Posted in Whathaveyou on November 6th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Business as usual here, by which I mean Desertfest London is coming in hot with the latest round of names for the 2026 lineup, with Clutch headlining on a UK exclusive, plus Gnome, Mario Lalli, Blackwater Holylight, friggin’ 16, Howling Giant, Waxy, and a host of others — names I’ve heard, names I’ve not — joining the bill. Some homework to do — who are Ian? who are Meatdripper? — and still more reveals to come, you can see on the poster below it’s getting pretty crowded.
Clutch are the last of the headliners to be revealed, and sure to be a draw for oldschool heads alongside Green Lung, Hermano and The Sword, whoever else counts. They’re always, always, always fun live, so no doubt they’ll deliver. Tickets are on sale and linked below:
Are you ready? Our third and final 2026 headliners are here – some of you may have guessed it from our teasers — please welcome the mighty Clutch to Desertfest 2026!
It certainly has been a longtime coming but we are thrilled to announce these supernovas are *finally* bringing their legendary high-energy live show to the Desertfest London stage – their only UK show in 2026.
And that’s not all we have to share — we warmly welcome:
↠ Antwerp powertrio Gnome
↠ LA (via PDX) ethereal heavy psyche dreamers Blackwater Holylight
↠ The Godfather of Desert Rock, Mario Lalli, returning with The Rubber Snake Charmers, to take us on a shaman’s journey through the desert landscape of imagination.
↠ Swedish quintet Hällas, bringing their cinematic storytelling, and epic fantasy-themed Adventure Rock.
↠ California sludge pioneers 16 The Band – playing their first UK show in over a decade – their first time at DF London.
Feast your eyes on the 24 new artists who have joined are 2026 line up! 💥 CLUTCH GNOME BLACKWATER HOLYLIGHT MARIO LALLI & THE RUBBER SNAKE CHARMERS Hällas 16 Howling Giant khost Cwfen Harrowed Coffin Mulch The Grey Red Eyed Cult DROMOS LIQUID SHIT Waxy Midhaven Meatdripper IAN SMOULDERING TOMB Praetorian Den Der Hale SUPERSEED INSTAR SLING
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 25th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
The lineup for next year’s Masters of the Riff V is out, as the event from the London Doom Collective is set to return Feb. 27-March 1, as you can see on the battlevest-poster below. That’s a cute idea. I haven’t seen it before.
I was at Freak Valley last week in Germany, and while there, ran into Jan and Sabine from Grin. I had about 30 seconds to talk, which is how it goes sometimes, but I made sure not to miss the chance at nerding out for their latest offering, Acid Gods (review here), in-person, which I try to not make embarrassing for myself. So anyway, as they’re here, obviously I’m going to say hell yes, go see Grin. I’ve been fortunate enough to do that as well in the past and it’s a stage you want to be in front of when they’re on it.
Of course, in light of Domkraft canceling what had been their soon-to-start West Coast US tour due to an unspecified health issue in the band, I’m glad to see them topping the thus-far bill for Masters of the Riff V, as their making plans for the future speaks well of a timeline to return. On the off-chance someone from the band sees this, I continue to wish them all the best. Not that, you know, the rest of the bands playing can screw off or anything like that, just that I’m happy to see the name here.
Got that Bear Bones tape, for example, and that’s a good time too.
From socials:
“Beginth thine riff already, won’t you,” said Tony, sipping from a freshly brewed ale. To his surprise, the riffith commenced almost immediately. Quite, thought Tony.
We’re exceptionally excited to announce the first wave of bands for next year’s Masters of the Riff Festival at @oslohackney
So have a butchers and behold this fine bunch of gorgeous legends from the underground scene, joining us for the fifth (damn) iteration of the festival!
Please feel free to raise one’s drink of choice accordingly. 🍻
PRAISE THE RIFF!!!
It means ever so much to us that the bands, breweries, amp wizards, fans, and all those in between trust us to curate this festival each year.
We’re honoured to be a small part of the great doom machine in the Sky, and we’re definitely looking forward to this epicus metallicus weekend (our livers, perhaps, less so).
There’s loads more incoming over the next few weeks and months, so keep your 👀 peeled.
Head over to @dicefm to grab your early bird tickets init!
Posted in Reviews on April 15th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
I won’t keep you long here. Today is the last day of this Quarterly Review. It’ll return in July, if all goes according to my plans. I hope in the last seven days of posts you’ve been able to find a release, a band, a song, that’s hit you hard and made your day better. Ultimately that’s why we’re here.
No grand reflections — this is business-as-usual by now for me — but I’ll say that most of this QR was a pleasure to mine through and I’ve added a few releases to my notes for the Best of 2025 come December. If you have too, awesome. If not, there’s still one more chance.
Quarterly Review #61-70:
Daevar, Sub Rosa
While Sub Rosa still basks in the murky sound with which Köln-based doomers Daevar set forth not actually all that long ago — they’re barely an earth-year removed from their second LP, Amber Eyes (review here), and just two from their debut, 2023’s Delirious Rites (review here) — there’s an unquestionable sense of refinement to its procession. “Wishing Well” moves but isn’t rushed. Opener “Catcher in the Rye” feels expansive but is four minutes long. It goes like this. Through most of the 31-minute seven-songer, including the “Hey Bacchus” strum at the start of “Siren Song,” Daevar seem to be working to strip their approach to its most crucial elements, and when they arrive at the seven-minute finale “FDSMD,” there’s a purposeful shift to a more patient roll. But the flow within and between tracks is still very much an asset for Daevar as they take full ownership of their sound. This is not a minor moment for this band, and feels indicative of future direction. Something tells me it won’t be that long before we find out if it is.
The follow-up to Rainbows Are Free‘s impressive 2023 outing, Heavy Petal Music (review here), Silver and Gold is the Norman, Oklahoma, six-piece’s fifth album since 2010 and second through Ripple Music. With nine songs that foster psychedelic breadth and tonal largesse alike, the album still has room for frontman Brandon Kistler to lend due persona, and in pairing sharp-cornered progressive lead work on guitar with lower-frequency grooves, Rainbows Are Free feel ‘classic’ in a very modern way. They remain capable of being very, very heavy, as crescendos like “Sleep” and “Hide” reaffirm near the record’s middle, but emphasize aural diversity whether it’s the garage march of “Fadeaway,” the barer thrust of “Dirty” or “Runnin’ With a Friend of the Devil” earlier on, of which the reference is only part of the charm being displayed. Rarely does a band so obviously mature in their craft still sound so hungry to find new ideas in their music.
The pedigreed spacefaring trio Minerall — guitarist Marcel Cultrera (Speck), bassist/synthesist Dave “Sula Bassana” Schmidt (Sula Bassana, Zone Six, etc.), and drummer Tommy Handschick (Kombynat Robotron, Earthbong) — return with two more side-long jams on Strömung, captured at the same two-day 2023 session that produced their early-2024 debut, Bügeln (review here). If you find yourself clenching your stomach in the first half of “Strömung” (19:35) on side A, don’t forget to breathe, and don’t worry, opportunity to do so is coming as the three-piece deconstruct and rebuild the jam toward a fuzzy payoff, only to raise “Welle” (20:24) from its minimalist outset to what seems like the apex at the midpoint only to blow it out the airlock in the song’s back half. That must have been one hell of a 48 hours.
By the time its five minutes are up, “Resources 2.0” has taken its title word and turned it into an insistent, chunky, noise-rocking sneer, still adjacent to the chicanery-laced psych of the song’s earlier going, but a definite fuck-you to modernity, evoking ideas of exploitation of people, places and everything. Philadelphia duo Deathbird Earth — first names only: BJ (Dangerbird, Hulk Smash) and Dave (Psychic Teens, etc.) — offer three songs on Mission, which has the honesty to bill itself as a demo, and from “Resources 2.0” they move into the sub-two-minute “Mission 1.0,” more ambient and laced with samples. The only song without a version number in its title, “Dead Hands” finds the duo likewise indebted to Chrome and Nirvana for a burst-prone, keyboardier vision of gritty spacepunk, vocal bite and all, but honestly, Mission feels like the tip of an experimentalism only beginning to reveal its destructive tendencies. Looking forward to more.
Approaching the 20th anniversary of the band next year, now-more-upstate New York heavy rockers Thinning the Herd return after 12 years with Cull, their third album. Guitarist/vocalist Gavin Spielman in 2023 recruited drummer Rob Sefcik (Begotten, Kings Destroy, Electric Frankenstein, etc.), and as a trio-sounding duo with Spielman adding bass, they dig into 11 raw, DIY rockers that, as one makes their way through the opening title-track, “Monopolist” and “Heady Yeti” and “Burn Ban” — themes from not-in-the-city-anymore prevalent throughout, alongside weed, beer, life, getting screwed over, and so on — play out in fuzzbuzz-grooving succession. Two late instrumentals, “Electric Lizard of Gloom” and the lush, unplugged “Acustank,” provide a breather from the riffs and gruff vibes, the latter with a pickin’-on-doom kind of feel, but across the whole it’s striking how atmospheric Cull is while presenting itself as straightforward as possible.
Let The Edge of Oblivion stand for the righteousness of anti-trend doom. You know what I’m talking about. Not the friendly doom that’s out there weed-worshiping and making friends, but the crunching doom metal proffered by the likes of Cathedral and Saint Vitus. Doom that wore is Sabbathianism as a badge of honor all the more for the fact that, at the time they were doing it, it was so much against the status quo of cool. Phantom Druid‘s fourth album is similarly strident and sure of its approach, and yeah, if you want to say some of the chug in “The 5th Mystical Assignment” sounds like Sleep, I won’t argue. Sleep liked Sabbath too. But the crawl in “Realms of the Unreal” and the dirge in instrumental “The Silent Observer” tell it. This is doom that knows and believes in this form, and is strident and reverential in its making. That “Admiration of the Abyss” caps could hardly be more appropriate. Hail the new truth.
Some context may apply. Kodok is the third long-player from adventurous Cambridge, UK, heavy post-rock/metallers The Grey, as well as their first outing through Majestic Mountain Records, and though much of what the band has done to this point is instrumental and that’s still a big part of who they are as 11:45 opener/longest track (immediate points) “Painted Lady” readily demonstrates, there’s a clear-eyed partial divergence from the norm as guitarist Charlie Gration, bassist Andy Price and drummer Steve Moore welcome guests throughout like Grady Avenell, who adds post-hardcore scathe to “Sharpen the Knife” ahead of the crushing “CHVRCH,” also released as a single, or fattybassman and Ace Skunk Anasie, who appear on the duly textural “AFG,” which also rounds out with a dARKMODE remix. Not a typical release, maybe, but not not either as the band do more than haphazardly insert these guests into their songs; there is a full-length album flow from front to back here, and while they purposefully push limits, the underlying three-piece serve as the unifying factor for the material as perhaps they inevitably would.
With a forward lumber marked by rigorous crash and suitably dense tone, Sun Below‘s apparently-standalone 12-minute single Mammoth’s Tundra tells the story of a wooly mammoth being reborn — I think not through techbro genetic dickery, unlike that dire-wolf story that was going around last week — and laying waste to the ecosystem of the tundra, remaking the food change in its aggro image. Fair enough. The Toronto trio likely recorded “Mammoth’s Tundra” at the same Jan. 2023 sessions that produced their Sept. 2023 split, Inter Terra Solis (review here), and whether you’re here for the immersive groove that rises from the gradual outset, the shred emerging in the second half, or that last meme-ready return of the riff at the end, complete with final slowdown — what? you thought they’d leave you hanging? — they leave the Gods of Stone and Riff smiling. Worship via volume, distortion, and nod.
It’s been nine years since Montreal’s Tumbleweed Dealer released their third album, but as the fourth, Dark Green offers instrumentalist narrative and a range of outside contributions to expand the sound and maybe make up for lost time. Across 10 tracks and 39 minutes, bassist/guitarist Seb Painchaud, synthesist/producer Jean-Baptiste Joubaud and drummer Angelo Fata broaden their arrangements to include Mellotron, Hammond, Wurlitzer, Rhodes and other keys as well as what basically amounts to a horn section on several tracks, the first blares in “Becoming One with the Bayou” somewhat jarring but coming to make their own kind of sense there and in the subsequent “Dragged Across the Wetlands,” the sax in “Body of the Bog,” and so on. These elements seem to be built around the core performances of the trio, but the going is remarkably fluid despite the range, and though it seems counterintuitive to think of a band who might end a record with a song called “A Soul Made of Sludge” as being progressive and considered in their craft, that’s very clearly what’s happening here.
Electronic dub, pop, death metal, glitchy electronics, krautrock synth, malevolent distortion, some far-off falsetto and some throatgurgling crust — it can only be the always-busy anti-genre activist Collyn McCoy (Unida, High Priestess, Circle of Sighs, etc.) mashing together ideas and making it work. To wit, “Alkahest” (17:36) and “Witchchrist” (16:03) both engage in sound design and worldmaking, take on pop, industrial and metallic aspects, and are an album unto themselves, hypnotic and experimental, the latter marked by a darker underlying drone that lasts until the whole song dissipates. “Necrotic Prayer” (7:28) feels more like collage by the time it gets to its surprise-here’s-a-ripper-guitar-solo-over-that-circa-’92-industrial-beat, but it still has a groove, and “Plutonic” (8:30) moves through static drone and seen-on-TV sampling through death-techno (god I love death techno) to croon, churn out with a sci-fi overlord, and finish with piano and voice; a misdirecting contemplative turn worthy of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. McCoy is a genius and the world will never be ready for these sounds. That’s as plain as I can say it.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 9th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Ahead of releasing their all-caps third long-player, KODOK, UK mostly-instrumentalist post-metal trio The Grey have put up the accordingly mostly-instrumental all-caps nine-minute single “CHVRCH,” which so far as I can tell is not in any way about the defunct Californian band who went by that moniker. Duly crushing in tone, spacious in atmosphere and pro-shop in overall sound, the single went up this past weekend on however-many digital outlets, and coincided with the news of the band’s inking to Majestic Mountain Records to issue the forthcoming album this Fall. There are a couple guest vocalists listed below who appear on the record, but I’m not sure who’s responsible for the later shouts emerging from the consuming nod of “CHVRCH.” If it’s you, nice job.
And yeah, if I’m being glib, it’s just to cover for missing the signing announcement last week. I don’t think I’m the first person ever to use humor to cover for insecurity, but everybody’s gotta have a talent, right? Either way, the stylistic territory The Grey are in might be familiar, but their exploration thereof and the flow of their transitions between the movements of “CHVRCH,” as well as the sheer weight of the single’s heaviest stretches, should be more than enough to pique your interest if you’re still reading.
Oh, and since the band are new to me as of, like 40 minutes ago, I included the stream of their second album, 2019’s Dead Fire, as well, to facilitate further digging in. From social media:
Majestic Mountain Records has always been a label that marches to its own beat with bands we truly love and are inspired by. The “Majestic magic” is less of a formula, more a display of a certain “otherness” which cannot fully be explained, but felt in the listener’s gut in addition to being able to elicit genuine emotion to and from the audience and connection to their community with a deep respect for and dedication to their craft.
Today we are proud to bring you news of Majestic’s latest signing, a band that embody all the above and more in spades.
Please join us in welcoming The Grey to the MMR crew.
To celebrate, they also have a new track “CHVRCH” which hits the streets this coming Saturday the 4th of May, ahead of a beastly full length album on the way this fall! We’re extremely proud of the album they’ve created for you and psyched to be able to present it to our incredible community with the Majestic treatment you’ve all come to know and love.
Cambridge post-metallers The Grey, craft (largely instrumental) music that brings with it an intense and crushing weight like few others – marrying the pummeling feel of a band like Neurosis, Karma To Burn or Domkraft to expansive themes and heavy soundscapes full of striking nuance and awash with brilliantly beautiful sonic colour.
This hard working and dedicated band have shared stages across the UK and Europe with such heavyweights as Palm Reader, Conjurer, Tuskar, Boss Keloid, Hundred Year Old Man, Abigail Williams, KAL-EL, and Asunojokei clocking in over 150 shows in 2023 alone, including performances at the infamous Bloodstock Festival and Uprising Festival and finished off the year with a 2 week Euro tour along side Sacramento heavy hitters Will Haven with whom US dates are planned.
The band share their thoughts on the single coming this Saturday as well as joining the Majestic Mountain Records roster:
“We are extremely proud to be joining the Majestic family. Not only have they consistently put out incredible records but the level of collaboration has been brilliant from day one & the mutual excitement infectious. We very much look forward to what the future holds together. Our forthcoming third album “KODOK “will be released this autumn with Majestic – vinyl preorder & more details to follow. The first single; “CHVRCH,” will be released and available for digital purchase on Saturday May 4th and has taken on a life & meaning of its own; a coda to grief & loss – a celebration of unity & hope – a moment to lose yourself – smile or cry; you decide. We hope you enjoy as we celebrate this new chapter of the band.”
The band explains that they “Carefully took our time crafting “KODOK,” with the incredibly talented Matty Moon at the helm, to create a true journey for the listener from start to finish. Heaviness & melody, darkness & beauty – it’s all there, alongside collaborations with some of our dearest friends & musical heroes.”
The album features the following collaborations; Guest vocals by Grady Avenell ( Will Haven ) – Sharpen The Knife. Guest vocals by Ricky Warwick ( The Almighty, Black Star Riders & Thin Lizzy fame ) – Don’t say Goodbye. Music collaboration with Ace – Skunk Anansie & bass from Chris ‘Fatty’ Hargreaves ( Pengshui / Submotion Orchestra ) – AFG.
The Grey are: Steve Moore – Drums Andy Price – Bass Charlie Gration – Guitars
