Posted in Whathaveyou on August 19th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Especially as it’s only been about a month since I was writing about Träden, aka Träd, Gräs och Stenar, I’m a little wistful looking at the latest round of adds to Høstsabbat 2024 knowing I won’t be there to see the show. I’ll confess I’m not familiar with Jaqueline or their 2006 record, Reaping Machines, but at this point I know enough to take the Oslo-based Fall fest at their word and follow their recommendations. I’ve got the album on now because it’s the future and the tradeoff for deregulated capitalist hell is we can do that. I don’t expect digging it will make me any less bummed not to make it to Høstsabbat this year.
Scheduling conflict. It’s my daughter’s birthday that weekend; same deal as last year. Yes, it’s true that the last time I was there I needed knee surgery afterward, but I still love Høstsabbat, Jens and Ole and their ultra-diligent, ultra-creative crew bringing the fest to life. Bringing in Witchthroat Serpent and Barren Womb too emphasizes the stylistic breadth of the fest as they are now — confident, established, ready and able to take risks and united by an idea of heaviness that, at its core, remains likewise amorphous and resonant. I could go on saying nice things about my experiences over the years at Høstsabbat, the bands who play or the people who staff it, the place it happens or the fact that there’s often an empty seat next to me on the flight to or from Oslo, but you get the point and I’m only bumming myself out. If you can get to this one, you should seriously consider doing so.
The Jaqueline record sounds pretty killer, by the way. Of course it does. Mid-aughts moody Scandinavian heavy rock, you say? Don’t mind if I do.
From social media:
It’s great to feel the winds of cold again, making path in our souls for the darker, grimmer, angrier and of course heavy AF acts that will come to our church of riffs in October.
Todays bouquet is as diverse as it is awesome.
The feeling of having Swedish prog legends 𝗧𝗥Ä𝗗, 𝗚𝗥Ä𝗦 𝗢𝗖𝗛 𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗔𝗥 come to church feels almost unreal (Not the Roxette-song). The original lineup started back in 1969, and the band’s cvlt status can hardly be argued. Joined by guitar-virtuoso Reine Fiske in 2008, the band has revitalized their lineup as age always takes its toll.
What a treat it will be to see this legendary band grace The Chapel stage.
Another absolute highlight is the return to stage for Norwegian monster three piece 𝗝𝗔𝗤𝗨𝗘𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗘.
Hardly any band as heavy as these guys have harvested more «sixes on the dice” from our national press. Ever.
Their masterpeice «Reaping Machines» from 2006 is a record as heavy as a ten ton Chevy, and led the way of combining songwriting finesse with pure, jaw dropping heaviness. What an album.
«Reaping Machines» will be performed in its entirety at Høstsabbat.
We Can Not Wait.
𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗖𝗛𝗧𝗛𝗥𝗢𝗔𝗧 𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗣𝗘𝗡𝗧 is the second French band on our lineup this year.
Although showcasing a completely different sound than their fellow countrymen in Ni, they are just as much a perfect fit for Høstsabbat with their ultra slow and heavy riff worship.
This bunch of axemen knows how to tickle your belly with their low end debauchery.
𝗕𝗔𝗥𝗥𝗘𝗡 𝗪𝗢𝗠𝗕. Yes, they are coming back!
Timo and Tony laid completely waste to Verkstedet closing out the festival, when we first introduced the stage in 2019. They have been doing so ever since, and before, for that matter. Barren Womb is one of those bands we should cherish to the bone here in Norway.
They turn every single live show into a chaotic fest of emotion, energy and twisted originality(?). Their blend of hardcore and whatnot is so unique, in its weird catchy way.
How do they get the complexity to feel this accessible?
Every now and then I go back to this one. Träden is a nickname for Träd Gräs och Stenar. Formed in 1969, and with their 1970 self-titled debut a landmark in early heavy prog/psych rock, Swedish or otherwise, the band led by more-or-less-founding guitarist/vocalist Jakob Sjöholm donned their abbreviated moniker to match the title of 2018’s Träden (review here), but it’s not the first time they’ve switched it up in that regard. Comprising eight tracks that run an immersive, hypnotic 70 minutes beginning with the longest of the bunch (immediate points) in “När lingonen mognar (Lingonberries Forever)” at 11:51, the album is a varied sprawl to be sure, but the material is tied together through the ultra-organic presentation and open-feeling creativity.
Parts are pretty clearly improvised, whether it’s the guitar solo in “När lingonen mognar (Lingonberries Forever)” or the outset of the lightly shuffling “Kung Karlsson” (7:55) that follows and builds into a noodly wash by its midsection, held together by the rhythm section as Sjöholm and guitarist/organist Reine Fiske (also Dungen) explore a decidedly earthy psychedelia, growing noisier at the finish before “Tamburan” (11:19) begins its pastoralist procession, twists of original-era psych on guitar gracefully distorted over the steady basswork of Sigge Krantz and fluid drumming from Nisse Törnqvist, who shares those duties with Hanna Östergren (also Hills) with the latter playing on most of the tracks and contributing vocals somewhere, somehow. The first instrumental, “Tamburan” is the point of departure for your consciousness; an unfolding fuzzscape of willful meander, almost meditative but leant vibrance through the live feel of the recording.
By this point, Träden are already embroiled in the back and forth between shorter and longer pieces, and that contrast is especially stark as “Å nej (Oh No)” starts out with running water giving over to shaker percussion and a sweetly casual folkish sensibility emphasized by the blend of acoustic strum and lockstep fuzz, shaker percussion, multiple vocalists joining for the simple-sounds-work-best chorus, which is one of few throughout Träden, and feels purposefully included near the center of the record. I don’t speak Swedish, but there’s some comfort in the procession of “Å nej” nonetheless, the humble melody and fun swell of hurdy gurdy or something like it in the midsection; it could even be guitar. If you’re a drinker, it might be what sways you to sleep with a warning of the hangover to follow, still distant enough not to be real in the tragic sense of the word.
“OTO” starts out with foreboding strums of distorted guitar and a quiet-ish tom rhythm from Östergren, with a shimmer of lead guitar cutting through tentatively at first and then markedly less so. They’re moving by the time they’re three and a half minutes into the total nine, but it’s more of a look-back-and-wonder-how-you-got-there than an outwardly purposeful build, and like much of the record that surrounds, it’s content to make its own kind of sense. The guitar tone changes shortly before they hit seven minutes and “OTO” the dreamier early going is somewhat solidified, relatively speaking, but stays mellow and hypnotic even as the guitar threatens howls toward the finish, from which “Hoppas du förstår (Hope You Understand)” picks up with another redirect, putting acoustic guitar at the center with arriving soon after.
What might be the bowed Indian instrument esraj features in the mix (handled by Fiske if that’s it) and adds ethereal lift to the otherwise humble procession. “Hoppas du förstår (Hope You Understand)” is of a kind with “Å nej” in runtime and the fact that it has vocals — in layers, even — but the voice, mood and sentiment conveyed by the music are different, and the later cut is backed by the instrumental “Hymn.” If it was American I would call “Hymn” a ramble — note to self: do Swedes ramble? — but its seven minutes feel contemplative enough to earn the name and after touching ground in the song prior, Träden depart once more into fuzz and wispy psych for the closer “Det finns blått (There is Blue),” which is true enough whether you’re talking about the sky, water, or misery. The finale is the third of the total eight songs to top 10 minutes, and if it was only the fuzz-washed lead and drums for the duration, it would still be a win, but the off-the-cuff-feeling vocals — which may have started as improv, but are doubled in parts — and sax and who knows what else are certainly welcome along for the ride.
And like much of the album that precedes, “Det finns blått (There is Blue)” is a ride, whether or not you realize it’s moving. Thick in vibe and the emergent fuzz alike, with some bordering-on-shouts later, it’s a mind-psych movement outward that’s not entirely unstructured or without form, but that carries a feeling of liquidity just the same, oozing out as it makes its way in its own time to the twisting solo noise that begins the second half, the drums growing accordingly more fervent in crash. By the seven-minute mark, it drops to standalone guitar strum, but the urgency that rose up hasn’t completely dissipated either, whatever solace is offered through the calming strum and peppered notes of epilogue guitar. That last couple minutes, which really could be a whole other song if the jam had gone that way, might be out of place with the preceding piece, but if anything, they only underscore the point of how little that matters in the first place if it doesn’t jolt the listener out of the experience, and by the last three minutes of Träden, the band would have to come to your house and stomp on your foot to snap you out of the spell they’ve just spent the last hour-plus casting. Call it a bonus on an existential level.
My only motivation for closing the week with Träden is to say I hope at some point Sjöholmand company do another album. Whether it sounds like this or wanders off elsewhere musically, whatever. I’ll take it. This record requires a certain kind of patience — don’t go in with expectations beyond hearing sound — but there’s so much life in the songs if you’re willing to meet them on their level. I have no idea if or when Träd Gräs och Stenar might return or in what form, but the world they make here begs further exploration. It’s among the CDs I least regret buying in the last decade.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
—
We’re in Budapest — me, The Patient Mrs., The Pecan, and the dog Tilly. In the part of the city called Astoria, which I’ve just been calling Queens, because, well, New York. It’s Friday. We got here Wednesday after two days in Zagreb, Croatia, following my excursion to Bear Stone Festival in the Croatian countryside last weekend. That seems longer ago.
My wife, kid and dog had a place in Zagreb that was apparently alright, but when I came back from the festival — met them at the airport as though I was just flying in from another world; kind of true minus the flying part — we and our five weeks’ worth of kidn-and-dog-inclusive luggage moved to a spot in the Old City, kind of a touristy section. It was above a Napoli pizza place, very clearly owned by the guy who owned the pizza place, and very clearly his fuckpad. The stove didn’t work. The tub didn’t work. There were two wall unit air conditionings: one useless, the other downstairs (yes, it was a two-level apartment) and pointed directly at a large pane of glass.
It was 100-plus degrees out every day as it has also been all throughout this week, and the temperature inside was absolutely punishing. Crippling. The kind of heat that kills people, as climate-crisis era Europe has found out for the last however long and will I guess continue to find out unless somebody here ever figures out how to freeze water. America is a recent enough country to have refrigeration infrastructure. Europe, in this regard, is well and truly fucked. And no, the irony of AC contributing to global warming isn’t lost on me. I’m just trying to stay alive.
The kid has been doing well. Better than on the Southwest trip, which was largely a nightmare. The four-hours-ish drive from Zagreb to Budapest gave a chance to see some of the countryside, the lake in Hungary that I’m told is where the people go to ease their summery sufferings, and so on. We hit a big Tesco and got a Lego excavator for The Pecan to build; she was stoked. The washer where we’re staying broke pretty much immediately on first use, so we need to figure out a laundry solution, so I think that’s this morning’s problem. And yes, the morning has started. It’s after 7AM CET now. The kid’s been going to bed after 9PM, and I’ve had the alarm set for 6AM since I haven’t been getting to sleep before 11 and actually need to be present mentally and physically for these days — that is, I need to have the capacity to engage, ever — and she was up before my phone even started playing that obnoxious, jaunty little tune that I’m too lazy to change. First rays of the rising sun, and all that. That’s been brutal.
Every second I write while we’re here is a scrape, including this one, and only happens because The Patient Mrs. lets it. That’s not a great dynamic for anybody, but I don’t stop needing to write just because I’m someplace else.
There are two shows I’m planning to see while I’m here: Brant Bjork Trio and Stoned Jesus/Dopelord. I have no idea where either is or how I’ll get there, but I’ve got time. We’re here until I think Aug. 7, then fly back to New York (ugh, JFK; weeks out and already I’m dreading it) to finish out the summer. The Pecan is in camp next week, and that should lessen some of the impact of our days as parents — also give her a valuable life experience blah blah — provided she can make it through without getting kicked out, which last year at this time was a standard that proved too high multiple times over. I’ve got my fingers crossed for her, but when she has a hard time, you know it.
This apartment is swank in a bourgeois kind of way, and that’s fine. The air conditioning works. There’s a bag of ice in the freezer we’re rationing out. A Nespresso. A working shower. It does not feel like a fuckpad. I haven’t had much chance to try out my magyarul other than to order coffee, but hopefully at some point I’ll be able to make a fool out of myself attempting to have an actual conversation with someone or trying to glean some necessary information. “Hol van a A38?,” and so on.
I hope you have a great and safe weekend. I have a couple things confirmed for next week, premieres on Tuesday and Thursday, but honestly don’t know how much I’ll be able to do around that. I’ve bowed out on doing two bios already and might do another. There’s news that came in as I was heading to Bear Stone that I’m still behind on. When I get home, much as I’m able, I plan to knuckle down on this thing, but it’s hard being pulled in multiple directions and I can’t really argue for more time when all it is from my family’s point of view is an indulgence for which the occasional payoff is the ego boost of someone saying something nice about my work on the internet and my own fleeting fulfillment before I need to do the next thing.
Speaking of the next thing, that’s breakfast. Thanks for reading. Have fun, stay safe and cool, and hydrate. All the water.
Posted in Reviews on December 5th, 2018 by JJ Koczan
Good morning from the kitchen table. It’s a couple minutes before 4AM as I get this post started. I’ve got my coffee, my iced tea in the same cup I’ve been using for the last three days, and I’m ready to roll through the next 10 records in this massive, frankly silly, Quarterly Review. Yesterday went well enough and I’m three days into the total 10 and I don’t feel like my head is going to explode, so I’ll just say so far so good.
As ever, there’s a lot to get through, so I won’t delay. I hope you find something here you dig. I certainly have.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Sandrider, Armada
Armada is the third full-length from Seattle noiseblasters Sandrider, and at this point I’m starting to wonder what it’s going to take for this band to get their due. Produced by Matt Bayles and released through Good to Die Records, the album is an absolute monster front to back. Scathing. Beastly. And yet the songs have character. It’s the trio’s first outing since 2015’s split with Kinski (review here) and follows 2013’s Godhead (review here) and 2011’s self-titled debut (review here) in melding the band’s West Coast noise superiority with a sense of melody and depth as the trio of guitarist/vocalist Jon Weisnewski, bassist/vocalist Jesse Roberts, and omegadrummer Nat Damm course and wind their way through intense but varied material. “Banger” has been tapped for its grunge influence. Eh. Maybe in the riff, but who cares when there’s so much more going on with it? “Brambles” is out and out brutal but still has a hook, and cuts like “Industry” and the closing “Dogwater” remind of just how skilled Sandrider are at making that brutality fun. If the record was six minutes long and just had “Hollowed” on it, you’d still call it a win.
Goodness gracious. Cavernous echo accompanies the roars of guitarist Scott Prater that are offset by the more subdued melodies of drummer Amber Burns, but even in the most spacious reaches of 11-minute second cut “Blind Faith,” Witchkiss are fucking massive-sounding. Their debut album, The Austere Curtains of Our Eyes, presents an especially crushing take on ritualistic volume, sounding its catharsis in a song like “Spirits of the Dirt” and sounding natural as it trades between a rolling assault and the atmospheres of its quieter moments. With the departure since the recording of bassist Anthony DiBlasi, the New York-based outfit will invariably shift in dynamic somewhat coming out of this record, but with such an obvious clarity of mission, I honestly doubt their core approach will change all that much. A band doesn’t make a record like this without direct intention. They may evolve, and one hopes they do just because one always hopes for that, but this isn’t a band feeling their way through their first record. This is a band who know exactly the kind of ferocity they want to conjure, and who conjure it without regret.
Argentinian instrumentalist trio Satta Caveira make a point of saying they recorded MMI, their second or third album depending on what you count, live in their home studio without edits or overdubs, click tracks or anything else. Clearly the intention then is to capture the raw spirit of the material as it’s happening. The eight songs that make up the unmanageable 62-minute listen of MMI — to be fair, 14 of those minutes are opener “Kundalini” and 23 are the sludge-into-jam-into-sludge riffer “T.H.C.” — are accordingly raw, but that in itself becomes a component of their aesthetic. Whether it’s the volume swell that seems to consume “Don Santos” in its second half, the funk of closer “Afrovoid” or the drift in “Kalifornia,” Satta Caveira manage to hone a sense of range amid all the naturalism, and with the gritty and more aggressive riffing of the title-track and the rush of the penultimate “Router,” their sound might actually work with a more elaborate production, but they’ve got a thing, it works well, and I’m not inclined to argue.
Vocalized only by spoken samples of astronauts, the thrice-exclamatory Lizard! Lizard! Lizard! is the debut EP from Perth, Australia, three-piece Apollo80, who are given mostly to exploring an outpouring of heavy molten vibes but still able to hone a bit of cacophony following the “godspeed, John Glenn” sample in second cut “FFH.” There are four songs on the 26-minute offering, and its spaciousness is brought to earth somewhat by the dirt in which the guitar and bass tones are caked, but it’s more the red dust of Mars than anything one might find kicking around a Terran desert. Unsurprisingly, the high point of the outing is the 10:46 title-track, where guitarist Luke, bassist Brano and drummer Shane push farthest into the cosmos — though that’s debatable with the interstellar drone of closer “Good Night” — but even in the impact of “Apollo” at the outset, there’s a feeling of low-oxygen in the atmosphere, and if you get lightheaded, that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.
The prevailing influence throughout the untitled debut EP from Minnesota’s The Great Unwilling is Queens of the Stone Age, but listening to the layer of wah intertwine with the solo on “Sanguine,” there’s more to their approach than just that, however dreamy the vocal melodies from guitarist Jesse Hoheisel might be. Hoheisel, bassist Joe Ulvi and Mark Messina present a clean four tracks and 20 minutes on their first outing, and for having been together for about 18 months, their songwriting seems to have a firm grasp on what they want to do. “If 3 was 7” rolls along at a heavy clip into an effectively drifting midsection and second half jam before returning to the initial riff, while “Current” leads off with a particularly Hommeian construction, and soon gives way to the flowing pace and apparent lyrical references of the aforementioned “Sanguine.” They finish with the dirtier tonality of “Apostasy” and cap with no more pretense than they started, bringing the short release to a close with a chorus that seems to finish with more to say. No doubt they’ll get there.
A prominent current of organ alongside the guitars gives Grusom‘s aptly-titled second album on Kozmik Artifactz, II, a willfully classic feel, and even the lyrics of “Peace of Mind” play into that with the opening lines, “I always said I was born too late/This future is not for me,” but the presentation from the Svendborg six-piece isn’t actually all that retro-fied. Rather, the two guitars and organ work in tandem to showcase a modern take on those classic ideas, as the back and forth conversation between them in the extended jam of “Skeletons” demonstrates, and with a steady rhythmic foundation and soulful vocals overtop, Grusom‘s craft doesn’t need the superficial trappings of a ’70s influence to convey those roots in their sound. Songs like “Dead End Valley” and “Embers” have a bloozy swing as they head toward the melancholy closer “Cursed from Birth,” but even there, the proceedings are light on pretense and the atmosphere is more concerned with a natural vibe rather than pretending it’s half a century ago.
Having originated as Träd Gräs och Stenar, the group now known as Träden is the product of a psychedelic legacy spanning generations. Founder Jakob Sjöholm has joined forces with Hanna Östergren of Hills, Reine Fiske of Dungen and Sigge Krantz of Archimedes Badkar to create a kind of supergroup of serenity, and their self-titled is blissful enough not only to life up to Träd Gräs och Stenar‘s cult status, but to capture one of its own. It’s gorgeous. Presumably the painting used on the cover is the cabin where it was recorded, and its eight tracks — sometimes mellow, sometimes more weighted, always hypnotic — are a naturalist blueprint that only make the world a better place. That sounds ridiculous, I know. But the truth is that for all the terrible, horrifying shit humanity does on a daily basis, to know that there are people on the planet making music like this with such a genuine spirit behind it is enough to instill a bit of hope for the species. This is what it’s all about. I couldn’t even make it through the Bandcamp stream without buying the CD. That never happens.
Last year, Spanish experimentalists Orthodox released Supreme and turned their free-jazz meets low-doom into a 36-minute fracas of happening-right-now creativity. Krèas, a lone, 27-minute track with the core duo of bassist Marco Serrato and drummer Borja Díaz joined by saxophonist Achilleas Polychronidis, was recorded in the same session but somehow seems even more freaked-out. I mean, it’s gone. Gone to a degree that even the hepcats who claim to appreciate free-jazz on anything more than a theoretical level (that is, those who actually listen to it) will have their hair blown back. The rest of the universe? Well, they’ll probably continue on, blissfully unaware that Orthodox are out there smashing comets together like they are, but wow. Challenging the listener is one thing. Krèas is the stuff of dissertations. One only hopes Orthodox aren’t holding their breath waiting for humanity to catch up to what they’re doing, because, yeah, it’s gonna be a while.
Danish bruisers Disrule run a brash gamut with their second album, Sleep in Your Honour (on Seeing Red). Leading off with the earworm hook of the title-track (premiered here), the album puts a charge into C.O.C.-style riffing and classic heavy rock, but shades of Clutch-y funk in “Going Wrong” and a lumbering bottom end in “Occult Razor” assure there’s no single angle from which they strike. “(Gotta Get Me Some) Control” elicits a blues-via-Sabbath vibe, but the drums seem to make sure Disrule are never really at rest, and so there’s a strong sense of momentum throughout the eight-song/29-minute EP, perhaps best emphasized by two-minute second cut “Death on My Mind,” which seems to throw elbows as it sprints past, though even shouted-chorus closer “Enter the Void” has an infectious energy about it. If you think something can’t be heavy and move, Disrule have a shove with your name on it.
First clue that all is not what it seems? The artwork. Definitely not a picture of cake on the cover of Ozymandias‘ debut album, Cake!, and accordingly, things don’t take long before they get too weird. “Jelly Beans” hits on harshest Nirvana — before it goes into blastbeats. “Mason Jar” scathes out organ-laced doom and vicious screaming, before “Hangman” gets all danceable like “All Pigs Must Die” earlier in the record. The wacky quotient is high, and the keyboards do a lot to add to that, but one can’t really call “Doom I – The Daisies” or the later “Doom II – The Lilies” anything but progressive in the Devin Townsend-shenanigans-metal sense of the word, and as wild as some stretches of Cake! are, the trio from Linz, Austria, are never out of control, and they never give a sense that what they’re doing is an accident. They’re just working on their own stylistic level, and to a degree that’s almost scary considering it’s their first record. I won’t claim to know where they might be headed, but it seems likely they have a plan.
