Posted in Whathaveyou on June 12th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
This tour, which will see Kal-El hitting Ripplefest Texas after a warm-up gig and then heading north up the Pacific Coastline and ending in the mountains, is a week longer than that which brought the Norwegians to the East Coast last year (review here). It follows the March release of Astral Voyager Vol. 2(review here), which came in hot as the sequel behind 2025’s Astral Voyager Vol. 1 (review here), and is parcel to the momentum that Kal-El have fostered over the last four years since the end of the pandemic. They’ve been hitting it hard. They continue to hit it hard.
Joining them on the stint will be Goya and Volume, picking up the former in their native Arizona and traveling as a package from there on out with Kal-El in a well-earned headline position. The tour runs into October and hits into Canada for a stop in Vancouver, should you happen to be on that part of the continent. I give kudos to anyody traveling to the US for any reason at this point, let alone tour. They’ll also do UK/EU dates in August before this trip happens.
From social media:
USA and Canada – it’s time to crack this open: We are coming back for a 3 weeks run this fall with Goya and VOLUME
Go get your tickets today, spread the word, and we’ll see y’all very soon.
9/18 Haltom City, TX – Haltom Theatre 9/19 Austin, TX – RippleFest Texas (Far Out Lounge) 9/20 San Antonio, TX – Paper Tiger 9/22 Santa Fe, NM – Desert Dogs 9/23 Phoenix, AZ – Last Exit Live 9/24 Las Vegas, NV – Dive Bar 9/25 Landers, CA – The Annex 9/26 Palmdale, CA – Transplants Brewing 9/27 Los Angeles, CA – Redwood Bar & Grill 9/29 San Francisco, CA – DNA Lounge 9/30 Sacramento, CA – Café Colonial 10/1 Eugene, OR – John Henry’s 10/2 Portland, OR – High Water Mark 10/3 Seattle, WA – The Funhouse 10/4 Vancouver, BC – Astoria 10/6 Spokane, WA – The Cameleon 10/7 Boise, ID – The Olympic 10/8 Salt Lake City, UT – Aces High 10/9 Denver, CO – Black Sky Brewing 10/10 Colorado Springs, CO – What’s Left Records
Posted in Reviews on April 14th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
As regards modern heavy rock, there are not a lot of boxes Kal-El leave unticked. The Stavanger, Norway, hard-riffing five-piece have been plugging away at their version of cosmic heavy rock for nearly 15 years, with a steady forward trajectory all the while. If you want to be honest, they’re a difficult band to write about because their sound is so solidified and so much their own despite using familiar elements that once you get past “hey this exists,” the rest feels like it speaks best for itself. But in terms of what they’re putting to use throughout an offering like Astral Voyager Vol. II — the here’s-more follow-up to 2025’s well-received Astral Voyager Vol. I (review here), which itself built on the breakthrough-type success of 2021’s Dark Majesty (review here), beginning to move past the pulp cleavage-in-space stoner idolatry of their early work and seeing their songcraft reach new degrees of refinement.
But even as they came into their own, Kal-El have remained remarkably consistent. Big melodies, big, spacious tones, weighted groove and less concern for the desert in their sound (or the tundra, as another Norwegian band frames it these days) than the feeling the music produces. And listening to “Juno” at the head of Astral Voyager Vol. II, one suspects that feeling is as much internal as external, and that while many bands talk a good game about making the songs they want to hear, Kal-El exist by this ethic and the passion that drives the according realization. Of course, like its predecessor, Astral Voyager Vol. II was recorded with co-producer/engineer Ørjan Kristoffersen Lund at Bridge Burner Recording and mixed/mastered by Ruben Willem, and as one would expect who’s had any prior experience with Kal-El whatsoever, the six-track/42-minute outing is full and rich enough to be atmospheric even as the songs retain a structured, grounded sensibility. Kal-El might be able to sound like they’re floating through space, in other words, but there’s very little about either of the two LPs in this apparent duology that one would call drifting.
Rather, Kal-El belong to a class of bands who can evoke a subtle sense of dynamic even across material that’s broadly heavy and consistent in mood. There is no radical departure from form, even as Vol. I laid it out, and there doesn’t need to be. This sequel is their seventh album overall, and it finds them duly assured. “Juno” is the nod at the beginning, and flows gracefully with not too much shove, but enough movement to be more than just massively toned, especially with the defining hooky chorus vocals cutting through. It is followed by the 10-minute “The Nine,” which would close a lot of records but sits well next to the opener in unfurling its patient largesse of chug. “Astral Voyager,” which opened Vol. I, was the longest cut on that record a nine minutes, so it wouldn’t be shocking if “The Nine” was held in reserve for Vol. II in part to let it complement the steady roll and listener immersion of “Juno,” offering something distinct near the front of the record for listeners who took on the last one.
Because it can be a tricky thing, releasing albums in a series. If your audience is used to hearing growth on every LP that comes out, one into the next into the next and so on, then having two albums that were recorded at the same time released a year apart — especially if the first one was as well-regarded as Astral Voyager Vol. I — can be a challenge because there really shouldn’t be too much different between the volumes. It’s not like one was going to be unplugged and the other full-on. The way Astral Voyager Vol. II works through this issue is with space. I don’t have statistics to back up this assertion, and if you sat down with both records on balance and mapped it all out and found otherwise, please, let me know in the comments, but to my ears and in my hearing of it, what keeps Astral Voyager Vol. II from being redundant — a trap many bands, from Earth to Ufomammut, have fallen into — as the second of a two-parter, is down to how it’s organized and the level of fluidity as pieces like “Juno” and “The Nine” give over to “The Prophecy” — oh that midsection breakdown; mollasses tone engulfs — to round out side A and the concordant rockers on side B, “Juggernaut,” “Pan” and “Asteroid.”
The latter, as the finale, hits eight minutes, but doesn’t really need to be a whole-LP payoff since Kal-El basically are the payoff from the start. I’m not saying they don’t build and release tension or whathaveyou, but even in the momentary letup of “Juggernaut” — a highlight mirroring “Juno,” perhaps even bassier — they are clear-eyed in direction and intent. “Pan” is faster and so distinguished from the more languid flow of most of “The Prophecy” — there’s a cosmo-Kyuss shove in the second half — or the patience in “The Nine,” but hardly out of place in reorienting the procession ahead of “Asteroid,” which remains equal parts vast and lumbering.
Most of all, throughout Astral Voyager Vol. II, as well as Vol. I before it, Kal-El retain one of their most key strengths, which is recognizability. They’re a band who started out playing to genre who’ve been able to turn that around, step out in front of their influences and declare their niche in the heavy underground. These songs are unmistakably theirs in concept and execution, and are not likely to wear out their welcome anytime soon, not the least for the heart that continues to drive their making. Kal-El‘s music bleeds a love of the sound, the riffs, the fuzz, the way it can lock into your brain if you’re lucky enough to have what for most of your life is probably the exact wrong kind of brain but is nonetheless just right for this. Across all their work, the we’re-fans-too passion and the enjoyment of collective creativity thread as ongoing parts of the story, but do not mistake this for a lack of mastery of their sound or craft, because if Astral Voyager Vol. II affirms anything, it is surely that.
Posted in Whathaveyou on December 30th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Well here’s a no-brainer for your 2026 heavy rock wishlist. On March 20, Norwegian riffbearers Kal-El will return with the follow-up to 2025’s Astral Voyager Vol. 1 (review here), aptly-titled Astral Voyager Vol. 2. You might recall that just before they launched their US tour this past October — saw them in Brooklyn (review here) — the band premiered a video here for “Juggernaut.” That song shows up at the likely start of side B here, while “Juno” is out today to mark the announcement of the album and the start of the promo cycle, much as the one for the last LP ended.
The info below comes from Bandcamp. Blues Funeral has the release in North America, while Majestic Mountain has it for Europe. I’ll hope to have more to come before it’s out:
KAL-EL return with Astral Voyager Vol. 2, the sequel to the most critically-acclaimed and eminently listenable album in their catalog.
The continuation of a multi-dimensional journey, Astral Voyager Vol. 2 picks up with interstellar bounty hunter Mica evading pursuit by The Nine as she traverses time and space to bring in her marks.
An infectious blast of sci-fi metal and soaring desert anthems, Astral Voyager Vol. 2 is a record about the dangers of manipulation and struggling for individuality against the unseen powers who try to keep us compliant and controlled.
On the heels of their first full US tour, KAL-EL welcome us back to the Astral Voyager universe with Astral Voyager Vol. 2, the second half of their epic riff-exploration to the farthest reaches of the galaxy!
releases March 20, 2026
Tracklisting: 1. Juno 2. The Nine 3. The Prophecy 4. Juggernaut 5. Pan 6. Asteroid
Written and performed by Kal-El Recorded at Bridge Burner Recording Engineered by Ørjan Kristoffersen Lund Produced by Kal-El Co-produced by Ørjan Kristoffersen Lund Mixed and mastered by Ruben Willem Copyright to Darkspace Music
Norway’s Kal-El begin their tour of the US East Coast and Midwest tomorrow, Oct. 16. Today, they’re premiering their video for the new track “Juggernaut,” which heralds the coming in 2026 of their next full-length, Astral Voyager Vol. 2. If you’re not auto-stoked on that prospect by seeing the words alone, just hit up the video. Really. The best argument that anyone has ever made in favor of Kal-El has always been Kal-El songs. I could sit here for the next three hours trying to capture some aspect of the intangible righteousness of what the band does, and on a decent day, I might say something that someone hearing the song could relate to. Hypothetical cookie for me.
But even if that were to happen, there’s nothing I could say that’s going to convey the largesse of the roll that starts “Juggernaut,” or the way the five-piece seem to ‘go-big’ just as much on melody as impact. There is no revolution happening in Kal-El‘s music, and there never has been, and it’s never been about that. “Juggernaut,” in being the first audio from the follow-up to this year’s correspondingly banger Astral Voyager Vol. 1 (review here), is exciting regardless. It’s a celebration of heavy rock itself, of riffs, of volume, of the power of music to move you. I didn’t understand this about the band at first. But they’re songwriters, as they’ve proven over and again, and they prove once more with “Juggernaut.” I look forward to the next record and the many more steamroller grooves to follow.
Astral Voyager Vol. 2 will be out next year on Blues Funeral Recordings and Majestic Mountain Records. Some words on the single and the tour dates follow here, courtesy of the PR wire:
Kal-El, “Juggernaut” video premiere
Kal-El on “Juggernaut”:
“We are thrilled to finally unleash our next album “Astral Voyager Vol. 2” upon the world. “Vol. 2” is perhaps somewhat darker than Vol. 1, but everything is wrapped up in our style of playing and sound: expect heavy riffs, melodic vocals, and thunderous drums. “Juggernaut” is the first single, and it’s just that: a merciless juggernaut pounding every inch of your body with heavy, oh so heavy drums and riffs wrapped up in a wall of sound with the typical melodic KAL-EL vocals.”
Juggernaut is the lead single from the upcoming album ‘Astral Voyager Vol 2,’ set for release in February 2026. ‘Astral Voyager Vol 2 is a co-release by Majestic Mountain Records and Blues Funeral Recordings!
Kal-el will tour the US in October. Catch them on these dates October 16: The Odditorium – Asheville, NC October 17: The Pour House Music Hall – Raleigh, NC October 18: TV Eye – Queens, NY October 19: Sonia – Cambridge, MA October 21: MilkBoy Philly – Philadelphia, PA October 22: The Metro Gallery – Baltimore, MD October 23: Westside Bowl – Youngstown, OH October 24: The Sanctuary Detroit – Hamtramck, MI October 25: Reggie’s Rock Club – Chicago, IL October 26: X-Ray Arcade – Cudahy, WI October 28: Bottleneck – Lawrence, KS October 29: The Vanguard – Tulsa, OK October 30: The Lost Well – Austin, TX
Enjoy, and may the fuzz be with you!
Credits Video by Drain Hope ( / drainhope ) Written and performed by Kal-El Recorded at Bridge Burner Recording Engineered by Ørjan Kristoffersen Lund Produced by Kal-El Co-produced by Ørjan Kristoffersen Lund Mixed and mastered by Ruben Willem Copyright to Darkspace Music
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 4th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Having made an initial incursion into US territory last Fall around their appearance at Ripplefest Texas 2024, Norwegian purveyors of plus-sized riffage Kal-El have announced a return this coming October to tour the Eastern Seaboard (plus some of the Midwest) as they continue to promote their new album released just last month, Astral Voyager Vol. 1 (review here), which like everything the band has done to this point, has been received by listeners like baby birds opening their mouths for groove. That’s how nature works, right?
In any case, cool that Kal-El will travel to the United States before the visa runs out and get to cover more ground. I wouldn’t be surprised if they followed this with a European run either, as they’ve never been shy when it comes to making the rounds, and thanks to the band for coming back over to this weird, huge, disjointed wreck of cable company fiefdoms we still deign to call a country. Hope you don’t like stuff like renewable energy or civil liberties. Also the democrats say ‘Happy Pride,’ so there’s that.
I typed out these dates, which is the only time I ever feel like it’s bullshit I don’t make any money doing this site. But yeah, here they are. The poster and blurb were on socials:
Hey USA – see you on tour this fall, and we bring with us the amazing @insomniac_atl as support
KAL-EL w/ Insomniac: 10/16 Asheville NC The Odd 10/17 Raleigh NC The Pour House 10/18 Brooklyn NY TV Eye 10/19 Cambridge MA Sonia 10/21 Philadelphia PA Milk Boy 10/22 Baltimore MD Metro Gallery 10/23 Youngstown Ohio Westside Bowl 10/24 Detroit MI Sanctuary 10/25 Chicago IL Reggies 10/26 Milwaukee WI X-Ray Arcade 10/28 Lawrence KS Bottleneck 10/29 Tulsa OK The Vanguard 10/30 Austin TX The Lost Well 10/31 New Orleans LA Holy Diver 11/01 Panama City FL Mosey’s 11/02 Atlanta GA Boggs Social
Good first day yesterday. Good second day today. I’ve been doing Quarterly Reviews for over a decade now, and I’ve kind of learned over time the kind of thing I should be writing about. It might be a record that has a ton of hype or one that has none, and it might be any number of styles — I also like to sneak some stuff in here that doesn’t ‘fit’ once in a while — but in my mind the standard is, “is this something I’ll want to have heard and/or written about later?”
For all the terrors of our age, the glut of good music coming out means there’s more than ever I want to write about, and in a weird way, I look forward to Quarterly Reviews as a way for me to dig in and get caught up a bit. I’ve already been blindsided this QR and it’s the second day. I call that a win.
Quarterly Review #11-20:
Kal-El, Astral Voyager Vol. 1
There are few acts the world over who so succintly summarize so much of the appeal of modern heavy rock. Norway’s Kal-El offer big riffs, big hooks, big melodies, songwriting, and still manage heavy-mellow vibes thanks to an ongoing cosmic thematic that brings desert rock methods to more ethereal places. Is “Cloud Walker” the best song they’ve yet written? It’s on the list for sure, but don’t discount nine-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “Astral Voyager” or the hey-that’s-a-Star-Trek-reference “Dilithium” with its dug-in low-distortion verses and the Captain‘s vocal outreach. All along, it’s never quite felt like Kal-El were reshaping heavy, but as time passes and they unveil Astral Voyager Vol. 1 with immediate promise of a follow-up, it’s curious how much Kal-El and notions of ‘peak genre’ align. Those of you who proselytize for riffs: even before you get to riding that groove in “Cosmic Sailor,” Kal-El are primed for ambassadorship.
North Carolinian sludgethrowers Bronco take their name from their bassist/vocalist, who also goes by Bronco, and who in the 2010s cut a tone-worshiping generational swath through the Southern wing of the style as a member of Toke, proffering heavy riffs, harsh-throat vocals, and a disaffection that can only be called classic. With eight songs rolling out over 45 minutes, Bronco‘s Bronco picks up the thread where Toke left off with pieces like “Ride Eternal,” which crawls, or the declarative riffing of “Legion” (eerie guest vocals included amid all the pummel), or the closer “TONS,” which I’m going to assume isn’t titled after the Italian sludge-band, though if those guys wanted to put out a song called “Bronco” on their next record, they’d be well within their rights. A remarkably cohesive debut for something that’s so loudly telling you to fuck yourself. These guys’ll be opening for High on Fire in no time.
Although one wouldn’t listen to Santiago, Chile’s Ocultum and be likely to have “refined” top the list of impressions given by the raw, rot-coated sludge of their third album and Heavy Psych Sounds debut, Buena Muerte, the grim-leaning atmosphere, charge later in the title-track, cultish presentation and the atmosphere emergent both from guitar-wail and yelling interlude “Fortunato’s Fortune” and from the material that surrounds, whether that’s the title-track or the just-under-12-minute “Last Weed on Earth.” The record finds the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Sebastián Bruna, bassist Pablo Cataldo and drummer Ricardo Robles dug in, stoned and malevolent. They’re not as over-the-top as many in cult rock, but one does get a sense of ceremony from “Last Weed on Earth” and subsequent capper “Emki’s Return” — the latter galloping in its first half and willfully devolved from there into avant noise — even if that’s more about the making of the songs than the performance of genre tropes.
The grunge crunch of “Running With Secrets” and the Cantrell-y acoustics of “Push” are barely the beginning of the story as regards Fidel A Go Go‘s meld of sounds, which ranges from the willfully desert rocking “Sandstorm” to the proggy “Lil Shit,” the transposed blues of “Rainy Days” and the penultimate “Psychedelicexistentialcrisisalidocious,” which is serene in its melody and troubling in the words, as one would hope, and while the moniker and the punny album title speak to shenanigans, the Brisbane four-piece offer a point of view both instrumentally and lyrically that is engaging and draws together the stylistic range. There’s little doubt left to whom “A Stench of Musk” and “Barely an Adversary” are about, but even that’s not the extent of the perspective resonant in these 11 songs. There’s enough fuzz here for desert heads, but Fidel A Go Go are broader in attitude and craft, and Diss Engaged makes a point of its artistic freedom.
Like their 2023 debut EP, Lady Cadaver, Tumble‘s second short offering, Lost in Light sees the trio of guitarist/vocalist Liam Deak, bassist Tarun Dawar and drummer Will Adams working with producer/engineer Ian Blurton (Ian Blurton’s Future Now, etc.) to hone and sharpen a classic, proto-metallic sound without seeing a dip in recording quality. As such, the five songs/20 minutes of Lost in Light are duly brash — looking at you, “Dead by Rumour” and the Radio Moscow-esque “The Less I Know” — but crisp in tone and execution. The mid-tempo “Sullen Slaves” picks up in its solo section later for a bit of boogie, and the slightly-slower metallic lurch of “Laid by Fear” sets up a contrast with the swinging closer “Wings of Gold” that makes the ending of the EP an absolute strut. They aren’t even asking a half-hour of your time, and the rewards are more than commensurate for getting down. They continue to be one to watch as they position themselves for a full-length debut in the next couple years.
Normally I might consider it a hindrance to have no clue what’s going on, but if you’ve never before encountered Italy/France semi-industrial duo Putan Club you might just find yourself in better position going into Filles d’Octobre as the avant garde radfem troupe unfurl a live set recorded at Portugal’s Amplifest, presumably in 2022. But if you don’t know it’s a live record, what’s coming musically, or that Filles d’Octobre is derived from their 2017 debut album, Filles de Mai, there’s a decent change your contextless self will be scrathing your head in wonder of just what’s going on with the bouncy lurch and maybe xylophone of “Filippino,” and that seems to suit Putan Club just fine. If you have to break something to remake it, Putan Club are set to the task of manifesting a rock and roll that is dangerous, new, unrepentantly socially critical, and ready to dance when you are. That they meet these significant ambitions head on shouldn’t be discounted. Not for everybody, but definitely for everybody who thinks they’ve heard it all.
The first live offering from Argentinian prog-heavy instrumentalists IAH follows behind the band’s most expansive studio LP to-date, 2023’s V (review here), and brings into emphasis the group’s dynamic. It’s not just about being able to make a part sound floaty or to make the part next to it crush, but the character of a piece like the 24-minute “Noboj pri Uaset” (which might be new) is as much about the journey undertaken in their builds and the smoothness of the shifts between parts. They dip back to their earlier going for “Sheut” at the start of the set and “Ourboros” and “Eclipsum” the latter of which closes, and the bass in “Sentado en el Borde de una Pregunta” is worth the price of admission alone, never mind as a complement to the extended progression of “Noboj pri Uaset,” which is something of the buried lede here. So be it. On stage or on record, IAH offer immersion unto themselves. A little more tonal edge as a result of the live recording doesn’t hurt that one bit.
Before the Dawn of Time is upwards of the seventh full-length from Swedish vintage-style heavy rockers Gin Lady, and in addition to seeing them make the jump from Kozmik Artifactz to Ripple Music, the sans-pretense 11-songer invents its own moment. It’s like the comedown era (from 1968-1974, roughly) happened, but happened differently. It’s another path to a heavy rock future. There’s ’70s vibes in “Tingens Sanna Natur” a-plenty, and if it’s boogie or push or hooky melodic wash you want, “Mulberry Bend” has you covered for that and then some, never mind the down-home strum of “Bliss on the Line” or the pastoral contemplation of “The Long Now,” as Gin Lady put a classy stamp of their own on classic aural ideologies, as what are no doubt hyperspecific keyboards make the production smooth and let “Ways to Cross the Sky” commune with Morricone while capper “You’re a Big Star” drops a melody that can really only be called “arena ready.” As it stands, it’ll probably go over killer at festivals across Europe.
Duly apocalyptic for being the band’s first full-length release since 2019, Adrift‘s fourth album, Dry Soil, elicits an overarching doom that makes its tonal claustrophobia all the more affecting. The long-running Madrid outfit offer six songs that veer between the contemplative and the caustic as throatrippers worthy of Enslaved add an element of the extreme to the post-metallic intensity of “Edge” and “Restart” in the record’s middle. There are heavy rock underpinnings — that is, somebody here still likes Sabbath — but Adrift are well at home in all the bludgeonry, and “Bonfire” finishes by tying black metal, sludge, noise and darkly thrashing metal together with a suitably severe ambience. Are they torching it at the end? Kind of, but just replace “it” with “everything” and you’ll have a better idea perhaps of where they’re coming from on the whole. But for regionalist discrimination, Adrift would’ve conquered Europe a long time ago.
Berlin trio Black Sadhu — guitarist/vocalist Max Lowry (also synth, effects), bassist Alex Glimm and drummer Martin Cederlund — employ atmosphere to a point of cinematics on their second full-length, Ashes of Aether, following up the post-doom wash of 2021 standalone single “Mindless Masses” with plays back and forth between full-heft nod and take-a-breather meanderings. This cuts momentum less than one might think as the keyboard and drone and sample of “Tumors of Light” lend experimentalist verve to “Descent,” the next of the nine-track outing’s more-complete-song songs, as the latter unfolds with a shine on the crash that continues to cut through the surrounding rumble as the procession unfurls. Patience, then. So long as you know the payoff is coming — and it is; looking at you, “Electric Death” — and don’t mind being stretched and contorted on a molecular level between here and there, you should be good to go.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 11th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Astral Voyager Vol. 1 will be released May 16 and begin a two-album cycle for Norwegian heavy rockers Kal-El. Also their first offering for Blues Funeral Recordings and a continued alliance with Majestic Mountain Records, the band’s sixth LP and the follow-up to 2021’s Dark Majesty (review here) is introduced to public ears and eyes via the new single “B.T.D.S.C.,” for which a new video is streaming at the bottom of this post. Both Astral Voyager Vol. 1 and its intended companion LP follow a narrative concept related to escaping oppression in space.
Those are the basic facts, and if you know Kal-El, the where and when and what is probably all you need. To that end, the single is an acronym standing for ‘Black Train Deep Space Caravan’ — obviously — and is a six-minute burner in what’s become the Kal-El tradition, blasting desert rock into the interstellar medium with energy to space and a solid sense of craft beneath. It’s very much a Kal-El song, in other words. Don’t be surprised when it’s stuck in your head. That’s part of the thing too.
I expect a press release about this any second now, but here’s the info from the Bandcamp page:
Set controls for the infinite expanse with staggering new epic Astral Voyager from KAL-EL.
Formed in Stavanger, Norway in 2012, KAL-EL established themselves as a unique force in the international heavy underground, blending Scandinavian desert-style rock, classic metal, psychedelia and doom elements with ambitious sci-fi themes.
After a profuse series of mind-expanding journeys through spacetime (five albums and three EPs from 2013 to 2023), the band are back with the most significant milestone in their multi-dimensional journey yet.
Astral Voyager Vol. 1 tells the saga of intergalactic bounty hunter Mica, who trades in taking down the scum of the universe while dodging The Nine, a control-obsessed consortium that seeks to dominate her as they do the rest of the cosmos. Traveling and bringing in her marks, Mica’s journey is a story of hope, individuality and searching for meaning in the unknown.
Presented in two volumes during 2025, the Astral Voyager double album is the strongest realization of KAL-EL’s signature sonic approach to date. Full of downtuned grooves, soaring anthems and vintage sci-fi aesthetics, it’s an explosion of contagious fuzz-blues from Scandinavia’s prolific and impressive masters of starfaring heaviness!
Written and performed by Kal-El Recorded at Bridge Burner Recording Engineered by Ørjan Kristoffersen Lund Produced by Kal-El Co-produced by Ørjan Kristoffersen Lund Mixed and mastered by Ruben Willem Artwork by Steven Yoyada Layout by ShaneHorror
Posted in Reviews on October 7th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Oh hi, I didn’t see you there. Me? Oh, you know. Nothing much. Staring off a cliffside about to jump headfirst into a pool of 100 records. The usual.
I’m pretty sure this is the second time this year that a single Quarterly Review has needed to be two weeks long. It’s been a busy year, granted, but still. I keep waiting for the tide to ebb, but it hasn’t really at all. Older bands keep going, or a lot of them do, anyhow — or they come back — and new bands come up. But for all the war, famine, plague and strife and crisis and such, it’s a golden age.
But hey, don’t let me keep you. I’ve apparently been doing QRs since 2013, and I remember trying to find a way to squeeze together similar roundups before it. I have no insight to add about that, it’s just something I dug back to find out the other day and was surprised because 11 years of this kind of thing is a really long gosh darn time.
On that note, let’s go.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
—
Agusa, Noir
The included bits of Swedish dialogue from the short film for which Agusa‘s Noir was written to serve as a soundtrack would probably ground the proceedings some if I spoke Swedish, admittedly. As it is, those voices become part of the dream world the Malmö-based otherwise-instrumentalist adventurers conjure across 15 at times wildly divergent pieces. In arrangement and resultant mood, from the ’70s piano sentimentality of “Ljusglimtar” to the darker church organ and flute workings of “Stad i mörker,” which is reprised as a dirge at the end, the tracks are evocative across a swath of atmospheres, and it’s not all drones or background noise. They get their rock in, and if you stick around for “Kalkbrottets hemlighet,” you get to have the extra pleasure of hearing the guitar eat the rest of the song. You could say that’s not a thing you care about hearing but I know it’d be a lie, so don’t bother. If you’ve hesitated to take on Agusa in the past because sometimes generally-longform instrumental progressive psychedelic heavy rock can be a lot when you’re trying to get to know it, consider Noir‘s shorter inclusions a decent entry point to the band. Each one is like a brief snippet serving as another demonstration of the kind of immersion they can bring to what they play.
With an assembled cast of singers that includes Mikko Kotamäki (Swallow the Sun), his Amorphis bandmates Tomi Koivusaari and Tomi Joutsen, Petri Eskelinen of Rapture, and Barren Earth bandmate Jón Aldará, and guests on lead guitar and a drummer from the underappreciated Mannhai, and Barren Earth‘s keyboardist sitting in for good measure, bassist Olli Pekka-Laine harnesses a spectacularly Finnish take on proggy death-psych metal for Octoploid‘s first long-player, Beyond the Aeons. The songs feel extrapolated from Amorphis circa Elegy, putting guttural vocals to folk inspired guitar twists and prog-rock grooves, but aren’t trying to be that at all, and as ferocious as it gets, there’s always some brighter element happening, something cosmic or folkish or on the title-track both, and Octoploid feels like an expression of creative freedom based on a vision of a kind of music Pekka-Laine wanted to hear. I want to hear it too.
The Obscure River Experiment, as a group collected together for the live performance from which The Ore has been culled, may or may not be a band. It is comprised of players from the sphere of Psychedelic Source Records, and so as members of River Flows Reverse, Obscure Supersession Collective, Los Tayos and others collaborate here in these four periodically scorching jams — looking at you, middle of “Soul’s Shiver Pt. 2” — it could be something that’ll happen again next week or next never. Not knowing is part of the fun, because as far out as something like The Obscure River Experiment might and in fact does go, there’s chemistry enough between all of these players to hold it together. “Soul Shiver Pt. 1” wakes up and introduces the band, “Pt. 2” blows it out for a while, “I See Horses” gets funky and then blows it out, and “The Moon in Flesh and Bone” feels immediately ceremonial with its sustained organ notes, but becomes a cosmic boogie ripper, complete with a welcome return of vocals. Was it all made up on the spot? Was it all a dream? Maybe both?
Way underhyped South Carolinian progressive heavy rockers Shun arrive at the sound of their second LP, Dismantle, able to conjure elements of The Cure and Katatonia alongside Cave In-style punk-born groove, but in Shun‘s case, the underlying foundation is noise rock, so when “Aviator” opens up to its hook or “NRNS” is suddenly careening pummel or “Drawing Names” half-times the drums to get bigger behind the forward/obvious-focal-point vocal melodies of Matt Whitehead (ex-Throttlerod), there’s reach and impact working in conjunction with a thoughtful songwriting process pushed forward from where on their 2021 self-titled debut (review here) but that still seems to be actively working to engage the listener. That’s not a complaint, mind you, especially since Dismantle succeeds to vividly in doing so, and continues to offer nuance and twists on the plot right up to the willful slog ending with (most of) “Interstellar.”
No Man’s Valley, Chrononaut Cocktail Bar/Flight of the Sloths
Whether it’s the brooding Nick Cave-style cabaret minimalism of “Creepoid Blues,” the ’60s psych of “Love” or the lush progressivism that emerges in “Seeing Things,” the hook of “Shapeshifter” or “Orange Juice” coming in with shaker at the end to keep things from finishing too melancholy, the first half of No Man’s Valley‘s Chrononaut Cocktail Bar/Flight of the Sloths still can only account for part of the scope as they set forth the pastoralist launch of the 18-minute “Flight of the Sloths” on side B, moving from acoustic strum and a repeating title line into a gradual build effective enough so that when Jasper Hesselink returns on vocals 13 minutes later in the spaced-out payoff — because yes, the sloths are flying between planets; was there any doubt? — it makes you want to believe the sloths are out there working hard to stay in the air. The real kicker? No Man’s Valley are no less considered in how they bring “Flight of the Sloths” up and down across its span than they are “Love” or “Shapeshifter” early on, both under three minutes long. And that’s what maturing as songwriters can do for you, though No Man’s Valley have always had a leg up in that regard.
Dallas’ Land Mammal defy expectation a few times over on their second full-length, with the songwriting of Will Weise and Kinsley August turning toward greater depth of arrangement and more meditative atmospheres across the nine songs/34 minutes of Emergence, which even in a rolling groove like “Divide” has room for flute and strings. Elsewhere, sitar and tanpura meet with lap steel and keyboard as Land Mammal search for an individual approach to modern progressive heavy. There’s some shades of Elder in August‘s approach on “I Am” or the earlier “Tear You Down,” but the instrumental contexts surrounding are wildly different, and Land Mammal thrive in the details, be it the hand-percussion and far-back fuzz colliding on “The Circle,” or the tabla and sitar, drums and keys as “Transcendence (Part I)” and “Transcendence (Part II)” finish, the latter with the sounds of getting out of the car and walking in the house for epilogue. Yeah, I guess after shifting the entire stylistic scope of your band you’d probably want to go inside and rest for a bit. Well earned.
Released through Majestic Mountain Records, the debut full-length from Forgotten King, The Seeker, would seem to have been composed and recorded entirely by Azul Josh Bisama, also guitarist in Kal-El, though a full lineup has since formed. That happens. Just means the second album will have a different dynamic than the first, and there are some parts as in the early cut “Lost” where that will be a benefit as Azul Josh refines the work laying out a largesse-minded, emotively-evocative approach on these six cuts, likewise weighted and soaring. The album is nothing if not aptly-named, though, as Forgotten King lumber through “Drag” and march across 10 minutes of stately atmospheric doom, eventually seeing the melodic vocals give way to harsher fare in the second half, what’s being sought seems to have been found at least on a conceptual level, and one might say the same of “Around the Corner” or “The Sun” taking familiar-leaning desert rock progressions and doing something decisively ‘else’ with them. Very much feels like the encouraging beginning of a longer exploration.
Branched off from drummer/synthesist Paul Williams‘ intermittent work over the decades with Quarkspace, the mostly-solo-project Church of Hed explores progressive, kraut and space rock in a way one expects far more from Denmark than Columbus, Ohio — to wit, Jonathan Segel (Øresund Space Collective, Camper Van Beethoven) guests on violin, bass and guitar at various points throughout the nine-tracker, which indeed is about an hour long at 57 minutes. Church of Hed‘s last outing, 2022’s The Father Road, was an audio travelogue crossing the United States from one coast to the other. The Fifth Hour is rarely so concerned with terrestrial impressionism, and especially in its longer-form pieces “Pleiades Waypoint” (13:50), “Son of a Silicon Rogue” (14:59) or “The Fifth Hour” (8:43), it digs into sci-fi prog impulses that even in the weird blips and robot twists of the interlude “Aniluminescence 2” or the misshapen techno in the closing semi-reprise “Bastard Son of The Fifth Hour” never quite feels as dystopian as some other futures in the multiverse, and that becomes a strength.
Like the Melvins on an AC/DC kick or what you might get if you took ’70s arena rock, put it in a can and shook it really, really hard, Italian duo Zolle are a burst of weirdo sensation on their fifth full-length, Rosa. The songs are ready for whatever football match stadium P.A. you might want to put them on — hugely, straight-ahead, uptempo, catchy, fun in pieces like “Pepe” and “Lana” at the outset, “Merda,” “Pompon,” “Confetto” and “Fiocco” later on, likewise huge and silly in “Pois” or closer “Maialini e Maialine,” and almost grounded on “Toffolette e Zuccherini” at the start but off and running again soon enough — if you can keep up with guitarist/vocalist Marcello and drummer Stefano, for sure they make it worth the effort, and capture some of the intensity of purpose they bring to the stage in the studio and at the same time highlighting the shenanigans writ large throughout in their riffs and the cheeky bit of pop grandiosity that’s such a toy in their hands. You would not call it light on persona.
Thicker in tone than much of modern black metal, and willing toward the organic in a way that feels born of Cascadia a little more to the northwest as they blast away in “Era of Ash,” Boise, Idaho’s Shadow and Claw nonetheless execute moody rippers across the five songs/41 minute of their debut, Whereabouts Unknown. Known for his work in Ealdor Bealu and the solo-project Sawtooth Monk, guitarist/vocalist Travis Abbott showcases a rasp worthy of Enslaved‘s Grutle Kjellson on the 10-minute “Wrath of Thunder,” so while there are wolves amid the trio’s better chairs, to be sure, Shadow and Claw aren’t necessarily working from any single influence in or out of char-prone extreme metals, and as the centerpiece gives over to the eponymous “Shadow and Claw,” those progressive aspirations are reaffirmed as Abbott, drummer/backing vocalist Aaron Bossart (also samples) and bassist/backing vocalist Geno Lopez find room for a running-water-backed acoustic epilogue to “Scouring the Plane of Existence” and the album as a whole. Easy to imagine them casting these songs into the sunset on the side of some pointy Rocky Mountain or other, shadows cast and claws raised.
