The quintessential third record. With the July 1971 release of Master of Reality (also discussed here), Black Sabbath further refined the dark, brooding aggression of Paranoid (discussed here) and the riff-following bad-trip hard acid blues of the self-titled (discussed here) to become something even more their own. More than five decades after the fact, the influence of the eight-song/34-minute LP continues to spread to new players, fans and underground culture at large, and it will probably never surpass Paranoid in sales, but there has been nothing made in the last 40-plus years that doom has been a genre primarily in Master of Reality‘s wake that has not been either directly or indirectly touched by its machinations. If you add pivotal opening track “Sweet Leaf” — which swapped out the storm and siren that began their first two records for a repeated cough counting into the riff in a way that’s become no less iconic, and was by no means the first rock song about marijuana but was perhaps the first to sound so hypnotically thick in tone — as a founding moment of all things stoner in heavy music, that reach goes even further.

It was their third go with producer Rodger Bain, who was then on-staff at Vertigo Records and would produce records for Troggs, Budgie, Arthur Brown and helm Judas Priest‘s undervalued Rocka Rolla before the 1970s were done, and clearly lessons had been learned over the past year. Black Sabbath both sharpened and filled out their attack to a degree that makes it difficult to avoid hyperbole in talking about it. Like either of its predecessors, it is arguable as the pinnacle of heavy music full-length recording in the 60-plus years that such a thing might have existed, and whether it’s “Lord of This World” speaking to economic and social inequalities, “Children of the Grave” chugging out a resistant surge, “After Forever” with its worshipful lyrics by drummer Bill Ward inadvertently inventing Christian metal, or the the soft-delivered quiet melancholia of “Solitude” before the escape-the-apocalypse envisioned in “Into the Void” — “Pollution kills the air, land and sea/Man prepares to meet his destiny” — as a wretched Earth is left behind in favor of a new planet where refugees might, “Make a home where love is there to stay/Peace and happiness in every day,” it is a landmark in performance, structure, atmosphere and purpose. Even the cover font gets ripped off. Rightly so.

At the core of the band’s craft, as ever, is Tony Iommi‘s guitar, and in Master of Reality, the boogie of “Rat Salad” that provided a side-step from Paranoid‘s harder fare becomes instead a showcase of more progressive ambitions that in some ways Iommi would struggle to make a part of Black Sabbath for the band’s entire career — and one could go on about the band’s working class background in Birmingham, England, as part of that; it comes up a bit in the 2010 Classic Albums: Paranoid documentary (review here) that was part of the VH1 series — with a showy mastery in his soloing throughout, as well as the interlude “Embryo” and side B intro “Orchid.”

At just 28 seconds and 1:31, respectively, they’re of course not as much a focal point as “Sweet Leaf” or “Into the Void,” etc., but the angular, off-sounding electric guitar strum of “Embryo” makes what might’ve been a tape-rolling toss-off into a landmark contrast as the brief gestation births “Children of the Grave” with an impact given additional force by the tense but obviously more subdued lead-in. And “Orchid” laid claim to both acoustic work and classical stylings as within Black Sabbath‘s sphere. From front to back, Master of Reality presents a more professional incarnation of Black Sabbath — still with the Iommi, Ward, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler lineup and just a year after their first LP, mind you — who are more directed and purposefully denser in tone, who know what they want their songs to do and to sound like, and who are growing creatively.

The four-piece had toured diligently between 1970 and 1971 in the UK, continental Europe, and the US, taken on new management later in 1970 and as the tour wound down, both Paranoid and Black Sabbath went gold in US sales, so Black Sabbath were no longer an obscure, not-from-London band with druggy, sad-sounding songs. Their music had begun to speak to an audience, and as the third album, Master of Reality is a realization and an arrival in ways that would help define the band across the decades that followed. In its divergences as well as its most intense stretches, it pushed further than the band had yet gone into their persona, and to call it classic is in some ways laughable because its relevance is so enduring. Every single day, Master of Reality continues to have an effect on heavy music. Entire genre ecosystems thrive in the crater it left behind.

The way “Children of the Grave” and “Into the Void” anchor its sides, the way “Solitude” took the mellow-psych of “Planet Caravan” to a place of genuine emotional resonance, or how “Lord of This World” hit the economic angle in answer to “War Pigs,” or the maybe-drugs-are-the-answer-to-all-this-disillusion attitude of “Sweet Leaf” and the confidence with which Master of Reality directly addresses its audience throughout — all of this and more that had been lurking in Black Sabbath‘s approach across the year prior came to fruition here, and the result is a singular, unique achievement.

I don’t believe in gods, but Master of Reality in my mind represents an ideal of the ‘higher power’ that can be reached through creative collaboration. I offer it as nothing less than a reason to feel lucky to be alive at this time in human history and a remedy for troubled souls. Putting it on feels like going home, and while much of it is grim in theme, there is a warmth in its presentation that’s like nothing Black Sabbath would ever do again. If that’s hindsight perspective, informed maybe by the massive influence the album and band have had since, a fan speaking to fans, preaching to the converted, whatever? Good. That’s the point. If perhaps you never have, open your heart and let these songs in. Your life will be better for it.

Thanks for reading.

—

Friday. Okay. Gotta get through the morning. Gotta get the kid fed, medded up, dropped off at school, then I’m home, finish posting, start setup for the Quarterly Review, hit the grocery store, blah blah. I woke up at 3:15AM. I figure maybe noon’ll be fuckoff time if I’m reasonably efficient? Very much looking forward to that.

She — the kid — has been on methylphenidate now for ADHD since December. It’s been a pretty remarkable turnaround at school from everything we’ve heard, which is great. The comedown at home is hard — it’s a whole thing with these drugs, apparently — but I’ll take the hit(s) for her to be successful elsewhere. I don’t think she’ll ever be an easygoing, cooperative kid, but I’m not easygoing or particularly cooperative either. Generally I’m a fucking prick to everybody without meaning to be and I feel terrible about it after the fact. So I’ll say she comes by it honestly and we’ll book some social skills classes at some point so she can learn why to say hello back to her classmates when they talk to her. That usually just gets the spit swished in her mouth. Kid is brutal.

The delivery method of the meds is kind of a quandary. She and The Patient Mrs. both have notably sensitive skin, and while slapping a patch on The Pecan’s lower back was working for a while, it’s been a week now and the itchy and plainly uncomfortable — though she’d just about never admit that out loud — is still there, which says to me finding another way was the right call. It’s fading, needs more lotion, etc. But what we’ve got instead are capsules with the medication in them that I’ve been opening up and putting in the morning yogurt that’s usually what she eats before a breakfast of cinnamon toast, apple, banana, strawberries if we have them. The dilemma is she doesn’t know I’m putting that in there.

Am I really supposed to be drugging my six-year-old daughter without her awareness? Does she not have rights as an individual? Isn’t it part of my job as a parent to build trust? How am I supposed to do that if I’m lying by concealment? The kid already tells me in so many words to fuck myself daily in any number of regards. I think I might deserve it more for this even than for suggesting she go to the bathroom when it’s been six hours and she needs to so badly she can’t sit still.

But here’s the rub: she might never eat yogurt again. She doesn’t eat meat, fish, beans, eggs, any of it. She eats cheese, but currently only Muenster and only sliced into small cubes. If I make some, every now and then I can get her to take a couple bites of almond/pecan butter, but that’s never a guarantee. Nutritionally, there’s a lot hinging on that yogurt. She is adamant about not trying new foods. Hard no. She did pasta for a while with butter, but it was basically just calories to get through an afternoon, and it didn’t last. And it turns out since it’s not the ’80s anymore you can’t just shove things in a kid’s mouth. It’s that whole autonomy thing again. Wildly inconvenient, that.

I don’t have a choice but to tell her. I’ll say we tried it this week and if it was okay with her we’ll keep going. My hope is that if I can convince her it’s a plan that’s already worked it’ll be easier for her to get past that initial wall of opposition into which just about any new idea or task is bound to slam, it’ll be easier for her to see that it’s alright, that it doesn’t make the yogurt taste funny, that it’s helping and that it doesn’t need to change. I’m trying to help, but I feel a very specific rot in my mind for this one. She deserves to know and deserve has nothing to actually do with it since it’s a basic human right.

How would I feel if some strange man put a drug in her food without her knowing it? How do I feel about being that man, even if my intentions are arguable as good and the results are positive across multiple levels? Ends justifying means? Am I right to compromise my values to support her success? Or am I teaching her that even the people she’s supposed to trust the most will betray that trust? Am I taking one for the team here or is it just easier for me to deal with getting the medication in her if she doesn’t know it’s happening? And does the fact that she’s six and not really able to make responsible judgments for herself at this point play in at all? Beyond the decision to medicate her in the first place — about which I have feelings, to say the least, mitigated though they are by the to-date outcome — is this even my jurisdiction?

So I guess telling her is my goal for Saturday morning. I’ll say we tried it this week and if it’s okay with her we’ll keep it going and if not we’ll find another way. But is she going to look at her yogurt every day now and wonder if it’s drugged? Or is she going to refuse the yogurt outright because that’s who she is, write it off entirely and lose a cornerstone of her daily intake with nothing on the horizon to replace it?

Guess we’ll find out.

As always, I thank you for reading and for your time. Have a great and safe weekend. Don’t forget to hydrate, watch your head, all that stuff. Quarterly Review starts Monday. I can’t wait to be stressed out all week and behind on news posts, which I already am. Rock and roll.

FRM.

[EDIT 10:37AM: So after writing the above, I decided there was no point in delaying until tomorrow to tell her; it wouldn’t make my case any stronger anyhow. I said that this week I’d been putting her medicine in her yogurt instead of doing the patch, and if it was okay we’d keep doing it. She was headed toward no, but we were able to sort of steer that back around to realizing it’s not a big deal and she ate the yogurt this morning knowing that the meds were in it. I feel better about it, and I’m really, really glad I don’t need a new primary source of protein for my kid. Sometimes you roll the dice and come out alright. I acknowledge I got away with one here, and for what it’s worth, I’m still not really okay with how I went about it. I’d say next time I’ll do differently, like I learned a moral lesson or something, but real life makes jokes of those promises and a moment’s need can eclipse bigger-picture concerns. I will continue to try my best to do right by my kid for as long as I am able.]

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Science tells us of a time when it rained on earth for thousands of years. Water, having traveled to our nascent planet on various asteroids smashing around each other in the early solar system, finally cooled the atmosphere to the point where it could precipitate, and it would seem — at least in hyper-simplified terms — that happened long enough for 70-plus percent of the crust to be covered with water surrounding whichever supercontinent the landmass was at the time. It is what let life happen here. It’s how we got here.

This is what Paranoid is to doom. Not a watershed, but the watershed. Ubiquitous to a point of cliché, though fortunately the genre doesn’t seem to mind. Released in Sept. 1970 as a seven-months-later follow-up to Black Sabbath‘s likewise genre-defining self-titled debut (discussed here just last week), it was the band’s most commercially successful release during their initial run, and is arguably the most important heavy metal record of all-time, at least from a pop-cultural standpoint. It’s not their most accomplished work, or a personal favorite, but its component songs are so pivotal to the making of heavy music of any and all niches/microgenres/whathaveyou that it’s a given. It was the first Black Sabbath album I owned, and I don’t imagine I’m alone in that.

The album like a vacuum for hyperbole. I’ll just say the names of the songs since I assume that’s all you need to hear them in your head: “War Pigs,” “Paranoid,” “Planet Caravan,” “Iron Man,” “Electric Funeral,” “Hand of Doom,” “Rat Salad” and “Fairies Wear Boots.”

To call it god-tier feels inadequate, considering the decades its relevance has held and the subsequent generations of bands who’ve internalized its teachings. 54 years after its original release, it has been put through a ringer of remasters and remixes and special editions, but the power of the original material hasn’t waned. If you want to compare it directly to its predecessor, you don’t need to look further than how each LP starts: the rainstorm at the beginning of “Black Sabbath” on the first record casting a morose atmosphere for the immediately-dug-in slow roll of that eponymous statement, and the riff and air raid siren of “War Pigs.” The one is foreboding, the other a literal alarm, a more active noise, and most of all, an acknowledgment of audience.

Generally speaking, you can only do something for the first time once. Among the most substantial differences between Black Sabbath circa Black Sabbath and Black Sabbath circa Paranoid — remember, we’re talking about a difference of months in terms of when these records happened — is that the audience is a clear consideration. Not just in “Paranoid,” the speedier track famously born from a spur-of-the-moment Tony Iommi riff as the label wanted a single. Even the label wanting a single is a change. With the element of surprise no longer on their side, Black Sabbath — the original lineup of Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward — instead had to take the work they did on the self-titled and expand on it. First came the heavy and then came the metal. “Electric Funeral” hits hard at the start of side B and is dark in atmosphere in a way that is more cogent but also more performative. Black Sabbath had ‘a sound’ they were playing toward, and Paranoid allowed them to focus on elements like atmosphere and songwriting all the more for that.

In addition to setting a standard that few LPs could ever hope to stand up to, by Sabbath or anyone else, Paranoid also serves as a model for trajectory and creative growth. Much of it is in conversation with its predecessor, but at the same time the band had clearly learned. The performances are sharper on Paranoid, with Ward rolling immediately on the “War Pigs” intro, giving depth to the chug of “Paranoid” through jazzy swing and holding the proceedings together as “Iron Man” invents proto-crush. Iommi is more confident as a soloist, Butler expands his palette lyrically to the sociopolitical — I’ll spare you the I’m-a-liberal-on-the-internet-so-I’m-performing-sadness-about-war diatribe about the ongoing applicability of “War Pigs” or the class consciousness of “Hand of Doom”; you’re welcome — and Osbourne emerges as both frontman and singer. The latter’s on-stage charisma feels accounted for in the shouts of “Paranoid,” and while he never was a technical, voice-as-instrument-style vocalist, he reaches highs in the verses of “War Pigs” that have seen cover versions fall short for decades and defines the style he’d later explore in his solo career on “Electric Funeral,” and so even within the band, Paranoid is monumental. There is no understanding or engaging Black Sabbath without it.

Like Pink Floyd‘s The Wall or The Jimi Hendrix Experience‘s Are You Experienced?, if grimmer in outlook and outwardly angrier about it, Paranoid has pervaded the pop-cultural mainstream in such a way that it no longer belongs solely to the genre born out of its primordial ooze. “War Pigs” was in Marvel movies. I tell you no lie, I heard “Paranoid” two weeks ago over the speakers at the grocery store down the road (and yes I absolutely rocked out my middle-aged self while picking up yogurt and eggs, thank you very much). It’s not just a classic metal record, it’s a classic record. It belongs to everybody.

Maybe in part because of that, doom itself tends to hold other albums closer, whether that’s the self-titled or 1971’s Master of Reality (discussed here), Vol. 4 in ’72, or something else from the catalog, but there’s no getting around Paranoid since it’s so essential to the persona of Black Sabbath as a whole, casting their aesthetic in its purposeful, willful, defiant-of-moment-but-representative-of-moment heft. Even “Planet Caravan,” float incarnate, is heavy.

I won’t feign impartiality here, or insight for that matter. Whatever else Black Sabbath was, is, will or would ever be, Paranoid is the album for which they’ll most be remembered, the moment the entered the zeitgeist, and the greatest source of their ongoing influence across heavy music styles. And somehow, even in acknowledging all of this, I can’t help but feel like I’m underselling it. Maybe because the songs are good?

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

—

That’s two weeks in a row of a Sabbath delve. Is this how I’m celebrating the site’s 15th anniversary? I don’t know. I’m curious though. Sometimes a thing kind of happens and then you have to explain it afterward. I’m doing my best. My brain’s got nooks and crannies like a Thomas’ English Muffin, so sometimes I need to chase my own motivations to their source.

It was a week, it’ll be a weekend. The godsend was a productive Monday. Shit you not, I’m still today posting stuff that I wrote Monday afternoon, which almost never happens unless I’m really behind. The difference this time was I was ahead. My daughter went to school Monday, had a snow day Tuesday, was home sick Wednesday, went Thursday and is off today and Monday for President’s Day — just in case anyone wanted to be reminded of Joe Biden, which is kind of a drag even in concept, what with all that fostering genocide — so it was the fact that I got shit done on Monday that let this week happen without my eyeballs falling out. I am behind on news but that’s nothing new, and I managed this week to even have some flex on last-minute stuff, which was satisfying considering that most of the time the kid is home, that’s where focus goes. You can’t really bust out the laptop and expect productivity, though I did for a bit on Tuesday as well.

That chaos and the sick kid also pulled me out of my own head a bit, which I needed desperately. I renewed my prescriptions for whichever  mood stabilizer I’m on and whichever meth I take for ADHD, so I’m back on that horse, wagon, etc. Drugs. You know how we look back on people drilling into each other’s heads and think “oh how savage! how fortunate we are now to have modern medical science!” Some day people will look back on all the shit we dump in our bodies the same way. And they won’t be wrong, but you work with what you’ve got and if I can make my trip easier from one end of an average, probably-not-that-difficult-generally day to the other, there is a value to that beyond the fiscal exploitation of the pharmaceutical industry. I am fortunate to have insurance.

So, a four-day weekend coming up. I’ve got a Holy Fingers video premiere on Monday that I hope you’ll watch, premieres for Clarion Void and Kitsa, the latter a full LP stream, and a review either Thursday or Friday for the new album from The Obsessed, which is out today. I’m slated to interview Brume next Thursday as well, but that record isn’t out for like two months, so I might wait a bit to post. We’ll see how it goes.

Coming on 7AM (today was a pre-4 wakeup) and I hear thudding upstairs, so I’ll punch out and wish you a great and safe weekend. Have fun, hail Black Sabbath, watch your head, hydrate. That list is getting pretty long. Whatever you’re up to, thanks for your time and for reading and I hope it’s the exact opposite of awful.

FRM.

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Headed toward their 35th anniversary next year, UK death-doom progenitors My Dying Bride have announced their new album, A Mortal Binding, will be released on April 19 in continued cooperation with Nuclear Blast. I actually went and counted before reading it two seconds ago in the press release, but yes, this will be the band’s 15th LP, and it arrives some four years after 2020’s The Ghost of Orion (review here), which was about as righteous a beginning to their post-Peaceville era as one could’ve hoped to get. A Mortal Binding greets public eyes and ears with the video for the first single “Thornwyck Hymn,” and I guess if there’s a visual theme you want to say it’s based around, it’d probably be ‘writhing.’ So, fair enough.

The song dogwhistles metal to longtime fans craving elements like the violin that’s made its way back into their sound or harsher vocals, but no one track is going to tell you everything you’re going to hear on a My Dying Bride record, whatever welcome reassurances it might otherwise provide. After 14 records, I don’t think anyone is expecting My Dying Bride to come along and completely revamp a very-much-not-broken-thus-not-needing-fixing approach, but they always show some level of refinement or progression in their sound — at this point the band has grown with them as people — and, well, I know I’m fuckin’ miserable, so bring it on. Please.

Preorders, etc., from the PR wire:

MY DYING BRIDE ANNOUNCE NEW STUDIO ALBUM A MORTAL BINDING

RELEASE FIRST SINGLE/VIDEO ‘THORNWYCK HYMN’

A MORTAL BINDING IS OUT ON APRIL 19TH

British death-doom legends, My Dying Bride, are proud to announce their 15th studio album, A Mortal Binding, set to be released on 19th April via Nuclear Blast Records. Today’s news is accompanied by the release of tempestuous, heart-wrenching new single ‘Thornwyck Hymn’. The track comes with a stunning video directed by Daniel Gray, depicting a maritime story of unfolding desire and tragedy.

My Dying Bride’s Aaron Stainthorpe commented, “Set upon the rugged coast of Yorkshire, Thornwyck village has spent an eternity being haunted by the chill waters that wash its shore – and the hidden folk who dwell in the salty depths.
Woe betide anyone who fares into the briny sea, or even steels to close to its edge for they may never set foot back on mother earth.”

You can pre-order A Mortal Binding here: https://mydyingbride.bfan.link/a-mortal-binding
Listen to ‘Thornwyck Hymn’ here: https://mydyingbride.bfan.link/thornwyck-hymn

A Mortal Binding, the much-anticipated follow-up to The Ghost of Orion (2020) finds the Yorkshire-based quintet delighting in anxiety, loss, and toil to resplendent effect. From the raw distress of ‘Her Dominion’ and twisted horror of ‘Thornwyck Hymn’ to the funerary violins of the 11-minute monolith ‘The Apocalyptist’ and the classic-feeling ‘The 2nd of Three Bells’, A Mortal Binding is pinnacle My Dying Bride. If Songs of Darkness, Words of Light (2004) elevated the band to new heights and A Map of All Our Failures (2012) expanded upon the group’s mid-tens grandeur, then A Mortal Binding stages My Dying Bride’s next exultant phase of elegiac misery.

A Mortal Binding tracklisting:
01. Her Dominion
02. Thornwyck Hymn
03. The Second of Three Bells
04. Unthroned Creed
05. The Apocalyptist
06. A Starving Heart
07. Crushed Embers

A Mortal Binding formats:
CD jewelcase
Vinyl 2LP gatefold – green
Vinyl 2LP gatefold – red w/ black smoke
Vinyl 2LP gatefold – clear w/ black smoke

My Dying Bride hired The Ghost of Orion studio wizard Mark Mynett to produce, mix, and master A Mortal Binding. The group holed up at Mynett’s Mynetaur Productions (Paradise Lost, Rotting Christ) in Manchester, UK, where they tracked the album consecutively from July to September 2023.

For over three decades, My Dying Bride from West Yorkshire have been the voice of the hopeless and broken, combining haunting sounds with crushing misery and melancholy. With their signature sound they’ve shaped the doom metal scene like barely any other act and integrated both soft violin melodies and violent death metal growls into their music, whilst always staying strictly loyal to themselves. And since the early Nineties, the band’s masterminds and founding members Andrew Craighan and Aaron Stainthorpe forged beautiful grief into studio albums with songs of epic length. As My Dying Bride edge past their 33rd year, they’re aging gracefully, remaining as vital and heart-wrenching as ever. The flower withers once more on My Dying Bride’s upcoming new record A Mortal Binding, due out on 19th April 2024.

My Dying Bride are:
Aaron Stainthorpe | vocals
Andrew Craighan | guitars
Lena Abé | bass
Shaun MacGowan | keyboards / violin
Neil Blanchett | guitars
Dan Mullins | drums

www.mydyingbride.net
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My Dying Bride, “Thornwyck Hymn” official video

To the origin point of doom. The riff. Contrary to marketing hypersimplification, no, Black Sabbath did not conjure heavy metal out of thin air, but they sure as hell got there first. You can root around late ’60s rock, Hendrix, Blue Cheer, Blue Öyster Cult, Led Zeppelin, Cream, even The Beatles if you want to stretch or hang your hat on a couple tracks from their last years, and find flashes of what you might call pre-heft. With their foundation in blues rock like so much of what was emerging in the UK and US at the time, Black Sabbath codified hard blues riffing with the depth of low end essential to create a sense of aural weight. If ‘heavy’ as a musical ideal was previously gestating, Black Sabbath‘s Black Sabbath is where all the threads came together to such a degree that it tipped some imaginary balance in the brains of listeners and was born as something new. Black Sabbath‘s Black Sabbath is a nexus. Heavy music would probably exist without it, but not as it does today. We will never be able to chart its full influence, because it is endemic to the microculture.

And rest assured, it’s hard in concept to look at an album that’s among the most landmark of landmarks in the history of recorded or rock music, an icon that’s earned any and all flowery hyperbole you can throw at it and then generations’ worth more plaudits, and try to look at it objectively, but one of the key facets of Black Sabbath is that the album refuses to let you romanticize it on any other level but its own. It is not the best Black Sabbath album either of the original lineup — vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward — or the post-Ozzy years, but it has something not even Paranoid, which was released later in 1970 (Sept., as opposed to the self-titled in Feb.), could have: it was utterly clueless of what the band was about to become.

At this point, your experience of the album is probably going to much depend on which version you take on. Do you want the Crow cover “Evil Woman, Don’t You Play Your Games With Me” with its casual misogyny and a boogie speaking to the band’s early days bumping around Birmingham as blues rockers? What about “Sleeping Village?” With decades of reissues, remasters, bonus material, on and on and on, especially if you’re not holding the 1970 Vertigo Records edition in your hands — which I’ll assume you’re not — and amid the disorganized wreck that is digitalia and the world of streaming, but whether or not the rainstorm you hear at the start of “Black Sabbath” sounds four levels of volume lower than the harmonica at the start of “The Wizard,” the songs themselves are undeniable and righteously imperfect. Ward‘s over-the-top fills in “The Wizard.” Ozzy sounding nervous singing “N.I.B.,” which is fair considering the Butler bass solo from which the song emerges, and early in the album, with the first two cuts and the swinging pickup at the start of “Behind the Wall of Sleep” that leads into the open verse, Iommi leads the material riffing to such a degree that even 53 years after the band’s first release, he’s never been given the credit as a guitar player that he’s deserved for his soloing.

But the record is sloppy. Disjointed. “Behind the Wall of Sleep” fades out lazily, like the band had no idea how to finish it, and its intros confuse the proceedings. The lyrics and patterns come across as simple, the melodies are dark, and Black Sabbath sound like a bunch of disaffected working class kids from industrial-crunch England who want nothing more than to blow their brains out with drugs and volume. Get stoned and jam out some Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation in “Warning” to end the record. Screw it. Who cares?

Thus we arrive at the appeal.

Don’t mistake me. I’m not saying Black Sabbath couldn’t handle their instruments. Ozzy may have been discovering the vocal approach he’d refine on later outings, but he still nails “Black Sabbath” and the aforementioned N.I.B.” enough to make himself the godfather of heavy metal, Iommi‘s always been technically underrated, Butler is the weight and it’s utter bullshit that his bass runs aren’t taught in grade schools, and when Bill Ward was ejected from the band ahead of their 2010s ‘final’ run, the character of his style revealed itself as having earned such audience loyalty that there was practically a social movement to get him back into the lineup. Black Sabbath wouldn’t have worked if they didn’t actually have the musicianship to pull off what they were doing, but volume and tonal density in the guitar and bass on Black Sabbath made it sound hard, foreboding and despondent. You can call it a preface to the comedown era of the post-hippie ’70s, the birth of heavy, whatever you want. Primarily, it’s the work of raw kids who had no clue what they were about to get into but wanted to get into it anyway.

This and others in Sabbath‘s early catalog are essential to the point of being a given, almost a cliché, but if you count yourself among the converted either to doom or heavy rock and roll, for anything that has based itself in some way around that Iommic methodology of centralizing the riff that bands have been doing since, oh, about five minutes after this record, then it is a thing to bask in. It has an energy entirely its own and is the perfect example of a band feeling their way into their sound and finding themselves in the process. Black Sabbath‘s stylistic progression would take them to places and see them explore ideas that this self-titled could never anticipate, but wherever they went, they were never completely removed from what they laid out in this collection of songs, and when it was time for their purported final LP, 2013’s 13 (review here), it was to this era they most looked in bringing their career full circle back to an Osbourne-fronted heavy blues. True to tradition, critics didn’t like it. I guess we’ll see what everyone says in another 50 years.

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

—

This might be a series? I might do a few Sabbath records, at least through the Ozzy years and get those covered. I feel like that should be a thing. In the back of my head I’m putting together a ‘canon of heavy’ as a book idea — probably time I did a book about music — and obviously Sabbath’s self-titled is the place to start. I don’t know that anything will come to fruition, as the vast majority of ideas I have don’t since I either get overwhelmed and give up (see my secret dream of selling homemade artisanal nut butters at Northern New Jersey’s lesser farm markets) or get distracted and move onto something else (pretty much everything to do with this site). But if I get the words out maybe some day MadJohnShaft (you know him) will make me an AI to go get all the words I want and cut and paste them into a Word doc.

Speaking of Word, holy crap, fuck Microsoft. Am I the only one out here using Windows 11? I hope so for your sake. What a wreck. Look, I can’t imagine having billions of dollars resting on the prospect of you fixing something you got right 30 years ago — which is essentially what’s been happening with Windows since the ’95/XP era; the tech ethic of ‘continuous improvement’ is both a scam to extract money and a flawed ethic generally — but they definitely broke that shit in the process. I’ve had this computer for two weeks, and every single day there’s been some instance of some intrusive-ass bundled software, or fucking OneDrive deciding to pull a ton of watermarked promos off my desktop and stick them on the internet calling them ‘safe’ — you gotta be kidding me — and secure, or Word not being able to apply an activation code, on and on, it’s just bad software. That’s all it is. My old machine was on Windows 10. I’d switch back, but I don’t trust it not to blow up the entire machine. Alas. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, and if not, apparently I love nothing more than complaining, so, fine.

Next Monday is my wife’s birthday. If you’re reading, happy birthday, baby. I love you more than I love complaining. I’m sorry I’m generally awful.

That’s kind of how it’s been: generally awful. I’m in this place, in my head, where I feel crippled in just about all situations. I accidentally deleted my entire desktop yesterday — and trust me, it’s ALL there — and I just couldn’t handle it. I started hyperventilating. I paced back and forth. I fell apart, and I lost like an hour of writing time as a result. That might not sound like much to you, but an hour a day, especially early in my weeks of late, is the difference between getting a thing finished and not.

I have a neurologist appointment for I don’t know when. I have a call in to a talk-therapy office that hasn’t called me back. I have spent the last 25-plus years shoving chemicals into my body and I have precious little to show for it other than 25 years’ worth of chemicals floating around my body. I’m not saying I’m anti-meds now — my refills await at Wegmans down the road — but the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results, so at a certain point I have to wonder what ‘help’ that route has actually been. I get more to shut up the bad voice in my brain out of eating a weed gummy than I’ve gotten from antidepressants probably since I was a teenager.

But weed gummies aren’t covered by insurance, and that being bullshit doesn’t make it less true. So we persist.

I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Have fun, watch your head, all that. Next week is packed front to back and beyond, so keep an eye out Monday as there’s good stuff to come. Thanks as always for reading.

FRM.

The Obelisk Collective on Facebook

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

Welsh trippy doom metallers Goat Major will release their debut full-length, Ritual, on March 8 through Ripple Music. Comprised of eight songs — “Snakes (Goddess of the Serpent)” wastes no time diving in as the opener; its video premieres below — and running 41 minutes, it is outwardly doom in its cultish downtrodden point of view, but to listen to the guitar at the end of the title-track, a melodic reference to ’60s psychedelia takes hold, and in “Light of the End,” that vibe extends to a druggy ’90s alternativism, growing declarative and sneering as it nods through its six-plus minutes, catchy with backing vocals behind bassist Tom Shortt, who’s joined in the group by guitarist Jammie Arnold and drummer Simon Bonwick, so the proceedings are not as straightforward as they might seem when “Snakes (Goddess of the Serpent)” unfurls the first of Ritual‘s several genuinely righteous rolls, an air of metallic dankness around a Candlemassian creeper of a riff serving double-duty as an intro to the album and a preface to the verse, which calls Electric Wizard to mind without losing itself in an aural fog.

At least not much. Indeed, there’s more going on throughout Ritual influence-wise than it might at first seem. “Power That Be” opens side B (I think) with an acoustic strum but soon moves into the push of a classic stoner rock riff, fuzz and all, distinguished by the change in context that sets it to such doomly purpose. The subsequent “Mountains of Madness” gives some manner of echo to this in a verse the vocal pattern of which is reminiscent of Acid King‘s ur-landmark “Electric Machine,” even if Goat Major take the song elsewhere for the chorus, touching again on the psychedelic in a way that feel far removed from the insistent hook of the title-track back on side A but that is no less crucial in its intention. And “Ritual” has its jammy part too, so these things are all relative, however one might end up blocking them into categories or hearing something here that’s also there, etc. From that, one can take the assurance that Goat Major‘s debut boasts nascent perspective on genre and is unafraid to take inspiration from blatant Sabbath worship early in “Turn to Dust” to the Slomatics-ish drama brought to the same song a short time later by Mellotron.

“Mountains of Madness” is more than half over by the time it gets to the chorus — rules — and has a semi-lysergic break that brings back the hook for a big slowdown ending with laughter over top. Hypnotic as that movement is, “Evil Eye” feels like a regrounding in doom and is a sleeper highlight, encapsulating the doom/fuzz meld and the impulses toward structure and fuckall that seem to be competing in Goat Major‘s sound right now. A side B complement to “Ritual,” maybe, and it’s not the last track — they cap atmospheric with the drumless open-space distortion wash of “Lay Me Down,” vocals far back in that churning ambient melodic hum — and it’s not the longest track, which is “Mountains of Madness” just before, but it says something about who Goat Major are circa their first album, and it is encouragingly their own in its willingness to cross stylistic lines that are awfully sacrosanct for being entirely made up and despite cult themes that will ring as familiar to experienced heads taking it on. I’m not sure they need those, and I find myself wondering what other stories their material might tell, but I’m not about to tell a band making their debut that they should drop the lyrical foundation they’re working from. Seems neither helpful nor useful. Plus I think if I was from Wales I’d probably be into the occult too. It’s like made for it.

That said, part of what makes Ritual engaging in its niche-crossover execution is that the band are exploring and at the beginning stages of their longer-term growth, and that development over time could take them down any number of thematic avenues, including the one they’re currently on, which suits this material fine and offers intricacy without pretense, heavy doom for and by those for whom it serves as a lifesblood. I’ve highlighted the individuality of what they do on Ritual here, and that’s because I believe that even more than the malevolent fuzz on the guitar or the sneer in Shortt‘s delivery, it’s the drive to present themselves as themselves that will serve them best over the course of their tenure, and whatever they’ll ultimately do with their sound, you can hear the roots of it in “Light of the End,” or “Evil Eye” or maybe even “Lay Me Down,” which lays claim to an entire seminar’s worth of mind expansion. Maybe this is the new generation’s statement and innovation — it doesn’t have to just be one or two things, it can be an encompassing whole built from parts that, to players in generations past, were disparate. That sounds like progress to me, and may or may not be the story of Goat Major as told by their next few records, but it certainly feels relevant to mention in light of what they achieve on Ritual.

The aforementioned video for “Snakes (Goddess of the Serpent)” premieres below, followed by more from the PR wire.

Please enjoy:

Goat Major, “Snakes (Goddess of the Serpent)” video premiere

The second single from the upcoming Goat Major album on Ripple Music is HERE! This is “Snakes (Goddess of the Serpent)” – enjoy the music video and then hit the links below to pre-order your copy of “Ritual” now – available March 8th on Vinyl/CD/Digital formats!

Hailing from Wales, the land of ancient monuments and Celtic traditions, GOAT MAJOR is a formidably earth-shattering newcomer in the British stoner and doom metal scene. The band was formed during the harsh lockdown of a global pandemic by longtime friends Jammie Arnold (guitar), Simon Bonwick (drums) and Tom Shortt (bass/vocals), who all grew up within half a mile of each other in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, in the shadow of the town’s medieval castle.

The power trio worked hard crafting songs of catchy sinister occult doom metal, all while escaping the brutality that was cast upon the world. As restrictions started to lift, GOAT MAJOR began playing shows as an instrumental band before Shortt decided to take up the vocal duties. The band continued fine-tuning their songs with regular shows around the south/west of Wales and further afield in England and consequently started playing higher profile shows around the UK, sharing the stage with the likes of Thunder Horse, Wytch Hazel, Sigiriya, Parish, OHHMS, Made Of Teeth, Inhuman Nature. They also performed at Swansea Fringe festival and headlined Rock the Gwasbah festival in West Wales.

Following the recent release of their “Evil Eye” EP, GOAT MAJOR recently signed to US reference stoner, doom and heavy rock label Ripple Music for the release of their debut album “Ritual” in March 2024.

GOAT MAJOR – Debut album “Ritual”
Out March 8th on Ripple Music (vinyl, CD, digital)
International preorder – https://ripplemusic.bandcamp.com/album/ritual
US preorder – https://ripplemusic.bigcartel.com/product/goat-major-ritual

TRACKLIST:
1. Snakes (Goddess of the Serpent)
2. Ritual
3. Turn to Dust
4. Light of The End
5. Power That Be
6. Mountains of Madness
7. Evil Eye
8. Lay Me Down

GOAT MAJOR is
Jammie Arnold – guitar
Simon Bonwick – drums
Tom Shortt – bass & vocals

Goat Major, Ritual (2024)

Goat Major on Facebook

Goat Major on Instagram

Goat Major on YouTube

Ripple Music on Facebook

Ripple Music on Instagram

Ripple Music on Bandcamp

Ripple Music website

So I guess this is the last announcement for the lineup of Desertfest London 2024, and I’ll just say I kind of love the casual manner in which the festival set for May 17-19 tosses in another 30-plus names for the bill. Oh no big deal but here’s like two more fests we’re just gonna add while we give you the schedule. Badass. There’s a lot to dig here on all levels, from the headliners — that Friday at The Electric Ballroom, also Saturday and Sunday, looks pretty sweet — and while I’d set up camp at The Underworld on Saturday, no question I’d have to abscond from that home base to at least catch a bit of Saint Karloff, Acid King, and so on, and, well, on Sunday I’m actually kind of relieved I’m just pretending to have to pick one spot to be in, as each room has a distinctive pull. DVNE and Morag Tong or Borracho and Kadabra? Ufomammut and Monolord or Stinking Lizaveta, Darsombra and Orme? This shit is hard sometimes.

You could go on here in choose-your-adventure daydreaming, and frankly I’d encourage you to do just that. Worst that happens is you end up listening to good music. Or, you know, going to the fest, which would also be the best thing that could happen. Here’s why:

Desertfest London announces day splits and 32 additional artists

Friday 17th May – Sunday 19th May 2024
Weekend & Day Tickets now on sale

Desertfest London has revealed their day and stage splits for their 13th edition, taking place this May across multiple venues in Camden, London.

The festival proudly welcomes Masters of Reality as Friday’s Electric Ballrooms headliners, with Chris Goss at the helm providing a master-class in desert sounds. Plus, newly announced for this stage are Colour Haze and Frankie and The Witch Fingers who will join Brant Bjork Trio and Mondo Generator to kick off the weekend in true Desertfest style. Mantar and Raging Speedhorn will shake-up the Underworld, whilst Brume and Alber Jupiter psych-out at The Black Heart.

Saturday sees skate-punk legends Suicidal Tendencies back in London for the first time in seven years, as they decimate the equally legendary Roundhouse. Joined by Cancer Bats, Bongripper, Acid King and newest addition to the bill, Pest Control. Saturday’s Roundhouse stage is undeniably a melting pot of genres, but celebrating one common thread – insane live performances. Elsewhere, Maserati, Monkey3, Domkraft, Wet Cactus and many more will level Camden to the ground.

Back at the Ballroom on Sunday night, the festival enters its final day with a dose of experimental heaviness from Godflesh, Ozric Tentacles, Monolord, Ufomammut & Ashenspire. Additionally, Desertfest will be welcoming Bat Sabbath, the Black-Sabbath cover band formed by Cancer Bats to close out the entire weekend at our Underworld Stage after-party. Plus, DVNE, Nightstalker, Astroqueen, Stinking Lizaveta & The Grudge, with a hell of a lot more will be rounding off the weekend’s festivities.

Across the weekend, Desertfest has also newly announced the likes of Morag Tong, Borracho, Noisepicker, Gramma Vedetta, Lodestar, Kulk, Earth Tongue, Skypilot, Wolfshead, Weedsnake, Orsak:Oslo, WAXY, Horndal, Silverburn, Fires In The Distance, Sleemo, Midwich Cuckoos, Akersborg, Grand Atomic, Voidlurker, Under The Ashes and Fuz Caldrin.

Weekend & Day Tickets for the event are on sale now via www.desertfest.co.uk

Full line-up
SUICIDAL TENDENCIES | MASTERS OF REALITY | GODFLESH | OZRIC TENTACLES BONGRIPPER | MONOLORD | ACID KING | UFOMAMMUT | COLOUR HAZE | BRANT BJORK TRIO | MASERATI | MANTAR | MONDO GENERATOR | CLOAKROOM | MONKEY3 | FRANKIE & THE WITCH FINGERS | NIGHTSTALKER | BLANKET | BAT SABBATH | DVNE | PEST CONTROL | RAGING SPEEDHORN | ASHENSPIRE | DOMKRAFT | ASTROQUEEN | PIJN | SUNNATA | BRUM | WAKE | KAL-EL | ALBER JUPITER | SUGAR HORSE | STINKING LIZAVETA | WET CACTUS | PSYCHLONA | MORAG TONG | KADABRA | BORRACHO | THE GRUDGE | DARSOMBRA | SERGEANT THUNDERHOOF | GRAMMA VEDETTA | SAINT KARLOFF | LODESTAR | LORD ELEPHANT | GOZER | ACID THRONE | KULK | EARTH TONGUE | DUSKWOOD| GOBLINSMOKER | SKYPILOT | BOREHEAD | ORME | WOLFSHEAD | CLOUDS TASTE SATANIC | WEEDSNAKE | NOISEPICKER | ORSAK:OSLO | WAXY | HORNDAL | SILVERBURN | FIRES IN THE DISTANCE | SLEEMO | SAGAN | MIDWICH CUCKOOS | AKERSBORG | WARPSTORMER | GRAND ATOMIC | VOID LURKER | UNDER THE ASHES | SONIC TABOO | WIZDOOM | FUZ CALDRIN

DAY / STAGE SPLITS FOR DESERTFEST LONDON 2024

Friday 17th May
Electric Ballroom
MASTERS OF REALITY
COLOUR HAZE
BRANT BJORK
MONDO GENERATOR
FRANKIE & THE WITCH FINGERS

Underworld
MANTAR
RAGING SPEEDHORN
WAKE
WEEDSNAKE
GRAND ATOMIC

Dingwalls
CLOAKROOM
BLANKET
SUGAR HORSE
PIJN
SLEEMO

Black Heart
BRUME
ALBER JUPITER
CLOUDS TASTE SATANIC
ORSAK:OSLO
SAGAN
BOREHEAD

The Dev
GOBLINSMOKER
WARPSTORMER
WOLFSHEAD
VOIDLURKER
AKERSBORG

Saturday May 18th
Roundhouse
SUICIDAL TENDENCIES
CANCER BATS
BONGRIPPER
ACID KING
PEST CONTROL

Underworld
MASERATI
MONKEY3
DOMKRAFT
SUNNATA
SERGEANT THUNDERHOOF
KAL-EL

Black Heart
WET CACTUS
DUSKWOOD
EARTH TONGUE
SAINT KARLOFF
LORD ELEPHANT
SONIC TABOO

The Dev
ACID THRONE
HORNDAL
UNDER THE ASHES
FIRES IN THE DISTANCE
WIZDOOM

Sunday May 19th
Electric Ballroom
GODFLESH
OZRIC TENTACLES
MONOLORD
UFOMAMMUT
ASHENSPHIRE

The Underworld
BAT SABBATH (after-party)
NIGHTSTALKER
ASTROQUEEN
PSYCHLONA
BORRACHO
KADABARA
NOISEPECKER

Dingwalls
DVNE
MORAG TONG
KULK
LODESTAR
SILVERBURN

Black Heart
STINKING LIZAVETA
DARSOMBRA
GOZER
SKYPILOT
ORME
GOAT MAJOR

The Dev
THE GRUDGE
GRAMMA VEDETTA
WAXY
MIDWICH CUCKOOS
FUZ CALDRIN

TICKETS ON SALE – www.desertfest.co.uk

http://www.desertscene.co.uk/support
https://www.facebook.com/DesertfestLondon
https://www.instagram.com/desertfest_london/
https://www.desertfest.co.uk/

Monkey3, “Collision” visualizer

Friday, Feb. 2, marks the awaited release for Troy the Band‘s first album, Cataclysm, through Swedish imprint Bonebag Records. The six-song/41-minute offering follows behind 2022’s debut EP, The Blissful Unknown (review here), and is weighted and spacious in kind, the London-based four-piece immersed in a sound that’s part heavygaze, but fuzz-grunge and almost universally molten. Opening with its title-track, Cataclysm lumbers with large-snail-creature presence but isn’t so unipolar in its approach as the overarching wash might make it seem, whether it’s the boogie in the second half of “Cataclysm” itself or the crash-laden shove of “IHOD,” on which vocalist Craig Newman is at his most reminiscent of Facelift-era Layne Staley, or “Only Violence” just before which seems to be working under the influence of earlier Mars Red Sky or the Sabbath-via-Sleep stonerized Declaration of Riff in “Flesh Wound,” bolstered by the production of Wayne Adams at Bear Bites Horse, who you probably already know because he also helmed your album. Or at least mixed it.

Most of the record though resides in the spaces between Dead Meadow‘s languid ethereality and the more grounded ends of modern riff worship. That is to say it’s a current sound but not ready to settle into being one thing or the other and, particularly on this first long-player, that much stronger for the flashes of doom that show up amid the hot pinks and psychedelic yellows in the wah-drenched reaches of “Flesh Wound,” which is also the longest song at 8:53 and a roller that seems to lose none of its impact for all the float surrounding, perhaps best encapsulating the meld of styles Troy the Band are crafting, if not necessarily telling the entire story on its own either in their melodic penchant, the post-punk goth dance party at the start of “The Void” or closer “Fauna” casting its urban-concrete bass tone against a ranging vocal and an outbound final push speaking one way or another to an escapist sensibility maybe also behind the title. They go, have gone, are gone, and when they decide it’s time to vibe on some Earth-y drone repetition, they’re dug no less into that than they are into the expanse in the hook of “Cataclysm” that teaches the listener so much about the album that follows.

And repetition is part of the methodology here, but again, not necessary all of it, as a big part of what ultimately makes Troy the Band an exciting listen — this was true of the EP as well, but is more fleshed out on the longer release, as well as the band being more sonically developed generally — is that the songs are coherent and purposeful but don’t draw from any single source so much as to be readily placed in this or that niche. Yeah, I’ve namedropped a few bands in the course of this review, and I stand by those comparisons — none of them feels outlandish; that riff in “Only Violence” really does sound like second-LP Mars Red Sky, even if it’s been buried in other effects — but that’s just it: Troy the Band have a sound that seems aware of its influences but unwilling to be limited by them. This is something that, inherently, can’t be confirmed by one full-length alone since it’s a measure of a band’s progression over time, but in coming across more like themselves than anyone else in the genre, Troy the Band seem to have a leg up on their own growth. Or maybe I’m just spaced out on that jam halfway through “Flesh Wound.” I don’t know, but it all feels very consuming and light — not like bright colors but like light itself; the mixed wavelengths of raw sunlight — right now, and I think that means it’s working.

The big question is how much Troy the Band will do in a live setting to support it. In 2023, they played both Masters of the Riff II and Desertfest London, and certainly those are by no means the only festivals in the UK, but they’re two good ones to have in your pocket as a band putting out your first LP. But if I mention touring for an act who haven’t been out for months at a time up to this point in their still-perhaps-nascent tenure, it’s not to point out something they haven’t done up to now so much to to highlight their sound as being strong enough in its identity to stand up to the task if they wanted to take it on the road. Plenty of time for such things, though. For now, the spaces conjured and conquered throughout Cataclysm stand as testament to the efforts put in by Troy the Band performance-wise and in terms of composition, but also that potential for what they might accomplish moving on from here.

Cataclysm streams in full below, followed by more info from the PR wire.

Please enjoy:

Cataclysm, the debut full-length album from London-based Doom-gaze four-piece Troy The Band, will be released on Sweden’s Bonebag Records on February 2nd 2024. Since the release of their debut EP, The Blissful Unknown, Troy The Band have become mainstays in the London heavy music scene, with a list of accolades in 2023 that includes appearances at Desertfest London, Masters of the Riff, and Stoomfest, as well as a craft beer collaboration with East London’s Old Street Brewery.

With Cataclysm the band have taken the most unique elements of their debut EP and forged them into an album that blends elements of Stoner-Doom, Post Rock, Shoegaze and Heavy Psych. Cataclysm is dark, heavy, and identifiably their own.

For this album the band went back to work with Wayne Adams at Bear Bites Horse studio in East London. From the band’s point of view, this was a no-brainer: “We knew we wanted to work with Wayne again on this album. He’s great to work with and he had an important hand in shaping the sound of our EP. We knew he would get what we were trying to do with this album, and we really couldn’t be happier with how it has turned out.”

Each track is built from a sturdy foundation of Sean Durbin’s bass riffs which are then overlaid with Sean Burn’s distinctive guitar playing and Craig Newman’s unique and ethereal vocal style, adding layers of harmonic complexity and tension that is a defining feature of their sound.

The album title is derived from the name the band gave the initial demo of the title track, driven by its musically jarring feel rather than its lyrical content. It was then self-consciously adopted as the album title to reflect their aim of causing a musical upheaval in the heavy music scene. We believe it will.

Troy the Band on Facebook

Troy the Band on Instagram

Troy the Band on Bandcamp

Troy the Band website

Troy the Band Linktree

Bonebag Records on Facebook

Bonebag Records on Instagram

Bonebag Records website

This past Fall, UK consciousness-smashers Conan took to the streets of Continental Europe in the company of futureprog-thrashers Lord Dying. Neat bill. For their upcoming US run, they’ll be out with Psychic Trash, the duo who until last year were known as Wizard Rifle, which is a similar kind of set up if you think about it as follows: A band gets on stage and does a lot. Conan get on next and crush everything.

It’s an interesting play with dynamic there, right? Lord Dying are more severe and far more metal, but both they and Psychic Trash are a counterpoint to Conan‘s own style, which while it has grown, refined, tried new things, etc., still readily bills itself as ‘Caveman Battle Doom.’ This tour will touch both coasts and points between, hitting not quite the four corners of the US, but pretty close. I wonder where Conan actually haven’t been yet, aside from Mars or some such. Limited to this planet.

If you missed word from the band early last month, they announced that Fudge Tunnel‘s David Riley has taken over on bass for Chris Fielding, who will continue in his role as producer, to both the betterment and devastation of all mankind. Pretty sure that’s the latest. At least until this tour, that is. Conan will be out in the UK before this one happens as well.

From socials:

***US TOUR 2024 ANNOUNCEMENT*** We are beyond excited to return to the USA with @psychictrash in March. Ticket links are over on our Linktree (www.linktr.ee/hailconan) dates are below. See you in the pit. Art by @apesofdoom

3/29 Boise, ID – Neurolux
3/30 Salt Lake City, UT – Aces High
3/31 Denver, CO – Skylark Lounge
4/1 Lincoln, NE – Cosmic Eye
4/2 Chicago, IL – Reggies
4/3 Youngstown, OH – West Side Bowl
4/4 Philadelphia, PA – Kung Fu Necktie
4/5 Brooklyn, NY – Saint Vitus Bar
4/6 Washington DC – Atlas Brew Works
4/7 Raleigh, NC – Pour House
4/8 Atlanta, GA – The Earl
4/9 New Orleans, LA – Santos
4/10 Austin, TX – Lost Well
4/12 Albuquerque, NM – Sister Bar
4/13 Phoenix, AZ – Rebel Lounge
4/14 Los Angeles, CA – The Echo
4/15 Oakland, CA – Stork Club
4/16 Sacramento, CA – Café Colonial
4/17 Eugene, OR – John Henry’s
4/18 Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios
4/19 Seattle, WA – Clock-Out Lounge

CONAN is:
Jon Davis – Guitar, Vocals
David Riley – Bass
Johnny King – Drums

http://www.hailconan.com/
https://www.facebook.com/hailconan/
https://www.instagram.com/hailconan/
https://conan-conan.bandcamp.com/
https://www.linktr.ee/hailconan

Conan, Evidence of Immortality (2022)