UK mega-doomers Conan filmed the above clip for “Hawk as Weapon” from their forthcoming album at the Buffalo Bar in Cardiff. As you’ll find out less than a minute into the song, it’s unbelievably fucking heavy. That’s what Conan does. Whatever they decide to call their next record, which will be their Burning World Records debut and follow-up to 2010′s epic Horseback Battle Hammer (review here), I expect nothing less than total devastation.

If “Hawk as Weapon” isn’t enough Conan for you, I’d recommend hitting up their Bandcamp site where you can hear and download the whole show. Or, if you don’t feel like clicking the link, here’s the Buffalo Bar gig in its 47-minute entirety:

If you’ve managed to make it through that much low-end marauding with your bowels still intact, kudos. You’ve done better than I think most do at Conan shows. They are, simply put, one of the heaviest bands I’ve ever heard.

Next week: A stream of the whole new King Giant record and hopefully an album giveaway to accompany. Also my interview with Selim Lemouchi of The Devil’s Blood and reviews of Caveman Voicebox, Earth, Bushfire and others, plus some Buried Treasure and the latest news on the Desertfests in London and Berlin, so plenty to look forward to. I hope you have a great and safe weekend. I’m plum tuckered from this week, but I’ll still be dicking around on the forum, so feel free to say hi if you get a minute.

Pending that, I’ll be back here Monday with more zany fun.

The German four-piece also announced some new jackets, but the album seemed the most headline-worthy inclusion. My Sleeping Karma, whose third full-length, Tri, was a 2010 highlight, sent over word today that they’ve begun the writing process for the follow-up, due out sometime before the end of this year. 2012 wasn’t exactly lacking for killer album prospects, but I won’t complain about the chance to hear new stuff from these guys, and they’ll also be playing a slew of European summer fests, on which you can find more info at their website.

Straight from the PR wire to your very eyes:

We hope that all of you had a peaceful start into the New Year.

Here is the latest news from The MSK Camp.

New Record 2012:
We are busy writing on new material for our 4th studio album. The release is planned for summer/fall this year. We don’t know the exact date yet, but it will happen in 2012, promised!

New Merchandise:
Our new zip jackets (colour: chocolate/gold) were sold out during the last tour. You will find them back in our shop during the next week as well as some other new shirts and items… do yourself something good during these cold days.

http://www.mysleepingkarma.com

With their signature crushing emotional weight in tow, French post-black metal forerunners Alcest return in 2012 with their third album, Les Voyages de l’Âme. The eight-track record, the title of which translates to “the journeys of the soul,” keeps its focus musically on Alcest’s well-developed melodic wash, toying with blastbeats, screams and other black metal genre conventions in the interest of exploring the kind of head-down melancholy that brought such notoriety to past efforts Écailles de Lune (2010; half-review here) and Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde (2007) and placed Alcest multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Stéphane “Neige” Paut at the head of a melodic movement championed by the label Prophecy Productions and acts like Les Discrets, Arctic Plateau and Lantlôs, of which Paut is also a member. Along with drummer Winterhalter (also of Les Discrets), who joined in 2009, Paut has long since established the sonic course of Alcest as a band. Indeed, even on the two extended tracks of 2005’s Le Secret EP, it seemed a specific aesthetic was driving Neige’s songwriting, and that has remained true and consistent across the ensuing releases – in conjunction with a steady touring schedule, that consistency is part of what has allowed Alcest to attain the profile they have. At times, it has felt like that adherence to aesthetic has trumped the actual songwriting in the creative process – songs have been more about the mood they generate or add to – and where that might also be the case given the overall affect of Les Voyages de l’Âme, there’s no question that the third full-length has Alcest’s most directly memorable material to date.

As compares to the relatively jagged guitar sound of Écailles de Lune, Les Voyages de l’Âme seems to have more in common with Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde in terms of its production. Neige’s guitar, bass and keys come through clearly and smooth, and right away on opener “Autre Temps,” it’s apparent that Alcest had definite structural ideas going into this album. “Autre Temps” was chosen as the lead-off single/video cut, and rightly so with its balance of catchy wistfulness and gracefully unfolding melody. The vocals are prominent without being overbearing, and play a considerable role in making the chorus so ethereal. Guitars are layered in acoustics and electrics, and Winterhalter’s drumming maintains a metallic percussive edge without sounding out of place amid the song’s gradual build. As ever for Alcest, “Autre Temps” evokes a feeling of longing and a contemplative kind of classical sadness. “Là Où Naissent les Couleurs Nouvelles” follows and revives the black metal screams that “Percées De Lumière” from Écailles de Lune explored, in this context using them to complement the melody in the chorus and eventually take the fore. Winterhalter adds blasts, and were the guitars not so unabashedly gorgeous and the melody not still so prominent, “Là Où Naissent les Couleurs Nouvelles” would essentially be traditional black metal. It’s not, and the song’s later minutes emphasize a propulsive post-rock feel, capping the nine minutes with fading guitar that brings on the title-track’s headphone-worthy density. Squiggly guitars serve as a chorus amid more subdued, lower-register verse vocals, and the initial sway breaks after three minutes to embark on Les Voyages de l’Âme’s most effective musical and vocal build, on which both Neige and Winterhalter contribute to a vast, stirring sprawl. Side A wraps with the winding verses of “Nous Sommes l’Emeraude,” a fitting (if short addition) to Alcest’s worship of nature and the passage of time within it.

Read more »

As guitarist/vocalist Scott Hill said the band would in our interview this past November, Fu Manchu have announced a slew of tour dates playing their 1997 classic The Action is Go front to back. One can only assume/hope that American dates will follow the European ones that have been made public, and look forward to staring into the “Evil Eye.” If the tour they did playing all of In Search Of… was anything to go by, this should be a blast.

Here’s the poster. Click to enlargify if you don’t like looking at tiny dates:

Red Fang‘s building up an awful lot of pressure to keep making hilarious videos. “Hank is Dead” is their third in a row, and what starts with awkward junk-glances in the shower ends with a PBR-fueled (PBR being the thread that unites the to-date trilogy of Red Fang clips) rager/air guitar championship. Spandex is had, blood is spilled, invisible necks are licked — in short, Red Fang‘s specific brand chaos ensues, and as always, it looks like a blast to have put it all together.

Enjoy “Hank is Dead,” followed by some PR wire info and European tour dates:

Portland, Oregon’s Red Fang are premiering their new video today on YouTube for “Hank is Dead”, which is taken from their critically acclaimed release Murder the Mountains. Red Fang worked with director extraordinaire, Whitey McConnaughy on the video.

Drummer John Sherman spoke about the “Hank is Dead” video:

“Another great concept from the brilliant mind of Whitey McConnaughy. This one came together super quick with the help of some insane Portland locals and their sick air guitar skills. We basically just threw a big party and had a blast while a bunch of cameras ran. That is my shower Aaron and Bryan and Bobcat are in at the intro, btw. It still has a weird ring around it…”

Red Fang are currently on tour in Europe with Mastodon. The tour runs through Feb. 11 in London and includes Red Fang headline dates in addition to the shows with Mastodon.

Red Fang European tour with Mastodon
01/27 GER, Stuttgart Juha West*
01/28 SWI, Zurich Xtra
01/29 GER, Frankfurt Batschkapp
01/30 GER, Munich Backstage Halle
01/31 GER, Berlin C-Club
02/01 GER, Osnabruck Bastard Club*
02/02 GER, Cologne Essigfabrik
02/03 HOL, Tilburg 013
02/04 FRA, Le Havre Le Mate L’Eau*
02/05 ENG, Bristol Academy
02/06 ENG, Manchester Academy
02/07 SCO, Glasgow Barrowland
02/09 Norwich, UEA
02/10 ENG, Birmingham Institute
02/11 ENG, London Brixton Academy

*Denotes headlining dates

Just a brief pause to mark this as post number 2,500 on this site. I was kind of hoping it would line up with doing the numbers at the end of the month — sort of kill two birds with one bit of self-aggrandizing, but apparently I’ve posted more the last couple weeks than I anticipated. Big change. Anyway, it’s only been six months since I marked post #2,000, so I guess the last half-year has been pretty busy. I hope that time was good to you.

We march on. Thanks for checking out The Obelisk, whenever, however, whyever you got here. If I could plot my own course, I would, but I’m pretty sure I’d fail miserably. I’d rather take that energy and put it into the next post, which will be up shortly. Until then, I know it’s kind of weird because chances are if you’re reading this, we don’t know each other, but take my word for it, I’m a real person, and I really appreciate your reading this site. Thank you and thank you again.

Admittedly, it’s a cruel, heartless question to ask, and yet, can there be any doubt as to the answer? Could anything ever top Master of Reality? I ask the question mostly because I want to see if anyone sticks up for Vol. 4, which, apart from “Changes,” is about as flawless as an album can get. With the recent terrible news of Tony Iommi‘s lymphoma diagnosis, I think we’re due for a good time. So let’s have some fun.

Earliest Black Sabbath was nothing if not a coalescing of various elements into a cohesive whole. A kind of cultural distillation, ground down and remade into the singular most formative basis of doom — the album Black Sabbath. Only months later in 1970, they released Paranoid and refined the darkness of the first record, adding range and sonic breadth. While the title-track became the band’s signature piece, “Electric Funeral” and “Fairies Wear Boots” grew into the anthems of a subculture within a subculture, and they remain so to this day.

However, every time I put on Master of Reality and listen to it straight through, with each successive track, I say to myself, “This is the heaviest shit ever made.” And each song proves the prior assessment wrong — yes, even “Solitude” — until finally, “Into the Void” offers clear and indisputable truth of riff. It is pure in its muck, and as perfect as stoner rock has ever gotten. The standard by which the genre is and should be measured: the heaviest shit ever made.

But what about Vol. 4? It seems to have an answer for every challenge Master of Reality throws at it. A “Snowblind” for “Sweet Leaf,” “Supernaut” for “Into the Void,” “Under the Sun/Every Day Comes and Goes” for “Lord of this World.” 1972 found Black Sabbath a more realized beast with a perfected heavy rock that seemed to already know the tropes of the metal genre it was shaping.

I could go on. I won’t. Is “Changes” enough to hold back Vol. 4 from standing up to Master of Reality? There are people who consider “Solitude” a misstep of similar magnitude. I leave it to you to decide in the comments.

You know the scenario. You can only pick one, so which is it?

Well, this is about the best kind of news one can get. Or at least the second best. Word came in last night from guitarist JJ Bonar that recording of the new Bloodcow album has begun. This prompted further investigating on my part of the Omaha, Nebraska, band’s Thee Facebooks page, where indeed, confirmation was had. Dig the following informativeness:

Recording of the next Bloodcow album has begun.

That settles it. Also, this:

They have a video series going that documents the recording process, but of course I couldn’t get it to work — Facebook wants me to upgrade my Flash so they can come to my house and steal my manly essence in the night — or something — but that’s fine, because it gives me an excuse to post a live clip instead. For example:

No word on a release date or whether or not the new one will be released on Crustacean Records like its most righteous predecessor, Bloodcow III: Hail Xenu. Stay tuned for more as this situation develops. In the meantime, Bloodcow will be opening for thrash legends Testament on Feb. 13. More info on that here.

Near as I can tell, the plot in the lyrics of Evil Cosmonaut’s “Boris Yeltsin vs. Giant Ants” is that huge bugs come and attack the world. Buildings fall, people die, and then Boris Yeltsin shows up, does an evil dance, and saves the planet. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that’s fucking awesome. Much of the Moscow three-piece’s R.A.I.G. debut, We Have Landed, follows that kind of course – not always to such heights of badassery, but nonetheless with a notable degree of charm. “My Moustache” calls its titular subject, “My present from God,” and “Armageddon” playfully name-checks the stars of the 1998 blockbuster, even going so far as to mention Steve Buscemi. That, in combination with the clay artwork, the crunchy tone of guitarist/vocalist Alex “Kaza” Kazachev and the bluesy groove of “The Song We Will Never Play Again,” seems to make We Have Landed a record that gets by more on personality than innovation, but whatever does it does it. The album’s nine tracks and 42 minutes feel quick, songs vary enough to hold interest, and periodic bursts of punkish energy keep the pace from being mired by sleepy stonerisms. A mostly dry production keeps Evil Cosmonaut grounded from where some of the space-program thematics might otherwise take them, giving the album a garage-esque feel at times, but between Kazachev and bassist Denis “Memphis Dead” Petrov, the tones are thicker than most of what passes these days for that aesthetic. It’s all rock.

And if anything, it’s hard to pick a highlight from among We Have Landed’s fare. “Armageddon” certainly makes a case for itself, with its rudimentary chugging riff and live feel, as well as its lyrics, but “Old Guy Neil,” which recalls the moon landing and Neil Armstrong’s first steps out of the craft, starts the album off with a crisp (if somewhat misleading) aggressive bent and foretells a lot of the perspective to come. Drummer Konstantin Sosnin, the only member of Evil Cosmonaut without a nickname, is straightforward in his approach and well-suited to Kazachev’s riffs, which for the most part lead the way. The upbeat shuffle of “Marvin” – either an inside joke or a reference I don’t get to an old man who lives in a cave – features some of We Have Landed’s best fuzz, to be later complemented by closer “The Golden Apples of the Sun,” and maintains the forward motion of the opener, leading to the even more rocking “Big Super Mega Monsters,” which earns its chorus shout of the title line late in the track. The song can’t help but be memorable with a name like that, but the music stands up to it with a marked simplicity of approach and a cheeky self-awareness that matches Kazachev’s vocal. However simple the album might seem, Evil Cosmonaut have a clear mindfulness of structure, as “The Song We Will Never Play Again” shows by slowing down the momentum of “Big Super Mega Monsters” and giving way in turn to the middle-pacing of “Armageddon.” Given the tongue-in-cheek nature of most of the lyrics – here a drunken alien abduction is recounted – I’d doubt the veracity of the title “The Song We Will Never Play Again,” or at least hope it’s not true, since the song’s relatively lumbering groove is among the album’s most fascinating assets.

Read more »

For this week’s Wino Wednesday, I have the absolute thrill of hosting the first track premiere from Heavy Kingdom, the new collaborative album from Wino & Conny Ochs. Ochs, a German singer-songwriter whose aptly-titled Raw Love Songs was released last year by Exile on Mainstream, toured with Wino following the issue of his own acoustic debut, Adrift, and the two reportedly hit it off creatively as well as personally. As is often the case when it comes to Wino, an album was imminent.

And Heavy Kingdom, which will be out on Exile on Mainstream Jan. 30 in Europe and March 13 in North America, captures the emotionality in both songwriters’ work. Most of its tracks are pretty bare-bones, however, so there’s an element of rawness that seems to convey the basic nature of the collaboration. They wrote them together, they play them together. Wino & Conny Ochs, as a unit, isn’t about showing off the prowess of one player or another, but about two artists who respect each other working in tandem to create something new and whole.

The album succeeds in that, and is at times almost embarrassingly honest. As a representation of the material as a whole, it’s fitting to unveil the title-track first, since it hones both that honesty and the rawness of approach that so much of Heavy Kingdom is built on. Like the collaboration itself, it deals in duality and effectively bridges seemingly disparate elements into something natural and engaging.

Please enjoy Wino & Conny Ochs‘ “Heavy Kingdom” on the player below:

Heavy Kingdom is due out Jan. 30 in Europe and March 13 in North America on Exile on Mainstream. Special thanks to Earsplit PR and Exile on Mainstream for letting me host the track. For more on the release, check out the label’s site here and Wino‘s official page. If you’d like to see a bigger version of the cover, click here. Happy Wino Wednesday.

Always sucks to see a good band go. British post-metallurgists Wiht released their impressive debut, The Harrowing of the North (review here), last year, and here we are just months later and they’ve announced their final show for March. If you missed it, guitarist Chris Wayper and bassist Joe Hall were kind enough to answer Six Dumb Questions back in November, and I was looking forward to hearing what they did next. So it goes.

All the best to Wayper, Hall and drummer Rick Contini in their future endeavors, musical and otherwise. Here’s the post from the band’s Thee Facebooks page:

WIHT – March ’09 – March ’12

It is with sadness and a great sense of pride, that we have decided to call it a day. This is a completely amicable decision and has been made in the best interests of the band. It has come to a point where we are no longer able to progress and take the band further, we feel this band deserves more respect than just to fade away. This simply is an issue of lack of time and funds; two of the three of us now have families and time has become a lot more precious. To progress as a band we need to dedicate a certain amount of time to write and record, let alone gigging and touring. This is why we have decided to call it a day at a point where we feel this is something to be proud of.

To have played and made music in a band comprised of three oldest and best mates for three years has been an absolute pleasure. We feel incredibly proud of what we have achieved with the limited time and resources that we have had. We are not for one moment suggesting this is something exclusive to our band, many bands manage to write, record and tour with limited funds and with children, unfortunately it hasn’t worked for us. 

We would like to thank the following bands and people for your huge support and influence over the years, it wouldn’t have been possible without you. Ross at Ghosttown Studios, Neil Best Edward, Dan at Desertscene Rock, Dave at Future Noise, Chris at Witch Hunter Records, Matthew Lee, Charlie Barnes, Elles, all our friends and family Ceara, Lorna, Bekki, Sydney, Vincent & Oscar. 

Huge shout to the bands we have played with and that have helped us out, Khuda; Wizards Beard, Tree of Sores, A Forest of Stars, Haar, Undersmile, Desert Storm, Conan, Slabdragger, Dead Existence, Lords of Bastard & everyone else that we have had the pleasure of sharing the stage with. 

But don’t fret, we have a killer finale for you. Lineup including Khuda, band Tree of Sores on 30th March at Royal Park Cellars, it would be amazing if you could come and send us off Leeds style! 

But before that we will be helping Wizards Beard celebrate their album launch at the same venue on 18th February with some killer bands from around the UK. 

Hails and Ales.

Wiht.

Not to be confused with the Swiss heavy prog trio from the early ’70s, the Tempe, Arizona-based six-piece TOAD‘s moniker is meant as an acronym for Take Over and Destroy, and seems as well to be a statement of their methodology. Their debut EP, titled Rotten Tide, blends a variety of styles from bombastic hardcore metal to post-Mastodonic technicality, and — perhaps most curiously of all — a preference for analog recording that’s almost entirely absent from the larger scope of modern metal.

Rotten Tide sounds modern, and though parts of centerpiece “Embody the Ghost” speaks to some affection for retro doom in its horror spookiness, the song itself quickly moves away from that and TOAD are, on the whole, working within a different aesthetic. Vocals from Andy Leemont come in abrasive and layered shouts over the guitars of Nate Garrett (who seems to have replaced Dan Labarbiera) and Alex Bank Rollins, and are clearly metallic in their origin, and yet Pete Porter‘s mellotron seems to add a backwards-looking flair that’s not incongruous with what the band are doing only because they mix it so well into their own context.

And as for recording analog — aside from the snobby prestige of being able to say you did it, it doesn’t really do much for your sound if you’re making something as metal as Rotten Tide — but as it’s genuinely a more arduous process, it says something that TOAD did it anyway and, along with their use of “all vintage gear from the ’60s and ’70s,” it seems to speak to the same kind of genre-straying ideology that drives “Embody the Ghost.” They’re still very metal, and at times border on black ‘n’ roll, but the band — who are just starting out and whose lineup is rounded out by bassist Trey Edwin and drummer Shane Taylor — have potential to develop in any number of sonic directions.

If you’d like to find out for yourself, they’ve put all of Rotten Tide up for streaming on their Bandcamp page, and also have a split release available through Boue Records with Drone Throne, with whom they share Rollins and Leemont. They’re also on Thee Facebooks, if that’s your thing. Here’s the whole of Rotten Tide, courtesy of the former:

Something about Severin Allgood’s delivery of the chorus lines in “Wine Witch” – the cadence of, “She’s the wine witch/Purple teeth/Six-six-six” – reminds me of Suplecs at their most fun-loving, but I can’t quite figure what it is. Backed on vocals by his fellow guitarist Shawn Apple, Allgood fronts Memphis, Tennessee, four-piece Hosoi Bros for the course of their brief Wine Witch debut 7”, ripping quickly through the aforementioned title-track and “Yellow Fever,” which follows an even speedier course. The band formed in 2010 has shared the stage with the likes of The Sword, Skeletonwitch, Red Fang and Totimoshi, and though they come off young as a unit, Allgood, Apple, bassist Drewbie Crenshaw and drummer JimmyJames Blasingame seem to have all been kicking around Memphis as members of various projects and bands. Hosoi Bros – one must resist the temptation to put a “The” before the band’s name – are cohesive across their first two tracks, however, and have a clear idea of where the core of their sound lies, and that’s mostly in their riffy punk influence. Wine Witch is pressed to a limited-to-300 edition of glow-in-the-dark vinyl, and shows immediately that the band – whose logo is remarkably similar in shape to that of Danish thrashers HateSphere – threatens nothing when it comes to taking themselves too seriously. Their Red Fang-esque video for “Wine Witch,” included below, confirms this as well.

What Hosoi Bros most have going for them is the energy in the material. Both “Wine Witch” and “Yellow Fever” teem with an unforced quickness of pace that only further highlights the excitement conveyed. The stuff is fairly basic stylistically, but that’s the point of it. Even with the two guitars, Hosoi Bros aren’t looking to make Wine Witch a prog record; they keep the formula simple and get right to the point. Bolstered by the humor in the lyrics – lines like “Merlot: Steals your soul” from “Wine Witch” – the songs are all the more memorable as a debut showing from the band. I don’t know if they’d be able to keep it up for a full-length without presenting some shift in sound, but a first 7” is certainly no time to worry about such things, when what Hosoi Bros are clearly trying to do is punk out and have a good time. They do it. Both “Wine Witch” and “Yellow Fever” – which is, near as I can tell, a variant on that of the jungle – are a lot of fun in their immature way, and delivered with a strength of performance from the band that shows they’re not just jokes. Crenshaw’s bass has its work cut out for it in keeping up with Apple and Allgood on guitar, but he more than manages, and Blasingame adds consistent snare rolls to “Wine Witch” while laying back more to ride the groove on “Yellow Fever” to show a bit of diversity and give a sense of adaptability. “Yellow Fever” borders on offensive, but stays on the side of cheeky, which is where it belongs, and its chorus of “I’m young/I’m ready/Yellow fever’s got the best of me” is undeniably catchy, while the verse – seemingly shouted by both Allgood and Apple – is harder to discern.

Read more »

If it was just two new clips I’d seen in the last 24 hours, they’d probably each get their own post, but three would feel cheap spacing them out that way. Plus, this way you can watch them next to each other and pick a winner. Not a clue what the prize is, but I do know that between the three videos below, all the bases are pretty much covered. Crippled Black Phoenix‘s surprisingly politicized clip for “Laying Traps” has gasmasks, King Giant‘s “Appomattox” has zombies, and Samsara Blues Experiment‘s “Into the Black” has a sad-looking girl doing a kind of stop-motion Curly shuffle. Good fun all around. Here they are, in that order, which also happens to be alphabetical. Go figure.

–

Crippled Black Phoenix, “Laying Traps”

The song is taken from the British outfit’s new album, (Mankind) The Crafty Ape, and finds the band — their faces obscured by gasmasks and bandannas — attempting the rare feat of making anthemic post-rock. I’ve never tried it, but it can’t be easy, though it seems their often mournful sound has been given a kick in the ass somewhere along the line. The spirit of protest suits them well, and there’s also a free download of “Laying Traps” here.

Watch for: The banker-looking dude with the screwdriver sticking out of his head.

–

King Giant, “Appomattox”

I give much respect to Arlington, Virginia’s King Giant for making a zombie video. As prevalent as zombie’s are in today’s weirdo media culture, it seems like an easy move, but the ubiquitous nature of zombies these days actually makes it that much harder to get right, and I think the band does that here. We start out with tattooed hottie and a bloody baseball bat and a decent The Walking Dead-style chase ensues. “Appomattox” comes from King Giant‘s sophomore album, Dismal Hollow.

Watch for: The zombie in the Red Fang t-shirt.

–

Samsara Blues Experiment, “Into the Black”

The German band’s second album, Revelation and Mystery (review here), pushed their sound in a surprisingly straightforward direction, moving away some from the heavy psych jamming of the first record. “Into the Black” was among the songs that most displayed this shift, though as you watch the video below, you can see the psychedelic element is nowhere near gone from Samsara Blues Experiment‘s sound. It’s just blended with a killer boogie riff.

Watch for: Orange amps, the stop-motion Curly shuffle and the big comfy chair.

One has to wonder if the fact that Greenleaf are now confirmed to be playing both the Berlin and the London Desertfests means that we’ll have the chance to hear their new album before April. If that’s the case, all the better. I’m dying to get the chance to see how they follow up 2007′s most righteous Agents of Ahriman, and whatever the new one is called, and whenever it comes, it’s definitely one of my most anticipated records of 2012. Hope you’re half as stoked as I am.

Here’s the confirmation from Sound of Liberation of Greenleaf‘s slot in Berlin:

Alright Desertfest Folks, a couple of news from the headquarters. We will announce more great bands during this week, so stay tuned for some acts you surely don’t expect. Anyhow, today we are delighted to confirm the presence of Swedish Super Stonerrockers from Greenleaf to the lineup!

Featuring a revolving cast of fellow musicians who share a love of heavy fuzz rock, Greenleaf has consistently defined what rock ‘n’ roll was, is, and should be, and they will prove it to you at Desertfest Berlin on Thursday 19 April 2012 !!!!!

This time, guitarist Tommi Holappa (Dozer) and bassist Bengt Bäcke are joined by Oskar Cedermalm (Truckfighters) on vocals, and Erik Bäckwall (ex-Dozer drummer) on drums.

Take note: this is what rock bands should sound like — a righteous kick in the ass and a testament to the almighty riff!