It’s all over now, I’ve got momentum on my side. This is day four of the Quarterly Review. The first three days have been nothing but a pleasure on my end, putting them together, and with just today and tomorrow left, I’m feeling pretty good about the entire endeavor. I’m not sure yet if this will be the end of the year as regards QRs, but if it is, it’s a good one to go out on.

And basically to make that determination, I need to look at next month’s schedule and see what’s coming when, when I’ll do things like the year-end poll and my own big end-of-year post. No idea on any of that yet, but I’ll get there. Getting this done in relatively smooth fashion is a help. Thanks for reading and I hope it’s been a good one for you as well.

Quarterly Review #31-40:

Psychedelic Source Records, The Initiation Outlaws

Set to release through Echodelick in the US and Weird Beard Records in the UK, in addition to Psychedelic Source Records‘ own distribution, The Initiation Outlaws brings eight pieces and a full 98-minute double-LP’s worth of cosmic improvised jamming, with a cast of regulars from the Hungarian collective — Bence Ambrus, Máté Varga, Róbert Kránitz, Krisztina Benus, Gergely Szabó — taking part in collaborative exploration with Go Kurosawa of Kikagaku Moyo, who goes from drums to bass to guitar as the release progresses, sliding right into the amorphous methodology of Psychedelic Source Records while distinguishing the heavier push in “Three Golds Reward II” or the snare work on “The King of Magic Colts and Wands I” earlier. Trance-inducing as ever, these captured moments are gorgeously fluid and immersive, active enough in parts like “The King of Magic Colts and Wands II” to defy mellowpsych-improv expectation, but abiding just the same. If you’re not there yet, it’s time to start thinking of Psychedelic Source among Europe’s finest purveyors of heavy psychedelia.

Psychedelic Source Records on Bandcamp

Echodelick Records store

Weird Beard Records store

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Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin, Stygian Bough Vol. II

The forlorn folkishness in the midsection of “Waves Become the Sky” bring to mind an extrapolation of emotive doom from the likes of Warning, but that’s understandable with Aerial Ruin and Bell Witch renewing their collaboration for Stygian Bough Vol. II, following on from a first volume (review here) in 2020. The album takes place over four extended tracks from the rolling density of the aforementioned opener through the minimalist-till-it-isn’t “King of the Wood” and the longform folk-death-doom of “From Dominion Let Them Bleed” and the melancholy triumph of heft wrought in 19-minute finale “The Told and the Leadened,” which dwells in spaces empty and full and remains conscious enough to end with tense noise and drumming. This is artistry on its own wavelength, working in its own time, and patient to a point of extremity. But they do it to offer comfort, make no mistake. There’s consolation in these songs, in addition to all the mourning.

Bell Witch website

Aerial Ruin website

Profound Lore Records website

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Giöbia, X-ÆON

Unrepentantly cosmic Italian outfit Giöbia are like a fresh coat of antimatter for space rock. The four-piece obviously hunkered down in their secret lab after 2023’s Acid Disorder (review here) and worked hard to refine their chemical compositions, such that “Voodoo Experience” nods grounded even as its synth and guitars surge beyond the thermosphere. The results show everywhere throughout X-ÆON in their outsider cohesion of classic and neo-space rocks, heavy psychedelia and oddball synthscaping, whether you’re doing the sensory thing with the dream-jam “1976” or embroiled in the four-part side B concept piece, “La Mort de la Terre,” which draws a cinematic curtain for life as we know it in “Dans la Nuit Éternelle,” a wordless epilogue that feels half a world removed from the stomp-and-verse of “The Death of the Crows,” but of course, that’s the whole idea.

Giöbia website

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Bone Church, Deliverance

The included acoustic guitar, organ and FM-radio classic rock vibes in the eight-and-a-half-minute closing title-track aren’t a coincidence. They’re part of a stated intention the band had in taking on more of a traditional sound, coming down from some of the harder-hitting doom of 2020’s Acid Communion and working in more of a ’70s-inspired style. That manifests to varying degrees throughout, as leadoff “Electric Execution” feels like it’s working in the vein of “Neon Knights” or “Turn Up the Night” in Dio Sabbathian raucousness (I know that was 1980-81, don’t @ me), and while “Lucifer Rising” has a weighted march, it’s more Scorpions than Sleep, and “Goin’ to Texas” brings in the organ to emphasize the Southern geography of the album’s centerpiece. It’s a striking turn but they pull it off for sure. “Muchachos Muchachin'” has mid-’70s charm to spare, and “Bone Boys Ride Out” seems to bridge the more modern attack of Bone Church-prior with who they are today. Not every progression plays out like you think it will, and if this is the band Bone Church have wanted to be all along, they sound accordingly right to have made the redirect.

Bone Church on Bandcamp

Ripple Music website

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Js Donny, Death Folk

The ‘soft scream’ vocals give Js Donny‘s Death Folk an immediate sense of extremity, but it’s a quiet extremity. The French solo artist — who also plays bass in adventurous Marseilles sludgers Donna Candy — released an EP with a full lineup in 2023, but this six-song/33-minute offering is more intimate. Js Donny dwells in the quiet, creepy spaces the songs create, the vocal gurgle giving shades of otherworldliness and malevolence alike. It’s called Death Folk, but especially with the electrified/distorted wash that takes hold in “Not Like That” and again at the outset of closer “Black Heart” — a biting tone, like harsher blackgaze — I can’t help but wonder if Js Donny isn’t working in a kind of post-death-metallic framing. There are no drums, which is a fair trade for what’s gained in grim ambience, but even without, the album is clear in manifesting both sides of its title, and while Js Donny isn’t the only one laying claim to death-folk as a style, how it happens here sure feels like an act of genre creation.

Js Donny on Bandcamp

Bamboo Shoes on Bandcamp

29Speedway on Bandcamp

Chrüsimüsi Records on Bandcamp

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Nuclear Dudes, Skeletal Blasphemy

In some distant future, when the history is written of our idiotic, persistently awful time, no one will ever say, “and the right-thinking people of the day had no choice but to seek refuge in avant garde cybergrind,” and that’s why history is bullshit. Skeletal Blasphemy is the third album from Nuclear Dudes and second of 2025 behind September’s Truth Paste (review here) — keep ’em coming — and is the solo-project’s most vicious and realized offering to-date. Spearhead Jon Weisnewski (Sandrider, ex-Akimbo) brings powerviolent catharsis on “Victory Pants,” the title-track and assorted others, working in collaboration with guest drummer Coady Willis (High on Fire, Big Business, Melvins), and whether it’s the punker push in “Bad Body” or the slow, undulations of the closing “The Octopus” and the burgeoning thread of progressive melody throughout these songs, it’s exactly the sort of self-bludgeoning that being alive right now requires. Album of the year? Fuck you, fuck the year, and fuck capitalism.

Nuclear Dudes on Bandcamp

The Ghost is Clear Records website

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Kronstad 23, Sommermørket

With an instrumentalist foot in progressive, horn-inclusive jazz, heavy psychedelic fluidity and a resonant warmth of tone alongside a will to meander, Kronstad 23 feel tailor-made for El Paraiso Records, run by members of Denmark’s Causa Sui. Sommermørket is the Norwegian outfit’s debut album and without sounding consumed by its own ambition to do so, it organically nestles the band in a stylistic niche that allows for the explorations in “Caesar” and “Astralreiser,” the latter of which will seem barely there in its early going at low volumes, to exist along the daring-toward-dancey opener “Dølgsmål” and building a kind of dreamy tension between the guitar and drums on “Trosten,” with none of it feeling out of place. They’ll invariably get comparisons to Kanaan, but the foundation is different and the delivery gentler, with “Helgen” finding its way on drum rolls and key/guitar drift into a classic-prog horn section in a payoff that’s somewhat understated until you look back across the five and a half minutes and see how far you’ve come. I can’t wait to hear how they grow.

Kronstad 23 on Instagram

El Paraiso Records website

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Rolls the River, Love of Driving

“Love of Driving” is the debut single from newcomer New Jersey-based krautrock-minded two-piece Rolls the River. The band brings together Dan Kirwan of Pyre Fyre on bass, guitar and vocals, and Victor Marinelli on guitar, synth, drums and vocals for a sub-five-minute cosmic reachout, obviously schooled in where it’s coming from — that is to say, one doesn’t krautrock by accident; it is a form to adopt and refine — but still feeling like an initial exploration of both style and composition. Fading in on an initial keyboardy drone, the guitar and drums come in together and the neospace shuffle is mellow as layers are added, guitar, keys, but the sense of movement brought to “Love of Driving” is enough to explain the title, whatever you might think of the Garden State’s highway system. Rather than get caught up in jughandles, though, Rolls the River harness tonal presence and linear development and still find room to include voice as part of the atmosphere. Formative, and an encouraging start.

Rolls the River on Bandcamp

Rolls the River on Instagram

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Psychonaut, World Maker

Belgium’s Psychonaut may yet teach progressive metal a lesson or two. The post-metal three-piece reach what sure feels in “Endless Currents” like a new level of expression and craft, and while at 11 songs and 60 minutes, World Maker isn’t a minor undertaking — one could easily argue making a world takes time — the utter consumption achieved in “All in Time,” which I won’t spoil any further, the blissful wash of “…Everything Else is Just the Weather” are not to be missed, and worth whatever minor investment of attention span might be required. Exciting as the intermittent metallic surges are, “Endless Erosion” caps in a quiet place, and the atmospherics across the first two and a half minutes of “Origins,” just as one example, help to bring a feeling of place (of ‘world’) to the procession. It is a vivid place Psychonaut have made, and there are listeners for whom the melodies of World Maker will be transcendental.

Psychonaut on Bandcamp

Pelagic Records website

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Cabfighter, The Sea Between Stars

Following an apparent 2024 EP called Anachronist that is below because this debut album isn’t streaming yet that I can find, The Sea Between Stars — a suitably romantic framing of what you might otherwise call ‘the void’ — brings a progressive take to classic-style doom rock. The Oregonian five-piece roll out a genuine feeling of dynamic across the album’s 10 tracks, from the proto-metal shove of “Knightrider” at the outset to the later rush and wail of “Sky Sized Heart,” to the doom-epic ballad reach of “Bridge of Irreconcilable Sorrow” to the acoustic turn in the last movement of “The Words We Don’t Speak” and variable but unifyingly soulful vocal arrangements throughout, up to the minimal voice-and-piano closer “Ghost Notes” or the duet in the crescendo of “Still Breathing.” Ambition set in balance with organic production and songwriting. I don’t know when The Sea Between Stars is coming out, if it’s now-ish, early 2026 or what, but if you want to take this as an early heads up, do.

Cabfighter on Bandcamp

Cabfighter on Instagram

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[Click play above to stream International Space Station Vol. 2 in full. The split is out Aug. 20 on Worst Bassist, Weird Beard and Echodelick Records.]

In addition to being the most expensive thing ever built, the International Space Station is the most resounding proof ever manifest of the potential for what humanity can accomplish when we, in even momentary or compartmentalized fashion, put aside our differences and genuinely collaborate. Human potential, circling the planet above our heads every 90 minutes or so. Worst Bassist Records (Germany/EU), working in conjunction with Weird Beard Records (UK) and Echodelick Records (US), offers the second installment of its split series, International Space Station Vol. 2, both in tribute and in some of the same cooperative spirit. Like its 2022 predecessor, International Space Station Vol. 1 (review here), the assemblage features four bands, including the Americans Verstärker, from Kentucky, as well as Kombynat Robotron (from Germany), Speck (from Austria) and Sarkh (from Germany). It’s not quite the same as Europe, Russia, Canada and America spending billions of dollars to construct the ISS itself, module by module, but as one would hope, each band brings something of their own to the overarching scope of International Space Station Vol. 2, while keeping to the abiding space rock theme, in essence if not necessarily genre tropes. It’s cosmic one way or the other, to be sure.

As with Vol. 1, each band on Vol. 2 is given a side to work with to make a full 72-minute 2LP. Verstärker lead off and bring the first of the split’s delves into krautrock across “Weltraumtraum” (12:16) and “Kvant” (5:46), the latter of which is an immersive, multi-tiered drone that gradually emerges from the second half of “Weltraumtraum.” The two are likewise exploratory, if in different ways, as the first cut starts out with a more urgent gallop on drums and a bassline that keeps it cool but still moves, guitar feeling out the spaces in the swirl. A boogie takes hold until about four and a half minutes in, where the change marked by a stop of drums leads to a heavier outbound thrust. About force more than escape velocity, the next two minutes of push give over to mellower bassy jamming and guitar effects floating overhead, a little ghostly, but there. The drums keep the tension so that when “Weltraumtraum” starts to build back up it makes sense, and even after the crescendo, until just about 10 minutes in, the drums hold out amid the residual synth and guitar echoes. Once they go, it’s the sci-fi drone of “Kvant” all the way — an initial and not at all last hypnotic stretch as International Space Station Vol. 2 broadens its reach.

Kombynat Robotron bring a reset at the start of their lone inclusion “Montan” (15:31) and answer the proggy flow of Verstärker‘s longer piece with an easy movement of their own. Shimmering guitar over a krautrock groove probably shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone familiar with the band, this split series, or the style more generally, but Kombynat Robotron bring a Yawning–Man-in-space sensibility to the guitar work and subtle gotta-go of the rhythm. A crash and stop at five minutes in marks the divergence from where they’ve been to where they’re going, which is to a more actively swirling solo section, with crash cymbal adding to the build as they move further into the maybe-improvised unknown. Howls and wails circa 8:20 preface a pickup in the toms, and the Kiel trio carry their procession in willfully, increasingly noisy style across its back half, such that when it ends with a feedbackscape, it makes sense, feeling all the more vibrant and nebular in their fusing of elements. As the only band with one song here — everyone else does a long one and a short one, like Verstärker — Kombynat Robotron still use their time well to emphasize performance as well as exploration. “Montan” is duly massive as a result.

The immediate impression when Speck set forth with “Flaniergang” (16:03), with “Bes, So Bes” (4:29) following, is cleaner in tone, but it’s the urging motion of the drums that is most consuming. Accompanied by a bassline one might be tempted to call “solid” were it not so utterly liquefied, the drums mark out the path the song will take and give everybody — yes, including you — the chance to get on board before the real takeoff. That comes shortly after three minutes in as the guitar comes forward and the groove opens up with chugging interstellar build. Hints of heavy psych melodicism persist in the guitar, and that’ll do quite nicely, thank you, but Speck bring the proceedings back down for a quick refueling ahead of the next launch, which comes in short order. It’s not the last either — they sneak in a third redirect in the last two minutes that makes “Flaniergang” even more exciting, capping with feedback that leads directly into the cymbal wash of “Bes, So Bes,” a slow-rolling improv-feeling jaunt into low gravity that isn’t shapeless but which is clear in its less-rigid structure, and at this point in the split, calling something “less rigid” is really saying something.

Given the unenviable task of rounding out the final of the 2LP’s four sides, Sarkh flip the script and put the shorter song first, topping “Helios” (6:17) with a sample in its early going and sweeping in with heavier tones and some of the post-metallic expanse they’ve established as well within their reach. By the time they’re three minutes in, “Helios” is crushing and sprawling in kind, and they continue to set airy post-rock guitar against what in context sounds downright pummeling as the song churns to its purposeful ending, a stretch of low hum making the transition between “Helios” and the concluding “Cape Wrath” (11:37). Terrestrial, if not cavernous in its sound, and once again, remarkably heavy, “Cape Wrath” turns from the patterned riff that begins it, drops the drums and resets for a breath around ambient guitar, and thereby sets out on one big, last build, the payoff of which is your explanation for why Sarkh appear last on International Space Station Vol. 2 — once you go in the black hole, there’s no getting back out. It’s okay though, because as gravitational as they get, Sarkh retain enough presence and intentionality to bring “Cape Wrath” to a close with a change to sparse standalone guitar, not unlike that which set out that build to begin with.

And really, who knows where or when that was. On the cosmic-web-defined, impossible-to-comprehend-by-our-bacteria-brains scales of time and space in the universe, International Space Station and the structure that inspired the series in the first are — like everything else human beings have ever done and likely will ever do — small achievements, but they share that aspect of realized potential, and like the different sections of the ISS being assembled in orbit some 255 miles above the surface of the planet, each band’s material adds to the complexity of what’s portrayed by the whole, which is a fresh, multidimensional space rock that speaks no less to an optimistic future. The eons-long course of civilization’s history has wrought little that is more worth celebrating, and International Space Station Vol. 2 feels suitably reverent.

Verstärker on Facebook

Verstärker on Instagram

Verstärker on Bandcamp

Kombynat Robotron on Facebook

Kombynat Robotron on Instagram

Kombynat Robotron on Bandcamp

Speck on Facebook

Speck on Instagram

Speck on Bandcamp

Sarkh on Facebook

Sarkh on Instagram

Sarkh on Bandcamp

Worst Bassist Records on Facebook

Worst Bassist Records on Instagram

Worst Bassist Records on Bandcamp

Worst Bassist Records website

Echodelick Records on Facebook

Echodelick Records on Instagram

Echodelick Records on Bandcamp

Echodelick Records website

Weird Beard Records on Facebook

Weird Beard Records on Bandcamp

Weird Beard Records store

I know I’ve said this before, but I continue to believe there’s something extra rad about a four-way split. Two, generally pretty cool, but often leads to a sense of one band competing with the other or at least a tendency on the part of the listener to compare them, which is just the same thing from the other side. Three, well fine as long as you don’t have any intention toward vinyl. But a four-way 2LP split breaks up in a satisfying way, as everybody gets to showcase their aural wares on their own side, and there’s usually enough breadth of personality between the four bands that the listener is more inclined to take everything as it comes. As Worst Bassist Records showed with three first installment of the four-way split series International Space Station (review here) in 2022, ‘take it as it comes’ is precisely the best way to go in hearing it.

Jointly released through Weird Beard Records in the UK and Echodelick Records in the US, and I believe available to preorder from all of them, International Space Station Vol. 2 once again brings together an intercontinental assemblage in Verstärker (from the US, despite the maybe-misleading umlaut), Kombynat Robotron and Sarkh (from Germany), and Speck (from Austria), and everybody but Kombynat Robotron already has a song streaming. And Kombynat Robotron aren’t being jerks or holdouts or whathaveyou, but they’ve only got one song on their side. Fair enough up keep it under wraps for now.

If you do want to hear that — and we both know you do — come back Aug. 19, as I’ll be streaming the album in full that day with what I’m sure will be a duly slobbering review full of obscure Star Trek references and cosmic buzzwords picked up from the PBS S0ace Time science videos my daughter watches with ironically religious fervor. So it’ll be awesome, in other words.

For now, art, info and copious linkage follow. Engage:

The long awaited vol. 2 of the Intrernational Space Station arrives!

2-LP in a fat gatefold cover, colored wax, limited to 500
LP 1: orange wax
LP 2: blue wax
CD in digisleeve lim. 100

Four international bands (Verstärker, Kombynat Robotron, Speck, Sarkh) contributing 1 LP side each, instrumental, about how to watch the ISS crossing their skies from time to time… or being overwhelmed by the rough beauty of the ocean…

Long and psychedelic tracks pulsating through space and try to follow the way of the space station around our globe and even beyond, to contribute you the opportunity to travel through your inner cosmosis while listening, only interrupted by the needle lifting, which could just be some stops at random interstellar stations, to release and gain passengers.

2-LP in a fat gatefold cover, colored wax, limited to 500
LP 1: orange wax
LP 2: blue wax

Out via Worst Bassist (DE+World), Echodelick (USA) and Weird Beird (UK)
August 20th 2024
Comes with Download Code

CD out via Worst Bassist on Aug. 20th.

Verstärker

Verstärker from Kentucky, USA, play monotonic motorik sound, surrounded by soundscapes and beautiful noise.

Groove, shifts, scapes, beauty, intensity, it’s all there.

Kombynat Robotron

Germany’s high flying neo-krautrockers continue on side B with their floating and dynamic longtrack.

Speck

Side C kicks off with Austria’s instrumental psychedelic mantra jammers Speck, who created a journey through mind and space until…

Sarkh

… the ISS takes another turn over Germany and brings you a force of nature to end all this, with side D.

You’ll be torn apart and re-built again through the heavy and yet delightful instrumentals.

1. Verstärker – Weltraumtraum
2. Verstärker – Kvant
3. Kombynat Robotron – Montan
4. Speck – Flaniergang
5. Speck – Bes, so bes
6. Sarkh – Helios
7. Sarkh – Cape Wrath

https://www.facebook.com/verstarker
http://instagram.com/verstarker/
https://verstarker.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/KombynatRobotron
https://www.instagram.com/kombynat_robotron
https://kombynatrobotron.bandcamp.com/

http://www.facebook.com/speckspeckspeck
http://www.instagram.com/speck_speck_speck
https://speckspeckspeck.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/SarkhWorship/
https://www.instagram.com/sarkh.evolve
https://sarkh.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/worstbassistrecords
https://www.instagram.com/worst.bassist.records
https://worstbassistrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://www.worstbassist.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ERECORDSATL
https://www.instagram.com/echodelickrecords/
https://echodelickrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://www.echodelickrecords.com/

https://www.facebook.com/WeirdBeardRecs/
https://weirdbeardrecs.bandcamp.com/
https://theweirdbeard.bigcartel.com/

Various Artists, International Space Station Vol. 2 (2024)

Alright, back at it. Putting together yesterday over the weekend was more scattershot than I’d prefer, but one might say the same of parenting in general, so I’ll leave it at that. Still, as happens with Quarterly Reviews, we got there. That my wife gave me an extra 40 minutes to bang out the Wizzerd video premiere was appreciated. As always, she makes everything possible.

Compared to some QRs, there are a few ‘bigger’ releases here. You’ll note High on Fire leading off today. That trend will continue over this and next week with the likes of Pallbearer, Uncle Acid, Bongripper, Harvestman (Steve Von Till, ex-Neurosis), Inter Arma, Saturnalia Temple spread throughout. The Pelican two-songer and My Dying Bride back to back a week from today. That’ll be a fun one. As always, it’s about the time crunch for me for what goes in the Quarterly Review. Things I want to cover before it’s too late that I can fit here. Ain’t nobody holding their breath for my opinion on any of it, or on anything generally for that matter, but I’m not trying to slight well known bands by stuffing them into what when it started over a decade ago I thought would be a catchall for demos and EPs. Sometimes I like the challenge of a shorter word count, too.

And I remind myself here again nobody really cares. Fine, let’s go.

Quarterly Review #11-20:

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High on Fire, Cometh the Storm

What seems at first to be business as usual for High on Fire‘s fourth album produced by Kurt Ballou, fifth for MNRK Heavy (formerly E1), and ninth overall, gradually reveals itself to be the band’s tonally heaviest work in at least the last 15 years. What’s actually new is drummer Coady Willis (Big Business, Melvins) making his first studio appearance alongside founding guitarist/vocalist Matt Pike (Sleep, Pike vs. the Automaton) and long-tenured bassist/backing vocalist Jeff Matz (also saz on the instrumental interlude-plus “Karanlik Yol”), and for sure Willis‘ thud in “Trismegistus,” galloping intensity in the thrashy and angular “The Beating” and declarative stomp beneath the big slowdown of 10-minute closer “Darker Fleece” is part of it, but from the way Pike and Matz bring “Cometh the Storm’ and “Sol’s Golden Curse” in the record’s middle to such cacophonous ends, the three-and-a-half-minute face-kick that is “Lightning Beard” and the suckerpunch that starts off with “Lambsbread,” to how even the more vocally melodic “Hunting Shadows” is carried on a wave of filthy, hard-landing distortion, their ferocity is reaffirmed in thicker grooves and unmitigated pummel. While in some ways this is what one would expect, it’s also everything for which one might hope from High on Fire a quarter-century on from their first demo. Triumph.

High on Fire on Facebook

MNRK Heavy website

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Spaceslug, Out of Water

A release concurrent to a remastered edition of their 2016 debut, Lemanis (review here), only puts into emphasis how much Spaceslug have come into their own over eight productive years. Recorded by drummer/vocalist Kamil Ziółkowski (also Mountain of Misery), with guitarist/vocalist Bartosz Janik and bassist/vocalist Jan Rutka dug into familiar tonal textures throughout five tracks and a quick but inevitably full-length-flowing 32 minutes, Out of Water is both otherworldly and emotionally evocative in the rollout of “Arise the Sun” following the intertwined shouts of opener “Tears of Antimatter,” and in keeping with their progression, they nudge toward metallic aggression as a way to solidify their heavy psychedelic aspects. “Out of Water” is duly mournful to encapsulate such a tragic notion, and the nod of “Delusions” only grows more forcefully applied after the return from that song’s atmospheric break, and while they depart with “In Serenity” to what feels like the escapism of sunnier riffing, even that becomes more urgent toward the album’s finish. The reason it works is they’re bending genre to their songs, not the other way around, and as Spaceslug mature as a group, they’ve become one of Poland’s most essential heavy acts.

Spaceslug on Facebook

Spaceslug on Bandcamp

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Lie Heavy, Burn to the Moon

First issued on CD through JM Records in 2023, Lie Heavy‘s debut album, Burn to the Moon, sees broader release through Heavy Psych Sounds with revamped art to complement the Raleigh, North Carolina, four-piece’s tonal heft and classic reach in pieces like “In the Shadow” and “The Long March,” respectively. The band is fronted by Karl Agell (vocalist for C.O.C.‘s 1991 Blind album and now also in The Skull-offshoot Legions of Doom), and across the 12-song/51-minute run, and whether it’s the crunch of the ripper “When the Universe Cries” or the Clutch-style heavy funk of “Chunkadelic” pushing further from the start-stops of “In the Shadow” or the layered crescendo of “Unbeliever” a short time later, he and bassist/vocalist TR Gwynne, guitarist/vocalist Graham Fry and drummer/vocalist Jeff “JD” Dennis deliver sans-pretense riff-led fare. They’re not trying to fix what wasn’t broken in the ’90s, to be sure, but you can’t really call it a retread either as they swing through “Drag the World” and its capstone counterpart “End the World”; it all goes back to Black Sabbath anyway. The converted will get it no problem.

Lie Heavy on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Burning Realm, Face the Fire

Dublin, Ireland, trio Burning Realm mark their first release with the four-song Face the Fire EP, taking the cosmic-tinged restlessness of Wild Rocket and setting it alongside more grounded riffing, hinting at thrash in the ping ride on “From Beyond” but careening in the modern mode either way. Lead cut “Homosapien” gives Hawkwindian vibes early — the trap, which is sounding like Slift, is largely avoided, though King Gizzard may still be relevant as an influence — but smoothly gives over to acoustics and vocal drone once its urgency has bene vaporized, and spacious as the vocal echo is, “Face the Fire” is classic stoner roll even into its speedier ending, the momentum of which is continued in closer “Warped One (Arise),” which is more charged on the whole in a way that feels linear and intended in relation to what’s put before it. A 16-minute self-released introduction to who Burning Realm are now, it holds promise for how they might develop stylistically and grow in terms of range. Whatever comes or doesn’t, it’s easy enough to dig as it is. If you were at a show and someone handed you the tape, you’d be stoked once you put it on in the car. Also it’s like 1995 in that scenario, apparently.

Burning Realm on Facebook

Burning Realm on Bandcamp

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Kalac, Odyss​é​e

Offered through an international consortium of record labels that includes Crême Brûlée Records in the band’s native France, Echodelick in the US, Clostridium in Germany and Weird Beard in the UK, French heavy psych thrusters Kalac‘s inaugural full-length, Odyss​é​e — also stylized all-caps — doesn’t leave much to wonder why so many imprints might want some for the distro. With a focus on rhythmic movement in the we-gotta-get-to-space-like-five-minutes-ago modus of current-day heavy neo-space-rock, the mostly instrumental procession hypnotizes even as it peppers its expanses with verses here or there. That might be most effectively wrought in the payoff noiseblaster wash of “II,” which I’m just going to assume opens side B, but the boogie quotient is strong from “Arguenon” to “Beautiful Night,” and while might ring familiar to others operating in the aesthetic galaxial quadrant, the energy of Kalac‘s delivery and the not-haphazard-but-not-always-in-the-same-spot-either placement of the vocals are enough to distinguish them and make the six-tracker as exciting to hear as it sounds like it probably was to record.

Kalac on Facebook

Crême Brûlée Records on Bandcamp

Clostridium Records store

Weird Beard Records store

Echodelick Records on Bandcamp

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Alkuräjähdys, Ehdot.

The live-tracked fourth outing from Helsinki psych improvisationalists Alkuräjähdys, the lowercase-stylized ehdot. blends mechanical and electronic sounds with more organic psychedelic jamming, the synth and bassier punchthrough in the midsection of opening piece “.matriisi” indeed evocative of the dot-matrix printer to which its title is in reference, while “központ,” which follows, meanders into a broader swath of guitar-based noise atop a languidly graceful roll of drums. That let’s-try-it-slower ideology is manifest in the first half of the duly two-sided “a-b” as well, as the 12-minute finale begins by lurching through the denser distortion of a central riff en route to a skronk-jazz transition to a tighter midtempo groove that I’ll compare to Endless Boogie and very much intend that as a compliment. I don’t think they’re out to change the world so much as get in a room, hit it and see where the whole thing ends up, but those are noble creative aims in concept and practice, and between the two guitars, effects, synth and whathaveyou, there’s plenty of weird to go around.

Alkuräjähdys on Instagram

Alkuräjähdys on Bandcamp

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Magick Brother & Mystic Sister, Tarot Pt. 1

Already a significant undertaking as a 95-minute 2LP running 11 tracks themed — as the title(s) would hint — around tarot cards, the mostly serene sprawl of Magick Brother & Mystic Sister‘s Tarot Pt. 1 is still just the first of two companion albums to be issued as the follow-up to the Barcelona outfit’s 2020 self-titled debut (discussed here). Offered through respected Greek purveyor Sound Effect Records, Tarot Pt. 1 gives breadth beyond just the runtime in the sitar-laced psych-funk of “The Hierophant” (swap sitar for organ, synth and flute on “The Chariot”) and the classic-prog pastoralia of closer “The Wheel of Fortune,” and as with the plague-era debut, at the heart of the material is a soothing acid folk, and while the keys in the first half of “The Emperor” grow insistent and there’s some foreboding in the early Mellotron and key lines of “The Lovers,” Tarot Pt. 1 resonates comfort and care in its arrangements as well as ambition in its scope. Maybe another hour and a half on the way? Sign me up.

Magick Brother & Mystic Sister on Facebook

Sound Effect Records store

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Amigo, Good Time Island

The eight-year distance from their 2016 debut long-player, Little Cliffs, seems to have smoothed out some (not all, which isn’t a complaint) of the rough edges in Amigo‘s sound, as the seemingly reinvigorated San Diego four-piece of lead guitarist/vocalist Jeff Podeszwik (King Chiefs), guitarist Anthony Mattos, bassist Sufi Karalen and drummer Anthony Alley offer five song across an accessible, straightforward 17 minutes united beneath the fair-enough title of Good Time Island. Without losing the weight of their tones, a Weezery pop sensibility comes through in “Dope Den” while “Frog Face” is even more specifically indebted to The Cars. Neither “Telescope Boy” nor “Banana Phone” lacks punch, but Amigo hold some in reserve for “Me and Soof,” which rounds out the proceedings, and they put it to solid use for an approach that’s ’90s-informed without that necessarily meaning stoner, grunge or alt, and envision a commercially relevant, songwriting-based heavy rock and roll for an alternate universe that, by all accounts here, sounds like a decent place to be.

Amigo on Facebook

Roosevelt Row Records store

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The Hazytones, Wild Fever

Culminating in the Sabbathian shuffle of “Eye for an Eye,” Wild Fever is the hook-drenched third full-length from Montreal fuzzbringers The Hazytones, and while they’ve still got the ‘tones’ part down pat, it’s easy to argue the eight included tracks are the least ‘hazy’ they’ve been to-date. Following on from the direction of 2018’s II: Monarchs of Oblivion (review here), the Esben Willems-mixed/Kent Stump-mastered 40-minute long-player isn’t shy about leaning into the grittier side of what they do as the opening title-track rolls out a chorus that reminds of C.O.C. circa In the Arms of God while retaining some of the melody between the vocals of Mick Martel (also guitar and keys) and Gabriel Prieur (also drums and bass), and with the correspondingly thick bass of Caleb Sanders for accompaniment and lead guitarist John Choffel‘s solo rising out of the murk on “Disease,” honing in on the brashness suits them well. Not where one might have expected them to end up six years later, but no less enjoyable for that, either.

The Hazytones on Facebook

Black Throne Productions store

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All Are to Return, III

God damn that’s harsh. Mostly anonymous industrialists — you get F and N for names and that’s it — All Are to Return are all the more punishing in the horrific recesses and engulfing blasts of static that populate III than they were in 2022’s II (review here), and the fact that the eight-songer is only 32 minutes long is about as close as they come to any concept of mercy for the psyche of their audience. Beyond that, “Moratorium,” “Colony Collapse,” the eats-you-dead “Archive of the Sky” and even the droning “Legacy” cast a willfully wretched extremity, and what might be a humanizing presence of vocals elsewhere is screams channeled through so much distortion as to be barely recognizable as coming from a human throat here. If the question being posed is, “how much can you take?,” the answer for most of those brave enough to even give III a shot will be, “markedly less than this.” A cry from the depths realizing a brutal vision.

All Are to Return on Bandcamp

Tartarus Records store

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Two bands, two sides, three jams. Kombynat Robotron and DUNDDW, from Germany and the Netherlands, respectively, offer their 37-minute/three-song split LP through Spinda Records (SP), Sunhair Music (DE), Echodelick Records (US) and Weird Beard Records (UK), and not to dwell so much on numbers, but yes, that is more record labels involved than there are songs on the release. As regards a title, I don’t know if it’s official, but the cover says Split LP, and that’s good enough as far as I’m concerned, and it’s fitting enough since, yes, that’s what it is, and being instrumental, both bands seem content enough to leave words at a minimum.

Kiel-based four-piece Kombynat Robotron — also stylized with Cyrillic letters: КОМВУИАТ ЯОВОТЯОИ — have been on a heavy psychedelic spree since their first outings (note the plural) in 2018, and they take side A with “Gamma” (7:34) and “Delta” (7:31), while side B goes to Nijmegen trio DUNDDW, with members of Bismut and Mt. Echo. The latter are closer to their origin point, having issued their first full-length in late-2022’s Flux (review here), but in addition to a shared aversion toward singers at least in the context of their own projects, the two acts share the improvisational ethic, and as DUNDDW unfold “VIII” (21:59) across side B, the unifying goal of Split LP is palpable as one of exploration.

There’s a bit of freakout here and there in “Gamma” and in the earlier going of “VIII,” DUNDDW‘s Peter Dragt just kind of starts to go nuts on drums and that energy becomes a build by itself until after the halfway point when they bring it back down, but serenity abounds otherwise; both bands foster an active forward reach amid miraculously unpretentious cosmic drift, harnessing the creativity of a fleeting moment and capturing it as it happened.

The tagline for the split is ‘100% improvised psych-kraut music from Germany and The Netherlands,’ and that may or may not be true — not sure why anyone would lie about that, but it’s happened before — the sounds fostered speak to the intention anyhow. I’m not arguing, in other words. Kombynat Robotron fade in on a cymbal wash for “Gamma,” but soon the guitar establishes the sunshiny central figure of the piece and they’re underway in a somewhat surprisingly song-ish manner. Mellow grunge in space? Post-whatever whatever?

Such interstellar krautrock pastoralia is set to a steady roller of a groove, and fluidity holds as they turn about a minute in — there must have been a head signal there or some such — to a more upbeat section. Guitarists James Ihnen and Richard Schröder, bassist Claas Ogorek and drummer Thomas Handschick are locked in from the outset, and whether they had some idea of what they wanted to do, or “Gamma” is cut out of a longer jam or what, the conversation happening between the members of the band, instrumentally speaking, is sharp. If they’re keeping it loose in any way, it’s conceptually, but there’s a linear build happening in “Gamma” that peaks just after six minutes in, and from there they noodle out on a long fade, and that hints at the very least toward a sense of direction rather than just showing up, plugging in and hitting it.

Not a complaint. Their “Delta” begins more subdued but has the same shimmer in the lower-mixed guitar and shifts after laying down that initial fuzzy breadth to a not-quite-motorik bit of push, fostering classic space rock vibes in its build en route to bringing that same lead guitar forward in the still-shimmying crescendo. They sound like they could keep going into perpetuity, but balance and the limitations of physical media require otherwise, so Kombynat Robotron fade to let DUNDDW start “VIII” with bass and drums.

Is it the eighth recording the band has done? Possible. On Flux, the three-piece featured the 22-minute “VI” and had two parts of the at-least-four-part “VII,” so “VIII” would be next in that succession, and it’s not unreasonable to think that guitarist Gerben Elburg, bassist Huibert der Weduwen and drummer Peter Dragt either recorded “VIII” then or are simply following the Karma to Burn example of numerical (if Roman numerals) ordering their songs. Ups and downs to that approach, as with anything, but most importantly, the chemistry that DUNDDW so readily displayed on Flux is to be found on the Split LP as well, whether it’s the proggy bassline and jazz-style business of the drumming or the way the guitar seems to inhabit a space of its own, weaving along with the rhythm as it grows more intense early on but keeping an overarching calmness via its tonality.

Dragt is on the toms by the time they’re four minutes in, and part of the journey becomes the bumps and jabs of the bass and the steady punctuation of the snare and the guitar moves closer to a wash as they approach the six-minute mark. It’s like you can hear them digging in. Elburg doesn’t miss the opportunity to freak out, and soon enough, Dragt is following suit on cymbals, resolving in a gallop that der Weduwen seems only too happy to complement. They draw it back down somewhat after seven minutes, but they’re nowhere near finished as they push farther and farther into improvised space ambience.

The hi-hat is still tense keeping time for a while after everything else calms and the guitar goes to sparse melodic hum — by then it’s the snare shuffling underneath — but the movement is never completely gone, so as they grow subtly more energetic, it’s easy to follow along. At 14:45, they begin in earnest the build back to full-volume, and the swirl, the push and the wash all come together in righteous cacophony for a crescendo before the inevitable denouement.

DUNDDW end on a fade, but “VIII” is basically done anyhow, with some studio noise underscoring the in-the-room-as-it-happened feel of the Split LP as a whole. I don’t know whose idea it was to put these two acts together, but cheers. That Kombynat Robotron and DUNDDW could have so much in common on paper and still be so distinct in their respective takes results in a split that emphasizes how identifiable each of their styles is. Their unity of purpose is enhanced, not contrasted, by their similarities as well as the differences between them.

Kombynat Robotron & DUNDDW, Split LP (2023)

DUNDDW on Facebook

DUNDDW on Instagram

DUNDDW on Bandcamp

Kombynat Robotron on Facebook

Kombynat Robotron on Instagram

Kombynat Robotron on Bandcamp

Spinda Records on Facebook

Spinda Records on Instagram

Spinda Records on Bandcamp

Spinda Records website

Sunhair Music website

What does it tell you about an album when five record labels get behind the release? Well, first it tells you that globalization was a farce that requires multiple DIY distributors to cover different territories around the planet because instead of actually helping smooth processes like releasing albums in multiple territories, it made the same five old white men who were already rich that much richer over the course of the last 30 years, but more immediately, it perhaps tells us that it’s time to start thinking of Volume‘s 2002 debut/only-LP Requesting Permission to Land (not the original cover below) as a lost classic, and maybe that it’s time to revisit that pre-social media era of heavy rock and roll in a similar fashion to how about 10 years back it seemed like every other week there was another lost classic from the heavy ’70s coming out on labels like Akarma and Rockadrome. Feels early, but I bet if you were there in the 1970s it felt early a decade ago too.

There are, of course, a near-infinite amount of treasures to be unearthed, because while I’d call the heavy underground well populated today and bolstered by the (semi-)democratization of recording gear/software and streaming, but whatever comes of it in the next few years, Volume‘s Requesting Permission to Land is easily worth the revisit, calling to mind nostalgia for the MySpace era when, say, one might’ve sent Patrick Brink a message requesting a copy of the record to play on one’s college radio stoner rock show. I’d say those were the days, but they weren’t really. I could go on off-topic, but you don’t care. If you want to talk and be friends in real life, hit me up. Also, don’t tell anybody that 2023 is actually the 21st anniversary of the album. Doesn’t matter. Pressing delays, timing, whatever. It exists and it’s coming out. That’s good enough for me.

The relevant info from the PR wire:

VOLUME To Release 20th Anniversary Edition of Requesting Permission To Land

Heavy fuzzed out psychedelic rock from the desert of Twentynine Palms, CA, is the offering from VOLUME. Formed in 1993, VOLUME are back following a hiatus to finish what they started and celebrate a career milestone. The 20th Anniversary edition vinyl pressing of Requesting Permission To Land will be released on October 27th.

“I’m super stoked that ‘Requesting Permission To Land’ will finally be out on vinyl like it was always supposed to be. Get ready to get cosmically freaked out!” – Patrick Brink

From the riff-fueled percussive-frenzy sound of the EP’s opener “Habit” to the rhythmic and progressive conclusion “Headswim”, Requesting Permission To Land is a thrilling collection of heavy acid rock tracks. The EP features a number of talented musicians with drums recorded by Scott Reeder (FU MANCHU), and bass played by James Scoggins (FINAL CONFLICT). If you like straight up fuzzed out psychedelic rock, sit back and let VOLUME spin your head!

About VOLUME:

Patrick Brink began VOLUME back in 1993 with the desire to have a project with which he could take the lead and steer the musical reins down psychedelic rocking routes. Having performed with a number of acts including doing vocals for FU MANCHU in their early days, VOLUME offered Patrick a new creative outlet. Over their career the band has shared stages with QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE, FU MANCHU, MASTADON and GOATSNAKE, and performed at festivals including Emmisions of the Monolith and Stoner Hands of Doom (SHoD). VOLUME draw musical influences from bands such as THE STOOGES, MC5 and BLACK FLAG to name a few, while also crafting their own distinctive heavy psychedelic identity.

Requesting Permission To Land will be released via Weird Beard (UK) We Here & Now (CA) Echodelick (US) Worst Bassist (EU) Ramble Records (AU)

Tracklisting:
1. Habit
2. Colossalfreak
3. Dont Look Around
4. Make Believe
5. Headswim

https://www.facebook.com/volumerocksofficial
https://www.instagram.com/volume_rocks/
https://twitter.com/RocksVolume
https://volume-rocks.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ERECORDSATL
https://www.instagram.com/echodelickrecords/
https://echodelickrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://www.echodelickrecords.com/

https://www.facebook.com/WeHereandNow
https://www.instagram.com/wehereandnowrecordings/
https://wehereandnow.bigcartel.com/
https://wehereandnow.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/worstbassistrecords
https://www.instagram.com/worst.bassist.records
https://worstbassistrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://www.worstbassist.com/

https://www.facebook.com/Ramble-Records-104456548098088
https://www.instagram.com/ramble_records
https://ramblerecords.bandcamp.com/
https://ramblerecords.com/

https://www.facebook.com/WeirdBeardRecs/
https://weirdbeardrecs.bandcamp.com/
https://theweirdbeard.bigcartel.com/

Volume, Requesting Permission to Land (2002)

There was some pretty good stuff this week, I gotta say. Feels self-congratulatory to be like, ‘hey good job slating reviews, me!’ but there it is. I don’t regret hearing anything I have thus far into the Winter 2023 Quarterly Review, and sometimes that’s not the case by the time we get to Friday.

Of course, there’s another week to go here as well. We’ll pick it back up on Monday with another 10 records and proceed from there. If you’ve been following along, I hope you’ve found something you dig as well.

Winter 2023 Quarterly Review #41-50:

Astrosaur, Portals

This is what happens when you have virtuoso players writing songs rather than paeans to their own virtuosity. Led by founding guitarist Eirik Kråkenes, with drummer Jonathan Eikum (also Taiga Woods) and bassist Steinar Glas (also Einar Stray Orchestra), Astrosaur are blindingly progressive on their third full-length, Portals (on Pelagic), operating with post-metallic atmospheres as a backdrop for stunning instrumental turns, builds and crashes, willful repetition and the defiant denial of same. There’s more scope in the intro “Opening” than on some entire albums, and what “Black Hole Earth” begins from there is a dizzying array of sometimes cosmic sometimes earthborn riffing, twisting bass and mindfully restless drums. “The Deluge” hitting into that chase after four minutes in, that seemingly chaotic swirling noise suddenly stopping “Reptile Empire” and the false start to the 23-minute epic “Eternal Return” — these details and many besides give the overarching weight of Portals at its heaviest a corresponding depth, and when coupled with the guitar’s ability to coast overhead, they are genuinely three-dimension in their sound. You’d be right to want to hear Portals for “Eternal Return” alone, but there’s so much more to it than that.

Astrosaur on Facebook

Pelagic Records on Bandcamp

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Kvasir, Sagittarius A* Star

Kvasir‘s Sagittarius A* Star is named for the black hole at the center of the galaxy, and the 21-minute single-song EP is the follow-up to their 2021 debut album, 4 (review here), a dug-in proto-metallic exploration composed in movements that flow together as a whole organic work. The Portland-based four-piece of guitarists Christopher Lee (also vocals) and Gabriel Langston, bassist Greg Traw and Jay Erbe work on either side between traditional metal and heavy rock riffing, inhabiting both here as “Sagittarius A* Star” launches into its initial verses over the first four minutes, a solo emerging after 5:30 to set the pattern that will hold for the remaining three-fourths of the song. A slowdown takes hold about a minute later and grooves until at about nine minutes in when the bass comes forward and things get funkier. The vocals return at about 11:30 to complement a galloping riff that’s fleshed out until just after the 14-minute mark, when a jazzier instrumental movement begins and the band makes it known they’re going out and not coming back, the swaying finish with more insistent guitar, first interjecting then satisfyingly joining that sway, capping with a (still plotted) jammier feel. If that’s the Milky Way succumbing to ultragravity and being torn apart molecule by molecule en route to physics-defying oblivion, then fair enough. Worse ways to go, certainly.

Kvasir on Facebook

Kvasir on Bandcamp

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Bloodshot, Sins of the Father

Though the leadoff Sins of the Father gets reminds of circa-’90s noise metal like Nailbomb, Marylander four-piece Bloodshot lean more into a hardcore-informed take on heavy rock with their aggressively-purposed debut album. Comprised of vocalist Jared Winegardner, guitarist Tom Stacey, bassist Joe Ruthvin (ex-Earthride) and drummer JB Matson (ex-War Injun, organizer of Maryland Doom Fest, etc.), the band push to one side or the other throughout, as on the more rocking “Zero Humility” and the subsequent metallic barker “Uncivil War,” the mid-period Megadeth-style riffer “Beaten Into Rebellion,” the brooding-into-chugging closing title-track and “Fyre,” which I’m pretty sure just wants to kick my ass. The 10-track entirety of the album, in fact, seems to hold to that same mentality, and there’s a sense of trying to recapture something that’s been lost that feels inherently conservative in its theme — “Faded Natives,” “Visions of Yesterday,” the speedier “Worn and Torn,” and so on — but gruff though it is, Sins of the Father offers a pissed-off-for-reasons take on heavy that’s likewise intense and methodical. That is to say, they know what they’re doing as they punch you in the throat.

Bloodshot on Facebook

Half Beast Records on Bandcamp

Nervous Breakdown Records store

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Tons, Hashension

A second release through Heavy Psych Sounds and Tons‘ third full-length overall, Hashension wears its love of all things cannabian on its crusty stoner sludge sleeve throughout its six-track/39-minute run, begun with the riffnotic “Dope Dealer Scum” before “A Hash Day’s Night” introduces the throatripper vocals and backing growls and a more heads-down, speedier tempo that hits into a mosh of a slowdown. “Slowly We Pot” — a play on Obituary‘s Slowly We Rot — to go along with the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd (and Gummo) titular references — follows in a spirit as angry as one imagines Bongzilla might be if someone un-freed their weed. Yes, “Hempathy for the Devil” and “Ummagummo” precede the sample-topped slamming march of “Hashended,” and lo, the well-baked extreme sludge they’ve wrought rumbles and thuds its way out, not so much gnashing in the way of “A Hash Day’s Night” or the roll after the midpoint in “Ummagummo” — though the lyrics there seem to be pure weed-worship — but lumbering in such a way as to ensure the point gets across anyhow. I’m not going to tell you you should be stoned listening to it, because I don’t know, maybe you’re driving or something, but I doubt Tons would argue if you brought some edibles to the gig. Enough to share, perhaps.

Tons on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds store

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Mothman & the Thunderbirds vs. World Eaters, Split

In the battle of Philly solo-project Mothman and the Thunderbirds vs. Ontario-based duo World Eaters, the numbers may be on the side of the latter, but each act offers something of its own on their shared 18-minute EP. Presenting two tracks from each band, the outing puts Mothman and the Thunderbirds‘ “Rusty Shackleton” and “Nephilim” up front, the latter particularly reinforcing the Devin Townsend influence on the part of multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Alex Parkinson, while “Flash of Green” and “The Siege” from World Eaters — drummer Winter Stomp and guitarist/bassist/vocalist/synthesist David Gupta — present an atmospheric death metal, more than raw bludgeoning, but definitely that as well. As a sampler platter for both bands, there’s more time to get to know World Eaters since their songs are markedly longer, but the contrast from one to the other and the progression into the mire of “The Siege” gives the split an overlaid personality, almost a narrative, and the melodies in Parkinson‘s two cuts have a lingering presence over the masterful decay that follows in World Eater‘s material. One way or the other, these are both relatively upstart projects and their will toward progression is clear, as pummeling as its form may be. Right on.

Mothman & The Thunderbirds on Bandcamp

World Eaters on Bandcamp

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Deer Lord, Dark Matter Pt. 1

Preceded by the two-song single Witches Brew/Psychedelic Roadkill, the six-song/24-minute Dark Matter Pt. 1 is short but feels nonetheless like a debut album from Sonoma County, California (try the cabernet), three-piece Deer Lord, who present adventures like getting stoned with witches on a mountaintop, riding free with an out-on-bail “Hippie Girl” in the backseat of presumably some kind of roadster, going down the proverbial highway and, at last, welcoming you to “Planet Earth” after calling out and casting off any and all “Ego” along the way. It is a modern take on stonerized heavy, starting off with “Witches Brew” as the opener/longest track (immediate points) with a languid flow and psychedelic underpinnings that flesh out even amid the apex soloing of “Planet Earth” or the fervent push of the earlier “Ride Away,” that tempo hitting a wall with the intro of “Ego” (don’t worry, it takes off) so as to support the argument in favor of Dark Matter Pt. 1 as an admittedly brief full-length, the component tracks working off each other to enhance the entirety. The elements beneath are familiar enough, but Deer Lord put an encouraging spin of their own on it, and especially as their debut, it’s hard to imagine some label or other won’t get on board, if not for pressing this, then maybe Pt. 2 to come. Perhaps both?

Deer Lord on Facebook

Deer Lord on Bandcamp

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IO Audio Recordings, Awaiting the Elliptical Drift & VVK

Compiling two 2022 EPs into a single LP and releasing through a microcosm of underground imprints in various terrestrial locales, IO Audio Recordings‘ Awaiting the Elliptical Drift & VVK is my first exposure to the Orange, CA, out-there-in-space unit, and from the blower kosmiche rocking “Awaiting the Elliptical Drift” to the sitar meditation “Luminous Suspension,” and the hazy wash of “Sunrise and Overdrive” (that’s side A) to the experimentalist consumption of “VVK” and “Gramanita” rounding out with its heartbeat rhythm giving over to a hardly-flatlined drone after shuffling cool and bassy and fuzzy with jangly jam strum overtop, I tell you in all sincerity it won’t be my last. There’s a broad cross-section stylistically, which suits a compilation mindset, but I get the feeling that if you called it an album instead, the situation would be much the same thanks to an underlying conceptualism and the adventuring purpose beneath the open-structured fluidity. That’s just fine, as IO Audio Recordings‘ sundry transformations only enhance the anything-that-works-goes and shelf-your-expectations listening experience. Not that there’s no tension in their groovy approach, but the abiding sensibility advises an open mind and maybe a couple deep breaths in and out before you take it on. But then definitely take it on. If you need me, I’ll be spending money I don’t have on Bandcamp.

Weird Beard Records store

Fuzzed Up and Astromoon Records on Bandcamp

We Here & Now on Bandcamp

Ramble Records on Bandcamp

Echodelick Records on Bandcamp

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Bong Voyage, Feverlung

While “bong” in a band name usually connotes dense sludge in my head, Oslo four-piece Bong Voyage defy that stereotype with their Dec. 2022-released second single, “Feverlung” — the first single was October’s “Buzzed Aldrin” — and no, the song isn’t about the pandemic, it’s about getting high. The six-minute rocker hoists jammy flourish mostly in its second half, in a break that, in turn, shifts into uptempo semi-space rock post-Slift pulsations atop a progression that, while I’ll readily admit it sounds little like the song on the whole still puts me in mind of Kyuss‘ “Odyssey” in its vocal patterning and melody. That ending is a step outward from the solidified early verses, which are more straight ahead heavy rock in the vein of Freedom Hawk or a less-directly-Ozzy take on Sheavy, and while one listening for them to bring it back around to the initial riff will find that they don’t, the band’s time isn’t necessarily misspent in terms of serving the song by letting it push beyond exospheric traps. They won’t catch me by surprise next time aesthetically, and it wouldn’t be a shock to find Bong Voyage in among the subset of up and coming heavy rockers that’s put Norway on the underground radar so much these last couple years. Either way, I’ll look forward to more here.

Bong Voyage on Facebook

Bong Voyage on Bandcamp

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Sun Years, Sun Years (Demo)

IMG

In its early going, Sun Years‘ “Codex” stagger-sludges like Eyehategod with guitarist Dalton Huskin‘s shouty echoing vocals on top, but as it moves into its second half, there’s a pickup in tempo and a bit of swirling lead guitar emerges in the 4:37 song’s closing stretch as Asechiah Bogdan (ex-Windhand, ex-Alabama Thunderpussy) makes his presence felt. Alongside bassist Buddy Bryant and drummer Erik Larson (once-and-again guitarist for Alabama Thunderpussy, drummer of Avail, Omen Stones, ex-Backwoods Payback, the list goes on), Bogdan and Huskin explore mellower and more melodic reaches the subsequent “Teeth Like Stars,” still holding some of their demo’s lead track’s urgency as a weighted riff takes hold in trade with the relatively subdued verse. That’s a back and forth they’ll do again, moving the second time from the more weighted progression into a solo and build into a return of the harsher vocals, some double-kick drumming and a last shove that lasts until everything drops out except one guitar and that riffs for a few seconds before being cut off mid-measure. Well, that’s a band with more dynamic in their first two tracks than some have in their entire careers, so I guess it’s safe to say it’ll be worth following the Richmond, Virginia, foursome to see where they end up next time out.

Sun Years on Bandcamp

Minimum Wage Recording on Facebook

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Daevar, Delirious Rites

Recorded by Jan Oberg (Grin, Slowshine, EarthShip) at Hidden Planet Studio in Berlin, Daevar‘s five-track/32-minute 2023 debut album, Delirious Rites, arrives likewise through Oberg‘s imprint The Lasting Dose Records and finds the man himself sitting in for guest vocals on the 10-minute “Leviathan” alongside the band’s own bassist/vocalist Pardis Latif, who leads the band from the depths of the rhythm section’s lurch on the gradually unfolding Windhand-vibing leadoff “Slowshine,” the particularly Monolordian “Bloody Fingers” with Caspar Orfgen‘s guitar howling over a marching riff, and “Leila” where Moritz Ermen Bausch‘s drums offer a welcoming grounding to Electric Wizardly nod and swirl. Thus, by the time his spot in the aforementioned “Leviathan” rolls (and I do mean rolls) around, just ahead of closer “Yellow Queen,” the layers of growling and screaming he adds to the procession are a standout shift well placed to play off the atmosphere established by the previous tracks. Shortest at 5:10, “Yellow Queen” lumbers through more ethereal doom and hints at a psychedelic current that might continue to develop in a midsection drifting break that builds back into the catchy plod from whence it came. Not necessarily innovative at this point — they’re a new band — but they seem to know what they want in terms of sound and style, and that only ever bodes well.

Daevar on Facebook

The Lasting Dose Records on Bandcamp

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Day seven of a Quarterly Review is pretty rarefied air, by which I mean it doesn’t happen that often. And even with 100 records in the span of these two weeks, I’ll never ever ever ever claim to approach being comprehensive, but the point is take it as a sign of just how much is out there right now. If you find it overwhelming, me too.

But think about our wretched species. What’s our redeeming factor? Treatment resistant bacteria? War? Yelling for more war? Economic disparity? Abortion rights? Art. Art’s it. Art and nothing.

So at least there’s a lot of art.

Quarterly Review #61-70:

Trigona, Trigona

With independent label distribution in the UK, US, Australia and Europe, Trigona‘s Trigona is about as spread out geographically as sonically. The Queensland, AUS-based instrumental solo outfit of Rob Shiels — guitar, bass, synth, drum programming, effects, noise, etc. — released the Meridian tape earlier in 2022 on Echodelick and I’m honestly not sure if this six-song self-titled is supposed to count as a debut full-length or what, expanded as it is from Trigona‘s 2021 EP of the same name, albeit remastered with a new track sequence and the eight-minute “Via Egnatia” tagged onto the end of side B to mirror side A’s eight-minute finale, “Rosatom.” Sweet toned progressivism and semi-krautrock bass meditation pervades, debut or not, as Shiels touches on more terrestrial songwriting in “Monk” only after “Shita Ue” has offered its uptempo, almost poppy except not at all pop take on space rock outwardness, a mirror itself somewhat for album opener “Von Graf,” while second cut “Nudler” spreads proggy guitar figures over a sunshiny movement, letting “Rosatom” handle the wash-conjuring. There’s a slowdown at the finish of “Via Egnatia,” its effect lessened perhaps by the programmed drums, but Trigona‘s Trigona is so much more about atmosphere than heft it feels silly to even mention. Debut or not, it is striking.

Trigona on Bandcamp

Weird Beard Records store

Ramble Records website

Echodelick Records website

Worst Bassist Records on Bandcamp

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Blasting Rod, 月鏡 (Mirror Moon Ascending)

Hells yeah J-psych. Nagoya-based three-piece Blasting Rod — guitarist/vocalist S. Shah (also electronics), bassist/guitarist Yoshihiro Yasui and drummer Chihiro (everybody also adds percussion) — already have a follow-up LP, Of Wild Hazel, on the way/streaming for the two-songer Mirror Moon Ascending, and that and some of their past work has aligned them with US-based Glory or Death Records, but if you’re looking to be introduced to their world of sometimes serene, sometimes madcap psychedelia, these two mono mixes by Eternal Elysium‘s Yukito Okazaki, with the drift and languid crash, far-back drums of “Mirror Moon Ascending” and the shaker-inclusive insistence of “Wheel Upon the Car of Dragonaut,” which turns its title into a multi-layered mantra, can be a decent place to start as a springboard into the band’s and S. Shah‘s sundry other projects. Their experimentalism doesn’t stop them from writing songs, at least not this time around, and it seems to drive aspects of what they do like mixing in mono in the first place, so there’s meta-screwing with form as well as get-weird-stay-weird heavy space rock push. After this, check out 2021’s III and then the new one. After that, you’re on your own. Good luck and have fun.

Blasting Rod on Facebook

Low&Slow.Disk on Facebook

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From Those Ashes, Contagion

From Those Ashes, a double-guitar four-piece from Chicago, present four songs in Contagion of thrash-derived but ultimately mostly mid-tempo metal, vocalist/guitarist Aaron Pokoj (also production) leading the charge with Jose “Mop” Valles ripping solos for good measure and bassist Ryan Compton and drummer Omar “Pockets” Mombela holding together tight grooves amid the deathlier moments of the title-track. Pokoj‘s trades between harsh and clean vocals show a firm grasp of melody and arrangement, and though their lyrical perspective is disaffected until basically the last two lines of EP-closer “Light Breaks,” the aggression doesn’t necessarily trump craft, though “The Reset Button” moves through throwing elder-hardcore elbows and the first words shouted on opener “Devoid of Thought” are “fuck it.” Fair enough. The Iron Maiden-style opening of “Light Breaks” is a standout moment, though guitar antics aren’t by any means in short supply, but when From Those Ashes build their way into the song proper, the death-thrash onslaught is fervent right up to the end. And those last lines? “As light breaks through the shadow and gives way to life/Sustained emergence of the soul and the will to survive?” Brutally, righteously growled.

From Those Ashes on Facebook

From Those Ashes on Bandcamp

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Hasishian, Hashishian

Rarely does music itself sound so stoned. Across six tracks of bassy, at least partially Dune-referential — the hand-drummed “Shai Hulud,” etc. — meditative heavy, the anonymous outfit Hashishian from somewhere, sometime, convey a languid, loosely Middle Eastern-informed, vibe-dense aural weedianism. And much to their credit, “Mountain of Smoke” seems to live up to its name. Less so, perhaps, “Let Us Reason,” which is drawn out in such a way that the moderation implied, maybe with desperation, is inhaled like so much pine-smelling vapor. “Shai Hulud” is the longest cut, mostly instrumental, and might be as far out as Hashishian go, but even the twisting feedback and lead notes at the beginning of closer “Nazareth” feel like a heavy-eyelidded march toward the riff-fill’d land, never mind the bass-led procession of the song itself, manifesting the ethic of opener “Onward” that seems to be the mentality of the 39-minute self-titled as a whole. It is molten in a way not much can claim to be, more patient than the most patient person you know, and seems to find way to make even the tolling bell of the penultimate “High Chief” a drone. Definitely post-Om in sound, Hashishian‘s Hashishian is a sprawl of sand waiting to engulf you. And to whoever is playing this bass, thank you.

Hashishian on Bandcamp

Herby Records on Bandcamp

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Above & Below, Suffer Decay Alone

Ohio-based industrialists Above & Below — primarily Plaguewielder‘s Bryce Seditz on vocals, guitar, synth, programming with Chrome Waves‘ Jeff Wilson adding bass, noise, production and a release through his Disorder Recordings imprint — make their debut with the seven tracks/27 minutes of Suffer Decay Alone, which digs into modern stylistic features like the weighted tonality of the guitar in “Isolate” and the screams on top, some The Downward Spiraling atmosphere given a boost in rhythm from the dense machine churn of Author & Punisher there and on the prior “Hope,” while “Rust” approaches danceable but for all that screaming. “Dead” sounds like something Gnaw might come up with, but the cold realization of craft in “Tear” feels like a signpost telling the project where it wants to head, and the same applies to the 3Teeth-style horror noise of “Covered.” I don’t know which impulse will win out, songwriting or destructive noise, and I’m not sure it needs to be one or the other, but Suffer Decay Alone sets out with a duly harsh mentality and sounds to match. If this is Rust Belt fuckall circa 2022, I’m on board.

Above & Below on Facebook

Disorder Recordings website

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Lord Elephant, Cosmic Awakening

Shades of Earthless‘ more meandering stretches pervade “Cosmic Awakening Pt. I – Forsaken Slumber,” the opener of Lord Elephant‘s Heavy Psych Sounds debut, Cosmic Awakening, and those are purposefully brushed away as “Cosmic Awakening Pt. II – First Radiation” brings on more straight-ahead instrumental shove. The Florence, Italy, trio issued the eight-track album independently in 2021 and their being on the label they are earns them a certain amount of trust before one even listens, but the vibe throughout the outing’s 43 minutes is a don’t-worry-we-know-what-we’re-doing blend of psychedelia and underlying tonal heft. Bass. Tone. Guitar. Tone. Drums. On point. There’s nothing overly fancy about it and there doesn’t need to be as “Raktabija” is a rush and a blast at once, “Covered in Earth’s Blood” crunches and builds and builds and crunches again and “Stellar Cloud” has enough low end to make you feel funny for staring. I wouldn’t put it past them to make friends with an organist at some point, but they’ve got everything they need for right now even without vocals, and the combination of weight and breadth is effectively conveyed from front to back, with closer “Secreteternal” executing a final slowdown until it just seems to come apart. Right on.

Lord Elephant on Facebook

Heavy Psych Sounds website

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Dirty Shades, Lift Off

French double-guitar four-piece Dirty Shades released their debut EP in March 2020, so yeah, there goes that. Lift Off is the four-song follow-up short release, tagged as a ‘live session,’ and given the organic vibe of the performances, I’m inclined to believe it. Vocalist/guitarist Anouk Degrande leads the way as “Dazed” picks up in winding style from the more ethereal opening across the two-minute “Ignition,” her voice reminding in places of No Doubt-era Gwen Stefani, albeit in a much different context. Fellow guitarist Nathan Mimeau provides backing for the chorus, ditto bassist Martin Degrande, and drummer Mathurin Robart is charged with keeping the patterns together behind the various turns in volume and intensity through “Dazed” and the subsequent “Running for Your Life,” which is full, spaced and surprisingly heavy by the time its five minutes are done but is still somehow more about the trip getting there. And a shorter take on now-closer “Trainwreck” appeared on 2020’s Specific Impulse, but its added dreaminess serves it well. Jazzy in spots and showing the band still seeking their stylistic niche, Lift Off may well prove to be the foundation from which the band launches.

Dirty Shades on Facebook

Dirty Shades webstore

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Venus Principle, Stand in Your Light

Best case scenario when a band revamps its lineup is that listeners get another killer band out of it. With that, bid hello to Venus Principle‘s debut album, Stand in Your Light. With vocalist/guitarist Daniel Änghede (also Astroqueen), pianist/vocalist Daisy Chapman, guitarist/keyboardist Jonas Stålhammar (also At the Gates), keyboardist/backing vocalist Mark Furnevall and drummer Ben Wilsker all having been in Crippled Black Phoenix — only bassist Pontus Blom would seem not to be an alumnus — this more recent project perhaps unsurprisingly digs into a deeply, richly melodic, expanded-definition-of-heavy post-rock. The songs across the 68-minute 2LP, which starts with its longest track (immediate points) in the 10:34 “Rebel Drones,” are afraid neither to be loud nor minimal, and standout moments like “Shut it Down” or the Mellotron into absolute-melody-wash of “Sanctuary” bear out that vibe as a reminder of the gorgeousness that can come from emotions normally thought negative. The promo text for this record says it, “provides balm for the wound that the split of ANATHEMA has caused,” and that’s a lofty claim from where I sit, but you know, it’s a start, and clearly a lineup capable of a certain kind of magic that they represent well here.

Venus Principle website

Prophecy Productions store

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Troy the Band, The Blissful Unknown

One doesn’t imagine it’s easy to be a new band in London at this point, with the seen-it-all-plus-we’re-all-in-like-10-bands-ourselves crowd and so many acts in and around the sphere of Desertfest, etc. — or maybe I’m way off and the community is amazing; I honestly don’t know — but Troy the Band distinguish themselves through the pendulum swing in their debut EP, The Blissful Unknown, guitars and bass both fuzzed to and beyond the gills and just a bit showy in “Michael” to give the outing a hint of strut despite its generally laid back attitude. Opener “I Wage a War” is the shortest inclusion by far on the 26-minute offering, and it’s a sprint compared to the more plodding, drone-hum-backed “Less Than Nothing,” and after “Michael” chugs and sways to its noisy finish, the title-track blows it all out to end off by underscoring the encouragingly atmospheric impression made by the songs prior, loose-sounding but not at all sloppy and occupying an expanse that comes across like it only wants to grow bigger. Here’s hoping it does exactly that. In the meantime, even in England’s green, pleasant and perpetually-full-of-riffs land, Troy the Band carve a fascinating place for themselves between various microgenres, psychedelic without being carried off by self-indulgence.

Troy the Band on Facebook

Troy the Band on Bandcamp

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Mount Desert, Fear the Heart

Oakland, California’s Mount Desert make an awaited full-length debut with Fear the Heart a full seven years after releasing their self-titled two-songer (review here), both cuts from which feature on the record. Hey, life happens. I get that. And if the tradeoff for not putting out two or three records in the interim is the airy float of guitar throughout and the subtle-then-not-so-subtle build in “Semper Virens,” I’ll take it. Who the hell needs more records when you can have one that speaks to your unconscious like that? In any case, Fear the Heart is striking in more than just its moments of culmination, “Blue Madonna” and “New Fire” at the outset casting a fluidity that “The River I” and “The River II” perhaps unsurprisingly further even as they find their own paths into the second half of the record. “The Wail” closes with nighttime howls only after “Fear the Heart” — one of the two from the first outing — and the aforementioned “Semper Virens” have their say in progressive guitar and weighted psychedelicraft, earthbound thanks to vocal soul and ‘them drums tho,’ and especially as a debut, and one apparently a while in the making, Mount Desert‘s first LP justifies all that hype from more than half a decade and 15 lifetimes ago. They’re a band with something to say aesthetically and in songwriting. I hope they continue to move forward.

Mount Desert on Facebook

Mount Desert on Bandcamp

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