Last day. Maybe I’m supposed to have some grand reflection as we hit 100 of 100 records for the Quarterly Review, but I’ll spare you. I’ve put a few records from the bunch on year-end lists, enjoyed a lot of music, wondered why a few people got in touch with me in the first place, and generally plotzed through to the best of my ability. Thanks as always to The Patient Mrs., through whom all things are possible, for facilitation.

And thank you for reading. I hope you’ve managed to find something killer in all this, but if not, there’s still today to go, so you’ve got time.

Next QR is probably early October, and you know what? I’ve already got records lined up for it. How insane is that?

Quarterly Review #91-100:

Jo Quail, The Cartographer

To list the personnel involved in Jo Quail‘s Roadburn-commissioned five-movement work The Cartographer would consume the rest of this review, so I won’t, but the London electric cellist is at the center of an orchestral experiment the stated purpose of which is to find the place where classical and heavy musics meet. Percussion thuds, there’s piano and electric violin and a whole bunch of trombones, and whatever that is making the depth-charge thud underneath “Movement 2,” some voices and narration at the start by Alice Krige, who once played the Borg Queen among many other roles. Though Quail composed The Cartographer for Roadburn — originally in 2020 — the recording isn’t captured on that stage, but is a studio LP, which lets each headphone-worthy nuance and tiny flash of this or that shine through. So is it heavy? Not really in any traditional sense, but of course that’s the point. Is SunnO))) heavy? Sure. It’s less about conforming to given notions of genre characteristics than bringing new ideas to them and saying this-can-be-that in the way that innovative art does, but heavy? Why the hell not? Think of it as mind-expansion, only classy.

Jo Quail on Facebook

By Norse Music website

—

 

Experiencia Tibetana, Vol. II

An aptly named second full-length from Buenos Aires trio Experiencia Tibetana greatly solidifies the band’s approach, which of course itself is utterly fluid. Having brought in Gaston Saccoia on drums, vocals and other percussion alongside guitarist/vocalist Walter Fernandez and bassist Leandro Moreno Vila since their recorded-in-2014-released-in-2020 debut, Vol. I (review here), the band take the methodology of meditative exploration from that album and pare it down to four wholly expansive processions, resonant in their patience and earthy psychedelic ritualizing. Each side of the 48-minute LP is comprised of a shorter track and a longer, and they’re arranged for maximum immersion as one climbs a presumably Tibetan mountain, going up and coming back down with the longest material in the middle, the 16-minute pair “Ciudad de latahes” and “(Desde el) Limbo” running in hypnotic succession with minimalism, noise wash, chanting, percussive cacophony, dead space, bass fuzz, spoken word and nearly anything else they want at their disposal. With “El delito espiritual I” (8:18) and the maybe-eBow(?) ghost howls of “El delito espiritual II” (7:19) on either side, Vol. II charts a way forward for the trio as they move into unknown aural reaches.

Experiencia Tibetana on Facebook

Experiencia Tibetana on Bandcamp

—

 

People of the Black Circle, People of the Black Circle

Not quite like anything else, Athenian conjurors People of the Black Circle plunge deep into horror/fantasy atmospheres, referencing H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Howard within the five tracks of their nonetheless concise 34-minute/five-track self-titled debut. Weighted in tone and mood, almost garage-doom in its production, the synth-backing of “Cimmeria” unfolds after the outward crunch of leadoff “Alchemy of Sorrow” — like Euro doom dramaturge transposed onto a bed of ’80s synths with Om-style bass — and from centerpiece “The Ghoul and the Seraph (Ghoul’s Song II)” through the bookending choral figures and either sampled or synthesized horns over the resolute chug of “Nyarlathotep” and more straight-ahead slow-motion push of closer “Ghosts in Agartha,” which swirls out a highlight solo after a wailing verse lets go and seems to drift away after its payoff for the album as an entirety. While in concept, People of the Black Circle‘s aesthetic isn’t necessarily anything new, there’s no denying the boundaries of dungeon synth and horror/garage doom are being transcended here, and that mixture feels like it’s being given a fresh perspective in these songs, even if the thematic is familiar. A mix of new and old, then? Maybe, but the new wins out decisively. In the parlance of our times, “following.”

People of the Black Circle on Facebook

Red Truth Productions on Bandcamp

—

 

Black Capricorn, Cult of Blood

It always seems to be a full moon when Black Capricorn are playing, regardless of actual cloud cover or phase. The Sardinian trio of guitarist/vocalist Fabrizio Monni (also production; also in Ascia), bassist Virginia Pras and drummer Rachela Piras offer an awaited follow-up to their 2019 Solstice EP (discussed here). Though it’s their fifth full-length overall, it’s the second with this lineup of the band (first through Majestic Mountain), and it comes packed with references like the doomly “Worshipping the Bizarre Reverend” and “Snake of the Wizard” as distorted, cultish and willfully strange vibes persist across its 44-minute span. Doom. Even the out-there centerpiece kinda-interlude “Godsnake Djamballah” and the feedback-laced lurch-march of the nine-minute “Witch of Endor” have a cauldron-psych vibe coinciding with the largely riff-driven material, though, and it’s the differences between the songs that ultimately bring them together, closer “Uddadhaddar” going full-on ritualist with percussion and drone and chanting vocals as if to underscore the point. It’s been five years since they released Omega (review here), their most recent LP, and Cult of Blood wholly justifies the wait.

Black Capricorn on Facebook

Majestic Mountain Records store

—

 

SABOTØR, Skyggekæmper

The Danish title Skyggekæmper translates to English as “shadow fighter,” and if punk-informed heavy rocking Aarhus three-piece SABOTØR mean it in a political context, then fair enough. I speak no Danish, but their past work and titles here like “2040-Planen” — seemingly a reference to Denmark’s clean energy initiative — the stomping, funky “Ro På, Danmark!” (‘calm down, Denmark’) and even the suitably over-the-top “King Diamond” seem to have speaking about Danishness (Danedom?) as an active element. Speaking of “active,” the energy throughout the nine-song/49-minute span of the record is palpable, and while they’re thoroughly in the post-Truckfighters fuzz rock dominion tonally, the slowdowns of “Edderkoppemor” and the closing title-track hit the brakes at least here and there in their longer runtimes and expand on the thrust of the earlier “Oprør!” and “Arbejde Gør Fri,” the start-stop riffing of which seems as much call to dance as a call to action — though, again, I say that as someone without any actual idea if it’s the latter — making the entire listening experience richer on the whole while remaining accessible despite linguistic or any other barriers to entry that might be perceived. To put it another way, you don’t have to be up on current issues facing Denmark to enjoy the songs, and if they make you want to be afterward, so much the better.

SABOTØR on Facebook

SABOTØR on Bandcamp

—

 

The Buzzards of Fuzz, The Buzzards of Fuzz

Vocalist/rhythm guitarist Van Bassman, lead guitarist/backing vocalist Benjamin J. Davidow and bassist/backing vocalist/percussionist Charles Wiles are The Buzzards of Fuzz. I’m not sure who that leaves as drummer on the Atlanta outfit’s self-titled Sept. 2021 debut LP — could be producer/engineer Kristofer Sampson, Paul Stephens and/or Nick Ogawa, who are all credited with “additional instrumentation” — and it could be nobody if they’re programmed, but one way or the other, The Buzzards of Fuzz sure sound like a complete band, from the trippin’-on-QOTSA vibe of “Tarantulove” and “Desert Drivin’ (No Radio)” (though actually it’s Kyuss alluded to in the lyrics of the latter) to the more languid psych pastoralia of “All in Your Head” and the spacious two minutes of “Burned My Tongue on the Sun,” the purposeful-feeling twist into Nirvana of “Mostly Harmless” and the nod to prior single “Lonely in Space” that is finale “Lonely in Space (Slight Return).” Sleek grooves, tight, hooky songwriting and at times a languid spirit that comes through no matter how fast they’re playing give The Buzzards of Fuzz, the album, a consistent mood across the 11 songs and 32 minutes that allows the delivery to play that much more of a role in making short pieces feel expansive.

The Buzzards of Fuzz on Facebook

The Buzzards of Fuzz on Bandcamp

—

 

Temple of Void, Summoning the Slayer

Crawl into Temple of Void‘s deathly depths and you may find yourself duly consumed. Their style is less outright doom than it used to be, but the Detroit extremist five-piece nonetheless temper their bludgeoning with a resilient amount of groove, and even at their fastest in songs like “Hex, Curse & Conjuration” and some of the more plundering moments in “A Sequence of Rot” just prior, the weight behind their aural violence remains a major factor. The keys in “Deathtouch,” which follows down-you-go opener “Behind the Eye” and leads into “Engulfed” branches out the band’s sound with keyboards (or guitar-as-keyboards, anyway) and a wider breadth of atmosphere than they’ve enjoyed previously — “Engulfed” seems to touch on Type O Negative-style tonality as it chugs into its midsection — and the concluding “Dissolution” introduces a quieter, entirely-clean approach for just under three key-string-laced minutes that Temple of Void have legitimately never shown before. Seems doubtful they’ll take that as far as Opeth in putting out Damnation — though that’s just crazy enough to work — but it shows that as Temple of Void move toward the 10-year mark, their progression has not abated whatsoever. And they still kill, so no worries there.

Temple of Void on Facebook

Relapse Records website

—

 

Anomalos Kosmos, Mornin Loopaz

Psych jazz, instrumental save for some found voice samples which, if you were listening on headphones out in the wild, say, might have you wondering if you’re missing the announcement for your train at the station. Based in Thessaloniki, Greece, Anomalos Kosmos brim with experimentalist urgency on the half-hour of Mornin Loopaz, the seven tracks of which are titled playing off the days of the week — “Meinday,” “Chooseday,” “Whensday,” etc. — but which embark each on their own explorations of the outer reaches of far out. The longest of the bunch is “Thirstday” at just over five minutes, and at 30 minutes one could hardly accuse them of overstaying their welcome. Instead, the shimmering tone, fluid tempos and unpredictable nature of their style make for a thrilling listen, “Thirstday” remaining vital even as it spaces out and “Friedday” picking up directly from there with a ready sense of relief. They spend the weekend krautrocking in “Shatterday” and managing to squeeze a drum solo in before the rushing Mediterranean-proggy end of “Sinday,” the crowd noise that follows leaving one wondering if there aren’t more subversive messages being delivered beneath the heady exterior. In any case, this is a band from a place where the sun shines brightly, and the music stands as proof. Get weird and enjoy.

Anomalos Kosmos on Facebook

Anomalos Kosmos on Bandcamp

—

 

Cauchemar, Rosa Mystica

This third full-length from Quebec-based doom outfit Cauchemar brings the band past their 15th anniversary and makes a bed for itself in traditionalist metallurgy, running currents of NWOBHM running through opener “Jour de colère” and “Rouge sang” while “Danger de nuit” takes a more hard rock approach and the penultimate roller “Volcan” feels more thoroughly Sabbathian. With eight songs presumably arranged four per vinyl side, there’s a feeling of symmetry as “Le tombeau de l’aube” tempts Motörhead demons and answers back with wilful contradiction the late-’70s/early-’80s groove that comes late in “Notre-Dame-sous-Terre.” Closer “La sorcière” tolls its bells presumably for thee as the lead guitar looks toward Pentagram and vocalist Annick Giroux smoothly layers in harmony lines before the church organ carries the way out. Classic in its overarching intentions, the songs nonetheless belong to Cauchemar exclusively, and speak to the dead with a vibrancy that avoids the trappings of cultism while working to some of its strengths in atmosphere, sounding oldschool without being tired, retro or any more derivative than it wants to be. No argument here, it’s metal for rockers, doom for doomers, riffs for the converted or those willing to be. I haven’t looked to see if they have patches yet, but I’d buy one if they do.

Cauchemar on Facebook

Temple of Mystery Records website

—

 

Seum, Blueberry Cash

If you ever wanted to hear Weedeater or Dopethrone hand you your ass with Sons of Otis-worthy tones, Seum‘s Blueberry Cash has your back. The no-guitar-all-bass-and-drums-and-screams Montreal three-piece are just as crusty and weedian as you like, and in “Blueberry Cash,” “John Flag” and the seven-minute “Hairy Muff,” they reinforce sludge extremity with all that extra low end as if to remind the universe where the idea of music being heavy in the first place comes from. Grooves are vital and deathly, produced with just enough clarity to come through laced with what feels like extra nastiness, and “John Flag”‘s blues verse opens into a chasm of a chorus, waiting with sharpened teeth. Rounding out, “Hairy Muff” is a take on a song by vocalist Gaspar‘s prior band, Lord Humungus, and it’s drawn out into a plodding homage to liberation, pubes and the ability of sludge to feel like it’s got its hands on either side of your face and is pressing them together as hard as it can. These guys are a treasure, I mean that, and I don’t care what genre you want to tag it as being or how brutal and skinpeeling they want to make it, something with this much fuckall will always be punk rock in my mind.

Seum on Facebook

Seum on Bandcamp

—

 

Somewhat unbelievably, we’ve reached the penultimate day of the Summer 2022 Quarterly Review. I believe it because every time I blink my eyes, I can feel my body trying to fall asleep. Doesn’t matter. There’s rock and roll to be had — 10 records’ worth — so I’mma get on it. If you haven’t found anything yet that speaks to you this QR — first of all, really??? — maybe today will be the day. If you’re feeling any of it, I’d love to know in the comments. Otherwise, off into the ether it goes.

In any case, thanks for reading.

Quarterly Review #81-90:

Hemlock Branch, Hemlock Branch

[Note: art above (photo by Nikita Gross) is not final. Album is out in September. Give it time.] Those familiar with Ohio sludge metallers Beneath Oblivion might recognize Scotty T. Simpson (here also guitar, lap-steel and vocals) or keyboardist/synthesist Keith Messerle from that band, but Hemlock Branch‘s project is decisively different on their self-titled debut, however slow a song like “The Introvert” might be. With the echo-laden vocals of Amy Jo Combs floating and soaring above likewise big-sky riffs, the far-back crash of drummer David Howell (White Walls) and the it’s-in-there-somewhere bass of Derda Karakaya, atmosphere takes a central focus throughout the 10 tracks and 22 minutes of the release. Hints of black metal, post-metal, doom, heavy psychedelia, and noise-wash dirgemaking experimentalism pervade in minute-long cuts like “Incompatible,” the sample-topped “Temporal Vultures” and “Küfür,” which gives over to the closing duo “Lifelong Struggle” and “High Crimes & Misdemeanors.” As even the longest track, “Persona Non Grata,” runs just 4:24, the songs feel geared for modern attention spans and depart from commonplace structures in favor of their own ambient linearity. Not going to be for everyone, but Hemlock Branch‘s first offering shows an immediate drive toward individualism and is genuinely unpredictable, both of which already pay dividends.

Hemlock Branch on Facebook

Hemlock Branch on Bandcamp

—

 

Știu Nu Știu, New Sun

In “Siren” and at the grand, swelling progression of “Zero Trust,” one is drawn back to The Devil’s Blood‘s off-kilter psychedelic occultism by Swedish five-piece Știu Nu Știu — also stylized all-caps: ŞTIU NU ŞTIU — and their fourth album, New Sun, but if there’s any such direct Luciferianism in the sprawling eight-song/47-minute long-player, I’ve yet to find it. Instead, the band’s first outing through respected purveyors Heavy Psych Sounds takes the stylistic trappings of psychedelic post-punk and what’s typically tagged as some kind of ‘gaze or other and toss them directly into the heart of the recently born star named in the title, their sound subtle in rhythmic push but lush, lush, lush in instrumental and vocal melody. “New Sun” itself is the longest piece at 8:17 and it closes side A, but the expanses crafted are hardly more tamed on side B’s “Nyx” or the get-your-goth-dance-shoes-on “Zero Trust,” which follows. Opening with the jangly “Styx” and capping with the also-relatively-extended “Dragon’s Lair” (7:57) — a noisy final solo takes them out — Știu Nu Știu bask in the vague and feel entirely at home in the aural mists they so readily conjure.

Știu Nu Știu on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds website

—

 

Veljet, Emerger de la mentira llamada dios

The title of Veljet‘s debut LP, Emerger de la mentira llamada dios, translates from Spanish as, ‘Emerge from the lie called god.’ So yes, the point gets across. And Veljet hint toward metallism and an overarching darkness of purpose in “Estar vivo es nada,” “La construcción de los sentimientos negativos,” and the buzzing, bounce-bass-until-it-falls-apart “Arder al crecer,” despite being instrumental for the album’s half-hour duration save perhaps for some crowd noise filling out the acoustic “Mentir con tristeza” at the finish, people talking over acoustic guitar notes, as they almost invariably, infuriatingly will. That three-minute piece rounds out and is in form a far cry from the push of “Inundata” or the buzz-tone-click-into-airiness “Lucifer luz del mundo,” but there’s room for all of these things in what feels like Satanic escapism more than any occult trappings — that is to say, while it’s pretty safe to say Veljet aren’t religious types, I don’t think they’re rolling around holding devil-worship masses either — and the album as a whole is drawn together by this immersive, mood-altering slog, a sense of the day’s weight conveyed effectively in that of the guitars, bass and drums, making the acoustic finish, and the human shittiness of speaking over it, all the more of a poignant conclusion. If god’s a lie, people aren’t much better.

Veljet on Facebook

LSDR Records on Bandcamp

—

 

Swamp Lantern, The Lord is With Us

Longform avant metal that draws on atmospheres from Pacific Northwestern blackened tropes without bowing completely to them or any other wholly rigid style, doom or otherwise. Some of the vocals in the more open moments of “Still Life” bring to mind Ealdor Bealu‘s latest in their declarative purpose, but Swamp Lantern‘s The Lord is With Us takes its own presumably-left-hand path toward aural identity, finding a sound in the process that is both ambient and obscure but still capable of deep heft when it’s called for — see “Still Life” again. That song is one of two to cross the 10-minute mark, along with closer “The Halo of Eternal Night,” though wholly immersive opener “Blood Oath (on Pebble Beach)” and “Graven Tide” aren’t far off, the latter nestling into a combination of groove-riding guitar and flourish lead notes intertwining on their way toward and through a well charred second half of the song, the way eventually given to the exploratory title-track, shorter but working off a similarly building structure. They cap vampiric with “The Halo of Eternal Night,” perhaps nodding subtly back to “Blood Oath (On Pebble Beach)” — at least the blood part — while likewise bookending with a guest vocal from Aimee Wright, who also contributed to the opener. Complex, beautiful and punishing, sometimes all at once, The Lord is With Us is a debut of immediate note and range. Who knows what it may herald, but definitely something.

Swamp Lantern on Instagram

Swamp Lantern on Bandcamp

—

 

Terror Cósmico, Miasma

The hellscape in the Jason Barnett cover art for Mexico City duo Terror Cósmico‘s fourth full-length, Miasma, is a fair update for Hieronymus Bosch, and it’s way more Hell than The Garden of Earthly Delights, as suits the anxiety of the years since the band’s last album, 2018’s III (review here). The eight instrumental selections from guitarist Javier Alejandre and drummer Nicolás Detta is accordingly tense and brooding, with “En un Lugar Frio y Desolado” surging to life in weighted push after seeming to pick at its fingernails with nervousness. A decade on from their first EP, Terror Cósmico sound fiercer than they ever have on “Tonalpohualli” and the opener “Necromorfo” sets the album in motion with an intensity that reminds both of latter day High on Fire and the still-missed US sans-vocal duo Beast in the Field. That last is not a comparison I’ll make lightly, and it’s not that Miasma lacks atmosphere, just that the atmospherics in question are downtrodden, hard-hitting and frustrated. So yes, perfectly suited to the right-now in which they arrive.

Terror Cósmico on Instagram

LSDR Records on Bandcamp

Stolen Body Records store

—

 

Urna, Urna

Somewhere between aggressive post-metal, post-hardcore, sludge and ambient heavy rock, Stockholm’s Urna find a niche for themselves thoroughly Swedish enough to make me wonder why their self-titled debut LP isn’t out through Suicide Records. In any case, they lead with “You Hide Behind,” a resonant sense of anger in the accusation that is held to somewhat even as clean vocals are introduced later in the track and pushed further on the subsequent “Shine,” guitarist Axel Ehrencrona (also synth) handling those duties while bassist William Riever (also also synth) and also-in-Ocean–Chief drummer Björn Andersson (somebody get him some synth!) offer a roll that feels no less noise-derived than Cities of Mars‘ latest and is no more noise rock than it either. “Revelations” fucking crushes, period. Song is almost seven minutes. If it was 20, that’d be fine. Centerpiece indeed. “Werewolf Tantrum” follows as the longest piece at 8:06, and is perhaps more ambitious in structure, but that force is still there, and though “Sleep Forever” (plenty of synth) has a different vibe, it comes across as something of a portrayed aftermath for the bludgeoning that just took place. They sound like they’re just getting started on a longer progression, but the teeth gnashing throughout pulls back to the very birthing of post-metal, and from there Urna can go just about wherever they want.

Urna on Facebook

Urna on Bandcamp

—

 

Astral Magic, Magical Kingdom

Finnish songwriter, synthesist, vocalist, guitarist, bassist, etc. Santtu Laakso started Astral Magic as a solo-project, and he’s already got a follow-up out to Magical Kingdom called Alien Visitations that’s almost if not entirely synth-based and mostly instrumental, so he’s clearly not at all afraid to explore different vibes. On Magical Kingdom, he somewhat magically transports the listener back to a time when prog was for nerds. The leadoff title-track is filled with fantasy genre elements amid an instrumental spirit somewhere between Magma and Hawkwind, and it’s only the first of the eight explorations on the 42-minute offering. Keyboards are a strong presence throughout, whether a given song is vocalized or not, and as different international guest guitarists come and go, arrangements in “Dimension Link” and “Rainbow Butterfly” are further fleshed out with psychedelic sax. Side B opener “Lost Innocense” (sic) is a weirdo highlight among weirdo highlights, and after the spacious grandiosity of “The Hidden City” and the sitar-drone-reminiscent backing waveforms on “The Pale-Skinned Man,” closer “Seven Planes” finds resolution in classic krautrock shenanigans. If you’re the right kind of geek, this one’s gonna hit you hard.

Astral Magic on Facebook

Tonzonen Records website

—

 

Grey Giant, Turn to Stone

The story of Turn to Stone seems to take place in opener “The Man, the Devil and the Grey Giant” in which a man sells his soul to the devil and is cursed and turned into a mountain for his apparent comeuppance. For a setting to that tale, Santander, Spain’s Grey Giant present a decidedly oldschool take on heavy rock, reminiscent there of European trailblazers like Lowrider and Dozer, but creeping on chunkier riffing in “Unwritten Letter,” which follows, bassist/vocalist Mario “Pitu” Hospital raw of throat but not by any means amelodic over the riffs of Ravi and Hugo Echeverria and the drums of Pablo Salmón and ready to meet the speedier turn when it comes. An EP running four songs and 26 minutes, Turn to Stone Sabbath start-stops in “Reverb Signals in Key F,” but brings about some of the thickest roll as well as a particularly righteous solo from one if not both of the Echeverrias and the Kyussy riff of closer “Last Bullet” is filled out with a grim outlook of Europe’s future in warfare; obviously not the most uplifting of endings, but the trippier instrumental build in the song’s final movement seems to hold onto some hope or at very least wishful thinking.

Grey Giant on Facebook

Grey Giant on Bandcamp

—

 

Great Rift, Utopia

Symmetrically placed for vinyl listening, “The Return” and “Golden Skies” open sides A and B of Great Rift‘s second long-player, Utopia, with steady grooves, passionate vocals and a blend between psychedelic range and earthier tonal textures. I feel crazy even saying it since I doubt it’s what he’s going for, but Thomas Gulyas reminds a bit in his delivery of Messiah Marcolin (once of Candlemass) and his voice is strong enough to carry that across. He, fellow guitarist Andreas Lechner, bassist Peter Leitner and drummer Klaus Gulyas explore further reaches in subsequent cuts like “Space” and the soaringly out-there “Voyagers” as each half of the LP works shortest-to-longest so that the arrival of the warm heavy psych fuzz of “Beteigeuze” and minor-key otherworldly build-up of the closing title-track both feel plenty earned, and demonstrate plainly that Great Rift know the style they’re playing toward and what they’re doing with the personal spin they’re bringing to it. Four years after their debut, Vesta, Utopia presents its idealistic vision in what might just be a story about fleeing the Earth. Not gonna say I don’t get that.

Great Rift on Facebook

StoneFree Records website

—

 

Torpedo Torpedo, The Kuiper Belt Mantras

Most prevalent complaint in my mind with Torpedo Torpedo‘s The Kuiper Belt Mantras is it’s an EP and not a full-length album, and thus has to go on the Best Short Releases of 2022 list instead of the Best Debut LPs list. One way or the other, the four-song first-outing from the Vienna psychedelonauts is patient and jammy, sounding open, lush and bright while retaining a heaviness that is neither directly shoegaze-based nor aping those who came before. The trio affect spacious vibes in the winding threads of lead guitar and half-hints at All Them Witches in “Cycling Lines,” and cast themselves in a nod for “Verge” at least until they pass that titular mark at around five and a half minutes in and pick up the pace. With “Black Horizon” the groove is stonerized, righteous and familiar, but the cosmic and heavy psych spirit brought forth has a nascent sense of character that the fuller fuzz in “Caspian Dust” answers without making its largesse the entire point of the song. Loaded with potential, dead-on right now, they make themselves the proverbial ‘band to watch’ in performance, underlying craft, production value and atmosphere. Takes off when it takes off, is languid without lulling you to sleep, and manages to bring in a hook just when it needs one. I don’t think it’s a listen you’ll regret, whatever list I end up putting it on.

Torpedo Torpedo on Facebook

Electric Fire Records website

—

 

I don’t know what day it is. The holiday here in the States has me all screwed up. I know it’s not the weekend anymore because I’m posting today, but really, if this is for Tuesday or Wednesday, I’m kind of at a loss. What I do know is that it’s 10 more records, and some quick math at the “71-80” below — which, yes, I put there ahead of time when I set up the back end of these posts so hopefully I don’t screw it up; it’s a whole fucking process; never ask me about it unless you want to be so bored at by the telling that your eyeballs explode — tells me today Wednesday, so I guess I figured it out. Hoo-ray.

Three quarters of the way through, which feels reasonably fancy. And today’s a good one, too. I hope as always that you find something you dig. Now that I know what day it is, I’m ready to start.

Quarterly Review #71-80:

MWWB, The Harvest

It’s difficult to separate MWWB‘s The Harvest from the fact that it might be the Welsh act’s final release, as frontwoman Jessica Ball explained here. Their synth-laced cosmic doom certainly deserves to keep going if it can, but on the chance not, The Harvest suitably reaps the fruit of the progression the band began to undertake with 2015’s Nachthexen (review here), their songs spacious despite the weight of their tones and atmospheric even at their most dense. Proggy instrumental explorations like “Let’s Send These Bastards Whence They Came” and “Interstellar Wrecking” and the semi-industrial, vocals-also-part-of-the-ambience “Betrayal” surround the largesse of the title-track, “Logic Bomb,” the especially lumbering “Strontium,” and so on, and “Moon Rise” caps with four and a half minutes of voice-over-guitar-and-keys atmospherics, managing to be heavy even without any of the usual trappings thereof. If this is it, what a run they had, both when they were Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard and with this as their potential swansong.

MWWB on Facebook

New Heavy Sounds website

—

 

Righteous Fool, Righteous Fool

Look. Maybe it’s a fan-piece, but screw it, I’m a fan. And as someone who liked the second run of Corrosion of Conformity‘s Animosity-era lineup, this previously-unreleased LP from the three-piece that included C.O.C. bassist/vocalist Mike Dean and drummer/vocalist Reed Mullin (R.I.P.), as well as guitarist/vocalist Jason Browning, is only welcome. I remember when they put out the single on Southern Lord in 2010, you couldn’t really get a sense of what the band was about, but there’s so much groove in these songs — I’m looking right at you, “Hard Time Killing Floor” — that it’s that much more of a bummer the three-piece didn’t do anything else. Of course, Mullin rejoining Dean in C.O.C. wasn’t a hardship either, but especially in the aftermath of his death last year, it’s bittersweet to hear his performances on these songs and a collection of tracks that have lost none of their edge for the decade-plus they’ve sat on a shelf or hard drive somewhere. Call it a footnote if you want, but the songs stand on their own merits, and if you’re going to tell me you’ve never wanted to hear Dean sing “The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown),” then I think you and I are just done speaking for right now.

Righteous Fool on Facebook

Ripple Music website

—

 

Seven Nines and Tens, Over Opiated in a Forest of Whispering Speakers

I agree, it’s a very long album title. And the band name is kind of opaque in a kind of opaque way. Double-O-paque. And the art by Ahmed Emad Eldin (Pink Floyd, etc.) is weird. All of this is true. But I’m going to step outside the usual review language here, and instead of talking about how Vancouver post-noise rock trio Seven Nines and Tens explore new melodic and atmospheric reaches while still crushing your rib cage on their first record for the e’er tastemaking Willowtip label, I’m just going to tell you listen. Really. That’s it. If you consider yourself someone with an open mind for music that is progressive in its artistic substance without conforming necessarily to genre, or if you’re somebody who feels like heavy music is tired and can’t connect to the figurative soul, just press play on the Bandcamp embed and see where you end up on the other side of Over Opiated in a Forest of Whispering Speakers‘ 37 minutes. Even if it doesn’t change your life, shaking you to your very core and giving you a new appreciation for what can be done on a level of craft in music that’s still somehow extreme, just let it run and then take a breath afterward, maybe get a drink of water, and take a minute to process. I wrote some more about the album here if you want the flowery whathaveyou, but really, don’t bother clicking that link. Just listen to the music. That’s all you need.

Seven Nines & Tens on Facebook

Willowtip Records website

—

 

T.G. Olson, II

In March 2021, T.G. Olson, best known as the founding guitarist/vocalist for Across Tundras, released a self-titled solo album (review here). He’s had a slew of offerings out since — as he will; Olson is impossible to keep up with but one does one’s best — but II would seem to be a direct follow-up to that full-length’s declarative purpose, continuing and refining the sometimes-experimentalist, sometimes purposefully traditional folk songwriting and self-recording exploration Olson began (publicly, at least) a decade ago. Several of II‘s cuts feature contributions from Caleb R.K. Williams, but Olson‘s ability to build a depth of mix — consider the far-back harmonica in “Twice Gone” and any number of other flourishes throughout — is there regardless, and his voice is as definitively human as ever, wrought with a spirit of Americana and a wistfulness for a West that was wild not for its guns but the buffalo herds you could see from space and an emotionalism that makes the lyrics of “Saddled” seem all the more personal, whether or not they are, or the lines in “Enough Rope” that go, “Always been a bit of a misanthrope/Never had a healthy way to cope,” and don’t seem to realize that the song itself is the coping.

Electric Relics Records on Bandcamp

—

 

Freebase Hyperspace, Planet High

Issued on limited blue vinyl through StoneFly Records, Freebase Hyperspace‘s first full-length, Planet High, is much more clearheaded in its delivery than the band would seem to want you to think. Sure, it’s got its cosmic echo in the guitar and the vocals and so on, but beneath that are solidified grooves shuffling, boogieing and underscoring even the solo-fueled jam-outs on “Golden Path” and “Introversion” with a thick, don’t-worry-we-got-this vibe. The band is comprised of vocalist Ayrian Quick, guitarist Justin Acevedo, bassist Stephen Moore and drummer Peter Hurd, and they answer 2018’s Activation Immediate not quite immediately but with fervent hooks and a resonant sense of motion. It’s from Portland, and it’s a party, but Planet High upends expectation in its bluesy vocals, in its moments of drift and in the fact that “Cat Dabs” — whatever that means, I don’t even want to look it up — is an actual song rather than a mess of cult stoner idolatries, emphasizing the niche being explored. And just because it bears mentioning, heavy rock is really, really white. More BIPOC and diversity across the board only makes the genre richer. But even those more general concerns aside, this one’s a stomper.

Freebase Hyperspace on Facebook

StoneFly Records store

—

 

Melt Motif, A White Horse Will Take You Home

Not calling out other reviews (they exist; I haven’t read any), but any writeup about Melt Motif‘s debut album, A White Horse Will Take You Home, that doesn’t include the word “sultry” is missing something. Deeply moody on “Sleep” and the experimental-sounding “Black Hole” and occasionally delving into that highly-processed ’90s guitar sound that’s still got people working off inspiration from Nine Inch Nails‘ The Downward Spiral even if they don’t know it — see the chugs of “Mine” and “Andalusian Dog” for clear examples — the nine-track/37-minute LP nonetheless oozes sex across its span, such that even the sci-fi finale “Random Access Memory” holds to the theme. The band span’s from São Paulo, Brazil, to Bergen, Norway, and is driven by Rakel‘s vocals, Kenneth Rasmus Greve‘s guitar, synth and programming, and Joe Irente‘s bass, guitar, more synth and more programming. Together, they are modern industrial/electrionica in scope, the record almost goth in its theatrical pruning, and there’s some of the focus on tonal heft that one finds in others of the trio’s ilk, but Melt Motif use slower pacing and harder impacts as just more toys to be played with, and thus the album is deeply, repeatedly listenable, the clever pop structures and the clarity of the production working as the bed on which the entirety lays in waiting repose for those who’d take it on.

Melt Motif on Facebook

Apollon Records on Bandcamp

—

 

Tenebra, Moongazer

Moongazer is the second full-length from Bologna, Italy-based heavy psychedelic blues rockers Tenebra, and a strong current of vintage heavy rock runs through it that’s met head-on by the fullness of the production, by which I mean that “Cracked Path” both reminds of Rainbow — yeah that’s right — and doesn’t sound like it’s pretending it’s 1973. Or 1993, for that matter. Brash and raucous on its face, the nine-song outing proves schooled in both current and classic heavy, and though “Winds of Change” isn’t a Scorpions cover, its quieter take still offers a chance for the band to showcase the voice of Silvia, whose throaty, push-it-out delivery becomes a central focus of the songs, be it the Iommic roll of “Black Lace” or the shuffling closer “Moon Maiden,” which boasts a guest appearance from Screaming Trees‘ Gary Lee Conner, or the prior “Dark and Distant Sky,” which indeed brings the dark up front and the distance in its second, more psych-leaning second half. All of this rounds out to a sound more geared toward groove than innovation, but which satisfies in that regard from the opening guitar figure of “Heavy Crusher” onward, a quick nod to desert rock there en route to broader landscapes.

Tenebra on Facebook

New Heavy Sounds website

Seeing Red Records website

—

 

Doom Lab, IV: Ever Think You’re Smart​.​.​. And Then Find Out That You Aren’t?

With a drum machine backing, Doom Lab strums out riffs over the 16 mostly instrumental tracks of the project’s fourth demo since February of this year, Doom Lab IV: Ever Think You’re Smart​.​.​. And Then Find Out That You Aren’t?, a raw, sometimes-overmodulated crunch of tone lending a garage vibe to the entire procession. On some planet this might be punk rock, and maybe tucked away up in Anchorage, Alaska, it’s not surprising that Doom Lab would have a strange edge to their craft. Which they definitely do. “Clockwork Home II (Double-Thick Big Bottom End Dub)” layers in bass beneath a droning guitar, and “Diabolical Strike (w/ False Start)” is a bonus track (with vocals) that’s got the line, “You’ll think that everything is cool but then I’ll crush your motherfucking soul,” so, you know, it’s like that. Some pieces are more developed than others, as “Deity Skin II” has some nuanced layering of instrumentation, but in the harsh high end of “Spiral Strum to Heaven II” and the mostly-soloing “Infernal Intellect II,” Doom Lab pair weirdo-individualism with an obvious creative will. Approach with caution, because some of Doom Lab‘s work is really strange, but that’s clearly the intention from the start.

Doom Lab on Bandcamp

—

 

White Fuzzy Bloodbath, Medicine

What you see is what you get in the sometimes manic, sometimes blissed-out, sometimes punk, sometimes fluid, always rocking Medicine by White Fuzzy Bloodbath, which hearkens to a day when the universe wasn’t defined by internet-ready subgenre designations and a band like this San Jose three-piece had a chance to be signed to Atlantic, tour the universe, and eventually influence other outcasts in their wake. Alas, props to White Fuzzy Bloodbath‘s Elise Tarens — joined in the band by Alex Bruno and Jeff Hurley — for the “Interlude” shout, “We’re White Fuzzy Bloodbath and the world has no fucking idea!” before the band launch into the duly raw “Chaos Creator.” Songs like “Monster,” “Beep-Bop Lives” and “Still” play fast and loose with deceptively technical angular heavy rock, and even the eight-minute title-track that rounds out before the cover of Beastie Boys‘ “Sabotage” refuses to give in and be just one thing. And about that cover? Well, not every experiment is going to lead to gold, but it’s representative on the whole of the band’s bravery to take on an iconic track like that and make their own. Not nearly everybody would be so bold.

White Fuzzy Bloodbath on Facebook

White Fuzzy Bloodbath on Bandcamp

—

 

Secret Iris, What Are You Waiting For

With the vocal melody in its resonant hook, the lead guitar line that runs alongside and the thickened verse progression that complements, Secret Iris almost touch on Euro-style melancholic doom with the title-track of their debut 7″, What Are You Waiting For, but the Phoenix, Arizona, three-piece are up to different shenanigans entirely on the subsequent “Extrasensory Rejection (Winter Sanctuary),” which is faster, more punk, and decisively places them in a sphere of heavy grunge. Both guitarist Jeffrey Owens (ex-Goya) and bassist Tanner Grace (Sorxe) contribute vocals, while drummer Matt Arrebollo (Gatecreeper) is additionally credited with “counseling,” and the nine-minutes of the mini-platter first digitally issued in 2021 beef up a hodgepodge of ’90s and ’00s rock and punk, from Nirvana grunge to Foo Fighters accessibility, Bad Religion‘s punk and rock and a slowdown march after the break in the midsection that, if these guys were from the Northeast, I’d shout as a Life of Agony influence. Either way, it moves, it’s heavy, it’s catchy, and just the same, it manages not to make a caricature of its downer lyrics. The word I’m looking for is “intriguing,” and the potential for further intrigue is high.

Secret Iris on Facebook

Crisis Tree Records store

—

 

Day seven of a Quarterly Review is pretty rarefied air, by which I mean it doesn’t happen that often. And even with 100 records in the span of these two weeks, I’ll never ever ever ever claim to approach being comprehensive, but the point is take it as a sign of just how much is out there right now. If you find it overwhelming, me too.

But think about our wretched species. What’s our redeeming factor? Treatment resistant bacteria? War? Yelling for more war? Economic disparity? Abortion rights? Art. Art’s it. Art and nothing.

So at least there’s a lot of art.

Quarterly Review #61-70:

Trigona, Trigona

With independent label distribution in the UK, US, Australia and Europe, Trigona‘s Trigona is about as spread out geographically as sonically. The Queensland, AUS-based instrumental solo outfit of Rob Shiels — guitar, bass, synth, drum programming, effects, noise, etc. — released the Meridian tape earlier in 2022 on Echodelick and I’m honestly not sure if this six-song self-titled is supposed to count as a debut full-length or what, expanded as it is from Trigona‘s 2021 EP of the same name, albeit remastered with a new track sequence and the eight-minute “Via Egnatia” tagged onto the end of side B to mirror side A’s eight-minute finale, “Rosatom.” Sweet toned progressivism and semi-krautrock bass meditation pervades, debut or not, as Shiels touches on more terrestrial songwriting in “Monk” only after “Shita Ue” has offered its uptempo, almost poppy except not at all pop take on space rock outwardness, a mirror itself somewhat for album opener “Von Graf,” while second cut “Nudler” spreads proggy guitar figures over a sunshiny movement, letting “Rosatom” handle the wash-conjuring. There’s a slowdown at the finish of “Via Egnatia,” its effect lessened perhaps by the programmed drums, but Trigona‘s Trigona is so much more about atmosphere than heft it feels silly to even mention. Debut or not, it is striking.

Trigona on Bandcamp

Weird Beard Records store

Ramble Records website

Echodelick Records website

Worst Bassist Records on Bandcamp

—

 

Blasting Rod, 月鏡 (Mirror Moon Ascending)

Hells yeah J-psych. Nagoya-based three-piece Blasting Rod — guitarist/vocalist S. Shah (also electronics), bassist/guitarist Yoshihiro Yasui and drummer Chihiro (everybody also adds percussion) — already have a follow-up LP, Of Wild Hazel, on the way/streaming for the two-songer Mirror Moon Ascending, and that and some of their past work has aligned them with US-based Glory or Death Records, but if you’re looking to be introduced to their world of sometimes serene, sometimes madcap psychedelia, these two mono mixes by Eternal Elysium‘s Yukito Okazaki, with the drift and languid crash, far-back drums of “Mirror Moon Ascending” and the shaker-inclusive insistence of “Wheel Upon the Car of Dragonaut,” which turns its title into a multi-layered mantra, can be a decent place to start as a springboard into the band’s and S. Shah‘s sundry other projects. Their experimentalism doesn’t stop them from writing songs, at least not this time around, and it seems to drive aspects of what they do like mixing in mono in the first place, so there’s meta-screwing with form as well as get-weird-stay-weird heavy space rock push. After this, check out 2021’s III and then the new one. After that, you’re on your own. Good luck and have fun.

Blasting Rod on Facebook

Low&Slow.Disk on Facebook

—

 

From Those Ashes, Contagion

From Those Ashes, a double-guitar four-piece from Chicago, present four songs in Contagion of thrash-derived but ultimately mostly mid-tempo metal, vocalist/guitarist Aaron Pokoj (also production) leading the charge with Jose “Mop” Valles ripping solos for good measure and bassist Ryan Compton and drummer Omar “Pockets” Mombela holding together tight grooves amid the deathlier moments of the title-track. Pokoj‘s trades between harsh and clean vocals show a firm grasp of melody and arrangement, and though their lyrical perspective is disaffected until basically the last two lines of EP-closer “Light Breaks,” the aggression doesn’t necessarily trump craft, though “The Reset Button” moves through throwing elder-hardcore elbows and the first words shouted on opener “Devoid of Thought” are “fuck it.” Fair enough. The Iron Maiden-style opening of “Light Breaks” is a standout moment, though guitar antics aren’t by any means in short supply, but when From Those Ashes build their way into the song proper, the death-thrash onslaught is fervent right up to the end. And those last lines? “As light breaks through the shadow and gives way to life/Sustained emergence of the soul and the will to survive?” Brutally, righteously growled.

From Those Ashes on Facebook

From Those Ashes on Bandcamp

—

 

Hasishian, Hashishian

Rarely does music itself sound so stoned. Across six tracks of bassy, at least partially Dune-referential — the hand-drummed “Shai Hulud,” etc. — meditative heavy, the anonymous outfit Hashishian from somewhere, sometime, convey a languid, loosely Middle Eastern-informed, vibe-dense aural weedianism. And much to their credit, “Mountain of Smoke” seems to live up to its name. Less so, perhaps, “Let Us Reason,” which is drawn out in such a way that the moderation implied, maybe with desperation, is inhaled like so much pine-smelling vapor. “Shai Hulud” is the longest cut, mostly instrumental, and might be as far out as Hashishian go, but even the twisting feedback and lead notes at the beginning of closer “Nazareth” feel like a heavy-eyelidded march toward the riff-fill’d land, never mind the bass-led procession of the song itself, manifesting the ethic of opener “Onward” that seems to be the mentality of the 39-minute self-titled as a whole. It is molten in a way not much can claim to be, more patient than the most patient person you know, and seems to find way to make even the tolling bell of the penultimate “High Chief” a drone. Definitely post-Om in sound, Hashishian‘s Hashishian is a sprawl of sand waiting to engulf you. And to whoever is playing this bass, thank you.

Hashishian on Bandcamp

Herby Records on Bandcamp

—

 

Above & Below, Suffer Decay Alone

Ohio-based industrialists Above & Below — primarily Plaguewielder‘s Bryce Seditz on vocals, guitar, synth, programming with Chrome Waves‘ Jeff Wilson adding bass, noise, production and a release through his Disorder Recordings imprint — make their debut with the seven tracks/27 minutes of Suffer Decay Alone, which digs into modern stylistic features like the weighted tonality of the guitar in “Isolate” and the screams on top, some The Downward Spiraling atmosphere given a boost in rhythm from the dense machine churn of Author & Punisher there and on the prior “Hope,” while “Rust” approaches danceable but for all that screaming. “Dead” sounds like something Gnaw might come up with, but the cold realization of craft in “Tear” feels like a signpost telling the project where it wants to head, and the same applies to the 3Teeth-style horror noise of “Covered.” I don’t know which impulse will win out, songwriting or destructive noise, and I’m not sure it needs to be one or the other, but Suffer Decay Alone sets out with a duly harsh mentality and sounds to match. If this is Rust Belt fuckall circa 2022, I’m on board.

Above & Below on Facebook

Disorder Recordings website

—

 

Lord Elephant, Cosmic Awakening

Shades of Earthless‘ more meandering stretches pervade “Cosmic Awakening Pt. I – Forsaken Slumber,” the opener of Lord Elephant‘s Heavy Psych Sounds debut, Cosmic Awakening, and those are purposefully brushed away as “Cosmic Awakening Pt. II – First Radiation” brings on more straight-ahead instrumental shove. The Florence, Italy, trio issued the eight-track album independently in 2021 and their being on the label they are earns them a certain amount of trust before one even listens, but the vibe throughout the outing’s 43 minutes is a don’t-worry-we-know-what-we’re-doing blend of psychedelia and underlying tonal heft. Bass. Tone. Guitar. Tone. Drums. On point. There’s nothing overly fancy about it and there doesn’t need to be as “Raktabija” is a rush and a blast at once, “Covered in Earth’s Blood” crunches and builds and builds and crunches again and “Stellar Cloud” has enough low end to make you feel funny for staring. I wouldn’t put it past them to make friends with an organist at some point, but they’ve got everything they need for right now even without vocals, and the combination of weight and breadth is effectively conveyed from front to back, with closer “Secreteternal” executing a final slowdown until it just seems to come apart. Right on.

Lord Elephant on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds website

—

 

Dirty Shades, Lift Off

French double-guitar four-piece Dirty Shades released their debut EP in March 2020, so yeah, there goes that. Lift Off is the four-song follow-up short release, tagged as a ‘live session,’ and given the organic vibe of the performances, I’m inclined to believe it. Vocalist/guitarist Anouk Degrande leads the way as “Dazed” picks up in winding style from the more ethereal opening across the two-minute “Ignition,” her voice reminding in places of No Doubt-era Gwen Stefani, albeit in a much different context. Fellow guitarist Nathan Mimeau provides backing for the chorus, ditto bassist Martin Degrande, and drummer Mathurin Robart is charged with keeping the patterns together behind the various turns in volume and intensity through “Dazed” and the subsequent “Running for Your Life,” which is full, spaced and surprisingly heavy by the time its five minutes are done but is still somehow more about the trip getting there. And a shorter take on now-closer “Trainwreck” appeared on 2020’s Specific Impulse, but its added dreaminess serves it well. Jazzy in spots and showing the band still seeking their stylistic niche, Lift Off may well prove to be the foundation from which the band launches.

Dirty Shades on Facebook

Dirty Shades webstore

—

 

Venus Principle, Stand in Your Light

Best case scenario when a band revamps its lineup is that listeners get another killer band out of it. With that, bid hello to Venus Principle‘s debut album, Stand in Your Light. With vocalist/guitarist Daniel Änghede (also Astroqueen), pianist/vocalist Daisy Chapman, guitarist/keyboardist Jonas Stålhammar (also At the Gates), keyboardist/backing vocalist Mark Furnevall and drummer Ben Wilsker all having been in Crippled Black Phoenix — only bassist Pontus Blom would seem not to be an alumnus — this more recent project perhaps unsurprisingly digs into a deeply, richly melodic, expanded-definition-of-heavy post-rock. The songs across the 68-minute 2LP, which starts with its longest track (immediate points) in the 10:34 “Rebel Drones,” are afraid neither to be loud nor minimal, and standout moments like “Shut it Down” or the Mellotron into absolute-melody-wash of “Sanctuary” bear out that vibe as a reminder of the gorgeousness that can come from emotions normally thought negative. The promo text for this record says it, “provides balm for the wound that the split of ANATHEMA has caused,” and that’s a lofty claim from where I sit, but you know, it’s a start, and clearly a lineup capable of a certain kind of magic that they represent well here.

Venus Principle website

Prophecy Productions store

—

 

Troy the Band, The Blissful Unknown

One doesn’t imagine it’s easy to be a new band in London at this point, with the seen-it-all-plus-we’re-all-in-like-10-bands-ourselves crowd and so many acts in and around the sphere of Desertfest, etc. — or maybe I’m way off and the community is amazing; I honestly don’t know — but Troy the Band distinguish themselves through the pendulum swing in their debut EP, The Blissful Unknown, guitars and bass both fuzzed to and beyond the gills and just a bit showy in “Michael” to give the outing a hint of strut despite its generally laid back attitude. Opener “I Wage a War” is the shortest inclusion by far on the 26-minute offering, and it’s a sprint compared to the more plodding, drone-hum-backed “Less Than Nothing,” and after “Michael” chugs and sways to its noisy finish, the title-track blows it all out to end off by underscoring the encouragingly atmospheric impression made by the songs prior, loose-sounding but not at all sloppy and occupying an expanse that comes across like it only wants to grow bigger. Here’s hoping it does exactly that. In the meantime, even in England’s green, pleasant and perpetually-full-of-riffs land, Troy the Band carve a fascinating place for themselves between various microgenres, psychedelic without being carried off by self-indulgence.

Troy the Band on Facebook

Troy the Band on Bandcamp

—

 

Mount Desert, Fear the Heart

Oakland, California’s Mount Desert make an awaited full-length debut with Fear the Heart a full seven years after releasing their self-titled two-songer (review here), both cuts from which feature on the record. Hey, life happens. I get that. And if the tradeoff for not putting out two or three records in the interim is the airy float of guitar throughout and the subtle-then-not-so-subtle build in “Semper Virens,” I’ll take it. Who the hell needs more records when you can have one that speaks to your unconscious like that? In any case, Fear the Heart is striking in more than just its moments of culmination, “Blue Madonna” and “New Fire” at the outset casting a fluidity that “The River I” and “The River II” perhaps unsurprisingly further even as they find their own paths into the second half of the record. “The Wail” closes with nighttime howls only after “Fear the Heart” — one of the two from the first outing — and the aforementioned “Semper Virens” have their say in progressive guitar and weighted psychedelicraft, earthbound thanks to vocal soul and ‘them drums tho,’ and especially as a debut, and one apparently a while in the making, Mount Desert‘s first LP justifies all that hype from more than half a decade and 15 lifetimes ago. They’re a band with something to say aesthetically and in songwriting. I hope they continue to move forward.

Mount Desert on Facebook

Mount Desert on Bandcamp

—

 

Week two, day one. Day six. However you look at it, it’s 10 more records for the Summer 2022 Quarterly Review, and that’s all it needs to be. I sincerely hope you had a good weekend and you arrive ready to dig into new music, most of which you’ve probably already encountered — because you’re cool like that and I know it — but maybe some you haven’t. In any case, there’s good stuff today and plenty more to come this week, so bloody hell, let’s get to it.

Quarterly Review #51-60:

Celestial Season, Mysterium I

After confirming their return via 2020’s striking The Secret Teachings (review here), Netherlands-based death-doom innovators Celestial Season embark on an ambitious trilogy of full-lengths with Mysterium I, which starts with its longest song (immediate points) in the heavy-hitting single “Black Water Rising,” but is more willing to offer string-laced beauty in darkness in songs like “The Golden Light of Late Day,” which transitions fluidly into “Sundown Transcends Us.” That latter cut, third of seven total on the 40-minute LP, provides some small hint of the band’s more rock-minded days, but the affair is plenty grim on the whole, whatever slightly-more-uptempo riffy nod might’ve slipped through. “This Glorious Summer” hits the brakes for a morose slog, while “Endgame” casts it lot in more aggressive speed at first, dropping to strings for much of its second half before returning to the deathly chug. The pair “All That is Known” and “Mysterium” close in massive and lurching form, and not that there was any doubt about this group 30 years on from the band’s founding, but yeah, they still got it. No worries. The next two parts are reportedly due before the end of next year, and one looks forward to knowing where the rest of the story-in-sound goes from here. If it’s down, they’re already there.

Celestial Season on Facebook

Burning World Records website

—

 

Noorvik, Hamartia

Post. Metal. Also post-metal. The third full-length from Koln-based instrumental four-piece Noorvik, Hamartia, glides smoothly between atmosphere and aggression, the band’s purposes revealed as much in their quiet moments as in those where the guitar comes forward and present a more furious face. In the subdued reaches of “Ambrosia” (10:00) or even opener “Tantalos” (6:55), the feeling is still tense, to where over the course of the record’s 68 minutes, you’re almost waiting for the kick to come, which it reliably does, but the form that takes varies in subtle ways and the bleeding of songs into each other like “Omonoia” into “Ambrosia” — which crushes by the time it’s done — the delving into proggy astro-jazz on “Aeon” and the reaching heights of “Atreides” (which TV tells me is a Dune reference) assure that there’s more than one path that gets Noorvik to where they’re going. At 15:42, “The Feast” is arguably the most bombastic and the most ambient both, but if that’s top and bottom, the spaces in between are no less coursing, and in their willingness to be metal while also being post-metal, Noorvik bring excitement to a style that’s made a trope of its hyper-cerebral nature. This has that and might also wreck your house, and if you don’t think that’s a big difference, ask your house.

Noorvik on Facebook

Tonzonen Records website

—

 

Doctors of Space, Mind Surgery

Wait. What? You mean to tell me that right now there are some people in the world who aren’t about to dig on 78 minutes’ worth of improvised psychedelic synth and guitar drones? Like, real people? In the world? What kind of terrible planet is this? Obviously, for Doctors of Space — Scott “Dr. Space” Heller (Øresund Space Collective) on synth, Martin Weaver (Wicked Lady) on guitar — this planet is nowhere near cool enough, and while it’s fortunate for the cosmos at large that once shared, these sounds have launched into the broader reaches of the solar system where they’ll travel as waves to be interpreted by some future civilization perhaps millions of years from now that evolved on a big silly rock a long, long way from here and those people will finally be the audience Doctors of Space richly deserve. But on Earth? Beyond a few loyal weirdos, I don’t know. And no, Doctors of Space aren’t shooting for mass appeal so much as interstellar manifestation through sound, but they do break out the drum machine on 23-minute closer “Titular Parody” to add a sense of ground amid all that antigravity float. Nonetheless, Mind Surgery is far out even for far out. If you think you’re up to it, get your head in the right mode first, because they might just open that thing up by the time they’re done.

Doctors of Space on Facebook

Space Rock Productions website

—

 

Astral Pigs, Our Golden Twilight

Pull Astral Pigs‘ second album, Our Golden Twilight, out of the context of the band’s penchant for vintage exploitation horror and porn and the record’s actually pretty cool. The title-track and slower-rolling “Brass Skies/Funeral March” top seven minutes in succession following instrumental opener “Irina Karlstein,” and spend that time in nod-inducement that goes from catchy-and-kinda-slow to definitely-slow-and-catchy before the long stretch of organ starts the at least semi-acoustic “The Sigil” and “Dragonflies” renews the density of lumbering fuzz, the English-language lyrics from the Argentina-based four-piece giving a duly ceremonious feel to the doomly drama unfolding, but long song or shorter, their vibe is right on and well in league with DHU Records‘ ongoing fascination with aural cultistry. The Hammond provided by bassist/producer Fabricio Pieroni isn’t to be ignored for what it brings to the songs, but even just on the strength of their guitar and bass tones and the mood they conjure throughout, Our Golden Twilight, though just 25 minutes long, unquestionably flows like a full-length record.

Astral Pigs on Facebook

DHU Records store

—

 

Carson, The Wilful Pursuit of Ignorance

No question, Carson have learned their lessons well, and I’ll admit, it’s been a while since a basically straightforward, desert-derived heavy rock record hit me with such an impression of songwriting as does their second full-length, The Wilful Pursuit of Ignorance. Issued through Sixteentimes Music, the eight-track/36-minute outing from the Lucerne-via-New-Zealand-based unit plays off influences like Kyuss, Helmet (looking at you, title-track), Dozer, Unida, and so on, and honest to goodness, it’s refreshing to hear a band so ready and willing to just kick ass musically. Not saying that an album with a title like this doesn’t have anything deeper to say, just that Carson make their offering without even a smidgeon of pretense about where they’re coming from, and from opener “Dirty Dream Maker” onward, their melody, their groove, their transitions and sharper turns are right on. It’s classic heavy rock, done impeccably well, made modern. A work of genre that argues in favor of itself and the style as a whole. If you were introducing someone to riff-based heavy, Carson would do the trick just fine.

Carson on Facebook

Sixteentimes Music website

—

 

Isaurian, Deep Sleep Metaphysics

Comprised of vocalist Hoanna Aragão, guitarist/vocalist Jorge Rabelo (also keys, co-production, etc.), guitarist Guilerme Tanner, bassist Renata Marim and drummer Roberto Tavares, Brazil’s Isaurian adapt post-rock patience and atmospheric guitar methods to a melody-fueled heavy purpose. Production value is an asset working in their favor on their second full-length, Deep Sleep Metaphysics, and seems to be a consistent factor throughout their work since Matt Bayles and Rhys Fulber produced their first two EPs in 2017. Here it’s Muriel Curi (Labirinto) and Chris Common (Pelican, many others), who bring a decided sense of space that’s measurable from the locale difference in Aragão‘s and Rabelo‘s vocal levels from opener “Árida” onward. Their intensions vary throughout — “For Hypnos” has “everybody smokes pot”-esque gang chants near its finish, “The Dream to End All Dreams” is a piano-inclusive guitar-flourish instrumental, “Autumn Eyes” is duly mellow and brooding, “Hearts and Roads” delivers culmination in a brighter melodic wash ahead of a bonus Curi remix of the opener — but it’s the melodic nuance and the clarity of sound that pull the songs together and distinguish the band. They’ve been tagged as “heavygaze” and various other ‘-gaze’ whathaveyou, and they borrow from that, but their drive toward fidelity of sound makes them something else entirely. They should tour Europe asap.

Isaurian on Instagram

Isaurian on Bandcamp

—

 

Kadavermarch, Into Oblivion

Hints of Kadavermarch‘s metallic origins — members having served in Helhorse, Illdisposed, as well as the Danish hip-hop group Tudsegammelt, and others — sneak into their songs both in the more upfront manner of harsher backing vocals on “The Eschaton” and the subsequent “Abyss,” and in some of the double-guitar work throughout, though their first album, Into Oblivion, sets their loyalties firmly in heavy rock. Uncle Acid may be an influence in terms of vocal melody, but the riffs throughout cuts like “Satanic” and “Reefer Madness” and the galloping “Flowering Death” are bigger and feel drawn in part from acts like The Sword and Baroness, delivered with a sharp edge. It’s a fascinating blend, and the recording on Into Oblivion lets it shine with a palpable band-in-the-room sensibility and stage-style energy, while still allowing enough breadth for a build like that in the finale “Beyond the End” to pay off the record as a whole. Capable craft, a sound on its way to being their own, a turquoise vinyl pressing, and a pedigree to boot — there’s nothing more I would ask of Into Oblivion. It feels like an opening salvo for a longer-term progression and I hope it is precisely that.

Kadavermarch on Facebook

Target Group on Bandcamp

—

 

Büzêm, Here

The violence implied in the title “Regurgitated Ambition Consuming Itself” takes the form of a harsh wall of noise drone that, once it starts, continues to unfurl for the just-under-eight-minute duration of the first of two pieces on Büzêm‘s more simply named Here EP. The Portland, Maine, solo art project of bassist/anythingelse-ist Finn has issued a range of exploratory outings, mostly EPs and experiments put to tape, and that modus very much suits the avant vibe throughout Here, which is markedly less caustic in the more rumbling “In an Attempt to Become the Creator” — presumably about Jackson Roykirk — the 10 minutes of which are more clearly the work of a standalone bass guitar, but play out with a sense of the human presence behind, as perhaps was the intention. Here‘s stated purpose is meditative if disaffected, Finn turning mindfulness into an already-in-progress armageddon display, and fair enough, but the found recording at the end, or captured footsteps, whatever it is, relate intentions beyond the use of a single instrument. Not ever going to be universally accessible, nonetheless pushing the kind of boundaries of what’s-a-song that need to be pushed.

Büzêm on Facebook

BÜZÊM on Bandcamp

—

 

Electric Mountain, Valley Giant

Can’t mess with this kind of heavy rock and roll. The fuzz runs thick, the groove is loose (not sloppy), and the action is go from start to finish. Electric Mountain‘s second LP, Valley Giant digs on classic desert-style heavy vibes, with “Vulgar Planet” riffing on Kyuss and Fu Manchu only after “Desert Ride” has dug headfirst into Nebula via Black Rainbows and cuts like “Outlanders” and the hell-yes-wah-bass of big-nodder “Morning Grace” have set the stage for stoner and rock, by, for and about being what it is. Picking highlights, it might be “A Fistful of Grass” for the angular twists of fuzz in the chorus, but “Vulgar Planet” and the penultimate acoustic cut “At Last Everything” both make a solid case ahead of the eight-plus-minute instrumental closing jam “A Thousand Miles High.” The band’s 2017 self-titled debut (also on Electric Valley Records) was a gem as well, and if they can get some forward momentum going on their side after Valley Giant, playing shows, etc., they’d be well placed at the head of the increasingly crowded Mexico City underground.

Electric Mountain on Facebook

Electric Valley Records website

—

 

Hush, The Pornography of Ruin

Also stylized all-caps with punctuation — perhaps a voice commanding: HUSH. — Hudson, New York, five-piece Hush conjure seven songs and 56 minutes of alternately sprawling and oppressive atmospheric sludge on their third full-length, The Pornography of Ruin, and if you take that to mean the quiet parts are spaced and the heavy parts are crushing, well, that’s true too, but not exclusively the case. Amid lyrical poetry, melodic ranging, slamming rhythms — “There Can Be No Forgiveness Without the Shedding of Blood” walks by and waves, its hand bloody — and harsh shouts and screams, Hush shove, pull, bite and chew the consciousness of their listener, with the 12-minute “By This You Are Truly Known” pulling centerpiece duty with mostly whispers and ambience in a spread-out midsection, bookended by more slow-churning pummel. Followed by the shorter “And the Love of Possession is a Disease with Them,” the keyboard-as-strings “The Sound of Kindness in the Voice” and the likewise raging-till-it-isn’t-then-when-it-is-again closer “At Night We Dreamed of Those We Were Stolen From,” the consumption is complete, and The Pornography of Ruin challenges its audience with the weight of its implications and tones alike. And for whatever it’s worth, I saw these guys in Brooklyn a few years back and they fucking destroyed. They’ve expanded the sound a bit since then, but this record is a solid reminder of that force.

Hush on Instagram

Hush on Bandcamp

—

 

Today’s Friday, and in most but a decreasing number of circumstances, that means a Quarterly Review is over. Not this one. Remember, doublewide means it goes to 100 albums. The really crazy part? It could go longer. I could add another day. It could go to 11! Have I done that before?

Probably. That Spinal Tap reference is too obvious for me to have never made it. In any case, I’ve got something booked for Monday after next already, so I won’t be adding another day, but I could just on the releases that came in over the last couple days. Onto the list for next time. Late September/early October, I think.

If you’re hurting for Quarterly Review in the meantime? Yeah, stick around. There’s a whole other week coming up. That’s what I’ve been saying. Have a great weekend and we’ll pick back up on Monday with another 10 records.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

The John Denver Airport Conspiracy, Something’s Gotta Give

Hail Toronto psych. The John Denver Airport Conspiracy released Something’s Gotta Give as a 16-tracker name-your-price Bandcamp download nearly a year ago, and vinyl delays give squares like yours truly who missed it at the time another opportunity to get on board. The 14-song LP edition runs 42 minutes, and it’s time well spent in being out of its own time, a pedal steel Americana-fying the ’60s drift of “Comin’ Through” while “Jeff Bezos Actually Works for Me” pairs garage strum-and-strut with a cavernous echo for an effect like shoegaze that looked up. “2000 November” and closer “The Lab” dares proto-punk shimmy and “Green Chair” has that B3 organ sound and lazy jangle that one can’t help but associate with 1967, “Ya, I Wonder” perhaps a few years before that, but “The Big Greaser” works in less directly temporal spaces, and the whole album is united by an overarching mellow spirit, not totally in a fog because actually the structures on some of these songs are pretty tight — as they were in the 1960s — but they’ve definitely and purposefully kept a few screws loose. Their sound may solidify over time and it may not, but as a debut album, Something’s Gotta Give is deceptively rich in its purpose and engaging in its craft and style alike. I wish I’d heard it earlier, I’m glad to have heard it now.

The John Denver Airport Conspiracy on Instagram

Cardinal Fuzz Records webstore

Little Cloud Records website

—

 

Clara Engel, Their Invisible Hands

Clara Engel‘s experimentalist folk songwriting moves into and across and over and through various traditions and methods, but their voice is as resonant, human and unifying as ever, and that’s true from “O Human Child” through the softly echoing guitar pieces “Golden Egg” and “High Alien Priest,” the more ethereal “Glass Mountain,” and so on, while excursions like “I Drink the Rain,” “Cryptid Bop” and “Dead Tree March” earlier add not only instrumental flourish but an avant garde sensibility consistent with Engel‘s past work, even if as songs they remain resoundingly cohesive. That is to say, while founded on experimentalist principles, they are built into songs rather than presented in their rawest form. The inclusion of organ in finale “The Devils are Snoring” is striking and complements the minimalist vocals and backing drone, but by then Engel has long established their ability to put the listener where they wants, with the image of “Rowing Home Through a Sea of Golden Leaves” duly poetic to suit the music as demonstration. Gorgeous, impassioned, hurt but striving and ever moving forward creatively. Engel‘s work remains a treasure for those with ears to hear it. “I Drink the Rain” is an album unto itself.

Clara Engel on Facebook

Clara Engel on Bandcamp

—

 

Cormano, Weird Tales

Though the initial push of doomer riffing and melodic vocals in the post-intro title-track “Weird Tales” reminds a bit of Apostle of Solitude, the hooky brand of heavy wrought by Chilean three-piece Cormano — vocalist/guitarist Aaron Saavedra, bassist/backing vocalist Claudio Bobadilla, drummer/backing vocalist Rodrigo Jiménez — on their debut full-length is more about rock than such morose proceedings, and in fact it’s the prior intro “La Marcha del Desierto” that makes that plain. They’ll delve into psychedelic airiness in “El Caleuche” — the bassline underneath a highlight on its own — and if you read “Bury Me With My Money” as a capitalist critique, it’s almost fun instead of tragic, but their swing in “Urknall” and the roll of “Rise From Your Grave” (second Altered Beast reference of this Quarterly Review; pure coincidence) act as precursor to the thickened unfurling of “Futuere” and “A Boy and His Dog,” a closing pair that reinforce Cormano‘s ultimate direction as anything but settled, the latter featuring a pointedly heavy crash before a surprisingly gentle finish. Will be curious to see where their impulses lead them, but Weird Tales is that much stronger for the variety currently in their influences.

Cormano on Facebook

Cormano on Bandcamp

—

 

Black Lung, Dark Waves

Like the rest of reality, Baltimorean heavy psychedelic blues rockers Black Lung have undergone a few significant changes in the last three years. Guitarist/vocalist Dave Cavalier (also Mellotron) and drummer/synthesist Elias Schutzman (also Revvnant, ex-The Flying Eyes) bid farewell to fellow founding member Adam Bufano (guitar, also ex-The Flying Eyes) and brought in Dave Fullerton to fill the role, while also, for the first time, adding a bassist in Charles Braese. Thus, their first record for Heavy Psych Sounds, the J. Robbins-produced/Kurt Ballou-mixed Dark Waves is a notable departure in form from 2019’s Ancients (review here), even if the band’s core methodology and aesthetic are the same. The sound is fuller, richer, and more able to hold the various Mellotrons and other flourishes, as well as the cello in “Hollow Dreams” and guest vocals on “Death Grip” and guest keys on “The Cog” and “The Path.” Taking inspiration from modern global uncertainties sociopolitical, medical and otherwise, the band put you in a mind of living through the current moment, thankfully without inducing the level of anxiety that seems to define it. Small favors amid big riffs. With shades of All Them Witches and further psychedelic exploring transposed onto their already-a-given level of songwriting, Black Lung sound like they’re making a second debut.

Black Lung on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds website

—

 

Slowenya, Meadow

Make a big space and fill it with righteousness. Finland’s Slowenya are born out of an experimentalist hotbed in Turku, and the three-piece do justice to an expectation of far-out tendencies across the nonetheless-concise 31 minutes and six songs of Meadow, their second long-player in as many years. There’s an undercurrent of metal as “Synchronized” holds forth with a resilient, earthy chug, but the melodicism that typifies the vocals running alongside is lighter, born of a proggy mindset and able to keep any overarching aggression in check. With synths, samples, and ambient sounds filling out the mix — not that the massive tonality of the guitar and bass itself doesn’t do the job — a breadth is cast from “Intro” onward through “Nákàn” and the gone-full-YOB swell of “Irrevocable,” which is yet another of the tracks on Meadow one might hear and expect to be 20 minutes long and instead is under seven. The penultimate “Transients” pushes deeper into drone, and “Resonate and Relate” (7:53) caps Slowenya‘s impressive second LP with a due blend of melodic wash and lurching rhythmic physicality, the screams into a sudden stop effectively carrying the threat of more to come. You want to hear this.

Slowenya linktr.ee

Karhuvaltio Records on Facebook

—

 

Superlynx, Solstice EP

As their growing fanbase immediately set about waiting for their third full-length after 2021’s Electric Temple, Norwegian heavy-broodgaze trio Superlynx issued at the very end of the year the Solstice EP, combining covers from Saint Vitus, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Nat King Cole (because obviously he’d be third on that list) and Nirvana with two originals in “Reorbit” and “Cosmic Wave.” As bassist/vocalist Pia Isaksen has already put out a solo release in 2022, drummer Ole Teigen has a blues band on the side among other projects, and one assumes guitarist Daniel Bakken is up to something else as well, Solstice serves as a welcome holdover of momentum after the album. It’s worth the price of admission (eight Euro) for the take on Nirvana‘s “Something in the Way” alone, but the so-slow-it-sounds-like-it’s-about-to-fall-apart “Reorbit” and the leadoff adaptation of “Born Too Late” enforces that song’s message with a modernized and made-even-more slogging sense of defeat. Maybe we were all born too late. Maybe that’s humanity’s fucking problem. Anyway, after you get this, get Isaksen‘s solo record as Pia Isa. You won’t regret that either, especially with the subdued vibe in some of the material on this one.

Superlynx on Facebook

Dark Essence Records website

—

 

Øresund Space Collective, Oily Echoes of the Soul

The always-hit-record ethic of multinational conglomerate jammers Øresund Space Collective pays dividends once again as Oily Echoes of the Soul emerges publicly — it was previously released in a different form to Bandcamp subscribers — as carved from a session all the way back in 2010. At the time I’m pretty certain all members of the band actually lived in Denmark, but sitarist K.G. Westman, who appeared here while still a member of Siena Root, is from Sweden, so whatever. Ultimately the affair is less about where they’re from than where you’re going while hearing it, which is off to a laid-back, anything goes psychedelic improvisation, beginning with the funky and suitably explorational, half-hour-long opener “Bump and Grind ØSC Style” before moving into the sitar-led “Peace of Mynd” (13:27) and the 24-minute title-track’s organic surges and recessions of volume; proggy, ’70s, and unforced as they are. Before twang-happy and much shorter closer “Shit Kickin'” (4:10), the 15-minute “Deep Breath for the EARTH” offers affirmation of the project’s reliably expansive sound. I’ve made no secret that I listen to this band in no small part for the emotionally and/or existentially soothing facets of their sound. Those are on ready display here, and I’ll be returning to this 12-year-old session accordingly.

Øresund Space Collective on Bandcamp

Space Rock Productions website

—

 

Zone Six, Beautiful EP

Recorded in Dec. 1997 at Zone Six‘s practice space, the two-song Beautiful EP portrays a much different band than Zone Six ultimately became, with Australian-born vocalist Jodi Barry and then-Liquid Visions members Dave “Sula Bassana” Schmidt (bass, effects), Hans-Peter Ringholz (guitar, noise) and drummer/recording specialist Claus Bühler as well as keyboardist/etc.-ist Rusty and bringing two longform, molten works of pioneering-at-the-time heavy psychedelia. I mean, we’re talking 20 years ahead of their time, at least, here. It’s still forward-thinking. The guitars and breathy vocals in “Something’s Missing” are a joy and “Beautiful” plays off drone-style atmospherics with intermittently jazzy verses and a more active rhythm, winding guitar and pervasively spaced mindbending. Imagining what could’ve been if this record had been finished, one could repaint the scope of 2010s-era European heavy psychedelia as a whole, but on their own, the two extended inclusions on the 23-minute EP are a gorgeous glimpse at this fleeting moment in time. It is what it says it is.

LINK

TO THE PAST

—

 

The Cimmerian, Thrice Majestic

Thrice Majestic and four-times barbarous comes this debut EP release from Los Angeles’ The Cimmerian, a new trio featuring Massachusetts expat David Gein (ex-bass, The Scimitar, etc.) on guitar, and the brand of heavy that ensues readily crosses the line between metal and doom, as the galloping “Emerald Scripture” reinforces directly after the eight-minute highlight and longest groover “Silver and Gold.” Drummer David Morales isn’t shy with the double-kick and neither should he be, and bassist/vocalist Nicolas Rocha has a bark that reminds of Entombed‘s L.G. Petrov, and that is not a compliment I’m ever going to hand out lightly. Lead cut “Howls of Lust and Fury” promises High on Fire-ist thrash in its opening, but The Cimmerian‘s form of pummel goes beyond any single point of inspiration, even on this presumably formative suckerpunch of an EP, which balances intensity and nod in the finishing move “Neck Breaker,” a last growl perhaps the most brutal of all. Fucking a. More of this.

The Cimmerian on Facebook

The Cimmerian on Bandcamp

—

 

Ultracombo, Season II

You could probably sit and parse out where Ultracombo are coming from — geographically, it’s Vincenza, Italy — in terms of sound on the sequentially titled follow-up to 2019’s Season I (review here), but to do so denies the double-guitar five-piece credit for the obvious efforts they’ve put into making this material their own. Those efforts pay off in the listening experience of the five-tracker, which runs 25 minutes and so offers plenty enough to make an impression. Witness the slowdown in centerpiece “Umanotest” or the keyboard-or-keyboard-esque lead in the back half of the prior “Follia,” the added jammy feel in “Specchio,” the this-is-the-difference-the-right-drummer-makes “12345” or the return of the synth and an added bit of playfulness before the big ending in — what else? — “La Fine.” That this EP manages to careen and pull such hairpin turns of rhythm is a triumph unto itself. That it manages to do so without sounding like Queens of the Stone Age feels like a fucking miracle. “Dear Ultracombo, Hope you’re well. Time to make an album. Put in an interlude or two depending on space. Sincerely, some dude on the internet.”

Ultracombo on Facebook

Ultracombo on Instagram

—

 

I’ll find out for sure in a bit, but I think this might be one of those supremely weird Quarterly Review days where it’s a total mash of styles and it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever from one release to the next so that by the time the batch of 10 records is done we’ve ended up covering a pretty significant swath of heavy music’s spectrum. I ain’t out here trying to be comprehensive, you understand. I’m just doing my best to keep up. And in that, sometimes you hit a weird day.

In fact, I think “weird” might be the operative word for the Quarterly Review so far. I think about this music, who it’s for, why, and it’s weird and it’s for weirdos in my head. Both of those things are meant in a spirit of reverence for weirdness. Weird is interesting. Weird stands out. Weird is… also how I feel basically any time I’m out of the house among other adults unless I’m at a show. Weird is that beautiful thing that unites those people who don’t seem to fit anywhere else but in this.

So yeah, today’s weird. Strap in, kids.

Quarterly Review #31-40:

Church of the Sea, Odalisque

Electronic beats, live guitar, and a resonant human voice make for a fascinating blend on Church of the Sea‘s richly atmospheric Odalisque. The Athenian trio of vocalist Irene, guitarist Vangelis (a different Vangelis) and synthesist/sampler Alex conjure a deep sense of mood in songs like “Mirror” and the closer “Me as the Water, Me as a Tree,” operating from the weighted beginning of opener “No One Deserves” onward in a slow-moving, open-spaced take on heavy post-rock that staves off the shimmering guitar in favor of adding the rumble of distortion often as a backing drone to fill out the sound alongside the synth behind Irene‘s voice. There are shades of Author & Punisher‘s latest — but Odalisque is less about slamming impact than spreading out the landscape of its title-track and the personal examinations of its lyrics, though “Raindrops” doesn’t seem fully ready to commit to one or the other and it’s easy to appreciate that. A striking debut from a band whose individualized purpose sets them apart even within Greece’s crowded and wildly creative underground.

Church of the Sea on Facebook

Church of the Sea links

—

 

Gu Vo, Gu Vo

Drummer Edu Escobar, bassist Raúl Burrueco and vocalist/synthesist Alejandro Ruiz are Gu Vo, and given their lack of guitar, it should come as little surprise that their Sentencia Records self-titled debut is a markedly rhythmic experience. Taking some example perhaps from Slift‘s uptempo space/krautrockism, the Spanish three-piece bring an avant garde vibe even to the ultra-smooth build of “Crab Ball Gate,” hypnotizing through repetition in the low end and drums while the keys weave in and out of prominence, “Little Lizard” arriving with storybook fanfare before toying with willful-sounding low- and high-end frequency imbalance — you go this way and I’ll go that, etc. — and vocals that are duly spaced. The nine-song/49-minute outing is ambitious, droning large in “USG Ishimura” and actually maybe-actually-sampling Altered Beast for the chiptunery of “Rise From Your Grave.” “TuunBaq” brings some of these impulses together at the end, but Gu Vo‘s Gu Vo is more about the trip you take than where you end up, and that’s much to its advantage.

Gu Vo on Facebook

Sentencia Records on Bandcamp

—

 

Witchfinder, Endless Garden

Watch out for the slowdown in about the last minute and a half of “The Maze” (6:28) which is the first of two songs on Witchfinder‘s Endless Garden EP. Things are rolling along, some Acid King nod in that main riff, and then, wham, screams and meaner sludge pushes into the proceedings without so much as a s’il vous plaît from the Clermont-Ferrand-based four-piece. The keyboard later in the subsequent “Eternal Sunset” (10:41) running alongside the slower movement there calls to mind Type O Negative — though I understand it’s Hangman’s Chair holding down such vibes in France these days, so maybe or maybe not an influence — plays a similar function in distinguishing the ending from what’s come before, but it’s the overarching heft of Endless Garden that makes it such a fulfilling answer to 2019’s Hazy Rites (review here), the band perhaps pushing back against some of the more cultish tendencies of current heavy in favor of a more individual statement of fuzz and psych-doomer spaciousness. It’s been a hell of a three years since the album. A reminder of Witchfinder‘s growth in progress is welcome.

Witchfinder on Facebook

Mrs Red Sound on Bandcamp

—

 

Centre El Muusa, Purple Stones

Imagine yourself having a dream about surfing and you might be on your way to Centre El Muusa‘s sound. The Estonian instrumentalist four-piece debuted on Sulatron with their 2020 self-titled (review here), and they cohesively explore various realms here, dream-beach among them, but also some twangy slide guitar in opener “Pony Road” and “Desert Song,” the band using the titles seemingly to drop hints of the vibes being captured. Sure enough, the dirty fuzz in “Boomerang” comes back around, “Keila Train” — it’s about a 15-mile trip from Talinn, where the band are from, to Keila — has a distracted line of keys over mellow jazz drumming and meandering guitar, and “Pilot on Board” brings a subtle kosmiche push with an undulating waveform drone that’s like the wind passing under and over the wings of an airplane. Each of these moments of (assisted) evocation can be experienced or not depending on how far in a given listener wants to plunge — or how high they want to float, in the case of “Pilot on Board” — but the abiding sense of exploration in sound remains vital just the same. Wherever it may want to take you at a given moment, it wants to take you. Let it.

Centre El Muusa on Facebook

Sulatron Records webstore

—

 

0N0, Unwavering Resonance

I’ll admit that Unwavering Resonance is my first exposure to Slovakia’s 0N0, but it won’t be the last. Their third full-length following 2016’s Reconstruction and Synthesis with an EP and a split between, the new outing collects four cuts across a manageable 36 minutes and begins with its longest track (immediate points) in the 12-minute declaration of purpose “Clay Weight.” Though reputed for more industrialized fare in the past — and still definitely utilizing programming for the ‘drums’ and other synthy sounds — one cannot ignore the chug that rises to prominence in the leadoff, or the malevolence of purpose in the deathly use to which it’s put. Post-metal and death-doom come together fluidly enough in “Clay Weight” and the subsequent “Shattering” (5:12) with a balance tipped to one side or another — the second track, shortest, blasts furiously — and one wouldn’t call what happens in the nine-minutes-each pair of “Unwavering Resonance” and closer “Wander the Vacant Twilight” an evening out, since they continue to lean to particular aspects of their crushing sound in a given stretch, but hell’s bells it’s heavy, and its catharsis is less about making your skin crawl than turning bones into powder. Methodical, not chaotic, but ready to bask in the chaos surrounding. More brutalism than brutal.

0N0 on Facebook

0N0 on Bandcamp

—

 

Faeries, Faeries

Shit, that’s heavy. Released on cassette and download, the 2021 self-titled debut long-player from Savannah, Georgia’s Faeries is a beast working under suitably beastly traditions. Tapping into a tonal density and an and-yet-it-moves crush of riff that reminds of the earliest days of fellow Peach Staters Mastodon, there’s a more straight-ahead, heads-down, push-through-with-the-shoulder sensibility to David Rapp‘s solo outfit, an underlying sense of riff worship in “March March,” “Megadrone,” and the rest of the nine-song/45-minute outing that — much to Rapp‘s credit — are set for destructive purposes rather than self-indulgent progressivism. That’s not to say Faeries, the album, is dumbed down. It’s not, and even in the vocal gruel of “Fresh Laces” and “The Pain of Days” or the chug-‘n’-swing instrumental “The Volcano,” that can be heard in the structure of the songs — “Slurricane” deviates to somewhat lighter tone and also-instrumental closer “Traces” echoes that — but Rapp‘s clear intention here is to base his songwriting around the heaviest sounds possible, and while it’s exciting to think maybe he got there on this first outing, it’s even more exciting to think maybe he didn’t and is going to try again sometime soon. Either way, happy bludgeoning/being bludgeoned.

Faeries on Instagram

The Silver Box on Bandcamp

—

 

The Cult of Dom Keller, Raiders of the Lost Archives: Demos & Rarities 2007-2020

Somewhat inevitable that a 100-minute collection of lost tracks, demos, alternate versions and live takes from UK psych adventurers Cult of Dom Keller would be something of a fan-piece. Still, as Raiders of the Lost Archives: Demos & Rarities 2007-2020 spans its 20-song run and multiple lineups of the band, its moving between years and methodologies has plenty of flow if you’re willing to open yourself to the essential fact that the band can do whatever. the. fuck. they. want. To wit, “Monarch” with its relatively forward verses and choruses and the lo-fi howling feedback of “QWERTYUIOP,” or 2020’s creep-into-wash “Dead Don’t Dream” and the garage-psych urgency of 2007’s “We Left This World Behind for a Place in the Sun.” Those who’ve followed Cult of Dom Keller on their merry path will dig the (again, relatively) efficient look at how far they’ve come and in how many different directions, while those unfamiliar with the band might want to find something less inherently uneven to dig on (start with 2020’s Ascend! (review here), then work back), but cuts like “Broken Arm of God” and “Jupiter’s Beard” are ready to catch ears either way, and if it takes time to digest, well heck, you’ll have all the time in the world if you quit your day job, so why not just go ahead and do that?

Cult of Dom Keller on Facebook

Cult of Dom Keller on Bandcamp

—

 

Supplemental Pills, Volume 1

The narrative — blessings and peace upon it — holds that Supplemental Pills got together at the behest of vocalist/guitarist Ezra Meredith when his main outfit, Hearts of Oak stepped back for pandemic lockdown. Fair enough. With Joel Meredith on guitar, bassist/synthesist Aron Christensen (also Hearts of Oak) and drummer/vocalist Mark Folkrod, these seven songs feel carved out of jams as the reportedly were, with “Feel It” blinking momentarily into Endless Boogie-sounding improv preach while mellower and more spacious pieces like opener “Run On,” the nine-minute drone-drawler “Floating Mountains Over Rivers” and the 11-minute fuzz-go repetitions of “Gonna Be Alright” — a decent mantra if e’er there was one — ooze deeper into vibe rock far-outreach. “Freedom March” is fairly active, with Ezra‘s vocals there and in “Run On” seeming to nod at the departed Mark Lanegan, and “The Wizard Was Right” has a sense of movement as well that suits its overlaid verses. If it feels right, it is right. Drone what thou wilt. And if this is what they’re coming up with essentially by accident, one shudders to think what might happen if they actually tried to write a song. It’s just crazy enough to work.

Supplemental Pills on Facebook

In Music We Trust Records on Bandcamp

—

 

Green Hog Band, Crypt of Doom

Some sonic coincidence brings Amorphis‘ “Forever More” to mind in hearing the winding guitar figure featured in Green Hog Band‘s instrumental-but-for-the-sample “Iron Horses,” but that’s not a direct influence. The Brooklynite trio’s third full-length, Crypt of Doom, follows last year’s Devil’s Luck (review here) and sees the self-recording trio of vocalist/bassist Ivan Antipov, guitarist Mike Vivisector (also lyrics) and drummer Ronan Berry weaving into and out of Russian-language lyrics on top of their thick-toned sludge rock, which they shove resolutely on “Sweet Tea, Banana Bread” and even give a little shuffle on the penultimate “New Year Massacre,” but which is invariably more suited to the doomly lurch of opener “Dragon” or its later giant-lizard-thing counterpart “Leviathan.” Still, that these guys can make that bubbling cauldron of sludge and are even vaguely interested in doing anything else is admirable, and as raw as Crypt of Doom is, even the air seems to be stale, never mind the bare walls of rock and dirt surrounding. Dig a hole, reside therein, riff.

Green Hog Band on Facebook

The Swamp Records on Bandcamp

—

 

Circle of Sighs, Alabaster

Most of all, one has to give kudos to Los Angeles experimentalist outfit for daring to cross the line between hard industrial music and the hip-hop it’s been summarily ripping off for the last quarter-century-plus. Alabaster is the third full-length from the unit not-so-secretly led by bassmaster/programmer/etc.-ist Collyn McCoy (also Night City, Aboleth, a bunch of others), and in addition to guest rappers A-F-R-O, Zombae and Kayee on cuts like “Anatomy Autonomy” (relevant) and the becomes-a-black-metal-onslaught “Copy Planet,” the nine-song/32-minute outing regurgitates genre expectations in a spew so willfully individual it can’t help but make its own kind of sense even unto the sound collage of “Segue-08” or “ec63294e-0dcf-4947-bb7c-965769967dbd,” which answers the freak-dance of “A Magical Journey of Love” with sentient-AI-knows-where-you-live moodsetting, which of course is an excellent precursor to the organ-laced cult extremity of “FLESHSELF: Abandon the Altars.” This is never going to be for everyone, but Alabaster‘s willingness to play with risk in sound makes just about everything that ‘fits in’ feel ridiculous. You think you’ve heard it all? Think you’re bored? Check this shit out and see how wrong you are.

Circle of Sighs on Facebook

Circle of Sighs on Bandcamp

—

 

Oh we’re in the thick of it now, make no mistake. Day one? A novelty. Day two? I don’t know, slightly less of a novelty? But by the time you get to day three in a Quarterly Review, you know how far you’ve come and how far you still have to go. In this particular case, building toward 100 records total covered, today passes the line of the first quarter done, and that’s not nothing, even if there’s a hell of a lot more on the way.

That said, let’s not waste time we don’t have. I hope you find something killer in here, because I already have.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

My Diligence, The Matter, Form and Power

The Matter, Form and Power is the third long-player from Brussels’ My Diligence, whose expansive take on melodic noise rock has never sounded grander. The largesse of songs like the Floor-esque “Multiversal Tree” or the choruses in “On the Wire” and the layered post-hardcore screams in “Sail to the Red Light” — to say nothing of the massive nod with which the title-track opens, or the progressively-minded lumbering with which the 10-minute “Elasmotherium” closes — brims with purpose in laying the atmospheric foundation from which the material soars outward. With “Celestial Kingdom” as its centerpiece, the heavy starting far, far away and shifting into an earliest-Mastodon chug as drift and heft collide, there are hints of Cave In in form if not all through the execution — that is, My Diligence cross similar boundaries but don’t necessarily sound the same — such that the growling that populates that song’s second half isn’t so much a surprise as it is a slamming, consuming, welcome advent. Music as a force. As much volume as you can give it, give it.

My Diligence on Facebook

Mottow Soundz website

—

 

BBF, I Will Be Found

Their moniker derived from the initials of the three members — bassist/vocalist/synthesist Pietro Brunetti, guitarist/vocalist Claudio Banelli and drummer Carlo Forgiarini — Italian troupe BBF aren’t through I Will Be Found‘s five minute opener “Freedom” before they’ve transposed grunge vibes onto a go-where-it-wants psychedelia from out of an acoustic, bluesy beginning. Garage rock in “Cosmic Surgery,” meditative jamming in “Rise,” and a vast expanse in “T-Rex” that delivers the album’s title line while furthering with even-the-drums-have-echo breadth the psych vibe such that the synthy take of the penultimate “Wake Up” becomes just another part of the procession, its floating guitar met with percussion real and imagined ahead of the bookending acoustic-based closer “Supernova,” which dedicates its last 90 seconds or so to a hidden track comprised entirely of sweet acoustic notes that might’ve otherwise ended up as an interlude but work just as well tucked away as they are. Here’s a band who know the rules and seem to take a special joy in bending if not outright breaking them, drawing from various styles in order to make their songs their own. To say they acquit themselves well in doing so is an understatement.

BBF on Facebook

Argonauta Records website

—

 

Druids, Shadow Work

Progressive and melodic, the fourth album from Iowan trio Druids is nonetheless at times crushingly heavy, and in a longer piece like “Ide’s Koan,” the band demonstrate how to execute a patient, dynamic build, beginning slow and spaced out and gradually growing in intensity until they reach a multi-layered shouting apex. Drew Rauch (bass), Luke Rauch (guitar) and Keith Rich (drums) all contribute vocals at one point or another, and whether it’s in the plodding rock of “Dance of Skulls” or the not-the-longest-track-but-the-farthest-reaching closer “Cloak/Nior Bloom,” their modern prog metal works off influences like Baroness, Mastodon, Gojira, etc., while retaining character of its own through both rhythmic intricacy and its abiding use of melody, both well on display in “Othenian Blood” and the subsequent, drum-intensive “Traveller” alike. “Path to R” starts Shadow Work mellow after the ceremonial build-up of “Aether,” but the tension is almost immediate and Druids‘ telegraphing that the heavy is coming makes it no less satisfying when it lands.

Druids on Facebook

Pelagic Records on Bandcamp

—

 

Kandodo4, Burning the (Kandl)

Though it’s spread across two LPs, don’t think of Kandodo4‘s Burning the (Kandl) as an album. Or even a live album, though technically it’s that. You might not know, you might not care, but it’s a historical preservation. ‘The time that thing happened,’ where the thing is Simon Price of The Heads leading a jam under the banner of his Kandodo side-project featuring Robert Hampson of Loop, and bassist Hugo Morgan and drummer Wayne Maskell — who play in both The Heads and Loop — as part of The Heads‘ residency at Roadburn Festival 2015 (review here). I tell you, I was there, and I’ve seen few psychedelic rituals that could compare in flow or letting the music find its own shape(lessness) as it will. Burning the (Kandl) not only has the live set, but the lone rehearsal that the one-off-four-piece did prior to taking stage at Het Patronaat in Tilburg, the Netherlands, that evening. Thus, history. Certainly for the fest, for the players and those who were there, but I like to think in listening to these side-long stretches of expanse upon expanse that all of our great-grandchildren will worship at the altar of this stuff in a better world. Maybe, maybe not, but better to have Burning the (Kandl) ready to go just in case.

Kandodo on Facebook

Kandodo on Bandcamp

Cardinal Fuzz webstore

—

 

Into the Valley of Death, Ruthless

The second EP in about nine months from Los Angeles’ Spencer Robinson — operating under the moniker of Into the Valley of Death — the seven-song Ruthless feels very much like a debut album despite a runtime circa 25 minutes. The songs are cohesive in bringing together doom and grunge as they do, and as with the prior Space Age, the lo-fi aspects of the recording become part of the overarching character of the material. Guitars are up, bass is up, drums are likely programmed, vocals are throaty and obscure at least until they declare you dead on “Ghost,” and the pieces running in the three-to-four-minute range have a kind of languid drawl about them that sound purely stoned even as they seem to reach out into the desert after which the project is seemingly named. Robinson, who also played bass in The Lords of Altamont and has another outfit wherein he fronts a full backing band, is up to some curious shit here, and whether or not it was, it definitely sounds like it was recorded at night. I’m not sure where it’s going, and I’m not sure where it’s been, but I know I’ll look forward to finding out.

Into the Valley of Death on Bandcamp

Doomsayer Records on Facebook

—

 

Stuck in Motion, Still Stuck

Enköping, Sweden’s Stuck in Motion issued their 2018 self-titled debut (review here) to due fanfare, and Still Stuck (changed from the working title ‘Ut på Tur,’ which translates, “on tour”) arrives with a brisk reminder why. Jammy in spirit, early singles “Höjdpunkternas Land,” “Lucy” and “På Väg” brim with vitality and a refreshing take on classic heavy rock, not strictly retro, not strictly not, and all the more able to jam and offer breadth around traditional structures as in “I de Blå” for that, weaving their way into and out of instrumental sections with a jazzy conversation between guitars and keys, bass and drums, percussion, and so on. Combined with the melodies of “Tupida,” the heavier tone underlying “Fisken” and the organ-and-synth-laced shuffle of the penultimate “Tung Sol,” there’s a balance between psych and prog — and, on the closing title-track, horns — which are emblematic of an organic style that couldn’t be faked even if the band wanted to try. I don’t know the exact release date for Still Stuck — I thought it was already out when I slated this review — but its eight songs and 40 minutes are like the kind of afternoon you don’t want to end. Sunshine and impossible blue sky.

Stuck in Motion on Facebook

Stuck in Motion on Bandcamp

—

 

Sageness, Tr3s

A blurb posted by Spanish instrumentalists Sageness — also written SageNESS — with the release of Tr3s reads as follows: “The future seen from the past, where another current reality is possible, follow us and we will transfer to a new dimension. (Tr3s),” and fair enough. One could hardly begrudge the trio a bit of escapism in their work, and listening to the 36 minutes across four songs that comprises Tr3s, they do seem to be finding their way into the ‘way out.’ Though if where they’re ending up is 12-minute finale “Event Horizon,” in which the very jam itself seems to be taffy-pulled on a molecular level until the solid bassline and drums dissipate and what takes hold is a freakout of propulsive, drift-toned guitar, I’m not sure if they do or don’t ultimately make it to another dimension. Maybe that’s on the other side? Either way, after the scope of “Greenhouse” and the more plotted-seeming stops of “Spirit Machine,” that end is somewhat inevitable, and we may be stuck in reality for real life, but Sageness‘ fuzzy and warm-toned heavy psychedelic rock makes a reasoned argument for daydreaming the opposite.

Sageness on Facebook

Interstellar Smoke Records store

—

 

Kaleidobolt, This One Simple Trick

You think you’re up for Kaleidobolt, and that’s adorable, but let’s be honest. The Finnish trio — whose head-spinning, too-odd-not-to-be-prog heavy rock makes This One Simple Trick laughable as a title — are on another level. You and me? They’re running circles around us in “Fantastic Corps” and letting the truth about humans be known amid the fuzz of “Ultraviolent Chimpanzee” after the alternately frenetic and spaced “Borded Control,” momentarily stopping their helicopter twirl to “Walk on Grapes” at the album’s finish, but even then they’re walking on grapes on another planet yet to be catalogued by known science. 2019’s Bitter (review here) boasted likewise self-awareness, but This One Simple Trick is a bolder step into their individuality of purpose, and rest assured, they found it. I don’t know if they’re a “best kept secret” or just underrated. However you say it, more people should be aware. Onto the list of 2022’s best albums it goes, and if there are any simple tricks involved here, I’d love to know what they are.

Kaleidobolt on Facebook

Svart Records website

—

 

The Tazers, Outer Space

It probably wouldn’t fit on a 7″, but The Tazers‘ Outer Space EP isn’t much over that limit at four songs and 13 minutes. The Johannesburg trio’s melodicism is striking nearly at the outset of the opening title-track, and the fuzz guitar that coincides is no less right on as they touch on psychedelia without ever ranging so much as to lose sight of the structures at work. “Glass Ceiling” boasts a garage-rocking urgency but is nonetheless not an all-out sprint in its delivery, and “Ready to Die” hits into Queens of the Stone Age-esque rush after an acoustic opening and before its fuzzy rampage of a chorus, while “Up in the Air” is a little more psych-funk until solidifying around the repeated lines, “Give me a reason/Show me a sign,” which culminate as the EP’s final plea, like Witch played at 45RPM or your favorite stoner band’s cooler cousin. Four songs, it probably took more effort to put together than they’d like you to think, but the casual cool they ooze is as infectious as the songs themselves.

The Tazers on Facebook

The Tazers on Instagram

—

 

Obelos, Green Giant

Bong-worship sludge from London. It’s hard to know the extent to which Obelos — which for some reason my fingers have trouble typing correctly — are just fucking around, but their dank, lurching riffs, throaty screams and slow-motion crashes certainly paint a picture anyhow. Paint it green, with maybe some little orange or purple flecks in there. Interludes “Paranoise” and “Holy Smokes” bring harsh noise and a kind of improvised-feeling, also-quite-noisy chicanery, but the primary impression in Green Giant‘s six tracks/27 time-bending minutes is of nodding, couchlocked stoner crush, and I wouldn’t dare ask anything more of it than that. Neither should you. I’d argue this is an album rather than the EP it’s categorized as being, since it flows and definitely gets its point across in a full-length manner, but I’m not even gonna fight the band on that because they might break out a 50-minute record or some shit and, well, I’m just not sure I’m ready to get that high this early in the morning. Might have to reserve an entire day for that. Which might be fun, too.

Obelos linktr.ee

Obelos on Instagram

—