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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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Psychic Pain is the third album and a welcome return from Seattle trio Serial Hawk — guitarist/vocalist Will Bassin, bassist Adam Holbrook and, making his first appearance, drummer Karter Rosner — who with its five songs renew their commitment to lumber and crush. Not immediately, granted. The three-minute drone intro “Pulsate” indeed seems to find some tension in the peaks and troughs of a drone waveform, echoing into space with a foreboding ambience that’s justified as soon as “Raw Wound” (7:30) slams in, Rosner hitting hard as the tones of Holbrook and Bassin unveil their full tonal heft. They dig into an intro in “Raw Wound” as well, letting the crash and plod play out in declarative fashion — this is a thing we can do — before kicking the tempo just before a minute and a half in and galloping into a growled verse.

The crash’n’bash ethic meets its inevitable end in a slowdown that gets to grueling levels of plod topped with bellowing howls, but they’re still not halfway through the first song yet. “Raw Wound” is heavy at its quietest, but after its midpoint, it begins a forward procession that feels like a march, but if it is, is one following its own pattern. More tortured verses cut through the voluminous mix by the returning Robert Cheek at ExEx Audio, who also engineered, and “Raw Wound” opens up to an airy guitar solo before giving back to its stomping central riff, but slower, to finish.

A synthy, flatter-somehow drone starts centerpiece “Drift Away” (8:13), soon joined by echoing guitar and cymbal wash, a dreamy minute setting up a subdued and melodic, Floydian verse. The drums enter subtly to begin the change, and at 2:31, “Drift Away” finds its footing in a massive lurch, revealing itself soon enough to be a heavygaze-style nod with a melodic vocal reach that reminds of Patrick Walker — a decidedly more emotive take and a shift in approach overall from the somewhat colder concrete slab’s comfort offered on “Raw Wound,” but then, that’s kind of the movement of pain too. First it hurts and then you’re sad it hurts. “Drift Away” isn’t hopeless in mood, necessarily, but six years after the band’s second album, 2019’s Static Apnea (review here), it conveys a grief that should be well familiar to anybody who’s lost someone in the last six years. Which is just about everybody.

“Drift Away” moves from its My Bloody Valentine-style chug into an even heavier roll in its second half, as though the band were trying to flatten their own feelings with the riffs — therapy for all — but its 90-plus seconds are spent in a quiet contemplation of guitar after the last rumble has faded. It’s a synthier, lower backing drone that makes the outro — which is nonetheless a bookend for the start of the track — sound almost like the quiet part before Meshuggah destroy the universe or somesuch, and it leads into the quick feedback snipe and let’s-fucking-go inherited-from-noise-rock riff sweep of “Psychic Pain” (11:34) itself. The sprawling title-track and presumed side B leadoff is a highlight unto itself, with a shouted verse amid the swaying groove they establish, a big mosh of the sort that Sweden’s Domkraft have so righteously proliferated. Daring to be fun.

For a while, anyhow. The cacophony grows quiet as Rosner turns the drums into a “Black Sabbath”-ish slog and guest vocalist Lauren Lavin — familiar contributors Mike Sparks, Jr. and the already-mentioned Cheeks also feature somewhere on the record, I know neither where nor in what capacity — adds voice to an atmospheric breadth to give the listener a focal point while the band sneakily build back up.

The roll renews circa 4:20 (obvs.) and finds its way into a willfully more angular transition before leaning hard on a riff that is more trad-doom in its construction — it also sounds like Black Sabbath, but different Sabbath, and not trying to be cheeky in saying it that way; if you want a closer, more obscure analog: the intro riff of Asteroid‘s “The Great Unknown” — and basking in its sheer largesse for the next however long it is until just before 10 minutes in there’s some sign of letup as they draw back the onslaught and space out a hypnotic ending that transitions directly into the feedback fade-in at the outset of closer “Caged” (5:53).

It’s not the first slow, feedback-soaked churn the band have proffered at this point, and that’s just fine. At its outset, “Caged” feels somewhat like an album outro — whether or not it was written to close the album, I don’t know, but it works where it is — but it isn’t only that as the shouted approach of “Raw Wound” renews, a downer riff seeming to give the whole movement a sense of drag through its initial succession of verses, but also working on a post-metallic build for its own ending before it’s even halfway done. It’s not quite the drop-everything-and-follow-this-riff conclusion Neurosis once wrought in “Stones From the Sky,” but it follows a not dissiimlar pattern of descending into noise as it heads to the finish.

Coupled with the adrenaline Serial Hawk are at that point riding, the agonized vocals of Bassin from within the mounting assault of “Caged” are a distinguishing presence. “Not only does that storm exist, but there’s someone in there,” etc. As they have all along, Serial Hawk give “Caged” its due space for an ending, and round out a varied course made cohesive through scope and performance with one last example of doing whatever they want and making it work. If that’s the underlying message of the record, so be it, and fair enough a decade on from their first album, 2015’s Searching for Light (review here), for the band to make such a fervent and multifaceted declaration of who they are.

As regards the titular theme of Psychic Pain, it doesn’t seem like “Caged” is at a point where things are hunky-dory, but it sure is cathartic, and especially after the intricacy of the title-track, the manner in which they strip down the attack to end is satisfying as an individual piece and as the tie-together moment for the record as a whole. I’ll admit to being somewhat surprised a new Serial Hawk LP exists at all, but that it does is good news for those who’ve followed them since their inception and for newcomers alike. Surely Psychic Pain will be the first experence for many of Serial Hawk‘s particular take on heavy — rougher than what you’d generally consider progressive, but not unthoughtful by any means — and as such it’s fortunate it resonates with a persona so much the band’s own.

Serial Hawk, Psychic Pain (2025)

Serial Hawk on Facebook

Serial Hawk on Instagram

Serial Hawk on Bandcamp

They make the point themselves. Year of the Cobra. It says it right there on the punkishly distressed-looking front cover, with a picture of the band in digitized black and white, like a picture off someone’s phone. Year of the Cobra. The photo itself is notable, as neither bassist/vocalist Amy Tung Barrysmith (now also of Slower) nor drummer Johanes Barrysmith are looking at the camera, but both seem to be looking out from under some industrial-looking covering. The Prophecy label is there, subtle and almost punk rock, just the logo with the catalog number under the band’s name to tell you it’s self-titled.

As for the photo, maybe a train station, a bus stop? The implication of touring life, of movement, of quick-get-this-picture-done-so-we-can-catch-this-ride, is prevalent, which is suitable to who Year of the Cobra are as a band, and indeed, the eight songs and 41 minutes of the Seattle duo’s third full-length build on the accomplishments of 2019’s Ash and Dust (review here), marking a crucial moment in the life of the group that they meet with some of their finest, heaviest songcraft.

For it, the two-piece teamed with producer Matt Bayles at Studio Litho (Bayles also mixed at The Red Room, while Brad Boatright mastered at Audiosiege). Known for his work with Isis, Sandrider, Mastodon, 1000mods and a slew of others, Bayles brings clarity enough to highlight the nuanced shifts in Amy‘s bass tone throughout, going from the rumble and infectious nod at the outset of opener “Full Sails” to the punchier fuzz that accompanies the uptempo push of “Daemonium,” while still giving the impression that Year of the Cobra are a band who hit hard, which if you’ve ever seen them on stage you already know is true to life. The entire message of the album, from the fact that it’s self-titled to the grainy pic to the stonervana riff in “War Drop,” the lyrics of which cast present real-world warmaking as catchy and maybe therefore inevitable, a chorus reference to the Wailing Wall putting the song in the time and place of the ongoing wreck of slaughter in Israel and Palestine.

The use of “drop” in the title — modern slang! one would pretend to clutch pearls were one not too broke for even imaginary jewelry — is emblematic of a continuing dialogue with pop influences that surfaced in 2017’s Burn Your Dead EP (review here) after the band’s debut album, 2016’s …In the Shadows Below (review here), laid out the foundation in heavy low end groove and breathy melody. Ash and Dust refined this aspect of their sound, and it’s part of how they’ve grown here as well. Amy‘s performance in “Alone,” which caps side A, not only justifies that song’s would-be-centerpiece positioning in the tracklisting, but reaffirms her power and reach as a singer. In a band that gets so much out of just two instruments sound-wise, Amy‘s voice has become the sneaky third instrument.

The depth of emotion conveyed in “Alone” is a decent example of that (prefaced by the crescendo of “Full Sails”), as much Cranberries (there’s even a mention of lingering) as a keyboard-laced Pallbearer, but also how much work the vocals and lyrics are doing in “Daemonium,” which comes across as a story of confronting someone who’s committed sexual assult — the rush of an interrogation in the chorus: “Did she make it alright?/Did she make it that night?/Did she put up a fight/You know…/Was she quiet?/Or Did she moan inside?/Did she look at you with her hollow eyes?/Did she say a word?/Did she scream in pain?/Did she close her eyes?/Did she plead and beg for her life?” — while framing it in the second-person, “…Did she look at you,” and that somehow conspiratorial, locker-room-talk-ish “you know,” taking the conversations some men have with each other and turning them into an accusation. It is striking, effective, efficient, and purposeful. There are examples of Year of the Cobra mastering their sound, knowing themselves as players and as a band together, as songwriters, all over these tracks.

The flourish in the vocals to help carry “7 Years” back to its hook, or the keyboard-laced post-doom daring-of-hope that takes place in the seven-and-a-half-minute “Prayer” at the end, the hey-let’s-go-on-tour-for-a-month sweep of “Full Sails” — these and others here are nothing less than Year of the Cobra owning their sound and demonstrating full command of their approach to manifesting it. In other words, whether dug into the sprawl of “Alone” or the shove of “Daemonium,” reaching to new ground at the end of the record or reinforcing their proclivity for planting their songs in your brain across the span, Year of the Cobra are doing their best work to-date right now.

Year of the Cobra feels like an album the band have been building toward for nearly a decade as they’ve explored, traveled, and developed across each of their releases, and it may be that two, three, six (?) years from now, they’ll put out another record that’ll be a step forward from this. Great. That doesn’t change the palpable feeling of intention that comes from so much of what’s happening across these eight songs, or the creative triumph of their making.

These, taken with the way in which confrontation of “Daemonium” is likewise one tool in their arsenal, alongside the longing of “Alone,” the brooding sensibility of “The Darkness,” or “Sleep” in which the breadth of bass tone in the verse reminds of Type O Negative circa World Coming Down — not a compliment I give lightly, though with the toxic nature of a lot of that band’s lyrics, they’d be a somewhat ironic influence if they actually were one — the lurch and hint of threat in the melody of “Sleep,” and so on, give Year of the Cobra range beyond that which can come from changing a tempo or clicking a pedal on or off. There’s aural scope to the material, but emotional and expressive scope as well.

From a band in a format that often derives an essential part of its character from configuration — i.e., one hears ‘duo’ and expects a certain kind of rawness — Year of the Cobra are more complete as two than many are as four or five. This self-titled confirms the potential of their work to this point and opens new avenues for them to continue to progress. Given the level of execution across the board, there’s no way Year of the Cobra doesn’t shine as one of 2025’s best releases in underground heavy.

Year of the Cobra, “War Drop” official video

Year of the Cobra, “Full Sails” lyric video

Year of the Cobra, Year of the Cobra (2025)

Year of the Cobra on Facebook

Year of the Cobra on Instagram

Year of the Cobra on Bandcamp

Prophecy Productions on Facebook

Prophecy Productions on Bandcamp

Prophecy Productoins website

If you look at the poster for the Sorcia and Mother Root tour that will take both bands from their shared home state of Washington to Montana for Rocky Mountain Riff Fest 2025, you’ll see the scaly snakey-snake that the boogie van is driving on — awesome, by the way — is on-point with the poster art for that same festival. I don’t know if there’s a corresponding tour for the other side of that poster — that is, if it might a triptych, ultimately — but that’d be rad and I’ll for sure keep an eye out. It’s a killer design either way.

That lineup, for Rocky Mountain Riff Fest in Kalispell, MT, also features Kadabra, Wizzerd and Swamp Ritual, among others, and it reads like a damn good time. I’m not trying to discount the series of club shows that will lead to Mother Root and Sorcia taking part, however. The tour runs eight nights in a row and dips as far south as Las Vegas, so for two bands who could just probably cut east for however many hours and get where they’re going, they’re making a genuine loop of it.

Both bands had records out in ’23, and you’ll find them below. Safe travels and good times wished to all involved parties, who collectively sent the following down the PR wire:

Sorcia & Mother Root – The Road to Riff Fest

Says Sorcia: “We are thrilled to announce our ‘Road To Riff Fest Tour’ with our good friends and fellow Snoqualmie Valley dwellers Mother Root as we make our way to Kalispell, MT for Rocky Mountain Riff Fest! We are looking forward to getting back out on the road and are very excited that the majority of this tour will be places we have not yet played. Cheers to Wizzerd for putting this amazing fest together and to Isaac M Passwater for killing it on the poster art. See you on the road in April!”

Says Mother Root: “In April 2025, we’re hopping in the van for our Road to Riff Fest tour with our longtime friends, Sorcia! This tour will take us through new cities, a few new states, and give us the chance to meet some amazing new people along the way. The journey will culminate at the legendary Rocky Mountain Riff Fest in Kalispell, MT- an event that’s been on our radar for a while. We’re honored and beyond thankful to be able to play it! If we’re nearby, we’d love to see you at the show so come say hi! See you soon!”

4/11 – Bend, OR @ Silver Moon Brewing
4/12 – Eureka, CA @ Siren’s Song Tavern
4/13 – Reno, NV @ Lobar Social
4/14 – Las Vegas, NV @ Griffin Bar
4/15 – Grand Junction, CO @ Copeka
4/16 – Denver, CO @ HQ
4/17 – Rapid City, SD @ AFL-CIO Labor Hall
4/18 – Bozeman, MT @ Gallatin Labor Temple
4/19 – Kalispell, MT @ Rocky Mountain Riff Fest

Mother Root photo by Sara Michelle @saramich3lle and Sorcia photo by Jesse Brasch @jessebrasch. Poster by Isaac M. Passwater.

https://sorciaband.com
https://sorcia.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/sorciaband
https://www.facebook.com/sorciaband
https://linktr.ee/sorciaband

https://motherroot.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/mother_root
https://www.facebook.com/MotherRootmusic
https://linktr.ee/mother_root

Sorcia, Lost Season (2023)

Mother Root, Clamour of Souls (2023)

The obvious caveat here is that any show by any band might be their last. But putting aside vague, maybe morbid, potentialities, the Feb. 20 gig Sandrider will play at Neumo’s in their native Seattle, has a chance of being it for the band. They’re not quite outright calling it a day, but with guitarist/vocalist Jon Weisnewski set to move to south to California, how the band functions will obviously change due to the distance, and they note below that shows will be rare.

Sucks. In the decade and a half since 2010, Sandrider have issued four stellar full-lengths, singular in their righteous blend of heavy groove and noise rock, punk chicanery and metallic aural force — their latest, Enveletration (review here), was released in 2023 through Satanik Royalty (which also got behind catalog reissues) and answered by the complementary ’24 single Aviary/Baleen (review here) — and part of the reason I’m bummed out on this news is I’ve never seen them live.

They’ve never been a band on the road for eight months out of the year, and with Weisnewski relocating, that gets even less likely in logistical terms. The good news is remote songwriting and even recording is possible, but moving sucks unless someone else is paying for it (no clue if that’s the case here), and if it’s a couple years before Sandrider can settle into a new modus, it wouldn’t be a shock. Needless to say, a fifth LP would be welcome whenever it shows up in the unknowable future — 2027? 2029? these are numbers out of sci-fi movies to someone born in the 1980s — and perhaps being isolated from his bandmates will allow Weisnewski to further develop his genre-defiant Nuclear Dudes side-project, which released Compression Crimes 1 in November as the follow-up to 2023’s rad-as-your-face Boss Blades (review here).

Either way, best of luck to Weisnewski, and here’s hoping Sandrider yet show up someplace where and when I am so that I can see them and bang my head and then be sore for two days afterward. That would be just about ideal. Them never playing again and not being a band anymore — which feels like the alternative reality being hinted at here — would be markedly less so.

From social media:

Hey friends. Jon will be moving to California in March for a new job. This unfortunately means that the status of Sandrider will be a long distance operation. Shows are going to be pretty rare and involve a lot of travel and coordination.

Getting loud with you all in Seattle has been a true joy and the three of us haven’t taken any of it for granted for a second. Come party with us in Jan/Feb while it’s still easy. Love you all.

Alright this is it… Thu 2/20 @neumos_ with @darkmeditation206 and a special guest. LAST TIME FOR A LONG TIME. Come party with us ✈️❤️

SANDRIDER:
Nat Damm – drums
Jesse Roberts – bass, vocals
Jon Weisnewski – guitar, vocals

Sandrider, Aviary/Baleen (2024)

Sandrider, Enveletration (2023)

Welcome to the Quarterly Review. Oh, you were here last time? Me too. All door prizes will be mailed to winning parties upon completion of, uh, everything, I guess?

Anywhazzle, the good news is this week is gonna have 50 releases covered between now — the 10 below — and the final batch of 10 this Friday. I’m trying to sneak in a bunch of stuff ahead of year-end coverage, yes, but let the urgency of my doing so stand as testament to the quality of the music contained in this particular Quarterly Review. If I didn’t feel strongly about it, surely I’d find some other way to spend my time.

That said, let’s not waste time. You know the drill, I know the drill. Just don’t be surprised when some of the stuff you see here, today, tomorrow, and throughout the week, ends up in the Best of 2024 when the time comes. I have no idea what just yet, but for sure some of it.

We go.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

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Gnome, Vestiges of Verumex Visidrome

Some bands write songs for emotional catharsis. Some do it to make a political statement. Gnome‘s songs feel specifically — and expertly — crafted to engage an audience, and their third full-length, Vestiges of Verumex Visidrome, underscores the point. Hooks like “Old Soul” and “Duke of Disgrace” offer a self-effacing charm, where elsewhere the Antwerp trio burn through hot-shit riffing and impact-minded slam metal with a quirk that, if you’ve caught wind of the likes of Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol or Howling Giant in recent years, should fit nicely among them while finding its own sonic niche in being able to, say, throw a long sax solo on second cut “The Ogre” or veer into death growls for the title line of “Rotten Tongue” and others. They make ‘party riff metal’ sound much easier to manifest than it probably is, and the reason their reputation precedes them at this point goes right back to the songwriting. They hit hard, they get in, get out, it’s efficient when it wants to be but can still throw a curve with the stop and pivot in “Rotten Tongue,” running a line between punk and stoner, rock and metal, your face and the floor. It might actually be too enjoyable for some, but the funk they bring here is infectious. They make the riffs dance, and everything goes from there.

Gnome on Instagram

Polder Records website

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Hermano, When the Moon Was High…

The lone studio track “Breathe” serves as the reasoning behind Hermano‘s first new release since 2007’s …Into the Exam Room (discussed here), and actually predates that still-latest long-player by some years. Does it matter? Yeah, sort of. As regards John Garcia‘s post-Kyuss career, Hermano both got fleshed out more than most (thinking bands like Unida and Slo Burn, even Vista Chino, that didn’t get to release three full-lengths in their time), and still seemed to fade out when there was so much potential ahead of them. If “Breathe” doesn’t argue in favor of this band giving it the proverbial “one more go,” perhaps the live version of “Brother Bjork” (maybe the same one featured on 2005’s Live at W2?) and a trio of cuts captured at Hellfest in 2016 should do the trick nicely. They’re on fire through “Senor Moreno’s Plan,” “Love” and “Manager’s Special,” with Garcia, Dandy Brown, David Angstrom, Chris Leathers and Mike Callahan treating Clisson to a reminder of why they’re the kind of band who might get to build an entire EP around a leftover studio track — because that studio track, and the band more broadly, righteously kick their own kind of ass. What would a new album be like?

Ripple Music on Facebook

Ripple Music website

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Stahv, Sentiens Eklektikos

Almost on a per-song basis, Stahv — the mostly-solo brainchild of multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Solomon Arye Rosenschein, here collaborating on production with John Getze of Ako-Lite Records — skewers and melds genres to create something new from their gooey remnants. On the opening title-track, maybe that’s a post-industrial Phil Collins set to dreamtime keyboard and backed by fuzzy drone. On “Lunar Haze,” it’s all goth ’80s keyboard handclaps until the chorus melody shines through the fog machine like The Beatles circa ’64. Yeah that’s right. And on “Bossa Supernova,” you bet your ass it’s bossa nova. “The Calling” reveals a rocker’s soul, where “Plainview” earlier on has a swing that might draw from The Birthday Party at its root (it also might not) but has its own sleek vibe just the same with a far-back, lo-fi buzz that somehow makes the melody sound better. “Aaskew” (sic) takes a hard-funkier stance musically but its outsider perspective in the lyrics is similar. The 1960s come back around in the later for “Circuit Crash” — it would have to be a song about the future — and “Leaving Light” seems to make fun of/celebrate (it can be both) that moment in the ’80s when everything became tropical. There’s worlds here waiting for ears adventurous enough to hear them.

Stahv on Facebook

Ako-Lite Records on Bandcamp

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Space Shepherds, Cycler

I mean, look. The central question you really have to ask yourself is how mellow do you want to get? Do you think you can handle 12 minutes of “Transmigration?” Do you think you can be present in yourself through that cool-as-fuck, ultra-smooth psychedelic twist Space Shepherds pull off, barely three minutes into the the beginning of this seven-track, 71-minute pacifier to quiet the bad voices in your (definitely not my) brain. What’s up with that keyboard shuffle in “Celestial Rose” later on? I don’t know, but it rules. And when they blow it out in “Got Caught Dreaming?” Yeah, hell yeah, wake up! “Free Return” is a 15-minute drifter jam that gets funky in the back half (a phrase I’d like on a shirt) and you don’t wanna miss it! At the risk of spoiling it, I’ll tell you that the title-track, which closes, is absolutely the payoff it’s all asking for. If you’ve got the time to sit with it, and you can just sort of go where it’s going, Cycler is a trip begging to be taken.

Space Shepherds on Facebook

Space Shepherds on Bandcamp

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King Botfly, All Hail

It is all very big. All very grand, sweeping and poised musically, very modern and progressive and such — and immediately it has something if that’s what you’re looking for, which is super-doper, thanks — but if you dig into King Botfly‘s vocals, there’s a vulnerability there as well that adds an intimacy to all that sweep and plunges down the depths of the spacious mix’s low end. And I’m not knocking that part of it either. The Portsmouth, UK-based three-piece of guitarist/vocalist George Bell, bassist Luke Andrew and drummer Darren Draper, take on a monumental task in terms of largesse, and they hit hard when they want to, but there’s dynamic in it too, and both has an edge and doesn’t seem to go anywhere it does without a reason, which is a hard balance to strike. They sound like a band who will and maybe already have learned from this and will use that knowledge to move forward in an ongoing creative pursuit. So yes, progressive. Also tectonically heavy. And with heart. I think you got it. They’ll be at Desertfest London next May, and they sound ready for it.

King Botfly on Facebook

King Botfly on Bandcamp

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Last Band, The Sacrament in Accidents

Are Last Band a band? They sure sound like one. Founded by guitarists Pat Paul and Matt LeGrow (the latter also of Admiral Browning) upwards of 15 years ago, when they were less of an actual band, the Maryland-based outfit offer 13 songs of heavy alternative rock on The Sacrament in Accidents, with some classic metal roots shining through amid the harmonies of “Saffire Alice” and a denser thrust in “Season of Outrage,” a rush in the penultimate “Forty-Four to the Floor,” and so on, where the title-track is more of an open sway and “Lidocaine” is duly placid, and while the production is by no means expansive, the band convey their songs with intent. Most cuts are in the three-to-four-minute range, but “Blown Out” dips into psychedelic-gaze wash as the longest at 5:32 offset by comparatively grounded, far-off Queens of the Stone Age-style vocalizing in the last minute, which is an effective culmination. The material has range and feels worked on, and while The Sacrament in Accidents sounds raw, it hones a reach that feels true to a songwriting methodology evolved over time.

Last Band on Bandcamp

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Dream Circuit, Pennies for Your Life

Debuting earlier this decade as a solo-project of Andrew Cox, Seattle’s Dream Circuit have built out to a four-piece for with Pennies for Your Life, which throughout its six-track/36-minute run sets a contemplative emotionalist landscape. Now completed by Anthony Timm, Cody Albers and Ian Etheridge, the band are able to move from atmospheric stretches of classically-inspired-but-modern-sounding verses into heavier tonality on a song like “Rosy” with fluidity that seems to save its sweep for when it counts. The title-track dares some shouts, giving some hint of a metallic underpinning, but that still rests well in context next to the sitar sounds of “Let Go,” which opens at 4:10 into its own organ-laced crush, emotionally satisfying. Imagine a post-heavy rock that’s still pretty heavy, and a dynamic that stretches across microgenres, and maybe that will give some starting idea. The last two tracks argue for efficiency in craft, but wherever Dream Circuit go on this sophomore release, they take their own route to get there.

Dream Circuit on Facebook

Dream Circuit on Bandcamp

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Okkoto, All is Light

“All is Light” is the first single from New Paltz bliss-drone meditationalist solo outfit Okkoto since 2022’s stellar and affirming Climb the Antlers and Reach the Stars (review here), and its seven minutes carry a similar scope to what one found on that album. To be clear, that’s a compliment. Interwoven threads of synth over methodical timekeeping drum sounds, wisps of airy guitar drawn together with other lead lines, keys or strings, create a flowing world around the vocals added by Michael Lutomski, also (formerly?) of heavy psych rockers It’s Not Night: It’s Space, the sole proprietor of the expanse. A lot of a given listener’s experience of Okkoto experience will depend on their own headspace, but if you have the time and attention — seven-plus minutes of active-but-not-too-active hearing recommended — but “All is Light” showcases the rare restorative aspects of Okkoto in a way that, if you can get to it, can make you believe, or at least escape for a little while.

Okkoto on Instagram

Okkoto on Bandcamp

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Trappist Afterland, Evergreen: Walk to Paradise Garden

Underscored with a earth-rooted folkish fragility in the voice of Adam Geoffrey Cole (also guitar, cittern, tanpura, oud, synth, xylophone and something called a ‘dulcitar’), Melbourne’s Trappist Afterland are comfortably adventurous on this 10th full-length, Evergreen: Walk to Paradise Garden, which digs deeper into psych-drone on longest track “Cruciform/The Reincarnation of Kelly-Anne (Parts 1-3)” (7:55) while elsewhere digs into fare more Eastern-influenced-Western-traditional, largely based around guitar composition. With an assortment of collaborators coming and going, even this is enough for Cole and his seemingly itinerant company to create a sense of variety — the violin in centerpiece “Barefoot in Thistles” does a lot of work in that regard; ditto the squeezebox of opener “The Squall” — and while the arrangements don’t lack for flourish, the human expression is paramount, and the nine songs are serene unto the group vocal that caps in “You Are Evergreen,” which would seem to be placed to highlight its resonance, and reasonably so. As it’s Trappist Afterland‘s 10th album by their own count, it’s hardly a surprise they know what they’re about, but they do anyway.

Trappist Afterland on Facebook

Trappist Afterland on Bandcamp

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Big Muff Brigade, Pi

For a band who went so far as to name themselves after a fuzz pedal, Spain’s Big Muff Brigade have more in common with traditional desert rock than the kind of tonal worship one might expect them to deliver. That landscape doesn’t account for their naming a song “Terre Haute,” seemingly after the town in Indiana — I’ve been there; not a desert — but fair enough for the shove of that track, which on Pi arrives just ahead of closer “Seasonal Affective Disorder,” which builds to a nonetheless-mellow payoff before its fadeout. Elsewhere, the seven-minute “Pierced by the Spear” drops Sleepy (and thus Sabbathian) references in the guitar ahead of creating a duly stonerly lumber before they even unfurl the first verse — a little more in keeping with the kind of riff celebration one might expect going in — but even there, the band maintain a thread of purposeful songcraft that can only continue to serve them as they move past this Argonauta-delivered debut and continued to grow. There is a notable sense of outreach here, though, and in writing to genre, Big Muff Brigade show both their love of what they do and a will to connect with likeminded audiences.

Big Muff Brigade on Facebook

Argonauta Records website

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I did some bio writing earlier this Fall for the upcoming third Year of the Cobra LP, which is self-titled, so I’m not going to pretend not to have heard it. Instead, I’ll tell you outright that it feels from opening track “Full Sails” onward like an absolute arrival point for the duo of bassist/vocalist Amy Tung Barrysmith (also Slower) and drummer Johanes Barrysmith — a fully realized take on what their last album, 2019’s Ash and Dust (review here), laid out in terms of bringing melodic influence from outside the bounds of doom/heavy-whathaveyou and daring toward pop songcraft, while remaining darker in their purposes in a way that knows goth exists but is and wants to be something else too. The songs are correspondingly complex and purposeful, and the band have never sounded better. The only bummer news is it’s not out until the end of February.

The good news, though, is there’s a video up now for second track “War Drop” that emphasizes a lot of what I’m actually talking about above. You’ll find it down at the bottom of this post and I’ll just hope to have more to come on the record between now and what feels like but surely isn’t the far future in which it will arrive. If you read this site with any regularity (sorry for the typos), you’ll know I keep notes throughout the year. Year of the Cobra is the first entry in my notes for the best albums of 2025.

The PR wire takes it from there:

YEAR OF THE COBRA reveal first video single ‘War Drop’ and details of self-titled new album “Year of the Cobra”

YEAR OF THE COBRA premiere the video ‘War Drop’ as the first single taken from their forthcoming new full-length. “Year of the Cobra”, the third album of Seattle’s doom sludge duo has been slated for release on February 28, 2025.

YEAR OF THE COBRA comment: “​​The track ‘War Drop’ was the last song that we recorded with Matt Bayles”, vocalist and bass player Amy Barrysmith explains. “I honestly did not think that it was going to make the album when we were listening to it as a demo. After Matt had worked his genius, we ended up choosing it to be our first single. It’s funny how things work out sometimes. I like this song because it has a little unexpected time change and I love nerding out on things like that.”

Tracklist
1. Full Sails
2. War Drop
3. Daemonium
4. Alone
5. 7 Years
6. The Darkness
7. The Sleep
8. Prayer

Produced & engineered by Matt Bayles at Studio Litho, Seattle, WA (US)
Mixing by Matt Bayles at The Red Room, Seattle, WA (US)
Mastering by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege, Portland, OR (US)

Line-up
Amy Tung Barrysmith – vocals, bass
Johanes Barrysmith – drums

https://www.facebook.com/yearofthecobraband/
https://www.instagram.com/yearofthecobra/
https://yearofthecobra.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/prophecyproductions/
https://prophecy-de.bandcamp.com/
https://en.prophecy.de/

Year of the Cobra, “War Drop” official video

First of all, this lineup is pretty badass. This year’s Rain City Doom Fest was originally billed as the release show for the new Year of the Cobra LP, but my understanding is the album has been delayed. It’s great, keep an ear out for it. In any case, the Seattle two-piece are still playing, alongside Bell Witch, who’ll headline in their particular morose, crawling, consuming fashion, and The Well, who will trek up from Austin as they do from time to time, presumably to remind everybody in attendance how fucking underrated they are. Those three alone make it quite an evening.

Those three also rest at and near the top of a 10-band bill with Ape Machine, Sorcia, Sun Crow and others showcasing from Washington/the Pacific Northwest, and the uniting factor is heavy as two stages play out over the course of one packed evening. This is the fourth year of the fest — I thought it was five, but I recall being very wrong about that last year — and it’s set for Dec. 14 at El Corazon and Funhouse. I don’t anticipate being in that part of the world at the , but it would be one to see if you are.

The PR wire has details:

Rain City Doom Fest announces lineup for this years festival in Seattle on December 14th!!

2 stages, 10 bands, One night of Doom.

TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY 8/30!
https://wl.seetickets.us/event/bell-witch/616791?afflky=ElCorazon

Rain City Doom Fest 2024 will be held at El Corazon/Funhouse in Seattle on December 14. This is the 4th year of this annual festival that showcases heavy music of the PNW and beyond. This year’s lineup will include some of the Seattle areas most esteemed active doom bands including Bell Witch, and Year of the Cobra who will be making this show their album release party. The festival is also pleased to welcome The Well as special guests from Austin, TX.

For more than a decade, Bell Witch have sent tides surging over the seawalls of the song form, unraveling conventional expectations about the ways music stations itself in time to absorb a listener’s attention.

Dynamic duo Amy and Jon Barrysmith make up the doom-y twosome that is Year of the Cobra, a Seattle-based sludge metal band. Moaning vocals accent what reeks of Black Sabbath coming back through a long, dark tunnel. The rippling hums of Amy’s ever-expanding bassy tones are complimented by the dynamics in Jon’s drumming, shifting effortless from laid back grooves to pushing, driving climaxes. Amy’s easy voice over Jon’s steady splashing lulls you in, only to hit you with the surprise, brutal left-hook!

A heavy psych rock/proto-metal power trio based out of Austin, Texas, The Well’s lethal blend of knotty prog, punk, and bluesy doom rock invokes names like Black Sabbath, Electric Wizard, Sleep, and Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats. Citing a desire “to blend different musical styles as diversified as Joy Division to Blue Cheer”, the band, which consists of Ian Graham, Lisa Alley, and Jason Sullivan, came together in 2012 out of a shared love for extreme music, cult horror films, and dark mysticism.

Completing this incredible lineup are some of Pacific North West’s finest doom bands. Each bringing their unique twist on the genre:

Witch Ripper

Washington’s WITCH RIPPER have seamlessly welded together the contemporary heaviness of such hard-hitting acts as MASTODON, GOJIRA, and BARONESS with the anthemic bombast of classic artists in the vein of QUEEN and DAVID BOWIE from the start.

Slow Goat

Gamy riffs cut from the flank of the Pacific Northwest

Ape Machine

The name APE MACHINE is a nod to the days of reel-to-reel magnetic tape audio recording; a fitting moniker for the heavy-hitting quartet as the band plays through vintage tube amplifiers and lays down its songs using exclusively throwback quality studio equipment.

Sorcia

SORCIA hails from the Snoqualmie Valley in the backwoods of Seattle, Washington. Combining blues-laden groovy riffs, heavy doom and raw grunge with the added dynamic of dual vocals, they deliver their own method of Pacific Northwest stoner sludge metal.

Sun Crow

Rain-soaked doom blues, moss-covered stoner rock, grey sky heavy psych, whatever they call it, SUN CROW summons the old spirits of high volume heavy rock into close quarters and paints the ceiling and walls with magnets, wood, and glass.

Melancholia

True to its name, MELANCHOLIA explores dread and anguish in all of its malformed glory through the lenses of crushing doom/sludge, ferocious black metal/death metal and raw, primitive crust punk.

Mother Root

Two brothers making noise in the backwoods of the Snoqualmie Valley.

https://wl.seetickets.us/event/bell-witch/616791?afflky=ElCorazon
https://www.instagram.com/raincitydoomfest

Bell Witch, Future’s Shadow Part 1: The Clandestine Gate (2023)