Posted in Whathaveyou on December 30th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
This is a band I consider myself fortunate to have seen. As Greek heavy progressives Naxatras have continued to broaden their sound and introduce new depths to an approach that still, somehow, retains the character of its jammy origins while incorporating dub, krautrock, psychedelia and other aspects, their live shows are worldsetting. All the sprawl, immersion and trance comes to life onstage and instead of pushing the audience away with self-indulgence, they welcome with warmth of tone and presence. They are a thing to behold if you have the opportunity.
They were out this Fall supporting their new album, V (review here), which was released earlier this year, and covered stops on the eastern side of Europe that they’ll now complement with dates in Germany, France, Austria, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, culminating in two days in Italy for Heavy Psych Sounds Fest 2026 in Bologna and Turin. I’d be surprised if those are the only festival dates Naxatras do in the New Year, so keep an eye out accordingly and I’ll do my best to do the same.
What’s currently confirmed follows here, as put together by Swamp Booking:
Beyond excited to embark on a new adventure through space and sound. This April we’re returning to places we love after a long time. We’re also exploring new territories we haven’t been before. Can’t wait to see you all of you in person and share the story of the Spacekeeper, Numenia and the Void.
Powered by @swampbooking Artwork by @chris__rw
23.4 PARIS – BACKSTAGE BY THE MILL (FR) 24.4 TILBURG – HALL OF FAME (NL) 25.4 UTRECHT – DB’S (NL) 27.4 BERLIN – NEUE ZUKUNFT (DE) 28.4 LEIPZIG – UT CONNEWITZ (DE) 29.4 MUNICH – BACKSTAGE HALLE (DE) 30.4 INNSBRUCK – P.M.K. (AT) 1.5 MARTIGNY – LES CAVES DU MANOIR (CH) 2.5 BOLOGNA – HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS FEST (IT) 3.5 TURIN – HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS FEST (IT)
NAXATRAS is John Delias – Guitar & Vocals John Vagenas – Bass & Vocals Kostas Charizanis – Drums & Percussion Pantelis Kargas – Keyboards & Synthesizers
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 18th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
As they’re no strangers to doing at this point, Greek prog-psych explorers Naxatras will continue with live activity through the coming Fall as they support their earlier-2025 studio album, V (review here), and its bold interpretation of their sound, building on the open psychedelic jamming the band had done in the past and putting the results toward new directions and structures of songwriting. It was an exciting record conceptually and a real-world gorgeous listen, able to find cohesion through a breadth of influences spanning decades.
I’ve been lucky enough to see Naxatras live — it was 2023 at SonicBlast in Portugal (review here), so before the new record but still relevant — and if it’s something you get the chance to do, you’d do well not to miss them. I know, I say that all the time. I mean it, though. Not my fault the world is full of killer underground music across a swath of styles and geographic locales. For sure, there are worse problems to have.
From the PR wire:
Greek psych rockers NAXATRAS announce summer and fall European shows!
Greek hard psych and prog rock stalwarts NAXATRAS are set to take over Eastern Europe this fall to spread the mesmerizing sonic tales of their new album “V” across nine cities, with more dates to be announced soon!
Naxatras has spent over a decade forging a distinctive presence in the hard psych scene. With four critically acclaimed albums under their belt, they have evolved from a predominantly jam-oriented band into one that balances spontaneity with purposeful craftsmanship. This transformation is the natural result of years of touring, artistic exploration, and a steadfast commitment to their unique sound.
Their new album “V” represents a bold leap forward, expanding their heavy progressive rock influences while broadening their sound through hypnotic touches of world music with Eastern flutes, strings and tribal percussions all finely blended with electronics. “V” is an immersive, intoxicating and genre-bending piece of music from cosmic adventurers that won’t cease to impress while taking us into their unique mirific sonic realms.
Upcoming European shows 12/07/2025 CY Cyprus Limpia 01/08/2025 GR Wake Up Festival 07/08/2025 RS Orom Malomfesztivál 23/08/2025 GR Crete Fortuna —————————————– 16/10/2025 BG Sofia Mixtape 5 17/10/2025 RO Bucharest Quantic Club 18/10/2025 RO Cluj FORM Space 20/10/2025 AT Vienna Arena 21/10/2025 SK Bratislava Žalár 22/10/2025 SI Ljubljana Gala Hala 23/10/2025 HR Zagreb Mochvara 24/10/2025 RS Belgrade Dorćol Platz 25/10/2025 RS Nis Istina Mašina
Posted in Reviews on March 10th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
It’s almost as if Naxatras‘ V is reassuring the listener as it goes. The Greek four-piece offer a supporting hand through ground familiar and not as their seemingly ongoing evolution continues to flower, building outward in prog-psych fractals from the vivid declaration of 2022’s IV (review here) and bringing rare grace of flow across a collection of eight songs that appear to have been kept willfully brief compared to some of Naxatras‘ past work — they’ve always had longer and shorter tracks, and with all its songs on at about five-to-six minutes, V feels directed in the contrast — and that specifically carries over in a live feel.
With bright light overarching and periodic dives into dub and reggae-tinged jamming, krautrock and dream-synth serenity, Naxatras are grounded at the center of an expansive style, and no doubt part of the credit for that is owed to drummer/percussionist Kostas Charizanis, who from deep in the mix of opener “Celestial Gaze” underscores the sense of purpose in the band’s execution. Experimentation has been part of Naxatras‘ modus since their now-decade-old self-titled debut (discussed here), but that doesn’t come across necessarily in wacky arrangements or goofy vocalizing. The songwriting is the experiment, and where IV introduced keyboardist/synthesist Pantelis Kargas to the fold with Charizanis, bassist/vocalist John Vagenas and guitarist/vocalist John Delias, across the 42-minute span of V, Kargas‘ is all the more integrated and all the more crucial to the Mediterranean-style, maybe-that’s-an-actual-flute-hanging-out-with-that-guitar-solo build of “Spacekeeper,” an instrumental following the shimmering, vocalized leadoff that’s brought to a dramatic conclusion but and seems keen to remind the band’s listenership that this kind of thing — sans-voice prog-psych at its root, but Naxatras‘ interpretation — is still a part of who they are.
They’re not hand-holding, exactly — later on in the record, “Legion” hints at new wave; I don’t want to give the impression that Naxatras aren’t taking risks in their sound — but the way they’re doing it is calm even at its loudest, and as “Numenia” sets itself to a bit of bounce to remind that every now and then they like to get a little funky, as immersive as the first two songs have been, the dual-vocal verses describing crystal towers and impressions of a goddess’ garden are a purposeful contrast, but as fluid as “Numenia” gets with that returning flute and its hand percussion, maybe light Tuareg influence, and the undercurrent of prog pulling it all together, the focus with V is clearly on live energy in the performance and communion with their audience in the craft. Naxatras push “Numenia” to an outward heaviness not yet shown on the record, so as side A’s vocal/instrumental back and forth rounds out with the hypnotic, ultra smooth, barely-there-at-first underwater jam “Utopian Structures” — I can’t help but feel like the keyboard there sounds a little like Beverly Hills Cop, but that’s not necessarily a negative — the sense of intent in everything the band have done up to that point is underscored. Not only have Naxatras become a band capable of making a record like this, but they’ve done it with the specific will to bring their listeners with them.
Underneath it all is confidence. As dug in as they are, Naxatras don’t come across as pretentious on the record, but nothing here is an accident. These songs were worked on. Their arrangment carries meaning. You can hear how they came together in the finished product, the way “Breathing Fire” gives a sense of movement at the start of the second half of the LP with the guitar and keys echoing back to “Spacekeeper” while the vocals set themselves over a more terrestrially-toned riff before we’re all whisked away to another world — or at least someplace as hot as I understand Greece to be in the summer — before a slowdown basks in the vocal melody with effectively moody toms and crashes behind, dramatic and culturally informed, but organic above all. “Breathing Fire” gives over to “Legion,” which holds to the sense of rhythmic movement and opens into its verse with hints both of Gary Numan and Greek folk, the mood somewhat darker initially than, say, “Spacekeeper,” but not out of line by any means. The second half of the song is as close to a freakout as they come, but it’s momentary and they take the energy and immediately redirect it to a vocal chant that moves into a string-laced fadeout ending.
At 4:51, “Legion” is the shortest piece on V and it pairs with “Sand Halo,” the longest at 6:02, and as has been the case all along, the choice was purposeful. There are vocals, but the way “Sand Halo” uses repetition makes it feel all the more entrancing, and so it has the spirit of something jammier without entirely giving up notions of structure. This becomes doubly fortunate as a more weighted crescendo mirrors that of “Numenia” on side A before residual drone leads the way into the cymbals and far-off howls of synth at the outset of “The Citadel,” its first guitar notes stark against such a backdrop. The closer rises from that somewhat minimal beginning into a midsection of My Sleeping Karma-esque meditative heavy, overarching notes of chime sounds standing out from the denser shove, which they ride until giving over to silence and an epilogue of piano, foreboding but still warm at the end as the whole album has been.
That too is part of what feels reassuring about V — how much Naxatras remain identifiably themselves as they again revise what that means — but also the sureness of the craft. The sense that there’s a reason behind every choice that’s been made in music, production, the Chris RW art on the front cover and everything else around the release. More than ever, the stage feels like the focus. If Naxatras got on stage and played V front-to-back with that piano playing as they took their leave, it would seem to be what the record was written for. It is a direct communication from the band to their audience, and reconfirms Naxatras among Europe’s most forward-thinking heavy psychedelic purveyors.
Posted in Whathaveyou on December 20th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I took today off for good reason: because after spending four full writing days hacking away at the Best of 2024 year-end coverage, my brain is even more goo than usual and could stand the day to recover (even though the truth is I was writing for much of yesterday afternoon). Then Naxatras come along and wake me from my Cave-Trollian slumber with the sassy-pants ending on the sprawling lead single “Spacekeeper” from their new album V — it’s followed consecutively by the sweet-ass flute funk of “Numenia” and the harder-distorted cosmic riffing of “Utopian Structures,” so, you know, the record goes places — and, by simple virtue of their kickass nature, consigning me once again to Clacky-Clacky Keyboard Time.
However, some vague, immeasurable sliver of one’s attempt at preserving wellbeing is a small price to pay for the bliss Naxatras have on offer with V. The four-piece are pretty fresh in mind, having last month posted a killer full-set live video recorded earlier this year in Hungary, perhaps in part to stir followers ahead of this announcement. In any case, I’ve heard the record, and whether you dig the synth-driven progressive lean of 2022’s IV (review here) or the jammier spirit presented in their earlier work, the answer for V is a big yes. Never quite still, Naxatras explore and entrance like no one else, and so their material is as expansive as it is immersive. Open world, in the parlance of the age. Colorful. Bursting with light by the time you get to the meditative “Legion.”
Look out for “Breathing Fire” when that one hits too. I already put in a request to stream the album Feb. 27. I’ll let you know how that goes. It’s out Feb. 28, as the PR wire tells it:
Greek psychedelic rockers NAXATRAS share first track off upcoming new album “V”, out February 28th on Evening Star Records.
Greek psychedelic rock powerhouse NAXATRAS announce the release of their anticipated fifth studio album “V” on February 28th, and unveil the hypnotic cosmos-coveting new single “Spacekeeper” on all streaming platforms today.
Naxatras has spent over a decade forging a distinctive presence in the hard psych scene. With four critically acclaimed albums under their belt, they have evolved from a predominantly jam-oriented band into one that balances spontaneity with deliberate craftsmanship. This transformation is the natural result of years of touring, artistic exploration, and a steadfast commitment to their unique sound.
In the band’s ever-present mindset of constant experimentation and evolution as a creative process, bits and pieces of ideas and patterns were brewing, waiting for the right time to surface. Now, those fragments have come to life, enriched by the band’s matured approach to songwriting. With a line-up that includes a keyboardist and an expanded percussion arsenal, Naxatras has embraced a multi-layered production, blending their analog warmth with a newfound clarity and complexity.
Their new album “V” represents a bold leap forward. The ingredients of the Naxatras sound have been multiplied and their influences broadened, incorporating not just the classic touchstones of 70s progressive rock but also world music and electronic elements, delivering songs that are both tightly constructed and daringly expansive. “V” balances the direct and the adventurous, taking listeners on a journey that is as grounded as it is cosmic. Exploring the saga of the world of Narahmon with the introduction of the Spacekeeper as a new chapter in their mythical lore, the album’s concept narrative reflects a band at the height of its creative powers, pushing boundaries while crafting music that resonates deeply.
This is more than an album: it’s a defining moment for Naxatras. With their vast array of influences and years of expertise converging, “V” signals a new chapter, reaffirming their place as one of the most visionary acts in the progressive rock landscape.
NAXATRAS – New album “V” Out February 28th on Evening Star Records (LP/CD/digital)
Posted in Reviews on December 12th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Day four of five for this snuck-in-before-the-end-of-the-year Quarterly Review, and I’m left wondering if maybe it won’t be worth booking another week for January or early February, and if that happens, is it still “quarterly” at that point if you do it like six times a year? ‘Bimonthly Quality Control Assessments’ coming soon! Alert your HR supervisors to tell your servers of any allergies.
No, not really.
I’ll figure out a way to sandwich more music into this site if it kills me. Which I guess it might. Whatever, let’s do this thing.
Quarterly Review #31-40
—
Sergeant Thunderhoof, The Ghost of Badon Hill
A marked accomplishment in progressive heavy rock, The Ghost of Badon Hill is the fifth full-length from UK five-piece Sergeant Thunderhoof, who even without the element of surprise on their side — which is to say one is right to approach the 45-minute six-tracker with high expectations based on the band’s past work; their last LP was 2022’s This Sceptred Veil(review here) — rally around a folklore-born concept and deliver the to-date album of their career. From the first emergence of heft in “Badon” topped with Daniel Flitcroft soar-prone vocals, Sergeant Thunderhoof — guitarists Mark Sayer and Josh Gallop, bassist Jim Camp and drummer Darren Ashman, and the aforementioned Flitcroft — confidently execute their vision of a melodic riffprog scope. The songs have nuance and character, the narrative feels like it moves through the material, there are memorable hooks and grand atmospheric passages. It is by its very nature not without some indulgent aspects, but also a near-perfect incarnation of what one might ask it to be.
The stated objective of Swallow the Sun‘s Shining was for less misery, and fair enough as the Finnish death-doomers have been at it for about a quarter of a century now and that’s a long time to feel so resoundingly wretched, however relatably one does it. What does less-misery sound like? First of all, still kinda miserable. If you know Swallow the Sun, they are still definitely recognizable in pieces like “Innocence Was Long Forgotten,” “What I Have Become” and “MelancHoly,” but even the frontloading of these singles — don’t worry, from “Kold” and the ultra Type O Negative-style “November Dust” (get it?), to the combination of floating, dancing keyboard lines and drawn out guitars in the final reaches of the title-track, they’re not short on highlights — conveys the modernity brought into focus. Produced by Dan Lancaster (Bring Me the Horizon, A Day to Remember, Muse), the songs are in conversation with the current sphere of metal in a way that Swallow the Sun have never been, broadening the definition of what they do while retaining a focus on craft. They’re professionals.
Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships, The Mind Like Fire Unbound
Where’s the intermittently-crushing sci-fi-concept death-stoner, you ask? Well, friend, Lincoln, Nebraska’s Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships would like to have a word, and on The Mind Like Fire Unbound, there’s a non-zero chance that word will come in the form of layered death metal growls and rasping throatripper screams representing an insectoid species about to tear more-melodically-voiced human colonizers to pieces. The 45-minute LP’s 14-minute opener “BUGS” that lays out this warning is followed by the harsh, cosmic-paranoia conjuration of “Dark Forest” before a pivot in 8:42 centerpiece “Infinite Inertia” — and yes, the structure of the tracks is purposeful; longest at the open and close with shorter pieces on either side of “Infinite Inertia” — takes the emotive cast of Pallbearer to an extrapolated psychedelic metalgaze, huge and broad and lumbering. Of course the contrast is swift in the two-minute “I Hate Space,” but where one expects more bludgeonry, the shortest inclusion stays clean vocally amid its uptempo, Torche-but-not-really push. Organ joins the march in the closing title-track (14:57), which gallops following its extended intro, doom-crashes to a crawl and returns to double-kick behind the encompassing last solo, rounding out with suitable showcase of breadth and intention.
Planet of Zeus make a striking return with their sixth album, Afterlife, basing their theme around mythologies current and past and accompanying that with a sound that’s both less brash than they were a few years back on 2019’s Faith in Physics (review here) and refined in the sharpness and efficiency of its songwriting. It’s a rocker, which is what one has come to expect from these Athens-based veterans. Afterlife builds momentum through desert-style rockers like “Baptized in His Death” and the hooky “No Ordinary Life” and “The Song You Misunderstand,” getting poppish in the stomp of “Bad Milk” only after the bluesy “Let’s Call it Even” and before the punkier “Letter to a Newborn,” going where it wants and leaving no mystery as to how it’s getting there because it doesn’t need to. One of the foremost Greek outfits of their generation, Planet of Zeus show up, tell you what they’re going to do, then do it and get out, still managing to leave behind some atmospheric resonance in “State of Non-Existence.” There’s audible, continued forward growth and kickass tunes. If that sounds pretty ideal, it is.
Cinematic in its portrayal, Le Premier Soleil de Jan Calet positions itself as cosmically minded, and manifests that in sometimes-minimal — effectively so, since it’s hypnotic — aural spaciousness, but Paris’ Human Teorema veer into Eastern-influenced scales amid their exploratory, otherworldly-on-purpose landscaping, and each planet on which they touch down, from “Onirico” (7:43) to “Studiis” (15:54) and “Spedizione” (23:20) is weirder than the last, shifting between these vast passages and jammier stretches still laced with synth. Each piece has its own procession and dynamic, and perhaps the shifts in intent are most prevalent within “Studiis,” but the closer is, on the balance, a banger as well, and there’s no interruption in flow once you’ve made the initial choice to go with Le Premier Soleil de Jan Calet. An instrumental approach allows Human Teorema to embody descriptive impressions that words couldn’t create, and when they decide to hit it hard, they’re heavy enough for the scale they’ve set. Won’t resonate universally (what does?), but worth meeting on its level.
There are two epics north of the 10-minute mark on Caged Wolves‘ maybe-debut LP, A Deserts Tale: “Lost in the Desert” (11:26) right after the intro “Dusk” and “Chaac” (10:46) right before the hopeful outro “Dawn.” The album runs a densely-packed 48 minutes through eight tracks total, and pieces like the distortion-drone-backed “Call of the Void,” the alt-prog rocking “Eleutheromania,” “Laguna,” which is like earlier Radiohead in that it goes somewhere on a linear build, and the spoken-word-over-noise interlude “The Lost Tale” aren’t exactly wanting for proportion, regardless of runtime. The bassline that opens “Call of the Void” alone would be enough to scatter orcs, but that still pales next to “Chaac,” which pushes further and deeper, topping with atmospheric screams and managing nonetheless to come out of the other side of that harsh payoff of some of the album’s most weighted slog in order to bookend and give the song the finish it deserves, completing it where many wouldn’t have been so thoughtful. This impression is writ large throughout and stands among the clearest cases for A Deserts Tale as the beginning of a longer-term development.
I find myself wanting to talk about how big Liminal Escapism sounds, but I don’t mean in terms of tonal proportion so much as the distances that seem to be encompassed by Greek progressive instrumentalists Anomalos Kosmos. With an influence from Grails and, let’s say, 50 years’ worth of prog rock composition (but definitely honoring the earlier end of that timeline), Anomalos Kosmos offer emotional evocation in pieces that feel compact on either side of six or seven minutes, taking the root jams and building them into structures that still come across as a journey. The classy soloing in “Me Orizeis” and synthy shimmer of “Parapatao,” the rumble beneath the crescendo of “Kitonas” and all of that gosh darn flow in “Flow” speak to a songwriting process that is aware of its audience but feels no need to talk down, musically speaking, to feed notions of accessibility. Instead, the immersion and energetic drumming of “Teledos” and the way closer “Cigu” rallies around pastoral fuzz invite the listener to come along on this apparently lightspeed voyage — thankfully not tempo-wise — and allow room for the person hearing these sounds to cast their own interpretations thereof.
One could not hope to fully encapsulate an impression here of nearly three and a half hours of sometimes-improv psych-drone, and I refuse to feel bad for not trying. Instead, I’ll tell you that Grand Fractal Orchestra — the Psychedelic Source Records 3CD edition of which has already sold out — finds Budapest-based guitarist Ákos Karancz deeply engaged in the unfolding sounds here. Layering effects, collaborating with others from the informal PSR collective like zitherist Márton Havlik or singer Krisztina Benus, and so on, Karancz constructs each piece in a way that feels both steered in a direction and organic to where the music wants to go. “Ore Genesis” gets a little frantic around the middle but finds its chill, “Human Habitat” is duly foreboding, and the two-part, 49-minute-total capper “Transforming Time to Space” is beautiful and meditative, like staring at a fountain with your ears. It goes without saying not everybody has the time or the attention span to sit with a release like this, but if you take it one track at a time for the next four years or so, there’s worlds enough in these songs that they’ll probably just keep sinking in. And if Karancz puts outs like five new albums in that time too, so much the better.
It probably goes without saying — at least it should — that while the classic folk fingerplucking of “Whispering Waters” and the Americana-busy “Laurel Creek Blues” give a sweet introduction to Blake Hornsby‘s A Village of Many Springs, inevitably it’s the 23-minute experimentalist spread of the finale, “Bury My Soul in the Linville River,” that’s going to be a focal point for many listeners, and fair enough. The earthbound-cosmic feel of that piece, its devolution into Lennon-circa-1968 tape noise and concluding drone, aren’t at all without preface. A Village of Many Springs gets weirder as it goes, with the eight-minute “Cathedral Falls” building over its time into a payoff of seemingly on-guitar violence, and the subsequent “O How the Water Flows” nestling into a sweet spot between Appalachian nostalgia and foreboding twang. There’s percussion and manipulation of noise later, too, but even in its repetition, “O How the Water Flows” continues Hornsby‘s trajectory. For what’s apparently an ode to water in the region surrounding Hornsby‘s home in Asheville, North Carolina, that it feels fluid should be no surprise, but by no means does one need to have visited Laurel Creek to appreciate the blues Hornsby conjures for them.
With a sensibility in some of the synth of “Hacamat” born of space rock, Congulus have no trouble moving from that to the 1990s-style alt-rock saunter of “Diri Bir Nefes,” furthering the momentum already on the Istanbul-based instrumentalist trio’s side after opener “İskeletin Düğün Halayı” before “Senin Sırlarının Yenilmez Gücünü Gördüm” spaces out its solo over scales out of Turkish folk and “Park” marries together the divergent chugs of Judas Priest and Meshuggah, there’s plenty of adventure to be had on Göçebe. It’s the band’s second full-length behind 2019’s Bozkır — they’ve had short releases between — and it moves from “Park” into the push of “Zarzaram” and “Vordonisi” with efficiency that’s only deceptive because there’s so much stylistic range, letting “Ulak” have its open sway and still bash away for a moment or two before “Sonunda Ah Çekeriz Derinden” closes by tying space rock, Mediterranean traditionalism and modern boogie together in one last jam before consigning the listener back to the harsher, decidedly less utopian vibes of reality.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on November 26th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I will tell you honestly this live video of Naxatras‘ full set from the Ozora Festival — also stylized O.Z.O.R.A. as an acronym for I don’t know what — this past summer in Dádpuszta, Hungary, isn’t what I was planning on writing about today. I was all set to review something else, an album that’s been hanging over my head for a bit and that I kind of feel obligated toward for various reasons, and along comes a Bandcamp update from the Greek jammers/progressive psychedelic rockers, a clip to check out, and there goes the next 75 minutes of my life. I ended up watching the thing on my laptop while I emptied the dishwasher and made breakfast. Things like that make me feel like I’m exist in an alt-definition of “lifer.”
And I might have gone back to that record — there’s a lot to like about it — but in the spirit of a band following where their creative will leads, here I am with this Naxatras video. It’s pro-shot and the lights are gorgeous, so even if you end up putting it on while you do chores or work or whatever you’re up to, it’ll be worth glancing over at, and the sound is correspondingly fantastic. A live recording that can harness any sense of breadth and be about more than just the spirit of here’s-album-tracks-performed is a thing to treasure, and if Naxatras were to release the audio from this set in some form, I’d be here telling you to listen to it anyway. As it is, the audio/visual impression here does a lot to convey how and why Naxatras have amassed such a reputation on the Euro circuit, rising to the fore of the admirably varied Greek heavy underground alongside current bands like 1000mods and Planet of Zeus.
Bassist and intermittent vocalist John Vagenas — most of the set and the band’s work more broadly is instrumental, but a couple songs have singing on them, including the multi-movement “Ent” from their 2015 self-titled debut (discussed here), which closes — posted the clip with the comment quoted below, and those who take particular note of the part where he says “…shortly before our new music comes out,” will definitely want to check out the video, which features two new songs in succession, with “Space Keeper” and “Utopian Structures” representing their latest batch of tunes, the actual release of which has yet to be announced. So a sneaky preview as a reward for those who’d take the plunge to find it. He says on stage they recorded “about two months ago,” which since Ozora is held at the end of July would’ve been sometime in Spring 2024. I know nothing about when it’ll be out, but if it’s done, that’s certainly an important step along the way.
The chilled-out-but-not-lazy jam is at the heart of what Naxatras — who performed at Ozora as a five-piece, including Vagenas, keyboardist Pantelis Kargas, guitarist John Delias, drummer Kostas Charizanis and percussionist Dimitris Kavoukidis — do as a band, but as demonstrated on 2022’s IV (review here), the totality of their scope is broader and reaches into different modes of songwriting. I don’t necessarily have an idea what to expect beyond broad strokes for their next album, but after IV, I have high hopes that they’ll continue to move forward as they’ve been doing for the last 10 years. Unless an announcement comes in the next week or so, or they decide to do a fancy, no-advance-promo surprise album drop in the next month (always possible), it’ll likely be 2025 before we find out. Fortunately, that’s still not too far off.
An unexpected pivot brought me here. The resonance of Naxatras turned out to be what I needed, and below, you’ll find the video in its entirety, shared with the hope that it might also connect with you one way or the other.
Please enjoy:
Naxatras, Live at Ozora Festival 2024
John Vagenas on Ozora Festival:
“It’s no secret that I have a weak spot for Ozora, it is after all a mothership of psychedelic culture as it exists right now in the world. So, I believe this show is really a milestone of our journey as a band until now, the evolution of our sound just shortly before our new music comes out! Stay tuned people, cool things are coming up really soon…”
We’re so happy to share with you our full show at the Dragon Nest stage of Ozora Festival 2024.
Directed and Colored by Ben Kirschenbaum An Eyechant Production Filmed by Daniel Vogman, Shira Houminer, Shaked Gorbatt, Ben Kirschenbaum Edited by Daniel Vogman and Ben Kirschenbaum Recorded by Konstantinos Ragiadakos Mixed and Mastered by World Frequencies
Tracklisting (Courtesy of @PlaylistMaker434) 00:00 On The Silver Line 07:50 Omega Madness 15:05 Journey To Narahmond 21:55 Space Keeper 27:00 Utopian Structures 33:18 Waves 40:35 Garden Of The Senses 49:13 I Am The Beyonder 1:00:35 The Great Attractor 1:07:20 Ent
This video was created to celebrate the human experience, with the utmost respect for the people lensed, we hope this resounds and spreads joy.
Naxatras at Ozora Festival: John Delias – Guitar John Vagenas – Bass & Vocals Kostas Charizanis – Drums Pantelis Kargas – Keyboards Dimitris Kavoukidis – Percussion
Posted in Reviews on October 8th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Welcome back to the Fall 2024 Quarterly Review, which started yesterday and will continue through next Friday. This week and next week, my life is pretty much cutting up pizza for the kid, Hungarian homework, and this. I could do worse.
There’s good stuff in this one though, and a lot of it, today and really throughout. I hope you find something you think is cool, tomorrow or the next day if not today.
Quarterly Review #11-20:
—
Pia Isa, Dissolve
Pia Isaksen, also of Superlynx, offers a follow-up to 2022’s solo debut as Pia Isa, Distorted Chants (review here), and with songs like “Into the Fire” and “Dissolve,” a heavy-meditative take on grunge is imagined, with Isaksen‘s lumbering bass leading the way with a low rumble behind often quietly delivered vocals, and Ole Teigen‘s drums placed deep in a three-dimensional mix, and spaciousness added to the bulk of the proceedings through Gary Arce‘s signature floating guitar tone; the Yawning Man founder guests on guitar for six of the eight tracks, and is a not insignificant presence in complement and contrast to some of the more morose elements and rhythmic churning, as in “New Light.” But Isaksen is no stranger to crafting material heavy in ambience and mood as much as tone, and Dissolve feels like a deep-dive into experimentalism that pays off in the songs themselves. As Isaksen and Arce get ready to unveil their new collaborative project SoftSun, nothing here makes me look forward to that less.
I don’t know where the lines between genres are supposed to be anymore and I’m done pretending to care. If Sun and Sail Club had Barney from Napalm Death singing lead, you’d call them grindcore. It’s Tony Adolescents, making his second appearance with Sun and Sail Club after 2015’s The Great White Dope (review here), alongside founding guitarist Bob Balch (also Fu Manchu, Big Scenic Nowhere, etc.), bassist Scott Reeder (ex-Kyuss, Goatsnake, The Obsessed, etc.) and drummer Scott Reeder (Fu Manchu) for another mostly-blistering round of heavy punk, full in its charge and crossover punk-metal defiance, in “The Color of War” and the early-C.O.C.-esque “Drag the River,” which follows. Oh, and Balch gets a little surf in there too in “Tastes Like Blood” and the wistful bookending intro and outro. Borders on goth for a moment there, but it works. In the Balchian oeuvre — somewhere on the opposite side of the spectrum from where Slower now reside — Sun and Sail Club found itself as a project with The Great White Dope. Shipwrecked is correspondingly more aware of what the band wants their music to do as a result, and so able to hit more directly.
The third album from Los Angeles-based heavy progressive rockers Vitskär Süden, Vessel is quick to establish ambition as a central element. That is to say, in the depth of their arrangements vocally and instrumentally, in their ability to set and vary a mood, and in being able to convey a sense of experimentalism in a four-minute track with a hook like “R’lyeh,” Vitskär Süden come across as cognizant of trying new ideas in their material and bringing these to fruition in the finished products of the songs. The material feels built around specific parts, some rhythmic, some melodic, in “Through Tunnels They Move” it might be Inxs, maybe the piano and strings in “Hidden by the Day,” and so on, and that it isn’t always the same thing adds to the character brought by guitarist/synthesist Julian Goldberger, bassist/vocalist Martin Garner, guitarist TJ Webber and drummer Christopher Martin as the songs coalesce and challenge the band’s own conceptions of their work as much as the listener’s. It is cinematic in both its sprawl and dramatic intent, and I won’t spoil the ending but yes of course it goes gospel.
German murk-doomers Daevar keep affairs dark on their second long-player, Amber Eyes, as the trio of bassist/vocalist Pardis Latifi, guitarist Caspar Orfgren and drummer Moritz Ermen Bausch explore nodding patience and grim atmospherics across the six included cuts, and Windhand are still an influence, but “Pay to Pray” has a rolling, Acid King-style fluidity and the guitar takes to someplace more decisively evil, and Electric Wizardly, so you figure it out, because what it sounds like to me is Daevar beginning to step out from any single influence and to more comfortably find their own, often hypnotic niche, meeting the post-metallic feel of “Caliban and the Witch” with layered vocal harmonies before the megaplod finish. The title-track is faster and represents the grungier intentions, and if that’s the start of side B, then “Lizards” and “Grey in Grey” could only be called a plunge from there. The finale in particular is consuming in a way that reminds of Undersmile, which isn’t a complement I would lightly give.
Have you ever heard Endless Floods and not wanted more? Me neither. The French art-doom four-piece made a single out of the eight-minute “Décennie” from their fourth full-length, Rites Futurs, and as that song works its way into a minimalist drone progression worthy of Earth before offering stark reassurance in intertwining human voices before exploding, gloriously, into a guitar solo the size of any number of partially undersea volcanoes, there is little that feels beyond the band’s creative reach. Volume is a part of what makes the material so affecting, with a progressive metal-style fullness of tone and voices treated to become part of what’s creating the sense of space. In its quiet reaches and surges of worshipful sounds — the choir on “Forge,” for example — Rites Futursis somehow dystopian, but it’s not an empty world “after” humans. There’s life in these songs, in the way the title-track builds into its post-punk shove and then just into this undulation of noise is twice as universe-devouring for the acoustic guitar that emerges by itself on the other side. Underrated band.
Dark heavy rock with a metallic underpinning that seems to come forward in “She Was a Witch” more than, say, opener “Alleyway Ecstasy,” from Black on High‘s debut, Echoes Through Time, notably brings elements from the likes of Mastodon and Alice in Chains together with songs that don’t just retain their immediacy but build upward from the leadoff, so that “Take These Pills” in the penultimate spot of the tracklisting becomes a punk rock apex for a trajectory the Dallas-based four-piece with members of Gypsy Sun Revival and Turbid North set forth on “I Feel Lethal,” and the drop into lower gears for the closing title-track seems to hit that much harder as a return. It’s like the meme where the riff comes back but heavier and Vince McMahon or whoever is laser-eye stoked, except it’s set up across the whole album and not actually so simple as that, and Echoes Through Time ends up being more about the journey than the destination. Fine. It’s a high level of craft for being a first record, and it feels like the beginning of an evolution for a longer term.
Greek experimentalist two-piece Anomalos Kosmos may or may not evoke a Grails-y impression with their ’70s-prog-informed soundtrack-style instrumentals, but the thing is, with Live at 102 FM, they seem at least to be making it up as they go along. Sure, looping this or that layer to fill out the sound helps, as “Flow + Improv 1” proves readily in its first half, then again in its second, but what makes it jazz is that the exploration is happening for the creator and the consumer at the same time. It gets weird, and weirder, and “The + Improv 2” throws down a swinging groove for a bit after that vocal sample in the last couple minutes, but even if part of “Me Orizeis” is plotted as opposed to being 100 percent made up like they just walked into the room and that noise happened, it represents a vibrant and encompassing process that can’t help but feel organic as it’s recorded live. The band’s 2022 debut, Mornin Loopaz (review here) was both more restless and more concept-based. I like that I have no idea how Anomalos Kosmos might follow this.
Maybe it won’t come as a shocker that a live record with takes on the band’s songs that are upwards of 14, 17, 19, 23 minutes long is expansive? Maryland’s Mountainwolf offer seven tracks across Dust on a New Moon, which were recorded live at some point, somewhere, ever, maybe at New Year’s? I don’t want to speculate. In any case, what happens over the course of the ‘evening with’ is Mountainwolf plunge into an Appalachian vision of Earthless-style instrumental epicness. East Coast groove set to a more Pacific ideology; I guess at a certain point jams is jams. Mountainwolf have plenty of those, and while it’s not at all their first live release, Dust on a New Moon unfolds the sludgy crash of “Edging” and the bassy jabs of “Heroin x 1991” with purpose in each twist of turn captured. I assume the show is a little different every night as a given song might go here or there, but it sounds like a show worth seeing, to say the very least of it.
The Giraffes don’t have to be out there burnin’ barns, but Cigarette is indeed incendiary in “Pipes” and “Limping Horse,” and that’s barely a fraction of the business the long-running New York outfit get done in short order across their eighth album’s 34 minutes. NYC has had its share of underheralded heavy rock bands and so fair enough for The Giraffes being part of a longstanding tradition, but the moody vibe in “Lazarus,” the eerie modernity cast in “Baby Pictures,” and the citified twang in “Dead Bird” — which is fair enough to consider Americana since it’s about drug addiction — or the way “The Shot” has a kind of punctuated strut that is so much the band’s own, it’s worth reiterating that The Giraffes have earned far more plaudits than they’ve ever received for their recorded work, and as “Pipes” and “Million Year Old Song” bring a bluesy tinge to the madcap groove, I don’t know Cigarette will change that or if the band would even want it to if it did, but they’re an institution in New York’s underground and LPs like this are why.
While the drift of psychedelia ranges further back, there’s something about even the most shimmering of moments on Filthy Hippies‘ Share the Pill that’s much more ’97 than ’67, more Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine adding a current of noise to the mellow-heavy groove, maybe. That’s all well and good but doesn’t account for the universe-tearing “Good Time” or the spacey post-punk of “Catatonic” (though maybe it does, in the case of the latter) or the dub-psych roll “Stolen From Heaven” that bridges the two halves of the record, so take it for what it is. The stylistic truth of Filthy Hippies is more complex than the superficial trappings of drug rock might lead one to believe, and it’s not without its challenging aspects, even though the material in pieces like “Candy Floss” or the tambourine-insistent “Dreaming of Water” veers readily into poppish frequencies. There doesn’t seem to be a ton that’s off limits, but it feels rooted in heavy groove just the same and that sits well next to the flashes of the brighter contrast.
Well here we are, at last. A couple weeks ago I looked at my calendar and ended up pushing this Quarterly Review to mid-July instead of the end of June, and it’s been hanging over my head in the interim to such a degree that I added two days to it to cover another 20 records. I’m sure it could be more. The amount of music is infinite. It just keeps going.
I’ll assume you know the deal, but here it is anyhow: 10 records per day, for seven days — Monday through Friday, plus Monday and Tuesday in this case — for a total of 70 reviews. Links and audio provided to the extent possible, and hopefully we all find some killer new music we didn’t know about before, or if we did know about it, just to enjoy. That doesn’t seem so crazy, right?
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Bongzilla, Dab City
None higher. Following extensive touring before and (to the extent possible) after the release of their 2021 album, Weedsconsin (review here), Madison, WI, canna-worship crust sludge-launchers Bongzilla return with Dab City, proffering the harsh and the mellow as only they seem to be able to do, even among their ’90s-born original-era sludge brethren. As second track “King of Weed” demonstrates, Bongzilla are aurally dank unto themselves, both in the scathing vocals of bassist Mike “Muleboy” Makela and the layered guitar of Jeff “Spanky” Schultz and the slow-swinging groove shoving all that weighted tone forward in Mike “Magma” Henry‘s drums. Through the seven tracks and 56 minutes of dense jams like those in the opening title-cut or the 13-minute “Cannonbong (The Ballad of Burnt Reynolds as Lamented by Dixie Dave Collins” (yes, from Weedeater) or the gloriously languid finale “American Pot,” the shorter instrumental “C.A.R.T.S.,” or in the relatively uptempo nodders “Hippie Stick” and “Diamonds and Flower,” Bongzilla underscore the if-you-get-it-then-you-get-it nature of their work, at once extreme in its bite and soothing in atmosphere, uncompromising in purpose. I’m not going to tell you to get bombed out of your gourd and listen, but they almost certainly did while making it, and Dab City is nothing if not an invitation to that party.
Adventures await as Redhill, UK, three-piece Trevor’s Head — guitarist/vocalist Roger Atkins, bassist/vocalist/synthesist Aaron Strachan (also kalimba), drummer/flutist/vocalist/synthesist Matt Ainsworth (also Mellotron) — signal a willfully open and progressive creativity through the heavy psych and grunge melodies of lead track “Call of the Deep” before the Primus-gone-fuzz-prog chug of “Under My Skin” and the somehow-English-pastoral “Grape Fang” balances on its multi-part harmonies and loose-feeling movement, side A trading between shorter and longer songs to end with the seven-minute, violin-inclusive folk-then-fuzz-folk highlight “Elio” before “Rumspringa” brings the proceedings to ground as only cowbell might. As relatively straight-ahead as the trio get there or in the more pointedly aggressive shover “A True Gentleman” on the other side of the Tool-ish noodling and eat-this-riff of “What Got Stuck” (answer: the thrashy gallop before the final widdly-widdly solo, in my head), they never want for complexity, and as much as it encapsulates in its depth of arrangement and linear course, closer “Don’t Make Me Ask” represents the band perhaps even more in looking forward rather than back on what was just accomplished, building on what 2018’s Soma Holiday (review here) hinted at stylistically and mindfully evolving their sound.
Born in the ’90s as Amend, turned more extreme as V and now perhaps beginning a new era as Vorder — pronounced “vee-order” — the Dalarna, Sweden, unit return with a new rhythm section behind founding guitarists Jonas Gryth (also Unhealer) and Andreas Baier (also Besvärjelsen, Afgrund, and so on) featuring bassist Marcus Mackä Lindqvist (Blodskam, Lýsis) and drummer Daniel Liljekvist (ex-Katatonia, In Mourning, Grand Cadaver, etc.) on drums, the invigorated four-piece greet a dark dawn with due presence on False Haven, bringing Baier‘s Besvärjelsen bandmate Lea Amling Alazam for guest vocals on “The Few Remaining Lights,” which seems to be consumed after its melodic opening into a lurching and organ-laced midsection like Entombed after the Isis-esque ambience of post-apocalyptic mourning in “Introspective” and “Beyond the Horizon of Life.” Beauty and darkness are not new themes for Vorder, even if False Haven is their first release under the name, and even in the bleak ‘n’ roll of the title-track there’s still room for hope if you define hope as tambourine. Which you probably should. The penultimate “Judgement Awaits” interrupts floating post-doom with vital shove and 10:32 finale “Come Undone” provides a resonant melodic answer to “The Few Remaining Lights” while paying off the album as a whole in patience, heft and fullness. Vorder use microgenres like a polyglot might switch languages, but what’s expressed from the entirety of the work is utterly their own, whatever name they use.
Multi-instrumentalist Beth Gladding (also of Forlesen, Botanist, Lotus Thief, etc.) shares vocal duties in New York’s Inherus with bassist Anthony DiBlasi (ex-Witchkiss) and fellow guitarist/synthesist Brian Harrigan (Grid, Swallow the Ocean), and the harsh/clean dynamic puts emphasis on the various textures presented throughout the band’s debut album. Completed by drummer Andrew Vogt (Lotus Thief, Swallow the Ocean), Inherus reach toward SubRosan melancholy on “Forgotten Kingdom,” which begins the hour-flat/six-track 2LP, and they follow with harmonies and grandeur to spare on “One More Fire” (something in that melody reminds me of Indigo Girls and I’m noting it because I can’t get my head away from it; not complaining) and “The Dagger,” which resolves in Amenra-style squibble and lurch without giving up its emotional depth. “Oh Brother” crushes enough to make one wonder where the line truly is between metal and post-metal, and the setup for closer “Lie to the Angels” in the drone-plus piece “Obliterated in the Face of the Gods” telegraphs the intensity to follow if not the progginess of that particular chug or the scope of what follows. Vogt signals the arrival at the album’s crescendo with stately but fast double-kick, and if you’re wondering who gets the last word, it’s feedback. Beholden may prove formative as Inherus move forward, but what their first full-length lays out as their stylistic range is at least as impressive as it is ambitious. Hope for more to come.
Even in the second half of “Tying Up the Noose” as it leads into “Give it Time” — which is about as speedy as Sonic Moon get on their Olde Magick Records-delivered first LP, Return Without Any Memory — they’re in no particular hurry. The overarching languid pace across the Aarhus five-piece’s 41-minute/seven-tracker — which reuses only the title-track from 2019’s Usually I Don’t Care for Flowers EP — makes it hypnotic even in its most active moments, but whether it’s the Denmarkana acoustic moodiness of centerpiece “Through the Snow,” the steady nod of “Head Under the River” later or the post-All Them Witches psych-blues conveyed in opener “The Waters,” Sonic Moon are able to conjure landscapes from fuzzed tonality that could just as easily have been put to use for traditional doom as psych-leaning heavy rock, uniting the songs through that same fuzz and the melody of the vocals as “Head Under the River” spaces out ahead of its slowdown or “Hear Me Now” eschews the huge finish in favor of a more unassuming, gentler letting go, indicative of the thoughtfulness behind their craft and their presentation of the material. Familiar enough on paper and admirably, unpretentiously itself, the self-recorded Return Without Any Memory discovers its niche and comes across as being right at home in it. A welcome debut.
With cosmic doom via YOB meeting with progressive heavy rock à la Elder or Louisiana rollers Forming the Void and an undercurrent of metal besides in the chug and double-kick of “Controlled Burn,” Cleveland’s Slow Wake make their full-length debut culling together songs their 2022 Falling Fathoms EP and adding the prior-standalone “Black Stars” for 12 minutes’ worth of good measure at the end. The dense and jangly tones at the start of the title-track (where it’s specifically “Marrow”-y) or “In Waves” earlier on seem to draw more directly from Mike Scheidt‘s style of play, but “Relief” builds from its post-rocking outset to grow furious over its first few minutes headed toward a payoff that’s melody as much as crunch. “Black Stars” indulges a bit more psychedelic repetition, which could be a sign of things to come or just how it worked out on that longer track, but Slow Wake lay claim to significant breadth regardless, and have the structural complexity to work in longer forms without losing themselves either in jams or filler. With a strong sense of its goals, Falling Fathoms puts Slow Wake on a self-aware trajectory of growth in modern prog-heavy style. That is, they know what they’re doing and they know why. To show that alone on a first record makes it a win. Their going further lets you know to keep an eye out for next time as well.
The Fierce and the Dead, News From the Invisible World
Unearthing a bit of earlier-Queens of the Stone Age compression fuzz in the start-stop riff of “Shake the Jar” is not even scratching the surface as regards textures put to use by British progressive heavies The Fierce and the Dead on their fourth album, News From the Invisible World. Comprised of eight songs varied in mood and textures around a central ethic clearly intent on not sounding any more like anyone else than it has to, the collection is the first release from the band to feature vocals. Those are handled ably by bassist Kev Feazey, but it’s telling as to the all-in nature of the band that, in using singing for the first time, they employ no fewer than six guest vocalists, mostly but not exclusively on opener/intro “The Start.” From there, it’s a wild course through keyboard/synth-fed atmospheres on pieces like the Phil Collins-gone-heavy “Photogenic Love” and its side-B-capping counterpart “Nostalgia Now,” which ends like friendlier Godflesh, astrojazz experimentalism on “Non-Player,” and plenty of fuzz in “Golden Thread,” “Wonderful,” “What a Time to Be Alive,” and so on, though where a song starts is not necessarily where it’s going to end up. Given Feazey‘s apparent comfort with the task before him, it’s a wonder they didn’t make this shift earlier, but they do well in making up for lost time.
Kliwon is the second offering from Indonesia-based meditative psych exploration unit Mud Spencer to be released through Argonauta Records after 2022’s Fuzz Soup (review here), and its four component songs find France-born multi-instrumentalist Rodolphe Bellugue (also Proots, Bedhunter, etc.) constructing material of marked presence and fluidity. Opener “Suzzanna” is halfway through its nine minutes before the drums start. “Ratu Kidul” is 16 minutes of mindful breathing (musically speaking) as shimmering guitar melody pokes out from underneath the surrounding ethereal wash, darker in tone but more than just bleak. Of course “Dead on the Heavy Funk” reminds of Mr. Bungle as it metal-chugs and energetically weirds out. And the just under 16-minute “Jasmin Eater” closes out with organ and righteous fuzz bass peppered with flourish details on guitar and languid drumming, becoming heavier and consuming as it moves toward the tempo kick that’s the apex of the album. Through these diverse tracks, an intimate psychedelic persona emerges, even without vocals, and Mud Spencer continues to look inward for expanses to be conveyed before doing precisely that.
It would seem that in the interim between 2021’s Ocean of Acid EP and this five-song/41-minute debut full-length, Tyhjiö, Finnish psychedelic death-doomers Kita traded English lyrics for those in their native Finnish. No, I don’t speak it, but that hardly matters in the chant-like chorus of the title-track or the swirling pummel that surrounds as the band invent their own microgenre, metal-rooted and metal in affect, but laced with synth and able to veer into lysergic guitar atmospherics in the 10-minute opener “Kivi Puhuu” or the acoustic-led (actually it’s bass-led, but still) midsection leading to the triumphant chorus of bookending closer “Ataraksia,” uniting disparate ideas through strength of craft, tonal and structural coherence, and, apparently, sheer will. The title-track, “Torajyvä” and “Kärpässilmät,” with the centerpiece cut as the shortest, make for a pyramid-style presentation (broader around its base), but Kita are defined by what they do, drawing extremity from countrymen like Swallow the Sun or Amorphis, among others, and turning it into something of their own. Striking in the true sense of: it feels like being punched. But punched while you hang out on the astral plane.
Greek fuzz alert! Heavy rocking three-piece Embargo hail from Thessaloniki with their first long-player, High Seas, using winding aspects of progressive metal to create tension in the starts and stops of “Billow,” “EAT” and “Candy” as spoken verses in the latter and “Alanna Finch” draw a line between the moody noise rock of Helmet, the grunge it informed, and the heavy rock that emerged (in part) from that. Running 10 tracks and 44 minutes, High Seas is quick in marking out the smoothness of its low tonality, and it veers into and out of what one might consider aggression in terms of style, “with 22 22” thoughtfully composed and sharply pointed in kind, one of several instrumentals to offset some of the gruffer stretches or a more patient melodic highlight like “Draupner,” which does little to hide its affinity for Soundgarden and is only correct to showcase it. They also finish sans-vocals in the title-track, and there’s almost a letting-loose sense to “High Seas” itself, shaking out some shuffle in the first half before peaking in the second. Greece is among Europe’s most packed and vibrant undergrounds, and with High Seas, Embargo begin to carve their place within it.
