Posted in audiObelisk on December 3rd, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Seattle-based heavy progressive rockers Mother Crone are set to release their second album, Embrace the Death, in March 2026. The four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Joe Frothingham, guitarist Edoardo Curatolo, bassist Preston Wilson and drummer Charlie Romano have been one-at-a-timing tracks out from the record for much of this year, beginning in August with “Eye of Providence,” following with “Embrace the Death” in September, and just yesterday they put up the hard-driving “Fever Stone.” Each single has its own artwork, cassette-proportioned, and each shows a different side of Mother Crone, be it the more gentle build of “Embrace the Death” or the chug, razor-solo and thrashy tension in “Eye of Providence.” “Inner Keep” diverges from this method and premieres below.
It is 11 minutes long — you know I love an 11-minute single — and starts out quiet before a by-now-familiar wave of distortion brings the central riff. The verse is slow when they get there, about two minutes in, and melodic, but moves into the rush and burl Mother Crone show elsewhere as well, finding a progressive edge that reminds of early Mastodon without sounding like that. At four minutes, they starkly shift to a quiet stretch of guitar and set about working themselves back. The chugging crescendo is metal as fuck, charged and duly furious for the journey the band have undertaken, and it ends with a searing emotionalism before a quiet guitar works its way out in standalone fashion. Tonally, there’s bite, but Mother Crone are as likely to crush as they are to slice, even if they do so with precision.
Ten years after the release of their debut album, Awakening, Mother Crone return with a new lineup and new music. You might think of these singles as the rumble on the horizon to announce the album’s coming. I think if you make your way through them, you’ll find the band have something special to offer with a sound that’s between different styles and able to be righteously harsh, but who clearly also compose their songs with thoughtfulness as well as raw passion. I don’t even know how many tracks Embrace the Death has since I haven’t heard the record, but “Inner Keep” as the fourth audio sample from it continues to reveal the band’s personality as comes through the material.
Embrace theDeathwill be out in March. Joe Frothingham was kind enough to offer some comment on “Inner Keep,” which you’ll find below, accompanied by more info from the PR wire.
Please enjoy:
Mother Crone, “Inner Keep” track premiere
Joe Frothingham on “Inner Keep”:
Inner Keep is an attempt to be as honest as possible about the struggle with antisocial tendencies and isolation, the hurt and pain that is derived from a lifelong sense of worthlessness and self loathing derived from some difficult family dynamics. It is the culmination of several themes developed in earlier songs in the record and was one hell of a song to try to write. It took years. Literally years.
I had the opening sequence of this song written a year or two before we recorded Awakening in 2014. The struggle to dive into the feelings that I was trying to process was real. It wasn’t like they were too painful and heavy to bear or anything. When I tried to feel those feelings, I’d space out and dissociate in subtle ways. It was a constant battle to try to get still enough to let something honest come through and keep the racing mind at bay enough to go there.
The band introduced themselves with their debut album Awakening in 2015, followed by two years of extensive touring across the region. Life’s demands eventually forced the group to slow down, but Mother Crone have now returned revitalized and refocused, ready to deliver their most ambitious material yet. The band describe Embrace the Death as “a reflection on loss, abuse, and abandonment… coming to peace with the things that have haunted us for decades.”
With their forthcoming sophomore record Embrace the Death, Mother Crone push their sound to new extremes, heavier, darker, and more expansive. Backed by a refreshed lineup featuring Preston Wilson (bass), Charlie Romano (drums), Edoardo Curatolo (guitar), and Joe Frothingham (guitar/vocals), the band aim to raise the standards of energy and execution in the Seattle scene and beyond.
Posted in Reviews on November 20th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
It’s all over now, I’ve got momentum on my side. This is day four of the Quarterly Review. The first three days have been nothing but a pleasure on my end, putting them together, and with just today and tomorrow left, I’m feeling pretty good about the entire endeavor. I’m not sure yet if this will be the end of the year as regards QRs, but if it is, it’s a good one to go out on.
And basically to make that determination, I need to look at next month’s schedule and see what’s coming when, when I’ll do things like the year-end poll and my own big end-of-year post. No idea on any of that yet, but I’ll get there. Getting this done in relatively smooth fashion is a help. Thanks for reading and I hope it’s been a good one for you as well.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Psychedelic Source Records, The Initiation Outlaws
Set to release through Echodelick in the US and Weird Beard Records in the UK, in addition to Psychedelic Source Records‘ own distribution, The Initiation Outlaws brings eight pieces and a full 98-minute double-LP’s worth of cosmic improvised jamming, with a cast of regulars from the Hungarian collective — Bence Ambrus, Máté Varga, Róbert Kránitz, Krisztina Benus, Gergely Szabó — taking part in collaborative exploration with Go Kurosawa of Kikagaku Moyo, who goes from drums to bass to guitar as the release progresses, sliding right into the amorphous methodology of Psychedelic Source Records while distinguishing the heavier push in “Three Golds Reward II” or the snare work on “The King of Magic Colts and Wands I” earlier. Trance-inducing as ever, these captured moments are gorgeously fluid and immersive, active enough in parts like “The King of Magic Colts and Wands II” to defy mellowpsych-improv expectation, but abiding just the same. If you’re not there yet, it’s time to start thinking of Psychedelic Source among Europe’s finest purveyors of heavy psychedelia.
The forlorn folkishness in the midsection of “Waves Become the Sky” bring to mind an extrapolation of emotive doom from the likes of Warning, but that’s understandable with Aerial Ruin and Bell Witch renewing their collaboration for Stygian Bough Vol. II, following on from a first volume (review here) in 2020. The album takes place over four extended tracks from the rolling density of the aforementioned opener through the minimalist-till-it-isn’t “King of the Wood” and the longform folk-death-doom of “From Dominion Let Them Bleed” and the melancholy triumph of heft wrought in 19-minute finale “The Told and the Leadened,” which dwells in spaces empty and full and remains conscious enough to end with tense noise and drumming. This is artistry on its own wavelength, working in its own time, and patient to a point of extremity. But they do it to offer comfort, make no mistake. There’s consolation in these songs, in addition to all the mourning.
Unrepentantly cosmic Italian outfit Giöbia are like a fresh coat of antimatter for space rock. The four-piece obviously hunkered down in their secret lab after 2023’s Acid Disorder (review here) and worked hard to refine their chemical compositions, such that “Voodoo Experience” nods grounded even as its synth and guitars surge beyond the thermosphere. The results show everywhere throughout X-ÆON in their outsider cohesion of classic and neo-space rocks, heavy psychedelia and oddball synthscaping, whether you’re doing the sensory thing with the dream-jam “1976” or embroiled in the four-part side B concept piece, “La Mort de la Terre,” which draws a cinematic curtain for life as we know it in “Dans la Nuit Éternelle,” a wordless epilogue that feels half a world removed from the stomp-and-verse of “The Death of the Crows,” but of course, that’s the whole idea.
The included acoustic guitar, organ and FM-radio classic rock vibes in the eight-and-a-half-minute closing title-track aren’t a coincidence. They’re part of a stated intention the band had in taking on more of a traditional sound, coming down from some of the harder-hitting doom of 2020’s Acid Communion and working in more of a ’70s-inspired style. That manifests to varying degrees throughout, as leadoff “Electric Execution” feels like it’s working in the vein of “Neon Knights” or “Turn Up the Night” in Dio Sabbathian raucousness (I know that was 1980-81, don’t @ me), and while “Lucifer Rising” has a weighted march, it’s more Scorpions than Sleep, and “Goin’ to Texas” brings in the organ to emphasize the Southern geography of the album’s centerpiece. It’s a striking turn but they pull it off for sure. “Muchachos Muchachin'” has mid-’70s charm to spare, and “Bone Boys Ride Out” seems to bridge the more modern attack of Bone Church-prior with who they are today. Not every progression plays out like you think it will, and if this is the band Bone Church have wanted to be all along, they sound accordingly right to have made the redirect.
The ‘soft scream’ vocals give Js Donny‘s Death Folk an immediate sense of extremity, but it’s a quiet extremity. The French solo artist — who also plays bass in adventurous Marseilles sludgers Donna Candy — released an EP with a full lineup in 2023, but this six-song/33-minute offering is more intimate. Js Donny dwells in the quiet, creepy spaces the songs create, the vocal gurgle giving shades of otherworldliness and malevolence alike. It’s called Death Folk, but especially with the electrified/distorted wash that takes hold in “Not Like That” and again at the outset of closer “Black Heart” — a biting tone, like harsher blackgaze — I can’t help but wonder if Js Donny isn’t working in a kind of post-death-metallic framing. There are no drums, which is a fair trade for what’s gained in grim ambience, but even without, the album is clear in manifesting both sides of its title, and while Js Donny isn’t the only one laying claim to death-folk as a style, how it happens here sure feels like an act of genre creation.
In some distant future, when the history is written of our idiotic, persistently awful time, no one will ever say, “and the right-thinking people of the day had no choice but to seek refuge in avant garde cybergrind,” and that’s why history is bullshit. Skeletal Blasphemy is the third album from Nuclear Dudes and second of 2025 behind September’s Truth Paste (review here) — keep ’em coming — and is the solo-project’s most vicious and realized offering to-date. Spearhead Jon Weisnewski (Sandrider, ex-Akimbo) brings powerviolent catharsis on “Victory Pants,” the title-track and assorted others, working in collaboration with guest drummer Coady Willis (High on Fire, Big Business, Melvins), and whether it’s the punker push in “Bad Body” or the slow, undulations of the closing “The Octopus” and the burgeoning thread of progressive melody throughout these songs, it’s exactly the sort of self-bludgeoning that being alive right now requires. Album of the year? Fuck you, fuck the year, and fuck capitalism.
With an instrumentalist foot in progressive, horn-inclusive jazz, heavy psychedelic fluidity and a resonant warmth of tone alongside a will to meander, Kronstad 23 feel tailor-made for El Paraiso Records, run by members of Denmark’s Causa Sui. Sommermørket is the Norwegian outfit’s debut album and without sounding consumed by its own ambition to do so, it organically nestles the band in a stylistic niche that allows for the explorations in “Caesar” and “Astralreiser,” the latter of which will seem barely there in its early going at low volumes, to exist along the daring-toward-dancey opener “Dølgsmål” and building a kind of dreamy tension between the guitar and drums on “Trosten,” with none of it feeling out of place. They’ll invariably get comparisons to Kanaan, but the foundation is different and the delivery gentler, with “Helgen” finding its way on drum rolls and key/guitar drift into a classic-prog horn section in a payoff that’s somewhat understated until you look back across the five and a half minutes and see how far you’ve come. I can’t wait to hear how they grow.
“Love of Driving” is the debut single from newcomer New Jersey-based krautrock-minded two-piece Rolls the River. The band brings together Dan Kirwan of Pyre Fyre on bass, guitar and vocals, and Victor Marinelli on guitar, synth, drums and vocals for a sub-five-minute cosmic reachout, obviously schooled in where it’s coming from — that is to say, one doesn’t krautrock by accident; it is a form to adopt and refine — but still feeling like an initial exploration of both style and composition. Fading in on an initial keyboardy drone, the guitar and drums come in together and the neospace shuffle is mellow as layers are added, guitar, keys, but the sense of movement brought to “Love of Driving” is enough to explain the title, whatever you might think of the Garden State’s highway system. Rather than get caught up in jughandles, though, Rolls the River harness tonal presence and linear development and still find room to include voice as part of the atmosphere. Formative, and an encouraging start.
Belgium’s Psychonaut may yet teach progressive metal a lesson or two. The post-metal three-piece reach what sure feels in “Endless Currents” like a new level of expression and craft, and while at 11 songs and 60 minutes, World Maker isn’t a minor undertaking — one could easily argue making a world takes time — the utter consumption achieved in “All in Time,” which I won’t spoil any further, the blissful wash of “…Everything Else is Just the Weather” are not to be missed, and worth whatever minor investment of attention span might be required. Exciting as the intermittent metallic surges are, “Endless Erosion” caps in a quiet place, and the atmospherics across the first two and a half minutes of “Origins,” just as one example, help to bring a feeling of place (of ‘world’) to the procession. It is a vivid place Psychonaut have made, and there are listeners for whom the melodies of World Maker will be transcendental.
Following an apparent 2024 EP called Anachronist that is below because this debut album isn’t streaming yet that I can find, The Sea Between Stars — a suitably romantic framing of what you might otherwise call ‘the void’ — brings a progressive take to classic-style doom rock. The Oregonian five-piece roll out a genuine feeling of dynamic across the album’s 10 tracks, from the proto-metal shove of “Knightrider” at the outset to the later rush and wail of “Sky Sized Heart,” to the doom-epic ballad reach of “Bridge of Irreconcilable Sorrow” to the acoustic turn in the last movement of “The Words We Don’t Speak” and variable but unifyingly soulful vocal arrangements throughout, up to the minimal voice-and-piano closer “Ghost Notes” or the duet in the crescendo of “Still Breathing.” Ambition set in balance with organic production and songwriting. I don’t know when The Sea Between Stars is coming out, if it’s now-ish, early 2026 or what, but if you want to take this as an early heads up, do.
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 29th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Spoiler alert: it’s rad.
Admittedly, that was the case in August, when this year’s Rain City Doom Fest — set for Dec. 12-13 in Seattle, Washington — made its initial announcement, with Acid King and Ragana and Merlock and sundry others confirmed at that time. But more of a good thing is a better thing, and with the complete picture of how those two days will look, it’s not hard to imagine seeing the bill and wanting to make the trip. Wherever you might be traveling from, from Mizmor to Kadabra, Hippie Death Cult, Sorcia, Sun Crow, Serial Hawk, Glasghote, Ragana and the relocated-from-the-desert Red Mesa, you’ll not be likely to find a richer sampling of the Pacific Northwest’s native underground — plus Acid King and Electric Citizen, from CA and Ohio, respectively — and if you wanted to cap the utter awfulness of 2025 with something decidedly less than awful, well, here you go.
To answer the question no one asked, no, I’m not likely to be there, but it still makes for a welcome escapist daydream for my afternoon, and for that I’m grateful. I’m not sure it needs to be said, but the below comes from social media, and I’ve left the atsign profile tags intact in case you’re on your phone and can use them to magically transport yourself to the bands’ pages or whatever. I assure you, I have no clue how any of that works, on the rare occasion it does. Killer bill, regardless.
Check it:
RAIN CITY DOOM FEST 2025 – Full line-up officially announced!
@raincitydoomfest December 12 + 13 at @elcorazonseattle / @funhouseseattle 2 stages | 18 bands | 2 nights of DOOM 2-day passes (limited) and single day tix on sale NOW! 🎟️🔗 in bio
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 16th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Next time you’re looking for evidence of ADHD as a potential superpower, check out Nuclear Dudes putting out two full-lengths in 2025. The project headed and mostly populated by Jon Weisnewski (anybody wanna hear my old-man story about seeing Akimbo at the Knitting Factory in Manhattan? no? never? well then anyone wanna hear me bitch about how being middle-aged sucks? also no? fuck.) is fresh off the September release of Truth Paste (review here), a third I think long-player behind 2024’s Compression Crimes 1 (review here) and 2023’s debut, Boss Blades (review here).
Following on from Truth Paste‘s collaboration with Brandon Nakamura on vocals, Skeletal Blasphemy will feature live drumming (a first for the project) from Coady Willis, known for his work in Big Business, High on Fire and the Melvins.
So yes, that’s one of underground heavy’s most furious drummers partnering for a record with the guitarist/vocalist from Sandrider‘s fuckall experimentalist heavy cybergrind outfit. Of course this is something you want to hear. Fortunately for you and all of us, the opening title-track is streaming now. You’ll find it at the bottom of this post.
To the PR wire:
NUCLEAR DUDES: Electro Powerviolence Project Feat. Members Of Sandrider, Melvins, High On Fire, More To Release Skeletal Blasphemy Full-Length November 14th On The Ghost Is Clear Records; Title Track Now Playing + Preorders Available
Electro powerviolence project NUCLEAR DUDES will unleash a new full-length, Skeletal Blasphemy, on November 14th via The Ghost Is Clear Records.
NUCLEAR DUDES is the inventive, anarchic yet sophisticated project of multi-instrumentalist and underground mainstay Jon Weisnewski (Sandrider, Akimbo). Originally conceived as a COVID-19 lockdown hyper hybrid, clever blend of Gary Numan meets Carcass, the project has since grown longer legs to include collaborations and a wider array of influences.
“NUCLEAR DUDES started as ‘something to do’ during the pandemic,” Weisnewski offers. “Turns out it’s real sticky. It’s become a consistent project that is exploring metal/grind, synth, and collaborating with musicians I love and admire.”
Skeletal Blasphemy is perhaps the most focused effort yet under the NUCLEAR DUDES moniker, a rollercoaster team-up with Coady Willis (High On Fire, Melvins, Murder City Devils), one of heavy rock’s most lauded percussionists.
“Coady and I started planning this release in 2023 and both worked on it on the side through 2024,” Weisnewski says. “Coady recorded all the drums at his own studio. I recorded all instruments and vocals at my house or practice space in Seattle, Washington.”
Despite the distance, the material has an incredible kinetic energy and wholeness to it. It “cooks,” as the kids say. Coming off as some futuristic hybrid that fans of rhythmic shifting pioneers like DFA 1979 and Lightning Bolt or more experimental Mastodon and new wave fans could all enjoy, Skeletal Blasphemy makes the impossible sound not only concise, but organic and logical. It extends the synth punky and multi-faceted earnestness of the group’s cartoony and disorienting yet potent attack into something even more formidable.
Weisnewski elaborates, “Some songs I wrote isolated and Coady played to them (‘Skeletal Blasphemy,’ ‘Fully Clothed,’ ‘Still Afraid’), and some songs were a drum part that Coady put together that I layered music on top of (‘Tastes Like Medicine,’ ‘The Octopus’). It was a pretty creatively unrestricted project in that sense.”
In advance of the release, today the band unleashes the opening title track, “Skeletal Blasphemy.”
Mixed by Matt Bayles (Giant Squid, Isis) and mastered by Ed Brooks at Resonant Mastering, the album is arriving mere weeks after the previous effort Truth Paste, a grindy, violent, twenty-minute collaboration with vocalist Brandon Nakamura. Unlike Truth Paste, which was self-released and digital only, Skeletal Blasphemy will be released in conjunction with taste makers The Ghost Is Clear Records.
“I started talking to TGIC about collaborating in 2024,” Weisnewski confirms. “They are prolific as hell, putting out non-stop cool and interesting music, and I’m fucking stoked to work with them.”
NUCLEAR DUDES’ Skeletal Blasphemy will be released on limited vinyl (Black – Ltd. 300; Blue – Ltd. 100) and digitally.
Skeletal Blasphemy Track Listing: 1. Skeletal Blasphemy 2. Fully Clothed And Still Afraid 3. Antisax 4. Victory Pants 5. Tastes Like Medicine 6. Bat Body 7. These Machines 8. The Octopus
Yes, I know; an EP can’t be a full-length. Thank you for your service to technicality. Moving on.
On either side of releasing the best album of the 1990s — that’s right, I said it — in their 1992 sophomore outing, Dirt (discussed here), Alice in Chains offered a mostly-acoustic EP. The precursor was Sap (discussed here), and Jar of Flies followed in 1994, just one year ahead of the self-titled (discussed here) third long-player that would be their final studio release with original vocalist Layne Staley before his death in 2002. The two EP releases have a lot in common.
This was the MTV Unplugged era, and Alice in Chains would take part in that televised ritual too (discussed here), but the point is it wasn’t uncommon at the time for a hard-hitting band to feature a couple less-so tracks on a given album, or to ‘unplug’ for either an acoustic song or, in Alice in Chains’ case, EP. That’s not to say there aren’t electric guitars on Jar of Flies, but as “No Excuses” and even “I Stay Away” — which I’ll go to bat for as heavy regardless of its arrangement for the way it dark-cloud floats over while you listen — made their way to radio and video outlets as singles, it was clear the hard-pushing chug that brought “Them Bones” into the world was taking an at-least-momentary backseat.
So be it. There was already precedent with Sap two years before, so it wasn’t even weird. Jar of Flies had a lot in common with its predecessor-of-form, but didn’t feel like a redux. The mood had changed, and so had the band. They were rockstars, for one thing. The reception to Dirt put them on another echelon commercially, and they correspondingly had a commercial-type fanbase. If the internet had existed, people would’ve already been talking smack about them, if you want think of it that way. I’d been hooked by Dirt, traipsing lonely around the neighborhood with the cassette in my Walkman. Not at all void of comedown tracks, it was one of the first CDs I ever owned (I took my sister’s copy, then got my own, along with Master of Puppets and a couple others), and on some level it remains the dragon I’ve been chasing for over three decades. I’d be sad about that if the dragon wasn’t still so awesome.
But what I’m saying is that, for Jar of Flies being a departure, it still made sense. It’s longer than Sap, runs half an hour instead of 20 minutes, and has seven tracks rather than five, but both releases showcase the songwriting of Jerry Cantrell — “No Excuses,” “Don’t Follow,” etc. — and the vocal harmonies shared with Staley as the frontman, while Staley, bassist Mike Inez, who never quite sounded so warm in tone as he does on opener “Rotten Apple” here, and still-somehow-underrated drummer Sean Kinney each took part in the creative process, bolstering the songs and coming together as a unit in a different way. I could’ve sworn somewhere at some point in the last 31 years I say Cantrell say Jar of Flies was their pitch letter to MTV Unplugged, and if that’s true and not just my headcanon, it’s little wonder that they would feature there soon enough.
“Rotten Apple” is both longest track and opener (immediate points), and it presents an immediate richness through its blend of bass and wah-soloing electric guitar. It’s not purely “unplugged” in the spirit of what Metalocalypse a decade later would call “grandpas guitars” but in among the layers there is the root strum that would seem to have been built around. As it moves toward the chorus, there’s a light surge, and the song cycles back through twice more before the solo again takes hold in a plotted instrumental ending. “Nutshell” is more stripped down and mellower, but still works with that electric/acoustic blend to create a kind of organic fluidity somewhere between folk and rock that isn’t folk-rock. How grunge-folk didn’t become a thing in the wake of this EP, I’ll never quite understand, but maybe that’s a testament to just how singular Alice in Chains were in being able to pull off such a thing.
The one-two punch of “I Stay Away” (oh, that string quartet) and “No Excuses” — I seem to recall there being videos for both — makes for eight minutes of some of the most gorgeous rock music to ever have existed in the pop sphere, with the two-and-a-half-minute instrumental “Whale and Wasp” subsequent to let the listener catch their breath after such immersion. “Don’t Follow,” with Cantrell on lead vocals until the harmonica-laced folk-bluesy departure later in its unfolding, reorients back toward where “Nutshell” left off in terms of pastoral contemplation, and because even in 1994 masculinity was toxic to basic human emotional expression, like Sap, Jar of Flies caps with a goofy-ass bumble, in this case “Swing on This.” Admittedly, it’s more of a song than Sap‘s “Love Song,” but neither has yet to show up on a greatest hits compilation and they’re more intentional throwaways, like, “hey we just gave you shelter for 26 minutes so let’s spend the last four undercutting the value of that by screwing around like it’s all a joke in the first place, right?” No. Not right. Kinda sad, when you think about it.
But even with that willful misstep, Jar of Flies is largely unassailable. The next year would bring the self-titled, and inarguably the darkest mood cast by the four-piece during their 1990s run, which really capped with the MTV Unplugged performance in 1996 but one supposes was given a more official ending with the release of the Music Bank box set and the singles “Get Born Again” and “What the Hell Have I,” the latter featured on the soundtrack to the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Last Action Hero.
Circa 2005, Cantrell, Inez (who by then had also played with Ozzy Osbourne‘s band) and Kinney would unite with William DuVall, who fronted Cantrell‘s solo band in the interim, and Alice in Chains was reborn for three-so-far more LPs, the latest of which was 2018’s Rainier Fog (discussed here), touted as something of a return to their Seattle roots since it was recorded there. They’ve been intermittently on the road with Cantrell taking time for two more solo releases and touring cycles ever since.
I could go on here with superlatives and hyperbole about AIC as the best band of the 1990s — and that might be fun — but it’s ultimately nothing that couldn’t be said in a meme, probably more effectively, so I’m content to leave it with Jar of Flies standing as testament to how special this period in the lives of these players was. A moment unto itself from a band unto itself. As always, I hope you enjoy.
Thanks for reading.
—
Another week. Kid moved out of gen-ed into what they call the STRIVE classroom for emotional regulation. ERI, or some such. It’s all just a softened-blow way of saying “we have nowhere to accommodate your twice-exceptional daughter so we’re stuffing her in special ed for now and hoping it sticks.” Sadly that’s also kind of where I landed with it.
We do this for a month, then see. If she’s not able to get through the day, do her work, etc., then the fight becomes something else. We have loaded the IEP with caveats and “parental concerns” about the appropriateness of the placement. She’s in a room with four other kids, two third and two fourth graders. I mentioned in the meeting before her first day on Wednesday (she was off yesterday for Yom Kippur) that we had been talking about adding negative numbers at bedtime the night before and that might be a good place to start in terms of math. No idea if that was taken up or not. They seemed to think they’d pick up with the next page of the second grade mathbook and go from there, which, since boredom is part of what brought us to this situation in the first place, would have been a dumbass way to go. We’re supposed to get a weekly update and there’s an app you can check to make sure she’s getting all her points in the class’ token economy, which she will for like three days before she gets tired and burns through it as she always does, deciding she doesn’t care about the reward and “screw you” has higher value to her than compliance.
Again, we’ll see how it goes. Her therapist casually this week floated home-schooling as an option. I can’t teach her. I can barely get her to put shoes on, and I’m the one putting them on her. It would only serve to make her home, instead of a refuge, the locus of conflict and demands being made. It would be good for no one, her least of all.
I also applied for a job last night. Full-time gig! It’s fully remote — oh no, more time in front of my laptop screen — managing social media for an organization that promotes awareness of end-of-life autonomy issues and advocates for the right to die. NJ is a right-to-die state, and actually that’s something I believe strongly in — the preservation of dignity through choice; if stricken with some terminal disease or others, I would not want to be a burden to my family either — and had had on my mind by coincidence the morning The Patient Mrs. told me about the job. I wrote a cover letter — no AI — and sent it with my resume yesterday. I assume I won’t even hear back, but it’s been eight years since I made even that much of an attempt to find outside work, beyond the odd bit of freelancing, etc. I think I’d be more nervous to get it, but obviously it’s not something with which I’m lacking experience.
Just now, or like 10 minutes ago, I was on chatting with Rich and Turbo’s Heavy Half-Hour, which was fun. I’ve seen their stuff around on socials because they do a lot and are kind enough to share links in the Obelisk group on Facebook (linked below), but I’d never spoken to either of them. I think Turbo thought I was full of shit, but I also happen to agree, so whatever. They were both very kind, said nice things about the site, asked about my background and so on. I did my best not to come off like a jerk and no doubt when I see the end-result video, I will have failed in that entirely. But I’ll share the link anyway.
Quick Zelda update? Not much to update. I haven’t played Twilight Princess since last weekend (it was a busy week) and don’t expect to have much time over the weekend or next week with a Quarterly Review ongoing. The Pecan is still deep in the Challenge Mode mod for Tears of the Kingdom, and erased the old game I think on Wednesday to go back and start from scratch. I guess that’s a hit, since it’s nine-tenths of what she wants to do on any given day. TV goes on in the evening. I might sneak some time in with Twilight Princess later if I can. Still bummed about losing that nine hours of doing-the-boring-stuff playtime last week, I guess.
So yeah, Quarterly Review next week and not much else. Roadburn’s made their first lineup announcement, and Desertfest London at least have one incoming, so I’ll be sneaking stuff out, but my focus will be on the 10 releases per day, so none of it will be accomplished in a timely fashion. If you’ve been reading this site for any length of time, that’s probably nothing new.
Have a great and safe weekend. Hydrate. Wear flannel because it’s Fall now that we’re in October. Free Palestine. Fuck fascism and its perpetrators. Make the world suck less. Bring back The Obelisk Radio while you’re at it, huh? Thanks.
Posted in Reviews on October 3rd, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Sneaking it in on a Friday? What is this madness? Fair question. The wretched truth is that in slating this Quarterly Review — welcome, by the way — I ran into a scheduling conflict with a stream I booked for Oct. 14. I wasn’t sure how to resolve the logistics there, and 10 reviews plus a full-album stream is more than I have brainpower to write in a day, even if I do nothing else, so think of this as like the soft-launch grand opening of the Fall 2025 Quarterly Review. I’ll go all through next week and then wrap up on Monday the 15th. 70 total releases covered, 10 per day, during that time.
It’s gonna be a lot, and I’m sure as always happens there will be other things I’ll fall behind on, but to be perfectly honest with you, I could really, really stand to force myself to sit down and engage the hardcore escapism of getting lost in 70 records one after the next, so I think I might actually enjoy this this time through. Famous last words, but last time was one of my favorite QRs ever, so I’ve got momentum on my side. I’ll keep you posted as we go, and while I’m here, have a great weekend. We’ll pick up with more on Monday.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Faetooth, Labyrinthine
While being terrible for most everything else, 2025 is a good year to go dark. Faetooth do so — darker, anyhow — with their sophomore album, Labyrinthine, and find a place where doomgaze and sludgier, scream-topped distortion can meet without seeming any more incongruous than the Los Angeles trio want it them to be. The record runs a substantial 10 songs/55 minutes, and songs like “Iron Gate,” “Hole,” “White Noise,” and “Eviscerate” derive as much of their atmosphere from the band scorching the ground beneath them as from the more subdued, murky and melodic stretches. With these elements put together in a cohesive whole sound, Labyrinthine is less an aesthetic revolution than a (welcome) generational refresh to doom and sludge, with the band set on a path of progression toward an increasingly individualized stylistic take. Idiot dudes will talk shit because they’re women. Don’t listen to idiot dudes. Listen to riffs. Faetooth have plenty to get you started.
The mighty Kiel, Germany, trio — oops, they just became a four-piece; heads up — recorded Bring Your Lungs this past April while on their first-ever tour of Australia. It’s a three-song, about-35-minute live-in-studio collection, and they’ll reportedly press it to vinyl in no small part so they have copies to take with them when they return down under in 2027. I guess it went well. Bring Your Lungs leaves little question as to why as the band put themselves in line among the heaviest sons of Sleep in the suitably-half-formed oeuvre of bong metal. Even the shortest of the three, the middle cut “Wax” (7:38) lays tonal waste(d), while “Fathead” (11:17) and “Goddamn High” (15:59) bark and crush and caveman plod, hitting into a slowdown and a speedup, respectively, that convey both the plan underlying the mire and the willfully, gleefully insurmountable nature of that mire itself. They’d like to teach the world to stone. Can’t help but think it’d be better for it.
We may not have circa-2005 Genghis Tron to manifest the in-brain chaos of modern overwhelm, but Jon Weisnewski (Sandrider, Akimbo) stands ready with the extremist shenanigans industrial grind of Nuclear Dudes to pick up the slack. Following the punishing radness of 2023’s Boss Blades (review here), Weisnewski, his keyboards, a buttload of samples and guitar here collaborate with vocalist Brandon Nakamura to manifest a cacophonous stew that almost gets away with tapping into “Welcome to the Jungle” on album opener “Napalm Life” (get it?) by making it almost completely unrecognizable. Further punishment is dealt with semiautomatic fervor on “Concussion Protocol” and “Juggalos for Congress,” but the 11-track/23-minute entirety of Nuclear Dudes‘ second full-length comes across like an intentional brainema, so approach with caution and know that, if it feels right, you’re not alone.
A quick glance at the social media for Italian stoner-droner heretofore solo-project Void Sinker, and one finds that sole denizen Guglielmo Allegro is currently searching for a bassist and a drummer to fill out the lineup. Unquestionably this would be a significant change to the proceedings on the five-song/69-minute Echoes From the Deep, which plunges frontal-lobe-first into undulating waveforms and its own distorted expanse. A clear progression of notes can be heard later in closer “Andromeda” (16:21) and “Hollow” is minimalist to the point of being barely there for most of its nine minutes, but obviously a certain kind of meditative monolith is constructed from lead cut “Cetus” onward. There are no shallow dives here, and one can’t help but wonder what Allegro might have in mind for filling out these arrangements with a rhythm section. Will Void Sinker adopt more straightforward stoner-doom riffing, or is the intention to try to make this kind of drone actually convey a sense of movement? Your guess is as good as mine, but for now, the trance induced is noteworthy.
Raw oldschool doom with a punker edge permeates Hebi Katana‘s first album for Ripple Music and fourth overall, Imperfection. And the title becomes somewhat ironic, because while the implication is they’re talking about a warts-‘n’-all sound perhaps in reference to the production rawness of the seven-track/35-minute outing highlighted by cuts like “Dead Horse Requiem” and “Blood Spirit Rising,” which shuffle-pushes into and out of a pastoral midsection, as well as the finale “Yume wa Kareno,” it just about perfectly suits the material itself, and the band bring vigor to the deceptively catchy “Praise the Shadows” that, while dark in atmosphere, speaks to a dynamic that’s developed in their sound over time. That is to say, they might be a ‘new band’ to listeners outside the band’s native Japan, but Imperfection conveys their experience in craft and in its chemistry. If it wasn’t recorded live, close enough. They’re not reshaping genre, but there is perspective at work, to be sure.
That Fair and Warlike Form/Return to Dust, a two-songer full-length with each consuming about 23 minutes of a vinyl side, sure feels like a landmark, but that seems to happen when Melbourne trio Khan are involved. Here they set a sprawl matched by few in heavy progressive psychedelia as the three-piece of Josh Bills (vocals, guitar, keyboard, recording, mixing, mastering), Will Homan (bass) and Beau Heffernan (drums) enact a linear build across the massive soundscape of “That Fair and Warlike Form,” as sure in their purpose as they are defiant of the expectation that these extended pieces might just be jams. Rather, that opener and “Return to Dust” are structured pieces, and resonate emotionally as well as immerse the listener in their clear-eyed breadth. “Return to Dust” is a level of triumph not every act achieves, and “That Fair and Warlike Form” is no less impactful throughout its procession. One of the best of 2025, but less about the fleeting moment than providing a place to dwell long-term. That is to say, it’s a record that has the potential for its own cult, never mind the wider following amassed by the band.
The first Sarkh LP, Helios (review here), arrived through Worst Bassist Records in 2023 and was a purposeful adventure across genre lines, taking elements of post-rock, heavy riffing, and even aspects of black metal and more extreme ideas into a context that became its own. The shimmer at the outset of “Helios” that starts their second full-length, Heretical Bastard, speaks immediately of communion, and as the German instrumentalists have set about refining and coalescing their sound, ambience remains central to what they do regardless of how outwardly heavy a given part gets, which, in tracks like “Kanagawa” and “Glazial,” is pretty gosh darn heavy, never mind the chug that pays off “Zyklon” or the wash that culminates 11-minute capper “Cape Wrath,” though admittedly, the latter is more about push that heft. It’s movement either way, and Heretical Bastard‘s greatest heresy might just be how convincingly invisible it makes the (yes, imaginary) lines that divide one style from another. A band on their own path, forging their own sound. If you can’t respect that, it’s your loss.
Eight years on from their well-received 2017 debut, Take Me to the Gallows, Chicagoan classic doom metallers Professor Emeritus reach pointedly into the epic with A Land Long Gone, their second record. The band’s traditionalism of form means there’s something inherently familiar about the proceedings, and certainly they’re not the only ones with an affinity for ’80s metal of various stripes these days, but in addition to being distinguished by the forward-mixed vocals of Esteban Julian Pena, the sheer weight of “Pragmatic Occlusion” and “Defeater” and the crescendo of “Kalopsia Caves” sets well alongside the graceful flow of “Zosimos” or the later, partly-acoustic “Hubris,” portraying the dynamic and sense of character brought into the material. Like Philly’s Crypt Sermon, they’re not pretending the intervening decades didn’t happen — you wouldn’t call A Land Long Gone retro, I mean — but their collective heart clearly bleeds for the classics just the same; Trouble, Candlemass, Iron Maiden. If that’s your speed, their blend of chug and soar should hit just right.
Florist know what they’re here for, and as they push through the let’s-start-with-the-universe’s-frequency “432Hz” into the modern, cavernous, riffage and nod of “Another Moon,” my brain sings a hearty fuck yes. They pack 29 minutes of rad into Adrift, their sophomore, six-songer LP, and while they’re not shy about lumber in “Grow” and the closer “Adrift (Part B),” that’s only one end of a style that’s able to move with marked fluidity across a range of tempos that, with a vibrant production, fullness of tone and hard-hit drums shoving it all, make for a refreshing take on what are unrepentantly familiar ideas. That is to say, there’s no pretense in Florist. Volume worship, riff worship, whatever you want to call it, it matters so little when the band are bashing away at “Out of Space” and hell’s bells it’s actually fun. Like, real life fun. The kind you might have with friends in a crowded room with the band on stage killing it through a set likewise heavy and intense but unashamed of the good time it’s having. Also giving, as one might a gift.
Ohio’s Paul Williams has released three ‘audio travelogues’ of the Blue Ridge Highway, with the Moog-only Under Blue Ridge Skies preceded directly by A Blue Ridge Spaceway and Our Grandfather the Mountain earlier this year. Maybe you have, and if so, that’s awesome, but to my knowledge I’ve never been on the Blue Ridge Highway, so I can’t necessarily speak to how the droney “Ghost Over a Pointed Top” or the kraut-style blips and bloops of “See Mount Mitchell” correlate to the experience of driving it. I’ll soak my ignorance in the keyboardy melancholia of “A Carolina Elegy,” which closes with evocations of past storms and forebodes of those still to come. Likewise, I’m not sure what the title “Abbott’s Fantasia” is a reference to, if anything at all, but you don’t get much more dug in than entire compositions played out on various layered, hyper-specific, probably-vintage-and-expensive-to-repair synthesizers, and it’s a kind of nerdery for which I’m very much on board.
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 11th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Granted, you had me at Acid King, and that’s pretty much always going to be the case forever and into perpetuity. HOWEVER, even putting aside that singularity-type draw, to have Witch Mountain, the black metallers Ragana, Electric Citizen (who I just saw and were killer), Hippie Death Cult (get well soon, Laura, sidelined for now with an unspecified health issue), Merlock (who I seem to recall seeing had new stuff in the works, including with a cello), Kadabra, Red Mesa (now at least partially relocated to the Pacific Northwest) and Glasghote, well, that’s a really good bill front to back.
This is just the first announcement for the Seattle-based Rain City Doom Fest 2025. I assume Sorcia will be added as they’re affiliated with the fest and are something of a house band, and there are others who’ve been regulars along the way, but yeah. I don’t know how much flights to Seattle are two weeks before Xmas, but this does very much make me want to find out.
Of course, there are no shortage of others in and around the region to fill out the bill, but whoever’s going to be added, I’d call this the proverbial killer start. I doubt I’ll get to see it — ain’t nobody banging down my door to bring me to Seattle for a thing, and that’s reasonable — but maybe you will, and that’s pretty rad.
Info follows as cobbled from social media:
RAIN CITY DOOM FEST 2025!
December 12 + 13 at @elcorazonseattle / @funhouseseattle
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 1st, 2025 by JJ Koczan
There isn’t really an announcement here, just the info I grabbed from Bandcamp, but I wanted to get a post up anyhow for Nuclear Dudes‘ upcoming album, Truth Paste. The anti-genre solo-project of Jon Weisnewski — who just played Hellfest in France with Sandrider, which is pretty good for a band who broke up earlier this year — was last heard from with late-’24’s Compression Crimes Vol. I (review here), which was more ambient and foreboding. Based on “Pelvis Presley,” which packs Meshuggah and Genghis Tron into 76 ADHD-diagnosable seconds, Truth Paste will be more in line with the project’s 2023 offering, Boss Blades (review here) in refusing to pummel on any terms other than its own.
This isn’t the kind of thing I expect a bunch of people are going to jump much. It’s got precious little to do with heavy rock and roll, and its metallic aspects are wrought with punker mischief. Remember when headbangers were pissed because The Dillinger Escape Plan were metal? If anyone was paying attention anymore, Nuclear Dudes‘ merry brand of iconoclastic shenanigans would find similar disdain among the smallminded. But that’s not you. You get it. You know the weirder the better. The louder, harder-hitting. I look forward to “Napalm Life” — as opposed to death — and “Juggalos for Congress,” which is to say the irreverence is welcome.
Nothing really came down the PR wire for it, again. There was the Bandcamp ‘this thing exists’ notification. I grabbed the recording credits and tracklisting from Bandcamp though and the streaming player where you can hear “Pelvis Presley.” I’d advise you to do that and if it’s too much, try again later with a more open mind. Have at it:
It went live a few days ago… but the next full length TRUTH PASTE is up for pre-order. This album is a collaboration with Brandon Nakamura (Doomsday 1999 / Teen Cthulhu) on vocals and is the album of the songs we’ve been playing live over the last few years.
Why pre-order a digital release?
No idea. It’s what they told me to do.
1. Napalm Life 2. Holiday Warfare 3. Truth Paste 4. Dirty 20 5. Sad Vicious 6. Concussion Protocol 7. Space Juice 8. Juggalos for Congress 9. Pelvis Presley 10. Death at Burning Man 11. Cyrus the Virus
Clarence Boddicker will set you free.
releases September 5, 2025
Songs written and recorded by Jon Weisnewski Vocals by Brandon Nakamura and Jon Weisnewski Mixed by Matt Bayles Mastered by Ed Brooks at Resonant Mastering Cover skull graphic by Cooper Weisnewski Layout by Nat Damm
