Posted in Whathaveyou on January 27th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Maybe fair to think of this as the second part of the story. Gnod, from Salford in the UK, and White Hills, from New York in the New York, are set to release their third collaborative outing, Drop Out III, on March 21 through Thrill Jockey. The special performance at Roadburn Festival, which was announced at the same time as the album itself, it turns out will be the launch point for a European tour together as they take the rest of April and into May to develop what will surely be an out-there onstage persona between the two outfits.
I have to imagine somewhere, at the behest of somebody, at least one of these shows will be recorded. Would you be surprised if a ‘Live at Roadburn’ showed up at some point later this year or in 2026? Me neither, but the more the merrier. The tour runs April 18 through May 4, as the PR wire tells it:
Gnod & White Hills announce their debut collaborative tour throughout the UK and EU this Spring including Roadburn Festival
Gnod & White Hills have announced a full collaborative tour throughout the UK and Europe this Spring, including their debut collaborative performance at Roadburn Festival. The tour comes just after the release of the newest release in their Drop Out series, Drop Out III, out Mar. 21st.
Manchester’s Gnod and New York’s White Hills stand as titans of Psychedelic & Space Rock. Together they bend the very notions of what rock can do, seemingly suspending our sense of time. Their alchemical chemistry and a fateful session at the Dropout Studio in Camberwell gave rise to the legendary, ongoing series of records under the moniker Drop Out. The records became an influential and sprawling series of extended pieces that remain touchstones of contemporary psychedelia. Having been called “absolutely essential,” “best I have heard – ever,” “A masterpiece,” the Drop Out series finally gets its definitive edition.
Drop Out III stands as a wholly new iteration of Gnod & White Hills’ initial collaboration. Reaching well beyond a mere reissue, Drop Out III is replete with sounds recorded in what the bands term the “Drop Out era” that have never been heard before. Drop Out III’s new elements make clear the unified ethos of both bands. The expanded versions of these timeless pieces epitomize the sense of possibility brimming throughout the album. That an album over 15 years out from its inception could continue to grow well past its roots is a testament to Gnod & White Hills’ ability as artists and collaborators.
Gnod & White Hills tour dates Apr. 18 – Tilburg, NL – Roadburn Festival Apr. 19 – Berlin, DE – Neue Zukunft Apr. 20 – Hamburg, DE – Stubnitz Apr. 22 – Stockholm, SE – HUS7 Apr. 23 – Oslo, NO – Goldie Apr. 24 – Copenhagen, DK – Loppen Apr. 25 – Sønderborg, DK – Sønderborghus Apr. 26 – Kiel, DE – Schaubude im Hinterhof Apr. 27 – Nijmegen, NL – Doornroosje Apr. 28 – Brussels, BE – Magasin 4 Apr. 29 – London, UK – Dingwalls Apr. 30 – Brighton, UK – Hope & Ruin May 1 – Falmouth, UK – Cornish Bank May 2 – Bristol, UK – Strange Brew May 3 – Hebden Bridge, UK – Trades Club May 4 – Newcastle, UK – Star and Shadow Cinema
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 27th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Does it make perfect sense that the forthcoming release from Gnod and White Hills would be hard to classify? If you’ve ever encountered either outfit on their own even in passing, never mind their prior collaborative output, probably. The kraut-worshiping psych heads share an affinity for digging into the outer expanses of ‘far out, man,’ and as the title Drop Out III implies, they’ve gone down this road together twice before.
But of course the story is more complicated than just that. Drop Out III expands on previous joint efforts and features material recorded around the time of their initial offering, as well as tracks from each band separately. Is it a split? A collaboration? A reissue? A new album? A little bit of all of them, it seems like.
A nine-minute sampling is available in the form of lead single “Run-A-Round,” and as the PR wire notes, the two entities will share the stage for a special thus-far-one-off at Roadburn 2025 in the Netherlands next April.
Art, info and audio follows:
Gnod & White Hills announce the next release in their legendary, ongoing collaborative series, Drop Out III, Due out Mar. 21st, 2025
Gnod & White Hills set to perform a Drop Out collaborative set for the first time ever at Roadburn Festival 2025
The legendary team-up of masters of psych rock Gnod & White Hills have announced the next release in their lauded ongoing collaborative series Drop Out. As titans of the exploratory rock community, their alchemical chemistry gave rise to the ongoing work that is Drop Out, originally conceived and assembled in the late 2000s from across the Atlantic Ocean which was later iterated by the more widely released Drop Out II. This new edition, Drop Out III, further expounds on the lysergic glory of previous versions with new arrangements, mixes, bonus tracks, and songs assembled as they were initially intended. Drop Out III will be released on double LP March 21st, 2025 with a full album of downloadable bonus material. Gnod & White Hills will be performing a collaborative set including material from Drop Out for the first time ever at Roadburn Festival 2025.
Along with the album’s announcement, Gnod & White Hills have shared the new expanded version of “Run-A-Round,” a loping cosmic excursion with cascading melodies that unfurl into one another, showcasing their fresh take on the track while retaining it’s intoxicating potency.
Drop Out III stands as a wholly new iteration of Gnod & White Hills’ initial collaboration. Reaching well beyond a mere reissue, Drop Out III is replete with sounds recorded in what the bands term the “Drop Out era” that have never been heard before. The double LP’s first two sides feature instrumentation and arrangements originally recorded but not included on previous releases. Embodying the two bands’ inquisitive natures, the already hypnotic flow of the songs take on new character, their timbres shifted and color palettes swirled in deft mixes. Classics like the single “Run-A-Round” and the eponymous “Drop Out” maintain their motorik drive and fizzing melodies, yet capture a new spirit. The latter two sides feature pieces never before included on vinyl, including the beautifully serene “Air Streams” in its original droning arc, previously broken bisected into separate tracks with completely different arrangements. In addition to those intoxicating pieces that will sound familiar and reinvigorated to fans, the album comes with a full album’s worth of bonus material, all crafted around the Drop Out era. White Hills’ “Decorating Time” (later repurposed into “Undressing Time”) showcases the depth of the band’s subtlety, rich with minute turns and a twist of psychedelic ambience. “Nothing NEU! Under the Sky” captures the invigorating pulse and dynamics of Gnod’s live performances.
Drop Out III’s new elements make clear the unified ethos of both bands. The expanded versions of these timeless pieces epitomize the sense of possibility brimming throughout the album. That an album over 15 years out from its inception could continue to grow well past its roots is a testament to Gnod & White Hills’ ability as artists and collaborators.
Drop Out III tracklist
LP 1: 1. Drop Out * 2. Run-A-Round * 3. Wellhang * 4. Spaced Man *
LP 2: 5. Elka * 6. Undressing Time ^ 7. Air Streams ^ 8. Unify ^
LP3 – digital only: 1. Per Sempre * 2. Decorating Time ~ 3. Changesaw + 4. Model Citizen ~ 5. Nothing Neu! Under The Sky + 6. Hole In My Eye ~ 7. Ovid’s Poem ~
* New expanded version % Never appeared on vinyl previously ^ Never previously released ~ White Hills track recorded around DO + Gnod track recorded around DO
Posted in Reviews on October 1st, 2024 by JJ Koczan
With a sound so impeccably Californian it sounds like it’s skate-surfing itself on a Back to the Future II hoverboard, San Francisco’s Terry Gross — guitarist/vocalist Phil Manley, bassist/vocalist Donny Newenhouse and drummer Phil Becker — offer much more than encouraging self-assessment on their second long-player, Huge Improvement. In relation to their 2021 debut, Soft Opening (review here), the new four-track/34-minute semi-cosmic burner answers a few pivotal questions more or less immediately.
Foremost, it proves Terry Gross — who cheekily borrow their moniker from the host of National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” interview program, produced at WHYY in Philadelphia — aren’t a one-off, which since Newenhouse and Manley (the latter also of Trans Am) are owners of El Studio, where the likes of Hot Lunch, Mammatus, Moon Duo and scores of others have recorded, and Becker (also also Trans Am) is the house engineer at El Studio who in the last year-plus alone has produced albums for the likes of Mondo Drag, Haurun and Carlton Melton, they very easily could have been. They are not lacking for other things to do, any of them.
Starting with a kind of wakeup groan, or maybe some disbelief as you drive by the shop depicted on the cover — reportedly a real place selling, you guessed it, stuff made out of hides — “Sheepskin City” commences a rush that seems to continue front-to-back. It doesn’t, actually, but within the first 90 seconds of the album, Terry Gross have pushed a kind of cosmic mania, the guitar spacing out as the drums propel the overdrive. The opener’s intro is all very tightly wound, very dug in, and gives a hint at some of the jammier thrust that Huge Improvement will foster later on, if not necessarily in the 12-minute galaxy-churner “Full Disclosure.”
Like “Sales Pitch,” which follows, and “Effective Control,” which closes the record after the big slowdown and noise-laced march in said penultimate cut, “Sheepskin City” is over seven minutes long but less than eight, and that’s likely a result of how the songs were built out of the jams and on the riffy foundations upon which they seem to be based rather than something that was implemented consciously on the part of Newenhouse, Becker and/or Manley. Certainly it’s not impossible for them to have said, “okay, we’re gonna have three seven-minute songs and one 12-minute song” — it would be weird but appropriate enough to the spirit of the proceedings, and you never know when bands have producers in the lineup; it’s arguable that a level of self-awareness if part of the point if you want to go by the LP titles — but either way, it gives the album a shape and something of a symmetry from the listener’s standpoint, highlighting the departure in the longer piece while seeming to understate the shifts in character between the others.
If that comes off feeling clever, there are a multitude of instrumental twists and turns of phrase in the sometimes-harmonized vocal melodies to back up Terry Gross giving actual consideration to this material, and the progressivism that emerges as a result of this doesn’t come at the expense of the songs. The sheer technical ability to pull off some of what they do is tempered by verse and chorus melodies holding a catchy track together as something more than a self-indulgent wank. The already-mentioned Mammatus are a partial comparison point for the shimmer in Terry Gross‘ guitar, and from Big Business to Psychic Trash, the urgency with which even the more lumbering descent in “Sales Pitch” is executed is definitively West Coast punk-rooted capital-‘h’ Heavy. There is no mistaking it. A band from where I live couldn’t sound like Huge Improvement if they wanted to, and everybody here is too angry and cold to try.
This sense is further reinforced with a penchant for over-the-top shred that’s as likely to manifest on snare drum as guitar and feels feels born of an Earthless influence, but again, met with Terry Gross‘ more individualized songcraft, finding a middle-ground between taut structuralizing and songs-as-excursion freakouttery, carving a niche for the band despite the familiarity of some of the elements being put to use. The way “Sales Pitch” resolves its earlier frantic space boogie with a bassline-led comedown in the second half after a particularly fervent build is consuming and brims with purpose as Manley‘s guitar reaches into an echo chamber of squibblies and Newenhouse carries a complementary melody to gradually lull Becker‘s drums into the slower final movement, a showcase for the vocals punctuated by thud and crash. “Full Disclosure” is suitably all-in, languid with a threatening rumble that builds into a ground-scorch of feedbacking guitar undulations, and the groove becomes a deceptively patient flow into addled bliss. That it’s all so Californy in style is the beginning of what’s working about it, not the sum total.
It’s probably noteworthy too that the members of Terry Gross have also contributed in a variety of fashions to that impression — i.e., the sound of heavy CA — over the last however many years/decades, but that’s less immediately relevant in part because Huge Improvement, thankfully, feels fresh in its approach and balance. The hard, clear strum of “Effective Control” and the vocal melody that sits on top once the riff is established are a willful re-grounding after “Full Disclosure,” righteous in their showcase of dynamic and calling back to the energy and at-full-impulse engagement of the record’s launch in “Sheepskin City,” but able to leave off with both a more memorable hook and a psychedelic-wash finish with Becker‘s galloping snare punching through.
There’s a lot happening in that finale and the album more broadly, but Terry Gross are right there the whole time, brighter in resonance and encouraging the listener to keep up as much as possible. The level of activity will be too much for some heads not wanting to be spun — so it goes — but Huge Improvement gives more in terms of the band declaring themselves, revealing Soft Opening as tentative in a way the title spoke to, and is exciting for what it might portend as well as its own accomplishments. If they continue on this trajectory, it will be fascinating to learn what they decide to call the next one, but there’s plenty to chew on here in the meantime, and more revealed with each runthrough. I liked Soft Opening, so I won’t disparage it by saying Huge Improvement lives up to its title — admittedly, it’s arguable — but it does make Terry Gross feel both underhyped and deeper in their knowledge of who they are as a group. They just might knock you on your ass, but they’ll also stick out a hand to help you up after.
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 25th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Oh my goodness, yes. I gotta be honest with you, when Terry Gross‘ debut, Soft Opening (review here), came out through Thrill Jockey in 2021, I didn’t dare hope for a follow-up. Nobody in the expansive, melody-minded, super-duper-West-Coast cosmic-shove-boogie rocking San Francisco trio seemed to be lacking for other stuff going musically, and while I thought the record kicked ass like Earthless if they stuck a fork in an electrical socket and still do, it wasn’t ever super-hyped in terms of dudes drooling over it on social media or whatnot. I’m sure they got critical praise. Sometimes I forget I don’t actually read reviews.
But not only will Terry Gross have a new album out Sept. 20 (still on Thrill Jockey), and not only is it self-assessed as a Huge Improvement, but the leadoff track “Sheepskin City” is streaming now. “Sheepskin City” — you can see the sign on the LP’s cover below and read the story from the PR wire in the blue text — is one of four on the record, and it’s a burner the way you think of stars fusing hydrogen into helium atoms. I can’t wait to be obsessed with this album and to annoy my family by having it on constantly.
Here’s looking forward:
Terry Gross announce their exhilarating sophomore album ‘Huge Improvement’ out September 20th
Terry Gross is the beloved Bay Area rock trio featuring members of Trans Am, Oneida and the Fucking Champs, who also run San Francisco’s acclaimed El Studio (Moon Duo, Big Business, Wooden Shjips)
Terry Gross, the trio of drummer Phil Becker, bassist Donny Newenhouse, and guitarist Phil Manley (Trans Am) announce their exhilarating sophomore album with the typically self-deprecating title of Huge Improvement. Coming September 20th, the album was written and recorded at El Studio, the band’s studio where artists such as Moon Duo, Big Business and Wooden Shjips have worked. Huge Improvement captures the trio’s psychedelic excursions with granular precision.
We are pleased to share bracing new single “Sheepskin City” – a gallivanting ode to impermanence that runs at full-tilt, classic riffing pushed to sonic extremes and invoking prog-rock drum and guitar heroics. Named for the San Francisco business (also featured on the album’s cover art), “Sheepskin City” exemplifies the band’s balance between absurdist humor and a genuine concern for preservation.
“Sheepskin City was always a perplexing oddball place on a busy corner in San Francisco’s Mission district,” notes Becker. “They hung the same weathered ragged sheepskins out front daily. Was it a front for something else? Something about it just made you smile when you drove by it. If Sheepskin City is still there, things are alright. Then, one day, after decades of being there, it’s gone!” Newenhouse adds: “For us it became sort of an analog for the future and how technological advancements will most likely result in some sort of ultimate letdown.” Manley continues: “These are places in the neighborhood where we have our recording studio, El Studio, which is where we write, rehearse and record. It’s our home base. We were capturing a moment in time. Everything is temporary.”
The four mammoth slabs that make up Huge Improvement are driving rock adventures, taking on a rollicking joy ride. The record welcomes cathartic release peppered with humor, delivering their observations on the changes on community and specifically their Bay Area community with considerable humor. Terry Gross’s Huge Improvement is a welcome release in this time of change and uncertainty and yes, a subtle attempt to get to speak to a journalist they admire, Terry Gross.
Tracklisting 1. Sheepskin City 2. Sales Pitch 3. Full Disclosure 4. Effective Control
Terry Gross are: Phil Becker – Drums Phil Manley – Guitar/Vocals Donny Newenhouse – Bass/Vocals
Posted in Whathaveyou on April 5th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
In the interest of honesty, I’ll tell you I’ve felt like I missed the boat on Sumac pretty much since their debut, The Deal (review here), came out in 2015, and now as they make public the first single from their four-song 2LP fifth album, The Healer, with all due ethereal presence amid its early, chugging post-metallic march, it’s much the same. I won’t deny the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Aaron Turner (ex-Isis, Mammifer, House of Low Culture, etc.), bassist Brian Cook (Russian Circles, Botch, ex-These Arms are Snakes, etc.) and drummer Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists, Genghis Tron, etc.) were a force to behold on stage when I was lucky enough to see them in 2019, and I won’t deny that they have an individualized creative breadth of their own that’s vast enough to justify their not being called a supergroup despite the pedigree in parentheses above — you can hear it in the 12-minute course of “Yellow Dawn,” to be sure — I’ve just never managed to get all the way on board with the hype as I probably should have considering who these guys are and the work they’ve done in this band.
A personal failing, then. The American branch of the style in which Sumac loosely reside — post-metal, though there’s plenty of harsh noise in “Yellow Dawn” too if you want to go by genre elements, never mind the angular crush that resolves the lead single’s 12 minutes — could use a new figurehead. Maybe it’s these guys, though their ambitions or at least the framing of the promotion around them have always come across as less adherent to categorization. I don’t know. They’re touring. They’ll probably tour more than this. Fair enough.
The Healer is out June 21 on Thrill Jockey, who sent the following down the PR wire:
SUMAC announce new album The Healer, out Jun. 21st; share new track “Yellow Dawn”
SUMAC, the Northwest-based trio SUMAC consisting of guitarist/vocalist Aaron Turner, bassist Brian Cook, and drummer Nick Yacyshyn have announced their new album The Healer, out on June 21st on 2xLP. Alongside the album’s announcement, the trio have shared the single “Yellow Dawn,” an epic that churns meditative organ by Faith Coloccia into a glacial stomp that the band obliterates into swirls of airtight riffing and untethered, intoxicating improvisations.
On The Healer, recorded and mixed by Scott Evans (Kowloon Walled City, Thrice, Great Falls, Autopsy), SUMAC deepens its multi-faceted exploration into the parallel experiences of creation and destruction. Over the course of 4 tracks in 76 minutes, SUMAC presents a sequence of shifting movements which undergo a constant process of expansion, contraction, corruption and regrowth.
This musical methodology reflects the thematic nature of the record – narratives of experiential wounding as gateways to empowerment and evolution, both individual and collective. The group’s interpolation of melody, drone, improvisation, and complex riffing becomes a transmogrifying act embodying the depth of human experience. In its highest aspiration it mirrors our ability to endure mortal and spiritual challenges, through which we may emerge with an increased capacity for understanding, empathy, love of self and others. Dismal though the subterranean pits of The Healer may at first appear, from them can be felt the unwavering determination to embrace life, acknowledge interdependence, and honor the gift of existence.
SUMAC – The Healer tracklist: 1. World of Light 2. Yellow Dawn 3. New Rites 4. The Stone’s Turn
In support of the release of The Healer, SUMAC will be touring throughout North America, including a set at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival alongside Moor Mother, whom they recently recorded with.
SUMAC tour dates Jun. 21 – Vancouver, BC – Fortune Sound Club (Vancouver International Jazz Fest) ^ Jun. 22 – Seattle, WA – Clock-Out Lounge # Jun. 23 – Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios # Jun. 25 – Chico, CA – Naked Lounge Coffee # Jun. 26 – San Francisco, CA – Bottom of the Hill # Jun. 27 – Oxnard, CA – Mrs. Olson’s # Jun. 28 – Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon * Jun. 29 – Los Angeles, CA – 2220 Arts + Archives ~ Jun. 30 – Las Vegas, NV – Backstage Bar & Billiards % Jul. 1 – Reno, NV – Holland Project % ^ w/ Moor Mother # w/ White Boy Scream, Grave Infestation * w/ White Boy Scream, Sulfuric Cautery ~ w/ Zachary Watkins, White Boy Scream
Posted in Reviews on April 18th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
So here we are. A fascinating and varied trip this has been, and while I’m tempted to find some greater meaning in it as regards the ongoing evolution of genre(s) in heavy underground music, the truth is that the overarching message is really that it’s impossible to keep up with that complexity as it unfolds. Hitting 70 releases on this last day with another 50 to come in a couple weeks, I feel like there’s just so much out there right now, and that that is the primary signifier of the current era.
Whether it’s pandemic-born projects or redirects, or long-established artists making welcome returns, or who knows what from who knows where, the world is brimming with creativity and is pushing the bounds of heavy with like-proportioned force and intent. This hasn’t always been easy to write, but as I look at the lineup below of the final-for-now installment of the QR, I’m just happy to be alive. Thanks for reading. I hope you have also found something that resonates.
Quarterly Review #61-70:
Dommengang, Wished Eye
A fourth full-length from Dommengang — are they in L.A. now? Portland, Oregon? does it matter? — neatly encapsulates the heavy psychedelic scope and the organic-vibing reach that stands them out from the pack, as somehow throughout the nine songs of Wished Eye, the Thrill Jockey denizen trio are able to inhabit a style that’s the Americana pastoral wakeup of “Runaway,” the hill-howling “Society Blues,” the drift-fuzz of over solid drums of “Last Card,” the dense tube-burning Hendrixism of “Myth Time,” and the minimalist guitar of “Little Beirut.” And oh, it keeps going; each track contributing something to the lush-but-natural spirit of the whole work. “Blue & Peaceful” brings acoustics to its midsection jam, while “Petrichor” is the West Coast freedom rock you’ve been waiting for, the title-track goes inland for nighttime desertscaping that finishes in hypnotic loops on a likewise hypnotic fade, and “Flower” proves to be more vine, winding its way around the lead guitar line as the vocals leave off with a highlight performance prior a fire-blues solo that finishes the record as the amps continue to scream. Undervalued? Why yes, Dommengang are, and Wished Eye makes the argument in plain language. With a sonic persona able to draw from country, blues, psych, indie, doom, fuzz, on and on, they’ve never sounded so untethered to genre, and it wasn’t exactly holding them back in the first place.
Formerly the frontman of Richmond, Virginia, sludgers Gritter, Ryan Kent — who already has several books of poetry on his CV — casts himself through Dying Comes With Age as a kind of spoken word ringmaster, and he’s brought plenty of friends along to help the cause. The readings in the title-track, “Son of a Bitch” and the title-track and “Couch Time” are semi-spoken, semi-sung, and the likes of Laura Pleasants (The Discussion, ex-Kylesa) lends backing vocals to the former while Jimmy Bower (Down, EyeHateGod) complements with a low-key fuzzy bounce. I’ll admit to hoping the version of “My Blue Heaven” featuring Windhand‘s Dorthia Cottrell was a take on the standard, but it’s plenty sad regardless and her voice stands alone as though Kent realized it was best to just give her the space and let it be its own thing on the record. Mike IX Williams of EyeHateGod is also on his own (without music behind) to close out with the brief “Cigarettes Roll Away the Time,” and Eugene S. Robinson of Oxbow/Buñuel recounting an homage apparently to Kent‘s grandfather highlights the numb feeling of so many during the pandemic era. Some light misogyny there and in “Message From Someone Going Somewhere With Someone Else Who is Going Somewhere” feels almost performative, pursuing some literary concept of edge, but the aural collage and per-song atmosphere assure Dying Comes With Age never lingers anywhere too long, and you can smell the cigarettes just by listening, so be ready with the Febreze.
The first hook on Clamor Luciferi, in post-intro leadoff “Succubus,” informs that “Your god is poison” amid a gravitationally significant wall of low-end buzzfuzz, so one would call it business as usual for Sardinian lurch-doomers 1782, who answer 2021’s From the Graveyard (review here) with another potent collection of horror-infused live resin audibles. Running eight songs and 39-minutes, one would still say the trio are in the post-Monolord camp in terms of riffs and grooves, but they’ve grown more obscure in sound over time, and the murk in so much of Clamor Luciferi is all the more palpable for the way in which the guitar solo late in “Devil’s Blood” cuts through it with such clarity. Immediacy suits them on “River of Sins” just before, but one would hardly fault “Black Rites” or the buried-the-vocals-even-deeper closer “Death Ceremony” for taking their time considering that’s kind of the point. Well, that and the tones and grit of “Demons,” anyhow. Three records in, 1782 continue and odd-year release pattern and showcase the individual take on familiar cultism and lumber that’s made their work to-date a joy to follow despite its sundry outward miseries. Clamor Luciferi keeps the thread going, which is a compliment in their case.
What Seum might be seen to lack in guitar, they more than make up in disgust. The Montreal trio — vocalist Gaspard, bassist Piotr, drummer Fred — offer a mostly-hateful 32-minute low-end mudslide on their second album, Double Double, the disaffection leaking like an oily discharge from the speakers in “Torpedo” and “Snow Bird” even before “Dog Days” lyrically takes on the heavy underground and “Dollarama” sees the emptiness in being surrounded by bullshit. For as caustic as it largely is, “Torpedo” dares a bit of dirt-caked melody in the vocals — also a backing layer in the somehow-catchy “Razorblade Rainbow” and the closing title-track has a cleaner shout — and the bass veers into funkier grooves at will, as on “Dog Days,” the winding second half of “Snow Bird,” where the bassline bookending the six-minute “Seum Noir” reminds a bit of Suplecs‘ “White Devil” in its fuzz and feels appropriate in that. Shades of Bongzilla persist, as they will with a scream like that, but like their impressive 2021 debut, Winterized (review here), Seum are able to make the big tones move when they need to, to the point that “Dollarama” brings to memory the glory days of Dopefight‘s over-the-top assault. Righteous and filthy.
Clearheaded desert-style heavy rock is the thread running through Old Mine Universe‘s debut album, This Vast Array, but with a bit of blues in “No Man’s Mesa” after the proggy flourish of guitar in “Gates of the Red Planet” and the grander, keyboardy unfolding of “My Shadow Devours” and the eight-minute, multi-movement, ends-with-cello finale “Cold Stream Guards,” it becomes clear the Canadian/Brazilian/Chilean five-piece aren’t necessarily looking to limit themselves on their first release. Marked by a strong performance from vocalist Chris Pew — whom others have likened to Ian Astbury and Glenn Danzig; I might add a likeness to some of Jim Healey‘s belting-it-out there as well, if not necessarily an influence — the songs are traditionally structured but move into a jammier feel on the loose “The Duster” and add studio details like the piano line in the second half of “Sixes and Sirens” that showcase depth as well as a solid foundation. At 10 songs/47 minutes, it’s not a minor undertaking for a band’s first record, but if you’re willing to be led the tracks are willing to lead, and with Pew‘s voice to the guitar and bass of David E. and Todd McDaniel in Toronto, the solos from Erickson Silva in Brazil and Sol Batera‘s drums in Chile, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the tracks take you different places.
Although Olso-based riffers Saint Karloff have tasked Nico Munkvold (also Jointhugger) for gigs, the band’s third album, Paleolithic War Crimes, was recorded with just the duo of guitarist/vocalist Mads Melvold (also keys and bass here) and drummer Adam Suleiman, and made in homage to original bassist Ole Sletner, who passed away in 2021. It is duly dug-in, from the lumbering Sabbath-worship repetitions of “Psychedelic Man” through the deeper purple organ boogieprog of “Blood Meridian” and quiet guitar/percussion interlude “Among Stone Columns” into “Bone Cave Escape” tilting the balance from doom to rock with a steady snare giving way to an Iommi-circa-’75 acoustic-and-keys finish to side A, leaving side B to split the longer “Nothing to Come” (7:01), which ties together elements of “Bone Cave Escape” and “Blood Meridian,” and closer “Supralux Voyager” (8:26) with the brash, uptempo “Death Don’t Have No Mercy,” which — I almost hate to say it — is a highlight, though the finale in “Supralux Voyager” isn’t to be ignored for what it adds to the band’s aesthetic in its patience and more progressive style, the steadiness of the build and a payoff that could’ve been a blowout but doesn’t need to be and so isn’t all the more resonant for that restraint. If Munkvold actually joins the band or they find someone else to complete the trio, whatever comes after this will inherently be different, but Saint Karloff go beyond 2019’s Interstellar Voodoo (review here) in ambition and realization with these seven tracks — yes, the interlude too; that’s important — and one hopes they continue to bring these lessons forward.
Astral Sleep, We Are Already Living in the End of Times
Feels like a gimme to say that a record called We Are Already Living in the End of Times is bleak, but if I note the despair laced into the extremity of songs like “The Legacies” or “Torment in Existence,” it’s in no small part to convey the fluidity with which Finland’s Astral Sleep offset their guttural death-doom, be it with melancholic folk-doom melody as on the opening title-track, or the sweetly weaving guitar lines leading into the bright-hued finish of “Invisible Flesh.” Across its 46 minutes, Astral Sleep‘s fourth LP picks up from 2020’s Astral Doom Musick (review here) and makes otherwise disparate sounds transition organically, soaring and crashing down with emotive and tonal impact on the penultimate “Time Is” before “Status of the Soul” answers back to the leadoff with nine-plus minutes of breadth and churn. These aren’t contradictions coming from Astral Sleep, and while yes, the abiding spirit of the release is doomed, that isn’t a constraint on Astral Sleep in needing to be overly performative or ‘dark’ for its own sake. There’s a dynamic at work here as the band seem to make each song an altar and the delivery itself an act of reverence.
The second single in two months from New Jersey sludge slayers Devoidov, “Amputation” backs the also-knife-themed “Stab” and brings four minutes of heavy cacophonous intensity that’s as much death metal as post-hardcore early on, and refuses to give up its doomed procession despite all the harshness surrounding. It’s not chaotic. It’s not without purpose. That mute right around 2:40, the way the bass picks up from there and the guitar comes back in, the hi-hat, that build-up into the tremolo sprint and kick-drum jabs that back the crescendo stretch stand as analogue for the structure underlying, and then like out of nowhere they toss in a ripper thrash solo at the end, in the last 15 seconds, as if to emphasize the ‘fuck everything’ they’ve layered over top. There’s punk at its root, but “Amputation” derives atmosphere from its rage as well as the spaciousness of its sound, and the violence of losing a part of oneself is not ignored. They’re making no secret of turning burn-it-all-down into a stylistic statement, and that’s part of the statement too, leaving one to wonder whether the sludge or grind will win in their songwriting over the longer term and if it needs to be a choice between one or the other at all.
Norwegian fuzz rollers Wolfnaut claim a lineage that goes back to 1997 (their debut was released in 2013 under their old moniker Wolfgang; it happens), so seems reasonable that their fourth full-length, Return of the Asteroid, should be so imbued with the characteristics of turn-of-the-century Scandinavian heavy. They might be at their most Dozerian on “Crash Yer Asteroid” or “Something More Than Night” as they meet careening riffs with vital, energetic groove, but the mellower opening with “Brother of the Badlands” gives a modern edge and as they unfurl the longer closing pair “Crates of Doom” (7:14) and “Wolfnaut’s Lament” (10:13) — the latter a full linear build that completes the record with reach and crunch alike, they are strident in their execution so as to bring individual presence amid all that thick tone crashing around early and the takeoff-and-run that happens around six minutes in. Hooky in “My Orbit is Mine” and willfully subdued in “Arrows” with the raucous “G.T.R.” following directly, Wolfnaut know what they’re doing and Return of the Asteroid benefits from that expertise in its craft, confidence, and the variety they work into the material. Not life-changing, but quality songwriting is always welcome.
If you’re gonna go, take a compass. And if your compass can be made of primo fuzz riffing, isn’t it that much more useful? If not as an actual compass? Each of the four cuts on Washington D.C. instrumentalists Fuzz Voyage‘s Heavy Compass Demo coincides with a cardinal direction, so you get “South Side Moss,” “North Star,” “East Wind” and “West Ice Mountain.” These same four tracks featured across two separate ‘sessions’-type demos in 2020, so they’ve been fairly worked on, but one can’t discount the presentation here that lets “East Wind” breathe a bit in its early going after the crunching stop of “North Star,” just an edge of heavy psychedelia having featured in the northerly piece getting fleshed out as it heads east. I might extend the perception of self-awareness on the part of the band to speculating “South Side Moss” was named for its hairy guitar and bass tone — if not, it could’ve been — and after “East Wind” stretches near seven minutes, “West Ice Mountain” closes out with a rush and instrumental hook that’s a more uptempo look than they’ve given to that point in the proceedings. Nothing to argue with unless you’re morally opposed to bands who don’t have singers — in which case, your loss — but one doesn’t get a lot of outright fuzz from the Doom Capitol, and Fuzz Voyage offer some of the densest distortion I’ve heard out of the Potomac since Borracho got their start. Even before you get to the concept or the art or whatever else, that makes them worth keeping an eye out for what they do next.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 17th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Dommengang are an ‘all of the above’ kind of band when it comes to what’s working in their favor. Chops, chemistry, songwriting; these together with an ability to inherit the organic vibes of classic heavy rock without necessarily being a retread. They’ve reaped plaudits far and wide, but I’m glad to add my voice to that chorus for whatever it’s worth. The proverbial new single, from the proverbial new album, and me talking about how the band are underrated? Yeah, we’ve been here before, and I’m not gonna tell you that if you’ve been listening to heavy rock and roll for the last year, five years, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years that they’re the first dudes ever to pick up a guitar and riff, but their work resonates with sincerity, and frankly, that should be enough.
The new record is called Wished Eye, and it’s out April 21 on Thrill Jockey, which is nothing you probably didn’t already know but good news just the same. The song is “Society Blues,” and it’s a rocker. You’ll find it at the bottom of the post. Everybody cool? Alright, I’m gonna go grind some almond butter.
From the PR wire:
Portland trio Dommengang announce new album
Wished Eye Out on Apr. 21st
Dommengang touring Europe this spring, including a set at Desertfest
Power trio Dommengang deliver heavy psych rock on new album Wished Eye, out April 21st. The album delivers super tasty, dirty guitars, serpentine psychedelic grooves, and propulsive drumming with gleeful abandon. First single “Society Blues” builds to an exuberant explosion of crisp, blues-laden guitar lines that soar over a driving rhythm section, bringing to mind the 1970’s power of a Louis Dambra solo. The dynamic song is carried by ascendant vocals, the band stretching out at the midway point and expanding into the outer world, giving the listener a taste of their explorative live shows.
Wished Eye is the studio album of a band that, live, ignites chaotic release and otherworldly meditation. To capture this energy and freedom in the studio, the trio tracked all the songs together to tape and let experimentation run wild. Working without time constraints or limitations, they could dig deeper into their ever expanding lines, their songs expanding as the guitar explores. Dommengang’s sheer joy of making music together, delivered with skill, imagination and abandon, make Wished Eye an immersive journey without ever leaving home – what a trip it is.
Dommengang will be touring Europe this spring following the release of Wished Eye, including a performance at Desertfest London. More worldwide tour dates and festivals to be announced.
Dommengang – Wished Eye tracklist 1. Runaway 2. Society Blues 3. Last Card 4. Myth Time 5. Little Beirut 6. Blue & Peaceful 7. Petrichor 8. Wished Eye 9. Flower
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 7th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Not to be left out, Sumac will hit the road in Europe next month. The stint comes just ahead of the band’s releasing a new collaborative live album with Keiji Haino given the too-long-for-filenames Into this juvenile apocalypse our golden blood to pour let us never, which is the third joint offering from Sumac and the weirdo legend Haino. Like the two before it, it’s a live improvisation, and for Sumac it’s also the follow-up to 2020’s May You Be Held, their last proper studio album, if you can use the word proper for a band who regularly and historically have so little time for such conventionalities.
They’ve got slots at Gloomy Days in Stockholm — I would love to spend a few gloomy days in Stockholm, as a side note — and Amplifest in Portugal — I’d take Portugal as well, whatever the weather — and between the two they’ll bounce hither and yon throughout the EU, heading as far north as Helsinki and swinging as far south as Madrid before hitting Porto on the West Coast of Europe. Even with a couple days off, this is a significant amount of ground to cover, but Sumac are hardly new to the dance, even if all you look at is their own three studio LPs, never mind the pedigree of those involved in Russian Circles, Isis, Baptists.
Dates were posted on socials. They’ll be in France when the Keiji Haino collab comes out. I’ve included the info and preorder for that too, because one likes to be thorough:
SUMAC EUROPEAN TOUR – OCTOBER 2022 – w/Patrick Shiroishi – ….. begins soon…. looking forward to seeing you….
01/10 – Stockholm // SE – Gloomy Days fest 02/10 – Helsinki // FIN – Tavastia ∆ 03/10 – Copenhagen // DK – Vega * 05/10 – Antwerp // BE – Trix * 06/10 – Tilburg // NL – Little Devil* 07/10 – Metz // FR – Les Trinitaires * 08/10 – Monthey // CH – Pont Rouge * 09/10 – Zurich // CH – Rote Fabrik * 11/10 – Barcelona // ES – Sala Boveda * 12/10 – Madrid // ES – Mon Live † 13/10 – Porto // PT – Amplifest
Thrill Jockey Records is proud to present Into this juvenile apocalypse our golden blood to pour let us never, the third collaborative album by Japanese free music provocateur Keiji Haino and expressionist metal trio SUMAC.
Like its predecessor, Even for just the briefest moment Keep charging this “expiation” Plug in to make it slightly better (Trost Records, 2019), Into this juvenile apocalypse captures Haino and the three members of SUMAC live on stage, navigating a series of spontaneous compositions in front of an attentive audience, with no prior discussions or planning involving the direction of the music. While all four participants agree that the Even for just the briefest moment session documents a particularly circuitous journey from discord to synchronicity, they also agree that Into this juvenile apocalypse finds the quartet navigating the push-and-pull of creative interplay with bolder strides and stronger chemistry. Recorded on May 21, 2019, at the Astoria Hotel on Vancouver BC’s notorious East Hastings Street as a one-off performance during a short North American tour for Haino, the six compositions comprising Into this juvenile apocalypse showcase a musical unit bouncing unfiltered ideas off of one another, mining a trove of textures and timbres from their armory to buoy and bolster these living and breathing pieces. Like so many albums documenting free music, the thrill here is in the tight rope walk, the wavering moments of uncertainty, and the ecstatic moments of shared brilliance.
As with American Dollar Bill and Even for just the briefest moment, Into this juvenile apocalypse our golden blood to pour let us never is an unfiltered and undoctored document of a specific moment in time. There are equipment failures. There are ideas left dangling in the ether. There are the technical handicaps of recording in a dingy hotel dive bar in a bad neighborhood as opposed to the optimal acoustics of a proper recording studio. But there is also an electricity in the air, and a continuous sense of creative elation and goosebump-inducing inspiration. It’s an hour-long exercise in seeking out happy accidents and reveling in the wreckage.
SUMAC: Aaron Turner, Brian Cook, and Nick Yacyshyn.
ongoing series of records under the moniker Drop Out. The records became an influential and sprawling series of extended pieces that remain touchstones of contemporary psychedelia. Having been called “absolutely essential,” “best I have heard – ever,” “A masterpiece,” the Drop Out series finally gets its definitive edition.
