Posted in Whathaveyou on October 28th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
It wasn’t overly hyped or anything, but I dug the gosh darn heck out of Dome Runner‘s first album, Conflict State Design (review here), when it came out through Svart in 2021. That record had a decidedly ’90s bent to it, with a pointed Godflesh influence at root in a way that the seven-minute single “Salvation Access” streaming below seems to work outward from. I hear less compression in the sound, more range and atmosphere, still with a heavy industrial charge running underneath. The new LP is called World Panopticon and it’s out Nov. 21, also through Svart Records.
Actually it’s a double-LP, and I’m here for the ’90s-style CD-era running time as well, especially if Dome Runner pan out to be as multifaceted as the first album made it seem they might. I haven’t heard the sophomore release yet, so can’t speak to the whole of the thing, but I’ll hope to hear it and have a review sometime between now and, well, whenever they do a third one, I guess. This post is very much a reminder to myself that that’s something I want to make happen when/if I’m able.
From the PR wire:
Salvation Access – DOME RUNNER’s new single out today; Upcoming album World Panopticon out in November via Svart Records
Industrial metal juggernaut DOME RUNNER have been grinding in the underground since 2017, fusing elements of extreme metal, hardcore and alternative with dystopian soundscapes and grinding machinery. Svart Records are proud to unleash their ambitious sophomore album World Panopticon in November.
The album’s second single Salvation Access was released today, October 24th, and the band’s mastermind Simo Perkiömäki comments on it as follows:
“In Salvation Access the album starts closing in thematically through collapse into acceptance, the place that ultimately sets the observer free. While the record deals with the various ways one tends to limit oneself even to the very edge of one’s own purpose, there are eventually deadends where you have to find another way instead of going through. The song represents a storm of light at the end of the tunnel for the soul-searching sun.” Watch the official visualiser for Salvation Access HERE
World Panopticon, the 77-minute double album, represent the strongest and most unafraid songwriting of the group while going dynamically and sonically further than ever before. Thematically spawn from a dystopian world as an escapist tale fused of observations of modern and future functions of society while simultaneously focusing in rebirth of the observing self-shackled within yet driven to break free, the album takes the listener deeper to the world around and beyond, open for those who dare to dive in.
World Panopticon is out on Svart exclusive ultra clear w/ black smoke vinyl, limited turquoise vinyl, classic black vinyl, and digipak CD. Release date November 21st.
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 11th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
I suppose I’m speaking more to those who haven’t caught on to The Lunar Effect as yet — and if that’s you, don’t feel bad; I only got on board with last year’s Sounds of Green and Blue (review here); there’s no judging or gatekeeping going on, and if there was, I’m nobody to keep any gate. But, with that said, if you haven’t heard The Lunar Effect yet, consider not letting the new single “Feed the Hand,” for which they’ve put out a new video that features what would seem to be a different band playing the song while saying nothing about it — I think maybe because British humour, and on that level, they’re not wrong — but the song manages to soar in four minutes’ time and that’s pretty emblematic of who The Lunar Effect are in terms of the effectiveness of their craft.
They’ve been kicking around the London underground for eight years now, and they’re already confirmed for Masters of the Riff next March at Oslo Hackney. Look out for more confirmations as we get closer to and through the Oct. 24 release for their new album, Fortune’s Always Hiding, for which the new single acts as herald.
The PR wire brought art, info, the video for “Feed the Hand,” and more:
Dragging classic rock through a psychedelic haze and leaving it bleeding in the present – The Lunar Effect’s most ambitious work to date out in October via Svart Records
The Lunar Effect were formed in London in 2017 by brothers Jon and Dan Jefford and later completed by vocalist Josh Neuwford, bassist Brett Halsey, and eventually second guitarist Mark Fuller. Since their arrival on the scene, they’ve carved out a reputation for crafting music that feels both familiar and original – a modern echo of grunge-soaked ’70s rock, fuzzed-out blues, and melancholic British soul.
Following the underground success of 2019’s Calm Before the Calm, the band signed with Svart Records and released the critically praised sophomore album Sounds of Green & Blue in 2024. After touring the album across the UK and Europe, they set their sights on album three, their most ambitious work to date. Fortune’s Always Hiding lands in October 2025; a brooding journey through loss, memory, and the weight of time. It marks a new era for the band – deeper, stranger, and more soul-baring than ever.
The first taste from the upcoming album was released today. “Feed the Hand sets the tone for what’s to come, uncomfortable, deliberate, and heavy with implication. It reaches back with one hand, grabbing a handful of early 90’s alternative nostalgia to bring a high energy groove. With the other, it drags the listener through an unravelling; guidance twisted into obedience, time eroding memory from a feeling to a realisation. There’s weight here, but it’s not theatrical. It’s cathartic and satisfyingly powerful. A quiet reckoning fed by the band’s influences, serving up a whole new dish to the table.” the band comments on the new single. Watch the video for Feed the Hand HERE
They don’t imitate the past, they channel its spirit through a warped, modern lens. From thunderous grooves and fuzz-soaked guitar riffs to intimate, fractured vocals, The Lunar Effect channel the unease of the modern world with a sound that refuses to sit still.
2026 promises more touring, more evolution, and no interest in standing still. For a band that’s never fit neatly into any box, The Lunar Effect continue building their own universe — one hypnotic, heavy track at a time.
Fortune’s Always Hiding is available on Svart exclusive Cream/Red/Orange marble vinyl, limited Transparent Green vinyl, Black vinyl, CD, and digital platforms on October 24th, 2025.
Tracklisting: 1. Feed the Hand 2. Watchful Eye 3. Five and Two 4. My Blue Veins 5. Stay With Me 6. Settle Down 7. I Disappear 8. A New Moon Rises 9. Scotoma 10. Nailed to the Sky 11. Tomorrow Comes Too Soon (Bonus Track)
Finnish collective Entheomorphosis will release their four-song LP, Pyhä Kuilu, this Friday, May 23. Set to issue through Svart Records, it is the first record for the band under this guise, but part of a lineage that can be followed backward for more than a decade to some of these players’ time in Mr. Peter Hayden, which evolved first into PH, later into Enphin, and now emerges sludgy and expansive through a 31-minute procession of works mostly centered around the extended opener “Alkiema” (13:26) and closer “Iätön” (12:11). These bookends that put the longest track first (immediate points) surround “Sikinä” (4:22) and “Huntu” (1:55), but although shorter, each one of those adds something distinct to the entirety.
Sludge is the foundation, weird is the mandate. Entheomorphosis sidestep the PH/Enphin progression of synthesizer cosmic megadrone in favor of painting a rawer futuristic sound, the tones of guitar and bass coming through after the ambient unfolding of “Alkiema” with post-metallic sprawl, but the count-in on drums a bit past the four-minute mark leads into a more directly-, purposefully-riff-driven verse, the gutted out vocals of guitarist Vesa Ajomo (also Moog) calling to mind harsh turn-of-the-century-era fuckall while remaining its own thing atmospherically — not to mention it’s in Finnish. The nod grows tortured and comes apart to thuds and ambience circa 9:30, and the minimalism feels particularly stark for how consuming the volume got before they dropped it. A meditative, liquefied pattern takes hold, topped suitably with throat-singing, and Pyhä Kuilu‘s initial movement ends in murk.
Thus the drums and bass rumble that start “Sikinä” — provided by Lassi Männikkö and Lauri Kivelä, respectively — and the backing howl of guitar either from Ajomo or JP Koivisto feel like a mismatch to the blackened rasp of the vocals, but that’s the point, and the way the guitar and synth subtly comes forward over the Godfleshian roll before, again, they drop it back to the bass and drums and then just the drums, is hypnotic. “Huntu” strikes a more foreboding cast. Synth-driven, it is more willfully cinematic, evoking a sense of unease in the world, like you’re in the wrong timeline and there’s robots — so maybe I recently watched that Blade Runner sequel on a plane — and though it’s short, it is both a setup for the riff-led return that closes with “Iätön” and a claim laid to future atmospheric exploration beyond that led by the guitar elsewhere.
Not necessarily a surprise they’d foster an open context given the band’s pedigree and the attention to fleshing out ideas, but it’s part of what furthers the feel of Pyhä Kuilu as a debut album, and “Iätön” ebbs and flows like mid-’90s Neurosis and is no less viscerally noise-laced when they let it drift into feedback after five minutes in, eventually making their way down to barely-there emptiness before bringing it all the way slamming back into a squibbly-topped final culmination. Here too, Entheomorphosis complete the bookend, just as “Iätön” itself answers back to “Alkiema” at the outset in its longer-form structure, outward heft and well-mixed vocal shout. It is a short full-length at 31 minutes, as noted, but “Iätön” assures by the time it’s done that Pyhä Kuilu feels complete in the now as it sets the trajectory for the band’s evolution.
And as to whether or not that will happen, that is, if Entheomorphosis will develop as a project over multiple releases or if the whims and directions of those behind it will lead them elsewhere, I know better than to predict. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll note that Lauri Kivelä and I were both involved in the industrial project Alitila, which released an album in March. This collaboration had no bearing on my choice to feature this record, and if you doubt that, I’ve got a decade-plus of writing about Kivelä‘s writing from before we actually worked together to demonstrate that I’d probably be writing about this anyhow. I don’t know why I feel the need to say these things at a time when $400 million jetliners are being tossed at government officials for seen and unseen favors, but the Gen X in me can’t help but give a shit about integrity. Thanks for reading.
Pyhä Kuilu streams in its entirety below, followed by more background on the songs and narrative from the PR wire.
PYHÄ KUILU is a journey across four movements, with each composition unravelling layers of profound symbolic meaning:
● “Alkiema” explores the absorption and distillation of light into a singularity—a dark, cosmic initiation leading to a metamorphosis of flesh and spirit.
●”Sikinä” follows with the re-birth of refined truth in flesh—a process of nourishment, ascension, and the painful shedding of old forms.
●”Huntu” acts as an atmospheric interlude, representing the tearing away of the illusory, exposing the core essence of the soul’s path.
●”Iätön” culminates the album’s journey in the transformation of the refined soul into an active operator of the Universal current, altering reality itself.
Entheomorphosis Vesa Ajomo: Vocals, Guitar, Moog Lauri Kivelä: Bass JP Koivisto: Guitar Lassi Männikkö: Drums
“Full Moon Fever” appeared on The Gates of Slumber‘s 2024 comebacker self-titled (review here), issued through Svart. On the album, it’s one of the speedier songs if you’re talking average tempo, though “At Dawn,” “The Plague,” and so on are prone to faster parts as well, if not beholden to them in quite the same way the Indianapolis three-piece revel in the grueling nod elsewhere. Led by guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon, who revamped the lineup now six years ago (that’s a GTFO realization for me) with original drummer Chuck Brown and newcomer bassist Steve Janiak, both of whom also handle guitar and vocals in Apostle of Solitude.
So, doom band makes video a while after record is out. That’s only a good thing, and if you follow Apostle, you already know that Janiak has had a hand in a number of clips for that band. That’s not what’s happening here though. “Full Moon Fever” was directed by Tad Leger, who has drummed for Toxik, Blood Farmers, Lucertola and a host of others, and who has done layout work in horror cinema for I don’t even know how long as a graphic designer. Don’t be surprised when you see the wolfman show up, is what I’m saying, and the classic-horror that pervades does so with a firm grip on whence it comes.
It had been a while, so I decided to bother Leger for some comment about making the clip, and he was kind enough to indulge. You’ll find that below, followed by more from the PR wire. I don’t think The Gates of Slumber are really plugging anything other than the existence of the record or the band as they stand, and that’s plenty as far as I’m concerned. If you believe in doom, you believe in The Gates of Slumber.
From the PR wire:
The Gates of Slumber, “Full Moon Fever” video
Tad Leger on “Full Moon Fever”:
“I felt like ‘Full Moon Fever’ was a very cinematic feel. It filled my mind with images from classic films by Hammer and German expressionist filmmakers who used a monochromatic color palette. My friend Cliff Peck and I put in serious hours to craft something worthy of Gates of Slumber. Big thanks to Karl Simon for giving us such a challenging experience.”
“I was talking with our buddy Tad and he expressed an interest in doing the lyric video,” explains guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon. “Tad’s a massive fan of classic horror and he was into the song…. One thing led to another and he and his buddy Cliff came up with what I think is a pretty killer video clip! Hope you enjoy.”
THE GATES OF SLUMBER was formed by Karl Simon in 1998. Various people were in and out of the group between 1998 and 2001, when the Blood Encrusted Deth Axe demo was recorded with Jamie Walters aka Dr. Phibes/Athenar (Boulder, Midnight) on drums and bass. In 2003 Jason McCash took over the bass duties and was a long-time member of the band until his untimely demise in 2014, after which Simon decided it was time to call it quits. That was until 2019 when the renowned metal festival Hell Over Hammaburg wanted to bring the band back on stage to perform at the festival’s 2020 edition. Simon reformed the band with its original member Chuck Brown on drums and Steve Janiak on bass and got back to work.
The Gates of Slumber is available on Svart-exclusive black/white marble vinyl, limited transparent blue vinyl, black vinyl, CD, and all major digital platforms.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 10th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
There’s a lot to unpack here, so sit tight. First, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll note that these are artists with whom I’ve collaborated before. Lauri Kivelä, Vesa Vatanen and I made a record a little while back for a project called Alitila that’s coming out in March. So that’s worth mentioning. Second, Entheomorphosis, in which Kivelä is joined by Vesa Ajomo of Dark Buddha Rising, etc., is a new project but part of a longer thread of work these guys have undertaken starting over 15 years ago when Mr. Peter Hayden set out and following through to more recent output as Enphin, blowing out electronic psych and experimentalist textures of drone.
Some of that is happening on the upcoming Pyhä Kuilu as well, as you can hear in the synth-horror of the penultimate interlude “Huntu” ahead of the finale “Iätön,” a bookend with opener and longest cut (immediate points) “Alkiema,” which follows a similar path of somewhat agonized longform sludge experimentalism, Ajomo‘s lyrics (in Finnish) giving voice to the overarching meditation and spiritual journey in the music. As has been the case with their work all along, it doesn’t sound like anything so much as itself.
May is a while off, so there’s no audio yet, but Svart sent this down the PR wire:
Entheomorphosis’ debut album PYHÄ KUILU will stare through you!
Featuring members of Dark Buddha Rising and Mr Peter Hayden/PH/Enphin
The Finnish underground music scene is set to welcome a formidable new entity as Entheomorphosis announce the release of their debut album PYHÄ KUILU (“Holy Abyss”) on May 23rd, 2025 via Svart Records. A collaborative new outfit featuring seasoned members from the enigmatic Dark Buddha Rising and the genre-defying Mr Peter Hayden/PH/Enphin, Entheomorphosis has crafted an immersive sonic purge that plunges into the depths of transformation, spirituality, and cosmic dissolution.
Guitarist Vesa Ajomo (Dark Buddha Rising), one of the principal architects behind the project, explains:
“Entheomorphosis was born in the need to refine artistic and spiritual work. During the years of turmoil and isolation, the main riffs were forged and over time they meandered into an album that has the most emotional weight that I have ever been involved with. This is the process of physical, spiritual, and mental transformation.”
With crushing riffs, hypnotic rhythms, and dark, ceremonial vocals, PYHÄ KUILU carves out an abyssal space where listeners can confront their own psychic dissolution and re-creation. Each track invites the audience to partake in the process of unveiling, where the descent into swirling chaos of Entheomorphosis leads to spiritual refinement and ascension. It’s not all about leaving the listener in the dark however, as there is a more transcendent mission within the Entheomorphosis quest.
As Vesa Ajomo puts it:
“Within this album we have captured the energy, intuition, and guidance in the most organic form possible and allowed the compositions to take their final form at a slow pace. Through this initiation, we have found the holy abyss and bravely dived into the darkness in order to find the light.”
Entheomorphosis channels the influences of doom, drone, and avant-garde metal, yet the album stands as a work of unique potency. For fans of Neurosis, Godflesh, and especially the celebrated Finnish dark and heavy Psychedelic underground, Entheomorphosis is at the very underneath of the hypnotic dark underbelly of psychedelia. Recorded with a minimalist ethos, the band prioritized capturing the raw intensity and spiritual essence of their compositions, ensuring that PYHÄ KUILU resonates with both primal and metaphysical power.
PYHÄ KUILU is available on Svart exclusive transparent violet/black smoke vinyl, band exclusive transparent green/black smoke, limited gold vinyl, black vinyl, CD, and digital platforms on May 23rd, 2025. The album release show will take place at the Sonic Rites festival in Helsinki on 23rd – 24th of May, 2025.
PYHÄ KUILU is a journey across four movements, with each composition unravelling layers of profound symbolic meaning:
● “Alkiema” explores the absorption and distillation of light into a singularity—a dark, cosmic initiation leading to a metamorphosis of flesh and spirit.
●”Sikinä” follows with the re-birth of refined truth in flesh—a process of nourishment, ascension, and the painful shedding of old forms.
●”Huntu” acts as an atmospheric interlude, representing the tearing away of the illusory, exposing the core essence of the soul’s path.
●”Iätön” culminates the album’s journey in the transformation of the refined soul into an active operator of the Universal current, altering reality itself.
Entheomorphosis Vesa Ajomo: Vocals, Guitar, Moog Lauri Kivelä: Bass JP Koivisto: Guitar Lassi Männikkö: Drums
Posted in Reviews on December 4th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
The last full-length offering from Indianapolis traditionalist doomers The Gates of Slumber was The Wretch in 2011, and it’s been a long road getting from there to their self-titled sixth album, also their first outing through Svart Records. Begun in 1998 in the message-board era of internet-based doomly proliferation, and led in the present by founding guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon, the band’s six-song/35-minute return opus features bassist/backing vocalist Steve Janiak (also guitar/vocals in Apostle of Solitude, Devil to Pay) and drummer Chuck Brown (also also guitar/vocals in Apostle of Solitude), a lineup that first came together in 2019. The occasion at that point was a return performance at Germany’s Hell Over Hammaburg festival in — wait for it — March 2020.
That fest actually happened (it was early in the month), but of course there wouldn’t be much opportunity for building momentum from there as a global pandemic shut down the world. Already at that point, the band’s path had been tumultuous, from the 2014 passing of then-former bassist Jason McCash after The Gates of Slumber‘s final release, 2013’s Scion A/V-backed Stormcrow EP (review here) and disbanding. As Simon moved forward to release a self-titled debut (review here) with a new trio, Wretch, in 2016, who also toured that year and the next in the US and Europe, issuing the EP Bastards Born (review here) in 2017 and making live appearances right up to an East Coast run in Spring 2019, the path back to The Gates of Slumber is somewhat tumultuous, but the point is that the music never really stopped — there was also the Gates live album, Live in Tempe, Arizona (discussed here), in 2020 — and the fact that the Simon/Janiak/Brown lineup have been playing together for five years in addition to knowing each other for probably decades by virtue of their respective tenures in the Indy underground might account for some of the cohesion heard across the material on The Gates of Slumber. Or it might just be that they know what the fuck they’re doing with slow riffs and morose vibes. Take your pick.
Either way, The Gates of Slumber is a clear and concise statement of intent and declaration of self on the part of the band who made it, perhaps nowhere more so than on the four-minute side B leadoff “At Dawn.” While certainly not the first time the band has conjured a gallop in their quarter-century-plus history, the chug the trio ride there is particularly fluid. By that point in the proceedings, the revamped dynamic has already been unveiled, as Janiak not only takes a backing role on vocals for the grueling-but-catchy opening cut “Embrace the Lie” but handles some leads as well, going on to anchor the extinction-themed, later-Iommi-hued chorus of the subsequent “We Are Perdition” with an effective drawling delivery of the lyric “…global holocaust” before side A capper “Full Moon Fever” begins the tempo kick that “At Dawn” will push further, Brown‘s drums slow-swinging in classic fashion behind some harsher vocal delve from Simon in the song’s middle, before the scorching solo and march into the gradual fadeout take hold to comprise the back half.
Already by that point the message that The Gates of Slumber are “back” has come through clearly, but in terms of aesthetic, their revelry of course takes a darker, more depressive hue. After “At Dawn” — which is neither the first fast or short song the band has ever had but stands out here nonetheless — The Gates of Slumber redirects to its closing duo, the seven-minutes-apiece pairing of “The Fog” and “The Plague,” the former of which rumbles out a lonely bassline before crashing in at full volume. It’s not quite like slamming into a wall, and even here the shifting character of the band can be heard in some of Janiak‘s punchthrough flourish in the low end, but the feeling of having arrived is palpable just the same as the initial chants begin, reminding the audience that this is a band who might consider the likes of Reverend Bizarre as peers, and whose roll has served as a catalyst for others in the style in the past. On a record brimming with doom, “The Fog” and “The Plague” both are especially doomed. A righteous culmination in “The Fog” after Simon‘s solo brings a crashout finish, and standalone guitar begins “The Plague” with due foreboding.
If “The Plague” is the payoff for the album as a whole — and it makes arguments for being thought of that way — then it’s all the more appropriate how much it reaffirms who The Gates of Slumber are while looking ahead to how that might continue to take shape over the course of this incarnation of the band. Slightly shorter than the song before, it is more willful in its slog, and thereby suitable to the subject of its title, and doubly notable for the coming together of Simon and Janiak for harmonies in the early hook before the song takes off on a Saint Vitus-esque shove leading to an eventual crawling return and shift back into that chorus, all the more effective the second time around for having so strongly declared itself the first. Even in that moment, the band remains identifiably The Gates of Slumber, but the element of ‘something new happening here’ isn’t to be discounted, and this isn’t the first time an established doom act has been richer sonically as a result of bringing Janiak on board. Some players make everyone around them sound better.
Whether or not “The Plague” is telling as to the future direction of The Gates of Slumber can’t really be known until when and if they do something after it, and a more immediate consideration is the fact that despite having significant ’00s and ’10s laurels to rest upon, they don’t, and that a crucial facet of this self-titled — the band stating in no uncertain terms this is who they are, right down to the minimalist black-on-black logo album cover because what’s the point of art or for that matter anything? — is what it adds to the scope of the band’s take on doom. It makes the record more than just a comeback for the band, reassuring that along with the grim point of view that’s informed their work all along and their commitment to a firm idea of what doom metal is and does, they’re finding spaces in which to progress and continuing to leave their stamp on the genre. The Gates of Slumber had long since earned a place among the finest American doom of the last 25 years. That they sound so hungry as well as so miserable results in an odd hopefulness for things to come. I’ll skip the hyperbole in the spirit of a band so clearly bent on purging bullshit from their sound, but at the very least, doom should be so lucky as to have The Gates of Slumber as the band’s hard-won new beginning.
Posted in Reviews on October 14th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Second week of the Fall 2024 Quarterly Review begins now. You stoked? Nah, probably not, but at least at the end of this week there will be another 50 records for you to check out, added to the 50 from last week to make 100 total releases covered. So, I mean, it’s not nothing. But I understand if it isn’t the make-or-break of your afternoon.
Last week was killer, and today gets us off to another good start. Crazy, it’s almost like I’m enjoying this. Who the hell ever heard of such a thing?
Quarterly Review #51-60:
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White Hills, Beyond This Fiction
New York’s own psychedelic heads on fire White Hills return with Beyond This Fiction, a collection of sounds so otherworldly and lysergic they can’t help but be real. Seven tracks range from the fluid “Throw it Up in the Air” to the bassy experimental new wave of “Clear as Day,” veering into gentle noise rock as it does before “Killing Crimson” issues its own marching orders, coming across like if you beamed Fu Manchu through the accretion disk of a black hole and the audio experienced gravitational lensing. “Fiend” brings the two sides together and dares to get a little dreamy while doing it, the interlude “Closer” is a wash of drone, and “The Awakening” is a good deal of drone itself, but topped with spoken word, and the closing title-track takes place light-years from here in a kind of time humans haven’t yet learned to measure. It’s okay. White Hills records will still be around decades from now, when humans finally catch up to them. I’m not holding my breath, though.
Five records deep into a tenure now more than a decade long, I feel like Demon Head are a band that are the answer to a lot of questions being asked. Oh, where’s the classic-style band doing something new? Who’s a band who can sound like The Cure playing black metal and be neither of those things? Where’s a band doing forward-thinking proto-doom, not at all hindered by the apparent temporal impossibility of looking ahead and back at the same time? Here they are. They’re called Demon Head. Their fifth album is called Through holes Shine the Stars, and its it’s-night-time-and-so-we-chug-different sax-afflicted ride in “Draw Down the Stars” is consuming as the band take the ’70s doomery of their beginnings to genuinely new and progressive places. The depth of vocal layering throughout — “The Chalice,” the atmo-doom sprawl of “Every Flatworm,” the rousing, swinging hook and ensuing gallop of “Frost,” and so on — adds drama and persona to the songs, and the songs aren’t wanting otherwise, with a dug-in intricacy of construction and malleable underlying groove. Seriously. Maybe Demon Head are the band you’re looking for.
You can call Earth Ship sludge metal, and you’re not really wrong, but you’re not the most right either. The Berlin-based trio founded by guitarist/vocalist Jan Oberg and bassist Sabine Oberg, plus André Klein on drums, offer enough crush to hit that mark for sure, but the tight, almost Ministry-esque vocals on the title-track, the way “Radiant” dips subtly toward psychedelia as a side-A-capping preface to the languid clean-sung nod of “Daze and Delights,” giving symmetry to what can feel chaotic as “Ethereal Limbo” builds into its crescendo, fuzzed but threatening aggression soon to manifest in “Acrid Haze,” give even the nastiest moments throughout a sense of creative reach. That is to say, Soar — which Jan Oberg also recorded, mixed and mastered at Hidden Planet Studio and which sees release through the band’s The Lasting Dose Records — resides in more than one style, with opener “Shallow” dropping some hints of what’s to come and a special lumber seeming to be dedicated to the penultimate “Bereft,” which proves to be a peak in its own right. The Obergs seem to split their time these days between Earth Ship and the somewhat more ferocious Grin. In neither outfit do they misspend it.
Bassist/vocalist Tommy Stewart (ex-Hallows Eve, owner of Black Doomba Records) once more sits in the driver’s seat of the project that shares his name, and with four new tracks Tommy Stewart’s Dyerwulf on Fyrewulf One — which I swear sounds like the name of a military helicopter or somesuch — offer what will reportedly be half of their third long-player with an intention toward delivering Fyrewulf Two next year. Fair enough. “Kept Pain Busy” is the longest and grooviest fare on offer, bolstered by the quirk of shorter opener “Me ‘n’ My Meds” and the somewhat more madcap “Zoomagazoo,” which touches on heavy rockabilly in its swing, with a duly feedback-inclusive cover of Bloodrock‘s “Melvin Laid an Egg” for good measure. The feeling of saunter is palpable there for the organ, but prevalent throughout the original songs as well, as Stewart and drummer Dennis Reid (Patrick Salerno guests on the cover) know what they’re about, whether it’s garage-punk-psych trip of “Me ‘n’ My Meds” the swing that ensues.
The narrative — blessings and peace upon it — presents A Grand Stream as the result of Smote guitarist Daniel Foggin and drummer Rob Law absconding to a cabin in the woods by a stream to write and record. There’s certainly escapism in it, and one might argue Smote‘s folk-tinged drone and atmospheric heavy meditations have always had an aspect of leaving the ol’ consciousness at the flung-open doors of perception, etc., but the 10-minute undulating-but-mostly-stationary noise in “Chantry” is still a lot to take. That it follows the 16-miinute “Coming Out of a Hedge Backwards,” laced with sitar and synth and other backing currents filling out the ambience, should be indicative of the sprawl of the over-70-minute LP to begin with. Smote aren’t strangers at this point to the expanse or to longform expression, but there still seems to be a sense of plunging into the unknown throughout A Grand Stream as they make their way deeper into the 18-minute “The Opinion of the Lamb Pt. 2,” and the rolling realization of “Sitting Stone Pt. 1” at the beginning resounds over all of it.
Hard to argue with Mammoth Caravan‘s bruising metallism, not the least because by the time you’d open your mouth to do so the Little Rock, Arkansas, trio have already run you under their aural steamroller and you’re too flat to get the words out. The six-song/36-minute Frostbitten Galaxy is the second record from the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Robert Warner, bassist/vocalist Brandon Ringo and drummer Khetner Howton, and in the willful meander of “Cosmic Clairvoyance,” in many of their intros, in the tradeoffs of the penultimate “Prehistoric Spacefarer” and in the clean-sung finale “Sky Burial,” they not only back the outright crush of “Tusks of Orion” and “Siege in the Stars,” as well as opener/longest track (immediate points) “Absolute Zero,” with atmospheric intention, but with a bit of dared melody that feels like a foretell of things to come from the band. On Frostbitten Galaxy and its correspondingly chilly 2023 predecessor Ice Cold Oblivion (review here), Mammoth Caravan have proven they can pummel. Here they begin the process of expanding their sound around that.
If you caught Harvestman‘s psychedelic dub and guitar experimentalism on Triptych Part One (review here) earlier this year, perhaps it won’t come as a shock to find former Neurosis guitarist/vocalist Steve Von Till, aka Harvestman, working in a similar vein on Triptych Part Two. There’s more to it than just heady chill, but to be sure that’s part of what’s on offer too in the immersive drone of “The Falconer” or the 10-minute “The Hag of Beara vs. the Poet (Forest Dub),” which reinterprets and plays with the makeup of opener “The Hag of Beara vs. the Poet.” “Damascus” has a more outward-facing take and active percussive base, while “Vapour Phase” answers “The Falconer” with some later foreboding synthesis — closer “The Unjust Incarceration” adds guitar that I’ve been saying for years sounds like bagpipes and still does to this mix — while the penultimate “Galvanized and Torn Open,” despite the visceral title, brings smoother textures and a steady, calm rhythm. The story’s not finished yet, but Von Till has already covered a significant swath of ground.
Following up on 2022’s successful debut full-length, Born of Obsidian, the 11-song/37-minute Of Amber and Sand highlights the UK outfit’s flexibility of approach as regards metal, sludge, post-heavy impulses, intricate arrangements and fullness of sound as conveyed through the production. So yes, it’s quite a thing. They quietly and perhaps wisely moved on from the bit of amateur anthropology that defined the MesoAmerican thematic of the first record, and as Of Amber and Sand complements the thrown elbows in the midsection of “Death No More” and the proggy rhythmmaking of “Fenjaan” with shorter interludes of various stripes, eventually and satisfyingly getting to a point in “Bell Tower,” “Neheh” and “Timekeeper” where the ambience and the heft become one thing for a few minutes — and that’s kind of a separate journey from the rest of the record, which turns back to its purposes with “Crux Ansata,” but it works — but the surrounding interludes give each song a chance to make its own impact, and Kurokuma take advantage every time.
SlugWeed, The Mind’s Ability to Think Abstract Thoughts
Do you think a band called SlugWeed would be heavy and slow? If so, you’d be right. Would it help if I told you the last single was called “Bongcloud?” The instrumental New England solo-project — which, like anything else these days, might be AI — has an ecosystem’s worth of releases up on Bandcamp dating back to an apparent birth as a pandemic project with the long-player The Power of the Leaf, and the 11-minute single “The Mind’s Ability to Think Abstract Thoughts” follows the pattern in holding to the central ethic of lumbering instrumental riffage, all dank and probably knowing about trichomes and such. The song itself is a massive chug-and-groover, and gradually opens to a more atmospheric texture as it goes, but the central idea is in the going itself, which is slow, plodding, and returns from its drift around a fervent chug that reminds of a (slower) take on some of what Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol had on offer earlier in the year. It probably won’t be long before SlugWeed return with anther single or EP, so “The Mind’s Ability to Think Abstract Thoughts” may just be a step on the way. Fine for the size of the footprint in question.
Dug-in solo krautistry from Tempe, Arizona’s Jeff Hopp, Man and Robot Society‘s Asteroid Lost comes steeped in science-fiction lore and mellow space-prog vibes. It’s immersive, and not a story without struggle or conflict as represented in the music — which is instrumental and doesn’t really want, need or have a ton of room for vocals, though there are spots where shoehorning could be done if Hopp was desperate — but if you take the trip just as it is, either put your own story to it or just go with the music, the music is enough to go on itself, and there’s more than one applicable thread of plot to be woven in “Nomads of the Sand” or the later “Man of Chrome,” which resonates a classic feel in the guitar ahead of the more vibrant space funk of “The Nekropol,” which stages a righteous keyboard takeover as it comes out of its midsection and into the theremin-sounding second half. You never quite know what’s coming next, but since it all flows as a single work, that becomes part of the experience Man and Robot Society offer, and is a strength as the closing title-track loses the asteroid but finds a bit of fuzzy twist to finish.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 19th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
A quick fill from drummer Chuck Brown is all the ceremony The Gates of Slumber need to launch their studio return, as the title-track of their impending sixth album and first in 13 years, Embrace the Lie, soon unfolds with founding guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon dug wholly into the righteous Iommic doom on which the band cut their teeth in the aughts. “Embrace the Lie,” which also opens the record, is the first single to feature the new lineup of The Gates of Slumber, with Brown and bassist/vocalist Steve Janiak, both of whom handle guitar/vocals in Apostle of Solitude, and in its final verse as Janiak takes the lead vocal spot, it hints at new ideas taking shape in the band’s sound that one hopes will play out across the album to come.
The history of The Gates of Slumber is complex at this point, with Simon having put the band to rest in 2013 and the 2014 death of bassist Jason McCash, three years on from their till-now-final studio album, The Wretch (review here). Their 2019 reunion, which Simon discussed here, came after his founding of the band Wretch, which released a self-titled debut (review here) in 2016 and the next year followed up with the Bastards Born EP (discussed here). Embrace the Lie arrives as an endpoint for this winding path, and though The Gates of Slumber are moving forward with new players and a new album, their doom remains as downtrodden as ever, as “Embrace the Lie” hammers home its central thesis: we’re fucked.
The esteemed Svart Records will offer Embrace the Lie on Nov. 29, as the PR wire tells it:
The Gates of Slumber return with a new single out today, upcoming sixth album out in November via Svart Records
“I never intended to pick up with The Gates of Slumber ever again in 2014. While I did start the band and wrote most of the first album it was never intended to be a one man show.” -Karl Simon, 2024
Indiana’s True Doom Metal legends The Gates of Slumber return with a new album out on Svart Records in November. The self-titled album is the band’s first full length offering since The Wretch from 2011. First taste from the upcoming sixth album is out today. Listen to the new single Embrace the Lie, an ode to the lying news media and political talking heads, now.
The Gates of Slumber was formed by Karl Simon in 1998. Various people were in and out of the group between 1998 and 2001, when the Blood Encrusted Deth Axe demo was recorded with Jamie Walters of Boulder on drums and Dr. Phibes/Athenar (later to form the cult black metal band Midnight) on bass. In 2003 Jason McCash took over the bass duties and was a long-time member of the band until his untimely demise in 2014, after which Simon decided it was time to call it quits. That was until 2019 when the renowned metal festival Hell Over Hammaburg wanted to bring the band back on stage to perform at the festival’s 2020 edition. Simon reformed the band with its original member Chuck Brown on drums and Steve Janiak on bass and got back to work. “We’d been asked several times to play Hell Over Hammaburg. But there was no “we” to play. The germ of the idea started. We started re-learning songs from the first LP. It wasn’t too long into the rehearsals that we started coming up with new songs.”, states Simon.
After a reunion tour was finished, Covid kicked in to slow down the process. Half of the album was already written but the remaining half took its time, and the songs were left to stew in their juices. With bastard heavy songs honoring the Doom Metal greats Saint Vitus and Penance, straight forward bangers, lyrics inspired by the Black Death and John Carpenter’s The Fog, The Gates of Slumber is a truly crushing album and a must listen to any Doom Metal fanatic.
The Gates of Slumber is available on Svart exclusive black/white marble vinyl, limited transparent blue vinyl, black vinyl, CD, and digital platforms on November 29th, 2024.
