I won’t keep you long here. Today is the last day of this Quarterly Review. It’ll return in July, if all goes according to my plans. I hope in the last seven days of posts you’ve been able to find a release, a band, a song, that’s hit you hard and made your day better. Ultimately that’s why we’re here.

No grand reflections — this is business-as-usual by now for me — but I’ll say that most of this QR was a pleasure to mine through and I’ve added a few releases to my notes for the Best of 2025 come December. If you have too, awesome. If not, there’s still one more chance.

Quarterly Review #61-70:

Daevar, Sub Rosa

While Sub Rosa still basks in the murky sound with which Köln-based doomers Daevar set forth not actually all that long ago — they’re barely an earth-year removed from their second LP, Amber Eyes (review here), and just two from their debut, 2023’s Delirious Rites (review here) — there’s an unquestionable sense of refinement to its procession. “Wishing Well” moves but isn’t rushed. Opener “Catcher in the Rye” feels expansive but is four minutes long. It goes like this. Through most of the 31-minute seven-songer, including the “Hey Bacchus” strum at the start of “Siren Song,” Daevar seem to be working to strip their approach to its most crucial elements, and when they arrive at the seven-minute finale “FDSMD,” there’s a purposeful shift to a more patient roll. But the flow within and between tracks is still very much an asset for Daevar as they take full ownership of their sound. This is not a minor moment for this band, and feels indicative of future direction. Something tells me it won’t be that long before we find out if it is.

Daevar on Bandcamp

The Lasting Dose Records on Bandcamp

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Rainbows Are Free, Silver and Gold

The follow-up to Rainbows Are Free‘s impressive 2023 outing, Heavy Petal Music (review here), Silver and Gold is the Norman, Oklahoma, six-piece’s fifth album since 2010 and second through Ripple Music. With nine songs that foster psychedelic breadth and tonal largesse alike, the album still has room for frontman Brandon Kistler to lend due persona, and in pairing sharp-cornered progressive lead work on guitar with lower-frequency grooves, Rainbows Are Free feel ‘classic’ in a very modern way. They remain capable of being very, very heavy, as crescendos like “Sleep” and “Hide” reaffirm near the record’s middle, but emphasize aural diversity whether it’s the garage march of “Fadeaway,” the barer thrust of “Dirty” or “Runnin’ With a Friend of the Devil” earlier on, of which the reference is only part of the charm being displayed. Rarely does a band so obviously mature in their craft still sound so hungry to find new ideas in their music.

Rainbows Are Free website

Ripple Music website

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Minerall, Strömung

The pedigreed spacefaring trio Minerall — guitarist Marcel Cultrera (Speck), bassist/synthesist Dave “Sula Bassana” Schmidt (Sula Bassana, Zone Six, etc.), and drummer Tommy Handschick (Kombynat Robotron, Earthbong) — return with two more side-long jams on Strömung, captured at the same two-day 2023 session that produced their early-2024 debut, Bügeln (review here). If you find yourself clenching your stomach in the first half of “Strömung” (19:35) on side A, don’t forget to breathe, and don’t worry, opportunity to do so is coming as the three-piece deconstruct and rebuild the jam toward a fuzzy payoff, only to raise “Welle” (20:24) from its minimalist outset to what seems like the apex at the midpoint only to blow it out the airlock in the song’s back half. That must have been one hell of a 48 hours.

Minerall on Bandcamp

Sulatron Records website

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Deathbird Earth, Mission

By the time its five minutes are up, “Resources 2.0” has taken its title word and turned it into an insistent, chunky, noise-rocking sneer, still adjacent to the chicanery-laced psych of the song’s earlier going, but a definite fuck-you to modernity, evoking ideas of exploitation of people, places and everything. Philadelphia duo Deathbird Earth — first names only: BJ (Dangerbird, Hulk Smash) and Dave (Psychic Teens, etc.) — offer three songs on Mission, which has the honesty to bill itself as a demo, and from “Resources 2.0” they move into the sub-two-minute “Mission 1.0,” more ambient and laced with samples. The only song without a version number in its title, “Dead Hands” finds the duo likewise indebted to Chrome and Nirvana for a burst-prone, keyboardier vision of gritty spacepunk, vocal bite and all, but honestly, Mission feels like the tip of an experimentalism only beginning to reveal its destructive tendencies. Looking forward to more.

Deathbird Earth on Bandcamp

Deathbird Earth at SRA Records

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Thinning the Herd, Cull

Approaching the 20th anniversary of the band next year, now-more-upstate New York heavy rockers Thinning the Herd return after 12 years with Cull, their third album. Guitarist/vocalist Gavin Spielman in 2023 recruited drummer Rob Sefcik (Begotten, Kings Destroy, Electric Frankenstein, etc.), and as a trio-sounding duo with Spielman adding bass, they dig into 11 raw, DIY rockers that, as one makes their way through the opening title-track, “Monopolist” and “Heady Yeti” and “Burn Ban” — themes from not-in-the-city-anymore prevalent throughout, alongside weed, beer, life, getting screwed over, and so on — play out in fuzzbuzz-grooving succession. Two late instrumentals, “Electric Lizard of Gloom” and the lush, unplugged “Acustank,” provide a breather from the riffs and gruff vibes, the latter with a pickin’-on-doom kind of feel, but across the whole it’s striking how atmospheric Cull is while presenting itself as straightforward as possible.

Thinning the Herd website

Thinning the Herd on Bandcamp

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Phantom Druid, The Edge of Oblivion

Let The Edge of Oblivion stand for the righteousness of anti-trend doom. You know what I’m talking about. Not the friendly doom that’s out there weed-worshiping and making friends, but the crunching doom metal proffered by the likes of Cathedral and Saint Vitus. Doom that wore is Sabbathianism as a badge of honor all the more for the fact that, at the time they were doing it, it was so much against the status quo of cool. Phantom Druid‘s fourth album is similarly strident and sure of its approach, and yeah, if you want to say some of the chug in “The 5th Mystical Assignment” sounds like Sleep, I won’t argue. Sleep liked Sabbath too. But the crawl in “Realms of the Unreal” and the dirge in instrumental “The Silent Observer” tell it. This is doom that knows and believes in this form, and is strident and reverential in its making. That “Admiration of the Abyss” caps could hardly be more appropriate. Hail the new truth.

Phantom Druid on Bandcamp

Off the Record Label store

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The Grey, Kodok

Some context may apply. Kodok is the third long-player from adventurous Cambridge, UK, heavy post-rock/metallers The Grey, as well as their first outing through Majestic Mountain Records, and though much of what the band has done to this point is instrumental and that’s still a big part of who they are as 11:45 opener/longest track (immediate points) “Painted Lady” readily demonstrates, there’s a clear-eyed partial divergence from the norm as guitarist Charlie Gration, bassist Andy Price and drummer Steve Moore welcome guests throughout like Grady Avenell, who adds post-hardcore scathe to “Sharpen the Knife” ahead of the crushing “CHVRCH,” also released as a single, or fattybassman and Ace Skunk Anasie, who appear on the duly textural “AFG,” which also rounds out with a dARKMODE remix. Not a typical release, maybe, but not not either as the band do more than haphazardly insert these guests into their songs; there is a full-length album flow from front to back here, and while they purposefully push limits, the underlying three-piece serve as the unifying factor for the material as perhaps they inevitably would.

The Grey on Bandcamp

Majestic Mountain Records store

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Sun Below, Mammoth’s Tundra

With a forward lumber marked by rigorous crash and suitably dense tone, Sun Below‘s apparently-standalone 12-minute single Mammoth’s Tundra tells the story of a wooly mammoth being reborn — I think not through techbro genetic dickery, unlike that dire-wolf story that was going around last week — and laying waste to the ecosystem of the tundra, remaking the food change in its aggro image. Fair enough. The Toronto trio likely recorded “Mammoth’s Tundra” at the same Jan. 2023 sessions that produced their Sept. 2023 split, Inter Terra Solis (review here), and whether you’re here for the immersive groove that rises from the gradual outset, the shred emerging in the second half, or that last meme-ready return of the riff at the end, complete with final slowdown — what? you thought they’d leave you hanging? — they leave the Gods of Stone and Riff smiling. Worship via volume, distortion, and nod.

Sun Below on Bandcamp

Sun Below’s Linktr.ee

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Tumbleweed Dealer, Dark Green

It’s been nine years since Montreal’s Tumbleweed Dealer released their third album, but as the fourth, Dark Green offers instrumentalist narrative and a range of outside contributions to expand the sound and maybe make up for lost time. Across 10 tracks and 39 minutes, bassist/guitarist Seb Painchaud, synthesist/producer Jean-Baptiste Joubaud and drummer Angelo Fata broaden their arrangements to include Mellotron, Hammond, Wurlitzer, Rhodes and other keys as well as what basically amounts to a horn section on several tracks, the first blares in “Becoming One with the Bayou” somewhat jarring but coming to make their own kind of sense there and in the subsequent “Dragged Across the Wetlands,” the sax in “Body of the Bog,” and so on. These elements seem to be built around the core performances of the trio, but the going is remarkably fluid despite the range, and though it seems counterintuitive to think of a band who might end a record with a song called “A Soul Made of Sludge” as being progressive and considered in their craft, that’s very clearly what’s happening here.

Tumbleweed Dealer on Bandcamp

Tumbleweed Dealer on Instagram

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NYTE VYPR, Plutonic

Electronic dub, pop, death metal, glitchy electronics, krautrock synth, malevolent distortion, some far-off falsetto and some throatgurgling crust — it can only be the always-busy anti-genre activist Collyn McCoy (Unida, High Priestess, Circle of Sighs, etc.) mashing together ideas and making it work. To wit, “Alkahest” (17:36) and “Witchchrist” (16:03) both engage in sound design and worldmaking, take on pop, industrial and metallic aspects, and are an album unto themselves, hypnotic and experimental, the latter marked by a darker underlying drone that lasts until the whole song dissipates. “Necrotic Prayer” (7:28) feels more like collage by the time it gets to its surprise-here’s-a-ripper-guitar-solo-over-that-circa-’92-industrial-beat, but it still has a groove, and “Plutonic” (8:30) moves through static drone and seen-on-TV sampling through death-techno (god I love death techno) to croon, churn out with a sci-fi overlord, and finish with piano and voice; a misdirected contemplative turn worthy of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. McCoy is a genius and the world will never be ready for these sounds. That’s as plain as I can say it.

NYTE VYPR on Bandcamp

Owlripper Recordings on Bandcamp

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Good first day yesterday. Good second day today. I’ve been doing Quarterly Reviews for over a decade now, and I’ve kind of learned over time the kind of thing I should be writing about. It might be a record that has a ton of hype or one that has none, and it might be any number of styles — I also like to sneak some stuff in here that doesn’t ‘fit’ once in a while — but in my mind the standard is, “is this something I’ll want to have heard and/or written about later?”

For all the terrors of our age, the glut of good music coming out means there’s more than ever I want to write about, and in a weird way, I look forward to Quarterly Reviews as a way for me to dig in and get caught up a bit. I’ve already been blindsided this QR and it’s the second day. I call that a win.

Quarterly Review #11-20:

Kal-El, Astral Voyager Vol. 1

There are few acts the world over who so succintly summarize so much of the appeal of modern heavy rock. Norway’s Kal-El offer big riffs, big hooks, big melodies, songwriting, and still manage heavy-mellow vibes thanks to an ongoing cosmic thematic that brings desert rock methods to more ethereal places. Is “Cloud Walker” the best song they’ve yet written? It’s on the list for sure, but don’t discount nine-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “Astral Voyager” or the hey-that’s-a-Star-Trek-reference “Dilithium” with its dug-in low-distortion verses and the Captain‘s vocal outreach. All along, it’s never quite felt like Kal-El were reshaping heavy, but as time passes and they unveil Astral Voyager Vol. 1 with immediate promise of a follow-up, it’s curious how much Kal-El and notions of ‘peak genre’ align. Those of you who proselytize for riffs: even before you get to riding that groove in “Cosmic Sailor,” Kal-El are primed for ambassadorship.

Kal-El website

Majestic Mountain Records store

Blues Funeral Recordings website

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Bronco, Bronco

North Carolinian sludgethrowers Bronco take their name from their bassist/vocalist, who also goes by Bronco, and who in the 2010s cut a tone-worshiping generational swath through the Southern wing of the style as a member of Toke, proffering heavy riffs, harsh-throat vocals, and a disaffection that can only be called classic. With eight songs rolling out over 45 minutes, Bronco‘s Bronco picks up the thread where Toke left off with pieces like “Ride Eternal,” which crawls, or the declarative riffing of “Legion” (eerie guest vocals included amid all the pummel), or the closer “TONS,” which I’m going to assume isn’t titled after the Italian sludge-band, though if those guys wanted to put out a song called “Bronco” on their next record, they’d be well within their rights. A remarkably cohesive debut for something that’s so loudly telling you to fuck yourself. These guys’ll be opening for High on Fire in no time.

Bronco on Bandcamp

Magnetic Eye Records store

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Ocultum, Buena Muerte

Although one wouldn’t listen to Santiago, Chile’s Ocultum and be likely to have “refined” top the list of impressions given by the raw, rot-coated sludge of their third album and Heavy Psych Sounds debut, Buena Muerte, the grim-leaning atmosphere, charge later in the title-track, cultish presentation and the atmosphere emergent both from guitar-wail and yelling interlude “Fortunato’s Fortune” and from the material that surrounds, whether that’s the title-track or the just-under-12-minute “Last Weed on Earth.” The record finds the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Sebastián Bruna, bassist Pablo Cataldo and drummer Ricardo Robles dug in, stoned and malevolent. They’re not as over-the-top as many in cult rock, but one does get a sense of ceremony from “Last Weed on Earth” and subsequent capper “Emki’s Return” — the latter galloping in its first half and willfully devolved from there into avant noise — even if that’s more about the making of the songs than the performance of genre tropes.

Ocultum on Bandcamp

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Fidel A Go Go, Diss Engaged

The grunge crunch of “Running With Secrets” and the Cantrell-y acoustics of “Push” are barely the beginning of the story as regards Fidel A Go Go‘s meld of sounds, which ranges from the willfully desert rocking “Sandstorm” to the proggy “Lil Shit,” the transposed blues of “Rainy Days” and the penultimate “Psychedelicexistentialcrisisalidocious,” which is serene in its melody and troubling in the words, as one would hope, and while the moniker and the punny album title speak to shenanigans, the Brisbane four-piece offer a point of view both instrumentally and lyrically that is engaging and draws together the stylistic range. There’s little doubt left to whom “A Stench of Musk” and “Barely an Adversary” are about, but even that’s not the extent of the perspective resonant in these 11 songs. There’s enough fuzz here for desert heads, but Fidel A Go Go are broader in attitude and craft, and Diss Engaged makes a point of its artistic freedom.

Fidel A Go Go website

Fidel A Go Go on Bandcamp

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Tumble, Lost in Light

Like their 2023 debut EP, Lady Cadaver, Tumble‘s second short offering, Lost in Light sees the trio of guitarist/vocalist Liam Deak, bassist Tarun Dawar and drummer Will Adams working with producer/engineer Ian Blurton (Ian Blurton’s Future Now, etc.) to hone and sharpen a classic, proto-metallic sound without seeing a dip in recording quality. As such, the five songs/20 minutes of Lost in Light are duly brash — looking at you, “Dead by Rumour” and the Radio Moscow-esque “The Less I Know” — but crisp in tone and execution. The mid-tempo “Sullen Slaves” picks up in its solo section later for a bit of boogie, and the slightly-slower metallic lurch of “Laid by Fear” sets up a contrast with the swinging closer “Wings of Gold” that makes the ending of the EP an absolute strut. They aren’t even asking a half-hour of your time, and the rewards are more than commensurate for getting down. They continue to be one to watch as they position themselves for a full-length debut in the next couple years.

Tumble’s Linktr.ee

Stickman Records website

Echodelick Records on Bandcamp

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Putan Club, Filles d’Octobre

Normally I might consider it a hindrance to have no clue what’s going on, but if you’ve never before encountered Italy/France semi-industrial duo Putan Club you might just find yourself in better position going into Filles d’Octobre as the avant garde radfem troupe unfurl a live set recorded at Portugal’s Amplifest, presumably in 2022. But if you don’t know it’s a live record, what’s coming musically, or that Filles d’Octobre is derived from their 2017 debut album, Filles de Mai, there’s a decent change your contextless self will be scrathing your head in wonder of just what’s going on with the bouncy lurch and maybe xylophone of “Filippino,” and that seems to suit Putan Club just fine. If you have to break something to remake it, Putan Club are set to the task of manifesting a rock and roll that is dangerous, new, unrepentantly socially critical, and ready to dance when you are. That they meet these significant ambitions head on shouldn’t be discounted. Not for everybody, but definitely for everybody who thinks they’ve heard it all.

Putan Club website

Toten Schwan Records on Bandcamp

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IAH, En Vivo en Cabezas de Tormenta

The first live offering from Argentinian prog-heavy instrumentalists IAH follows behind the band’s most expansive studio LP to-date, 2023’s V (review here), and brings into emphasis the group’s dynamic. It’s not just about being able to make a part sound floaty or to make the part next to it crush, but the character of a piece like the 24-minute “Noboj pri Uaset” (which might be new) is as much about the journey undertaken in their builds and the smoothness of the shifts between parts. They dip back to their earlier going for “Sheut” at the start of the set and “Ourboros” and “Eclipsum” the latter of which closes, and the bass in “Sentado en el Borde de una Pregunta” is worth the price of admission alone, never mind as a complement to the extended progression of “Noboj pri Uaset,” which is something of the buried lede here. So be it. On stage or on record, IAH offer immersion unto themselves. A little more tonal edge as a result of the live recording doesn’t hurt that one bit.

IAH website

IAH on Bandcamp

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Gin Lady, Before the Dawn of Time

Before the Dawn of Time is upwards of the seventh full-length from Swedish vintage-style heavy rockers Gin Lady, and in addition to seeing them make the jump from Kozmik Artifactz to Ripple Music, the sans-pretense 11-songer invents its own moment. It’s like the comedown era (from 1968-1974, roughly) happened, but happened differently. It’s another path to a heavy rock future. There’s ’70s vibes in “Tingens Sanna Natur” a-plenty, and if it’s boogie or push or hooky melodic wash you want, “Mulberry Bend” has you covered for that and then some, never mind the down-home strum of “Bliss on the Line” or the pastoral contemplation of “The Long Now,” as Gin Lady put a classy stamp of their own on classic aural ideologies, as what are no doubt hyperspecific keyboards make the production smooth and let “Ways to Cross the Sky” commune with Morricone while capper “You’re a Big Star” drops a melody that can really only be called “arena ready.” As it stands, it’ll probably go over killer at festivals across Europe.

Gin Lady on Bandcamp

Ripple Music website

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Adrift, Dry Soil

Duly apocalyptic for being the band’s first full-length release since 2019, Adrift‘s fourth album, Dry Soil, elicits an overarching doom that makes its tonal claustrophobia all the more affecting. The long-running Madrid outfit offer six songs that veer between the contemplative and the caustic as throatrippers worthy of Enslaved add an element of the extreme to the post-metallic intensity of “Edge” and “Restart” in the record’s middle. There are heavy rock underpinnings — that is, somebody here still likes Sabbath — but Adrift are well at home in all the bludgeonry, and “Bonfire” finishes by tying black metal, sludge, noise and darkly thrashing metal together with a suitably severe ambience. Are they torching it at the end? Kind of, but just replace “it” with “everything” and you’ll have a better idea perhaps of where they’re coming from on the whole. But for regionalist discrimination, Adrift would’ve conquered Europe a long time ago.

Adrift on Facebook

Adrift on Bandcamp

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Black Sadhu, Ashes of Aether

Berlin trio Black Sadhu — guitarist/vocalist Max Lowry (also synth, effects), bassist Alex Glimm and drummer Martin Cederlund — employ atmosphere to a point of cinematics on their second full-length, Ashes of Aether, following up the post-doom wash of 2021 standalone single “Mindless Masses” with plays back and forth between full-heft nod and take-a-breather meanderings. This cuts momentum less than one might think as the keyboard and drone and sample of “Tumors of Light” lend experimentalist verve to “Descent,” the next of the nine-track outing’s more-complete-song songs, as the latter unfolds with a shine on the crash that continues to cut through the surrounding rumble as the procession unfurls. Patience, then. So long as you know the payoff is coming — and it is; looking at you, “Electric Death” — and don’t mind being stretched and contorted on a molecular level between here and there, you should be good to go.

Black Sadhu on Bandcamp

Black Sadhu on Instagram

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I distinctly remember when Toronto’s Quest for Fire released their self-titled debut in 2009, in no small part because I utterly whiffed on it. Brutally. The label behind the release, New York’s much-respected Tee Pee Records, had just switched their promo methodology to sending CDs in a generic digipak for review, and I was bummed about that, because artwork, etc. And so, when it came time to dig into the self-produced six-track/43-minute outing from the heavy psychedelic rockers — the album’s lineup: Chad Ross (ex-The Deadly Snakes, also Nordic Nomadic, Comet Control and solo work as C.Ross) on guitar, vocals and Korg, Andrew Moszynski (Comet Control) on guitar, Josh Bauman (Nordic Nomadic) on bass, Mike Maxymuik (ex-Cursed, ex-Black Mountain) on drums, plus here Will Kidman on keys and Matt Carlson (who also engineered) on harmonica — I let it go. I don’t have another way to say it. Sometimes the thought of listening, liking, buying one more good record is exhausting. Right or wrong, I didn’t have room in my heart for Quest for Fire‘s Quest for Fire.

Wrong, decidedly.

As a matter of self-defense from myself, it wasn’t all that long before I got on board. Quest for Fire‘s second record, 2010’s Lights From Paradise (review here), was an admirably languorous work of lush, resonant, and melodic psych. Not without its more active moments, but defined by the serenity overarching its procession, Ross‘ mellow vocals giving even the brashest stretches a peaceful vibe. In an interview here in 2021, Ross talked about the rougher edges and more nebulous definition (paraphrasing) of Quest for Fire‘s early days, the jams from which the first album was born, and indeed the self-titled carries a looser construction than the record that followed in such short order.

This becomes a boon to the songs quickly as four-minute, comparatively taut careening opener “Bison Eyes” prefaces the new space rock by hailing the old, showing punker roots in the riff, but immediately rich in tone in a way that’s atmospheric even with the tempo. Lead guitar notes float over the thrust, and the backbeat holds behind the swirl of the last verse and chorus, taking some influence from heavy rock but using it toward decidedly more molten ends, and when it’s done, “Strange Waves” complicates the plot with hints of a Western ramble next to languid, addled chug with acoustic guitar (and Carlson‘s echoing harmonica) laced through, complementing the bottom-end heft with a sense of lightness as would become an essential facet of Quest for Fire‘s work during their time, and building to a roll across its seven and a half minutes that’s glorious in its payoff, pointedly slower than “Bison Eyes” and a classic example of a band leading off with a rocker and then pulling the floor out from under their listener. One can’t hear some Dead Meadow-style fuzzgaze in “Hawk That Hunts the Walking” (8:44) at the end of side A manifest in the wah soloing and verses, but the chorus has a layered, complex melody of its own, and there’s more depth to it than just that as they cycle through quieter and louder parts, keeping the nod of “Strange Waves” from the outset and holding forth a kind of glacial momentum as they solo to the finish from which side B’s “I’ve Been Trying to Leave” crashes in. Well hello.

If you’ve been hanging in this far, congratulations. Quest for Fire‘s spacious mix has plenty of room for the listener the burrow themselves into, but lacks nothing for impact, whether it’s Maxymuik‘s snare or Bauman‘s bass underscoring “Strange Waves,” and the second half of the album continues with a mind toward expansion of sound. At 6:16, “I’ve Been Trying to Leave” realigns more toward the straightforward, like a funhouse mirror of how “Bison Eyes” started off, manipulated in its purposes to its own ends as it imagines a psychedelic post-hardcore the likes of which a band might’ve made an entire career out of. Swirl and churn and melody and charge are all accounted for, and as with side A, the two longer cuts that follow — “You Are Always Loved” (7:23) and the closer “Next to the Fire” (9:08) — draw from the well of energy established just prior.

Quest for Fire didn’t invent this methodology, but they employ it well on their first LP, and it gives “You Are Always Loved” the freedom to be as subdued as it wants without entirely losing the balance of motion in the material. There are subtler ebbs and peaks in the first half of the track, a fuzzy solo and acoustic/voice finish, and the abiding kindness of the lyrical reassurance feels like part of the ambient breadth; a sweet herald of things to come, both in Quest for Fire and in Ross and Moszynski‘s subsequent outfit, Comet Control, and in the former’s songwriting more generally. Such moments of a band ‘figuring it out’ aren’t always so palpable, but they’re making a home in the nebulous range of “You Are Always Loved,” and the space left open as the title-line is delivered underscores the point.

That leaves “Next to the Fire” as both last and longest of Quest for Fire‘s inclusions, and it buzzes to life around an accordingly large roll. The wah’s on, the cymbals crashing, the movement forward and at a more active tempo as they shift into the verse around twists of lead and echoing vocal lines. “Next to the Fire” is more brash, but like “Hawk That Hunts the Walking,” is leant a more individual impression by Ross‘ breathy delivery, which in the second half becomes the calm around which the storm is rotating. They end with noise and a wisp of synth, which is fair enough, and leave the listener with an in-the-room feel as regards dynamic, their chemistry established unflinchingly across a swath of well united moods and immersive sounds.

I won’t say I’ve been avoiding Quest for Fire‘s Quest for Fire for the last 15 years, because I’ve listened to it plenty in that span if less than its follow-up, but digging into the songs again, I retain my sheepishness at having skipped out initially, much to my own loss. The band would be done in 2013 and Comet Control picked up from there with their 2014 self-titled debut (review here), which brought new direction to what Quest for Fire had built. In addition to serving as a refresher at how underrated this band was, I guess the hindsight is a reminder that music, art and so much else in life doesn’t have an expiration date, no matter what capital-driven internet-era FOMO would tell you otherwise. Maybe you’ll hear it now, maybe you heard it then, maybe you’ll hear Quest for Fire‘s self-titled in another 15 years. There’s comfort knowing it’ll still be there, whenever you need it.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

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This week was Xmas. We hosted Xmas Eve for my family on Tuesday, a casual thing. Thanksgiving was a big sit-down dinner, this was mellower. My sister, her husband and one of their sons were all sick, so my mother and one of my nephews came, along with my sister’s in-laws (who also live in the neighborhood) and a couple of local cousins. It was pleasant and relatively low-key. The plan had been to go to my mother/sister’s house for Xmas Day, but that was canceled; still sick. Yesterday I ended up taking my nephew (who is 16 and just getting into metal; drop your recommendations in the comments) to the video game store, and that was fun, and today The Patient Mrs.’ mother, sister, and her two kids are coming down today to stay over to tomorrow and do a delayed celebration either tonight or tomorrow I don’t really know. All the while, The Pecan is off from school and spending much time on the iPad in the mornings, though yesterday we also spent like two hours at an indoor play-place in Fairfield called FunTime Junction — we were like the only ones there for an hour; it was great — where we’ve been a bunch of times, so trying to keep a balance in the activity level as much as possible in the cold. It snowed on Monday and Tuesday.

So that was the holiday. Being spectacularly broke, it was not a huge splash of presents. I asked The Patient Mrs. what she wanted, she wanted socks. I bought her the socks she wanted. I also got socks, a case of Topo Chico (which is kind of a gag gift, but also pretty good if you like spending $2.50 for a bottle of seltzer), and the Final Fantasy VII/VIII remaster for Switch. Not the VII remake for PS5 or whatever, the original games, which I bought somewhat for posterity because I figured I’d want to play VIII again eventually, ever, at some point, and the likelihood of finding the four-disc PS1 version I bought in 1999 alongside a new tv specifically purchased to play that game with money I earned stocking shelves at KB Toys Store #1051 in on Rt.10 & 202 in Morris Plains, NJ — roughly a minute from where I now live — is probably on par with my likelihood of finding that tv. I started a new game, got killed by the big dinosaur early on, and nostalgia ensued. I’ll call it a win.

It was a relatively quiet week around here, but I’m glad to have gotten the reviews up that I did for The Whims of the Great Magnet and West, Space and Love — two 2024 releases I definitely wanted to cover before crossing the admittedly arbitrary line of the New Year. Happy New Year, by the way. I’m taking off Jan. 1 and will try to put together the poll results. If I can do it in one day, I’ll post accordingly, but don’t count on it. Not that you’re holding your breath, but I kind of am. The difference between first and second place is four votes. That’s tighter than it’s been in years. Every vote counts.

Kind of a rough morning so far as The Pecan has decided she no longer wants her meds in a mashed banana and so a pivot is required to whatever the next fucking thing that will spark minimal cooperation might be. A bribe? Some complicated performance aspect? Who knows, but rest assured, it’s fucking always something and generally an argument. It’s nine in the morning and I’ve already been punched today, which doesn’t happen every day anymore but still sucks for sure and has a tendency to sour one’s mood. I’ll eat a gummy and chill out, shower and have breakfast. Just feels shitty to feel like I need to redirect my own morning before it’s really even started, no less with company coming and all that. I don’t know. Small bumps in the big picture, but they add up.

That’s a bummer note to leave on, so let’s look at next week. Monday is a Darsombra video premiere if I get the video in time. Thursday I have a full premiere for the second Pontiac record. I need this weekend to write a bio for the new 16 album, which is rad, and there’s still news to catch up on forever, so that.

Whatever you’re up to, have a great and save weekend. Don’t forget to hydrate, especially if you’re hitting it to ring in 2025, and watch your head. I’m gonna go bathe for the first time since, I think, Tuesday, and get my head right. Thanks again for reading.

FRM.

The Obelisk Collective on Facebook

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

 

Wow. This is a pretty good day. I mean, I knew that coming into it — I’m the one slating the reviews — but looking up there at the names in the header, that’s a pretty killer assemblage. Maybe I’m making it easy for myself and loading up the QR with stuff I like and want to write about. Fine. Sometimes I need to remind myself that’s the point of this project in the first place.

Hope you’re having an awesome week. I am.

Quarterly Review #21-30

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Thou, Umbilical

Even knowing that the creation of a sense of overwhelm is on purpose and is part of the artistry of what Thou do, Thou are overwhelming. The stated purpose behind Umbilical is an embrace of their collective inner hardcore kid. Fine. Slow down hardcore and you pretty much get sludge metal one way or the other and Thou‘s take on it is undeniably vicious and has a character that is its own. Songs like “I Feel Nothing When You Cry” and “The Promise” envision dark futures from a bleak present, and the poetry from which the lyrics get their shape is as despondent and cynical as one could ever ask, waiting to be dug into and interpreted by the listener. Let’s be honest. I have always had a hard time buying into the hype on Thou. I’ve seen them live and enjoyed it and you can’t hear them on record and say they aren’t good at what they do, but their kind of extremity isn’t what I’m reaching for most days when I’m trying to not be in the exact hopeless mindset the band are aiming for. Umbilical isn’t the record to change my mind and it doesn’t need to be. It’s precisely what it’s going for. Caustic.

Thou on Bandcamp

Sacred Bones Records website

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Cortez, Thieves and Charlatans

The fourth full-length from Boston’s Cortez sets a tone with opener “Gimme Danger (On My Stereo)” (premiered here) for straight-ahead, tightly-composed, uptempo heavy rock, and sure enough that would put Thieves and Charlatans — recorded by Benny Grotto at Mad Oak Studios — in line with Cortez‘s work to-date. What unfolds from the seven-minute “Leaders of Nobody” onward is a statement of expanded boundaries in what Cortez‘s sound can encompass. The organ-laced jamitude of “Levels” or the doom rock largesse of “Liminal Spaces” that doesn’t clash with the prior swing of “Stove Up” mostly because the band know how to write songs; across eight songs and 51 minutes, the five-piece of vocalist Matt Harrington, guitarists Scott O’Dowd and Alasdair Swan, bassist Jay Furlo and sitting-in drummer Alexei Rodriguez (plus a couple other guests from Boston’s heavy underground) reaffirm their level of craft, unite disparate material through performance and present a more varied and progressive take than they’ve ever had. They’re past 25 years at this point and still growing in sound. They may be underrated forever, but that’s a special band.

Cortez on Facebook

Ripple Music website

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Lydsyn, Højspændt

Writing a catchy song is not easy. Writing a song so catchy it’s still catchy even though you don’t speak the language is the provenance of the likes of Uffe Lorenzen. The founding frontman of in-the-ether-for-now Copenhagen heavy/garage psych pioneers Baby Woodrose digs into more straightforward fare on the second full-length from his new trio Lydsyn, putting a long-established Stooges influence to good use in “Hejremanden” after establishing at the outset that “Musik Er Nummer 1” (‘music is number one’) and before the subsequent slowdown into harmony blues with “UFO.” “Nørrebro” has what would seem to be intentional cool-neighborhood strut, and those seeking more of a garage-type energy might find it in “Du Vil Have Mere” or “Opråb” earlier on, and closer “Den Døde By” has a scorch that feels loyal to Baby Woodrose‘s style of psych, but whatever ties there are to Lorenzen‘s contributions over the last 20-plus years, Lydsyn stand out for the resultant quality of songwriting and for having their own dynamic building on Lorenzen‘s solo work and post-Baby Woodrose arc.

Lydsyn on Facebook

Bad Afro Records website

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Magick Potion, Magick Potion

The popular wisdom has had it for a few years now that retroism is out. Hearing Baltimorean power trio Magick Potion vibe their way into swaying ’70s-style heavy blues on “Empress,” smoothly avoiding the trap of sounding like Graveyard and spacing out more over the dramatic first two minutes of “Wizard” and the proto-doomly rhythmic jabs that follow. Guitarist/vocalist/organist Dresden Boulden, bassist/vocalist Triston Grove and drummer Jason Geezus Kendall capture a sound that’s as fresh as it is familiar, and while there’s no question that the aesthetic behind the big-swing “Never Change” and the drawling, sunshine-stoned “Pagan” is rooted in the ’68-’74 “comedown era” — as their label, RidingEasy Records has put it in the past — classic heavy rock has become a genre unto itself over the last 25-plus years, and Magick Potion present a strong, next-generation take on the style that’s brash without being willfully ridiculous and that has the chops to back up its sonic callouts. The potential for growth is significant, as it would be with any band starting out with as much chemistry as they have, but don’t take that as a backhanded way of saying the self-titled is somehow lacking. To be sure, they nail it.

Magick Potion on Instagram

RidingEasy Records store

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Weite, Oase

Oase is the second full-length from Berlin’s Weite behind 2023’s Assemblage (review here), also on Stickman, and it’s their first with keyboardist Fabien deMenou in the lineup with bassist Ingwer Boysen (Delving), guitarists Michael Risberg (Delving, Elder) and Ben Lubin (Lawns), and drummer Nick DiSalvo (Delving, Elder), and it unfurls across as pointedly atmospheric 53 minutes, honed from classic progressive rock but by the time they get to “(einschlafphase)” expanded into a cosmic, almost new age drone. Longer pieces like “Roter Traum” (10:55), “Eigengrau” (12:41) or even the opening “Versteinert” (9:36) offer impact as well as mood, maybe even a little boogie, “Woodbury Hollow” is more pastoral but no less affecting. The same goes for “Time Will Paint Another Picture,” which seems to emphasize modernity in the clarity of its production even amid vintage influences. Capping with the journey-to-freakout “The Slow Wave,” Oase pushes the scope of Weite‘s sound farther out while hitting harder than their first record, adding to the arrangements, and embracing new ideas. Unless you have a moral aversion to prog for some reason, there’s no angle from which this one doesn’t make itself a must-hear.

Weite on Facebook

Stickman Records website

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Orbiter, Distorted Folklore

Big on tone and melody in a way that feels inspired by the modern sphere of heavy — thinking that Hum record, Elephant Tree, Magnetic Eye-type stuff — Florida’s Orbiter set forth across vast reaches in Distorted Folklore, a song like “Lightning Miles” growing more expansive even as it follows a stoner-bouncing drum pattern. Layering is a big factor, but it doesn’t feel like trickery or the band trying to sound like anything or anyone in particular so much as they’re trying to serve their songs — Jonathan Nunez (ex-Torche, etc.) produced; plenty of room in the mix for however big Orbiter want to get — as they shift from the rush that typified stretches of their 2019 debut, Southern Failures, to a generally more lumbering approach. The slowdown suits them here, though fast or slow, the procession of their work is as much about breadth as impact. Whatever direction they take as they move into their second decade, that foundation is crucial.

Orbiter on Facebook

Orbiter on Bandcamp

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Vlimmer, Bodenhex

As regards genre: “dark arts?” Taking into account the 44 minutes of Vlimmer‘s fourth LP, which is post-industrial as much as it’s post-punk, with plenty of goth, some metal, some doom, some dance music, and so on factored in, there’s not a lot else that might encompass the divergent intentions of “Endpuzzle” or “Überrennen” as the Berlin solo-project of Alexander Donat harnesses ethereal urbanity in the brooding-till-it-bursts “Sinkopf” or the manic pulses under the vocal longing of closer “Fadenverlust.” To Donat‘s credit, from the depth of the setup given by longest/opening track (immediate points) “2025” to the goth-coated keyboard throb in “Mondläufer,” Bodenhex never goes anywhere it isn’t meant to go, and unto the finest details of its mix and arrangements, Vlimmer‘s work exudes expressive purpose. It is a record that has been hammered out over a period of time to be what it is, and that has lost none of the immediacy that likely birthed it in that process.

Vlimmer on Facebook

Blackjack Illuminist Records on Bandcamp

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Moon Goons, Lady of Many Faces

Indianapolis four-piece Moon Goons cut an immediately individual impression on their third album, Lady of Many Faces. The album, which often presents itself as a chaotic mash of ideas, is in fact not that thing. The band is well in control, just able and/or wanting to do more with their sound than most. They are also mindfully, pointedly weird. If you ever believed space rock could have been invented in an alternate reality 1990s and run through filters of lysergism and Devin Townsend-style progressive metal, you might take the time now to book the tattoo of the cover of Lady of Many Faces you’re about to want. Shenanigans abound in the eight songs, if I haven’t made that clear, and even the nod of “Doom Tomb Giant” feels like a freakout given the treatment put on by Moon Goons, but the thing about the album is that as frenetic as the four-piece of lead vocalist/guitarist Corey Standifer, keyboardist/vocalist Brooke Rice, bassist Devin Kearns and drummer Jacob Kozlowski get on their way to the doped epic finisher title-track, the danger of it coming apart is a well constructed, skillfully executed illusion. And what a show it is.

Moon Goons on Facebook

Romanus Records website

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Familiars, Easy Does It

Although it opens up with some element of foreboding by transposing the progression of AC/DC‘s “Hells Bells” onto its own purposes in heavy Canadiana rock, and it gets a bit shouty/sludgy in the lyrical crescendo of “What a Dummy,” which seems to be about getting pulled over on a DUI, or the later “The Castle of White Lake,” much of Familiars‘ Easy Does It lives up to its name. Far from inactive, the band are never in any particular rush, and while a piece like “Golden Season,” with its singer-songwriter vocal, acoustic guitar and backing string sounds, carries a sense of melancholy — certainly more than the mellow groover swing and highlight bass lumber of “Gustin Grove,” say — the band never lay it on so thick as to disrupt their own momentum more than they want to. Working as a five-piece with pedal steel, piano and other keys alongside the core guitar, bass and drums, Easy Does It finds a balance of accessibility and deeper-engaging fare combined with twists of the unexpected.

Familiars on Facebook

Familiars on Bandcamp

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The Fërtility Cült, A Song of Anger

Progressive stoner psych rockers The Fërtility Cült unveil their fifth album, A Song of Anger, awash in otherworldly soul music vibes, sax and fuzz and roll in conjunction with carefully arranged harmonies and melodic and rhythmic turns. There’s a lot of heavy prog around — I don’t even know how many times I’ve used the word today and frankly I’m scared to check — and admittedly part of that is how open that designation can feel, but The Fërtility Cült seem to take an especially fervent delight in their slow, molten, flowing chicanery on “The Duel” and elsewhere, and the abiding sense is that part of it is a joke, but part of everything is a joke and also the universe is out there and we should go are you ready? A Song of Anger is billed as a prequel, and perhaps “The Curse of the Atreides” gives some thematic hint as well, but whether you’ve been with them all along or this is the first you’ve heard, the 12-minute closing title-track is its own world. If you think you’re ready — and good on you for that — the dive is waiting for your immersion.

The Fërtility Cült on Facebook

The Fërtility Cült on Bandcamp

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Day two. I mean, it’s work in the sense of it takes effort to put together these posts and structure thoughts into hopefully somewhat coherent sentences, etc., but at this point the Quarterly Review is a pretty important tool for me to hear records that, generally once I hear them, I feel like I want to be covering. Sometimes the intensity of that feeling varies; there are things that don’t “fit” with the stoner-and-doom adjacent foundations of what this site does, but the format allows for that flexibility as well, and I credit the QR for helping broaden the perspective of the site as a whole and making me push my own boundaries.

Admittedly, the trade for covering so much — 50 records in five days is a lot, if it needs to be said — is that I can’t always get as deep as I otherwise might, but as I’ve said before, the fact is that I’m one person, and if writing about a lot of this stuff didn’t happen in this way, it probably wouldn’t happen at all. It’s still never going to be everything I want to cover, but doing it this was is often more suited to the subject at hand than a longform writeup would be, it gives me a chance to explore, it’s a consistently challenging undertaking on multiple levels, and it’s satisfying like little else around here when you’re on the other end of one and immediately start building the next.

I’m not entirely sure why I felt the need right there to justify the existence of the entire Quarterly Review thing as a part of this site. If you care, thanks. If not, I can only call that understandable. Thanks for seeing this sentence and whatever you came here for anyway.

We march on, into day two.

Quarterly Review #11-20:

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Fuzz Sagrado, Cold Remains

As Christian Peters has gradually embraced his inner rocker over the last couple years with Fuzz Sagrado, rediscovering the sacredness of tone, if you will, and using an expanded palette of synth and keyboards to build on the project’s beginnings while tying it together with his prior outfit, the heavy psych rockers Samsara Blues Experiment, it’s fascinating how much the respective personalities of the two acts still shine through. On Cold Remains, along with the new song “Snowchild” that leads off, Peters showcases three until-now lost pieces that have their origins in his former band but were never released: “Cold Remains,” a grim-lyric title-track given due heft of low end, the short “Morphine Prayer,” which intertwines acoustic strum and electric leads and drops the drums for an even more open feel, and “Neurotic Nirvana,” which clues you into the grunge of its central riff in the title but stretches outward from there across six minutes with particular bliss in the solo for a hopeful second half. It sounds like reconciliation, and in that, it fits well with the ongoing growth of Peters‘ Brazilian period.

Fuzz Sagrado on Facebook

Electric Magic Records on Bandcamp

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24/7 Diva Heaven, Gift

From the punkish opening shove of “Rat Race” and “Manic Street Ballet,” 24/7 Diva Heaven‘s second full-length for Noisolution, Gift, unfolds a style that’s both raw and dense enough to carry a heavy groove, straightforward but nuanced in craft and threaded through with attitude born out of ’90s-era riot grrrl noise rock, but able to temper that somewhat with a mellower, more melodic rocker like “Crown of Creation” — some influence from The Donnas, maybe? — before the sharp-edged intensity of “Face Down” and the thrust of “These Days” precede the centerpiece title-track’s quiet-grunge trading off with careening, hard-hitting punk rock in a way that works. No worries, as “L.O.V.E. Forever” and the Godsleep-esque aggro-rocker “Suck it Up” follow at what might be the start of side B, with a highlight bassy groove in the QOTSA-meets-Nirvana catchy “Born to Get Bored,” staying in a heavy rock modus but nonetheless faster and kind of threatening to throw a punch in “Flawless Fool,” the piano-led “Nothing Lasts” capping with duly wistful minimalism. Killer. It’s 11 tracks in 32 minutes, wastes zero of its own or your time, and has something to say both in sound and its lyrics. This band should be on all the festivals.

24/7 Diva Heaven on Facebook

Noisolution website

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Mount Hush, II

Holy smokes that’s a vibe. Even at its most active — which would be “Grey Smoke,” if you want specifics — the heavygaze-adjacent psych blues rock of Germany’s Mount Hush holds an encompassing sense of atmosphere, and while cuts like “All I See” or the smokey “Blues for the Dead” can trace some of what they do to the likes of All Them Witches, Queens of the Stone Age, Colour Haze, and so on, the material is inventive, unrushed and explores outward from a solid foundation of craft, leaning perhaps deepest into psych on “Celestial Eyes,” featuring a classy bit of flute in the penultimate “54” and going big in melody and tone for the finishing move in “Blood Red Sky,” working in Eastern scales for a meditative feel while staying loyal to its own distortion and post-Uncle Acid swing; one more part of the not-slapdash pastiche Mount Hush build as they take a marked breadth of influence, melt it down and shape something of their own from it. Gorgeously. Flowing with grace at no expense to the impact, II is a striking and forward looking point of arrival waiting to be caught up to. This is a band I’m glad to have heard, even before you get to the RPG.

Mount Hush on Facebook

Mount Hush’s Linktr.ee

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Luna Sol, Vita Mors

Wherever you’re headed, Luna Sol are ready to meet you there. David Angstrom — also of Hermano — leads the bluesy heavy rockers with a slew of choice, family-style cuts. Granted, with 15 tracks and more than 50 minutes of material, there’s room to move around a bit, but whether it’s the Leaf Hound cover “Freelance Fiend” or Mountain‘s “Never in My Life” or the delay-laced verses of not-a-cover “Surrounded by Thieves” later on, Vita Mors offers both scope and craft around the heavy blues framework. That can get a little meaner tonally in “Watch Our Skeletons Die” or fuzzily back a bouncing groove on “I’ll Be Your One,” and the songs will remain united through Angstrom‘s vocals and the trust the band as a whole earn through the strength of their songwriting. It’s not a minor undertaking in an age of short attention spans, but given their time, Vita Mors‘ songs can very easily start to live with you.

Luna Sol on Facebook

Ripple Music website

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Ian Blurton’s Future Now, Crimes of the City

Taut in their two-guitar drive and going big on hooks and harmonies alike, Ian Blurton’s Future Now‘s second album, Crimes of the City, is a heart-on-sleeve heavy rocker brimming with life, purpose in its construction, and a sense of celebrating the riffs and metals of old. With Blurton himself on guitar/vocals, guitarist Aaron Goldstein, bassist Anna Ruddick and drummer Glenn Milchem — Gregory MacDonald is also listed as ‘The Goose’ in the credits — the four-piece don’t touch the four-minute mark once in Crimes of the City‘s succession of 10 bangers, despite coming close in “Cast Away the Stones,” and as one could only expect, the songs are air tight in structure and delivery. And just when it seems to run the risk of being too perfect, Blurton drops the layers for the verse of “Nocturnal Transmissions” or exudes sheer delight in the ’80s metal of “Seventh Sin of Devotion,” or the whole band rides a groove like “School’s In,” and it’s all so open, welcoming and vibrant that it can’t help but be human in the end. Killer at any volume, but more don’t hurt.

Ian Blurton’s Future Now on Facebook

Ian Blurton’s Future Now on Bandcamp

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Moskitos, Mirage

Prone to a psych-garage freakout, willfully jagged on the swaying “Two Birds,” indie drifting to the Riff-Filled Land™ and the neighboring Epicsolosburg on “Ten Lies” and righteously horny/not creepy on “Woman,” Mirage is the first full-length from South Africa’s Moskitos, and while it has some element of sneer as a facet inherited from in-genre influences, “Ryder” still feels sincere as it departs what Moe called a “carhole” one time in favor of a more open landscape. There’s intricacy in the rhythm of “Believer” if you want it, and the set-up-for-contrast relative patience of opener “Umbra,” which, yeah, still twists the cosmos a bit by the time it’s done, is a highlight as well, and “Trigger” shifts between quiet parts and putting a shuffle beneath its melodic ending, but some of the most effective moments here are more about the soul behind it all. The feel is loose, but they’re not without a plan, and while there’s no shortage of haze between here and there, it will be interesting to hear how Moskitos build on ideas like the expansive-but-not-unpoppy-till-the-payoff “Ten Lies” and what new ground they find as they move forward.

Moskitos on Facebook

Moskitos’ Linktr.ee

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Deer Lord, Dark Matter Pt. 2

This Halloween-issued sequel to Deer Lord‘s early-2023 EP, Dark Matter (review here) unfolds across six tracks broken into two sides of three each. Each begins with its longest track (immediate points), and uses the spaciousness cast in “Dark Matter” (8:11) and “Intelligent Life” (7:24), respectively, to bolster the atmosphere of the rockers that follow, “Faster” and “Dogma” on side A, the swinging cosmic blowout “Blade” and closer “Pay” on side B. If that makes it sound somewhat orderly, this symmetry is contrasted by the loosen-your-head psychedelic drive of “Dogma” or “Faster” sounding like Clutch as beamed from Voyager 1 hitting a gravity wave on the way. The now-trio of guitarist/vocalist Sheafer McOmber, drummer Ryan Alderman and bassist Jared Marill hit on a sonic niche of earthy fuzz meeting with spaced plasmatic volatility. It’s big and it moves! It would be more of a surprise if they weren’t signed by somebody or other by the time they get around to their debut full-length.

Deer Lord on Facebook

Deer Lord on Bandcamp

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TFNRSH, Book of Circles

Following up on their 2023 self-titled-if-you-go-by-apparent-pronunciation LP, Tiefenrausch, Book of Circles sees instrumentalist three-piece TFNRSH make a striking entry into the admittedly crowded German and greater European sans-vocal heavy psychedelic underground. Standing out through a proggy use of synth, the second album offers “Zorn” in the place the first put “Slift,” and while it’s true the band remain not without influence from the modern European heavy psychedelic ouevre — some of the twists in “Zemestån” feel Elderian, as an example — they’re distinguished not only by how heavy “Zorn” eventually gets or “WRZL” is at its outset, or by Julius Watzl‘s stellar hold-it-together drumming amid the currents of synth being run by both guitarist Sasan Bahreini and bassist Stefan Wettengl there, but also by the float and patience of “Ammoglÿd” — imagine a mid-period Anathema intro but it unfolds as the whole song and it works — which only underscores the progressive mindset underlying all of this material. The kind of record that won’t hit with everybody but will hit with some very, very hard.

TFNRSH on Facebook

TFNRSH on Bandcamp

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Altareth, Passage: The Welfare Sessions

While based largely in doom, Altareth‘s Passage: The Welfare Sessions absolutely soars in the solo of its centerpiece track “Singapore,” picking up from a mellower kind of lumbering brood and answering the lift of its middle with a push to the finish. Passage: The Welfare Sessions may be worth the asking price for that alone, but that hardly means that’s all the Gothenburg five-piece have on offer, when there’s acoustic to layer into the subsequent “Pilgrim” or the blend of murk and impact in the rolling leadoff “Passage,” the way “The Stars” holds to its crawling tempo but offers a sense of payoff anyhow, or the psychedelia that runs alongside the march of “Recluse,” which rounds out the reportedly live-recorded proceedings with emotive melancholy and a final stretch of quiet, sample-topped guitar. Produced by Kalle Lilja and Per Stålberg at Welfare Sounds, hence the title, Passage: The Welfare Sessions speaks even more boldly to the band’s potential than their 2021 debut, Blood (review here). Don’t be fooled by smooth transitions and a subtlety of scope. Altareth are onto something.

Altareth on Facebook

Altareth on Bandcamp

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Jarzmo, Antropocen

If you find yourself wanting to applaud in the couple seconds of silence between “Bat Trip” and the pointedly doomjazzy “Piosenka o przemijaniu,” at least know that you’re not alone. Antropocen is the debut full-length from Kraków, Poland’s Jarzma, and with it, the band invent a style of playing that is immediately their own, basing their arrangements around nyckelharpha and imaginative percussion and drumming either folkish or not, voices coming and going through songs that don’t just sound the way they do as a novelty, but break their own rules from the very outset in the poppish dance hook of opener “Big Heat.” It’s brazen, it’s masterful in terms of performance, and it’s made from a place of wanting to add to the scope of the genre that birthed it (doom/heavy) and represent something about its place to those outside. I guess you could call it experimental in terms of sound, but that’s not to say there’s anything haphazard about it. Given the range of what they’re doing — the band is comprised of Piotr Aleksander Nowak on the aforementioned nyckelharpa and drummer/vocalist Katarzyna Bobik, and there are guests throughout — it’s kind of astonishing for how clearly the plan comes across, actually. When you want something in heavy music you’ve never heard before, Jarzmo will be waiting.

Jarzmo on Facebook

Jarzmo on Bandcamp

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Comprised of 10 sharp, catchy, tight songs that get in, make their mark on the proceedings, and are gone while the chorus is still imprinting itself on your brain, Crimes of the City is coming in hot for a Nov. 15 release just two years after Ian Blurton’s Future Now offered 2022’s stellar Second Skin (review here). Like that record, the band’s sound centers around a classic rock ideal, and Blurton — guitarist, vocalist, producer of his own projects and so many others, songwriter and here credited with “songplay”; I honestly don’t even know what that means; he recorded all the instruments? — touching on metal in soaring solos and Priestly chug, but here even in comparison to the last record going b-i-g on harmonies and melodic presence.

But where in hands of less skillful craft, that might result in an LP that’s needlessly grandiose or self-indulgent, Blurton as a songwriter strikes a balance between breath and immediacy. The material is heavy but daringly poppish, a succession of mostly uptempo bangers that might not be released in summer but will surely remind of warmer days and brighter suns. Rest assured, that intangible nostalgia is part of what makes it work.

Two songs are up now and as the opener says, “There’s no time to waste,” so have at it. The full thing will apparently stream on Wednesday:

Ian Blurton’s FUTURE NOW Announces New Album Crimes of the City

Ian Blurton’s FUTURE NOW is set to release their highly anticipated new album Crimes of the City this fall, bringing their raw, live energy to a brand-new collection of heavy, guitar-driven rock. The album will be available digitally on October 30, with a limited vinyl and cassette release to follow on November 15 via Toronto’s Pajama Party Records. A run of 300 vinyl records—150 black and 150 blood splatter editions—will be available alongside a super-limited cassette release from Northern Haze.

Produced and recorded by Blurton and FUTURE NOW at Toronto’s ProGold Studios, Crimes of the City strips rock back to its primal roots: Marshall amps, roaring Gibsons, and double-kick drumming. The album’s 10 tracks, spanning just 33 minutes, were recorded to capture the raw power of a live performance, with no autotune, no samples, and no studio tricks. According to Blurton, the goal was to create something “real, human, and visceral.”

“We spent a lot of time on the songs, but once we’d narrowed 20 demos down to 10, we just put them down,” says Blurton. “This time we didn’t want to go crazy with too many mics on everything or get too caught up in editing or overworking things. We just wanted a record that felt really human. We don’t use backing tracks, or any kind of ‘tricks,’ live. It’s just the band. Four people with a lot of very unique and disparate musical experience and some trusty tube amps. And that’s what this record is about.”

Described as a blend of influences like DANZIG, CHEAP TRICK, BUDGIE, and BLUE ÖYSTER CULT, Crimes of the City promises to deliver an unrelenting wave of heavy riffs, soaring harmonies, and hook-laden choruses. Fans of FUTURE NOW’s 2022 album Second Skin will find a leaner, more direct approach on this new release, with a focus on capturing the essence of rock stripped of its excesses.

Also joining the band on Crimes of the City is guest vocalist Gregory Macdonald (SLOAN), who adds lush, Queen-inspired harmonies to the record’s hard-hitting tracks.

Track Listing:
1. Ends Of August
2. House Of Lords
3. Cast Away The Stones
4. Nocturnal Transmissions
5. In Broken Lines
6. School’s In
7. Search For Tomorrow
8. Seventh Sin Of Devotion
9. Halfway Between Heaven And Hell
10. Assailed By The Sun

Blurton and FUTURE NOW will hit the road in November to support the release, with a series of shows across Ontario and Quebec, culminating in an official album release party at Toronto’s The Garrison on November 23.

Upcoming Tour Dates:
Sat, Nov 9 – London @ The Rec Room (w/ TUMBLE)
Fri, Nov 15 – Peterborough @ Bar 379 (w/ TUMBLE)
Sat, Nov 16 – Sudbury @ Cosmic Dave’s
Fri, Nov 22 – Hamilton @ The Casbah (w/ THE GOLDEN SHITTERS + TUMBLE)
Sat, Nov 23 – Toronto @ The Garrison (Record Release Party w/ BIBLICAL + TUMBLE)
Thurs, Nov 28 – Ottawa @ House of Targ (w/ DOUBLE TALKER + TUMBLE)
Fri, Nov 29 – Montreal @ Turbohaus (w/ LOW SIXES + SICK THINGS + TUMBLE)

More Canadian dates will follow in 2025.

starring
Glenn Milchem as The Drummer
Anna Ruddick as La Bajista
Aaron Goldstein as Guy With Guitar
Ian Blurton as Himself
and introducing Gregory Macdonald as The Goose

Produced and Directed by Future Now
Songplay: Ian Blurton
Director of Photography: Kelly Shee
Production Designer: Brad Boatright
Visual Effects: Johny Bekavac
Stunt Department: Tom Patterson
Prop Department: Wolfgang Gray
Model Rendering: Louis Durand
Sound recording: ProGold (Toronto)

http://www.facebook.com/ianblurton.futurenow/
http://www.instagram.com/ianblurton
https://ianblurton.bandcamp.com/

Ian Blurton’s Future Now, Crimes of the City (2024)

By the time today is through — come hell or high water! — we will be at the halfway point of this two-week Quarterly Review. It hasn’t been difficult so far, though there are ups and downs always and I don’t think I’m giving away secrets when I tell you that in listening to 50 records some are going to be better than others.

Truth is that even outside the 100 LPs, EPs, etc., I have slated, there’s still a ton more. Even in something so massive, there’s an element of picking and choosing what goes in. Curation is the nice word for it, though it’s not quite that creatif in my head. Either way, I hope you’ve found something that connects this week. If not yet, then today. If not today, then maybe next week. As I’m prone to say on Fridays, we’re back at it on Monday.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

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Pallbearer, Mind Burns Alive

While I won’t take away from the rawer energy and longing put into their earlier work, maturity suits Pallbearer. The Little Rock, Arkansas, four-piece of vocalist/guitarist Brett Campbell, guitarist/backing vocalist Devin Holt, bassist/synthesist/backing vocalist Joseph D. Rowland and drummer Mark Lierly have passed their 15th anniversary between 2020’s Forgotten Days (review here) and the self-recorded six tracks of Mind Burns Alive, and they sound poised harnessing new breadth and melodic clarity. They’ve talked about the album being stripped down, and maybe that’s true to some degree in the engrossing-anyhow opener “When the Light Fades,” but there’s still room for sax on the 10-minute “Endless Place,” and the quieter stretches of the penultimate “Daybreak” highlight harmonized vocals before the bass-weighted riff sweeps in after the three-minute mark. Campbell has never sounded stronger or more confident as a singer, and he’s able to carry the likewise subdued intro to “Signals” with apparent sincerity and style alike. The title-track flashes brighter hopes in its later guitar solo leads, but they hold both their most wistful drift and their most crushing plod for closer “With Disease,” because five records and countless tours (with more to come) later, Pallbearer very clearly know what the fuck they’re doing. I hope having their own studio leads to further exploration from here.

Pallbearer on Facebook

Nuclear Blast website

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BleakHeart, Silver Pulse

With its six pieces arranged so that side A works from its longest track to its shortest and side B mirrors by going shortest to longest, Denver‘s BleakHeart seem to prioritize immersion on their second full-length, Silver Pulse, as “All Hearts Desire” unfolds fluidly across nearly eight minutes, swelling to an initial lumbering roll that evaporates as they move into the more spacious verse and build back up around the vocals of Kiki GaNun (also synth) and Kelly Schilling (also bass, keys and more synth). Emotional resonance plays at least as much of a role throughout as the tonal weight intermittently wrought by JP Damron and Mark Chronister‘s guitars, and with Joshua Quinones on drums giving structure and movement to the meditations of “Where I’m Disease” before leaving the subsequent “Let Go” to its progression through piano, drone and a sit-in from a string quartet that leads directly into “Weeping Willow,” the spaces feel big and open but never let the listener get any more lost in them than is intended. This is the first LP from the five-piece incarnation of BleakHeart, which came together in 2022, and the balance of lushness and intensity as “Weeping Willow” hits its culmination and recedes into the subdued outset of “Falling Softly” and the doomed payoff that follows bodes well, but don’t take that as undercutting what’s already being accomplished here.

BleakHeart on Facebook

Seeing Red Records website

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Pryne, Gargantuan

Austria’s Pryne — also stylized all-caps: PRYNE — threaten to derail their first album before it’s even really started with the angular midsection breakdown of “Can-‘Ka No Rey,” but that the opener holds its course and even brings that mosher riff back at the end is indicative of the boldness with which they bring together the progressive ends of metal and heavy rock throughout the 10-song/46-minute offering, soaring in the solo ahead of the slowdown in “Ramification,” giving the audience 49 seconds to catch its breath after that initial salvo with “Hollow Sea” before “Abordan” resumes the varied onslaught with due punch, shove and twist, building tension in the verse and releasing in the melodic chorus in a way that feels informed by turn-of-the-century metal but seeming to nod at Type O Negative in the first half bridge of “Cymboshia” and refusing flat-out to do any one thing for too long. Plotted and complex even as “The Terrible End of the Yogi” slams out its crescendo before the Baronessy verse of “Plaguebearer” moves toward a stately gang shout and squibbly guitar tremolo, they roll out “Enola” as a more straight-ahead realignment before the drone interlude “Shapeless Forms” bursts into the double-kick-underscored thrash of closer “Elder Things,” riding its massive groove to an expectedly driving end. You never quite know what’s coming next within the songs, but the overarching sense of movement becomes a uniting factor that serves the material well regardless of the aggression level in any given stretch.

Pryne on Facebook

Pryne on Bandcamp

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Avi C. Engel, Too Many Souls

Backed by looped percussive ticks and pops and the cello-esque melody of the gudok, Toronto experimental singer-songwriter Avi C. Engel is poised as they ask in the lyrics of “Breadcrumb Dance,” “How many gods used to run this place/Threw up their hands, went into real estate” near the center of the seven-song Too Many Souls LP. Never let it be said there wasn’t room for humor in melancholy. Engel isn’t new to exploring folkish intimacy in various contexts, and Too Many Souls feels all the more personal even in “Wooly Mammoth” or second cut “Ladybird, What’s Wrong?” which gets underway on its casual semi-ramble with the line, “One by one I watch them piss into the sun,” for the grounded perspective at root. An ongoing thread of introspection and Engel‘s voice at the center draw the songs together as these stories are told in metaphor — birds return in the album’s second half with “The Oven Bird’s Song” but there’s enough heart poured in that it doesn’t need to be leaned into as a theme — and before it moves into its dreamstate drone still with the acoustic guitar beneath, “Without Any Eyes” brings through its own kind of apex in Engel‘s layered delivery. Topped with a part-backmasked take on the traditional “Wayfaring Stranger” that’s unfortunately left as an instrumental, Too Many Souls finds Engel continuing their journey of craft with its own songs as companions for each other and the artist behind them.

Avi C. Engel on Facebook

Somnimage website

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Aktopasa, Ultrawest

The 13-minute single “Ultrawest” follows behind Aktopasa‘s late-2022 Argonauta Records debut, Journey to the Pink Planet (review here), and was reportedly composed to feature in a documentary of the same name about the reshaping of post-industrial towns in Colorado. It is duly spacious in its slow, linear, instrumentalist progression. The Venice, Italy, three-piece of guitarist Lorenzo Barutta, bassist Silvio Tozzato and drummer Marco Sebastiano Alessi are fluid as they maintain the spirit of the jam that likely birthed the song’s floating atmospherics, but there’s a plan at work as well as they bring the piece to fruition, with Alessi subtly growing more urgent around 10 minutes in to mark the shift into an ending that never quite bursts out and isn’t trying to, but feels like resolution just the same. A quick, hypnotic showcase of the heavy psychedelic promise the debut held, “Ultrawest” makes it easy to look forward to whatever might come next for them.

Aktopasa on Facebook

Aktopasa on Bandcamp

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Guenna, Peak of Jin’Arrah

Right onto the list of 2024’s best debuts goes Guenna‘s Peak of Jin’Arrah, specifically for the nuance and range the young Swedish foursome bring to their center in heavy progressive fuzz riffing. One might look at a title like “Bongsai” or “Weedwacker” (video premiered here) and imagine played-to-genre stoner fare, but Guenna‘s take is more ambitious, as emphasized in the flute brought to “Bongsai” at the outset and the proclivity toward three-part harmonies that’s unveiled more in the nine-minute “Dimension X,” which follows. The folk influence toward which that flute hints comes forward on the mostly-acoustic closer “Guenna’s Lullaby,” which takes hold after the skronk-accompanied, full-bore push that caps “Wizery,” but by that point the context for such shifts has been smoothly laid out as being part of an encompassing and thoughtful songwriting process that in less capable hands would leave “Ordric Major” disjointed and likely overly aggressive. Even as they make room for the guest lead vocals of Elin Pålsson on “Dark Descent,” Guenna walk these balances smoothly and confidently, and if you don’t believe there’s a generational shift happening right now — at this very moment — in Scandinavia, Peak of Jin’Arrah stands ready to convince you otherwise. There’s a lot of work between here and there, but Guenna hold the potential to be a significant voice in that next-gen emergence.

Guenna on Facebook

The Sign Records website

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Slow Green Thing, Wetterwarte / Waltherstrasse

The interplay of stoner-metal tonal density and languid vocal melody in “I Thought I Would Not” sets an atmospheric mood for Slow Green Thing on their fourth LP, Wetterwarte / Waltherstrasse, which the Dresden-based four-piece seem to have recorded in two sessions between 2020 and 2022. That span of time might account for some of the scope between the songs as “Thousand Deaths” holds out a hand into the void staring back at it and the subsequent “Whispering Voices” answers the proggy wash and fuzzed soloing of “Tombstones in My Eyes” with roll and meditative float alike, but I honestly don’t know what was recorded when and there’s no real lack of cohesion within the aural mists being conjured or the heft residing within it, so take that as you will. It’s perhaps less of a challenge to put temporal considerations aside since Slow Green Thing seem so at home in the flow that plays out across Wetterwarte / Waltherstrasse‘s six songs and 44 minutes, remaining in control despite veering into more aggressive passages and basing so much of what they do on entrancing and otherworldly vibe. And while the general superficialities of thickened tones and soundscaping, ‘gaze-type singing and nod will be familiar, the use made of them by Slow Green Thing offers a richer and deeper experience revealed and affirmed on repeat listens.

Slow Green Thing on Facebook

Slow Green Thing on Bandcamp

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Ten Ton Slug, Colossal Oppressor

Don’t expect a lot of trickery in Ten Ton Slug‘s awaited first full-length record, Colossal Oppressor, which delivers its metallic sludge pummel with due transparency of purpose. That is to say, the Galway, Ireland, trio aren’t fucking around. Enough so that Bolt Thrower‘s Karl Willetts shows up on a couple of songs. Varied but largely growled or screamed vocals answer the furious chug and thud of “Balor,” and while “Ghosts of the Ooze” later on answers back to the brief acoustic parts bookending opener “The Ooze” ahead of “Mallacht an tSloda” arriving like a sledgehammer only to unfold its darkened thrash and nine-plus-minute closer “Mogore the Unkind” making good on its initial threat with the mosh-ready riffing in its second half, there’s no pretense in those or any of the other turns Colossal Oppressor makes, and there doesn’t need to be when the songs are so refreshingly crushing. These guys have been around for over a decade already, so it’s not a surprise necessarily to find them so committed to this punishing mission, but the cathartic bloodletting resonates regardless. Not for everyone, very much for some on the more extreme end of heavy.

Ten Ton Slug on Facebook

Ten Ton Slug on Bandcamp

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Magic Fig, Magic Fig

Don’t let the outward Beatles-bouncing pop-psych friendly-acid traditionalism of “Goodbye Suzy” lull you into thinking San Francisco psych rockers Magic Fig‘s self-titled debut is solely concerned with vintage aesthetics. While accessible even in the organ-and-synth prog flourish of “PS1” — the keyboards alone seeming to span generations — and the more foreboding current of low end under the shuffle and soft vocals of “Obliteration,” the six-song/28-minute LP is no less effective in the rising cosmic expanse that builds into “Labyrinth” than the circa-’67 orange-sun lysergic folk-rock that rolls out from there — that darker edge comes back around, briefly, in a stop around the two-minute mark; it’s hard to know which side is imagining the other, but “Labyrinth” is no less fun for that — and “Distant Dream,” which follows, is duly transcendent and fluid. Given additional character via the Mellotron and birdsong-inclusive meditation that ends it and the album as a whole, “Departure” nonetheless feels intentional in its subtly synthy acoustic-and-voice folkish strum, and its intricacy highlights a reach one hopes Magic Fig will continue to nurture.

Magic Fig on Facebook

Silver Current Records on Bandcamp

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Scorched Oak, Perception

If you followed along with Dortmund, Germany’s Scorched Oak on their 2020 debut, Withering Earth (review here), as that album dug into classic heavy rock as a means of longer-form explorations, some of what they present in the 39 minutes of Perception might make more sense. There was plenty of dynamic then too in terms of shifts in rhythm and atmosphere, and certainly second-LP pieces like “Mirrors” and “Relief” come at least in part from a similar foundation — I’d say the same of the crescendo verse of “Oracle” near the finish — but the reportedly-recorded-live newer offering finds the band making a striking delve into harder and more metallic impacts on the whole. An interplay of gruff — gurgling, almost — and soulful melodic vocals is laid out as opener/longest track (immediate points) “Delusion” resolves the brooding toms of its verse with post-metal surges. Perhaps it’s obvious enough that it doesn’t need to be said, but Scorched Oak aren’t residing in a single feel or progression throughout, and the intensity and urgency of “Reflection” land with a directness that the closing “Oracle” complements in its outward spread. The element of surprise makes Perception feel somewhat like a second debut, but that they pull off such an impression is in itself a noteworthy achievement, never mind how much less predictable it makes them or the significant magnitude of these songs.

Scorched Oak on Facebook

Scorched Oak on Bandcamp

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Another night in Toronto. It’s the end of July, and onstage at Bovine Sex Club, hometown-hero space-doom purveyors Sons of Otis are getting ready to play. The video camera has the three-piece founded by guitarist/vocalist Ken Baluke off to the left side of the frame. They look far away and sound it too, but that’s nothing new. Sons of Otis have been aurally gone for over 30 years now.

“Way I Feel” originally appeared on the band’s 2005 album, X, which followed 2001’s Songs for Worship in the post-Man’s Ruin era of the band — that seminal label had released their first two albums, 1996’s Spacejumbofudge (discussed here) and 1999’s Temple Ball (review here), before folding — and X found them on Small Stone after The Music Cartel put out Songs for Worship, a tumultuous period they resolved through molten riffs, massive, lurching groove, and cosmic vibes. In other words, they were Sons of Otis. If bong rock is a thing, Sons of Otis are gravity bong rock.

You can hear some conversation at the very start of the video. People are having a chat as one does between songs or bands. Sons of Otis were filling in this night for The Obsessed, who’d had to cancel a stint of Canadian shows and thusly left an open space at the top of the night’s lineup. Needless to say, they did the job admirably or they probably wouldn’t have put the video up.

I like bootlegs. If you feel the same, remember putting bootleg VHS tapes or DVDs in your player or listening to rough-sounding audience audio recordings, then this might resonate. What strikes me about it is how down to business the band is, and how they get up, hit the sample, lay waste, stop. I’ve never seen Sons of Otis, and already I knew this was an oversight, so I won’t call that fresh learning or anything, but certainly it points out the folly of living this long without.

So, road trip?

I don’t have any real reason for posting this other than it’s good. It’s not tied to an album release — the band put out their latest LP, Isolation (review here), in Fall 2020 through Totem Cat; the stream is below because who the hell wants to stop listening to Sons of Otis after one song? — or being put out to do any kind of active promotion that I know of. But that’s fine. I don’t need an excuse to dig in, and I think the a/v aesthetic value of the clip speaks for itself. In rumble.

Enjoy:

Sons of Otis, “Way I Feel” live in Toronto, July 29, 2023

Bovine Sex Club Toronto 7/29/23

Sons of Otis, Isolation (2020)

Sons of Otis on Facebook

Sons of Otis on Bandcamp