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The Obelisk Presents: The Top 20 Debut Albums of 2017

Posted in Features on December 18th, 2017 by JJ Koczan

the obelisk top-20-debut-albums

Please note: This post is not culled in any way from the Year-End Poll, which is ongoing. If you haven’t yet contributed your favorites of 2017 to that, please do.

Every successive year brings an absolute inundation of underground productivity. Every year, someone new is inspired to pick up a guitar, bass, drums, mic, keyboard, theremin, cello — whatever it might be — and set themselves to the task of manifesting the sounds they hear in their head.

This is unspeakably beautiful in my mind, and as we’ve done in years past, it seems only fair to celebrate the special moment of realization that comes with a band’s first album. The debut full-length. Sometimes it’s a tossed-off thing, constructed from prior EPs or thrown together haphazardly from demo tracks, and sometimes it’s a meticulously picked-over expression of aesthetic — a band coming out of the gate brimming with purpose and desperate to communicate it, whatever it might actually happen to be.

We are deeply fortunate to live in an age (for now) of somewhat democratized access to information. That is, if you want to hear a thing — or if someone wants you to hear a thing — it’s as simple as sharing and/or clicking a link. The strong word of mouth via ubiquitous social media, intuitive recording software, and an ever-burgeoning swath of indie labels and other promotional vehicles means bands can engage an audience immediately if they’re willing to do so, and where once the music industry’s power resided in the hands of a few major record companies, the divide between “listener” and “active participant” has never been more blurred.

Therefore, it is a good — if crowded — time for an act to be making their debut, even if it’s something that happens basically every day, and all the more worth celebrating the accomplishments of these first-albums both on their current merits and on the potential they may represent going forward. Some percent of a best-debuts list is always speculation. That’s part of what makes it so much fun.

As always, I invite you to let me know your favorite picks in the comments (please keep it civil). Here are mine:

telekinetic-yeti-abominable

The Obelisk Presents: The Top 20 Debut Albums of 2017

1. Telekinetic Yeti, Abominable
2. Rozamov, This Mortal Road
3. Mindkult, Lucifer’s Dream
4. Dool, Here Now There Then
5. Eternal Black, Bleed the Days
6. Arduini/Balich, Dawn of Ages
7. Vinnum Sabbathi, Gravity Works
8. Tuna de Tierra, Tuna de Tierra
9. Brume, Rooster
10. Moon Rats, Highway Lord
11. Thera Roya, Stone and Skin
12. OutsideInside, Sniff a Hot Rock
13. Hymn, Perish
14. Riff Fist, King Tide
15. Bees Made Honey in the Vein Tree, Medicine
16. Abronia, Obsidian Visions/Shadowed Lands
17. Book of Wyrms, Sci-Fi Fantasy
18. Firebreather, Firebreather
19. REZN, Let it Burn
20. Ealdor Bealu, Dark Water at the Foot of the Mountain

Honorable Mention

Alastor, Black Magic
Devil’s Witches, Velvet Magic
Elbrus, Elbrus
Green Meteor, Consumed by a Dying Sun
Grigax, Life Eater
High Plains, Cinderland
Kingnomad, Mapping the Inner Void
Lord Loud, Passé Paranoia
Masterhand, Mind Drifter
The Necromancers, Servants of the Salem Girl
Owlcrusher, Owlcrusher
Petyr, Petyr
The Raynbow, The Cosmic Adventure
Savanah, The Healer
War Cloud, War Cloud
WhiteNails, First Trip

I could keep going with honorable mentions, and no doubt will add a few as people remind me of other things on which I brainfarted or whathaveyou, preferably without calling me an idiot, though I recognize that sometimes that’s a lot to ask. Either way, the point remains that the heavy underground remains flush with fresh infusions of creativity and that as another generation comes to maturity, still another is behind it, pushing boundaries forward or looking back and reinventing what came before them.

Notes

Will try and likely fail to keep this brief, but the thing I find most striking about this list is the variety of it. That was not at all something I planned, but even if you just look at the top five, you’ve got Telekinetic Yeti at the forefront. Abominable is something of a speculative pick on my part for the potential it shows on the part of the Midwestern duo in their songcraft and tonality, but then you follow them with four other wildly different groups in Rozamov, Mindkult, Dool and Eternal Black. There you’ve got extreme sludge from Boston, a Virginian one-man cult garage project, Netherlands-based dark heavy rock with neo-goth flourishes, and crunching traditionalist doom from New York in the vein of The Obsessed.

What I’m trying to say here is that it’s not just about one thing, one scene, one sound, or one idea. It’s a spectrum, and at least from where I sit, the quality of work being done across that spectrum is undeniable. Think of the prog-doom majesty Arduini/Balich brought to their collaborative debut, or the long-awaited groove rollout from Vinnum Sabbathi, or how Italy’s Tuna de Tierra snuck out what I thought was the year’s best desert rock debut seemingly under everybody’s radar. Stylistically and geographically these bands come from different places, and as with Brume and Moon Rats, even when a base of influence is similar, the interpretation thereof can vary widely and often does.

That Moon Rats album wasn’t covered nearly enough. I’m going to put it in the Quarterly Review coming up just to give another look at the songwriting on display, which was maddening in its catchiness. Maddening in its cacophony of noise was Stone and Skin from Brooklyn’s Thera Roya, which found itself right on the cusp of the top 10 with backing from the ’70s heavy rock vibes of the post-Carousel Pittsburgh outfit OutsideInside. Norway’s Hymn thrilled with their bleak atmospheres, while Australia’s Riff Fist showed off a scope they’d barely hinted at previously, and Bees Made Honey in the Vein Tree offered surprises of their own in their warm heavy psych tonality and mostly-instrumental immersion. That record caught me almost completely off-guard. I was not at all prepared to dig it as much as I did.

Thrills continue to abound and resound as the Young Hunter-related outfit Abronia made their first offering of progressive, Americana-infused naturalist heavy, while Book of Wyrms dug themselves into an oozing riffy largesse on the other side of the country and Sweden’s Firebreather emerged from the defunct Galvano to gallop forth and claim victory a la early High on Fire. REZN’s Let it Burn got extra points in my book for the unabashed stonerism of it, while it was the ambience of Ealdor Bealu’s Dark Water at the Foot of the Mountain that kept me going back to it. An album that was genuinely able to project a sense of mood without being theatrical about it was all the more impressive for it being their first. But that’s how it goes, especially on this list.

There you have it. Those are my picks. I recognize I’m only one person and a decent portion of my year was taken up by personal matters — having, losing a job; pregnancy, childbirth and parenting, etc. — but I did my best to hear as much music as I could in 2017 and I did my best to make as much of it as new as I could.

Still, if there’s something egregious I left out or just an album you’d like to champion, hell yes, count me in. What were some of your favorites? Comments are right down there. Let’s get a discussion going and maybe we can all find even more music to dig into.

Thanks for reading and here’s to 2018 to come and the constant renewal of inspiration and the creative spirit.

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The Necromancers Tour Starts Sept. 19; Playing Up in Smoke & Keep it Low

Posted in Whathaveyou on August 25th, 2017 by JJ Koczan

We’re just about a week removed from the release of the debut album from The Necromancers, Servants of the Salem Girl, via Ripple Music, and hey, no time like the present for the French outfit to announce a European tour supporting the record. They start out Sept. 19 in their native Poitiers and are go-go-go from there, making their way across France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany as support for Swiss-based progressive instrumentalists Monkey3. Good gig to get, and all the better since their tour also includes slots on the Up in Smoke and Keep it Low festivals, where no doubt they’ll be in top form, having just spent the prior week-plus on the road. Seems like they’re doing it right on all the way through.

The PR wire has background and whatnot, and if you haven’t heard Servants of the Salem Girl, it’s streaming in its entirety at the bottom of this post. Please feel free to dig in:

the necromancers

THE NECROMANCERS: French heavy psych quartet announce European tour with Monkey3 | Debut album out now on Ripple Music

Drawing on antiquated inspirations in mythology, religion, fantastical tales from European literature and an obsession for classic horror cinema, The Necromancers are a curious alliance of musicians, and together are a strange beast to behold.

Experimenting with progressive rock, heavy psych and the 70s pagan/proto-metal of bands like Black Sabbath and Coven, they take these influences, throw in the urgency of NWOBHM and douse the entire lot in lysergic illusions. All with a mind to create a debut album for the ages.

Having performed at many of Europe’s largest metal and rock festivals the band also toured Europe recently with London-based stoner rockers Elephant Tree and are set to embark on a short tour this year with Monkey 3.

“The band is still young,” explains vocalist and guitar player Tom Cornière. “We never would have thought of signing with a label like Ripple. We could hardly have hoped for better. It’s an honour and a surprise. Now, we are looking forward to the next tour and to be able to share our album wherever we can.”

Servants of the Salem Girl by The Necromancers is out now via Ripple Music on limited edition, multi-coloured vinyl and worldwide in a black vinyl edition, as well as on CD and digital.

Tour Dates:
19th Sept – Le Zinc – Poitiers (FR)
20th Sept – Le Ferailleur – Nantes (FR)*
21st Sept – Backstage – Paris (FR)*
25th Sept – Magasin 4 – Brussels (B)*
26th Sept – Hafenklang – Hamburg (D)*
28th Sept – Burgerweeshuis – Deventer (NL)*
29th Sept – Cadillac – Oldenburg (D)*
30th Sept – Vortex – Siegen (D)*
1st Oct – Nachtleben – Frankfurt (D)*
2nd Oct – Muz – Nürnberg (D)*
3rd Oct – 7er Club – Mannheim (D)*
4th Oct – Scheune – Dresden (D)*
7th Oct – Up In Smoke Festival – Pratteln (CH)
17th Oct – L’Usine – Geneva (CH)
22nd Oct – Keep It Low Festival – Munich (D)
*With Monkey3

The Necromancers:
Tom Cornière – Vocals, Guitar
Robin Genais – Lead Guitar
Simon Evariste – Bass Guitar
Benjamin Rousseau – Drums

https://www.facebook.com/thenecromancersband/
http://ripplemusic.bigcartel.com/product/the-necromancers-servants-of-the-salem-girl-black-magic-lp
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ripple-Music/369610860064
https://twitter.com/RippleMusic
https://ripplemusic.bandcamp.com/
http://www.ripple-music.com/

The Necromancers, Servants of the Salem Girl (2017)

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The Necromancers Premiere “Black Marble House” Video; Servants of the Salem Girl Due Aug. 18 on Ripple Music

Posted in Bootleg Theater on June 13th, 2017 by JJ Koczan

the-necromancers-photo-maya-c

French four-piece The Necromancers have set an Aug. 18 release for their debut album, Servants of the Salem Girl, via respected purveyor Ripple Music, and even if it’s about witches, they manage to avoid many of the trappings of modern cult rock. To wit, they sound like neither the garage doom of Uncle Acid nor the retrofied boogie of Graveyard — and when it comes to what we’ve come to associate with cult rock, those are two considerable monoliths to avoid (even though Graveyard are just about in no way a cult rock band). The track “Black Marble House,” for which you can see a new video premiering below, is my first exposure to the Poitiers-based outfit, and it finds their sound modern, heavy, fuzzy and deceptively straightforward given their purported lyrical thematic.

One might be tempted to call that incongruity were it not for the obvious core of songwriting on display beneath the crisp production of “Black Marble House,” which allows The Necromancers to immediately take the track where they please, adding a gruff edge of aggression to the hook as they shove through the five-plus minutes over which they tell this portion of a story that, presumably, takes place over the course of the album as a whole. August is a ways off, and I haven’t heard the entirety of Servants of the Salem Girl as yet — and that’s not me being coy; I actually haven’t heard it — but as an introduction to what The Necromancers might proffer at least in part sonically throughout, “Black Marble House” piques interest and at very least gives those who’d take it on a chorus to have stuck in their head until more info and/or audio arrives.

The band offered some insight on the song and how it plays into the full record, which you’ll find under the player here along with the credits and other whatnot.

Please enjoy:

The Necromancers, “Black Marble House” official video

The Necromancers on “Black Marble House”:

“‘Black Marble House’ is the first song we recorded as a demo, and when we shot the video (which tells a witch hunt that goes wrong for the Witchfinder), we mostly wanted to release something that could illustrate the whole album we were working on, Servants of the Salem Girl. The ‘Salem Girl’ is a presence who haunts all our songs, taking different names, symbolising different things, but always floating around. It was important to us to have something not just based on the lyrics of ‘Black Marble House.'”

Taken from THE NECROMANCERS’ debut album ‘Servants Of The Salem Girl” out on Ripple Music on August 18th.’

Directed and edited by Tom Cornière-David.
Filmed by Pauline Foeillet.
Starring : Marie Besiat, Antoine Alonso, Hugo Pravia, Andolin Vermillet & The Necromancers.

The Necromancers are:
Rob – Lead Guitar
Tom – Lead Vocals & Guitar
Simon – Bass Guitar
Ben – Drums

The Necromancers on Thee Facebooks

The Necromancers on YouTube

Ripple Music website

Ripple Music on Bandcamp

Ripple Music on Thee Facebooks

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