So, first things first: Witch Ripper and Brume release their Split MMXIX this Friday, March 15, through DHU Records. Second, with Witch Ripper working with Matt Bayles and Brume working with Billy Frickin’ Anderson on production, it should come as no surprise that the thing sounds awesome. From the opening High on Fire-through-a-meat-grinder churn of the early going in Witch Ripper‘s 13-minute-long “1985” and the melancholy creep that follows before they build back up to the last apex, to the fallout symptoms at the end of “Man-Made” (you’ll see it in the video) to the timeless and familiar strains of “In the Pines” as rendered through Brume‘s melodic lurch and longing, Split MMXIX is of course more than the sum of those behind the board, behemoths of the monolithic — or was that monoliths of the behemoth? — as they are, it’s also the result of two bands working each on their own level to affect that consuming sonic largesse. “1985” was recorded when Witch Ripper tracked their 2018 debut, Homestead, while Brume‘s “Man-Made” and “In the Pines” are older and newer recordings, respectively, brought to bear with the sense of lumber one has come to expect from the San Francisco three-piece.
With its extended runtime, the opener consumes the entirety of side A of the vinyl and puts it to good use. Tones are weighted and the initial plod is given duly guttural vocal accompaniment for about the first half of the track, and as it hits the midpoint, “1985” breaks to a stretch of quiet, classically metallic guitar, dramatic and atmospheric and a stark turn from the grit preceding, but not entirely out of place — or at least not anymore than it’s intended to be. Clean-sung lines top as the bass and drums casually work their way back in and Witch Ripper push forward on a subtle build for the next couple minutes, a tolling bell seeming to signal the shift into the grander instrumental solo section that pays off the track in epic metal fashion. The band note below that “1985” was taken off the album because it was too long, and listening to it, one tends to believe them. It is long, but that only seems to make it all the more worthy of the showcase it has here alongside the work of Brume, who follow their 2017 debut, Rooster (review here), with these two tracks showcasing their evolving personality.
“Man-Made” — the video below directed by the band’s own Jordan Perkins-Lewis — seems to rumble out its start in answer to “1985” back on the A side, but obviously that’s just coincidence of tone; it’s an older song recorded before the band knew it would be on this split. The impact of its riffing is well met by the nuclear test footage sped up to match the rhythm of the strumming guitar, and over the eight minutes, “Man-Made” evolves into a maddened beast before, like “1985” before it, dropping to mellow but tense guitar. The difference is “Man-Made” resumes its previous heading and caps with its central riff in the forward position and feedback leading the way via fadeout into “In the Pines,” written by Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter and given generational breadth through a particularly tortured performance by Nirvana on MTV Unplugged. Brume make it sound massive, thereby demonstrating not only the malleability of the song itself, but their own reach as they move beyond their debut into this release and whatever might come after.
Below, you’ll find all three tracks on Split MMXIX presented across three different YouTube clips. Not how these kinds of things usually work, but go with it. Witch Ripper have a creepy spider to go with “1985,” while Brume have a static image for “In the Pines” and the aforementioned bomb-dropper clip for “Man-Made.” One way or the other, it all makes sense atmospherically with the release itself, which is unapologetic in its heft and worthy of whatever volume you can give it.
Comment from the bands and more follows the videos.
Please enjoy:
Witch Ripper, “1985”
Brume, “Man-Made” official video premiere
Brume, “In the Pines”
Witch Ripper on “1985”:
Recorded during the “Homestead” sessions by Matt Bayles (Isis, Mastodon, Minus the Bear) it was cut from the full length because frankly, it was too damn long to fit on the vinyl. Luckily we found a home for the song as our side of a killer split with San Francisco doom weirdos Brume. The song “1985” is one of our most ambitions creations yet. At 13 minutes strong the song moves from grunge inspired doom riffs to a psychedelic clean bridge and huge musical soaring outro. It’s got a lot. Lyrically it’s about knowing that you love music, not knowing how long you can do it for but not wanting to give up that dream. Something that I think we can all relate too.
Brume on “Man-Made” & “In the Pines”:
Brume’s two tracks on the split are a celebration of the SF Trio’s second home, the Pacific Northwest and bring to light recordings old and new. “Man-Made” is the first track the band worked with producer Billy Anderson (Neurosis/Sleep) and was recorded in Portland while on their first West Coast tour in 2015. “In the pines” is the most recent track recorded with Billy (also in Portland), some three years after. The cover was pulled together for a show in Seattle, paying homage to both Nirvana and Leadbelly. What better way to release these tracks than with label mates Witch Ripper from Seattle?
Brume/Witch Ripper Split MMXIX
Side Witch Ripper A1. 1985
Side Brume B1. Man-made B2. In the Pines
Pre orders go live Friday January 25th at 7PM CET
Official release date March 15th
The Brume/Witch Ripper Split will be released on 3 different limited edition color vinyl options
DHU Exclusive: Limited to 90 copies Witch Ripper Edition: Limited to 100 copies Brume Edition: Limited to 100 copies
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 8th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
Fair enough that Earth as they celebrate the 30th anniversary of their start in 1989 would also strip down their approach to its essential core — that being the guitar of Dylan Carlson and the drums of Adrienne Davies. Somehow or other, it got to be five years since the release of their last album, Primitive and Deadly (review here), which saw both fleshed out arrangements instrumentally but the addition of guest vocalists as well. The take on Full Upon Her Burning Lips would seem to pull back in response to that, with Davies and Carlson comprising the lineup and eschewing any of the “extras” that have come up as their sound was fleshed out over the last decade-plus.
You can stream the new track “Cats on the Briar” at the bottom of this post, and it certainly sounds like Earth, which only makes me want to hear more. Funny how that goes.
Dylan Carlson has been doing prolific solo work in the years since Primitive and Deadly (and before that as well), and he’s got a Euro tour set to begin this month. Dates for that and Full Upon Her Burning Lips album info follow here, courtesy of the PR wire:
EARTH ANNOUNCE A NEW ALBUM FULL UPON HER BURNING LIPS, TO BE RELEASED VIA SARGENT HOUSE ON 24TH MAY
LISTEN TO THE NEW ALBUM TRACK “CATS ON THE BRIAR”
DYLAN CARLSON EUROPEAN SOLO DATES INCOMING
Over the course of their thirty trips around the sun, Earth has remained diligent in their commitment to monolithic minimalism. The sonic vocabulary may have changed—from their early years churning out seismic drone metal on albums like Earth 2 (1993) to the dusty Morricone-tinged comeback album Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method (2005) to the meditative rock approach of Primitive and Deadly (2014)—but the underlying principle of austerity and restraint remains a constant. With their latest album Full Upon Her Burning Lips, Earth purges the layers of auxiliary instrumentation that embellished some of their previous records and deconstructed their dynamic to the core duo of Dylan Carlson on guitar and bass and Adrienne Davies on drums and percussion. In the process, they tapped into the Platonic ideal of Earth—an incarnation of the long running band bolstered by the authority of purpose, where every note and every strike on the drum kit carries the weight of the world.
Full Upon Her Burning Lips opens with “Datura’s Crimson Veils”, a twelve-minute opus that adheres to Earth’s 21st century approach with Carlson’s sepia-toned Bakersfield Sound guitars lurching across a barren landscape while Davies punctuates the melodies with death knell drums. It’s a sound that harkens back to the riff-constructed vistas of their Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light albums, but stripped of their ornateness. “It was definitely a very organically developed record,” Carlson says of the process. “I limited the number of effects I used. I always like the limiting of materials to force oneself to employ them more creatively. Previous Earth records were quite lush sounding, and I wanted a more upfront and drier sound, using very few studio effects.” In less capable hands, these kinds of limitations might diminish the aural scope of the compositions, but Carlson and Davies have always thrived on reductive methods.
The stripped down approach had another advantage. “I really wanted the drums to be present,” Carlson says. “I felt with previous Earth records that other instrumentation took up so much of the sonic space that the drums were kind of pushed to the side.” This tactic helps highlight Davies’ ability to elevate the drum kit beyond its mere metronomic functions and allows it to serve as an expressive, nuanced, and tonally rich component to Earth’s arsenal of sound.
In addition to scaling back on their ranks, Earth altered their previous trajectory by entering into Full Upon Her Burning Lips without a conceptual arc to guide the process, relying instead on their collective subconscious to hone in on the overarching muse as the songs developed. “In the past I’ve usually had a strong framework for an album,” Carlson says. “This one developed over the course of writing and recording. It just felt like ‘Earth’—like just the two players doing their best work at playing, serving the music.” The absence of a pre-existing narrative guiding the compositions meant that the songs were more open and intuitive, often resulting in more terse musical vignettes like the richly harmonic “Exaltation of Larks” or the dreamily itinerant “Maidens Catafalque”. Yet subconscious impulses gradually created their own subtext for the album. “I wanted this to be a ‘sexy’ record, a record acknowledging the ‘witchy’ and ‘sensual’ aspects in the music… sort of a ‘witch’s garden’ kind of theme, with references to mind altering plants and animals that people have always held superstitious beliefs towards. A conjuror or root doctor’s herbarium of songs, as it were.”
The ten tracks on Full Upon Her Burning Lips came together in bits and pieces. Songs like “Cats on the Briar” and “Mandrake’s Hymn” stemmed from a handful of musical phrases and repeating patterns concocted in moments of downtime during their 2017 tour schedule. “Descending Belladonna” came from a live soundtrack project. Other songs came from rehearsals in the months leading up to recording or in moments of divine inspiration in the studio. The record was engineered, mixed, and mastered by longtime associate Mell Dettmer at Studio Soli. Knowing their process and their sound, Dettmer helped harness, shape, and document the songs in a manner that highlights the depth of Earth’s sparse components, capturing hidden dimensions much like the veiled images residing in the Magic Eye prints from the ‘90s. For the patient listener, the cyclical nature of the songs “She Rides an Air of Malevolence” or “An Unnatural Carousel” reveal new forms with repeated listens, with the subtle variations between passes creating a kaleidoscope of auditory activity.
“I feel like this is the fullest expression and purest distillation of what Earth does since I re-started the band,” Carlson says in reflection of Full Upon Her Burning Lips. And indeed, anyone that’s followed Earth on their journey will bask in the unadulterated hums, throbs, and reverberations conjured by Carlson and Davies.
Sargent House is proud to offer up the album to the world on May 24th, 2019 on 2xLP / CD / digital formats.
DYLAN CARLSON SOLO DATES: MAR 21 Newcastle, UK @ The Cluny MAR 22 Bristol, UK @ Rough Trade MAR 23 Manchester, UK @ Soup Kitchen MAR 24 Birmingham, UK @ The Flapper MAR 26 London, UK @ St John of Bethnal Green MAR 27 Brussels, BE @ Botanique MAR 28 Lille, FR @ La Malterie MAR 29 Duisburg, DE @ Explorado Museum MAR 30 Berlin, DE @ Cassiopeia MAR 31 Prague, CZ @ Futurum APR 01 Vienna, AT @ Grillx APR 03 Munich, DE @ Feierwerk APR 04 Lausanne, CH @ Le Bourg APR 05 Zurich, CH @ Bogen F APR 06 Paris, FR @ Sonic Protest Festival
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 15th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
Dylan Carlson‘s Fall 2018 European tour hit the skids when the Earth guitarist landed in a Berlin hospital for an infected gallstone as as result of ongoing liver issues. That run got canceled as a result — and fairly enough so — but Carlson will be back at it in the UK and Europe in March and April. This is happening while word is beginning to kick around as well of a new Earth album in the works, which is only to the general betterment of humans as a species and well enough due. More on that as I hear it — also, I hope I get to hear it — but you’ll find Carlson‘s redux tour below, and of course one wishes him nothing but the best health-wise so he can get out there and drone as much as possible in any incarnation he wants.
You can hear Conquistador at the bottom of this post. Dates follow from the PR wire:
DYLAN CARLSON ANNOUNCES RESCHEDULED UK/EU LIVE DATES IN SUPPORT OF HIS RECENT SOLO ALBUM, CONQUISTADOR (OUT NOW ON SARGENT HOUSE)
Legendary Earth guitarist Dylan Carlson announces rescheduled live dates in March and April this year, in support of his first proper full-length, Conquistador (which came out last year via Sargent House). Full listings below and tickets available at this link: sargenthouse.com/dylan-carlson. A new Earth studio album is also expected before summer this year via Sargent House, more details in due course.
DYLAN CARLSON LIVE DATES: MAR 21 Newcastle, UK @ The Cluny MAR 22 Bristol, UK @ Rough Trade MAR 23 Manchester, UK @ Soup Kitchen MAR 24 Birmingham, UK @ The Flapper MAR 26 London, UK @ St John of Bethnal Green MAR 27 Brussels, BE @ Botanique MAR 28 Lille, FR @ La Malterie MAR 29 Duisburg, DE @ Explorado Museum MAR 30 Berlin, DE @ Cassiopeia MAR 31 Prague, CZ @ Futurum APR 01 Vienna, AT @ Grillx APR 03 Munich, DE @ Feierwerk APR 04 Lausanne, CH @ Le Bourg APR 05 Zurich, CH @ Bogen F APR 06 Paris, FR @ Sonic Protest Festival
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 15th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
Nobody here loses. Two bands and a label team up, everybody gets circa-100 copies to sell, and everyone helps each other promote it. What Brume, Witch Ripper and DHU Records have going with the Split MMXIX is basically the idea behind doing a split in the first place. Two bands are showcased with the promotional help from an imprint and everybody gets to put out something new. The fact that Seattle four-piece Witch Ripper take up their whole side with their “1985” opus is a bonus, as is Brume‘s side B take on “In the Pines,” the Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter track known to an entire generation as “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” as covered by Nirvana once upon a time on MTV Unplugged. Hard to argue with the pick, frankly.
The release is out March 15 and the preorders start Jan. 25. I wouldn’t be surprised if the pressing sold out on preorders alone, but whether or not the thing actually makes it to its release date, everyone still wins.
From the PR wire:
Brume/Witch Ripper Split MMXIX (DHU023) Pre order + release date
San Francisco’s Doom Trio Brume have teamed up with Seattle’s Stoner Metal misfits Witch Ripper to bring you a split of unforgiving heaviness to ring in the New Year of Heavy MMXIX
Witch Ripper open the gates on Side A with a mind melting 13+ min track called “1985”. A track that was recorded during their magnificent debut “Homestead” recording session released last year, so you know you will be swept up once again in their punishing assault!
On Side B Brume grace us with a song recorded between the debut “Donkey” and follow up full length “Rooster”, a relentless 8+min Doom anthem called “Man-made” which starts as slow as you know them to be, then bursts into a mid paced groove that will have you banging your head uncontrollably before sending you out into oblivion as they quiet down before the last storm. And, to top it off, Brume does a cover of the classic Leadbelly song “In the Pines” or “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” (also covered by Nirvana and Mark Lanegan respectively) in their own traditional Doomed way, so get ready!
Presented here is the cover artwork, done by the incredible photographer Katrin Albert
Brume/Witch Ripper Split MMXIX
Side Witch Ripper A1. 1985
Side Brume B1. Man-made B2. In the Pines
Pre orders go live Friday January 25th at 7PM CET
Official release date March 15th
The Brume/Witch Ripper Split will be released on 3 different limited edition color vinyl options
DHU Exclusive: Limited to 90 copies Witch Ripper Edition: Limited to 100 copies Brume Edition: Limited to 100 copies
Posted in Reviews on December 13th, 2018 by JJ Koczan
I’ve been doing this for a while, the whole Quarterly Review thing. Not just talking about the last two weeks — though that also feels like a while to be doing it — but over the last few years. And in so doing I have a couple running gags kind of with myself. One obvious one is the “(immediate points)” for bands who put their longest song first on their album. There is no point system. There will be no tally at the end. I don’t grade records. It’s just a way of noting a decision I almost always find to be particularly bold.
Another is the use of “penultimate.” I don’t even know how this happened, but I use that word all the time in these reviews, way, way more than I might in day-to-day life. Somehow I’m always talking about the second-to-last song. Keep an eye out today, I’m sure it’ll be in there.
Indeed, I bring it up because today is the penultimate day of this extended Quarterly Review. We’ll finish out with the last 10 records tomorrow, and no doubt by the end of it I’ll be doling out more “(immediate points)” and talking about the “apex of the penultimate cut” or whatever else it is I do. Hard not to repeat yourself when you’re writing about 100 records. Or, you know, one.
Quarterly Review #81-90:
Rotor, Sechs
Long-running Berlin instrumentalists Rotor issue Sechs, their aptly-titled sixth album, as their second for Noisolution after 2015’s Fünf (review here), and in so doing blend the best impulses from where they started with where they’ve ended up. Fünf, not without its moments of heavy psych drift, was a deeply progressive album, and Sechs is likewise, but it also brings in a more natural, warmer production sound like some of their earlier material, so that songs like “Vor der Hern” or “Allmacht” come across as nuanced but welcoming all the same. “Allmacht” is a highlight for its classic prog elements, but that’s not to discount the centerpiece “Abfahrt!,” with its raucous second half or the nine-minute penultimate cut “Druckverband,” which finds Rotor pushing themselves to new heights some 20 years on from their beginnings. Or anything else, for that matter, because it’s all brilliant. And that, basically, is how you know you’re listening to Rotor.
Next-level naturalism from Belfast trio Electric Octopus means that not only does the digital-only-otherwise-it’d-be-a-box-set Line Standing top four and a half hours, but those four and a half hours bring the listener into the studio with the band — guitarist Tyrell Black, bassist/keyboardist Dale Hughes and drummer Guy Hetherington — as they talk between jams, goof around and discuss what they just played in quick interludes. Complementing cuts like 35-minute opener “Iliudi,” the 38-minute “Line Standing 23336,” the 24-minute “Room Move” and the three-minute funk-reggae vibe of “Inspired by a Chicken,” the chatter gives Line Standing an even more organic vibe not by trying to capture a live feel, like what they’d do on stage — they have plenty of live albums for that — but by bringing the listener into the studio while they pick up their instruments and improvise their way through whatever it is that’s coming next, which is something that everyone seems to find out together. It’s not always smooth, but neither should it be. This is pure sonic exploration — and not a little of it.
Randall Dunn, through his production work, collaborations with Sunn O))), founding Master Musicians of Bukkake, etc., is no stranger to experimentalism, and his first solo album, Beloved (on Figureight), finds him evoking cinematic landscapes one at a time in ambient tracks that range from minimalist to consuming by sheer will. His range as a composer means that “Mexico City” shimmers with a near-overwhelming post-Vangelis splendor while “Lava Rock and Amber” is barren enough to make each strike of the piano keys feel like a lifeline before the synth horror takes hold near the end. Dunn brings in several guest vocalists for spots on “Something About that Night” and closer “A True Home,” but there’s hardly a lack of human presence throughout the material anyway, as the nine-minute centerpiece “Theoria : Aleph” resonates with the creative drive that made it. Not by any means a record that’s going to be for everyone, Beloved casts a sound that’s impeccably broad.
Heirs of Discord, indeed. With guitarist/vocalist Peter Maturi and drummer Chris Csar from the much-missed Swarm of the Lotus and bassist Teddy Patterson of Burnt by the Sun and Human Remains in the up-and-down-the-Eastern-Seaboard lineup with vocalist Jason Borowy, there’s no shortage of discord to go around. Deathly extremity and a pervasive grinding sensibility is conveyed with tones that absolutely crush and a groove that, while not shy with the blastbeats on “I Dreamt You Were Dead” — or the bonus track Human Remains cover “Human,” for that matter — is no less comfortable locked in the nod of the nine-minute “Thieves of Rotted Ilk.” It reportedly took Graven over a year to make the six-song/28-minute LP at various studios (including one two towns over from where I grew up in my beloved Garden State), and one only hopes the no-doubt daunting nature of that task doesn’t dissuade Graven from a follow-up, because whether it’s the angular starts and stops of “Backwards to Oblivion” or the initial assault of “A Failed Mask,” they bring a stylistic nuance to extreme metal that goes beyond the often dry showcase of technical prowess the style can sometimes be. However long it might take to put together, a sophomore outing feels well justified.
The cleverly-titled “Humboldt Pie” finds them dipping into bluesier fare with some psychedelic effect on guitarist Matthew Orloff‘s vocals, and “We are the Buffalo” has a distinct spaciousness, but the core of Denver trio Near Dusk‘s self-released, self-titled debut is in straightforward heavy rock, and Orloff, bassist Kellen McInerney and drummer Jon Orloff sound well schooled in the ways of following the riff. “That Bastard” chugs out behind a vocal echo and the six-minute opener and longest track (immediate points) “No More” introduces the steady factor that is McInerney‘s bass behind some initial guitar noodling that leads to the first of many rolling grooves to come on the seven-track/34-minute outing. The bass again gets to shine in the subsequent “Sweet Home,” setting up the final push for a moment before being joined by the drums and guitar, and the low-end tone is right on, though by the time they close out with “Furnace Creek,” all three of them seem to tease some jammier sensibilities. Near Dusk allow themselves room to develop their approach and perspective, but establish a strong root of songwriting to serve as their foundation as they move forward.
At least some of the material on Svuco‘s debut long-player, El Gran Mito de SanSaru, dates back a few years. The release includes what was the title-track of their 2015 Mizaru EP as well as the title-track of 2016’s Kikazaru, as well as a number of tracks that also featured on the Iwazaru EP shortly before the album actually arrived. Still, taken in this form and with these recordings, the Granada-based four-piece unfurl a varied 13-song full-length that’s crisp in its production and smoothly constructed to hit hard but with a sense of tonal presence that speaks to a heavy rock influence. That is, there might be a current of noise rock to the ’90s-style chug of “Llorarás,” but “Fuzzia” still has room for organ and acoustic guitar along with its central riff. Later cuts like “Nobogo,” the layered-vocals of “El Color del Sol,” and the almost-industrial pulsations (conveyed through organic instrumentation) of “El Dios del Nuevo Mundo” branch out, but there’s an underlying identity taking shape all the while.
Welcoming in its tone and bordering on cosmic in its atmosphere, Lunar Eclipse is the second EP from Cyprus-based troupe Stonus, and for the sprawl of its eight-minute title-track alone, it showcases distinct potential on the part of the band. Intro and outro tracks help set up a flow, but as “Aspirin” and “Spiritual Realities” fuzz their way toward “Lunar Eclipse” itself, it’s hardly like Stonus need the help. The tempo of “Aspirin” tells the tale, taking desert rock to three-quarters speed for an extra laid back vibe, still pushed along by the drums, but chill, chill, chill as it goes. “Spiritual Realities” is a little more tripped out in its lumber, and its vocals are more forward in the mix, but once again, “Lunar Eclipse” is nothing but a joy to behold from front to back, and in large part it defines the short release that shares its name. They close out with the minute of experimentalism on “Euphoric Misery” and only make one hope they don’t lost those impulses by the time they get around to a full-length, because they’ll only help them further distinguish themselves.
Seven years on from playing their first show, Swedish doomers Acolytes of Moros present their first full-length, The Wellspring (CD on Nine Records), and if that might stand as an indication of their pacing overall, it would certainly apply to the album itself. Presented as four extended tracks with an interlude/instrumental near seven minutes dividing the two halves, it’s a rawly-produced take on doom-death traditionalism with an emphasis on the first part of that equation. Calling it “morose” feels too easy given the band’s moniker, but they’re nothing if not self-aware, and the miseries they portray in “Quotidian” and the 14-minute “A Yen to Relinquish and Evanesce” border on the dramatic without ever really tipping too far in that direction, coming through as much in the grueling riffs as in the vocal declarations and willfully repetitive rhythms. It’s a slog and it’s supposed to be, but Acolytes of Moros eschew the sometimes lush presentation of their genre in favor of a barebones take that loses none of its emotional impact for that.
As regards recording narratives, it’s hard to beat the image of Traveling Circle drummer Josh Schultz recording Lime Eyelid‘s debut album, Week of Wonders (as in, The Wonder Weeks?), alone in his kitchen. The resulting limited LP is comprised mostly of numbered instrumental experiments in drone and languid groove, save for “I Saw Waves,” which brings to mind some of Six Organs of Admittance‘s far-out earlier fare, but psychedelia holds a prominent sway and if you ever want a lesson in doing something new with familiar elements, look no further than the watery guitar line of “1” or “3,” with its Earth groove gone processional. The 12-minute soundscape of “4” follows as Schultz moves deeper into the realms of cosmic minimalism — that big, mostly empty, galaxy — but “5” somehow sounds even more piped in from outer space, and closer “6” rounds out with swells of high-pitched volume that seem to be speaking their own language in tone. Pretty vast reaches for a record to hit, having been recorded in the kitchen. One awaits further adventures in the follow-up.
I don’t know if the band’s moniker refers to one who actually tokes tombs or who tokes in tombs, but neither would surprise me. The Baltimorean five-piece Tombtoker unveil their 20-minute debut EP, Coffin Texts (on Seeing Red, tapes through Metal Swarm), with a melding of doom, sludge and metallic extremity that is righteous in its riffs and malevolent in its purposes. That is to say, they mean harm. “Warfare Revolution” and “Robo Cujo” demonstrate that plainly ahead of the centerpiece “Stenchsquatch” with its oh-you’re-gonna-have-to-play-that-at-all-the-shows lurching midsection of death, while the subsequent “Blood Freak” taps Eyehategoddy swing and closer/shortest track “Globster” (3:21) bludgeons its own riffs before a bit of Slayer-style ping ride late adds even more of that metal-for-metal feel. I’d call it promising, but maybe “foreboding” is a better word. Whether they’re smoking your corpse or just smoking near your corpse, Tombtoker bring a welcome sense of chaos to extreme sludge that hearkens to the genre’s original, unhinged appeal.
Posted in Reviews on December 5th, 2018 by JJ Koczan
Good morning from the kitchen table. It’s a couple minutes before 4AM as I get this post started. I’ve got my coffee, my iced tea in the same cup I’ve been using for the last three days, and I’m ready to roll through the next 10 records in this massive, frankly silly, Quarterly Review. Yesterday went well enough and I’m three days into the total 10 and I don’t feel like my head is going to explode, so I’ll just say so far so good.
As ever, there’s a lot to get through, so I won’t delay. I hope you find something here you dig. I certainly have.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Sandrider, Armada
Armada is the third full-length from Seattle noiseblasters Sandrider, and at this point I’m starting to wonder what it’s going to take for this band to get their due. Produced by Matt Bayles and released through Good to Die Records, the album is an absolute monster front to back. Scathing. Beastly. And yet the songs have character. It’s the trio’s first outing since 2015’s split with Kinski (review here) and follows 2013’s Godhead (review here) and 2011’s self-titled debut (review here) in melding the band’s West Coast noise superiority with a sense of melody and depth as the trio of guitarist/vocalist Jon Weisnewski, bassist/vocalist Jesse Roberts, and omegadrummer Nat Damm course and wind their way through intense but varied material. “Banger” has been tapped for its grunge influence. Eh. Maybe in the riff, but who cares when there’s so much more going on with it? “Brambles” is out and out brutal but still has a hook, and cuts like “Industry” and the closing “Dogwater” remind of just how skilled Sandrider are at making that brutality fun. If the record was six minutes long and just had “Hollowed” on it, you’d still call it a win.
Goodness gracious. Cavernous echo accompanies the roars of guitarist Scott Prater that are offset by the more subdued melodies of drummer Amber Burns, but even in the most spacious reaches of 11-minute second cut “Blind Faith,” Witchkiss are fucking massive-sounding. Their debut album, The Austere Curtains of Our Eyes, presents an especially crushing take on ritualistic volume, sounding its catharsis in a song like “Spirits of the Dirt” and sounding natural as it trades between a rolling assault and the atmospheres of its quieter moments. With the departure since the recording of bassist Anthony DiBlasi, the New York-based outfit will invariably shift in dynamic somewhat coming out of this record, but with such an obvious clarity of mission, I honestly doubt their core approach will change all that much. A band doesn’t make a record like this without direct intention. They may evolve, and one hopes they do just because one always hopes for that, but this isn’t a band feeling their way through their first record. This is a band who know exactly the kind of ferocity they want to conjure, and who conjure it without regret.
Argentinian instrumentalist trio Satta Caveira make a point of saying they recorded MMI, their second or third album depending on what you count, live in their home studio without edits or overdubs, click tracks or anything else. Clearly the intention then is to capture the raw spirit of the material as it’s happening. The eight songs that make up the unmanageable 62-minute listen of MMI — to be fair, 14 of those minutes are opener “Kundalini” and 23 are the sludge-into-jam-into-sludge riffer “T.H.C.” — are accordingly raw, but that in itself becomes a component of their aesthetic. Whether it’s the volume swell that seems to consume “Don Santos” in its second half, the funk of closer “Afrovoid” or the drift in “Kalifornia,” Satta Caveira manage to hone a sense of range amid all the naturalism, and with the gritty and more aggressive riffing of the title-track and the rush of the penultimate “Router,” their sound might actually work with a more elaborate production, but they’ve got a thing, it works well, and I’m not inclined to argue.
Vocalized only by spoken samples of astronauts, the thrice-exclamatory Lizard! Lizard! Lizard! is the debut EP from Perth, Australia, three-piece Apollo80, who are given mostly to exploring an outpouring of heavy molten vibes but still able to hone a bit of cacophony following the “godspeed, John Glenn” sample in second cut “FFH.” There are four songs on the 26-minute offering, and its spaciousness is brought to earth somewhat by the dirt in which the guitar and bass tones are caked, but it’s more the red dust of Mars than anything one might find kicking around a Terran desert. Unsurprisingly, the high point of the outing is the 10:46 title-track, where guitarist Luke, bassist Brano and drummer Shane push farthest into the cosmos — though that’s debatable with the interstellar drone of closer “Good Night” — but even in the impact of “Apollo” at the outset, there’s a feeling of low-oxygen in the atmosphere, and if you get lightheaded, that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.
The prevailing influence throughout the untitled debut EP from Minnesota’s The Great Unwilling is Queens of the Stone Age, but listening to the layer of wah intertwine with the solo on “Sanguine,” there’s more to their approach than just that, however dreamy the vocal melodies from guitarist Jesse Hoheisel might be. Hoheisel, bassist Joe Ulvi and Mark Messina present a clean four tracks and 20 minutes on their first outing, and for having been together for about 18 months, their songwriting seems to have a firm grasp on what they want to do. “If 3 was 7” rolls along at a heavy clip into an effectively drifting midsection and second half jam before returning to the initial riff, while “Current” leads off with a particularly Hommeian construction, and soon gives way to the flowing pace and apparent lyrical references of the aforementioned “Sanguine.” They finish with the dirtier tonality of “Apostasy” and cap with no more pretense than they started, bringing the short release to a close with a chorus that seems to finish with more to say. No doubt they’ll get there.
A prominent current of organ alongside the guitars gives Grusom‘s aptly-titled second album on Kozmik Artifactz, II, a willfully classic feel, and even the lyrics of “Peace of Mind” play into that with the opening lines, “I always said I was born too late/This future is not for me,” but the presentation from the Svendborg six-piece isn’t actually all that retro-fied. Rather, the two guitars and organ work in tandem to showcase a modern take on those classic ideas, as the back and forth conversation between them in the extended jam of “Skeletons” demonstrates, and with a steady rhythmic foundation and soulful vocals overtop, Grusom‘s craft doesn’t need the superficial trappings of a ’70s influence to convey those roots in their sound. Songs like “Dead End Valley” and “Embers” have a bloozy swing as they head toward the melancholy closer “Cursed from Birth,” but even there, the proceedings are light on pretense and the atmosphere is more concerned with a natural vibe rather than pretending it’s half a century ago.
Having originated as Träd Gräs och Stenar, the group now known as Träden is the product of a psychedelic legacy spanning generations. Founder Jakob Sjöholm has joined forces with Hanna Östergren of Hills, Reine Fiske of Dungen and Sigge Krantz of Archimedes Badkar to create a kind of supergroup of serenity, and their self-titled is blissful enough not only to life up to Träd Gräs och Stenar‘s cult status, but to capture one of its own. It’s gorgeous. Presumably the painting used on the cover is the cabin where it was recorded, and its eight tracks — sometimes mellow, sometimes more weighted, always hypnotic — are a naturalist blueprint that only make the world a better place. That sounds ridiculous, I know. But the truth is that for all the terrible, horrifying shit humanity does on a daily basis, to know that there are people on the planet making music like this with such a genuine spirit behind it is enough to instill a bit of hope for the species. This is what it’s all about. I couldn’t even make it through the Bandcamp stream without buying the CD. That never happens.
Last year, Spanish experimentalists Orthodox released Supreme and turned their free-jazz meets low-doom into a 36-minute fracas of happening-right-now creativity. Krèas, a lone, 27-minute track with the core duo of bassist Marco Serrato and drummer Borja Díaz joined by saxophonist Achilleas Polychronidis, was recorded in the same session but somehow seems even more freaked-out. I mean, it’s gone. Gone to a degree that even the hepcats who claim to appreciate free-jazz on anything more than a theoretical level (that is, those who actually listen to it) will have their hair blown back. The rest of the universe? Well, they’ll probably continue on, blissfully unaware that Orthodox are out there smashing comets together like they are, but wow. Challenging the listener is one thing. Krèas is the stuff of dissertations. One only hopes Orthodox aren’t holding their breath waiting for humanity to catch up to what they’re doing, because, yeah, it’s gonna be a while.
Danish bruisers Disrule run a brash gamut with their second album, Sleep in Your Honour (on Seeing Red). Leading off with the earworm hook of the title-track (premiered here), the album puts a charge into C.O.C.-style riffing and classic heavy rock, but shades of Clutch-y funk in “Going Wrong” and a lumbering bottom end in “Occult Razor” assure there’s no single angle from which they strike. “(Gotta Get Me Some) Control” elicits a blues-via-Sabbath vibe, but the drums seem to make sure Disrule are never really at rest, and so there’s a strong sense of momentum throughout the eight-song/29-minute EP, perhaps best emphasized by two-minute second cut “Death on My Mind,” which seems to throw elbows as it sprints past, though even shouted-chorus closer “Enter the Void” has an infectious energy about it. If you think something can’t be heavy and move, Disrule have a shove with your name on it.
First clue that all is not what it seems? The artwork. Definitely not a picture of cake on the cover of Ozymandias‘ debut album, Cake!, and accordingly, things don’t take long before they get too weird. “Jelly Beans” hits on harshest Nirvana — before it goes into blastbeats. “Mason Jar” scathes out organ-laced doom and vicious screaming, before “Hangman” gets all danceable like “All Pigs Must Die” earlier in the record. The wacky quotient is high, and the keyboards do a lot to add to that, but one can’t really call “Doom I – The Daisies” or the later “Doom II – The Lilies” anything but progressive in the Devin Townsend-shenanigans-metal sense of the word, and as wild as some stretches of Cake! are, the trio from Linz, Austria, are never out of control, and they never give a sense that what they’re doing is an accident. They’re just working on their own stylistic level, and to a degree that’s almost scary considering it’s their first record. I won’t claim to know where they might be headed, but it seems likely they have a plan.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on November 20th, 2018 by JJ Koczan
I was fortunate enough to be in the room at Roadburn 2018 when Seattle duo Bell Witch played their 2017 album, Mirror Reaper (review here), in its entirety from front to back for the only time that, to-date as of this post, they’ve done so. They’re soon to embark on a European tour doing the same with visual backing from assembled archival footage by Taylor Bednarz that’s recently been posted as a “visual album” representation for Mirror Reaper‘s equal-parts-massive-and-mournful 83-minute single-song entirety, gorgeous and emotionally harrowing as it is. But the point is that, yeah, I saw that. You should go see that. That’s a thing you want to see. Talking to you, Europe. Make that happen.
Aside from the raw power of Bell Witch‘s performance, the inclusion of vocalist Erik Moggridge (Aerial Ruin) and Bednarz‘s visuals make the Mirror Reaper performance all the more resonant. To call its spacious downward reaches epic is to undersell them with cliché, as not only was the album a personal expression of grief on the part of bassist Dylan Desmond and drummer/vocalist Jesse Shreibman at the loss of one-time drummer Adrian Guerra, but further, it was a pinnacle achievement of what the band’s work up to that point has been leading toward, their 2015 outing, Four Phantoms (review here), widely lauded as a landmark in death-doom. Mirror Reaper is — if it’s nothing else — a bold forward step in that progression, so even without the emotional weight behind it, its sheer impact as a creative work sets slow-churning fire to any scrutiny one might want to place on it.
The tour starts Nov. 28 in Iceland and continues through Dec. 14 in Cork, Ireland. I don’t know what the future will hold for Bell Witch, who also toured earlier this year in the States alongside YOB promoting the album and played the Pool Party of all things at this year’s Psycho Las Vegas (review here), but whether or not they do this kind of thing again, the moment right now feels crucial for it as they’re taking the album out on tour for the first time, and even if they make a habit of it, to say you were there the first time will remain a special claim to make. If you doubt me, reread the first sentence of this post.
The entirety of the Mirror Reaper visual album is below, followed by the tour dates.
Enjoy:
Bell Witch, Mirror Reaper visual album
Ahead of their upcoming European tour where they will perform their album Mirror Reaper in full, BELL WITCH, are streaming the album’s accompanying video. The 83-minute opus was released via Profound Lore to widespread acclaim in 2017 – a repress of the album is now available with new colour variants. Director Taylor Bednarz created a visual accompaniment to the one-track album.
Although the band have played part of Mirror Reaper live at previous shows, the full album has only been performed once in full, at this year’s Roadburn Festival – complete with visuals created by Taylor Bednarz, and vocals from Aerial Ruin’s Erik Moggridge. This full scale performance will be replicated in its entirety at a number of special shows across Europe at the end of the year.
BELL WITCH’s Dylan Desmond comments: “Taylor Bednarz created a fantastic film to fit Mirror Reaper using exclusively archived footage. During the writing process it became evident to us that the music invited a visual aspect. Bednarz’s interpretation captures much of the emotion we were trying to convey during the song and we are proud of the collaboration with him.”
The accompanying film is a video collage comprised of dozens of archival films. Each of these clips are woven together with the album to build a patient, heavy, and haunting narrative. The film aims to hold the viewer in the state of a lucid dream, feeling trapped as a specter drifting through places of darkness. All shows on the tour will be performed in front of the Mirror Reaper film.
BELL WITCH European Tour Dates: November 28 – Reykjavik IS – Gaukurinn* November 30 – London UK – The Dome December 1 – Leeuwarden NL – Into Darkness Festival* December 2 – Sint Niklaas BE – Darken The Moon X * December 3 – Wiesbaden DE – Schlachthof December 5 – Leipzig DE – UT Connewitz December 7 – Wroclaw PL – Sala Gotycka December 8 – Berlin DE – Zukunft December 9 – Malmo, SE – Plan B* December 10 – Oslo, NO – BLÅ December 11 – Gothenburg, SE – Musikens Hus* December 12 – Copenhagen, DK – Alice December 13 – Dublin IE – Thomas House* December 14 – Cork IE – Cyprus Avenue *denotes show is not seated
Posted in Bootleg Theater on October 30th, 2018 by JJ Koczan
I won’t tell you that you need to do this or that, but if you have a second, you should hit up Shitty Person‘s Bandcamp page and take a look at the lyrics of their debut album, Judgement. Released by Svart Records this past June, the eight-track post/heavygaze/whatever outing by the Seattle-based outfit does so much more to capture the truth of misanthropy in lines like “Nobody believes shit talk’s all true/Even god’s not an asshole like you/If you believe half this shit’s true/Fuck you” than any number of doom bands out there who write songs about killing ladies or some other faux-edgy crap like that. Self-loathing don’t come cheap, and it bleeds through the slow tempos, sax solos, airy tones and dual-vocal melodies of Judgement in songs like opener “Butthole,” in which the above lines appear, and the subsequent “Take Your Clothes Off,” in which the sole lyric amidst the rolling drones and lush tonal unfurling is, well, “Take your clothes off.” If that’s there at all — and I’m not sure it is. To call it anything less than punk rock would be cheapening it, I think.
Later in the record, the they take on Electric Wizard‘s “Behemoth,” but before that, there’s the sad ramble of “Champagne and Cakes,” which brings the vocals of guitarist Benjamin Thomas-Kennedy (see also: Lesbian and Fungal Abyss) forward in a Michael Gira-informed dark post-Americana that gives way to biting noise by its finish. It’s hard to think of “Nobody Likes You” and “Your God is Ending You” as anything other than the crux of Judgement, both for the fact that they comprise more than a third of the album’s runtime and the perspective from which they work, both of them saying a lot with not a ton of words in an efficiency that somehow doesn’t at all undercut the fuckall so rampant in the proceedings. “Nobody Likes You” makes an attempt at kind self-talk with “Relax and be nice to yourself/And don’t be that way” before the inevitable turn: “Nobody likes you/Nobody likes you/Like you don’t like you/Nobody likes you,” a voice that seems to be directed inward ahead of “Your God is Ending You,” which is more accusatory.
Either way, Shitty Person is a fucking slog and that’s exactly what it’s intended to be. The disaffection of “Dumbshit” I’m not even going to recount here, because it wasn’t really my intention to just quote lyrics for this entire post, but needless to say, it’s palpable. “Behemoth” is brought suitably into Judgement‘s sonic context, and closer “Dark Bear” is an effects-laden 47-second spoken story of loss that ends the downerism plunge with another low. It’s not so much about catharsis as it is an exploration of that moment where you’re in it and there’s that feeling of utter hopelessness. Where depression informs everything you see and how you see yourself seeing everything; that bleak narcissism that produces an endless cycle of self-loathing that you can’t see any way out of. The last line, “And when he passed, everything turned to blue,” sums up a lot of it, but even that is just a slice of the actual-misery portrayed throughout. Where it’s always been that way and there won’t ever be a time where it isn’t. People call death metal brutal. Ha.
You can watch the “Take Your Clothes Off” video below. It’s got bathrobes. The album is name-your-price on the aforementioned Bandcamp if you’re up for it, and more info follows the clip on the player here.
Please enjoy:
Shitty Person, “Take Your Clothes Off” official video premiere
The video for Take Your Clothes Off is the secord in a series of visual versions of songs from Shitty Person’s debut album Judgement (Svart Records). Directed by Seattle artist/photographer/musician Lauren Rodriguez, it mirrors the song’s ecstatic apathy and laces the senses with same drug-fueled lust that the song engenders. Shot on film, the footage was captured at Shitty Person’s album release show at Seattle’s Clock Out Lounge where the band performed in their bathrobes as they are wont to do. This work follows the band’s first visual effort Butthole (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=161tyF1Of0k) directed by I Want You (http://iwantyoustudio.com/).
Shitty Person is the latest solo-ish project from Benjamin Thomas-Kennedy (Lesbian, Fungal Abyss). Along with other members of Lesbian, Rose Windows, and Master Musicians of Bukkake, Shitty Person makes music about self-hatred and counterproductive self-reflection. It sounds like drugs, has lots of swears, and will probably make you feel terrible.
Although a relatively new band, Shitty Person’s roots run deep. “I’ve been playing drums for metal bands for almost two decades,” explains Thomas-Kennedy, “but before that, I used to front a couple of less heavy bands as the primary songwriter and guitar player. During the time I was touring with Lesbian-the-band, a lot of songs started kicking around my head that I didn’t know what to do with. As that project began to wind down, I had more time to start putting some of these ideas together. I bought a guitar and finalized a pile of songs. I decided to ask some of my favorite musicians if they would help me put a group together, and to my surprise, everyone I approached said they’d be into it. We played a live show to a sold-out crowd opening for Moon Duo in Seattle. It was the first time I had played guitar and sang in front of an audience in over 15 years. It went pretty well, so we made this album. I am extremely proud of it and honored that so much great talent jumped on board to pull it off.”
Benjamin Thomas-Kennedy – guitar and vocals Daniel LaRochelle – rhythm guitar Arran McInnis – lead guitar Nicole Thomas-Kennedy – bass guitar Dave Abramson – drums and percussion Rabia Shaheen Qazi – vocals Sam Yoder – percussion Skerik – saxophone
way back in and Witch Ripper push forward on a subtle build for the next couple minutes, a tolling bell seeming to signal the shift into the grander instrumental solo section that pays off the track in epic metal fashion. The band note below that “1985” was taken off the album because it was too long, and listening to it, one tends to believe them. It is long, but that only seems to make it all the more worthy of the showcase it has here alongside the work of Brume, who follow their 2017 debut, Rooster (review here), with these two tracks showcasing their evolving personality.
