Posted in Questionnaire on August 1st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Phil Swanson of Solemn Lament
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
Surreal is the first word that comes to mind. A massive underground music nerd who was just wanting to be part of something in any way possible. Started writing reviews for a friend’s fanzine in the ’80s that led to interviews. Tape trading and vinyl collecting that led to a small retail and wholesale distro working with bands to get their music heard and released before deciding to sneak my own music into the mix. Eventually I got better at it apparently to the point even more talented people than myself wanted to be a part of it with me.
Describe your first musical memory.
Staying home sick from school in the ’70s bored and exploring my parents’ hi-fi and record collection. Nothing good, but at the time I really didn’t know what listening to music was all about until I pulled the record out of the sleeve and put it on while watching the cover come to life. It literally blew my mind.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
I have been lucky enough to experience everything I could ever want to in music. Met my heroes, played with my friends I idolized and earned their respect. Developed relationships with musicians who are now the closest people to my heart as I will allow whether they know it or not. The journey has been the best memory. To be a part of something I only dreamed of and never thought possible.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
As a child of 13 when I was brutally beaten by a group of kickers in Texas and the people I thought were there to keep me safe looked the other way. My belief in trust was tested and lost forever in that moment and so many moments after.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Catharsis.
How do you define success?
Achieving personal goals however large or small. It’s a very relative thing and can happen in many different ways.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Violence on more occasions than I would like to admit at this stage of my life. Things that haunt me and make me feel my struggles in present life are justified by things that surrounded me in my past.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
A finished graphic novel or film. I have written several scripts, one came very close to publication but timing was lost. I was writing scripts at the same time as my music progressed and then music took precedent. If I wasn’t so complicated and difficult that I could play along I probably could have had the opportunity, but I tend to pull back every time I have the chance to move forward.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Escape.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Taking my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to the highest level I am capable of while I still can. To be a legitimate player and threat in any room I enter. To have the respect of anyone I tap hands with.
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 26th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
God damn this EP is good. It’s basically three songs plus an intro, probably would fit on a single 12″ vinyl side — Svart is pre-selling it in an edition of 500 ‘mini-LPs,’ which I took to mean a 10″ but don’t quote me on that — but in the melodic doom drawl of its riffing, in Phil Swanson‘s vocals and in the procession of hurt that unfolds rhythmically, the doom-schooled-in-doom, by-doom-for-doom sensibility pervades, giving vibes reminiscent of Apostle of Solitude‘s earlier work with a sharper edge of its own, Solemn Lament‘s self-titled EP (review here) earns its place on one of the underground’s most respected imprints.
The actual signing to Svart happened last October, and it’s easy enough to chalk the delay from that to releasing the EP on CD and vinyl on Aug. 19 up to pandemic-born pressing delays, supply chain this and that, and so on. Even better news arrives with the band’s plan to unveil a proper first album in 2023, which is enough for me to start my list of next year’s most anticipated albums in the Docs sheet of notes by which I essentially run my life. Here’s looking forward, in other words.
Of course, you can stream Solemn Lament‘s Solemn Lament on the player at the bottom of this post. It might not perk up your day, but you’d still be doing yourself a favor.
From Bandcamp updates and various social sources:
Solemn Lament present a limited edition of their debut recording. 4 tracks of somber yet heavy, crushing and melodic doom metal.
Blending early UK doom influences with a nod to stateside doom, Solemn Lament is a bicoastal collaboration of vocalist Phil Swanson (Hour of 13, Sumerlands, Vestal Claret, Briton Rites, Smith & Swanson, Seamount), drummer, Justin DeTore (Dream Unending, Innumerable Forms, Magic Circle, Sumerlands, Mind Eraser, & more), bassist, Drew Wardlaw (Blind Dead, Dry-Rot, Uranium Orchard), lead guitarist, Adam Jacino (Blind Dead) and rhythm guitarist, Eric Wenstrom.
Physical copies (Vinyl & CD) of the debut EP will be released on August 19th via Svart Records.
Pre-Order (North America) http://svart.ochre.store/release/309453-solemn-lament-solemn-lament Pre-Order (Europe) http://svartrecords.com/product/solemn-lament-solemn-lament-ep/ Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B3F2BP3J?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_XVF1AYXA9KJZTGCQKAC0
Shirts are also available here: http://solemnlament.bandcamp.com/merch (Apologies for the absurd shipping costs outside of the US)
New material is in the works with a full length expected in 2023 via Svart Records. Thanks again for the continued support!
In the meantime, several of Justin’s other projects have releases and tours scheduled in the coming months:
Sumerlands is releasing “Dreamkiller” on September 16th http://store.relapse.com/b/sumerlands
Innumerable Forms is releasing “Philosophical Collapse” also on September 16th http://linktr.ee/innumerableformsdeath
Innumerable Forms will also be making their live debut in Europe as they embark on an EU tour with Faceless Burial.
Posted in Reviews on September 29th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
According to my notes, today is Day Three of the Fall 2021 Quarterly Review. Are you impressed to have made it this far? I kind of am, but, you know, I would be. I hope you’ve managed to find something you dig over the course of the first 20 records, and if not, why not? I’ve certainly added to a few year-end lists between debut albums, regular-old albums and short releases. Today’s no different. Without giving away any secrets ahead of time, this is a pretty wacky stylistic spread from the start and that’s how I like it. Maybe by next Tuesday it’ll all make a kind of sense, and maybe it won’t. In any case, this is apparently my idea of fun, so let’s have fun.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Thief, The 16 Deaths of My Master
Someone used the phrase “techno for metalheads” in an email to me the other day (about something else) and I can’t get it out of my head concerning Thief‘s The 16 Deaths of My Master. From the swelling distortion of opener “Underking” to the odd bit of harpsicord that shows up in “Scorpion Mother” to the bassy rumble underscoring “Fire in the Land of Endless Rain,” the post-everything “Lover Boy,” droning “Life Clipper,” lazyman’s hip-hop on “Gorelord” and “Crestfaller” and Beck-on-acid finale in “Seance for Eight Oscillators,” there’s certainly plenty of variety to go around, but in the dance-dream “Apple Eaters” and goth-with-’90s-beatmaking “Bootleg Blood” and pretend-your-car-ride-is-a-movie-soundtrack “Wing Clipper,” the metallic underpinning of Dylan Neal (also Botanist) is still there, and the lyrical highlight “Teenage Satanist” rings true. Still, songs like the consuming washer “Night Spikes and subsequent drum’n’bass-vibing “Victim Exit Stage Left” are inventive, fascinating, short and almost poppy in themselves but part of a 16-track entirety that is head-spinning. If that’s techno for metalheads, so be it. Horns up for dat bass.
The album’s title is kind of another interpretation of the band’s name, the idea behind the Latin phrase Per Aspera Ad Astra being moving through challenges to the stars and the Santiago, Chile, one-man death-doom outfit being Rise to the Sky. Multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Sergio González Catalán reportedly wrote and arranged the title-track in the days following his father’s funeral, and the grand, flowing string sounds and engrossing heft that ensues feel genuinely mournful, capping with a progression of solo piano before “End My Night” seems to pick up where “The Loss of Hope” left off. The lyrics to closer “Only Our Past Remains” derive from a poem by Catalán‘s father, and the sense of tribute is palpable across the album’s 46 minutes. I’m not sure how the Russian folk melody bonus instrumental “Horse” might tie in, but neither is it out of place among “Deep Lament” and “Bleeding Heart,” the latter of which dares some clean vocals alongside the gutturalism, and in context, the rest of the album seems to answer with loss what opener “Life in Suspense” is waiting for.
Those familiar with Brian Ellis and Conor Riley‘s work in Astra should not be surprised to find them exploring ’70s-style progressive rock in Birth, and anybody who heard Psicomagia already knows that bassist Trevor Mast and drummer Paul Marrone (also Radio Moscow) are a rhythm section well up to whatever task you might want to set before them. Thus Birth‘s Demo arrives some four years after its recording, with “Descending Us” (posted here) leading off in dramatic Deep Purple-y fashion backed by the jammier but gloriously mellotroned and Rhodes’ed “Cosmic Wind” and “Long Way Down,” which digs itself into a righteous King Crimson payoff with due class even as it revels in its rough edges. Marrone‘s since left the band and whoever replaces him has big shoes to fill, but god damn, just put out a record already, would you?
Wielding mighty tonality and meeting Monolordian lurch with an aural space wide enough to contain it, Old Horn Tooth follow their 2019 debut LP, From the Ghost Grey Depths, with the single-song EP True Death, proffering a largesse rarely heard even from London’s ultra-populated heavy underground and working their way into, out of, back into, out of and through a nod that the converted among riff-heads likely find irresistible and hypnotic in kind. To say the trio of guitarist/vocalist Chris, bassist/keyboardist Ollie and drummer Mark ride out the groove is perhaps underselling it, but as my first exposure to the band, I’m only sorry to have missed out on both the orange tapes and the limited flash drives they were selling. So it goes. Slow riffs, fast sales. I’ll catch them next time and drown my sorrows in the interim in this immersive, probably-gonna-get-picked-up-by-some-label-for-a-vinyl-release offering. And hey, maybe if you and I both email them, they’ll press a few more cassettes.
Pro-shop-level doom from an initial public offering by Solemn Lament, bringing together the significant likes of vocalist Phil Swanson (ex-Hour of 13, Vestal Claret, countless others), drummer Justin DeTore (Magic Circle and more recently Dream Unending) as well as Blind Dead‘s Drew Wardlaw on bass and Adam Jacino on lead guitar, and Eric Wenstrom on rhythm guitar. These personages cross coastlines to three tracks and intro of grand and immersive doom metal, willfully diving into the Peaceville-three legacy on “Stricken” to find the beauty in darkness after the lumber and chug of the nine-minute “Celeste” resolves with patient grace and “Old Crow” furthers the Paradise Lost spirit in its central riff. Geography is an obvious challenge, but if Solemn Lament can build on the potential they show in this debut EP, they could be onto something really special.
A stunning third full-length from Fayetteville, Arkansas, trio Terminus, The Silent Bell Toll bridges doomed heft and roll, progressive melodicism and thoughtful heavy rock construction into a potent combination of hooks and sheer impact. It’s worth noting that the 10-minute closer of the nine-song/40-minute outing, “Oh Madrigal,” soars vocally, but hell, so does the 3:18 “Black Swan” earlier. Guitarist Sebastian Thomas (also cover art) and bassist Julian Thomas share vocal duties gorgeously throughout while drummer Scott Wood rolls songs like “The Lion’s Den” and “The Silent Bell Toll” — that nod under the solo; goodness gracious — in such a way as to highlight the epic feel even as the structure beneath is reinforced. With three instrumentals peppered throughout to break up the chapters as intro, centerpiece and penultimate, there’s all the more evidence that Terminus are considered in their approach and that the level of realization across The Silent Bell Toll is not happenstance.
Clearly named in honor of its defining intent, Recurring Nightmare is the three-song/48-minute debut full-length from Boston-based charred sludge outfit, who take the noisy heft of ultra-disaffected purveyors like Indian or Primitive Man and push it into a blackened metallic sphere further distinguished by harshly ambient drones. One can dig Neurosis-style riffing out of the 19:30 closer “Guillotine” or opener “Torch and Spear,” but the question is how much one’s hand is going to be sliced open in that process. And the answer is plenty. Their tones don’t so much rumble as crumble, vocals are willfully indecipherable throat-clenching screams, and the drums duly glacial. There is little kindness to be had in 16:43 centerpiece “Freedom Fever Dream” — originally broken into two parts as a demo in 2019 — which resolves itself lyrically in mourning a lost ideal over a dense lurch that’s met with still-atmospheric churning. Their established goal, if that’s what it is, has been met with all appropriate viciousness and extremity.
An ethic toward straight-ahead riff rock is writ large throughout Taxi Caveman‘s self-titled debut full-length, the Warsaw trio offering a face-first dive into fuzz of varying sizes and shaping their material around the sleek groove of “Prisoner” or the more aggressively bent vinyl-side-launchers “Building With Fire” and “Asteroid.” There’s a highlight hook in “I, the Witch” and the instrumental “426” leads into the Dozer-esque initial verse of 10-minute closer “Empire of the Sun,” but the three-piece find their own way through ultimately, loosening some of the verse/chorus reins in order to affect more of a jammed feel. It’s a departure from the crunch of “Asteroid” or “Prisoner” and the big, big, big sound that starts “Building With Fire,” but I’m certainly not about to hold some nascent sonic diversity against them. They’re playing to genre across these 33 minutes, but they do so without pretense and with a mind toward kicking as much ass as possible. Not changing the world, but it’s not trying to and it’s fun enough in listening that it doesn’t need to.
“Negative Libra” runs 36:36 and is the lone track on the album that bears its name from Las Vegas-based solo-project Droneroom. The flowing work of Blake Conley develops in slow, meditative form and gradually introduces lap steel to shimmer along with its post-landscape etherealities, evocative of cinema as they are without exactly playing to one or the other film-genre tropes. That is to say, Conley isn’t strictly horror soundtracking or Western soundtracking, and so on. Perhaps in part because of that, “Negative Libra” is allowed to discover its path and flourish as it goes — I’m not sure as to the layering process of making it vis-à-vis what was tracked live and put on top after — but the sense of exploration-of-moment that comes through is palpable and serene even as the guitar comes forward just before hitting the 27-minute mark to begin the transition into the song’s noisier payoff and final, concluding hum.
Blown-out vocals add an otherworldly tinge to Arizona-based one-man-band Aiwass‘ debut full-length, Wayward Gods, giving the already gargantuan tones a sense of space to match. Opener “Titan” and closer “Mythos” seem to push even further in this regard than, say, the centerpiece “Man as God” — the last track feeling particularly Monolordly in its lumbering — but by the time “Titan” and the subsequent, 10-minute inclusion “From Chains,” which ends cold with a guest solo by Vinny Tauber of Ohio’s Taubnernaut and shifts into the cawing blackbird at the outset of “Man as God” with a purposefully jarring intent. Despite the cringe-ready cartoon-boobs cover art, the newcomer project finds a heavy niche that subverts expectation as much as it meets it and sets broad ground to explore on future outings. As an idea, “gonna start a heavy, huge-sounding band during the pandemic,” is pretty straightforward. What results from that in Aiwass runs deeper.
Good show. Starts heavy, stays heavy. Gets a little rocking by the end, but even the Acidemia jam that caps has a good sense of heft behind it. I noticed last episode had a pretty fair amount of drift — and this one isn’t entirely without, as you’ll notice — but I guess sometimes those aggro tendencies surface. Plus I’ve been very much enjoying the new LLNN album, and you can’t really start with that and not keep going with more extreme fare. Or I can’t, anyway. Or at least I didn’t. So there.
The Pecan joined in on the voice tracks, which was fun. I tried to get him to say his letters but he was like “up yours,” as ever. He knows them, and I guess that’ll have to do for now. But he got such a kick out of hearing himself on the playback that he started sprinting back and forth across the sectional in our living room, so I’m glad to know he at least enjoys taking part, even if having your toddler on is about as un-metal a thing I can think of. I’ve always maintained I have no business being on Gimme, even before they renamed it. It’s nice to be right every once in a while, even if it’s gonna feel bad when they eventually shitcan me.
Either way, thanks for listening and/or reading. I hope you enjoy.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at: http://gimmemetal.com
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 08.20.21
LLNN
Obsidian
Unmaker
Yanomamo
Dig 2 Graves
Yanomamo/Slomatics Split
Churchburn
Scarred
Genocidal Rite
VT
Sky Pig
The Strain
Hell is Inside You
Guhts
Eyes Open
Blood Feather
Year of No Light
Réalgar
Consolamentum
Blackwater Holylight
Around You
Silence/Motion
Deep Tomb
Endless Power Through Breathless Sleep
Deep Tomb
Starless
Pendulum
Hope is Leaving You
VT
Craneium
Shine Again
Unknown Heights
Kal-El
Mica
Dark Majesty
Crystal Spiders
Morieris
Morieris
Solemn Lament
Celeste
Solemn Lament
VT
Acidemia
Caximbo
Podridão
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is Sept. 3 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
