This, obviously, is bigger than music. This is a human being and their family. Given the circumstances, it doesn’t feel right to speculate what might happen with Neurosis or any of his other projects in the longer term, so I’ll just say that if this was the situation, he’s probably right to step back. We all know that ‘permanent’ is a fluid idea when it comes to things like band breakups and retirements, so if you’re down about the prospect of no more music from Kelly, first, maybe you’ve missed the point a little and want to look at that, and second, never say never. But again, there are larger concerns at play here.

Best to Scott Kelly’s family on behalf of this site and myself, and hope for healing all around.

If you or someone you know is suffering under domestic violence, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 800-799-7233. And no, a hotline isn’t enough and one can feel trapped, paralyzed, terrorized. It happens every day. But if that’s you, know that you’re not alone no matter how much you’ve been made to feel you are.

From social media:

Scott Kelly on abusing family and retiring from music:

Due to recent events, I feel that I clearly need to address some rumors and set the record straight. For the past several years I have engaged in the emotional, financial, verbal and physical abuse of my wife and younger children. When I became paranoid that people were going to find out, I found ways to keep my wife and kids from work and school and created divisions with friends and family members. I became obsessed with control and used threats, manipulation, threats of self-harm and suicide, inflicted physical damage on people and their reputations all to keep that control. When I knew my wife was going to leave I tried to convince her and others that I was crazy, and seeing things, and that I did not know what I was doing. She tried to help me with therapy and psychiatrists. My lies and deceptions fell apart in front of the professionals. When my wife finally tried to leave, I stalked and harassed her day and night and caused her and our youngest to live in a constant state of fear. I have lied or told half truths to so many people about so much of this that I can’t keep track of them. I don’t want to lie about any of this anymore. I love my wife to no end. She is the best person that I know. She is intensely honest, loving and good to her core. This letter is massive simplification of the irreparable damage I have caused and the unforgivable things that I’ve done to her and our kids. To say more in this public forum would not help anyone. As the truth has started to leak out there have been people who have tried to blame my wife for my abuse to give me an out and people who have spread ridiculous and damaging rumors about her. This is fucked. She deserves so much better. If you are adopting this mentality or spreading these rumors you need to fucking stop. I have some serious issues that I am dealing with and I have separated myself from anyone who is connected with my public life so that I can focus on my own toxic shit. When my wife has been kind enough to answer questions about my absence, she has faced crazy accusations. There was a recent situation that was so fucked up that it necessitated immediate action on my part to set the record straight. My wife absolutely speaks for me in my absence and I have already said she is intensely honest. If you don’t want the truth definitely don’t ask her questions. Additionally it is never appropriate to approach or question our children.

I know now that choosing to live a public life and be onstage was the worst decision that I could have made given the way that I am. I have hidden behind the attention and unfounded respect and adulation. I used my social position to directly and indirectly manipulate all of you and to hide the abuse of my family. I got satisfaction from my deception and perceived control of everyone involved. I am 100% permanently retired from being a professional musician. Some people can be in a scene like this where there is no accountability and maintain their integrity. I cannot. My sole focus for the rest of my life is on taking care of my family, allowing them safe space to heal and rebuilding their trust. I hope putting this out there will protect my wife from further attacks and finally allow my family some peace.

—

Likewise inevitable and impossible. You take some of the most formidable players of their generation — Scott Kelly of Neurosis, Al Cisneros of Om and Sleep, Scott “Wino” Weinrich of The Obsessed (etc.) and Dale Crover of the Melvins — and put them in a band together. As groups go, that’s pretty super. It didn’t last.

Listening back to Shrinebuilder‘s 2009 self-titled debut (review here), released through Neurot Recordings with cover art by Josh Graham (who probably should’ve been in the band too), the novelty of the idea is still hard to overcome. Maybe if Shrinebuilder had become a real working band — that is, one that took priority over everyone else’s other projects; no minor ask in this case — and had put out two or three more records by now, it would be easier to divorce the five songs of the 39-minute offering from the people behind them, but I remember when this album came in the mail, and the premise remains exciting, bringing these artists together and seeing what comes out.

Driven mostly by the riffs of Kelly and Weinrich, Shrinebuilder nonetheless gave everyone their space. In album opener “Solar Benediction,” the two guitarists trade verses early, with Kelly‘s gruff delivery playing off Wino‘s wizened sneer, before an e-bow topped break, hypnotic in its layered stretch, builds back up to a crawling final crush, and it’s not until the subsequent “Pyramid of the Moon” that Cisneros arrives on mic. He does so in the fashion of a wandering mystic. The foundation on which the changes from one riff to another and one apparent songwriter to another could hardly be more solid than to have Dale Crover on drums. Find me someone more used to going wherever the hell the song is going to go who already happens to be friends with all of these others. And he holds “Pyramid of the Moon” together through volume ebbs and flows, Kelly‘s vocal subdued early as they move toward a kind of vocal-drone chanting midsection and, with a few cymbal hits, into Cisneros‘ first verse of the record and the second lyrical mention of Jericho in the span of two songs.

That itself is emblematic of what’s largely been lost in Shrinebuilder‘s Shrinebuilder and certainly was at the time. Its songs are loaded with nuance. The subtle layer of guitar effects bolstering the atmosphere behind the second verse of “Pyramid of the Moon” — could be more e-bow, could be something else — or the acoustic guitar layered into the back end of “Solar Benediction.” As much as that leadoff track and the entire LP that follows is typified by that first moment when Kelly arrives to declare, “We stand burning before you/Returning wisdom with blood,” even the interplay between bass and drums as that ambient buildup takes place moving into the second half of the song is worth the headphone listen.

And Shrinebuilder continues to offer depth all across its span, whether its the vocals harmonizing with Kelly in the first half of centerpiece “Blind for All to See” — is that Crover? — or the march in that final riff as the song seems to just kind of come apart into a psychedelic ether, moving into “The Architect,” which feels Wino-driven in its guitar progression early, that twisting style, only to give way to Kelly again — and maybe Crover too, or Cisneros, it’s hard to tell even now — in a thicker movement that caps the shortest song on the record and what might’ve been at least a partial working model for the band had they opted to go forward, lacking the turns of “Solar Benediction” or the nine-minute closer “Science of Anger” that immediately follows, but a basic structure from which they might’ve pushed ahead. So it goes.

Shred comes early in “Science of Anger” and hits over at least two layers of rhythm guitar before the first verse — if you want to guess who wrote that lead-style riff, I’d put even money on Kelly or Wino — but the energetic feel from that first solo is mirrored in the drums and carries over to a feeling of spaciousness as guitars to twist and intertwine between the next two verses. Vocals are again layered without ceremony to which they’d be well entitled, and as Kelly‘s guttural voice rises to consume seemingly everything in its path, consider the layered-in echo of the words “twisted formations” at 3:33 as further evidence of Shrinebuilder‘s orientation toward detail. They didn’t just throw these songs together with parts by one person or the other. They could’ve. But even in the progression of the album as a whole, they saved both Wino joining Kelly in that heavier part and a mic-return from Cisneros for last. They built an album.

The transition to Cisneros, prefaced by a turn toward more of an Om-style march, is somewhat awkward, or at least rhythmically counterintuitive as to when he actually starts singing at 5:28, but it all starts to make its own kind of sense as the track gradually builds toward its earthen-psychedelic finish, a suitable payoff but a relatively gentle touch for a record that’s been nothing if not liberal in throwing its weight around, tonally-speaking.

As noted, Shrinebuilder didn’t last. I was fortunate enough to interview Al Cisneros for the album (I don’t think I’m cool enough to get that interview these days, so I’m proud of that one), and to see the band in New York in Nov. 2009 (review here). I was drunk and uncomfortable at Le Poisson Rouge, out of my league in its New York-ness. I don’t remember much about the show, to be honest, other than they was awesome. That was one of a few tours Shrinebuilder did; they’d also hit the West Coast and Europe before everyone went their own way again. In 2011, they put a 13-minute version of “Science of Anger” out as a single (discussed here) through Coextinction Recordings — the idea of a digital-only label was also a novelty at the time — and they’d follow with Live in Europe 2010 (discussed here) that year as well, releasing on vinyl through My Proud Mountain.

I’m not sure if more Shrinebuilder would be worth trading the last decade of material from these players — Kelly‘s records with Neurosis, Corrections House, and solo, as well as the Sleep reunion, Wino‘s ill-fated regroup with Saint Vitus before reviving Spirit Caravan and The Obsessed in succession, or even Crover‘s ongoing Melvins-being-Melvins — but since it didn’t happen the point is moot. Everyone is still alive, so never say never, but as it stands, this self-titled is a moment that’s passed and doesn’t look likely to come again. Fair enough. Particularly in terms of how well it’s stood up to the last 12 years, still delivering something new on a random revisit on a random week, one couldn’t ask for more than they gave.

As always, I hope you enjoy.

—

In New Jersey, where I live, the office of child welfare is called Child Protective Services. When I was a kid, it was called DYFS, the Division of Youth and Family Services, or some such. My mother used to say DYFS was gonna come and take me away if I didn’t behave. Fair enough.

CPS came to the house this past weekend because The Pecan broke his leg and it’s his second significant fracture in about two months’ time, following of course his cracking his skull falling on the basement floor in March. I think it’s largely because we’re white and living in suburban comfort in a nice, relatively clean house (I could stand to vacuum), that they didn’t allege significant abuse, but they definitely asked. “Hey, you ever spank your kid?” I said I swat his butt to get him to go up the stairs — not with a broken leg, obviously — but never in a disciplining manner so much as playful.

I guess a toddler — worse, this toddler — with a spiral-fractured tibia is what I get for calling out one of my parenting nightmares last Friday in noting that he’d pooped in the tub. This is life, people.

He was going down the twisty slide with The Patient Mrs. after tee-ball, juked when he should’ve jived, and snapped it. He and I had gone down the same slide in the same way just minutes before. A fluke thing. In our postgame analysis of the event, The Patient Mrs. and I examined both whether he needs more calcium in his diet — he doesn’t drink milk but his doctor has never remarked on significant lacks in his bloodwork — and whether we’re terrible parents. I’m pretty much convinced of my own awfulness, and The Pecan himself is unilaterally mommy-centered enough to articulate his confirmation of same, but neither this nor his fall a couple months back were really anyone’s fault. I blame myself for both, but that’s just parenting shit (or, in my case, shit parenting; I failed even before I started). It’s unfortunate timing.

Which is basically what we said to not-DYFS. They were supposed to send a follow-up later in the week and no one came. Fine.

He can walk with help at this point. A little more movement every day. No school this week, which has meant I get up early to work. He goes for follow-up imaging today and a second orthopedist appointment on Monday. At urgent care last Saturday right after it happened, they scared The Patient Mrs. with talk of surgery — some residual trauma factoring in from our hospital stay post-skull fracture there, I should think — but it doesn’t look like he’ll need any rods or anything as of now. He’s in a boot. Might need a cast. We’ll see on Monday. His entire being stinks. Hasn’t had a bath in more than a week. I’ve been wiping him down every day, but he’s “cheesy,” as we often joke. “Ya cheesy,” he says.

That’s been the week. That and maintain, and both have been a challenge. It has brought into light how fortunate we are to live minutes from my family — a support system we simply didn’t have when we were living in Massachusetts — for not the first time, but that is especially vivid after vaccination. We are lucky to be where we are, in this house. I have hard times. A lot. In my head. A lot. Every day I speak to myself in Bad Voice. I should like to actively work more on being thankful than being a miserable bastard like my own father. It is an aspiration. A challenge. I fail more often.

The kid’s up and has been for a while — we’ve been joking this week about “loafing” in bed — and it’s quarter-to-eight, so I’m gonna head upstairs and help him get down, get breakfast going. Thanks for reading and have a great and safe weekend. Watch your head, hydrate, all that stuff.

FRM.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

If time has taught us anything at all about rock and roll, it’s never say never. Shrinebuilder put out its self-titled debut in 2009 on Neurot Recordings with the staggering lineup of bassist/vocalist Al Cisneros, guitarist/vocalists Scott Kelly and Scott “Wino” Weinrich and drummer/vocalist Dale Crover, played here and there, followed-up with a single and a live record, played some more shows, and then receded. It was never intended to be a full-time project, and when they were done, everyone went back to their own bands, whether it was Sleep and Om for Cisneros, Saint Vitus for Wino, Neurosis and solo work for Kelly or the Melvins for Crover. Rumors of a second album persisted for a while and then similarly receded.

We may never get another Shrinebuilder record. Hell, we might not even get another Shrinebuilder tour, or a single show, but it seems just as likely that at some point and in some form — whether with all four of the same players or not — they’ll get together again for some purpose or other. The full set snagged for this week’s Wino Wednesday revelry was filmed by TubeVision, a long-running East Coast taper, and captures Shrinebuilder on their inaugural run from Nov. 2009, not yet a month after the release of the self-titled, live in full force at the Sonar in Baltimore, Maryland. I was fortunate enough two nights later to see Shrinebuilder take the stage in Manhattan with Rwake (review here), and while it was just over five years ago now, I can still readily recall the powerful presence they had as a band on stage and the weight the performance carried because of who it was standing up there.

They might or they might not ever do another album, but whatever winds up happening, we were lucky enough to get it once. Hope you enjoy the video:

Shrinebuilder, Live at The Sonar, Baltimore, MD, 11.13.09

The track “We Let the Hell Come” would wind up as one of the most memorable songs on Scott Kelly‘s 2012 Scott Kelly and the Road Home album, The Forgiven Ghost in Me. Interpreted with subtle, still-minimalist interplay of electric and acoustic guitar and Kelly‘s mournful, gravel-throated wonderings, it was a highlight of the record (review here), engaging with a sweet, sad melody and the persistent strum of Kelly‘s strings. Little in that version would link “We Let the Hell Come” to its prior interpretation — the song having been performed over two years earlier live by Shrinebuilder.

At the very start of the video below, filmed at Skully’s in Columbus, Ohio, as part of the 2010 Scion Rock Fest — Shrinebuilder headlined that venue for the night; YOB, Pelican, Acrassicauda and others also played — the band says that “We Let the Hell Come” will be on the next record. It may well still be, but more than three years later, a follow-up to Shrinebuilder‘s 2009 self-titled debut (review here) has yet to surface, and with the band’s members — Kelly (also in Neurosis), Scott “Wino” Weinrich (also in The Obsessed and Saint Vitus at this point, as well as putting out solo material), Dale Crover (the Melvins) and Al Cisneros (Sleep and Om) — busy with their respective main outfits, it may be that Shrinebuilder was a one-time planetary alignment that we won’t be fortunate enough to see again.

If that’s the case, all the better that clips like this one of “We Let the Hell Come” are out there — the song also showed up on Shrinebuilder‘s Live in Europe 2010 vinyl, which I regret not buying when I had the chance — to give a sampling of what might’ve been or, who knows, might still be when and if there’s a second Shrinebuilder outing. This video was filmed by Chris Kimbrough and I hope you enjoy and have an excellent Wino Wednesday:

Shrinebuilder, “We Let the Hell Come” Live at Scion Rock Fest 2010

I guess this show and the circumstances surrounding have become something of a tale to tell. In 2010, the supergroup Shrinebuilder were en route to play Roadburn and tour Europe to promote their self-titled debut and only album to date. Coming from the Western Seaboard, where all the members of the band — Scott Kelly and Wino on guitar/vocals, Al Cisneros on bass and Dale Crover on drums — were located, they got as far as New York before their flight was grounded like so many others at the time.

Not to be completely undone by that volcano — whose mere name, Eyjafjallajökull, strikes syllabic terror into the hearts of pronunciation guides everywhere — Shrinebuilder booked themselves a last-minute gig at Brooklyn’s Club Europa. While they were in town, they also recorded a session with Andrew Schneider for Coextinction Recordings that’s been featured here before. They had been to New York for a show about a month before and of course around the time the album came out as well in 2009 (review here), but as it was such a bizarre situation, and as they haven’t been back since, the Europa show has taken on a mystical kind of quality — not that anything these guys did wouldn’t already have had one.

Shrinebuilder did finally get to Europe, and they played Roadburn in 2011 as not the only act on the bill to be carried over from the year before. A self-released Live in Europe 2010 vinyl commemorated the experience, but since they basically started out as a headlining act because of the members’ pedigree in Neurosis, Sleep, Saint Vitus (etc.) and the Melvins, those earlier Shrinebuilder shows featured a couple covers, and on this one from Brooklyn of Creedence Clearwater Revival‘s “Effigy,” Crover and Wino show a classic rocking side of Shrinebuilder that was unlike anything else they did.

Enjoy and have a great Wino Wednesday:

Shrinebuilder, “Effigy” at Europa, Brooklyn 04.16.10

Next Saturday, Oct. 20, will mark three full years since Shrinebuilder‘s self-titled debut was released on Neurot. The most super of supergroups unleashed five tracks and just under 40 minutes of exploration, at times devastatingly heavy, at times contemplatively ambient, but always in motion and never predictable. Three years later, I still don’t think I have a grip on all of it — though I did a review when it came out — and even though the status of the band is unclear at this point, I’m not sure more time is going to help.

If you have to be outclassed, though, Shrinebuilder is the cast to do it. I’ll run down the list because it’s fun: Scott Kelly (Neurosis), Scott “Wino” Weinrich (The Obsessed, this feature, etc.), Al Cisneros (Sleep, Om) and Dale Crover (the Melvins), all contributing to the complex, driving psychedelic heaviness that successfully blended the approaches of its members. I spent a year in fanboy nerd-out mode waiting for it, and when it came, was certain my days were well spent.

I’ve griped about the longevity of Shrinebuilder‘s Shrinebuilder before, that I didn’t go back to it after 2009 and so forth, and I suppose that’s true, though I think it’s more on me than the album. In any case, with zero prospects of a follow-up anytime soon, I figure the full-length is ripe for a revisit, and if you’re gonna listen to a record with Wino on it, Wednesday’s the day.

Enjoy and have a great Wino Wednesday:

Of all the Wino-type excellence 2012 has so far wrought — be that in the form of the collaboration with Conny Ochs or the reunion of The Obsessed at Roadburn — news on the Shrinebuilder front has been curiously sparse. I guess the dudes involved are busy with their main projects, whether it’s Wino with Saint Vitus and his sundry other outfits, Scott Kelly with Neurosis, Al Cisneros with Om and Sleep, or Dale Crover with the Melvins, but I had thought the follow up to their 2009 self-titled would be along this year, and it seems like there would’ve been some word by now if that was going to be the case.

Maybe it’s for the best, since I don’t know if I’d trade the output and shows of all those bands for the prospect of new Shrinebuilder anyway, but whenever the second album from this underground megagroup arrives, it’ll be interesting to hear how or if they build at all on the direction they seemed to be taking with the debut. They were playing new material as early as their European tour in 2010, delayed as much of life was that spring by volcanic activity in Iceland. That tour resulted in the Live in Europe 2010 live album last year, but for a band of this magnitude, it’s hard not to want a new studio offering as soon as possible.

Lurking my way around the TubesofYou, I stumbled on this pro-shot, multi-angle clip of the new songs “Nagas 1 & 2” coupled with “Pyramid of the Moon,” filmed in Belgium at De Kreun in Kortrijk. Credit where it’s due, apparently the crew behind the cameras was 4×4 TV. My only regret is that it wasn’t uploaded in HD, but I don’t even remember if you could do that two years ago. One more reason Shrinebuilder needs to get out there again.

So yeah, here’s 21 minutes solid of ritualistic psych groove. Happy Wino Wednesday:

It is a supergroup to define a generation of heavy. Guitarists Scott “Wino” Weinrich and Scott Kelly (Neurosis), bassist Al Cisneros (Sleep, Om) and drummer Dale Crover (the Melvins). I remember interviewing Kelly on the occasion of the last Neurosis record and that being the first time I’d heard of the project or anything about who was involved. My reaction was fanboy honest: “Holy shit, dude.” His was too: “I know, man.”

The assemblage of these mega-influential figures resulted in a 2009 self-titled full-length, released on Neurot, and subsequent bits of touring and shows. While traveling en route to Roadburn in 2010, Shrinebuilder were held up in New York due to closed European airspace from Icelandic volcanic ash. They wound up playing a gig in the city that night, and, in addition to catching a ballgame and sundry other “we’re here anyway”-type activities, re-recorded their album’s closer “The Science of Anger.”

This new version of the song, reworked to match how they were performing it live, was released as a digital single via Coextinction Recordings. It’s available for a $2.99 download here and is all the more special for the bizarre circumstances that led to its creation. As we stand on the hopeful precipice of a new Shrinebuilder outing in 2012, I can think of no better way to celebrate this Wino Wednesday than their most cohesive outing yet.

Now bear witness as Wino and Scott Kelly turn feedback into your gods: