If you heard that girlish squeal a little bit ago, don’t worry, it was just me reacting to the latest PR wire teaser of info about the forthcoming two-part Neurot Recordings debut by Italian space doom progenitors Ufomammut. Oro: Opus Primum is due out April 17. Here’s the latest, including the Malleus (of course) cover art, which you can click to enlarge:

More details on Oro: Opus Primum – the first installment of the new two-album series from Italy’s supernatural doom sorcerers, Ufomammut — have this week been confirmed.

Already known for their attention to detail with each release, including meticulous, quality artwork and packaging as expansive and layered as every obliterating Ufomammut release is musically, this time they take it one notch higher and have completed a massive two-part album, set for release months apart.

Now confirmed for release in the UK on April 9th, throughout the rest of Europe on April 13th, and in North America April 17th, this week the artwork and track listing for the incredibly anticipated first installment of the series — Oro: Opus Primum — have been unveiled for the first time:

Oro: Opus Primum Track Listing:
1. Empireum
2. Aureum
3. Infearnatural
4. Magickon
5. Mindomine

More details on the album will be released in the weeks ahead as the world awaits the arrival of Ufomammut’s latest art. The second chapter in this monolithic two-part album, Oro: Opus Alter, will be released sometime in September with more details to be unveiled throughout the months following Opus Primum.

2012 will see Ufomammut expanding their touring circles wider across the face of the planet in support of Oro. Stay tuned throughout the year as more details on the release and the act’s tour schedule are confirmed.

It’s not every day I get to write about a band from what’s essentially my own back yard. Space-riffing foursome Eternal Fuzz make their home in New Brunswick, New Jersey, which is about half an hour south on the Parkway from where I currently sit. It’s a college town, hosting the main campus of Rutgers University, and from what I can tell from the (somehow appropriately) fuzzy video above, the double-guitar outfit is pretty young.

Far more revealing about Eternal Fuzz though is their summer 2011 demo, which is currently available for streaming on their Bandcamp page. With warm low end and ghostly echoing vocals, shades of Om meet with a kind of miniaturized riffy splendor and Torche-esque brevity on “Vexed by the Curse of the Sloth,” which sounds short at just three minutes.

I’d be surprised if the demo wasn’t recorded live, since it comes off so much that way, but rough production becomes part of the band’s character by the end of the five songs, and with the striking build of “Moody Hum” acting as a centerpiece, Eternal Fuzz show a surprising amount of clarity for an act who should still just be getting their bearings sound-wise.

For that, I’m happy to include them in the same school of formative NJ acts like sludge villains Dutchguts and bass/drum duo The Badeda Ladies, who both also have growing to do but are making a strong start. Here’s Eternal Fuzz‘s demo if you want to check it out:

With the release of their second LP today, Jan. 31, Virginia rockers King Giant enter into the lexicon of Southern heavy. The five-piece’s debut, Southern Darkness, was self-released in 2009 and was a ballsy excursion into mostly familiar territory of gruff riffs and heavy grooves, and though Dismal Hollow follows suit, it also finds King Giant a more cohesive, more individualized unit. Fortunately for all of us, they’re still heavy as hell.

And they’re not shy about it, either. Right from the start of “Appomattox,” the guitars of Todd “T.I.” Ingram and David Kowalski embark on a southbound journey of thickened metal. The groove is classic, the breath stank with beer, the stomp formidable in the bass of Floyd Walters III and Brooks‘ drumming, and amid layered acoustics, samples and swaggering leads, vocalist Dave Hammerly injects an early Danzig melodic cadence that only heightens the swampy vibe of the album.

In celebration of Dismal Hollow coming out on the band’s own Graveyard Hill Records in conjunction with The Path Less Traveled, I’m fortunate enough to be able to host not only a high-quality full stream of the record, and not only a few words from Kowalski about what went into making it, but also a giveaway for a vinyl/USB prize-pack that one lucky winner will be able to call their own! It’s like three posts in one. Here’s the stream:

And here’s the giveaway and Kowalski discussing the making of Dismal Hollow:

We made a conscious decision to just let the songwriting take its natural course. Anytime we tried to steer a song in a specific direction, it fell flat, and simply didn’t work.

With Southern Darkness, Todd Ingram came in towards the end to add his parts. So what he played was more reactionary to the music that was already there. With Dismal Hollow, we all wrote as a band, and consequently the lead parts blend more intricately with the rhythms and have more of a cohesive feel.

We spent a lot of time in pre-production, making sure that we all had our parts written before we went into the studio. We also recorded to 2” tape. There are places on the album where you can hear the tape hiss, but overall I feel that we achieved a really good organic sound. In the world of digital audio, it makes it really easy to not have to commit to takes, and to edit out every little sonic “imperfection.” But the imperfections are what gives an album character.

Southern Darkness was recorded over a long period of time with all of us recording our parts separately. Going into a studio this time around forced a time constraint on the band, and allowed all of us to be together while we were tracking, so there was definitely more of a camaraderie to the whole recording process.

PRIZE PACK:

A signed copy of Dismal Hollow in LP format, a King Giant patch for all you heshers out there, and so you can take your King Giant wherever you go, a copy of Southern Darkness AND Dismal Hollow on this badass USB drive from the fine folks at Power Tunes. That’s right you get a real deal Marshall KT66 power tube that has been modified into a USB drive. It even glows when you plug it in.

[NOTE: This giveaway is now over. Thanks to all who entered.]

To win, enter your name, email and address in the form above and click “Send.” One winner will be selected, and as always, your information stays private and is deleted after the contest is over. The winner will be chosen on Feb. 7 and entries will be accepted until then.

For more on King Giant, check out their Thee Facebooks page, the album on iTunes, or their Bandcamp site, where Dismal Hollow will be available shortly. Power Tunes USB drives are made by Will Sprague (The Crimson Electric) and available via Thee Facebooks here.

Tree-tagging or other forest-based graffiti is a lost medium in these days of city-based arts. Fortunately, Belgian duo SardoniS are bringing back the bygone days of taking a permanent marker, jogging through the woods with a hood up and writing shit on fallen trees for hikers to see and probably be confused by later. Their video for the song “Entering the Woods,” from an upcoming album that may or may not share that title, keeps the band’s thrashy and aggressive edge while also being tonally pummeling.

SardoniS‘ prior offering and self-titled debut for MeteorCity, released in 2010 (review here), was a treat, and I look forward to hearing more of the follow-up, but for now, here’s “Entering the Woods”:

…And if you don’t know why, click here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Yeah, that’s right. I broke out the Lo-Pan links. No better way to let you know the Ohioan fuzz titans mean business. Doubtless that’ll also be the case as they head down to sunny Austin, Texas, to take part in this year’s recently-announced Small Stone showcase at SXSW. Here’s the poster with the dates — click to enlarge as you see fit:

True, in the past I’ve had my issues being burned by ill-advised “import” purchases (see here and here, for starters), but I’ve also had some real wins, and with my recent eBay purchase of Unida‘s well-regarded show in Vienna, March 6, 1999, I feel like I finally reached an acceptable compromise point. I paid $13, and for that, I received a full jewel case, a red-backed CD-R, and decent-looking inkjet artwork. There are no gaps between the tracks. I feel like I got my money’s worth.

Of course, it helps that Unida — John Garcia‘s ill-fated post-Slo Burn, post-Kyuss, semi-concurrent-to-Hermano outfit with Scott Reeder, guitarist Arthur Seay and drummer Mike Cancino, who’d later develop the project (sans Reeder) into House of Broken Promises — absolutely killed in Vienna that night, and that the 12-song set was captured with beautiful clarity and thickness. Garcia himself announces that they’re recording, and I don’t know if the plan was to use it as a live album or what, but they play all of that year’s Coping with the Urban Coyote except for “If Only Two” and three out of the four tracks from the 1998 EP, The Best of Wayne-Gro, so if that was the intent, it’s a solid showcase of what they did in their time, which was cut short by label politics surrounding their second, Rick Rubin-produced full-length, For the Working Man (2003).

That album remains without official issue to this day, though it was eventually self-bootlegged by the band and some of the material showed up on their self-released El Coyote compilation. Cuts like “Wet Pussycat” (with which they opened in Vienna), “Human Tornado” and the heady “Vince Fontaine” were re-recorded for that album, which was to be their commercial breakthrough, but also appeared on Unida‘s earlier offerings, and listening to this set, it’s clear their live dynamic was coming into its own in 1999 — they were developing their own character within desert rock. Seay‘s tone and riffs lead the charge, Reeder‘s warmth vibrates the speakers, and Cancino and Garcia seem to be in lockstep even as the latter veers into his trademarked boozy jam invocations, yeahs, whoas, and so on. Unida‘s is a story of potential left unfulfilled, and that’s no less true here than anywhere else.

But even so, had this disc shown up with some shitty label, or with two-second spaces between these tracks, I’d be pissed. As it is, I’m not. And really, it’s that simple. I know my days of buying a $25 professionally-printed silver-CD bootleg are by and large over, and roughly half that cost is, I think, a fair price to pay for a product like Live in Vienna, which sounds stellar and shows that at least a bare minimum of effort was put into the presentation. $13 for that and I get to put it on my shelf? Well, shit, why didn’t you say so? That’s all I ever wanted.

As one might expect, Los Angeles rockers Caveman Voicebox don’t exactly play it subtle on their debut EP, Strippers, Mullets and Beer. Released through what appears to be their own Faceslapper Records in December 2011, the five-songer is a quick 15-minutes, and though there are few surprises sonically in that time – the longest song, the closer “Mindset,” caps at 3:20 – and though the first word on opener “Forsaken Place” is “whiskey,” Caveman Voicebox still are less sleazy than one might think going into a first listen. That’s either a positive or negative, depending on your personal taste, but with the Orange Goblin by way of Motörhead burl they offer instead, it’s hard to complain. The songs, written by bassist/vocalist Graham Wilson, are structurally simple but varied in mood and over fast enough to hold even fickle attention, and the vocals touch on melody without overdoing it or sacrificing a natural feel to get some kind of misguided commercialism. A song like EP centerpiece “After What She Said” strikes a decent balance between catchy hooks and riffy groove, and as far as straightforward American-style heavy rock goes, Caveman Voicebox give a strong first showing, if one perhaps overly mindful of the aesthetic concerns of their genre.

By that I mean that even unto its title, Strippers, Mullets and Beer seems to be reaching for a specific idea of what boozy stoner-style rock and roll is, rather than focusing itself on crafting the songs and worrying about where they fit genre-wise after the fact. The beer I’ll give you, but the strippers and the mullets? Well, maybe, maybe not. In that regard, “Mindset” is actually the strongest of the songs here. Although it doesn’t come close to the infectious octane of “Forsaken Place,” Wilson positions the EP’s final statement lyrically as a kind of insider nod to the heavy rock scene – “You’ve got the time and the money/Ain’t got the mindset” – and placed with self-awareness in a genre looking out, it works better than “’72 Nova,” which seems to turn a blind eye to its unoriginality rather than acknowledge it. We all know it’s not the first song ever written about a car and a girl, and where “Mindset” offers some personality on the part of Caveman Voicebox by saying in effect, “we know exactly what we’re doing and it’s all on purpose,” the earlier cut wants to pretend that’s not the case. It’s a kind of anti-pretense pretense, and it’s only not more of an issue than it is because of the strength of Wilson’s songwriting. Joining Alfred Cruz and Mike McKnight’s guitars is a bluesy slide guest spot from Eric Dover (Slash’s Snakepit) that adds character to the already barn-burning energy, and though the Doug Carrion (Descendants) production doesn’t quite beef up the guitars as one might think, the added feeling of rawness winds up an asset working in the band’s favor.

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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.

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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.