Posted in Whathaveyou on June 8th, 2017 by JJ Koczan
Losing Warning is a bummer, but Northwest Terror Fest 2017 is taking it in stride and taking its game to another level entirely by adding Coven to the bill for their first US show in 27 years. I had the good fortune of watching Coven play at Roadburn in April (review here), and their classic sound has never been more relevant than it is today, and Jinx Dawson remains a mystifying presence as frontwoman, even nearly five decades after the band issued their landmark 1969 outing, Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls, which you can hear in full below. The point of that massive fucking run-on sentence? Go see Coven if you can. There. I made it simple. I hear that’s what you’re supposed to do on the internet.
John Haughm of Pillorian and Agalloch will also play an acoustic set as part of the packed lineup, and as a side note, tomorrow I’ll have a Six Dumb Questions interview posted with David Rodgers of Godhunter, who organizes this fest as well as other Terror Fest incarnations like the Austin Terror Fest at SXSW and Southwest Terror Fest in Arizona. Dude breaks his ass in making these things happen, and you’ll note Godhunter aren’t on this bill, so it’s clearly not about just putting together an event to promote his own doings. Just something to keep an eye out for.
Northwest Terror Fest 2017 runs June 15-17. Here’s the latest from the PR wire, including the full schedule:
COVEN, JOHN HAUGHM JOIN NORTHWEST TERROR FEST
NORTHWEST TERROR FEST – SEATTLE JUNE 15-17
Due to matters out of control of Northwest Terror Fest, we regret to inform that Warning will no longer be able to perform during this specific weekend. But at the end of the darkness is light as we are proud to announce that the legendary Coven will be playing on the evening of Saturday June 17th in what will be their first stateside show in 27 years!
While its widely disputed that some have cited Coven as the first band to brandish the sign of the horns, their occult laced tunes have laid down an irrefutable influence on the world of metal and doom beginning with their mystic debut album, 1969’s Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls.
John Haughm of Agalloch will be performing an intimate set.
Inspired by Cormac McCarthy, Ennio Morricone, Neil Young’s “Dead Man” soundtrack, and the renegade years of the American old west, John Haughm’s solo performance is a haunting and sonic 30 minute journey through dystopian wastelands of the past. It is a bleak, atmospheric, and powerful droning Western soundscape in steadfast spirit of the years 1865 – 1895.
Northwest Terror Fest Schedule:
THURSDAY 6/15 Neumo’s: 10:10 – END – Wolves In The Throne Room 8:50 – 9:30 – Samothrace 7:35 – 8:10 – King Woman 6:30 – 7:00 – Lycus 5:30 – 6:00 – Uada
Barboza: 9:30 – 10:10 – Graves At Sea 8:10 – 8:50 – Take Over And Destroy 7:00 – 7:35 – Void Omnia 6:00 – 6:30 – Barghest 5:00 – 5:30 – Witch Ripper
THURSDAY AFTER PARTY
Highline: 1:00 – END – John Haughm 11:50 – 12:40 – Aerial Ruin 11:00 – 11:30 – Crowhurst
Barboza: 9:30 – 10:10 Cult Leader 8:10 – 8:50 – Call Of The Void 7:00 – 7:35 – Transient 6:00 – 6:30 – Endorphin’s Lost 5:00 – 5:30 – Recluse
FRIDAY AFTER PARTY
Highline: 12:40 – END – Usnea 11:50 – 12:20 – Burials 11:00 – 11:30 – Sol
SATURDAY 6/17
Neumo’s: 10:10 – END – Coven (First US Show in 27 years) 8:50 – 9:30 – Yob 7:35 – 8:10 – Marissa Nadler 6:30 – 7:00 – Young And In The Way 5:30 – 6:00 – Infernal Coil
Posted in Reviews on March 28th, 2016 by JJ Koczan
So it begins. I’d say this one snuck up on me, but the terrible truth of these things is that there are months of planning involved. You know the drill by now: Between today and Friday, I’ll be posting 50 record reviews in batches of 10 per day, and that’s the Quarterly Review. They’re not really in any order. Some have been out for a while, some aren’t out yet. I have tried to mark 2015 stuff where possible, if only to keep my own organizational modus straight. We’ll see how that goes as the week plays out. In any case, I hope you find something here that you dig. I know I have.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Wheel in the Sky, Heading for the Night
Although Wheel in the Sky’s presentation is modern enough on their The Sign Records debut album, Heading for the Night, to steer them clear of Sweden’s boogie-mad masses, they’re still very clearly taking influence from classic rock, most notably The Who on cuts like opener “Fire, Death to All” (also the longest track; immediate points), “Total Eclipse of the Brain” and “Thrust in the Night.” The clarity of sound and approach puts them more in line with bands like The Golden Grass and, for a countrymen example, Troubled Horse, than Graveyard, and the Uppsala/Stockholm four-piece distinguish themselves further through the dual-lead interplay of “A Turn for the Wicked,” which hints just a bit toward Thin Lizzy bounce to feed into closer “God on High,” which coats its vocals in echo to add a sense of grandeur before the last instrumental push, which picks up the pace at the end to cap a first album from a band clearly looking to find their own niche within a classic heavy rock feel.
Offered first by the band in 2012 and reissued through Sulatron Records with two bonus tracks from the same recording session, Sun Dial’s Mind Control puts the long-running UK psych/space rockers in their element in a kosmiche expanse quickly on “Mountain of Fire and Miracles,” and while electronic experimentation is a factor throughout “Radiation” and “Burned In,” there’s always a human spirit underneath and sometimes out front in what Sun Dial do, and the newly-included “Seven Pointed Star” and “World Within You” fit in with the sense of acid ritual that the original album tracks convey, the title cut transposing Hawkwindian warp drive on a more relaxed atmosphere, each measure seemingly a mantra in a longer meditation. Even with its wah-soaked ending, “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” has a more straightforward tack, proving that even when you think you know what a group like Sun Dial are up to, you’re probably wrong.
The second EP from San Francisco-based shoegazing psychedelic rockers LSD and the Search for God, Heaven is a Place, arrives a whopping nine years after its self-titled predecessor. Granted, it might be the wash of effects and the almost-whispered vocal melodies that seem to barely break the surface of the waves of airy distortion, but if any of this material goes back that far, it doesn’t show its age. The five-piece – guitarist/vocalist Andy Liszt, vocalist Sophia Cambell, guitarist Chris Fifield, bassist Ryan Lescure and drummer Ricky Maymi – offer five tracks of blissed-out, dripping wet vibe, with “Outer Space (Long Way Home)” at the center of a post-grunge swirl following the cosmic push of “(I Don’t Think that We Should) Take it Slow” and before the serenity of “Elizabeth” takes hold as a lead-in for seven-minute finale “Without You,” simultaneously the most lucid and dreamy of the cuts included. Nine years is a long time. Heaven is a Place begs for a quicker follow-up.
Austin purveyors Duel make a striking impression from the cover onward with their Heavy Psych Sounds full-length debut, Fears of the Dead. The four-piece, which by all reports features two former members of Scorpion Child, get down with classic swing on the opening title-track and thereby broadcast the intent of the album as a whole, bringing ‘70s-style grooves and boogie forward in time with modern fullness and a crisp production that highlights the gruff vocals of guitarist Tom Frank, who alongside bassist/vocalist Shaun Avants, guitarist Derek Halfmann and drummer JD Shadowz, swaggers through the record’s eight included slabs as one might through a crowded venue for the next in a long series of an evening’s beers. Later cuts like “When the Pigs are Fed” and 7:52 closer “Locked Outside” bring some more variety to the approach, but the heart of Fears of the Dead remains brash and unbridled, and one doubts if Duel would have it any other way.
One might blink and miss the debut single from somewhat mysterious psychedelic rockers The Canadian Sweetmen, which totals its A and B sides together for a runtime of about four and a half minutes, but the fact that the 90-second “Intro” (the A side) manages to marry The Velvet Underground and The Beach Boys in that span is definitely something worth taking the time to note. There’s just about no information on the band as to who they are, where they come from, where they’re going, etc., but the three-minute “New Cigarettes” makes an impression on style and substance alike and offers an encouraging glimpse at what seems to be a psychedelia bolstered by organ and Rhodes and unbound by a need to adhere to genre tenets. “Intro” doesn’t even stick around long enough to do so, but “New Cigarettes” careens into a rhythmic push for its chorus that offers an earthy undertone to the heady, spaced-out vibe. More please.
Absolutely devastating. UK post-sludgers Wren dole out a punishment that won’t be soon forgotten on their second EP, Host (on Holy Roar), following up the blackened post-rock of their 2014 self-titled EP (review here) and their 2015 split with Irk (review here) with four pummeling but still richly atmospheric cuts. Working now as the lineup of Owen Jones, Chris Pickering, Robert Letts and John McCormick, Wren have had three different vocalists on their three releases, but not a one of them has failed to add to the ambience and crushing impression of their riffs, and the hook of “No Séance” particularly on Host signifies that despite whatever lineup shifts they may have had, Wren continue to progress and refine their attack. “Stray,” “No Séance,” “The Ossuary” and “Loom” are unshakable, deeply weighted and righteously spaced. They may have flown somewhat under the radar up to this point, but Wren are too loud to be a well kept secret for much longer.
Some 12 years after their initial demo surfaced in 2003, Massachusetts’ Transient present an atmospheric take on alt-metal with their self-titled debut full-length, self-released last fall. Bringing together nine tracks/46 minutes with a patient but tense pacing and underlying currents of progressive metal in cuts like “Ditch of Doubt” and “Wrong Time,” it unfolds gracefully with the intro “Voyager One” and finds an aggressive burst in “Wrong Time” and the Tool-gone-psych build of the penultimate “Slightest Scare.” That song is part of an extended two-cut closing suite with “Hold this Grudge,” which highlights Scott McCooe’s bass tone as it provides a surprising but satisfying laid back finish. McCooe, joined here by guitarist/vocalist Tim Hayes and drummer John Harris, splits his time with metalcore progenitors Overcast, and as Transient was recorded over a year’s stretch and then mixed and mastered a year after that – living up to the band’s name – it may be a while before a follow-up, but after so long from their demo, it’s still a welcome debut.
Issued by H42 Records in a limited edition for this year’s Desertfest, the new split 7” from UK heavy platoons Desert Storm and Suns of Thunder is so dudely they could sell it as vitamin supplements on late-night tv. A complex critique of gender it is not, heavy it is. One track from each band. Desert Storm bring the burl of “Signals from Beyond,” which with its strong hook and gravely vocals brings to mind Orange Goblin nestled into a nodding riff. For Swansea’s Suns of Thunder, it’s “Earn Your Stripes,” with its complex vocal arrangements for lyrics about small men and big men, paying your dues and other whathaveyou that dominant culture tells those with testicles will make them more complete people. Fine. Masculinity and femininity are scams to sell pants, but “Earn Your Stripes” is catchy as all anything and “Signals from Beyond” is even catchier than however catchy that is, so a testosterone overdose seems a small price to pay.
Telstar Sound Drone, Magical Solutions to Everyday Struggles
Magical Solutions to Everyday Struggles is the second album from Copenhagen-based auralnauts Telstar Sound Drone, and like much of what Bad Afro releases, it presents a strong temptation to drop out, tune in and turn on. Little surprise the band is something of an offshoot from Baby Woodrose, sharing guitarist Mads Saaby and drummer Hans Beck with the seminal garage rockers, but the lush impression made on “Something I Can’t Place” with the watery vocals of Sean Jardenbæk comes from an even more lysergic place, and the experimental side that comes through on “Closer Again,” “Dark Kashmir” and the languid “Dead Spaces” is a multi-tiered dreamscape that closer “Lean down on White” seems sad to leave. Reasonably so. With guest spots from members of Spids Nøgenhat, Bite the Bullet and Baby Woodrose (Kåre Joensen on bass/synth), Telstar Sound Drone’s sophomore outing is an otherworldly psychedelic vision that, as promised, does seem to cure what ails, exciting even in its most subdued moments.
Initially offered by the band in 2012 and subsequently pressed to a six-song 7” and jewel case CD, the self-titled debut EP from San Diego trio Fantasy Arcade only runs about 11 minutes, but that’s all it needs to bring together punk, thrash, sludge and heavy rock across fuckall-heavy cuts like “The Dwarves are Missing” – the longest song here at 3:38 – and the rumbling finale “Die Before You Suck,” which gallops and shouts and seems to crash into walls on its way out, though drummer/vocalist Adam, bassist/vocalist Chris and guitarist Mike actually do well in deciding when to keep control and when to let it go. More nuanced than it lets on, Fantasy Arcade is an aggressive pulse given to moments of frustration boiling over, but being rooted in metal as much as punk, its dwelling in two worlds gives heft to the freneticism at play, as shown in “Poison Arrow,” the first half of which runs at a sprint right into the brick wall slowdown of its second, and final, minute.
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 10th, 2013 by JJ Koczan
If you’re gonna book your flight to get to Tucson for the Southwest Terror Fest, you might want to get on it. There are only a few hours left till the four-dayer kicks off and time’s a wastin’! There’s a good chance this’ll be the only all-ages show some of these bands play this year, so for the kids, all the better, but even for an aged cave ogre such as myself, an assemblage that culls toghether Kylesa, Ancestors (one day I will bring them East for a show and it will be glorious; mark my words), SubRosa and Red Fang is worthy of note. In just their second year out, the Southwest Terror Fest crew have not only outdone what they were able to make happen last year, but set the bar pretty high for 2014. Would be nice to make the trip to the desert one of these days…
Until then, I live vicariously through the PR wire:
SOUTHWEST TERROR FEST – Year Of The Snake; Four Days Of Mayhem Takes Over Tucson Tonight
SOUTHWEST TERROR FEST 2013: Year Of The Snake, the second annual installment of the Tucson-based extreme underground music gathering featuring over sixty bands in four days, begins tonight.
A fully DIY undertaking, envisioned and organized by Tucson-based sludgecore instigators GODHUNTER, the SOUTHWEST TERROR FEST is a low-cost event for all ages and brings a one-of-a-kind festival to the Southwestern sector of America. Following the dominant 2012 debut of SWTF, this year’s installment of the now annual outing has more than doubled in duration and has expanded to include a more sizable roster of national acts and dozens more crushing newcomers.
Beginning tonight, October 10th, and running through Sunday the 13th at The Rock, the SOUTHWEST TERROR FEST 2013: Year Of The Snake lineup features Sacred Reich Vehemence, Kylesa, Red Fang, Demon Lung, Ancestors, Subrosa, Landmine Marathon, Early Graves, Theories, Transient, Pinkish Black, Helms Alee, Dog Shredder, Children Of God, ACxDC and literally dozens of other acts hailing from across the vast extreme music subgenre spectrum.
SOUTHWEST TERROR FEST 2013: Year Of The Snakeis sponsored by Earsplit PR, Moon Smoke Shops, Lace Pickups, Cvlt Nation, Zombie Effects Lab, Ear/Splitters, Axe Of Contrition, Acid Reflux Records, Violent Resonance.com, Lindy’s on 4th, Black Rose Tattoo and Sticks N’ Strings Music Center
Any metalhead with an internet connection can stay current with the fest action via Cvlt Nation who will be running day-to-day coverage throughout the entire ordeal.
SOUTHWEST TERROR FEST 2013: Year Of The Snake 10/10-13/2013 The Rock – Tucson, AZ
Saturday, October 12th: Red Fang, Helms Alee, Dog Shredder, Subrosa, Deathkings, Crankbait, Aseethe, Thorncaster, North, Sorxe, Goya, Ladybird, Oryx, Skulldron, Bhorelord, Acidalia, Funerary, Methra, Conqueror Worm, Destroy Her
Sunday, October 13th: Early Graves, Children Of God, Theories, ACxDC, Lost Lands, GAT ROT, Territory, Inoculara, Magnum Force, Sex Prisoner, Seas Will Rise, Sorrower, American Standards, Biocidio, Berith, Freedom Assault, Swamp Wolf, Wookiee Rage, Get A Grip, SLUG
