Listening back to it now, I think what I enjoy most about Swedish atmospheric doomers Kongh‘s second album, Shadows of the Shapeless (review here) is the potential it shows. The album, released last year in Europe on Trust No One and given American issue via Seventh Rule Recordings at the beginning of April, isn’t an outrageous standout from the scores of post-metal that has come up in the last half-decade or so, but the trio of David Johansson (guitar/vocals), Oscar Ryden (bass) and Tomas Salonen (drums) are able to infuse the recording with individualistic glimpses of creativity to come, and on that level, it’s a very positive record.

That, however, is about the only level on which it is positive. Sonically, it oppresses, seems to hold you down at the shoulders. Even in its most atmospheric moments, it crushes with abandon and is the kind of heavy that brings to mind images of giant unmanned machinations in some factory building a Babel tower to rip open the heavens. Massive, in other words. Fucking massive.

After much delay on my part (most but not all of it completely my fault), I finally got my crap together enough to fire off some questions to Johansson for an email interview. Of course, what I wanted chiefly to ask him was, “Your album sounds big,” but that’s neither a question nor a basis for discovering anything about Kongh‘s processes, so I did my best to avoid it and only failed a little bit.

Following the jump, the guitarist/vocalist fields queries about writing, recording, Shadows of the Shapeless‘ suitably bleak artwork, how the band came to play the Kuma’s Fest in Chicago and subsequently got hooked up with Seventh Rule, and whether or not more US touring is in the cards. Please enjoy.

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Here in the States, today is Memorial Day, which is basically yet another excuse for everyone to get their jingoism going and glorify war, blow fingers off with fireworks and blah blah blah. What it means to me is the official start of grilling season. True, I hate the heat and I have in fact been grilling all winter, but now it’s the season, which means eating outside, which means grilling music. Killer.

Because I’m all about sharing, here are my seven favorite barbecue records, presented in the order in which they should be played:

1. Black Sabbath, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. What this says is, “I am here to grill. I don’t care what else happens in the universe, I am going to have a good time and that is that. Now rock with me as I cook this meat.” Perfect starter album.

2. C.O.C., Wiseblood. Like Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, it’s a fun collection of songs, but Wiseblood is a little thicker sound-wise. It’s great to sing-along to, and the groove seems to run throughout the whole album, so it’s consistent too. A definite necessity.

3. Greenleaf, Agents of Ahriman. By now you’ve had a few beers and it’s time to let loose. Greenleaf‘s Agents of Ahriman is catchy, rocking and has a freedom to its sound that seems to be made for the outdoors.

4. Queens of the Stone Age, Songs for the Deaf. I confess, I love this record regardless of the food and/or climate surrounding. I try to take it everywhere, so it comes out for grilling for sure. “Go with the Flow?” Come on, man. Can’t beat that.

5. Fu Manchu, King of the Road. The last of the real rockers on the list, it’s great to finish the meal with some righteous fuzzery, and for that, there’s nowhere to go but to Fu Manchu. If you’ve got ice cream for dessert, this’ll work with it.

6. Monster Magnet, Spine of God. You’ve rocked, you’ve stuffed yourself, you’re probably more than a little intoxicated and you feel like if you ever even see another burger, your heart will explode in your chest. Clearly you’ve yanked on the spine of god and it’s time for some penance.

7. Masters of Reality, Flak ‘n Flight. This is for your cleanup. When you’ve drunkenly insulted all your relatives or friends and they’ve left and it’s just you and the mess. You put this one on and sing along as you throw away paper plates, beer bottles and the bloody packaging that once contained the meat now blocking up your colon. It’ll help ease the pain.

I’ve also found that Enslaved‘s Ruun album is great for cleanups, so if it persists longer than Flak ‘n Flight lasts, you might want to have that on-hand for reinforcements. Or maybe you just want to sit on a plastic chair in the dark for a while. It’s good for that too.

Of course, if you’re in it for the full-day barbecue experience, you’re going to need more than seven albums, but hopefully this is a decent start. If you have any longtime favorites, leave a comment and let me know about them. You can never have too much grilling music.

One could sit for hours, either with one’s self or with others amenable to such a situation, and argue back and forth whether or not Port Orchard, Washington, classic rockers Stone Axe fall under the ever-expanding banner of stoner rock or not, but then you’d entirely miss the point. On the band’s second album, II (Music Abuse Records), they remind us that it’s not about genre or subgenre, not about classification, about overthinking it, about analysis unto death, but about getting together with friends, having a good time, and the enduring spirit of rock and roll.

To affect this revelation of purpose, multi-instrumentalist T. Dallas Reed and vocalist Dru Brinkerhoff (joined here part-time by bassist Mike DuPont and drummer Mykey Haslip) have made some of the least pretentious music ever to grace the eardrums of man. Stone Axe’s II oozes a brand of organic sincerity that’s generally either subservient to corporate shilling or undercut by ironic snickers, and they do it for the duration of the record and without wavering. Their warm, ultra ‘70s-styled rock is so specific in its mission that to even call out Thin Lizzy, Free, Grand Funk and any number of the other (of course Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin) foundational acts from whom they take inspiration seems superfluous. It matters so much less where this music comes from than how it makes you feel while listening.

Like summer.

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NOTE: Gonna leave this post in the first spot for a couple days. New ones will appear underneath.

Since starting The Obelisk, I’ve made no secret of my unbridled fanboy status for all (or at least most) things Man’s Ruin Records. The now-defunct label headed by artist Frank Kozik put out some of the best music I’ve ever heard, and the bands released under the Man’s Ruin banner went on to influence an entire generation of underground rock, virtually defining and redefining The Heavy for the better part of a decade.

This podcast only scratches the surface of Man’s Ruin‘s impact crater. Some of the bands were Kozik discoveries, some were established acts he picked up for a release or two, but what is always assured with Man’s Ruin is that you’re going to get a work of quality, passion and genuine aesthetic. I can only hope Transmission 005 from the audiObelisk captures some of that. Like the banner above (made from an original Kozik poster), it was compiled in a spirit of reverence and with the utmost respect for those involved.

I didn’t exhaust my Man’s Ruin collection to put together all these songs, but also there are some things I just don’t own. Vinyl, for example. And Chrome. And Killdozer. And the first Desert Sessions. Nonetheless, these are all my personal rips from CDs and I think they’ve made for the best podcast yet. I’m optimistic you’ll agree when you download the file by clicking the image above, follow this link, or stream it on the player below.

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Just because I found the timeline interesting, I included the years the albums were released in the track listing. We start off with Tummler in 2000, and you’ll find the rest after the jump…

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I was waiting to post this until I finished my interview with Mario Lalli of Fatso Jetson. That was the plan. I was going to do the interview, which has been shuffled around the last week or so due to scheduling conflicts on both sides, then triumphantly post a Frydee video and call it a week.

Of course the interview hasn’t happened yet. It’s 11PM valley time and when I talked to Mr. Lalli earlier this evening he told me Cafe 322 (the restaurant he and cousin/bandmate Larry Lalli own together) was understaffed and he’d call me back. These things happen. I’m not upset. I watched the ball game and drank some wine. Life has been much worse.

The above Red Fang video was linked through StonerRock.com today, and it ruled, so there it is.

Those of you around this weekend, keep an eye on the site, as I’ll be posting the June 2010 podcast (we missed May, sorry, but we had the Dio-cast, so that ought to make up for it; certainly there were extenuating circumstances there) as soon as it’s made, hopefully tomorrow but Sunday at the latest. New podcasts rule, and if you missed the voting, well, you’ll just have to be surprised to see who came out on top.

I’ll also be around Monday (no Memorializing for me), so check in for regular updates, and next week we’ll wrap up the month — the numbers are close, so feel free to check in numerous times — give the numbers and post interviews with Kongh and Jimmy Bower of Eyehategod. Maybe even Mario Lalli if it all comes together. Here’s hoping.

As the follow-up EP to their Below the Thunders of the Upper Deep debut Relapse full-length, Culted’s four-track excursion Of Death and Ritual is nothing if not aptly named. In the three originals – the closer is a cover of Swans’ “Whore” – the word “dead” or some variation thereof makes no fewer than 11 appearances. Interestingly, “ritual” only shows up once. I wonder if that’s why they ordered them thusly in the title. Otherwise, Of Ritual and Death would have worked just as well.

Much like they did on the full-length, on Of Death and Ritual Culted dwell in the bleak, dreary realms of blackened doom, like Khanate with a noise fetish. With the instrumental portion of the band located in Winnipeg, Canada, and vocalist Daniel Jansson in Gothenburg, Sweden, you might think there’d be some discrepancy or lack of cohesion in the execution of the material, but really it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference. I don’t think “Spirituosa,” “Black Cough, Black Coffin” and “Dissent” would be any better off had Jansson been in the room while guitarists/bassists Michael Klassen and Matthew Friesen and percussionist Kevin Stevenson were developing the instrumental basis for the songs and adding sundry noises and percussions. The trio, who also operate as the black metal band Of Human Bondage, seem to have a pretty good handle on what they’re doing, and I doubt the files had to do much back and forth before the songs were finished.

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Thinking about Church of Misery‘s Early Works Compilation the other day got me in a reissue state of mind, so I thought I’d take a look at some other recent re-releases. Rest assured, there’s never a shortage. Dig it:

Goatsnake: This came up in my interview with Greg Anderson, but it’s worth mentioning here as well that Goatsnake‘s 2000 sophomore outing, Flower of Disease (originally on Man’s Ruin), has been reissued on Southern Lord. Unlike when they did I/Dog Days a couple years back, there’s no new artwork or bonus material, but Flower of Disease has been out of print for probably about eight years now, and if you never managed to get a copy of it, it should go without saying that doing so is a worthwhile endeavor. It’s not the classic the first album is, but it stands the test of time nonetheless, with “Easy Greasy” and “A Truckload of Momma’s Muffins” set to kick your ass with doomed out goodness.

16: In 2009, Relapse put out 16‘s underrated Bridges to Burn reunion album and sent them off on the road like they’d never left it in the first place. Now the label has repressed the Los Angeles noise metal band’s blazing first two albums, Curves that Kick (1993) and Drop Out (1996), which for my money are right up there with Buzzov*en‘s terminally fucked up sludge and anything Unsane were doing at the time.

16 has always been one of those acts that never quite got the mass attention they deserved, and it doesn’t look like that’s about to change, but for the few who will check them out (new artwork and all), Curves that Kick and Drop Out both prove to be ahead of their time. No word on reissues of 16‘s other two albums, 1997′s Blaze of Incompetence and 2003′s Zoloft Smile.

Jameson Raid: The obscure pre-NWOBHM act formed in 1976 and barely made it past 1982, but the ever-vigilant Shadow Kingdom Records has seen to it their work will garner new appreciation (such as mine) with the discography collection, Just as the Dust Had Settled. Vocalist Terry Dark has a little Phil Lynott inflection to his voice, but it fits well over the music, which is culled from 1979′s debut Seven Days of Splendour single, 1980′s End of Part One EP and the Electric Sun demo from 1982. The songs vary in quality (and lineup), but the essential elements of the band come across even with dated production, the early Priest-isms of shining through without hindrance. Like a lot of Shadow Kingdom‘s reissues, Just as the Dust Had Settled is going to find itself a small but passionate market appeal, but NWOBHM fanatics and other curious parties should be thrilled to get their hands on it.

[Please note: Pekka Koskelo plays drums and Lasse Pyykkö plays bass, guitar and sings on Never Cross the Dead. This information was not included with the album promo I received. Sorry for any inconvenience this mistake caused.]

Fuck me, this is heavy. One has certain expectations when one hears the words “Finland” and “death/doom” in the same sentence, given that the land of a thousand lakes is the same one that gave us Thergothon and Skepticism (funny how that nickname never caught on), and relative newcomers Hooded Menace, who hail from Joensuu, pick up the ceremonial death/doom mace and drive it right into any and all unsuspecting would-be worthy eardrums on their sophomore full-length, Never Cross the Dead (Profound Lore). Play slow, play loud, play horrific; they’ve pretty much got the formula nailed down.

The four-piece Hooded Menace made their debut in 2008 with Fulfill the Curse, which I haven’t yet heard, but listening to Never Cross the Dead makes me want to go back and find it, whether it’s the surprise sample scream on “Terror Castle” (spoiler alert) or the cement-drying pace of “From Their Coffined Slumber.” Vocalist Oula Kerkelä has a growl that could crack the earth, and it sits well on the thick metallic riffage of guitarist Lasse “Leper Messiah” Pyykkö (formerly of Acid Witch), and Hooded Menace find some of their most effective moments when the balance tips more toward the death metal side of death/doom. Don’t get me wrong, the plod works. Drummer Jori Sara-aho pulls off the ultra-slow crash/ride hits on “Night of the Deathcult” perfectly with bassist Antti Salminen rumbling beneath, and the droning riffs are flat-out killer, but Hooded Menace pick up the pace for a part here and there, and it sounds like Immolation on downers, which, as I’m sure you can imagine, rules.

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To know Slough Feg‘s music is to love Slough Feg‘s music, and though it’s not always easy to penetrate the heady sounds the San Francisco unit produces, those who’ve done so happily consider themselves part of a growing gnostic cult. 2009′s Ape Uprising! was a joy to ears tired of banal rock (I’m looking and can’t find a review; doubtless I decided the album was beyond my capacity for understanding), and with the announcement that their next record will be released through Profound Lore this Fall, one can only imagine the badassery to follow.

This might be old news to some of you, but it was new to me, so here goes:

The mighty Slough Feg will release their next album in North America through Profound Lore Records and we couldn’t be more psyched to work with one of our favourite heavy metal bands ever. Mastermind Mike Scalzi has been pounding away in the studio over the last while crafting what we could only imagine to be one of the best heavy metal releases you’ll hear this year. Slough Feg’s next full-length album should be released early fall. Expect more album updates to surface sometime soon.

In the meantime, Scalzi and Co. are gearing up for another tour, this time a West Coast run alongside none other than Profound Lore alumni The Gates of Slumber. Dates are as follows:

May
05/28 – Seattle, WA @ Comet Tavern (w/ The Gates of Slumber)
05/29 – Vancouver, BC/Canada @ Red Room (w/ The Gates of Slumber)
05/30 – Portland, OR @ East End (w/ The Gates of Slumber)

June
06/01 – San Francisco, CA @ Thee Parkside (w/ The Gates of Slumber, Black Cobra)
06/02 – Boyle Heights, CA @ The Blvd (w/ The Gates of Slumber)
06/04 – Ramona, CA @ Ramona Mainstage (w/ The Gates of Slumber)
06/05 – Las Vegas, NV @ Cheyenne Saloon (Doom in June fest)

Clutch have a new and recently reviewed DVD out called Live at the 9:30, which means I have two of my very favorite things in the world: a new Clutch release and an excuse to interview the band. This will be the third Clutch-related feature The Obelisk has done in its 15 months of existence counting the Bakerton Group chat with bassist Dan Maines last February, and though that might seem like a lot (it is), they keep kicking ass, so I feel fully justified.

On Live at the 9:30, which was filmed at the club of the same name in Washington D.C. as part of Clutch‘s New Years string of shows this past December, the venerable four-piece play their entire 1995 Clutch album, making it a treat for the fans beyond the normal gig. Encompassing that set, which also includes a few tracks from their latest, Strange Cousins from the West, and a couple closers, the DVD set also contains a second disc titled Fortune Tellers Make a Killing Nowadays that documents Clutch on the road in Fall 2009.

Especially after watching the scene in that documentary wherein he describes the ins and outs of his kit and how using different drums can affect the outcome of an entire song, I wanted to chat with drummer Jean-Paul Gaster (also of Scott “Wino” Weinrich‘s Wino solo band) about the shows and the opposition between looking back on everything Clutch has accomplished and looking forward to what’s still to come.

Incidentally, what’s to come includes an unsurprisingly hefty load of touring throughout the summer and autumn, followed by the recording of a new album. In June, Clutch perform an acoustic set at the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee, and they’ve got reissues planned for the three albums released via DRT Records this past decade — Blast Tyrant, Robot Hive/Exodus and From Beale Street to Oblivion. So yeah, lots to look forward to.

Q&A with J.P. Gaster is after the jump. Please enjoy.

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While you and I are sitting on our lazy asses, ostensibly “remembering” the contributions of the veterans who’ve made our empire so very great and laid the foundations for the evil which our leaders have wrought, Savannah, Georgia‘s Kylesa will be in the studio, working hard on their new album. It’s going to be their first record for Season of Mist, and especially coming off the oh-so-badass Static Tensions, I’m stoked to hear what they come up with. Best of luck to the band. I’ll keep them in my thoughts while grilling and/or grabbing a beer from the cooler.

Sayeth the PR wire:

Between extensive tours of Europe, Kylesa will enter the studio on May 31 to begin recording the follow-up to the critically-acclaimed album Static Tensions. The new album is the band’s debut for Season of Mist Records. The sessions will take place over the month of June at the legendary Jam Room in Columbia, SC with Phillip Cope at the helm as producer. The band is very excited about the new material, with writing ongoing since January of this year. After the completion of the recording the band will return to Europe supporting Converge through August, with US touring plans to be announced shortly.

Everything I’ve seen, heard or read about French stoner rockers Wheelfall compares them to Slo Burn (fair since “Wheel Fall” was the name of a track on the latter’s 1996 demo), so in the interest of comparison and a refresher, I took out the Amusing the Amazing EP and put it next to Wheelfall’s self-released debut extended player, From the Blazing Sky at Dusk. What did I find out, you ask? Well, I found out John Garcia is awesome and the kid from Wheelfall is no John Garcia, but I don’t suppose that does much for a review.

Yeah, I guess a Slo Burn comparison works, but there are at least 100 other desert rock acts who would fit just as well, most notably Kyuss, whose Blues for the Red Sun could easily be seen as the blueprint for From the Blazing Sky at Dusk. The double-guitar Lorraine four-piece do a job of balancing groove and aggression, and their tones are pretty well what you’d expect from desert fuzz. According to their bio, they will, “beat you down with an [sic] heavy atmosphere and a fuzzy distortion up your ass.” I can say from several listening experiences, From the Blazing Sky at Dusk sounds much more pleasant than that.

Vocals come courtesy of guitarist Wayne Furter, whose gruff delivery is a bit of a put-on and could stand some development (in which this EP will doubtless aid), but is a decent match with these five-plus tracks anyway. There are three interludes on From the Blazing Sky at Dusk – titled “From the…” “…Blazing Sky… (Nasa)” and “…At Dusk…” – that seem to recount some alien capture and subsequent rectal probing (perhaps with a fuzzy distortion), but five genuine songs, which is why I make the distinction “five-plus.” The interludes, apart from “…Blazing Sky… (Nasa),” which jams a bit, don’t really feature any music from Wheelfall, so although I’ve dedicated a paragraph to them at this point, I’d just as soon not count them, as by my estimation they don’t really add anything to the release. It’s not like the desert atmosphere was lacking before they came along.

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Dutch witch rockers The Devil’s Blood issue a sprawling invitation to buy in with their first Ván Records full-length, The Time of No Time Evermore. Based out of Eindhoven and thoroughly in league with Satan, the as-many-as-six-piece play high-energy classic occult prog with sonic references to Jefferson Airplane, Heart, Coven and Black Widow, most notably showing up in the form of the powerful female vocals that front the band. They’re on a no-name basis, so all you get with The Devil’s Blood is The Devil’s Blood, but we do know that Erik Danielsson of Swedish black metallers Watain co-wrote “The Yonder Beckons” with the band, and that that dude knows the Devil personally, so at most there’s one degree of separation there.

In listening to The Time of No Time Evermore, I was surprised in comparing it to the prior Come, Reap EP that Profound Lore put out last year at how relatively metal it is. The guitars don’t shy away from carrying across an ‘80s metal vibe, as heard in songs like “Christ or Cocaine,” the stomping “Queen of My Burning Heart” and even the soloing on “The Yonder Beckons.” Think Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Vivian Campbell’s work on Dio’s The Last in Line and so on, both tonally and in terms of the riffs, The Devil’s Blood seem to have superimposed ‘70s acid prog and classic metal on top of each other in an offering to their (and, they hope, everyone’s) dark lord.

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Right at the end of August, when the whole world feels like that episode of The Twilight Zone where the earth is moving closer to the sun, when the haze of humidity covers the eastern half of the US like a blanket from Hell — is there any better time to reissue one of the most intense albums of all time? Neurosis‘ 1993 full-length, Enemy of the Sun — originally released on Alternative Tentacles, then reissued in 1999 on Neurot Recordings – will once again see new life through Neurot on August 30.

The tracklisting is the same as the 1999 reissue, but the album will feature newly-interpreted artwork from Neurosis‘ resident visual artist, Josh Graham. As per the PR wire:

Neurot Recordings is proud to announce the reissue of one of the most groundbreaking releases in the ever-expanding lineage of icons Neurosis, Enemy of the Sun.

With Neurosis’ earlier releases — 1987’s Pain of Mind, and even 1990’s The Word as Law — the band’s jagged and eerie blend of metallic, hypnotic, post-gutter punk was instantly recognized as wholly unique, yet it took multiple releases for the then Bay Area unit to infinitely define their sound, forcing the world to listen, then run for cover. Their 1992 full-length Souls at Zero showcased the band branching off into much more expanded songwriting, giving birth to much longer hymns, infusing them with tribal rhythms and slow-building post-doom bastardization, then breaking massive new ground for the metal world.

But it was their follow-up in 1993, the crushing Enemy of the Sun LP, that would be the album to take the pulsing, hypnotizing monoliths Neurosis was crafting down to much darker, and much, much heavier territory for the rest of the band’s still-growing roster of masterpieces. Still to this day, critics and fans of heavy and experimental metal hold this release to be one of the harshest, spine-chilling, mind-warping releases in history, and countless acts have cited Enemy of the Sun as “the one that changed everything” for them.

The eight tracks on the release was one of the most massively cavernous, crushing records the world had experienced. A mesmerizing, pressurizing, dirge-driven display of brutal riffing, thick with haunting samples, layered, anguished vocal tracks, raging multiple-member percussion contributions, and some of the most mammoth buildups ever, Enemy of the Sun was an album that left a sense of anguish in your soul long after the record was over.

Neurot Recordings are exceptionally proud to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Neurosis, and once again issue this classic album to the masses. 2010’s reissue of Enemy of the Sun bears a fully redesigned package by visionary artist, Neurosis live visual master Josh Graham, and will be released worldwide on August 30th, 2010.

A little while back, former Hackman guitarist Darryl Shepard filled us in on some of his upcoming projects, and first among them was Blackwolfgoat. An entirely solo venture, Blackwolfgoat is just Shepard and his guitar running through ambient pieces that range from the more active to the eerily still. Blackwolfgoat‘s first album, Dragonwizardsleeve (I guess he’s got a thing for putting words together; who doesn’t?) is self-released and Shepard has just put some if not all of it up for streaming on MySpace.

What’s interesting in listening to a track like “Death of a Lifer” is the layering. It’s subtle, but Shepard is working with multiple tracks of guitar, the dip and pull of the notes he’s playing seems to undercut that, but it’s there, and like a lot of drone/ambient material, it does develop, albeit subtly. The cuts range from the 10-minute “Hotel Anhedonia” (anhedonia being a loss of the ability to experience pleasure), the basic riff of which could easily have been worked into a structured song, to the 2:46 arrhythmia of “Aspirin Forever,” which has an almost drum and bass feel to it, though one obviously still in development.

There’s a range of emotions and moods clearly on display here, which is refreshing given how much drone seems just an exercise for its own sake or a tryout of equipment. The distorted “Tinnitus the Night” is on the shorter end at 4:17, but nonetheless creates an unsettled atmosphere of worry, and the sweeter “Risk and Return” plays with light mathematics that seem to be trying to air positivity on top of light percussion. Shepard being a proven-capable guitarist and no stranger to working in instrumental settings, Blackwolfgoat can be engaged either on the level of audio wallpaper or active listening. Of course I’d recommend the second option, but either way you approach Dragonwizardsleeve, definitely be sure to keep Blackwolfgoat‘s MySpace page on your radar.