Posted in Whathaveyou on October 21st, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Like few bands out there right now, Finland’s Dark Buddha Rising actively sound like their music is trying to eat you. Their new album, Mathreyata, was hinted toward way back in March as the seams in the fabric of the world were just starting to get stretched wider, but though the original October release date has passed, Svart will have it out on Nov. 13 and that’s as good a time as any for the end of all things to meet its soundtrack. The band put out their 2018 II EP on Neurot and and Mathreyata is their first full-length since 2015’s Inversum (review here). Normally I’d call five years between LPs a long stretch, but for Dark Buddha Rising, that’s about right when it comes to needing recovery time in between.
If you’ve got 13 minutes and a soul to kill, they’re streaming a video for the lead single “Sunyaga” now that is little short of pure shamanic destruction. Partake.
Via the PR wire:
Dark Buddha Rising unveil their seventh album, Mathreyata on Friday the 13th of November 2020 via Svart Records
Video for first single “Sunyaga” revealed.
Finnish “dark underlords of psychedelic drone” Dark Buddha Rising return with their heaviest and darkest record yet.
V. Ajomo from Dark Buddha Rising states:
“Mathreyata follows the visions that were received from Inversum’s implosion and is the accession of what we invoked with the II EP. Before completing the great circle, all cycles must be dissolved. In the end we are standing at the edge of the abyss with all our previous work as weights, impatient to dive in. We recorded the basis of the album just before the Waste of Space Orchestra project began and mostly because of that, it took a few years to get it finished. Finally the material that we have performed live for several years can be experienced as a recorded album.”
Dark Buddha Rising’s abyssic and meditative sonic-void has been opening up over the last 10 years to swallow more and more devotees in their wake. Since their inception in 2007, with their first four albums being highly-coveted, sold-out private pressings, to subsequent Svart Records reissues, to their burgeoning fifth album Dakhmandal, Dark Buddha Rising have been shining like a black diamond for those that go mining for the real thing. Embraced into Neurosis’ Neurot Records fraternity, with 2015’s critically acclaimed sixth album Inversum, Tampere-based psychonauts, Dark Buddha Rising have captivated the collective consciousness of the heavy underground and achieved cult-legend status.
2019’s climactic and highly praised Waste Of Space Orchestra collaboration with local kindred spirits Oranssi Pazuzu at Roadburn Festival, put Dark Buddha Rising’s Wastement home studio: “the asylum of eternal feedback,” firmly on the International music world map and into the hearts of the pitch-black psych-rock underworld. Gathering a throng of newly devoted adherents who worship at the altar of their churning vortex, Dark Buddha Rising’s live shows are a transformative experience that are religiously revered by audiences across Europe. To put words into what Dark Buddha Rising does to the listening audience is to describe the band surrendering fully to the intuition and primal instincts as altered states of mind.
Prepare your mind and body for an initiation into the dark arts of Mathreyata on Friday the 13th of November 2020. Dark Buddha Rising have channeled a work for dark spirits and those who seek to travel beyond the unknown.
Mathreyata features inlay artwork by Adam Burke. “Sunyaga” video by Dehn Sora.
First single “Sunyaga” drops on the 9th of October 2020. Mathreyata album on Friday the 13th of November 2020.
Posted in Reviews on October 12th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Well, the weekend’s over and it’s time to wrap up the Quarterly Review. Rest assured, I wrote the following during my copious weekend leisure time, resting on the side of a heated Olympic-size pool with a beverage nearby. It definitely wasn’t four in the morning on a Sunday or anything. If I haven’t gotten the point across yet, I hope you’ve found something amid this massive swath of records that has resonated with you. By way of a cheap plug, I’ll be featuring audio from a lot of these bands on the Gimme Metal show this Friday, 5PM Eastern, if you’re up for tuning in.
Either way, thanks for reading and for being a part of the whole thing. Let’s wrap it up.
Quarterly Review #51-60:
The Pilgrim, …From the Earth to the Sky and Back
Lest he be accused of laziness, Gabriele Fiori — also of Black Rainbows, Killer Boogie and the head of the Heavy Psych Sounds label, booking agency and festival series — made his solo debut as The Pilgrim with Spring 2019’s Walking into the Forest (review here). Joined by Black Rainbows drummer Filippo Ragazzoni, Fiori ups the scale of the journey with the second The Pilgrim LP, …From the Earth to the Sky and Back. Richer in arrangement, bolder in craft and more confident in performance, the album runs 14 songs and 50 minutes still largely based around an acoustic acid rock foundation, but with a song like “Riding the Horse” tapping ’70s singer-songwriter vibes while “Cuba” touches on Latin percussion and guitar and “Space and Time” journeying out near the record’s end with waves of synthesizer, it seems The Pilgrim isn’t so willing to be pigeonholed. So much the better.
There is an undercurrent of extremity to the debut release from Polymoon, who hail from the psychedelic hotbed that is Tampere, Finland. The six-song/42-minute Caterpillars of Creation turns in opener “Silver Mt.” to fervent guitar push or from freaked-out cosmic prog into drifting post-universe exploration, setting the stage for the dynamic that unfolds throughout. The wash early in the second half of “Lazaward” is glorious, and it’s not the first or the last time Polymoon go to that adrenaline-pumping well, but the serenity that caps that song and seems to continue into “Malamalama” in closing side A is no less effective. “Helicaling” mounts tension in its early drumming but finally releases it later, and “Neitherworld” gives Caterpillars of Creation‘s most fervent thrust while closer “Metempsychosis” rounds out with a fitting sense of dissipation. As a first album/first release, it is particularly stunning, and to make it as plain as possible, I will think less of any list of 2020’s best debut albums that leaves out Polymoon.
The two-piece comprised of Martin Weaver (ex-Wicked Lady) and synthesist Scott “Dr. Space” Heller (Øresund Space Collective, Black Moon Circle, etc.) position First Treatment as their proper studio debut, and it certainly hits its marks in galaxial adventuring well enough to qualify as such, but the duo have been on a creative splurge throughout this year — even in lockdown — and so the six songs here are also born out of the work they’ve been doing since releasing their debut single “Ghouls ‘n’ Shit” (video premiere here) late last year. The album launches with “Journey to Enceladus,” which boasts drum programming by Weaver and though one of the movements in the 21-minute “Into the Oort Cloud” is based around beats, the bulk of First Treatment is purely a work of guitar and synth, and it basks in the freedom that being so untethered inherently brings. Running an hour long, it’s improvisational nature isn’t going to be for everyone, but Heller and Weaver make a strong argument that maybe it should be.
Who’s ready for a New Wave of PNW Fuckery? That’s right folks, the NWOPNWF has arrived and it’s Spokane, Washington’s Merlock leading the sometimes-awfully-punk-sometimes-awfully-metal-but-somehow-also-always-sludge charge. Aggressive and damning in lyrics, swapping between raw screams, grows, shouts and cleaner vocals and unhinged in terms of its genre loyalties, That Which Speaks seems to find the “melt faces” setting wherever it goes, and though there’s a sense of the four-piece feeling out what works best for them stylistically, the sometimes frantic, sometimes willfully awkward transitions — as in second cut “Prolapse” — serve the overall purpose of undercutting predictability. Eight-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “Idolon” stomps and shoves and gnashes and nasties its way through, and that’s the modus across what follows, though the scream-along headbanger “Vessel” somehow seems even rawer, and though it ends by floating into oblivion, the start of “Condemnation” is heavy fuckin’ metal to me. You never know quite where Merlock are going to hit next, and that’s the joy of the thing. May they remain so cacophonous.
Long-running UK psychedelic rockers Sun Dial — led by founding guitarist/vocalist Gary Ramon — released Mind Control in 2012. Sulatron Records picked it up in 2015, and now, five years after that, the same label presents Mind Control: The Ultimate Edition, a 2CD version of the original LP-plus-bonus-tracks reissue that brings the total runtime of the release to a well-beyond-manageable 98 minutes of lysergic experimentation. A full 20 tracks are included in the comprehensive-feeling offering, and from early mixes to alternative takes and lost tracks, and if this isn’t the ‘ultimate’ version of Mind Control, I’m not sure what could be, notwithstanding a complete-studio-sessions box set. Perhaps as a step toward that, Mind Control: The Ultimate Edition gives an in-depth look at a vastly underappreciated outfit and is obviously put together as much for the label as by it. That is to say, you don’t put out a reissue like this unless you really love the original record, and if Sulatron loving a record isn’t enough endorsement for you, please turn in your mushrooms on your way out the door.
Immersion is the goal of Saturn’s Husk‘s third long-player, The Conduit, and the Riga, Latvia, instrumentalist trio accomplish it quickly with the fluid riffs that emerge from the drone-based intro “Death of Imaginary Lights” and the subsequent 10-minute opener “Black Nebula.” At nine songs and 63 minutes, the album is consuming through the welcome nodder “The Heavenly Ape,” the especially-doomed “The Ritual” and the more mellow-float centerpiece “Spectral Haze,” while “Mycelium Messiah” brings more straight-ahead fuzz (for a time) and drones on either side surround the 10:35 “Sand Barrows,” the latter serving as the finale “A Shattered Visage” quoting Percy Bysshe Shelley and the former “City of the Djinn” running just a minute-plus but still doing enough to reset the brain from where “Mycelium Messiah” left it. Almost functioning as two albums side-by-side with “Spectral Haze” as the dividing point, The Conduit indeed seems to join various sides together, with a depth to coincide that invites the listener to explore along with it.
Landing a punch of classic metal to go along with its heavy-bottomed groove, Diggeth‘s Gringos Galacticos — one supposes the title ‘Spacecrackers’ was taken — was released by the Dutch trio in 2019 and receives a US limited vinyl edition thanks to Qumran Records. One finds some similar guitar heroics to those of Astrosoniq‘s more straightforward moments, but Diggeth‘s focus remains on hookmaking for the duration, offering hints of twang and acoustics in “In the Wake of Giants” and tipping a hat southwestward in “Three Gringos,” but “Straight-Shooter” is willfully breaks out its inner Hetfield and even as the penultimate “Unshackled” departs for a quieter break, it makes its way back in time for the big finish chorus, adding just a touch of Candlemass grandiosity for good measure before the harmonica-laced closing title-track rounds out with its dynamic spacey weirdness, the name of the album repeating itself in an answer to the Stephen Hawking sample that started the voyage on its way.
Cursed Tongue Records has the vinyl here, and Three Moons the tape, and the CD will arrive through Aladeriva Records, La Rubia Producciones, Aneurisma Records, Surnia Records and Violence in the Veins — so yes, Horizon‘s third album, The White Planet Patrol is well backed. Fair enough for the Kyuss-via-Black–Rainbows vibes of “End of Utopia” or the initial charge and flow of “The Backyard” that sets the Alicante, Spain, trio on their way. “King Serpent” and “Death & Teddies” bring well-crafted fuzz to bear, and “Blind World” effectively layers vocals in its chorus to coincide, but the more laid back roll of the title-cut is an unmistakable highlight. Shades of mid-paced Nebula surface in “Meet the Forest” later on, but Horizon are part of a tradition of heavy bands in Alicante and they know it. The smoothness of their tone and delivery speaks volumes on its own in that regard, never mind the actual songwriting, which also leaves nothing to be desired.
Debut EP from Limousine Beach out of Pittsburgh, and if the three guitars involved don’t push it over the top, certainly the vocal harmonies get that particular job done. You got six minutes for three songs? Yeah, obviously. They scorch through “Tiny Hunter” to close out, but it’s in the leadoff title-track that Stealin’ Wine + 2 sees the Dave Wheeler-fronted outfit land its most outrageous chorus, just before they go on to find a middle-ground between KISS and Thin Lizzy on “Hear You Calling.” The harmonies open and are striking from the outset, but it’s in how they’re arranged around the standalone parts from Wheeler (also Outsideinside, ex-Carousel) that the outfit’s truest potential is shown. Issued through Tee Pee Records, Stealin’ Wine + 2 is the kind of thing you’d pick up at a show in a normal year and then feel way ahead of everyone else when the LP finally hits. Not a normal year, obviously, but Limousine Beach are serving due notice just the same. In six minutes, no less.
I’m sure a lot of records show up at Satan’s door with notes, like, “Dear sir, please find the enclosed submitted for your approval,” but it’s not hard to imagine Beelzebub himself getting down with the filth-coated sludge and rolling doom unfurled across The Crooked Whispers‘ debut offering, Satanic Melodies, marked by hateful, near-blackened screams from Anthony Gaglia and the plodding riffs of Chad Davis (Hour of 13, et al). The title-track is longest at 8:23 and in addition to featuring Ignacio De Tommaso‘s right-on bass tone in its midsection, it plays out early like Weedeater sold their collective soul, and drifts out where earlier pieces “Sacrifice” and “Evil Tribute” and “Profane Pleasure” held their roll for the duration. Stretches of clean-vocal cultistry add to the doomier aspects, but The Crooked Whispers seem to care way less about genre than they do about worshiping the devil, and that unshakable faith behind them, the rest seems to fall into place in accordingly biting fashion.
Posted in Reviews on October 8th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
We’ve reached the portion of the Quarterly Review wherein I would no longer know what day it is if I didn’t have my notes to help me keep track. I suppose it doesn’t matter — the day, that is — since it’s 10 records either way, but I’d hate to review the same albums two days in a row or something. Though, come to think of it, that might be a fun experiment sometime.
Not today. Today is another fresh batch of 10 on the way to 60 by next Monday. We’ll get there. Always do. And if you’re wondering, today’s Thursday. At least that’s what I have in my notes.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin, Stygian Bough Vol. I
The collaborative effort Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin and their 64-minute full-length, Stygian Bough Vol. I — the intention toward future output together hinted at in the title already confirmed by the group(s) — is a direct extension of what Aerial Ruin, aka Erik Moggridge, brought to the last Bell Witch album, 2017’s Mirror Reaper (review here), in terms of complementing the crushing, emotionally resonant death-doom of the Washington duo with morose folk vocal melody. Stygian Bough Vol. I is distinguished by having been written by the two-plus-one-equals-three-piece as a group, and accordingly, it more fluidly weaves Moggridge‘s contributions into those of Bell Witch‘s Dylan Desmond and Jesse Shreibman, resulting in an approach like if Patrick Walker from Warning had joined Thergothon. It’s prevailing spirit is deep melancholy in longer pieces like “The Bastard Wind” and “The Unbodied Air,” both over 19 minutes, while it might be in “Heaven Torn Low I (The Passage)” and “Heaven Torn Low II (The Toll)” that the trio most effectively bring their intent to life. Either way, if you’re in, be ready to go all the way in, but know that it’s well worth doing so.
Traditional doom with flourish both of noise and NWOBHM guitars — that turn in the second half of opener “Transformation” is like a dogwhistle for Iron Maiden fans — I hear Cruthu‘s second album, Athrú Crutha, and all I can think of are label recommendations. The Michigan outfit’s 2017 debut, The Angle of Eternity (review here), was eventually issued on The Church Within, and that’d certainly work, but also Ván Records, Shadow Kingdom, and even Cruz Del Sur seem like fitting potential homes for the righteousness on display across the vinyl-ready six-song/39-minute outing, frontman Ryan Evans commanding in presence over the reverb-loaded classic-style riffs of guitarist Dan McCormick and the accompanying gallop in Matt Fry‘s drums given heft by Derek Kasperlik‘s bass. Like the opener, “Necromancy” and “Dimensional Collide” move at a good clip, but side B’s “The Outsider” and closer “Crown of Horns” slow things down following the surprisingly rough-edged “Beyond the Pale.” One way or the other, it’s all doomed and so are we.
Whereas 2017’s Berdreyminn (review here) existed in the shadow of 2014’s Ótta (review here), Endless Twilight of Codependent Love brings Iceland’s Sólstafir to a new place in terms of their longer-term progression. It is their first album with an English title since 2005’s Masterpiece of Bitterness, and though they’ve had English-language songs since then, the mellow “Her Fall From Grace” is obviously intended to be a standout here, and it is. On the nine-song/62-minute course of the album, however, it is one impression of many, and in the raging “Dionysus” and post-blackened “Drýsill,” 10-minute opener and longest track (immediate points) “Akkeri,” richly atmospheric “Rökkur,” goth-lounging “Or” and worthy finale “Úlfur,” Sólstafir remind of the richly individual nature of their approach. The language swaps could be reaching out to a broader, non-Icelandic-speaking audience. If so, it’s only in the interest of that audience to take note if they haven’t already.
Curse is the first long-player from Portland, Oregon’s ILS, and it’s a rager in the PNW noise tradition, with uptempo, gonna-throw-a-punch-and-then-apologize riffs and basslines and swaps between semi-spoken shouts and vicious screams from Tom Glose (ex-Black Elk) that are precisely as jarring as they’re meant to be. I don’t think Curse is anyone’s first time at the dance — Glose, guitarist Nate Abner, bassist Adam Pike or drummer Tim Steiner — but it only benefits across its sans-bullshit 28-minute run by knowing what it wants to do. Its longest material, like the title-track or “Don’t Hurt Me,” which follows, or closer “For the Shame I Bring,” rests on either side of three and a half minutes, but some of the most brutal impressions are made in cuts like “It’s Not Lard but it’s a Cyst” or leadoff “Bad Parts,” which have even less time to waste but are no less consuming, particularly at high volume. The kind of record for when you want to assault yourself. And hey, that happens.
Apart from the consciously-titled three-minute noiseblaster finale “Antithesis” that’s clearly intended to contrast with what comes before it, Bismut‘s second LP for Lay Bare, Retrocausality, is made up of five extended instrumental pieces the shortest of which is just under 13 minutes long. The Nijmegen-based trio — guitarist Nik Linders, bassist Huibert der Weduwen, drummer Peter Dragt — build these semi-improvisational pieces on the foundation they set with 2018’s Schwerpunkt (review here), and their explorations through heavy rock, metal and psychedelia feel all the more cohesive as a song like “Vergangenheit” is nonetheless able to blindside with the heavy riff toward which it’s been moving for its entire first half. At 71 minutes total, it’s a purposefully unmanageable runtime, but as “Predvídanie” imagines a psych-thrash and “Oscuramento” drones to its crashing finish, Bismut seem to be working on their own temporal accord anyhow. For those stuck on linear time, that means repeat listens may be necessary to fully digest, but that’s nothing to complain about either.
UK instrumentalists Cracked Machine have worked relatively quickly over the course of their now-three albums to bring a sense of their own perspective to the tropes of heavy psychedelic rock. Alongside the warmth of tone in the guitar and bass, feeling drawn from the My Sleeping Karma/Colour Haze pastiche of progressive meditations, there is a coinciding edge of English heavy rock and roll that one can hear not so much in the drift of “Temple of Zaum” as in the push of “Black Square Icon,” which follows, as well as the subtle impatience of the drums on “October Dawn.” “Move 37,” on the other hand, is willfully speedier and more upbeat than much of what surrounds, but though opener/longest track (immediate points) “Cold Iron Light” hits 7:26, nothing on Gates of Keras sticks around long enough to overstay its welcome, and even in their deepest contemplations, the feeling of motion carries them and the listener effectively through the album’s span. They sound like a band realizing what they want to do with all the potential they’ve built up.
From cinematic paranoia to consuming and ultra-slow rollout of massive tonality, the debut offering from Megadrone — the one-man outfit of former Bevar Sea vocalist Ganesh Krishnaswamy — stretches across 53 minutes of unmitigated sonic consumption. If nothing else, Krishnaswamy chose the right moniker for the project. The Bandcamp version is spread across two parts — “Transmission A” (21:45) and “Transmission B” (32:09) — and any vinyl release would require significant editing as well, but the version I have is one huge, extended track, and that feels like exactly how Transmissions From the Jovian Antennae was composed and is supposed to be heard. Its mind-numbing repetitions lead the listener on a subtle forward march — there are drums back in that morass somewhere, I know it — and the piece follows an arc that begins relatively quiet, swells in its midsection and gradually recedes again over its final 10 minutes or so. It goes without saying that a 53-minute work of experimentalist drone crushscaping isn’t going to be for the faint of heart. Bold favors bold.
Sax-laced noise rock psychedelic freakouts, blown-out drums and shouts and drones, cacophonous stomp and chaotic sprawl, and a finale that holds back its payoff so long it feels cruel, KLÄMP‘s second album, Hate You, arrives less than a year after their self-titled debut, and perhaps there’s some clue as to why in the sheer mania of their execution. Hate You launches with the angularity of its 1:47 title-track and rolls out a nodding groove on top of that, but it’s movement from one part to another, one piece to another, is frenetic, regardless of the actual tempo, and the songs just sound like they were recorded to be played loud. Second cut “Arise” is the longest at 7:35 and it plays back and forth between two main parts before seeming to explode at the end, and by the time that’s done, you’re pretty much KLÄMPed into place waiting to see where the Utrecht trio go next. Oblivion wash on “An Orb,” the drum-led start-stops of “Big Bad Heart,” psych-smash “TJ” and that awaited end in “No Nerves” later, I’m not sure I have any better idea where that might be. That’s also what makes it work.
Preceded by two singles, Heni is the debut EP from Rio de Janeiro psychedelic tonal worshipers Mábura, and its three component tracks, “Anhangá,” “III/IV” and “Bong of God” are intended to portray a lysergic experience through their according ambience and the sheer depth of the riffs they bring. “Anhangá” has vocals following the extended feedback and drone opening of its first half, but they unfold as a part of the general ambience, along with the drums that arrive late, are maybe sampler/programmed, and finish by leading directly into the crash/fuzz launch of “III/IV,” which just before it hits the two-minute mark unfurls into a watershed of effects and nod, crashing and stomping all the while until everything drops out but the bass only to return a short time later with the Riff in tow. Rumbling into a quick fade brings about the toking intro of “Bong of God,” which unfolds accordingly into a riff-led noisefest that makes its point seemingly without saying a word. I wouldn’t call it groundbreaking, but it’s a first EP. What it shows is that Mábura have some significant presence of tone and purpose. Don’t be surprised when someone picks them up for a release.
It’s still possible to hear some of Astral Sleep‘s death-doom roots in their third album, Astral Doom Musick, but the truth is they’ve become a more expansive unit than that (relatively) simple classification than describe. They’re doom, to be sure, but there are progressive, psychedelic and even traditional doom elements at work across the record’s four-song/43-minute push, with a sense of conceptual composition coming through in “Vril” and “Inegration” in the first half of the proceedings while the nine-and-a-half-minute “Schwerbelastungskörper” pushes into the darkest reaches and closer “Aurinko ja Kuu” harnesses a swirling progressive spread that’s dramatic unto its last outward procession and suitably large-sound in its production and tone. For a band who took eight years to issue a follow-up to their last full-length, Astral Sleep certainly have plenty to offer in aesthetic and craft. If it took them so long to put this record together, their time wasn’t wasted, but it’s hard to listen and not wonder where their next step might take them.
This record doesn’t come out until September, so I’m going to stop myself from heaping ecstatic praise upon its gloriously honed wash of fuzz- and noise-drenched progressive heavy psychedelia, but keep in mind, the impulse is definitely there. Caterpillars of Creation, out Sept. 4 through Svart Records, is the debut offering from Tampere, Finland’s Polymoon, and by “debut offering,” I mean it’s the first thing they’ve ever done. As of this post, I don’t think they’ve even played a live show. They had something booked for March, but I’m pretty sure it got canceled because of the ensuing lockdown. There are some dates booked for around the release, so I guess they’ll get there sooner or later.
Finland has long served as a salon of weirdo visionaries, and it’s not really much of a surprise to find that Polymoon have some connection to the Waste of Space collective, whose Jun-His — vocalist for Oranssi Pazuzu and indeed a member of the Waste of Space Orchestra — helmed the production. There are flashes of extremity in some of the later guitar work and noise on Caterpillars of Creation, but ultimately, Polymoon show little interest in adhering to the tenets of one genre or another and instead bring their own perspective to such established ideals. The record is preceded by the single “Malamalama,” for which you’ll find a visualizer premiering at the bottom of this post (I’m delighted to host it given how much I’m enjoying the album from whence it comes), and which will be released this Friday on all the usual-suspect sources.
More to come? I certainly hope so. Easily one of the most impressive debuts I’ve heard this year.
Here’s info, and live dates, which it feels exceptionally good to post:
Svart Records to release POLYMOON’s first single Malamalama this week, music video out now
Somewhere between cosmic space rock and progressive psychedelia are POLYMOON, a new band from Tampere, Finland. The basic elements of POLYMOON are endless sonic reflections in the night sky, crushing fuzz guitars and undulating synthesizers. The backbone of the entity is a symbiosis of complex drum sequences and pulsating bass guitar.
Malamalama is the first single off the POLYMOON debut album Caterpillars of Creation, out this Friday via all digital outlets. Caterpillars of Creation will be released by Svart Records on the 4th of September, 2020.
Malamalama (lit. the light of knowledge) is the crimson heart pounding in the chest of POLYMOON. Malamalama is the lifeblood of POLYMOON: it combines an ethereal, otherworldly atmosphere with heavy-prog soundscapes. Together these elements form the progressive-psychedelic nectar flowing in the orchestra’s heart. Malamalama is like a deep feverish dream from which one does not want to wake up. In its essence, Malamalama is nostalgy for the times past: a longing for something long gone.
“Polymoon are the new open-minded young mages of the explosive psychedelia rock scene that Finland and Tampere area has been producing over the recent years. The rich and colorful sound of the band delivers really fresh and beautiful ideas to the table. And they are being served with such a passion that it makes you think of the days when music was standing out for a revolution. And not in that nostalgic manner, but in a way that makes you experience something important is happening right here and now”, comments the album’s co-producer Jun-His, also known as the voice of Oranssi Pazuzu.
In the music of POLYMOON, euphoria and melancholia converge to guide the listener to another level of being to embrace the monolith of psychedelia. POLYMOON is an ensemble of the end times, a formless entity behind the clandestine curtain.
Upcoming POLYMOON gigs: Sep 4th. Bar 15, Seinäjoki Sep 5th. Ääniwalli, Helsinki (w/ Hidria Spacefolk + Superfjord) Sep 11th. Manse Psych Fest pre-party: Telakka, Tampere (w/ Kaleidobolt + Radio Supernova) Sep 18th. Freetime, Jyväskylä (w/ Ghost World) Dec 4th. Korjaamo, Helsinki (w/ Kairon; IRSE!) Dec 5th. Olympia, Tampere (w/ Kairon; IRSE! + Radio Supernova)
POLYMOON is: Tuomas Heikura / Drums Jesse Jaksola / Guitar Otto Kontio / Guitar Kalle-Erik Kosonen / Vocals, Synthesizer Juuso Valli / Bass
Posted in Whathaveyou on March 12th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Should you be unaware of how chaotic and apocalyptic and outright mind-pummeling the doomery of Dark Buddha Rising is, just look at the utter madness that is the lack of information about their new album being given here. Sure, they know. Svart Records, to which the Tampere, Finland, outfit have re-signed following a stint on Neurot, knows too. But they’re not telling. You don’t even get the title. The artwork? Tracks? Audio? Forget it. That’s how brutal Dark Buddha Rising are. They give you nothing.
Well, nothing other than the release date, anyhow. That’s Oct. 2.
Don’t bother keeping an eye out, you’ll hear it coming.
Svart of course reissued the band’s first four releases in the form of 2018’s The Black Trilogy (demo and three albums), and the band put out the II EP through Neurot the same year (streaming below) in following-up 2015’s Inversum (review here). But the PR wire can tell you more about that:
Dark Buddha Rising return to Svart Records to release their 7th album, on Friday the 2nd of October 2020!
Finnish “dark underlords of psychedelic drone” Dark Buddha Rising return to Svart Records to release their seventh album, on Friday the 2nd of October 2020!
Since their inception in 2007, with their first four albums being highly-coveted, sold-out private pressings, to subsequent Svart Records reissues, to their burgeoning fifth album Dakhmandal, Dark Buddha Rising’s abyssic and meditative sonic-void has been opening up over the last 10 years to swallow more and more devotees in their wake. Embraced into Neurosis’ Neurot Records fraternity, with 2015’s critically acclaimed sixth album Inversum, Tampere-based psychonauts, Dark Buddha Rising have captivated the collective consciousness of the heavy underground and achieved cult-legend status.
2019’s climactic and highly praised Waste Of Space Orchestra collaboration with local kindred spirits Oranssi Pazuzu at Roadburn Festival, put Dark Buddha Rising’s Wastement home studio: “the asylum of eternal feedback,” firmly on the International music world map and into the hearts of the pitch-black psych-rock underworld. Gathering a throng of newly devoted adherents who worship at the altar of their churning vortex, Dark Buddha Rising’s live shows are a transformative experience that are religiously revered by audiences across Europe.
Svart Records Tomi Pulkki says “We’re proud to have Dark Buddha Rising back under the Svart banner, to continue to expand the dimensions of their dark journey into the beyond. The band is a national treasure, that has thoroughly deserved their well respected status over the years. We look forward to the new void they have summoned up for us all.”
Prepare your mind and body for an initiation of music on Friday the 2nd of October 2020 that Dark Buddha Rising have channeled, for dark spirits and those who seek to travel beyond the unknown.
Dark Buddha Rising are booking a tour of Europe for Spring 2021.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 11th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Finnish experimentalist black metallers Oranssi Pazuzu are preparing to unleash their label debut for Nuclear Blast, titled Mestarin Kynsi. Preorders are up for the LP in several editions, all of which are due April 17. That weekend, as it happens, is Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands, where the spearheads of the varied creative underground in their own hometown of Tampere (see also Dark Buddha Rising, Hexvessel, Death Hawks, The Fërtility Cült, etc.) will hold something of a release show presenting the new album. That’s a return appearance for them after playing there both on their own and as part of the Waste of Space Orchestra commissioned collaboration with Dark Buddha Rising, but as they follow-up 2016’s Värähtelijä (review here), their set is nothing if not anticipated, not the least with a new record in tow.
The PR wire brings an album trailer and more info:
ORANSSI PAZUZU ANNOUNCE NEW ALBUM, “MESTARIN KYNSI,” OUT ON APRIL 17TH
Uncovering the intensity and the metal inherent in non-metal, the avant-garde and anti-traditionalist inclinations of Finland’s ORANSSI PAZUZU have always had transcendental goals at heart.
Through the rabbit hole and out the other side to 2020 with the release of their fifth album “Mestarin kynsi”, (“The Master’s Claw”). Inking a deal with German-based industry giants Nuclear Blast, ORANSSI PAZUZU subvert the idea of world domination to open a conceptual discourse on indoctrination and propaganda itself. Their psychological nightmare evolves a philosophical and earnest tone, where occult future meets troubled reality.
“Mestarin kynsi” will be available as CD, 2LP Black Vinyl and 2LP Gold Vinyl.
As “Oranssi”, meaning “orange” in their native Finnish language, is the colour of cosmic energy and “Pazuzu” is the ancient Mesopotamian demon of the wind, their swirling kaleidoscope of psychedelia has blown through the underground to redefine boundaries ever since their inception in 2007.
Jun-His: “We definitely wanted to look for new horizons, but on the other hand continue something we began building already on “Värähtelijä”. Some big influences were electro albums that inspired an idea about having a song that would travel through different kinds of portals whilst being mutilated and mutated by the new environment.”
On “Mestarin kynsi” the doors of perception are not only evoked but off their hinges. Working again with their co-producer Julius Mauranen, who also helped craft their acclaimed 2018 Roadburn Festival commissioned, WASTE OF SPACE ORCHESTRA collaboration live show/album “Syntheosis”, in their home-city of Tampere, Finland, the familiarity served a greater purpose towards the evolution of the album. As singer/guitarist Jun-His puts it, “there is a city heart pumping on this album somewhere”.
Tracklisting: 01. Ilmestys 02. Tyhjyyden Sakramentti 03. Uusi Teknokratia 04. Oikeamielisten Sali 05. Kuulen Ääniä Maan Alta 06. Taivaan Portti
Posted in Reviews on October 16th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
Two limited reissues bring out the beginnings of Finnish experimentalists Death Hawks and provide fresh context to the work the Tampere-based band has done since signing to Svart Records for 2015’s Sun Future Moon (review here). The band’s first two albums, Death and Decay and Death Hawks, were originally released in 2012 and 2013 through GAEA Records and have been out of print since, sought after by late-comers like yours truly who didn’t catch them the first time around. With 500 copies of pressed of each, Svart does the universe a solid in this instance and puts Death & Decay on a gold LP and Death Hawks in black and white — suited to their respective artwork — and allows for curious parties to discover more about the band’s roots. As it turns out, there’s plenty to learn.
For example, that the stylistic experimentation of 2019’s Psychic Harmony (review here) were by no means a new impulse, and indeed, central to the ethic of the band. You might say it’s the root of Death & Decay, though it’s manifested not in synth-driven progressive disco, but a psychedelic take on country blues, putting the guitar and vocals of Teemu Markkula front and center like an otherworldly John Lee Hooker on a cut like “Death Hawk on My Trail” or the rockabilly-style “Roamin’ Baby Blues,” taking its structure from the Robert Johnson school of proto-blues and adding a speedy snare for that riding-the-rails vibe — filtered, of course, through Finnish psychedelia. With 11 tracks unfolding from the mellow ramblin’-“Planet Caravan”-style understatement of opener “Blue Void” to the later Tom Waits-of-Alpha-Centauri severity of “Priest’s March,” amid fuzzier tones and subtle backing synth also provided by Markkula, Death & Decay is a formative tour de force.
“The Beast” touches on organ-laced ’70s folk while “Holy Water,” which immediately follows, starts with a wild bark and turns itself into a tent revival of psychedelic wash, while over on side B, “Death Has No Reprieve” weaves hypnotic background vocals into its deceptive depths, and the catchy “Dead Man” (probably a reference to the 1995 Jim Jarmusch film of the same name), foreshadows some of the melodic sweetness Markkula will bring to his vocal style on subsequent outings, letting closer “The Peace Maker” touch on Morricone — among other things — as a direct foreshadow for some of what the self-titled would do the next year. Ultimately, Death & Decay is broader in its sound than just tagging it “psych-blues” could hope to convey, but especially with Markkula‘s performance so much at the root of the material on guitar/vocals/keys/producer/composer/etc., the feeling throughout is less full-band-expanse and more solo-exploration, and that gives the 44-minute 11-tracker even more of a “starting out” vibe, as though the material were experiments that came together as songs as they were fleshed out. As sure as the band has been of what they’ve done since, it’s kind of refreshing to know this sense of adventure was what sparked their origin in the first place. Their will to push beyond and between stylistic confines is readily on display, and the songs are memorable and weird in kind, recognizable in themselves and in the nascent sprawl the band would go on to develop from the foundation they set.
This, of course, was realized in the quick turnaround of Death Hawks, and though it’s a shameful cliché, I’ll note that it does not seem at all a coincidence that the second album is self-titled in terms of their laying claim to who they are as a group and their intentions going forward. Shorter at 35 minutes/seven tracks with a recurring theme in “Cain Go Home (2. Session)” on side A and “Cain Go Home (1. Session)” on side B — the Morricone influence returning in the whistle of both — the self-titled is immediately immersive in its psychedelic reach, with whispers and backing melodies and winding hypnotic guitar on six-minute opener “Night Children,” the title doing little in the end to convey the colorfulness of the tone there or in songs like “Blind Daughter of Death” and the string-and-organ-backed mellow meander of “Quiet Sun,” a not-all-who-wander-are-lost krautrock texture pervading the spirit of what sounds rooted in a live recording.
That, in turn, is answered by the flamenco strum of the “Cain Go Home (1. Session),” which is nothing if not based around conveying a feeling of motion, so a dynamic emerges across the self-titled that is broad while remaining unified not just by Markkula‘s continued melodicism, but through more of a full-band feel around him, with the centerpiece “Grim-Eyed Goat” and sax-inclusive nine-minute closer “Black Acid” ranging into the beyond of subdued-and-not space rock while holding firm to Death Hawks‘ identity as they establish it throughout. Like its predecessor, Death Hawks is very much about its mood and vibe, but it’s an essential step in coming off of the debut and does much to convey what became the overarching intent of the band at the time. True, that intent would shift by the time Sun Future Moon came around and continue to do so for Psychic Harmony earlier this year, but if anything, the first two Death Hawks LPs highlight the purposefulness behind that.
Because it’s not just about how there’s a leap in sound from one record to the next one — which it’s worth reiterating: the sophomore album followed just a year after the first — but about the creative ethic that’s behind making that leap in the first place. Death Hawks‘ open sensibility and forward drive is something that continues to push their material in exciting directions and down paths that others probably wouldn’t dare to tread even if they thought to do so. What Death & Decay and Death Hawks make plain is that this is a founding principle under which Death Hawks have operated for as long as they’ve been a band, and really since before they were a band as they are now. Perhaps more than anything else, these Svart represses make Death Hawks seem like an even less predictable group, with their origins in unexpected climes and an even broader palette than that for which I’d previously given them credit. I wasn’t about to predict what they’d do next anyhow, but I find myself less inclined than ever to speculate.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 23rd, 2019 by JJ Koczan
I want these. Among the great many unmade Roadburn purchases I regret from over the years, not shelling out for every-frickin’-thing Finland’s Death Hawks were selling when they played there in 2015 has to be somewhere near the top of the list. Hang my head in shame. Svart Records — as it will — offers solace in the form of two LP reissues of the band’s 2012 debut, Death and Decay, and its 2013 self-titled follow-up. The numbers are limited, and while Death Hawks did already release the brilliant synth-o-prog of Psychic Harmony (review here) earlier this year and I still need to pick up that CD, these records have both been on my Amazon wishlist for I guess the last four years, so they’re pretty much necessary grabs as well.
Wonder what my chances are of getting digital versions to review. I’d love to write about anything Death Hawks that cites Wovenhand as an influence, and if the second record was where they went psych, that’s where I want to be.
Here’s the info and preorder links:
SVART RECORDS TO RE-RELEASE EARLY WORK FROM DEATH HAWKS
Death & Decay, the debut album from Death Hawks, will be released as a limited edition golden vinyl on October 4, 2019. The album is a unique mix of Finno-Americana tunes that draws influences from Wovenhand for example and where the voice of singer-songwriter Teemu Markkula carries through this multidimensional journey.
The album is the first knot on the bands own unique string of albums, where every album stand boldly on their own almost as if they were done by a different band every time.
Tracklisting: Blue Void How Dark Was The Land Roamin’ Baby Blues The Beast Death Hawk On My Trail Shining Holy Water Death Has No Reprieve Priests March Dead Man The Peace Maker
At the same time Svart Records will also re-release the band’s self-titled sophomore album that opened doors also internationally for Death Hawks. This psychedelic gem brought the band a license deal to Germany and several tours across Europe. This unnamed album packed in mystical dark covers is still the one album from Death Hawks discography that many love the most. The album is available in black & white vinyl reissue limited in 500 pieces.
Tracklisting: 1. Night Children 2. Cain Go Home (2. Session) 3. Blind Daughter of Death 4. Grim-eyed Goat 5. Quiet Sun 6. Cain Go Home (1. Session) 7. Black Acid
Death Hawks – Psychic Harmony tour Finland 2019 04.10. Hämeenlinna, Suistoklubi 11.10. Helsinki, G Livelab 12.10. Helsinki, G Livelab 18.10. Tampere, Olympia-kortteli + VIRTA 25.10. Oulu, 45 Special + VIRTA 26.10. Jyväskylä, Tanssisali Lutakko + VIRTA + Kantatie 1.11. Turku, Dynamo
