Posted in Whathaveyou on February 25th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Athens-based four-piece Acid Mammoth and Sardinian trio 1782 have announced a tour to take place in April throughout Europe. The two acts are no strangers to each other, being labelmates on Heavy Psych Sounds. Both are also confirmed for the label’s impending festival in Salzburg, Austria, this June.
1782 issued their From the Graveyard (review here) LP last year and Acid Mammoth offered Caravan (review here) earlier in 2021 as well. The latter release was Acid Mammoth‘s third full-length and the former 1782‘s second, but both bands have followed a course of big-riff doom, 1782 playing more toward cultish tropes and Acid Mammoth complementing their tones with a due sense of haze.
It makes sense, accordingly, that they’d tour together as 1782 head toward Desertfest London 2022 (couldn’t find a slot for Acid Mammoth? maybe another announcement coming?) and further a connection that was forged before either of the latest releases from the bands, when they joined forces in 2019 for the second installment of Heavy Psych Sounds‘ Doom Sessions split series (discussed here).
They’ll play the Go Down Festival, Dudefest, and Doom in Bloom together, and there are still a couple dates TBA, so if you can help out in an appropriate part of the world, do it. Hell, make an offer and put on a show in your back yard. Here’s what’s up:
Heavy Psych Sounds announce ACID MAMMOTH & 1782 DOOM TOUR EUROPE 2022 !!!
*** ACID MAMMOTH & 1782 *** DOOM TOUR EUROPE 2022 15/04/2022 IT **OPEN SLOT** 16/04/2022 IT FIRENZE CPA 17/04/2022 IT BOLOGNA FREAKOUT 18/04/2022 IT ZEROBRANCO GO DOWN FESTIVAL 19/04/2022 SLO LJUBLJANA CHANNEL ZERO 20/04/2022 AT GRAZ EXPLOSIV 21/04/2022 DE ULM HEXENHAUS 22/04/2022 AT INNSBRUCK PMK 23/04/2022 DE KARLSRUHE DUDEFEST 24/04/2022 NL SNEEK BOLWERK 25/04/2022 DE HAMBURG KNUST 26/04/2022 DE BERLIN DOOM IN BLOOM 27/04/2022 FR **OPEN SLOT** 28/04/2022 FR DIJON LES TANNERIES 29/04/2022 CH FR **OPEN SLOT** 30/04/2022 CH BRUNNEN KULT-TURM 01/05/2022 UK LONDON DESERTFEST (only 1782)
ACID MAMMOTH is: Chris Babalis Jr. – Vocals, Guitars Chris Babalis Sr. – Guitars Dimosthenis Varikos – Bass Marios Louvaris – Drums
1782 is: Marco Nieddu – vocals/guitar Gabriele Fancellu – drums/back. vocals Francesco Pintore – bass
Posted in Reviews on January 20th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Welcome to Day Four of the Jan. 2022 Quarterly Review. Or maybe it’s the other half of the Dec. 2021 Quarterly Review. Or maybe I overthink these things. The latter feels most likely. Inanycase, welcome. If you’ve been keeping up with the records as they’ve been coming in 10-per-day batches over the course of this week, thanks. If not, well, if you’re interested, it’s not like the posts disappeared. Just keep scrolling, then I think click through. One of these days I’ll get an infinite scroll plug-in. Those are for the cool kids.
Also, ‘Infinite Scroll’ is, as of right now, the name of my ’90s-style pixel-art role playing game. Ask me about the plot when these reviews are done.
For now…
Quarterly Review #31-40:
SOM, The Shape of Everything
Working from a foundation in heavy post-rock, Connecticut’s SOM soar and float like so many shoreline seagulls over the Long Island Sound on the eight-song/34-minute The Shape of Everything, which would call to mind the melancholy of Katatoniia were its sadness not even more shimmering. Early pieces “Moment” and “Animals” build a depth of modern progressive metal riffing beneath only the airiest of guitar leads, a wash of distortion meeting a wash of melody, and with guitarist/vocalist/producer Will Benoit helming, his voice rings through clear in melody and still somewhat ethereal, calling to mind a more organically-constructed Jesu in poppier as well as some heavier stretches. The penultimate “Heart Attack” tips into heavier fare with a steady bassline and bursts of crunching guitar, and the finale “Son of Winter” answers back with a (snow)blinding spaciousness and an entrancing last buildup. There’s enough room here to really get lost, and SOM are too mindful of their craft to let it happen.
Alright, I admit it. I went to “Icy Flatulence” first. Even before “Cyborgian Burger Hut” or “Euphoric Nostril.” Scott Heller, otherwise known as Dr. Space of Øresund Space Collective and any number of other outfits on a given day, is as-ever exploring on Muzik 2 Loze Yr Mynd Inn, and the results are hypnotic enough that they might leave you using the kind of spelling on the album’s title, but even in the relatively serene “Garden of Rainbow Unicorns” there’s a forward keyline — and actually, in that song, an undercurrent of horror soundtracking that makes me think the unicorn is about to eat me; could happen — and the extended pair of “T-E-T” and “Ribbons in Time” are marked by ’80s sci-fi beeps and boops and a kind of electronic shuffle, respectively, though the latter is probably as close as the 54-minute six-songer comes to soundscaping. Which is like landscaping only, in this case, happening in another galaxy somewhere. And there they call it jazz as they should and all is well. In all seriousness, I keep a running list in my brain of bands who should ask Dr. Space to guest on their records. Your band is probably on it. It’s pretty much everybody.
Here’s some context you probably don’t need: “Cold Wind” and “When I’m King” were written around the time of Wellington, New Zealand’s Beastwars‘ 2011 self-titled debut (review here). They may even have been recorded — I could’ve sworn “When I’m King” popped up somewhere at some point — but they’ve now been redone from the ground up and they’re pressed to a limited 7″ as part of the 10th anniversary celebration that also saw the self-titled get a new vinyl issue. Now, is it helpful knowing that? Yeah, sure. If I came at you instead and said, “Hey, new Beastwars!” though, it’d probably be more of a draw, and whatever gets Beastwars in as many ears as possible is what should invariably be done. “When I’m King” is a banger (bonus points for gang shouts), “Cold Wind” a little more seething, but both tracks harness that peculiarly sludged tonality that the band has owned for more than a decade now, and the guttural delivery of Matthew Hyde is only more resonant for the years between the writing and the execution of these songs. That execution is beheading by riffs, by the way.
A Nocturnal Crossing, the second album from Toulouse, France’s Deathbell and their first for Svart Records, can come at you from any number of angles seemingly at any point. Which thread are you following? Is it the soaring, classic-feeling occult rock melodies of Lauren Gaynor, or her organ work that, at the same time, adds gothic drama to so much of the material on the six-songer? Is it the lumbering groove of “Shifting Sands” and the doomed fuzz of “Devoured on the Peak” earlier, speaking to entirely different traditions? Or maybe the atmosphere in “Silent She Comes,” which is almost post-metallic in its shining lead guitar? Or perhaps, and hopefully I think, it’s all of these things as skillfully woven together as they are in these tracks. Opener “The Stronghold and the Archer” and the closing title-track mirror each other in their underlying metallic influence, but that too becomes one more texture at Deathbell‘s disposal, brought forward in such a way as to emphasize the unity of the whole work as much as the individual progressions.
After debuting on Svart with 2018’s Toinen Toista (review here), sax-laced Helskini classic prog pastoralists Malady offer Ainavihantaa (‘all the time’) across a lush and welcoming six tracks and 37 minutes. The flow is immediate and paramount on opener “Alava Vaara” and through the flute/sax tradeoff in “Vapaa Ja Autio,” which follows, and though it’s heady fare, somehow the “Foxy-Lady”-if-King–Crimson-wrote-it strut-into-meander of “Sisävesien Rannat” skirts a line of indulgence without fully toppling over. Side B is jazzy and winding across “Dyadi” and “Haavan Väri” ahead of the title-track, but the human presence of vocals, even in a language I don’t speak, does wonders in keeping the proceedings grounded, right up to the Beatlesian finish of “Ainavihantaa” itself. This was on a lot of best-of-2021 lists and it’s not a challenge to see why.
The Earth, ecologically devastated by industrialization and the wastefulness of humans — capitalism, in other words — becomes a wasteland. A few billionaires, who’ve been playing around with laughably-phallic rockets anyway, decide they’re going to escape out into space and leave the rest of the species, which they’ve destroyed, to suffer. It would be — and used to be — the stuff of decent science fiction were it not basically what homo sapiens are living through right now. A mass extinction owing to climate change the roots of which are in anthropocene action and inaction alike. French outfit Wormsand tell this utterly-plausible story in cascading doom riffs that reminds at once of Pallbearer and Forming the Void, keeping an edge of modern heavy prog to their plodding and accompanying with clean vocals and some more gutty shouts. As one might expect, things get pretty grim by the time they’re down to “Carrions,” “Collapsing” and “Shapeless Mass” near the album’s end, but the trio get big, big points for not trying to offer some placating “you can avoid this future” message of hope at the end, instead highlighting the final message, “The oracles warned us long ago/That a huge mass would swallow us all.” Ambitious in narrative concept, expertly conveyed.
I hate to call out a falsehood, but Virginia duo Thunderchief‘s claim that, “No fucks were used, or given, on this recording,” just isn’t the case. I’m sorry. You don’t rip the fuck out of your throat like Rik Surly does on “Aiboh/Phobia” without a clear intent. That intent might be — and would seem to be — fuckall, but fuckall’s way different from ‘no fucks.’ If they didn’t give a fuck, Synanthrope could hardly come across as furious as it does in these seven tracks, totaling a consuming, gruff, sludged 39 minutes, marked out by centerpiece “King of the Pleistocene” fucking with your conception of desert rock, the second part of “Aiboh/Phobia” — the part named after a grind band, oddly enough — and “Toss Me a Crumb” fucking around with some grind, and closer “Paw” trodding out its feedback-laden course with Erik Larson‘s drums marching in crash with Surly‘s riffs. Hell, you got Mike Dean to record the thing. That’s giving a fuck all by itself. This kind of heavy and righteous, purposeful aural cruelty doesn’t happen by mistake. It’s too good to be fuckless. Sorry.
No lyric sheet necessary to get that the longest song on Turkey Vulture‘s Twist the Knife EP, the three-minute “Livestock on Our Way to Slaughter,” is based lyrically on the ever-relevant film They Live. The married Connecticut duo of guitarist/bassist/vocalist Jessie May and drummer Jim Clegg (also in charge of visuals), find thrashy release on the four-song release, which totals about eight minutes and in opener “Fiji,” “Where the Truth Dwells,” as well as “Livestock on Our Way to Slaughter,” they rip with surprising metallic thrust. The closing “She’s Married (But Not to Me)” is something of a further shift, and had me searching for an original version out there somewhere thinking it was a cover either of Buddy Holly or some wistful punk band, but no, seems to be an original. So be it. Clearly, at this point, May and Clegg are finding new modes of sonic catharsis that even a couple years ago they likely wouldn’t have dared. They’re a stronger band for their readiness to follow such whims.
In Stargo‘s Dammbruch, I hear a signal back to European heavy rock’s prior instrumentalist generation, the Dortmunder three-piece not completely divorced from the riffy progressions that drove the warmth creating heavy psychedelia in the first place, even as the four-part, 14-minute title-track of the EP shifts between those impulses and more progressive, weighted, extreme or airy movements before its eerily peaceful conclusion. “Copter,” which could be titled after its wub-wub-wub effect early and the guitar chug that takes hold of it, and the closer “Bathysphere,” with its outward reach of guitar telegraphed in the first half but still resonant at the end, bring likeminded breadth in shorter bursts, but the abiding story of the EP is what the band — who made their full-length debut with 2020’s Parasight — might continue to offer as their style continues to develop. 35007, My Sleeping Karma, The Ocean, Pelican and Russian Circles — Stargo‘s sound is a melting pot of ideas. They only need to keep exploring.
Fabrizio Monni, also of Black Capricorn, issues a second EP from the solo-project Ascia following up on Sept. 2021’s Volume I (review here) with the marauding lumber of Dec. 2021’s Volume II, bringing his axe down across five tracks in a sub-20-minute run that’s been compiled onto a limited CD with the first release. Makes sense. The two outings share an affinity for the running megafuzz of earliest High on Fire and showcase the emerging personality of the new outfit in the melodies of “The Will of Gods” and the untempered doom of the later slowdown in “Thousands of Ghosts.” The instrumental “A Night with Shahrazad” closes, and feels a bit like a piece of a song — it crashes out just when you think the vocals might kick in — but if Monni‘s leaving his audience wanting more, well, he also seems quick enough to provide. “Eternal Glory” and “Ruins of War” will remind you what you liked about the first EP, and the rest will remind you why you’re looking forward to the next one. Mark it a win.
Posted in Reviews on January 18th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
If you, like me, drink coffee, then I hope that you, like me, have it ready to go. We enter day two of the Jan. 2022 Quarterly Review today in a continued effort to at least not start the year at an immediate deficit when it comes to keeping up with stuff. Will it work? I don’t know, to be honest. It seems like I could do one of these for a week every month and that might be enough? Probably not, honestly. The relative democratization of media and method has its ups and downs — social media is a cesspool, privacy is a relic of an erased age, and don’t get me started on self-as-brand fiefdoms (including my own) that permeate the digital sphere in sad, cloying cries for validation — but I’m sure glad recording equipment is cheap and easier to use than it once was. Creativity abounds. Which is good.
Lots to do today and it’s early so I might even have time to get some of it done before my morning goes completely off the rails. Only one way to find out, hmm?
Quarterly Review #11-20:
Emma Ruth Rundle, Engine of Hell
It’s not inconceivable that Emma Ruth Rundle captured a few new ears via her previous LP and EP collaborations with New Orleans art-sludgers Thou, and she answers the tonal wash of those offerings with bedroom folk, can-hear-fingers-moving-on-strings intimacy, some subtle layering of vocals and post-grunge hard-strumming of acoustic guitar, but ultimately a minimal-feeling procession through Engine of Hell, an eight-track collection that, at times, feels like it’s barely there, and in other stretches seems overwhelming in its emotional heft. Rundle‘s songwriting is a long-since-proven commodity among her fans, and the piano-led “In My Afterlife” closes out the record as if to obliterate any lingering doubt of her sincerity. Actually, Engine of Hell makes its challenge in the opposite: it comes across as so genuine that listening to it, the listener almost feels like they’re ogling Rundle‘s trauma, and whatever it’s-sad-so-it-must-be-meaningful cynicism one might want to saddle on Engine of Hell is quickly enough dispatched. Rundle was rude to me once at Roadburn, so screw her, but I won’t take away from the accomplishment here. Not everybody’s brave enough to make a record like this.
Released in November, Lost Horse Returns of its Own Accord isn’t even the latest full-length anymore from the creative ecosystem that is T.G. Olson, but it’s noteworthy just the same for its clarity of songwriting — “Like You Never Left” makes an early standout for its purposeful-feeling hook and the repeated verse of “Flowers of the End in Bloom” does likewise — and a breadth of production that captures the happening-now sense of trad-twang-folk performance one has come to expect and leaves room for layered in harmonica or backing vocals where they might apply. A completely solo endeavor, the 10-track outing finds the Across Tundras founder taking a relatively straightforward approach as opposed to some of his more experimentalist offerings, which makes touches like the layering in closer “Same Ol’ Blue” and the mourning of the redwoods in the prior “The Way it Used to Be” feel all the more vital to the proceedings. More contemplative than rambling, the way “Li’l Sandy” sets the record in motion is laden with melancholy and nostalgia, but somehow unforgiving of self as well, recognizing the rose tint through which one might see the past, unafraid to call it out. If you’ve never heard a T.G. Olson record before, this would be a good place to start.
Formerly known as Haast’s Eagled, Welsh four-piece Haast make a strikingly progressive turn with Made of Light, what’s ostensibly a kind of second debut. And while they’ve carried over the chemistry and some of the tonal weight of their work under the prior moniker, the mission across the seven-track offering is more than divergent enough to justify that new beginning. Cuts like “A Myth to End All Myths” and the from-the-bottom-up-building “The Agulhas Current” might remind some of Forming the Void‘s take on prog-heavy or heavy-prog, but Haast willfully change up their songwriting and the execution of the album, bringing in vocalist Leanne Brookes on the title-track and Jams Thomas on nine-minute closer “Diweddglo,” which crushes as much as it soars. The central question that Made of Light needs to answer is whether Haast are better off having made the change. Hearing them rework the verse melody of Alice in Chains‘ “We Die Young” on “Psychophant,” the answer is yes. They’ve allowed themselves more reach and room to grow and gained far more than whatever they’ve lost.
Have riffs, will groove. So it goes with the debut EP from Stockholm-based unit Dark Ocean Circle, who present four formative but cohesive tracks on Bottom of the Ocean, following the guitar in more of a Sabbathian tradition then one might expect from the current stoner-is-as-stoner-does hesher scene. To wit, the title-track’s starts-stops, bluesy soloing and percussive edge tap a distinctly ’70s vibe, if somewhat updated in the still-raw production value after the straight-ahead fuzz of “Battlesnake” hints toward lumber to come in its thickened tone. “Setting Sun” feels more spacious by the time it’s done, but makes solid use of the just over three minutes to get to that point — a short, but satisfying journey — and the closing “Oceans of Blood” speaks to a NWOBHM influence while pairing that with the underlying boogie-blues that seemed to surface in “Bottom of the Ocean” as well. A pandemic-born project, their sound is nascent here but for sure aware of its inspirations and what it wants to take from them. Sans nonsense heavy rock and roll is of perennial welcome.
Floridian three-piece El Castillo self-tag as “surf Western,” and yeah, that’s about right. Instrumental in its 19-minute entirety, Derecho is the first EP from the trio of guitarist Ben McLeod (also All Them Witches, Westing), bassist Jon Ward and drummer Michael Monahan, and with the participation of McLeod as a draw, the feeling of two sounds united by singularity of tone is palpable. Morricone-meets-slow-motion-Dick–Dale perhaps, though that doesn’t quite account for the subtle current of reggae in “Diddle Datil” or the somehow-fiesta-ready “Summer in Bavaria,” though “Double Tap” is just about ready for you to hang 10, even if closer “Hang 5” keeps to half that, likely in honor of its languid pace, which turns surf into psych as easily as “Wolf Moon” turns it toward the Spaghetti West. An unpretentious exploration, and more intricate than it lets on with “El Norte” bringing various sides together fluidly at the outset and the rest unfolding with similarly apparent ease.
Listening to “Hunted,” the 22:53 leadoff from Tekarra‘s two-song long-player, Kicking Horse, it’s hard not to feel nostalgic for standing in a small room with speaker cabinets stacked to the ceiling and having your bones vibrate from the level of volume assaulting you. I’ve never seen the Edmonton, Alberta, three-piece live, but their rumble and the tension in their pacing is so. fucking. doomed. You just want to throw your head back and shout. Not even words, just primal noises, since that seems to be what’s coming through on their end, so laced with feedback as it is. Coupled with the likewise grueling “Crusade / Kicking Horse” (23:11), there’s some guttural vocals, some samples, but the overarching intention is so clearly in the tune-low-play-slow ethic that that’s what comes across most of all, regardless of what else is happening. I’d be tempted to call it misanthropic if it didn’t have me so much pining for the live experience, and whatever you want to call it there’s no way these dudes give a crap anyway. They’re on another wavelength entirely, sounding dropped out of life and encrusted with cruelty. Fuck you and fuck yes.
It’s been the better part of a year since 1782 released From the Graveyard, and I could detail for you the mundane reason I didn’t review it before now, but there’s only so much room and I’d rather talk about the bass tone on “Bloodline” and the grimly fuzzed lumber of “Priestess of Death.” An uptick in production value from their 2019 self-titled debut (review here), the 43-minute/eight-song LP nonetheless maintains enough rawness to still be in the post-Electric Wizard vein of cultistry, but its blowout distortion is all the more satisfying for the fullness with which it’s presented. “Seven Priests” sounds like Cathedral played at half-speed (not a complaint) and with its stretch of church organ picking up after a drop to nothing but barely-there low end, “Black Void” lives up to its name while feeling experimental in structure. Familiar in scope, for sure, but a filthy and dark delight just the same. Give me the slow nod of “Inferno” anytime. Even months after the fact its righteousness holds true.
Alpha Waves is a sonic twist a few years in the making, as Fever Dog transcend the expectation of their prior classic desert boogie in favor of a glam-informed 10-track double-LP, impeccably arranged and unrepentantly pop-minded. A cut like the title-track or “Star Power” is still unafraid to veer into psychedelics, as Danny Graham and Joshua Adams, but the opener “Freewheelin'” and “Solid Ground” and the later “The Demon” are glam-shuffle ragers, high energy, thoughtfully executed, and clear in their purpose, with “King of the Street” tapping vibes from ELO and Bowie ahead of the shimmering funk-informed jam that is “Mystics of Zanadu” before it fades into a full-on synthesizer deep-dive. Does it come back? You know what, I’m not gonna tell you. Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. Definitely you should find out for yourself. Sharp in its craft and wholly realized, Alpha Waves is brought to bear with an individualized vision, and the payoff is right there in its blend of poise and push.
Led by Chris Jude Watson, the dronadelic outfit Black Holes are Cannibals may just be one person, it may be 20, but it doesn’t matter when you’re dealing with a sense of space being manipulated and torn apart molecule by molecule, atom by atom. So it goes throughout the 19-minute “Surfacer,” the 19:07 title-track of the two-songer LP accompanied by “No Title” (20:01). At about eight minutes in, Watson‘s everything-is-throat-singing approach seems to find the event horizon and twists into an elongated freakout with swirls of echoing tones, what seem to be screams, crashing cymbals and a resonant chaotic feel taking hold and then building down instead of up, seeming to disappear into the comparatively minimal beginning of “No Title,” which holds its own payoff back for a broader but more linear progression, ending up in the same with-different-marketing-this-would-be-black-metal aural morass, willfully thrown into the chasm it has made. You ever have an out of body experience? Watson has. Even managed to get it on tape.
What is one supposed to say to paying tribute to Lemmy Kilmister and Cliff Burton? Careers have been made on far less original fare than the two homage tracks that comprise Sonic Wolves‘ It’s All a Game to Me EP, with “CCKL” setting the tempo for a Motörheaded sprint and “Thee Ace of Spades” digging into early-Metallica bombast in its first couple minutes, drifting out for a while after the halfway point, then thrashing its way back to the end. Obviously it’s not the same kind of stuff they were doing with their 2018 self-titled (review here), but neither is it worlds apart. The basic fact of the matter is bands pay tribute to Motörhead and Metallica, to Lemmy and Cliff Burton, all the time. They just don’t tell you they’re doing it. In that way, It’s All a Game to Me almost feels courteous as it elbows you in the gut.
Posted in Reviews on December 15th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Okay. Day Three. The halfway point. Or the quarter point if you count the week to come in January. Which I don’t. Feeling dug in. Ready to roll. Today’s a busy day, stylistically speaking, and there’s two wolf bands in there too. Better get moving.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Duel, In Carne Persona
Duel seem to be on a mission with In Carne Persona to remind all in their path that rock and roll is supposed to be dangerous. Their fourth album and the follow-up to 2019’s Valley of Shadows (review here) finds the Austin four-piece in a between place on songs like “Children of the Fire” (premiered here) and “Anchor” and the especially charged gang-shout-chorus “Bite Back,” proffering memorable songwriting while edging from boogie to shove, rock to metal. They’ve never sounded more dynamic than on the organ-inclusive “Behind the Sound” or the tense finale “Blood on the Claw,” and cuts like “The Veil” and the particularly gritty “Dead Eyes” affirm their in-a-dark-place songwriting prowess. They’re not uneven in their approach. They’re sure of it. They turn songs on either side of four minutes long into anthems, and they seem to be completely at home in their sound. They’re not as ‘big’ as they should be by rights of their work, but Duel serve their reminder well and pack nine killer tunes into 38 minutes. Only a fool would ask more.
Fading in like the advent of something wicked this way coming until “The Hiss” explodes into “Fail,” Hull exports Mastiff tap chug from early ’00s metalcore en route to various forms of extreme bludgeonry, whether that’s blackened push in “Beige Sabbath,” grind in “Midnight Creeper” or the slow skin-crawling riffage that follows in “Futile.” This blender runs at multiple speeds, slices, dices, pummels and purees, reminding here of Blood Has Been Shed, there of Napalm Death, on “Endless” of Aborted. Any way you go, it is a bleak cacophony to be discovered, purposefully tectonic in its weight and intense in its conveyed violence. Barely topping half an hour, Leave Me the Ashes of the Earth knows precisely the fury it manifests, and the scariest thing about it is the thought that the band are in even the vaguest amount of control of all this chaos, as even the devolution-to-blowout in “Lung Rust” seems to have intent behind it. They should play this in art galleries.
Melody and a flair for the grandeur of classic NWOBHM-style metal take prominence on Wolftooth‘s Blood & Iron, the follow-up to the Indiana-based four-piece’s 2020 outing, Valhalla (review here), third album overall and first for Napalm Records. As regards trajectory, one is reminded of the manner in which Sweden’s Grand Magus donned the mantle of epic metal, but Wolftooth aren’t completely to that point yet. Riffs still very much lead the battle’s charge — pointedly so, as regards the album’s far-back-drums mix — with consuming solos as complement to the vocals’ tales of fantastical journeys, kings, swords and so on. The test of this kind of metal should ALWAYS be whether or not you’d scribble their logo on the front of your notebook after listening to the record on your shitty Walkman headphones, and yes, Wolftooth earn that honor among their other spoils of the fight, and Blood & Iron winds up the kind of tape you’d feel cool telling your friends about in that certain bygone age.
Another argument to chase down every release Prophecy Productions puts out arrives in the form of Illudium‘s second long-player, Ash of the Womb, the NorCal project spearheaded by Shantel Amundson vibing with emotional and tonal heft in kind on an immersive mourning-for-everything six tracks/47 minutes. Gorgeous, sad and heavy in kind “Aster” opens and unfolds into the fingers-sliding-on-strings of “Sempervirens,” which gallops furiously for a moment in its second half like a fever dream before passing to wistfully strummed minimalism, which is a pattern that holds in “Soma Sema” and “Atopa” as well, as Amundson brings volatility without notice, songs exploding and receding, madness and fury and then gone again in a sort of purposeful bipolar onslaught. Following “Madrigal,” the closing “Where Death and Dreams Do Manifest” finds an evenness of tempo and approach, not quite veering into heavygaze, but gloriously pulling together the various strands laid out across the songs prior, providing a fitting end to the story told in sound and lyric.
Ascia takes its name from the Italian word for ‘axe,’ and as a solo-project from Fabrizio Monni, also of Black Capricorn, the 20-minute demo Volume 1 lives up to its implied threat. Launched with the instrumental riff-workout “At the Gates of Ishtar,” the five-tracker introduces Monni‘s vocals on the subsequent “Blood Axes,” and is all the more reminiscent of earliest High on Fire for the approach he takes, drums marauding behind a galloping verse that nonetheless finds an overarching groove. “Duhl Qarnayn” follows in straight-ahead fashion while “The Great Iskandar” settles some in tempo and opens up melodically in its second half, the vocals taking on an almost chanting quality, before switching back to finish with more thud and plunder ahead of the finale “Up the Irons,” which brings two-plus minutes of cathartic speed and demo-blast that I’d like to think was the first song Monni put together for the band if only for its metal-loving-metal charm. I don’t know that it is or isn’t, but it’s a welcome cap to this deceptively varied initial public offering.
France’s Stone From the Sky, as a band named after a Neurosis singularized song might, dig into heavy post-rock aplenty on Songs From the Deepwater, their fourth full-length, and they meet floating tones with stretches of more densely-hefted groove like the Pelican-style nod of “Karoshi.” Still, however satisfying the ensuing back and forth is, some of their most effective moments are in the ambient stretches, as on “The Annapurna Healer” or even the patient opening of “Godspeed” at the record’s outset, which draws the listener in across its first three minutes before unveiling its full breadth. Likewise, “City/Angst” surges and recedes and surges again, but it’s in the contemplative moments that it’s most immersive, though I won’t take away from the appeal of the impact either. The winding “49.3 Nuances de Fuzz” precedes the subdued/vocalized closer “Talweg,” which departs in form while staying consistent in atmosphere, which proves paramount to the proceedings as a whole.
Whenever you’re ready to get weird, The Brackish will meet you there. The Bristol troupe’s fourth album, Atlas Day brings six songs and 38 minutes of ungrandiose artsy exploration, veering into dreamtone noodling on “Dust Off Reaper” only after hinting in that direction on the jazzier “Pretty Ugly” previous. Sure, there’s moments of crunch, like the garage-grunge in the second half of “Pam’s Chalice” or the almost-motorik thrust that tops opener “Deliverance,” but The Brackish aren’t looking to pay homage to genre or post-thisorthat so much as to seemingly shut down their brains and see where the songs lead them. That’s a quiet but not still pastoralia on “Leftbank” and a more skronky shuffle-jazz on “Mr. Universe,” and one suspects that, if there were more songs on Atlas Day, they too would go just about wherever the hell they wanted. Not without its self-indulgent aspects by its very nature, Atlas Day succeeds by inviting the audience along its intentionally meandering course. Something something “not all who wander” something something.
Formerly known as Wolfgang, Elverum, Norway’s Wolfnaut offer sharp, crisp modern heavy rock with the Karl Daniel Lidén mixed/mastered III, the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Kjetil Sæter (also percussion), bassist Tor Erik Hagen and drummer Ronny “Ronster” Kristiansen readily tapping Motörhead swagger in “Raise the Dead” after establishing a clarity of structure and a penchant for chorus largesse that reminds of Norse countrymen Spidergawd on “Swing Ride” and the Scorpions-tinged “Feed Your Dragon.” They are weighted in tone but emerge clean through the slower “Race to the Bottom” and “Gesell Kid.” I’m going to presume that “Taste My Brew” is about making one’s own beer — please don’t tell me otherwise — and with the push of “Catching Thunder” ahead of the eight-minute, willfully spacious “Wolfnaut” at the end, the trio’s heavy rock traditionalism is given an edge of reach to coincide with its vitality and electrified delivery of the songs.
Having released their debut full-length, TTBS, earlier in 2021 as their first outing, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Lincoln, Nebraska’s Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships still seem to be getting their feet under them in terms of sound and who they are as a band, but as the 34-minute-long Rosalee EP demonstrates, in terms of tone and general approach, they know what they’re looking for. After the thud and “whoa-oh” of “Core Fragment,” “Destroyer Heart” pushes a little more into aggression in its back end riffs and drumming, and the chugging, lurching motion of “URTH Anachoic” brings a fullness of distortion that the two prior songs seemed just to be hinting toward. It’s worth noting that the 16-minute title-track, which closes, is instrumental, and it may be that the band are more comfortable operating in that manner for the time being, but if there’s a confidence issue, no doubt it can be worked out on stage (circumstances permitting) or in further studio work. That is, it’s not actually a problem, even at this formative stage of the project. Quick turnaround for this second collection, but definitely welcome.
Their persistently irreverent spirit notwithstanding, Closet Disco Queen — at some point in the process, ever — take their work pretty seriously. That is to say, they’re not nearly as much of a goof as they’d have you believe, and on the quickie 16-minute Stadium Rock for Punk Bums, the Swiss two-piece-plus, their open creative sensibility results in surprisingly filled-out tracks that aren’t quite stadium, aren’t quite punk, definitely rock, and would probably alienate the bum crowd not willing to put the effort into actively engaging them. So the title (which, I know, is a reference to another release; calm down) may or may not fit, but from “Michel-Jacques Sonne” onward, bring switched-on heavy that’s not so much experimentalist in the fuck-around-and-find-out definition as ready to follow its own ideas to fruition, whether that’s the rush of “Pascal à la Plage” or the barely-there drone of “Lalalalala Reverb,” which immediately follows and gives way to the building-despite-itself finisher “Le Soucieux Toucan.” If these guys aren’t careful they’re gonna have to start taking themselves seriously. …Nah.
Posted in Whathaveyou on December 6th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Kudos to Sardinian doomers Black Capricorn on signing to Majestic Mountain Records for the 2022 release of their next album. The trio have had a couple short releases out in the last few years — 2019’s Solstice EP, and Equinox preceding — but their last proper full-length was 2017’s Omega – Cult of the Dead, and as to how they might answer the raw, rootsy doom procession of that outing, well, actually, they’ll probably do it with more doom. That’s the hope, anyway. No one says “doom on” because they want it to stop.
No details or audio from the impending album yet — for all I know it’s not even recorded — but consider Black Capricorn part of Majestic Mountain‘s upward trajectory as the imprint continues to show itself with a mind toward sonic and geographic variety while remaining purposeful in its allegiance to varying kinds of heavy. I don’t know what pressing schedules will look like next year — or what anything will look like next year, up to and including, like, the sky, which seems ready to turn orange any minute now — but Majestic Mountain are working quickly to make themselves a reliable name when it comes to purveyors of weighted goods. One doubts this will be their only announcement in the coming months.
From the social medias:
We’re stoked to welcome Black Capricorn into the Majestic motley crew! The new album will be released in 2022. Stay tuned for more information!
What the doom power trio got to say about joining Majestic Mountain Records:
“We are very honored to join the Majestic Mountain Records family. A young label that in a few years reached a very solid reputation in the worldwide heavy music underground. Can’t wait to start this new adventure together!”
Posted in Questionnaire on May 24th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Daniele Murroni of Gramma Vedetta, Aliceissleeping & Mandrone Records
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I will define myself as Jack of all trades, master of nothing. I’m a software engineer from 9 to 5 day and a musician, sound engineer and record label owner from 5pm to 9am. (occasionally video editor).
This is because I like to do different things, I get bored quickly, but also because I’m a geek and I’m pretty curious about how things work.
I’ve always been interested in science since I was a kid and I’ve been raised by music-lover parents, so in the ’90s I started playing the guitar with friends in a small town in Sardinia, in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and since then everything I wanted to learn was something that could have been applied to music.
I started Computer Science at Uni because I wanted to learn how to develop audio plugins (tried, put together a distortion, sounded like shit).
I develop an interest in sound engineering and music production because I wanted to record my band’s first demo back in 1998. I learned how to edit videos because I wanted to edit video for bands.
Money was scarce, time was in abundance.
I married a bass player, actually, she married me because I’m a guitarist.
We opened Mandrone Records because we wanted to release our stuff and friends’ stuff.
So I do a lot of things and I am a lot of things, I’m not mastering anything but I enjoy life being like this.
Describe your first musical memory.
I have two early musical memories that I remember very well. I was like 4 or something.
“Dad, please put the disc with the thing that spin!” It was me asking my dad to put the Vinyl of Gentle Giant, Octopus, Side B, where the label had the full-size Vertigo logo printed in it.
With the vinyl rotating, the logo generated a 3D Optical illusion. I was hypnotized, I spent hours staring at that drawing.
Second musical memory: “Dad, please, put the music where there are kids singing, an ass with wig and eyes and hammers walking”. (The Wall)
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Guess the best musical memories are related to gigs I’ve seen.
I’ve been an avid music listener in my teens but haven’t seen any big band live because no one came down in Sardinia to play music.
Finally, at the age of 17, a couple of friends ad I organised a trip to Milan to attend the gig of our idols: Dream Theater!
To leave the island we needed of course to take a ship, It was an amazing experience, first time travelling with no adult supervision, seeing new places, watching your heroes playing your fav songs few meters from you, people jumping, moshpit.
Amazing. Sometimes I’d like to revive an experience like this. It was something completely new that I’ve never seen before. Real musicians, wow!
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
This question is not easy. Honestly, I don’t have absolute beliefs, I always question myself, thanks to the experiences I’ve had in my life. Human history itself has shown that certain assumptions, certain beliefs deeply rooted in society for a certain period, have turned out to be incorrect or otherwise limited.
Perhaps the only thing I believe at the moment is that the human being is evil and that in order to justify himself he had to create someone above or there responsible for his behaviour.
But I want to be clear, I don’t think ALL human beings are bad. There are many good people, like me for example, otherwise, we would have been extinct with an atomic war in the ’80s to the sound of Rust in Peace by Megadeth played by Vangelis on the synthesizer.
(I know Rust in Peace was released in 1990 but if I have to imagine the end of the world I imagine it in my own way.)
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
The artistic progression does not happen to everyone. There are many artists who have been repeating themselves for decades. The absence of artistic progression makes you an assembly line product, sterile and rigid made for mass consumption.
The artistic progression, which in my opinion consists of evolving, in developing new skills and therefore new ideas, in breaking out of the mould, takes you to unexplored, inaccessible territories, lands to conquer, where your survival skills are put to the test. In short, it makes you suffer, it makes you feel alive and unique.
How do you define success?
My definition of success is when you look at what you do and who you are and what you see it’s exactly what you wanted to do and be.
It’s not a matter of numbers or money.
It’s having no regrets, it’s being able to say “I wanted to do it so I tried” instead of “I haven’t done it because I don’t know if I’m capable” or “I wish I’d be like this but I can’t.”
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Racist, ignorant, misogynistic and corrupt people rise to power. It hurts even more when you realize they have been voted on in regular elections.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I have an idea for a book/novel. It’s a dream I had once it was weird because the story had a twist towards the end that I wasn’t expecting. My brain played it very well during that dream.
I still remember it.
Also, I’d like to create a fictional universe, like Gene Roddenberry in Star Trek, George Lucas in Star Wars. I’m working on it, but’s not easy when you waste your time doing all the shit I’ve mentioned in question 1.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
I’m related to this. As I said I like science and math, I work on computers, on machines that follow rules I impose on them. In this field, things have to be done in this way, with this sequence of operation, catch the exception, what If, then else.
Science is something that grows, but laws of physics are that one, you can’t defy them and we are forced to follow them.
Art is exactly what let us deviate from this, Art is something that his not tied to anything, let you build links between phenomena and parallel path. Art is the chaos that makes us non-machine, that scramble the numbers and give us guidance to create something new.
Art is what makes me feel alive after hours spent watching on a screen.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
To see my family again. To gather together at a table, eat our favourite food and drink the best wine we have, telling each other stories about how we spent the past years.
Put headphones on and you can hear the waves. It’s been a while since Tuna de Tierra were last heard from — they made their self-titled debut (review here) on Argonauta in 2017 — but their return could hardly be more fitting or more welcome than to find guitarist/vocalist Alessio De Cicco on a Sardinian hillside strumming away on an unplugged version of “El Paso de la Tortuga.” The track originally comes from the trio’s 2015 debut EPisode 1: Pilot (review here) desert-style three-songer — the same material was also issued as a split with California’s The Bad Light in 2018 — and if you’re gonna find something to complain about in watching the clip of De Cicco playing the song, shove it. This video’s three minutes long, the song’s melody is sweet, and the scenery is about as pure as grey-day escapism gets. If you can’t hang with that, it’s your loss.
The minimalist approach — dude and guitar — reminds of the quieter moments of Nirvana‘s Unplugged in New York, minus the tragic historical context. It’s a mystery at this point whether Tuna de Tierra have anything new in the works. From what I can tell via cursory social media scrollthrough, their last show was in Feb. 2020, which sounds about right, and this video was recorded last summer, so its loneliness is only appropriate. They’re due a follow-up for the self-titled, certainly, and the potential of that record and warmth of it remain resonant these four years after the fact. Hopefully they’ll offer up somewhere down the line, but again, in the meantime, this is three minutes you won’t regret spending.
DeCicco tells the story himself under the player below, and the song’s lyrics (which apparently have never been published before) and video credits follow.
Please enjoy:
Tuna de Tierra, “El Paso de la Tortuga” acoustic video premiere
Alessio De Cicco on “El Paso de la Tortuga”:
July 2020, a random sunrise on Asinara, an island off Sardinia’s north-west shores.
A light breeze comes from the sea, and not that long after it will leave the leading role of the day to the blazing sun.
Time is still, moments are stretched.
And yet on this almost unspoiled island, on which we were more or less 15 guests staying that night, until a few years ago stood a penal colony.
Someone has seen his time being taken away in a paradise on earth which could eventually turn into a nightmare for his own mind. That time will never be returned to anyone, just like the one we choose to lose.
The moment was perfect to take my old Silvertone and play the song that was inspired just from the time I was losing when I wrote that and the loneliness that quite always goes with it.
It was the 2015 when our first EP and first record ever came out, and we could never imagine where we would have been some years after, but right now everyone had his chance to better understand how precious our time is.
We as a band cannot wait to be back together and start playing again and develop the ideas we had during this year, go back in the studio and finally go on a stage to share them with you all!”
EL PASO DE LA TORTUGA lyrics: Layin’ on your lost time Believing your thoughts do not lead your life Holding you there Crossing your brain So on and on And on and on You wish you never lose control Leaving you being on your own
Tuna de Tierra is: Alessio De Cicco: guitar, vocals Luciano Mirra: bass guitar Mattia Santangelo: drums
Posted in Whathaveyou on April 22nd, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Sardinian solo unit Sarram — also stylized all-caps with spaces between the letters: S A R R A M, thereby throwing caution to the wind as regards line breaks — will release its fourth full-length, Albero, in less than a month’s time. You can stream the track “Midnight” from it now and it’s easy enough to imagine that Valerio Marras (hey that’s Sarram backwards!), also of Charun, composed the track late some evening, on his own, headphones on, dug into the exploratory moment as it unfolded. The record as a whole is a vibe likewise worthy of titling a song “Diving Deep,” as rich immersion in headphone-ready drones and soundscapes comes across from opener “Heavy Sleep” onward, the evocative nature of Marras‘ work giving rise to any number of narratives for those willing to engage.
Will that be everyone? Nope. Never is, and I’m sure by the time of his fourth record, Marras doesn’t need to be told that. But, those seeking something textural and escapist might find room for themselves within the open spaces of “The Sound of a Needle” or the brief but consuming “Fading Sunlight,” the album’s eight-song course playing out over a still-accessible 39-minutes with a significant weight of atmosphere.
Info and the track stream came down the PR wire:
SARRAM – New album ‘Albero’ Out May 14th on Subsound Records
S A R R A M is the solo project of Sardinian multi-instrumentalist Valerio Marras, combining elements of drone/ambient, post-rock, doom and electronica. Also guitar player of post-rock oriented trio Thank U For Smoking and post-metal foursome Charun, Valerio Marras played extensively in Europe, with appearances at the KME, Schwarzer Herbst in Germany, Whoneedslyrics?! in Slovakia, Johanneskirche in Lobau, The Academy of fine Arts in Munich, Spazio Musica Project and Signal Fest in Cagliari, Dunk!Festival in Belgium and Young Team in France. He also collaborated with MAN and Ciusa Museum in Nuoro, Mua Museum in Sinnai, Nubifilm, Animamundi and naturalistic photographer Bobore Frau.
His fourth album ‘Albero’ presents a balanced and enigmatic mix of drone and ambient soundscapes, walls of guitar and hypnotic loops, while incorporating electronic and warm whispers. It’s a deep and intense journey, a dark ceremony of frequencies. It was recorded and mixed at ACME Studio at Cagliari, Sardinia by Nicola Olla and mastered by James Plotkin. Artwork was designed by Animamundi.
‘Albero’ will be released on May 14th via Subsound Records.
TRACK LISTING: 1. Heavy Sleep 2. The Sound Of A Needle 3. Scraps Of Paper 4. Sinking Shadows 5. Diving Deep 6. Fading Sunlight 7. Midnight 7. The Far Side Of The Moon
S A R R A M is Valerio Marras — Guitar/fx, synth, glockenspiel, mandolin, kalimba
