Posted in Whathaveyou on February 3rd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Don’t sleep on this. Don’t do it. I know, it’s another band, announcing another release, they’ve already made their debut in 2021’s Wyrd Syster (review here) so maybe you feel like you’re late to the party, but trust me, you’re not. Go ahead and click play on “Demon Behemoth” at the bottom of this post and you’ll find welcome amid the warm heavy psych tones and melodies as Acid Magus give a first taste of their upcoming sophomore LP, Hope is Heavy.
The song gets into some proggy chug and exploration later on — there’s time for these things in an eight-minute single — but the message even in its outer reaches is to immerse, to lose yourself in the going, and it’s worth doing so. Some restructuring of the band’s lineup has led to their becoming a five-piece, and while I dug that first record, what I’m hearing in “Demon Behemoth” is an uptick in fullness as well as production value and if that’s hope getting heavy as the track passes its sixth minute mark and finds its way back to its harmony-topped roll, the real adventure is just beginning. Sign me up.
No concrete release date as yet for Hope is Heavy, but Mongrel Records will have the release and the label sent the following down the PR wire:
Acid Magus unveil cathartic new single Demon Behemoth
Acid Magus is an experimental rock outfit from Pretoria, South Africa. Doom, stoner, punk, psych, and classic rock are all common themes in their music. As huge fans of the rock greats (Zeppelin, Sabbath), stoner/desert rock behemoths (Kyuss, Sleep) as well as the tripped out psychedelic stylings of modern “psych” bands like Slift. Acid Magus take inspiration from all kinds of great music, spanning the entire gamut from 60s Hendrix and The Doors to Hawkwind and Scorpions at their heaviest, all this with maybe a little Alt Rock sensibility thrown in for good measure.
The band’s debut album Wyrd Syster was released in 2021 to widespread acclaim from fans and heavy music media. 2023 see Acid Magus returning as a 5 piece with a new vocalist and the addition of a second guitarist, as well as a brand-new album Hope Is Heavy, set for release later this year on Mongrel Records.
Demon Behemoth is the crushing first single from the forthcoming album. Guitarist and chief songwriter Keenan Kinnear explains, “Demon Behemoth is not only the first single but also the first track off our upcoming sophomore album, Hope is Heavy. The entire album is a concept dealing with me realizing how I am slowly becoming more cynical with age. Every song on the album, including Demon Behemoth, is a cross-section of my psyche, self-analyzed for the sake of solving the “great cynicism” I am experiencing at the moment and searching for the silver lining in what constantly seems to be an increasingly grim outlook.”
In the faint light that separates dreams from reality, lies from truth and heaven from hell, lives the Acid Magus. Meditating, surrounded by darkness and light, energizing the air with electric anticipation. Come forward and listen, stay awhile, there are no sins…
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 27th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
I don’t see a release date for Ruff Majik‘s impending fourth album, Elektrik Ram, in the PR wire info below, and I’m not sure what to make of that if anything, but when the South African band put out “She’s Still a Goth” (posted here), it was reportedly April 2023. That’s still my best estimate, and if “She’s Still a Goth” was an early teaser, then “Elektrik Ram,” the title-track, builds on that with more cheeky goth and a purposely rough, almost garage-style sound to its strummed riff. You’ll note the use of the word “triumph” and considerations of it as a “battle song” in the quote, and you can hear that in some of the turns of lead guitar, but as ever for Ruff Majik, there’s a lot happening in relatively little time, and it’s still very much recognizably their own.
I’m really looking forward to this album. Expecting something different from 2020’s The Devil’s Cattle (review here) considering the years in between and the two songs they’ve made public thus far, but if they’re growing weirder I think that’s only an asset in their favor and the further out they reach from their desert-style heavy rock roots, the stronger a band I think they’re becoming. One assumes tour announcements are forthcoming as well, so with that in mind, I’ll turn you over to the info in blue and the track streaming at the bottom of this post.
Also, if you’re on TikTok, they’ve been doing some skits and posting practice footage on there. Might be worth giving them a follow.
Here you go:
RUFF MAJIK UNLEASH EXPLOSIVE NEW SINGLE ‘ELEKTRIK RAM’
Elektrik Ram is the new single and title track from South African stoner rock reprobates Ruff Majik’s upcoming album.
Vocalist and guitarist Johni Holiday’s quick stint in a mental wellness facility brought on the lyrics and structure of Elektrik Ram. “What started as a fun ditty, emulating the sound of Siamese Dream era Smashing Pumpkins, became a triumphant battle song chronicling the power of picking up where you left off and trying again.” Explains Johni.
He delves deeper into the message behind the song, “Conquering dependency on medication and machines (as a replacement for human contact) to step out victorious. It’s a song about not letting go of rage but using it instead to break through the barriers of modern living.”
The first gasps of air this song took was a three-part harmony that Johni wrote using only his acoustic guitar and a tape recorder to lay down the ideas. From there it was presented to the other members of the band, with the idea of making a relentless juggernaut of a song. “It should sound like a swarm of bees, but with an uplifting crescendo” Johni said.
Lyrically, Holiday referenced the feeling of being incapacitated on a hospital bed and combined it with an allegory for oppressive and dogmatic religious views, to drive the point home that “fate will not grant you any favours, you must take them.”
Current lineup: Johni Holiday Jimmy Glass Cowboy Bez Steven Bosman
Posted in Reviews on January 3rd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
We roll on in this new-year-smelling 2023 with day two of the Quarterly Review. Yesterday was pretty easy, but the first day almost always is. Usually by Thursday I’m feeling it. Or the second Tuesday. It varies. In any case, as you know, this QR is a double, which means it’s going to include 100 albums total, written about between yesterday and next Friday. Ton of stuff, and most of it is 2022, but generally later in the year, so at least I’m only a couple months behind your no doubt on-the-ball listening schedule.
Look. I can’t pretend to keep up with a Spotify algorithm, I’m sorry. I do my best, but that’s essentially a program to throw bands in your face (while selling your data and not paying artists). My hope is that being able to offer a bit of context when I throw 100 bands in your face is enough of a difference to help you find something you dig. Some semblance of curation. Maybe I’m flattering myself. I’m pretty sure Spotify can inflate its own ego now too.
Winter 2023 Quarterly Review #11-20:
Antimatter, A Profusion of Thought
Project founder, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Mick Moss isn’t through opener “No Contact” — one of the 10 inclusions on Antimatter‘s 54-minute eighth LP, A Profusion of Thought — before he readily demonstrates he can carry the entire album himself if need be. Irish Cuyos offers vocals on the subsequent “Paranoid Carbon” and Liam Edwards plays live drums where applicable, but with a realigned focus on programmed elements, his own voice the constant that surrounds various changes in mood and purpose, and stretches of insularity even on the full-band-sounding “Fools Gold” later on, the self-released outing comes across as more inward than the bulk of 2018’s Black Market Enlightenment, though elements like the acoustic-led approach of “Breaking the Machine,” well-produced flourishes of layering and an almost progressive-goth (proggoth?) atmosphere carry over. “Redshift” balances these sides well, as does fold before it, and “Templates” before that, and “Fools Gold” after, as Antimatter thankfully continues to exist in a place of its own between melancholic heavy, synthesized singer-songwriterism and darker, doom-born-but-not-doom metal, all of which seem to be summarized in the closing salvo of “Entheogen,” “Breaking the Machine” and “Kick the Dog.” Moss is a master of his craft long-established, and a period of isolation has perhaps led to some of the shifting balance here, but neither the album nor its songs are done a disservice by that.
There was a point, maybe 15 years ago now give or take, when at least Manhattan and Brooklyn in New York City were awash in semi-retro, jangly-but-rough-edged-to-varying-degrees rock and roll bands. Some sounded like Joan Jett, some sounded like the Ramones, or The Strokes or whoever. On Salvation, their second LP, Mick’s Jaguar bring some chunky Judas Priest riffing, no shortage of attitude, and as the five-piece — they were six on 2018’s Fame and Fortune (review here) — rip into a proto-shredder like “Speed Dealer,” worship Thin Lizzy open string riffing on “Nothing to Lose” or bask in what would be sleaze were it not for the pandemic making any “Skin Contact” at all a serotonin spike, they effectively hop onto either side of the line where rock meets heavy. Also the longest track at 4:54, “Molotov Children” is a ’70s-burly highlight, and “Handshake Deals” is an early-arriving hook that seems to make everything after it all the more welcome. “Man Down” and “Free on the Street” likewise push their choruses toward anthemic barroom sing-alongs, and while I’m not sure those bars haven’t been priced out of the market and turned into unoccupied investment luxury condos by now, rock and roll’s been declared dead in New York at least 100,000 times and it obviously isn’t, so there.
Long live Finnish weird. More vintage in their mindset than overall presentation, Sammal return via the ever-reliable Svart Records with Aika Laulaa, the follow-up to 2018’s Suuliekki (review here) and their fourth album total, with eight songs and 43 minutes that swap languages lyrically between Finnish, Swedish and English as fluidly as they take progressive retroism and proto-metal to a place of their own that is neither, both, and more. From the languid lead guitar in “Returning Rivers” to the extended side-enders “On Aika Laulaa” with its pastoralized textures and “Katse Vuotaa” with its heavy blues foundation, willfully brash surge, and long fade, the band gracefully skip rocks across aesthetic waters, opening playful and Scandi-folk-derived on “På knivan” before going full fuzz in “Sehr Kryptisch,” turning the three-minute meander of “Jos ei pelaa” into a tonal highlight and resolving the instrumental “(Lamda)” (sorry, the character won’t show up) with a jammy soundscape that at least sounds like it’s filled out by organ if it isn’t. A band who can go wherever they want and just might actually dare to do so, Sammal reinforce the notion of their perpetual growth and Aika laulaa is a win on paper for that almost as much as for the piano notes cutting through the distortion on “Grym maskin.” Almost.
Former Hades guitarist Dan Lorenzo continues a personal riffy renaissance with Cassius King‘s Dread the Dawn, one of several current outlets among Vessel of Light and Patriarchs in Black. On Dread the Dawn, the New Jersey-based Lorenzo, bassist Jimmy Schulman (ex-Attacker) and drummer Ron Lipnicki (ex-Overkill) — the rhythm section also carried over from Vessel of Light — and vocalist Jason McMaster offer 11 songs and 49 minutes of resoundingly oldschool heavy, Dio Sabbath-doomed rock. Individual tracks vary in intent, but some of the faster moments on “Royal Blooded” or even the galloping opener “Abandon Paradise” remind of Candlemass tonally and even rockers like “How the West Was Won,” “Bad Man Down” and “Back From the Dead” hold an undercurrent of classic metal, never mind the creeper riff of the title-track or its eight-minute companion-piece, the suitably swinging “Doomsday.” Capping with a bonus take on Judas Priest‘s “Troubleshooter,” Dread the Dawn has long since by then gotten its point across but never failed to deliver in either songwriting or performance. They strut, and earn it.
Issued on tape through UK imprint Dub Cthonic, the four-extended-tracker Way of the Pilgrim is the second 2022 full-length from South African solo folk experimentalist Seven Rivers of Fire — aka William Randles — behind September’s Sanctuary (review here) and March’s Star Rise, and its mostly acoustic-based explorations are as immersive and hypnotic as ever as the journey from movement to movement in “They are Calling // Exodus” (11:16) sets up processions through the drone-minded “Awaken // The Passenger” (11:58), “From the Depths // Into the Woods” (12:00) and “Ascend // The Fall” (11:56), Randles continuing to dig into his own particular wavelength and daring to include some chanting and other vocalizations in the opener and “From the Depths // Into the Woods” and the piano-laced finale. Each piece has an aural theme of its own and sets out from there, feeling its way forward with what feels like a genuinely unplanned course. Way of the Pilgrim isn’t going to be for everybody, as with all of Seven Rivers of Fire‘s output, but those who can tune to its frequencies are going to find its resonance continual.
Leeds-based psychedelic doomers Amon Acid channel the grimmer reaches of the cosmic — and a bit of Cathedral in “Hyperion” — on their fifth full-length in four years, second of 2022, Cosmogony. The core duo of guitarist/vocalist/synthesist Sarantis Charvas and bassist/cellist Briony Charvas — joined on this nine-tracker by the singly-named Smith on drums — harness stately space presence and meditative vibes on “Death on the Altar,” the guitar ringing out vague Easternisms while the salvo that started with “Parallel Realm” seems only to plunge further and further into the lysergic unknown. Following the consuming culmination of “Demolition Wave” and the dissipation of the residual swirl there, the band embark on a series of shorter cuts with “Nag Hammandi,” the riff-roller “Mandragoras,” the gloriously-weird-but-still-somehow-accessible “Demon Rider” and the this-is-our-religion “Ethereal Mother” before the massive buildup of “The Purifier” begins, running 11 minutes, which isn’t that much longer than the likes of “Parallel Realm” or “Death on the Altar,” but rounds out the 63-minute procession with due galaxial churn just the same. Plodding and spacious, I can’t help but feel like if Amon Acid had a purposefully-dumber name they’d be more popular, but in the far, far out where they reside, these things matter less when there are dimensions to be warped.
The original plan from Germany’s Iron & Stone was that the four-song Mountains and Waters was going to be the first in a sequence of three EP releases. As it was recorded in Fall 2020 — a time, if you’ll recall, when any number of plans were shot to hell — and only released this past June, I don’t know if the band are still planning to follow it with another two short offerings or not, but for the bass in “Loose the Day” alone, never mind the well-crafted heavy fuzz rock that surrounds on all sides, I’m glad they finally got this one out. Opener “Cosmic Eye” is catchy and comfortable in its tempo, and “Loose the Day” answers with fuzz a-plenty while “Vultures” metes out swing and chug en route to an airy final wash that immediately bleeds into “Unbroken,” which is somewhat more raucous and urgent of riff, but still has room for a break before its and the EP’s final push. Iron & Stone are proven in my mind when it comes to heavy rock songwriting, and they seem to prefer short releases to full-lengths — arguments to be made on either side, as ever — but whether or not it’s the beginning of a series, Mountains and Waters reaffirms the band’s strengths, pushes their craft to the forefront, and celebrates genre even as it inhabits it. There’s nothing more one might ask.
To be sure, there shades of are discernible influences in DRÖÖG‘s self-titled Majestic Mountain Records first long-player, from fellow Swedes Graveyard, Greenleaf, maybe even some of earlier Abramis Brama‘s ’70s vibes, but these are only shades. Thus it is immediately refreshing how unwilling the self-recording core duo of Magnus Vestling and Daniel Engberg are to follow the rules of style, pushing the drums far back into the mix and giving the entire recording a kind of far-off feel, their classic and almost hypnotic, quintessentially Swedish (and in Swedish, lyrically-speaking) heavy blues offered with hints of psychedelic flourish and ready emergence. The way “Stormhatt” seems to rise in the space of its own making. The fuller fuzz of “Blodörn.” The subtle tension of the riff in the second half of “Nattfjärilar.” In songs mostly between six and about eight minutes long, DRÖÖG distinguish themselves in tone — bass and hard-strummed guitar out front in “Hamnskiftaren” along with the vocals — and melody, creating an earthy atmosphere that has elements of svensk folkmusik without sounding like a caricature of that or anything else. They’ve got me rewriting my list of 2022’s best debut albums, and already looking forward to how they grow this sound going on from here.
Rare is a record so thoroughly screamed that is also so enhanced by its lyrics. Hello, Remember the Earth but Never Come Back. Based in Montreal — home to any number of disaffected sludgy noisemakers — Grales turn apocalyptic dystopian visions into poetry on the likes of “All Things are Temporary,” and anti-capitalist screed on “From Sea to Empty Sea” and “Wretched and Low,” tying together anthropocene planet death with the drive of human greed in concise, sharp, and duly harsh fashion. Laced with noise, sludged to the gills it’s fortunate enough to have so it can breathe in the rising ocean waters, and pointed in its lurch, the five-song/43-minute outing takes the directionless fuckall of so many practitioners of its genre and sets itself apart by knowing and naming exactly what it’s mad about. It’s mad about wage theft, climate change, the hopelessness that surrounds most while a miserly few continue to rape and pillage what should belong to everybody. The question asked in “Agony” answers itself: “What is the world without our misery? We’ll never know.” With this perspective in mind and a hint of melody in the finale “Sic Transit Mundus,” Grales offer a two-sided tape through From the Urn Records that is gripping in its onslaught and stirring despite its outward misanthropy. It’s not that they don’t care; it’s that they want you to pick up a molotov cocktail and toss it at your nearest corporate headquarters. Call it relatable.
Energetic in its delivery and semi-progressive in its intentions, Half Gramme of Soma‘s second album, Slip Through the Cracks, arrives with the backing of Sound of Liberation Records, the label wing of one of Europe’s lead booking agencies for heavy rock. Not a minor endorsement, but it’s plain to hear in the eight-song/42-minute course the individualism and solidified craft that prompted the pickup: Half Gramme of Soma know what they’re doing, period. Working with producer George Leodis (1000mods, Godsleep, Last Rizla, etc.) in their native Athens, they’ve honed a sound that reaches deeper than the deceptively short runtimes of tracks like “Voyager” and “Sirens” or “Wounds” might lead you to believe, and the blend of patience and intensity on finale-and-longest-song “22:22” (actually 7:36) highlights their potential in both its languid overarching groove and the later guitar solos that cut through it en route to that long fade, without sacrificing the present for the sake of the future. That is, whatever Half Gramme of Soma might do on their third record, Slip Through the Cracks shouldn’t. Even in fest-ready riffers “High Heels” and “Mind Game,” they bleed personality and purpose.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on December 1st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Cape Town, South Africa, five-piece Ethyl Ether will release their fourth album, Violent Entertainment, through Mongrel Records on Jan. 27. And the drawling catchiness, post-rock languidity and tonal weight of “Six Feet of Snow” is representative perhaps not of every move the triply-guitared outfit make across the ’90s-style, CD-ready 12-song/58-minute stretch of the album. It doesn’t account for, say, the dub of “Good Neighbor,” for example, or the post-grunge somehow-Beatlesian alt rock radio friendliness of “Field of Shadows,” “Seasons of Gold” and “Flowers” with their wistfulness tucked away after the acoustic demo-sounding 47 seconds of “I” as the album’s final salvo, but in its blend of shimmer and grim, float and heft, and in its drawing influence from aughts-era emotive rock and heavier impulses to create a kind of immersive wash of melody, it speaks much of what’s at the foundation of the record itself.
Sharp in its songwriting and malleable, clearly, to whatever purposes the band point it toward, Violent Entertainment launches with an according three-song salvo of rockers of which “Six Feet of Snow” is the third, behind opener “Dead Conversations” and the subsequent “Phenomenal,” though the shift when “Vacant” hits is mostly in atmosphere, the band putting more space into the sound, what might be breathing room if anyone could breathe. As a follow-up to 2020’s Chrome Neon Jesus (review here), and as a collection of crafted material in its own right, Violent Entertainment is purposeful and ambitious atop its relatively straightforward structures, and makes deep sounds accessible with a continued poppy sensibility that suits a fourth-album maturation of their processes.
The aforementioned “I” aside, most songs hover on either side of the five-minute mark — “Compromise” is the longest at 6:35 and fills its time working toward a full-toned payoff and classically bluesy solo — and convey a human, feeling-feelings presence without tipping into melodrama at least until the band decide to do pretty much exactly that near the finish. We live in an era of plot twists and cliffhangers. Violent Entertainment speaks to that in its own songs and in making the listener wonder where they might go from here.
As the band note below, ‘Violent Entertainment laments the loss of real human emotion and cries for a return to real interactions… a call for a time that is sadly long gone,’ and that perspective, a certain nostalgia for something lost, is prevalent whatever turns in sound accompany, be it the heavy post-Britpop of “Satin” or the charged thrust of “Exhibition.” Fair enough. As someone old enough to remember a time before I had my face buried in my phone in a desperate search for any minor dopamine fix like a sad hunched over cog, I get it.
And one could debate the quality levels of connection between seeing what’s happening in all your friends’ lives versus actually speaking to them — broadcasting ourselves over interpersonal communication, in other words — never mind the presentation of self as a brand (a personal least-favorite; don’t forget to read The Obelisk!), but what’s the use of decrying the trap’s existence when you’re already snared? Perhaps a song like “Six Feet of Snow” is Ethyl Ether‘s way of trying to gnaw their collective leg off to break free. If you make it, send a postcard from what used to be reality. That’s not even snark. It’s nice to get mail.
Hope you’re ready to have this one stuck in your head for the rest of the day and then some:
Ethyl Ether, “Six Feet of Snow” video premiere
Ethyl Ether on Violent Entertainment:
The song speaks about the feeling of struggling to carve one’s way forward in life. When you are stuck in the past or in your head, that is the snow, that is the crown that you bleed from. Social media perpetuates this, driving us all slowly insane.
Violent Entertainment is a commentary on the times we find ourselves as humans… a constant diet of social media and reality shows. We are shocked by nothing anymore, allowing ourselves to be influenced by whatever speaks strongest to our personal viewpoint. We have become selfish, and live from selfie to selfie, one foot in the real world and one foot online. Violent Entertainment laments the loss of real human emotion and cries for a return to real interactions… a call for a time that is sadly long gone.
Ethyl Ether are a five-piece Psychedelic rock outfit from Cape Town. Formed in 2016, the band has released 3 full length albums, the last album, 2020’s ‘Chrome Neon Jesus’ earned the band a SAMA (South African Music Awards) nomination for Best Rock Album as well as being well received by international rock media.
The band has been hard at work in the studio over the last 9 months on their new album ‘Violent Entertainment’ which will drop in January 2023.
Track Listing: 1 – Dead Conversation 2 – Phenomenal 3 – Six Feet Of Snow 4 – Vacant 5 – Good Neighbour 6 – Satin 7 – Compromise 8 – Exhibition 9 – I 10 – Field Of Shadows 11 – Seasons Of Gold 12 – Flowers
Line Up: Andrew Paine – Vocals/Guitar Mark Van Zyl – Guitar Mornay Carstens – Guitar Pat Naidoo – Drums Frederick Muller – Bass
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 9th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The story is pretty simple here: ‘band who’ve done a couple cool records are about to do another.’ That doesn’t do much to tell you about Ethyl Ether‘s heavygaze-informed psychedelic rock as presented on their new streaming single “Field of Shadows,” let alone the rest of their upcoming Violent Entertainment full-length opus, but, well, better to get the basics across than nothing. There’s time to dig in deeper as we get closer.
If you didn’t catch the band’s 2020 outing, Chrome Neon Jesus (review here), it is by no means too late to be introduced. And if you find yourself looking for more as regards the impending follow-up, which is out Jan. 27, 2023, through Mongrel Records, stick around, as I’ll be premiering a video on Thursday, Dec. 1, for the track “Six Feet of Snow.” Seems like the kind of thing one might pair with an album review, if one is so inclined. Which I probably will be, because — and here’s something personal, I hope you’re comfortable with that — I like writing about good tunes.
So, off we go to the preliminaries, hoisted from the PR wire whence they came:
ETHYL ETHER – Violent Entertainment
Artist: Ethyl Ether Title: Violent Entertainment Format: Digital Release Date: 27th January 2023
Ethyl Ether are a five-piece Psychedelic rock outfit from Cape Town. Formed in 2016, the band has released 3 full length albums, the last album, 2020’s ‘Chrome Neon Jesus’ earned the band a SAMA (South African Music Awards) nomination for Best Rock Album as well as being well received by international rock media.
The band has been hard at work in the studio over the last 9 months on their new album ‘Violent Entertainment’ which will drop in January 2023.
“Violent Entertainment is a commentary on the times we find ourselves as humans… a constant diet of social media and reality shows. We are shocked by nothing anymore, allowing ourselves to be influenced by whatever speaks strongest to our personal viewpoint. We have become selfish, and live from selfie to selfie, one foot in the real world and one foot online. Violent Entertainment laments the loss of real human emotion and cries for a return to real interactions… a call for a time that is sadly long gone.” – Ethyl Ether
Track Listing: 1 – Dead Conversation 2 – Phenomenal 3 – Six Feet Of Snow 4 – Vacant 5 – Good Neighbour 6 – Satin 7 – Compromise 8 – Exhibition 9 – I 10 – Field Of Shadows 11 – Seasons Of Gold 12 – Flowers
Line Up: Andrew Paine – Vocals/Guitar Mark Van Zyl – Guitar Mornay Carstens – Guitar Pat Naidoo – Drums Frederick Muller – Bass
With the release tomorrow of their new single She’s Still a Goth, Lydenburg, South Africa, four-piece-with-new-press-shots-soon Ruff Majik also announce the coming of their next album, Elektrik Ram, due from Mongrel Records in April 2023, which may feel and sound like the distant future when people live on Mars and there’s no war on Earth and someone still being a goth would be like a big surprise I guess, but, you know, isn’t actually that far away. Far enough that I haven’t asked to hear the record yet though, not least since I don’t know whether or not it’s done.
I know this song rocks. Among the rampage of admirable qualities in Ruff Majik‘s music, whether it’s the frenetic guitar strum and intertwining leads of Johni Holiday or the depth of vocal arrangement that’s somewhere between Axl Rose and Josh Homme, the shove of groove, etc., the willingness to have actual-fun is a standout, and “She’s Still a Goth” — why on earth wouldn’t she be? — is a blast in that very spirit. Written in homage to Holiday‘s wife, Anni Buchner, who’s been doing art for the band for years now as Ale & Cake Illustration — she helmed the Pulp comic they had out last year as well, and that also was actual-fun — it is nonetheless a reminder that, no matter who you are, where or how you live, gender, orientation, anything, at some point, everybody has had a crush on a goth girl. It’s a part of life in modern times.
Ruff Majik would probably need to slow down a bit to play toward actual goth music, but I’ve known goths into Misfits and Ministry and so on, so maybe there’s a place for them to play at ‘grim’ for a while — at least for the sub-three-minute run of this track — and if the rules are bent, so be it. One more reason to look forward to Elektrik Ram, which will serve as the follow-up to 2020’s The Devil’s Cattle (review here), an absolute fucking destroyer of a rock album that the band of course didn’t get to give nearly the support touring that it deserved because, well, you were there.
Ooh, I wonder if they’ll have a pandemic song on the record. Those are lyrics I want to see.
Onto the list of 2023’s most anticipated it goes, and I’m just kind of assuming they’ll head back up to Europe to tour, but I haven’t actually seen dates or anything yet. April release means Spring festival season is in play, though, so it’ll be worth keeping an eye out.
Enjoy the video. Yes, it’s got a bat:
Ruff Majik, “She’s Still a Goth” video premiere
South African stoner rock cult Ruff Majik releases their first new music since the critically acclaimed 2020 album The Devil’s Cattle. Frontman and chief songwriter, Johni Holiday splatters latest single She’s Still A Goth with 80’s tinged goth saturated rock and roll synth-wave. Biting down on a dirty riff and even filthier backbeat the song includes a doom infused breakdown and highly flammable swagger throughout. The track is the first single from their highly anticipated upcoming album Elektrik Ram, which drops in April 2023.
Johni and his wife’s (Anni Buchner of Ale & Cake Illustration) fascination with b-grade horror and gothic imagery has always been influential in the lyrical themes and overall image of the band. When Anni fell in love once more with 80’s tinged gothic synthwave during the pandemic, it inspired him to write a tune in ode to her – featuring references to classic gothic imagery whilst still fitting neatly into the realm of Tarantino-esque desert rock.
It’s just a love song. Nothing more, nothing less. Packaged neatly in a ghoulish package…” – Johni Holiday
Posted in Reviews on September 29th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Welcome to the penultimate day of the Fall 2022 Quarterly Review, and yes, I will make just about any excuse to use the word “penultimate.” Sometimes you have a favorite thing, okay? The journey continues today, down, out, up and around, through and across 10 records from various styles and backgrounds. I hope you dig it and check back tomorrow for the last day. Here we go.
Quarterly Review #81-90:
Motorpsycho, Ancient Astronauts
There is no denying Motorpsycho. I’ve tried. Can’t be done. I don’t know how many records the Norwegian progressive rockers have put out by now, and honestly I wonder if even the band members themselves could give an accurate count. And who would be able to fact check? Ancient Astronauts continues the strong streak that the Trondheim trio of Tomas Järmyr, Bent Sæther, and Hans “Snah” Ryan have had going for at least the last six years — 2021’s Kingdom of Oblivion (review here) was also part of it — comprising four songs across a single 43-minute LP, with side B consumed entirely by the 22-minute finale “Chariot of the Sun/To Phaeton on the Occasion of Sunrise (Theme From an Imaginary Movie).” After the 12-minute King Crimsony build from silence to sustained freakout in “Mona Lisa Azazel” — preceded by the soundscape “The Flower of Awareness” (2:14) and the relatively straightforward, welcome-bidding “The Ladder” (6:41) — the closer indeed unfurls in two discernible sections, the first a linear stretch increasing in volume and tension as it moves forward, loosely experimental in the background but for sure a prog jam by its 11th minute that ends groovy at about its 15th, and the second a synthesizer-led arrangement that, to no surprise, is duly cinematic. Motorpsycho have been a band for more than 30 years established their place in the fabric of the universe, and are there to dwell hopefully for a long(er) time to come. Not all of the hundred-plus releases they’ve done have been genius, but they are so reliably themselves in sound it feels silly to write about them. Just listen and be happy they’re there.
Did you think Abrams would somehow not deliver quality-crafted heavy rock, straightforward in structure, ’00s punk undercurrent, plus metal, plus melody? Their first offering through Small Stone is In the Dark, the follow-up to 2020’s Modern Ways (review here), and it finds guitarist/vocalist Zachary Amster joined by on guitar by Patrick Alberts (Call of the Void), making the band a four-piece for the first time with bassist/vocalist Taylor Iversen and drummer Ryan DeWitt completing the lineup. One can hear new textures and depth in songs like “Better Living” after the raucous opening salvo of “Like Hell” and “Death Tripper,” and longer pieces like “Body Pillow,” the title-track and the what-if-Blizzard–of–Ozz-was-really-space-rock “Black Tar Mountain,” which reach for new spaces atmospherically and in terms of progressive melody — looking at you, “Fever Dreams” — while maintaining the level of songwriting one anticipates from Abrams four records in. They’ve been undervalued for a while now. Can their metal-heavy-rock-punk-prog-that’s-also-kind-of-pop gain some of the recognition it deserves? It only depends on getting ears to hear it.
Australia-based electronic prog outfit All India Radio — the solo ambient/atmospheric endeavor of composer and Martin Kennedy — has been releasing music for over 20 years, and is the kind of thing you may have heard without realizing it, soundtracking television and whatnot. The Generator of All Infinity is reportedly the final release in a trilogy cycle, completely instrumental and based largely on short ambient movements that move between each other like, well, a soundtrack, with some more band-minded ideas expressed in “The New Age” — never underestimate the value of live bass in electronic music — and an array of samples, differing organs, drones, psychedelic soundscapes, and a decent bit of ’80s sci-fi intensity on “Beginning Part 2,” which succeeds in making the wait for its underlying beat excruciating even though the whole piece is just four minutes long. There are live and sampled drums throughout, shades of New Wave, krautrock and a genuine feeling of culmination in the title-track’s organ-laced crescendo wash, but it’s a deep current of drone that ends on “Doomsday Machine” that makes me think whatever narrative Kennedy has been telling is somewhat grim in theme. Fair enough. The Generator of All Infinity will be too heady for some (most), but if you can go with it, it’s evocative enough to maybe be your own soundtrack.
Mississippi-based heavygaze rockers Nighdrator released the single “The Mariner” as a standalone late in 2020 as just the duo of vocalist/producer Emma Fruit and multi-instrumentalist JS Curley. They’ve built out more of a band on their self-titled debut EP, put to tape through Sailing Stone Records and bringing back “Mariner” (dropped the ‘The’) between “Scarlet Tendons” and the more synth-heavy wash of “The Poet.” The last two minutes of the latter are given to noise, drone and silence, but what unfurls before that is an experimentalist-leaning take on heavier post-rock, taking the comparatively grounded exploratory jangle of “Scarlet Tendons” — which picks up from the brief intro “Crest/Trough” depending on which format you’re hearing — and turning its effects-laced atmosphere into a foundation in itself. Given the urgency that remains in the strum of “Mariner,” I wouldn’t expect Nighdrator to go completely in one direction or another after this, but the point is they set up multiple opportunities for creative growth while signaling an immediate intention toward individuality and doing more than the My-Bloody-Valentine-but-heavy that has become the standard for the style. There’s some of that here, but Nighdrator seem not to want to limit themselves, and that is admirable even in results that might turn out to be formative in the longer term.
William Graham Randles, who is the lone figure behind all the plucked acoustic guitar strings throughout Seven Rivers of Fire‘s three-song full-length, Sanctuary, makes it easy to believe the birdsong that occurs throughout “Union” (16:30 opener and longest track; immediate points), “Al Tirah” (9:00) and “Bloom” (7:30) was happening while the recording was taking place and that the footsteps at the end are actually going somewhere. This is not Randles‘ first full-length release of 2022 and not his last — he releases the new Way of the Pilgrim tomorrow, as it happens — but it does bring a graceful 33 minutes of guitar-based contemplation, conversing with the natural world via the aforementioned birdsong as well as its own strums and runs, swells and recessions of activity giving the feeling of his playing in the sunshine, if not under a tree then certainly near one or, at worst, someplace with an open window and decent ventilation; the air feels fresh. “Al Tirah” offers a long commencement drone and running water, while “Bloom” — which begins with footsteps out — is more playfully folkish, but the heart throughout Sanctuary is palpable and in celebration of the organic, perhaps of the surroundings but also in its own making. A moment of serenity, far-away escapism, and realization.
Half a decade on from The Electric Dunes of Titan (review here), Melbourne sludge rock bruisers Motherslug return with Blood Moon Blues, a willfully unmanageable 58-minute, let’s-make-up-for-lost-time collection that’s got room enough for “Hordes” to put its harsh vocals way forward in the mix over a psychedelic doom sprawl while also coexisting with the druggy desert punkers “Crank” and “Push the Venom” and the crawling death in the culmination of “You (A Love Song)” — which it may well be — later on. With acoustic stretches bookending in “Misery” and the more fully a song “Misery (Slight Return),” there’s no want for cohesion, but from naked Kyussism of “Breathe” and the hard Southern-heavy-informed riffs of “Evil” — yes I’m hearing early Alabama Thunderpussy there — to the way in which “Deep in the Hole” uses similar ground as a launchpad for its spacious solo section, there’s an abiding brashness to their approach that feels consistent with their past work. Not every bands sees the ways in which microgenres intersect, let alone manages to set their course along the lines between, drawing from different sides in varied quantities as they go, but Motherslug do so while sounding almost casual about it for their lack of pretense. Accordingly, the lengthy runtime of Blood Moon Blues feels earned in a way that’s not always the case with records that pass the single-LP limit of circa 45 minutes, there’s blues a-plenty and Motherslug brought enough riffs for the whole class, so dig in, everybody.
Keep an ear out because you’re going to be hearing more of this kind of thing in the next few years. On their third album, Planetarium Module, Cheater Pipe blend Oliveri-style punk with early-aughts sludge tones and sampling, and as we move to about 20 years beyond acts like Rebreather and -(16)- and a slew of others including a bunch from Cheater Pipe‘s home state of Louisiana, yeah, there will be more acts adapting this particular stoner sludge space. Much to their credit, Cheater Pipe not only execute that style ably — Emissions sludge — on “Fog Line Shuffle,” “Cookie Jar” or “White Freight Liner Blues” and the metal-as-punk “Hollow Leg Hobnobber,” they bring Floor-style melody to “Yaw” and expand the palette even further in the second half of the tracklist, with “Mansfield Bar” pushing the melody further, “Flight of the Buckmoth” and closer “Rare Sunday” turning to acoustic guitar and “The Sad Saga of Hans Cholo” between them lending atmospheric breadth to the whole. They succeed at this while packing 11 songs into 34 minutes and coming across generally like they long ago ran out of fucks to give about things like what style they’re playing to or what’s ‘their sound.’ Invariably they think of these things — nobody writes a song and then never thinks about it again, even when they tell you otherwise — but the spirit here is middle-fingers-up, and that suits their sound best anyway.
The largely solo endeavor of Brian Lucas of Dire Wolves and a merry slew of others, Old Million Eye‘s latest full-length work arrives via Cardinal Fuzz and Feeding Tube with mellow psychedelic experimentalism and folk at its core. The Air’s Chrysalis Chime boasts seven pieces in 43 minutes and each one establishes its own world to some degree based around an underlying drone; the fluidity in “Louthian Wood” reminiscent of windchimes and accordion without actually being either of those things — think George Harrison at the end of “Long Long Long,” but it keeps going — and “Tanglier Mirror” casts out a wash of synthesizer melody that would threaten to swallow the vocals entirely would they not floating up so high. It’s a vibe based around patience in craft, but not at all staid, and “White Toads” throws some distorted volume the listener’s way not so much as a lifeline for rockers as another tool to be used when called for. The last cosmic synthesizer on “Ruby River,” the album’s nine-minute finale, holds as residual at the end, which feels fair as Lucas‘ voice — the human element of its presence is not to be understated as songs resonate like an even-farther-out, keyboard-leaning mid-period Ben Chasny — has disappeared into the ether of his own making. We should all be so lucky.
“Bury” is the newest single from Swedish heavy rockers Zoltar, who, yes, take their moniker from the genie machine in the movie Big (they’re not the only ones either). It follows behind two songs released last year in “Asphalt Alpha” and “Dirt Vortex.” Those tracks were rawer in overall production sound, but there’s still plenty of edge in “Bury,” up to and including in the vocals, which are throatier here than on either of the two prior singles, though still melodic enough so that when the electric piano-style keys start up at about two and a half minutes into the song, the goth-punk nod isn’t out of place. It’s a relatively straight-ahead hook with riffing made that much meatier through the tones on the recording, and a subtle wink in the direction of Slayer‘s “Dead Skin Mask” in its chorus. Nothing to complain about there or more generally about the track, as the three-piece seem to be working toward some kind of proper release — they did press up a CD of Bury as a standalone, so kudos to them on the physicality — be it an EP or album. Wherever they end up, if these songs make the trip or are dropped on the way, it’s a look at a band’s earliest moves as a group and how quickly that collaboration can change and find its footing. Zoltar — who did not have feet in the movie — may just be doing that here.
Sardinia’s Fabrizio Monni (also of Black Capricorn) has unleashed a beast in Ascia, and with III, he knows it more than ever. The follow-up to Volume II (review here) and Volume I (review here) — both released late last year — is more realized in terms of songcraft, and it would seem Monni‘s resigned himself to being a frontman of his own solo-project, which is probably the way to go since he’s obviously the most qualified, and in songs like “The Last Ride,” he expands on the post-High on Fire crash-and-bash with more of a nodding central groove, while “Samothrace” finds a place for itself between marauder shove and more direct heavy rock riffery. Each time out, Monni seems to have more of an idea of what he wants Ascia to be, and whether there’s a IV to come after this or he’s ready to move onto something else in terms of release structure — i.e., a debut album — the progression he’s undertaken over the last year-plus is plain to hear in these songs and how far they’ve come in so short a time.
Posted in Reviews on September 21st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Day three, passing the quarter mark of the Quarterly Review, halfway through the week. This is usually the point where my brain locks itself into this mode and I find that even in any other posts where I’m doing actual writing I need to think about I default to this kind of trying-to-encapsulate-a-thing-in-not-a-million-words mindset, for better or worse. Usually a bit of both, I guess. Today’s also all over the place, so if you’re feeling brave, today’s the day to really dig in. As always, I hope you enjoy. If not, more coming tomorrow. And the day after. And then again on Monday. And so on.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Nadja, Labyrinthine
The second full-length of 2022 from the now-Berlin-based experimental two-piece Nadja — as ever, Leah Buckareff and Aidan Baker — is a four-song collaborative work on which each piece features a different vocalist. In guesting roles are Alan Dubin, formerly of Khantate/currently of Gnaw, Esben and the Witch‘s Rachel Davies, Lane Shi Otayonii of Elizabeth Colour Wheel and Full of Hell‘s Dylan Walker. Given these players and their respective pedigrees, it should not be hard to guess that Labyrinthine begins and ends ferocious, but Nadja by no means reserve the harshness of noise solely for the dudely contingent. The 17-minute “Blurred,” with Otayonii crooning overtop, unfurls a consuming wash of noise that, true, eventually fades toward a more definitive droner of a riff, but sure enough returns as a crescendo later on. Dubin is unmistakable on the opening title-track, and while Davies‘ “Rue” runs only 12 minutes and is the most conventionally listenable of the inclusions on the whole, even its ending section is a voluminous blowout of abrasive speaker destruction. Hey, you get what you get. As for Nadja, they should get one of those genius grants I keep hearing so much about.
El Paraiso Records alert! London Odense Ensemble features Jonas Munk (guitar, production), Jakob Skøtt (drums, art) and Martin Rude (sometimes bass) of Danish psych masters Causa Sui — they’re the Odense part — and London-based saxophonist/flutist Tamar Osborn and keyboardist/synthesist Al MacSween, and if they ever do a follow-up to Jaiyede Sessions Vol. 1, humanity will have to mark itself lucky, because the psych-jazz explorations here are something truly special. On side A they present the two-part “Jaiyede Suite” with lush krautrock rising to the level of improv-sounding astro-freakout before the ambient-but-still-active “Sojourner” swells and recedes gracefully, and side B brings the 15-minute “Enter Momentum,” which is as locked in as the title might lead one to believe and then some and twice as free, guitar and sax conversing fluidly throughout the second half, and the concluding “Celestial Navigation,” opening like a sunrise and unfolding with a playful balance of sax and guitar and synth over the drums, the players trusting each other to ultimately hold it all together as of course they do. Not for everybody, but peaceful even in its most active moments, Jaiyede Sessions Vol. 1 is yet another instrumental triumph for the El Paraiso camp. Thankfully, they haven’t gotten bored of them yet.
True, most of these songs have been around for a few years. All eight of the tracks on Omen Stones‘ 33-minute self-titled full-length save for “Skin” featured on the band’s 2019 untitled outing (an incomplete version of which was reviewed here in 2018), but they’re freshly recorded, and the message of Omen Stones being intended as a debut album comes through clearly in the production and the presentation of the material generally, and from ragers like “Fertile Blight” and the aforementioned “Skin,” which is particularly High on Fire-esque, to the brash distorted punk (until it isn’t) of “Fresh Hell” and the culminating nod and melody dare of “Black Cloud,” the key is movement. The three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Tommy Hamilton (Druglord), bassist Ed Fierro (Tel) and drummer Erik Larson (Avail, Alabama Thunderpussy, etc. ad infinitum) are somewhere between riff-based rock and metal, but carry more than an edge of sludge-nasty in their tones and Hamilton‘s sometimes sneering vocals such that Omen Stones ends up like the hardest-hitting, stoner-metal-informed grunge record that ever got lost from 1994. Then you get into “Secrete,” and have to throw the word ‘Southern’ into the mix because of that guitar lick, and, well, maybe it’s better to put stylistic designations to the side for the time being. A ripper with pedigree is a ripper nonetheless.
Proggy, synth-driven instrumentalist space rock is the core of what Italy’s Jalayan bring forward on the 45-minute Floating Islands, with guitar periodically veering into metallic-style riffing but ultimately pushed down in the mix to let the keyboard work of band founder Alessio Malatesta (who also recorded) breathe as it does. That balance is malleable throughout, as the band shows early between “Tilmun” and “Nemesis,” and if you’re still on board the ship by the time you get to the outer reaches of “Stars Stair” — still side A, mind you — then the second full-length from the Lesmo outfit will continue to offer thrills as “Fire of Lanka” twists and runs ambience and intensity side by side and “Colliding Orbits” dabbles in space-jazz with New Age’d keyboards, answering some of what featured earlier on “Edination.” The penultimate “Narayanastra” has a steadier rock beat behind it and so feels more straightforward, but don’t be fooled, and at just under seven minutes, “Shem Temple” closes the proceedings with a clear underscoring the dug-in prog vibe, similar spacey meeting with keys-as-sitar in the intro as the band finds a middle ground between spirit and space. There are worlds being made here, as Malatesta leads the band through these composed, considered-feeling pieces united by an overarching cosmic impulse.
Following 12 years on the heels and hells of 2010’s Dusk (review here), San Antonio, Texas, doomers Las Cruces return with the classic-style doom metal of Cosmic Tears, and if you think a hour-long album is unmanageable in the day and age of 35-minute-range vinyl attention spans, you’re right, but that’s not the vibe Las Cruces are playing to, and it’s been over a decade, so calm down. Founding guitarist George Trevino marks the final recorded performance of drummer Paul DeLeon, who passed away last year, and welcomes vocalist Jason Kane to the fold with a showcase worthy of comparison to Tony Martin on songs like “Stay” and the lumbering “Holy Hell,” with Mando Tovar‘s guitar and Jimmy Bell‘s bass resulting in riffs that much thicker. Peer to acts like Penance and others working in the post-Hellhound Records sphere, Las Cruces are more grounded than Candlemass but reach similar heights on “Relentless” and “Egyptian Winter,” with classic metal as the thread that runs throughout the whole offering. A welcome return.
Kind of a sneaky album. Like, shh, don’t tell anybody. As I understand it, the bulk of The Freeks‘ nine-tracker Miles of Blues is collected odds and ends — the first four songs reportedly going to be used for a split at some point — and the two-minute riff-and-synth funk-jam “Maybe It’s Time” bears that out in feeling somewhat like half a song, but with the barroom-brawler-gone-to-space “Jaqueline,” the willfully kosmiche “Wag the Fuzz,” which does what “Maybe It’s Time” does, but feels more complete in it, and the 11-minute interstellar grandiosity of “Star Stream,” the 41-minute release sure sounds like a full-length to me. Ruben Romano (formerly Nebula and Fu Manchu) and Ed Mundell (ex-Monster Magnet) are headlining names, but at this point The Freeks have established a particular brand of bluesy desert psych weirdness, and that’s all over “Real Gone” — which, yes, goes — and the rougher garage push of “Played for Keeps,” which should offer thrills to anyone who got down with Josiah‘s latest. Self-released, pressed to CD, probably not a ton made, Miles of Blues is there waiting for you now so that you don’t regret missing it later. So don’t miss it, whether it’s an album or not.
South Africa-based self-recording folk guitarist Duncan Park answers his earlier-2022 release, Invoking the Flood (review here), with the four pieces of In the Floodplain of Dreams, bringing together textures of experimentalist guitar with a foundation of hillside acoustic on opener and longest track (immediate points) “In the Mountains of Sour Grass,” calling to mind some of Six Organs of Admittance‘s exploratory layering, while “Howling at the Moon” boasts more discernable vocals (thankfully not howls) and “Ballad for the Soft Green Moss” highlights the self-awareness of the evocations throughout — it is green, organic, understated, flowing — and the closing title-track reminisces about that time Alice in Chains put out “Don’t Follow” and runs a current of drone behind its central guitar figure to effectively flesh out the this-world-as-otherworld vibe, devolving into (first) shred and (then) noise as the titular dream seems to give way to a harsher reality. So be it. Honestly, if Park wants to go ahead and put out a collection like this every six months or so into perpetuity, that’d be just fine. The vocals here are a natural development from the prior release, and an element that one hopes continue to manifest on the next one.
Crushing and atmospheric in kind, Poland’s MuN released Presomnia through Piranha Music in 2020 as their third full-length. I’m not entirely sure why it’s here, but it’s in my notes and the album’s heavy like Eastern European sadness, so screw it. Comprised of seven songs running 43 minutes, it centers around that place between waking and sleep, where all the fun lucid dreaming happens and you can fly and screw and do whatever else you want in your own brain, all expressed through post-metallic lumber and volume trades, shifting and building in tension as it goes, vocals trading between cleaner sung stretches and gut-punch growls. The layered guitar solo on “Arthur” sounds straight out of the Tool playbook, but near everything else around is otherwise directed and decidedly more pummeling. At least when it wants to be. Not a complaint, either way. The heft of chug in “Deceit” is of a rare caliber, and the culmination in the 13-minute “Decree” seems to use every bit of space the record has made prior in order to flesh out its melancholic, contemplative course. Much to their credit, after destroying in the midsection of that extended piece, MuN make you think they’re bringing it back around again at the end, and then don’t. Because up yours for expecting things. Still the “Stones From the Sky” riff as they come out of that midsection, though. Guess you could do that two years ago.
I’ve never had the fortune of seeing long-running Dallas trio Elliott’s Keep live, but if ever I did and if at least one of the members of the band — bassist/vocalist Kenneth Greene, guitarist Jonathan Bates, drummer Joel Bates — wasn’t wearing a studded armband, I think I might be a little disappointed. They know their metal and they play their metal, exclusively. Comprised of seven songs, Vulnerant Omnes is purposefully dark, able to shift smoothly between doom and straight-up classic heavy metal, and continuing a number of ongoing themes for the band: it’s produced by J.T. Longoria, titled in Latin (true now of all five of their LPs), and made in homage to Glenn Riley Elliott, who passed away in 2004 but features here on the closer “White Wolf,” a cover of the members’ former outfit, Marauder, that thrashes righteously before dooming out as though they knew someday they’d need it to tie together an entire album for a future band. Elsewhere, “Laughter of the Gods” and the Candlemassian “Every Hour” bleed their doom like they’ve cut their hand to swear an oath of fealty, and the pre-closer two-parter “Omnis Pretium (Fortress I)” and “Et Sanguinum (Fortress II)” speaks to an age when heavy metal was for fantasy-obsessed miscreants and perceived devil worshipers. May we all live long enough to see that particular sun rise again. Until then, an eternal “fucking a” to Elliott’s Keep.
Sometime between their 2017 debut, Jungla (review here), and the all-fire-even-the-slow-parts boogie and comprises the eight-song/35-minute follow-up Ambos Mundos, Barcelona trio Cachemira parted ways with bassist Pol Ventura and brought in Claudia González Díaz of The Mothercrow to handle low end and lead vocals alongside guitarist/now-backing vocalist Gaston Lainé (Brain Pyramid) and drummer Alejandro Carmona Blanco (Prisma Circus), reaffirming the band’s status as a legit powerhouse while also being something of a reinvention. Joined by guest organist Camille Goellaen on a bunch of the songs and others on guitar, Spanish guitar and congas, Ambos Mundos scorches softshoe and ’70s vibes with a modern confidence and thickness of tone that put to use amid the melodies of “Dirty Roads” are sweeping and pulse-raising all at once. The name of the record translates to ‘both worlds,’ and the closing title-track indeed brings together heavy fuzz shuffle and handclap-laced Spanish folk (and guitar) that is like pulling back the curtain on what’s been making you dance this whole time. It soars and spins heads until everybody falls down dizzy. If they were faking, it’d fall flat. It doesn’t. At all. More please.
