Posted in Whathaveyou on August 4th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
It’s not like Closet Disco Queen & The Flying Raclettes are trying to get away with anything here in being too weird for the planet. It’s not like they’re coming out of the gate with a name like Electric Orange Witchness or something pretending to be run-of-the-mill heavy fare and then blindsiding you with proggy weirdness on Omelette du Fromage, their debut album out next month.
Nopers. Instead, the four-piece born out of the already-plenty-quirky duo Closet Disco Queen let you know right up front you’re in for a ride, and if the moniker doesn’t get you then surely the cover art for Omelette du Fromage will. You like postmodern absurdity? You like surrealism? You like dada hippos? Of course you do.
Maybe they should’ve called the band Dada Hippos. Next time.
I love the fact that the record title comes from Dexter’s Laboratory, and I would totally play whatever video game is happening in the visualizers for “Flugensaft” and “Flugantaj Raketoj,” so yeah, I guess I’m on board here. You got me.
To the PR wire:
Closet Disco Queen & The Flying Raclettes – Swiss Progressive Rock Collective Announce New Album “Omelette du Fromage”
Share New Songs “Flugensaft” And “Flugantaj Raketoj”
Closet Disco Queen & The Flying Raclettes is an extended version of the instrumental duo made of Luc Hess and Jona Nido from Coilguns, The Ocean, Louis Jucker, etc…, now welcoming Kevin Galland (who also plays in Coilguns and is a well established live and studio sound engineer), and Chadi Messmer (a graduated bass player from the Luzern Jazz School playing with numerous projects such as Jacob Hannes, Tanche, Beurre, etc…) to join them as The Flying Raclettes.
Closet Disco Queen originally started in 2014 when Coilguns was on hold as a joke with the pointless ambition to become a less talented version of the iconic progressive rock group known as The Mars Volta. The two piece have since then released one studio album, two eps and a live album. They’ve also toured for over three years all around the globe including direct support to Baroness and Red Fang European tours. Closet Disco Queen played both the London and Berlin edition of Desert Fest and have already set foot in several Swiss Festivals such as Montreux Jazz Festival, Festi’Neuch, or Palp Festival. It is the latter that offered the band the possibility to create an exclusive set to be presented for the first time on Aug. 8th 2021 at Palp Festival. And thus The Flying Raclettes were born.
The end result will now be released on September 3rd in the form of a full-length album titled “Omelette du Fromage” on Jona Nido’s record label Hummus Records. The album title is a direct homage to “The Big Cheese” episode of Cartoon Network’s animated series “Dexter’s Laboratory” from 1996. In this episode, Dexter ends up becoming worldwide famous, giving public speeches and being a celebrity just by saying ‘Omelette du Fromage’. Just like Dexter, the band is hoping to gain instant celebrity across the universe with this very much pompous album title and its beautiful and elusive graphic design. Or maybe Closet Disco Queen & The Flying Raclettes are just as much of a fraud as Dexter in the big cheese episode. But don’t be fooled, the album is an organic yet powerful piece of instrumental loud rock music. The additional musicians (bass and guitar) have allowed the former two piece to enhance their songwriting and dig deeper into their sound, implementing stronger punk, progressive as well as psych and ambient elements in their music. Bands quoted as inspiration during the creative process went from The Mars Volta, Breach, The Hives or Goat.
The album was written, recorded, mixed and mastered in twenty days by the four-piece and as mentioned before was the result of a project initiated by Palp Festival. They gave Closet Disco Queen the opportunity to live in the tiny mountain village of Bruson and an access to an abandoned school where the band built a DIY mobile studio, started writing and 15 days later the album was sent to the pressing plant.
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 20th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Not going to sit here and pretend I know what the next year will bring. Or the next 15 minutes. Shit, I live with a three year old. Every day is a new reality to face down. Maybe announcements like this are grasping at straws for a life that’s gone now. I don’t know. But isn’t it worth it, especially in light of the universe of bullshit that has unfolded over the last year and a half — and don’t fool yourself, is still unfolding — to err on the side of optimism?
So yeah, Heavy Psych Sounds is announcing lineup info for its fest next year in Winterthur, Switzerland, at the famed Gaswerk venue. High on Fire, Elder and Duel (who had a recent song premiere here) are the first three names, and that’s awesome. It’s a two-day event, and probably one of at-least-several-if-not-many the Italian label will unveil in the coming months, and though the chances of my being there are approximately nil, it still makes me feel good to think this might happen, so I’m posting about it. That’s all. I just want to actively think positively about a thing.
Here goes:
HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS RECORDS announces HIGH ON FIRE, ELDER and DUEL for HPS FEST SWITZERLAND 2022!
After last year’s cancellation, Heavy Psych Sounds Records is proud to finally reveal the first bands for their Swiss edition of the renowned HPS Fest- series, taking place between June 3 – 4, 2022 at the Gaswerk in Winterthur!
Headquartered in Rome, Italy, Heavy Psych Sounds specializes in presenting the best artists in the global heavy psych, doom, fuzz blues, sludge and space rock realms such as BRANT BJORK, NEBULA, NICK OLIVERI, YAWNING MAN, STÖNER, BLACK RAINBOWS, ACID MAMMOTH, BELZEBONG, WEDGE, THE SONIC DAWN among many more, and their festival- series shows no exception, spotlighting the ever-growing label’s dedication to its craft. While the first HPS Fests were held in Italy, the label has since extended its live reach into the UK, Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria and even the USA: The underground cult label is not only THE adress for all heavy rock record collectors, but has also become an essential part of the live scene with a brisk participation from heavy music fans all over the world. More than a long year without live shows, today Heavy Psych Sounds announced the first big names for their Swiss 2022- edition, and have confirmed metal icons HIGH ON FIRE, progressive psych rock overlords ELDER, and Texas‘ heavy rockers DUEL to play HPS FEST Switzerland!
“We are so stoked to finally get back on the road with our HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS FESTs !“ Says Heavy Psych Sounds staff member Rajko Dolhar. “After bringing our heavy psych vibes in the EU and the USA in recent years, we wanted to take on Switzerland too. Last year the pandemic put a hitch in our giddy up but we are pretty sure that in 2022 we will succeed. The lineup is one of the best so far with HIGH ON FIRE, ELDER, DUEL and many more yet to come, so grab your tickets and see you soon in front of the stage again !!”
What a record. I know Celtic Frost‘s legacy was already long since set by the time they returned to do Monotheist in 2006, and that their earlier works in 1984’s Morbid Tales EP, 1985’s debut album, To Mega Therion, and 1987’s Into the Pandemonium — not to mention what Thomas Gabriel Fischer and Martin Eric Ain had done previously in Hellhammer — had already cast them as one of the formative units not just of black metal, but of a new kind of heavy darkness in general. But 15 years later and long since the band fell apart all over again, Monotheist still resonates, and it’s still so goddamned dense. Thick to the point of making it difficult to move through. Righteous in the challenge it issued to its audience. Righteous in its unmitigated grandiosity. Righteous in its crush, righteous in its indulgent use of space and ambience. Righteous in its heft and heavy in its righteousness.
Fischer had gotten divorced in 2004, and that may well have played into some of the spit in his vocal approach on songs like “Progeny” or “Domain of Decay,” though as I recall many of these songs were older at least in their foundation. The CD came with extensive liner notes — a band putting out their first LP in 16 wanting to be understood are well within their rights to do so — with Ain and Fischer, sometimes opaque, sometimes straightforward, talking about the whens and wheres. If you got the digipak, it came with the extra track “Temple of Depression,” which is a welcome speedier thrust between “Os Abysmi vel Daath” and “Obscured,” but listening back to Monotheist now, I wonder if the album isn’t best served as a double-vinyl. Certainly CDs were already in decline in 2006 and now-clunky-looking iPods were high fashion, but vinyl had yet to make its mass-market comeback as the dominant physical format, but Monotheist works exceedingly well with breaks.
Part of that is the aforementioned density. Celtic Frost‘s sound is about more than just the chug of their riffs, and they never hit harder or certainly with more elaborate produciton behind them than they did on Monotheist, making their atmospheres all the more consuming. The 2LP edition traded out “Temple of Depression” for the more atmospheric “Incantation Against You,” with guest lead vocals by Simone Vollenweider — a performance worthy of the investment that was also a bonus track on the Japanese edition CD; you could go nuts keeping it all straight — but the way that the songs split up into sides highlights the natural flow from one movement into the next, the album working in stages until finding its culmination in “Triptych I: Totengott,” the 14-minute “Triptych II: Synagoga Satanae” and “Triptych III: Winter (Requiem, Chapter Three: Finale),” the last a four-minute orchestral instrumental answer back to previous Celtic Frost works that would be a fitting culmination to Celtic Frost‘s career even if they didn’t know it at the time.
The initial salvo of “Progeny,” “Ground” and “Dying God Coming into Human Flesh” is unfuckwithable. The immediacy of the first, the still-catchy crush of the second and the ambience of the third — it sets the stage perfectly for everything Celtic Frost and their vast array of guests, engineers, session players, etc. will offer throughout, the actual band involved being Fischer, Ain, drummer Franco Sesa and guitarist Erol Unala. Ain and Fischer sharing vocal duties on “A Dying God Coming into Human Flesh” particularly, in how it pushes wider the context of the listening experience, is a thing to be treasured in the message it sends to the audience. As heavy and as bludgeoning as Monotheist is, it stretches no less wide as it goes deeper.
And deeper is exactly where the LP version heads on side B, with “Drown in Ashes” bringing in guest singer Lisa Middelhauve (Xandria) in a grim duet with Fischer ahead of the return to harsh doom chug in “Os Abysmi vel Daath” — a landmark hook in any language — and the spacious, patient “Obscured,” again with Vollenweider turning in an emotive performance alongside Fischer, the two touching on harmony even as the distortion builds behind them. “Incantation Against You,” though it starts the next platter, builds in turn on that, with “Domain of Decay” bringing a return of sheer aural force for a quick four and a half minutes before “Ain Elohim” offers as pure a take on Satanism as I’ve ever encountered: “There is no god but the one that dies with me,” along with a stretch of pure avant garde metal that’s outside genre even as the band helped define it.
While we’re pushing boundaries, “Totengott” feels prescient 15 years later with its Ain-led ambient black metal, while “Synagoga Satanae” brings the summary of the proceedings — including co-producer Peter Tägtgren (Hypocrisy, Pain, etc.) on backing vocals — as a whole and “Winter (Requiem, Chapter Three: Finale)” serves as epilogue, a final, ultra-purposeful three-part ending that especially isolated on side D of the 2LP version underscores the strength of intention behind everything happening on Monotheist.
This is the kind of record a band does once in a career. It is all-consuming, an utter creative blowout, and in hindsight, it’s not surprising they didn’t make another. It’s not so much that they couldn’t have topped it — I won’t say a negative word about what Fischer has gone on to do in Triptykon in carrying forward what Celtic Frost established here, up to and including the 2020 live record from Roadburn 2019 completing Celtic Frost‘s “Requiem” — but it seems ludicrous now to think they would’ve done anything else. How could they? What’s left after you’ve already dug to the marrow of yourself and presented it to your listener? Sometimes there’s just nothing more that needs to be said.
Beautiful, genuinely engrossing, punishing, Monotheist is a museum piece for what heavy metal can be. That’s not what everyone will want from a given listening experience, but the last statement Celtic Frost would make was that if you weren’t going to meet them at their level, then you were only going to be obliterated for standing in their way, even at the cost of obliterating themselves.
One of the best albums the aughts had to offer, and of course rest in peace Martin Eric Ain, who passed away in 2017.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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I’m having dental surgery on Monday. They’re putting a screw in the hole in my mouth here a molar was until I had it pulled, with an eventual eye toward a dental implant. I guess the screw will be an improvement over the presently empty spot, though that’s been an interesting experience. They had to take the tooth out in pieces it was so dug in, did a good amount of bone graft with some magical science pellets. I anticipate having a rod screwed into my jawline will present some discomfort. I don’t expect it to interrupt the flow of the Quarterly Review, and that and passive interest-in-what’s-gonna-happen is about the extent of my feelings on the matter, apart from the general nervousness about leaving the house, doing a thing, and so on.
Fucking Celtic Frost, man. How good is that record? I got to interview Martin Ain and Tom Fischer when they played New York on tour, in-person, and it was fucking awesome. They had rented an apartment downtown and then later that night they demolished B.B. King’s in Midtown Manhattan, and it was well worth breaking my blood oath never to go to Midtown. That room was pure love, despite the blanket of bleakness cast over the entire proceedings. So heavy. I just looked to see if there was any audio or video of it on YouTube, and there isn’t, but if you want to go down a rabbit hole, there’s plenty of older live stuff there.
This week brought the exhale that was being able to send The Pecan to daycamp for three hours every day. An easy pattern to fall into, thanks largely to the fact that he was in preschool before. We dropped him off a bit ago, in fact. He didn’t even look back at us as he went through the door, so I guess he likes it well enough. Very good.
That three-hour respite is huge, from 8:30-11:30. It allowed me to do the Quarterly Review this week while staying sane in the process, and since he still takes a rest in the afternoon — sometimes he naps, but mostly he just goes up to his room and farts around making various degrees of noise in unsupervised but contained fashion — I had some time to unwind, read a book, which is massive as far as my general quality of life goes.
I’m reading Star Trek books, as usual, a three-part series called ‘My Brother’s Keeper’ about Jim Kirk and Gary Mitchell, who dies in the (second) pilot of The Original Series, about how they’re best friends and Kirk has to deal with the fallout of having to kill Mitchell after he becomes a megalomaniac with godlike powers. You’d want to retcon it now making him a malevolent Q. And by you, I mean me, in fan-fic. As regards brain power, though, it’s this or that, and I’m better off here.
New Gimme show today, as previously noted. You can listen free: https://gimmeradio.com. 5PM Eastern. Lotsa Neurosis, little bit of me talking about how good Neurosis are. Good fun.
That’s about all I’ve got. Thanks again to everybody who’s snagged some of the new merch. Thinking it might be time to end the run in another week or so, just because I’m starting to feel like a shill plugging it, but please know that your support is sincerely appreciated. Much love.
Great and safe weekend. Hydrate, watch your head, all that stuff. Have fun.
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 7th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Normally, one might not necessarily think of 40-plus seconds of spliced-together audio as much to go on, but in Norna‘s case, that 40 seconds comes coupled with the endorsement of the recently-formed Vinter Records, about which you can read more here. Now, making the narrow-minded assumption you actually clicked that link and that, accordingly, I don’t need to recount for you why I might be so readily on board with a relatively new label’s picks, I’ll just say I’m happy we can agree on a thing. Plus, if you take the 40 seconds to look at the teaser, I think you’ll find it’s disturbing enough to warrant interest. Not sure if I’m getting Nibiru vibes because of ultra-dark atmosphere or clumped-together hair, but one way or the other, there seems to be some dreary ritualizing going on here, and that’s just fine by me.
Album releases this Fall, and I’ll hope to have more to come before then. For now, the PR wire takes it:
VINTER RECORDS Announce The Release of Debut Album From Post Metal Heavy Hitters NORNA
Norna, the new and devastatingly punishing outfit with members from Breach, Ølten and The Old Wind, will release their debut album via Vinter Records this fall.
Hailing from the cold north of Sweden and the epic vastness of the Swizz alps, the band consists of Swedish hardcore pioneer Tomas Liljedahl (Breach, The Old Wind) and Swiss underground troopers Christophe Macquat and Marc Theurillat (Ølten). Formed merely a year ago, the three piece is now ready with their debut recording – a thunderous onslaught of bleak, cold and desperate heaviness.
“We are stoked to announce the release of our debut album. ‘Star is way way is eye.’ Super excited to join VINTER RECORDS for the ride! We are blown away by these guys young hearts and passion for music, hopefully a long and beautiful collaboration. The album will be released this fall so stay tuned for more important dates and drops and when the world let’s us we will definitely take this Swiss/Swedish three piece freight train on the road. We can’t wait to share this with the world.”
Band: Guitar/Vox. Tomas Liljedahl (ex Breach ,The old wind) Guitar/Moog. Chris Macquat (Olten) Drums/Moog. Marc Theurillat (Olten)
Swiss post-metallers Echolot are getting ready to release their third album, Destrudo, on Oct. 2 through Sixteentimes Music, and they give a substantial glimpse at its sprawling atmospheric base in the new single “Frozen Dead Star.” At nearly 10 minutes long, the track unfolds with a slow, doomly rollout and harsh, biting screams à la Thou before adding melodic singing to the mix and at about three minutes in turning to a guitar part that feels built off of what Neurosis were doing in the midsection of “Reach,” which closed their most recent LP, Fires Within Fires. Echolot manipulate this figure and join it soon enough to post-Amenra barely-there vocal fragility, passing the song’s halfway point with echoing melody and an underlying tension of drums that eases the transition back to heft when the time comes for it to inevitably be made.
Effective and airy lead guitar takes hold in squibbly fashion over the resurgent roll, marked by a fluid-sounding wash of crash cymbal — the bassline beneath it all is a treasure all too buried on my speakers; I suspect a different system would feature it more prominently — and the guitar line that has made itself central returns in heavier fashion before “Frozen Dead Star,” approaching its final minute, unleashes a deathly growl and more intense and insistent progression. Echoing, black metal-style screaming caps the proceedings with final lumbering, and the song fades out feeling something like an album on its own with the linear but cohesive course it follows. I don’t know what the rest of Destrudo might have on offer, but with “Frozen Dead Star” the Basel three-piece successfully execute the precise control and cerebral crush for which Euro post-metal is known. It is the work of a band who know what the fuck they’re doing.
The accompanying video has some band shots interspersed as part of its duly ambient presentation, and you can find it premiering below.
Please enjoy:
Echolot, “Frozen Dead Star” official video premiere
ECHOLOT new Album ‘DESTRUDO’ is out on October 2!
New single FROZEN DEAD STAR by ECHOLOT
Echolot – Frozen Dead Star (Official Video) Recording by Jeroen Van Vulpen Mix by Simon Jameson Music by Echolot Camera: Roberto Machulio Designe: Renata Matellini Effects: Raul Mate Cut: Rafaela Matteo Coloring: Renault Mattisimo
Posted in Features on April 9th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
The statistics of COVID-19 change with every news cycle, and with growing numbers, stay-at-home isolation and a near-universal disruption to society on a global scale, it is ever more important to consider the human aspect of this coronavirus. Amid the sad surrealism of living through social distancing, quarantines and bans on gatherings of groups of any size, creative professionals — artists, musicians, promoters, club owners, techs, producers, and more — are seeing an effect like nothing witnessed in the last century, and as humanity as a whole deals with this calamity, some perspective on who, what, where, when and how we’re all getting through is a needed reminder of why we’re doing so in the first place.
Thus, Days of Rona, in some attempt to help document the state of things as they are now, both so help can be asked for and given where needed, and so that when this is over it can be remembered.
Thanks to all who participate. To read all the Days of Rona coverage, click here. — JJ Koczan
Days of Rona: Chris Sigdell of Leaden Fumes (Basel, Switzerland)
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How are you dealing with this crisis as a band? Have you had to rework plans at all? How is everyone’s health so far?
Since we played shows just before the pandemic arrived at our doorstep, we were a bit worried, especially since we had played in front of 150 people in Berlin and had been pretty careless regarding a possible infection. But we are all well, and while this pandemic is causing some serious thinking, the only bummer is that we have had to postpone booking shows to promote our new album. Theoretically we’d have shows at the end of May — but I don’t see them happening, as the borders will not open this soon – even if normal activities were resumed.
What are the quarantine/isolation rules where you are?
In Switzerland we are still allowed to move without too many restrictions. Groups of more than five are not allowed and the general advice is to stay in, which most people here follow as a rule. It is quite eerie to look out the windows and see a more or less empty street –- especially at night. As I live in the middle of a hipster area, usually there’s a whole lot more going on. But so far we are lucky in as much as there is no general order to stay inside, so we can still go for a walk.
How have you seen the virus affecting the community around you and in music?
There is a general sense of cautiousness around people, avoiding getting too close to each other when passing on the street or in the supermarket. We now have a queue at the supermarkets and have to take a number, disinfect our hands before we may venture inside, the number of consumers being restricted. It feels a bit spooky. Not unlike a dystopian science fiction movie scene. Luckily Switzerland has a very good (though expensive) healthcare system. The same can be said about the unemployment service. So people are more or less at ease and do not yet face immediate problems.
As for the music — it’s the same as everywhere I guess. Venues and bands are struggling, especially those who depend on making a living out of it.
What is the one thing you want people to know about your situation, either as a band, or personally, or anything?
We as a band might not be able to do what we most desire — to play live. But we are glad to be in good health and that we can manage financially. That is the most important. We now have a lot of time to focus on new ideas and on honing our songwriting skills, while in other countries people are getting desperate and the situation is much worse. In Switzerland it is all still quite easy compared to Italy, or France. I hope we all come through this a changed people and that we will not fall back to the ways of before. I think we as humans need to change. A lot. Individually and as a society. Stay positive, stay healthy, stay free.
Posted in audiObelisk on February 21st, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Swiss doombringers Leaden Fumes release their first full-length, Abandon Ship, next week through Petty Bourgeois Broadcasts, and I’m pretty sure the ship they’re talking about is Earth itself. The band was started in 2016 by former Phased guitarist/vocalist Christian Sigdell (also of the droned-out B°tong and a slew of other projects) who, moving to bass/vocals, brought on board former Phased live guitarist Florian Schönmann to take guitar duties and drummer Jonathan Schmidli of psychedelic expansionists Echolot in the new trio. For anyone who knew Sigdell‘s work in Phased or got tipped to Echolot‘s 2016 debut LP, I, Leaden Fumes is something of a stylistic jump, with tracks like “(Let Burn The) Temple Within” and the opening title cut before it dug into a cavernous and grimly doomed sensibility, shouted vocals echoing out over riffs lumbering or, in the case of the nine-minute second track, chugging into a bass-drone-and-movie-sample oblivion before surging back for a final two minutes of nod.
There’s something ancient and primal about Leaden Fumes‘ approach, speaking to the roots of doom metal as grown out from the NWOBHM, but at no point are they retro in style and their material veers further into extremes as the record plays out through “Ruthless,” which shifts into blackened screams and guitar squibblies with a viciousness and underlying severity that should please fans of Valborg, and into the deceptively catchy pair “Asphyxia” and “Chromophobia,” both of which transmit their tortured mentality through volatile transitions, creeping and shoving in “Asphyxia” — which caps with a sample describing the rush of choking during orgasm as “no less powerful than cocaine and highly addictive” — and more fluid in “Chromophobia” but with Sigdell‘s voice coated in an effect not quite like a megaphone, but not far off, obscuring the lyrics as compared to the barebones-ness of “Abandon Ship” earlier. The plod behind, however, is pure doom with just the slightest stonerly edge, and so the spaciousness created by the echoes comes with a corresponding feeling of largesse. That is, they full the space they create, and a psychedelic solo from Schönmann is a welcome melodic touch in the second half before it drifts off into noise and the crash cymbals that start the penultimate “This Bleeding Cavity.”
At seven songs and 41 minutes, Abandon Ship is hardly a slog, but neither is it intended to be easy listening, and one gets a sense of Leaden Fumes trying out different approaches across its span. To wit, the charred thrust of “Ruthless” or the psych-doom stomp in “This Bleeding Cavity,” which though the shortest take at 4:22, still functions to broaden the scope of the LP overall, touching on its own extremes in later reaches through subtle layering. Likewise, the plot continues to thicken through closer “Craving,” which brings together the howls of “(Let Burn The) Temple Within” with an atmospheric feel that rounds out in a sudden finish at a little over five minutes, which is about where Leaden Fumes seem most comfortable, as “Ruthless,” “Asphyxia” and “Chromophobia” are of similar duration. Abandon Ship is all the more laudable as a debut for the three-piece’s ability to shift their sound during those tracks, however, and whatever the runtimes might be and however the songs might interact in terms of sound or theme, there are ultimately no two that are the same in terms of style all the way through.
Given the context of Sigdell‘s past in founding Phased over 20 years ago and working across a variety of genres, one can only assume the aesthetic choices Leaden Fumes make throughout Abandon Ship are purposeful, but there is still a notion in listening of the band discovering their identity through these songs, finding out as they go how the black metal and the psych and the doom and the noise and the samples and the shouts and everything else might all come together into a singular focus over time. As Abandon Ship was preceded only by a 2017 four-song demo, led off by an earlier take on “Chromophobia,” it’s reasonable to think of their progression as bring in a formative if not a beginning period. They are, then, on a journey, and a somewhat grim one at that. The album’s mood, even in its broadest-ranging moments, is consuming in its darkness, and the feeling of threat and paranoia that comes through in their songs is palpable; a conscious challenge being issued to those who’d take them on.
So go ahead and do that.
Given its underlying nuance and abidingly off-genre-kilter feel, I’m thrilled to host the full stream of Abandon Ship below. You’ll find it accompanied by more info from the PR wire, and the recently-posted video for “This Bleeding Cavity” down at the bottom, just for the hell of it.
LEADEN FUMES were torn out of PHASED – the cult stoner/doom band Christian S formed back in ancient 1997, and which he led through a multitude of line-ups up until 2016. Most likely Phased were Switzerland’s first stoner band – surely the were the only Swiss band to sign to Elektrohasch. So with LEADEN FUMES two members of Phased reconvene to wreak fresh havoc. Having switched from guitar to bass, Christian S is giving LEADEN FUMES the ultra low-end spark, while Florian S alone is responsible for the upper regions. The line-up is completed with young and talented drummer Jonathan S from ECHOLOT.
LEADEN FUMES recorded and released a four song demo-CD in 2017, and played their first show at legendary local venue “Hirscheneck”. In 2018 they not only played a local festival and headlined a metal-night in Zürich, but also played their first shows in Germany – among which “Deep Sound City” festival in Halle. 2019 saw the band recording their first album proper – in their own studio, and with Jonathan S at the controls.
The album is entitled “Abandon Ship” and features seven killer songs that range from slow doom to influences of math-rock and black-metal.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 5th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Fu Manchu are in the studio now and I think they said on Instagram they’re eyeing a May release for their next album, which would rule and would arrive in timely fashion as they celebrate their 30th anniversary all year on the road. They joined the Up in Smoke 2020 lineup at the end of last week along with Mars Red Sky, Pallbearer, The Heavy Eyes — still waiting for the full tour to be announced — Sons of Morpheus and Mother Engine.
It’s a pretty efficient bundle if what you’re looking for is ‘awesome,’ and I think probably it is. It seems early for the Fall fest season to start taking shape, but it always does when it happens around now, so points for consistency at very least, and Sound of Liberation, which is behind this fest as well as Keep it Low and has a hand in several others along the way — Desertfest in Berlin, Antwerp and New York, and so on — rarely leaves this kind of thing to chance. Pro-shop and all that.
The latest announcement is below. I’m late with it but I’m late with everything. I’m a pitiful old man, give me a break.
Smokers, we’ve been eager to share some line up news with you and we could for sure do it slowly and patiently, announcing one band after another… but you know what? It’s Friday, so take them all!!
Californian legends Fu Manchu are celebrating their 30th anniversary and we’re super stoked they’ll celebrate it with us!
They’ll make your neck hurt alongside mighty US doomsters Pallbearer, French’s unique psych-doom wizards Mars Red Sky, groove masters The Heavy Eyes, also from the USA, German Instrumental wonder Mother Engine and beloved Swiss psychedelic trio Sons of Morpheus !
We’re super proud and excited to welcome those amazing acts on board! Can’t wait, see ya there!
??Up In Smoke takes place at Konzertfabrik Z7 – Pratteln in Pratteln on 2-3-4 October 2020.
