Posted in Whathaveyou on September 22nd, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Heads up on this one. I know plenty of people caught onto Uncle Woe with the first record, late-2019’s Our Unworn Limbs (review here), but if you didn’t, the second one, called Phantomescence, pushes even further out in terms of what that offering accomplished in terms of style, bringing down-in-a-hole grunge melody to a backdrop of lumbering cosmic doom. I’ve only had occasion to go through it once, but the progression is evident even in the structure offsetting longer tracks with shorter ones, and there is a clearer sense of purpose throughout.
I’ll have a review up of Phantomescence hopefully ahead of the release date, but the opening track is streaming now. Hail Canadian heavy, and no, I’m not just saying that because I plan to apply for asylum there.
Again, heads up. Here’s PR wire info:
Mournful And Meandering, Canada’s Uncle Woe Reveal Second Album “Phantomescence”
Canada’s Uncle Woe brings you a contemplative, progressive doom album “Phantomescence” that was completely conceived and recorded in pandemic induced isolation. The opening track/lead single, “Become The Ghost” is a meandering exploration of death and dreams.
“Phantomescence” deviates from the first Uncle Woe album as the band moves forward from a solo studio project. It is an easily digestible, logical next step in the band’s evolution; elements, which made the first LP, “Our Unworn Limbs”, engaging and intriguing are present again on this offering; expanded upon, polished, and moderately better produced. The new album deals with death in a much broader and less personal sense, and also contains a lot of abstract, dream sequence type elements.
Currently, as a two-piece, Rain Fice and Nicholas Wowk worked on their parts separately, shared them online and managed to pull off the second album from the band. Fice details the intricacies of the single:
“Become The Ghost is almost relentless in its forward, mid-tempo, stomping march. The first chorus comes as a very small, simple 3/4 breather, in the midst of the opening/verse riff’s endless churning and revolving 11/4 and 15/4 riff. The vocals throughout are rough, and finally build to a scream in that last, closing verse. After the death of someone very near to me, I remember a feeling of loss so great that it seemed that even though THEY had died, I was the one who became a ghost if that makes sense; a ghost, or shadow, or shell.”
Many chugging, bludgeoning passages are offset by expansive and contemplative, subdued, almost post-rock soundscapes, making Uncle Woe suitable for fans of Yob, Chrome Ghost and Deftones.
Track Listing: 1. Become The Ghost (6:29) 2. On Laden Shores (13:30) 3. Lucid Degrees of Autoscopic Ruin (6:45) 4. A Map of Dead Stars (13:14) EP Length: 40:00
Album Credits: • All songs performed by: Rain Fice/Nicholas Wowk • All songs written by: Rain Fice *Become the Ghost by Fice/Wowk • Produced by: Rain Fice/Nicholas Wowk • Mixed by: Rain Fice • Mastered by: Rain Fice • Album Artwork by: Rain Fice • Canadian Content (MAPL)
EP Recording Band Line Up: Rain Fice – Guitar, Vocals, Bass, Keyboards Nicholas Wowk – Drums/Percussion
Posted in Bootleg Theater on January 24th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
The intention behind Uncle Woe‘s new video would seem pretty clearly to be to give a sampling of what the project’s debut album, Our Unworn Limbs (review here), is all about, and in that regard, the song “Mania for Breaking” is more than suited to the purpose. At a little under five minutes, it is the shortest of the pieces on Our Unworn Limbs by a wide margin — the minute-long acoustic departure “When the Night Fell In Pt. 2” that precedes it notwithstanding — but still captures the tonal crunch and atmospheric reach of the album’s longer material. The video put together by Rain Fice, who also happens to be the sole figure behind the Ontario-based solo-project (more on that in a bit), is animated weirdness that underscores the emotional tumult on display in the chugging riffs and YOB-style cosmic atmosphere.
Video, song and album alike are equal parts entrancing and strange. The animation comes across with the avant feel of a darker Terry Gilliam, but still feels on-theme with the track it complements, moth-lady to the moon and all. Elsewhere on the record, 10-plus-minute songs like “Son of the Queen,” “That’s How They Get You” and the 15-minute closer “Push the Blood Back In” unfurl some of the same textures of “Mania for Breaking” on a grander scale of melody and heft, but particularly with the visual accompaniment, there’s enough here to begin to get the point across at least to a degree that one might be tempted to, say, stream the record in full via Bandcamp. Fortunately there’s a player embedded at the bottom of the post for precisely that purpose.
As noted, Uncle Woe is a solo-project, but my understanding is Fice‘s intent is to put a group of together and begin a full, live incarnation of it as a band. What that will ultimately look like, I don’t know — trio, four-piece, dude-plus-drummer, etc. — but it means that, if it happens, the follow-up to Our Unworn Limbs will invariably have a different dynamic, provided those players actually appear on the record as well. So as much as “Mania for Breaking” is a sampling of Our Unworn Limbs, maybe the album too is just a sampling of things to come from Uncle Woe as Fice gets the band going. Given what he achieves on his own with this debut, to say I’m intrigued to find out what happens next would be putting it mildly.
Video and album stream follow. Please enjoy:
Uncle Woe, “Mania for Breaking” official video
Now you can enjoy Uncle Woe at your next video dance party!
Official music video for, “Mania for Breaking,” from Uncle Woe’s Debut LP, “Our Unworn Limbs.”
Hailing from the oft frozen hills of rural Canada, Uncle Woe is a phantom limb, shown here wielding some bludgeoning tool against mostly true tales of bittersweet sorrow, revenge, and regret.
Posted in Reviews on January 9th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Yesterday was marked by a decisive lack of productivity. I got there, don’t get me wrong, but it took friggin’ forever to make it happen. I’m obviously hoping for a different result today and tomorrow. You would think 10 records is 10 records, but some days it’s easy flowing, bounce from one to the next without any trouble, and some days you’re me sitting there wondering how many times you can get away with using the word “style” in the same post. Punishing. The saving factor was that the music was good. Amazing how often that serves as the saving factor.
Just today and tomorrow left, so let’s dive in. Lots of different kinds of releases today, so keep your ears and mind open.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
We Lost the Sea, Triumph and Disaster
There is plenty of heavy post-rock floating — and I do mean floating — around these days, spreading ethereal and contemplative vibes hither and yon, but none have the emotional weight brought to bear instrumentally by Sydney, Australia’s We Lost the Sea. Across their 65-minute 2LP, Triumph and Disaster (on Translation Loss), the six-piece band recount a wordless narrative of the aftermath of the end of the world through the eyes of a mother and child on their last day. It is a touching and beautiful flow of sentiment, regret and weight that comes through the wash of three guitars and synth, bass and drums, and though 2015’s Departure Songs (review here, discussed here) worked in a similar vein in terms of style if not story, these seven tracks and 65 minutes are wholly distinguished by a willful-seeming progression on the part of the band and a patience and poise of execution as they alternate between longer and shorter pieces that only underscores how special their work truly is. At least the apocalypse is gorgeous.
Nothing against the progenitors of the form, but Nebula Drag seem with Blud to pull off the feat that Helmet never really could, bringing together a noise-rock derived dissonance of riff with a current of melody in the vocals and even moments of patience in the guitar to go along with the crunch of its more aggressive points. This inherently makes the Desert Records offering from the San Diego outfit a less outwardly intense affair than it might otherwise be, but songs like “Always Dying,” “Numb” and the closer “Mental” — as well as the album as a whole — are ultimately richer for it, and there’s still plenty of drive in opener “Dos Lados” and the shorter “Faces” and “What Went Wrong,” which arrive back to back on side B and lend the momentum that carries Nebula Drag through the remainder of the proceedings. It’s easy to hear to Blud superficially and pass it off as noise or heavy rock or this or that, but Nebula Drag earn and reward deeper listens in kind.
Los Angeles oppressive and misanthropic noise project Nothing is Real manifested some of the harshest sounds I heard in 2019 on Only the Wicked are Pure (review here), and the just-months-later follow-up, Pain is Joy, reminds of the constant sensory assault under which we all seem to live. Across five extended tracks of increased production value — still raw, just not as raw — the band seems to be forming a coherent philosophical perspective in “Existence is Pain,” the guest-vocalized “Realms of Madness,” “Life is but a Dream,” “Pain is Joy,” and “We Must Break Free,” but if there’s a will to explain the punishment that is living, there’s not much by way of answer forthcoming in the sludgy riffing, grinding onslaught and surprising solo soar of “We Must Break Free,” instrumental as it is. Still, the fact that Pain is Joy allows for the possibility of joy to exist at all, in any form, ever, distinguishes it from its predecessor, and likewise the clearer sound and cogent expressive purpose. A focused attack suits Nothing is Real. I have the feeling it won’t be long before we find out where it takes the band next.
If the name Oresteia isn’t immediately familiar, maybe “Agamemnon” will give some hint. San Francisco’s Lotus Thief, with their third full-length and second for Prophecy Productions, not only bring together progressive black metal, post-rock and drama-laced doom, but do so across eight-tracks and 38 minutes summarizing a 5th century Greek tragedy written in three parts. Ambitious? Yes. Successful? I’ll claim zero familiarity with the text itself, but for the eight-minute “Libation Bearers” alone — never mind any of the other immersive, beautiful wash the band emits throughout — I’m sure glad they’re engaging with it. Ambient stretches like “Banishment” and “Woe” and the barely-there “Reverence” add further character to the proceedings, but neither are “The Furies,” “Agamemnon,” “Sister in Silence” or subdued-but-tense closer “The Kindly Ones” lacking for atmosphere. Oresteia is grim, theatrical, stylistically forward-thinking and gorgeous. A perfect, perfect, perfect winter record.
Chugging, sprawling, and most of all reaching, the late-2019 debut LP, Our Unworn Limbs, from Ontario as-yet-solo-outfit Uncle Woe — composed, performed and recorded by Rain Fice — is one of marked promise, taking elements of modern progressive and cosmic doom from the likes of YOB‘s subtly angular riffing style and unfolding them across an emotionally resonant but still manageable 43-minute span. The stomp in “That’s How They Get You” is duly oppressive in following the opener “Son of the Queen,” but with the one-minute experiment “When the Night Fell Pt. 2” and jagged but harmonized “Mania for Breaking” ahead of 15-minute closer “Push the Blood Back In,” the record’s tumult and triumphs are presented with character and a welcome feeling of exploration. I would expect over time that the melodic basis and vocal presence Fice demonstrates in “Mania for Breaking” will continue to grow, but both are already significant factors in the success of that song and the album surrounding it, the first 20-plus minutes of which is spent mired in “Son of the Queen” and “That’s How They Get You,” as early proof of the sure controlling hand at the helm of the project. May it continue to be so.
Guitarist/vocalist Alex Wyld, bassist Doug MacKinnon and drummer Lewis May have processed the world around them and translated it into a riffy course of sci-fi and weirdo semi-prog thematics across Absurdum ad Nauseam. What else to call such a thing? At eight songs and 52 minutes, it stands astride the lines between heavy rock and doom and sludge in lengthier pieces like “The Cetacean,” “The Ivory Tower” and the finale “Hypercomputer Part 2,” yet when it comes to picking out discernible influences, one has to result to generalizations like Black Sabbath and Acrimony, the latter in the rolling largesse of “Spice” and “The Myth of Sisyphus” later on in the outing and the vocal effects there particularly, but neither is enough to give a sense of what Cybernetic Witch Cult are actually about in terms of the modernity of their approach and the it’s-okay-we-know-what-we’re-doing-just-trust-us vibe they bring as they rush through “Cromagnonaut” after the intro and “Hypercomputer Part 1.” I’m inclined to just go with it, which should tell you something in itself about the band’s ability to carry their listener through. They earn that trust.
Heavy blues meets heavy metal on Your Highness‘ self-titled and self-released third album, collecting eight tracks that divide evenly across two sides of an LP, each half ending with a longer piece, whether it’s “Black Fever” (9:00) on side A or “Kin’s Blood” (14:14) on side B. Through these, in full-throttle movements like opener “Devil’s Delight” and “Rope as a Gift” and in nestled-in groovers like “The Flood” and “To Wood and Stone,” Your Highness don’t shy away from bringing a sense of atmosphere to their material, but maintain a focus on burl, gruffness and tonal weight, an aggressive undercurrent in a song like “Born Anew” — the riff to which is nonetheless particularly bluesy — being emblematic of the perspective on display throughout. It moves too fleetly to ever be considered entirely sludge, but Your Highness‘ 51-minute span is prone to confrontation just the same, and its ferocious aspects come to a head in satisfying fashion as the wash of crash pays off “Kin’s Blood,” shouts cutting through en route to a finish of acoustic guitar that lands as a reminder to release the breath you’ve been holding the whole time. Heavy stuff? Why yes, it is.
Italy’s fervor for stoner rock is alive and well as represented in Demonic Sunset, the eight-song/34-minute debut full-length from Catanzaro’s Deep Valley Blues. Their sound works out to be more heavy rock than the desert one might imagine given the album cover, but that influence is still there, if beefed up tonally by guitarists Alessandro Morrone and Umberto Arena (the latter also backing vocals), bassist/vocalist Giando Sestito and drummer Giorgio Faini, whose fluid turns between propulsion and swing enable a song like “Dana Skully” to come together in its verse/chorus transitions. The penultimate nine-minute “Tired to Beg For” is an outlier among more straight-ahead songwriting, but they use the time well and close with the acoustic-led “Empire,” an encouraging showcase of sonic breadth to follow up on the start of “Lust Vegas” and a widening of the melodic range that one hopes Deep Valley Blues push further on subsequent releases. Centered around issues of mental health in terms of its lyrics, if somewhat vaguely, Demonic Sunset is a first LP that extends its focus to multiple levels while still keeping its feet on the ground in a way that will be familiar to experienced genre heads.
You can toss a coin as to whether Sky Shadow Obelisk are death-doom or doom-death, but as you do, just keep an eye on the bludgeoning doled out by the solo-project of Rhode Island-based composer Peter Scartabello on his latest EP, The Satyr’s Path, because it is equal parts thorough and ferocious. Flourish of keys and melody adds a progressive edge to the proceedings across the five-track release, particularly in its two instrumentals, the centerpiece “Ouroboros” and the first half of closer “Shadow of Spring,” but amid the harnessed madness of “Chain of Hephaestus” — which from its lyrics I can only think of as a work song — and the one-two of “The Serpent’s Egg” and the title-track early on, those moments of letup carry a tension of mood that even the grand finish in “Shadow of Spring” seems to acknowledge. It’s been since 2015 that Scartabello last offered up a Sky Shadow Obelisk full-length. He shows enough scope here to cover an album’s worth of ground, but on the most basic level, I’d take more if it was on offer.
Following up on a 2015 self-titled the material on Minus Green‘s sophomore album, Equals Zero, would seem to have at least in part been kicking around for a couple years, as the closer here, “Durial” (11:22) was released in a single version in 2016. Fair enough. If the other three cuts, opener “Primal” (9:58), “00” (11:51) and the penultimate “Kames” (10:08), have also been developed over that span, the extra rumination wouldn’t seem to have harmed them at all — they neither feel overthought to a point of staleness nor lack anything in terms of the natural vibe that their style of progressive instrumentalist heavy psychedelia warrants. The procession unfolds as a cleanly-structured LP with two songs per side arranged shorter-into-longer, and their sound is duly immersive to give an impression of exploration underway without being entirely jam-based in their structure. That is, listening to “00,” one gets the feeling it’s headed somewhere, which, fortunately it is. Where it and the record surrounding go ultimately isn’t revolutionary in aesthetic terms, but it is well performed and more than suitable for repeat visits. Contrary to the impression they might seek to give, it amounts to more than nothing.
Nothing says ‘welcome to a new year and new decade’ like playing a bunch of songs from the one that just ended, right? Right? I knew I should’ve gone into marketing.
Still, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the lack of how much ground was left uncovered by last month’s edition of The Obelisk Show on Gimme Radio. It was an awesome playlist, which I’ll gladly say as the guy who made it, but two hours is just two hours. I could’ve easily gone 10. Dedicating another show to the cause, even just with one a month, seemed like a worthy endeavor. And so it was.
As I write this I’m still waiting to cut voice tracks, but you’ll notice there are only two breaks. I didn’t want to take the extra couple minutes away from music, so I thought one for each hour of the show was fair. Ain’t nobody listening for my “duh, this record’s good” level of insight, and I refuse to fool myself into thinking otherwise. But some of this stuff — Uncle Woe, Stones of Babylon — is new to me. Those two were just sent my way in the last week or so, and they’ll both be covered in the Quarterly Review next week — at least I think they will; should check that list — so I thought to get them a look here as well would be cool. You’ll also notice Zone Six was reviewed this morning. Trying to keep current, at least with myself.
But in with those of course are more 2019 essentials, and I won’t list them twice when you can just read the below. All of these (the newer-to-me stuff notwithstanding) were included in the Best of 2019 feature, so I was thinking of this a little bit as a complement to that. Either way, I hope you dig it.
The Obelisk Show on Gimme Radio airs every first Friday of the month at 1PM Eastern, with replays every Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next show is Feb. 7. Thanks for checking it out if you do.
