Posted in Whathaveyou on March 5th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
I wanna crawl inside the bright melody of Turtle Skull‘s “Apathy” and just wait for this Northern Hemisphere winter to end. The Australian four-piece sound ready for export on the early singles from their upcoming third (I think?) full-length, Being Here, and if the title puts you in a time and place — here — that’s the idea. The record was tracked mostly live and follows 2020’s Monoliths (review here), which was a gem from which they seem to have nonetheless stepped forward in composition and style. “Apathy” has a little Dead Meadow to it, but “Into the Sun” is wetter psych, with a touch of garage rock that gives some push to its six-minute course. “Heavy as Hell,” which was issued as a standalone single in Feb. 2024, fits the bill, and is no less in the harmonies throughout than its organ-laed second-half culmination.
It sounds like the record’s gonna fucking rule, and so here’s a ton of PR wire information about it, the preorder links, the likewise-rad cover art and the Bandcamp player at the bottom as always.
Dig into this and I don’t think you’ll regret it:
Neo-Psych/ Doom Rockers TURTLE SKULL Announce New Album Being Here. New Single Into The Sun Streaming.
Art As Catharsis and Copper Feast Records are proud to announce Turtle Skull’s upcoming record, Being Here, a lush and gritty exploration of neo-psych with indie and alt-pop sensibility, out May 23, 2025.
With Being Here, Turtle Skull have evolved. A new lineup. A fresh approach. A leap forward. While the album builds on the sonic foundations of 2020’s Monoliths, it’s a different beast. Still hefty and considered but more immediate. Made for the moment. A record that values gut instinct over perfection.
Tracked live at NoWave in Mullumbimby, with a paired-back approach to studio tweaking, Being Here captures that ‘lightning in a bottle’ energy that happens when a band fully locks in. New member Ally Gradon’s synths inject fresh energy, swirling around meaty riffs and driving rhythms. It’s expansive yet raw, drawing from the likes of Black Moth Super Rainbow, Idles and Cause Sui with a nod to the cinematic sprawl of Spiritualized and The Flaming Lips. A heavy, heady blend of melody and atmosphere.
The new single from the release, Into the Sun, exemplifies this new ethos, centering poignant musings amid a shimmering wash of synth and surging guitar.
“Into the Sun was a collection of riffs I had from years ago that Ally had always favoured”, tells drummer Charlie Gradon. “We brought it to the group and it quickly fleshed itself out. The lyrics came after a particularly rowdy yet fulfilling wedding that some of us went to. It’s about being stuck and needing to be with your people. The day to day mundane vs the hyper connected and profound, and how both are equally important.
“Being Here was much more about good songs that we had freshly written being captured live in the moment” says Gradon. “No click, no excessive layering, no studio trickery. The only thing that wasn’t captured live was the vocals. Choosing to self-produce and mix the album gave us the chance to preserve our initial vision, even if it nearly did kill me.”
The album puts a spotlight on songwriting, covering weighty subject matter, from the life-force drain of social media to the relentless march of time. But it does so with a call to stay connected, empathetic and grounded. In this way, Being Here isn’t just an album title. It’s a philosophy. A mantra. A demand to be fully present, to embrace the chaos, the beauty, the weight of it all.
No strangers to sold-out headline shows across Sydney and Melbourne, Turtle Skull have a reputation for epic live performances. They’ve graced festival stages at Camp A Low Hum (NZ), The Gumball (NSW), Vivid (NSW) and Ninchfest (VIC)and supported the likes of Frankie and the Witch Fingers (USA), Earthless (USA) and Stonefield.
With Being Here set for release, the band is gearing up for another wave of touring, kicking off with a 7 March show at the Bergy Bandroom in Melbourne as part of the Brunswick Music Festival ahead of rumoured festival appearances later in the year. Keep your eyes peeled for gig announcements and make sure to catch one of Australia’s most electrifying live acts.
Turtle Skull’s new record, Being Here, is out on Art As Catharsis (AUS/NZ) and Copper Feast Records (UK/EU) on 23 May 2025.
All songs written by Turtle Skull Lyrics by Charlie Gradon and Dean McLeod
Recorded by Julian Abbott at Nowave Studio and Charlie Gradon at his Crabbes Creek studio Mixed by Charlie Gradon Mastered by Michael Lynch Produced by Charlie Gradon and Dean McLeod
Artwork by Graham Yarrington Graphic Design by Jim Grimwade
Turtle Skull is: Julian Frese – Bass guitar Ally Gradon – Vocals, synths Charlie Gradon – Vocals, drums Dean McLeod – Vocals, guitars
Sydney, Australia, sludge rock bruisers Amammoth will release their second album, Distant Skies and the Ocean Flies, on March 21, in continued cooperation with Electric Valley Records. Guess what? They’re heavy.
I know, with a name like Amammoth, somehow that’s not at all shocking even though with the ‘a’- prefix, there’s a suggestion of anti-mammoth. Like, in protest of the mammoth. Fuck this mammoth! I shall be the opposite! An amammoth!, and so on. (And yeah, I know I said as much when I reviewed The Fire Above in 2021.) But no, in fact Amammoth have way more in common in terms of sonic largesse with a mammoth than an amammoth, which isn’t a thing that ever existed so far as I know but if it did would surely cower beneath the grunt, roll and flourish of “Among Us” (video premiering below), the nine-minute post-intro opener and longest track on Distant Skies and the Ocean Flies. Drawing its expanse from sludge and doom and maybe even a little death metal in there somewhere of the European strain, pushing into psychedelia with organ and keys later on so that while Scott Fisher is gutting out vocals Kirk Windstein-style, what accompanies is trippier riffing (plus a bit of triangle, I think? maybe keyboard-triangle?) than one might necessarily expect. But that’s what one gets for having expectations in the first place. Gotta let that go. Zen and crushing riffs.
So there they are, Fisher, bassist Warwick Poulton (making his first appearance) and drummer Scott Wilson, hammering away at your cortex after setting an atmos-sludge course in the aptly-titled “Intro” like someone put an organ behind Souls at Zero, but “Among Us” isn’t post-metallic in its lumber necessarily, and its riffing leans more to Sleep than Neurosis, if we want to keep the comparisons to Jason Roeder bands. There’s something oldschool about the largely unipolar vocals — it’s gruff shouts and such, as noted, not screams for the most part, but not entirely “clean” singing either — like in the early ’90s when you could just get away with barking for an entire record; for what it’s worth, in the 40 minutes and eight songs of Distant Skies and the Ocean Flies, there’s enough variation in what Amammoth do around their central purpose in largesse that nothing feels like it’s missing.
“Among Us” caps with repetitions of “Walk among us” and a few homeward slams to make the point before they rumble to the finish, “Chosen” picking up almost immediately with its own muted crashes on the way to reveling in its combination of swinging drums and slogging riffs; the shift from what would be the closer on a lot of records (and is here the opener but for “Intro”) into the more-than-three-minutes-shorter track that follows letting Amammoth cast an open impression and then strip it down for a more direct attack.
To wit, “Chosen,” “So High So Numb” and the pointedly primordial “Sink or Swim” are positioned to feel comparatively immediate regardless of their actual tempos, and Amammoth bask in the lumbering reaches their tonal worship lets them conjure. And “Sink or Swim” coming through as so much of an epitome in this regard means “Satellite,” which follows, is a well-timed change.
Amid more Crowbar-esque seething and declarative steamrolling, the organ returns — joining the fray in a brazenly classic-heavy-rock manner that I can’t help but feel like would make Oppu from Amorphis/Octoploid smile in this context — and deftly calls back to “Among Us” before hitting its culmination and giving over to the penultimate “Ashes Remain,” which might be the rawest and angriest of the eight inclusions, and which serves as the whole-album crescendo accordingly before the thud-backed drone and noisemaking of “Interstitial” reinforce the atmospheric depth for three minutes on the band’s way out.
For a record that’s so much about throwing elbows, some of them at your larynx (heads up on that), the movement across Distant Skies and the Ocean Flies is remarkably easy. I guess the degree of that will be somewhat subject to one’s own tolerance for harder-edged fare, rough vocals, and so on, but Amammoth are perhaps not as monolithic in their approach as they would have you believe. In that case, “Among Us” represents the totality of Distant Skies and the Ocean Flies well, summarizing a lot of what the tracks that follow have on offer without giving away everything at the album’s outset.
The video has a flashing lights warning, and it comes up more later in the clip but they’re not kidding. More info follows from the PR wire below.
Please enjoy:
Amammoth, “Among Us” video premiere
Amammoth on “Among Us”:
Our second single “Among Us” is a B-grade psychedelic, sci-fi adventure, kind of like ET on acid.
Sydney’s sludgiest stoner outfit Amammoth’s trippy sonic sensibilities and intellectually vitriolic lyrical approach blur the boundaries between sedation and stimulation, simultaneously submerging listeners into the distorted depths of the human experience while lifting them up with a distinctly groovy vibe and clean vocal style that shines through both in the studio and on stage. Following the release of their debut EP and their first full-length album, as well as a host of electrically frenzied live shows, Amammoth’s momentum is at an all-time high as they prepare for their biggest year yet, with a second full-length album set for release with Electric Valley Records, to be officially announced in due time, much to the delight of their diverse and growing global fanbase.
Tracklisting: 1. Intro 2. Among Us 3. Chosen 4. So High So Numb 5. Sink or Swim 6. Satellite 7. Ashes Remain 8. Interstitial
Amammoth are: Scott Fisher : vocals/guitar Warwick Poulton : bass Scott Wilson : drums
Amammoth, Distant Skies and the Ocean Flies (2025)
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 7th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Look, it’s been a rough couple days where I’m at. I know that doesn’t have jack shit to do with Iron Blanket, who are from Australia and who put out their Astral Wanderer LP earlier this year on Copper Feast and Sound Effect Records, and who are from Australia. I know. Unrelated. But man, everything just feels like a drag. Existing got heavier, and not in a good way.
So I’m not saying don’t watch Iron Blanket‘s ‘Live at Red Belly Records’ live session. At all. I’m saying stop whatever else you’re doing and immerse in it. Don’t just watch it. Maybe put some headphones on, turn the volume up and really let go for a while. I don’t know where you are or your situation, but if you actually make it through all 25 minutes with some kind of mental escape, isn’t that automatically a win? Just a couple minutes of being someplace else in your head?
The video has four songs, three of which were on Astral Wanderer and the concluding “Jam Sandwich,” which, yes, has plenty of jam. Maybe it’s what you need today and maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. But sitting here doing this feels stupid and listening to music doesn’t, so I’m gonna put on some tunes and try to check out for a while.
Peace:
Sydney powerhouse IRON BLANKET slithered their way up into the into Redbelly studios after their Album release after ‘That’ night at the Northern in Byron Bay.
Here’s: Mystic Goddess 00:45 Visions of the End 05:20 Kookaburra Nightmare 11:11 Jam sandwich 20:25
Filmed: 47 Studio Edited: 47 Studio / Red Belly Records Recorded: Red Belly Records Mixed + Mastered: Iron Blanket
Iron Blanket is: Mark Lonsdale – Guitar Nick Matthews – Drums Tom Withford – Guitar Charles Eggleston – Bass Johann Ingemar – Vocals
Posted in Reviews on October 11th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I got a note from the contact form a bit ago in my email, which happens enough that it’s not really news, except that it wasn’t addressed to me. That happens sometimes too. A band has a form letter they send out with info — it’s not the most personal touch, but has a purpose and doesn’t preclude following-up individually — or just wants to say the same thing to however many outlets. Fair game. This was specifically addressed to somebody else. And it kind of ends with the band saying to send a donation link, like, “Wink wink we donate and you post our stuff.”
Well shit. You mean I coulda been making fat stacks off these stoner bands all the while? Living in my dream house with C.O.C. on the outdoor speakers just by exploiting a couple acts trying to get their riffs heard? Well I’ll be damned. Yeah man, here’s my donation link. Daddy needs a new pair of orthopedic flip-flops. I’ma never pay taxes again.
Life, sometimes.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
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Alunah, Fever Dream
The seventh full-length from UK outfit Alunah, Fever Dream, will be immediately noteworthy for being the band’s last (though one never knows) with vocalist Siân Greenaway fronting the band, presiding over an era of transition when they had to find a new identity for themselves. Fever Dream is the third Alunah LP with Greenaway, and its nine songs show plainly how far the band has come in the six-plus years of her tenure. “Never Too Late” kicks off with both feet at the intersection of heavy rock and classic metal, with a hook besides, and “Trickster of Time” follows up with boogie and flute, because you’re special and deserve nice things. The four-piece as they are here — Greenaway on vocals (and flute), guitarist Matt Noble, bassist Dan Burchmore and founding drummer Jake Mason — are able to bring some drama in “Fever Dream,” to imagine lone-guitar metal Thin Lizzy in the solo of the swaggering “Hazy Jane,” go from pastoral to crushing in “Celestial” and touch on prog in “The Odyssey.” The finale “I’ve Paid the Price” tips into piano grandiosity, but by the time they get there, it feels earned. A worthy culmination for this version of this band.
Swiss heavy post-hardcore unit Coilguns‘ fourth LP and the first in five years, though they’ve had EPs and splits in that time, Odd Love offers 11 songs across an adventurous 48 minutes, alternately raw or lush, hitting hard with a slamming impact or careening or twisting around, mathy and angular. In “Generic Skincare,” it’s both and a jet-engine riff to boot. Atmosphere comes to the fore on “Caravel,” the early going of “Featherweight” and the later “The Wind to Wash the Pain,” but even the most straight-ahead moments of charge have some richer context around them, whether that’s the monstrous tension and release of capper “Bunker Vaults” or, well, the monstrous tension and release of “Black Chyme” earlier on. It’s not the kind of thing I always reach for, but Coilguns make post-hardcore disaffection sound like a good time, with intensity and spaciousness interwoven in their style and a vicious streak that comes out on the regular. Four records deep, the band know what they’re about but are still exploring.
Subconscious Awakening is Robot God‘s second album of 2024 and works in a similar two-sides/four-songs structure as the preceding Portal Within, released this past Spring, where each half of the record is subdivided into one longer and shorter song. It feels even more purposeful on Subconscious Awakening since both “Mandatory Remedy” and “Sonic Crucifixion” both hover around eight and a half minutes while side A opens with the 13-minute “Blind Serpent” and side B with the 11-minute title-track. Rife with textured effects, some samples, and thoughtful melodic vocals, Subconscious Awakening of course shares some similarity of purpose with Portal Within, which was also recorded at the same time, but a song like “Sonic Crucifixion” creates its own sprawl, and the outward movement between that closer and the title-track before it underscores the progressivism at work in the band’s sound amid tonal heft and complex, sometimes linear structures. Takes some concentration to wield that kind of groove.
Especially for an experimentalist, drone-based act who relies on audience theater-of-the-mind as a necessary component of appreciating its output, Pittsburgh solo outfit Fuzznaut — aka guitarist Emilio Rizzo — makes narrative a part of what the band does. Earlier this year, Fuzznaut‘s “Space Rock” single reaped wide praise for its cosmic aspects. “Wind Doula” specifically cites Neil Young‘s soundtrack for the film Dead Man as an influence, and thus brings four minutes more closely tied to empty spread of prairie, perhaps with some filtering being done through Earth‘s own take on the style as heard in 2005’s seminal Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method. One has to wonder if, had Rizzo issued “Wind Doula” with a picture of an astronaut floating free on its cover, it would be the cosmic microwave background present in the track instead of stark wind across the Great Plains, but there’s much more to Fuzznaut than self-awareness and the power of suggestion. Chalk up another aesthetic tryout that works.
Trad metal enthusiasts will delight at the specificity of the moment in the history of the style Void Moon interpret on their fourth album, Dreams Inside the Sun. It’s not that they’re pretending outright that it’s 1986, like the Swedish two-piece of guitarist/bassist Peter Svensson and drummer/vocalist Marcus Rosenqvist are wearing hightops and trying to convince you they’re Candlemass, but that era is present in the songwriting and production throughout Dreams Inside the Sun, even if the sound of the record is less directly anachronistic and their metallurgical underpinnings aren’t limited to doom between slowed down thrash riffs, power-metal-style vocalizing and the consuming Iommic nod of “East of the Sun” meeting with a Solitude Aeturnus-style chug, all the more righteous for being brought in to serve the song rather than to simply demonstrate craft. That is to say, the relative barn-burner “Broken Skies” and the all-in eight-minute closer “The Wolf (At the End of the World,” which has some folk in its verse as well, use a purposefully familiar foundation as a starting point for the band to carve their own niche, and it very much works.
Best known for slinging his six-string alongside brother Kyle Juett in Texas rockers Mothership, Kelley Juett‘s debut solo offering, Wandering West pulls far away from that classic power trio in intention while still keeping Juett‘s primary instrument as the focus. Some loops and layering don’t quite bring Wandering West the same kind of experimental feel as, say, Blackwolfgoat or a similar guitarist-gonna-guitar exploratory project, but they sit well nonetheless alongside the fluid noodling of Juett‘s drumless self-jams. He backs his own solo in centerpiece “Breezin’,” and the subsequent “Electric Dreamland” seems to use the empty space as much as the notes being cast out into it to create its sense of ambience, so if part of what Juett is doing on Wandering West is beginning the process of figuring out who he is as a solo artist, he’s someone who can turn a seven-minute meander like “Lonely One” (playing off Mos Generator?) into a bluesy contemplation of evolving reach, the guitar perfectly content to talk to itself if there’s nobody else around. Time may show it to be formative, but let the future worry about the future. There’s a lot to dig into, here and now.
With vocalists Kristian Eivind Espedal (Gaahls Wyrd, Trelldom, ex-Gorgoroth, etc.) and Lindy-Fay Hella (Wardruna, solo, etc.), guitarist Ronny “Valgard” Stavestrand (Trelldom) and drummer/bassist/keyboardist/producer Iver Sandøy (Enslaved, Relentless Agression, etc.), who also helmed (most of) the recording and mixed and mastered, Whispering Void easily could have fallen into the trap of being no more than the sum of its pedigree. Instead, the seven songs on debut album At the Sound of the Heart harness aspects of Norwegian folk for a rock sound that’s dark enough for the lower semi-growls in the eponymous “Whispering Void” to feel like they’re playing toward a gothic sentiment that’s not out of character when there’s so much melancholy around generally. Mid-period Anathema feel like a reference point for “Lauvvind” and the surging “We Are Here” later on, and by that I mean the album is intricately textured and absolutely gorgeous and you’ll be lucky if you take this as your cue to hear it.
You know how sometimes in a workplace where there’s a Boss With Personality™, there might be a novelty sign or a desk tchotchke that says, “The beatings will continue until morale improves?” Like, haha, in addition to wage theft you might get smacked if you get uppity about, say, wage theft? Fine. Orme sound like what happens when morale doesn’t improve. The 24-minute single-song No Serpents, No Saviours EP comes a little more than a year after the band’s two-song/double-vinyl self-titled debut (review here) and finds them likewise at home in longform songwriting. There are elements of death-doom, but Orme are sludgier in their presentation, and so wind up able to be morose and filthy in kind, moving from the opening crush through a quiet stretch after six minutes in that builds into persistent thuds before dropping out again, a sample helping mark the transitions between movements, and a succession of massive lumbering parts trading off leading into a final march that feels as tall as it is wide. I like that, in a time where the trend is so geared toward lush melody, Orme are unrepentantly nasty.
Budapest instrumentalist duo Azutmaga make their full-length debut with the aptly-titled Offering, compiling nine single-word-title pieces that reside stylistically somewhere between sludge metal and doom. Self-recorded by guitarist Patrik Veréb (who also mixed and mastered at Terem Studio) and self-released by Veréb and drummer Martin Várszegi, it’s a relatively stripped-down procession, but not lacking breadth as the longer “Aura” builds up to its full roll or the minute-long “Orca” provides an acoustic break ahead of the languid big-swing semi-psychedelia of “Mirror,” informed by Eastern European folk melodies but ready to depart into less terrestrial spheres. It should come as no surprise that “Portal” follows. Offering might at first give something of a monolithic impression as “Purge” calls to mind Earth‘s steady drone rock, but Azutmaga have a whole other level of volume to unfurl. Just so happens their dynamic goes from loud to louder.
After trickling out singles for over a year, including the title-track of the album and, in 2022, an early version of the instrumental “The Freaks Come Out at Night” that may or may not have been from before vocalist Virginie D. joined the band, the hashtag-named #chaleurhumaine delights in shirking heavy rock conventions, whether it’s the French-language lyrics or divergences into punk and harder fare, but nothing here — regardless of one’s linguistic background — is so challenging as to be inaccessible. Catchy songs are catchy, whether that’s “Fada Fighters” or “La Diable au Corps,” which dares a bit of harmonica along with its full-toned blues rock riffing. Likewise, nowhere the album goes feels beyond the band’s reach, and while “La Ligne” doesn’t sound especially daring as it plays up the brighter pop in its verse and shove of a chorus, well made songs never have any trouble finding welcome. I’m not sure why it’s a hashtag, but #chaleurhumaine feels complete and engaging, at once familiar and nothing so much as itself.
While the arrangements are full-band in terms of featuring guitar, bass, drums and the like, Stubai‘s recently-issued four-song Voyager EP carries solo-project intimacy to coincide with its outward accessibility — bedroom pop working from foundations that resonate in frequencies of grunge on a cut like “Broken Teeth” and progressive heavy emo on the leadoff title-track, the video for which you’ll find streaming below. The “Voyager” clip features artist-impression footage of and actual images taken by NASA’s two Voyager probes — Voyager 1 and 2, launched in Sept. and Aug. 1977, respectively (yes, two before one) — which are the farthest-out manmade objects in the cosmos, having left much of the sun’s gravity and certainly all the planets, Kuiper Belt, etc. behind. Voyager 1 is now over 15 billion miles away from the sun, and Voyager 2 is 13 billion. Not bad for pre-’80s technology.
Stubai, which is comprised of Matt T., is slightly more modern in influence, what with the ’90s-ism of “Another Way” and the particularly-Nirvana strum and drawl of the aforementioned “Broken Teeth,” as well as the early-Cave In vibe that “Voyager” itself is radiating. Thoughtful in melody and wistful even unto the dancier sway of capper “Do You Miss Me,” the EP is intended as a precursor to Stubai‘s debut full-length, We Were Here, set to release sometime this Fall. I haven’t heard that yet, but the songs feel crafted and fluid in like measure, and while the production is hardly flashy, it is clear and able to convey a due sense of breadth to suit the thicker-toned distortion being explored in “Voyager” itself.
You’ll note the final among the video’s snagged images is the famous image of Earth as viewed from roughly six billion miles out christened by astronomer Carl Sagan as the ‘Pale Blue Dot.’ It is a fitting and humbling reminder of our place in the cosmos itself, which is practically nowhere at all when put to even the tiniest fraction of such a scale. Ephemeral as we are, we nonetheless persist with things like art (yay) and war (boo), and the Voyager EP harnesses an urgency of expression that speaks of reaching out in a way to suit the stated theme of learning about humanity through the gold records on the Voyager probes containing information about the human species, the planet and our culture. If you want a more terrestrial interpretation, it’s also catchy with a hook to get stuck in your head and a flowing riff. Up to you how you want to look at it, ultimately.
My daughter, The Pecan, is deep into wanting to be an astrophysicist when she grows up, and, well, that’d be just fine. I showed her the video and we ended up watching it four times that day. When I put it on a bit ago to start writing about the EP, she remembered it on the basis of the song alone, came over, and sat down with me in front of the laptop to watch again. It isn’t the first song she’s liked, but it is the first one I’ve heard her say she liked. Ever. Not a minor or easily earned endorsement.
Stubai has written a fuzzed out stoner rock epic about NASA’s 1977 Voyager probes. It comes with a music video that takes the viewer on a cinematic journey through the solar system (shoutout to V101 Science for the awesome footage).
Voyager wonders how aliens might perceive us humans if they actually listened to the sounds on the probes’ famous Golden Records.
Strap yourself in and take a trip to the heliosphere and beyond!
NASA space probe Voyager’s journey through the solar system. Footage used with kind permission of @V101SPACE Edited by: Oscar Teffer
Music: “Voyager” from Stubai’s forthcoming debut album “We Were Here”, out October 2024
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 23rd, 2024 by JJ Koczan
The occasion bringing together Copper Feast Records in the UK and Sound Effect Records in Greece to collaborate for the first time is the April 5 release of Iron Blanket‘s debut full-length, Astral Wanderer. And fair enough for the charged heavy psychedelia thus far on display in the album’s three streaming tracks, the opening duo “Evil Mind” and “Mystic Goddess” portraying a style of grounded riffing that kicks-in-the-ass some of Uncle Acid‘s garage groove while vocalist Johann Ingemar reimagines Sabbath-era Ozzy reach through a delivery that you could just as easily say comes from folk as prog and which is likened in the release info to Mars Volta. So yes, vibrato.
A later but still side A cut, “Kookaburra Nightmare” is more relaxed in tempo and broader in its soundscaping, taking some of the dreamy impulses hinted at in “Evil Mind” and “Mystic Goddess” and shifting the balance between elements in the crafting. Much of the info below came from Copper Feast‘s Bandcamp, but some I took from the social media announcement as well and kind of repositioned it to make sense all as one thing. The bottom line remains the same: something new for you to dig if you can dig it, and here’s hoping.
Preorders start Feb. 23, which is apparently today because it’s no longer July 2005 for some silly reason.
Info:
Iron Blanket – Astral Wanderer – Sound Effect & Copper Feast Records
Blending 70’s inspired psychedelic grooviness with unmistakable driving stoner rock riffs and Mars Volta-esque vocals, Sydney’s Iron Blanket are a band like no other right now.
Their much heralded live show that has drawn them new fans at every venue they’ve played down under is now translated to their debut LP, Astral Wanderer.
Released through UK-based Copper Feast Records and legendary Athens’ label Sound Effect Records, Astral Wanderer is slated for full release on 5th April.
Says Copper Feast: “Please join me in welcoming one of Sydney’s worst kept secrets Iron Blanket to Copper Feast Records! We’ve got the pleasure to be co-releasing this unmissable slab of wax alongside legendary Athens-based label Sound Effect Records. We’ll be dropping presales this Friday, February 23rd, for the two limited edition variants.”
The inaugural co-release between these much loved labels will also bring two limited edition vinyl editions, one on classic black and the other on blood red vinyl. Numbers as follows:
Classic Black – 250 worldwide Blood Red – 150 worldwide
Tracklisting: 1. Evil Mind 2. Mystic Goddess 3. Witch’s Kiss 4. Kookaburra Nightmare 5. Astral Wanderer 6. Iron Blanket 7. Visions of the End 8. Tongue of Time
releases April 5, 2024
All songs written and performed by Iron Blanket Recorded and mixed by Phan Sharif at Parliament Studios Mastered by Darren Ziesing
Iron Blanket is: Mark Lonsdale – Guitar Nick Matthews – Drums Tom Withford – Guitar Charles Eggleston – Bass Johann Ingemar – Vocals
Posted in Reviews on October 3rd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
I broke my wife’s phone yesterday. What a mess. I was cleaning the counter or doing some shit and our spare butter dish — as opposed to the regular one, which was already out — was sitting near the edge of the top of the microwave, from where I bumped it so that the ceramic corner apparently went right through the screen hard enough that in addition to shattering it there’s a big black spot and yes a new phone has been ordered. In the meantime, she can’t type the letter ‘e’ and, well, I have to hand it to Le Creuset on the sturdy construction of their butter dishes. Technology succumbing to the brute force of a harder blunt object and gravity.
Certainly do wish that hadn’t happened. What does it have to do with riffs, or music at all, or really anything? Who cares. I’m about to review 10 records today. I can talk about whatever the hell I want.
Quarterly Review #11-20:
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Samsara Blues Experiment, Rock Hard in Concert
10 years after releasing 2013’s Live at Rockpalast (review here), and nearly three after they put out their 2021 swansong studio LP, End of Forever (review here), German heavy psych rockers Samsara Blues Experiment offer the 80-minute live 2LP Rock Hard in Concert, and while it’s not their first live album, it gives a broader overview of the band from front to (apparent) back during their time together, as songs opening salvo of “Center of the Sun,” “Singata Mystic Queen” and “For the Lost Souls” from 2010’s debut, Long-Distance Trip (review here), melds in the set with “One With the Universe” and “Vipassana” from 2017’s One With the Universe (review here), End of Forever‘s own title-track and “Massive Passive,” and “Hangin’ on a Wire” from 2013’s Waiting for the Flood (review here) to become a fan-piece that nonetheless engages in sound and presentation. If you were there, it’s likely must-own. For the rest of us, who maybe did or didn’t see the band during their time — glad to say I did — it’s a reminder of how immersive they could be, especially in longer-form material, and how much influence they had on the last decade-plus of jam-based heavy psych in Europe. Recorded in 2018 at a special gig for Germany’s Rock Hard magazine, Rock Hard in Concert follows behind 2022’s Demos & Rarities (review here) in the band’s posthumous catalog, and it may or may not be Samsara Blues Experiment‘s final non-reissue release. Whether it is or not, it summarizes their run gorgeously and puts a light on the chemistry of the trio that led them through so many winding aural paths.
Sounding modern and full and in opening cut “Marrow” almost like the fuzz is about to swallow the rest of the song, Restless Spirit step forward with their third long-player, Afterimage, and establish a new level of craft for themselves. In 2021, the Long Island heavy/doom rock trio offered Blood of the Old Gods (review here), and their guitar-led energetic surges continue here in Afterimage riffers like the chug-nod “Shadow Command” and “Of Spirit and Form,” which seems to account for the underlying metallic edge of the band’s execution with its sharper turns. Their first album for Magnetic Eye Records, its eight tracks fit smoothly into the label’s roster, which at its baseline might be said to foster modern heavy styles with a particular ear for songwriting and melody, and Restless Spirit dig into “All Furies” like High on Fire galloping into a wall of Slayer records, only to follow with the 1:45 instrumental reset “Brutalized,” which is somehow weightier. They touch on the ethereal with the guitar in “The Fatalist,” but the vocals are more post-hardcore and have a grounding effect, and after starting with outright crush, “Hell’s Grasp” offers respite in progressive flourish and midtempo meandering before resuming the double-plus-huge roll and pointed riff and noodly offsets, the huge hook coming back in a way that makes me miss doing a radio show. “Hell’s Grasp” is the longest piece on the collection at 6:25, but “From the Dust Returned” closes, mindful of the atmospherics that have been at work all along and no less huge, but clearly saving a last push for, well, last. I’ll be interested in how it holds up over the long term, but Magnetic Eye has become one of the US’ most essential labels in heavy music and releases like this are exactly why.
When did Graham Clise from WitchLecherous Gaze, etc. — dude used to be in Uphill Battle; I remember that band — move to Australia? Doesn’t matter. It happened and Stepmother is the raw, garage-ish fuzz rock outfit the now-Melbourne-residing Clise has established, with Rob Muinos on bass and vocals and Sam Rains on drums. With Clise on guitar/vocals peppering hard-strummed riffs with bouts of shred and various dirtier coatings, the 12-tracker goes north of four minutes one time for “Do You Believe,” already by then having found its proto-Misfits bent in the catchy “Scream for Death.” But whether they’re buzz-overdosing “Waiting for the Axe” or digging into the comedown in “Signed DC” ahead of the surf-informed rager of a finale “Gusano,” Planet Brutalicon is a debut that presents fresh ideas taking on known stylistic elements. And it’s not a showcase for Clise‘s instrumental prowess on a technical level or anything — he’s not trying to put on a clinic — but from the sound of his guitar to the noises he gets from it in “The Game” (that middle part, ultra-fuzz) and at the end of “Stalingrad,” it is very much a guitar-centered offering. No complaints there whatsoever.
Pilot Voyager, The Structure is Still Under Construction
WARNING: Users who take even a small dose of Pilot Voyager‘s The Structure is Still Under Construction may find themselves experiencing euphoria, or adrift, as though on some serene ocean under the warm green sky of impossibly refracted light. The ethereal drones and melodic textures of the 46-minute single-song LP may cause side effects like: momentary flashes of inner peace, the quieting of your brain that you’ve been seeking your whole life without knowing it, calm. Also nausea, but that’s probably just something you ate. Talk to your doctor about whether this extended work from the Hungarian collective Psychedelic Source Records (szia!) is right for you, and if it is, make sure to consume responsibly. Headphones required (not included or covered by insurance). Do not be afraid as “The Structure is Still Under Construction” leaves the water behind to float upward in its midsection, finally resolving in intertwining drones, vague sampled speech echoing far off somewhere — ugh, the real world — and birdsong someplace in the mix. Go with it. This is why you got the prescription in the first place. Decades of aural research and artistic movement and progression have led you and the Budapesti outfit to this moment. Do not operate heavy machinery. Ever. In fact, find an empty field, take off your pants and run around for a while until you get out of breath. Then drink cool water and giggle. This could be you. Your life.
Philadelphia has become the East Coast US’ hotbed for heavy psychedelia, which must be interesting for Northern Liberties, who started out more than two decades ago. The trio’s self-released, 10-song/41-minute Self-Dissolving Abandoned Universe — maybe their eighth album, if my count is right — with venerated producer Steve Albini, so one might count ‘instant-Gen-X-cred’ and ‘recognizably-muddy-toms’ among their goals. I wasn’t completely sold on the offering until “Infusorian Hymnal” started to dig a little further into the genuinely weird after opener “The Plot Thickens” and the subsequent “Drowned Out” laid forth the crunch of the tones and gave hints of the structures beneath the noise. “Crucible” follows up the raw shove of “Star Spangled Corpse” by expanding the palette toward space rock and an unhinged psych-noise shove that the somehow-still-Hawkwindian volatility of “The Awaited” moves away from while the finale “Song of the Sole Survivor” calls back to the folkish vocal melody in “Ghosts of Ghosts,” if in echoing and particularly addled fashion. Momentum serves the three-piece well throughout, though they seem to have no trouble interrupting themselves (can relate), and turning to follow a disparate impulse. Distractable heavy? Yeah, except bands like that usually don’t last two decades. Let’s say maybe their own kind of oddball, semi-spaced band who aren’t afraid to screw around in the studio, find what they like, and keep it. And whatever else you want to say about Albini-tracked drums, “Hold on to the Darkness” has a heavier tone to its snare than most guitars do to whole LPs. Whatever works, and it does.
“Good Night, Ophelia” is the first single from the forthcoming debut full-length from semi-goth Portland, Oregon, heavy rock four-piece Nyxora. There are worse opening shots to fire than a Hamlet reference, I suppose, and if one regards Ophelia’s character as an innocent driven to suicide by gender-based oppression, then her lack of agency is nothing if not continually relevant. Nonetheless, for Nyxora — Vox on, well, vox, guitarist E.Wrath, bassist Luke and drummer Weatherman — she pairs with dark-boogie riff recorded for edge with Witch Mountain‘s Rob Wrong at his Wrong Way Studio. There are some similarities between Nyxora and Wrong‘s own outfit — I double-checked it wasn’t Uta Plotkin singing some of the higher-reaching lines of “Good Night, Ophelia,” which is a definite compliment — but I get the sense that fuller atmosphere of Nyxora‘s first LP isn’t necessarily encapsulated in this one three-and-a-half-minute song. That is, I’m thinking at some point on the album, Nyxora will get more morose than they are here. Or maybe not. Either way, “Good Night, Ophelia” is an enticing teaser from a group who seem ready to dig their niche when the album is released, I’ll assume in 2024 though one never knows.
I hate to do it, but I’m calling bullshit right now on Sydney, Australia’s Old Goat Smoke. Sorry gents. To be sure, your Bongzilla-crusty, ultra-stoned, Church of Misery-esque-in-its-madcap-vocal-wails, goat weed metal is only a pleasure to behold. But that’s the problem. How’re you gonna write a song called “Old Goat Smoke” and not post the lyrics? I shudder to think of the weed puns I’m missing. Fortunately, it’s not too late for the newcomer band to correct the mistake before the entire project is derailed. In that eponymous one of three total tracks included, Old Goat Smoke cast themselves in the mold of the despondent and disaffected. “Return to Dirt” shifts fluidly in and out of screams and harsher fare while radioactive-dirt tonality infects the guitar and bass that have already challenged the drums to cut through their morass. So that there’s no risk of the point not being made, they cap this initial public offering with “The Great Hate,” and eight-and-a-half-minute treatise on feedback and raw scathe that’s likewise a show of future nastiness to manifest. Quit your job, do all the drugs you can find, engage the permanent fuck-off. Old Goat Smoke may not have ‘bong’ in their moniker, but that’s about all they’re missing. And those lyrics, I guess, though by the time the 20 minutes of Demo have expired, they’ve made their caustic point regardless.
German transport-themed heavy rock and rollers Van Groover — as in, one who grooves in or with vans — made a charming debut with 2021’s Honk if Parts Fall Off (review here), and the follow-up five-song EP, Back From the Shop, makes no attempt to fix what isn’t broken. That would seem to put it at odds with the mechanic speaking in the intro “Hill Willy’s Chop Shop,” who runs through a litany of issues fixed, goes on long enough to hypnotize and then swaps in body parts and so on. From there, the motor works, and Van Groover hit the gas through 21 minutes of smells-like-octane riffing and storytelling. In “A-38″ — the reference being to the size of a sheet of paper in Europe; equivalent but not the same as the US’ 8.5″ x 11” — they either get arrested, which would seem to be the ending of “The Bandit” just before,” or are at the DMV, I can’t quite tell, but it doesn’t matter one you meet “The Grizz.” The closer has an urgency to its push that doesn’t quite sound like I’d imagine being torn apart by a bear to feel, but the Lebowski-paraphrased penultimate line, “Some days you get eaten by the bear, some days the bear eats you,” underscores Van Groover‘s for-the-converted approach, speaking to the subculture from within. Possibly while driving. Does look like a nice van, though. The kind you might write a song or two about.
Facts-wise, there’s not much more I can tell you about Hotel Lucifer than you might glean from looking at the New York four-piece’s Bandcamp page. Their self-released and self-titled debut runs 43 minutes and eight tracks, and its somewhat bleak, not-obligated-to-heavy-tonalism course takes several violent thematic turns, including (I think.) in opener “Room 222,” where Katie‘s vocals seem to talk about raping god. This, “Murderer,” “Torquemada,” “The Ultimate Price,” “Picking Your Eyes Out” and 12-minute horror noisefest closer “Beheaded” — only the classic metaller “Training the Beast” and the three-minute acoustic-backed psychedelic voice showcase “Echidna” seem to restrain the brutaller impulses, and I’m not sure about that either. With Jimmy on guitar, Muriel playing bass and Ed on drums, Hotel Lucifer are defined in no small part by the whispers, rasps and croons that mark their verses and choruses, but that becomes an effective means to convey character and mood along with the instrumental ambience behind, and so Hotel Lucifer find this strange, almost willfully off-putting cultish individualism, and it’s not hooks keeping your attention so much as the desire to figure it out, to learn more about just what the hell is going on on this record. I’ll wish you good luck with that as I continue my efforts along similar lines.
Its five songs broken into two sections along lines of “Obscure Fire” pairing with “Of Silence” and “Descending” leading to “Into the Depths” with “Of Eternal Doom” answering the question that didn’t even really need to be asked about which depths the Russian stoner sludge rollers were talking about. The Sleep-worshiping three-piece of guitarist/vocalist SAA, bassist KKV and drummer PAN — whose credits are worth reading in the band’s own words — lumber with purpose as they make that final statement, each side of Obscure Fire working shortest to longest beginning with the howling guitar and drum thud of the title-track at nine minutes as opposed to the 10 of “Of Silence.” At two minutes, “Descending” is barely more than feedback and tortured gurgles, so yes, very much a fit with the concrete-toned plod of the subsequent “Into the Depths” as the band skirt the line between ultra-stoner metal and cavernous atmospheric sludge without necessarily committing to one or the other. That position favors them, but after a certain point of being bludgeoned with huge riffs and slow-nodding, deeply-weighted churn, your skull is going to be goo either way. The route Megalith Levitation take to get you there is where the weed is, aurally speaking.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 16th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Post-hardcore in its urgency, doomed in its slower stretch, full in tone in a way that works against expectationsfor a two-piece, metallic in its pointed aggression and with just an edge of Living Colour in its melody, the new single from Astrodeath emerges from its six minutes having brought together divergent styles with a fluidity and attitude that are undeniable. Set to issue on May 12 through Tuff Cuff Records in the duo’s native Australia and on the ubiquitous Heavy Psych Sounds in Europe, the band’s aptly-titled second album, Vol. II, is preceded by their 2019 self-titled debut and in addition to “Ceremonial Blood,” which you can hear below, a couple other album cuts have been previously posted as singles.
That tells me the release has been in the works for some time, as will happen these days. The below info comes from Bandcamp, and I post it with the full anticipation that a proper press release will be along about three minutes after I finish writing, so I might update what appears below (or I might’ve already, if you’re seeing this later; so it goes in linear time), but the track hit my inbox in a Bandcamp update from HPS, so I’m going with what I know. Simple creature, and all that.
ASTRODEATH are pleased to announce their brand-new album VOL. 2 is looming and will be available through Tuff Cuff Records in Australia and Heavy Psych Sounds Records in Europe.
Astrodeath will tour nationally in support of the release, leaving no stone unturned on their quest to bring sonic mayhem to audiences all over Australia.
VOL. 2 continues a mountainous sound borne of madness and revelation, ASTRODEATH report back from the precipice, bringing us haunting visions of a blind and indifferent universe and the hideous, mindless creations that lie in wait, insatiable in their desire to dominate and devour. Hailing from Cadigal Land in the Eora Nation (otherwise known as Sydney), singer/guitarist Tim Lancken and drummer Yoshi Hausler weave an otherworldly musical alchemy that belies their earthly origins and underpins the ritualistic hypnosis of Astrodeath’s furious and intimidating sound, a titanic reverberation that far exceeds the sum of its twin parts.
SAYS THE BAND:
“Ceremonial blood is a sacrificial offering of RIFF to our reptilian overlords, Cut from our sophomore LP Vol.2 and released worldwide through Heavy Psych Sounds and Tuff Cuff records in Australia. It is potentially our heaviest slab, Written as a soundtrack to our second Comic book (Illustrated by Glenno Smith), Ceremonial Blood will flow deep for fans of Sci-fi, Horror and Head banging. In the accompanying music video (Produced by John Flaws) I butcher my neighbour with a samurai sword in Yoshi’s bathtub and eat his leg….you’ll just have to watch it.. We are both HEAVILY PSYCHED to be sending Ceremonial blood out worldwide! Horns Up!”
1. Permafrost 2. Leviathan Rising 3. Red Weed 4. Ceremonial Blood 5. Neo Nephilim 6. Golden Death Machine 7. Invasion 8. The End
Releases May 12, 2023.
ASTRODEATH is: Tim Lancken – guitar/vocals Yoshi Hausler – drums
