Posted in Whathaveyou on December 16th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Athenian bang-head-against-genre heavy rockers Godsleep have spent much of the last two years on the road supporting their latest release, 2023’s Lies to Survive (review here). I was lucky enough to see them at Freak Valley 2024 (review here), and after witnessing their onstage energy for myself — they blew me right out of the water; I had to sit down — it was little surprise this year when they showed up on the bills for Tabernas Desert Rock Fest, Down the Hill, Keep it Low and others.
That’s not to say I ‘discovered’ a thing, unless you count realizing for myself what the European heavy underground already knew well, just that the set was killer and, as in the best scenarios, gave a new dimension to my conception of who Godsleep are as a band. Fervency is part of it, and stage presence, but listening back to Lies to Survive, that sense of breaking-the-rules of style (which are imaginary, it needs to be said every time) and the righteousness of their delivery are also factors. There are a bunch of reasons to like this band, in other words.
Dates were posted on socials and — wouldn’t you know it? — here they are:
Europe, we’re coming for you! Headlining shows all spring and we can’t wait. Bring the energy, bring the noise, let’s make this tour massive!⚡️
22/04/26 BERLIN (DE) – NEUE ZUKUNFT 23/04/26 DRESDEN (DE) – OSTPOL 24/04/26 WIESBADEN (DE) – KREATIVFABRIK 25/04/26 MARSBERG (DE) – ZUR TENNE 28/04/26 SOLOTHURN (CH) – KULTURFABRIK KOFMEHL 29/04/26 STUTTGART (DE) – JUHA WEST 30/04/26 JENA KUBA (DE) – JENA 01/05/26 MÜNSTER (DE) – RARE GUITAR 02/05/26 BRAUNSCHWEIG (DE) – B58 04/05/26 LANGENBERG (DE) – KGB 05/05/26 HAMBURG (DE) – HAFENKLANG 06/05/26 HANNOVER (DE) – KULTURZENTRUM FAUST 07/05/26 KÖLN (DE) – GARAGEN 08/05/26 VIERSEN (DE) – ROCKSCHICHT 09/05/26 LIMBURG (DE) – LIMEWOOD FESTIVAL 26/05/26 LILLE (FR) – BRAT CAVE 27/05/26 PARIS (FR) – SUPERSONIC RECORDS 28/05/26 NANTES (FR) – COLD CRASH 29/05/26 LORIENT (FR) – PITDOG 30/05/26 HOSSEGOR (FR) – 416 CREW 31/05/26 MONTPELLIER (FR) – SECRET PLACE
-More Dates to be Announced-
Powered by @spider_promotion / @sanitmils Artwork by @bewild
Posted in Reviews on October 18th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
So this is it for the second of two Quarterly Review weeks around here, bringing the total to 100 releases covered since last Monday, with 10 more still to come next Monday.
110 releases, mostly (not all) from about April through November.
That’s insane. More, I’m not in any way prepared to call it or any other Quarterly Review comprehensive. It’s nowhere near everything that’s come out or is coming out. It’s a fraction at best. There’s just so much.
I’m not going to attach a value judgment to that. It’s not good, it’s not bad; it simply is. My processes remain largely unchanged, and whether it’s a net positive that the underground is either sparse and fractured or flooded with bands to such a point that Gen-X reunions underwhelm in the face of so much good, new music being made, I’ll be here regardless. And even if there were a fifth as many bands out there as there are right now, no doubt I still couldn’t keep up.
See you Monday.
Quarterly Review #91-100:
—
Elder, Live at BBC Maida Vale Studios
While it’s by no means Elder‘s first captured-live release, as they’ve put out festival sets from Roadburn and Sonic Whip in years past, Live at BBC Maida Vale Studios answers any what’s-all-this-about questions with the sound of the performances themselves. It’s a single LP, somewhere about 40 minutes long, and in Elder terms that translates to three songs — “Merged in Dreams/Ne Plus Ultra” (15:33), “Lore” (13:54) and “Thousand Hands” (9:21) — so by no means is it expansive, or comprehensive in representing this era of Elder‘s presence on stage or scope in songwriting. Why put it out instead of some recorded tour night or a compilation of songs from different shows? Same answer as before: the sound of the performances. For sure Live at BBC Maida Vale Studios is a fan-piece, but it is live, and Elder sound fantastic — and it’s probably a pretty decent memory for the band to celebrate — so you’re not at all going to hear me argue.
Simon Price, now formerly of UK heavy psych forebears The Heads, returns with the first Kandodo outing since 2019’s K3 (review here) and a reoriented focus on intimacy rather than operating in a full-band style. That is to say, the five-track/44-minute release sounds like the solo album it is. That, however, doesn’t stop “Fuzzyoceans” from casting an expanse in its just-under-11 minutes, with a central rhythmic bounce around which layers of synth and guitar conjure a wash of experimentalist flourish. Lo-fi beatmaking starts in “Chamba7,” the opener, and sounds higher budget as “Theendisinpsych Pt. 1” borders on psych techno — “Theendisinpsych Pt. 2” follows immediately and moves from sustained keyboard notes and a sampled David Bowie radio interview to an evocative, shimmering drone; it isn’t arhythmic, but it doens’t have a ‘beat’ per se — and becomes part of the avant garde soundscape (the lightning part) in closer “Freefalling,” which unfolds in stages of variable volume and hum with some howling leads snuck in near the end. It’s a deep dive and at times a challenging listen. So yes, exactly what one would hope.
When High Reeper‘s third LP, Renewed by Death, was announced back in July, it was notable how much the album’s narrative seemed to position them as a metal band rather than heavy/doom rock, which even though 2019’s Higher Reeper (review here) had its harder-hitting moments, is kind of how I’d come to think of them. The eight songs of Renewed by Death aren’t hyper-aggressive — though you wouldn’t call “Torn from Within” ‘chill’ by any means — but they feel sharper in their composition than the last record, and if High Reeper want to say that “Lamentations of the Pale” and “Jaws of Darkness” are their take on doom metal, I’d only emphasize how much that take feels like High Reeper‘s own in being cognizant of the traditional metal and doom aspects of their sound and making them groove as fervently as they do. The Eastern Seaboard is lucky to have them.
A low-key highlight of 2024, the collaboration between Norwegian neofolkers Ævestaden and heavy progressive instrumentalists Kanaan — titled Langt, Langt Vekk and comprising nine songs of varied intent, arrangement and origin — resounds with creative depth. It’s in Norwegian, and plays a lot off of traditional folk instrumentation and vocal styles — not to mention the songs themselves, which are also traditionals — but as the two sides come together even just on a three-minute instrumental piece like “Fiskaren,” there’s an organic forested space rock to be found, and whether it’s the somehow-catchy “Farvel” or “Habbor og Signe,” the cosmic-leaning “Vallåt efter C.G. Färje” or the wistful progeadelia that resolves in “Vardtjenn,” the reverence for the material is palpable, and also the reverence for the process itself, for each of these two entities contributing to something grander than either might be able or inclined to conjure on their own. That the collection worked out to be gorgeous, both worldly and otherworldly, and to cast such a breadth while remaining cohesive in mood is a credit to all involved. It could’ve been an absolute mess. It very much is not.
Slugs are Legal Now contains two live sets from experimental doomers MC MYASNOI, one from Harpa and one from R6013, both venues in the band’s hometown of Reykjavík, Iceland. The setlists are identical at six-per, but the performances are varied in a way that becomes part of the personality of the whole, which is immersive in its droning stretches, sometimes harsher in the noise being made particularly on the rougher R6013 songs, but still able to be heavy in a piece like “Step on Ur Neck” in a way that feels conversant with the likes of Ufomammut or Boris, and neither the moody post-darkjazz of “Nytrogen” nor the drums-and-rumble-do-a-minute-or-two-of-free-psych “lea%rdi%rdx2%rcx” a short time later (watch out for your speakers with that one), do anything to dissuade that impression. “Terror Serpentine” finishes both halves of Slugs are Legal Now with 11 minutes of grim sprawl, and in the culmination, that it’s the keyboard that’s shredding instead of one or the other of the guitars feels suitable to the weirdo nuance MC MYASNOI seem to come by so naturally and pair with a progressive will to grow by screwing with convention. Not going to be for everybody, but those ready to take a risk might find the reward waiting.
Back after two years with further affirmation of their comfort with the EP format, Connecticut two-piece Turkey Vulture run a condensed gamut in the six songs and 12 minutes of On the List, with the duo of vocalist/guitarist/bassist Jessie May and drummer/backing vocalist Jim Clegg giving specifically Misfits-y early punk impressions on “Fiends Like Us,” which “Untitled” takes more of a garage angle on in following before they metal-up for “Dollhouse” and the 48-second grind-punker “Adults Destroy,” which leads to thrashing in “Harvest Moon” offset by doomly swing, and the closing “Jill the Ripper,” going out on a note that toys with goth Americana in the vein of The Bad Seeds and boasts banjo, guitar, percussion and, crucially, accordion from Steve Rodgers in a multifaceted guest spot. The accordion makes it. Turkey Vulture‘s output is generally pretty raw and that’s true with On the List as well, but there’s character in them coinciding with the flow from one aspect of their sound to the next between the songs, and the EP ends up conveying a lot about what works in the band for something that’s 12 minutes long.
Doubly-bassed Brussels longform doom explorers Ghost:Whale certainly don’t get any less consciousness melting on the second disc of Dive:Two, which manifests its plunge across three extended pieces each given the title “Dub:Whale” and assigned a Roman numeral, but by then the five songs of the album’s first 67 minutes (as opposed to the 57 of the concluding trilogy) have already passed in the hypnotic, cosmic-doom push of “Under Pressure” and the synth-laced chug nod in the second half of “Les Danses des Sorcieres” that seems to come to a head in the speedier “Ultimas Palabras.” The shortest inclusion at nine minutes and by its finish spending some time cruising around a Truckfightersian desert, “Ultimas Palabras” gives over to “Godzilla” and “Eye of the Storm,” a kind of second LP within the first CD, led into by the synth of “Godzilla” — not a cover — and arriving at the farthest reach in the electronics-infused expanses of “Eye of the Storm,” for which the drums mostly sit out and the noise spends 21 minutes venturing into the unknown. Ghost:Whale are not fucking around. And obviously the “Dub:Whale” tracks are a divergence in intention, harnessing the power of repetition in a different way, but either it’s a logical extension or my brain has just gone numb from the low-end. Fine in any case, honestly.
Do I really need to tell you these guys are up to some shenanigans? They called the band Sheepfucker and Kraut, for crying out loud. Heavy rock chicanery ensues over eight tracks rife with willful misbehavior, culminating with “Broner” after turning the album’s progression into a kind of playground running between heavy rock, classic and psychedelic instrumentalism, metal and jams. It’s not a little, and I guess a namedrop for Mr. Bungle is somewhat obligatory, but the Bulgarian outfit make themselves welcome in the swath of ground they cover, punkish in their glee on top of everything else in “Bobanei” and the pop-adjacent “Look at Me,” which would seem to have some satire behind its chorus but is a standout hook just the same. They’re not all nonsense, or at least not at the expense of their songwriting in “Rich Man” and “Jolly Roger,” or “Did You Know” mirroring “Look at Me” in the penultimate spot on side B, but if people having fun while making music is a problem for you, I mean, really, you might want to have a good long think on what that’s all about. Yeah, it’s over-the-top. That’s the idea.
In some ways, LungBurner‘s second LP of 2024, Natura Duale, reminds of earliest Yatra in bringing together vicious sludge metal and a breadth of atmosphere, but the Atlanta outfit have more of a post-metallic bent as the solo of “Barren” nonetheless dares to soar, and opener/longest track (immediate points) “Requiem” establishes the first of the album’s nods in a build of standalone guitar in the spirit of YOB, and in combination with a churn that wouldn’t feel out of place on Neurot and a crush in centerpiece “(Prey) Job” that opens to a classic stoner metal swagger in its verse, the righteousness here takes many forms, most of them dark, grueling and heavy — this definitely applies to the Celtic Frosting put on the proceedings by the finale “Astral Projection” — but not without a corresponding reach or purpose. LungBurner are served by the complexity of character, and Natura Duale grows more vivid as it goes.
With their material steeped in fantasy and horror/sci-fi lore, a goodly portion of it being of their own making, Michigan’s Bog Wizard continue to find the thread between tabletop gaming and sometimes monolithic sludge. The bulk of Journey Through the Dying Lands, which is their second release in a row done in collaboration with a game company, is dedicated to opener “I, Mycelium,” which stretches across 19:50 and unfolds in stages that don’t bother to choose between being brutal or fluid, the band winding up coming across as dug-in as one might expect Bog Wizard to be in the endeavor. There are two more studio tracks, in “Dodz Bringare,” which is black metal until it slams into the doom wall, and “Hagfish Dinner,” on which they depart for two minutes of harmonized chant-like vocals over resonant acoustic guitar. They’re not done yet as Ben Lombard (guitar/vocals), bassist Colby Lowman and drummer/vocalist Harlen Linke offer a glimpse at some live-on-stage banter before tearing into the thrasher “Stuck in the Muck” and backing it with another live track, this one a take on “Barbaria” from 2021’s Miasmic Purple Smoke (review here) that by the time it builds to its galloping finish has already long since demanded every bit of volume you can give it.
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 28th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Why call your band Sheepfucker and Kraut? I don’t really have a good answer for that question, since to my knowledge in the course of human history up to apparently seven years ago, no one had done it. It certainly gets the attention. I’m all for a bit of stonerly charm — one assumes the sheep finds it less humorous — but yeah, obviously the Sofia, Bulgaria-based outfit aren’t shooting for mass appeal. FM radio need not apply, which is just fine since FM radio also doesn’t exist anymore in this context.
However Mr. Sheepfucker and Mr. Kraut got together, the band built out to be an international four-piece with roots in Italy, Germany, Guatemala and Bulgaria, and their 2022 debut, Pipes — streaming below — rules. I hadn’t heard it until the announcement of the follow-up came through, because I suck at being cool like I suck at everything, but check out “Love is Dead” or the instrumental “Burning Churches” and the vibe should catch on quickly enough. Driving fuzz, catchy in a post-QOTSA careen, but more raucous and punk in “Fire” and self-aware in the stoner roll of “Cosmic Universal Studio.” Their alignment with Threechords Records brings word of a follow-up, Bring Your Sheep, which is to see release in October. I’ll go ahead and hope that the title isn’t indicative of a theme in the songs themselves.
All kidding aside — and I’m not kidding when I say The Obelisk doesn’t endorse fucking sheep, any other animals, furniture, or anything/anyone against their will — as much as the moniker makes Sheepfucker and Kraut seem like a toss-off, the songs are there. I haven’t heard Bring Your Sheep yet, but I consider myself lucky to have caught up to Pipes at this point and look forward to the follow-up to come.
The PR wire brought the signing and album announcement. Bring Your Sheep is due in October:
Since forming in 2017, the Sofia (Bulgaria) based duo quickly managed to get well known on the local stoner scene, but staying like that was no more acceptable for them. That’s why, in the beginning of 2019, the Sheepfucker (Sardegna, Italy) and Mr. Kraut (Germany) welcomed the bassist Riccardo Sunda (Italy).
Their rough heavy, a little bit chaotic stoner melodies with cracked powerful vocals turned groovier and the band became well known in the local rock clubs. The search for uniqueness led them to the doorstep of a thrash metal guitar player, Dr. Espresso (Guatemala), and their first full album, Pipes, was released on digital form in 2022.
Riccardo Sunda was replaced with a new bass player, Mr. Goodnews (Bulgaria) and that way, Sheepfucker and Kraut became an energetic, creative and aggressively unusual stoner band, originating from an Italian-German collaboration, enhanced with heavy Guatemalan fuzz, whose hypnotically heavy-thrash riffs were softened by the gentle note of the Bulgarian bass. The vocals were enriched by all the band members, and Dr. Espresso, who manipulatively and aggressively is using his Explorer guitar, is leading us to virulent rhythms and to the knotty basslines of Mr. Goodnews.
The band and the sound were finally completed, the band now shares the stage with WeedWolf, Godsleep, Villagers of Ioannina City, Mondo Generator etc, and gaining more and more experience, they started to work on their second album, “Bring Your Sheep”, which will be released in early October 2024 by Threechords Records on limited “black sheep” edition 180 gr vinyl, limited “sauerkraut” edition, CD and super limited cassettes.
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 3rd, 2023 by JJ Koczan
The play-whatever-the-hell-they-want Athenian heavy troupe Godsleep released their latest album, Lies to Survive (review here) earlier in 2023 through Ouga Booga and the Mighty Oug and Threechords Records, and when they did so in Spring, they undertook a pretty significant tour to support it. That makes the upcoming ‘Permanent Vacation’ run — which takes its name from one of the songs on the record; I doubt they’re huge Aerosmith fans, but you never know — their second such stint of the year, and I think it’s even bigger. Starting in September, it carries them into December with a steady amount of live activity, and the band assures below that there’s more to come. It says it right there on the poster.
And about the poster. Usually it’s my modus to transcribe tour dates from a poster so that I can have the shows searchable by text. You never know when, eight years from now, you might need to know what date Godsleep hit Mixtape 5 in Sofia, Bulgaria, for whatever reason. I would do that here, but the wretched truth is I’m pressed for time and I wanted to post about the tour, so in the balance of writing out this entire covers-three-months list or posting about it at all, I went with the latter. I do hope that you’ll forgive me for skipping this usual step that I have absolutely no doubt you wouldn’t have noticed was missing at all if I didn’t mention it because, and here’s another wretched truth, I remain the only one who gives a crap about that kind of thing. So be it.
If you click the poster, the image gets big enough to read. If you click it again — or just give it a nudge with your finger if you’re on your fancyphone — it’ll go away. I promise I’m doing my best.
Their announcement on socials was short and appears below:
GODSLEEP – Permanent Vacation European Tour 2023
We are really happy to be back on the road this Fall to visit old friends but also excited to meet some of you for the first time!
These are the first dates of our “Permanent Vacation” tour and we will announce more dates shortly!
Let us know if we missed anything !
Powdered by: Ouga Booga and the Mighty Oug / Tuned Tools Guitar Lab
Athens-based progressive heavy rockers Godsleep will release their new full-length, Lies to Survive, on April 7 through Ouga Booga and the Mighty Oug Recordings and Threechords Records. It is their third album overall and second to be fronted by Amie Makris behind 2018’s Coming of Age (review here), which set a more varied course from the fuzz that launched them with 2015’s Thousand Suns of Sleep (review here) — it’s also their first for the 1000mods-adjacent label, if you want to do the full three-two-one — and it argues quickly that perhaps half a decade ago the band hadn’t really come of age as much as that title indicated.
With Lies to Survive, Makris, guitarist Johnny Tsoumas, bassist Fedonas Ktenas and (making his first appearance) drummer Dennis Panagiotidis, answer the expansion that Coming of Age brought in exponential style, breaking out of genre confines to bring in elements of pop, hip-hop, electronic music, space rock, noise, punk, sociopolitical themes all drawn together by a prevalence of attitude that pushes over to righteous arrogance across 11 songs and a CD-era-reminiscent 56-minute runtime somehow squashed onto a single LP (I actually don’t know that all songs are on the vinyl, but it looks like there are 11 listed in the gatefold lyrics of the mockup from their Bandcamp, as shown here; maybe some tracks are edited?).
But if Godsleep are pushing the limits of format, that’s just one on the longer list of limitations being exceeded. Fuzz riffing is still at least a definite part of their foundation, and plays a significant role in songs like the punker “Pots of Hell” (video premiering below), “Room 404,” the careening “Cracks,” or “Egonation” a short time later, as well as the penultimate “Permanent Vacation,” but in each of those songs, the job of the guitar goes further than ‘establish riff, play riff, repeat riff’ by a broad margin. To wit, “Pots of Hell” greets its rhythmic shove with rants and raps and resolves in an intensity that leaves Makris no choice but to let out a scream and drop the mic before it gets to its willfully choppy but immersive finish, while “Room 404,” which follows immediately, is an even more expansive nod, interrupting itself early with timely hits on snare and guitar that come across like they’re meant to be intrusive before opening to a vaster fuzz in the hook.
Yeah, sure, then they introduce the keyboard at about three minutes in and by the time they’re done, they’re in a psych-guitar-topped dub jam. Meanwhile, “Cracks” leans aggro in its hook in paying off the hint dropped by the punch of Ktenas‘ bass in the verse, dropping to stick clicks after its second chorus only to tear itself open and let the fuzz back out at a run before it’s three minutes into its grand total of four, “Egonation” uses up-strummed twanger fuzz at its outset but becomes a lesson in how to build tension and bring it to a point of explosion, and “Permanent Vacation” goes prog metal in its construction, vaguely Tool-ish but more restless (not a complaint) until maybe-probably-electronic percussion beats begin a midsection shift that grows larger until it opens to a triumphant play on Sabbath‘s “Hole in the Sky” before slipping back into the verse with a nigh-on-motorik thrust and more hypnosis that seems somehow also to answer the trance resulting from the dug-in ending of “Pots of Hell,” demonstrating the lethal consciousness at work behind Lies to Survive‘s sometimes manic procession.
And if it seems like I’m bouncing around the tracklisting here (you can see it listed below in order for reference), that’s not a coincidence. The songs are in part united by the tour de force performance put on by Makris, whose anarchist declarations in the initially-keyboard-backed leadoff “Booster” — “You won’t find an apologist here” among them — work to quickly establish a defiant tone that Godsleep reinforce by shifting within that three-and-a-half-minute cut to a crunch born of noise rock executed around the first but by no means last pattern of circular guitar from Tsoumas — see also “Pavement,” “Breakfast,” and the aptly-titled capper “Last Song,” where every now and then a little flourish is thrown in to remind that no, it’s not a loop — before “Pots of Hell” takes this cue and runs with it, the drums, bass and accent guitar backing Makris for the forceful, semi-spoken verse before the next bombastic hook.
It is by no means the last surprise in store on Lies to Survive, with “Saturday” dropping ’90s alt rock references lyrical and instrumental, delving into Soundgarden-ism in layered vocal harmonies before riding a suitably long guitar solo but shifting back to its chorus before it’s done, or the toying with pop and techno in the outset of “Better Days” prior to its own introduction of the guitar, a mini-epic for side B that feels at distant remove from, say, “Breakfast,” with its good-fun Casio-style backbeat and a rare fadeout to transition into “Pavement,” which ends its first verse with the line “Now it’s time to party” and seems very much to mean it if the brash and funky groove that ensues is anything to go by, topped with another impressive rant in the spirit of “Pots of Hell.”
In addition to Makris‘ standout work and the marked increase in stylistic range throughout, Lies to Survive is also the first Godsleep album not to be recorded by George Leodis (also of 1000mods), as the band partnered with John Sotiropoulos on production (John Fuho also co-engineered) and mixing at Wreck it Sound Studios in Corinth, and that choice very much becomes a part of the character of the whole work, whether it’s the bass emphasis in the last build of “Booster” or the forward vocal layers at the start of “Better Days” or even the ambient stretch that caps the record after the end of “Last Song,” where Makris enters at 6:45 into an otherwise instrumental eight-minute stretch to deliver a resonant epilogue to the proceedings. The production is another tie bringing the songs together, but that proves ultimately to be as much about consciousness of the choices being made as the tones or overarching flow, each song feeling thought-out and considered, getting what it needs in terms of arrangement while mainlining far too much adrenaline to be anything close to staid.
Lies to Survive is not a record one would have predicted eight years ago that Godsleep would ever release, even before changes in lineup are considered. Still audible are the riffy roots and a current of Mediterranean roil, even as “Last Song” begins its long adventure through keyboard storytelling and proggy stomp, but the most powerful impression Godsleep make on third full-length is of having the ability to be genuinely untethered by genre considerations, to be free to go where the tracks — and, deeper, the parts of those tracks — take them, and to know when indeed to let the songs lead themselves. They do not sound at all like they’re finished exploring, but no question Lies to Survive is a landmark for them in unveiling the scope of their intent as it is today, pairing awareness of that with the knowledge born of experience that not all of their audience is going to be on board for the sundry turns in the material. The album is bolder for that, and its boldness might be the greatest unifier of all.
The video for “Pots of Hell” premieres below, followed by more from the PR wire.
Please enjoy:
Godsleep, “Pots of Hell” official video premiere
Formed in 2010, Godsleep have been working relentlessly since then, walking their way to entering the heavy rock pantheon. Having been described as one of the most promising bands of the heavy/psychedelic rock sound, from their very beginning, the Athenian heavy rock roller-coaster based its very existence on powerful live appearances, including the participation in high profile rock festivals all around Europe and a full European tour in support of their critically acclaimed debut album “Thousand Sons of Sleep” (Rock Freaks Records, 2015).
2018 welcomes the release of “Coming of Age”, Godsleep’s sophomore full length album, which was released by legendary Greek underground rock record label The Lab Records and garnered strong reactions from both press and fans. Having kept the core ingredients of their sound intact: heavy/fuzzy guitars, thick bass lines and powerful groovy drumming, Godsleep enriched their songwriting with uniquely addictive female vocals which vary from psychedelic howls and haunting melodies to throat-ripping edgy screams.
Now five years later, Godsleep return with their third album “Lies to Survive” to be released by “Ouga Booga and the Mighty Oug” Records in April 2023. This new effort showcases the band’s penchant for layering fuzzy, infectious riffs with engaging melodies, yet time is also shows their eagerness to branch out into other areas bringing in elements of noise-rock and even punk-rock elements like on the raucous “Pots of Hell”.
Tracklisting: 1. Booster 2. Pots of Hell 3. Room 404 4. Saturday 5. Cracks 6. Breakfast 7. Pavement 8. Better Days 9. Egonation 10. Permanent Vacation 11. Last Song
All music written, arranged and performed by Godsleep Produced by John Sotiropoulos & Godsleep Mixed by John Sotiropoulos Engineered by John Sotiropoulos & John Fuho Recorded at Wreck it Sound Studios, Corinth, GR Mixed at Wreck it Sound Studios, Corinth, GR Mastered by John Sotiropoulos at Wreck it Sound Studios, Corinth, GR
[Click play above to see the premiere of Gomer Pyle’s ‘Laeviculus’ from their new album, Before I Die I…, out Feb. 28 on The Lab and Three Chords Records.]
A new full-length from Dutch-native heavy rockers Gomer Pyle isn’t something that simply happens every year or every other year. Or every five. Or 10. To wit, Before I Die I… is the third Gomer Pyle album, arriving as a 2LP through The Lab Records and Three Chords Records, and it follows behind their 1999 debut, Eurohappy, and its 2008 follow-up, Idiots Savants. While it’s true they’ve had a couple EPs out along the way, the latest of them being 2016’s three-song GP — which boasted “Side Kings,” also featured here as the longest track at 11:51 — three records over the course of 21 years, a one-per-seven-years average is still not a rate one would call prolific. One could spend months waxing poetic about the different world that 2020 presents as opposed to 2008, but the occasion bringing the band — with the listed membership of guitarist/vocalist Mark Brouwer, guitarist Mark van Loon, keyboardist Danny Gras (who also recorded), bassist Danny Huijgens and drummer Kees Haverkamp — together for Before I Die I… is more personal, and the clue is in the name. Like Astrosoniq‘s 2018 offering, Big Ideas Dare Imagination (review here), the title Before I Die I… is an extrapolation from Bidi, the first name of former manager Bidi van Drongelen, who passed away in June 2017. So that covers why.
As to how long some of these songs have been kicking around, the easiest guess considering the prior appearance of “Side Kings” is a mix of newer and older ideas, and Gomer Pyle‘s sound works much the same way, be it the progressive grunge of the penultimate “Your Demon,” which taps Alice in Chains-style harmonies and darkened vibes before resolving in a sudden thrust of harder-hitting noisy jaggedness, or the fluidity across 10-minute opener “Remember the Days,” which gradually makes its way in over the first two-plus minutes and continues to unfold patiently despite an underlying rhythmic tension and a chorus of the type that one ends up hoping will be stuck in the head when it’s over, with just a current of pop-style wistfulness in the vocals that finds its payoff in the finale “Cyclus,” amid an instrumental build that the band gracefully let go into the ether after just four minutes of repeated lyrical structures and harmonizing. Across the 62 minutes and nine songs of Before I Die I…‘s span — and it is a span — the group make a case for themselves as being among the great lost generation of pre-social media underground heavy rock, but as with their countrymen in Astrosoniq, that “heavy rock” in their sound is really just a launch point for broader exploration.
Whether it’s “The Buzzer” bringing its hook after “Remember the Days” or the winding, swinging and brash “Scum Trade” or the insistent push of “Nicky McGee,” which follows — that one-two punch arriving, by the way, on the other end of the gorgeous unfurling of “Side Kings,” which is enough of a highlight that one hopes the 2LP positions it as its own side, simply because it deserves to stand alone — Gomer Pyle triumph through the varied currents of their songwriting, tying together sonic diversity through performance and distinctive tone and melody.
That’s not new math by any means, and while one wouldn’t accuse them of being revolutionary — for one thing, the word implies an urgency that despite some of their speedier grooves is undercut by the years between their releases — neither are Gomer Pyle anything resembling derivative in style. Rather, they present enough changes and shifts across Before I Die I… that one never quite knows where the next song is going to go, and that lack of predictability only makes finding out all the more thrilling as “Nicky McGee” rough-and-tumbles its way into the languid eight-minute stretch of “We Are One,” where the sweet and psychedelic guitar melody signals the emotional resonance at its core throughout the keyboard-laced linear build to come, meeting with a due payoff.
The subsequent “Laeviculus” is charged with distilling the sort of fluidity brought by “We Are One” and perhaps marrying it to some of the more straightforward impulses presented throughout Before I Die I…, but it does this across a six-minute run that still wants nothing for reach or memorability, thanks to a standout guitar solo in its second half, a particularly strong vocal, and a sense of nuance that extends to the timing of the snare hits around the five-minute mark. As it surges late and makes its sudden departure, it’s up to “Your Demon” to continue the momentum, which it does with a classic heavy rock swaggering groove, albeit one dressed in grunge melody and a quirky intertwining of guitar lines in the verse, perhaps hinting at some of the more open toying with structure that follows, but if there’s resolution to be had, it comes not only in the finality of the last thuds in “Your Demon” itself, but in the opening piano lines of “Cyclus,” which is, again, gorgeous and rife with class and sincerity without pretense, keeping a current of experimentalism in low-end electronic pulses underneath the emergent build, but finding its footing in the dramatic and sing-along ready vocals, though they’re there for a surprisingly short time.
Aren’t we all.
I did not know Bidi van Drongelen, and seeing the impact his loss had on the community of which he was a part has only made that more regrettable, but grief is universal and touches everyone at one point or another to some measure. The manner in which Gomer Pyle channel that into the scope of Before I Die I… is the type of homage not simply everyone could pay, channeling not just the sadness of losing someone who matters to you, but representing and celebrating the beautiful, complex wholeness of a life worth missing. Even separated from this context, its emotional crux is striking and powerful, and the multifaceted nature of the band’s approach stands up to whatever angle or read one might want to put to it in craft, performance and presentation.
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 1st, 2019 by JJ Koczan
Issued at what might be considered the tail end of the CD era in 2008, Idiots Savants was the second album from Netherlands-based heavy rockers Gomer Pyle. They’ve yet to put out a third. And at 57 minutes, it’s long by today’s standards, but what a record to get lost in. From the motorik launch to the psychedelic immersion that takes hold later, the progressive heavy rock and grunge that arrives late in brooding fashion and the character and grace of their craft on the whole, it’s the kind of long-player that might have someone antsy for a proper follow-up even 11 years later.
Or 12 years later, as it were, since the band’s third full-length will reportedly be released in 2020. It’s been in the works for a while, so here’s hoping that comes together. A Nov. 29 reissue for Idiots Savants is welcome news for the interim though, and The Lab and Threechords Records seem intent on giving it some long overdue due, so right on. Still going to hold out hope for a new-stuff materialization of some sort — to be fair, they did put out an EP in 2016 — next year. Doesn’t even require actual physical effort to figuratively cross the fingers, so there you go.
Reissue info follows, courtesy of the PR wire:
The Lab Records and Threechords Records, proudly present: GOMER PYLE – IDIOTS SAVANTS 2019 reissue
The Lab Records in collaboration with Threechords Records proudly present Gomer Pyle’s “Idiots Savants”, originally released in 2008. This masterpiece will be released on November 29, 2019 in limited edition of 300 copies double orange vinyl with gatefold sleeve.
Release date 29/11/19
Gomer Pyle is a Psychedelic Stoner/ Grunge Rock band from South Netherlands.
Gomer Pyle is an unconventional band with a broad musical range and musical interest.
Each song is a genre on its own. It is all about the unconventional creative process. The autonomous journey where goals or not to please or fulfill (commercial) expectations, but to give way to creativity and the art of music and related arts. Through the years Gomer Pyle has gathered a great accumulation of fellow-thinkers and musical friends.
The band was formed in 1994 when the grunge scene came to a full. One year later they released their first EP “Honeybunny”. In 1999, the Eurohappy CD was released, and some time later the EP “Angelseagirl”. But after some bigger gigs the band went into a long hibernation. In 2006 Gomer Pyle introduced drummer Sander Evers and started a new musical era.
In 2007 the EP “GP” (limited promo pack edition) was released. In 2008 they released their masterpiece “Idiots Savants”. Until today referred to as a ‘stoner icon’ by many. Idiots Savants is a great mix of psychedelic jams and hard-straight stoner rock.
In 2011 the band fell apart due to colliding personalities and individual issues. After all those years it seemed Gomer Pyle was done for.
But after a long period of musical vacuum, the urge to put life back in to the band rose strong. Mark Brouwer and Mark van Loon, historically the main composers of Gomer Pyle, hooked up with Kees Haverkamp (drums) and found a great new bass player in Danny Huijgens. In this setting creativity found its way and set the band back on track like never before.
In 2016 they released an EP, did some great gigs in the Netherlands and Europe and after that started writing songs for a new and upcoming album.
In 2019 the band signed with The Lab Records (GR) and Threechords Records (BG). On late November, the two labels will reissue “Idiots Savants“ in 300 double orange vinyl with gatefold sleeve, and in 2020 – their upcoming new album “Before I Die I”.
Gomer Pyle is: Mark Brouwer: Guitar, vocals Mark van Loon: Guitar Danny Gras: Keys Danny Huijgens: Bass Kees Haverkamp: Drums
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 14th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
Later this month, Athenian heavy rockers Godsleep will embark on a round of tour dates that will find them not only in their native Greece, but also Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Switzterland and Croatia. Eight countries. The tour takes place over the course of most of November as it covers this swath of the continent, and it finds the four-piece out supporting their late-2018 sophomore outing, Coming of Age (review here), which came out last November through The Lab Records and Threechords Records as the follow-up to 2015’s Thousand Sons of Sleep (review here). The second LP marked the arrival of vocalist Amie Makris to the lineup, which gave the songs a refreshed feel and a due amount of soulfulness to go along with their fuzzy push in tracks like “Unlearn” and the dynamic shifts of “Karma is a Kid.”
Touring a year after the release, well, it’s probably not ideal, but you work with what you’ve got and no doubt Godsleep will make the run worth the trip one way or the other. Dates follow, as well as the Coming of Age stream, should you want to get reacquainted:
GODSLEEP – EUROPEAN TOUR 2019
This fall we are on a mission.
Follow us on this trip along the roads of Europe and let’s find out how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Long live rock ‘n’ roll!
See you down the hall…
30.10 IOANNINA (GR), CASTILLO 31.10 SOFIA (BG), MIXTAPE 01.11 BUCHAREST (RO), EXPIRAT 02.11 CLUJ (RO), FLYING CIRCUS 03.11 TIMISOARA (RO), CAPCANA 05.11 BUDAPEST (HU), ROBOT 06.11 LODZ (PL), MAGNETOFON 07.11 KATOWICE (PL), FAUST 08.11 TORUN (PL), DWA SWIATY 09.11 BERLIN (DE), HEADZ UP FEST 10.11 HAMBURG (DE), MS STUBNITZ 12.11 TRIER (DE), LUCKY’S LUKE 13.11 FRANKFURT (DE), DREIKÖNIGSKELLER FFM 14.11 MANNHEIM (DE), JUGENDHAUS SCHÖNAU 15.11 POTSDAM (DE), ARCHIV 16.11 LEUVEN (BE), JH SOJO 19.11 WEIMAR (DE), C.KELLER 21.11 LUCERNE (CH), BRUCH BROTHER’S 22.11 RADEBEUL (DE), BARNYARD 23.11 SALZBURG (AT), DOME OF ROCK FESTIVAL 24.11 ZAGREB (HR), KSET 27.11 THESSALONIKI (GR), ROVER
