Posted in Whathaveyou on March 27th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Fresh off supporting Queens of the Stone Age in their native New Zealand, stopping by SXSW on a string of US shows to play a few unofficial showcases after ditching their official one for the age-old reason — the malignant corporate influence of weapons manufacturers — and looking forward to a Spring that will see them in Europe to feature at Desertfest in Oslo, Berlin and London, Poland’s Red Smoke Festival and others following the summer run they did last year, Earth Tongue have announced their second full-length, Great Haunting, will be released on In the Red Records this June 14. Got all that? Sweet.
They have a video up now for “Bodies Dissolve Tonight!” that leans more heavy than psych but still has plenty of both to offer along with krautrock-informed pop and hard-landing riffery in its under-three-and-a-half-minute span, and if you’d like to get acquainted, it’s at the bottom of this post. It’s got a flying truck, if that helps you get on board.
And maybe it will, but it’s the song itself that’s going to make the difference. Find it and the album announcement below, courtesy of the PR wire:
Announcing second full-length from fuzz-soaked psychedelic rock duo EARTH TONGUE
Drawing inspiration from eerie depths of ’70s and ’80s horror cinema, delivering a sonic concoction of dark and primitive songs with thick layers of fuzz and punchy, compressed drums.
Share new single/video ‘Bodies Dissolve Tonight!’
Earth Tongue, the brainchild of guitarist Gussie Larkin and drummer Ezra Simons, present their second full-length album Great Haunting. The duo, known for their heavy flavor of fuzz-soaked psychedelic rock, are also pleased to unveil their signing to In The Red Records.
Earth Tongue’s partnership with In The Red stems from a run of shows supporting the legendary Ty Segall throughout New Zealand. Larkin explains: “Ty’s band Fuzz was a significant influence for our sound early on. Ezra and I saw them play live in London about nine years ago, long before Earth Tongue existed. We absorbed a lot of music at that time, and in fact many of the bands we saw released records via In The Red.”
Great Haunting sees the duo draw inspiration from the eerie depths of ’70s and ’80s horror cinema, delivering a sonic concoction of dark and primitive songs with thick layers of fuzz and punchy, compressed drums. The album was engineered by Jonathan Pearce from The Beths at his studio on Karangahape road in Auckland.
The ascent of Earth Tongue is testament to their dedication and hard work. They’ve toured relentlessly across Europe and scored support slots for acts like IDLES and Queens Of The Stone Age. They’re consistently selling out headline shows and have featured on festival lineups throughout Aotearoa and Australia. Having just spent last week shredding SXSW, they tour America and then, in May, hit Europe/UK, playing DESERT FEST in London on 18th May!! Amongst a huge EU tour.
EARTH TONGUE GREAT HAUNTING In The Red Records Release date: 14th June 2024
Tracklist: 1. Out Of This Hell 2. Bodies Dissolve Tonight! 3. Nightmare 4. The Mirror 5. Grave Pressure 6. Miraculous Death 7. Sit Next To Satan 8. Reaper Returns 9.The Reluctant Host
Posted in Reviews on December 1st, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Well, this is it. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to do Monday and Tuesday, or just Monday, or Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or the whole week next week or what. I don’t know. But while I figure it out — and not having this planned is kind of a novelty for me; something against my nature that I’m kind of forcing I think just to make myself uncomfortable — there are 10 more records to dig through today and it’s been a killer week. Yeah, that’s the other thing. Maybe it’s better to quit while I’m ahead.
I’ll kick it back and forth while writing today and getting the last of what I’d originally slated covered, then see how much I still have waiting to be covered. You can’t ever get everything. I keep learning that every year. But if I don’t do it Monday and Tuesday, it’ll either be last week of December or maybe second week of January, so it’s not long until the next one. Never is, I guess.
If this is it for now or not, thanks for reading. I hope you found music that has touched your life and/or made your day better.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
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David Eugene Edwards, Hyacinth
There are not a ton of surprises to behold in what’s positioned as a first solo studio offering from David Eugene Edwards, whose pedigree would be impressive enough if it only included either 16 Horsepower or Wovenhand but of course is singular in including both. But you don’t need surprises. Titled Hyacinth and issued through Sargent House, the voice, the presence, the sense of intimacy and grandiosity both accounted for as Edwards taps acoustic simplicity in “Bright Boy,” though even that is accompanied by the programmed electronics that provides backing through much of the included 11 tracks. Atop and within these expanses, Edwards broods poetic and explores atmospheres that are heavy in a different way from what Wovenhand has become, chasing tone or intensity. On Hyacinth, it’s more about the impact of the slow-rolling beat in “Celeste” and the blend of organic/inorganic than just how loud a part is or isn’t. Whether a solo career under his name will take the place of Wovenhand or coincide, I don’t know.
Whatever led Beastwars to decide it was time to do a covers EP, fine. No, really, it’s fine. It’s fine that it’s 32 minutes long. It’s fine that I’ve never heard The Gordons, or Julia Deans, or Superette, or The 3Ds or any of the other New Zealand-based artists the Wellington bashers are covering. It’s fine. It’s fine that it sounds different than 2019’s IV (review here). It should. It’s been nearly five years and Beastwars didn’t write these eight songs, though it seems safe to assume they did a fair bit of rearranging since it all sounds so much like Beastwars. But the reason it’s all fine is that when it’s over, whether I know the original version of “Waves” or the blues-turns-crushing “High and Lonely” originally by Nadia Reid, or not, when it’s all over, I’ve got over half an hour more recorded Beastwars music than I had before Tyranny of Distance showed up, and if you don’t consider that a win, you probably already stopped reading. That’s fine too. A sidestep for them in not being an epic landmark LP, and a chance for new ideas to flourish.
Because Messages From the Mothership stacks its longer songs (six-seven minutes) in the back half of its tracklisting, one might be tempted to say Sun Dial push further out as they go, but the truth is that ’60s pop-inflected three-minute opener “Echoes All Around” is pretty out there, and the penultimate “Saucer Noise” — the longest inclusion at 7:47 — is no less melodically present than the more structure-forward leadoff. The difference, principally, is a long stretch of keyboard, but that’s well within the UK outfit’s vintage-synth wheelhouse, and anyway, “Demagnitized” is essentially seven minutes of wobbly drone at the end of the record, so they get weirder, as prefaced in the early going by, well, the early going itself, but also “New Day,” which is more exploratory than the radio-friendly-but-won’t-be-on-the-radio harmonies of “Living for Today” and the duly shimmering strum of “Burning Bright.” This is familiar terrain for Sun Dial, but they approach it with a perspective that’s fresh and, in the title-track, a little bit funky to boot.
With rampant heavy blues and a Mk II Deep Purple boogie bent, Toulouse, France’s Fuzzy Grass present The Revenge of the Blue Nut, and there’s a story there but to be honest I’m not sure I want to know. The heavy ’70s persist as an influence — no surprise for a group who named their 2018 debut 1971 — and pieces like “I’m Alright” and “The Dreamer” feel at least in part informed by Graveyard‘s slow-soul-to-boogie-blowout methodology. Raw fuzz rolls out in 11-minute capper “Moonlight Shades” with a swinging nod that’s a highlight even after “Why You Stop Me” just before, and grows noisy, expansive, eventually furious as it approaches the end, coherent in the verse and cacophonous in just about everything else. But the rawness bolsters the character of the album in ways beyond enhancing the vintage-ist impression, and Fuzzy Grass unite decades of influences with vibrant shred and groove that’s welcoming even at its bluest.
If you go by the current of sizzling electronic pops deeper in the mix, even the outwardly quiet intro to Morne‘s Engraved with Pain is intense. The Boston-based crush-metallers have examined the world around them thoroughly ahead of this fifth full-length, and their disappointment is brutally brought to realization across four songs — “Engraved with Pain” (10:42), “Memories Like Stone” (10:48), “Wretched Empire” (7:45) and “Fire and Dust” (11:40) — written and executed with a dark mastery that goes beyond the weight of the guitar and bass and drums and gutturally shouted vocals to the aura around the music itself. Engraved with Pain makes the air around it feel heavier, basking in an individualized vision of metal that’s part Ministry, part Gojira, lots of Celtic Frost, progressive and bleak in kind — the kind of superlative and consuming listening experience that makes you wonder why you ever listen to anything else except that you’re also exhausted from it because Morne just gave you an existential flaying the likes of which you’ve not had in some time. Artistry. Don’t be shocked when it’s on my ‘best of the year’ list in a couple weeks. I might just go to a store and buy the CD.
Don’t tell the swingin’-dick Western swag of “Wounded,” but Appalooza are a metal band. To wit, The Shining Son, their very-dudely follow-up to 2021’s The Holy of Holies (review here) and second outing for Ripple Music. Opener “Pelican” has more in common with Sepultura than Kyuss, or Pelican for that matter. “Unbreakable” and “Wasted Land” both boast screams worthy of Devin Townsend, while the acoustic/electric urgency in “Wasted Land” and the tumultuous scope of the seven-plus-minute track recall some of Primordial‘s battle-aftermath mourning. “Groundhog Days” has an airy melody and is more decisively heavy rock, and the hypnotic post-doom apparent-murder-balladry of “Killing Maria” answers that at the album’s close, and “Framed” hits heavy blues à la a missed outfit like Dwellers, but even in “Sunburn” there’s an immediacy to the rhythm between the guitar and percussion, and though they’re not necessarily always aggressive in their delivery, nor do they want to be. Metal they are, if only under the surface, and that, coupled with the care they put into their songwriting, makes The Shining Son stand out all the more in an ever-crowded Euro underground.
An invitation to chill the beans delivered to your ears courtesy of Irish cosmic jammers Space Shepherds as two longform jams. “Wading Through the Infinite Sea” nestles into a funky groove and spends who-even-cares-how-much-time of its total 27 minutes vibing out with noodling guitar and a steady, languid, periodically funk-leaning flow. I don’t know if it was made up on the spot, but it sure sounds like it was, and though the drums get a little restless as keys and guitar keep dreaming, the elements gradually align and push toward and through denser clouds of dust and gas on their way to being suns, a returning lick at the end looking slightly in the direction of Elder but after nearly half an hour it belongs to no one so much as Space Shepherds themselves. ‘Side B,’ as it were, is “Void Hurler” (18:41), which is more active early around circles being drawn on the snare, and it has a crescendo and a synthy finish, but is ultimately more about the exploration and little moments along the way like the drums decided to add a bit of push to what might’ve otherwise been the comedown, or the fuzz buzzing amid the drone circa 10 minutes in. You can sit and listen and follow each waveform on its journey or you can relax and let the whole thing carry you. No wrong answer for jams this engaging.
Young Chilean four-piece Rey Mosca — the lineup of Josué Campos, Valentín Pérez, Damián Arros and Rafael Álvarez — hold a spaciousness in reserve for the midsection of teh seven-minute “Sol del Tiempo,” which is the third of the three songs included in their live-recorded Volumen! Sesion AMB EP. A ready hint is dropped of a switch in methodology since both “Psychodoom” and ” Perdiendo el Control” are under two minutes long. Crust around the edge of the riff greets the listener with “Psychodoom,” which spends about a third of its 90 seconds on its intro and so is barely started by the time it’s over. Awesome. “Perdiendo el Control” is quicker into its verse and quicker generally and gets brasher in its second half with some hardcore shout-alongs, but it too is there and gone, where “Sol del Tiempo” is more patient from the outset, flirting with ’90s noise crunch in its finish but finding a path through a developing interpretation of psychedelic doom en route. I don’t know if “Sol del Tiempo” would fit on a 7″, but it might be worth a shot as Rey Mosca serve notice of their potential hopefully to flourish.
Principally engaged in the consumption and expulsion of expectations, Fawn Limbs and Nadja — experimentalists from Finland and Germany-via-Canada, respectively — drone as one might think in opener “Isomerich,” and in the subsequent “Black Body Radiation” and “Cascading Entropy,” they give Primitive Man, The Body or any other extremely violent, doom-derived bludgeoners you want to name a run for their money in terms of sheer noisy assault. Somebody’s been reading about exoplanets, as the drone/harsh noise pairing “Redshifted” and “Blueshifted” (look it up, it’s super cool) reset the aural trebuchet for its next launch, the latter growing caustic on the way, ahead of “Distilled in Observance” renewing the punishment in earnest. And it is earnest. They mean every second of it as Fawn Limbs and Nadja grind souls to powder with all-or-nothing fury, dropping overwhelming drive to round out “Distilled in Observance” before the 11-minute “Metastable Ion Decay” bursts out from the chest of its intro drone to devour everybody on the ship except Sigourney Weaver. I’m not lying to you — this is ferocious. You might think you’re up for it. One sure way to find out, but you should know you’re being tested.
Do they pilot, a-pilot, do they the dune? Probably. Regardless, German heavy rockers Dune Pilot offer their third full-length and first for Argonauta Records in the 11-song Magnetic, taking cues from modern fuzz in the vein of Truckfighters for “Visions” after the opening title-track sets the mood and establishes the mostly-dry sound of the vocals as they cut through the guitar and bass tones. A push of voice becomes a defining feature of Magnetic, which isn’t such a departure from 2018’s Lucy, though the rush of “Next to the Liquor Store” and the breadth in the fuzz of “Highest Bid” and the largesse of the nod in “Let You Down” assure that Dune Pilot don’t come close to wearing down their welcome in the 46 minutes, cuts like the bluesy “So Mad” and the big-chorus ideology of “Heap of Shards” coexisting drawn together by the vitality of the performances behind them as well as the surety of their craft. It is heavy rock that feels specifically geared toward the lovers thereof.
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 13th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
With no intent to offend, I’ll say outright that I have never heard of any of the artists Beastwars are covering on their upcoming eight-track covers LP, Tyranny of Distance, but I’ve heard the thing and it sure sounds like Beastwars, which is enough for me. I got a listen-through and didn’t initially know it was covers, but remarked on some different kinds of moods and shifts in sound around their central crushing ethic — you can hear some of that in the single “Waves” at the bottom of the post, and not just in the guest vocals from Julia Deans — and then was told what the deal was. As regards ferocity, I’ve yet to do a side-by-side with 2019’s IV (review here), but I’m genuinely thrilled to have the excuse to do one.
One of the vinyl editions is already sold out on preorder. I would not be surprised if others go before the actual release date, which is Oct. 13. So just a heads up on that.
Here’s info from the PR wire:
BEASTWARS: Wellington Metallers Celebrate the Music of New Zealand with TYRANNY OF DISTANCE Covers Album
The band’s fifth studio album offers interpretations of classic NZ artists such as The 3Ds, The Gordons, Superette, Snapper, and more!
Renowned Wellington metallers Beastwars are thrilled to announce the release of their long-awaited fifth studio album, Tyranny of Distance, this October.
Showcasing the band’s remarkable talent for covering a range of artists and genres, the album spans across four decades of New Zealand’s rich musical history. Featuring reimagined tracks by acts such as The Gordons, Superette, Snapper, Marlon Williams, The 3Ds and more, Beastwars have extracted, mutated and distorted riffs to create a fresh and characteristically powerful sound.
The concept behind the album took root several years ago when vocalist Matthew Hyde expressed his admiration and desire to cover Marlon Williams’s ‘Dark Child’. The band didn’t pursue the idea until 2022 when they were approached to contribute a song to a Soundgarden tribute album. While on hiatus with band members facing personal challenges, the prospect of creating new, original music felt seemingly impossible. Yet they quickly discovered that the act of making music together was not only healing and cathartic but incredibly enjoyable. This realisation led to the resurrection and expansion of the idea to cover Williams’ song, marking the beginning of an ambitious journey involving shortlisting songs, seeking artists’ blessings, uncovering the inspirations behind the tracks, and even undertaking the challenging quest to decipher long-lost lyrics from original recordings.
Panhead Custom Ales, local institution and champions of rock music and custom car culture stepped up to show their unwavering support for Beastwars by embracing a simple proposition: “Would you finance the band’s recording of hot-rodded New Zealand songs?” Their answer? A resounding, “hell yeah!”
‘Waves’, the first single from Tyranny of Distance – featuring Fur Patrol’s Julia Deans and originally performed by ’90s Flying Nun act, Superette – exemplifies the band’s experimental approach when pushing the boundaries of the source material. With two Superette songs initially considered for the project, Beastwars based the song on the monolithic riff from ‘Saskatchewan’, overlaying the haunting lyrics and melody of ‘Waves’ to carry the pathos of the original, while making it entirely their own.
To celebrate the release of Tyranny of Distance, the band will also embark on a nationwide tour this October and November, with seven dates scheduled across Aotearoa (see below). For live performances, Christian Pearce, who also contributes to Beastwars’ side projects End Boss and Putrid Future, will join the band on guitar duties while original member Clayton Anderson takes a temporary break.
Tyranny of Distance will be released on 13th October 2023
Obey the Riff, Long Live the Beast!
TYRANNY OF DISTANCE NZ ALBUM TOUR DATES: 13/10 – The Musicians Club, Whanganui 14/10 – Zeal/The Mayfair, New Plymouth 26/10 – Last Place, Hamilton 27/10 – Galatos, Auckland 28/10 – San Fran, Wellington 3/11 – 12 Bar, Christchurch 4/11 – Dive, Dunedin
TRACK LISTING: 1. Identity (Orig. by The Gordons) 2. Waves (Orig. by Superette) 3. Emmanuelle (Orig. by Snapper) 4. Dark Child (Orig. by Marlon Williams) 5. Looking for the Sun (Orig. by Children’s Hour) 6. High and Lonely (Orig. by Nadia Reid) 7. We Light Fire (Orig. by Julia Deans) 8. Spooky (Orig. by The 3Ds)
Wellington, New Zealand, heavy rock trio Mammuthus will self-release their debut album, Imperator, on July 7. And don’t let the fact that it’s 29 minutes long fool you, it’s an LP. The heavy-swinging chug ‘n’ rollers released their four-song self-titled debut EP in 2020, and like End Boss, whose vocalist EJ Thorpe shows up for a guest spot on Imperator closer “Formless,” Mammuthus find a niche within post-Beastwars NZ heavy, guitarist/vocalist Josh Micallef working some Sasquatch influence into the riff and vocals of second cut “Long Drive” after “Holy Goat” has taken three minutes out of your busy day to lower a bludgeon of tone and establish a perimeter of largesse like an impact zone for where his and bassist Matt Bradford‘s fuzz will land, drummer Jay Rodeo (new since the EP) signaling the change to the hook with two hits on the splash.
Both of those comparisons, I’ll note, were made in the PR wire bio below, but they’re both right (Black Sabbath and Kyuss apply more generally, but you wouldn’t call them wrong for this kind of thing ever) and supported by specific examples. At the same time, “Backdoor” finds Mammuthus — not to be confused with Mammatus, Mammathus, Ufomammut, Wooly Mammoth or Mammoth Volume, etc.; that first ‘u’ and the fact that they’re from New Zealand do some heavy lifting in distinguishing the name — works in a bluesy C.O.C.-style semi-metal double-kick later, and the centerpiece “King of the Dead” lurches out initially with a doomly presence, if still righteously fuzzed, so Micallef, Bradford and Rodeo are less beholden to one or another side of the heavy underground aural sphere than it might at first seem when “Holy Goat” swaggers through its gritty verse. They speed up in “King of the Dead” and some backing growls behind Micallef — or at least a layer of added burl — emphasize the weight surrounding while its position at the end of a presumed A-side (or the beginning of a B-side) sets an expectation for “Formless” to answer back in particularly huge fashion, which it does following “Monolith” and “Bloodworm.”
For all the chugging bulk it throws around, “King of the Dead” has a hook — Mark Mundell of Planet of the Dead does a guest spot — and its tempo variety makes the sleek middle-ground groove of “Monolith” feel like a landing point. It’s a standout either way for being entirely instrumental, and though one can hear where the initial verse lines would go, the fact that the first half of the song doesn’t shift into a chorus gives its bouncing progression more room to flourish. At 1:36, the fuzz pedal clicks off and Micallef‘s guitar moves into a floating heavy psych midsection that pulls out memories of Sungrazer maybe informed by some of Elder‘s shimmering prog-heavy, and at 3:29 into the purposeful-seeming total 4:20, Mammuthus unveil the triumph-of-riff that feels like what they named the album after. They don’t ride it for long — nothing on Imperator overstays its welcome, including the album as an entirety — but the crater is made and that makes a fitting setting for the arrival of “Bloodworm.”
The second of two tracks repurposed from the demo — the other was “Backdoor” — the penultimate track is likewise bluesier at its outset and sub-four-minutes in its runtime, but the last of those minutes shifts into a heavier thrust that’s like a mini-rampage. Not lacking atmosphere, “Bloodworm” has bombast worthy of the re-recording, and lets the softer beginning of “Formless” and the start of Thorpe‘s vocals become a dynamic contrast. It is no small thing for a band to give away the crescendo of their debut album, and even at 5:52, “Formless” isn’t as long as it would be on any number of other records, but a rumble of bass at about 4:37 signals the start of the build and the guitar sweeps forward to preface the surge at 4:55, screamed repetitions of the title mounting in intensity as they push higher for the second of two sets of four, capping with residual feedback and crunch-noise before ending cold.
Going back around to the start, the roll of “Holy Goat” feels all the more immediate and the swing seems to carry an extra touch of Sabbath, so fair enough. Mammuthus know the styles they’re playing toward, and the genre elements they’re picking from in a given track, whether it’s a lurching groove or sludgy shove or chugga-chugga-chugga, and that awareness serves them well throughout while not holding them back in terms of craft. With the impression of “Backdoor” and “Bloodworm” as the oldest inclusions, one might anticipate Mammathus to continue to grow more mammoth (mammuth?) in sound as demonstrated though “King of the Dead,” “Monolith” or “Formless,” but in under half an hour they find room to celebrate a variety of heavy forms, and that’s an accomplishment in itself, and the expanse they lay out across that minimal LP runtime isn’t to be understated either. Whatever direction they take from here, the thing to hope for is growth, and they give every indication of that being underway, so right on.
We’ve got a ways to go until July, but you can get a sample of Imperator with “Bloodworm” as first single premiering below, followed by more from the PR wire.
Please enjoy:
The roar of MAMMUTHUS is a doom/stoner rock bred proposal embracing the inspirations of bands such as Black Sabbath, Sasquatch, Beastwars, and Kyuss but a confrontational involvement of sound stamping its own commanding individuality. The Wellington band’s 2020 released debut EP stamped down that distinction, its quartet of tracks a sinewy introduction which soon proved a praise luring incitement. It was a rippling of creative muscle which has grown into a pharaonic snowball of craft and imagination; evolution and intent uniting within the unforgiving yet alluring seductive beast that is ‘Imperator’.
Overall an eclectic body of enterprise and invention, ‘Imperator’ finds MAMMUTHUS breaching a whole new realm in their and heavy rock’s tempestuous plateaus. From the incisive and invasive swings of Jay Rodeo’s beats, the prowling growling bestiality of Matt Bradford’s bass to the distorted yet melodically searing weaving of Josh Micallef’s guitar, it all rapaciously courted by the latter’s inner and vocal snarling, the album is a hulking shadow of sound and intimidation upon the senses but, as proven by the likes of tracks such as ‘Formless’ featuring EJ from End Boss, equally a source of keen surprise and untethered imagination.
Set to be released on July 7th, “Imperator” was recorded and mixed by James Goldsmith and mastered by Will Borza, and also features the Mark Mundell of Planet of the Dead as guest vocalist in “King Of The Dead”.
Tracklisting: 1. Holy Goat 2. Long Drive 3. Backdoor 4. King of the Dead (feat. Mark Mundell) 5. Monolith 6. Bloodworm 7. Formless (feat. EJ Thorpe)
Mammuthus are: Josh Micallef – guitar/vocals Matt Bradford – bass Jay Rodeo – drums
You have your coffee yet? I’ve got mine. Today’s Friday, which means day five of this six-day Spring 2022 Quarterly Review, and it’s been a hell of a week. Yesterday was particularly insane, and today offers not much letup in that regard. If you’d have it another way, I’m sorry, but there’s too much cool shit out there to write about stuff that all sounds the same, so I don’t. I’ve had a good time over this stretch and I hope you have too if you’ve been keeping up. We’ll have one more on Monday and that’s it until late June or early July, so please enjoy.
And thanks as always for reading.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
Pike vs. the Automaton, Pike vs. The Automaton
Matt Pike acoustic? It happened, and YOU were there! Truth is, the strumming foundation on which “Land” is built is just one example of Pike vs. The Automaton‘s singular get-weirdness, and followers of his career arc through Sleep and High on Fire from playing basements to winning a Grammy will recognize pieces of cuts like “Abusive” and “Trapped in a Midcave,” the all-out rager “Alien Slut Mom” (which of course was the lead single), the bombastic expanse of “Apollyon,” the even-more-all-out-rager “Acid Test Zone” and the dug-in get-weirdness of “Latin American Geological Formation” as one of heavy music’s most influential auteurs welcomes (?) listeners into a world of swirling chaos, monsters, conspiracies and, of course, riffs. The album saves its greatest accomplishment for last in the 11-minute “Leaving the Wars of Woe,” but if you’re old enough to remember when Rob Zombie did those off-the-wall cartoons for White Zombie videos and the Beavis and Butt-Head movie, listening to Pike vs. the Automaton is kind of like living in that for a while. So yeah, awesome.
Maybe the heaviest sans-bass low end since Floor? That’s not a minor claim, but at very least Wellington, New Zealand’s End Boss put themselves in the running with They Seek My Head, their debut album. The guitars of Greg Broadmore and Christian Pearce are the crushing foundation on which the band is built, and with Beastwars‘ own Nathan Hickey on drums, there’s a reliable base of groove to coincide as all that weight becomes the backdrop for E.J. Thorpe‘s vocals to soar over top on cuts like “Heart of the Sickle” and “Punished.” It’s a wide breadth throughout the eight songs and 33 minutes, allowing “Becomes the Gold” to show some emotive urgency while “Nail and Tooth” seems only to be sharpening knives at the outset of side B, while “The Crawl” just about has to be named after its riff and fair enough. “Lorded Over” hints at an atmospheric focus that may or may not further manifest in the future, but the closing title-track is what it’s all about, and it’s big nod, big melody, big hooks. You can’t lose. Onto the ‘best debuts of 2022’ it goes.
Fred Laird (Earthling Society, Taras Bulba) and Mike Vest (Bong, Blown Out, etc.) released their self-titled debut as Artifacts & Uranium in 2021 as a collection of three massive dronescapes. Their follow-up, Pancosmology, telegraphs being more compositionally-focused even before you put it on, running eight songs instead of three, and indeed, that’s how it turns out. There are still massive waves of exploratory drones, guitar, electric piano, drums programmed and real — Nick Raybould plays on half the tracks, so a potential third in the duo — synth, bass, whatever a Gakken Generator is, it all comes together with an understated splendor and a sense of reaching into the unknown. Witness the guitar and synth lines of “Silent Plains,” and are those vocals buried so deep in that mix? I can’t even tell. It doesn’t matter. The point is that for 37 minutes, Laird and Vest (and Raybould) take you on a psych-as-spirituality trip into, around and through the universe, and by the time they get to “The Inmost Light” noisewashing at the finish, the feeling is like being baptised in a cold river of acid. If this is the birth of the gods, I’m in.
After the slower rolling opener “Broken Dick,” Night City‘s debut cassette EP, Kuang Xi, works at a pretty intense clip, taking the Godflesh vibe of that lead track, keeping the abiding tonal thickness, and imbuing it with an also-’90s-era Ministry-ish sense of chaos and push. The four-song outing works from its longest track to shortest and effectively melds heavy industrial with brutal chug and extreme metal, and one should expect no less from Collyn McCoy, whose plumbing of the dark recesses of the mind in Circle of Sighs is a bit more purely experimentalist. That said, if “Encryptor/Decryptor” showed up as a Circle of Sighs track, I wouldn’t have argued, but the use of samples here throughout and the explicitly sociopolitical lyrics make for coherent themes separate from McCoy‘s other project. “Steppin’ Razor” uses its guitar solo like a skronky bagpipe while calling out Proud Boy bullshit, and in fewer than three minutes, “Molly Million$” finds another gear of thrust before devolving into so much caustic noise. The version I got also featured the dancier “Tomorrow’s World,” but I’m not sure if that’s on the tape. Either way, a brutalist beginning.
Rise Above Records signing a band that might even loosely be called doom is immediately noteworthy because it means the band in question has impressed label owner Lee Dorrian, formerly of Cathedral, who — let’s be honest — has some of the best taste in music the world over. Thus Friends of Hell unleash 40 minutes of dirt-coated earliest-NWOBHM-meets-Celtic–Frost chugging groove, with former Electric Wizard bassist Tasos Danazoglou (currently Mirror) on drums and Sami “Albert Witchfinder” Hynninen (Spiritus Mortis, Reverend Bizarre, Opium Warlords) on vocals, biting through catchy classic-sounding cuts like “Into My Coffin” and side B’s “Gateless Gate” and “Orion’s Beast.” Unremittingly dark, the nine-song collection ends with “Wallachia,” a somewhat grander take that still keeps its rawness of tone and general purpose with a more spacious vibe. It is not a coincidence Friends of Hell take their name from a Witchfinder General record; their sound seems like prime fodder for patch-on-denim worship.
The second full-length keeping on a literally-underground theme from 2021’s From the Basement (review here), the 10-song/35-minute What Lies Beneath finds founding Delco Detention guitarist Tyler Pomerantz once again getting by with a little help from his friends, up to and including members of Hippie Death Cult — Eddie Brnabic shreds over instrumental closer “FUMOFO” — The Age of Truth, Kingsnake and others. Angelique Zuppo makes a highlight of early cut “Rock Paper Scissors,” and Dave Wessell of Ickarus Gin brings a performance that well suits the strut-fuzz of “War is Mine,” while instrumentals “What Lies Beneath” and “Velcro Shoes” find Tyler (on bass and guitar) and drummer Adam Pomerantz digging into grooves just fine on their own. The shifts between singers give a compilation-style feel continued on from the first record, but a unifying current of songwriting brings it all together fluidly, and as “A Slow Burn” and “Study Hall Blues” readily demonstrate, Delco Detention know how to take a riff out for a walk. Right on (again).
Put Lansing, Michigan’s Room 101 up there with Primitive Man, Indian and any other extreme-sludge touchstone you want and their debut long-player, Sightless, will hold its own in terms of sheer, concrete-tone crushing force. In answering the potential of 2019’s The Burden EP (review here), the album offsets its sheer bludgeoning with stretches of quiet-tense atmospherics, “Boarded Window” offering a momentary respite before the onslaught begins anew. This balance is further fleshed out on longer tracks like “Dead End,” with a more extended break and the title-cut with its ending guitar lead, but neither the sub-five-minute “Windowlicker” nor “Boarded Window” earlier want for mood, and even the finale “The Innocent, the Ignorant and the Insecure” brings a feeling of cohesion to its violence. This shit is lethal, to be sure, but it’s also immersive. Watch out you don’t drown in it.
Heralded by the prior single “With the Devil Hand in Hand” (posted here), which is positioned as the closer of the 41-minute five-tracker, Hydra‘s second full-length, Beyond Life and Death, finds the Polish four-piece pushing deeper into doomed traditionalism. Where their 2020 debut, From Light to the Abyss (review here), had a garage-ist edge, and if you work hard, you can still hear some of that just before the organ kicks in near the end of “On the Edge of Time” (if that’s a “Children of the Sea” reference we can be friends), but after the more gallop-prone opener “Prophetic Dreams” and the penultimate “Path of the Dark”‘s whoa-oh backing vocals, the crux of what they’re doing is more NWOBHM-influenced, and blending with the cult horror lyrical themes of centerpiece “The Unholy Ceremony” or the aforementioned closer, it gives Hydra a more confident sound and a more poised approach to doom than they had just two years ago. The adjusted balance of elements in their sound suits them, and they seem quickly to be carving out a place for themselves in Poland’s crowded scene.
The two 12-minute tracks “Opiate the Sun” and “Foret” bookend Swiss trio E-L-R‘s second LP for Prophecy Productions, Vexier, and the intention would seem to be plain in hooking and immersing the listener in the experience and flow of the album. Like their wildly impressive 2019 debut, Mænad (review here), this collection has plenty of post-metallic elements, and there’s specifically a post-black metal bent to “Three Winds” in its earliest going — by the midsection it’s come apart into broad, open spaces, but the rush comes back — and the centerpiece and shortest track, “Seeds,” which seems to shine even brighter in its melody than the opener, as the vocals are once more presented on a level plane with the rest of the atmospheric elements, far back in the mix but not at all lacking resonance for being vague. “Seeds” is a fitting summary, but “Fleurs of Decay” leans into the expectation of something harsher and “Foret” boasts a more complex linear build, stretches of drone and a broader vocal arrangement before bringing the record to its gentle finish. I liked the first record a lot. I like this one more. E-L-R are doing something with sound that no one else quite has the same kind of handle on, however familiar the elements making it up might be. They are a better band than people yet know.
Titled Three or III, depending where you look, the third long-player from Denver instrumental heavy rockers Buffalo Tombs follows relatively hot on the heels of the second, Two (review here), which came out last October. Spearheaded by guitarist/bassist Eric Stuart, who also recorded the instrumentation sans Patrick Haga‘s own self-recorded drums (lockdown? depends on when it was) and mixed and mastered — Joshua Lafferty also adds bass to “Ancestors” and “Monument,” which are just two of the six contemplations here as Buffalo Tombs explores an inward-looking vision of heavy sounds and styles, not afraid to shove or chug a bit on “Swarm” or “Gnostics/Haint,” but more consistently mellow in mood and dug into its own procession. “Familiars” hints at aspects of heavy Americana, but the root expression on III comes across as more personal and that feeling of intimacy suits well the mood of the songs.
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 3rd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Welcome to me telling you I told you so. When Wellington, New Zealand’s End Boss — not to be confused with the defunct End of Level Boss, from London — released their debut EP, Heart of the Sky (review here), I actually said the words “watch out.” Now, here they come with a debut full-length called They Seek My Head on Rough Peel Records and a first single that’s got all the stomp and reach that you were duly warned about. You’ll note the participation of Beastwars drummer Nathan “Nato” Hickey, but he’s just part of the story of what’s going on here as the band manage to bring dense low-end despite having no bassist and vocalist E.J. Thorpe adds soar and soul alike to complement the earth-moving chug.
The song, suitably enough, is called “Punished,” but that too is only part of the tale. There’s healing here too.
It’s not too late to make friends with it, which I think you’re going to want to do ahead of the album.
From the PR wire:
END BOSS (Beastwars, Ghidoragh) to Release Debut Album | Video for ‘PUNISHED’
This April will see the arrival of the debut album by Wellington, New Zealand’s exciting and utterly spellbinding heavy powerhouse, End Boss.
Featuring the electrically ethereal talents of lead singer E.J. Thorpe, venerable Ghidoragh guitarists Greg Broadmore and Christian Pearce, and Beastwars’ percussive colossus Nathan Hickey, They Seek My Head is a tempest. A debut album which, from the first wailing guitar siren to final triumphant crescendo, heralds End Boss as a new authority in heavy music.
For the Kiwi four-piece, their debut has been a long-time coming. Having completed the album in-between lockdowns over a 10-month period, their lead single ‘Punished’ heralds everything you need to know about the band.
“The lyrics heavily deal with the struggles of the mind,” explains Thorpe. “I’m really interested in the psychological theory of the ‘shadow’ and how it influences us as individuals and a collective. The human brain is pretty messed up and the things we do to each other, and the planet reflects that. I guess you could say the ‘shadow’ is the End Boss and if we want to get off this trajectory of destruction, we have to heal ourselves.”
With Thorpe’s beautifully delivered vocals offering up intense lyrical pathos, and tectonic rhythms articulating the shaky isles of their homeland, listeners will be left astounded by the sludge and sorcery. It’s a monstrous offering from a newly spawned leviathan.
They Seek My Head will be released 8th April 2022 on Rough Peel Records.
Tracklisting: 1. Heart of the Sickle 2. Punished 3. Becomes the Gold 4. Covet 5. Nail & Tooth 6. The Crawl 7. Lorded Over 8. They Seek My Head
Produced by James Goldsmith and End Boss Recorded and Mixed by James Goldsmith Mastered by Will Borza
END BOSS: E.J. Thorpe – Vocals Greg Broadmore – Guitar Christian Pearce – Guitar Nathan Hickey – Drums
Posted in Reviews on January 20th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Welcome to Day Four of the Jan. 2022 Quarterly Review. Or maybe it’s the other half of the Dec. 2021 Quarterly Review. Or maybe I overthink these things. The latter feels most likely. Inanycase, welcome. If you’ve been keeping up with the records as they’ve been coming in 10-per-day batches over the course of this week, thanks. If not, well, if you’re interested, it’s not like the posts disappeared. Just keep scrolling, then I think click through. One of these days I’ll get an infinite scroll plug-in. Those are for the cool kids.
Also, ‘Infinite Scroll’ is, as of right now, the name of my ’90s-style pixel-art role playing game. Ask me about the plot when these reviews are done.
For now…
Quarterly Review #31-40:
SOM, The Shape of Everything
Working from a foundation in heavy post-rock, Connecticut’s SOM soar and float like so many shoreline seagulls over the Long Island Sound on the eight-song/34-minute The Shape of Everything, which would call to mind the melancholy of Katatoniia were its sadness not even more shimmering. Early pieces “Moment” and “Animals” build a depth of modern progressive metal riffing beneath only the airiest of guitar leads, a wash of distortion meeting a wash of melody, and with guitarist/vocalist/producer Will Benoit helming, his voice rings through clear in melody and still somewhat ethereal, calling to mind a more organically-constructed Jesu in poppier as well as some heavier stretches. The penultimate “Heart Attack” tips into heavier fare with a steady bassline and bursts of crunching guitar, and the finale “Son of Winter” answers back with a (snow)blinding spaciousness and an entrancing last buildup. There’s enough room here to really get lost, and SOM are too mindful of their craft to let it happen.
Alright, I admit it. I went to “Icy Flatulence” first. Even before “Cyborgian Burger Hut” or “Euphoric Nostril.” Scott Heller, otherwise known as Dr. Space of Øresund Space Collective and any number of other outfits on a given day, is as-ever exploring on Muzik 2 Loze Yr Mynd Inn, and the results are hypnotic enough that they might leave you using the kind of spelling on the album’s title, but even in the relatively serene “Garden of Rainbow Unicorns” there’s a forward keyline — and actually, in that song, an undercurrent of horror soundtracking that makes me think the unicorn is about to eat me; could happen — and the extended pair of “T-E-T” and “Ribbons in Time” are marked by ’80s sci-fi beeps and boops and a kind of electronic shuffle, respectively, though the latter is probably as close as the 54-minute six-songer comes to soundscaping. Which is like landscaping only, in this case, happening in another galaxy somewhere. And there they call it jazz as they should and all is well. In all seriousness, I keep a running list in my brain of bands who should ask Dr. Space to guest on their records. Your band is probably on it. It’s pretty much everybody.
Here’s some context you probably don’t need: “Cold Wind” and “When I’m King” were written around the time of Wellington, New Zealand’s Beastwars‘ 2011 self-titled debut (review here). They may even have been recorded — I could’ve sworn “When I’m King” popped up somewhere at some point — but they’ve now been redone from the ground up and they’re pressed to a limited 7″ as part of the 10th anniversary celebration that also saw the self-titled get a new vinyl issue. Now, is it helpful knowing that? Yeah, sure. If I came at you instead and said, “Hey, new Beastwars!” though, it’d probably be more of a draw, and whatever gets Beastwars in as many ears as possible is what should invariably be done. “When I’m King” is a banger (bonus points for gang shouts), “Cold Wind” a little more seething, but both tracks harness that peculiarly sludged tonality that the band has owned for more than a decade now, and the guttural delivery of Matthew Hyde is only more resonant for the years between the writing and the execution of these songs. That execution is beheading by riffs, by the way.
A Nocturnal Crossing, the second album from Toulouse, France’s Deathbell and their first for Svart Records, can come at you from any number of angles seemingly at any point. Which thread are you following? Is it the soaring, classic-feeling occult rock melodies of Lauren Gaynor, or her organ work that, at the same time, adds gothic drama to so much of the material on the six-songer? Is it the lumbering groove of “Shifting Sands” and the doomed fuzz of “Devoured on the Peak” earlier, speaking to entirely different traditions? Or maybe the atmosphere in “Silent She Comes,” which is almost post-metallic in its shining lead guitar? Or perhaps, and hopefully I think, it’s all of these things as skillfully woven together as they are in these tracks. Opener “The Stronghold and the Archer” and the closing title-track mirror each other in their underlying metallic influence, but that too becomes one more texture at Deathbell‘s disposal, brought forward in such a way as to emphasize the unity of the whole work as much as the individual progressions.
After debuting on Svart with 2018’s Toinen Toista (review here), sax-laced Helskini classic prog pastoralists Malady offer Ainavihantaa (‘all the time’) across a lush and welcoming six tracks and 37 minutes. The flow is immediate and paramount on opener “Alava Vaara” and through the flute/sax tradeoff in “Vapaa Ja Autio,” which follows, and though it’s heady fare, somehow the “Foxy-Lady”-if-King–Crimson-wrote-it strut-into-meander of “Sisävesien Rannat” skirts a line of indulgence without fully toppling over. Side B is jazzy and winding across “Dyadi” and “Haavan Väri” ahead of the title-track, but the human presence of vocals, even in a language I don’t speak, does wonders in keeping the proceedings grounded, right up to the Beatlesian finish of “Ainavihantaa” itself. This was on a lot of best-of-2021 lists and it’s not a challenge to see why.
The Earth, ecologically devastated by industrialization and the wastefulness of humans — capitalism, in other words — becomes a wasteland. A few billionaires, who’ve been playing around with laughably-phallic rockets anyway, decide they’re going to escape out into space and leave the rest of the species, which they’ve destroyed, to suffer. It would be — and used to be — the stuff of decent science fiction were it not basically what homo sapiens are living through right now. A mass extinction owing to climate change the roots of which are in anthropocene action and inaction alike. French outfit Wormsand tell this utterly-plausible story in cascading doom riffs that reminds at once of Pallbearer and Forming the Void, keeping an edge of modern heavy prog to their plodding and accompanying with clean vocals and some more gutty shouts. As one might expect, things get pretty grim by the time they’re down to “Carrions,” “Collapsing” and “Shapeless Mass” near the album’s end, but the trio get big, big points for not trying to offer some placating “you can avoid this future” message of hope at the end, instead highlighting the final message, “The oracles warned us long ago/That a huge mass would swallow us all.” Ambitious in narrative concept, expertly conveyed.
I hate to call out a falsehood, but Virginia duo Thunderchief‘s claim that, “No fucks were used, or given, on this recording,” just isn’t the case. I’m sorry. You don’t rip the fuck out of your throat like Rik Surly does on “Aiboh/Phobia” without a clear intent. That intent might be — and would seem to be — fuckall, but fuckall’s way different from ‘no fucks.’ If they didn’t give a fuck, Synanthrope could hardly come across as furious as it does in these seven tracks, totaling a consuming, gruff, sludged 39 minutes, marked out by centerpiece “King of the Pleistocene” fucking with your conception of desert rock, the second part of “Aiboh/Phobia” — the part named after a grind band, oddly enough — and “Toss Me a Crumb” fucking around with some grind, and closer “Paw” trodding out its feedback-laden course with Erik Larson‘s drums marching in crash with Surly‘s riffs. Hell, you got Mike Dean to record the thing. That’s giving a fuck all by itself. This kind of heavy and righteous, purposeful aural cruelty doesn’t happen by mistake. It’s too good to be fuckless. Sorry.
No lyric sheet necessary to get that the longest song on Turkey Vulture‘s Twist the Knife EP, the three-minute “Livestock on Our Way to Slaughter,” is based lyrically on the ever-relevant film They Live. The married Connecticut duo of guitarist/bassist/vocalist Jessie May and drummer Jim Clegg (also in charge of visuals), find thrashy release on the four-song release, which totals about eight minutes and in opener “Fiji,” “Where the Truth Dwells,” as well as “Livestock on Our Way to Slaughter,” they rip with surprising metallic thrust. The closing “She’s Married (But Not to Me)” is something of a further shift, and had me searching for an original version out there somewhere thinking it was a cover either of Buddy Holly or some wistful punk band, but no, seems to be an original. So be it. Clearly, at this point, May and Clegg are finding new modes of sonic catharsis that even a couple years ago they likely wouldn’t have dared. They’re a stronger band for their readiness to follow such whims.
In Stargo‘s Dammbruch, I hear a signal back to European heavy rock’s prior instrumentalist generation, the Dortmunder three-piece not completely divorced from the riffy progressions that drove the warmth creating heavy psychedelia in the first place, even as the four-part, 14-minute title-track of the EP shifts between those impulses and more progressive, weighted, extreme or airy movements before its eerily peaceful conclusion. “Copter,” which could be titled after its wub-wub-wub effect early and the guitar chug that takes hold of it, and the closer “Bathysphere,” with its outward reach of guitar telegraphed in the first half but still resonant at the end, bring likeminded breadth in shorter bursts, but the abiding story of the EP is what the band — who made their full-length debut with 2020’s Parasight — might continue to offer as their style continues to develop. 35007, My Sleeping Karma, The Ocean, Pelican and Russian Circles — Stargo‘s sound is a melting pot of ideas. They only need to keep exploring.
Fabrizio Monni, also of Black Capricorn, issues a second EP from the solo-project Ascia following up on Sept. 2021’s Volume I (review here) with the marauding lumber of Dec. 2021’s Volume II, bringing his axe down across five tracks in a sub-20-minute run that’s been compiled onto a limited CD with the first release. Makes sense. The two outings share an affinity for the running megafuzz of earliest High on Fire and showcase the emerging personality of the new outfit in the melodies of “The Will of Gods” and the untempered doom of the later slowdown in “Thousands of Ghosts.” The instrumental “A Night with Shahrazad” closes, and feels a bit like a piece of a song — it crashes out just when you think the vocals might kick in — but if Monni‘s leaving his audience wanting more, well, he also seems quick enough to provide. “Eternal Glory” and “Ruins of War” will remind you what you liked about the first EP, and the rest will remind you why you’re looking forward to the next one. Mark it a win.
Posted in Whathaveyou on December 9th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Remember that time Beastwars put out their self-titled debut (review here) in 2011? I do. It was awesome. That record dominated nearly everything in its path, and it set the New Zealand band’s destructive course in motion in a way for which one can only feel grateful these 10 years later. The Wellington-based four-piece embarked earlier this year on a round of tour dates playing their first album in its entirety, and in reissuing it, they included a 7″ with two songs initially left off the LP, re-recorded by the band as they are now.
“Cold Wind” and “When I’m King” can both be streamed now, and the band have made a few limited copies of the 7″ available in standalone fashion. Shipping ain’t cheap, I’ll tall you right now, but I’ve been watching the numbers available tick down over the last few days, and I’ll confess to feeling an increasing sense of urgency as they do. My inclination is to treasure pretty much anything Beastwars do at this point as a bonus, what with the band having broken up before eventually coming back together for 2019’s IV (review here).
I don’t know how long they’ll last but the songs, unsurprisingly, are killer, so it’s one you might want to snag while the snagging’s good and the numbers tick down to zero.
Art/info/links/audio follow:
Don’t let the disheveled looks deceive you. This 7″ is fresh out of the vault. 2 tracks that we love that didn’t make it on to our debut album have been re-recorded and pressed to fresh black vinyl by Holiday Records in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Hand numbered and limited to 300 copies worldwide. This will never be repressed.
Tracklisting: 1. Cold Wind 04:44 2. When I’m King 02:57
BEASTWARS: Clayton Anderson – Guitar Nathan Hickey – Drums Matt Hyde – Vocals James Woods – Bass
