Posted in Questionnaire on July 29th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Kenny-Oswald Dufvenberg of Cavern Deep
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
I define myself as a creative person, in the art, writing and music fields, with a humble approach to my craft and a soft spot for the ’60s/’70s heavy rock and prog scene. I started playing and writing music in eighth grade when my stepdad introduced me to his vinyls, guitar gear and such. Before that I was not really interested in playing myself. I needed that creative kick in the ass to get started! No turning back since.
Describe your first musical memory.
Probably my mom humming around the house. A lot of singing all the time. She is one very musical lady.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
There are so many! But the first time I saw Bigelf live was a big one! It blew my brains out! The sheer volume was insane. I was 15 then and the experience had a huge impact on me.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
I thought that nothing would be more important than my music, my guitar playing… Writing… When I got my first kid I realized at once that there are more important things in life.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
It has nothing to do with practice or how much more awesome things you play or make. I think progression is about understanding your strengths as time passes and being able to put them to the best use in your creative process.
How do you define success?
When people I do not personally know, genuinely enjoy my music. When doors open so that you get the chance to work with other creative people you admire.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
The human body in a bloated, half decayed state.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
Aside from exploring the angles on doomy heavy music, I would like to record a stripped-down, nasty blues album: Live. And a fat, gnarly prog epos, In the vein of late-’70s Rush or such. It would be a challenge!
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
To make people feel and connect.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Waiting patiently for the second season of Made in Abyss. A great little animated gem, that series. Very special tone in both story, animation and soundtrack. Great stuff.
I’m also drawing a lot more these days after a quite long hiatus. I am really looking forward making more art in the future.
Oh my breaking heart as we move into day seven of the Summer 2021 Quarterly Review and I am reminded that the wages of hubris are feeling like a dumbass later. I was loading up my laptop on Saturday — so pleased with how ahead-of-the-game I was able to stay all last week — when the thing decided it was gonna give itself some time off one way or the other.
I dropped it for repair about 20 minutes before the guy I’ve come to trust was closing shop. He said he’d be in touch on Monday. Needless to say, I’m on my backup cheapie Chromebook, reviewing off Bandcamp streams, eagerly awaiting that call which I can only hope has come in by the time this is posted. I’ll keep you in the loop, of course, but putting together the reviews for yesterday? That was not pretty.
I expressly thank The Patient Mrs., through whom all things are possible.
Onward.
Quarterly Review #61-70:
Geezer, Solstice
Geezer‘s ambition could hardly be clearer in their 17-minute “Solstice” jam. It was the Solstice — Winter 2020, to be specific — and the Kingston, New York, trio jammed. Guitarist/vocalist Pat Harrington (who doesn’t sing on the track) added some dreamy synth after the fact, and the affect is all the more hypnotic for it. Harrington, bassist Richie Touseull and drummer Steve Markota are no strangers to exploratory fare, as they showed on 2020’s righteous Groovy (review here), and as a Bandcamp Friday-era stopgap offering, “Solstice” brings a sampling of who they are in the rehearsal space, willing to be heavy, willing to not, ready to go where the music leads them. If Geezer wanted to do a whole full-length like this, I wouldn’t fight them, so you most definitely will not find me arguing against a digital single either. With jams this tasty, you take what you can get.
Issued less as a stopgap, which a digital-only single might normally be, than as a response to the band having lost gear in a practice space flood, the 8:52 single-song outing The Event Horizon was recorded at the same time as Spaceslug‘s late 2020 EP The Leftovers (review here) and in a way acts to bridge the melancholy beyond-genre push of that release with the more weighted, spacious roll that has typified the Polish outfit’s work to-date — their latest full-length was 2019’s Reign of the Orion (review here), and they recently finished a new one. So perhaps “The Event Horizon,” with its hypnotically languid rhythm and concluding drift, is a stopgap after all, but between helping the band recoup their losses and thinking of what might be coming next, it’s an exciting if not-unalloyed listening experience, and the three-piece move deeper into a signature sound even as they continue to bring the definition of what that means to new places.
Creating sometimes-scorching, droning psychedelic soundtracks to all your favorite classic sci-fi films that never existed, Kansas City’s Expo Seventy offer a call to worship for freaks and converted heads on their new album, Evolution. Still headed by guitarist James Wright as on late-2016’s America Here and Now Sessions (review here), the band offer new glories celestial and terrestrial instrumental chemistry throughout the six tracks (seven on the CD) of Evolution, lumbering away on “Echoes of Ether” only after floating in brass-section antigrav conditions on “The Slow Death of Tomorrow.” Can you hang? You’ll know one way or the other as the culminating duo “Second Vision, First Sight” and “First Vision, Second Sight” are done with you, having altered dimensions so thoroughly that the ethereal will either come to feel like home or you will simply have melted. In any case, lash yourself to it. Own that shit.
Peak-era Faith No More reborn in progressive heavy fuzz? What stoner rock might’ve been if it went to college instead of spending all that time hanging around talking about old cars? I don’t know where UK four-piece Boss Keloid ultimately stand on their admirable fifth LP, Family the Smiling Thrush — the follow-up to 2018’s also-well-received Melted on the Inch (review here) — but they most certainly stand on their own. Across seven tracks, the band careen, crash, lumber, rush and ponder — lyrics no less worth a close read than any other component — and from opener/longest track (immediate points) “Orang of Noyn” on, they make it abundantly clear that their style’s unpredictability is an asset, and that just because you might not know where they’re going next doesn’t mean they don’t. Melodic, complex and cerebral, there’s still a human presence here, a sense of a plan unfolding, that makes the album seem all the more masterful.
Though it’s ultimately less electric-kool-aid than endless-churning-abyss-with-psychdelic-saxophone-screaming-up-at-you-like-free-jazz-trapped-in-the-downward-tonal-spiral, Bong-Ra‘s four-tracker Antediluvian is duly experimentalist in being born out of the mind of Jason Köhnen, whose work on this project not only extends more than 20 years, but who has been a part of landmark Dutch outfits like Celestial Season, The Kilmanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble and The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, among scores of others. The procession on this full-length, originally released in 2018 through Svart Lava, is wild times indeed, but immersive despite feeling at times like a litmus for how much you can take, with Köhnen‘s bass/keys/etc. and Balazs Pandi‘s drums meeting with Colin Webster‘s saxophone and Chloe Herrington‘s bassoon, willfully plodding through long-ish form improv-seeming movements of atmospheric heft creation.
A coherent and forceful debut full-length, Reek of the Parvenu quickly shows the metallic undercurrent from Athens-based four-piece Zebu on opener “The Setting Dust,” and pushes from there in groove metal fashion, taking some impulses from heavy rock but holding largely to a central aggressive stance and tension in the rhythm that is a backdrop even as the later “Nature of Failure” breaks from its chugging shove for a quieter stretch. That is to say, the next punch is always coming, and Zebu‘s blows are effectively delivered — looking at you, “Burden” — though some of the slower, sludgier cuts like “Our Shame” or the doomier finale “The City” bring a welcome atmosphere to go with the coinciding burl. I’m not sure if “People Under the Stairs” wants to kick my ass or crack a beer, but the songwriting is air tight and the thrashy threat only contributes to the immediacy of the release on the whole. They’re not screwing around.
It’s been 11 years since France’s Los Disidentes del Sucio Motel debuted with Soundtrack From the Motion Picture (review here), an engaging, kind of silly play on stoner rock and B-movie tropes. Beneath that, however, it was also a concept album, and the band — who now seem to prefer LDDSM for a moniker — still work from that foundation on their fourth full-length, Polaris. The difference scope and sonic maturity. Rife with vocal harmonies and progressive flourish, the 10-track answer to 2016’s Human Collapse (review here) smoothly shifts between the patient and the urgent, the intimate and the grand — and that’s in the first two minutes of “Blue Giant” alone — finding their way into a proggy post-heavy rock that’s too clearheaded to be psychedelic, but that balances the crunch of “Horizon” with a sense of the otherworldly just the same.
With their fourth long-player, guitarist/vocalist Anthony Gaglia and drummer Brady Maurer of Portland, Oregon’s LáGoon welcome bassist Kenny Combs to the fold and dive as a trio — their first three-piece outing was last year’s Father of Death EP — headfirst into murky riffing and heady heavy rock, made all the more spacious through cavern echo and the garage doom vocals Gaglia brings on the title-track, as well as the synth that surfaces on the subsequent interlude “Buried” and elsewhere throughout. The earlier “Beyond the Trees” is particularly bleak and otherworldly, but I won’t take away from the further-down procession of “Hill Bomb” and “The Slow Down” into “Final Ride,” the last of which closes out with scummer doom that’s familiar but distinct enough to be their own. There are moments on Skullactic Visions where, for as much as they could sound like Electric Wizard given the ingredients, I’m all the gladder they don’t.
Maha Sohona‘s second album comes some seven years after their self-titled debut, but who cares about time when you’ve got your headphones on and you’re surrounded by the richness of tone on offer throughout Endless Searcher‘s five rolling tracks? Heavy and laid back, the trio of guitarist/vocalist Johan Bernhardtson, bassist Thomas Hedlund and drummer David Lundsten finding some kinship with Polish three-piece Spaceslug in their post-Sungrazer blend of weight and flow, a jam like “Luftslot” nodding and conjuring depth even as it soars. Can’t argue with the quicker push of “A Black Star” or the purposefully straightforward “Scavengers” (where the title-line is delivered) but some of the mellow moments in opener “Leaves” and especially the building instrumental finisher “Orbit X” are even more satisfying for how effectively they move you place to place almost without your realizing it. I’ve got nothing for you if you can’t dig this vibe.
Keen observers will recognize The Bad Sugar Rush vocalist René Hofmann from his work with Wight, but the work here alongside guitarist Josko Joke-Tovic, bassist Minyeong Fischer and drummer Peter Zettl is distinct from that other unit here, even as the Humble Pie-esque “Push Me” and semi-sleeze “Liar” both have some shade of funk to their procession. Both cuts circa four minutes makes for a suitable debut 7″ with respected purveyor H42 Records doing the honors, and the results are an encouragingly catchy display of what a first full-length might accomplish when and however such a thing emerges. There’s classic heavy rock as the foundation, but more than outright ’70s worship — though some of that too — it’s the organic feel of the songs that leaves an impression on the listener, though the background singers on “Push Me” don’t hurt in that regard, certainly. An auspicious and intriguind first showing.
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 28th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Umeå, Sweden, trio Maha Sohona released their first album in seven years — just their second overall — digitally on June 18, and I’ve been trying to find an excuse and the time to dig into the record for real ever since. With the news that Endless Searcher, which was preceded by the single “Leaves” just two weeks before, will be issued on vinyl through Greece’s Made of Stone Recordings, I feel pretty satisfied at finally having my chance. They’re not wrong when they talk about things like mellow heavy and atmospheric compositions. You get plenty of that across the five-song outing, and it’s an easy one to lose yourself in, whether you heard the band’s 2014 self-titled debut or not. To wit, I didn’t.
That’s still on their Bandcamp as well, of course, and you can stream Endless Searcher at the bottom of the post here. If the style of the cover art looks familiar, you might recognize the hand of Maciej Kamuda from his work for Spaceslug, Weedpecker, Sunnata, Scorched Oak and a slew of others. I just went down a 20-minute rabbit-hole on his Facebook page and don’t regret it in the least.
But I digress. The vinyl. Here’s PR wire info:
Maha Sohona release “Endless Searcher” via Made Of Stone Recordings
The overall vision behind Johan Bernhardtson’s power trio is not an easy task to describe. Hailing from Umeå, Sweden and with a mission to reach as far out as possible, the 3 musicians use the compelling power of riffing and the creation of translucent atmospheres as a vehicle that can easily become a weapon. Their dynamic stoner/desert/space rock is equally explosive and laid back, depending on the dynamics of each moment.
Having enough experience to channel the creative energy into well-crafted compositions, the energy of the band finds a way into the listener’s heart and mind, through meticulous rock n roll outtakes with a distinct character and identity.
All songs written and arranged by Maha Sohona Recorded December 5-6th 2020 at Järnhjälmen Studio Mixed by Stefan Johansson at Järnhjälmen Studio Mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege Cover artwork and layout by Maciej Kamuda
Made of Stone Recordings presents the analogue vinyl editions of “Endless Searcher”:
– The splatter transparent 180gr in 100 limited copies – The double coloured 180gr in 200 copies – The all-time classic black LP 180gr in 200 copies,
With a release date of November 10, 2021.
Tracklisting: 1. Leaves 09:41 2. Luftslott 07:59 3. A Black Star 08:24 4. Scavengers 03:58 5. Orbit X 07:22
Maha Sohona are: Guitar/Vocals – Johan Bernhardtson Bass – Thomas Hedlund Drums – David Lundsten
Swedish trio Cavern Deep release their self-titled debut July 23 through Interstellar Smoke Records. The album begins on a ledge looking underground and ends simply in “The Dark Place,” so it’s safe to assume that the narrative happening across the eight-song/46-minute outing from the Umeå-based three-piece doesn’t go well for the team of 50 explorers undertaking it. The band — guitarist/vocalist Kenny-Oswald Duvfenberg, bassist/vocalist Max Malmer and drummer/backup vocalist Dennis Sjödin (also keys), who introduces second cut “Abandoned Quarters” with duly ceremonial organ — use open space as well as tonal largesse to their aural advantage throughout Cavern Deep, with Duvfenberg‘s vocals echoing out in mournful fashion atop willful lumber, embodying the slog one might make in pursuit of unknown riches, and in spaces minimal and crushing, telling the story with duly grim and soulful perspective while remaining fluid in songcraft all the while.
From the shift out of the plodding stretch of “Staring Down” into its solo-topped apex, the instruments have their say in the narrative as well. Sjödin‘s drums march with a dutiful sensibility as “Abandoned Quarters” takes up the journey where the opener left off, and Malmer‘s bassline later in the open, quiet portion of the second half helps to set up the Candlemassian epic finish, rumbling into the cinematic-then-crushing back and forth of “Ominous Gardens,” and leading the way into the presumed side A finale, “Waterways,” a highlight for the confidence of its vocal arrangement and the splendor-in-decay its riff conjures over the still-tense keys. This is not a debut lacking attention to detail, or patience, or complexity in its construction. It is not haphazard. Cavern Deep are methodical both in their groove and in how these songs are built. In short, they are not fucking around.
There’s dissention in the ranks of our cavern-divers as “Leap of Faith” opens with the lines, “22 are stalling/Below is only void,” and the more active chug that accompanies. Like “Deeper Grounds,” which follows — and for which a live-in-studio performance video is premiering below — “Leap of Faith” strips down some of the lyrical impressionism of side A to add a sense of chaos to the ever-downward procession, but is one word and one central riff in “Deeper Grounds,” and “deeper” about covers it. Both songs are shorter than anything on the first half of Cavern Deep, and they give way to the brooding lurch of “Fungal Realm,” the dark hallucinogenic crescendo of the record as a whole, answering back to the grandiosity of “Waterways” as a closer might, but still leaving room for the organ-laced “The Dark Place” to cap with a feeling of arrival.
If you’re worried about a spoiler for how it turns out, I guess it would be a jerk move for me to ruin the end of the tale, so I won’t do that, but yeah. They telegraph pretty well where the conclusion is headed. They kind of gave it away too when the album was announced, but in any case, there’s a reason it’s “The Dark Place” and not “The Friendly Place Where Everything’s Fine and Hey I Just Found Five Dollars Isn’t That Awesome.”
The performance video below for “Deeper Grounds” follows one for “Fungal Realm” the band posted in April, and they’ve been leaking tracks periodically through their Bandcamp page as well if you’d like to get even more of a sense where they’re coming from. The crash and hopelessness of “Deeper Grounds” are both well represented here and not to be discounted for their effect on the album that surrounds.
As always, I hope you enjoy.
Cavern Deep, “Deeper Grounds” live video premiere
Cavern Deep on “Deeper Grounds”:
“Deeper Grounds is the 6th track of our upcoming concept album, the song is about the point where the expedition into the cavernous realm realize that there is no way to go except further down into the abyss. The lyrics are as follows:
Deeper Deeper Deeper Deeper
This live recording was made at our bassist Max’s studio-rehersal in Umeå. The hats is an artifact of the number of beers consumed prior to the recording of the song.”
Cavern Deeps debut concept album is about 50 adventurers that find the entrance to a lost underground civilization which they enter with the hopes of treasure.
The debut self-titled album is about one archeologist and his crew of ambitious henchmen and their descent into the cavernous realm below the crust of the earth. Learn about their fate and listen to some heavy, gloomy riffs along their slow path downwards.
The album will be released on all major platforms and vinyl via Interstellar Smoke Records on July 23rd.
Cavern Deep is: Kenny-Oswald Duvfenberg – Guitars and Vocals Max Malmer – Bass and Vocals Dennis Sjödin – Drums, Backup Vocals and Keys
Cavern Deep, “Funal Realm” live at Malmer Productions
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 19th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Duly dramatic and duly doomed, the self-titled debut from Swedish trio Cavern Deep will be released on July 23 through Interstellar Smoke Records. I read a lot of press releases — it’s kind of a habit of mine, actually — but not a lot of them come with a full narrative guide to the record in question. And frankly, not a lot of records warrant it. Even those that might fall into the category of “protagonist falls into abyss, is consumed” are rarely presented with such a clear attention to detail as what one might glean from the below, and as Cavern Deep — who are from Umeå, which is Meshuggah‘s hometown as well (the things you remember) — have already put up several of the album’s tracks on their Bandcamp, including “Waterways,” which you’ll find streaming at the bottom of this post, you can hear they match their intensity of purpose with a fitting sonic grandeur.
Into the deep we go:
Doom distributors Cavern Deep gear up to release their chilling debut album via Interstellar Smoke Records
The start of the expedition.
One archaeologist and 49 men stand at the gates of a previously unknown civilization, for a moment staring down into the bowels of the mountain before they begin their decent.
The journey downwards turn out to be more dangerous than expected, they climb down through whirling stairs lit only by organic fluorescent lights.
Further down the path turns more and more crumbled, eventually they must use ropes to traverse the broken bridges and tunnels over the deep chasms below. Filled by the promise of treasure they continue downwards. Many men go missing as they’re tasked to explore diverting tunnels, they never return and their screams are followed by silence. the only thing found is their safety ropes, driven by greed the archaeologist continues the expedition.
Cavern Deeps debut concept album is about 50 adventurers that find the entrance to a lost underground civilization which they enter with the hopes of treasure.
1. Staring Down – The first song is about the ominous feeling whilst staring down the stairs. “Staring down…. Into the deep.” Unknown symbols from a by gone by intelligence fills the walls of the staircase which never seem to end.
2. Abandoned Quarters – In this song the party finds the remnants of a lost city with abandoned spires and halls. “To the levels below.” The ruins are filled with hatched eggs and signs of struggle. But no corpses… On the other side of the city the stairs continue into the depths.
3. Ominous Gardens – After leaving the city the party stumbles on a huge abandoned garden. Abandoned by the warden this underground garden is filled with ancient deadly fauna. Many of the party members perish as the jungle takes its toll.
4. Waterways – Below the jungle lies the aqueducts that provided all of the water needed for the once prosperous civilization. It soon becomes obvious that they’re no longer alone. “Searching… for the door.” The party soon gets lost in this maze, hope seems lost.
5. Leap of Faith – After many men had perished in the waterways, they finally find the door which leads out to a ledge. Before them lies an enormous gap, the chasm is so deep that the only thing they see is an endless darkness in the depths below. The darkness seem to have a life of its own…
6. Deeper Grounds – The depths of the leap swallowed its fair share of adventurers. “Deeper…” Less then half of the party left they realize that there no way out but down.
7. The Fungal Realm – Finally, the party arrives in a dark and damp large cavern. It’s full of a fungus which has a hive mind intent of consuming the minds of the adventurers. “My mind is melting away.” Slowly the everyone but the leader of the expedition becomes a part of the fungus.
8. The Dark Place – The leader of the venture now alone enters a great dark room. On the other side of the room a dark and ancient entity lurks. The entity has lived in these caverns for a very long time, possible being the source of power of the ancient civilization. “We are lost, Cavern Deep.” This old god of a forgotten time has waited for someone to take his place. As the lost adventurer tries to scream the god consumes him to take his place, finally released.
The art: All of the art is made by Kenny, the guitarist of the band.
Cavern Deep is a slow, heavy band, founded 2019, by members from Zonaria and Swedish retro riffsters Gudars Skymning.
The debut self-titled album is about one archeologist and his crew of ambitious henchmen and their descent into the cavernous realm below the crust of the earth. Learn about their fate and listen to some heavy, gloomy riffs along their slow path downwards.
The album will be released on all major platforms and vinyl via Interstellar Smoke Records on July 23rd.
Cavern Deep is: Kenny-Oswald Duvfenberg – Guitars and Vocals Max Malmer – Bass and Vocals Dennis Sjödin – Drums, Backup Vocals and Keys
Posted in Bootleg Theater on November 6th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Immediately before I started writing this sentence — just now — I clicked through the back end of this site to filter out a couple spam comments. They always throw something random in the text, then link to I don’t even know what because there’s no way I’m clicking to find out. Sometimes it’s like “ur sitez teh best omg how you blog” or whatever. This morning all it said was “where to find neurosurgeon.” I can hardly think of a more appropriate question to lead into a discussion about Meshuggah‘s Chaosphere.
Based in Umeå, Sweden, and dating back to the thrashy beginnings of the late 1980s, they’re a long-standing flagship band of Nuclear Blast Records and unquestionably among the most influential bands of their generation. Their 1991 debut, Contradictions Collapse — which wound up repackaged with the 1994 EP None — led to 1995’s landmark Destroy, Erase, Improve, which in songs like “Soul Burn,” “Suffer in Truth” and “Future Breed Machine” became the skull from which what was later known as “djent” sprang. Not the best descriptor, but a more efficient encapsulation than astoundingly-progressive-and-technically-focused-time-signature-fuckery And yeah, “djent” has been maligned since like every trend that arises in heavy metal eventually is, but that wouldn’t be the case if band’s weren’t doing it. And they were and are.
Chaosphere, which followed the 1997 EP The True Human Design and coincided with the also-’97 release of Sol Niger Within, a debut album from guitarist Fredrik Thordendal‘s side-project, Fredrik Thordendal’s Special Defects, is inarguably pinnacle Meshuggah. Its largely, willfully amelodic refinement of the crunch, crush and inhuman style that emerged on the prior record makes its 47-minute run breathtakingly intense even more than two decades later. The subtleties of spacious guitar leads and mechanized — industrial, really, without the keyboards — rhythms between Thordendal and Mårten Hagström, the punch of bass at the outset of “Neurotica” from Gustaf Hielm, the lifeline of Tomas Haake‘s okay-now-make-it-all-make-sense drums thrown to the listener as though if we just all find the snare pattern it’ll be fine, along with the largely unipolar bark of vocalist Jens Kidman, all work together to bring metal to a place it had never gone on songs like “Concatenation” and “Corridor of Chameleons,” while still somehow staying catchy on “New Millennium Cyanide Christ” and “The Mouth Licking What You’ve Bled.”
It was an album that demanded nothing less than memorization. It tasked the listener in a way that ran counter to the bulk of what was being produced through even bigger underground labels at that point, whether it was the nü-metal and rap-crossover dominating radio and MTV or the death or black metal and stoner rock that began to take shape elsewhere. At the dawn of the age of file-sharing, Meshuggah were a band speaking from a post-apocalyptic future, and even at low volumes their work astounded, but loud, it was like being churned through gears in an old Looney Tunes cartoon, winding your way seemingly at random through the inner workings, springs and chunking pieces of metal of a clock keeping its own time. If you could get your head around it at all, it felt like an win. The sheer severity.
And yet somehow, Chaosphere also seems spare. Neither “The Mouth Licking What You’ve Bled” nor “Sane” and “The Exquisite Machinery of Torture” top four minutes — though they’re all close — and the only reason the runtime hits 47 minutes is because after closer “Elastic” finishes at around six minutes in, there’s five-plus minutes of noise and then the band piles four songs on top of each other for a final four minutes of absolute noise punishment, making the ‘track’ a total of 15 minutes long. But even if you can listen to that unnerving drone — and really, you can, but only if you really feel the need to prove that to yourself — and the appropriate ball of chaos that follows, which is interesting if completely overwhelming, it’s the forcefulness of purpose in the earlier proceedings that so much stands out.
I won’t get into debating Chaosphere versus others in Meshuggah‘s discography either before or after. Destroy, Erase, Improve was a step along the path and crucial in its own right, but its follow-up stands alone among the band’s output, and even aside from the fact that it inspired an entire generation — probably two at this point — to explore more complexity in their own songwriting for better and/or worse as well as a ton of lunkhead mosh parts, its own victory still stands up 22 years later in the cathartic listening experience. From the raging shove of “Concatenation” through the start-stop breakdown late in “New Millennium Cyanide Christ” and the violence that seems to accompany every fitful smash of “Corridor of Chameleons,” it is a masterpiece of its own particular kind of brutality, and the stuff of which legacies — specifically Meshuggah‘s — are rightly made.
They made the most of it, sort of, by touring. A compilation, Rare Trax, would be their next release in 2001, though, and I recall that feeling like a long time. When the band did emerge with new output, it was the 2002 LP Nothing, which would get a subsequent redux in 2006, and the 2004 I EP, a single-song 20-minute track that stands as one of Meshuggah‘s greatest achievements. Along with the 2005 LP Catch Thirty-Three and 2008’s obZen, this stands as the most productive period in the band’s history, with the album Koloss following in 2012 and offering up a few singles but little new to the mix. By contrast, 2016’s The Violent Sleep of Reason found the group recording live and trying to capture a more natural feel counter to popular conception of what they do, and while raw-sounding at times, it was clear their restlessness was leading them to try something else.
Now statesmen of metal some eight or nine records deep into a tenure of 30-plus years, that they’d even bother speaks to the enduring creative and progressive spirit that led to the accomplishment that was and is Chaosphere. It continues to stun and likely will do so into perpetuity.
In the parlance of our times, “current mood:” and “MFW.”
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
—
6:01AM. I tried to go for a run after finishing the above. Got running clothes on, my new brown Carhartt hat that’s like the one I had in high school — I guess between that and the Meshuggah I’m regressing; maybe I’ll replay Final Fantasy VIII next — and barely made it out of the driveway before my left heel offered a swift correction. Feels like plantar fasciitis, which is familiar enough, but I’ve been having trouble with that ankle of late as well. This is a familiar pattern. I start to work out, hurt myself, stop, “compensate” through negative eating habits, feel like shit, feel like shit, and in the end, feel like shit.
I also haven’t had any form of nut butter in like a month now, because, really, it was getting out of hand, and I don’t know if I’ve lost any weight as a result, but I’ve definitely lost some of my sense of joy in life. So that’s good. Because enjoying things is bad.
I guess that feeling like shit part going to happen one way or the other, then. Maybe I really should break out the PlayStation. Would be something to give now-three-year-old The Pecan his first real 100 hours of screen time watching me get Squall and company up to level 85 and then just wreck everybody. My time-tested method for such things.
Ah.
The Meshuggah choice, if it needs to be said, was born of frustration with the uncertainty of the American political situation, the presidential election, various dictatorial rantings on the part of the White House — which really should be torn down and replaced by something not built by slaves, just for the optics if not the actual morality of it — and so on. How many times can you refresh the New York Times frontpage in a single day? I’m on a quest to find out. Fuck the electoral college, the senate and other such bastions of American anti-democracy. Chaosphere has been a welcome cathartic burst even if the unspoken companion message there is my own impotency to enact any sort of change to any of it. At least music still sounds good.
Not that Joe Biden is going to fix everything, you understand. Like because he was Obama’s VP structural racism will end and cops will stop killing black people and economic inequality will disappear and we’ll all have healthcare and student loan forgiveness and blah blah blah godless socialist paradise that everyone actually wants but doesn’t happen because CAPITALISM. He’s a mediocre candidate and that was the point behind his getting the nomination — the Democratic party wanted a safe choice to counteract the president’s off-rails consumption of the media sphere, otherwise they wouldn’t have undercut Bernie Sanders as brutally as they did — but how much worse can he possibly make anything? Two days in a row of 100,000-plus new cases of COVID-19, and a dude standing in front of a mic in the press briefing room just lying about shit. Biden’s mediocre but at least he’s human. The president is like Nomad after Kirk tells him he’s not the crea-tor, all spouting nonsense with smoke coming out of his ears and so on.
Well, the kid’s up and looking out his window. He’s been up earlier all week with the time change, though we’re starting to get back on track. He’s also been biting again, and hitting, and kicking. Comes and goes. He bites himself. He bites me. He grabs now, kind of a proto-pinch. Frustrating. Shitty. After a year of occupational therapy, kind of backslid going into preschool. I’m hoping it’s the change in schedule/physical activity. I’m hoping it doesn’t last. I’m hoping he doesn’t bite another kid, though last time he did the kid scratched his face all to hell and I kind of thought that was a win on a lesson-learned level. Apparently not, though it’s not like I’m going to bite him back, as much as I’ve been given that advice in the past.
Everything’s a fight though. The good news is the dog hasn’t really been around to make it worse. She’s been spending days up the road at my sister and mother’s house, where there’s a big fenced-in back yard to run around, other dogs to play with, and a toddler factor of zero. Frankly, it seems like a better existence for her there on every level, and the photos of the dog relaxed and sprawled on their couch snuggling their other dogs that my sister has been sending me all week bear that out. Apparently one of their dogs, Rey, whines now when Omi leaves. Omi was also despondent last time I picked her up. We’ll see how that plays out over time, but I’m not at all opposed to sharing the dog in the interim. My sister’s son, 10, apparently likes her as well. So yeah.
We’re thinking of going to Connecticut today to see The Patient Mrs.’ mother before her place at the beach closes for the season so the pipes don’t freeze. It’s always kind of stressful with The Pecan, since there’s no real “proofing” that small space for him, but we might just suck it up and go. We’re up that way tomorrow anyhow for great-grandma’s 90-somethingth birthday. Outside. Maybe masks? I don’t know. We’re all in the pod anyway.
I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Next week is packed. Today is Bandcamp Friday. No Gimme show, but I’ll be kicking around a few recommendations on Facebook for how to spend your money, if you feel like keeping an eye out. If you don’t, I get that too. Times are tough. My Facebook likes thing is broken (you have to click to the post from the frontpage, then look at the bottom one to see how many likes there are; I have no idea why and I can’t seem to fix it). So it goes. Make sure to hydrate.
[Click play above to stream ‘JaEDeJaE’ and ‘Lemmy on the Beach’ from UFO Över Lappland’s self-titled debut. Reissue available to order now from Sulatron Records.]
Lappland is located in the north of Sweden. All the way up. It is home to the country’s largest nature preserve, and while I don’t know if there’s a particular history of flying saucer sightings, in 1959, a slice of sci-fi cheese called Rymdinvasion i Lappland — “Space Invasion of Lappland” — was released and maybe that’s where psych-jamming four-piece UFO Över Lappland got their name from. Or maybe they’re aliens. The latter would explain the extraterrestrial vibes of their self-titled debut, originally released in 2016 by Fluere Tapes in a glittery translucent blue-green pressed in an edition of 50 copies. 50 copies. Brutal. Long gone, of course.
Sulatron Records — helmed by Dave “Sula Bassana” Schmidt of Electric Moon, Zone Six, et al — has stepped in to reissue UFO Över Lappland‘s UFO Över Lappland on CD and LP, turning the original three-track digital outing from guitarist Krister Mörtsell, bassist Christer Blomquist, synthesist Peter Basun and drummer Andreas Rejdvik into a five-song/50-minute instrumentalist sprawl that includes “Lemmy on the Beach,” which featured as a bonus track on the original tape, and the oddly-capitalized “JaEDeJaE.” The UFO may be over Lappland, but space is for sure its final destination, and the band gives it well enough thrust to get there. Opener and longest track (immediate points) “Keep on Keepin’ on Space Truckin'” begins its 12-minute cast with tense, proggy lines of looped guitar as a and a solid forward drumbeat as a bed for the lead line. Swirl comes and goes via synth and the bass makes itself felt in low end swells working on their own wavelength to underscore the groove. It’s all on the beat, all working together toward the same end, which is the thorough and early immersion of the listener to be sustained over the course of the proceedings. Bridge to engine room: take us to full impulse.
I don’t think UFO Över Lappland have the intent of reinventing space rock or heavy psychedelia, but what they do exceedingly well throughout their first album is to balance fluidity and drift in their jams with a subtle outward push. The only time they really go full-on with a Hawkwindian rhythm is, suitably enough, in “Lemmy on the Beach,” but even in “Keep on Keepin’ on Space Truckin'” there’s an underlying movement happening that carries through the track such that when it hits into its fuller-toned payoff in the second half, the shift is natural. Tied to the earlier stretch via synth, they return soon enough to the bouncing rhythm and airy guitar to close out, giving way to “JaEDeJaE,” which begins with a rumble and feedback for the first minute of its total 6:52. The shortest track on UFO Över Lappland, it continues the modus of the opener in patiently building repetitions, but there’s a keyboard line that takes forward position early and is met by fuzzy lead guitar that stands it out among its companion cuts.
Obviously there isn’t time for the same kind of stretch as in the opener, but UFO Över Lappland still find room for a suitable payoff, with the drums signaling the change with tom runs and a switch to crash-cymbal timekeeping, adding to the overall wash. Noise and a few seconds of silence make a fitting enough bed for the lead into “Podzol” (10:40), which dedicates itself to the most patient and hypnotic unfolding on the record. Not a minor distinction, given the context of what surrounds. But even with the drums setting forth a progressive motion, that itself is gradual too. It opens minimal, then synth and guitar, then bass and drums, the latter just with toms, then snare, then cymbals. It all happens in stages, and it’s not until they’re about halfway through that the full breadth of the song comes to bear. “Podzol” has a payoff of its own, but the sense is that it’s more about the trip than where they wind up, though I won’t discount the dissolution into noise that happens in the last minute either, nor how it bleeds into the subsequent “Nothing that Lives Has… Such Eyes!…,” continuing the cosmic thread forward as it gracefully takes hold.
By this point they’ve set the parameters and the coordinates are locked in. “Nothing that Lives Has… Such Eyes!…” nonetheless marks itself out with its noisy second half and a slower-rolling finish, leaving little question as to why it originally was intended as the pre-bonus track capstone of the album. There is a feeling of waiting for that payoff to arrive that’s set up through the similar structures that run throughout the first three songs, but UFO Över Lappland make sticking it out worthwhile, and “Lemmy on the Beach” resolves itself in a space rock blast that’s true to form in a way the rest of UFO Över Lappland only hinted at being, so there’s a showing of some freakout genre fluidity as well following that closer’s early going, which again pairs active rhythms with spacious guitar work and synth, finding an atmosphere outside the atmosphere but still wearing mag-boots to stay grounded.
Again, it’s that balance that’s so crucial to UFO Över Lappland‘s first outing, and while they’ve given themselves room to grow and expand their style in terms of structure, there’s a tonal reach from top to bottom in the mix that proves to be height as much as depth. It might be for the converted, but the converted won’t complain at its arrival, and especially given the here and vanished nature of the original pressing — a second round of tapes is reportedly available from the band — there’s plenty of reason to see why Sulatron would invite listeners to get lost in its vastness. It’s a pleasure to do so, and considering the original release was two years ago, one hopes it won’t be that much longer before UFO Över Lappland offer a follow-up. It would only be welcomed, however it might ultimately be beamed in.
Posted in Bootleg Theater on September 26th, 2017 by JJ Koczan
Swedish heavy psych rockers Fungus Hill released their Ludenben single this past Spring as the follow-up to January’s Creatures EP (review here), and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the animated video for the track has been in the works since that time. I’ll admit that were it not for the English subtitles given to the lyrics, I’d have basically no idea what the story being told is about beyond what the band says about it, but it tells the tale of a goat farmer who has four goats named after colors that get stolen by a troll. Because of course that’s what happens. Trolls friggin’ love goats. Everybody knows this.
So anyway, the farmer, whose name is Petter, is all bummed out about his goats being taken — and well he should be; they look like some pretty badass goats in the video, if not exactly the petting-zoo type — and his cat winds up going and scaring the troll so he falls off a cliff and Petter gets his goats back. Does it rule? Oh yes, it mightily rules. The animation is excellent, and Fungus Hill tell the story with soul and a perfectly folkish edge that finds them well earning the furs in which they appear throughout. Dead-on vibe and execution of what as a concept and realization could’ve easily fallen flat in less capable hands.
In fact, and this isn’t a comparison I’m going to make lightly, but if you miss some of the sweet fuzz of the defunct-once-again Örebro natives Asteroid, you especially might want to dig into “Ludenben,” because in amidst the dual vocals and expansively psychedelic rollout, there’s some of that depth and warmth to be found. I’ve posted about Fungus Hill a couple times now over the past few months, but let me say outright in case the point hasn’t gotten across that I think they’re onto something special in their sound and chemistry and I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing how that develops going into their next release and, hopefully, beyond that as well.
Until then, you’ll find the video for “Ludenben” below and I hope agree that if was in fact a while in the making, it’s definitely been worth the wait.
Enjoy:
Fungus Hill, “Ludenben” official video
The music video is officially released!!!
Turn of the lights, plug in your speakers and check out our new animated tale about goats, magic and trolls. Inspired by the book “Petter och hans fyra getter” written by Einar Norelius.
Special thanks to Jörgen Rabben who painted and illustrated the animated pictures… You did an amazing job!! Also thank you to Lars Samuel Olsson who helped out filming.
Produced by JAQ Studios. Director, animator & editor: Gustav Orvefors Painter and illustrator: Jörgen Rabben Camera operator: Samuel Olsson Mix and master: Nils Mörtzel
