, and just as Toscano led Iota into a career-defining reignition with 2024’s comeback LP, Pentasomnia, so too do Dwellers declare themselves with Corrupt Translation Machine.

“In the context of the album, the Corrupt Translation Machine is the human being,” reveals Toscano. “The songs on this album seem to be mostly about impermanence, addiction, loss, love, and the intangibility of perception. I say ‘seem to’ because there was no contrived concept for the album to be one thing or another, and when I listen to it, I have a strong feeling that I’m interpreting it just the same as when I’m listening to someone else’s songs. I could tell you exactly what each song is about, but that would go against the title of the album.”

The evocative tapestry of Dwellers’ sound has evolved in craft, intention and performance. It’s not just about having new people on board or about not sounding like Iota. Corrupt Translation Machine posits Dwellers as a singular entity as it engages classic progressivism and breadth in the 11-minute “Marigold (Heart of Stone)” or shifts into the outright tonal crush of “The Beast” or the weighted push of “The Maze.” No one song is just one thing, however, and as Dwellers bring together ideas from across a range of styles from space rock to dirt-coated grunge, the listening experience becomes less about genre and more about soul.

In this way, and despite the title, Corrupt Translation Machine could hardly communicate more clearly what and who Dwellers are as a band. And more, it speaks to the greater ongoing thread of their progression, renewed after 11 years and somehow still right on time. – JJ Koczan

Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. Headlines – 04:03
2. Spiral Vision – 04:21
3. Old Ways – 04:33
4. The Beast – 05:41
5. The Maze – 04:26
Side B:
6. Inside Infinity – 05:21
7. The Sermon – 05:04
8. Marigold (Heart of Stone) – 11:05

All songs written, arranged and produced by Joey Toscano
Drums tracked at Akira Audio by Gabe Van Benschoten, Calabasas, CA.
Everything else recorded by Mike Sasitch at Man Vs. Music, Salt Lake City, UT.
Mixed by Eric Hoegemyer at Tree Laboratory, Brooklyn, NY.
Mastered by Chris Goosman at Baseline Audio Labs, Ann Arbor, MI.
Artwork by Dani Joy @d_joy_art
Layout by Alexander von Wieding, zeichentier.com
Published by Small Stone Records (ASCAP).

Dwellers are:
Joey Toscano: guitars, vocals, synth, rhodes piano
Oz Inglorious: bass
Kellii Scott: drums
Chase Cluff: synthesizers, rhodes piano

https://www.facebook.com/dwellersband
https://dwellers.bandcamp.com/

http://www.smallstone.com
http://www.facebook.com/smallstonerecords
http://www.instagram.com/smallstonerecords
https://smallstone.bandcamp.com/

Dwellers, Corrupt Translation Machine (2025)

A lot going on today, not the least of which is the Spring 2025 Quarterly Review passing the halfway mark. Normally this would’ve happened yesterday, but half of 70 records is 35 and unless I’ve got the math wrong that’s where we’re at here. It’s a decent time to check and see if there’s anything you’ve missed over the last couple days. You never know how something will hit you the next time.

The adventure continues…

Quarterly Review #31-40:

Messa, The Spin

Now signed to Metal Blade — which is about as weighty as endorsements get for anything heavy these days — Italy’s Messa emerge from the pack as cross-genre songwriters working at a level of mastery across their fourth album, The Spin, elevating riff-led songs with vocal melodicism and aesthetic flexibility. “Fire on the Roof” is a hook ready to tattoo itself to your brain, while “The Dress” dwells in its ambience before getting intense and deceptively technical — just because a band dooms out doesn’t mean they can’t play — ahead of the Iommi-circa-’80 solo’s payoff. It’s all very grand, very sweeping, very encompassing, very talented and expensive-sounding. “At Races” and “Reveal” postulate a single ‘Messa sound’ that someone more important than me will come up with a clever name for, and the band’s ascent of the last nine years will continue unabated as they’re heralded among the foremost stylistic innovators of their generation. You won’t be able to say they didn’t earn it.

Messa on Bandcamp

Metal Blade Records website

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After Nations, Surface | Essence

Kansas-based heavy djent instrumentalists After Nations offer their fifth full-length, Surface | Essence, with a similar format to 2023’s The Endless Mountain (review here), and, fortunately, a similarly crushing ethic. Where the prior album explored Buddhist concepts, the band seem to have traded that for Hinduist themes, but the core approach remains in a mix of sounds churning and progressive. Meshuggah are a defining influence in the heavier material, but each ‘regular’ song (about four minutes) is offset by a shorter (about a minute) ambient piece of one sort or another, and so while Surface | Essence gives a familiar core impression, what the band add to that — including in short, Between the Buried and Me-ish quiet breaks like in “Yāti” and “Vīrya” — is their own. Not to harp on it, but the last record played out the same way and it worked there too. Eventually, one assumes, the two sides will bleed together and they’ll lay waste with that all their mathy interconnected atmospheric assault. As-is, the gigantism of their heaviest parts serves them well.

After Nations website

After Nations’ Linktr.ee

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Lost Moon, The Complicated Path to the Multiverse

Taking its chiaroscuro thematic to a meta level, The Complicate Path to the Multiverse breaks its eight-song procession in half, with four heavy rockers up front followed by four acoustic-based cuts thereafter. It’s not a hard and fast rule — there’s still some funky wah in the penultimate “When it’s All Over,” for example — but it lets the Roman troupe give a sense of build as they make their way to “Cradle of Madness” in drawing the two sides of light and dark together. The lyrics do much of the heavier lifting in terms of the theme — that is, the heavier material isn’t overwhelmingly grim despite being the ‘darker’ side — but they let tonal crunch have its say in that regard as well, and side A brings to mind heavy rockers with a sense of progressivism like Astrosoniq while side B pays that off with a creative turn. If you don’t know what you’re getting going into it, the songwriting carries the day anyhow, and as laid back as the groove gets, there’s an urgency of expression underlying the delivery.

Lost Moon on Bandcamp

Pink Tank Records website

Karma Conspiracy Records website

—

Bident, Blink

Likely no coincidence that London instrumentalist guitar/drum duo Bident — get it, bi-dent? two teeth? there are two of them in the band? ah forget it — launch their debut album, Blink, with “Psychological Raking.” That opener lives up to its billing in its movement between parts and sets up the overarching quirk and delight-in-throwing-a-twist that the subsequent eight tracks provide, shenanigans abound in “Calorina Leaper,” “Thhinking With a Moshcap On” and “Blink,” which renews the drum gallop at the end. With a noteworthy character of fuzz, Blink can accommodate the push of “Two-Note Pony” — which sure sounds like there’s bass on it — the nod in “Bovine Joni” and the sprint that takes hold in the second half of “That Sad,” and their use of the negative space where other instruments or vocals might be is likewise purposeful, but they don’t sound like they’re lacking in terms of arrangements thanks to the malleability of tone and tempo throughout. They operate in a familiar sphere, but there’s persona here that will come to fruition as they proceed.

Bident on Instagram

Bident on Bandcamp

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Harvest of Ash, Castaway

Death-sludge and post-metallic lumber ooze forth from the five songs of Harvest of Ash‘s second full-length, Castaway, which keeps its atmospheric impulses in check through grounded riffing and basslines as the whole band takes straightforward nod and extreme metal methodologies and smashes them together in a grueling course like that of “Embracing.” Remember in like 1996 when a band like Skinlab or Pissing Razors could just make you feel like you needed to take a shower? There’s a bit of that happening on Castaway as well in the opening title-track or the nine-minute “Constellation” later on, what with its second-half murk and strident riff, but a turn to quieter contemplations or a flash of brighter tone, whatever it is that offsets the churn in a given song, gives breadth to all that misanthropic plodding and throaty gurgle. Accordingly, Harvest of Ash end up both aggressive and hypnotic. I’m not sure it is, at least entirely, but Castaway positions itself as post-metal, and if it is, it is its own interpretation of the style’s tropes.

Harvest of Ash on Bandcamp

Harvest of Ash’s Linktr.ee

—

Vlimmer, Diskomfort EP

Berlin’s Vlimmer — the solo-project of multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, label head and producer Alexander Leonard Donat — return on a not-surprising quick turnaround from late-’24’s full-length, Bodenhex (review here) with six new tracks that include a Super Furry Animals cover of “It’s Not the End of the World?” and quickly establish a goth-meets-new-wave electro dance melancholy in “Firmament” that gives over to the German-language “Ungleichgewicht,” residing stylistically somewhere between The Cure and krautrock experimentalism. Guitar comes forward in “Friedhofen,” but Donat keeps the mood consistent on Diskomfort where the album ranged more freely, and even as the title-track moves into its finishing wash, the bumout remains. And I don’t know if that’s an actual harpsichord on “Nachleben,” but it’s a reminder that the open arrangements are part of what keeps me coming back to Vlimmer, along with the fact that they don’t sound like anything else out there that I’ve heard, the music is unpredictable, and they take risks in craft.

Vlimmer on Instagram

Blackjack Illuminist Records on Bandcamp

—

Duskhead, The Messenger EP

When Duskhead posted “Two Heads” in December from their The Messenger four-songer EP, it was the first new music from the Netherlands-based rockers in a decade. Fair enough to call it a return, then, as the band — which features members culled from Tank86 and The Grand Astoria — unfurl a somewhat humble in everything but the music 15 minutes of new material. “My Guitar Will Save the Day” answers the Elder-ish vocal melody with a fervent Brant Bjork-style roll, while “Kill the Messenger” cuts the tempo for a more declarative feel and “Searchlights” takes that stomp and makes it swing to round out, some layering at the end feeling like it’s dropping hints of things to come, though one hesitates to predict momentum for a band who just got back after 11 years of silence. Still, if they’re going for it, there’s life in this material and ground to be explored from here. Concept proven. Back to work.

Duskhead website

Duskhead on Bandcamp

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The Watcher, Out of the Dark

Plenty to hear in The Watcher‘s Cruz Del Sur-issued late-2024 debut Out of the Dark as the Boston unit — not to be confused with San Fran rockers The Watchers — unfurl the Trouble-and-Pentagram-informed take on traditionalist metal. The title-track opens and makes an energetic push while calling to mind ’80s metal in the hook, where “Strike Back” and the lead-heavy “Burning World” emphasize the metal running alongside the doom in their sound. Time for a big slowdown? You guessed it. They fall off the edge the world with “Exiled,” but rather than delve into epic Sabbathianism right then, they break into to the thrashier “The Revelator,” which only gets grittier as it goes. “Kill or Be Killed” and “The Final Hour” build on this vitality before the capper “Thy Blade, Thy Blood” saves its charge for the expected but still satisfying crescendo. Fans of Crypt Sermon and Early Moods will want to take particular note.

The Watcher on Bandcamp

Cruz Del Sur Music website

—

Weed Demon, The Doom Scroll

Each of the six inclusions on Weed Demon‘s cleverly-titled third long-player, The Doom Scroll, adds something to the mix, so while one might look at the front cover, the Columbus, Ohio, band’s moniker and general presentation and think they’re only basking in weed-worshipping dirt-riffed sludge, that’s not actually the case. Instead, “Acid Dungeon” starts off with dungeon synth foreboding before the instrumental “Tower of Smoke” lulls you into sludgenosis before “Coma Dose” brings deathlier vibes and, somewhere, a guest appearance from Shy Kennedy (ex-Horehound), “Roasting the Sacred Bones” strips back to Midwestern pummel circa 2002 in its stoned Rustbelt disaffection, “Dead Planet Blues” diverges for acoustics and the vinyl-only secret track “Willy the Pimp,” a Frank Zappa cover, closes. By the end of the record, Weed Demon are revealed as decidedly more complex than they seem to want to let on, but I suppose if you’re numbed out on whichever chemical derivative of THC it is that actually does anything, it’s all riffs one way or the other. You want THC-P, by the way. THC-A, the ‘a’ stands for “ain’t about shit.” I’m gonna guess Weed Demon know the difference.

Weed Demon on Bandcamp

Electric Valley Records website

Daily Grind Records on Facebook

—

Nuclear Dudes, Compression Crimes 1

The one-man solo-project of Jon Weisnewski (also of Sandrider, formerly of Akimbo), Nuclear Dudes released the rampaging full-length Boss Blades (review here) in 2023, glorious in both its extremity-fueled catharsis and its anti-genre fuckery. Weisnewski described the seven-song EP Compression Crimes 1 as “a synthwave album, probably,” and he might be right about that, but it’s definitely not just that. “Death at Burning Man” brings unruly techno until it lands in Mindless Self Indulgence pulsations, where “Tomb Crawler” surges near its end with metallic lashing. “Skyship” is so good at being electro-prog it’s almost obnoxious, and that too feels like the point as Weisnewski sees through creative impulses that are so much his own. Sleeper outfit, maybe. Never gonna be huge. But if you can find someone else making this kind of noise, you’re better at the internet than I am.

Nuclear Dudes on Instagram

Nuclear Dudes on Bandcamp

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[*NOTE: It’s not a full-length. It’s one song. I’ve snuck EPs and splits into this feature before, but this is the first single I’ve done in memory in this format. Something new. Big day for me. Thanks for reading.]

Fortunately, it hasn’t been all that long since the last we heard from The Otolith. In September, the Salt Lake City five-piece took part in Desert Records‘ split series, Legends of the Desert, sharing a split LP alongside the also-Utah-based woodsy crunch-blues duo Eagle Twin, for which they presented the first two new songs since their wrenching 2022 debut, Folium Limina (review here). But just because it’s only been a few months doesn’t make the new single “Glimmer” any less welcome.

Released just this past Wednesday, March 5, presumably to get ahead of the somehow-inevitable onslaught of Bandcamp Friday offerings (oh no, more new music! run!) from artists around the world, “Glimmer” didn’t arrive with a ton of fanfare. They posted it on socials, and Blues Funeral Recordings, which also released the full-length and has been behind the band since their inception following the breakup of SubRosa in 2019. Inheriting vocalist/violinists Kim Cordray and Sarah Pendleton, guitarist Levi Hanna and drummer/producer Andy Patterson from that band and bringing in bassist/vocalist Matt Brotherton (Visigoth, Huldra) to complete the lineup, The Otolith captured the flattening resonance of most of its component members’ prior outfit while working pointedly to set out on a new creative path.

“Glimmer,” about which little actual information was posted — one assumes Patterson recorded it both because of how it sounds and because when you have that dude in your band why would you go anywhere else — continues that thread. It is reportedly, “one of their favorite tracks to perform live” — which of course implies the song has been around for some time; it’s not so new they’ve never played it before — and perhaps part of the reason why is for the simple contrast it makes with the rest of the material they’ve released to-date. Part of what The Otolith carried forward on Folium Limina and Legends of the Desert Vol. 4 was the sense of immersion, the otherworldly float of the violins over such crushing tonality, and a patient execution thereof.

I wouldn’t call “Glimmer” gleeful by any means in shirking the norm, because it certainly isn’t a gleeful sound, but the label refers to it as “cathartic” and this too would seem to derive from the band working at a faster pace and with a more immediate structure. I could very easily see standing in front of a stage and having my brain melt out of my ears as The Otolith lay out the dronescape at the start of the song — pure daydream as I’ve not yet been fortunate enough to see The Otolith live — and take it from the quiet guitar that follows and adds one element at a time, the violins, the hissing snares behind, the vocals, the bass, gradually unfolding and piecing itself together with suitable, signature presence before dropping everything but the violins and bass at 1:30, to 10 seconds later where the entire thing explodes into an intense, elephantine lumber. Bass leads through a chugging section and backing growls take their own course in the chorus that follows, violin still bringing melody to the upper frequency echelons of the mix. Just at three minutes in, they switch to more of a foward roll and that brings them to a finish of standalone vocals.

To-date, there has not been such an efficient encapsulation of The Otolith‘s sound — and I’ll drop the caveat that no, they’re not representing the totality of what they do in one sub-four-minute track; up to now, long songs has been part of that same methodology — or the powerful sweep of which their music is capable. The counterargument there is that perhaps until “Glimmer,” being efficient hasn’t been a primary concern for The Otolith nearly so much as building flowing arrangements and highlighting the ambience, emotionality, the depth of their work and the unmitigated heft they keep in reserve for when they need it. On the balance, their vocal harmonies are no less heavy than the guitar, bass or drums that reguarly churn like tectonics to accompany, and the question that “Glimmer” leaves open is if it is a sign of things to come or if this song, born for the stage and perhaps put to tape at the same time as the tracks for the Legends of the Desert split — I don’t know that, hence “perhaps” — the standalone single is less a shift in norms than a purposeful abberation from them, whether it was written ‘to be different’ or not.

The immediacy doesn’t hurt “Glimmer” in the slightest, and The Otolith seem to have zero trouble harnessing a world from a more linear-feeling course, so take it as a win either way. Whether it is a portent or not is academic at least for now, that it exists at all is further case for The Otolith‘s ongoing development moving forward from the less than ideal circumstances of their founding in the dissolution of SubRosa and honoring that past while letting evolution happen on new strides like this. When it was written becomes relevant if one wants to look at “Glimmer” as indication of where The Otolith are headed, but at the risk of sounding like less of a rock-blogger, maybe we can just take a couple days and appreciate it on its own terms while letting its ultimate context in the timeline of the band’s still-hopefully-barely-begun tenure work itself out later, organically. Fair enough.

Whether one basks in the finer details of its mix — that light bass chug in the calm before the storm, hints of tension on the horizon, or the smoothness of the awakening that gets the band to that unleashing point, etc. — or passes through “Glimmer” en route to whatever the next thing may be (I’m not judging; we all have those days), the brevity of the song makes it feel no less declarative, even if some of what’s being declared will have to remain a mystery for the time being.

Either way you go, as always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

This weekend, we’re hosting — as is our wont — a cross-family gathering for my wife’s mother’s birthday. It’s a big one, so in a few minutes I’ll wrap this up probably on the quick and get back to cleaning the house. Vacuuming needs to get done. I’ve been in and out all morning, went to the grocery store, took out recycling, vacuumed upstairs yesterday, wiped down the bathroom downstairs and picked up upstairs, will windex the big mirror and the bathroom mirrors, blah blah blah, keeping up on dishes from The Patient Mrs.’ baking, putting the ‘big room’ in order including getting one of the foldout tables that I already forgot once (damn) from the garage and picking up The Pecan’s toys from the living room, along with whatever else. She made a rad tower, did the kid, and I told her it had to come down today, and she was bummed. Nature of the thing.

I have a couple reviews set for next week — Naxatras and Rwake — and a premiere for The Riven, so that should be good. I’m behind on news and everything and Bandcamp Friday is today so I’ve gotten more than a literal 300 emails this morning and it’s 11AM. Not that I’m reading them all, but they still require time and attention both of which are in e’er-dwindling supply.

But that’s the story of it. The Pecan had half-days this past Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, for parent-teacher conferences. I stayed with kiddo while The Patient Mrs. went. She’s doing fine academically, is weird about food and doesn’t want to take off her jacket. I think we’ll end up working an accommodation for extra food time, but if she feels weird about eating in front of people — COMES BY IT HONESTLY — then I’m less certain a decent answer is letting her be the only one still eating after everyone else is done. Teachers are smarter than me though, so I’m sure it’ll work out.

Oh yeah and the world’s horrifying and ending not soon enough. Wouldn’t want to neglect mentioning that just because I’m distracted thinking about how in 25 minutes I need to put syran wrap on a ginger cake. It’s cool, I set an alarm for it.

My sincere best to you and yours. I’m gonna get going on the weekend and take some pictures of that tower before I pull it down, which I promise not to enjoy doing. At all. Have a great and safe couple days. Don’t forget to hydrate, don’t get too stoned at your mother-in-law’s birthday party (maybe talking to myself a little there), and be careful out there because these are stupid, dangerous times. Love as much and as often as you can stand to do so.

And I say this every week, but new shirts are coming soon. April? I said next month last month, but whatever. I think it’s gonna be The Obelisk like Sleep and Black Sabbath Master of Reality logos. Classic stuff but hopefully they can stay up for a while. Will keep you posted.

FRM.

The Obelisk Collective on Facebook

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

 

Following up their 2022 debut, Ache and Impulse (review here), Salt Lake City atmospheric sludge metallers Harvest of Ash return in March with Castaway. The second LP is self-released from what I can tell, where the first album was out through Horror Pain Gore Death, and is led off by its title-track, which also serves as the first single, introducing the sense of lumber that comes through in the low end to give the entire nigh-on-seven-minute procession a doomlier cast. With Pepper Glass‘ gutturalisms over top, the downer idolatry resonates, but there’s more happening in “Castaway” than defeat as well as it leads into the rest of the album.

And I’m just first-blush in terms of listening, admittedly, but things don’t seem to get any less monstrous after “Castaway” from what I can tell. I’ll hope to have more to come around the release, but March 7 is the date if you’re looking to mark your calendar, and the PR wire brought info and audio to put in your brain:

HARVEST OF ASH: Salt Lake City’s doom trio set to release sophomore LP on March 7th, 2025

The writing and recording of Salt Lake City’s Harvest of Ash second full length album was a dark time for the band. Lineup changes and injuries stopped the band for months at a time. Yet, they took all of this calamity and channeled it into a new album about confronting and overcoming chaos. What they produced is a new album, titled Castaway.

In Castaway, Harvest of Ash has excavated the crevasses of calamity and emerged with an uncompromisingly filthy and punishing, yet skillfully crafted, work.

Lyrically, it charts a journey from self-criticism and feelings of rejection to being happy with who you are and what you have become as a person. A main theme of the work is the idea of amor fati, or love of fate. This is the notion of living life in an authentic way, embracing every decision and path taken – good and bad – as uniquely your own, that you would do everything the same way again. This makes Castaway a deeply personal statement about when you feel the bottom has dropped out of your life, and reclaiming value in yourself during these times.

Salt Lake City’s geography is a study of contrasts. Towering mountains, expressing power and grandeur, meet with desert emptiness – a completely flat limitlessness where barely a shrub is able to grow. Enormous and overwhelming, three-piece doom band Harvest of Ash conjures both the magnificence of mountain ranges and the desolation of barren deserts.

Tracklisting:
1. Castaway
2. Embracing
3. Shine
4. Constellation
5. Of beloved flame

Recorded and mixed by Wes Johnson at Archive Recordings,
Salt Lake City, Utah, February & May 2024
Mastered by Stephan Hawkes in North Hollywood, CA

Harvest of Ash:
Pepper Glass: guitar/vocals
Mike DiTullio: drums/percussion
Ben Dodds: bass

https://facebook.com/harvestofash/
http://instagram.com/HarvestofAsh
https://harvestofash.bandcamp.com/
https://linktr.ee/harvestofash

Harvest of Ash, Castaway (2025)

Bit of a note to myself on this one, as Salt Lake City doom rockers Moon Wizard released their third full-length, Sirens, early this year and I missed it. Now signed to Hammerheart Records — which makes them labelmates to Castle, Trouble and a broad swath of others — the four-piece will issue Sirens as their label-debut early in 2025, giving those like me a year-later chance to get on board with the bluesy melody and metal-rooted grooves, riff worship and engaging procession across songs like “Mothership” and “Desert Procession,” the band playing to style but not without a corresponding individuality in their persona. If you haven’t heard Sirens yet either — how fortunate for us that music doesn’t have an expiration date — you’ll find the stream at the bottom of this post, following the announcement from Hammerheart as snagged from social media.

There’s a lot here to dig, and I’m not about to hold you up from it. Or myself, for that matter. Let’s dive in:

Moon Wizard sign to Hammerheart Records for their debut album “Sirens” on CD and LP in january!

Praise the Almighty Riff! Triumphant, gorgeous, heavy and powerful Stoner Metal.

Moon Wizard’s “Sirens” has triumphant, gorgeous and powerful Stoner Metal vocals and instrumental hooks that’re anthemic and addicting and totally worth every minute. Just melodic, heavy Stoner Metal goodness and overall, a sweet atmosphere. Makes sense this album is titled “Sirens” as they’re known to have alluring voices.

Moon Wizard, formed by longtime friends Aaron, Joe, and Ashton, emerged from their Black and Death Metal roots to craft a unique blend of Doom and Stoner metal. After debuting with their self-titled album in 2018, the band added Chicago vocalist Sami Wolf in 2020, bringing a new dimension to their sound. “Sirens” is showcasing their continued evolution and setting the stage for what’s next.

https://www.facebook.com/MoonWizardBand/
https://www.instagram.com/moonwizardofficial/
https://moonwizard.bandcamp.com/
https://moonwizardofficial.wixsite.com/

https://www.facebook.com/hammerheartrecords/
https://www.instagram.com/hammerheartrecords666/
https://www.hammerheart.com/

Moon Wizard, Sirens (2024)