Hell yeah. I love a winning recommendation. A scant couple weeks ago — three now, I think — I stood in the aftermath of Planet Desert Rock Weekend V in Las Vegas, saying a few goodnights at the end of four killer days of music and hugs and such. Among the people I met was Phil from Phoenix, who asked me if I’d ever heard of Stone Witch.

Now, it had been a long fest and I was pretty out of it. Plus, it’s kind of a generic name. No, I didn’t know the band. I also didn’t know he was talking about a band. The way he said it, it kind of sounded like Stone Witch was a genre, or something else entirely. Less a band than a secret being shared, was how he said it. Like a regional delicacy cooked up with special Arizona seasonings, and not the ones they have in the Penzey’s catalog, but like maybe some regional dirt thrown in with all the spicey groove and classic flair.

Order of the Goat was originally released by Stone Witch as an EP in 2016 — at the time, the lineup was listed as guitarist/vocalist Jayare Robbins, lead guitarist Matt Wentz, bassist Ian Colbert and drummer Jason Colbert — and the original five-tracker was expanded to seven songs and 36 minutes in 2022. By then, the band had already offered their fuzz-slinging debut full-length, Desert Oracle, in 2019. So no, the album version of Order of the Goat featured above (on Wet Records, though Glory or Death and Interstellar Smoke had copies) isn’t the OG edition, but like I said, I didn’t know the band until Phil from Phoenix hinted that there was some grand mystery that I needed to solve as to just who or what Stone Witch was. I never claimed to be Johnny Groundfloor here.

They’re pretty raw, to start with. Desert Oracle smoothed out some of the grit that pervades in Order of the Goat — not all of it, thankfully — but the fact that these songs were recorded earlier even if they made it to a 12″ platter later shouldn’t be neglected. But the rawness becomes part of the character, like earliest Duel or any number of other hard-hitters who also happen to boogie down. Stone Witch most certainly do that, and while I don’t know the relationship between Ian on bass and Jason handling percussion — if they’re brothers, cousins, just people who have the same last name and play in a band together — I’m assuming they’re siblings simply based on the chemistry between them in the janga-janga shuffling “Wind Walker” or as the later “Oath Breaker” picks up the tempo heading into its solo section.

Rest assured, no attempt is being made to reinvent the wheel here, and this too works entirely to the benefit of the listening experience. Who needs to innovate when you can pull off a shuffle as tight as “Dark Goddess” or find a classic doomer roll in “Blood Feast” like some lost Pagan Altar track from 197X but still with room for an airy lead stretch from Wentz, or you have the monolithic low end distortion of “1903” — which wasn’t on the original EP but closes the LP — sitting in your back pocket the whole time? Stone Witch are a celebration of heavy rock from Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, plus more obscurities of the age, through Pentagram, Cathedral and maybe even some Fu Manchu or Kyuss, High on Fire and Monolord. A melting pot of heavy ideologies. But, crucially, they make it dance.

It’s hard to fight an impulse to credit Jason Colbert with that specifically for what he brings to the drums — the push later in “1903” is a fitting example, or the swing and proto-metallic lateral thrust behind the other not-originally-included cut, “Ghost Rider,” earlier on — and how it enhances the character of the material while furthering the sense of movement. “Blood Feast” digs into a chugging swing in its second half and the drums are right there making it happen; the band almost functioning in the ’70s power trio ideal, except with two guitars for extra punch of riff and to let the rhythm have extra force during solos. In any case, just as it’s so often the bass that gives heavy music its sense of heft, the momentum Stone Witch are able to harness across Order of the Goat comes from the fluidity of the drumming. When they’re kicking up dust on “Herald,” though, by no means are the drums alone in being all-in.

Is this the part where I wax poetic about the power of community in the heavy underground, express my wonder at the support this site gets and my thanks to Phil from Phoenix for putting the question of what and/or who Stone Witch was in the back of my head in the first place? Well, I could. It’s all certainly true. But you know it already, and as the four-piece space out a bit in “Herald” and jam their way to a finish that if you were drunk enough standing in front of the stage while it happened surely you would lose your addled mind — never mind the blowout that follows in “1903” — some big divergence from the central purpose here would be in the wrong spirit. Stone Witch very clearly went into their first EP with an idea of who they were as a band or at very least the sounds they wanted to worship, and the second album that’s resulted from that is richer for it. Yeah, the heavy rock underground is amazing, but more to the point the record’s a banger.

So, thanks Phil from Phoenix for clueing me in on a treasure of his hometown underground. I checked out the band’s socials to see if maybe there was something I could plug — maybe they’ve got a record out next week or some such — but not much really going on except some Reels plugging the vinyl. Not a criticism. Not everybody can or wants to play the ‘content’ game, and given the heart behind what they’re doing on Order of the Goat, I don’t think Stone Witch are much for bullshit generally. If you’ve heard it before, cool, if not, cool. I hope you dig it either way. It’s one I’m happy to have encountered, and at some point I’ll probably dig into Desert Oracle too. If that’s next week, so be it.

Thanks for reading.

—

Weird week. Monday there was no school, so The Pecan was hanging around. I spent the first half of the week fretting about getting Hungarian homework done and the second thinking about fleeing the country. Anybody in Europe got a home they want to open up to my family for, say, six weeks or until we can find a place to exist? Just a heads up, all your stuff will be broken if you say yes. The dog is really good though. She’s never pooped in the house. She did pee on the couch that one time in Budapest last summer though.

So maybe not lodging thanks to the kindness of strangers/internet acquaintances. So it goes.

Still, it is a compelling consolidation of power in the executive branch taking place, and the nakedness of the corruption makes me think maybe it’s time to call up one of those “I’ll help you pack”-type fascists and take them up on the offer.

I don’t know what that would do to this site, and honestly the safety of my family is a higher priority. I have a lot of fun here and I’ve seen and heard amazing things as a result of doing The Obelisk for the last 16 years, but if I need to drop it I will. I would not miss sorting links or images for news posts. I still suck at SEO. If I’m here, there, doing this or something else, I’ll probably keep writing in some context or other. I don’t know how else to live at this point.

Maybe you think that’s over the top, melodramatic. I don’t care. It’s where I’m at.

This weekend I’m traveling to Massachusetts to see the Worshipper 10th anniversary show and a bunch of old friends. That will be good. Show review Monday, then next week is full with a video premiere for Church of the Sea, a Make Money From Home review, I think a video premiere for Amammoth, and hopefully an interview with Matte from Sound of Liberation if I can edit the transcript in time.

If this week seemed light on posts, I was doing other stuff besides. In the last seven days I’ve banged out two band bios — for Witchcraft and Dwellers — and done two more edits/reads, for Temple Fang and Clamfight. That’s a lot for a week’s time. I have to do another album-bio piece too in the next couple weeks. I keep saying I’m gonna say no to that kind of work and then it’s like “so-and-so has a new record!” and I get excited because silly brain like shiny things.

I mention the bio writing to give myself a little grace on the week here. I wanted to review Make Money From Home yesterday morning to go up today, but the kid was up before I was in the morning, so I couldn’t get the usual jump on the day, I had one of the bios above to do that I’d promised would be in, and the review got pushed back. There’s a ton of stuff on my list though. That record, Yawning Balch, Naxatras, Year of the Cobra, Conan, Dirtmother, Kryptograf, Colour Haze’s To the Highest Gods We Know redux and, at the start of April, Lo-Pan. And I still don’t even know when the Dead Shrine record is coming out.

All of which, I guess, is my way of reminding myself why I do a Quarterly Review.

Whatever you’re up to, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Thanks again for reading, watch your head, be safe, hydrate. The bastards are lurking everywhere and they’re hidden in the code. Keep your head.

FRM.

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Los Angeles heavy rockers Sea of Snakes release their debut album, The Serpent and the Lamb, on Oct. 14 through Wet Records, and, well, I think we all know how it’s going to work out for the lamb in question. The record runs 10 songs and 42 minutes and sure enough, its aesthetic intention is clear almost from the outset in “Start a War” through the hard-landing tonal crunch, burly vocals and rhythmic shove. It is also fascinatingly specific in seeming to be keyed directly in terms of influences on an era of pre-heavy rock circa 1990-1991, primarily drawing from Corrosion of Conformity‘s Blind (and Deliverance), and Facelift-era Alice in Chains, the latter of which comes out all the more as “Demon Seed” picks up from the opener.

Jason Busiek‘s vocals are a big part of that impression, and over the dense riffing of Jim McCloskey, Lorenzo Almanza‘s bass and Jeff Murray‘s drums, his delivery in “Get the Gun” (anyone remember that Ozzy Behind the Music where he talked about “Suicide Solution?” All I can think of is, “I never said get the fucking gun, man.” And well, Sea of Snakes said “get the gun” and “shoot shoot shoot shoot”) and the slower, more-doomed-in-the-first-half “End of the Sun,” brings earlier Staley l0w-in-mouth sensibilities to bear as part of a sound that’s so 30 years ago I want to ask my mom to drive me to Caldor to buy the tape so I can play it on the Sony Walkman that I got for my birthday with the cheap-ass headphones that have the metal slide that pulls my hair out every single time.

I fucking loved that Walkman. Took it for walks, you know.

It would not be a surprise to find out if anybody among the four members of Sea of Snakes had the same player — it was a very popular item down at the Caldor — but that time period obviously left a mark one way or the other, and aside from some differentiated popping in the snare on “End of the Sun,” they just about nail it. That slowdown is both a transition out of the opening three-song, kick-ass-out-of-the-gate salvo and one into the stoned-bluesy mood-piece “Dead Man’s Song,” with its Pepper Keenan-via-“Planet Caravan” drift and Busiek hitting those notes as few in the post-AIC vein could ever hope to do. Admirably, the song doesn’t veer into the swell of volume one might expect — there’s plenty more heavy to come on side 2, no worries so long as your tape doesn’t get chewed up — and it doesn’t tip into goofball metal balladry either, even with the layered vocals near the end.

And as though to reassure that any feeling of feelings was only temporary and have another beer and it’s all good, the second half of The Serpent and the Lamb starts with the chugging “Third Kind,” a semi-metal roller based around a central riff that’s more the band’s own while still being a fit with its surroundings, lyrics about alien abduction something of an escape from the more real-world crunch in the earlier tracks (not a complaint). “Third Kind” finishes with its solo and makes a smooth, on-the-beat turn into “In Hell,” a catchy highlight that follows suit with a punchy declension and its own scorcher of a solo, as well as one of just three tracks along with “Demon Seed” and “Hands are Tied” to come that are under four minutes long.

“God of Creation” swings and rides that groove well, holding firm to the momentum coming out of “In Hell” and turning at its halfway point to a mid-tempo nod that serves as the basis for the rest of the song, a structural change that is subtle but well appreciated as a changeup from the straightforward approach of much of The Serpent and the Lamb that’s nonetheless consistent with the overarching pretense-free attitude Sea of Snakes have about where they’re coming from. They sneak another hook into “Hands Are Tied” before closing out with a doomier repositioning in “The Ritual,” an open verse with subdued lead notes trading off with a heavier chorus twice before shifting into the ending, faster and semi-metallic unto its should’ve-seen-it-coming quick fadeout.

That last element is one more underscoring the early-’90s particularity of the moment being represented in Sea of Snakes‘ sound. Even unto the “Suicide Solution” reference, the four-piece follow their aptly-named 2021 World on Fire EP with an upfront reassurance that they’re schooled in what they’re doing, and The Serpent and the Lamb is a step deeper into the method of groove (as Life of Agony would say in 1993) that the initial short release put forth that’s not necessarily held back by its self-awareness.

All of which is to say, they know who they are and they know what they want to be as a band, and the feel of their first record is that it accomplishes this goal in sound and songwriting. What comes next is to build on the niche-digging spirit of this material and to develop the persona being laid forth here, but there’s no denying they nailed the sound they were honing in on with these songs, right at the point when ’80s metal and harder rock were turning into grunge and heavy riffing and the second generation to worship Black Sabbath was coming of age. I guess you could call it retro, but what isn’t? So long as they watch out for Tipper Gore and the PMRC they should be just fine.

You’ll find The Serpent and the Lamb streaming in full on the player below, followed by more info from the PR wire.

Please enjoy:

A powerful mix of hard rock, stoner rock/metal with touches of doom, The Serpent And The Lamb is a fuzz-fueled explosion. In 2021 the band signed with Metal Assault Records to release their debut EP, World On Fire, and now the new album marks the next chapter of SEA OF SNAKES’ journey. The Serpent And The Lamb will release on October 14th.

These untameable serpents make no apologies in turning it up to eleven. Become immersed in the captivating sounds forming beneath the darkening skies. A drop of blood may be spilled here and there, but The Serpent And The Lamb is an experience not be missed.

SEA OF SNAKES was formed by longtime friends Jeff Murray of The Shrine (drums) and Jim McCloskey of MotorSickle (guitar), soon joined by heavy-hitting vocalist Tracy Steiger (ex Saul of Tarsus) and bassist Mick Coffman. The Serpent And The Lamb recorded at Birdcage Studios in Pico Rivera. Mixed by Matt Lynch (bassist from the band SNAIL).

Track List:
1. Start A War
2. Demon Seed
3. Get the Gun
4. End of the Sun
5. Dead Man’s Song
6. Third Kind
7. In Hell
8. God of Creation
9. Hands are Tied
10. The Ritual

SEA OF SNAKES is:
Jim McCloskey – guitars
Jeff Murray – drums
Jason Busiek – vocals
Lorenzo Almanza – bass

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The second full-length from Indiana-based solo artist Roy Waterford, aka Watchman, is titled The End of All Flesh, and it’s being released on vinyl and digitally this coming Saturday through Wet Records and Glory or Death Records. The project has worked quickly across the last two years, issuing the debut EP, Behold a Pale Horse (review here), in 2020 before following up with last year’s Doom of Babylon debut long-player. The sophomore outing begins with its longest track (immediate points) in the just-under-six-minute “Pour Out the Vials,” and the hazy psych-driven stoner lurch is palpable in the nodding undulations, like if Electric Wizard decided momentarily to give it a rest on watching old VHS horror tapes and mellowed out a bit on the cultistry. Not to say that “Fire and Brimstone,” the hookier drawl of “Death is Coming” — a roughed-up take on doomgaze made more vital by the solo performance — or the fuzz swinger “The Smoke,” which appears right ahead of the closing title-track as The End of All Flesh wraps in suitably melancholic, misanthropic fashion, the drums barely there behind the gruel-fed guitar and slow lurching groove.

All told, the album runs seven songs and 36 minutes. It is largely unipolar in its point of view, willfully dug in to its own riffing and able accordingly to convey a due sense of trance. There are full-band progressions happening, mind you. These are songs, constructed and executed in layers and put together at the behest of one person, but it’s Waterford‘s vision that most unites the material throughout. What if Six Organs of Admittance was also Sleep at their most miserable? It is a somewhat troubled sonic blend, but that’s very obviously the intention, to bring that sense of bedroom folk intimacy to something no less personal but manifest in an outwardly heavier way. Familiar elements resound, but Waterford‘s doom is ultimately his own.

And if you can’t hang with a half-hour-plus of wretchedness and riffs, I humbly suggest that perhaps doom isn’t the thing after all and that The End of All Flesh may be overwhelming despite and in part because of its empty and manipulated spaces. What I’ll say though is that while this second Watchman album was clearly designed or at least arranged after the fact to maximize an overarching flow, the individual songs that comprise it nonetheless are pointed in the impressions they make. The only thing stopping Waterford is nothing, and left to his own devices, one wonders how much deeper into the doomed psyche he might plunge as a forward step coming off this release. Eventually there’s a floor down there, you know.

Enjoy the album and thanks for reading:

Watchman, The End of All Flesh album premiere

After the very well-received “Doom Of Babylon”, the creation of multi-instrumentalist and producer Roy Waterford (Indiana), Watchman returns once again with his second album “The End Of All Flesh”.

Through its slow and mesmerizing riffs, and distant and mysterious vocals, listeners are pulled into a mystical and chaotic journey.

Watchman echoes a dark and outstanding atmosphere. Roy tells us that he taps into the gritty, fuzzy 70s sound, combined with his Stoned Doomed inspirations mentioning the names Electric Wizard and Sleep.
Amidst the monolithic riffs, we are engulfed in strong psychedelic touches.

The fantastic Album Art for “The End Of All Flesh” was created by MontDoom.

About vinyl:

Watchman is teaming up with Wet Records once again to bring their second album, “The End Of All Flesh” into this world on vinyl and digitally. Which happens next Saturday, June 11th.

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