Posted in Whathaveyou on April 24th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
I’ll admit that in perusing the press release below for Space Queen‘s new video for the previously-premiered single “Incantation”, I was hoping to run into a release date for their upcoming debut album, following on from 2023’s listed-as-an-EP-but-it’s-got-nine-songs-so-how-much-more-do-you-really-need release, Nebula (review here). No dice. I did find out they played the California Avocado Festival though, which, hell yeah I’d check that out.
So not necessarily a loss, but I still have no idea when Space Queen‘s LP will be released, and as they dive further into “Incantation” with visual accompaniment, I’m even more curious as to when it might be in store for when it arrives. I feel like there’s some searching going on here as regards identity, the candles in the visuals and cult aspects. The performances stand up strong enough that I feel like some of that might phase out over time, allowing for more of a pastoral heavy to take hold. At least that’s what I get from “Incantation.” Again, I don’t even know when the record’s coming out, let alone how it sounds, so I guess I don’t have much to add here except that if you missed this song when it premiered, now it has a video. Alright.
From the PR wire:
Space Queen share “Incantation” video from forthcoming full length debut
Vancouver, BC trio Space Queen share the official video for their new single “Incantation” today.
Space Queen is the stoner rock evolution of power trio Jenna Earle (guitar/vocals), Seah Maister (bass/keys/vocals) and Karli MacIntosh (drums/vocals).
Space Queen takes the trio’s signature haunting vocal harmonies and sends them soaring over a cosmic canvas of neo-psychedelic rock. Driving beats from MacIntosh provide an anchor for Earle’s heavy distortion and 70s-style riffs, while Maister keeps everything grounded on fuzzed-out, gnarly bass.
The band released their debut EP in 2020 which garnered a ton of favorable press and college radio play, including landing on the Earshot charts. Space Queen was featured on Nardwuar The Human Serviette’s radio show for a month leading up to their EP release.
Space Queen has steadily increased their following by opening for Meatbodies, King Buffalo, Blackwater Holylight, Dopethrone, Cancer Bats, Hippie Death Cult, Mondo Drag, The Well, Acid Mother’s Temple, RIP, Spirit Mother, Spoon Benders, Hastronaut, Mos Generator and Black Mastiff. The band also hit multiple festival stages including Massif Music fest, Electric Highway, Tune It Down Turn It Up Festival, The Dream Roll, The California Avocado Festival, Noise Cult Festival, Rock ‘n’ Roll Pride, and Fallen Fest.
2023-2024 have been landmark years for the band: They released their sophomore record, Nebula, supported by extensive touring in western Canada, across-Canada (to Toronto to play NXNE), the U.S. west coast, and Southern California multiple times.
Day three. Yesterday had its challenges as regards timing, but ultimately I wound up where I wanted to be, which is finished with the writing. Fingers crossed I’m so lucky today. Last time around I hit into a groove pretty early and the days kind of flew, so I’m due a Quarterly Review where it’s a little more pulling teeth to make sentences happen. I’m doing my best either way. That’s it. That’s the update. Let’s go Wednesday.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
Godzillionaire, Diminishing Returns
Tell you what. Instead of pretending I knew Godzillionaire at all before this record came along or that I had any prior familiarity with frontman Mark Hennessy‘s ’90s-era outfit Paw — unlike everything else I’ve seen written about the band — I’ll admit to going into Diminishing Returns relatively blind. And somehow it’s still nostalgic? With its heart on its sleeve and one foot in we’re-all-definitely-over-all-that-shit-from-our-20s-by-now-right-guys poetic moodiness, the Lawrence, Kansas, four-piece veer between the atmospherics of “Spin Up Spin Down” and more grounded grooves like that of “Boogie Johnson” or “3rd Street Shuffle.” “Unsustainable” dares post-rock textures and an electronic beat, “Astrogarden” has a chug imported from 1994 and the seven-minutes-each capstone pair “Common Board, Magic Nail,” which does a bit of living in its own head, and “Shadow of a Mountain,” which has a build but isn’t a blowout, reward patient listens. I guess if you were there in the ’90s, it’s god-tier heavy underground hype. From where I sit, it’s pretty solid anyhow.
In Flight is the second full-length from Portland, Oregon’s Time Rift, and it brings the revamped trio lineup of vocalist Domino Monet, founding guitarist Justin Kaye and drummer Terrica Catwood to a place between classic heavy rock and classic metal, colliding ’70s groove and declarative ’80s NWOBHM riffing — advance single “The Hunter” strikes with a particularly Mob Rulesian tone, but it’s relatable to a swath of non-sucky metal of the age — such that “Follow Tomorrow” finds a niche that sounds familiar in its obscurity. They’re not ultimately rewriting any playbooks stylistically, but the balance of the production highlights the organic foundation without coming across like a put-on, and the performances thrive in that. Sometimes you want some rock and roll. Time Rift brought plenty for everyone.
Canadian instrumentalist trio Heavy Trip released their sophomore LP, Liquid Planet, in Nov. 2024, following on from 2020’s Burning World-issued self-titled debut (review here). A 13-minute title-track serves as opener and longest inclusion (immediate points), setting a high standrad for scorch that the pulls and shred of “Silversun,” the rush and roll of “Astrononaut” (sic) and capper “Mudd Red Moon” with its maybe-just-wah-all-the-time push and noisy comedown ending, righteously answer. It’s easy enough on its face to cite Earthless as an influence — instrumental band with ace guitarist throwing down a gauntlet for 40 minutes; they’re also touring Europe together — but Heavy Trip follow a trajectory of their own within the four songs and are less likely to dwell in a part, as the movement within “Astrononaut” shows plainly. I won’t be surprised when their next one comes with label backing.
An impressive debut from UK four-piece Slung, whose provenance I don’t know but who sound like they’ve been at it for a while and have come into their first album, In Ways, with clarity of what they want in terms of sound and songwriting. “Laughter” opens raucous, and “Class A Cherry” follows with a sleeker slower roll, while “Come Apart” pushes even further into loud/quiet trades for a soaring chorus and “Collider” pays off its early low-end tension with a melodic hook that feels so much bigger than what one might find in a three-minute song. It goes like that: one cut after another, for 11 songs and 37 minutes, with Slung skillfully guiding the listener from the front of the record to the back. The going can be intense, like “Matador” or the crashing “Thinking About It,” more contemplative like “Limassol” and “Heavy Duty,” and there’s even room for a title-track interlude before the somewhat melancholic “Nothing Left” and “Falling Down” close, though that might only be because Slung use their time so well.
Madrid-based progressive heavy rockers Greengoat return on a quick turnaround from 2024’s A.I. (review here) to Aloft, which over 33 minutes plays through seven songs each of which has been given a proper name: the album intro is “Zohar,” it moves into the grey-toned tension of “Betty,” “Jim” is moody, “Barney” takes it for a walk, and so on. The big-riffed centerpiece “Travis” is a highlight slog, and “Ariel,” which follows, is thoughtful in its melody and deceptively nuanced in the underlying rhythm. That’s kind of how Greengoat do. They’ve taken their influences — and in the case of closer “Charles,” that includes black metal — and internalized them toward their own methodologies, and as such, Aloft feels all the more individually constructed. Hail Iberia as Western Europe’s most undervalued heavy hotspot.
If it seems a little on the nose for Author & Punisher, modern industrial music’s most doom-tinged purveyor, to cover Godflesh, who helped set the style in motion in the first place, yeah, it definitely is. That accounts for the reverence with which Tristan Shone treats the track that originally appeared on 1994’s Selfless LP, and maybe is part of why the song’s apparently been sitting for 11 years since it was recorded in 2014. Accordingly, if some of the sounds remind of 2015’s Melk en Honig (discussed here), the era might account for that. In Shone‘s interpretation, though, the defeated vocal of Justin K. Broadrick becomes a more aggressive rasp and the guitar is transposed to synth. One advantage to living in the age of content-creation is stuff like this gets released at all, let alone posted so you can stream or download as you will. Get it now so when it shows up on the off-album-tracks compilation later you can roll your eyes and be extra cool.
Children of the Sün, Leaving Ground, Greet the End
It’s gotta be a trap, right? The third full-length from Arvika, Sweden, heavy-hippie folk-informed psychedelic rockers Children of the Sün can’t really be this sweet, right? The soaring “Lilium?” The mellow, lap-steel-included motion in “Come With Us?” The fact that they stonerfy “Whole Lotta Love?” Yeah, no way. I know how this goes. You show up and the band are like, “Hey everything’s cool, check out this better universe we just made” and then the next thing you know the floor drops out and you’re doing manual labor on some Swedish farm to align yourself with some purported oneness. I hear you, “Starlighter.” You’re gorgeous and one of many vivid temptations on Leaving Ground, Greet the End, but you’ll not take my soul on your outbound journey through the melodic cosmos. I’m just gonna stay here and be miserable and there’s nothing you or that shiver-down-the-spine backing vocal in “Lovely Eyes” can do about it. So there.
While the core math at work in Pothamus‘ craft in terms of bringing together crushing, claustrophobic tonality, aggressive purposes and expansive atmospherics isn’t necessarily new for a post-metallic playbook, but the melodies that the Belgian trio keep in their pocket for an occasion like “De-Varium” or the drone-folk “Ykavus” before they find another layer of breadth in the 15-minute closing title-track are no less engrossing across the subdued stretches within the six songs of Abur than the band are consuming at their heaviest, and the percussion in the early build of the finale says it better than I could, calling back to the ritualism of opener “Zhikarta” and the way it seems to unfold another layer of payoff with each measure as it crosses the halfway point, only to end up squeezing itself through a tiny tube of low end and finding freedom on the other side in a flood of drone, the entire album playing out its 46 minutes not like parts of a single song, but vivid in the intention of creating a wholeness that is very much manifest in its catharsis.
Gentle Beast, Vampire Witch Reptilian Super Soldier (…From Outer Space)
Gentle Beast are making stoner rock for stoner rockers, if the cumbersome title Vampire Witch Reptilian Super Soldier (…From Outer Space) of the Swiss five-piece’s sophomore LP didn’t already let you know, and from the desert-careening of “Planet Drifter” through the Om-style meditation of “Riding Waves of Karma” (bonus points for digeridoo) ahead of the janga-janga verse and killer chorus of “Revenge of the Buffalo,” they’re not shy about highlighting the point. There’s a spoken part in the early going of “Voodoo Hoodoo Space Machine” that seems to be setting up a narrative, and the organ-laced ending of “Witch of the Mountain” certainly could be seen as a chapter of that unfolding story, but I can’t help but feel like I’m thinking too hard. Go with the riffs, because for sure the riffs are going. Gentle Beast hit pretty hard, counter to the name, and that gives Vampire Witch etc. etc. an outwardly aggressive face, but nobody’s actually getting punched here, they’re just loud having a good time. You can too.
Metal and psychedelia rarely interact with such fluidity, but South Africa’s Acid Magus have found a sweet spot where they can lead a record off with a seven-minute onslaught like “War” and still prog out four minutes later on “Incantations” just because both sound so much in their wheelhouse. In addition, the fullness of their tones and modern production style, the way post-hardcore underlines both the nod later in “Wytch” and the shoving apex of “Emperor” is a unifying factor, while the bright-guitar interludes “Ascendancy” and “Absolution” broaden the palette further and contrast the darker exploration of “Citadel” and the finale “Haven,” which provides a fittingly huge and ceremonious culmination to Scatterling Empire‘s sense of space. It’s almost too perfect in terms of the mix and the balance of the arrangements, but when it hits into a more aggressive moment, they sound organic in holding it together. Acid Magus have actively worked to develop their approach. It’s hard to see the quality of these songs as anything other than reward for that effort.
Posted in audiObelisk on March 28th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
This very evening, March 28, harmony-laced Vancouver three-piece Space Queen will play a hometown release show celebrating their new single, “Incantation,” at the Waldorf, as part of a four-band bill. Premiering below, the song is on streaming services today, and it’s a preface to the beginning of the cycle for the first Space Queen LP, maybe later this year, though nobody at this point is throwing around a release date. Fair enough.
Last heard from with 2023’s Nebula EP (review here), the everybody-sings trio — that’s how you get three-part harmonies with three people; math! — of guitarist Jenna Earle, bassist Seah Maister and drummer Karli MacIntosh continue to develop the cultish aesthetic across these three minutes, with a voice intro preceding the arrival of the start-stop riff that underlies the verse, the lyrics of lighting candles and bathing in moonlight keeping to the vibe, but there’s a tension in the guitar line that speaks to a shifting paradigm with an edge of desert tonality.
Something to listen for heading into an album, maybe, but Space Queen brought a sense of variety to Nebula as well, and “Incantation” doesn’t feel out of line spiritually with the EP’s leanings, even as it potentially hints toward some of what the album might be exploring. The occult aspects will come through as familiar for genre heads, but the thematic has given Space Queen solid footing on which to begin their exploration of heavier sounds and ideas — the band reportedly evolved out of the folk trio Sound of the Sun, and folk remains a major element of their songwriting — and they’ve brought immediate perspective to their approach, offering listeners something they can’t get everywhere else on “Incantation” in the sinister sweetness of its croon.
The song resolves in a brief but immersive swirl, balancing pop accessibility and ethereal reach as they hit into a final slowdown and end back at the start, giving a sense of completion to the piece that’s oozing with aura and mood but still feels purposeful in its structure, never letting itself go so deep into the unknown as to become actually lost. Nebula — which is streaming near the bottom of this post, in case you’d like to do a side-by-side with “Incantation”; always fun — worked back and forth between longer and shorter songs, interludes, and different arrangements, so one would expect that when Space Queen‘s debut album arrives it’ll function much the same, but as a herald of things to come, I hope you’ll agree the new single is an enticing initial plunge.
You can hear “Incantation” on the player below, followed by more info from the PR wire.
Please enjoy:
Space Queen is the stoner rock evolution of power trio Jenna Earle (guitar/vocals), Seah Maister (bass/keys/vocals) and Karli MacIntosh (drums/vocals)
Space Queen takes the trio’s signature haunting vocal harmonies and sends them soaring over a cosmic canvas of neo-psychedelic rock. Driving beats from MacIntosh provide an anchor for Earle’s heavy distortion and 70s-style riffs, while Maister keeps everything grounded on fuzzed-out, gnarly bass.
The band released their debut EP in 2020 which garnered a ton of favourable press and college radio play, including landing on the Earshot charts. Space Queen was featured on Nardwuar The Human Serviette’s radio show for a month leading up to their EP release.
Space Queen has steadily increased their following by opening for Meatbodies, King Buffalo, Blackwater Holylight, Dopethrone, Cancer Bats, Hippie Death Cult, Mondo Drag, The Well, Acid Mother’s Temple, RIP, Spirit Mother, Spoon Benders, Hastronaut, Mos Generator and Black Mastiff. The band also hit multiple festival stages including Massif Music fest, Electric Highway, Tune It Down Turn It Up Festival, The Dream Roll, The California Avocado Festival, Noise Cult Festival, Rock ‘n’ Roll Pride, and Fallen Fest.
2023/2024 were landmark years for the band – they released their sophomore record, “Nebula,” supported by extensive touring in western Canada, across-Canada (to Toronto to play NXNE), the U.S. west coast, and Southern California multiple times.
Space Queen is releasing a new single produced by Tony Reed (Mos Generator, Pentagram) plus a supporting music video in March 2025. It will be followed by more singles, leading up to the band’s first full length album.
Space Queen live: Mar 28 The Waldorf Vancouver, BC (single release show) Apr 12 The Starlite Room Edmonton, AB Apr 13 Modern Love Calgary, AB
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 6th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Vancouver’s Heavy Trip have been riding a wave of positive reception since the November release of their second album, Liquid Planet, which I swear I’m going to review one of these days. I’m sure you’ve heard it because you’re cool like that — if not, no worries, player’s below — but it’s four songs/40 minutes instrumental neostoner bangers. The band sound energetic coming off 2020’s self-titled debut (review here), and they’ll take the show on the road next month to support the LP, playing in Canada and deigning to come to the United States, which honestly, if I was Canadian, I would probably not at this point do. Kudos, Heavy Trip, on your generosity of spirit in sharing sets with such a roiling shitshow of a country.
I put this one on the calendar. It’s in Manhattan, which compared to every recent experience in New York I’ve had sounds so easy I can’t believe it, but it’s also a Friday night, which is hard for traffic. But, Sundrifter are gonna be there. Two bands I’ve never seen makes it hard to argue. Maybe I can get a babysitter and make it date night, just accept that getting out of the city after is gonna take two hours. Life man. Oddly enough I never used to think about this shit in my 20s. Too drunk, likely.
…Thanks for taking that little walk off-topic with me. Here’s the info you probably clicked here for in the first place. Have a great day:
⚡️🛸HEAVY TRIPPING EAST🛸⚡️🗽🎚️💥 🇨🇦/🇺🇸 TOUR COMMENCING MARCH 2025 📡 10 GIGS 11 DAYS, SEE YA ON Z ROAD ⛽️ 💨
@black_throne_productions 🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻🍻
Wednesday, March 12 – Montreal – @bar_lesco Hosted by @astrosonicprods Thursday, March 13 – Ottawa – @houseoftarg Hosted by @strangevalleyprodetrangevallee Friday, March 14 – Toronto – @bovinesexclub Hosted by @black_throne_booking & @fuzzedandbuzzed Saturday, March 15 – Hamilton – @doorspubhamilton Hosted by @black_throne_booking Sunday, March 16 – Niagara – @niagaraartistscentre Hosted by @black_throne_productions Tuesday, March 18 – Buffalo – @recroombuffalo Hosted by @heavyblazerbooking & @afterdarkpresents Wednesday, March 19 – Albany – @empirelivealbany Hosted by @empirelivealbany Thursday. March 20 – Providence, RI – @fetemusic Hosted by @sundrifterbc Friday, March 21 – NYC – @theboweryelectric Hosted by @sundrifterbc Saturday, March 22 – Easthampton, Massachusetts – @marigoldtheater Hosted by @marigoldtheater
Tomorrow, Jan. 3, is the release date of the second Pontiac EP, Night Tripper and a UFO. If it’s not already marked on your calendar, it’s cool, I know everybody gets busy around the holidays, etc., but if you caught wind of the duo’s debut release, Hard Knox (review here), back in early 2024 and had your interest piqued, the four-songer follow-up digs deeper into the nuance of influence and into the songs themselves for a more expanded but cohesive feel. At the center of the project is guitarist/vocalist/bassist Dave Cotton, also known for his work in the likewise intricate progressive metal outfit Seven Nines and Tens, and with these songs, he and drummer Drew Christie explore ground around psychedelic indie, post-hardcore, shifting with heavy fluidity through parts and melodies pulling from different sides, veering into and out of wash and shimmer, the crash and ringout vibrant before the title line is delivered, again, to round out “Night Tripper and the UFO.” The abiding vibe is weird, the music a 17-minute (and some of that is silence after the title-track in my version) call to the open-minded and aurally curious: come hear something you might not’ve heard before.
That call remains the same, mind you, even for those who took on Hard Knox from out of the glut of the digital ether. Pontiac‘s initial public offering traded on its ability to pivot, to bounce between one idea and the next, and to make it flow except where the interruption was the point. Night Tripper and a UFO operates similarly, and sometimes it’s still Cotton‘s voice wrangling disparate ideas into a single song, but “Death Valley” unfurls with layered harmony, hints a record scratch in its ’90s-strut midsection if doesn’t actually have one, and works to and through a bright-toned and still angular nod to cap with the line “No better time than the nighttime” amid a fading rollout into the more garage “Night Tripper and a UFO,” taking the emo at root in Cotton‘s vocal style and giving it a pastoral chorus backdrop early before adding backing vocals by Sara Wazani. A penchant for throwing open doors, aurally, shows itself in both “Death Valley” and “Night Tripper and a UFO” as it moves in its second half back to the hook to close, the standout line somehow Beatlesian, “Headmistress will perform/Night tripper and a UFO,” in the tradition of Mr. Kite’s Benefit happening in a world the listener can’t and doesn’t need to fully see to appreciate.
“Bible of the Roaring Twenties” calls back to some of the oldie-born realizations of the first EP, which I’m pretty sure I called an album last year — it doesn’t matter, it’s all made up and I’m willing to argue my point — but takes on a twang in its electric guitar before shifting into pastoral, gentle-snare surf shuffle shove. If the first two of its three minutes seem brazen in their straightforwardness, just before three minutes in, organ arrives to hold your hand as you leap off the cliff into the ending procession of decades, and the capper “Cut the Competition to Shreds” follows with mid-’60s shine resonating from its guitar. The narrative, loaded with place-names, including prisons, speaks to the Americana life-on-road ideal — you can read below of Cotton‘s inspiration from Kerouac — presented in snippets complemented by jangly alt rock guitar and music that feels built around the words but that serves its own purposes as well. “Cut the Competition to Shreds,” which in its title highlights a kind of capitalistic cruelty and the violence of exploitation so often framed as part of the natural order, is a fitting ending for Night Tripper and a UFO, for its ensuing quirk, sure, but also for the outward-looking perspective of the song itself.
Like the rest of the short release that surrounds, it confirms the experimentalist crux underlying Pontiac‘s craft and the individual poise of Cotton‘s songwriting in collaboration with Christie. I don’t know that Pontiac are or aren’t working their way toward a full-length — aren’t we all, on some level? — but Night Tripper and a UFO asserts/affirms a progression underway in the craft, and a distinct creative voice coming into focus. Not everyone who hears it will be able to get on board, but Pontiac is likely to land in craterous fashion with the right kind of oddball ears. Take a breath before you dive in.
For further background, Cotton was kind enough to present a track-by-track look at where the material is coming from, going into detail on some of the meld of influence and such. There’s a lot more substance to what’s going on here than the 17 minutes really hints. I encourage you in a spirit of friendship to dig in.
And please, enjoy:
Night Tripper and a UFO Track-by-Track with Dave Cotton
My drummer Drew and I had a really enjoyable time making the first Pontiac release “Hard Knox” in 2023 at Little Red Sound in New Westminster with Felix Fung. When we recorded the first tune “Ether” for the session, Felix asked us to come into the control room and listen to the take. He pointed to the screen with the soundwave of our performance and said “you guys could have recorded this to tape.” What he was referring to was the old recording technique of recording to two inch tape, where the performance had to be flawless. Personally, I was excited to hear that. Especially coming from Felix who is as savvy a musician as anyone you will meet.
The new record Night Tripper and UFO was less easy to record. I wrote the songs in half the time and we weren’t as well rehearsed. We finished the session feeling humbled which was the polar opposite of the Hard Knox sessions. Despite this it was still enjoyable and I think the sounds we got the 2nd time are seemingly higher quality.
As well this was my first time working with Noah Mintz at the Lacquer Channel based in Toronto. Noah is a bit of a Canadian musician legend. It’s pretty exciting as a songwriter to finally work with him and as a result I feel like I have a batch of some of my best tunes in this release.
“Death Valley”
I really wanted to write a song that sounded like the band Cactus and their cover of Bukka White’s blues classic “Parchman Farm Blues.” For those having heard the Cactus version, it’s very busy complex drumming, with really busy guitar playing over top. Cactus were being championed as “The American Led Zeppelin” during that era. I think they only put out two records, maybe three, before they split, but if you listen to the performance on their tune, it’s pretty incredible. Aside from that I was also trying to capture the spirit of 70s hard rock like Montrose, Budgie, Bloodrock, Groundhogs, Blue Cheer, and Bubble Puppy.
Death Valley’s working title was “Hobby Farm.” In writing it, it was a literal riff farm of ideas. When I edited them altogether finally, it was tricky to keep the busy spirit of the arrangement but also make it sort of linear in a traditional song context.
“Night Tripper and a UFO”
This tune’s working title for a long time was “Shake Dope” as I was trying to write a song like “Shake the Dope Out” by Warlocks from LA. Sara Wazani of Vancouver group “The Brahmankind” stopped by the studio the day we tracked vocals. She contributed some amazing singing to the track.
“Bible of the Roaring Twenties”
Part of my intention with Pontiac is to create a sort of subversive take on late 80s and early 90s Canadian Content groups like The Northern Pikes, Skydiggers, Glass Tiger, Frozen Ghost, and The Pursuit of Happiness. I can hear me going for that on this track. My love of John Squire from the Stone Roses is on full display as well with the guitar phrases, especially the pull off lead lines.
This song also sounds like the Eagles on acid to my ears. I was definitely influenced by the group the Four Freshmen with all the vocal harmonies. This song started out as me trying to write something “surfy” like Link Wray. Funny how songs rarely sound like the original intention.
“Cut the Competition to Shreds”
I read “On the Road Again” by Jack Kerouc this year. The book’s themes of manic wanderlust, and road trip adventures were an influence on the lyrics for this tune. I started out trying to write something like Atlanta band Deerhunter but as usual, it ends up sounding completely different than intended.
Recorded at Little Red Sound Engineered and mixed by Felix Fung Mastered by Noah Mintz at Lacquer Channel Additional vocals on title track Sara Wazani
Pontiac: Guitars, bass, vocals David Cotton Drums Drew Christie
Posted in Reviews on October 17th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Writing this intro from a bench near the playground at my daughter’s grade school. It was different equipment at the time — made of unrecycled tires, because it was the ’80s — but I used to play here when I was her age too. The Pecan’s day ended about 10 minutes ago and after-school go-time has become part of the routine when we don’t have to be elsewhere. It’s chilly today — I have my hat on for the first time since winter, but if I was more used to the cold, I wouldn’t need it. If it was April, I’d be in shorts celebrating the arrival of spring. All depends on which way the planet is tipped, I guess.
Pretty sure I mentioned this at some point, but in part because the Quarterly Review is going well, I’m adding an 11th day. That brings it up to 110 releases, which, frankly, is just stupid. I don’t really have a reason I’m doing any of it except that I am. I feel the same about a lot of this lately.
As happens with any decent QR more than a week long, I’m behind on news. I don’t really have anything to say about a new Dax Riggs song or an Acid Bath reunion without any context, and I’m not cool enough to be in the know on any of it, but Roadburn has done a lineup announcement that I’d like to post and Uncle Acid announced a US tour, so there’s stuff to catch up on. Tuesday and on, I suppose. Good thing the internet exists or disseminating any of this information might have any stakes to it whatsoever.
Quarterly Review #81-90:
—
Castle, Evil Remains
Hammerheart Records steps forth to issue the masterful metallurgy of Castle‘s Evil Remains. The duo of bassist/vocalist Liz Blackwell and guitarist/vocalist Mat Davis work with drummer Mike Cotton on the 37-minute eight-tracker that’s the first new Castle LP since 2018’s Deal Thy Fate (review here), and their take on dark heavy rock meeting in a pocketknife alley with doom, thrash and classic metal continues to be utterly their own. “Queen of Death,” “Nosferatu Nights,” the swaggering “Evil Remains” itself, all the way down to the twisting leads, dual-vocals and hard-chug of “Cold Grave” — the message of the album is glaring across its span in how undervalued Castle are and have been over their 15 years, but even that can’t top the vibrancy of the songs themselves, which have long given up genre concerns in pursuit of the individualism they’ve found.
Clearly, Vancouver’s Waingro titled their new release Sports in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Huey Lewis album of the same name. It’s hard to find the influence of the 1980s pop superstar — who, with Sports, really came into his own, commercially and artistically, according to American Psycho — in the band’s ripper heavy hardcore punk, but they’ve got five tracks in 11 minutes, so there’s no risk of overstaying their welcome with the likes of the minute-long fuzz instrumental “Masonic Falls” or the apocalyptic post-hardcore of centerpiece “Brougham,” which follows the opening pair of “Fuel for Vomit” and “Sports,” which don’t seem to have been put together accidentally as the EP closes with its two shortest pieces in “Masonic Falls” and the subsequent “Pray for Blackout.” Both are under two minutes long, and while the former is something of a breather after the assault of “Brougham,” “Pray for Blackout” is vicious and pummeling, leaving on an intense, raw note in which Waingro bask.
15-minute opener “Dåderman Renoverar” jams its way into a sax-topped ’50 bop and swing, like you’re down at the soda shop getting a pull of root beer and here come these crazy Swedish psychedelic jammers to get the hula-hoops spinning, so yes, För Samtida Djur 2 is very much a Kungens Män release. As well it should be, following just months behind the preceding För Samtida Djur 1 (review here) with four more pieces piped in from the greater distances of Out There in improv rock-as-jazz psychedelic fashion. “Dåderman Renoverar” is leadoff and longest (immediate points), while “Väntar På Zonen” (8:28) is less of a build than a mellow dwell, “Skör Lugg” (11:43) hypnotizes with guitar before unfurling a pastoralism worthy of Sweden’s history of progressive psych-folk and “Gubbar Reser Sig” (8:36) ends with a bit of bounce and build amid brighter jangle that they let unwind at the finish, completing the cycle in duly eccentric fashion. This band is a treasure, make no mistake. Every time they step in a room, someone should be recording.
Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that Caffeine‘s The Threshold feels so tense and taut since it executes its eight songs in 29 minutes — 10 of which are dedicated to “Ghost Town” and “The Agency” on side B — but as its two sides play out, the Hanover, Germany-based trio of vocalist/bassist Denis Radoncic, guitarist Andre Werk and drummer/vocalist Enrico “Rocko” Winkler, plus Sebi on keys and guitar, find a progressive heavy thrust that’s informed by early Mastodon in its crunch and the rearing-up of riffs on “Last Train” and the twisting rhythms of the title-track, but from a post-hardcore rush in “The THreshold” to the humming tones of the penultimate interlude “Citadel” — which has a more percussive counterpart in side A’s “Rorschach’s Waltz” to the pro-shop heavy metal of “Dead End,” Caffeine‘s material sounds thoughtful in its construction without being a gimme in terms of influence or losing itself in the intensity as it unfolds. This is the band’s second record. It’s a fucking beast.
They’re delivered in a deathly rasp, as perhaps it would need to be, before the clean vocals arrive, but the lyrics in “Space is Now Tainted” from The Mountain King‘s 13th album in 10 years, Stoma, are among the most fitting encapsulations of life under apocalypse-capitalism that I’ve seen. The whole song is brilliant, and it’s one of eight on the 48-minute LP, so I’m not trying to neglect anything else, but when I see lines like, “And when the last tree is down/You will climb the bodies of the ones who didn’t drown,” it’s hard not to be taken aback. The later “Dripping Bats” offers thoughts and prayers for the death of god, so the righteousness is by no means isolated as The Mountain King find a version of doom metal the chug of which has learned at least as much from Carcass‘ Heartwork as anything Black Sabbath ever did, and pushes into avant miserablism in “Twomb” or the intermittently volatile/gorgeous “To the Caves!,” which would seem to be the end The Mountain King see for human decline. Back to the caves. At least the end of the world turned up some good art. I wish more bands would dare to have an opinion.
Time will tell how the balance of NWOBHM grandstanding and from-farther-back boogie shakes out in the sound of German newcomers Kant, but for now, it’s an intriguing blend on the Aschaffenburg-based four-piece’s debut album, Paranoia Pilgrimage, and with the backing of Sound of Liberation Records, one might take the cavernous vocals, cultish melodies and declarative guitar work as part of the needed injection of fresh perspectives that the European heavy underground has been receiving the last few years in generational turnover. That is to say, there’s potential in the nuance of a song like “Traitors Lair,” which injects from flute-prog into the proceedings, and even as Kant search for ‘their sound,’ what they’re finding is likewise varied and exciting, if not blindingly original. The sharper corners of “Dark Procession” and the atmospheric depth offered in opener “The Great Serpent” both find an underpinning of darker, more cultish sounds — unsurprisingly, “Occult Worship” bears that out as well — but when the lead cut launches into its solo late in its five-minute going, Kant revel in the freedom of that breakout. Wherever time and their exploration takes them, Paranoia Pilgrimage is the foundation on which they’ll build.
With a mix and master by Karl Daniel Lidén (Katatonia, Dozer, Greenleaf, Vaka, Demon Cleaner, etc.) building on the production helmed by guitarist/vocalist Luc Bourgeois and guitarist Shawn Rice, it’s little wonder Sandveiss‘ third full-length, Standing in the Fire, sounds as full and charged as it does, from the first tones of “I’ll Be Rising” through drummer Dominic Gaumond‘s clinic in “Bleed Me Dry.” Completed by bassist Maxime Moisan, who is the force behind the propulsive “Wait and See” and the later, more expansive “These Cold Hands,” Sandveiss present Standing in the Fire as a showcase of multifaceted songwriting intent. The title-track, opener “I’ll Be Rising,” and the careening “Fade (Into the Night)” are catchy uptempo fuzzers kin to the ethic of Valley of the Sun, but “No Love Here” and the ensuing huge roll of “Bleed Me Dry” bring a stately cast and highlight some of the variety of mood and purpose amid all the heft and professional-grade craft throughout.
If you like your sludge noisy — or your noise sludged — aggressive and pummeling, Plant signal from Madison, Wisconsin, with their first album, Cosmic Phytophthora, a gnashing and duly punishing 44-minute/six-song assault that hits a particularly escape-proof crescendo in side B’s “Envenoming the Carrion” (11:59) and “Skyburial” (11:04) before closing with the harsh tumult of “Wolf Plague.” Once upon a time bands like Axehandle and The Mighty Nimbus walked the earth. Plant would stand well alongside either, with leadoff “Until it Dies” cracking open a can — I’ll assume lime seltzer? — before the drums kick in on what’s basically a spoken-word-topped riff introducing the seethe and tones that define what’s to come, screaming by the time its three minutes are up. “Anthracnos Stalk Rot” and the outright brutality of “Root Worm” follow and underscore the impression of a horticultural thematic, but whether you’re digging on plant parts or reeling from the various punches the band throw along the way, it’s hard not to be moved by a debut that has such a clear idea of what it’s about. Make it loud, make it caustic, make it hurt. Riffs to break oneself upon.
Tommy and the Teleboys, Gods, Used, in Great Condition
There are threads of punk and classic rock running through Tommy and the Teleboys‘ dance-ready debut long-player, Gods, Used in Great Condition, but ultimately the album is neither of them. United under a scope that includes psychedelia, proggy-jazz and maybe a bit of heavy blues, the post-modern nine-song outing has a depth of mix all the more emphasized through the band’s stylistic range, but it’s a feeling of brashness that seems most to bring the songs together and the vital sense of command in the tracks themselves. Each follows its own plot, whether it’s the willfully off-kilter “Loverboy” or textured pieces like “Seninle” and “Srevokk” later on, but “Gib Mir” and “Jesus Crowd” at the start — shades of Bowie Ameriphobia in the latter — give Gods, Used in Great Condition quirk to coincide with all its hey-we’re-not-40-yet urgency, and while the band range hither and yon in terms of style, there’s nowhere the melodic wash of “Jeffrey 3000” or the otherworldly wistful strum of “Night at the Junkyard” go that feels out of place in the surrounding context, and Tommy and the Teleboys seem to be serving notice to anyone clued in of intention to disrupt. One hopes they do.
MEDB is a new solo-project by Rodger Boyle, who also runs Cursed Monk Records and features in bands like Noosed, ÚATH and Stonecarver, among others, and this first demo unveils four songs working under the stated concept of conveying the landscape/ambience of Boyle‘s home in Waterford, Ireland. Certainly the ambience of “Returning Home” is darker than the photos from the Port Láirge tourism committee, but while MEDB lays claim to a drumless drone on that nine-and-a-half-minute opener, “Glasha,” “Mahon Falls” and “The Wild Deer of Sillaheen” conjure a more full-band impression, plodding in “Glasha” before “Mahon Falls” digs into a more open and meditative feel in one guitar layer while lower distortion holds sway beneath, and “The Wild Deer of Sillaheen” earns its post-metallic antlers at the finish. So you’re saying there’s more than one thing going on in Waterford? Reasonable to expect for the oldest city in the Republic of Ireland, and all the better for inspiring future manifestation from MEDB, whatever form that might take. You could do worse than learning about a place through audio.
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 1st, 2024 by JJ Koczan
I like to imagine that wherever Vancouver gothy-type doom metallers Tribunal go, rain follows. In Seattle? Well that wouldn’t be such a surprise, but when the downpour starts in Vegas or L.A. or Reno, people might be scratching their heads a bit. Not you, provided you get tickets, but, you know, squares. The nine-day jaunt has been given the suitable billing of ‘Doom Over the West Coast,’ and it’s not the first stretch the band have undertaken in support of last year’s The Weight of Remembrance (review here). They were recently on the Eastern Seaboard and did Western Canada last year as well, leaving a trail of classy misery behind them that surely still swirls in the air.
The PR wire brought dates for your perusal:
TRIBUNAL: Vancouver Symphonic Doom Act Announces Doom Over The West Coast September Tour Dates; Acclaimed The Weight Of Remembrance Debut LP Out Now On 20 Buck Spin
Following their North American East Coast tour with Mares Of Thrace last month, Vancouver-based gothic/orchestral doom collective TRIBUNAL this week announces an upcoming tour of the Western US to close out the Summer. The Doom Over The West Coast tour will run from September 12th through the 21st, with shows booked in Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington.
TRIBUNAL Doom Over The West Coast: 9/12/2024 Aces High Saloon – Salt Lake City, UT 9/13/2024 Sinwave – Las Vegas, NV 9/14/2024 Knucklehead – Los Angeles, CA 9/15/2024 Brick By Brick – San Diego, CA 9/17/2024 Ivy Room – Albany, CA 9/18/2024 Midnight Coffee Roasting – Reno, NV 9/19/2024 John Henry’s – Eugene, OR 9/20/2024 Dante’s – Portland, OR 9/21/2024 The Funhouse – Seattle, WA
TRIBUNAL continues touring in support of their acclaimed debut LP, The Weight Of Remembrance, released in June of 2023 on 20 Buck Spin. Featuring classically trained cellist/bassist/vocalist Soren Mourne and guitarist/vocalist Etienne Flinn, TRIBUNAL’s brick-heavy classic doom riffage borders on death metal heaviness, like My Dying Bride filtered through a colossal stained-glass edifice. The sound is instantly familiar with nods to the ‘80s and ‘90s but never sounds retro or like mere homage. Rather, The Weight Of Remembrance evokes the feeling of a painstakingly composed orchestral movement fit for a crumbling cathedral overgrown with moss. The duo frequently trades off vocals alternating between haunted wailing cleans, scathing black-metal style shrieks and dread-filled death calls.
At the risk of being Dude On The Internet With Opinions™, I’ll profess to having strong feelings about Strapping Young Lad‘s 2005 opus, Alien. Specifically, about the version of the song “Love?” that appears on the final record.
Sometime between when Century Media sent out the sleeve-promo CDs for review and when the album was actually released, both now 19 years ago, there was an edit made to “Love?” that took out just over a minute of runtime. What’s actually missing — and yes, it is very much missing — is a section of muted chugs, a turn back to a tremolo riff and an “Awww shit/Fuck it.” The playlist above has both versions — the longer one is tacked onto the end, along with the concurrent Melvins cover “Zodiac.”
And I acknowledge that if you’ve never heard the record before, or maybe didn’t hear the original version of “Love?” as part of the original 11-song/55-minute tracklisting coming out of “Shitstorm” and going into “Shine,” then maybe it wouldn’t be such a big deal, but I’ll tell you honestly, I took the CD from the jewel case I eventually got and put it in the sleeve, and took the one from the promo and put that in the jewel case. That’s the album in my mind. The other “Love?” sounds butchered to my ears.
Having that association, and “Love?” as part of what I’ll put forward as one of metal’s most righteous opening salvos regardless of microgenre — the intro “Imperial” and “Skeksis” and “Shitstorm” merrily blasting away and running through a litany of power-declarations and complaints; to wit, the lyrics of “Shitstorm”: “And I don’t want to fight because I don’t know what’s WRONG or RIGHT/But I’ll do ANYTHING just to get some FUCKING sleep tonight/And I can’t even EAT/And I can’t even FUCKING PISS/All I’ve been doing is thinking about GOD and DEATH/Infinity” in founding guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist/producer/principle-songwriter Devin Townsend‘s trademark conversational-with-self style — all drawing up to the exhaled single word question, “love?” and the immediate snapback answer, “Children!”
And that’s where you find out what the purported shitstorm is really about. Having a baby. Underscoring all that initial tumult as Townsend, guitarist/backing vocalist Jed Simon, bassist Byron Stroud and megadrummer Gene Hoglan tore away at the fabric of the universe while dropping references to Jim Henson’s legit-terrifying-to-a-five-year-old 1986 film The Dark Crystal was insecurity about procreating, thinking about love and the power dynamics of relationships (“This love, it’s about control”), the direction of one’s life in the face of one of the most major changes one can make to it. Dude was scared having a kid would wreck is life.
Townsend‘s correspondingly brilliant solo follow-up, 2006’s Synchestra (discussed here), worked under a similar thematic and tied to Alien in its lyrics and music. The two are very much complements, but Strapping Young Lad were unto themselves in catharsis, and that’s audible in “Love?” (either version, admittedly) and the from-void screams of “Shine,” which follows and the gallop-thrash charge of “We Ride” trying to see the upside of life outside the band from within its cycles while a little bit making fun of Pantera in the solos, the way the wretched-but-funny shout at the start of “Possessions” becomes the opening line that unfolds seconds later into chugging impact and a build of tension as Townsend grapples lyrically, “Children and money and family and DEATH and TAXES and CAREER and PICKET FENCES…JUST GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!/TAKE IT!!!/FUCK IT ALL!!!”
“Possessions” makes it even clearer early on, “”…And being HUMAN is FUCKED as it is./With all these questions of FAITH, and of…KIDS!!!/So what do you wanna do now baby???/Do you wanna have a fucking BABY?!” The answer that comes in the song is an immediate and emphatic negative. As I understand it, this is a traditionally masculine point of view — reproduction as subtracting from (your life) rather than adding to (your family) — but stereotyping it undercuts the honesty of expression throughout Alien, raw language used to convey raw feelings. Backed by a choir for its push-pull, ugh-pop hook, “Possessions” prefaces some of the more accessible turns SYL would make on their cobbled-together 2006 final LP, The New Black, but is a highlight in context as Alien plunges deeper into its second half, giving over to the acoustic-led Floydian escapism of “Two Weeks.”
Remember vacation? “What do you wanna do now, baby?/Should we take the day, maybe go to the beach?” The opening lines set the scene: easy breezy, no need to be anywhere and thus able to be everywhere. Compare it to “So what do you wanna do now, baby?” from the song before, and it’s clear there’s a different kind of life being represented here, at least in ideal. Freedom of movement and a claim to one’s own time. “Two Weeks” drifts and drones in preface to what the closing 12-minute experimentalist sample/synth excursion “Info Dump” will bring, but before the band gets there, “Thalamus” begins the culmination by returning — gradually, considering how prone the band was to plunge headfirst at this point — to the onslaught with its verse and more melodic chorus, releasing some if not all of the jaw-clench before moving into an almost operatic but still definitely metal procession and “Zen” finding its peace, such as it is, in Hoglan‘s endless double-kick and resolve, the line “Connect now and emerge” calling back to “We Ride” before it all comes to a head and gives over to “Info Dump” at the finish.
Toward the end of that extended drone piece, a machine static takes hold and is willfully abrasive — I guess after so much blowout, that’s what a blowout might sound like. I’ll admit I don’t always listen to “Info Dump” in its totality, but it’s usually a couple minutes before I realize I’m in it because Alien front-to-back leaves you so mesmerized and/or punchdrunk. As regards heavy metal, it’s one of the best records I’ve ever heard, and even before I had a kid, its tales of terror were vividly relatable. The better part of two decades later, they remain such.
I won’t attempt to summarize the varied directions of Devin Townsend‘s career since. You’re on the internet. You can look it up. But for me, while Strapping Young Lad‘s early-career industrial-metal-let’s-do-Fear–Factory-but-less-robots-and-more-personality take holds a special place, Alien is a pinnacle among several in Townsend‘s catalog. For something more recent, less aggro and perhaps working from a similarly over-the-top point of view, hit up his 2019 Empath album, though genius abounds in the discography, the label-needs-a-single “Love?” edit notwithstanding.
Either way, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
—
Next week is Freak Valley Festival. Flight is booked for Wednesday, but I don’t know that I’m actually going to make it. My mother was scheduled to have knee surgery this week, had to postpone, now it’s slated for — you guessed it — this coming Wednesday. The Patient Mrs.’ take was, “You seem like you could use some time standing in a field with people you like.” She is correct, but what’s a boy to do.
That trip hangs pretty much in the balance of timing. If her surgery is early in the day, I can be there to support her and my sister and then go to the airport and embark on a few days that I very much consider as supporting myself. If it’s afternoon, which it was gonna be this week, less. But my mother is in her late 70s and getting her knee replaced has been years in the making and she’s finally willing to do it because basically she can’t walk anymore, so if it’s happening, I don’t have much choice. Certainly I’ve been that selfish in the past — what’s the point of being the youngest kid if you can’t? — but this is my mother, and she is both my only remaining parent and the only one I ever connected with on any human level.
It is… complicated.
Or maybe just sad.
This is a long weekend. The Pecan is off from school today (it’s coming on 7AM, she should be up momentarily), Monday and Tuesday for an extended Memorial Day giveback of snow days worked into the calendar apparently without need because it doesn’t snow here anymore. Definitely used to. The Patient Mrs. wants to go north to her mother’s place on the beach in Connecticut — The Cottage, we call it — and either tomorrow or Sunday she’ll take the kid and head up.
At her suggestion, I’ll stay home for another day, do as much of Monday and Tuesday’s writing as I can stand, and then likely spend the rest of that day in a stoned stupor playing the already-at-100-perecent-complete Tears of the Kingdom, slaughtering Lynels and picking mushrooms in pursuit of restorative boredom, loin-girding for following them north on Sunday or Monday, staying there I guess until Tuesday so we can all come home and be tired going into the shortened school week and the arrival of June with all of its what’s-that-black-dot-on-the-ceiling little jumpy spiders and emergent Northeastern humidity.
The dog needs a bath. The kid needs one more. I could use one myself. We’ve been extra-extra-broke this just-ended semester, and today’s payday, so Costco’s in the offing and maybe Job Lot if we can keep it together long enough to hit two stores. Big if.
As implied above, I’ve got stuff slated for Monday and Tuesday despite the long weekend here. There’s news to catch up on from being in the Quarterly Review, and premieres and all that throughout the week, regardless of my travel situation. Fuck I hope I get to go to that festival, but — and I know this won’t surprise you if you’ve ever spent more than five minutes on this site — I’m not optimistic about my chances.
Whatever you’re up to (or not), I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Watch your head, be safe, all that stuff. And thank you for reading, as always.
