The Obelisk is proud and thrilled to be hosting the premiere of the new, first-ever Kings Destroy video, “Old Yeller.” Dig it:

For those who don’t remember, “Old Yeller” comes off Kings Destroy‘s first 7″ single, Old Yeller/Medusa. The band is guitarists Carl Porcaro and Chris Skowronski (both of Killing Time), vocalist Steve Murphy (Uppercut), bassist Ed Bocchino (Stanley) and drummer Rob Sefcik (Electric Frankenstein).

Steve Murphy had this to say about the track and the video:

“Old Yeller” was a collaboration between a filmmaker friend of ours named Dave Danesh and Morgan Nichols. It has various live footage from the Cake Shop show as well as the show we did at the Charleston with Droids Attack. Dave Danesh came up with the concept.

The idea surrounding it is pretty self-explanatory and goes hand-in-hand with the lyrics. The song is about how the media has been bought off by the US government and therefore lost its way in terms of protecting our democracy as the fourth check and balance. We don’t have a lot of political songs, however we definitely feel like this is a major problem right now.

This video has never been played before for anyone other than the band members — an official world premiere. So grab a nice cold PBR and hail the demise of our glorious nation.

Man’s Gin is the new project from Cobalt multi-instrumentalist and Hemingway enthusiast Erik Wunder. Now residing in Brooklyn, NY, having relocated from Denver (I cannot imagine why someone would do such a thing), he’s joined in Man’s Gin by Scott Edward and Inswarm‘s Josh Lozano, and the three explore dark post-folk Americana with Wunder out front singing melodic in a huge departure from Cobalt‘s blackened ambience. I dig it.

Profound Lore, who will be releasing the Man’s Gin debut, Smiling Dogs, in August, has the title-track posted for preview-type listening. Here it is, followed by PR wire info about the record. To their list of influences, I’d add the solo acoustic work of Neurosis‘ Steve Von Till and Scott Kelly. But that’s me. Enjoy the track:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Man’s Gin (featuring Erik Wunder of Cobalt) have completed work on their debut album, Smiling Dogs.

Smiling Dogs is a moving musical pilgrimage reminiscent of the vibe of such acts as Woven Hand, Deadboy & the Elephant Men, Dax Riggs’ solo stuff, 16 Horsepower, Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen Nebraska-era. With a singer-songwriter approach (obviously this is not metal in the slightest) that dabbles with southern rock and Americana folk, Smiling Dogs is a journey through the dark heart of America’s desolate, barren, and ghostly wastelands.

To be released late August, tracklisting for Smiling Dogs goes as follows:

1. Smiling Dogs
2. Free
3. Stone on My Head
4. Solid Gold Telephone
5. Nuclear Ambition Part 1
6. Nuclear Ambition Part 2
7. The Death of Jimmy Sturgis
8. Hate.Money.Love.Woman.
9. Doggamn

If I were to sit you down and tell you Hawkwind’s latest studio album, Blood of the Earth (Plastic Head) is an uncharted journey into synthed out psych-osis, would you be the least bit surprised? Not if you were aware that the Dave Brock-led band has been bringing listeners on similar journeys for over 40 years now, having started in 1969 and never looked back as they sped through the cosmos, endlessly trading in members, endlessly documenting their course through studio albums, live records and archival releases, resulting in a discography well past 75 entries and showing no signs of slowing and an influence nearly as far reaching as the Milky Way itself. To be blunt: if Zeus, God of Gods, were a band, he’d probably be Hawkwind.

Joining Brock who vocals, guitar and more on Hawkwind’s first studio album in half a decade is longtime drummer Richard Chadwick, bassist/vocalist Mr. Dibs, keyboardist/vocalist Tim Blake and guitarist/keyboardist Niall Hone. Dibs, Blake and Hone represent a newer contingent in Hawkwind, the latter two brought aboard in 2008 to help fill the void of Jason Stuart, who died that year following a brain hemorrhage but appears recorded on Blood of the Earth nonetheless. The band sound dynamic and lively across the 10 tracks of the album, songs loaded with synth flourishes and psychedelia but still brought occasionally to earth with solid riffs and vocal structures, and though it’s clear Brock is leading the expedition, each member contributes ably to the material. As for what it sounds like, well, it’s Hawkwind, isn’t it?

And by that I mean Hawkwind is space rock, by definition. Very nearly every act in the genre who has come since them has worshipped – some more plagiaristically than others – at their altar. From the sweet classical keyboard and lead guitar melodies of “Green Machine” to the ambient noise of the title track and tripnotic freak out of “Wraith” or the vaguely Eastern vibe of highlight cut “Prometheus,” on which the vocals seem to be standing in triumph over both the music and our minds, Blood of the Earth is essential, elemental Hawkwind. It’s true their days of hard-line innovation are most likely behind them, but listening to the interplay between what’s commonly regarded as electronica and synth washes on “Inner Visions,” it’s clear the spirit to create and influence is still as prevalent in Hawkwind as it ever was.

Read more »

Calling the citywide hippie commune known to outsiders as Columbus, Ohio, home, retro-alterna-psych-folk rockers The Main Street Gospel make their Tee Pee Records debut with the casually ominous Love Will Have Her Revenge. The trio take notes from Neil Young (“Getting Through”) and The Black Keys (“I Won’t be Stayin’”), but occasionally let guitarist/vocalist Barry Dean (ex-Brian Jonestown Massacre) go off on a singer-songwriter tangent (“Truly (Hymn),” “Give Your Love Away”) that pulls back from the full-band aesthetic. This interrupts the flow of the album, but also gives some ground to the material, which after a song like the spacey, bass-led “Ready to Shine,” isn’t such a terrible idea.

Although “Ready to Shine,” on which bassist Ryan “Tito” Ida does just that, is among the highlights of Love Will Have Her Revenge, so perhaps The Main Street Gospel would be better off tipping over the edge of the acid folk abyss. It’s hard to say, and in fact, that statement could be extrapolated to apply more or less to the whole album. The first time I listened to it, I barely made it through, found myself skipping tracks later in the record and saying, “Okay, I got it, you like reverb. Next.” On subsequent hearings, though, Love Will Have Her Revenge, with its subtle shifts from quiet to “loud” and back, its subdued movements and airiness, had me hooked solid for the duration. As far as listening recommendations, I’ll say The Main Street Gospel are better suited to stillness than motion. Love Will Have Her Revenge is not the album you put on speeding down the highway, but perhaps the one you put on once you’ve reached your destination and require decompression from the frustrations of traffic, life, etc.

Read more »

I got to Europa about 15 minutes after doors and 15 minutes before the first band. Annoyingly early, even for an early show with four acts on the bill, set to be over by about 10 so the Polish dance party, which is a regular feature at Europa, could start vaguely on time and the venue could make some real money. I wasn’t drinking (much) because I was driving in. I should have drank more.

The first band was Hot Graves from Florida, and though they rocked like a blackthrash Kill ‘em All era Metallica and the vocalist/guitar player talked some righteous shit, I just couldn’t get into it. I sat in the back, sipped my beer and regretted the ride in and the $15 I paid at the door when I should have just left. Some nights going to shows is like not being able to get a boner.

I do enjoy me some Javelina though. The Philly outfit killed as usual, and though it was only about 7PM when they were done, I felt like I’d been through a full night already. Unearthly Trance was next, playing songs from their new album, guitarist/vocalist Ryan Lipynski trying out a more melodic vocal approach that worked fairly well. They’re a band I’ve always taken for granted because they’re local. I have the feeling if I was from Arkansas I’d think they were the best shit in the world. But they are good what they do and deserve the success they’ve had. I won’t begrudge them that. There were people who left when they were done.

Those people missed Floor. Jerks. The ones who stayed were treated to sing-alongs, guitar bombs from Steve Brooks, smiles, good times, good songs, and occasional stretched out heavy droning that broke up the set nicely. Floor only played for an hour and 15 minutes or so, but they pretty much killed, and I was glad to see recently interviewed bassist Anthony Vialon looking like he was enjoying himself. The room was packed and it was more genuine enjoyment than I’ve seen Brooklyn allow itself to have in a long time. Who the hell cares if these people heard Floor after the fact? They knew the words to the songs — one up on me in that category — so who am I to criticize? At least they didn’t just stand there like assholes.

When the show was over, I split out to a bar down the street to sober up (that’s right) and got funny looks from the locals. Perhaps it was my pre-imposed annoyance — unrelated to the show, but not helped by it either — but I didn’t come out of Europa feeling like I’d communed with gods. I’ve always liked Floor in a more than ambivalent kind of way, and though it looked like everyone was having a great time on stage and off, I felt like I was in a bubble surrounded by it rather than actually a part of it. My loss, I’m more than sure.

Here’s a fun fact that may or may not have been forgotten: Swiss sludgers Knut were around a long time before that baby polar bear of the same name got all famous at the Berlin Zoo. Today, their first album in four years, Wonder, is out on Hydra Head, who extols the band’s underground cred thusly by means of an unsuspecting PR wire:

There is simply too much music in the world these days, and little of it seems to embody what could be described as passion or even soul. Rarer still are the bands who have stuck around long enough to be considered consistent institutions of musical integrity and ingenuity. All but extinct are the bands that embody/possess the qualities above, and who have continued to produce, evolve and thrive despite deficient attention from the music buying public. While artists like The Melvins, Neurosis, Converge and Enslaved have managed to plumb the depths of the various caverns of heavy metal/hardcore/loud rock and emerged atop mountains of accolades (while simultaneously making careers of their craft), Knut have long labored in relative obscurity, churning out some of the finest all-enveloping-mathsludge-metal-pummelry known this (or that) side of the Atlantic.

16 years and 12-plus releases into their existence Knut have managed once again to top themselves and shame their peers with the creation of Wonder. A commentary on the human capacity for creative thought and numinous experience in the face of a violent and oppressive global-market ethos, Wonder stands as a testament to our will for survival and defiance in times of adversity and crippling doubt… and, yeah, it’s proof-positive that Celtic Frost and Swatch ain’t the only Swiss exports from which we may all reap unending benefits.

Knut live:
8/13 Ieper/Ypres, Belgium @ Ieper Fest w/ Converge, Kylesa, Gaza, Despised Icon, AmenRa
8/27 Gigors, Drôme, France @ Gigors, Drôme w/ Melt Banana, Human Toys, DK
8/28 Geneva, GE @ Usine, Geneva w/ Melt Banana
10/2 Bulle, Fribourg, Switzerland @ Ebullition, Bulle

The grimmest doom I’ve heard yet this year has come from Ramesses. The UK trio boasting ex-members of Electric Wizard have tapped the mainline of cult horror and turned it into Take the Curse (review here), a startlingly heavy crusher of an album that feels pulled straight from the nightmares of Yvonne Monlaur. Even in its quiet moments, it is furious and foreboding in equal measure.

Ramesses is comprised of bassist/vocalist Adam Richardson, guitarist Tim Bagshaw and drummer Mark Greening. Take the Curse is their second album (first through their management’s label, Ritual Productions), and the band has previously done splits with the likes of Negative Reaction and Unearthly Trance. Their last full-length, 2007′s Misanthropic Alchemy, was also a monster, and it’s no surprise they call themselves The Ram Family — which I imagine is like The Manson Family, except instead of peace, love and murder, it’s Hammer horror, the occult and weed — when you take into account how much this music feels like it’s brainwashing you to obey it.

Since Ramesses recently played the album release show for Take the Curse at Rough Trade East in London, that seemed an appropriate-as-any place to start my email exchange with Adam Richardson, who was kind enough to enlighten me on how Take the Curse came together, how the band captured such aural sickness, their tour plans, relationship with Electric Wizard and more.

You’ll find the Q&A after the jump. Please enjoy.

Read more »

Well, it’s a new announcement in the sense of the specifics, but as savvy Obelisk attendees know, Apostle of Solitude frontman Chuck Brown was talking about heading east this July for shows all the way back in February during our interview about his band’s second album, Last Sunrise. Glad to see it’s all come to fruition.

The dates came in via the PR wire from Profound Lore, and since there aren’t that many of them and it’s not like Apostle of Solitude is on tour eight months out of the year, I strongly urge you check the band out should they be in your area. Doom:

Indianapolis doom metal heroes Apostle of Solitude will be embarking on a mini US tour this July which will take them on the road in support of Last Sunrise. The dates and bands listed to play with AoS for the tour are listed below, with some venues TBA (which will be updated of course upon confirmation). We can only imagine how monumental the tracks from Last Sunrise will sound live. Dates are as follows:

July
07/17 The Loud House, Cincinnatti, OH (w/ Beneath Oblivion and Highgate)
07/18 TBA, Pittsburgh, PA
07/19 The M-Room in Philadelphia, PA
07/20 Court Tavern, New Brunswick, NJ (w/ Maegashira)
07/21 Ace of Clubs, Manhattan, NY (w/ Archon, Kings Destroy)
07/22 Bug Jar, Rochester, NY (w/ Orodruin)
07/23 Annabell’s, Akron, OH (w/ Mach II, Mocking Bird)
07/24 Metal Shaker, Chicago, IL (w/ Iron Tongue)
07/30 Melody Inn, Indianapolis, IN (w/ Earthride, Valkyrie, and Bible of the Devil)

If I’m a sucker for anything in this universe, it’s Swedish stoner rock. There’s plenty of great bands out there from the rest of the world, but for my money, the Swedes do it with a love and respect for the genre that — as a nation — no one else can match. You’re be hard pressed these days to even find a band in the US to admit they even play stoner rock, let alone actually do it.

As such, Stockholm‘s Death Rattle Six, who’ve just self-released their second album in two years (fourth overall) in the form of Death Rattle Six, are definitely on my radar. I haven’t heard the complete album, but the old-school four-piece (vocals, guitar, bass, drums) have posted four of the tracks on their MySpace page for checking out, and I’ve been gladly rocking out to the early Dozerisms of “Rover” and the Truckfighters-style fuzz of “Down the Hole.” Death Rattle Six claim an Alice in Chains influence, and I can hear it in the way singer Greg layers his voice on “The Beast Within,” but it’s not the rampant bottom of the mouth “Hey whoa yea-yuh” that’s infected so much of American commercial hard rock in the last two decades. More like a less laid back Asteroid.

If any of these words — Dozer, Truckfighters, Asteroid — are ringing a bell with you, you’d do well to look up “Torn Inside,” which makes use of a similar nighttime desertry. Death Rattle Six are, at least on these four tracks, playing desert rock exclusively, but if their genre sticktoitiveness is admirable, all the more so is the fact that the basic instrumental tracks for the Death Rattle Six album were done completely live. As in the most successful cases where that’s so, these songs have an urgency to them which simply can’t be faked.

They have links (again, on their MySpace) where you can buy Death Rattle Six on CDBaby or iTunes, but they also appear to be giving it away via internationally famed torrent site The Pirate Bay. Of course, The Obelisk urges you to support quality independent talent however you can. For me, that means keeping Death Rattle Six on the radar and looking forward to hearing the rest of the album.

With Finnish doomers Garden of Worm, the trick in listening is not to succumb to riff hypnosis and miss out on the interludes and progressive movements that make their sound unique. Right from the opening track of their self-titled debut Shadow Kingdom full-length, the trio offer deceptive intricacy on songs like “Spirits of the Dead” and “The Ceremony,” sounding on the one hand like little more than post-Reverend Bizarre players in a crowded scene, but actually exploring roots both deeper and more satisfying to hear. You’re not three songs in before they break out the mellotron sounds.

In fact, you’re not through the aforementioned “Spirits of the Dead” before a left turn leads to a proggy-type jam that concludes the cut. The guitars of EJ. Taipale take a temporary backseat to SJ. Harju’s foundational bass (both also handle vocals), and gradually the track comes to an apex with the driven cymbal work of drummer JM. Suvanto, and if you weren’t paying attention you could have easily missed it. To be perfectly clear, this is doom we’re dealing with. Garden of Worm play doom and Garden of Worm is a doom album. “The Black Clouds” is lumbering, slow and riff-led, with crashes and mournful vocals in the grand tradition. There’s just also more to it structurally. Like the opener, it soon twists toward the progressive for its back end.

The second half of Garden of Worm is little different from the first, although anyone with a track name fetish should be able to easily get off on “Psychic Wolves.” As for the song itself, it’s a great hulking beast, all the more powerful coming off “The Black Clouds” – both songs are well past seven minutes in length – but Taipale’s guitar leads into a jazzy, near Opethian thoughtful musical space where the song seems to want to rest a while. Guest keyboards from Markus Pajakala (who also provided the “mellotron” to “Rays from Heaven”) make the piece standout, but the real surprise is when a heavy Scott Kelly-style riff takes hold and Garden of Worm transpose the vocal style they’ve been using the whole time over top of it. You wouldn’t think it would fit, but they make it work.

Read more »

[NOTE: New posts will appear underneath this post for the rest of the week. You know the deal.]

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Truth be told, I was planning a special UK-only podcast even before Chris and Pete from Trippy Wicked and the Cosmic Children of the Knight were so hospitable to me in April. There’s been a Post-It on my desk with a list of bands on it since February. Pretty sad, I know.

But it’s all the more appropriate that it goes live today, when Germany‘s psychic octopus proved correct and England was knocked out the World Cup. Having watched the US succumb to the unstoppable force known as the Ghanaian team yesterday, I can empathize. We bleed as one, except, you know, it matters to England.

As always, this audiObelisk Transmission is culled from my own rips, made with love in honor of the UK‘s many contributions to the heavy underground. Making your way through it, you’ll notice a couple glaring omissions, among them Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden. I wanted to keep it focused on stoner rock and doom (apart from the bonus track), and while I know these bands are vastly influential, I’d rather spend that time listening to Uriah Heep, Leaf Hound and Atomic Rooster. Yeah, there’s Deep Purple and Black Sabbath on the playlist. It’s a pretty fine line.

We start off (following a Snuff Box sample) with London‘s Kings of Frog Island, and I think it’s a pretty good flow of songs and styles thereafter. The UK has had so much diversity, sound wise, it was all I could do to hold it together. In my most trying moments, I thought of England.

Playlist is after the jump…

Read more »

Be sure to check in this weekend, as the July podcast is going to go up either tomorrow or Sunday. Should be a good time, I’m looking forward to putting it together.

Meanwhile, I figured it’s only appropriate given yesterday’s Where to Start post to close out this week with some high grade Maryland doom. The clip above is Internal Void performing on a local access cable show in their native state. There’s some killer material in the beginning for fans of Dr. Steve Brule too. I consider it a bonus for the ultra Sabbathy rock that follows.

Next week we’ll close out June and I’ll give the numbers (not great), and we’ll check in for an interview with Gozu‘s Marc Gaffney, whose album, Locust Season, is available now on iTunes from Small Stone. If you’re planning on hitting Floor tomorrow night in Brooklyn, I’ll be there. Come say hi. We’ll hang out like the real people do.

Other than that, be safe and enjoy the weekend. If you didn’t yet download the June podcast, now’s the time.

Of all the “oh man, that’s a bummer” musical dissolutions, the quick one that befell Battle of Mice after their first (and only) album, A Day of Nights, was especially pointed. I’ve always dug Made Out of Babies in a middling kind of way, but vocalist Julie Christmas‘ performance on that Battle of Mice record was landmark. Just fantastic. One can only hope she puts the same fervor into her first solo album, which is due out this Fall. Ever illuminating, the PR wire informs thusly on that and other Christmas‘ other projects:

Brooklyn‘s Julie Christmas has been mysteriously under the radar as of late. But far from disappearing, the emerging singer/songwriter has been busier than ever. Christmas is scheduled to release her first solo record, The Bad Wife, this fall. More details about the album are forthcoming, but “July 31st,” a song from the pending release, is featured on the soundtrack for Paramount film, Wrong Turn at Tahoe, starring Harvey Keitel and Cuba Gooding, Jr. A video to promote the album is in production.

“I use sounds to express feelings and ideas that I am too clumsy to get across with words alone,” explains Christmas. “Working with amazing visual artists — people who speak in images — gets me one step closer to really communicating with anyone nuts enough to listen.”

Currently, Christmas is also collaborating with Nix Turner, renowned illustrator of worldwide counterculture icon, Emily the Strange, to create a book titled The Scribbles and Scrapes of Amy Anyone: A Multiple Personality Autobiography. Christmas wrote the story and is working on music for the release of an accompanying CD, which features a tone signaling the reader to turn the page.

In addition, the singer recently worked on the soundtrack for a French indie film Le Debut, in which a young couple resorts to infanticide when faced with the challenges of poverty, depression and parenthood. Christmas’s band, Made Out of Babies, is currently writing their fourth full-length album, scheduled to be released in the Spring of 2011. Live shows and exhibitions with visual artists are being arranged.

Having never encountered either Flat Tires or The Asound (which I assume is like the sound, but opposite), I reveled in the chance to check out this Flat Tires vs. The Asound split 7” single on Tsuguri Records, and all the more so once I saw the Jeff Clayton (The Antiseen) cover art, which has Sasquatch fighting a giant eagle on it. If there’s a more perfect metaphor for the current state of affairs in our nation, folks, I don’t know what it is.

Both bands call North Carolina home, Flat Tires in Hickory and The Asound in Connelly’s Springs, so they have that in common. The Asound have a more straightforward riff rock approach and are the younger of the two bands, having formed in 2009, whereas Flat Tires, for all four and a half minutes (two songs) of material they present here, affect a well-established aesthetic combining outlaw country and hardcore punkabilly that’s quick, to the point, and on Flat Tires vs. The Asound, really, really misogynist. Take that, ladies.

Flat Tires opens with “G D Woman,” on which vocalist Clint Harrison, sounding like a combination Hank III, Unknown Hinson and drunken uncle, threatens in the direction of some female, “Get out of my face or I’ll have to punch you in your face,” which I found neither charming nor humorous. The band behind Harrison (Bryon Smallwood on guitar, Jeremy Godfrey on drums and Scott Cline on bass) rocks furious and fast in a heavy honky tonk ZZ Top kind of way on “Crybaby,” which is topped with more lyrical ladybashing, the chorus being, “Cry baby, cry baby, whine, whine, whine.” Uh huh. Okay.

Read more »

I missed Eyehategod when they played their Thursday set at this year’s Roadburn festival, which is a bummer. But now, thanks to the wonders of technology, even I can pretend I was there with this live audio stream. If you missed the last two batches of streams, they are here, and here.

And if you’d like to read what Mr. Bower Power himself, Jimmy Bower, has to say about playing Roadburn, check out our interview here. Please enjoy the set and thanks once again to Walter and the Roadburn crew:

Eyehategod live at Roadburn 2010