Posted in Whathaveyou on July 22nd, 2024 by JJ Koczan
So release show at Roadburn, maybe? Anyone wanna take bets? It wouldn’t be their first, mind you. A third studio full-length from the Tom G. Warrior-led Triptykon, if it manifests in 2025 — it’s a big crazy world and a lot can happen between now and then — would be 11 years after the band’s preceding Melana Chasmata, though they also had the commissioned project at the aforementioned Roadburn in 2019. Anyway, anywhere, however it comes, that’s an event, and one to look forward to. We’re more than halfway through 2024 now, somewhat astonishingly. I don’t have a 2025 most-anticipated list yet in my notes. Triptykon are a good first one for it.
The announcement was made with due formality on social media:
Triptykon Confirm Work On New Album
After an extended period of frantic inactivity on the recording front, Swiss/German avant-garde extreme metal group Triptykon are convening in 2024 to focus on the completion and recording of material for the band’s long-awaited fourth album.
The album is scheduled to be released by long-time music industry partners Century Media Records/Sony Music Entertainment in 2025. For this purpose, Triptykon (via the group’s own label Prowling Death Records) signed a new, vastly enhanced licensing agreement with CMR/SME on 1 June 2024. It is likely that an EP or onstage glimpses of Triptykon’s new music will precede the album.
Once the songwriting and arrangement sessions at the band’s base in Zurich, Switzerland, are concluded to the band’s satisfaction, Triptykon will relocate to guitarist V. Santura’s own studios in Bavaria, Germany, to conduct recording and mixing sessions. The album will again be produced by V. Santura and Tom Gabriel Warrior.
In light of the fact that Triptykon was established as the direct successor to Celtic Frost, there also exists an emblematic undertone to these sessions, as they are taking place exactly 40 years after Celtic Frost commenced work on that band’s debut album, “Morbid Tales”.
Triptykon: Tom Gabriel Warrior (voice/guitar), Vanja Slajh (bass), V. Santura (guitar/vocals), Hannes Grossmann (drums/percussion). Triptykon are managed by Miles Hackett and represented by Jörg Düsedau for Dragon Productions.
Triptykon’s previous album releases: “Eparistera Daimones” (2010), “Melana Chasmata” (2014), “Requiem – Live At Roadburn 2019” (2020).
Triptykon line-up shot by Roland Moeck/Arkana PhotoArt, Sweden, 2023
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 13th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Not gonna hear me arguing with the lineup for Up in Smoke 2024, the 10th anniversary edition of the Pratteln, Switzerland-based festival appearing early in the Fall circuit alongside the likes of Desertfest Belgium, Keep it Low, Lazy Bones, Høstsabbat and others. It’s done — the lineup, that is — with the final additions of Masters of Reality, Naxatras and The Machine, although you can see the “and more” remains on the poster, so there may indeed yet be more names to come. With Monster Magnet, Greenleaf, Lowrider, Pentagram (debuting a new lineup even on their “retirement” tour, apparently), Monolord, Slomosa, Messa, Samavayo, Valley of the Sun and Daevar, among others, you wouldn’t say it’s hurting for righteousness either way.
Even unto its final acts announced, the spread of geography and styles emphasizes how easy it is to take these things for granted. Masters of Reality, the long-tenured outfit led by Chris Goss, make the trip from California. Naxatras, who shifted from open jams to synth-laced prog-psych with their last record, will head north from Greece. The Machine, with tone for days and a readiness to either blast out noise rock or jam, jam, jam, will pop over from the Netherlands. The entire bill is a swath of countries and styles drawn mostly from Europe with a few US acts worked in, and while with so much going on across the continent it’s easy to think of it as just another weekend, the fact is it’s an anchor for a lot of Fall tours and, 10 years later, a communion unto itself. I’ve never been, but if invited, I’d be there in a snap. Or however long the flight is, anyhow. It’s never actually a snap.
The point, though, is don’t take it for granted. I remember when events like this didn’t exist, let alone exist every weekend in a linear succession of countries. That Up in Smoke happens at all is a thing to celebrate, never mind that it’s been going on for a decade now.
Word came from Sound of Liberation via socials:
UP IN SMOKE 2024 – FINAL BAND ANNOUNCEMENT
We’re stoked to announce the last bands for the Up In Smoke festival 2024!💥
The line up is now complete!🔥
*** PLEASE WELCOME ***
MASTERS OF REALITY NAXATRAS THE MACHINE
*** FULL LINE UP ***
MONSTER MAGNET MASTERS OF REALITY PENTAGRAM TRUCKFIGHTERS MONOLORD LOWRIDER GREENLEAF SLOMOSA NAXATRAS MESSA WOLVENNEST SCORPION CHILD VALLEY OF THE SUN GNOME PSYCHLONA THE MACHINE SAMAVAYO DJIIN DAEVAR TAR POND PREAMP DISASTER NORNA NO MUTE GLUE
Finnish extreme industrial two-piece Vorare are releasing two albums this month, and the Rope Tower collaboration LP pairing them with Geneva, Switzerland, experimentalist noisemaker Earthflesh is the latter of them, set to issue on May 31. That puts it just one week after the standalone Atelier lands May 24 as the follow-up to 2022’s Voyeur (review here), and that record too is a barrage of death-stench machine cruelty. The concurrent offerings began their respective recording processes about two years ago, but where Atelier was finished in May 2022, the five-track/30-minute so-dark-it’s-like-you-read-the-news Rope Tower started toward the end of that summer and seems to have been longer in its poisonous steeping.
Earthflesh earlier this year released the 39-minute single-tracker Light-Matter-Spirit — also stylized all-caps — and amid the panicked pulsations of “Seepage” premiering in the ropes-and-hoods-themed video below, the effectively noise-on-noise blend feels particularly harsh, even in the context of what Vorare have done before. It all seems to decay in the middle of the six-minute piece, with indecipherable blown-out growling to offer no real comfort and a later drag of beat offset by various electronic hums before it ends with distorted drone. That’s also how “Ovigerous” leads off Rope Tower, but the opener hits less immediately with its beat, instead using that drone and various piercing high frequencies to set the backdrop for the cruelty about to unfold.
I’ll note that “Seepage” isn’t the first reference to bodily discharge from Vorare, whose debut EP was 2022’s The Drainage Rituals (review here), but together with Earthflesh, the foreboding ambience wrought in Rope Tower is its own thing. Listening front-to-back as “Haswell” slowly fades-in its threat with howls like distant mechanized beasts or war horns echoing over devastated landscapes, the feeling is like when you stand somewhere you know that a murder or something else awful happened. That lingering aura of the reality of violent death. Certainly the suicidal/executionary imagery bolsters this impression, but as “Haswell” cymbal-washes out circa 2:50 and everything but the guttural vocals goes away for about 20 seconds before slamming back with a grueling thud, rising to a speaker-blowing (seriously, watch out) low-end static unto its gradual wash of funereal sounds, the confrontation is consuming.
“Sopite” doesn’t blink in staring into this overarching void, evolving its infected cinematic tension with non-beat rhythmic back-and-forth and elements appearing and disappearing as they go. Without the onslaught of the vocals, the penultimate piece of Rope Tower feels like a respite, but the keyboard lines in its second half and the rumble underscoring them are consistent in their horrific manifestations and more than just a setup for the eight-minute finale “Turpentine Falls,” which begins with its own flatline drone and far-back growling over the course of its first two minutes. You could call it minimal in everything but how it makes your skin crawl. It’s not until 3:47 that the beat and harsh screaming kick in, and from there, the next several minutes embark on a vicious build-up so that by the time they hit the six-minute mark, “Turpentine Falls” has grown to the LP’s most ferocious cacophony.
It’s anyone’s guess who’s meting out which aspects of the punishing entirety — most of the vocals seem to come from the Vorare side, so that’s something — but as “Turpentine Falls” shifts from its payoff to the fading residual drone that ends, it underscores the way Rope Tower works on multiple levels at once in a mix that’s deep enough to hold the monsters it does. United perhaps most of all in their readiness to push the limits of extremity in music through their way-gone-and-way-dark approaches, the alignment of Earthflesh and Vorare results in an aurally caustic and immersive nightmare. Words like ‘heavy’ don’t begin to cut it.
Rope Tower is out May 31. “Seepage” premieres below. It’s NSFW unless you never want anyone in your office or other place of employment to talk to you again. Which maybe you do, and fair enough.
Good luck:
Vorare & Earthflesh, “Seepage” video premiere
VORARE, the Finnish avant-garde drone-doom/death industrial duo comes together with the Swiss one-man drone/noise outfit EARTHFLESH to bring you the five-track, 30-minute collaboration album Rope Tower. The albums is the second of the two VORARE albums coming out in May, scheduled to be released on May 31. Pre-orders available here:https://vorare.bandcamp.com/album/rope-tower
Having crossed paths first elsewhere, the idea for the two projects to collaborate came into fruition after each noticed they’re on similar wavelengths when it comes to hallucinatory aesthetics in both aural and visual worlds. The work begun in late summer ’22 and took its own time to morph and refine over the ensuing year and a half, involving multiple recording sessions across countries, and meticulous attention to detail above all. The end result is a perfect amalgamation of the two entities, presenting familiar corners from both worlds yet discovering brand new nooks along the way.
Rope Tower is an immensely dark but pervasive journey throughout various sonic fields ranging from structured bursts of industrial and doom to seeping, slowly evolving droning ambiances, that melt together seamlessly as a single tapestry free of dashed lines and silent spaces. The narratives detail real life events from the personal to the more broad instances, more often than not brushed in monochromatic colours and vile mien. You can only match the abyss by becoming one.
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 19th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
The 2024 Up in Smoke Festival came out swinging big in its first announcement last month, with names like Greenleaf, Monolord, Lowrider, Truckfighters, Messa and Gnome among others, and the second announcement below makes a fitting follow-up with the promise of a doesn’t-happen-all-the-time-see-them-when-you-can stopover from Monster Magnet, as well as up and coming atmospheric doomers Daevar, the e’er-a-riot Valley of the Sun, the reunited Scorpion Child and veteran heavy rockers Samavayo set to play. It’s the 10th anniversary for the Swiss festival held each Fall in Pratteln as part of what’s become an international family of festivals backed or semi-backed by Sound of Liberation — see also Keep it Low, Desertfest Belgium, etc. — and they’re only right to do it up accordingly.
From Pentagram to Slomosa, the span of generations and sounds here is broader than the monikers alone can convey, but the celebratory feel of how the lineup is taking shape remains strong. There’s a lot to like about it, in other words, and while I’ve never been lucky enough to attend, I do know enough to know that running a successful fest for a decade — never mind surviving the odd bit of pandemic interruption of same — is no minor feat. Congratulations to Up in Smoke on the anniversary, and I look forward to when the rest of the bill is announced, say, mid-April?
From the PR wire:
UP IN SMOKE FESTIVAL confirms MONSTER MAGNET & many more new band names for its 2024 edition!
UP IN SMOKE FESTIVAL has announced new names for their upcoming, 10th anniversary edition, and confirms spacelords MONSTER MAGNET, high-voltage desert rockers VALLEY OF THE SUN, Berlin’s finest SAMAVAYO, stoner doomsters DAEVAR, US rock act SCORPION CHILD & many more!
They will join the already eclectic line-up featuring mighty PENTAGRAM, who will play their last Swiss show ever(!), TRUCKFIGHTERS, MONOLORD, GREENLEAF, LOWRIDER, SLOMOSA and more high class live acts. Further band names will be revealed soon.
Posted in Reviews on February 29th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Day four of five puts the end of this Quarterly Review in sight, as will inevitably happen. We passed the halfway point yesterday and by the time today’s done it’s the home stretch. I hope you’ve had a good week. It’s been a lot — and in terms of the general work level of the day, today’s my busiest day; I’ve got Hungarian class later and homework to do for that, and two announcements to write in addition to this, one for today one for tomorrow, and I need to set up the back end of another announcement for Friday if I can. The good news is that my daughter seems to be over the explosive-vomit-time stomach bug that had her out of school on Monday. The better news is I’ve yet to get that.
But if I’m scatterbrained generally and sort of flailing, well, as I was recently told after I did a video interview and followed up with the artist to apologize for my terribleness at it, at least it’s honest. I am who I am, and I think that there are places where people go and things people do that sometimes I have a hard time with. Like leaving the house. And parenting. And interviewing bands, I guess. Needing to plow through 10 reviews today and tomorrow should be a good exercise in focusing energy, even if that isn’t necessarily getting the homework done faster. And yeah, it’s weird to be in your 40s and think about homework. Everything’s weird in your 40s.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
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Monkey3, Welcome to the Machine
What are Monkey3 circa 2024 if not a name you can trust? The Swiss instrumental four-piece are now more than 20 years removed from their 2003 self-titled debut, and Welcome to the Machine — their seventh album and fourth release on Napalm Records (three studio, one live) — brings five new songs across 46 minutes of stately progressive heavy craft, with the lead cut “Ignition” working into an early gallop before cutting to ambience presumably as a manifestation of hitting escape velocity and leaving the planetary atmosphere, and trading from there between longer (10-plus-minute) and shorter (six- and seven-minute) pieces that are able to hit with a surprising impact when they so choose. Second track “Collision” comes to crush in a way that even 2019’s Sphere (review here) didn’t, and to go with its methodical groove, heavy post-rock airiness and layered-in acoustic guitar, “Kali Yuga” (10:01) is tethered by a thud of drums that feels no less the point of the thing than the mood-aura in the largesse that surrounds. Putting “Rackman” (7:13, with hints of voice or keyboard that sounds like it), which ends furiously, and notably cinematic closer “Collapse” (12:51) together on side B is a distinct immersion, and the latter places Monkey3 in a prog-metal context that defies stylistic expectation even as it lives up to the promise of the band’s oeuvre. Seven records and more than two decades on, and Monkey3 are still evolving. This is a special band, and in a Europe currently awash in heavy instrumentalism of varying degrees of psychedelia, it’s hard to think of Monkey3 as anything other than aesthetic pioneers.
With its Sabbath-born chug and bluesy initial groove opening to NWOBHM grandeur at the solo, the opening title-track is quick to reassure that Sweden’s The Quill are themselves on Wheel of Illusion, even if the corresponding classic metal elements there a standout from the more traditional rock of “Elephant Head” with its tambourine, or the doomier roll in “Sweet Mass Confusion,” also pointedly Sabbathian and thus well within the wheelhouse of guitarist Christian Carlsson, vocalist Magnus Ekwall, bassist Roger Nilsson and drummer Jolle Atlagic. While most of Wheel of Illusion is charged in its delivery, the still-upbeat “Rainmaker” feels like a shift in atmosphere after the leadoff and “We Burn,” and atmospherics come more into focus as the drums thud and the strings echo out in layers as “Hawks and Hounds” builds to its ending. While “The Last Thing” works keyboard into its all-go transition into nodding capper “Wild Mustang,” it’s the way the closer seems to encapsulate the album as a whole and the perspective brought to heavy rock’s founding tenets that make The Quill such reliable purveyors, and Wheel of Illusion comes across like special attention was given to the arrangements and the tightness of the songwriting. If you can’t appreciate kickass rock and roll, keep moving. Otherwise, whether it’s your first time hearing The Quill or you go back through all 10 of their albums, they make it a pleasure to get on board.
Equal parts brash and disillusioned, Nebula Drag‘s Dec. 2023 LP, Western Death, is a ripper whether you’re dug into side ‘Western’ or side ‘Death.’ The first half of the psych-leaning-but-more-about-chemistry-than-effects San Diego trio’s third album offers the kind of declarative statement one might hope, with particular scorch in the guitar of Corey Quintana, sway and ride in Stephen Varns‘ drums and Garrett Gallagher‘s Sabbathian penchant for working around the riffs. The choruses of “Sleazy Tapestry,” “Kneecap,” “Side by Side,” “Tell No One” and the closing title-track speak directly to the listener, with the last of them resolved, “Look inside/See the signs/Take what you can,” and “Side by Side” a call to group action, “We don’t care how it gets done/Helpless is the one,” but there’s storytelling here too as “Tell No One” turns the sold-your-soul-to-play-music trope and turns it on its head by (in the narrative, anyhow) keeping the secret. Pairing these ideas with Nebula Drag‘s raw-but-not-sloppy heavy grunge, able to grunge-crunch on “Tell No One” even as the vocals take on more melodic breadth, and willing to let it burn as “Western Death” departs its deceptively angular riffing to cap the 34-minute LP with the noisy finish it has by then well earned.
LLNN & Sugar Horse, The Horror bw Sleep Paralysis Demon
Brought together for a round of tour dates that took place earlier this month, Pelagic Records labelmates LLNN (from Copenhagen) and Sugar Horse (from Bristol, UK) each get one track on a 7″ side for a showcase. Both use it toward obliterating ends. LLNN, who are one of the heaviest bands I’ve ever seen live and I’m incredibly grateful for having seen them live, dig into neo-industrial churn on “The Horror,” with stabbing synth later in the procession that underscores the point and less reliance on tonal onslaught than the foreboding violence of the atmosphere they create. In response, Sugar Horse manage to hold back their screams and lurching full-bore bludgeonry for nearly the first minute of “Sleep Paralysis Demon” and even after digging into it dare a return to cleaner singing, admirable in their restraint and more effectively tense for it when they push into caustic sludge churn and extremity, space in the guitar keeping it firmly in the post-metal sphere even as they aim their intent at rawer flesh. All told, the platter is nine of probably and hopefully-for-your-sake the most brutal minutes you might experience today, and thus can only be said to accomplish what it set out to do as the end product sounds like two studios would’ve needed rebuilding afterward.
Fuzzter aren’t necessarily noisy in terms of playing noise rock on Pandemonium, but from the first cymbal crashes after the Oppenheimer sample at the start of “Extinción,” the Peruvian outfit engage an uptempo heavy psych thrust that, though directed, retains a chaotic aspect through the band’s willingness to be sound if not actually be reckless, to gang shout before the guitars drift off in “Thanatos,” to be unafraid of being eaten by their own swirl in “Caja de Pandora” or to chug with a thrashy intensity at the start of closer “Tercer Ojo,” doom out massive in the song’s middle, and float through jazzy minimalism at the finish. But even in that, there are flashes, bursts that emphasize the unpredictability of the songs, which is an asset throughout what’s listed as the Lima trio’s third EP but clocks in at 36 minutes with the instrumental “Purgatorio,” which starts off like it might be an interlude but grows more furious as its five minutes play out, tucked into its center. If it’s a short release, it is substantial. If it’s an album, it’s substantial despite a not unreasonable runtime. Ultimately, whatever they call it is secondary to the space-metal reach and the momentum fostered across its span, which just might carry you with it whether or not you thought you were ready to go.
The listed representation of dreams in “Dream One” adds to the concrete severity of Cold in Berlin‘s dark, keyboard-laced post-metallic sound, but London-based four-piece temper that impact with the post-punk ambience around the shove of the later “Found Out” on their The Body is the Wound 19-minute four-songer, and build on the goth-ish sway even as “Spotlight” fosters a heavier, more doomed mindset behind vocalist Maya, whose verses in “When Did You See Her Last” are complemented by dramatic lines of keyboard and who can’t help but soar even as the overarching direction is down, down, down into either the subconscious referenced in “Dream One” or some other abyss probably of the listener’s own making. Five years and one actual-plague after their fourth full-length, 2019’s Rituals of Surrender, bordering on 15 since the band got their start, they cast resonance in mood as well as impact (the latter bolstered by Wayne Adams‘ production), and are dynamic in style as well as volume, with each piece on The Body is the Wound working toward its own ends while the EP’s entirety flows with the strength of its performances. They’re in multiple worlds, and it works.
With the expansive songwriting of multi-instrumentalist/sometimes-vocalist Eric McQueen at its core, The Mountain King issue Apostasyn as possibly their 10th full-length in 10 years and harness a majestic, progressive doom metal that doesn’t skimp either on the doom or the metal, whether that takes the form of the Type O Negative-style keys in “The White Noise From God’s Radio” or the tremolo guitar in the apex of closer “Axolotl Messiah.” The title-track is a standout for more than just being 15 minutes long, with its death-doom crux and shifts between minimal and maximal volumes, and the opening “Dødo” just before fosters immersion after its maybe-banging-on-stuff-maybe-it’s-programmed intro, with a hard chug answered in melody by guest singer Julia Gusso, who joins McQueen and the returning Frank Grimbarth (also guitar) on vocals, while Robert Bished adds synth to McQueen‘s own. Through the personnel changes and in each piece’s individual procession, The Mountain King are patient, waiting in the dark for you to join them. They’ll probably just keep basking in all that misery until you get there, no worries. Oh, and I’ll note that the download version of Apostasyn comes with instrumental versions of the four tracks, in case you’d really like to lose yourself in ruminating.
The self-titled debut from Parisian doomers Witchorious is distinguished by its moments of sludgier aggression — the burly barks in “Monster” at the outset, and so on — but the chorus of “Catharsis” that rises from the march of the verse offers a more melodic vision, and the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Antoine Auclair, bassist/vocalist Lucie Gaget and drummer Paul Gaget, continue to play to multiple sides of a modern metal and doom blend, while “The Witch” adds vastness and roll to its creeper-riff foundation. The guitar-piece “Amnesia” serves as an interlude ahead of “Watch Me Die” as Witchorious dig into the second half of the album, and as hard has that song comes to hit — plenty — the character of the band is correspondingly deepened by the breadth of “To the Grave,” which follows before the bonus track “Why” nod-dirges the album’s last hook. There’s clarity in the craft throughout, and Witchorious seem aware of themselves in stylistic terms if not necessarily writing to style, and noteworthy as it is for being their first record, I look forward to hearing how they refine and sharpen the methods laid out in these songs. The already-apparent command with which they direct the course here isn’t to be ignored.
Though their penchant for cult positioning and exploitation-horror imagery might lead expectations elsewhere, North Carolinian trio Skull Servant present a raw, sludge-rocking take on their second LP, Traditional Black Magicks II, with bassist Noah Terrell and guitarist Calvin Bauer reportedly swapping vocal duties per song across the five tracks while drummer Ryland Dreibelbis gives fluidity to the current of distortion threaded into “Absinthe Dreams,” which is instrumental on the album but newly released as a standalone single with vocals. I don’t know if the wrong version got uploaded or what — Bauer ends up credited with vocals that aren’t there — but fair enough. A meaner, punkier stonerism shows itself as “Poison the Unwell” hints at facets of post-hardcore and “Pergamos,” the two shortest pieces placed in front of the strutting “Lucifer’s Reefer” and between that cut and the Goatsnake-via-Sabbath riffing of “Satan’s Broomstick.” So it could be that Skull Servant, who released the six-song outing on Halloween 2023, are still sorting through where they want to be sound-wise, or it could be they don’t give a fuck about genre convention and are gonna do whatever they please going forward. I won’t predict and I’m not sure either answer is wrong.
Notice of arrival is served as Lord Velvet dig into classic vibes and modern heft on their late 2023 debut EP, Astral Lady, to such a degree that I actually just checked their social media to see if they’d been signed yet before I started writing about them. Could happen, and probably will if they want it to, considering the weight of low end and the flowing, it’s-a-vibe-man vibe, plus shred, in “Lament of Io” and the way they make that lumber boogie through (most of) “Snakebite Fever.” Appearing in succession, “Night Terrors” and “From the Deep” channel stoned Iommic revelry amid their dynamic-in-tempo doomed intent, and while “Black Beam of Gemini” rounds out with a shove, Lord Velvet retain the tonal presence on the other end of that quick, quiet break, ready to go when needed for the crescendo. They’re not reinventing stoner rock and probably shouldn’t be trying to on this first EP, but they feel like they’re engaging with some of the newer styles being proffered by Magnetic Eye or sometimes Ripple Music, and if they end up there or elsewhere before they get around to making a full-length, don’t be surprised. If they plan to tour, so much the better for everybody.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 20th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
As they make ready to release their new album, Welcome to the Machine, this Friday through Napalm Records, Swiss instrumentalist prog-psych mainstays Monkey3 have revealed the tour that draws together previously-announced stops through festivals like Desertfest London, Desertfest Berlin, Esbjerg Fuzztival, Heavy Psych Sounds, an so on. Their paths will cross with the Brant Bjork Trio more than once as they go, and you’ll note that the entirety of the run is billed as ‘Pt. I’ of a larger touring plan. It would not be a surprise to find them out again later this year as well, perhaps on the Sound of Liberation circuit of Fall festivals? You never know.
There are two singles out from Welcome to the Machine, both of which stream below if you haven’t had the chance yet to engage, and the e’er crucial ticket link, should you be in a position to leave the house for a few hours at some point in the next couple months. And if not, no judgment. I don’t always have those hours either. The music’s still cool and there for you to check out.
Dig:
MONKEY3 – 🔥Tour Announcement🔥
Sound of Liberation Presents: MONKEY3 – WELCOME TO THE MACHINE TOUR – EUROPE 2024 Part 1 27.04 FR Savigny le Temple, L’Empreinte, Paris Grand Sludge 28.04 FR Colmar, Le Grillen 10.05 CH Seewen, Gaswerk 11.05 DE Fulda, Kulturkeller Kreuz 12.05 DE Köln Club Volta w/Brant Bjork Trio 13.05 DE Hamburg, Knust 14.05 DK Kopenhagen, Stengade 15.05 DE Bremerhaven, Shiva 16.05 BE Sint-Niklaas, De Casino w/Brant Bjork Trio 17.05 BE Brussels, Magasin 4 18.05 UK London, Desertfest 19.05 NL Den Bosch, Willem Twee 23.05 DE Jena, KuBa 24.05 DE Berlin, Desertfest 25.05 PL Krakow, Kamienna 10 27.05 AT Vienna, Viper Room 29.05 DE Dresden, Chemiefabrik 31.05 DK Esbjerg, Fuzztival 07.06 CH Winterthur, Heavy Psych Sounds Fest 08.06 CH Martigny, Heavy Psych Sounds Fest 28.06 DE Passau, Blackdoor Festival 09.08 BE Kortrijk, Alcatraz Festival 18.08 FR Motocultor, Carhaix
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 14th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
With Pentagram at the top of its thus-far bill playing what will reportedly be their final Swiss show ever on a retirement tour that will also stop through Desertfest Berlin 2024 this Spring, the Sound of Liberation-associated Up in Smoke Festival has made the first lineup announcement for its 10th anniversary edition. Set for Oct. 4-6, it is at the spearhead of what will almost certainly be a busy month on the European underground touring circuit. And as one expects news to follow shortly from other October festivals throughout Western Europe — Keep it Low in Munich, Desertfest Belgium in Antwerp, Høstsabbat in Norway that I’ve been fortunate enough to go to a couple times, and so on — knowing that the likes of Truckfighters, Monolord, Lowrider, Greenleaf and Slomosa will be out on the road, at least the latter two of them behind new records, warms the heart in February’s drear. Will I be there? Probably not, barring a miracle or some kind of grant that doesn’t exist, but someone will be, and that’s rad enough of a thought to get me through the end of this sentence, so I’ll take it.
Wonder if we’ll see new stuff from Gnome this year, and I think Messa were beginning the process this winter of their next LP. October is far enough away that just about anything can happen between now and then, and I guess that’s part of the fun in posting these things in the first place. Thanks for talking that one through with me.
And while we’re here, happy 10th anniversary to Up in Smoke, and many happy returns.
Here’s the latest:
⚡️UP IN SMOKE FESTIVAL 2024 – FIRST BAND ANNOUNCEMENT⚡️
Hey Smokers,
Today, we are thrilled to announce the first bunch of amazing bands for the 10th-anniversary of our beloved Up In Smoke Festival!🖤
None other than Bobby Liebling and his crew in Pentagram will be joining us to celebrate their last show in Switzerland ever! 🔥
So great to see our Scandinavian friends Truckfighters, Monolord, Slomosa, Greenleaf and Lowrider joining the madness with exclusive Switzerland shows.
In addition to this, we are introducing the dark, haunting sounds of the female-fronted doom outfits Messa and Wolvennest, along with the experimental rockers Djinn, Belgium’s one and only Gnome, and the UK riffmasters Psychlona.
Up in Smoke takes place near Basel and Switzerland offers some excellent bands as well! Check out Tar Pond, Preamp Disaster, Norna, No Mute and Glue.🇨🇭
Make no mistake, this was just the beginning!👀
Up in Smoke 2024 will be a massive heavy rockin’ birthday bash and the stoner party of the year!🪩
Line Up:
Pentagram *last Swiss show ever* Truckfighters Monolord Lowrider Greenleaf Slomosa Messa Wolvennest Gnome Psychlona Djiin Tar Pond Preamp Disaster Norna No Mute Glue & many more
Posted in Whathaveyou on December 19th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Swiss heavy progressive instrumentalists Monkey3 have already been confirmed for Desertfest Berlin 2024 and its UK co-flagship Desertfest London 2024, which implies at least a week of touring, so it’s not the craziest thing in the universe that the band are announcing the release of Welcome to the Machine today and streaming the visualizer for the first single “Rackman” that you can find at the bottom of this post, but it’s welcome news either way.
Their last studio outing was 2019’s Sphere (review here), and 2023 marks two decades since their self-released self-titled debut. “Rackman,” as the first I’ve heard of Welcome to the Machine to come — out Feb. 21, on Napalm — is duly mature and progressive but also somewhat surprisingly heavy. There are moments in the first few minutes where if you put a growl on there you’d have death-doom, but that’s only one element of the atmospherics Monkey3 present. They’ve never been an outfit to do the same thing over and over, but if the other four songs on the record stand up to “Rackman” tonally, it could be the band’s heaviest work.
The PR wire explores themes and more in the info that follows:
Instrumental Psych Rock Masters MONKEY3 Announce New Album Welcome To The Machine
Music Video For First Single “Rackman” Premiering Now!
New Album, Welcome To The Machine, out February 23, 2024 via Napalm Records
Following Live at Freak Valley in 2017 and their latest, much-acclaimed album, Sphere (2019), instrumental psych rock frontrunners MONKEY3 will herald 2024 with a true album highlight of the new year: The Lausanne-based four-piece has announced a brand new, cosmic studio offering, entitled Welcome To The Machine, set for release on February 23, 2024 via Napalm Records!
Once again, MONKEY3 envelops listeners in their unique, cosmic auditory haze. Welcome To The Machine not only marks their seventh and most epic, dark and captivating record to date, but will also clearly prove why they are one of the most exciting instrumental rock bands in the modern stoner and psychedelic rock scene.
Today, MONKEY3 has premiered a music video for their first album single “Rackman”. “‘Welcome To The Machine’ is a reflection on the future of humanity through the duality of man and machine,” the band explains. About the new single, they comment: “Are human beings becoming machines or machines becoming human beings?”
Welcome To The Machine’s musical themes are inspired by movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix, Sunshine, Solaris and 1984, while unveiling an intense mankind vs. machines story that instantly launches the listener into deep space. Right from its first tones, the album immediately emerges as a perfect soundtrack to a journey into the unknown. Tracks such as “Rackman” perfectly showcase how MONKEY3, who formed in 2001, are one of only a few instrumental bands that know how to tell an enthralling story. Welcome To The Machine explores as much as it poses questions. It is dark and menacing; evoking melancholic destruction while somehow bursting with hope at the same time, moving between haunting passages and progressive breaks, mesmerizing grooves and colossal riffs.
The album was recorded and mixed by Raphaël Bovey at Blend Studio and MyRoom Studio, and was mastered by Lad Agabekov at Caduceus Studios in Switzerland. The incredible cover artwork was created by Sebastian Jerke. Pre-Order Welcome To The Machine HERE:https://www.napalmrecordsamerica.com/monkey3
Welcome To The Machine track listing: 1. Ignition 2. Collision 3. Kali Yuga 4. Rackman 5. Collapse
Welcome To The Machine will be available in the following formats: – Digipak – 1 Vinyl Gatefold Black – 1 Vinyl Gatefold Clear Orange – 1-Vinyl Gatefold Crystal Clear Deluxe Version (incl. Slipmat & Art Print ) – Digital
MONKEY3 live: May 24 – 26, 2024 (DE) Desertfest Berlin + many more live dates to be announced soon!
MONKEY3 is: Walter – Drums Jalil – Bass Boris – Guitars dB – Keys and Sounds
