“Full Moon Fever” appeared on The Gates of Slumber‘s 2024 comebacker self-titled (review here), issued through Svart. On the album, it’s one of the speedier songs if you’re talking average tempo, though “At Dawn,” “The Plague,” and so on are prone to faster parts as well, if not beholden to them in quite the same way the Indianapolis three-piece revel in the grueling nod elsewhere. Led by guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon, who revamped the lineup now six years ago (that’s a GTFO realization for me) with original drummer Chuck Brown and newcomer bassist Steve Janiak, both of whom also handle guitar and vocals in Apostle of Solitude.
So, doom band makes video a while after record is out. That’s only a good thing, and if you follow Apostle, you already know that Janiak has had a hand in a number of clips for that band. That’s not what’s happening here though. “Full Moon Fever” was directed by Tad Leger, who has drummed for Toxik, Blood Farmers, Lucertola and a host of others, and who has done layout work in horror cinema for I don’t even know how long as a graphic designer. Don’t be surprised when you see the wolfman show up, is what I’m saying, and the classic-horror that pervades does so with a firm grip on whence it comes.
It had been a while, so I decided to bother Leger for some comment about making the clip, and he was kind enough to indulge. You’ll find that below, followed by more from the PR wire. I don’t think The Gates of Slumber are really plugging anything other than the existence of the record or the band as they stand, and that’s plenty as far as I’m concerned. If you believe in doom, you believe in The Gates of Slumber.
From the PR wire:
The Gates of Slumber, “Full Moon Fever” video
Tad Leger on “Full Moon Fever”:
“I felt like ‘Full Moon Fever’ was a very cinematic feel. It filled my mind with images from classic films by Hammer and German expressionist filmmakers who used a monochromatic color palette. My friend Cliff Peck and I put in serious hours to craft something worthy of Gates of Slumber. Big thanks to Karl Simon for giving us such a challenging experience.”
“I was talking with our buddy Tad and he expressed an interest in doing the lyric video,” explains guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon. “Tad’s a massive fan of classic horror and he was into the song…. One thing led to another and he and his buddy Cliff came up with what I think is a pretty killer video clip! Hope you enjoy.”
THE GATES OF SLUMBER was formed by Karl Simon in 1998. Various people were in and out of the group between 1998 and 2001, when the Blood Encrusted Deth Axe demo was recorded with Jamie Walters aka Dr. Phibes/Athenar (Boulder, Midnight) on drums and bass. In 2003 Jason McCash took over the bass duties and was a long-time member of the band until his untimely demise in 2014, after which Simon decided it was time to call it quits. That was until 2019 when the renowned metal festival Hell Over Hammaburg wanted to bring the band back on stage to perform at the festival’s 2020 edition. Simon reformed the band with its original member Chuck Brown on drums and Steve Janiak on bass and got back to work.
The Gates of Slumber is available on Svart-exclusive black/white marble vinyl, limited transparent blue vinyl, black vinyl, CD, and all major digital platforms.
Posted in Reviews on December 4th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
The last full-length offering from Indianapolis traditionalist doomers The Gates of Slumber was The Wretch in 2011, and it’s been a long road getting from there to their self-titled sixth album, also their first outing through Svart Records. Begun in 1998 in the message-board era of internet-based doomly proliferation, and led in the present by founding guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon, the band’s six-song/35-minute return opus features bassist/backing vocalist Steve Janiak (also guitar/vocals in Apostle of Solitude, Devil to Pay) and drummer Chuck Brown (also also guitar/vocals in Apostle of Solitude), a lineup that first came together in 2019. The occasion at that point was a return performance at Germany’s Hell Over Hammaburg festival in — wait for it — March 2020.
That fest actually happened (it was early in the month), but of course there wouldn’t be much opportunity for building momentum from there as a global pandemic shut down the world. Already at that point, the band’s path had been tumultuous, from the 2014 passing of then-former bassist Jason McCash after The Gates of Slumber‘s final release, 2013’s Scion A/V-backed Stormcrow EP (review here) and disbanding. As Simon moved forward to release a self-titled debut (review here) with a new trio, Wretch, in 2016, who also toured that year and the next in the US and Europe, issuing the EP Bastards Born (review here) in 2017 and making live appearances right up to an East Coast run in Spring 2019, the path back to The Gates of Slumber is somewhat tumultuous, but the point is that the music never really stopped — there was also the Gates live album, Live in Tempe, Arizona (discussed here), in 2020 — and the fact that the Simon/Janiak/Brown lineup have been playing together for five years in addition to knowing each other for probably decades by virtue of their respective tenures in the Indy underground might account for some of the cohesion heard across the material on The Gates of Slumber. Or it might just be that they know what the fuck they’re doing with slow riffs and morose vibes. Take your pick.
Either way, The Gates of Slumber is a clear and concise statement of intent and declaration of self on the part of the band who made it, perhaps nowhere more so than on the four-minute side B leadoff “At Dawn.” While certainly not the first time the band has conjured a gallop in their quarter-century-plus history, the chug the trio ride there is particularly fluid. By that point in the proceedings, the revamped dynamic has already been unveiled, as Janiak not only takes a backing role on vocals for the grueling-but-catchy opening cut “Embrace the Lie” but handles some leads as well, going on to anchor the extinction-themed, later-Iommi-hued chorus of the subsequent “We Are Perdition” with an effective drawling delivery of the lyric “…global holocaust” before side A capper “Full Moon Fever” begins the tempo kick that “At Dawn” will push further, Brown‘s drums slow-swinging in classic fashion behind some harsher vocal delve from Simon in the song’s middle, before the scorching solo and march into the gradual fadeout take hold to comprise the back half.
Already by that point the message that The Gates of Slumber are “back” has come through clearly, but in terms of aesthetic, their revelry of course takes a darker, more depressive hue. After “At Dawn” — which is neither the first fast or short song the band has ever had but stands out here nonetheless — The Gates of Slumber redirects to its closing duo, the seven-minutes-apiece pairing of “The Fog” and “The Plague,” the former of which rumbles out a lonely bassline before crashing in at full volume. It’s not quite like slamming into a wall, and even here the shifting character of the band can be heard in some of Janiak‘s punchthrough flourish in the low end, but the feeling of having arrived is palpable just the same as the initial chants begin, reminding the audience that this is a band who might consider the likes of Reverend Bizarre as peers, and whose roll has served as a catalyst for others in the style in the past. On a record brimming with doom, “The Fog” and “The Plague” both are especially doomed. A righteous culmination in “The Fog” after Simon‘s solo brings a crashout finish, and standalone guitar begins “The Plague” with due foreboding.
If “The Plague” is the payoff for the album as a whole — and it makes arguments for being thought of that way — then it’s all the more appropriate how much it reaffirms who The Gates of Slumber are while looking ahead to how that might continue to take shape over the course of this incarnation of the band. Slightly shorter than the song before, it is more willful in its slog, and thereby suitable to the subject of its title, and doubly notable for the coming together of Simon and Janiak for harmonies in the early hook before the song takes off on a Saint Vitus-esque shove leading to an eventual crawling return and shift back into that chorus, all the more effective the second time around for having so strongly declared itself the first. Even in that moment, the band remains identifiably The Gates of Slumber, but the element of ‘something new happening here’ isn’t to be discounted, and this isn’t the first time an established doom act has been richer sonically as a result of bringing Janiak on board. Some players make everyone around them sound better.
Whether or not “The Plague” is telling as to the future direction of The Gates of Slumber can’t really be known until when and if they do something after it, and a more immediate consideration is the fact that despite having significant ’00s and ’10s laurels to rest upon, they don’t, and that a crucial facet of this self-titled — the band stating in no uncertain terms this is who they are, right down to the minimalist black-on-black logo album cover because what’s the point of art or for that matter anything? — is what it adds to the scope of the band’s take on doom. It makes the record more than just a comeback for the band, reassuring that along with the grim point of view that’s informed their work all along and their commitment to a firm idea of what doom metal is and does, they’re finding spaces in which to progress and continuing to leave their stamp on the genre. The Gates of Slumber had long since earned a place among the finest American doom of the last 25 years. That they sound so hungry as well as so miserable results in an odd hopefulness for things to come. I’ll skip the hyperbole in the spirit of a band so clearly bent on purging bullshit from their sound, but at the very least, doom should be so lucky as to have The Gates of Slumber as the band’s hard-won new beginning.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 19th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
A quick fill from drummer Chuck Brown is all the ceremony The Gates of Slumber need to launch their studio return, as the title-track of their impending sixth album and first in 13 years, Embrace the Lie, soon unfolds with founding guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon dug wholly into the righteous Iommic doom on which the band cut their teeth in the aughts. “Embrace the Lie,” which also opens the record, is the first single to feature the new lineup of The Gates of Slumber, with Brown and bassist/vocalist Steve Janiak, both of whom handle guitar/vocals in Apostle of Solitude, and in its final verse as Janiak takes the lead vocal spot, it hints at new ideas taking shape in the band’s sound that one hopes will play out across the album to come.
The history of The Gates of Slumber is complex at this point, with Simon having put the band to rest in 2013 and the 2014 death of bassist Jason McCash, three years on from their till-now-final studio album, The Wretch (review here). Their 2019 reunion, which Simon discussed here, came after his founding of the band Wretch, which released a self-titled debut (review here) in 2016 and the next year followed up with the Bastards Born EP (discussed here). Embrace the Lie arrives as an endpoint for this winding path, and though The Gates of Slumber are moving forward with new players and a new album, their doom remains as downtrodden as ever, as “Embrace the Lie” hammers home its central thesis: we’re fucked.
The esteemed Svart Records will offer Embrace the Lie on Nov. 29, as the PR wire tells it:
The Gates of Slumber return with a new single out today, upcoming sixth album out in November via Svart Records
“I never intended to pick up with The Gates of Slumber ever again in 2014. While I did start the band and wrote most of the first album it was never intended to be a one man show.” -Karl Simon, 2024
Indiana’s True Doom Metal legends The Gates of Slumber return with a new album out on Svart Records in November. The self-titled album is the band’s first full length offering since The Wretch from 2011. First taste from the upcoming sixth album is out today. Listen to the new single Embrace the Lie, an ode to the lying news media and political talking heads, now.
The Gates of Slumber was formed by Karl Simon in 1998. Various people were in and out of the group between 1998 and 2001, when the Blood Encrusted Deth Axe demo was recorded with Jamie Walters of Boulder on drums and Dr. Phibes/Athenar (later to form the cult black metal band Midnight) on bass. In 2003 Jason McCash took over the bass duties and was a long-time member of the band until his untimely demise in 2014, after which Simon decided it was time to call it quits. That was until 2019 when the renowned metal festival Hell Over Hammaburg wanted to bring the band back on stage to perform at the festival’s 2020 edition. Simon reformed the band with its original member Chuck Brown on drums and Steve Janiak on bass and got back to work. “We’d been asked several times to play Hell Over Hammaburg. But there was no “we” to play. The germ of the idea started. We started re-learning songs from the first LP. It wasn’t too long into the rehearsals that we started coming up with new songs.”, states Simon.
After a reunion tour was finished, Covid kicked in to slow down the process. Half of the album was already written but the remaining half took its time, and the songs were left to stew in their juices. With bastard heavy songs honoring the Doom Metal greats Saint Vitus and Penance, straight forward bangers, lyrics inspired by the Black Death and John Carpenter’s The Fog, The Gates of Slumber is a truly crushing album and a must listen to any Doom Metal fanatic.
The Gates of Slumber is available on Svart exclusive black/white marble vinyl, limited transparent blue vinyl, black vinyl, CD, and digital platforms on November 29th, 2024.
Posted in Questionnaire on March 15th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Steve Janiak of Devil to Pay, Apostle of Solitude & The Gates of Slumber
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I just spin my wheels, wondering if there’s a point to it all. I got here by years and years of self-delusion. As a kid I wanted to be a drummer, but my parents bought me a toy kit and I knew it was a toy so I hated it. I think I poked a hole in the bass drum and stuck it in the closet. One day a friend was over and we saw a commercial for Arthur’s Music’s year end sale. He said something about wanting a guitar and I replied “Me too, but my parents would never buy me one” and Mom overheard. I ended up with my first acoustic guitar on my 11th birthday.
Describe your first musical memory.
Either singing songs with my Mom in the car, or wearing little tiger sunglasses and singing Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “Southern Nights” for my babysitter or maybe sneaking my Dad’s records into my room like The Ventures and Johnny Horton. Listening to 8-tracks of Paul Anka and the Fifth Dimension’s “Age of Aquarius,” which I thought was dark and ominous. I remember hearing Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2” on the radio and thinking it was evil. The first record I bought was Boston’s “Don’t Look Back”, obviously because it had a cool UFO on the cover.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Probably the Gates of Slumber 2020 Euro Tour, or when Apostle played Hammer of Doom in Germany. Or in college, the Pub Sigs endless jamming. But maybe when I first heard myself on the radio, WTTS played a Neurotic Box song, “Open.” We sent them a reel-to-reel copy. That was 30 goddamned years ago.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
In 2020 when I lost both of my parents in a stupid pandemic full of hypocrites, idiots and fuckwits.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
I think it leads everyone to wherever they expect it will lead them, down a rabbit hole that ends somewhere between worldwide success and bankruptcy.
How do you define success?
When you make a connection and someone tells you how your art or music has inspired them, or maybe if you could pay a single bill from something you’ve spent your entire life trying to do, that would be something.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Animal abuse. Human cruelty and stupidity. Family members turning on each other over politics. Mac Sabbath at Psycho Las Vegas.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I would love to paint some giant paintings or make my own line of Tiki mugs.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Expression. Being able to express yourself through music or art is pretty vital and I think everyone should try it. Good or bad, just getting what’s inside and getting it out.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Traveling again. Putting down the phone and reading more. Hoping like a fool that we can move past this age of bullshit soon.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 25th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
I wasn’t at this show, but I was reading guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon‘s Bandcamp info about The Gates of Slumber‘s Live in Tempe, Arizona, and it occurred to me I did see them on this tour. The Indianapolis trio, then Simon, bassist Jason McCash and drummer J. Clyde Paradis, were on the road in Spring 2011 supporting their new-at-the-time album The Wretch (review here), which would turn out to be their final record with just the Scion A/V-sponsored Stormcrow EP (review here) following in 2013 until this Live in Tempe, Arizona, came along in 2020. They’d been to Europe and were back in the States touring with Orange Goblin for the UK outfit’s 15th anniversary. Here’s what Simon remembers about it:
2011 was a very good year for The Gates of Slumber, we had come off a run of great shows with Cathedral and the amazing experience of recording The Wretch in London with Jaime Gomez in December of 2010, and we were fresh off touring with Place of Skulls and our headliner set at Roadburn when we got the call that Orange Goblin was wanting us to support them as they tried to get a full US tour in 13 days… 13 grizzly days where we had no air conditioning in the van as we trekked across the deep south… the realities of touring in the US vs Europe were laid bare on this one, there was the infamous decided lack of everything that we were dealing with as we confronted blown out tires, a lack of sleep, a lack of food and mostly a lack of time.
Make no mistake, I have a few good memories (and a few hazy ones; it was a different, much drunker time) of seeing The Gates of Slumber live, but hot damn, I loved The Wretch. Produced by Jaime Gomez Arellano as noted above, the record used negative space — empty space in the mix — to create a downtrodden, lonely, depressive feel that was as pure and classic American doom as Saint Vitus‘ best work. It was clear in its message and perspective, its songs were intentionally grueling, and in departing from the more epic-minded fare of LP’s like 2008’s Conqueror and 2009’s Hymns of Blood and Thunder (review here), the band took up the mantle of forerunners of a kind of doom that very, very few acts have been able to capture in the decade-plus since. No one I’ve heard has been able to do this thing, this way, so well.
The New York show was Orange Goblin, The Gates of Slumber, Naam and Kings Destroy (review here), on May 27, 2011, which according to the original list of dates puts it 10 days before they hit Tempe — after Albuquerque, New Mexico, it should be noted given the album cover for the live record (click the image above to enlarge) — and what a night. Even first night of the tour, they delivered, and listening back to Live in Tempe, Arizona, it brings to mind just how on-fire they were at this point. If you’re wondering just what the hell I’m talking about with “negative space” above, take a listen to “Coven of Cain” on the live record. That (not really) empty pause as Simon drudges through the early verses, the slow march so pointedly undramatic in its execution. The song itself doesn’t need to be massive because the impact comes from the atmosphere and the emotion behind it.
It’s raw in a way that distortion-obsessed riff-doom — and hey, I like plenty of that too — can’t possibly be, and feels braver for that, for being more up front. The Gates of Slumber in this era had plenty of forward push, as “Day of Farewell” here demonstrates, and the dynamic was fluid, which is to say that they were able to shift between the quieter and louder, more weighted stretches with apparent ease owing to the strength of the songwriting and the performances, not just of Simon in fronting the band and embodying the miseries the songs were about, but McCash and Paradis bringing density and a just-about-to-fall-off-the-track rolling nod to the material. Even as they chug through “Ice Worm” from Conqueror here and finish out with “The Jury” from their 2004 debut, …The Awakening (discussed here), the quiet intensity keeps up with the surge of volume. And I know the early days of the band have engendered a loyalism among the band’s fans, but for my money, this was as doomed as The Gates of Slumber got.
Listening to it, there’s no question as to why The Gates of Slumber would want to eventually release Live in Tempe, Arizona. Even 11 years after the fact, the downer aspects of these six songs — the set opener “The Scovrge ov Drvnkeness” wasn’t recorded according to Simon — comes through with marked resonance, and the barebones-but-clean sound with which the songs are captured ties everything together with remarkable effectiveness. That is to say, it’s doom as fuck. The tragedy of McCash‘s death in 2014 ensured that The Wretch — or Stormcrow, for that matter — never got a proper follow-up from The Gates of Slumber, but Simon continued forward in the band Wretch, whose 2016 self-titled debut (review here) answered the call that the album after which they were named seemed to put forth. It wasn’t the same — nothing is — but it was a worthy continuation of Simon‘s former outfit and a beginning of something new.
In 2019, The Gates of Slumber announced a reunion of sorts. With the occasion of the 2020 Hell Over Hammaburg Festival — which actually happened! — as the driving factor, Simon brought on Chuck Brown on drums and Steve Janiak on bass (both also guitarist/vocalists in Apostle of Solitude), the band went to Europe for a few shows and captured some prime live and rehearsal footage in the process. The new incarnation of the band has released some of that stuff through their Patreon, as well as some footage of the group’s first run, studio behind-the-scenes stuff, and so on, but I don’t know if they’re writing or working toward a new The Gates of Slumber album or not. I wouldn’t mind being surprised by one one of these days, in the way of sudden Bandcamp drops, but in the meantime, revisiting what was so clearly a special time for them makes me wonder all the more what the Simon, Janiak and Brown lineup might have to offer.
As always, I hope you enjoy.
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So, I guess war, huh? The tribes of Europe, who’ve been fighting and redrawing maps for over a thousand years, are at it again. And young and old, military and civilian, men, women and children will die, land will be scorched. Everybody’s got their WWIII boner up. I’m not trying to be glib about it — it’s a genuine tragedy, most of all for the people of Ukraine, including friends of mine — but if humanity was ever going to learn not to wage war against itself, I think it probably would have by now, and failing that, what’s really left to say about us as a species? We’re awful and someday there won’t be any of us left. Maybe who/whatever comes along next and claims earth as its dominion (which, come to think of it, is part of the problem in the first place, so hopefully who/whatever’s next doesn’t make that claim to start with) will do better.
On more domestic questions of diplomacy and battle, The Pecan — aged four and four months as of today — and The Patient Mrs. worked out some weeks ago that today, Feb. 25, would be the day he peed on the potty. He’s done it once before, after sitting on the toilet for a literal eight hours, and I kind of think that might be where today is headed as well. School was canceled owing to freezing rain and other wintry whathaveyou, and when I woke up, it was his yelling and crying about being on the toilet that did it.
I’m in the bathroom now, having spelled The Patient Mrs. so she can go upstairs and get work done, and I’ve hidden the diapers so he can’t go find one and put it on (I told him diapers would come back after he peed on the potty, so he’s not freaking out that they’re gone forever), and after trying every bribe in the known universe and giving him buy-in by picking the day, I guess it’s just a matter of making it happen. He’s physically uncomfortable from having to pee so badly. He holds in his poop for days on end. This is something that needs to happen. He knows when he has to go. They’ve tried at school and he just refuses all bribes and continues to hold it in until he gets home. It’s a thing. A whole thing. It’s been a thing for over a year and it’s only gotten worse. Do I think there’s a freezing rain’s chance in hell that the issue will be solved today? No, I do not. It’ll happen when it happens. But if we come out of the day celebrating even a drop or a trickle going in the toilet, that will ultimately give us a win from which to move forward. That win will have been worked for.
He’s currently watching Doc McStuffins on my phone. We did Bluey for a bit too and we may or may not get to Muppets as the day plays out. He’ll be hungry in a bit, so I anticipate a lunch break and then, yeah, probably back for more of this. That’s real life. Happening right now.
Thanks if you checked out the YOB review yesterday. That show was incredible.
No Gimme show this week, but next week it’ll happen if you’re looking for it, which I doubt you are. I’m slowly making my way toward 100 episodes of that, which I’ll hit later this year provided they don’t cancel it in the meantime. Fingers crossed. I enjoy that.
Fuck. All Them Witches just posted a new song. Why does this crap have to happen on Fridays?
Alright, gonna go post that, then do lunch for the kid. Have a great and safe weekend. Watch your head, hydrate, don’t forget to use the potty before you leave the house. All that stuff.
Here’s the deal — last week or somewhere thereabouts, someone on Twitter was bitching about rock music being dead and blah blah the usual good music doesn’t come to me in the ways it did when I was 12 and therefore I think it’s irrelevant. The usual. Gimme Metal was mentioned as an outlet delivering good heavy to those who care enough to invest the minimal effort of clicking ‘listen.’ Dude was all “well if they played Trouble I’d listen” and Gimme rightly responded with a list of DJs who might be on board for such a thing. I was one of them.
Brought into the conversation I said hell yes I’d play Trouble. And as it happens I’ve gone ahead to play them twice, at the start of the show, and then follow it up with a bunch of other killer doom, old, newer and newer still, before circling back on the mother of them all, Black Fucking Sabbath, because when my name is brought into a random Twitter conversation and a challenge is issued, you bet your ass I’m going overboard. So pretty much the first hour of the show is doomed as all get-out. Trouble even through The Quill, who I thought were a good match for Dehumanizer-era Sabbath with that track from their new record.
Sometimes you gotta step up. Or something. I don’t know. I was just happen to have something to talk about in the voice breaks other than my kid or “thanks for listening.”
By the way, thanks for listening and/or reading. As always, I hope you enjoy.
The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmemetal.com
Full playlist:
The Obelisk Show – 04.16.21
Trouble
The Tempter
Psalm 9
Trouble
R.I.P.
Trouble
Saint Vitus
Burial at Sea
Saint Vitus
Place of Skulls
Last Hit
With Vision
VT
The Gates of Slumber
The Awakening (Interpolating the Wrath of the Undead)
…The Awakening
Apostle of Solitude
Grey Farewell
From Gold to Ash
The Obsessed
Neatz Brigade
The Church Within
Black Sabbath
After All (The Dead)
Dehumanizer
The Quill
Evil Omen
Earthrise
VT
Boss Keloid
Gentle Clovis
Family the Smiling Thrush
Hippie Death Cult
Hornet Party
Circle of Days
NOÊTA
Elm
Elm
Kosmodemonic
Morai
Liminal Light
Hellish Form
Shadows with Teeth
Remains
VT
Darsombra
Call the Doctor (Sun Side)
Call the Doctor / Nightgarden
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is April 30 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.
Posted in Features on April 16th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
The statistics of COVID-19 change with every news cycle, and with growing numbers, stay-at-home isolation and a near-universal disruption to society on a global scale, it is ever more important to consider the human aspect of this coronavirus. Amid the sad surrealism of living through social distancing, quarantines and bans on gatherings of groups of any size, creative professionals — artists, musicians, promoters, club owners, techs, producers, and more — are seeing an effect like nothing witnessed in the last century, and as humanity as a whole deals with this calamity, some perspective on who, what, where, when and how we’re all getting through is a needed reminder of why we’re doing so in the first place.
Thus, Days of Rona, in some attempt to help document the state of things as they are now, both so help can be asked for and given where needed, and so that when this is over it can be remembered.
Thanks to all who participate. To read all the Days of Rona coverage, click here. — JJ Koczan
Days of Rona: Karl Simon of The Gates of Slumber & Wretch (Indianapolis, Indiana)
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How are you dealing with this crisis as a band? Have you had to rework plans at all? How is everyone’s health so far?
Well, Gates of Slumber just got back from Europe just ahead of things going to shit here. We were all in quarantine for two weeks at home… and now shelter in place.
Somehow in spite of being in O’Hare the date of that big shitshow we are all healthy. No fevers no symptoms.
Wretch was meant to be recording our second record at the end of April. Those plans are paused now as we are just waiting to see what the future has in store. Sucks… this album has been held up so long… it’s like the way things go for Wretch: everything takes twice as long as it should. Which is fine.
What are the quarantine/isolation rules where you are?
I don’t know. I am just holed up indoors. So far as I know it’s carry-out only at restaurants and maybe bars. People can still go to stores you just keep your distance.
How have you seen the virus affecting the community around you and in music?
I see more people walking in front of my house than normal. Kids riding bikes. People walking their dogs. I think that’s a good thing to come of this: people have been slowed the fuck down. And hopefully we stick with it. But that is just what I see out my window. I don’t really pay attention to the news or anything. Stay away and stay down. If you have to go out: cover up the best you can — wear any kind of glove/mask/hat. Get in get what you need and get out. Wash your hands a fuck ton.
As far as music goes. I think a lot of bands are going to be releasing some very meticulously arranged stuff over the next few years. I expect we might see attention spans lengthen and that’s always good I think. I like the live shows people have been doing on social media. Might be the future…. which sucks for me as I actually like the idea of touring and playing live. But all of this remains to be seen.
What is the one thing you want people to know about your situation, either as a band, or personally, or anything?
I think that we will get over this and things will get back to a normal. People need to take it easy. And they need to look out for each other a bit more. This won’t last forever.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 28th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Beginning next week, Indianapolis doomers The Gates of Slumber will embark on a European tour that, centered around and fostered by an appearance at Hell over Hammaburg in Germany, will touch down in six different countries across nine shows. It’s not the hugest tour the band have ever undertaken by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a special moment nonetheless as founding guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon (interview here) — who’s spent the last couple years developing the similarly-minded trio Wretch in part to spread The Gates of Slumber‘s legacy — revitalizes the band after splitting up in 2013. They go abroad with the express purpose of celebrating their 2004 debut, …The Awakening (originally released on Final Chapter Records), and joining Simon in the lineup is drummer Chuck Brown, who played on the album and went on to found Apostle of Solitude as vocalist/guitarist after its release, and bassist Steve Janiak, who’s been in Apostle of Solitude since about 2012 and who also fronts the wildly underrated Devil to Pay, also in vocals and guitar. The latter steps into an especially precarious position in the band, taking on the role once held by Jason McCash prior to his leaving the band in 2013 — causing the breakup — and subsequent death the next year.
The reunion tour and what it might lead to aside, …The Awakening hit 15 years old in 2019 and remains a work out of its own time. Not that there was no doom happening circa 2004 — indeed, The Gates of Slumber‘s “membership” in the ‘Circle of True Doom’ speaks to a community already crossing international borders — but they represented a new generation in direct engagement with some of the style’s most treasured traditions. You want to know how to doom? Cool. Go ahead and put on the opening track of …The Awakening, and once you’re past the howling wind, tolling bell and vague screams that consume the first minute-plus, sit back as Simon, McCash and Brown put together a handy tutorial on doing it right. Seriously. “The Awakening (Interpolating the Wrath of the Undead)” is a nine-minute clinic not only in what the album that in part shares its name has to offer, but really on the appeal of traditionalist doom on the whole. Its Sabbathian lurch is worn on-sleeve, and Simon‘s vocals are immediately downtrodden, the melody following the riff on a depressive spiral punctuated by the bell of Brown‘s ride cymbal evoking the introduction. The song grows slower and more tortured in its second half setting up the guitar solo that consumes both channels in Iommic layering, and then, as it approaches its last minute, the drums kick into a faster progression to thrash out as another, more ripping lead finishes off.
I won’t discount the 9:33 bookending closer “The Burial,” or a speedster shuffle like “The Executioner,” the low-end-shoved chug of “Broken on the Wheel” or the plod and swing of “The Judge” and “The Jury,” respectively — this is essential doom and essentialist doom. It is doom the cuts through nuance and bullshit and proceeds to death. That is what it does from front to back. Wakes up on its last day, sees judge and jury, is tortured, executed and buried — done. But it’s in “The Awakening (Interpolating the Wrath of the Undead)” that The Gates of Slumber set the stage on which the drama that follows plays out, and they’re never so much consumed by the narrative as they are bringing to bear the sense of defeat of one who is powerless against their fate. Every dense-toned bassline from McCash and even the most uptempo of parts in “Broken on the Wheel” or “The Executioner” are prefaced by that last stretch in the leadoff cut. Perhaps only the penultimate bass-led interlude “Blessed Pathway to the Celestial Kingdom” stands apart in terms of aesthetic, but definitely not in mood, and …The Awakening remains unified in its purpose even as it transitions from alive to dead in that brief moment.
“The Burial,” then, is a glorious epilogue of a wasted life. You never find out what brings about the execution — “The Awakening (Interpolating the Wrath of the Undead)” references zombies and post-death horrors at the outset, but the nearest clue is in the lyrics to “The Jury,” with the lines, “You were guilty as the oaths were sworn. A felon to die upon the morn.” Whether we’re burying the undead alive or punishing some unknown treason or betrayal, does it really matter? The underlying point of …The Awakening is that existence is the punishment, and whatever situational extrapolation one might want to bring to the narrative across the songs, the same statement applies. There’s no getting away from it. No escape from that executioner’s blade. We’re all fucked. Doom on.
As much as one might look at a lineup of The Gates of Slumber with Karl Simon, Steve Janiak and Chuck Brown and daydream of new material topped with morose three-part harmonies to fill the grueling spaces left by the band’s signature riffs, part of the appeal of …The Awakening — a big part of it — is its straightforwardness. It is hiding nothing, either about its origins, its influences, or its intentions. The band at the time were beginning an exploration that would gradually lead them away from doom as a central focus and toward a more epic metal style, as 2006’s Suffer No Guilt begat 2008’s Conqueror and 2009’s Hymns of Blood and Thunder (review here), but doom was always there, and when 2011’s The Wretch (review here) — from whence Simon‘s post-Gates band would later derive their name — surfaced in all its ultra-Saint Vitus-style misery, the feeling was that The Gates of Slumber‘s claim on the forefront of US doom had never been stronger or more resonant. When their 2013 EP, Stormcrow (review here), served as the final installment of their career, even more than a decade on from their start the primary loss seemed to be in their potential going unfulfilled.
The Church Within Records has — today, apparently — issued a live record called Live at Tempe Arizona, and The Gates of Slumber have been steadily posting rehearsal footage from a basement that should be well recognizable to anyone who follows along with similar videos from Apostle of Solitude. Wherever their reunion goes or doesn’t go after this tour, whether there’s another The Gates of Slumber album or tour or not, their legacy is cast in the quality and the sincerity of their doom. There are few bands who have been able to play to style while feeling as genuine and heartfelt as The Gates of Slumber do on …The Awakening, and that only makes the record all the more worthy of the homage they’re paying it.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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Don’t even ask what’s on next week. I have a dentist appointment Thursday? I know that. But I don’t even know what I’m writing about for Monday. It’s in the notes, I’ll deal with it over the weekend. Lord Buffalo maybe? I don’t know. Whatever. I’ve been trying to sleep later with mixed results and this week sucked anyway. Kid’s good. Everyone’s healthy. Whatever else.
Fuck email. I just don’t have the energy to deal with that shit. I have 147 messages that I just have no idea what the fuck to do with. I want to put up an out of office and be like, “Sorry I’m dead.” Facebook Messenger. Are you fucking kidding me?
Oh, I’m gonna review Arbouretum next week. Well that’s a break. That’ll be good. No one will give a crap, but whatever. I reviewed My Dying Bride this week, no one gave a crap. Why would they. Band’s been around for 30 years, what the hell am I gonna say about them that hasn’t been said 100 times before? Duh they’re good at what they do. Review over. Took me 1,000 words to say that, pretentious nitwit that I am. Feigning relevance for 11 years and counting! I don’t care. I just keep doing it anyway. I need it.
I’m burnt out, man. Still more than a month to go until Roadburn and I’m feeling like that spiritual rejuvenation is needed. Lot of hills to climb before I get there.
Leap Day tomorrow. I’ll be watching baseball and trying to avoid looking at the computer, counting down the minutes until it’s time to heat up leftovers for dinner. Farmer’s market on Sunday maybe. Fine.
Last night, I got offered $100 to write a review for today. Someone trying to buy coverage. This is a person who, in the past, I’ve considered a friend. Trying to buy coverage from me. Obviously clueless as to how insulting that is. I did not, and now will not, write the review. How could I possibly?
That’s life.
So I’m out $100. Ha.
At least Picard is good.
Anyway. Great and safe weekend. Appreciate you reading. FRM.
