Posted in Whathaveyou on August 6th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Moon Destroys already toured with Elder this year, and they’ll be out with Dozer and The Sword before 2025 is done. Significant time on the road and in some decent slots. And yeah, a pedigree that lets them namedrop Torche and Royal Thunder is nothing to sneeze at, but if you heard their 2025 debut album, She Walks by Moonlight (review here), upon its self-release this Spring, you already know that as a band they’re more than the sum of their collective discography.
Likely the Blues Funeral Recordings issue of She Walks by Moonlight set to release this October will be the ‘official’ edition, and fair enough for that since they’ll apparently spend much of 2026 touring to support it. Europe yet? Another record first, maybe, but you never know. They’d be a smart pickup for some Desertfest or other happening in Europe next Spring. Just thinking out loud.
Kudos to the band, cheers to Jadd on his forever-to-the-ground ear, and thanks for reading. Here’s the announcement from the PR wire:
Atlanta alternative psych unit MOON DESTROYS (w/ ex-Torche and Royal Thunder) sign to Blues Funeral Recordings; US tours with Dozer and The Sword coming!
Atlanta alternative psych rock unit MOON DESTROYS have signed to Blues Funeral Recordings for the reissue of their self-released debut “She Walks By Moonlight” as well as their new album release in 2026. The band is ready to embark on their US West Coast tour this week alongside Dozer and Abrams, and will be touring the East Coast with The Sword this fall.
Formed by guitarist Juan Montoya (ex-Torche) and drummer Evan Diprima (ex-Royal Thunder), Moon Destroys released their first EP ‘Maiden Voyage’ in 2020. The 5-song debut featured contributions from Troy Sanders (Mastodon) and Bryan Richie (The Sword) and laid a foundation that would come fully into focus when vocalist/guitarist Charlie Suárez (MonstrO) and bassist Arnold Nese completed the band in 2024.
April 2025 found Moon Destroys thrust into the limelight, supporting Elder on tour just as they were self-releasing their debut full-length “She Walks By Moonlight” in limited form. Despite hurrying to get the new LP ready in time to take on the road, the album inarguably captured the band’s tremendous evolution beyond the connections to the members’ former outfits.
Gritty and distorted yet hazy and hypnotic, “She Walks By Moonlight” shifts from shimmering post-rock to driving riff-doom and back to shoegazy psychedelia. It’s a cinematic and otherworldly journey from a band who breeze easily into the environs of Floor, Mother Love Bone, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Russian Circles and Ride, ultimately collapsing all efforts at categorization into its effervescent, compulsive swirl.
Blues Funeral Recordings is proud to welcome Moon Destroys to the label just in time for a string of US tour dates supporting Swedish icons Dozer alongside labelmates Abrams. The label will bring forth a proper worldwide release of “She Walks By Moonlight” this October as they will hit the stage for a coveted run of dates with The Sword, followed by their next album release and more touring in 2026.
The band says: “We are extremely excited to join forces with Jadd and the Blues Funeral Recordings team to continue the saga of Moon Destroys. It’s an honor to join a roster with great, like-minded artists to keep pushing the heavy underground forward! We will see you out on the West Coast this month supporting fellow label mates and Swedish legends Dozer. After that, we’ll be out supporting our friends and fellow rippers The Sword this October on the East Coast before heading back into the studio to finish a new album. We are looking forward to working hard for the rest of the year to make for an even busier 2026! It’s full steam ahead now with a great team!“
Summer 2025 supporting Dozer w/ Abrams August 7 – Las Vegas, NV @ The Swan Dive August 8 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room August 9 – San Diego, CA @ Brick By Brick August 10 – Palmdale, CA @ Transplants Brewing August 12 – San Francisco, CA @ Bottom Of The Hill August 13 – Eureka, CA @ Savage Henry Comedy Club August 14 – Eugene, OR @ John Henry’s August 15 – Portland, OR @ Dante’s August 16 – Vancouver, BC @ Rickshaw August 17 – Seattle, WA @ Substation
Fall 2025 tour supporting The Sword
October 13 – Boston, MA @ Paradise October 14 – New York City, NY @ The Bowery Ballroom October 15 – Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground October 17 – Buffalo, NY @ Higher Ground October 18 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr. Smalls October 19 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer October 22 – Raleigh, NC @ Lincoln Theater October 23 – Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse October 24 – Orlando, FL @ The Beacham October 26 – Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl
Alright, y’all. This is where it ends. The Quarterly Review has been an absolute blast, an easy, fun, good time to have, but inevitably it must come to close and that’s where we’re at. Last day. Last 10 releases. Thanks if you’ve kept up. I’ll be back I think in September with another one of these, probably longer.
Hope you’ve found something killer this week. I did.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
Katatonia, Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State
Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State is the first long-player in the 34-year history of Katatonia — upwards of their 13th album, depending on what you count — to not feature guitarist Anders Nyström. That leaves frontman Jonas Renkse as the remaining founder of the band, with two new guitarists in Nico Elgstrand and Sebastian Svalland, bassist Niklas Sandin and drummer Daniel Moilanen, steering one of heavy music’s most identifiable sounds in new ways. “Wind of No Change” is duly subversive, and “Departure Trails” basks in texture in a way Katatonia have periodically throughout the last 20 years, but the Opethian severity of they keys in “The Light Which I Bleed” and the declarative chug at the end of opener “Thrice” speak to the band’s awareness of the need to occasionally be very, very heavy, even as “Efter Solen” shifts into dark, emotive electronics ahead of the sweeping finale “In the Event Of…” Renkse has never wanted for expression as a singer. If he’s to be the driving force behind Katatonia, fair enough for how that manifests here.
Black Moon Circle, A Million Leagues Beyond: Moskus Sessions Vol. I
Trondheim, Norway’s Black Moon Circle recorded the four-song set of A Million Leagues Beyond: Moskus Sessions Vol. 1 at the hometown venue of Moskus, a small bar that, to hear them tell it, mostly hosts jazz. Fair enough for cosmic heavy psychedelic grunge rock to join the fray, I should think. It was late in 2023, so earlier that year’s Leave the Ghost Behind (review here) full-length features readily, with “Snake Oil” following the opener “Drifting Across the Plains” — which is jazzy enough, certainly — ahead of the chunkier-riffed “Serpent” and a 20-minute take on “Psychedelic Spacelord (Lighter Than Air),” which has become a signature piece for the three-piece, suitably expansive. If you know Black Moon Circle‘s studio albums, you know they do as much as they can live. Honestly, A Million Leagues Beyond: Moskus Sessions Vol. I isn’t all that different, but it’s definitely a performance worth enjoying.
Kudos if you had ‘new Bloodhorse‘ on your 2025 Stoner Rock Bingo card or caught it when they launched an Instagram page last year. I certainly didn’t. The Massachusetts aughts-type prog-leaning riffmakers were last heard from with their 2009 debut album, Horizoner (review here), and the six-song/28-minute A Malign Star serves as a vital return, if not one brimming with good vibes as “The Somnambulist” dream-crushes its four-minute course, the band not so much dwelling in atmospheres like the relatively careening “Shallowness,” but getting into a song, making their point, and getting out. This works to their advantage in opener “Saboteur” and the chuggier title-track that follows, but even six-minute closer “Illumination” retains a sense of immediacy amid the dirty fuzz and comparatively laid back roll. This band was once the shape of sludge to come. 16 years later, the future has taken a different course and everybody’s a little more middle-aged, but Bloodhorse still kind of feel like they’re waiting for the world to catch up.
Should you find yourself thinking you didn’t remember Canadian riffers Aawks — also stylized all-caps: AAWKS — having quite such a nasty streak, you’re not alone. Their 2022 debut, Heavy on the Cosmic (review here), had a take that seems like fuzzy dream-pop in comparison to “Celestial Magick” and the screamy sludge that populates On Through the Sky Maze, their second LP. The nine-song 48-minute full-length is the first to feature bassist/vocalist Ryan “Grime Pup” Mailman alongside guitarist/vocalist Kris Dzierzbicki, guitarist Roberto Paraíso, and drummer Randylin Babic, and songs like “Lost Dwellers” or the mellow-spacier “Drifting Upward,” with no harsh vocals, seem to hit more directly, in addition to arriving in a different context with the “blegh”s of “Wandering Supergiants” and “Caerdoia,” and so on. In the end, Mailman‘s rasp becomes one more tool in Aawks‘ songwriting shed, and the band have more breadth and are less predictable for it. Call that a win, even before you get to the record being good.
The shimmering, floating guitar in “Echoes (The Empress)” tells part of the story in the deep-running The Cure influence, and the somewhat moody vocals of Charlie Suárez echo that emotional foundation, which is coupled in that song and throughout Moon Destroys‘ debut album, She Walks by Moonlight, with a willful progressivism in the songwriting, attention to detail in the arrangements, melodies, even the mix. Comprised of Suárez, guitarist Juan Montoya (ex-Torche), bassist Arnold Nese and drummer/producer Evan Diprima (Royal Thunder), the band are able to set a wash in place that’s not deceptively heavy in “The Nearness of June” (an earlier demo track) because it’s beating you over the head with tone, but still has more to offer than just its own heft. “Only” sounds like heavied-up proto-emo, while the roll of “Set Them Free” is massive in terms of both its riff and its big feelings. If you’re willing to let it grow on you, She Walks by Moonlight can be a space to occupy.
In Space We Trust is one of four-so-far full-lengths that Santtu Laakso — multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer and producer — has out between Astral Magic and related collaborations and projects. It’s not a pace of releasing one can keep up with, but if you need a check-in from the generation ship that is Astral Magic, chances are Laakso is out there on some voyage or other between classic space rock and clearheaded prog, spanning galaxies. The eight-song/42-minute In Space We Trust pairs him with lead guitarist Jonathan Segel (Øresund Space Collective, etc.), and one should not be surprised at the cosmic nature of the resulting music. The pair get into some sci-fi atmospherics in “Ancient Pilots” and “Alien Emperor,” but the synth and guitar are leading the way across the galaxy and the vibe across the board is more Voyager and less Nostromo, so yes, smooth solar-sailing the whole way through.
The dreamy guitar, semi-rapped vocal, and dub backbeat give the opening title-track of Never Never a decidedly ’90s cast, but it’s not the summary of what Toronto’s Lammping have to offer in their collaboration with weirdo-rockabilly solo artist Bloodshot Bill, bringing together their urbane, grounded psych and studiocraft, samples, etc., with the singer/guitarist’s low, sometimes bluesy delivery across seven songs totaling 15 minutes, peppering the vibe-on-vibes of “Never Never,” “One and Own” and “Won’t Back Down” — the longest inclusion at 3:23 — with ramble and flow alike, with experimental jawns like “Coconut,” “0 and 1” or “Anything is Possible” and the closer “Nitey Nite,” all under two minutes long and each going their own way with the casual cool one has come to expect from Lammping, quietly staking out their own wavelength while still sounding like something from a half-remembered soundtrack to a radder version of your life. This is one of four releases Lammping will reportedly have over the next year or so. Way on board for whatever’s coming next.
After the disbanding of Samsara Blues Experiment in 2021, guitarist/vocalist Christian Peters — who had already by then moved from Germany to Brazil — unveiled Fuzz Sagrado with EPs in July and October of that year. Fuzz Sagrado‘s 2021 self-titled (review here) and Vida Pura EPs are included on Strange Daze, a new compilation of tracks unified through a remaster by John McBain, showcasing the early outreach of keyboard and guitar that served as the foundation for the project. As Peters readies a live band for an eventual return to the stage, Strange Daze demonstrates how multifaceted the growth has been in terms of songwriting and still feels exploratory in hindsight as it did when the material was first released. Also included is the jammy “Arapongas,” which wasn’t on either EP but was recorded around the same time. Something of a curio or a fan-piece, but I ain’t arguing.
When the Deadbolt Breaks, In the Glow of the Vatican Fire
A couple different modes on When the Deadbolt Breaks‘ In the Glow of the Vatican Fire, which is the long-running Connecticut malevolent doomers’ umpteenth album, running 63 minutes and eight songs. Some of those are longer pieces, like opener “The Scythe Will Come” (12:24), “The Chaos of Water” (14:02), “The Deep Well” (10:42) and “Red Sparrow” (10:57), but interspersed with these are a succession of shorter tracks, and the breakdown between them isn’t just that the short songs are fast and the long songs are slow. Certainly the ripping early portions (and the later, more minimalist spaciousness) of “The Chaos of Water” argue against this, and the dynamic turns out to be correspondingly complex to suit the abiding murk of mood, as founding guitarist/vocalist Aaron Lewis and co-singer Cherilynne provide foreboding croon to suit the lo-fi, creeping, distorted terrors of the music surrounding. This is When the Deadbolt Breaks absolutely in their element; bleak, churn-chaotic, expressive, immersive. They’re able to put you where they want you whether you want to go or not.
It may have sat on the shelf for two years since recording finished in 2023, but don’t worry, it’s still from the future. Laughter is the second-on-Sulatron full-length from Italian experimentalists A/lpaca, and it sees them push deeper into electronic elements and ambiences, keeping some of the krautrock elements of their 2021’s Make it Better, but with songs that are shorter on average and that stand ready to convey a sense of quirk in the keyboard elements or the Devo verses of the title-track, which isn’t without its aspect of shove. Does it get weird? You bet your ass it does. “Bianca’s Videotape,” “Who’s in Love Daddy?,” the post-punk synthery meeting doomed fuzz on “Empty Chairs,” the list goes on. Actually, it’s just the tracklisting and it’s all pretty freaked out, so as long as you know going in that the band are working from their own standard of weirdoism, making the jump into the keyboardy gorge of “Kyrie” or the new wave-y “Don’t Talk” should be no problem. If you heard the last record, yeah, this is different. Seems like the next one will probably be different again too. Not everyone wants to do the same thing all the time.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 7th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
With a shimmer in the guitar and the breathy verse vocal of guitarist Charlie Suárez in its first single, the debut album from Moon Destroys, She Walks by Moonlight, isn’t shy about giving a heavy post-rock initial impression, and that’s nothing to complain about. The Miami/North Carolina-based four-piece are set to begin supporting She Walks by Moonlight the night before it comes out, as they’ll open for Elder and Sacri Monti on the former’s Lore-celebration tour, and they bring something to that bill distinct from either of the other two sound-wise. The single is called “Echoes (The Empress)” and it’s showcased in a visualizer below.
The band’s pedigree in bands like Torche and Royal Thunder is nifty-nifty and certainly relevant, but less applicable to the sound than the context from which it emerges. I’ve been looking forward to this album for a minute or two. Only more so after hearing the single.
Here’s the PR wire with more:
Dark Psychedelic Outfit MOON DESTROYS Announces Debut Album ‘She Walks By Moonlight’ Out April 4th via Limited Fanfare Records
New Single “Echoes (The Empress)” Out Now + Visualizer
Today, Dark Psychedelic outfit MOON DESTROYS are excited to announce their debut album ‘She Walks By Moonlight’ due out on April 4th via Limited Fanfare Records. To celebrate the announcement, MOON DESTROYS share the second single off the album titled “Echoes (The Empress)”, accompanied by a visualizer available to view below.
About the single, vocalist/guitarist Charlie Suárez states:
“If time is an illusion, it’s fair to say that Ego elects which aspects of it all circle back as perceived experiences of Love, Hate, and everything in between. ‘Echoes (The Empress)’ addresses the repetitive “in between” areas of human disconnect with overwhelming uncertainty and reflective conviction.”
MOON DESTROYS, the project of guitarist Juan Montoya (ex-Torche, MonstrO) and drummer/bassist/producer Evan Diprima (Gold Pyramid, ex-Royal Thunder), delivers a fusion of massive, swirling guitars and tight rhythmic counterpoints influenced by Alternative, Post-Punk, and Dark Wave. Their 5-song EP, ‘Maiden Voyage’, was released in March 2020 via Brutal Panda Records, featuring guest vocals from Troy Sanders (Mastodon) and Paul Masvidal (Cynic), with synth contributions from Bryan Richie (The Sword).
Now, their debut LP, ‘She Walks By Moonlight’, arrives April 4, 2025, on Limited Fanfare Records. Writing began in late 2023, with Montoya in Miami and Diprima in North Carolina, collaborating remotely. Realizing the need for a permanent vocalist, they enlisted Montoya’s former MonstrO bandmate, Charlie Suárez, who contributed vocals, guitars, and synths. Diprima handled most engineering, production, and mixing, with mastering by Carl Saff (Sonic Youth, Magnolia Electric Co., Melt-Banana).
The album’s first single, “The Nearness of June”, showcases Suárez’s hypnotic vocals and lyrical depth. Other standout tracks include today’s “Echoes/The Empress”, exploring human disconnect, and “Only”, a plea to mend the irreconcilable.
In late 2024, bassist Arnold Nese (ex-Sunday Driver) joined to complete the lineup.
On the album, guitarist Juan Montoya shares:
“This record is like a phoenix, soaring over the moon’s glow leaving behind the ashes of darker days. These are songs with passion in every pulse, tapping into a universal sound for the receptive mind.”
‘She Walks By Moonlight’ Track List: 1. She Walks By Moonlight 2. The Nearness of June 3. Only 4. Set Them Free 5. A Song For Jade 6. Losing Sleep 7. Echoes (The Empress) 8. Metallic Memories 8. Sway
Catch MOON DESTROYS across the US and Canada this April supporting Elder!
MOON DESTROYS Live:
Supporting Elder 4/3 Brooklyn, NY @ The Meadows 4/4 Baltimore, MD @ The Ottobar 4/5 Raleigh, NC @ The Pour House 4/6 Asheville, NC @ Eulogy 4/8 Orlando, FL @ The Conduit 4/9 Atlanta, GA @ The Earl 4/11 Columbus, OH @ Ace of Cups 4/12 Chicago, IL @ Reggies 4/13 Detroit, MI @ Sanctuary 4/14 Buffalo, NY @ Rec Room 4/15 Toronto, ON @ Axis 4/17 Montreal, QC @ Theatre Fairmount 4/18 Hamden, CT @ Space Ballroom 4/19 Cambridge, MA @ Middle East / Downstairs
MOON DESTROYS are: Juan Montoya – Guitars Evan Diprima – Drums Charlie Suárez – Vocals Guitars Arnold Nese – Bass
