By virtue of the most solid eight hours of sleep I’ve had in the last six months, I was reborn. My first thought this morning when Lee’s alarm went off at nine was “now we’re talking.” Okay, Roadburn. I’m here.

That was a fortunate position to be in, because as will happen in Tilburg each Spring, today was packed. Showered, coffee, a couple crucial changes made, like my pants. Went to the 013 office with Lee for blurbing for the app and such, back to the room, ate an apple that I’d grabbed from the breakfast downstairs, got myself together and ready to jump back into it.

The sun came out as I waited on the line outside The Engine Room. I was glad to have traded purple hoodie for wizard flannel back at the room. 1PM would be an early start to the day with the Throwing Bricks and Ontaard commissioned piece ‘Something to Lose.’ I knew/know precious little about either band, but had heard exciting things, and when you’re here, the commissioned pieces are part of why. An ongoing series of maybe-once-in-a-lifetime performances and collaborations — among the ‘special sets’ that I’ve seen at Roadburns over the years, they’ve been some of the most special — and word was that the two young Utrecht bands, had gone all-in on the project. Something I’d never seen and something, two bands I’d never heard and I’d probably never be able to see otherwise. I don’t take it for granted how par-for-course that is at is at Roadburn.

Barring disaster between now and the end, Thursday will have been the hardest day for me at Roadburn 2025. Usually Friday is pretty rough because I’m through the initial adrenaline of getting here and have to sort of coast on momentum, but that sleep and some food did me good. Lesson learned? Probably not. With the busier schedule of today, though, I was happy for how it worked out.

Even more after Ontaard and Throwing Bricks went on, because the moisture level in the room shot up immediately and it was all snuggles in the tight photo pit. It was too early in the day for me to smell that bad, so I grabbed the shots I could and ended up making my way around the entire room (apologizing to everyone crunched in in the space as I passed excuse me I’m sorry excuse me I’m sorry excuse me I’m sorry I was born, etc.) to get my camera bag from the other side of the photo pit. In hindsight, this was a dumbass move, but I underestimated how many people there would be, despite having waited on line with them outside. I don’t have an excuse. Just a moron. Sorry.

I do hope somebody had the good sense to record ‘Something to Lose,’ though, because it struck me as an effort worth preserving, and it would be cool to hear the depth of the atmospherics against all that bashing away, blast and plod and nod, but if it’s a one-shot and that’s it, take it as a reminder to be present the moment as much as you can. Genre lines rendered as meaningless as they ultimately are, they were cohesive and purposeful as players came and went from the stage, vocalists trading out, spoken word over drones, all leading to a grand finale of upwards of 14 of them on the stage. Quite a thing to behold. Then you get to the music, which was likewise divergent and devastating. I watched from the back, stank but out of the way, and if you believe in Roadburn’s vision of ‘underground futurism,’ in terms of being forward thinking about things to come in heavy anything, it was right there on stage. Consuming.

There was a box of tapes for me at the backstage entrance — not at all aberrant; for years I’ve had all my mail forwarded through the 013 office (not true) — and I had walked down toward the Hall of Fame and seen no end to the line for Midwife, so I booked it up grab that box, dropped it off at the room, drank water and ate a protein cookie, washed up a bit — didn’t shower for a second time, but the thought occurred to me — and changed the now-smelly tshirt I had on for a fresh one. Wouldn’t save me the rest of the day as it was sunny and warmer than Thursday, but one does what one can. I popped in somewhat casually to check out a few minutes of De Mannen Broeders, which is Colin H. van Eeckhout from Amenra and Broeder Dieleman, both also performing solo at some point in the weekend, I believe. Well, Eeckhout definitely was, since his double-duty solo set was next after De Mannen Broeders finished, in the same room.

Before either Dieleman or van Eeckhout came out, a choir sang. I stuck around long enough to see them depart and the two principals, as well as a piano player on a baby grand, take up the vocal duties. It was moody and introverted, but still ‘folk’ in the way of folk music as human expression of humanity. Accordingly, somebody farted. All told, I was there for maybe 15 minutes, and then I realized Messa was on in a few over at the Main Stage, about to bring their new album, The Spin (review here), to life before an anxious throng of an audience.

In the interest of honesty, it was the photo pit of the weekend I was most dreading and I was right. But that’s why I’ve been carrying around the big lens this whole time. Messa came out after their intro and dove into the record with poise and flow, and as it was my first time seeing them — not the fault of any lack of touring on their part, mind you — to witness the charisma and performance first-hand, never mind the stylistic innovation of the songs themselves, they left no question as to how Metal Blade Records got on board for the release. They sounded like an idea whose time had come. It was heavy, lovely, sad and bold in kind, and though The Spin had only been out for a week, the room was ready for it.

Standing in the hallway, I ran into Lee. We had a quick debate about whether Messa were metal or not — I’m in the ‘pro’ camp — and eventually landed on a kind of goth metal. I might throw the word progressive in there, if only to account for the stupid amount of talent in the band. I went in the back downstairs for the end of Messa and had a little break before I needed to be anywhere, which I used to sit on ass and look at the rest of the day. I knew I wanted to finish out with Gnod and White Hills up the road at Koepelhal, so I decided to make my way there and settle in. I’d been back and forth already, but was in no rush. Found a sun-adjacent shady spot and parked for a few to watch the world go by.

I brought my sunglasses on this trip, but the trouble is I like them and I don’t think I’ve ever worn a pair at a festival anywhere on the planet and had that pair make it from beginning to end. To live in the now, or to squint. That was the (dumb) question.

The tradeoff for being awake was antsiness. I had a really good spot, but after about 10 minutes, I started getting itchy, got up and left. Where was I headed? To food, it turned out. I had thought I was going to go the photo pit for Envy on the 013 Main Stage, but my body took me downstairs for some chicken instead. Pounded that in all of three minutes, downed and refilled my water bottle, and by then Envy were on. The photo pit was going, but on a whim I decided to revert to my original intention, which was to see Pygmy Lush at The Engine Room, back up the block at the Koepelhal. So I got my back and forth in, but also food, which was solid strategy because I missed lunch. There was still a lot of day to go.

I didn’t know Pygmy Lush at all, either personally or musically, but the Virginian outfit are friends of a friend and I think mostly if not entirely comprised of members from pg.99, who were also on the bill, so on a day where nothing I’d thus far seen I’d ever seen before — that’s Ontaard and Throwing Bricks, De Mannen Broeders, Messa and Envy — it made sense to keep the thread going. Not even one of them I’d seen. I’m not trying to paint myself like generally I’m Mr. Watchedeverybandever, because I’m not and I haven’t, but such days for me are rarer than not at a festival.

Not lost on me that that thread occurred to me while I stopped for the first time today to really take a purposeful break, as I did sitting and waiting for Pygmy Lush l. It gave me a frame in which to place the day, and even though my one remaining must for Roadburn Friday — Gnod and White Hills — was comprised of two acts I’d seen individually, their ‘Drop Out’ collaboration would give me a chance to appreciate their work in a new way, and was something that had never happened on stage before. So, close enough for me. A whole day of musical first exposures. What a gift to get.

Pygmy Lush were not without tonal presence, but we’re coming from a mellow place in terms of spirit, and with three guitarists, two with vocals, the songs had texture and melody and were thoughtful in the delivery of both. Not uptempo, but affirming in a fragile way. They had no merch and said so, warned the crowd when there were two songs left, and were laid back on the stage, which made it all the more human as they unfurled contemplative Americana with intermittent fuller breakouts that filled the space otherwise purposely left open in the sound. A little shuffle, a little push, but I’m the era of vibes, they were one, and I was glad to have made the walk back to Koepelhal. They finished about as loud as they got and the place went off. I watched the whole set.

This morning, back at the office of the 013, we put a headline on the blurbs that went out with the day’s picks. I had a few, Lee, the esteemed José Carlos Santos, whose bibliography is intimidating but who is decidedly not a dick, Walter, and Dan Pietersen, who writes for Lee. Too many dudes by any measure, but it was sort of a last-minute thing anyway. The headline we ended up going with was, ‘The Sonic Journey Continues,’ and absolutely that’s kind of corny. We knew that when we went with it, but being here, especially the way my Friday had panned out, the cliché feels pretty well earned, and I’m not sure I would want to say it another way. Because there is a certain amount of buying in you have to do as an audience member. If you’re going to stand there cross-armed and cynical, you’ve already missed the point of coming to Roadburn. Shit yeah, be on that sonic journey. At the end of this weekend we’re all going to go back to lives, jobs, families and/or situations that involve various combinations of all of the above. This time is precious and scant. Why let yourself miss it?

Yeah, said the guy who had eight real-life hours of sleep last night. I know. But let part of my holding onto the moment be appreciating that as well as part of what’s made my experience of the day possible. Surely I wouldn’t have the energy for all this navelgazing if I was poorly rested.

In the years since Roadburn started putting bands at the Koepelhal — there is a part of me for whom it’s still a novelty, but it’s been a while by now — you’ve been able to cross from the Engine Room to The Terminal without leaving the building, and the merch was set up between. This year it’s under construction. Merch is elsewhere right down the sidewalk, and you walk outside and around the corner of the building to get to The Terminal. I have to think that makes lines easier to manage, but it can be surprising to walk out into bright daylight. I guess my inner goth was shocked after Pygmy Lush. Spoiler though: there is no inner goth.

Said the robot voice: “Thank you. It is time to take you to paradise. It is a cold, black paradise. Thank you.” This was how Zombie Zombie introduced the penultimate song they would play. They were killer. Total switch in spirit from Pygmy Lush into krautrocking weirdo psychedelic techno with live drums — sometimes two of the three members would be playing them on opposite sides of the stage, and a bit of cosmic sax early, but an unrepentant danciness at the heart of it all. You could tag them as experimental in form, since that’s almost certainly part of what they do, but their songs, though largely instrumental but for the what came through the robo-effect mic, and that was fine, because while space is dark and endless, it’s also constantly in motion in all directions at once according to the math.

Zombie Zombie weren’t quite ‘dark energy’-level powernerds, but the movement was essential just the same. The earlier dance party gave way to more of a build as they moved through their 50-minute set — loaded with temporal distortions as it was — and I went to stand next to the soundboard to take it all in, the throb of bass in wub wub wub thud thud thud, the video behind them raining code like The Matrix used to do. With a higher synth drone and low pulsing beat, a pickup on the drums and strong notion of being all-in for the far-out, and they had people dancing the entire time. It wasn’t aggressive and it wasn’t threatening unless you’re the genre status quo, but they were heavy in a different way than anything I’ve seen this weekend if not ever, and no less so for all that fun.

There was any half an hour before Human Impact went on, and I did find a way between the two rooms from the back of The Terminal. Easy enough. Sat in the photo pit for a quiet few, fell down a hole on my phone and wrote while the band did a line check. They’ve been around at least since the pandemic — I’m not a huge noise rock guy, but I don’t know if you get to be into underground heavy anything in the New York metro area (where I live) and not respect the shit out of Unsane, and Chris Spencer’s involvement in Human Impact was what first grabbed my attention about the band. I haven’t covered everything they’ve done, but with Eric Cooper from Made Out of Babies on bass, who I remember going to see play in Brooklyn the better part of 20 years ago, Cop Shoot Cop’s Jim Coleman on keyboard and Jon Syverson from Daughters on drums, I don’t think I’d be the first to call them super in the group sense, but onstage the impression was far different from the egotism that designation implies.

A bleak, not-inaccurate portrayal of now in music, Human Impact fused noise rock and industrial sounds and atmospheres, were vivid in message and heft, sometimes raging but not all the time, and when the keys and riffs diverged, they seemed to hit that much harder upon coming back together. Cooper mostly backed Spencer’s vocals, but with some input from Coleman as they pushed toward the dark noise apocalypse that was promised but never materialized in the ’90s when some of the same formula was put to much worse use by far too many bands. In Human Impact, the clash of organic and inorganic was resonant, and the aggression seethe was palpable on stage, in no small part because they threw it at you from there and it would be hard to miss. The finish — I didn’t know the title but did recognize the crush — was like grim concrete.

My night would close as planned, with Gnod and White Hills at The Terminal. At a fest this broad, you can make your own way, find your sound and your people. Ideally, anyhow. Gnod Drop Out With White Hills was the official billing, with the ‘Drop Out’ in reference to the collaborative album NYC’s preeminent psych freaks and Gnod, from Salford, UK, who surely are keeping themselves busy these days saying no to the psycho right-wing capitalist fascist industrial death machine, as they once put it. I was there for the line check and even that was hypnotic. Chat Pile were about to go on for a secret show I saw in the TMSQR app, but nah.

With Ego Sensation’s persistent tom and snare as the beating heart of the proceedings, Gnod and White Hills didn’t so much drop out as they did force one to question whether they were ever in to begin with. I did my best with the camera in the lights and fog early in the set — photographic evidence of alien life would be quite a coup for a middle-aged blogger — but whatever. I was honestly more concerned with watching them than taking pictures. Crazy, I know.

Builds of synth along with the guitars of Dave W. and Gnod’s Paddy Shine gave a sense of expanse with the bass crying the groove alongside the drums, and by the time vocals came in, it was a genuine churn, with a depth of mix that came through even by the side of the stage, let alone over in back. Entrancing heavy psych from masters of the form, in a collab that goes back at least a decade, tearing holes in the universe together on stage for the first time. Something special. I don’t know how many times I even said that today, but start to finish, that’s what it was. Careening and cascading, the joint project rode my day out on a chariot with a wizard painted on the side, and scorched the ground beneath them like rockets at takeoff. I’ve done a lot of really stupid shit in my life. I’m not a particularly good person. I’m not kind. But I had to look around me as the one where they kept going “unified…” hit its comedown and understand that whatever I’ve made worse about the planet during my time on it, I’d done something right if I was standing there.

I went back to the room to finish out the night, sort photos, etc. I had done more back and forth than I’d intended throughout the day and was exhausted with work to do, but no regrets whatsoever for how Friday panned out. Hard to believe there are two more days of Roadburn left.

Thanks for reading. More pics after the jump.

Read more »

Maybe fair to think of this as the second part of the story. Gnod, from Salford in the UK, and White Hills, from New York in the New York, are set to release their third collaborative outing, Drop Out III, on March 21 through Thrill Jockey. The special performance at Roadburn Festival, which was announced at the same time as the album itself, it turns out will be the launch point for a European tour together as they take the rest of April and into May to develop what will surely be an out-there onstage persona between the two outfits.

I have to imagine somewhere, at the behest of somebody, at least one of these shows will be recorded. Would you be surprised if a ‘Live at Roadburn’ showed up at some point later this year or in 2026? Me neither, but the more the merrier. The tour runs April 18 through May 4, as the PR wire tells it:

Gnod & White Hills announce their debut collaborative tour throughout the UK and EU this Spring including Roadburn Festival

New album Drop Out III is out Mar. 21st

Preorder Gnod & White Hills’ Drop Out III: https://thrilljockey.com/products/drop-out-iii

Gnod & White Hills have announced a full collaborative tour throughout the UK and Europe this Spring, including their debut collaborative performance at Roadburn Festival. The tour comes just after the release of the newest release in their Drop Out series, Drop Out III, out Mar. 21st.

Manchester’s Gnod and New York’s White Hills stand as titans of Psychedelic & Space Rock. Together they bend the very notions of what rock can do, seemingly suspending our sense of time. Their alchemical chemistry and a fateful session at the Dropout Studio in Camberwell gave rise to the legendary, ongoing series of records under the moniker Drop Out. The records became an influential and sprawling series of extended pieces that remain touchstones of contemporary psychedelia. Having been called “absolutely essential,” “best I have heard – ever,” “A masterpiece,” the Drop Out series finally gets its definitive edition.

Drop Out III stands as a wholly new iteration of Gnod & White Hills’ initial collaboration. Reaching well beyond a mere reissue, Drop Out III is replete with sounds recorded in what the bands term the “Drop Out era” that have never been heard before. Drop Out III’s new elements make clear the unified ethos of both bands. The expanded versions of these timeless pieces epitomize the sense of possibility brimming throughout the album. That an album over 15 years out from its inception could continue to grow well past its roots is a testament to Gnod & White Hills’ ability as artists and collaborators.

Gnod & White Hills tour dates
Apr. 18 – Tilburg, NL – Roadburn Festival
Apr. 19 – Berlin, DE – Neue Zukunft
Apr. 20 – Hamburg, DE – Stubnitz
Apr. 22 – Stockholm, SE – HUS7
Apr. 23 – Oslo, NO – Goldie
Apr. 24 – Copenhagen, DK – Loppen
Apr. 25 – Sønderborg, DK – Sønderborghus
Apr. 26 – Kiel, DE – Schaubude im Hinterhof
Apr. 27 – Nijmegen, NL – Doornroosje
Apr. 28 – Brussels, BE – Magasin 4
Apr. 29 – London, UK – Dingwalls
Apr. 30 – Brighton, UK – Hope & Ruin
May 1 – Falmouth, UK – Cornish Bank
May 2 – Bristol, UK – Strange Brew
May 3 – Hebden Bridge, UK – Trades Club
May 4 – Newcastle, UK – Star and Shadow Cinema

https://www.instagram.com/ingnodwetrust
https://gnod.bandcamp.com/
https://linktr.ee/gnodgnetwerk

http://www.whitehillsband.com
http://www.facebook.com/WHITEHILLSBand
http://www.instagram.com/whitehillsmusic
http://whitehills.bandcamp.com/music

http://www.thrilljockey.com/
http://www.facebook.com/thrilljockey
http://www.instagram.com/thrilljockey

Gnod & White Hills, Drop Out III (2025)

Does it make perfect sense that the forthcoming release from Gnod and White Hills would be hard to classify? If you’ve ever encountered either outfit on their own even in passing, never mind their prior collaborative output, probably. The kraut-worshiping psych heads share an affinity for digging into the outer expanses of ‘far out, man,’ and as the title Drop Out III implies, they’ve gone down this road together twice before.

But of course the story is more complicated than just that. Drop Out III expands on previous joint efforts and features material recorded around the time of their initial offering, as well as tracks from each band separately. Is it a split? A collaboration? A reissue? A new album? A little bit of all of them, it seems like.

A nine-minute sampling is available in the form of lead single “Run-A-Round,” and as the PR wire notes, the two entities will share the stage for a special thus-far-one-off at Roadburn 2025 in the Netherlands next April.

Art, info and audio follows:

Gnod & White Hills announce the next release in their legendary, ongoing collaborative series, Drop Out III, Due out Mar. 21st, 2025

Preorder Gnod & White Hills’ Drop Out III: https://thrilljockey.com/products/drop-out-iii

Gnod & White Hills set to perform a Drop Out collaborative set for the first time ever at Roadburn Festival 2025

The legendary team-up of masters of psych rock Gnod & White Hills have announced the next release in their lauded ongoing collaborative series Drop Out. As titans of the exploratory rock community, their alchemical chemistry gave rise to the ongoing work that is Drop Out, originally conceived and assembled in the late 2000s from across the Atlantic Ocean which was later iterated by the more widely released Drop Out II. This new edition, Drop Out III, further expounds on the lysergic glory of previous versions with new arrangements, mixes, bonus tracks, and songs assembled as they were initially intended. Drop Out III will be released on double LP March 21st, 2025 with a full album of downloadable bonus material. Gnod & White Hills will be performing a collaborative set including material from Drop Out for the first time ever at Roadburn Festival 2025.

Along with the album’s announcement, Gnod & White Hills have shared the new expanded version of “Run-A-Round,” a loping cosmic excursion with cascading melodies that unfurl into one another, showcasing their fresh take on the track while retaining it’s intoxicating potency.

Drop Out III stands as a wholly new iteration of Gnod & White Hills’ initial collaboration. Reaching well beyond a mere reissue, Drop Out III is replete with sounds recorded in what the bands term the “Drop Out era” that have never been heard before. The double LP’s first two sides feature instrumentation and arrangements originally recorded but not included on previous releases. Embodying the two bands’ inquisitive natures, the already hypnotic flow of the songs take on new character, their timbres shifted and color palettes swirled in deft mixes. Classics like the single “Run-A-Round” and the eponymous “Drop Out” maintain their motorik drive and fizzing melodies, yet capture a new spirit. The latter two sides feature pieces never before included on vinyl, including the beautifully serene “Air Streams” in its original droning arc, previously broken bisected into separate tracks with completely different arrangements. In addition to those intoxicating pieces that will sound familiar and reinvigorated to fans, the album comes with a full album’s worth of bonus material, all crafted around the Drop Out era. White Hills’ “Decorating Time” (later repurposed into “Undressing Time”) showcases the depth of the band’s subtlety, rich with minute turns and a twist of psychedelic ambience. “Nothing NEU! Under the Sky” captures the invigorating pulse and dynamics of Gnod’s live performances.

Drop Out III’s new elements make clear the unified ethos of both bands. The expanded versions of these timeless pieces epitomize the sense of possibility brimming throughout the album. That an album over 15 years out from its inception could continue to grow well past its roots is a testament to Gnod & White Hills’ ability as artists and collaborators.

Drop Out III tracklist

LP 1:
1. Drop Out *
2. Run-A-Round *
3. Wellhang *
4. Spaced Man *

LP 2:
5. Elka *
6. Undressing Time ^
7. Air Streams ^
8. Unify ^

LP3 – digital only:
1. Per Sempre *
2. Decorating Time ~
3. Changesaw +
4. Model Citizen ~
5. Nothing Neu! Under The Sky +
6. Hole In My Eye ~
7. Ovid’s Poem ~

* New expanded version
% Never appeared on vinyl previously
^ Never previously released
~ White Hills track recorded around DO
+ Gnod track recorded around DO

https://www.instagram.com/ingnodwetrust
https://gnod.bandcamp.com/
https://linktr.ee/gnodgnetwerk

http://www.whitehillsband.com
http://www.facebook.com/WHITEHILLSBand
http://www.instagram.com/whitehillsmusic
http://whitehills.bandcamp.com/music

http://www.thrilljockey.com/
http://www.facebook.com/thrilljockey
http://www.instagram.com/thrilljockey

Gnod & White Hills, Drop Out III (2025)

Second week of the Fall 2024 Quarterly Review begins now. You stoked? Nah, probably not, but at least at the end of this week there will be another 50 records for you to check out, added to the 50 from last week to make 100 total releases covered. So, I mean, it’s not nothing. But I understand if it isn’t the make-or-break of your afternoon.

Last week was killer, and today gets us off to another good start. Crazy, it’s almost like I’m enjoying this. Who the hell ever heard of such a thing?

Quarterly Review #51-60:

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White Hills, Beyond This Fiction

New York’s own psychedelic heads on fire White Hills return with Beyond This Fiction, a collection of sounds so otherworldly and lysergic they can’t help but be real. Seven tracks range from the fluid “Throw it Up in the Air” to the bassy experimental new wave of “Clear as Day,” veering into gentle noise rock as it does before “Killing Crimson” issues its own marching orders, coming across like if you beamed Fu Manchu through the accretion disk of a black hole and the audio experienced gravitational lensing. “Fiend” brings the two sides together and dares to get a little dreamy while doing it, the interlude “Closer” is a wash of drone, and “The Awakening” is a good deal of drone itself, but topped with spoken word, and the closing title-track takes place light-years from here in a kind of time humans haven’t yet learned to measure. It’s okay. White Hills records will still be around decades from now, when humans finally catch up to them. I’m not holding my breath, though.

White Hills on Facebook

White Hills on Bandcamp

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Demon Head, Through Holes Shine the Stars

Five records deep into a tenure now more than a decade long, I feel like Demon Head are a band that are the answer to a lot of questions being asked. Oh, where’s the classic-style band doing something new? Who’s a band who can sound like The Cure playing black metal and be neither of those things? Where’s a band doing forward-thinking proto-doom, not at all hindered by the apparent temporal impossibility of looking ahead and back at the same time? Here they are. They’re called Demon Head. Their fifth album is called Through holes Shine the Stars, and its it’s-night-time-and-so-we-chug-different sax-afflicted ride in “Draw Down the Stars” is consuming as the band take the ’70s doomery of their beginnings to genuinely new and progressive places. The depth of vocal layering throughout — “The Chalice,” the atmo-doom sprawl of “Every Flatworm,” the rousing, swinging hook and ensuing gallop of “Frost,” and so on — adds drama and persona to the songs, and the songs aren’t wanting otherwise, with a dug-in intricacy of construction and malleable underlying groove. Seriously. Maybe Demon Head are the band you’re looking for.

Demon Head on Facebook

Svart Records website

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Earth Ship, Soar

You can call Earth Ship sludge metal, and you’re not really wrong, but you’re not the most right either. The Berlin-based trio founded by guitarist/vocalist Jan Oberg and bassist Sabine Oberg, plus André Klein on drums, offer enough crush to hit that mark for sure, but the tight, almost Ministry-esque vocals on the title-track, the way “Radiant” dips subtly toward psychedelia as a side-A-capping preface to the languid clean-sung nod of “Daze and Delights,” giving symmetry to what can feel chaotic as “Ethereal Limbo” builds into its crescendo, fuzzed but threatening aggression soon to manifest in “Acrid Haze,” give even the nastiest moments throughout a sense of creative reach. That is to say, Soar — which Jan Oberg also recorded, mixed and mastered at Hidden Planet Studio and which sees release through the band’s The Lasting Dose Records — resides in more than one style, with opener “Shallow” dropping some hints of what’s to come and a special lumber seeming to be dedicated to the penultimate “Bereft,” which proves to be a peak in its own right. The Obergs seem to split their time these days between Earth Ship and the somewhat more ferocious Grin. In neither outfit do they misspend it.

Earth Ship on Facebook

The Lasting Dose Records on Bandcamp

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Tommy Stewart’s Dyerwulf, Fyrewulf One

Bassist/vocalist Tommy Stewart (ex-Hallows Eve, owner of Black Doomba Records) once more sits in the driver’s seat of the project that shares his name, and with four new tracks Tommy Stewart’s Dyerwulf on Fyrewulf One — which I swear sounds like the name of a military helicopter or somesuch — offer what will reportedly be half of their third long-player with an intention toward delivering Fyrewulf Two next year. Fair enough. “Kept Pain Busy” is the longest and grooviest fare on offer, bolstered by the quirk of shorter opener “Me ‘n’ My Meds” and the somewhat more madcap “Zoomagazoo,” which touches on heavy rockabilly in its swing, with a duly feedback-inclusive cover of Bloodrock‘s “Melvin Laid an Egg” for good measure. The feeling of saunter is palpable there for the organ, but prevalent throughout the original songs as well, as Stewart and drummer Dennis Reid (Patrick Salerno guests on the cover) know what they’re about, whether it’s garage-punk-psych trip of “Me ‘n’ My Meds” the swing that ensues.

Tommy Stewart’s Dyerwulf on Facebook

Black Doomba Records store

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Smote, A Grand Stream

The narrative — blessings and peace upon it — presents A Grand Stream as the result of Smote guitarist Daniel Foggin and drummer Rob Law absconding to a cabin in the woods by a stream to write and record. There’s certainly escapism in it, and one might argue Smote‘s folk-tinged drone and atmospheric heavy meditations have always had an aspect of leaving the ol’ consciousness at the flung-open doors of perception, etc., but the 10-minute undulating-but-mostly-stationary noise in “Chantry” is still a lot to take. That it follows the 16-miinute “Coming Out of a Hedge Backwards,” laced with sitar and synth and other backing currents filling out the ambience, should be indicative of the sprawl of the over-70-minute LP to begin with. Smote aren’t strangers at this point to the expanse or to longform expression, but there still seems to be a sense of plunging into the unknown throughout A Grand Stream as they make their way deeper into the 18-minute “The Opinion of the Lamb Pt. 2,” and the rolling realization of “Sitting Stone Pt. 1” at the beginning resounds over all of it.

Smote on Instagram

Rocket Recordings website

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Mammoth Caravan, Frostbitten Galaxy

Hard to argue with Mammoth Caravan‘s bruising metallism, not the least because by the time you’d open your mouth to do so the Little Rock, Arkansas, trio have already run you under their aural steamroller and you’re too flat to get the words out. The six-song/36-minute Frostbitten Galaxy is the second record from the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Robert Warner, bassist/vocalist Brandon Ringo and drummer Khetner Howton, and in the willful meander of “Cosmic Clairvoyance,” in many of their intros, in the tradeoffs of the penultimate “Prehistoric Spacefarer” and in the clean-sung finale “Sky Burial,” they not only back the outright crush of “Tusks of Orion” and “Siege in the Stars,” as well as opener/longest track (immediate points) “Absolute Zero,” with atmospheric intention, but with a bit of dared melody that feels like a foretell of things to come from the band. On Frostbitten Galaxy and its correspondingly chilly 2023 predecessor Ice Cold Oblivion (review here), Mammoth Caravan have proven they can pummel. Here they begin the process of expanding their sound around that.

Mammoth Caravan on Facebook

Blade Setter Records store

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Harvestman, Triptych Part Two

If you caught Harvestman‘s psychedelic dub and guitar experimentalism on Triptych Part One (review here) earlier this year, perhaps it won’t come as a shock to find former Neurosis guitarist/vocalist Steve Von Till, aka Harvestman, working in a similar vein on Triptych Part Two. There’s more to it than just heady chill, but to be sure that’s part of what’s on offer too in the immersive drone of “The Falconer” or the 10-minute “The Hag of Beara vs. the Poet (Forest Dub),” which reinterprets and plays with the makeup of opener “The Hag of Beara vs. the Poet.” “Damascus” has a more outward-facing take and active percussive base, while “Vapour Phase” answers “The Falconer” with some later foreboding synthesis — closer “The Unjust Incarceration” adds guitar that I’ve been saying for years sounds like bagpipes and still does to this mix — while the penultimate “Galvanized and Torn Open,” despite the visceral title, brings smoother textures and a steady, calm rhythm. The story’s not finished yet, but Von Till has already covered a significant swath of ground.

Steve Von Till website

Neurot Recordings store

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Kurokuma, Of Amber and Sand

Following up on 2022’s successful debut full-length, Born of Obsidian, the 11-song/37-minute Of Amber and Sand highlights the UK outfit’s flexibility of approach as regards metal, sludge, post-heavy impulses, intricate arrangements and fullness of sound as conveyed through the production. So yes, it’s quite a thing. They quietly and perhaps wisely moved on from the bit of amateur anthropology that defined the MesoAmerican thematic of the first record, and as Of Amber and Sand complements the thrown elbows in the midsection of “Death No More” and the proggy rhythmmaking of “Fenjaan” with shorter interludes of various stripes, eventually and satisfyingly getting to a point in “Bell Tower,” “Neheh” and “Timekeeper” where the ambience and the heft become one thing for a few minutes — and that’s kind of a separate journey from the rest of the record, which turns back to its purposes with “Crux Ansata,” but it works — but the surrounding interludes give each song a chance to make its own impact, and Kurokuma take advantage every time.

Kurokuma on Facebook

Kurokuma on Bandcamp

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SlugWeed, The Mind’s Ability to Think Abstract Thoughts

Do you think a band called SlugWeed would be heavy and slow? If so, you’d be right. Would it help if I told you the last single was called “Bongcloud?” The instrumental New England solo-project — which, like anything else these days, might be AI — has an ecosystem’s worth of releases up on Bandcamp dating back to an apparent birth as a pandemic project with the long-player The Power of the Leaf, and the 11-minute single “The Mind’s Ability to Think Abstract Thoughts” follows the pattern in holding to the central ethic of lumbering instrumental riffage, all dank and probably knowing about trichomes and such. The song itself is a massive chug-and-groover, and gradually opens to a more atmospheric texture as it goes, but the central idea is in the going itself, which is slow, plodding, and returns from its drift around a fervent chug that reminds of a (slower) take on some of what Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol had on offer earlier in the year. It probably won’t be long before SlugWeed return with anther single or EP, so “The Mind’s Ability to Think Abstract Thoughts” may just be a step on the way. Fine for the size of the footprint in question.

SlugWeed on Instagram

SlugWeed on Bandcamp

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Man and Robot Society, Asteroid Lost

Dug-in solo krautistry from Tempe, Arizona’s Jeff Hopp, Man and Robot Society‘s Asteroid Lost comes steeped in science-fiction lore and mellow space-prog vibes. It’s immersive, and not a story without struggle or conflict as represented in the music — which is instrumental and doesn’t really want, need or have a ton of room for vocals, though there are spots where shoehorning could be done if Hopp was desperate — but if you take the trip just as it is, either put your own story to it or just go with the music, the music is enough to go on itself, and there’s more than one applicable thread of plot to be woven in “Nomads of the Sand” or the later “Man of Chrome,” which resonates a classic feel in the guitar ahead of the more vibrant space funk of “The Nekropol,” which stages a righteous keyboard takeover as it comes out of its midsection and into the theremin-sounding second half. You never quite know what’s coming next, but since it all flows as a single work, that becomes part of the experience Man and Robot Society offer, and is a strength as the closing title-track loses the asteroid but finds a bit of fuzzy twist to finish.

Man and Robot Society on Facebook

Sound Effect Records website

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Check out that stomp in White Hills‘ new single “Killing Crimson,” and the weirdo-skronk guitar lead that bleep-bloops over the lower tone that follows the verse like you put proto-punk in a cosmic taffy pull. The long-running-but-what-is-time-anyway New York two-piece are set to issue Beyond This Fiction on Aug. 23 as the first all-new studio release through their own label, Heads on Fire Records behind 2022’s The Revenge of Heads on Fire (review here) semi-redux, and “Killing Crimson” finds Dave W. and Ego Sensation with vocals at the fore, catchy but still very much in their own place sonically as they reliably are.

Of course, Beyond This Fiction doesn’t just do one thing in terms of sound, and “Killing Crimson” is probably the most direct and forward beat they’ve got in the seven tracks, but if you’d expect White Hills to be sonically monochromatic, you’ve got the wrong band. We’ve got a bit before the album is out, but the announcement and single stream are below. Dig in and drop out:

White Hills Blast Open Reality Altering Vortex With New Album Beyond This Fiction

Hear “Killing Crimson”: https://linktr.ee/WHITEHILLS

NYC’s notorious shapeshifting duo White Hills will unleash their philosophy influenced album Beyond This Fiction this summer on Heads On Fire Records. Inspired by the ideas of Joseph Campbell, the writer/philosopher known for The Power of Myth, the album explores the idea of “riding between opposites”- forging one’s own path unrestrained by the collective “fiction” that the masses subscribe to. It’s a cry to all the seers among us- call us outsiders or rebels- who feel smothered by convention and see nonconformity as the gateway into divine mystery.

Recorded with longtime collaborator Martin Bisi, known for his iconic NYC sound developed through his work with no-wave titans Sonic Youth, Swans and Lydia Lunch, Beyond This Fiction sees Dave W (guitar/vocals/synths) and Ego Sensation (drums/bass/vocals) orchestrating their distinct guitar heavy meditations into songs with a stronger focus on vocals than previous albums. Neo-psychedelia, indie, post-punk, shoegaze and experimental elements synthesize leading the listener through the doors of perception. Harnessing the seductive accessibility of 2015’s Walks For Motorists while evoking the tempestuous soul of the band’s trailblazing 2011 H-p1, White Hills make Beyond This Fiction a familiar surprise.

For nearly two decades, White Hills have been blowing minds with their sonic alchemy: a unique mix at once original and recognizable. Their cult reputation emblazoned in celluloid following their performance in Jim Jarmusch’s sultry vampire romance Only Lovers Left Alive, the duo has toured vigorously since their inception. With a vast catalogue that astounds and a relentless punk ethos, time seems to energize the duo, making them increasingly daring and prolific.

Artist: White Hills
Album Title: Beyond This Fiction
Label: Heads on Fire Records
Release Date: August 23, 2024

Beyond This Fiction (Track Listing)
1) Throw It Up in The Air
2) Clear As Day
3) Killing Crimson
4) Fiend
5) Closer
6) The Awakening
7) Beyond This Fiction

WHITE HILLS:
Dave W. – guitar, vocals, synth
Ego Sensation – drums, bass, vocals

http://www.whitehillsband.com
http://www.facebook.com/WHITEHILLSBand
http://www.instagram.com/whitehillsmusic
http://whitehills.bandcamp.com/music
http://www.youtube.com/whitehillsband
http://www.tiktok.com/@whitehillsband
http://www.patreon.com/whitehills

White Hills, “Killing Crimson”

09.16.23 – Saturday – Knockdown Center – Before show

First thing, got kicked out of the parking lot. “Who are you with?” Alone in the car, clearly I’m by myself. Whatever. That’s New York. “You can’t be here.” Is it okay if I exist anywhere else?

Yesterday was great, front to back. Knockdown Center has apparently gotten a new sound system since last year and I’ll confirm with my ringing ears that it is fully functional. But even aside from that, saw cool people I don’t often get to see, met some I’d never met, dared to enjoy myself amid the back and forth.

Got to bed at about 2AM, was up a bit after seven. Charged the camera batteries, phone, etc. Traffic was light on the way in, which felt like a gift, and I did find parking on the street nearby, so yeah.

What does the day hold? An intimidating amount of music. Today opens the third stage — called ‘The Ruins’ though actually it looks pretty nice — outside in back where the food trucks were last year. Brant Bjork Trio out there will be cool, as well as Clouds Taste Satanic and Mick’s Jaguar early. And both inside stages are packed, so it’s right back to it. It is my sincere hope that adrenaline will carry me through. Guess we’ll find out.

Conan loading in. Clouds Taste Satanic checking on the outside stage, where by the grace of Geezer Butler’s bass tone on Master of Reality there is a photo pit. Thank you Desertfest for that specifically. Maybe I’ll just hang out outside all afternoon. Crazy ideas you get.

Here’s the day:

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Clouds Taste Satanic

Did not turn out to be a photo pit, just a barricade — Geezer’s bass giveth and taketh away; it’s okay though because Tomoko went in and I’m going to do the same next time — but though I went up and laid out on a picnic table before New York’s own instrumentalists Clouds Taste Satanic went on, here supporting this year’s Majestic Mountain-issued 2LP, Tales of Demonic Possession (discussed here) as they are after a first European stint this Spring, they bore the naked riffing and groove that tells you how little you need anything else when you do it right. I grabbed some photos and put myself in a shady spot. It’s a long day ahead, and especially as I’m outside in the sun, gotta hydrate. Clouds Taste Satanic, with their LSD name and raw sound, were a wakeup for me — almost literally — but there’s no arguing with their approach, they drew a good early crowd and more came as they played, and a broken kick pedal only cost about a minute before they were back at it. I’d never seen them though and I’m glad to have rectified that. Imagine sans-vocal toe-tappers, but like 15 minutes long.

—

Mick’s Jaguar

A check-in with New York-based attitude rockers Mick’s Jaguar is appreciated after the late-2022 release of their Salvation (review here) album, and their catchy, ultra-NYC take on heavy revels in a lineage that goes back actual generations, not just musical ones that are like four years or whatever. They’re the middle installment in a NYC triad opening the ourdoor stage, and their party vibe and brash swing and crash were suited to that spot, with some flow held over from Clouds Taste Satanic, but brought to a different context. There’s a narrative there, Clouds Taste Satanic into Mick’s Jaguar into White Hills, Desertfest celebrating the local sphere and its aural diversity. Other than to fill my water bottle — 16 oz. per band; I am a firm believer in radical hydration — I haven’t been inside yet, and I suppose that’s not really saying anything since there haven’t been any bands on in there yet, but the sunshine, gently autumnal breeze and buzz in the crowd were suitable accommodation for an energetic take and people were into it. I’ll say it was different being outside as opposed to when I saw them at Desertfest NY 2019 (review here), when they played the small room at The Well, which has only become smaller in my mind in the years since. Almost the opposite, really, but the fact that they owned both spaces is a unifying factor.

—

Mantar

I didn’t go in the photo pit, because jesus there’s gotta be a break somewhere and I could not envision a scenario in which somebody said to themselves “oh man he didn’t shoot Mantar — fucking poseur,” and I was all set to remain on the picnic bench where I’d been writing and hanging out, but the ultra-aggressive German two-piece drew me inside for a bit. Nasty, gnashing, pummeling and biting as they are, Mantar still groove. If that’s the crossover appeal that lets them play a fest like this, fair enough. They’ll always be an outlier, but you need that for something like this. Yesterday I called Windhand the sore thumb, and they were. That’s Mantar today, if less so with the always devastating Conan on the bill. Godflesh are mean, but it’s not the same intensity. Even punk as they are, Mantar cross that line between heavy and metal, and when you’re on one side there, it’s easy to recognize the other. They’re not really my thing most of the time, but I like that they wreck up the place, sonically speaking.

White Hills

White Hills are weirder than you, weirder than me, weirder than the fact that an electron doesn’t technically exist until something is used to measure it. The list goes on. But the stalwart NYC outfit — third of three in the noted triumvirate — seem perfectly content to inhabit their own spacial plane. Comprised of drummer/vocalist Ego Sensation and guitarist/vocalist Dave W., their persistently exploratory psychedelia — here droning, there rolling, somehow freaking out ALL THE TIME like they’re me with any kind of social obligation — is wholly immersive. Even in the great out-of-doors. Their sound bounced off the concrete wall up by where the trains go (I don’t think it’s an actual station, but could be wrong; it’d be an odd spot for one but these are odd times) and seemed to come from behind as well as in front while standing near the stage, and the effect was hypnotic. A roll you can just go with, a drift set adrift, jams for the universe. Spirals of water down a drain casting hurricane echoes and a scale at which even galaxies rotate. The sun’s out. Everything is great. Let’s be friends in real life.

—

Conan

I went outside for a bit during Conan’s set to let some air back in my lungs after they had squeezed it all out. They’re was about three entire seconds of my earplugs not being in, and I suspect that’ll be enough for me to hear their low distortion in my head when I try to go to sleep tonight. Fine. I don’t know how many superlatives are left to say it — also don’t care — but there’s no mistaking Conan as one of the heaviest bands on the planet. When I was done with pictures, I stood over by the sound desk for optimal fidelity. All hail “Volt Thrower.” Jon Davis, Chris Fielding, Johnny King — guitar, bass, drums — and if you put it on paper it’s nothing so special, but when these dudes hit it, you know damn well to whom you are listening. And if you do go see them, which you should, wear earplugs. The whole time. Sad to say, however, my foamies aren’t holding up to Conan’s volume assault — “Thronehammer” laying waste, as it will — which is probably to be expected. But against all common sense and every piece of advice one might receive from a medical professional, I stayed there and let that volume and tone just kill me. And sure enough, I was obliterated. 9 got another bottle of water though and felt better after that.

—

Dorthia Cottrell

You could hear Mondo Generator playing outside before Dorthia Cottrell — vocalist for Windhand, who played last night — started her set, playing as a three-piece with guitar and violin accompaniment. As to the metric by which I ended up inside instead of out, the math is easy. Last time I saw Mondo Generator was a month ago. saw Cottrell play solo was 2015, and Also last June. Both have new records. From hers, which is called Death Folk Country (review here), Cottrell eased quickly into the sad blues and dark folk — you might say she’s influenced by, death, folk, and country — with the breathy melody of her voice bolstered by the textures of the additional guitar (it was Leanne Martz, formerly of Heavy Temple) and fiddle. To their credit, once they started, I didn’t even know anymore whether you could still hear the noise from outside. Got lost in the mood and the ambience and and somehow it no longer mattered.

—

Godflesh

The Main Stage heft streak continues, and it turns out that what I’ve needed all day was to be churned into so much human goo by industrial metal pioneers and still-ahead-of-their-time crushbringers Godflesh. They have a new record out, Purge. I didn’t see it on the merch table earlier, but will check again to be sure. They played at least initially mostly in the dark and fog, and fair enough, but the onslaught of their beats and distortion, of guitarist Justin K. Broadrick’s gruff, barking shout and the filthy tone of G.C. Green’s bass, was consuming regardless of how visible they might or might not have been. I’ve been destroyed. Bludgeoned. Godflesh were a culmination of the progression on the main stage today that drew through Mantar and Conan; another triad. A decidedly angrier one, and if you want to hear what it feels like when your brain is running a thousand miles an hour and you don’t want it to and your entire body feels overwhelmed to the point of physical collapse — if you want to hear something that will remind you of being an insecure kid — Godflesh are here for it. I’d heard a bunch of good things about them on their current tour — mostly from Boston — and I was not misinformed. Now, about that album. Not on the table. Oh, if only someone would invent the internet so I can buy a Godflesh CD. Oh wait, sold out online too. You’ve betrayed me, circumstance! JK Flesh, one of Broadrick’s many other projects, plays NYC tomorrow. Good for him, making the most of the trip. Also, Godflesh rule. Thanks.

—

The Brant Bjork Trio

Brant Bjork, Mario Lalli and Ryan Güt are The Brant Bjork Trio, and they played songs from Bjork’s solo catalog. I don’t have any insight into the narrative of how they got together this time around, but I know that Bjork and Lalli have known each other for decades and worked together periodically over that time. Lalli played on Bjork’s 1999 solo debut, Jalamanta, so that’s about all the way back at least as far as this thing goes. And Mario Lalli and The Rubber Snake Charmers supported Bjork’s Stõner three-piece last year. On and on. Güt is a part of Stöner as well with Nick Oliveri on bass/vocals, and I kind of assumed that when Nick was ready to go back to Mondo Generator, keeping a trio configuration made sense. And crap, if there’s a chance to go on tour in a band with Lalli on bass, of course you’re gonna do that. Together, Bjork and Lalli are sculptors of desert rock, Lalli having actively participated in the forming of the style in Yawning Man and brought weird to the desert in Fatso Jetson, Bjork having played drums and contributed to the songwriting of Kyuss before joining Fu Manchu and embarking on the solo thing in various formats over the last 24 years, the latter I’d argue as his most crucial work. I could go on about this — blah blah generator parties; the horrible truth is I think the timeline is fun — but what I’m trying to say is these guys are real deal lifers, and in addition to having influenced two-plus generations of bands in a global underground that exists in part because of them, they also rock. “Cleaning Out the Ashtray” was a nice touch, and “Let the Truth Be Known.” There was a longer-maybe new song with a classic, sleek groove called “Sunshine” that broke after a couple verses into an even more languid flow, and if there’s new material, maybe this band will put out an LP. That’d be just ducky, thanks. Maybe I’d even get to tell the same story about how these guys are legends all over again! Perhaps with slight variations in the phrasing! Sweet!

—

Boris

Volume and thrust, lumber and noise. Shove. GO. Boris make it all exciting, and are somehow frenetic in their energy no matter what they’re actually playing. They drew the biggest crowd of the festival. Significant, statistically. Brant Bjork Trio finished and Djunah — of whom I saw a few minutes; knew nothing about them beforehand, turned out they were cool; a note-to-self moment — and I guess everybody who was at another stage congregated in front of Boris only to be blown back by a bulldozer of volume. Whoosh. It’s been a few years, but Boris were Boris, and that’s maybe the highest compliment they might be paid, since it actually means so many things, nearly all of them awesome. Wata, Atsuo and Takeshi took the whole building on a ride through a vortex of shred, the set becoming an assault of noise and fog with the band in the eye of their own storm, and while I could go on mixing metaphors and trying to craft suitable hyperbole for what they do on stage, the truth is that I’m really, really fucking tired and that I don’t need to hide that. Doesn’t mean I didn’t appreciate Boris, doesn’t mean I don’t think they’re an incredible band with decades of influence and legacy who also absolutely slay live. The not-even-the-end-of-the-day fatigue might’ve put Boris closer to the line between immersion and abrasion for my own experience, but hell’s bells, they’re dizzying when they want to be.

—

Ecstatic Vision

Because I’ve seen the band before, I showed up 25 minutes early to Ecstatic Vision on the Texas stage. Does it make sense to leave a band from Japan’s set to go see a band from Philadelphia when you’re in New York? It does if that band is Ecstatic Vision. Psychrippers extraordinaire. Bombast in excelsis. Willfully sliding into most of humanity’s definition of obnoxious, but hitting this crowd just right. I wasn’t the only one there early, nor first in the room. A reputation, preceding. I knew I was going to miss the Melvins — I saw them in June and as I said then, I’m not a huge fan, though they were and are good live — and somehow having Ecstatic Vision in the small room as my capper seemed just right. It goes without saying they destroyed. The sax, the guitar, bass and drums, the effects wash, the intense push inherited from Hawkwind and Monster Magnet both, cosmic heavy rock turned into a party unparalleled by anyone I’ve encountered in current US psych. They were the blowout, and as excellent as the Melvins are live (and yes I know they’ve got Coady Willis drumming in place of Dale Crover; the point stands), I knew that was how I wanted to cap my Desertfest New York 2023. Three days of heavy stuffed into a cannon and launched into the sun, and everyone in the room with it. I’d take a new record from them for sure, but I do also feel like they shouldn’t even stop playing live long enough to make one. These guys are providing a valuable service guiding all involved parties on a direct line into the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy.

—

I made it home from Brooklyn in under an hour. It was beautiful. Unheard of. “Magic,” as Ronnie James Dio might say. Falling asleep at the keyboard now.

That’s it for me. Thanks to Desertfest New York for coming back, to Sarika, Reece and Matte and all behind the making of the thing. Friends old and new — in the photo pit: Falk-Hagen Bernshausen (so glad you made it over), Tim Bugbee (you’re the best), Dante Torrieri (that Star Trek nerd-out turned my whole day around), Dylan Gonzalez (smartest guy in the room, also sweetest), Tomoko (thanks for the fruit offer, by the way you’re a genius), Charles (rarely do I find somebody who so much speaks the same language of sarcasm) — and everyone who came to say hi or something nice about the site. Thanks to The Patient Mrs. for the time. Thank you for reading.

More pics after the jump.

Read more »

This is some of the biggest news of my year, right here, and precisely some of what I’ve been hoping for since the advent of Desertfest New York in 2019. The NYC branch of Europe’s foremost heavy festival brand is slates do the seemingly impossible this Fall and bring German heavy psychedelic rock progenitors Colour Haze to the States for the second time as well as Greek heavy rock forerunners 1000mods, overcoming the pandemic-interrupted growth after a successful 2022 edition to realize a genuinely world-class event already just with the first reveal. And that’s before you get to the badassery of Lo-Pan, Heavy Temple, bringing Duel back, Boris, and so on.

I mean that. This puts Desertfest New York on a level of scope and reach with Psycho Las Vegas, Monolith on the Mesa or Fire in the Mountains or whoever else you want to namedrop, while maintaining club-show roots in its pre-party and secondary stages. I also wouldn’t surprised if a third stage isn’t added to the fest proper, as Knockdown Center certainly has that space available.

Either way, this is a big fucking deal and I’m excited at the prospect of what’s still to come. Will Steak return? My Sleeping Karma? Perhaps even a Green Lung US debut? The doors are thrown wide here as Desertfest New York 2023 takes it to that next level. The possibilities are that much closer to endless.

From the PR wire:

Desertfest New York returns for 3rd edition this September announcing
Melvins, Boris, Colour Haze, Truckfighters & more

TICKETS ON SALE NOW VIA WWW.DESERTFESTNEWYORK.COM

Leading independent stoner rock, doom, psych & heavy rock festival Desertfest returns to
New York this September. Hot off the heels of their largest US event to date in May ‘22, the
globally renowned festival will return to the unique space of the Knockdown Center in
Queens, alongside an exclusive pre-party at heavy metal institution, Saint Vitus Bar from 14th to 16th September 2023.

Headlining the 3rd edition of the festival will be genre-defining trailblazers the MELVINS.
With King Buzzo & Dale Crover at the helm ensuring their 40-year status as icons of the
underground, Desertfest attendees can expect a MELVINS performance unlike any other, as
they are treated to the bands’ expansive & iconic back catalogue.

Joining them on the Knockdown Center main-stage, with a rare New York performance, will
be Japan’s own BORIS. An exercise in auditory marksmanship for any whom are lucky
enough to bear witness, BORIS continue to redefine heavy on their own terms.

German psychedelic trio COLOUR HAZE will join the festival for a US exclusive,
headlining Thursday’s pre-party at Saint Vitus Bar. A band who move beyond a space of
labels, their continued evolution propels them out of any current galaxy recognised as ‘stoner
rock’. Thursday night will also welcome the infectiously groovy sounds of LO-PAN &
Texan goodtimers DUEL to help warm up the gears.

Long-time friends in the Desertfest-sphere, high-octane Swedish rockers
TRUCKFIGHTERS join proceedings for their first New York performance in three years.

Greece’s stoner rock heroes 1000MODS also make the jump overseas, ready to bring their
ear-worm worthy riffs to revellers. Local legends WHITE HILLS, raucous street doom
reapers R.I.P & ‘heavy primal psych’ outfit ECSTASTIC VISION all join the bill.

Elsewhere Desertfest NYC also welcomes HEAVY TEMPLE, CLOUDS TASTE SATANIC, MICK’S JAGUAR, CASTLE RAT, GRAVE BATHERS & SPELLBOOK, with more still to be announced…

3-day passes (incl. access to Saint Vitus Pre-Party) & 2-day passes (Knockdown Center
only) are on sale NOW via the following link – https://link.dice.fm/Desertfest_NewYork

Day Tickets will be released in April. There are no individual Day Tickets for Thursday’s
Pre-Party.

Full Line-Up
Saint Vitus – Sept 14th | Knockdown Center Sept 15th & 16th 2023
Melvins | Boris | Colour Haze | Truckfighters | 1000Mods | White Hills | Lo-Pan | Duel |
R.I.P | Ecstatic Vision | Heavy Temple | Clouds Taste Satanic | Mick’s Jaguar | Castle
Rat | Grave Bathers | Spellbook

https://facebook.com/Desertfestnyc/
https://www.instagram.com/desertfest_nyc/
http://www.desertfestnewyork.com

Colour Haze, Sacred (2022)

In many ways, this is my favorite kind of Quarterly Review day. I always place things more or less as I get them, and let the days fill up randomly, but there are different types that come out of that. Some are heavier on riffs, some (looking at you, Monday) are more about atmosphere, and some are all over the place. That’s this. There’s no getting in a word rut — “what’s another way to say ‘loud and fuzzy?'” — when the releases in question don’t sound like each other.

As we move past the halfway point of the first week of this double-wide Quarterly Review, 100 total acts/offerings to be covered, that kind of thing is much appreciated on my end. Keeps the mind limber, as it were. Let’s roll.

Winter 2023 Quarterly Review #21-30:

White Hills, The Revenge of Heads on Fire

The narrative — blessings and peace upon it — goes that White Hills stumbled on an old hard drive with 2007’s Heads on Fire‘s recording files on it, recovered them, and decided it was time to flesh out the original album some 15 years after the fact, releasing The Revenge of Heads on Fire through their own Heads on Fire Records imprint in fashion truer to the record’s original concept. Who would argue? Long-established freaks as they are, can’t White Hills basically do whatever the hell they want and it’ll be at the very least interesting? Sure enough, the 11-song starburster they’ve summoned out of the ether of memory is lysergic and druggy and sprawling through Dave W. and Ego Sensation‘s particular corner of heavy psychedelia and space rocks, “Visions of the Past, Present and Future” sounding no less vital for the passing of years as they’re still on a high temporal shift, riding a cosmic ribbon that puts “Speed Toilet” where “Revenge of Speed Toilet” once was in reverse sequeling and is satisfyingly head-spinning whether or not you ever heard the original. That is to say, context is nifty, but having your brain melted is better, and White Hills might screw around an awful lot, but they’re definitely not screwing around. You heard me.

White Hills on Facebook

White Hills on Bandcamp

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Dystopian Future Movies, War of the Ether

Weaving into and out of spoken word storytelling and lumbering riffy largesse, nine-minute opener and longest track (immediate points) “She Up From the Drombán Hill” has a richly atmospheric impact on what follows throughout Dystopian Future Movies‘ self-issued third album, War of the Ether, the residual feedback cutting to silence ahead of a soft beginning for “Critical Mass” as guitarist/vocalist Caroline Cawley pairs foreboding ambience with noise rocking payoffs, joined by her Church of the Cosmic Skull bandmate Bill Fisher on bass/drums and Rafe Dunn on guitar for eight songs that owe some of their root to ’90s-era alt heavy but have grown into something of their own, as demonstrated in the willfully overwhelming apex of “The Walls of Filth and Toil” or the dare-a-hook ending of the probably-about-social-media “The Veneer” just prior. The LP runs deeper as it unfurls, each song setting forth on its own quiet start save for the more direct “License of Their Lies” and offering grim but thoughtful craft for a vision of dark heavy rock true both to the band’s mission and the album’s troubled spirit. Closer “A Decent Class of Girl” rolls through volume swells in what feels like a complement to “She Up From the Drombán Hill,” but its bookending wash only highlights the distance the audience has traveled alongside Cawley and company. Engrossing.

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Basalt Shrine, From Fiery Tongues

Though in part defined by the tectonic megasludge of “In the Dirt’s Embrace,” Filipino four-piece Basalt Shrine are no more beholden to that on From Fiery Tongues than they are the prior opening drone “Thawed Slag Blood,” the post-metallic soundscaping of the title-track, the open-spaced minimalism of closer “The Barren Aftermath” or the angular chug at the finish of centerpiece “Adorned for Loathing Pigs.” Through these five songs, the Manila-based outfit plunge into the darker, denser and more extreme regions of sludgy stylizations, and as they’ve apparently drawn the notice of US-based Electric Talon Records and sundry Euro imprints, safe to say the secret is out. Fair enough. The band guide “From Fiery Tongues,” song and album, with an entrancing churn that is as much about expression as impact, and the care they take in doing so — even at their heaviest and nastiest — isn’t to be understated, and especially as their debut, their ambition manifests itself in varied ways nearly all of which bode well for coming together as the crux of an innovative style. Not predicting anything, but while From Fiery Tongues doesn’t necessarily ring out with a hopeful viewpoint for the world at large, one can only listen to it and be optimistic about the prospects for the band themselves.

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Psychonaut, Violate Consensus Reality

Post-metallic in its atmosphere, there’s no discounting the intensity Belgium trio Psychonaut radiate on their second album, Violate Consensus Reality (on Pelagic). The prog-metal noodling of “All Your Gods Have Gone” and the singing-turns-to-screaming methodology on the prior opener “A Storm Approaching” begin the 52-minute eight-tracker with a fervency that affects everything that comes after, and as “Age of Separation” builds into its full push ahead of the title-track, which holds tension in its first half and shows why in its second, a halfway-there culmination before the ambient and melodic “Hope” turns momentarily from some of the harsher insistence before it, a summary/epilogue for the first platter of the 2LP release. The subsequent “Interbeing” is black metal reimagined as modern prog — flashes of Enslaved or Amorphis more than The Ocean or Mastodon, and no complaints — and the procession from “Hope” through “Interbeing” means that the onslaught of “A Pacifist’s Guide to Violence,” all slam and controlled plunder, is an apex of its own before the more sprawling, 12-minute capper “Towards the Edge,” which brings guest appearances from Brutus‘ Stefanie Mannaerts and the most esteemed frontman in European post-metal, Colin H. van Eeckhout of Amenra, whose band Psychonaut admirably avoid sounding just like. That’s not often the case these days.

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Robot God, Worlds Collide

If you’re making your way through this post, skimming for something that looks interesting, don’t discount Sydney, Australia’s Robot God on account of their kinda-generic moniker. After solidifying — moltenifying? — their approach to longform-fuzz on their 2020 debut, Silver Buddha Dreaming, the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Raff Iacurto, bassist/vocalist Matt Allen and drummer Tim Pritchard offer the four tracks of their sophomore LP, Worlds Collide, through Kozmik Artifactz in an apparent spirit of resonance, drawing familiar aspects of desert-style heavy rock out over songs that feel exploratory even as they’re born of recognizable elements. “Sleepwalking” (11:25) sets a broad landscape and the melody over the chugger riff in the second half of “Ready to Launch” (the shortest inclusion at 7:03) floats above it smoothly, while “Boogie Man” (11:24) pushes over the edge of the world and proceeds to (purposefully) tumble loosely downward in tempo from there, and the closing title-track (11:00) departs from its early verses along a jammier course, still plotted, but clearly open to the odd bit of happy-accidentalism. It’s a niche that seems difficult to occupy, and a difficult balance to strike between hooking the listener with a riff and spacing out, but Robot God mostly avoid the one-or-the-other trap and create something of their own from both sides; reminiscent of… wait for it… worlds colliding. Don’t skip it.

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AAWKS, Heavy on the Cosmic

Released in June 2022 and given a late-in-the-year vinyl issue seemingly on the strength of popular demand alone, AAWKS‘ debut full-length, Heavy on the Cosmic sets itself forth with the immersive, densely-fuzzed nodder riff and stoned vocal of longest track (immediate points) “Beyond the Sun,” which finds start-with-longest-song complement on side B’s “Electric Traveller” (rare double points). Indeed there’s plenty to dig about the eight-song outing, from the boogie in “Sunshine Apparitions,” the abiding vibe of languid grunge and effects-laced chicanery that pervade the crashouts of “The Woods” to the memorable, slow hook-craft of “All is Fine.” Over on side B, the momentum early in “Electric Traveller” rams headfirst into its own slowdown, while “Space City” reinforces the no-joke tonality and Elephant Tree-style heavy/melodic blend before the penultimate mostly-instrumental “Star Collider” resolves itself like Floor at half-speed and closer “Peeling Away” lives up to its title with a departure of psychedelic soloing and final off-we-go loops. The word-of-mouth hype around AAWKS was and is significant, and the Ontario-based four-piece tender three-dimensional sound to justify it, the record too brief at 39 minutes to actually let the listener get lost while providing multiple opportunities for headphone escapism. A significant first LP.

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Smokes of Krakatau, Smokes of Krakatau

The core methodology of Polish trio Smokes of Krakatau across their self-titled debut seems to be to entrance their audience and then blindside them with a riffy punch upside the head. Can’t argue if it works, which it does, right from the gradual unfurling of 10-minute instrumental opener “Absence of Light” before the chunky-style riff of “GrassHopper” lumbers into the album’s first vocals, delivered with a burl that reminds of earlier Clutch. There are two more extended tracks tucked away at the end — “Septic” (10:07) and “Kombajn Bizon” (11:37) — but before they get there, “GrassHopper” begins a movement across four songs that brings the band to arguably their most straightforward piece of all, the four-minute “Carousel,” as though the ambient side of their persona was being drained out only to return amid the monolithic lumber that pays off the build in “Septic.” It’s a fascinating whole-album progression, but it works and it flows right unto the bluesy reach of “Kombajn Bizon,” which coalesces around a duly massive lurch in its last minutes. It’s a simplification to call them ‘stoner doom,’ but that’s what they are nonetheless, though the manner in which they present their material is as distinguishing a factor as that material itself in the listening experience. The band are not done growing, but if you let their songs carry you, you won’t regret going where they lead.

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Carrier Wave, Carrier Wave

Is it the riff-filled land that awaits, or the outer arms of the galaxy itself? Maybe a bit of both on Bellingham, Washington-based trio Carrier Wave‘s four-song self-titled debut, which operates with a reverence for the heft of its own making that reminds of early YOB without trying to ape either Mike Scheidt‘s vocal or riffing style. That works greatly to the benefit of three-piece — guitarist/vocalist James Myers, bassist/vocalist Taber Wilmot, drummer Joe Rude — who allow some raucousness to transfuse in “Skyhammer” (shortest song at 6:53) while surrounding that still-consuming breadth with opener “Cosmic Man” (14:01), “Monolithic Memories” (11:19) and the subsequent finale “Evening Star” (10:38), a quiet guitar start to the lead-and-longest track (immediate points) barely hinting at the deep tonal dive about to take place. Tempo? Mostly slow. Space? Mostly dark and vast. Ritual? Vital, loud and awaiting your attendance. There’s crush and presence and open space, surges, ebbs, flows and ties between earth and ether that not every band can or would be willing to make, and much to Carrier Wave‘s credit, at 42 minutes, they engage a kind of worldmaking through sound that’s psychedelic even as it builds solid walls of repetitive riffing. Not nasty. Welcoming, and welcome in itself accordingly.

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Stash, Through Rose Coloured Glasses

With mixing/mastering by Chris Fielding (Conan, etc.), the self-released first full-length from Tel Aviv’s Stash wants nothing for a hard-landing thud of a sound across its nine songs/45 minutes. Through Rose Coloured Glasses has a kind of inherent cynicism about it, thanks to the title and corresponding David Paul Seymour cover art, and its burl — which goes over the top in centerpiece “No Real” — is palpable to a defining degree. There’s a sense of what might’ve happened if C.O.C. had come from metal instead of punk rock, but one way or the other, Stash‘s grooves remain mostly throttled save for the early going of the penultimate “Rebirth.” The shove is marked and physical, and the tonal purpose isn’t so much to engulf the listener with weight as to act as the force pushing through from one song to the next, each one — “Suits and Ties,” “Lie” and certainly the opener “Invite the Devil for a Drink” — inciting a sense of movement, speaking to American Southern heavy without becoming entirely adherent to it, finding its own expression through roiling, chugging brashness. But there’s little happenstance in it — another byproduct of a metallic foundation — and Stash stay almost wholly clearheaded while they crash through your wall and proceed to break all the shit in your house, sonically speaking.

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Lightsucker, Stonemoon

Though it opens serene enough with birdsong and acoustic guitar on “Intro(vert,” the bulk of Lightsucker‘s second LP, Stonemoon is more given to a tumult of heavy motion, drawing together elements of atmospheric sludge and doom with shifts between heavy rock groove and harder-landing heft. And in “Pick Your God,” a little bit of death metal. An amalgam, then. So be it. The current that unites the Finnish four-piece’s material across Stonemoon is unhinged sludge rock that, in “Lie,” “Land of the Dead” and the swinging “Mob Psychosis” reminds of some of Church of Misery‘s shotgun-blues chaos, but as the careening “Guayota” and the deceptively steady push of “Justify” behind the madman vocals demonstrate, Lightsucker‘s ambitions aren’t so simply encapsulated. So much the better for the listening experience of the 35-minute/eight-song entirety, as from “Intro(vert)” through the suitably pointy snare hits of instrumental closer “Stalagmites,” Lightsucker remain notably unpredictable as they throw elbows and wreak havoc from one song to the next, the ruined debris of genre strewn about behind as if to leave a trail for you to follow after, which, if you can actually keep up with their changes, you might just do.

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