Montreal sludge rockers Seum release their third full-length, Parking Life, on April 23. Preorders are up through Black Throne Productions (LP) and Falling Apart Records (K7) now, and this week marks the arrival of the second single from the album, “Labrador,” for which a video featuring vocalist Gaspard, bassist Piotr and drummer Fred is premiering today below.
Parking Life has been billed, tongue firmly in cheek, as Seum ‘going pop.’ I have to think that humans who actually listen to pop music would be terrified by the opening title-track, or “Employee of the Month” or any of the quit-your-job-and-fuck-your-life fare on offer, be it “Labrador” or “666 Problems,” which brings in Vince Houde of Dopethrone for a pointedly nasty guest spot. But if you’ve followed the bass/drum trio at all over the last five or six years, you’ll likely notice Parking Life is their first outing to employ clean-sung vocals at all, and that only one of the eight tracks on the 26-minute album (yes, it’s short, but yes, it’s an album) is over four minutes long. On 2023’s Double Double (review here), just to compare, that number was four.
What you need to understand about it — this is true of the album across the board and certainly goes for the rousingly, encouragingly anticorporate “Labrador” too — is that Seum still don’t want for intensity. They brought plenty. The difference between Parking Life and Double Double or their 2021 debut, Winterized (review here), is that they let the listener in on more of the fun they’ve surely been having the whole time, while also taking advantage of a chance to become more dynamic in how thye present their material. The fuzzy strut after the initial verses of “Parking Life,” the bassy sway and the swagger after the cough at 1:40 signals the switch to screams, is a telling moment for the record as a whole, and sure enough, “Parking Life” not only lays out the theme of middle-age descent into mediocrity, but also the character the band bring to the songs, which is that much richer for being multifaceted.
A litany of samples — jingling keys at the start, Steve Buscemi shows up later, etc. — join the band for what’s still on balance something of an onslaught but nonetheless refined in context. “Employee of the Month” is a full-weight shove at first and rounds off with a nod that feels like something Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol might roll out, leaving room for Houde‘s vocal in “666 Problems” (which is like “99 Problems,” but with more problems) to meet any quota for viciousness that might’ve been had going in. It is duly punishing. “Labrador” follows, and as the video and the single art above portray, the chorus, “Cut your tie/Bite your master/Break your leash like a bad labrador,” is a defining hook for the record as a whole. A phone call to the ‘Midlife Crisis Solutions Hotline,’ and thereby being put on hold, in the interlude “Solutions” leads into “Right Swipe Blues,” which is kind of tucked away but might be the most directly vocally melodic inclusion on balance.
I’d have to break out the charts to be sure, but the way the penultimate “Sad Labbath” backs it with the most aggressive uptempo force Parking Life has on offer tells me the assertion is correct, and as such, “Right Swipe Blues” comes across as the furthest delve Seum make here, though the closing “Always on My Mind” follows a not-dissimilar-if-more-brooding course, introducing the screams to top a slowdown/riffout. One might think of a band like California’s -(16)-, who in recent years have also made the jump to incorporating a cleaner singing style not previously employed. It doesn’t change the personality of what Seum do entirely, and it’s not trying to, but it does suit and serve these songs and it gives the band another tool at their disposal generally, which only makes them more deadly. Also, they’re right. Fuck work. Quit your job.
For a tutorial on breaking your leash, “Labrador” follows here. Please enjoy:
2nd single of SEUM’s 3rd album “Parking Life” out on April 23rd 2026. Be there.
Directed by Florian Nermont in March 2026.
From the band:
“As we are reaching the middle of our lives, the temptation to settle down, forget our dreams and ambitions is high, this would be the safer choice!
Instead we decided ‘not to park here and doubled down on music by picking the Parking Life, travelling, playing shows for a hundred or one and exploring what doom’n bass music has to offer.
We also decided ‘not to park here’ musically by getting as far from our comfort zone as we could, adding clean vocals, melodies and treating each song of the album as a pop track.
We sing about loneliness, boredom, unfulfilling careers, addiction and broken hearts, topics all too common when you grow older, but we do it in a fun – no fucks given – way.”
Tracklisting: 1. Parking Life 2. Employee of the Month 3. 666 Problems (Feat. Vince Houde) 4. Labrador 5. Solutions 6. Right Swipe Blues 7. Sad Labbath 8. Always On My Mind
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 9th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Out one week from today timed to a show June 16 in Paris ahead of Seum‘s June 18 appearance at Hellfest Open Air — which I’m assuming is a warm-up of some sort since the fest lists its dates as June 19-22 — the new track “Sad Labatt” is also the first audio the band has unveiled from the follow-up to 2023’s Double Double (review here), which doesn’t seem to have a release date as yet but will surely be along sooner or later. Not like they’re lacking in goings-on besides, what with Hellfest and all.
Seum earlier this year also released a split with rising Detroit conjurors Temple of the Fuzz Witch (review here) that was a good time in that nasty slash-with-audio kind of way. That and the album both stream below, in lieu of audio for the song not out yet.
Have at it:
SEUM (bass-only sludge from Montreal): “Sad Labatt” New single out on June 16th
After releasing two albums, Winterized in June 2021, DOUBLE DOUBLE in February 2023 and multiple EPs among which Conjuring, a split EP with Temple of the Fuzz Witch in February 2025, Seum is about to release Sad Labatt on June 16th, the first single of their upcoming third album, supporting their upcoming show at the Hellfest Open Air Festival on June 18th.
Sad Labatt will be out and available on all streaming platforms on June 16th just in time for their two shows in Europe this summer:
June 16th: Paris – Le Klub June 18th: Hellfest Open Air Festival
From the band:
“Sad is the mood, Labatt is the drink, this one is for all the broken hearts looking too deep in their glass, still finding solace in music. We love to try new stuff and Sad Labatt is our first song with clean vocals. It is also the first single of our upcoming third album… We hope you will love us when we are smooth as much as when we are rough.”
SEUM is a bass-only sludge band from Montreal (Canada) formed by 3 doom veterans formerly in Lord Humungus (Gaspard – vocals), Mlah! (Piotr – bass), and Uluun (Fred – drums). Adding a ferocious punk energy to their New Orleans inspired sludge, the band is known for its intense live performances, workaholic attitude and nihilistic, tongue-in-cheek lyrics.
SEUM means Venom in Arabic and is French slang for disappointment and frustration: No guitars.
Seum is: Fred – Drums Gaspard – Vocals Piotr – Bass
Posted in Reviews on April 14th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Welcome back to the Quarterly Review. Just because it’s a new week, I’ll say again the idea here is to review 10 releases — albums, EPs, the odd single if I feel like there’s enough to say about it — per day across some span of days. In this case, the Quarterly Review goes to 70. Across Monday to Friday last week, 50 new, older and upcoming offerings were written up and today and tomorrow it’s time to wrap it up. I fly out to Roadburn on Wednesday.
Accordingly, you’ll pardon if I spare the “how was your weekend?”-type filler and jump right in instead. Let’s. Go.
Quarterly Review #51-60:
Megaritual, Recursion
Last heard from in 2017, exploratory Australian psychedelic solo outfit Megaritual — most often styled all-lowercase: megaritual — returns with the aptly-titled Recursion, as multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and producer Dale Paul Walker taps expansive kosmiche progressivisim across nine songs and 42 minutes. If you told me these tracks, which feel streamlined compared to the longer-form work Walker was doing circa 2017, had been coming together since that time, the depth of the arrangements and the way each cut comes across as its own microcosm within the greater whole bears that out, be it the winding wisps of “Tres Son Multitud” or the swaying echoey bliss of later highlight “The Jantar Mantar.” I don’t know if that’s the case or it isn’t, but the color in this music alone makes it one of the best records I’ve heard in 2025, and I can’t get away from thinking some of the melody and progressive aspects comes from metal like Opeth, so yeah. Basically, it’s all over the place and wonderful. Thanks for reading.
Slab-heavy riffage from Andalusian three-piece Red Eye‘s III spreads itself across a densely-weighted but not monolithic — or at least not un-dynamic or unipolar — eight songs, as a switch between shouted and more melodic vocals early on between the Ufomammut-esque “Sagittarius A*” (named for the black hole at the Milky Way’s center; it follows the subdued intro “Ad Infinitum”) and the subsequent, doomier in a Pallbearer kind of way “See Yourself” gives listeners an almost-immediate sense of variety around the wall-o’-tone lumbering fuzz that unites those two and so much else throughout as guitarist/vocalist Antonio Campos del Pino, bassist/synthesist Antonio Pérez Muriel and drummer/synthesist/vocalist Pablo Terol Rosado veer between more and less aggressive takes. “No Morning After” renews the bash, “Beyond” makes it a party, “Stardust” uses that momentum to push the tempo faster and “Nebula” makes it swing into the Great Far Out before “The Nine Billion Names of God” builds to a flattening crescendo. Intricate in terms of style and crushingly heavy. Easy win.
Even by the respective standards of the bands involved — and considering the output of Detroit grit-doomers Temple of the Fuzz Witch and Montreal sans-guitar scathemakers Seum to this point, it’s a significant standard — Conjuring is some nasty, nasty shit. Presented through Black Throne Productions with manic hand-drawn cover art that reminds of Midwestern pillsludge circa 2008, the 27-minute split outing brings three songs from each outfit, and maybe it’s the complementary way Seum‘s low-end picks up from the grueling, chugging, and finally rolling fare Temple of the Fuzz Witch provide, but both acts come through as resoundingly, willfully, righteously bleak. You know how at the dentist they let you pick your flavor of toothpaste? This is like that except surprise you just had all your teeth pulled. It only took half-an-hour, but now you need to figure out what to do with your dazed, gummy self. Good luck.
Uncle Woe offer two eight-minutes-each tracks on the new EP, Folded in Smoke, Soaked and Bound, as project founder/spearhead Rain Fice (in Canada) and collaborator Marc Whitworth (in Australia) bring atmosphere and grace to underlying plod. It’s something of a surprise when “One is Obliged” relatively-speaking solidifies at about five minutes in around vocal soar, which is an effective, emotional moment in a song that seems to be mourning even as it grows broader moving toward the finish. “Of Symptoms and Waves” impresses vocally as well, deep in the mix as the vocals are, but feels more about the darker prog metal-type stretch that unfolds from about the halfway point on. But what’s important to note is these plays on genre are filtered through Uncle Woe‘s own aesthetic vision, and so this short outing becomes both lush and raw for the obvious attention to its sonic details and the overarching melancholy that belongs so much to the band. A well-appreciated check-in.
I would not attempt to nor belittle the band’s accomplishments by trying to summarize 35 years of Negative Reaction in this space, but as the West-Virginia-by-way-of-Long-Island unit led by its inimitable principal/guitarist/vocalist Ken-E Bones mark this significant occasion, the collection Salvaged From the Kuiper Belt provides 16 decades-spanning tracks covering sundry eras of the band. I haven’t seen a liner, so I don’t even know the number of players involved here, but Bones has been through several incarnations of Negative Reaction at this point, so when “NOD” steamrollers and later pieces like “Mercy Killing” and the four-second highlight “Stick o’ Gum” are more barebones in their punksludge, it makes sense in context. Punk, psych, sludge, raw vocals — these have always been key ingredients to Negative Reaction‘s often-harsh take, and it’s a blend that’s let them endure beyond trend, reason, or human kindness. Congrats to Bones, whom I consider a friend of long-standing, and many more.
Given how many different looks Fomies present on Liminality, and how movement-based so much of it is between the uptempo proto-punk, krauty shuffle and general sense of push — not out of line with the psych of the modern age, but too weird not to be its own spin — it feels like mellower opener “The Onion Man” is its own thing at the front of the album; a mellower lead-in to put the listener in a more preferred mindset (on the band’s part) to enjoy what follows. This is artfully done, as is the aforementioned “what follows,” as the band thoughtfully boogie through the three-part “Colossus,” find a moment for frenetic fuzz via Gary Numan in “Neon Gloom,” make even the two-and-a-half-minute “Happiness Relay” a show of chemistry, finish in a like-minded tonal fullness with “Upheaval,” and engage with decades of motorik worship without losing themselves more than they want to in the going. At 51 minutes, Liminality is somewhat heady, but that’s inherent to the style as well, and the band’s penchant for adventure comes through smoothly alongside all that super-dug-in vibing.
Classic Boston DGAF heavy riff rock, and if you hear a good dose of hardcore in amid the swing and shove, The Long Wait‘s self-titled debut comes by it honestly. The five-piece of vocalist Glen Dudley (Wrecking Crew), guitarist Darryl Shepard (Kind, Milligram, Slapshot, etc.) and Steven Risteen (Slapshot), bassist Jaime Sciarappa (SSD, Slapshot) and drummer Mark McKay (Slapshot) plunder through nine cuts. Certainly elbows are out, but considering where they’re coming from, it’s not an overly aggressive sound. Hardcore dudes have been veering into heavier riffing à la “Uncharted Greed” or “FWM” for the last 35 years, so The Long Wait feels well in line with a tradition that some of these guys helped set in the first place as it revisits songs from 2023’s demo and expands outward from there, searching for and beginning to find its own interpretation of what “bullshit-free” means in terms of the band’s craft.
Since 2020, Miskolc, Hungary-based solo-band Babona have released three EPs, a couple singles and now two full-lengths, with Az Utolsó Választás Kora (‘the age of the last choice’) as the second album from multi-instrumentalist and producer Tamás Rózsa. Those with an appreciation for the particular kind of crunch Eastern Europe brings to heavy rock will find the eight-tracker a delight in the start-stops of “2/3” and the vocals-are-sampled-crying-and-laughing “A Rendszer Rothadása,” which digs into its central riff with suitable verve. The later “Kormányalakítás” hints at psych — something Rózsa has fostered going back to 2020 with Ottlakán, from whom Babona seems to have sprung — and the album isn’t without humor as a crowing rooster snaps the listener out of that song’s trance in the transition to the ambient post-rocker “Frakció,” but when it’s time to get to business, Rózsa caps with “Pártatlan” as a grim, sludgy lumber that holds its foreboding mood even into its own comedown. That’s not the first time Az Utolsó Választás Kora proves deceptively immersive.
Sit tight, because it’s about to get pretty genre-nerdy. Sutras, the Washington D.C.-based two-piece of Tristan Welch (vocals/guitar) and Frederick Ashworth (drums/bass) play music that is psychedelic and heavy, but with a strong foundation specifically in post-hardcore. Their term for it is ‘Dharma punk,’ which is enough to make me wonder if there’s a krishna-core root here, but either way, The Crisis of Existence feels both emotive and ethereal as the duo bring together airy guitar and rhythmic urgency, raw, sometimes gang-shouted vocals, and arrangements that feel fluid whether it’s the rushing post-punk (yeah, I know: so much ‘post-‘; I told you to sit tight) of “Racing Sundown” or the denser push of “Bloom Watch” or the swing brought to that march in “Working Class Devotion.” They cap the 19-minute EP with posi-vibes in “Being Nobody, Going Nowhere,” which provides one last chance for their head-scratching-on-paper sound to absolutely, totally work, as it does. The real triumph here, fists in the air and all that, is that it sounds organic.
The story of Sleeping in Samsara‘s self-titled two-songer as per Christian Peters (formerly Samsara Blues Experiment, currently Fuzz Sagrado, etc.) is that in 2023, My Sleeping Karma drummer Steffen Weigand reached out with an interest in collaborating as part of a solo-project Weigand was developing. Weigandpassed away in June 2023, and “Twilight Again” and “Downtime,” with underlying basic tracks from Weigand in drums, keys/synth, and rhythm guitar, and Peters adding lead guitar, vocals, bass in the latter, the songs are unsurprising in their cohesion only when one considers the fluidity wrought by both parties in their respective outfits, and though the loss of Weigand of course lends a bittersweet cast, that this material has seen the light of day at all feels like a tribute to his life and cretive drive.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 4th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
There isn’t going to be a digital release for this one. I don’t think there’s any plan for putting it out on anything other than the 10 tapes that Montréal sludge metallers Seum will have for sale at the show they’re playing on Friday. So maybe it’s a little more like the band made a few DIY tapes for themselves and the merch table, but whatever, I dig this band and think that’s kind of cool. They released their second album, Double Double (review here), earlier this year, and that’s got enough disgust packed into it to go around, so if you can’t make it to l’Hémisphère Gauche at the end of this week, there’s still plenty to dive into should you be so inclined.
And considering the one-off nature of the June show that’s become the Ratseum cassette, that they’d want to preserve it, performing as two-thirds of the band did with Ratpiss vocalist Erin Faeth sitting in as singer. Well, I say one-off, but can’t help notice that Ratpiss are playing the gig Friday too, so there’s nothing to say an onstage guest spot can’t happen again with the full band. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but it’s nice to have friends. And as as one who came of age in the 1990s, I’ll say as well that it’s also nice to make your friends tapes. Still cooler than CDRs.
From their socials:
Surprise: RATSEUM – Live Tape – Dropping on September 8th
On June 10th 2023, as Gaspard could not make it to our show at l’Hémisphère Gauche, he was replaced on Vocal by Erin, singer of the Montreal Power violence band Ratpiss.
For one night SEUM became… RATSEUM!
As the show ended up being recorded we decided to release it on tape as a memory.
Our friend Gorka made a logo, we fixed a quick cover and made 10 DIY copies.
Each copy is hand numbered, and that recording will only be available on tape.
The tape will be released on Friday September 8th on Bandcamp and during our show at The TraXide with Kapitur, Twin Banshee and #ratpiss.
Posted in Reviews on April 18th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
So here we are. A fascinating and varied trip this has been, and while I’m tempted to find some greater meaning in it as regards the ongoing evolution of genre(s) in heavy underground music, the truth is that the overarching message is really that it’s impossible to keep up with that complexity as it unfolds. Hitting 70 releases on this last day with another 50 to come in a couple weeks, I feel like there’s just so much out there right now, and that that is the primary signifier of the current era.
Whether it’s pandemic-born projects or redirects, or long-established artists making welcome returns, or who knows what from who knows where, the world is brimming with creativity and is pushing the bounds of heavy with like-proportioned force and intent. This hasn’t always been easy to write, but as I look at the lineup below of the final-for-now installment of the QR, I’m just happy to be alive. Thanks for reading. I hope you have also found something that resonates.
Quarterly Review #61-70:
Dommengang, Wished Eye
A fourth full-length from Dommengang — are they in L.A. now? Portland, Oregon? does it matter? — neatly encapsulates the heavy psychedelic scope and the organic-vibing reach that stands them out from the pack, as somehow throughout the nine songs of Wished Eye, the Thrill Jockey denizen trio are able to inhabit a style that’s the Americana pastoral wakeup of “Runaway,” the hill-howling “Society Blues,” the drift-fuzz of over solid drums of “Last Card,” the dense tube-burning Hendrixism of “Myth Time,” and the minimalist guitar of “Little Beirut.” And oh, it keeps going; each track contributing something to the lush-but-natural spirit of the whole work. “Blue & Peaceful” brings acoustics to its midsection jam, while “Petrichor” is the West Coast freedom rock you’ve been waiting for, the title-track goes inland for nighttime desertscaping that finishes in hypnotic loops on a likewise hypnotic fade, and “Flower” proves to be more vine, winding its way around the lead guitar line as the vocals leave off with a highlight performance prior a fire-blues solo that finishes the record as the amps continue to scream. Undervalued? Why yes, Dommengang are, and Wished Eye makes the argument in plain language. With a sonic persona able to draw from country, blues, psych, indie, doom, fuzz, on and on, they’ve never sounded so untethered to genre, and it wasn’t exactly holding them back in the first place.
Formerly the frontman of Richmond, Virginia, sludgers Gritter, Ryan Kent — who already has several books of poetry on his CV — casts himself through Dying Comes With Age as a kind of spoken word ringmaster, and he’s brought plenty of friends along to help the cause. The readings in the title-track, “Son of a Bitch” and the title-track and “Couch Time” are semi-spoken, semi-sung, and the likes of Laura Pleasants (The Discussion, ex-Kylesa) lends backing vocals to the former while Jimmy Bower (Down, EyeHateGod) complements with a low-key fuzzy bounce. I’ll admit to hoping the version of “My Blue Heaven” featuring Windhand‘s Dorthia Cottrell was a take on the standard, but it’s plenty sad regardless and her voice stands alone as though Kent realized it was best to just give her the space and let it be its own thing on the record. Mike IX Williams of EyeHateGod is also on his own (without music behind) to close out with the brief “Cigarettes Roll Away the Time,” and Eugene S. Robinson of Oxbow/Buñuel recounting an homage apparently to Kent‘s grandfather highlights the numb feeling of so many during the pandemic era. Some light misogyny there and in “Message From Someone Going Somewhere With Someone Else Who is Going Somewhere” feels almost performative, pursuing some literary concept of edge, but the aural collage and per-song atmosphere assure Dying Comes With Age never lingers anywhere too long, and you can smell the cigarettes just by listening, so be ready with the Febreze.
The first hook on Clamor Luciferi, in post-intro leadoff “Succubus,” informs that “Your god is poison” amid a gravitationally significant wall of low-end buzzfuzz, so one would call it business as usual for Sardinian lurch-doomers 1782, who answer 2021’s From the Graveyard (review here) with another potent collection of horror-infused live resin audibles. Running eight songs and 39-minutes, one would still say the trio are in the post-Monolord camp in terms of riffs and grooves, but they’ve grown more obscure in sound over time, and the murk in so much of Clamor Luciferi is all the more palpable for the way in which the guitar solo late in “Devil’s Blood” cuts through it with such clarity. Immediacy suits them on “River of Sins” just before, but one would hardly fault “Black Rites” or the buried-the-vocals-even-deeper closer “Death Ceremony” for taking their time considering that’s kind of the point. Well, that and the tones and grit of “Demons,” anyhow. Three records in, 1782 continue and odd-year release pattern and showcase the individual take on familiar cultism and lumber that’s made their work to-date a joy to follow despite its sundry outward miseries. Clamor Luciferi keeps the thread going, which is a compliment in their case.
What Seum might be seen to lack in guitar, they more than make up in disgust. The Montreal trio — vocalist Gaspard, bassist Piotr, drummer Fred — offer a mostly-hateful 32-minute low-end mudslide on their second album, Double Double, the disaffection leaking like an oily discharge from the speakers in “Torpedo” and “Snow Bird” even before “Dog Days” lyrically takes on the heavy underground and “Dollarama” sees the emptiness in being surrounded by bullshit. For as caustic as it largely is, “Torpedo” dares a bit of dirt-caked melody in the vocals — also a backing layer in the somehow-catchy “Razorblade Rainbow” and the closing title-track has a cleaner shout — and the bass veers into funkier grooves at will, as on “Dog Days,” the winding second half of “Snow Bird,” where the bassline bookending the six-minute “Seum Noir” reminds a bit of Suplecs‘ “White Devil” in its fuzz and feels appropriate in that. Shades of Bongzilla persist, as they will with a scream like that, but like their impressive 2021 debut, Winterized (review here), Seum are able to make the big tones move when they need to, to the point that “Dollarama” brings to memory the glory days of Dopefight‘s over-the-top assault. Righteous and filthy.
Clearheaded desert-style heavy rock is the thread running through Old Mine Universe‘s debut album, This Vast Array, but with a bit of blues in “No Man’s Mesa” after the proggy flourish of guitar in “Gates of the Red Planet” and the grander, keyboardy unfolding of “My Shadow Devours” and the eight-minute, multi-movement, ends-with-cello finale “Cold Stream Guards,” it becomes clear the Canadian/Brazilian/Chilean five-piece aren’t necessarily looking to limit themselves on their first release. Marked by a strong performance from vocalist Chris Pew — whom others have likened to Ian Astbury and Glenn Danzig; I might add a likeness to some of Jim Healey‘s belting-it-out there as well, if not necessarily an influence — the songs are traditionally structured but move into a jammier feel on the loose “The Duster” and add studio details like the piano line in the second half of “Sixes and Sirens” that showcase depth as well as a solid foundation. At 10 songs/47 minutes, it’s not a minor undertaking for a band’s first record, but if you’re willing to be led the tracks are willing to lead, and with Pew‘s voice to the guitar and bass of David E. and Todd McDaniel in Toronto, the solos from Erickson Silva in Brazil and Sol Batera‘s drums in Chile, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the tracks take you different places.
Although Olso-based riffers Saint Karloff have tasked Nico Munkvold (also Jointhugger) for gigs, the band’s third album, Paleolithic War Crimes, was recorded with just the duo of guitarist/vocalist Mads Melvold (also keys and bass here) and drummer Adam Suleiman, and made in homage to original bassist Ole Sletner, who passed away in 2021. It is duly dug-in, from the lumbering Sabbath-worship repetitions of “Psychedelic Man” through the deeper purple organ boogieprog of “Blood Meridian” and quiet guitar/percussion interlude “Among Stone Columns” into “Bone Cave Escape” tilting the balance from doom to rock with a steady snare giving way to an Iommi-circa-’75 acoustic-and-keys finish to side A, leaving side B to split the longer “Nothing to Come” (7:01), which ties together elements of “Bone Cave Escape” and “Blood Meridian,” and closer “Supralux Voyager” (8:26) with the brash, uptempo “Death Don’t Have No Mercy,” which — I almost hate to say it — is a highlight, though the finale in “Supralux Voyager” isn’t to be ignored for what it adds to the band’s aesthetic in its patience and more progressive style, the steadiness of the build and a payoff that could’ve been a blowout but doesn’t need to be and so isn’t all the more resonant for that restraint. If Munkvold actually joins the band or they find someone else to complete the trio, whatever comes after this will inherently be different, but Saint Karloff go beyond 2019’s Interstellar Voodoo (review here) in ambition and realization with these seven tracks — yes, the interlude too; that’s important — and one hopes they continue to bring these lessons forward.
Astral Sleep, We Are Already Living in the End of Times
Feels like a gimme to say that a record called We Are Already Living in the End of Times is bleak, but if I note the despair laced into the extremity of songs like “The Legacies” or “Torment in Existence,” it’s in no small part to convey the fluidity with which Finland’s Astral Sleep offset their guttural death-doom, be it with melancholic folk-doom melody as on the opening title-track, or the sweetly weaving guitar lines leading into the bright-hued finish of “Invisible Flesh.” Across its 46 minutes, Astral Sleep‘s fourth LP picks up from 2020’s Astral Doom Musick (review here) and makes otherwise disparate sounds transition organically, soaring and crashing down with emotive and tonal impact on the penultimate “Time Is” before “Status of the Soul” answers back to the leadoff with nine-plus minutes of breadth and churn. These aren’t contradictions coming from Astral Sleep, and while yes, the abiding spirit of the release is doomed, that isn’t a constraint on Astral Sleep in needing to be overly performative or ‘dark’ for its own sake. There’s a dynamic at work here as the band seem to make each song an altar and the delivery itself an act of reverence.
The second single in two months from New Jersey sludge slayers Devoidov, “Amputation” backs the also-knife-themed “Stab” and brings four minutes of heavy cacophonous intensity that’s as much death metal as post-hardcore early on, and refuses to give up its doomed procession despite all the harshness surrounding. It’s not chaotic. It’s not without purpose. That mute right around 2:40, the way the bass picks up from there and the guitar comes back in, the hi-hat, that build-up into the tremolo sprint and kick-drum jabs that back the crescendo stretch stand as analogue for the structure underlying, and then like out of nowhere they toss in a ripper thrash solo at the end, in the last 15 seconds, as if to emphasize the ‘fuck everything’ they’ve layered over top. There’s punk at its root, but “Amputation” derives atmosphere from its rage as well as the spaciousness of its sound, and the violence of losing a part of oneself is not ignored. They’re making no secret of turning burn-it-all-down into a stylistic statement, and that’s part of the statement too, leaving one to wonder whether the sludge or grind will win in their songwriting over the longer term and if it needs to be a choice between one or the other at all.
Norwegian fuzz rollers Wolfnaut claim a lineage that goes back to 1997 (their debut was released in 2013 under their old moniker Wolfgang; it happens), so seems reasonable that their fourth full-length, Return of the Asteroid, should be so imbued with the characteristics of turn-of-the-century Scandinavian heavy. They might be at their most Dozerian on “Crash Yer Asteroid” or “Something More Than Night” as they meet careening riffs with vital, energetic groove, but the mellower opening with “Brother of the Badlands” gives a modern edge and as they unfurl the longer closing pair “Crates of Doom” (7:14) and “Wolfnaut’s Lament” (10:13) — the latter a full linear build that completes the record with reach and crunch alike, they are strident in their execution so as to bring individual presence amid all that thick tone crashing around early and the takeoff-and-run that happens around six minutes in. Hooky in “My Orbit is Mine” and willfully subdued in “Arrows” with the raucous “G.T.R.” following directly, Wolfnaut know what they’re doing and Return of the Asteroid benefits from that expertise in its craft, confidence, and the variety they work into the material. Not life-changing, but quality songwriting is always welcome.
If you’re gonna go, take a compass. And if your compass can be made of primo fuzz riffing, isn’t it that much more useful? If not as an actual compass? Each of the four cuts on Washington D.C. instrumentalists Fuzz Voyage‘s Heavy Compass Demo coincides with a cardinal direction, so you get “South Side Moss,” “North Star,” “East Wind” and “West Ice Mountain.” These same four tracks featured across two separate ‘sessions’-type demos in 2020, so they’ve been fairly worked on, but one can’t discount the presentation here that lets “East Wind” breathe a bit in its early going after the crunching stop of “North Star,” just an edge of heavy psychedelia having featured in the northerly piece getting fleshed out as it heads east. I might extend the perception of self-awareness on the part of the band to speculating “South Side Moss” was named for its hairy guitar and bass tone — if not, it could’ve been — and after “East Wind” stretches near seven minutes, “West Ice Mountain” closes out with a rush and instrumental hook that’s a more uptempo look than they’ve given to that point in the proceedings. Nothing to argue with unless you’re morally opposed to bands who don’t have singers — in which case, your loss — but one doesn’t get a lot of outright fuzz from the Doom Capitol, and Fuzz Voyage offer some of the densest distortion I’ve heard out of the Potomac since Borracho got their start. Even before you get to the concept or the art or whatever else, that makes them worth keeping an eye out for what they do next.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 28th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Montreal sans-guitar sludge rockers Seum released their second album, Double Double, earlier this month, and on March 31 they’ll bring their sometimes caustic and increasingly complex wares to the venerable Geno’s Rock Bar in Portland, Maine, entering the US for the first time as a band to play a show. This initial incursion is one of just two US dates — which, given how many US tours are billed as “North American” if they include two Canadian shows (and generally nothing in Mexico), seems like fair turnabout — and followed by a gig in Plattsburgh, New York, before they turn back north to do four more shows Ontario, but hell, that counts. International territory! For the first time! I’m not sure why I need these exclamation points!
You can stream Double Double (yeah, I know; it’ll be in the next Quarterly Review unless something comes up before; I’m doing my best, damnit) on the Bandcamp player below, and in oldschool fashion, the band sent the dates over with a hearty list of acts with whom they’ll be sharing stages. If you’ve never read a list of tour dates and come away with at least one band you’ve never heard of to check out, today might be your day. As for me, do I dare check out Shepherd of Rot? Or TV Moms? Think of it as the good kind of homework.
Info and dates from the PR wire. Cheers to Seum on going new places:
SEUM – DOUBLE DOUBLE Tour – 1st time in the US and Ontario
After the successful release of its second album DOUBLE DOUBLE, SEUM is about to visit the US and Ontario for the first time to defend their album on stage during the DOUBLE DOUBLE tour. Catch them here:
March 31st: Portland, ME (USA) at Geno’s Rock Bar with Necronomichrist, Candy Striper Death Orgy and Bloodborn April 1st: Plattsburgh, NY (USA) at Monopole with Shepherd of Rot, Grave Sight and Embers May 3rd: Hamilton, ON at The Doors with Desiccate + Holofernes Head May 4th: London, ON at The Richmond Tavern with Hunter Gatherer and TV Moms May 5th: Toronto, ON at Bar Orwell with Sun Below and Lousy Riders May 6th: Ottawa, ON at Avant-Garde with TBD (Org by Smol Audio)
SEUM is a Montreal Doom’n’Bass band formed by 3 European French Doom veterans expats formerly in Lord Humungus (Gaspard – vocals), Mlah! (Piotr – bass), and Uluun (Fred – drums). SEUM means Venom in Arabic and is French slang for disappointment and frustration.
The band is only using drums, vocals and bass, no guitars.
DOUBLE DOUBLE is SEUM’s sophomore album. Self-produced by the band and mastered by the legendary John Golden (Melvins, Sleep, Weedeater), the album is available on:
This gets pretty heavy, pretty nasty. Then it kind of gets pretty. What happened was I knew I wanted to start with Basalt Shrine because that’s just too killer a beginning to pass up. But I was barely two days into the Quarterly Review and I knew I didn’t want to do a whole show based on that, so I just kind of went from Basalt Shrine forward on a line of extreme sludge of varying kinds, and that was fun for a while. When I started stumbling coming up with inclusions off the top of my head, I decided to switch gears.
That’s where you see the second voice break. I was going to put it at the top of the second hour but figured screw it. I wanted to play Indian and Wren and KVLL, so I did. And then I jump on, announce the change happening, and jump off. I didn’t even really end the show, just “here’s something else” and done. That was a little liberating, if I’m honest. I feel like I have to say hi, thanks, thanks to Gimme, explain what The Obelisk is to anyone who doesn’t know (which I assume is everyone), then thanks again and see you in two weeks. Felt good to skip even a little of that formality/formula.
I don’t think I’ll be rewriting how I do the show entirely, but I apparently needed something different, and that’s what I got.
Thanks for listening if you make it. Thanks for reading if you see this.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at: http://gimmemetal.com.
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 01.06.23 (VT = voice track)
Basalt Shrine
In the Dirt’s Embrace
From Fiery Tongues
Bongzilla
Free the Weed
Weedsconsin
Come to Grief
Death Can’t Come Soon Enough
When the World Dies
VT
Seum
Snowbird
Snowbird
Grales
All Things are Temporary
Remember the Earth but Never Come Back
Gg:ull
Hoisting Ruined Sails
Ex Est
Nomadic Rituals
The Burden
Tides
Belzebong
Pot Fiend
Light the Dankness
Wren
Chromed
Groundswells
Indian
Directional
From All Purity
KVLL
Suffocation
Suffocation
VT
DUNDDW
VII Part 4
Flux
Aktopasa
Agarthi
Journey to the Pink Planet
Mister Earthbound
Wicked John
Shadow Work
Amon Acid
Death on the Altar
Cosmogony
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is Jan. 6 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
Posted in Whathaveyou on December 15th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
From the initial stonerized unfolding of “Torpedo” on through the fuckall punkblaster “Dollarama,” Seum indeed offer a bit more variety throughout Double Double than on their raw-but-impressive-and-in-no-small-part-because-of-that-rawness 2021 debut, Winterized(review here), but as the Montreal low-end scumpushers expand their sound, they seem no less ferocious for doing so, and a clearer production sound only seems to emphasize the sludge that would seem to pump through their collective heart. They close with the title-track. It’s downright painful.
Thirty-two joyously destructive minutes later, Seum stand not perhaps as the first Montreal act to revel in such filth, but surely one of marked potency. Electric Spark has the vinyl release, and the band will have a single out on New Year’s Day. Keep an ear open.
Here’s the announcement from the PR wire:
SEUM – New Album DOUBLE DOUBLE Out on February 2nd
After the unexpected success of our debut album – Winterized – praised for its powerful dark tone and fuzzy heaviness, we are stepping out of our comfort zone to present a different and way more aggressive side of our bass and drums formula.
Double Double: Canada-specific term used to describe a caffeine filled caloric bomb: a dark blend of coffee with two teaspoons of sugar and two creams.
Double Double is fed on the experience we gathered during our live shows across France and Canada for the last 2 years.
We added fast punk inspired riffs – sugar – and groovy doom breakdowns – cream – to our dark blend of Doom’N’Bass.
We also opted for a warmer and more open production than our debut, we have been helped by the legendary John Golden (Melvins, Sleep, Weedeater) on mastering to shape the tone of what we think are our most complex (Razorblade Rainbow, Seum Noir) and catchiest (Torpedo, Snow Bird) songs to date.
We aim at making something unique and hypnotizing just like Double Boy – the cover art creature created by our long-time collaborator Gorka Uztarroz. Double Double is our middle finger to the second album curse!
Double Double will be self-released on CD and released on Vinyl with an alternative cover artwork by Electric Spark.
The first single Snow Bird will be released on January 1st.
To promote the album the band has organized a citywide treasure hunt: fans are invited to repost “SEUM 2X2” stencils spread across Montreal in their social media.
The best stencil finder will be invited with their friends for a private show and party.
Seum is: Fred – Drums Gaspard – Vocals Piotr – Bass
they’ve surely been having the whole time, while also taking advantage of a chance to become more dynamic in how thye present their material. The fuzzy strut after the initial verses of “Parking Life,” the bassy sway and the swagger after the cough at 1:40 signals the switch to screams, is a telling moment for the record as a whole, and sure enough, “Parking Life” not only lays out the theme of middle-age descent into mediocrity, but also the character the band bring to the songs, which is that much richer for being multifaceted.
From the band:
