Well, I have just about a full week’s worth of news to catch up on, so we must be coming down to the end of the Quarterly Review. “Planets align. A king is born. Dodge Swinger.” Etc.

It’s been real, though. Again, I didn’t go one day without putting something in my notes for end-of-year list time, and that includes today as well. If you’ve come along for the ride on these 50 release, thank you. I hope you’ve found something new to listen to, or at least had your opinions of what you’ve already heard confirmed, which always feels good on some level. I will say it’s been a pleasure to dig into this stuff, and I don’t know who slates these things — that’s a joke, I do; there’s nobody else here; sometimes I feel like I need to say that even after 17 years because I’m both insecure and irrelevant — but they did alright on this one because at no point in this process was I like, “omg what is mah life,” and it’s always a relief to not get there.

Bottom line, as always, thanks for reading. I’ll be back with another of these in October, probably.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, The Disappearing Man

Word on the street — by that I mean their Linktree — is that Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol release their new single “Ca$h Grab” Aug. 18. That’s also the title-track of their next full-length, reportedly, but the low-string charmer Austin trio have been eeking out singles since Spring, and the resultant three-songer, The Disappearing Man, is a welcome keep-momentum interim outing for those who’ve been chasing the dragon of 2024’s Big Dumb Riffs (review here) and need something new for their reels-addled attention spans. All three tracks — “The Disappearing Man,” “Bough Down” and “Peaches” — are two minutes long but each gives a different look between the sneer of “Peaches,” the post-grunge heavy rock of “Bough Down” and the harder-hitting pummeling fuckery of the title cut. Is it a holdover? Yeah, probably. Will it even exist when the album comes out and likely features the same tracks? I don’t know. But it’s here now and the songs rule, so maybe get it while it’s there to get got and worry about the rest later, hmm?

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol website

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol Linktr.ee

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Tidal Wave, Volume Tree

The rock is by no means gone from Tidal Wave‘s sound on Volume Tree, but a shift has taken place as well since 2023’s The Lord Knows (review here) such that the first half of the new record seems to draw more from classic heavy metal than desert rock. On “The Orb,” “Hangman,” “Earth” and “Temple of Humanity,” that finds the Swedish foursome more in league with Dio-era Sabbath or Johan Langquist-fronted Candlemass, which is a compliment to vocalist Alexander “Sunkan” Sundqvist. The back half of the album, with “Sideburns,” “Shapeshifter,” “Manuscript 512” and “Skitliv,” complicates the narrative in the yachty experiment of the closer and the penultimate cut drawing the two sides together, but “Sideburns” and “Shapeshifter” have desert-style push, and the latter reminds particularly of late-1900s outfits like The Awesome Machine in its crunch and buzz. Either way they go, the songs hit their marks, so mark it a win for the complexity.

Tidal Wave on Bandcamp

Ripple Music website

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Thunderchief, With Hatchet, Pike or Morning Star…

With six songs likewise furious and welcome, Richmond, Virginia’s Thunderchief are only right to name their latest EP after ways they might possibly kill you. The charred heavy thrash-doom of from the two-piece of guitarist/screamer Rik Surly and drum-pummeler Erik Larson does not shy away from the caustic, and whether it’s a roll like “Entrance of the Devil” or the gallop-over-your-head “Chintzy,” or the concluding noisefest in “Slurpee,” to which nine of the EP’s 23 minutes are dedicated, their penchant for aural slaughter shows itself in Surly‘s unflinching rasp, in Larson‘s corresponding pounding — looking at you, “Malaise” — and in the disaffected shove of “Lie Nation,” the band packing a full album’s worth of aggression into the abbreviated runtime. This is Thunderchief‘s wheelhouse, and hardly their first excursion into listener-abuse, but as impressive as the raw sustained ferocity is — not that the world doesn’t provide constant reasons to stay angry — it’s the fact that the material holds together and bears the weight they put to it that makes their approach so lethal. That’s on full and punishing display here.

Thunderchief website

Thunderchief on Instagram

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Umma, Kosmovisionen

A multinational collaboration between Peruvian psychheads Chino Burga and Pepe Abad (both veterans of La Ira de Dios) and Scott “Dr. Space” Heller (Øresund Space Collective and adjacent projects), Umma resonate psychedelic meditation across their four-song debut, Kosmovisionen, with layers of intersecting guitar drones, percussion, and synth. “Monts” sets the stage for the unfolding free/freak jazz of “Procesio,” and while “Aeparatio” feels grounded by comparison, its float of guitar remains transcendant ahead of the finale “Ogon,” which is a dream of experimentalist tone and cymbal wash. I don’t know how much of a band Umma are going to be, sending files back and forth between Peru and Portugal, but they tap into something spiritual here in just 35 minutes, and Kosmovisionen sounds more like the beginning of a broader exploration rather than a one-off collab. They create so much space, it’d be a shame if they didn’t grow and flesh out their arrangements accordingly.

Umma on Bandcamp

Echodelick Records website

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Rifle, Bound to a Psychotic Cycle

Intended as a 7″ complement to the DHU Records vinyl pressing of Rifle‘s 2025 album, Beyond Paranoia, this two-songer plays out for 11 minutes across “Incarnation” and “Twisted Death,” vibing like rote jams with mellow vocals overtop like Endless Boogie or something like that, with an unpredictable edge and underlying tension. Apparently there were lineup issues? I’m not sure on the story, but the resultant vibe is off-kilter in a fascinating way — it’s not necessarily holding back the songs, I mean — and the low-key chaos they capture in the recordings, with mad swirls of guitar behind the mostly-whisper vocals, builds on what the album was doing in pieces like “Beyond Paranoia” and “Gipsy Spell” while feeling less tethered to a classic-heavy/vintage songwriting methodology. That may be indicative of a future direction, or these may just be leftovers from the album sessions, I don’t know, but it’s weird and dug in and sounds like it doesn’t care in the slightest how you classify it.

Rifle on Bandcamp

DHU Records store

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Brass Hearse, Can’t Get No

This year has brought new productivity from Boston experimentalists Brass Hearse, who’ve released three singles in 2026 in addition to this 17-track/51-minute ambient film soundtrack; their first new offerings in six years. The penultimate “Destroyer of the Breach” runs nearly nine minutes, but most of Can’t Get No — titled after the movie — is made up of shorter pieces one to three minutes long, with drones and guitar, keys and various washes of tone, some cogent progressions, some purposefully not, evoking a feeling of loneliness and foreboding. Presumably the title is a Rolling Stones reference — “Drifting Through the Void” might build on the song in question as well, though I might be imagining it — and I haven’t seen the movie, but from what I read it’s shorter than the soundtrack, so yes, that would be emblematic of the new creative delve on the part of the Boston band. On its own, the album makes for a meditative, atmospheric listen but don’t take that to mean Brass Hearse lack dynamic or are doing the same thing all the time. They just happen to be really effective in conjuring a world.

Brass Hearse on Bandcamp

Brass Hearse on Instagram

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Svindel, Drömfeber

Tucked away in the northeast of Sweden, the Umeå-based three-piece Svindel strike an immediately classic impression on their Ripple-issued debut album, Drömfeber, channeling boogie rock’s sense of motion and, in the title-track and elsewhere, calling to mind psychedelic reach without actually veering too far from the underlying structures of their material. Somebody’s playing organ on opener “Jupiterbarn,” and I’d swear I hear keyboards elsewhere too, but none among guitarist/vocalist Jan Lindblad, bassist Daniel Forsberg and drummer/backing vocalist Johannes Braf is credited with the contribution, so maybe I’m the one in a fever dream. In any case, as “Tunga Ögon” hints toward blues and “Ta Mig Tillbaka Till Världen Nu” embarks in the direction of pastoralia, the stylistic book hardly seems closed in terms of how Svindel might progress, but the fact that they are able to cover this swath without sacrificing cohesive songwriting makes their debut impressive even for someone like me who speaks not a lick of Swedish.

Svindel on Instagram

Ripple Music website

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Dirtmother, Dirtmother Live

The abrasive sludge excoriation of Dirtmother Live makes a fitting companion-piece for the Fayetteville, Arkansas, local-legend/cryptid outfit’s 19-years-later 2025 self-titled debut (review here), presenting five songs across a rasping, willfully confrontational half-hour set captured from the board at the American Legion Hall in their hometown in true punker fashion, and let’s say probably mixed thereafter. In this material — most of which comes from the record; “Reversal” seems to be “Reverse Cowgirl” under a different name and “Cult of Suzie Everett” does not appear on the studio LP — the nodding fuzz and the impact-density of their low end comes though in full-punch glory, stage banter is preserved, and “Trucker” is even nastier in its bite than it already was, which should be read as a high compliment to the achievement. If you don’t come out of this wanting to start a sludge band, consult a physician.

Dirtmother on Bandcamp

Dirtmother on Instagram

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Hijss, Hijss

Italy’s Hijss return after 2024’s Stuck on Common Ground (review here) with a self-titled eight-song/39-minute LP that’s an even deeper dive into krautisms and cosmic heavy rock, volatile in “Vicious Cycle” and “Parasite,” daring to soothe before they walk into the wash of “S.W.A.N.” and getting full-on electro-dance-mode in the penultimate “Fatal Attraction” before the moody distortion swell of “Outro” rounds out. Opener and longest track (immediate points) “Drain of Thoughts” establishes precedent in the motorik-roll-turned-heavy-shove progression, but the ultimate product of the album is that Hijss have gotten weirder and more individualized in the last two years, they’re ready to tour with labelmates Giöbia like yesterday, and the experimentalism in bringing together acoustics and synthesized textures of “Underwater” and the throb/fuzz banger “Dopamine” present a fresher take than I’ve yet seen the band credited for honing.

Hijss on Linktr.ee

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Deley Sound System, Unsync 001

Deley Sound System is the techno alter-ego of Budapesti psychedelic improvisationalist Deley, and if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, their earlier-2026 live recording Unsync 001 captures them bringing their spontaneity-fueled creative process to a style of music that, considering it’s programmed, is often classified as more staid. Psychedelia persists across genre here as the band weave together samples and different layers to carve an affect that’s all the more immersive and hypnotic not in spite of the steady beat that might underpin a track like “Sun 001” or the 18-minute “BBM 001” but rather because of it. The dub techno and synthesizer aspects, playing off influences from jams and generally more guitar-led (or -inclusive at all, for that matter) fare, are fascinating academically, but it’s satisfying as well to hear a band so willing to step beyond their comfort zone and a crucial reminder that the boundaries of creativity are far more imaginary than the sitar sounds on “Sun 002” and that the most dangerous thing to any status quo is a mind brave enough to look beyond it as these minds do here.

Deley on Bandcamp

Deley Linktr.ee

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Some off-laptop bumps and unpleasantness yesterday, but nothing to actually derail this process, just to make it both less efficient and less pleasant. I’m grateful for that. Life happens, and what I’ve learned is that there are two ways to be a “lifer” in music or any kind of anything, and the easier and often more celebrated one is to not have a life. “Oh so and so is such a lifer they’ve toured for 30 years and never got famous.” Cool bro. Go coregulate an hour-long throw-furniture tantrum, still manage to handle your business on your own terms, and then call me. The harder-core lifer has a life beyond the work they’re doing, whatever that may be and whatever Gen-X ‘punk legends’ might tell you otherwise.

Today is the penultimate day of the Quarterly Review, bringing us — you, cool, serene, the picture of grace, and me, a sweaty cavetroll of middle age — closer to the stated goal of 50 releases covered by tomorrow. At this point, I like our chances, but you never know what’s coming until you get there. So let’s get there before declaring victory.

Quarterly Review #31-40:

Child, Rebirth

I’m not sure there’s anybody out there right now who does heavy blues as bluesy as Melbourne, Australia’s Child, and even as their fourth full-length, Rebirth, shifts the balance the ‘rock’ end of blues rock, the emphasis on soul remains strong and central in their work. The album runs 35 minutes and six songs, and with no small task in following up 2023’s Soul Murder (review here), the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Mathias Northway, bassist Rhys Kelly and drummer Michael Lowe bring clarity of purpose to material like “Forgot How to Love,” which takes a desert rock riff to the mud, or the catchy four-minute “Heavy Load.” Working in slow tempos isn’t new for Child — they cook, and good cooking takes time — but they’re still able to make “I Tried (Newy)” move under its fuzzy-as-hell solo, while opener/longest track (immediate points) “Woman Like You” sets the stage for tales of heartbreak, boozehounding and other vaguely self-destructive whathaveyou. Northway is an ace on guitar and carries the vocals well, but I’ll put this rhythm section up against just about anybody out there when it comes to sleek, gradual groove. Not a ton of surprises, but still satisfying.

Child website

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Dr. Space, Dr. Space’s Wicked Sonic Bulls

Regular collaborator Martin Weaver (Wicked Lady, etc.) handles bass while Tom Ashurst (ex-Hawklords) steps in on guitar and Darren Butler takes up drum duties — all of a sudden, opening track “Shouldn’t You Do It?” (18:24) makes it seem like synthmaster and Øresund Space Collective bandleader/producer Scott “Dr. Space” Heller has a whole band together for Dr. Space’s Wicked Sonic Bulls, the four-song/70-miinute outing that isn’t even his latest at this point but is an immersive joy just the same. The drums bring flow to the float, and Heller‘s e’er-molten synthery is sit-and-take-it-all-in hypnotic, weaving drones behind the dream-tone of Ashurst‘s guitar as the band dynamic takes shape. Of course, the fades-in, goes-everywhere, comes-apart-at-the-end closer “The Underside of Your Tongue” (29:56) is a focal point, and feels daring in terms of tempo even with “Splasing, Lashing, Flashing” (10:43) as preface, but the mood across the almost-certainly-entirely-improvisational outing is, duh, exploratory, and nothing in the resultant material takes away from that. Comforting and rad in kind. Put headphones on and get yourself lost.

Dr. Space on Bandcamp

Space Rock Productions website

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Shadow of Jupiter, Bones

The largesse in “Bones” and the dudely swagger of “Rumblestrip” puts Bones squarely in the realm of modern capital-‘h’ Heavy, and Chicagoan four-piece Shadow of Jupiter revel in it accordingly. “Riot Dogs” is cavernous and crushing, while “Whatever God You Fear” moves faster like a beefed-up High Desert Queen but holds to the thickness overarching the seven-song entirety here as the band play to multiple sides here, and while I’m not sure what role faith actually plays in their craft, closer “For Heaven Above” feels duly downtrodden and tired of humanity and is Sabbath-rooted beneath all its tonal hugeness, through which the melodic vocals cut smoothly as they have all along. Burl is a factor, but the songwriting is there beneath the well-produced bluster, and though the prevailing impression is in its sheer heft, Shadow of Jupiter hone a sense of dynamic as they plunge into their own distortion and gravitational nod. Bones is their first album for Ripple Music and second overall, and it sure feels like they nailed it in terms of stepping up to the moment.

Shadow of Jupiter website

Ripple Music website

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Psychedelic Source Records, Pseudopredestinated

Three jams, each hovering on either side of 20 minutes, contemplative and following the stated narrative of casting off mundane woes — busted cars, jobs, etc. — to escape for a bit into the ether. Pseudopredestinated is day-in-the-life psychedelic improvisation, featuring familiar players from the Psychedelic Source Records stable in Bence Ambrus on guitar, Gergely Szabó and David Strausz splitting bass duties and Máte Varga on drums, coming together to headfirst-dive into the aural unknown and see where they end up. In “Protoplanetarian,” that’s a noisier and more active space to answer the graceful build of opener “Precambriality,” and closer “Postpurposes” builds on the low-key shred and pushes further into the far-out. It’s emblematic fare for the Psychedelic Source Records collective, thematically and musically — yes, that is a compliment — and if you find yourself looking also to indulge a bit of escapism from your own mind, immersion awaits. Part of the joy here is never knowing quite where you’ll end up but going, going, going.

Psychedelic Source Records on Bandcamp

Psychedelic Source Records on Spotify

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Fangus, Emerald Dream

Well, you’re a ’70s-sounding heavy rock band with a strong emphasis on Hammond organ, so yes, people are going to say you sound like Deep Purple. The good news is that swinging Montreal five-piece Fangus are too busy dug into their own might-pivot-to-the-next-boogie-at-any-moment, vibe-dense sound to show they care much at all, and a ripper like “Pyre of Love” stands as evidence of this. Keys are a big part of what they do — that Mellotron on the title-track, the organ taking the fore on “Psychoid Telepath,” and so on — but the crunching tone of the guitar and the gutted-out vocals are no less vintage in their mindset, and while I don’t know that it was all recorded live, the band-in-the-room feel is palpable, ditto the chemistry, and that suits them both in the shove of “Time Gambler” and the burgeoning progressivism of “Quest for Fire,” the album as a whole rarely diverting from its sense of movement. Once “Howling Hammer” picks up from establishing its riff, they’re on their way and show little interest in looking back, refusing to be beholden even to the reverence in their sound as they convey freedom and breakout.

Fangus on Bandcamp

Fangus on Instagram

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Hollow Drifter, Colours in Time

With two full-lengths and numerous singles/two-songers to their credit since 2019, Amsterdam psychedelic progressive rockers Hollow Drifter sound duly comfortable dwelling somewhere between the two on Colours in Time, on which the first and last tracks — “Morning Fog” (2:27) and “Cradlesong” (1:48) — complement and enhance the atmosphere of the 14-minute centerpiece, “Seasons, Ages, Legends…,” which tinges toward alt rock momentarily but feels warm and organic in its acoustic-guitar foundations even as it grows more lush with the introduction of electrics. The extended piece ebbs and flows but remains purposeful for the duration, and after the first, willfully gorgeous build ends after six minutes, they remain in control in terms of the direction they’re headed, subtly building again toward repetitions of the EP’s title-lyric over nuanced noodling and steady, tense drums that give hints of the unfolding about to take place as they move into the solo. The harmonized folk of “Morning Fog” and acoustic strum/keys of “Cradlesong” fit and flesh out the atmosphere, and as this is my first experience with the band, the message of homework to do is almost as clear as the evocations of the music itself. Get pastoral.

Hollow Drifter website

Hollow Drifter on Instagram

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Veilcaste, Hellward

Keyed for onslaught, Hellward is the fourth full-length from Indianapolis veteran heavymakers Veilcaste, who bring together doom, sludge and post-metallic atmospheres to create a style that’s almost universally oppressive, even in its moments of foreboding quiet, and able to harness an intensity that extends to the “You don’t belong here” lyrical reptitions of the title-track. How they transposed my inner monologue to fit the song, I don’t know, but kudos. The bellowing “Chains” and worldcrumbling “Worn in Stone” show some influence from ’90s metal, whether that’s Sepultura‘s slowdowns or Godflesh, but at this point Veilcaste have found their niche in consuming aggression, and from the outset-descent of “Embedded” to the oblivion-march into the subdued acoustic finish of “I Am the Guillotine,” they punish aurally and conjure depths of mix in which there’s still intricacy and humanity to be found. I’ve had days that sound exactly like “Anchored.” Maybe you have too, if you’re reading this.

Veilcaste on Bandcamp

Third House Communications on Bandcamp

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Robot God, Onto the Afterlife

Onto the Afterlife makes itself a journey, and maybe that’s not such a deep insight since the title itself does more than hint at it, but the way Sydney heavy rockers Robot God take their fifth album from its relatively straight-ahead beginnings to a gradually broader-reaching mindset across the longer final three tracks — the penultimate “I Am the Night” becoming both a celebration of Sabbathianism and an expansive psychedelic jaunt in its 11 minutes — feels purposeful on the part of the prolific trio, and the procession is all the more a joy to follow after the wakeup crashes of “Soldier of Love” and the semiprog chug of the title-track at the outset, atmosphere being the key to tying it all together. Centerpiece “Cerebral Annihilation” marks the turn, instrumental save for its sample, and the builds of “Long Goodbye” are suited to round out, but it’s the fluidity of the changes within and between the songs and the obvious care put into their craft that lets Onto the Afterlife carry the listener across its 41-minute duration. Without sounding morbid, it’s a trip very much worth taking.

Robot God on Bandcamp

Kozmik Artifactz website

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Mothertomb, Dying to Live

The debut full-length from North Michigan atmospheric doom four-piece Mothertomb, Dying to Live, brims with purpose from the three-minute mood-setting intro “The Summoning” onward. And indeed, mood becomes integral throughout the five-track/39-minute stretch as “Cythraul” picks up from the intro with a 10-minute croon-doom build, unshy in its metal but not anymore beholden to the double-kick than it needs to be to get the point across. The four-piece of vocalist/cover artist Alice Gawlinski, guitarist Chance Gawlinski, bassist Alton Minor and drummer Mike Benitez remind atmospherically of dark-arts practicioners like Second Grave in their ambient take on doom metal — emphasis on both the doom and the metal — in “Beware,” but “Mountain Hag” is more stoned in its first-half roll before the operatics and screams and crush, so I’m not prepared to say the book is closed on what they’re going for sound-wise. Nonetheless, as they end with the also-hard-hitting title-track’s apex screams, the potential for forward growth is easy to hear. Won’t be for everyone, but will land hard with those who can get to its level.

Mothertomb website

Mothertomb on TikTok

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Producer, Three

With two members of Alabama Thunderpussy in the lineup — guitarist Ryan Lake and drummer Bryan Cox — and Fire Faithful‘s Jon Bone on bass, it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that Richmond, Virginia’s Producer have more than a tinge of Southern heavy to their sound, but the band completed by guitarist Mike Jarvis and vocalist Kenny Ball run that through a thread of classic heavy metal and find clarity in the slowdown of “The Climb” and the harder push of “The Upper East Side Sadists,” with the two-minute “A Natural Death” fostering swing to follow the AC/DC-ism of opening cut “Nailed to the Cross” before closer/still-under-five-minute longest track “Vengeful God Complex” seems to pull the various sides together. Three takes its title from the fact that it’s the band’s third EP, which I chalk up to a conscious choice because there’s no way they’re not ready for an album if they don’t want to be. I’ll take 18 minutes in the swamp though, to be sure.

Producer on Bandcamp

Producer on Instagram

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I don’t know how many Quarterly Reviews I’ve done at this point, but aside making my wife avoid me for a week, they’re always their own, probably-doesn’t-make-sense-to-anyone-else kind of fun, and it’s an engagement with music that I don’t get in any other way, even doing this site. Some of it feels like the old days in print, with the pile of CDs on my desk waiting to be reviewed for that week’s column, maybe 100 words per (I try to keep it to 150-200 here), with half the challenge going from one thing to the next and not repeating myself. But I don’t really expect anyone to get that. It’s work, but I enjoy it.

Yesterday was killer like Phyllis Diller. If nothing hit you, I hope today’s more your speed. If not, check back tomorrow. I’ll still be here, doing the thing.

Quarterly Review #11-20:

Edena Gardens, Quintessence

The fifth album from the instrumentalist amalgam of Causa Sui and Papir, Edena Gardens‘ Quintessence not only references the ordinal relevance but embodies the title’s implication of getting to the very root purpose of the project. Spread across four sides of a 2LP, the 80-minute six-songer is the band’s most open and rawest-feeling outing to-date, and for a project that was ‘supposed’ to produce a trilogy and then everybody goes home, they continue to bring a sense of vibrancy and exploration to their jams. The difference is that here, the songs are longer, there’s less editing involved, and the production, while clear enough to convey the spirit of what they’re doing, feels pointedly straightforward in doing so. And from the willfully, surprisingly Sabbathian “Nigredo” onward, the titles give hints toward their evocations of ground and color, be it “Earth Blemish” or the 22-minute finale “The Vermillion Quintessence.” Maybe not the best place to start with the band, but on the other hand, maybe it absolutely is.

Edena Gardens on Instagram

El Paraiso Records website

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Stone Clones, You Already Know

“You Already Know” is the fourth studio single from New Zealand four-piece Stone Clones, founded in 2021 by the brotherly pair of guitarists Seager and Calum Ray, the former of whom also serves as lead vocalist in harmony with bassist Juan Los B while Dylan Byrne holds the alt-rock-informed-desert push through the chorus toward the particularly post-Homme solo that follows. The lyrics are something of an assessment of modernity and the “you” in question becomes a stand-in for the greed that exploits and ruins the polis of our day. The song runs 6:20 and captures a mood without giving entirely over to it even in that final verse where some of the purported Radiohead influence comes out, and as they continue to grow and work toward a somewhat inevitable debut album, the place they’re making for themselves between styles will continue to hone its own identity through the songcraft they demonstrate here, making heavy sounds and ideas feel light and able to sway the balance in whatever direction they want.

Stone Clones Linktr.ee

Stone Clones on Bandcamp

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Os Solair, Lever/Capra

Comprised of just the two songs “Lever” (7:49) and “Capra” (5:42), this second EP offering from psychedelic depthmakers Os Solair doesn’t shy away from heft just because it’s also creating a sense of space or wash of effects. “Lever” grows more fervent as it goes and “Capra” picks up where it left off, but the Darmstadt, Germany, four-piece are mindful of dynamic and melodicism as well, and apparently recording live in their rehearsal space with vocal overdubs after, they come across as atmospheric and bit noisy but not really chaotic in the sense of not knowing where they’re headed. That is to say there’s a plan at work on Lever/Capra, and that can be heard as the latter cut moves into its more subdued, psych-adventuring midsection, tense enough in the drums to convey the explosion that’s coming but nonetheless a turn from the lower-end weight of the song’s beginning. Molten in its use of effects on guitar and vocals, it’s almost subversively grounded in the rhythm section, but the two sides work together with a fluidity that’s where the band’s real potential lies. I will look forward to what they do next.

Os Solair on Bandcamp

Os Solair on Instagram

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Darren Ironside, The Nothing

The Nothing is the first solo album from former Midnight Whiskey Massacre guitarist Darren Ironside, and perhaps unsurprisingly the guitar leads the way for most of the nine-song offering. Based in the UK, Ironside blends throaty vocals that at times cross over to the metallic over a succession of riffs informed by doom rock, thrash, classic heavy, etc., over what I’m fairly sure are programmed drum progression, and though the mix is raw and pushes the vocals forward, songs like “To the Gallows” carry across a sense of brooding as the shred pervades, complementing the lyrical disaffection of “Forgotten Dream” — a familiar Charlie Chaplin sample there as well — and, on the other side of the noisy interlude “Nebula Rising,” “Overwatch and Control.” The bottom line is Ironside, who also self-produced, is figuring out where he wants his songs to go — or where they want to go, if you’d rather personify — and beginning to shape his own sound separate from his prior outfit and has something to say about the world around him. It’s raw and will come off abrasive at first to the unacclimated, but there’s groove to be had.

Darren Ironside on Bandcamp

Darren Ironside on Instagram

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Sun Voyager, Coming Down

The ad astra per aspera narrative of New York’s Sun Voyager continues with their latest standalone single, “Coming Down,” which arrives scorching as if they knew the summer would be too damn hot and required something duly humid to coincide. No surprise though it’s a burner, and in the ascendance of guitarist Christian “Shaman Smoke” Lopez as a lead vocalist joined by bassist Stefan Mersch — the band is completed by drummer Kyle Beach, reliable and not to be discounted in holding their songs together — here manifests a sense of breakout that is wrought in the reptitions of the title line, sneering with attitude and righteously cosmic. It’s been nearly four years since Lopez joined Sun Voyager after they lost their prior guitarist/vocalist, and the time the band spent woodshedding and nailing down their chemistry is audible on “Coming Down” as well as the prior serve-notice single “Running Hot” (premiered here). I don’t know what it’s leading toward beyond probably an LP sooner or later, but Sun Voyager sound increasingly ready for whatever’s coming. East Coast psych gnarl. Get it.

Sun Voyager website

Sun Voyager Linktr.ee

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Oath, Unteach

Cultish and telegraphing their Iommi worship in their presentation — they’re certainly not hiding it in the music either — Athenian trio Oath reportedly recorded their first full-length Unteach live, and while I don’t know how that accounts for the doubled solos, with one foot in the Hammer Horror of “Alucarda ’77,” and the other in the pastoral “Orchid”ness of “Through the Evergreen Fields,” the band carve a place for themselves in “My Second Life” with a sound that’s as much proto-doom as it is punk as it is metal, and the place it winds up is crushingly heavy in “Soviet Invasion” and the penultimate “Dies Capri” and still plenty heavy but more playful in “Fur, Claws and Leather,” taking influence maybe from earliest Electric Wizard, is satisfyingly individual. That is to say, while you can pinpoint the roots of where they’re coming from, the actual material of the album, raw as it is, is not at all without stylistic nuance. They let the slower tempos manifest foreboding rather than occult theatrics, and that suits the buzz-tone riffs as well. It’s a weird one, but full of purpose in that, and so appreciable.

Oath on Bandcamp

Oath on Instagram

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Automaton, Labyrinth

Somewhere in the gray ether that exists between post- and black metals, Greek unit Automaton harness a grim spaciousness as their Sound Effect Records-delivered third album Labyrinth, retelling the titular mythology in impressionist lyrics throughout as the six-song/46-minute sprawl varies from ripping to crushing and back again. “Ariadne” and the prior “Minotaur” hone a thickened viciousness, while the 12-minute “Black Sails” is a more ambient delve, building in its second half to a march ahead of the cavernous interlude “Your Bull Nature Clouds Your Human Self” — perhaps a thesis for the record — before the blastbeats resume in closer “Battle in the Labyrinth.” The story is allegorical (duh) and the telling is relevant in theme as well as aesthetic, but the gnash stands on its own as well in its fury and satisfies in terms of the plot as well as in execution. Much to its credit, even as it follows a linear narrative, at no point does Labyrinth feel like it’s subsumed songwriting to that, and each piece fleshes out with a patience correspondant to mastery.

Automaton website

Sound Effect Records website

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Witch Ripper, Through the Hourglass

Ultimately, it’s the poise here that makes Witch Ripper‘s third album so lethal, and if you’ve seen the band likened to Mastodon somewhere along the way, the Matt Bayles production probably has something to do with that, but the Seattle progressive riff metallers conjure their own feeling of space across the seven included songs. I’ve said on multiple occasions that part of what’s kept me from being a fan of this band is the kind of unthinking misogynist implication of their moniker, but there’s no denying either the growth they’ve undertake between albums or the sense of accomplishment overarching Through the Hourglass as a manifestation of their approach that they’ve been working toward all the while. Alternating between shorter and longer songs highlights the structural variety on display, and the shifts between clean-sung and harsher vocal styles gives purpose and drama to the procession from one piece to the next, with closer “The Spiral Eye” seeming to take cues from the likes of Blood Incantation in its leads while providing due culmination to the encompassing entirety prior. They’ve always meant business and they still do.

Witch Ripper on Bandcamp

Magnetic Eye Records store

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Hostile Tides, Dead Man Talking

Self-releasing UK apparent-newcomers Hostile Tides offer their first EP in the five-song/17-minute Dead Man Talking, taking a double-guitar approach to heavy instrumentalism that’s pretty clearly in the process of shaking out where they’re headed in terms of style but that just the same conveys their setting forth on that progression. Chunky-style riffing in the centerpiece “Adrift” feels like it’s got some ’90s crunch, but it’s kind of hard to tell if that’s the rougher edges of the recording showing through an initial outing or something purposeful on the part of the band, or both, considering the way the song turns to a dreamier midsection with the bass holding to ground while the guitars branch out into atmospherics. Tonally more Karma to Burn than Russian Circles, they make the divergences a strength and a distinguishing factor, and the five-minute capper (the EP works shortest to longest) “Peaks” hints toward a burgeoning patience of craft. They could go just about anywhere from here.

Hostile Tides on Bandcamp

Hostile Tides on Instagram

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Johnny Tirade and The Circle of Futures Past, What is at the Beginning of Eternity, the End of Time, the Beginning of Every End, and the End of Every Place

When Dublin’s Johnny Tirade and The Circle of Futures Past labels themselves as “stoner industrial-tinged,” I think they’re talking about the Ministry-esque push of opener “Hey Man” and the overarching tonal crunch (maybe also the drum machine) more than the acoustic guitar in near-17-minute centerpiece “Memory Hole” (also sax) and the concluding “Improv,” but one way or the other, that self-applied tag hardly encapsulates the weirdo gamut of the band’s cumbersomely-named 31-minute debut album, What is at the Beginning of Eternity, the End of Time, the Beginning of Every End, and the End of Every Place. But it’s part of it. There’s an earnest experimentalism at play in the songs as each of the five tracks wants to and does head to its own destination, but the more you hear “Lizard Johnny” or the samples and spoken verses of “American Dream” (prececed by “Fuck the…” in the chorus; fair enough), the more they make their own kind of linear sense, and as a showcase for what the band/project might become, the plunge undertaken in these tracks is an encouragingly odd fit for any number of square-hole genres in which one might try to shove them.

Johnny Tirade and the Circle of Futures Past on Bandcamp

Johnny Tirade and the Circle of Futures Past on Instagram

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Welcome to the Quarterly Review. I’m not sure which quarter it is, and actually it’s been less than two full months since the last time we did this, but I had this crazy idea to NOT fall 50 records even further behind in covering stuff, so I decided to run one now. Maybe I’ll do another in July. Maybe a piano will fall on my head.

You know the drill by now. 10 releases per day covered. I think I’m going to keep this to 50 total, but I might tack on another day or two if I get through it and still have a bunch more on the docket. We’ll see. But time’s a crunch, so we gotta move.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

Abrams, Loon

When the postmortem is done on this generation of heavy rock and roll, Abrams might be among its most underrated bands in terms of songwriting. The Denver unit led by guitarist/vocalist Zachary Amster offer the taut 10-song/37-minute run of Loon as further argument in their favor, basking in a heavy and post-hardcore blend and working with Godcity Studio and Kurt Ballou (Converge, High on Fire, etc.) to foster a more aggressive sound in pieces like “Glass House,” “While Walls,” “Said and Done,” and so on, bordering on noise rock while bringing grunge melody to “A State of Mind” and blasting double-kick drumming to closer “Remains.” At this point, I’m wondering if they’re too good. Are they too polished, is Amster too capable a singer? Is the songwriting too tight? In the immortal words of Will Ferrell, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Once again, Abrams do nothing wrong. One hopes the added charge wakes up more ears to what they’re doing. Or even better, instead of snagging jaded oldheads, put this shit on TikTok and let the 17 year olds learn about melody from it. That’s how it works now, right?

Abrams on Bandcamp

Blues Funeral Recordings website

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Buzzard, Take the Tyrant Down (Acoustic) b/w Hunchback, Vicar & Wizard

Two cuts from Massachusetts solo artist Buzzard, aka Christopher Thomas Elliott, whose voice and point of view for me personally has been salve in terrible times and for that a marker of the era. Late last year, Elliott released the EP Everything is Not Going to Be Alright (review here) with a plugged version of “Take the Tyrant Down,” which is stripped down here of its later chug and “Down down down/Sic semper tyrannis” vocal bridge. Perhaps too heavyhanded? It becomes a quiter contemplation of overcoming oppression, and its ultimate victory is no less sweet. The (digital) B-side is “Hunchback, Vicar and Wizard,” which wraps itself in an acoustic central line like “Doom Folk Fury” from the EP (which has also been expanded to an LP this year, heads up) but is less of a chorus surge, letting the Mellotron bring atmospheric backing to the lyrical tale of cathartic justice for the abuse victims of clergy. Yes, I’m talking about killing priests who rape children. Or Elliott is anyhow, in his increasingly solidified and yet malleable doom-folk aesthetic, with craft likewise prolific and purposeful.

Buzzard on Bandcamp

Buzzard on Instagram

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Masheena, Let the Spiders In

As I understand it, Masheena have traded out half their lineup since recording Let the Spiders In with producer Machine (Clutch, etc.) in early 2024, but either way, the Bergen, Norway, heavy rocking four-piece bring expansive melodies to sharp structures in hooky cuts like “Going to the Mountain” and “One Good Eye,” taking bluesy energy in pieces like “Been Waiting” and “Don’t Tell Her” and the chug of the penultimate “Riffy” and fostering a sound that’s straightforward and accessible while not lacking at all in variety. It’s their second LP, and though on “Sara Lost Her Way,” they edge close to the big-stage energy of countrymen Spidergawd, the thickness in “Riffy” and the subsequent, nonetheless shuffling closer “You Owe Me,” as well as the generally bluesier foundations, aid in distinction. The album is paced comfortably at 34 minutes but never in any danger of overstaying its welcome. Can’t help but be curious how the dynamic has changed with the new lineup. It’s certainly solid in this material.

Masheena website

Majestic Mountain Records store

Ripple Music website

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Sergio Ch., Last Dance of a Dying Man

As Buenos Aires-based singer-songwriter Sergio Chotsourian (aka Sergio Ch., of Los Natas, Ararat, Soldati, etc.) has developed his solo approach, it’s satisfying to hear him working with a drum machine on “Last Dance,” the first cut on this two-song EP, paired with the 12-minute “The Journey.” It highlights a modernized bedroom-folk intimacy that’s always been in his experimentalist craft, and lets the guitar become the source of tension in the piece, which it does righteously. “The Journey” is more synth-based and is instrumental for most of its stretch, but there are late-arriving vocals. He also seems to be trying something new with his voice, though that might just be a result of returning to English-language lyrics after however long it’s been since last time. Note the guitar figure consistent beneath the keys of “The Journey” as well. Last Dance of a Dying Man is Sergio being Sergio, but part of that is pushing his own boundaries, and that can clearly be heard in these songs.

Sergio Ch. on Instagram

South American Sludge Records on Bandcamp

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Vestjysk Ørken, LSDREI

LSDREI, a combination of LSD and ‘drei,’ as in ‘three,’ is indeed the third LP from Danish jammers Vestjysk Ørken, and it begins with a long monologue over foreboding backing drone spoken by the drug itself, maybe from an old propaganda film? In any case, this first eight minutes set the mood before a burst-in of heavy fuzz after the eight-minute mark starts what’s presumed to be ‘Violets and Yellow’ in the six-parts-presented-as-a-single-36-minute-track of the LP. The full course is listed as “The Traveler / Violets & Yellow / Drei / Running My Head / (Backwards) Like A Mirror / Lovely Colours Shimmering,” and though immersion has always been a top priority for the Esbjerg outfit — theirs and yours both — they’ve never sounded quite so intentional in their exploration. The lumber gives way to shimmering lead guitar, more speech and a light but bassy boogie as they pass the halfway point, and plays back and forth from there between airy verses, ebbs and flows, more samples and, in the last few minutes, both shove and a massive concluding roll finishing with vague but angry shouts of a populace. It gets weird, kids. Actually, starts weird and gets weirder. For best results, recommend you do likewise.

Vestjysk Ørken Linktr.ee

Vestjysk Ørken on Bandcamp

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Liminal Sky, All Tomorrow’s Darkness

Liminal Sky is presented as an extension of the work drummer, guitarist and keyboardist Jaime Gomez Arellano (also a noted producer in London) and guitarist, bassist, keyboardist Daniel Knight did together in the band Messenger, but the debut album All Tomorrow’s Darkness takes on an identity of its own, thanks in no small part to vocal collaborations with Mat McNerny (Hexvessel, Grave Pleasures), Kristoffer Rygg (Ulver) and Karin Park (Årabrot), as well as a slew of instrumental contributors too many to list in this space. This amalgam results in an emotionally resonant, post-genre melancholia, kin to the beauty in darkness in pieces like “Algebra of Unknowing,” “Penance” and “Forget Me Not,” the latter of which hits into a satisfying crescendo without giving up its core expressive purpose. It is not a minor undertaking in the substance of its songs, but Arellano and Knight create an entire world for this material, and the listener, to dwell in.

Liminal Sky on Bandcamp

Karisma Records website

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The Quill, Master of the Skies

Professional-grade delivery from a professional band. Master of the Skies is the 11th album in the 35-plus-year tenure of Sweden’s The Quill, and if they’re exploring themes of mastery, you could hardly find a better theme to coincide with their sound. With expert hand and worldly care, they gracefully guide the listener through a diverse 45-minute collection, with rockers and ballads and acoustic numbers and the nine-minute volume-trade sprawl of the penultimate “Mastodon,” part Sabbath as they go, but more of a decades-meld of heavy rock ideologies so that “You Can Not Kill My Soul” hits with triumphant melody and side B opener “If Tomorrow Never Comes” wraps itself up in chugging largesse. The band — vocalist Magnus Ekwall, guitarist Christian Carlsson, bassist Roger Nilsson and drummer Jolle Atlagic — are unflinching in the refinement of their approach, but even when they reprise lead cut “Master of the Skies” to finish, there’s no pretense, just some of the most solid craft a band could hope to stand on.

The Quill website

Metalville Records website

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Greenthrone, The Greenthrone EP

Unearthed from the depths of Columbus, Ohio’s underground, Greenthrone‘s The Greenthrone EP was put to tape in 2010 and 2011 as a series of demos from what was then the bombastic duo of Danny Bays (guitar/vocals) and Lisa Bella Donna (drums/production), the latter also of much-missed progressive heavy explorers EYE. A five-song collection, it is brash and raw and finds Bays‘ vocal delivery somewhere between Matt Pike and Chuck Schuldiner on “The Sentinel” and “Beyond the Veil,” and that’s before they get into the sludgy push/roll of centerpiece “Hidden in Plain Sight” or the righteously-tin-can “Brujo,” and “Feather Crown” to close. There’s an audible shift in sound there ahead of the last two tracks, but there was point of view in the band even 15 years ago. Bays got a new lineup going at some point, a trio, and hopefully there’s more to follow sooner or later.

Greenthrone Linktr.ee

Greenthrone on Bandcamp

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Dave Heumann, Chimes of Freedom // Further Adventures of Big Ten

Two at least semi-covers; one straight up take on Bob Dylan, the latter transmogrified reportedly from The Grateful Dead and David Crosby, and either make a fitting place for Arbouretum frontman Dave Heumann to dwell in for a while. The fragility of his voice in Dylan‘s lyrics on “Chimes of Freedom” makes that song feel all the more like a song for the people — in both the folk music and political senses, because they’re linked — while “Further Adventures of Big Ten” feels more like an exploration, being instrumental and set atop a drone and backed with hand-percussion as it is. “Chimes of Freedom” is the more straightforward, I guess, but its organ line and way-back-there gentle drums feel emblematic of the 1964 original, captured at the precipice of the birth of the psychedelic era. You could say a lot about the choices one way or the other, but from where I sit it’s five more minutes of Heumann singing and about 11 of him playing and I’ll take what I can get, thanks. He’s like if you gave the National Park System a voice.

Dave Heumann website

Dave Heumann on Bandcamp

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A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers, Towers of Silence

Most of all, Towers of Silence sounds like the beginning of a rich and creative plunge into sound. Netherlands-based four-piece A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers take a sludgy angle on post-metallic lurch on this three-songer, and as “The Massacre of Flour” unfolds, it seems like it’s going to be all-onslaught until they hang a louie into a psychedelic midsection framed on the other side by a punishing return. “I Fuck People” follows and is noisier and more chaotic, but still manages to find room for saxophone in its second half, while the nine-minute title-track wraps by flipping the script into volume trades between meditative melodic contemplation and heavier bashing-away. The message that comes through is A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers aren’t restrained by genre ideology. Breaking out of it on three songs, they’re at the starting point in developing the individual creative expression one hears in this material. The prospects for where their journey might take them are exciting.

A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers on Bandcamp

Lay Bare Recordings website

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Hope you had a banner weekend. Last week was pretty slammed. As ever, I’m like three days’ worth of news behind, and this is still just the penultimate day of the Spring 2026 Quarterly Review, so there may yet be more creative ways for me to find to shoot myself in the ass and make myself feel overwhelmed because… well anyway, stick around, folks!

In all seriousness, considering The Patient Mrs. was away last week — who schedules these things? — and my daughter spent two and a half of five possible days at school, I came through it pretty well. I’m just tired and I missed my wife while she was gone. Ain’t no sunshine, and so on.

We wrap up tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

Quarterly Review #51-60:

Godzilla Was Too Drunk to Destroy Tokyo, Sideral Voivod

Fuzz rockers Godzilla Was Too Drunk to Destroy Tokyo — or Godzilla WTDTDT, if you want to go by how they abbreviate their Instagram — give automatic impressions of quirk, and their most realized work to-date, their second full-length, Sideral Voivod, thankfully has more going for it than the in-genre radness of the band’s moniker. Based on the coast of Northern Italy, the trio of bassist/vocalist Sara de Luca, guitarist Alessandro “Camu” Camurati and drummer Nicola Viola find a place between art-punk and weighted fuzz, each piece contained in itself and its intention, but feeding into a tense flow with periodic blowouts like “Telekinetic Thunder Yeti” or “Space Leech,” somewhere between Black Flag and Black Sabbath, while “Worship the Middle” makes the latter allegiance plainer. It might sound like it’s coming at you flailing, but the really dangerous thing is I think Godzilla Was Too Drunk to Destroy Tokyo might know what they’re doing. Imagine that.

Godzilla Was Too Drunk to Destroy Tokyo on Bandcamp

Argonauta Records store

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Ritual Arcana, Ritual Arcana

Ritual Arcana‘s Heavy Psych Sounds-issued debut offers cultish bikerisms and doomed roll, never quite veering into caricature as classic-styled modern cult-heavy does, but kept aligned to a central tonal weight as heard in the atmospheric “Berkana” or in the nodding “Occluded.” The band is comprised of SharLee LuckyFree on bass/vocals, Scott “Wino” Weinrich (The Obsessed, et al) on guitar, and Oakley Munson (The Black Lips) on drums, and some of the roll throughout is recognizably Weinrich‘s style, but in a song like the declarative “Free Like a Pirate” or “Road Burnt,” there are elements that speak to the songwriting collaboration taking shape in their darkly-presented but still accessible style, and with that in mind, those finding their way to Ritual Arcana through their guitarist’s sundry projects will find Ritual Arcana harnessing something distinct from all of them. I’ll be curious to hear how the balance between push and dwell Ritual Arcana lay out here comes to fruition over the longer term, and by that I mean it’s an exploration worth following.

Ritual Arcana website

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Brass Hearse, Salem Rain

New Brass Hearse? Well hello. The Boston-based outfit fronted and I think steered by the classic-psych-meets-weirdo-doom-melancholia whims of frontman Ron Rochondo present their first single in six years with the four-minute “Salem Rain,” which sets its drunken-singalong of a hook “Let’s go to Salem in the rain” at the foundation of its intent. Musically, the song is wistful in the guitar and starts as backing ambience as the lyrics immediately begin a conversation leading to the suggestion in the chorus — at one point there’s even mention of the Willows, wihch is a park in town — which is forward in the mix and presented in layers as an escape from monotony. In the final minute, they depart the verse/chorus format and over complementary guitar, finish out with a Beach Boys-y vocal arrangement, toying with that notion of sentimental sounds but coming across as sincere in the delivery. As in maybe the song really does want to get out of here for a while and go hang out in the park and smoke cigarettes and whatnot. Fair.

Brass Hearse on Bandcamp

Playing Records on Bandcamp

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Dr. Paradiso Meets Dr. Space, Liquid Planetscapes

If you might read ‘three songs/79 minutes’ and that’s a lot, well, the three songs are actually part of the same overarching movement — it’s all one song — so yes, the good doctors Paradiso and Space (also Øresund Space Collective) aren’t kidding when they allude to operating at a planetary scale. “Swampworld” is the name of all three tracks (broken down as Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), and the longform drone marked by croaking sounds and vague mists of synthesizer indeed evokes things alien, humid and teeming with unseen animal life. Surely the power of suggestion plays a role there, but I don’t think that’s invalidating. If you looked at a museum painting of a swamp world and it was called ‘Swampworld’ and it brought to mind a swampy kind of world, would you say it was using the power of suggestion? That’s art. Liquid Planetscapes‘ immersion requires a willing participant, but if you’re able to get yourself in a state of mind open to its happening-on-a-different-scale-of-time procession, the sense of journey is duly otherworldly, and warm besides.

Dr. Space on Bandcamp

Space Rock Productions website

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Mollusk, Cursebreaker

Boston despondent sludge metallers Mollusk made their debut a decade ago with Children of the Chron (review here), and they’ve reportedly had Cursebreaker in the works since not long after, but if the seven songs (six and a demo) have been seasoned for the years between, don’t worry, you’d never know it from the sheer pummel they elicit. “Trapped in a Cave” opens with telltale density and plod, and though the subsequent “Azathoth” and “Two Things” might up the tempo or delve into willful repetition, the downer cast remains right into and through “Human Suffering” and the closing linear build of “Apostle,” which is immediately backed by its own demo, which is even rawer and dirtier feeling than the proper album track just before. However long it’s been in the making, rest assured it sounds like they just dug it up. Fresh, in that way.

Mollusk on Bandcamp

Mollusk on Instagram

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Zahn, Purpur

Maybe the proggiest thing about Berlin instrumental three-piece Zahn is the sense of adventure they bring to their songcraft, the feeling of intention behind what they do, even when it’s an idea that probably came about spontaneously. Their heavy, electronics-infused sound is always textured and atmospheric, and Purpur‘s eight songs fit that mold more than they fit any other, as Felix Gebhard, Chris Breuer and Nic Stockmann range through the futurism of “Diaabend,” or go big-riff in the later build-into-crush of “Katamaran” or “Atoll,” start dancey and post-punk with “Stroboskop” or finish hypnotic with a build around the central strum of “Butter.” If there’s middle-ground to be had, it might be in “Alhambra,” but middle-ground isn’t necessarily what I’m looking for when they’ve got the rad electro-density mashup of “Gensher” instead. Zahn don’t always want to be very, very heavy, but they keep their ability to get there in use as one of the many tools of their craft.

Zahn on Bandcamp

Crazysane Records website

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Prophets of Thwaites, Vulnerant Omnes Ultima Necat

Preceded only by demos and rehearsal recordings, Vulnerant Omnes Ultima Necat is the first EP from the Netherlands’ Prophets of Thwaites — comprised of guitarist/vocalist Esma Larabi, bassist Ferry Vermeeren and drummer Nico Beemster — who with it offer two dug-in slabs of atmospheric doom/post-metal in “Deadlock” (7:32) and “Vulnerant Omnes Ultima Necat” (6:38); probably too long to press to a 7″, and well enough to give an impression of the spaciousness of their sound, whether that’s in the vocals and corresponding plod of the former or the squibbly solo as the title-cut works into its final minute. The vocals come through too clearly to really feel shoegazey in my mind (like, I would expect more effects on Larabi‘s voice in a ‘gazier context), but I don’t think that hurts them so much as it sets the band up for a more individualized exploration as they continue to grow. They make it easy to look forward to where they might be headed.

Prophets of Thwaites on Bandcamp

Prophets of Thwaites on Instagram

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Shizumunamari, Nagasugita Genjitsu

Tokyo bass-and-drum duo Shizumunamari offer the two-song Nov. 2025 sophomore full-length Nagasugita Genjitsu as a herald of what the band calls the ‘New Wave of Japanese Doom Metal’ (sadly not called the ‘New Wave of Japanese Weirdo Doom’), and shit, here’s hoping. With Namari Toyama on vocals, bass and keys and Ebianime on drums, “Nagayama” (14:34) celebrates raw tones and drawling vocals, reminding of some of Queen Elephantine‘s open-air Cisnerosism, but less directly meditative in style and sneaking in a dub break later on before they bring back the nod to close and let “Nagai Kyoku” (22:17) begin its longform procession with a grungier intro and a persistent roll punctuated with crash cymbal and building on the original vocal reachout. They use minimalism more in “Nagai Kyoku,” and the late-arriving organ sounds don’t detract from that, but “Nagai Kyoku” sounds like it could easily kepe going when it ends. Shizumunamari took six years before following up their first record. Hopefully their third comes on a shorter turnaround and we can really get this ‘wave’ going. I’m ready for it.

Shizumunamari on Bandcamp

Shit Eye Cassettes on Instagram

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Desert Collider, Generation Ship: Endless Drift Through Infinity

Generation Ship: Endless Drift Through Infinity is the ambitious, sci-fi-conceptual (at least semi-conceptual) debut full-length from Italian desert-style heavy rockers Desert Collider, delivered through Small Stone and Kozmik Artifactz. I don’t know if they’re setting up a continuity, if all their releases forever will be telling metaphorical tales under the banner of ‘Generation Ship,’ or when the thematic emerged from the material. But it rocks. For a highlight, one might suggest either “Sonic Carver,” where they hit hard and space out in the back half, or the 13-minute “Far Centaurus: Drifting without Guidance through Interstellar Space,” which takes stoner ambience and uses it as the basis for a dynamic, melodic and Mellotron-inclusive build. They’re able to play back and forth between immediacy and atmospherics (though “Nomads of the Red Sun” starts and stays acoustic), and while they’re on familiar ground stylistically, the push for an individual point of view is there, musically as well as in the presentation. Guess we’ll see where their journeys take them.

Desert Collider’s Linktr.ee

Small Stone Records website

Kozmik Artifactz website

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Üga Büga, Valley of the Wolf

Get up. Such is the clear message of Üga Büga at the outset of Valley of the World as the Virginian trio of Calloway Jones (guitar, keys, vocals), Niko Cvetanovich (bass, backing vocals, more keys), and Jimmy Czywczynski (drums, backing vocals, consonants) approach sludge from a distinctively metallic place. Double-kick drumming, sharp-cornered structures, and vocals that veer before declarative melody and screams all feed into an overarching sense of aggression, even if the grooves themselves aren’t bludgeoning. Is it party metal? I wouldn’t tell you no, but don’t take that as “it’s stupid,” because the complexity even in the breakdown of “Nail That Binds” speaks to the consideration given to these parts and songs. That said, “The Sand Witch” (the sandwich?) thumps in a way that feels like it wants you to clap along at the show, and the chug and lurch of “Earthsuckers” early on stays on the beat, so put that with the thrashing in “Divination” and the big rolling finish in eight-minute closer “Revolting Power” and you get some picture of where they’re at on the idea of your good time.

Üga Büga on Bandcamp

Üga Büga on Instagram

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Hey hey, it’s Friday. I’m not closing out the week this week because we’re not done with this Quarterly Review yet and that shift in writing mindset feels like too much of a jump at just this moment, but even though the QR will continue Monday, it still feels worth marking this as the end of a week. Yeah, I’ll be writing all weekend. Yeah, it ends next Tuesday, but making it through a Monday to Friday — especially this Monday to Friday — doesn’t feel like nothing as far as achievements go.

I hope you have a great and safe weekend, and I hope you find something to listen to hear that makes it even better. Thanks for reading.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

Pelican, Ascending

Chicago instrumentalists Pelican released their seventh album, Flickering Resonance (review here), in 2025, which filled three sides of a 2LP, and the title-track of their new EP, Ascending, would have fit right in as a seven-plus-minute crunch-riffer that chugs itself into an oblivion of lush bombast. I guess they figured they had enough, and fine. Certainly the album wasn’t missing anything. But “Ascending” stands well on its own, or in this case, leading off a succession of four cuts compiled for this release, the final two of which were previously issued on tape as  Adrift/Tending the Embers (review here) in 2024, and the other being a version of “Cascading Crescent” from the EP with Geoff Rickley of Thursday on vocals. For the life of me, I’ve never been able to conceive a man’s voice singing Pelican songs, but Rickley‘s ability to work in dynamic layers, and of course the emotive cast, make the experiment fluid. More right-now-Pelican, you say? That’s a no-brainer yes.

Pelican website

Run for Cover Records website

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Earth Tongue, Dungeon Vision

Dungeon Vision is the third full-length from now-Berlin-based duo Earth Tongue, and it brings a potently-fuzzed choose-your-adventure run through medieval horrors presented with due quirk and subtle intricacy by guitarist/vocalist Gussie Larkin and drummer/vocalist Ezra Simons. It is not a radical shift from where they were on 2024’s Great Haunting (review here), full of dark themes and floaty melodies, the let’s-start-a-satanic-panic lyrics continuing as a basis here, but “Body of Water” toys with the arrangement, and who the hell could resist a nod like “Living Hell” anyway? You can hear growth in their songwriting along with the gnarl in their tone, and with cultish charisma, they lead the way deeper into the proceedings for hooks like “Watchtower,” “Orbit of a Witch” and the bounce of the penultimate “Harvester.” I’m not saying you should sell your soul for it, but that might actually be a decent investment.

Earth Tongue on Bandcamp

In the Red Records website

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Boozewa & Nowhere, Split

They are, perhaps, somewhat united in their punkish undertones, but Pennslyvania’s Boozewa and Nowhere each build a sound of their own atop that foundation, and both turn out roilingly heavy. Each band adds four songs to this split. Nowhere plunder toward powerviolence as they move through “Neurogénesis” into “New JNCOs” and the 22-second capper “You Lose,” but the groove from “Convicción” onward is brash, so not that you see it coming, but the destination is justified by the journey. For Boozewa, their grunge seems to land ever harder, as “Garbage Day” and “Landline” push deeper into aggression before the narrative divergence in “The Big Dumb” leads into “4 Out of 10” finding the middle-ground in heavy rock and characteristic post-hardcore melody. You get about 11 minutes of Boozewa and about six of Nowhere and both leave you wanting more, so it’s a win for the classic-punk-rock, let’s-split-costs, limited-numbers DIY split 12″.

Boozewa website

Nowhere on Bandcamp

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Fjords, Gehenna

The 13:51 “Inferno” trades genres like most bands trade riffs, between progressive heavy rock, twisty garage rawness, hardcore crunch and intensity, and fluid doom nod. Don’t get me wrong. The five-minute “Purgatorio” on Fjords‘ four-track Gehenna LP, or the shorter opener “Virgilio” and the avant drone-stoner close they mount with “Paradiso” each have their respective scope, but as the Portuguese band run a line down the middle between madcap and methodical, their creative reach and their sheer chops align to lend their material a feeling of cohesion. The production is pretty barebones in terms of depth — it’s not a ‘huge’ sound on its face — but the jangly guitar suits the synth pulses in “Purgatorio” and “Paradiso,” giving an impression of outsiderism and of disruptive purpose behind all the movement in the songs. But if they’re transgressing, they’re gleeful in it; more mischief than destruction, and maybe influenced by the Melvins without trying to sound like them, which is twice as admirable.

Fjords on Bandcamp

Fjords on Instagram

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Gran Moreno, El Sol

Austin two-piece Gran Moreno offer one of heavy rock’s best debut albums of 2026 with El Sol. The songs are sharply composed, energeticaly delivered, full-sounding and professional without being overwrought. It is cohesive but not repetitive, and rife with hooks even as lyrics go back and forth between English and Spanish and the later “Oaxaca/Please Don’t Cry” brings in Mariachi horns. “Las Montañas” opens at a medium tempo to set an atmosphere and introduce the audience-engagement factor in its second half, but the subsequent “Aztlan” ignites a charge that affects the ’70s-styled blues riffing of “Huracán” and the desert strut and take-the-air of “Temple of Fire” (premiered here) before the organ-laced “La Mentira” pushes over the top into “Oaxaca/Please Don’t Cry” and six-minute strum’n’fuzz closer “Hikuri,” where they ride out the riff until it’s all the way gone. Skillfully conceived and executed modern underground heavy rock.

Gran Moreno on Bandcamp

Gran Moreno on Instagram

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Lord Elephant, Ultra Soul

The second Lord Elephant full-length, Ultra Soul, finds the Florence-based instrumentalist trio both exploring and providing comfort and warmth to the listener. That is, one can hear them pushing themselves further into desert rock as “Gigantia” picks up from the more laid back “Electric Dunes” at the record’s outset, before they up the plod for “Smoke Tower,” but their approach — as heavy as the album gets on “Astral” and “MindNight” and “Leave” on side B — is never so aggressive as to remove the listener from that mellower mindset. This lets crush become a gift, and encourages active listening and immersion. The centerpiece “Black River Blues” celebrates its heft in its contrasting stops, but the other thing “Electric Dunes”-into-“Gigantia” clues you into is the overarching flow across the 48-minute run, and Lord Elephant maintain this gorgeously while asking no more from the audience than to put it on and go with its roll, which they make it a pleasure to do.

Lord Elephant on Bandcamp

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Black Magic Tree, Terra

Like their 2021 debut, Through the Grapevine (discussed here), Black Magic Tree‘s sophomore LP, Terra, was recorded by Richard Behrens, who is no stranger to sounds that span decades as this Berlin five-piece’s does. They can shuffle, they can fuzz-push, and if it’s a subdued vocal showcase like “Love and Doubt,” they can hold up to that, too. There is no ground they touch on the nine-song outing that they do not approach from a place of mastery, and while that might sound like they’re not taking risks, I don’t think that’s actually the case. I think they’ve just worked on these songs, hammered out the lyrics and instrumental parts to convey ideas that are classic in form but unplaceable to any time other than now. It’s a much more complex blend than the straightforward, traditionalist structures might lead you to believe; vital, intentional, efficient and heavy.

Black Magic Tree on Instagram

Majestic Mountain Records store

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CB3, Edge, End and Discovery

Why the hell didn’t someone tell me CB3 were done? The often-improvisational Malmö, Sweden, heavy psychedelic rockers led by guitarist/sometimes-vocalist Charolotta Andersson called it quits last Fall with the release of the three-song Edge, End and Discovery, following the progressive/songwriting-based turn that 2022’s Exploration (review here). “Edge of Forever,” “End of It All” and “Discovery” — which is broken into five-parts on the release, shifting between improv and pre-structured progressions — are lush with layers of synth and guitar alongside the fluid rhythms, and the movement through any of them should be enough to make you understand why it’s such a bummer they’re not a band anymore. Thanks to Andersson, bassist Pelle Lindsjö and drummer Natanael Solmonsson for the decade of growth. If it needed to end, Edge, End and Discovery is as suitable a place to land as one could ask.

CB3 on Bandcamp

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Mortal Blood, Vigil for a Hollowed Earth

Somewhere between gothic dirge metal and funeral doom’s rawer morose cast, Maryland solo-band Mortal Blood dwell in the noisy shadows of Vigil for a Hollowed Earth, with sole denizen Dan Krell not so much basking in the camp theatricality of goth doom/metal, but the darker despoondency, made all the more real through a solo-project’s inherently singular perspective. No, I’m not saying Krell‘s material lacks variety — Vigil runs 10 songs/58 minutes and is by no means unipolar — but that the programmed-sounding drums, the bite on the harsh vocals in “Decay and Burn,” early in “Crow’s Sweet Caress,” the closer “Clay Born Titan,” etc., the from-the-graveyard echo on the guitar and the feeling that it’s raining the whole time you’re listening are all part of the same expression of Krell‘s sonic ideal. It is not a minor undertaking, and not without its challenging aspects, but Vigil for a Hollowed Earth revels on its way to grim accomplishment.

Mortal Blood’s Linktr.ee

Mortal Blood on Bandcamp

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Faraj Risberg Rogefeldt, Faraj Risberg Rogefeldt

Sweet-toned heavy blues, and the more-than-an-edge of retroism in the tone and production on their self-titled debut give Faraj Risberg Rogefeldt an even more welcoming vibe as they bring the listener into the eight-song/50-minute course of the album, which isn’t gonna rush until it’s time to rush, so don’t worry about it. They get there in 11-minute highlight “Rötter,” to be sure, but even the proto-doom of the penultimate “Skepnad” is set to a march, so movement isn’t a problem throughout. With lyrics in Swedish, the trio nonetheless make the mellow early cut “Flera dagar bort” catchy enough for me to get my brain around the chorus, and the consideration behind the songs goes well beyond the tambourine perfectly placed in “En ny dag” and the cowbell in “Vet Hur Visorna Går,” however off-the-cuff, just-walked-in-and-hit-record they make it sound. Not reinventing the wheel, not trying to. They remind me most of Dirty Streets, who occupy a similar place between heavy rock and blues — I also feel compelled to namedrop November — but as they begin this exploration, Faraj Risberg Rogefeldt are softshoe fodder all the way. Language means nothing when you can boogie.

Faraj Risberg Rogefeldt’s Linktr.ee

Faraj Risberg Rogefeldt on Instagram

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Feel like we’re really getting into it now, and that’s a good thing. I’m not saying I was shaking off rust for the first two days, but I look at the spread of styles across the names above and ‘it’s gonna be a good day’ pops inexorably into my head. I like that feeling, which I guess is how we get here in the first place.

It’s Wednesday of this seven-day QR, so we’re not quite halfway through yet. If you’ve been keeping up, thank you. If not, it’s okay. You’re still welcome to peruse the below and hopefully find something that speaks to you.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

Clayton Burgess, If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home by Now

Self-recorded and just as raw as the day is long, the first solo album from Clayton Burgess (Satan’s Satyrs founder, also ex-Electric Wizard), If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home by Now, is so classic in its substance it can’t help be modern. And I’m not talking about the pop garage indie of the 2000s, like it sounds cheap but also everybody has perfect hair. Songs like “Kerosene” and the Mellotron-laced “Meadowlands” are more in the Rise Above Records mindset of retroism, which is to say doing the thing for real and letting the genres sort themselves out later. Thus the proto-punk of “Little Bat Dreams” and the strut of “Scenic Byway” coexist with the jazzy “Faustine,” and so on. “Signal Fire” and the closer “Golden Age of Volcanism” are a bit darker, maybe a little closer to Burgess‘ work with Satan’s Satyrs, while “Greasy Bangs” lives up to its name for all of its 90 seconds, a heavy garage instrumental of the ’60s tradition. What’s amazing about it is the whole style is based around familiarity and yet the indentity built up throughout is so individual. I haven’t seen a lot of hype about it, but here’s hoping Burgess continues this pursuit.

Clayton Burgess on Bandcamp

Satan’s Satyrs on Bandcamp

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New Mexican Doom Cult, Ziggurat

There have been some personnel shifts in Swedish stoner-doomnodders New Mexican Doom Cult, and their second full-length, Ziggurat, operates mostly in the same volume-worshipping vein of riffing as 2023’s Necropolis (review here), but with a deeper perspective in “Metatron” and the pointedly doomed “Return to Babylon,” among others. The band now is Nils Ahnland on guitar and vocals (also bass), drummer Jonathan Ekvall and Jonas Strömberg on keys/production, and though they’ve given up some tonal impact as a result of dropping to a single guitar (layering notwithstanding; looking at you, “Criosphinx”), the tradeoff is they’re more flexible in sound while remaining plenty heavy from “The Church of Starry Wisdom” onward. Sabbathian roll is a specialty of the house, but the satisfaction when “Sungod” finally kicks in at full volume speaks to a different kind of mastery before the doom-hook in “I Stand Alone” rounds out. Curious where they’ll go from here.

New Mexican Doom Cult on Bandcamp

New Mexican Doom Cult on Instagram

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Lammping/Drew Smith/Marker Starling, Risky

Following on from 2025’s Never Never (review here), Toronto mellow-hangs specialists Lammping continue their four-album cycle of collaborations with this second one, bringing them together with Drew Smith (The Bicycles) and Chris Cummings (Marker Starling), as core Lammping duo Mikhail Galkin (vocals, production, guitar, etc.) and Jay Anderson (drums) slide so smoothly into and out of dub instrumentals and low-key heavy vibes, always fluid, here hinting toward jazz, there shimmering into the techno experiment “Prelude to Never” ahead of the finale “Never Done,” which closes like psychedelic singer-songwriter fare from some lost decade that was never actually real. I guess the update is Lammping remain on their on wavelength of sound and on their own echelon of cool. Spending some time there with them could only be to your greater benefit. Two more LPs coming.

Lammping on Bandcamp

We Are Busy Bodies on Bandcamp

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Mos Eisley Spaceport, Live on Crow Hill

Most of the material on Mos Eisley Spaceport‘s apparently-self-released live album, Live on Crow Hill, comes from their 2023 debut, Further, but with newer two songs at the end in the 12-minute “Interstellar Mantis” and “In Your Mind,” the jam-based classic heavy blues boogie rockers give a glimpse at where they’re headed just the same. And that’s not to take away from “Space Shift” — which starts with the Star Wars sample from whence their moniker hails — or the scope in “Ashes to Ashes” made organic by the fluidity of the band’s performance, I’m just noting the progression underway in their sound. Whether brand new or not, they deliver, and the fact that they’ve added organ to the arrangements in the time since the record came out means these interpretations stand on their own regardless. Most of all, the set is a blast and sounds like they’re having as much fun playing as I am listening, which is plenty. It would feel silly to ask more of it than that, whatever it might portend for them moving forward.

Mos Eisley Spaceport on Bandcamp

Mos Eisley Spaceport on Instagram

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Dome Runner, World Panopticon

How lucky you are that after 40-plus years of industrial sounds depicting dystopian apocalyptic scenarios you finally get to live in one. Dome Runner are the machine punishment humanity deserves in an era where a tech CEO can casually say something about flying drones into people’s heads to kill them and/or licensing common knowledge on a subscription model and not be immediately imprisoned or extrajudicially hanged to the benefit of all. World Panopticon is suitably brutal across a 76-minute span, the Tampere, Finland, troupe keeping one foot in ’90s industrial metal as they did on their 2021 debut, Conflict State Design (review here), but filtering this through modern tonality and horrors. There are breaks, quiet parts in longer songs, interludes, etc., but I don’t know that I’d call any of it a real letup in the looming sense of oppression, and well, get used to that, because the boot on your neck that they’re portraying isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Welcome to the age of it-gets-worse-and-nobody-stops-it. At least you still have the music, for now.

Dome Runner on Bandcamp

Svart Records website

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Basaltic Plateau, Dead Dinosaurs Echoes

While clearly written as individual pieces, the six songs comprising the 36-minute run of Italian heavy psych instrumentalists Basaltic Plateau‘s late-’25 debut LP, Dead Dinosaurs Echoes flow exceedingly well into each other, extrapolating the ebbs and flows within a given track into how it interacts with those around it. In this way, the three-piece build a landscape of sound — some kind of sound… scape! — across the span, warm-toned and so easy enough to liken to a desert rock influence, but heavier in its payoff stretches and up for trippier weirdness in “Summer Dream” and the more technical severity of the closing title-cut, also the longest at nearly nine minutes, and less predictable in its entirety than one might expect going in. As a debut, their self-awareness bodes well, and the psych of “Cuttlefish Galaxy” and progressivism of “Sleep Paralysis” might be careening toward each other like the Milky Way and Andromeda, but if there’s to be a conflict between the two, it’s a ways off. In the meantime, their creative reach serves them in immersing the listener.

Basaltic Plateau on Bandcamp

Electric Valley Records website

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Gjenferd, Black Smoke Rising

Should you find yourself needing a reason to feel hopeful about the future of heavy rock, that Gjenferd might be part of it should more than suffice. The Bergen, Norway, four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Vegard Bachmann Strand, bassist Samuel Robson Gardner, keyboardist/vocalist Jakob Særvoll and drummer/vocalist Sivert Kleiven Larsen present their second album in Black Smoke Rising, and draw a thread back through decades of heavy rock stylization to conjure a sound that is their own and welcoming, unpretentious and progressive in kind. Whether it’s the shuffle of “Bound to Fall” and the hook of “Ride On” or the moodier nod of “Calling Your Name” and the mellow-till-it-ain’t “The Silence,” the band are dynamic, thoughtful in their craft and vital very much in the ‘alive’ sense of the word across the 10 inclusions, further distinguishing themselves among the emergent next generation of heavy rock and rollers. The listenability here can’t and shouldn’t be discounted, which is to say, don’t be surprised when you come back for another round with it.

Gjenferd’s Linktr.ee

Apollon Records website

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Codex Serafini, Mother, Give Your Children Sanity

I feel like it may forever be my fate to feel like I’m trying to catch up to Codex Serafini. Yes, temporally — their second LP, Mother, Give Your Children Sanity, came out last November — but also stylistically, and in this I feel a oneness with the universe, for which the UK outfit are an intentionally odd fit. Spacerocking in their own dimensional phase, the band follow 2023’s The Imprecation of Anima (review here) with a status-quo threatening cohesion that lands heavy with Wayne Adams‘ production but is more about the plunge into the farther far-out, sax and skronk and ritualistic melodies and madness. The title-track brings healing, but not like you’re thinking, whatever you’re thinking, and the subsequent blowout in capper “Marching Like a Toad” (before the drone finish) could hardly be better earned. Bands rarely sound so willing to follow where their whims take them, and the quirk in Mother, Give Your Children Sanity is more appreciable for that.

Codex Serafini on Bandcamp

Riot Season Records website

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Sunbreather, Sunbreather

Airy grunge pervades the self-titled 2025 full-length debut from UK trio Sunbreather, resulting in a tonal richness one can hear in the eponymous “Sunbreather” or the prior “Apricity” as the record gets going, creating a kind of terrestrial psychedelia that vocal effects and an upped fuzz quotient in all-caps centerpiece/side B leadoff “WINE” seems to revel in pushing to one side or another. I like this album a lot; the way it feels like it’s establishing one aspect of the band’s sound or another and then moves on to the next idea without losing itself in indulgence. The organic flow. The closing pair of “Sleep” and “Aubade” emphasize this, with a fuller lumber in “Sleep” that opens atmospherically in “Aubade” while staying dreamy in tempo at least for most of its time. I say all the time that the challenge for UK bands is distinguishing themselves from the constant glut of their home country’s underground. That might be true here as well, on its face, but in actually hearing the songs, Sunbreather come out ahead in terms of identity. I’m pretty sure this was self-released, but I can’t imagine they wouldn’t be able to find a label if they wanted to for it.

Sunbreather’s Linktr.ee

Sunbreather on Instagram

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Konung, Dope Druid

True, the Moscovian plodders don’t have ‘bong’ or ‘weed,’ etc., in their name, but they’re pretty close to bong metal regardless on this initial three-songer, Dope Druid, lumbering through dank megasludge on the opening title-track before rolling noisier into “Wolf Shepherd” and chug-and-feedbacking to a point of near-abrasion (of the willful sort, mind you) on “Tsar of Blood,” making for a solid 19 minutes of damage to eardrums and braincells alike. So much the better a tone on which to break onesself. Imagine drowning in bong water. They aren’t shooting for anything overly complicated, but there is sort of a scope to the onslaught, and the rawness overarching becomes a benefit to the impact of the material — its heft is engrossing and the way the harshness comes through the recording lends aggression to the groove — but I’m not sure that’s aspiration so much as fortunate circumstance. It’s moot, ultimately, because any way you go, Konung have come to crush you into flattened little bits, and the best advice I can give is go with it and deal with the cleanup after.

Konung on Bandcamp

Konung on Instagram

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Day one down, time for day two of this Spring 2026 Quarterly Review. If you missed me saying so yesterday, this QR will run 70 releases total, so it finishes a week from today. If you didn’t find anything you got down with yesterday, I hope today’s your day. If not, maybe tomorrow. That’s kind of how this works.

You should note that some of this is 2025 releases. I’ll try to note that in the reviews when I can, but today leads off with Spidergawd’s latest and that’s six months old at this point. The older I get, the less of a shit I give for release dates. That’s a somewhat aspirational statement, I admit. I’ve always sucked at keeping up.

Quarterly Review #11-20:

Spidergawd, From Eight to Infinity

Reconfirming their place among top tier songwriters in heavy rock, Norway’s Spidergawd offer their eighth album with Thin Lizzy and Judas Priest and way more energy behind the delivery than ‘eighth album’ could ever hope to imply. From Eight to Eternity indeed is an eighth album running eight tracks (40 minutes; that’s eight times five, anyhow), and while charge is part of what they do, they’ve always been able to hone a sense of dynamic across a record and the latest is no different. As the world outside crumbles, Spidergawd offer escape to a better place and unshakable solidity of approach. Even the extra-vehemence of chug in “Confirmation” and the proto-thrashy twists in “200 Miles High” are brought into the fold rather than left to hang as anomalous, and there’s a gallop in “The Hunter” that’s pure NWOBHM, but Spidergawd remain a rock band even when they’re playing metal, which “The Ghost of Eirik Raude” says better than I could, and in “The Grand Slam,” the grander outreach of “Winter Song” and the shove of “One in a Million” they once more underscore how special the thing they do is. Do you understand what a gift Spidergawd are to heavy rock and roll? You might if you listen.

Spidergawd website

Crispin Glover Records website

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Aunt Cynthia’s Cabin, Misty Woman

Originally issued through Nasoni Records in 2020, Aunt Cynthia’s Cabin‘s Misty Woman arrives via a Dec. 2025 Black Throne Productions reissue, and reasonably so. In the parlance of our times, it’s a vibe. The title-track is spacious and ’60s psych, with choice vocals and easy swing, and by then they’ve already been through the volatility of the jam in “Which One is the Jellyfish” and the plus-sized roll in “Kennel and the Dog,” so they’re well underway, with rawness and atmosphere both as part of their crux. That doesn’t abate in the two-part “Rider in the Desert Sun” or the hypnotic diversion “In the Valley,” willfully repetitive across its five minutes ahead of the longest track “There’s No Saving Cass,” which uses the negative space of the mix for a live feel before hitting into a classic-style fadeout into the interlude “Grains of Sand.” The closer “Black and Blue” is fuller in sound, but still echoing out, and the bonus track “Magic Touch” brings extra brightness to the crash and a satisfying swell of rawer distortion to its finish. Sleeper, maybe, because it’s already six years old, but with scope, and well earns the second look.

Aunt Cynthia’s Cabin on Bandcamp

Black Throne Productions website

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Hawk vs. Dove, The Weight of All Matters

The Dallas outfit have said that “The Weight of All Matters” is a herald of their third record, but as it’s been more than 10 years since the band released their second album, 2015’s Divided States (review here), it seemed reasonable to approach the six-minute newcomer as a standalone, at least for the time being. The new song is perhaps more patient for the years between — though I wouldn’t presume to imply that to an entire album; they’ve always been able to change it up amid various 1990s influences, here grunge, there noise, filtered through their own tonal heft and melodic sensibility, the latter of which is a crucial factor in “The Weight of All Matters” as well, lending a progressive feel to the chorus and the brash swell in the second half. More likely than not, the single doesn’t speak for the entirety of the full-length to come, but it’s good to hear from Hawk vs. Dove again at all. They make it easy to look forward to more.

Hawk vs. Dove on Bandcamp

Hawk vs. Dove on Instagram

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Silver Orbs, Silver Orbs

There are six dudes in Brisbane fuzz-psych rockers Silver Orbs and four of them sing, so yes, part of the impression the band’s late-’25 three-songer self-titled debut EP makes is in the vocals, particularly in opener “Manganangas,” but “Gannets” brings a more serene start with intertwining keyboard and guitar, though the rumble of bass and steady kick drum herald the volume kick that arrives soon enough, and “Gannets” is instrumental, so clearly sending a message that they’re not one-sided in their approach. “Kanto Katso” affirms this with a strikingly heavy intro of crashes and guitar attack, but its verses are more like psychedelic chants and the drums shift to the toms there, so they’re having fun making it weird, and that’s as it should be. I don’t know if “Kanto Katso” doesn’t return to that same directness of impact from its start or if one just acclimates to it, but a band setting such a vivid context for their own sound across the first three songs they’ve ever released isn’t something that happens every day, and Silver Orbs come across as ready to continue exploring. A thing to hope for.

Silver Orbs on Bandcamp

Silver Orbs on Instagram

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Xain, Xaraba

Azerbaijani duo Xain unfurl a bit over six minutes of heavy post-grind extremity on Xaraba, the three included tracks pummeling one after another in succession, with perhaps the most brutal crush of all coming in centerpiece “Günahkar” where the overarching rush groove opens to a breakdown start-stop nod that speaks to their noted The Dilligner Escape Plan influence, but the shove and the context are all their own. I’m not sure if it’s live drums or not, as vocalist Toghrul Manafov and guitarist Elkhan Alshin (both founding members of death metallers Fatal Nation), but the toy piano offset in “Çürüyən ruhun ət qəfəsi” speaks to outside-genre impulses that can only continue to serve them well as they do here, and as unforgiving and unbridled as they are, the catharsis comes through strongly despite the language barrier. They should probably get a government grant to make more of this.

Xain on Bandcamp

Xain on Instagram

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Iron Void & Orodruin, Altar of Worship

The ‘altar’ in question for Altar of Worship is Pagan Altar, and two of doom metal’s most doomed — Wakefield, UK’s Iron Void and NY’s Orodruin — give due homage to Terry Jones (R.I.P. 2015) and the classic sound he had a hand in developing as part of the band (who are still going, mind you). Each band offers one studio-tracked original — Iron Void lead off side A with “The Tolling Bell” (also the longest track; immediate points) and Orodruin answer back with “In This Place” at the start of side B — as well as a Pagan Altar cover and two live songs. Orodruin‘s take on “In the Wake of Armadeus” is a highlight, but so is Iron Void‘s “Highway Cavalier,” and it quickly becomes fortunate that the two bands aren’t so much in competition with each other — lest you had to pick one over the other — as they are working together remotely toward a common goal in celebrating one of doom’s many underheralded legends. It’s a tribute that wears its (dark, grim, sorrowful) heart on its sleeve.

Iron Void on Bandcamp

Orodruin on Bandcamp

Nameless Grave Records website

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Epimetheus, Perseus 9

Lead cut “Earthbound” gets pretty chunky toward its finish, but as Epimetheus roll on to pursue Conan-esque levels of heavy in “Coalesce” and bring “Drift Beyond” to a rumblenoise apex that the likes of Cities of Mars or Domkraft might proffer, the UK-based outfit know there’s more than one way to crush a skull. They are atmospheric without overproduction, and’90s rooted without sounding like either grunge, stoner rock, doom and meditative psychedelia directly while having aspects of all of them, and are dug into their own processes enough that the promo for the seven-song/48-minute Perseus 9 came with a document detailing the building and modding of their instruments, pedals and recording apparatus. If you think I’m complaining about that, you’re wrong. The care they put into crafting their sound can be heard in the centerpiece “Held No More,” which effectively summarizes the scope across nearly 10 minutes before the eight-minute title-track follows up with more cosmic chug and nod. “Calling” is duly feedback-coated for the shouts that complement its riff, and they close with the uptempo “Terraform” presumably so they can begin to repair the damage they caused all along their way. Perseus 9 is their debut, and there are things to be sorted in terms of their approach, but the potential here is no less broad than their creative reach. Heads up, this one’s a journey.

Epimetheus on Bandcamp

Epimetheus on Instagram

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Wolftooth, Wizard’s Light

A well established penchant for the epic serves Indiana capital-‘h’ Heavy metal rockers Wolftooth on their fourth album and first for Ripple Music, Wizard’s Light, as they bring a strident NWOBHM feel to “Darkened Path,” “Sands of Redemption,” “Armor of Steel,” “Bloodline” and others throughout the 45-minute 10-track collection, but as sweeping and grand as even a rocker like “Wizard’s Light” ends up being, Wolftooth are never actually overblown. The longest inclusion here is the penultimate “Bloodline,” and it’s a ripper very much on-brand for the record and the band making it, but it’s also only five and a half minutes long. So while Wolftooth come on in grand fashion with the intro “Hymn of Belgarath” carrying into the hard snare and galloping chug of “Sightless Archer,” they never rest in one place long enough to lose the urgency of what they’re doing in sacrifice either to precision or class, though they offer no shortage of either of those. It’s not my thing, necessarily, but I’m just one person and the appeal here might as well be scored into the side of a mountain.

Wolftooth on Bandcamp

Ripple Music website

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Babona, Az Átkozott

Translated as ‘the cursed’ from the original Hungarian, Babona‘s Az Átkozott is the short third full-length from the Miskolc-based solo-project of multi-instrumentalist Tamás Rózsa, and the prolific craftsman adds percussive nuance to “Soha” and goes out to the car in “Mahnurk,” seeming to tell a story complete with giggles and a big inhalation before “Csapágy” kicks in with a mellower intro ahead of the record’s most active pummel. From opener “Álomra hajtom a fejemet” onward, the mood is prevailingly dark, and the cawing crows of “ÍmeaT átka” (a second interlude) only reinforce the feeling. Still, even the start-stop ’90s crunch riffing of “Visszatérés” and the back and forth mellow/shove trades in “A szigetmonostori búcsú” harness a feeling of movement, and at maybe 25 minutes, Az Átkozott is a long way from the danger of overstaying its welcome. This is an exploration worth following if you’re not yet.

Babona on Bandcamp

Babona on Facebook

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Motsus, Atlas

Belgian instrumentalists Motsus lean into riffy post-metal in a way that’s invariably going to lead to Pelican or Russian Circles comparisons on Atlas, but the push in “Driver,” which hits subsequent to “Intro (El Toro de Fuego)” at the album’s outset, isn’t shy about its underlying stonerism, and both “Duna” and “Exploder Pt. II” back this idea with plotted longform processions, the former rising from its Middle Eastern-style intro into a massive lumber while the latter climbs the cliff just to jump off and enjoy the downward tumble. They thrash for a bit in the two-minute “Short Notice,” but it’s in closer “Turboslak” that they pull all the sides together and find their very-loud-no-matter-what-volume-you’re-listening-at niche in the sphere, setting a low barrier to entry for the genre converted without playing so much to style as to lose sight of the ideals they’re chasing as they execute for such marked weight.

Motsus on Instagram

Polderrecords on Bandcamp

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