Thus ends my favorite Quarterly Review since the last one. Yeah, some of my motivation was in bookkeeping, in wanting to cover this stuff before the year’s done, but trying to keep up is always part of the thing, so that’s nothing new. I am grateful to have spent so much time this listening to music. I get asked a lot to listen to stuff and I’m not sure I’ve ever had less time for hearing new music than I presently have. So take a week and do nothing but that has been fulfilling.

As always, I hope you’ve found something cool to check out, and I hope you tune in for the next one, maybe in December, maybe in January, maybe this is low-key evolving into a monthly thing and eventually I’m going to have to rename the feature — and so on.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

Brant Bjork and the Bros., Live in the High Desert

The difference between Brant Bjork and the Bros. and prior Brant Bjork solo incarnations was that it was the first time the desert rock figurehead had stepped into the role of being a genuine live bandleader. He’d of course toured with solo bands, as he’s continued to, but The Bros. as a backing band gave him the space to shine in a different way onstage, and that comes through in classics like “Too Many Chiefs” and the medleys near the finish of the 78-minute set from 2009 captured on Live in the High Desert, recorded at Pappy & Harriet’s in Pioneertown, CA. I saw this band, and they were hot shit. If you don’t believe me, “Low Desert Punk” here makes the point better than I could, while a piece from the era like “Freaks of Nature” emphasizes the chemistry Bjork and his Bros. fostered during their time. As a follow-up to recent studio LP reissues, as an archival fan-piece, and as nearly 80-minutes of blowout heavy dezzy grooves, this should be an absolute no-brainer for Bjork followers or aficionados.

Brant Bjork website

Duna Records website

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Dresden Wolves, Vol. IV

Mexico City heavy rocking two-piece Dresden Wolves named their six-song EP Vol. IV presumably because by some count it’s their fourth release, but that’s not the same as being their fourth full-length album, if that’s what you were thinking. Here they offer 25 minutes of brash, cymbal-and-low-end-heavy crunch. “Tiempo” has some debut to psychedelia, but mostly in the echo, and the density of the prior “ECO” feels more representative, though with the movement of bassfuzz in “Wherter” I’m not sure one is more weighted than the other. They’re in the element stoner punking in “Robin,” and “Pesadilla” rounds out answering the Sabbathism of “Ketamina” with raw shouts and a swirling current of noise laced around a central shove. They’re not reinventing riffery, but they execute with both personality and a sense of craft while simultaneously bashing away in a manner that my silly lizard brain finds utterly delightful. They’ve been around a decade now. Album?

Dresden Wolves on Bandcamp

Dresden Wolves on Instagram

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Sherpa, Alignment

The obscuring-all-else drones of the nine-minute title-, opening and longest track (immediate points) are the major draw to Alignment, as “Alignment” is the only one of the seven inclusions not previously released in some form. Thus can it be said that Italian experimental psych post-rockers Sherpa remained experimental right up to the very end, as Alignment sees issue as a farewell release, comprised most of demos from Matteo Dossena of what would become Sherpa songs featured on their albums, which is fair enough. There’s sun reflecting on “River Nora” and “The Mother of Language,” from 2018’s second LP Tigris and Euphrates (review here), remains hypnotic even in this raw take, samples and/or field recordings seemingly a part of its skeleton. If you didn’t know Sherpa during their time, Alignment probably isn’t the place to start, since the material isn’t finished, but whatever if it gets you to hear the band.

Sherpa on Bandcamp

Subsound Records website

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Barren Heir, Far From

Crushing. Far From is the third full-length from Chicagoan post-sludge tonebearers Barren Heir, and when “Patient” ends and you feel like you can finally breathe after that four-minute assault, know you’re not alone. Uniformly harsh in vocals, intense in impact and aggression alike, and weighed down by copious amounts of distorted concrete, one piece bleeds into the next as Far From builds momentum through the megariffed “Medicine” and the subsequent, slightly more angular “No Roses,” which seems to get eaten by its own chug before it’s done. The remnants fade into the more peaceful beginning of “Abcesstral,” which serves as a quiet interlude creating tension ahead of the start of “Way In,” which scorches. I guess, if you don’t know the band, what you need to take away is they’re very, very heavy, and they know just where on the upside of your head to hit you with it. There’s a thread of noise rock, but I think maybe it’s just the trio being pissed off, and the blasting away, successive slowdowns and residual noise in closer “Inside a Burning Vehicle” are as punishing an end as Far From justifies. You know I never mention Swarm of the Lotus lightly. Well, here we are.

Barren Heir Linktr.ee

Barren Heir on Bandcamp

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Some Pills for Ayala, Dystopia

There’s a moment about five minutes in, before the solo starts, where opening cut “Little Fingers” sort of settles into its groove, and the effect is an immediate chill on the listener. Néstor Ayala Cortés, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and the sole denizen of the project, has long specialized in the heavy and languid, and without lacking either activity or swing — lookin’ at you, “Black Rains” — as the melodies touch on a heavy psychedelia only bolstered by the abiding tonal warmth. Three tracks top eight minutes — “Little Fingers,” “Above and Below” and “Falling Down” — and while these are obvious focal points, both for how they dwell in parts and how they differentiate from the shorter pieces that space them out, a song like “Rise to the Surface” or experiments like “Regrets” and “Flying to Nowhere” use their relative brevity as a strength, and while one might as well hang a big old ‘you are here’ sign on Dystopia, the closing title-track, a subdued instrumental flesh-out into a quick fade and the only song under three minutes long, is arguably the most hopeful sounding of the bunch. Go figure. Cortés, like South American heavy as a whole, remains underappreciated, but his songwriting remains vibrant and forward-looking.

Some Pills for Ayala on Bandcamp

Some Pills for Ayala on Instagram

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Stonebirds, Perpetual Wasteland

Cerebral French post-metallers Stonebirds offer their first new music in five years with Perpetual Wasteland, their fifth full-length. The album is comprised of six tracks that range from minimalist guitar standing alone to an explosive, big-the-way-modern-pop-is-big chorus like that of “Sea of Sorrow” (not a cover). Stonebirds might be aggressive, as on “Circles” at the outset, or they might even delve into a bit of post-black metal in “Croak,” but there’s never a point at which Perpetual Wasteland lacks purpose. Each side is three songs, two between five and six minutes and a closer circa eight; I’m telling you the symmetry is multi-tiered. And as destructive as “So Far Away” feels at its start, “The Last Time” mirrors with a more open-sounding approach, lush in melody in a way they’ve been before by then, and still tense in chug, but pulled back in the delivery. They’re dynamic, they have range, and they craft their material with clear consideration of how every second is going to unfold.

Stonebirds on Bandcamp

Ripple Music website

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Yurt, VI – Rippling Mirrors of the Other

VI – Rippling Mirrors of the Other is indeed the sixth LP from Irish space rockers Yurt, as I remind myself that just because I’d never heard the band before doesn’t mean they haven’t been around over 16 years. So it goes. The keyboard-prone three-piece — Andrew Bushe and drums and then some, Steven Anderson on guitar/vocals and sax, and Boz Mugabe on bass, vocals, keys (plus visuals) — find a way to make a classic-style motorik push feel mellow on “From the Maggot’s Perspective,” where “Shop of the Most Auspicious Frog” is more of a freakout and “Seventh is the Skut” is more about the jazzprog instrumental chase. Those three songs are shorter, but the album has three more extended pieces as well in opener “The Cormorant Tree” (15:33), “Pagpag Variations” (16:28) and “Sun Roasted Rodent” (13:30), which unfurl across multiple movements, bringing heavy doomjazz skronk and more experimentalist space rock together in a way that makes me bummed to be late to the party, but also kind of feel like I’m right on time.

Yurt website

Yurt on Bandcamp

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Evoken, Mendacium

As the band are now past the 30-year mark, it is an honor to once again be drenched in Evoken‘s pouring, grey, cold, wretched visions. Mendacium brings eight songs themed, because obviously, around the slow decline and death of a 14th century Benedictine monk, running 62 dug-in minutes of beauty-in-darkness extremity. It is not universally crawling, as “Lauds” and “Sext” move with a poise that feels kin to modern Paradise Lost, but for sure is defined by and uses that sense of slow, grueling churn to bolster its atmosphere, which is duly wood-churchy for its subject matter. They’re not all-pummel, of course, and never were. The penultimate “Vesper” is a brief organ interlude before closer “Compline” lowers you down into the pit to face whatever it is that takes place in the song after the seven-and-a-half-minute mark, and there is a morose peace to be found in the quiet moments throughout, as with what might be their only album this decade, Evoken land that much harder for the emotional weight the songs carry, whatever metaphor might be applied to them.

Evoken website

Profound Lore Records website

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Mourners & Yanomamo, Mourners & Yanomamo Split EP

Oh that’s nasty. You might think you’re ready for what Mourners and Yanomamo are bringing in gutter-dwelling death-doom and gnashing, crush-prone sludge roll, but that isn’t likely to save you as the two Sydney-based acts align for a three-song/20-minute split EP that wastes not a second in terms of efficiency of infliction. Mourners present “It Only Gets Worse,” with a raw punch in its bass chug, low-deathly growls and a sound that’s so down and dense across 11 minutes that it sounds slower than it actually is. It dies loud in a wash of noise to let Yanomamo‘s feedback-and-sample start “Lifefucker,” pointedly miserable in its unfolding. It and the growl-into-a-void-but-the-void-is-you diagnosing of mankind’s miseries in “Self-Inflicted” are shorter together than “It Only Gets Worse,” but more outwardly aggressive, as if to make sure you got spit out after being so thoroughly chewed up. I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s pretty heavy in that the-world-is-dying-and-nobody’s-coming-to-stop-it kind of way.

Yanomamo on Bandcamp

Mourners on Bandcamp

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Muttering Bog, Sword Axe Wizard Cult

The craggy dark-wizard-giving-soon-to-be-unheeded-warnings vocals of Muttering Bog‘s first release, the sludgy Sword Axe Wizard Cult, become a defining aspect. The Winchester, Virginia, band’s lone member, credited only as Ben, hones a raw-throated rasp that, where parts of the album might otherwise be stoner metal, keep a tether to extremity that feels as much born of black metal as Bongzilla. It is a challenging but not unrewarding listen; a just-out-of-the-dirt basement doom that isn’t afraid of being caustic or harsh in its riffy, weedian homage. And yeah, it comes across as pretty rough. Some of the changes are choppy on the drums and such, but hell’s bells, it’s a fully DIY make-and-release-a-thing from one person that pushes limits, is certain to evoke an emotional response, and is absolutely uncompromising in the identity being carved. None of that makes it listenable, if you’re looking for listenability, but it does make it art.

Muttering Bog on Bandcamp

Muttering Bog on Instagram

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Recorded and released in DIY fashion by Néstor Ayala Cortés in Santiago, Chile, …And We Leave the Planet? is the third full-length from the solo-project Some Pills for Ayala, which began some time after Cortés‘ prior outfit, At Devil Dirt, faded out. The guitarist/vocalist/bassist/maker-of-drum-sounds-likely-programmed works in territory that will be familiar enough to those who took on At Devil Dirt‘s melodic wall o’ fuzz when the getting was good, but Some Pills for Ayala is able to dig into some noisier vibes like the Helmet-meets-“Symphony of Destruction” chug in “Counting Clouds” after the declarative opener “You Are Dead,” the earliest-QOTSA bassy turn “I Am Right” takes and fleshes out with organ, or the subsequent “The Pilot Knows… And We Leave the Planet?,” with its languid version of space rock push in the drumming and characteristic depth of tone. Cortés has been exploring various modes of heavycraft for at least the last 15 years. He is no stranger to doing this kind of work, and he does it on his own terms without compromises or outside input. Further, and specifically as regards …And We Leave the Planet?, he notes in the release info, “By the way, the whole album was made by a human being, there is no fucking AI in this work.”

Fair enough. Since he brought it up, I’ll note that the cover art indeed looks like it was made with AI — it’s credited to Pedro Ayala — but I’ve been wrong before, so don’t quote me. In any case, it would be hard to accuse …And We Leave the Planet? of lacking humanity. Whether it’s the hooky self-harmonies of “I Am Right” or a more expansive roll like that which “No Third Eye” conjures in its layered-vocal midsection, a cosmic stoner blowout like “Be Away” or something more desert grunge in “This is Where We Stand,” speaking to a live-band energy without, obviously, being that thing and hitting harder than some of what features elsewhere. As the penultimate consideration, “Be Away” is outright molten in its procession, sounding like the amps were melting as they were being recorded. And yes, the production is somewhat raw.

That’s been the case for Cortés‘ work since At Devil Dirt, and three albums deep into Some Pills for Ayala‘s evolution, it feels like both an aesthetic decision and a practical reality of self-recording. The good news is that the balance between clarity and fullness of sound with an organic, live feel is an asset working in …And We Leave the Planet?‘s favor. Druggy enough to suit the name of the project in some of the post-Alice in Chains vocal drawl, Some Pills for Ayala is able to come across as all the more dug in for the compact affect throughout. It feels like being squeezed through a tube, so it must be compression.

Set next to 2023’s Sleep Walkers (review here), it’s not really until the closer “Last Chance” that Cortés really mellows out in the spirit of that record’s title-track, say, but the second LP had plenty of elbows to throw around during its course and the third LP functions much the same in its intent. Corresponding to this is the growth in songwriting that allows Some Pills for Ayala to simultaneously evoke notions of barebones-DIY-fuzz-punk and headmelt atmospherics, subdued and contemplative in places like the start of “No Third Eye” to offset the bassy pull in “You Are Dead,” or taking the time to establish the guitar line in “The Pilot Knows… And We Leave the Planet?,” or even just to bring such a feeling of spaciousness in the mix so that as the tones shift from all-consuming heft to more entrancing open-reach psychedelia as that same semi-title-track does, and that boils down to the chief distinguishing factor between Some Pills for Ayala and what Cortés had done before.

There’s a clearness of purpose in the creative voice behind this album that gives it a sense of maturity even as it retains the spirit of something more barebones. It’s not garage-doom exactly, and it’s not like it was taped on a phone in a rehearsal space, but for what was likely a process of piecing these songs together painstakingly, one layer at a time over the I-assume-programmed drums, Some Pills for Ayala is able to convey a band-persona despite being wrought by a single creativity.

Maybe an easier way to say that is Cortés is able to employ more than one songwriting modus, and so different songs are chasing after different goals in terms of tempo, mood, or expression more broadly. A solo-project honing a sense of diversity across a collection of eight songs isn’t a huge surprise — it’s kind of what one would hope for, at least in most situations. And …And We Leave the Planet? delivers almost immediately as the big swing of “You Are Dead” with its weirdo spoken break and later thud, and the comparatively upbeat starts and stops of “Counting Clouds” lead the listener into the record’s crux, drawn from decades of influence in heavy rock and able to drift in “No Third Eye” without letting go of the structure beneath.

The arrangements of the vocals are a factor in the resultant feeling of ‘a plan at work’ across the album’s utterly manageable 38-minute span, but Cortés is still exploring as well, and the melodies on keys and voice in “I Am Right,” the thrust of backbeat for “The Pilot Knows… And We Leave the Planet?” and the ethereal turn at the end with “Last Chance” all speak to that aspect of what makes …And We Leave the Planet? feel so vibrant.

The closer brings into emphasis the important role a malleable mix has played throughout, and if the studio is becoming another instrument in Cortés‘ veteran hands, so much the better for how the adventure of Some Pills for Ayala might continue. As it stands with this late-2024 offering, Cortés occupies a place very much his own in style, executing with soul and a lack of pretense songs that range deep in character and tone alike. I know the robots are getting pretty good at stuff, but the humanity of the music was never in question here.

Some Pills for Ayala, …And We Leave the Planet? (2024)

Some Pills for Ayala on Instagram

Some Pills for Ayala on Bandcamp

[Click play above to stream the title-track of Some Pills for Ayala’s Sleep Walkers. Album is out July 7 available to preorder on Bandcamp.]

Sleepwalking has long been a ready-to-use analogue for conformity, and while there may be that aspect to the lyrics of Some Pills for Ayala‘s second full-length, Sleep Walkers, given the title, the astronaut and weed on the cover and the ultra-fuzzed largesse that ensues on album opener “A Flower in My Left Eye” and much of what follows, one wonders if the Chile-based outfit isn’t also nodding at the band Sleep as well. Certainly that leadoff could be said to be taking Sleep for a walk in its steady roll of stonerized buzz, and the later title-track accompanies its meditative bassline with a Cisernos-style monotone-ish vocal — also organ or maybe Mellotron — so there may be some in-genre communion happening across the nine-song/45-minute long-player from the Santiago-based solo-project of Néstor Ayala Cortés.

It follows behind 2022’s The Crows That Sing and two 2021 EPs, Space Octopus EP (review here) and a self-titled, and finds Cortés once again handling all instruments himself and helming the recording process at his Camino la Luna home studio. If that sounds somewhat insular as making a record by yourself at home might be, Sleep Walkers counteracts that both in being mixed by David Veliz at Planetario Fuzz Recs in Horcón and through its general expansiveness of sound. In its arrangements, it is a full-band style collection, as all Some Pills for Ayala‘s output has been to-date, give-or-take; drums, bass, guitar, keys, vocals, and so on. Cortés even manages an effective psych-tinged self-jam in the solo section of closer “The Way I See the Sound” before the repetitions of the synesthetic lyric “I hear color and see sound” and, after a break of silence, jams again as a kind of epilogue/secret reprise.

“A Flower in My Left Eye” opens heavy, and that’s ground that Some Pills for Ayala touches again on “Let Me Free,” punctuated by sharp, maybe-programmed snare sounds and underscored in its multi-layer-vocal verse by dense rumble of low end, as well as side B’s “Smile and Lie” and the penultimate “Sore.” What these songs have in common aside from their methodology is that they’re shorter than the five cuts that surround them; “A Flower in My Left Eye” is 4:07, none of the other of Sleep Walkers‘ heaviest tracks tops four minutes, and they move accordingly in terms of tempo.

To contrast, more psychedelic-leaning songs like “Into Oblivion” or the bassy centerpiece “Reflections,” or even the strutting second track “Blood or Love” — previously issued as a standalone single under the title “No More Love… No More Blood?” — with its right-on swing and ride cymbal foreshadow of “Sleep Walkers” to come, early Om meeting with Uncle Acid a bit in its instrumental/vocal blend between the verse and chorus, come through with a focus more on expanse than impact, and in the mellow fluidity of “Into Oblivion,” Cortés is patient and considered in crafting an immersive space for the listener.

His style of melody will be familiar to those who’ve heard At Devil Dirt, and some of the weightier punch throughout Sleep Walkers could be called a carry-over as well, but the branching-out in terms of sound is palpable, and if heavy is the stem of one of the pot leaves on the cover, than the multiple points surrounding might be different facets of it that are brought together on the album. That “The Way I See the World” ends the record and is also the longest track at 8:54 doesn’t feel like a coincidence, but the songs are also arranged alphabetically — as becomes apparent when one looks at side B with “Sleep Walkers,” “Smile and Lie” and “Sore” in succession — so it may well be. Aural kismet? Stranger things have definitely happened.

Through these various shifts and twists in style, Sleep Walkers is able to pivot smoothly in no small part owing to Cortés‘ strength as a songwriter. Again, that won’t be a revelation for those who followed from At Devil Dirt or who took on The Crows That Sing last year, but for being genuinely ‘solo’ in the writing, performance and recording, is distinctly full-band in its presentation to the degree that, if a lineup (or a laptop) were assembled, the songs could be played live. Whether there’s any interest on the part of Cortés in doing so, I don’t know, but it exists as a possibility, and on a record with such depth of mix, where one might not immediately characterize it as the work of one person alone, the spirit in the material is less insular than the phrase “solo-project” implies.

This is mirrored as well in the delivery of the material. “Reflections” as the centerpiece is representative in its sprawl and hypnotic repetitions across its first 90 seconds before it turns to fully-realized twists of fuzz and layers of vocal melody and effects. It is big, grand in an organic manner, and actively working to engage its audience. “Smile and Lie” and “Sore,” the pair of shorter, harder-hitting cuts before the finale, are no less emblematic of Some Pills for Ayala‘s quality of craft. They are neither haphazard nor lazy, they swing with vital fervency and in the case of the latter especially, speak to a living history of South American heavy rock and roll of which At Devil Dirt and Cortés‘ efforts here are part.

In “The Way I See the World,” Sleep Walkers encounters its greatest expanse and highlights the creativity at root beneath its construction. Languid, melodious guitar stretches out atop likewise flowing groove, bass and drums working to complement the exploration happening above in the mix as the vocals lend presence before the instrumental takeoff of the second half, from which — counter to accusations one might level against a solo-project as self-indulgent — the vocals return in the above-noted lyrical repetition before the song departs, somewhat suddenly, to silence, then noise, before picking up and light-chugging its way out to residual feedback and noise that end just before the nine-minute mark.

Given the breadth and seemingly willful changes in stylistic lean from one song to the next that happen throughout Sleep Walkers, I’m less inclined to guess what might be on a subsequent release from Some Pills for Ayala than I am to suggest simply that Cortés will keep it going. It’s a universe of infinite possibility, of course, but given the heart and obvious passion for the work that’s been put into this material, I would expect continued growth along the varied course charted here. So much the better as Sleep Walkers follows The Crows That Sing and looks further outward. That, too, may well continue. At present though, accessibility is an asset, not a detriment, to this second album, and multiple avenues of potential progression are laid out among those already realized.

Some Pills for Ayala, Sleep Walkers (2023)

Some Pills for Ayala on Instagram

Some Pills for Ayala on Bandcamp

Somehow it feels longer than it’s actually been. Yeah, a year’s changed over, but it’s really only been about a month since the last Quarterly Review installment, which I said at the time was only half of the full proceedings. I’ve started the count over at 1-50, but in my head, this is really a continuation of that five-day stretch more than something separate. It’s been booked out I think since before the last round of 50 was done, if that tells you anything. Should tell you 2021 was a busy year and 2022 looks like it’ll be more of the same in that regard. Also a few other regards, but let’s keep it optimistic, hmm?

We start today fresh with a wide swath of stuff for digging and, well, I hope you dig it. Let’s go.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

Zack Oakley, Badlands

Apparently I’ve been spelling Zack Oakley‘s name wrong for the better part of a decade. Zack with a ‘k’ instead of an ‘h’ at the end. I feel like a jerk. By any spelling, dude both shreds and can write a song. Known for his work in Joy, Pharlee, Volcano, etc., he brings vibrant classic heavy to the fore on his solo debut, Badlands, sounding like a one-man San Diego scene on “I’m the One” only after declaring his own genre in opener “Freedom Rock.” “Mexico” vibes on harmonica-laced heavy blues and the acoustic-led “Looking High Searching Low” follows suit with slide, but there’s tinge of psych on the catchy “Desert Shack,” and “Fever” stomps out in pure Hendrix style without sounding ridiculous, which is not an achievement to be understated. Closing duo “Acid Rain” and “Badlands” meet at the place where the ’60s ended and the ’70s started, swaggering through time with more hooks and a sound that might be garage if your garage had a really nice studio in it. I’ll take more of this anytime Mr. Oakley wants to belt it out.

Zack Oakley website

Kommune Records on Bandcamp

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Vøuhl, Vøuhl

Issued by Shawn Pelata — also known as Pælãtä Shåvvn, with an apparent thing for accent marks — the self-titled debut from Vøuhl mixes industrial-style experimentalism, dark ambience and a strong cinematic current across a still-relatively-unassuming five-songs and 23 minutes, hitting a resonant minimalism at the ending of “Evvûl” while building to a fuller-sounding progression on the subsequent “Välle.” Drones, echoing, looped beats and thoughtfully executed synth let Pelata construct each atmosphere as an individual piece, but with the attention obviously paid to the presentation of the whole, there’s nothing that keeps one piece from tying into the next either, so whether one approaches Vøuhl‘s Vøuhl as an EP or a short album, the impression of a deep-running soundscape is made one way or the other. What seems to be speech samples in “Aurô” and noise-laced closer “ßlasste” — thoroughly manipulated — may hint at things to come, but I hope not entirely at the expense of the percussive urgency of opener “Dùste” here.

Vøuhl on Facebook

Stone Groove Records website

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White Manna, First Welcome

At first you’re all like, “yeah this is right on I can handle it” and then all of a sudden White Manna are about four minutes into the freakery of “Light Cones” opening up their latest opus First Welcome and you’re starting to panic because you took too much and you’re couchlocked. The heretofore undervalued Calipsych weirdos are out-out-out on their new eight-songer, done in an LP-ready 39 minutes but drippy droppy through an interdimensional swap-meet of renegade noises and melted-down aesthetics. Maybe you heard 2020’s ARC (review here) and thereby got on board, or maybe you don’t know them at all. Doesn’t matter. The thing is they’re already in your brain and by the time you’re done with the triumph-boogie of “Lions of Fire” you realize you’re one with the vibrating universe and only then are you ready to meet the “Monogamous Cassanova” in krautrock purgatory before the swirling “Milk Symposium” spreads itself out like a blanket over the sun. Too trippy for everything, and so just. fucking. right. If you can hang with this, I wanna be friends.

White Manna on Facebook

Cardinal Fuzz webstore

Centripetal Force Records website

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Daily Thompson, God of Spinoza

In 2022, German heavy rockers Daily Thompson mark a decade since their founding. God of Spinoza is their fifth full-length, and in songs like “Cantaloupe Melon,” “Golden Desert Child,” and “Muaratic Acid,” the reliability one has come to expect from them is only reinforced. Their sound hinges on psychedelia, but complements that with an abiding sense of grunge and a patience in songwriting. They’ve done heavy blues and straight-up rock in the past, so neither is out of the trio’s wheelhouse — the penultimate “Midnight Soldier” is a breakout here — but the title-track’s drawn-out “yeah”s and slacker-nod rhythm seem to draw more directly from the Alice in Chains school of making material sound slow without actually having it crawl or sacrifice accessibility. I’d give them points regardless for calling a song “I Saw Jesus in a Taco Bell,” but the closer is a genuine highlight on God of Spinoza turning a long stretch of disaffection to immersive fuzz with a deftness befitting a band on their fifth record who know precisely who they are. Like I said, reliable.

Daily Thompson on Facebook

Noisolution website

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Headless Monarch, Titan Slug

Founded by guitarist/bassist Collin Green, Headless Monarch released their first demo in 2013 and their most recent EP, Nothing on the Horizon, in 2016. Five years later, Green and drummer Brandon Zackey offer the late-2021 debut full-length, Titan Slug, working in collaboration for the first time with vocalist and producer Otu Suurmunne of Moonic Productions — who mostly goes by Otu — across a richly executed collection of six tracks, three new, three from prior outings. Not sure if Otu is a hired gun as a singer working alongside the other two, but there’s little arguing with the results they glean as a trio across a song like “Fever Dream” or “Sleeper Now Rise,” the latter taken from Headless Monarch‘s 2015 two-songer and positioned in a more aggressive stance overall. The newer songs come across as more fleshed out, but even “Eight Minutes of Light” from the first demo has atmospheric reach to go with its clarity of focus and noteworthy heft. One only hopes the collaboration continues and inspires further work along these lines.

Headless Monarch on Instagram

Headless Monarch on Bandcamp

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Some Pills for Ayala, Space Octopus

Technically speaking, you had me at Space Octopus. After releasing a self-titled EP under the somewhat-troubling moniker (one hopes it’s not too many) Some Pills for Ayala, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and producer Néstor Ayala Cortés of At Devil Dirt returns with this two-songer, comprised of its 11-minute title-cut and the shorter “It’s Been a Long Trip.” The lead track is duly dream-drifty in its procession, a subtle build underway across its span but pushing more for hypnosis than impact and getting there to be sure, even as the second half grows thicker in tone. At 3:48, “It’s Been a Long Trip” comes across more as an experiment in technique captured and used as the foundation for Cortés‘ soft, wide echoing vocals. Lysergic and adventurous in kind, the 15-minute EP is nonetheless serene in its presence and soothing overall. Could be that Cortés might push deeper into folk as he goes forward, but the acidy foundation he’s working from will only add to that.

Some Pills for Ayala on Instagram

Some Pills for Ayala on Bandcamp

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Il Mostro, Occult Practices

It’s a quick in-out from Boston heavy punkers Il Mostro on the Occult Practices EP. Four songs, the last of which is a cover of T.S.O.L.‘s “Black Magic,” nothing over three minutes long, all fits neatly on a 7″. For what they’re doing, that makes sense, taking the high-velocity ethic of Motörhead or Peter Pan Speedrock (if you need a second plays-fast-punk-derived-and-rocks band) and delivering with an appropriately straightforward thrust. Opener “Firewitch” ends with giggling, and that’s fair enough to convey the overarching lack of pretense throughout, but they do well with the cover and have a righteous balance between control and chaos in the relatively-mid-paced “Trial” and the sprinter “Faith in Ghosts,” which follows. Is cult punk a thing? I guess you could ask the Misfits that question, but Il Mostro mostly avoid sounding like that Jersey band, and it’s easy enough to imagine them bashing walls at any number of Beantown havens or bathed under the telltale red lights of O’Brien’s as they tear into a set. So be it, punkers.

Il Mostro on Facebook

Il Mostro on Bandcamp

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Carmen Sea, Hiss

Should it come as a surprise that an EP of violin-laced/led instrumentalist progressive post-rock, willfully working against genre convention in order to cross between metal, rock and more atmospheric fare includes an element of self-indulgence? Nope. How could it be otherwise? The five-track Hiss from Parisian four-piece Carmen Sea is a heady outing indeed, but at just 29 minutes, the band doesn’t actually lose themselves in what they’re doing, and the surprises they offer along the way like the electronic turns in “Black Echoes” or the quiet drone stretch in the first half of 11-minute closer “Glow in Space” — which gets plenty tense soon enough — provide welcome defiance of expectation. That is to say, whatever else they are, Carmen Sea are not predictable, and that serves them well here and will continue to. “Frames” begins jarring and strutting, but finds its strength in its more floating movement, though the later bridge of classical and weighted musics feels like the realization that might’ve led to creating the band in the first place. There’s potential in toying with that balance.

Carmen Sea on Facebook

Carmen Sea Distrokid

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Trip Hill, Ain’t Trip Ceremony

Florence’s Fabrizio Cecchi has vibe to spare with his solo-project Trip Hill, and Denmark’s Bad Afro Records has stepped forward to issue the 2020 offering, Ain’t Trip Ceremony, toward broader consciousness. The eight-song/39-minute long-player is duly dug-in, and its psychedelic reach comes with a humility of craft that makes the songs likewise peaceful and exploratory and entrancing. Repetition is key for the latter, but Cecchi also manages to keep things moving across the album, with a fuzzy cut like “Spam Mind” seeming to build on top of loops and shifting into a not-overblown space rock, hardly mellow, but more acknowledging the vastness of the cosmos than one might expect. The more densely-fuzzed “Ralph’s Heart Attack” leads into the guitar-focused “Pan” ahead of the finale “What Happened to Will,” but that’s after “Tame Ùkhan” has gone a-wandering and decided to stay that way and the seven-minute “Trái tim Thán Yêu” has singlehandedly justified the vinyl release in its blend of percussive urgency and psychedelic shimmer. Go in with an open mind and you won’t go wrong.

Trip Hill on Facebook

Bad Afro Records on Bandcamp

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Yanomamo & Slomatics, Split 7″

Yanomamo begin their Iommium Records two-song split 7″ with Slomatics by harshly delivering a deceptively positive message: “If you’re going to seek revenge/Might as well dig two graves/He who holds resentment is already digging his own.” Fair enough. The Sydney, Australia, and Belfast, Northern Ireland, outfits offer about 10 and a half minutes of material between them, but complement each other well, with the thickness of the latter building off the raw presentation of the former, Yanomamo‘s guttural portrayal of bitterness offered in scream-topped sludge crash on “Dig Two Graves” that builds in momentum toward the end while Slomatics‘ “Griefhound” offers the futurist tonal density and expanse of vocal echo typifying their latter-day work and turns a quiet, chugging bridge into a consciousness-slamming payoff. Neither act is really out of their comfort zone, but established listeners will revel in the chance to hear them alongside each other, and if you hear complaints about either of these cuts, they won’t be from me.

Yanomamo on Facebook

Slomatics on Facebook

Iommium Records on Bandcamp

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I had two ideas in my head for this episode. The first was to do a stuff-to-look-forward-to-next-year playlist, which I did, and the second was to do a me-spending-your-money-on-Black-Friday-Bandcamp-recommendations edition, which I did not do.

Was it the right choice? I don’t know, but it kind of feels like a victory for the good guys every time I get to play All Souls, or King Buffalo, or Sasquatch — or Gozu, or Conan, Stöner, Colour Haze, etc. — and there’s some small chance anybody will hear it, so I won’t exactly say I regret going the way I did. There will be other Bandcamp Fridays, I think.

And to be perfectly honest, I like thinking about this stuff, about new records coming out. I like to wonder what bands will come up with, song-wise, sound-wise, how things will have changed since their last record, how the identity of a group can shift over time. Think of High on Fire. Think of Dozer! A new Dozer album after 14 years. Who the hell knows what that’s going to sound like?

So yeah, that’s what I went with. And since preorder is up for some of this stuff — 40 Watt Sun, the PostWax series of which Dozer are a part, Naxatras, Messa, Earthless — I guess maybe you could spend some money anyway here. Plus there’s always older records to buy. It’s a big planet. There are a lot of albums on it.

Thanks for listening if you do 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 – 11.26.21

Dozer	The Flood	Beyond Colossal (2008)
Some Pills for Ayala	Space Octopus	Space Octopus (2021)
Gozu	They Probably Know Karate	Equilibrium (2018)
Wo Fat	There’s Something Sinister in the Wind	Midnight Cometh (2016)
VT
Sasquatch	Destroyer	Maneuvers (2017)
Earthless	Electric Flame	Black Heaven (2018)
Stöner	The Older Kids	Stoners Rule (2021)
Långfinger	Silver Blaze	Crossyears (2016)
King Buffalo	The Knocks	The Burden of Restlessness (2021)
Torche	Times Missing	Admission (2019)
All Souls	Winds	Songs for the End of the World (2020)
Conan	Volt Thrower	Existential Void Guardian (2018)
High on Fire	Freebooter	Electric Messiah (2018)
Messa	Leah	Feast for Water (2018)
40 Watt Sun	The Spaces in Between	Perfect Light (2022)
VT
Colour Haze	Life	We Are (2020)
Naxatras	Land of Infinite Time	III (2018)

The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is Dec. 10 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.

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