The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Blake Carrera of Aiwass

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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

I’d describe my music as psychedelic doom. I didn’t make a conscious decision to start playing psychedelic doom or anything. It wasn’t like I sat down and said “yep, this is what I’ll be playing today.” Instead, it came from years of listening to music and playing downtuned guitars and one day it just started coming out of me. This was all during the pandemic when no one had anything better to do. Some people started baking; I started writing and recording an album that had been in my head in one form or another since I was fourteen or fifteen years old.

Describe your first musical memory.

My first musical memories are all about being in the car. This was back in the day when cassettes were contemporaneous and not collector’s items. We had so many of them. I remember the Beatles, the Stones, and Black Sabbath always being on. Before that, it was all lullabies I guess. I still remember those somewhat. I lucked out in that my mom always said she couldn’t remember the entirety of traditional lullabies so she sang what she knew – Elvis, The Doors, The Beatles, stuff like that. I guess if you really, really go back that’s my earliest musical recollection – being rocked to sleep while my mom sang me those songs.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

Maybe it’s not the best per se, but the most important musical memory is the first time I picked up a guitar. Originally, I wanted to play drums. I just wanted to make as much sound as possible. But that wasn’t going to jive with my mom. Instead, I was told I could have an acoustic guitar – little did she know I’d save up to buy an electric guitar and a loud amp down the line. But that first music shop experience where I held a bunch of cheap starter acoustic guitars was so important to my development as an artist and a human being. I felt an immediate connection to the instrument even though I had no clue how to play it. Something about it was calling to me. Then came the frustration and the blisters that turned into calluses, but I sure hated the thing for a while. Nonetheless, it was that pure memory of first holding a guitar that kept me going and still does. I can’t say that I really have any memories that compare in terms of the longevity of their impact – not good ones to say the least.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

This is a hard one. I like to think that people are, at heart, good, but that belief has really been tested in the last few years. Whether it’s the political environment we live in or this BS about not getting the COVID vaccine, it seems like the worst in people is really coming to the forefront. I find it harder and harder to believe in the good in people, which is really sad. I’m starting to wonder whether we’re all just selfish and narcissistic at heart. There’s still plenty of good out there – I’ve met some incredible people since I started this project – but I see so much negativity and hatred out there that it’s getting harder to see that goodness.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

Artistic progression can only be a good thing. Not everyone may agree because some artists think they’re progressing when they’re really stumbling, but I think that as long as the artist feels that they are progressing, really good things are going to happen. The reason for that is that progression is a byproduct of growth, something that we should all be aspiring towards. An artist doesn’t just grow as an artist – they grow as a person. Some people might not like the results. A lot of people hated Bob Dylan for going electric, but he changed rock and roll forever (I would say for the better). The important thing is to cling to that sense of personal growth and to follow the wave of progression to see where it leads you. I know that the songs I’m working on now, for example, are the best ones I’ve done. I think they’re the most mature that I’ve produced. Some people might prefer what I’ve done and want me to stick to “what I’m good at” but that isn’t why I’m doing any of this. I’m doing this to grow as a human being and express myself. So, long story short, fuck ’em if they don’t like it. Artistic progression is everything, even if your audience doesn’t necessarily appreciate it. You have to progress in order to avoid stagnation which is, let’s face it, certain death for an artist.

How do you define success?

Ultimately, success is pretty ephemeral and hard to define, I believe. Part of that is because success is so subjective. It’s not something that I think you can quantify through commodities – money, possessions, things like that – because I don’t think that’s what success is about. Success is about happiness I think. Success is about feeling fulfilled. When it comes to music, success is about finding an audience that connects with your music. It doesn’t have to make you a lot of money or make you rich – it just has to find an audience who thinks your music matters and is worth listening to.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

After I finished my first album, my mom got very sick very suddenly and passed away. It was incredibly hard to watch her waste away and ultimately fade away. She was in the ICU for about a month and I had to watch, day by day, while she drifted away from me. Being mostly raised only by her, we were pretty close. On top of that, the ICU ward was full of people on ventilators from COVID. I saw some really nightmarish things in there. I never doubted the danger of COVID, but I’m much more aware of just how bad it is now that I’ve seen it. It really makes me more comfortable in my atheism because if there was a god, that being is either very vengeful or doesn’t care about us. That’s in my music a lot – talking about how people are gods and there isn’t some entity up there in the clouds. It just so happened that the moment that I was most secure in my lack of belief in a god came after I was finished writing the first EP and album.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

For my second album, I’d love to create a concept album. On the first album, the concept was really the occult, Jungian psychology, my own mental turmoil and struggles. But for the second album, I’d like to craft more of a story. I think part of that will come from forming a band and writing with other people. Overall, though, creating a story and telling that story through music is one of the things I’m most eager to do. I think concept albums are pretty much the apex of what you can do and I think I have the songwriting chops to actually get it done.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

Not to get too philosophical here, but art is about uplifting the mind and the soul – whatever the soul is. I think that art is the highest form of expression, communication, and interpersonal relationship-building. Without it, what are we but blind and dumb? We’re just organisms, animals. In my opinion, what distinguishes us from the rest of the natural world is our ability to create art. There’s so much out there, whether it’s visual, musical, literary, etc. and all of it is worth consuming in as much quantity as possible. The more that we imbibe art, the more that we become whole and fully actualized.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

This is a hard one since most of my life revolves around music and work. But the thing that keeps me going when I’m not playing music is reading. I have a lot of great books on the docket. Some Crowley as always, a few other occult thinkers, but I’m also really diving into older classics and philosophy again. Right now I’m reading Paradise Lost and I hope to follow that up with Dante’s Inferno. On the side, I’m reading some Nietzsche, some Schoppenhauer. I’m really interested in keeping my mental blade sharp and I think reading is the best way to do that. Aside from reading, I’m a huge sports fan. Really enjoying the current NFL season.

https://www.facebook.com/aiwassbandaz
https://aiwassband.bandcamp.com/

Aiwass, Wayward Gods (2021)

According to my notes, today is Day Three of the Fall 2021 Quarterly Review. Are you impressed to have made it this far? I kind of am, but, you know, I would be. I hope you’ve managed to find something you dig over the course of the first 20 records, and if not, why not? I’ve certainly added to a few year-end lists between debut albums, regular-old albums and short releases. Today’s no different. Without giving away any secrets ahead of time, this is a pretty wacky stylistic spread from the start and that’s how I like it. Maybe by next Tuesday it’ll all make a kind of sense, and maybe it won’t. In any case, this is apparently my idea of fun, so let’s have fun.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

Thief, The 16 Deaths of My Master

Someone used the phrase “techno for metalheads” in an email to me the other day (about something else) and I can’t get it out of my head concerning Thief‘s The 16 Deaths of My Master. From the swelling distortion of opener “Underking” to the odd bit of harpsicord that shows up in “Scorpion Mother” to the bassy rumble underscoring “Fire in the Land of Endless Rain,” the post-everything “Lover Boy,” droning “Life Clipper,” lazyman’s hip-hop on “Gorelord” and “Crestfaller” and Beck-on-acid finale in “Seance for Eight Oscillators,” there’s certainly plenty of variety to go around, but in the dance-dream “Apple Eaters” and goth-with-’90s-beatmaking “Bootleg Blood” and pretend-your-car-ride-is-a-movie-soundtrack “Wing Clipper,” the metallic underpinning of Dylan Neal (also Botanist) is still there, and the lyrical highlight “Teenage Satanist” rings true. Still, songs like the consuming washer “Night Spikes and subsequent drum’n’bass-vibing “Victim Exit Stage Left” are inventive, fascinating, short and almost poppy in themselves but part of a 16-track entirety that is head-spinning. If that’s techno for metalheads, so be it. Horns up for dat bass.

Thief on Facebook

Prophecy Productions website

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Rise to the Sky, Per Aspera Ad Astra

The album’s title is kind of another interpretation of the band’s name, the idea behind the Latin phrase Per Aspera Ad Astra being moving through challenges to the stars and the Santiago, Chile, one-man death-doom outfit being Rise to the Sky. Multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Sergio González Catalán reportedly wrote and arranged the title-track in the days following his father’s funeral, and the grand, flowing string sounds and engrossing heft that ensues feel genuinely mournful, capping with a progression of solo piano before “End My Night” seems to pick up where “The Loss of Hope” left off. The lyrics to closer “Only Our Past Remains” derive from a poem by Catalán‘s father, and the sense of tribute is palpable across the album’s 46 minutes. I’m not sure how the Russian folk melody bonus instrumental “Horse” might tie in, but neither is it out of place among “Deep Lament” and “Bleeding Heart,” the latter of which dares some clean vocals alongside the gutturalism, and in context, the rest of the album seems to answer with loss what opener “Life in Suspense” is waiting for.

Rise to the Sky on Facebook

GS Productions website

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Birth, Demo

Those familiar with Brian Ellis and Conor Riley‘s work in Astra should not be surprised to find them exploring ’70s-style progressive rock in Birth, and anybody who heard Psicomagia already knows that bassist Trevor Mast and drummer Paul Marrone (also Radio Moscow) are a rhythm section well up to whatever task you might want to set before them. Thus Birth‘s Demo arrives some four years after its recording, with “Descending Us” (posted here) leading off in dramatic Deep Purple-y fashion backed by the jammier but gloriously mellotroned and Rhodes’ed “Cosmic Wind” and “Long Way Down,” which digs itself into a righteous King Crimson payoff with due class even as it revels in its rough edges. Marrone‘s since left the band and whoever replaces him has big shoes to fill, but god damn, just put out a record already, would you?

Birth on Facebook

Bad Omen Records website

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Old Horn Tooth, True Death

Wielding mighty tonality and meeting Monolordian lurch with an aural space wide enough to contain it, Old Horn Tooth follow their 2019 debut LP, From the Ghost Grey Depths, with the single-song EP True Death, proffering a largesse rarely heard even from London’s ultra-populated heavy underground and working their way into, out of, back into, out of and through a nod that the converted among riff-heads likely find irresistible and hypnotic in kind. To say the trio of guitarist/vocalist Chris, bassist/keyboardist Ollie and drummer Mark ride out the groove is perhaps underselling it, but as my first exposure to the band, I’m only sorry to have missed out on both the orange tapes and the limited flash drives they were selling. So it goes. Slow riffs, fast sales. I’ll catch them next time and drown my sorrows in the interim in this immersive, probably-gonna-get-picked-up-by-some-label-for-a-vinyl-release offering. And hey, maybe if you and I both email them, they’ll press a few more cassettes.

Old Horn Tooth on Facebook

Old Horn Tooth on Bandcamp

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Solemn Lament, Solemn Lament

Pro-shop-level doom from an initial public offering by Solemn Lament, bringing together the significant likes of vocalist Phil Swanson (ex-Hour of 13, Vestal Claret, countless others), drummer Justin DeTore (Magic Circle and more recently Dream Unending) as well as Blind Dead‘s Drew Wardlaw on bass and Adam Jacino on lead guitar, and Eric Wenstrom on rhythm guitar. These personages cross coastlines to three tracks and intro of grand and immersive doom metal, willfully diving into the Peaceville-three legacy on “Stricken” to find the beauty in darkness after the lumber and chug of the nine-minute “Celeste” resolves with patient grace and “Old Crow” furthers the Paradise Lost spirit in its central riff. Geography is an obvious challenge, but if Solemn Lament can build on the potential they show in this debut EP, they could be onto something really special.

Solemn Lament on Facebook

Solemn Lament on Bandcamp

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Terminus, The Silent Bell Toll

A stunning third full-length from Fayetteville, Arkansas, trio Terminus, The Silent Bell Toll bridges doomed heft and roll, progressive melodicism and thoughtful heavy rock construction into a potent combination of hooks and sheer impact. It’s worth noting that the 10-minute closer of the nine-song/40-minute outing, “Oh Madrigal,” soars vocally, but hell, so does the 3:18 “Black Swan” earlier. Guitarist Sebastian Thomas (also cover art) and bassist Julian Thomas share vocal duties gorgeously throughout while drummer Scott Wood rolls songs like “The Lion’s Den” and “The Silent Bell Toll” — that nod under the solo; goodness gracious — in such a way as to highlight the epic feel even as the structure beneath is reinforced. With three instrumentals peppered throughout to break up the chapters as intro, centerpiece and penultimate, there’s all the more evidence that Terminus are considered in their approach and that the level of realization across The Silent Bell Toll is not happenstance.

Terminus on Facebook

Terminus on Bandcamp

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Lunar Ark, Recurring Nightmare

Clearly named in honor of its defining intent, Recurring Nightmare is the three-song/48-minute debut full-length from Boston-based charred sludge outfit, who take the noisy heft of ultra-disaffected purveyors like Indian or Primitive Man and push it into a blackened metallic sphere further distinguished by harshly ambient drones. One can dig Neurosis-style riffing out of the 19:30 closer “Guillotine” or opener “Torch and Spear,” but the question is how much one’s hand is going to be sliced open in that process. And the answer is plenty. Their tones don’t so much rumble as crumble, vocals are willfully indecipherable throat-clenching screams, and the drums duly glacial. There is little kindness to be had in 16:43 centerpiece “Freedom Fever Dream” — originally broken into two parts as a demo in 2019 — which resolves itself lyrically in mourning a lost ideal over a dense lurch that’s met with still-atmospheric churning. Their established goal, if that’s what it is, has been met with all appropriate viciousness and extremity.

Lunar Ark on Facebook

Trepanation Recordings on Bandcamp

Lunar Seas Records on Bandcamp

Realm and Ritual on Bandcamp

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Taxi Caveman, Taxi Caveman

An ethic toward straight-ahead riff rock is writ large throughout Taxi Caveman‘s self-titled debut full-length, the Warsaw trio offering a face-first dive into fuzz of varying sizes and shaping their material around the sleek groove of “Prisoner” or the more aggressively bent vinyl-side-launchers “Building With Fire” and “Asteroid.” There’s a highlight hook in “I, the Witch” and the instrumental “426” leads into the Dozer-esque initial verse of 10-minute closer “Empire of the Sun,” but the three-piece find their own way through ultimately, loosening some of the verse/chorus reins in order to affect more of a jammed feel. It’s a departure from the crunch of “Asteroid” or “Prisoner” and the big, big, big sound that starts “Building With Fire,” but I’m certainly not about to hold some nascent sonic diversity against them. They’re playing to genre across these 33 minutes, but they do so without pretense and with a mind toward kicking as much ass as possible. Not changing the world, but it’s not trying to and it’s fun enough in listening that it doesn’t need to.

Taxi Caveman on Facebook

Piranha Music on Bandcamp

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Droneroom, Negative Libra

“Negative Libra” runs 36:36 and is the lone track on the album that bears its name from Las Vegas-based solo-project Droneroom. The flowing work of Blake Conley develops in slow, meditative form and gradually introduces lap steel to shimmer along with its post-landscape etherealities, evocative of cinema as they are without exactly playing to one or the other film-genre tropes. That is to say, Conley isn’t strictly horror soundtracking or Western soundtracking, and so on. Perhaps in part because of that, “Negative Libra” is allowed to discover its path and flourish as it goes — I’m not sure as to the layering process of making it vis-à-vis what was tracked live and put on top after — but the sense of exploration-of-moment that comes through is palpable and serene even as the guitar comes forward just before hitting the 27-minute mark to begin the transition into the song’s noisier payoff and final, concluding hum.

Droneroom on Facebook

Somewherecold Records website

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Aiwass, Wayward Gods

Blown-out vocals add an otherworldly tinge to Arizona-based one-man-band Aiwass‘ debut full-length, Wayward Gods, giving the already gargantuan tones a sense of space to match. Opener “Titan” and closer “Mythos” seem to push even further in this regard than, say, the centerpiece “Man as God” — the last track feeling particularly Monolordly in its lumbering — but by the time “Titan” and the subsequent, 10-minute inclusion “From Chains,” which ends cold with a guest solo by Vinny Tauber of Ohio’s Taubnernaut and shifts into the cawing blackbird at the outset of “Man as God” with a purposefully jarring intent. Despite the cringe-ready cartoon-boobs cover art, the newcomer project finds a heavy niche that subverts expectation as much as it meets it and sets broad ground to explore on future outings. As an idea, “gonna start a heavy, huge-sounding band during the pandemic,” is pretty straightforward. What results from that in Aiwass runs deeper.

Aiwass on Facebook

Aiwass on Bandcamp

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