The following PR wire info doesn’t exactly give the answer to that question, but it does add further intrigue in a quote from guitarist Justin Maranga. Check it out:

Los Angeles psychedelic prog-rock band Ancestors will release its new album In Dreams and Time on April 10 via Tee Pee Records. Recorded in east L.A.’s Infrasonic Sound (Queens of the Stone Age, Best Coast, Xasthur), the record showcases the band’s most accomplished music to date and a creative sound that morphs from thunderous cacophony to soul-searching peaks and valleys as towering riffs collide with bleak beauty and deep wells of light and dark.

“In Dreams and Time feels like the culmination of everything we’ve done so far,” says Ancestors guitarist Justin Maranga. “The record incorporates elements of everything that we’ve come to feel that Ancestors is, as well as new things that we’ve never tried. We’re hoping that it will tie together fans of our previous albums Neptune with Fire, Of Sound Mind and Invisible White who may or may not have connected one release or the other, while hopefully helping us reach a new audience. We’re excited about it.”

The track listing for Ancestors’ In Dreams and Time is as follows:
1. Whispers
2. The Last Return
3. Corryvreckan
4. On the Wind
5. Running in Circles
6. First Light

Ancestors have also announced the addition of new drummer Daniel Pouliot (Horse the Band, ex-Bleeding Kansas) to its ranks and have been confirmed for both the 2012 Desertfest and the 2012 Roadburn Festival, where the band will share the stage with Killing Joke, Michael Gira, Chelsea Wolfe and more.

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.

Still, it’s on songs like “Forsaken Place” and “Mindset” that the band most shines and leaves a positive, memorable impression of itself. The penultimate “Banana” is perhaps the most straightforward of the cuts on Strippers, Mullets and Beer, with drummer Matt Merrow sounding almost mechanical, but it also offers some of the best guitar leads on the EP. Along with Caveman Voicebox’s well-reasoned balance of influence seems to be that kind of tradeoff; for every one thing that might strike as lacking individual presence, there’s a corresponding something either structurally or performance-wise to cover for it. Because of that and because, again, Wilson seems to have hooks to spare, I feel comfortable saying Caveman Voicebox’s first outing displays some marked potential for future growth. Naturally, I’d be more interested to hear more of their personality come out on whatever they do next, but Strippers, Mullets and Beer offers a few inarguable choruses and shows the four-piece as having a rudimentary grip on what they want to sound like, and for a band self-releasing their first EP, I wouldn’t ask anything more of it than that. Heavy rockers in L.A. might do well to check them out live if possible to get a fuller impression of what they’re about, but the songs here showcase a band aware of and working within genre as they begin to get a feel for what they want to do sonically, and that process continues to fascinate. Coupled with the fact that I’ve been unable to get “Forsaken Place” out of my head for the last three days, and it’s a recommendation well earned. They’ve definitely got the mindset.

Caveman Voicebox on Thee Facebooks

Caveman Voicebox on ReverbNation

This was just a couple weeks before Wino hit the road alongside Shrinebuilder bandmate Scott Kelly on an acoustic tour in support of Adrift and a split 7″ single between them, but I’d hardly call the performance rough. He nails the restless angst of “I Don’t Care” and manages to elicit whoops and yells from the crowd during “Nothin’” in the solo at the end. The energy is there, is what I’m trying to say.

And given the odd setting near a shirt rack and the clarity of sound and video for this clip, it was an easy choice. Enjoy “I Don’t Care” and “Nothin’” and the rest of your Wino Wednesday:

Aaron Edge

But time marches on, and as Ozzy once taught us, the wicked find no rest. Relocated from Seattle to Los Angeles, Aaron Edge now resurfaces with Peril on the Sea, the latest in the long line. They’ve got a page on Thee Facebooks with a few songs of ass-kicking, undulating nautical doom. Well worth a look.

In the meantime, here’s the announcement Aaron sent over:

Aaron Edge (of 2 Men Dead, Brothers of the Sonic Cloth, Eshas, Genuine, Grievous, Harkonen, Hauler, Hellephant, Himsa, Iamthethorn, Les Gants, Requin, Roareth, Rote Hexe, Swallowing Swords, Swearengen, The Horde, Tsuga, West of Zero, etc.) has been writing and recording three EPs’-worth of heavy songs over the last two years, and the first has finally reached the light of day. All five tracks from the first EP, entitled Voyage, the First, have been uploaded to the Facebook page.

Check it all out, download all five songs for free…

If you like what you hear, please share the page/songs with others.

Romano, of course, is the former drummer from Fu Manchu and Nebula. In Free Range Humanz, he’s joined by bassist Kenny Cunningham and guitarist Kurt Van Lifeson — who’s also credited with vocals, although in listening through the cuts on the band’s ReverbNation page, I’ve yet to hear any singing. Maybe they’re hedging their bets for later on. Smart play.

What’s already in the Free Range Humanz tracks is no small amount of Californian-style riffy groove. Cunningham donates choice fills to “Anchor” and “A Passage” as Van Lifeson‘s guitar leads the way through a slew of jams. They sidestep the rehearsal-room feel in this initial batch of tracks for the acoustic piano cut “The Dream” and a few others (there’s some dance music on there too; things get weird toward the end of the playlist). It’s a surprise given the lighthearted feel of the rest of the material, but it’s pretty clear all the way through that Free Range Humanz are still pretty nascent and exploring their sound.

For where that might lead them as much as for their pedigree, they’re definitely worth keeping on the radar. You can check them out on Thee Facebooks here or at ReverbNation, from whence these songs were snagged:

The difference between Invernal and everything else Black Cobra have done – and it’s a big difference – is I’m not sure it’s trying to. More than anything they’re released to date, Invernal finds Landrian and Martinez a mature studio act. They’re not just trying to compress their live show to disc, they’re making an album, and ultimately, that’s a huge part of what makes Invernal succeed as one of the best releases in 2011. The recording job of Converge’s Kurt Ballou does effectively balance their overwhelming crest with an appropriate amount of clarity (not too clean, but clean enough to appreciate), but even more than that, the principle change seems to have been in the overall goal and mindset of the recording. One can appreciate the album on its own terms and then look forward to the experience of witnessing the material live. There’s less pining involved, and I think that has to be thanks in part to the songs themselves. My chief complaint with Black Cobra from a songwriting standpoint has always been that the material doesn’t stand up to the experience of it – that is, you hear a Black Cobra song, feel like you’ve been punched in the face with awesome, and don’t remember a thing afterwards. Invernal changes that as well, with twists and turns and a genuine progression from track to track, beginning with opener “Avalanche,” on which Landrian approaches an Al Jourgensen-style verse vocal with both confidence and a sense of individuality.

His vocal shift – there are plenty of screams on “Avalanche” and elsewhere, so it’s not like he’s gone completely clean – is a natural progression from the last album and rightfully prominent where it needs to be in Ballou’s mix. The focus remains on the overall effect of the music, and Landrian’s chemistry with Martinez is palpable in how they interact on guitar and drums. As “Avalanche” transitions immediately into “Somnae Tenebrae” – the shortest song but for closer “Obliteration” – the band’s added focus on structure is made apparent: They wanted to start off pummeling, and their opening salvo does precisely that. “Somnae Tenebrae” isn’t Invernal’s most memorable track, but it does successfully convey Black Cobra’s “holy shit that’s heavy” live presence and offer some thrashing groove in its latter half. When it crashes, it gives a couple seconds for listeners to catch their breath, which is the perfect way to set up album highlight, “Corrosion Fields.” The interplay between the tracks feels more thought out than ever, if that hasn’t yet been made clear, but when “Corrosion Fields” kicks in following some sparse playing from Landrian and periodic crashes from Martinez, the focus is less on stepping back and examining the moves Black Cobra are making and more on “How do I make this as loud as possible as quickly as possible?”

At the 1:12 mark, “Corrosion Fields” launches into Invernal’s most effective groove. Martinez steps back into a breakdown beat behind Landrian’s guitar, and although they’ve already shown considerable fury on “Avalanche” and “Somnae Tenebrae,” “Corrosion Fields” shows that Black Cobra have more than just one way to kill. The second half of the track follows a more technically precise course that’s no less dramatic for the increase in number of notes played, giving way following a ring-out to centerpiece “The Crimson Blade,” which is perhaps most typified by Landrian’s guitar runs in the verse and the sense of overall build. That’s not an easy thing for Black Cobra to pull off, because it’s not exactly like they’re starting from zero and going to 60 – more like starting at 60 and going to 300 – but there’s an apocalyptic air to “The Crimson Blade” that marks a shift from the straightforward (I’d say “dopey” if I could properly stress that I don’t mean it in a derogatory way) violence of “Corrosion Fields.” By comparison, “The Crimson Blade” is progressive, which makes yet another smooth transition into “Beyond.” Invernal is purported to have a semi-narrative Antarctic voyage thread to it partially inspired by the work of Irish researcher/explorer Ernest Shackleton, and the flow from track to track bears that out (without the benefit of a lyric sheet, I won’t base an opinion on what of Landrian’s lyrics are immediate discernable). With “Beyond,” we come to what feels like the heart of the story musically. It’s the longest track at 6:14, and gets underway with slower, inhuman riffing from Landrian that soon picks up as Martinez comes in on drums. They’re setting a foundation, adding character and a distinctive feel, and much to the song’s benefit.

The aforementioned “Erebus Dawn,” then, is the culmination, and, I’d gladly argue, Black Cobra’s best blend of bombastic thrashing and Voivod-style progressivism to date. Its intensity is unmatched except by Invernal’s finale – which surpasses it – and though it’s propelled by Martinez’s quick and steady hits, it’s not impatient. As much as they’re embroiled in this menacing sound, Black Cobra are never completely consumed or controlled by it. Landrian’s solo on “Erebus Dawn” is perhaps an area of less comfort than the complicated riffing that surrounds – that on “Avalanche” feels more precise and directed – but he makes it work anyway, and returns to more comfortable ground (if you can call it that) to end the song with just the right lack of ceremony. It’s not a post-script, but the instrumental “Abyss” marks a significant change in methodology on the part of Black Cobra that, reading into it, one could only liken to the death either of some central character in the narrative or some other grand undoing. It is slower, rffier, more grooving in a doomed sense, and less striving toward the extremity that so much of Invernal bases itself on. Given the backwards-cymbal-into-snare hit that acts as transition between it and maniacal closer “Obliteration,” one could almost see it as a five-minute intro to a three-minute song, but like the totality of what Black Cobra accomplish on their latest, it makes sense in their overall arc.

And as their final statement of Invernal, “Obliteration” is also the most ferocious. Echoing the beginning of the record, but pushing it further, “Obliteration” blasts through its 2:47 – literally in parts as concerns Martinez – and strips away some of the technicality of the preceding tracks, but is frankly the most violent song on the album, which is saying something. Like “Somnae Tenebrae,” it isn’t the most memorable of Black Cobra’s included cuts for itself, but for the effect it has on the listener, it’s a positively breathtaking capper for Invernal and a potent “fuck you” to any potential accusation of letting up – which, of course, they’ve never done except to come back later and contrast it with further punishment. As someone who wasn’t a huge fan of Chronomega in the long term and who thought perhaps Black Cobra was in need of some stylistic progression, I’m wholly satisfied that Invernal has provided exactly that, and with zero sacrifice in force. As the band marks its 10th anniversary in 2011, they do so with their greatest achievement yet. This is what metal should be.

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Southern Lord Recordings

Avenger (review here) marks Totimoshi‘s first studio outing since departing from Volcom Entertainment, the imprint on which their last two installments — 2006′s Ladrón and 2008′s Milagrosa — were released, and while the 10 tracks continue the complex melodic development that songs from those records like “Dance of Snakes” and “Gnat” first began to demonstrate, there is an undeniable noise rock crunch in Aguilar‘s guitar as well that comes across right from the bluesy swagger of “Mainline” down through the grandiose epic “Waning Divine,” which features guest appearances from Mastodon‘s Brent Hinds and Scott Kelly of Neurosis. It’s a sound fit for the oft-groundbreaking At a Loss Recordings.

The drummer for the Melvins, Dale Crover, also shows up in the intro and elsewhere, but Avenger is much more than Totimoshi showing off the fact that they have cool friends. The chemistry between Aguilar and bassist/vocalist Meg Castellanos is pivotal to the album’s success, as is the input of drummer/vocalist Chris Fugitt, whose versatility in no small part allows the band to roam in the varied and genre-defying directions they do on a cut like “Rose,” which is just as exciting for its melodic apex as for its stylized heaviness. Having also been fortunate enough to see Totimoshi live supporting Avenger, and earlier in the band’s career, it’s apparent that they’ve hit new levels of creativity, confidence and mastery of their craft.

Totimoshi are, and always have been, beholden to themselves. That comes across as important to Aguilar in the following interview, and that he takes the time to consider his band’s place in the overall sphere is no great surprise considering the effort that goes into actually making the songs. In our phone conversation, he discussed the touring lifestyle, the tribulations surrounding the 2002 album, Monoli, working with Melvins producer Toshi Kasai on Avenger instead of Helmet‘s Page Hamilton (who helmed Ladrón and Milagrosa), the differences between headlining a tour and playing in a support slot, potential future directions, and much more.

Please find the complete Q&A after the jump, and enjoy.

How have the shows been so far?

There’s been one kind of dud, and all the other shows have been great so far. The one dud was in Denver. Kind of weird, because we’ve had really good shows there before. I don’t think there was a lot of promotion for it, but other than that, every show’s been really cool. Been super-awesome. And this is our first time in 14 years where we’re actually trying to do a headlining tour. It’s a little scary, but it’s way more gratifying, because we actually get to play a whole hour. It’s way more fun.

I was gonna say, I’m used to seeing Totimoshi come around with the Melvins or whoever else. Is it different playing to your crowd?

Yeah. It’s more gratifying, because you know people are there to hear you specifically, whereas opening for other bands, it’s more like, we want to try to turn people on and see what happens, but often times they’re more fans of the bands headlining and you’re just kind of there (laughs), trying to get their attention. It’s different. It’s a little scarier, because it’s the first time venturing off into that whole world of trying to do your own thing, but it’s what we want to do. Not that we’re not gonna look for support slots in the future, but for now, it’s what we want to start to try to do more and more.

All the time you’ve put in supporting other bands puts you in a better position to do that, I’d think.

The band’s been around for 14 years (laughs). It’s time to try at least to do that and see what happens. We definitely have enough music, that’s for sure, but you know. It’s a lot of the old stuff that we don’t play anymore that we need to get down. We were thinking of re-recording, actually, some of the old stuff.

Doing a whole album over, or just a comp of material?

A lot of the stuff — for example, like Monoli, the second record that we did – it’s completely out of print. John [Geldbach] from This Dark Reign just completely took it out. He actually told the guy at the distributor to throw them in the trash because I asked for a statement on sales. Dude, I don’t know what that guy’s problem is. He freaked out on me for simply wanting a statement, and told me I wasn’t entitled to a statement as per the contract, and told the distributor guy to throw them in the trash. Of course, I went over to Cobraside [Distribution], which is right around the corner from my house, and the guy was super-nice. He was like, “Dude, I wouldn’t throw them in the trash.” He gave me whatever he had left of Monoli, and the worst part about that is I wrote that album right after my father died. Almost every single song – not every single song, but most of the songs – are about losing my dad and the whole idea of death and going to a dark place. It was a really, really personal record, and to have that guy want them to go in the trash was like throwing my father’s memory in the trash to me. So I want to re-record it and re-put it out with a bunch of other older songs, and just sell them at our merch table. I think that’s more the way to go these days, is to have your own small run of records at the merch table that people can buy, rather than having shit in stores. It doesn’t seem like stuff is selling in stores as much anymore.

Shitty situation to have with that record. That was my introduction to the band.

The fortunate thing is he doesn’t own the work. He doesn’t own any of the soul and the spirit that went into it. He’ll never, ever own that. He’ll never be able to throw that in the trash. The guy can just fuckin’ eat a huge pile of dicks as far as I’m concerned.

Are you more comfortable at this point on the road than in the studio?

No. They’re different things. I like being in the studio, especially (laughs) recently. We didn’t have any money, and Toshi was coming to our rehearsal studio to record us with this little mobile unit. So we were basically – our rehearsal studio’s like our house, our second house, and we’re really comfortable there. It was really simple to record. It’s a good, cheap way to do it. We’re gonna do that from now on. As far as the road is concerned, I tour with Totimoshi, and I also tour manage Neurosis, Sleep and Shrinebuilder, and then I also tech for the Melvins, so I’ve been on the road… Basically since November, I’ve been on the road. I’ve been home maybe a month since November of last year. I’m on the road all the time. Both are incredibly comfortable to me. They’re just kind of what I do, personally. We were in the earthquakes. Did you hear about the earthquakes?

Which ones?

There was the Christchurch one in January. I was with the Melvins when all that stuff happened. Pretty crazy. That makes touring a little weird (laughs). Natural catastrophes.

What did you guys end up doing? I remember reading everyone was okay.

Basically everyone was fine. I think Dale [Crover] hurt his pinky, but other than that, everyone was cool. Basically run for a safe place, or what you think is a safe place.

Did you stand in the doorway?

(Laughs) I did. I didn’t know where else to go. Just like, “Uh, I’ll stand right here.” Kind of funny.

So if you’ve been on the road since November, when were the songs for Avenger written?

I think when we moved to Los Angeles, about a year and a half ago, two years ago, we had one song. I think I had “Rose” written already. I also had “The Line” written, which is now called “The Fool.” It was originally called “The Line.” The rest of it was written, when I would get home from a Melvins tour, I would write. I wrote “Avenger” around the same time. “Waning Divine” I just wrote right before we recorded the last small batch of songs. They were just basically recorded on breaks, being home from tour. “Calling all Curs” I actually wrote in a hotel room on a Melvins tour. I take a itty bitty guitar to practice with. I wrote that in a hotel room, showed it to Dave Curran, the Unsane guy. He tour manages the Melvins, and I showed it to him, like, “Check this out!” It was just written on the road, basically. Most of it.

Have you done it that way in the past?

Yeah. Milagrosa was completely written on the road. I take a little tape recorder, and I record ideas, and I’ll re-listen to the ideas, and I’ll go over and over them again, and slowly trim them into more songs, and then by the time I show Meg and Chris, they’re almost songs, and then they turn into songs with those two added. They put in their two cents and it gets finished. Usually by the time I present them, the idea’s almost done. It makes it a little easier. And then after that, it’s whatever we add in the studio and whatever we think is gonna work here and there, and you know. It’s a process, definitely. It’s cool, bro. I like writing on the road. Especially when, say, if I’m tech’ing for the Melvins – I was thinking about this the other night. Tech’ing for the Melvins or tour managing for Neurosis, it’s almost like – it’s a normal job – but it’s almost like understudy. I get to watch two of probably the most amazing bands in the last 20 years. The most groundbreaking, seminal bands. I get to watch those guys every single night, and I feel almost like I’m an understudy with those guys when I’m watching them on stage. Watching how they approach music, how they approach what they do on stage. How they work as a band, how they tour. Everything about those guys just amazes me. Especially those two bands specifically are incredible. They’re machines. It’s great to see. I think that adds to our artistic edge. Seeing the way that they work. Fucking awesome. Mastodon too was pretty fuckin’ amazing. We did a tour together in January. Those guys are pretty great.

You’ve toured with them for years at this point.

We have. We’ve done one major tour, and then we used to do shows with them back before they were as huge as they are now. [Mastodon guitarist/vocalist] Troy [Sanders] would set us up with shows in Atlanta and stuff. All those guys are so nice. They’re super, super-great people. We instantly became friends with them, and we’ve stayed friends with them. It’s great. Music, to me, is all about unity and it’s such a small world. We all see each other all the time. We’re out on the road, or occasionally we’ll see each other, and it’s like a big family. I really love it.

Was Page Hamilton involved with Avenger at all?

He did some pre-production stuff for four songs. He did “Avenger,” “The Fool,” “Rose” and “Leeds,” which was the very, very first recording that we did, at a studio in L.A. He came for pre-production, and then he was busy doing the Helmet record, so he just didn’t have any time, and we didn’t have any money to pay him, and I felt really bad about not being able to pay Page. He’s definitely worth what he gets paid for. Because he got so busy, me and Toshi just took over, and I didn’t really have time to be waiting, unfortunately, so me and Toshi took over the reins, and Toshi ended up producing it, and I’m super, super-happy with how it came out. It’s really cool, because I was go to Toshi’s house, and we would just sit in his room – he’s got a studio in his little room – and we would just sit there and bounce ideas off each other and try them. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t work, and it was just continuous idea-throwing. It was really great. The first time I’ve really gotten to do that – just be patient and take my time. And Toshi’s such a great guy, so easy to work with, easy to communicate. I never feel intimidated by anything. It’s a mellow atmosphere, so it makes it easy to work. So Page was involved with a few of the songs.

What came out of those idea exchanges with Toshi?

It was mostly adding counterpoint. Vocal ideas. Adding harmonies to the main melody of the vocal. Harmony, and maybe adding a keyboard part here or a guitar part there. Tambourine. A lot of the parts, the weird – some of it Toshi came up with completely on his own and I was just really floored, like, “Oh yeah man, I love that shit. It’s really cool.” It’s just adding stuff, adding texture, basically, to the original recording. The base recording is, you go in there and you record a track exactly how it is live and raw. Adding texture on top of that is basically what the whole production part of it was with me and Toshi. It wasn’t changing any parts of the songs at all. The basic structures of the songs are exactly how they were written. It was just adding stuff on top.

I wanted to ask you about the melodic growth of the band. It seems like the last couple albums especially have been more melodically focused. This one is too, but it also brings in that guitar crunch. It doesn’t feel like a step backwards because it’s still very melodic, but it’s almost like the guitars have stepped up too. Was that something you specifically wanted to do?

No, I think that’s just something that happens naturally. Early on, we were heavy and I was screaming way too much because I was – I think I was too much of a chickenshit. A lot of the Oakland scene was grindcore, and really angry and heavy, and I was too much of a chickenshit to actually stand up and be myself. I’m more into the Beach Boys than I’m into some grindcore crap. I’ve never been from that whole perspective. I really, really, really love melody. I like songs. I like structure. That’s just me allowing myself, and growing to just be more naturally who I really am, rather than basing it on some scene that we’re kind of around. I think I’m less of a chickenshit now, is basically what it is. (Laughs) I hope that makes sense.

Absolutely. But at the same time, Totimoshi’s never really been part of one specific scene or sound. You were never metal, never really stoner rock, never really noise. Always in between.

Yeah. We certainly were never really accepted into any of those Oakland dark metal whatever scenes. We’ve always been kind of on the outside of a bunch of different genres, and it’s probably because of that, because we’re not really one specific genre. To me, it would be incredibly boring to be something like that. I don’t want to be part of a scene anyways. I’d rather just be a musician. Whatever comes out comes out. It’s natural. It’s all related to your experiences in life. It’s all such a personal thing. Not every single person is going to have the exact same experiences in life, so it’s better to just do it that way. Be who you are. I do think we’re unique though, honestly. I’m reminded of it usually when we play shows (laughs). We’re always the sore thumb that sticks out. We don’t sound like a lot of the bands that we play with.

What was behind bringing Dale, Brent and Scott onto the album?

Firstly and most importantly, they’re our friends. The whole Brent thing was because, when I toured with Mastodon in January, he had this little acoustic guitar. And he would come into our dressing room all the time and we would sit there, me and him, and we would just kind of jam. I just liked the way the two styles blended together. I thought it was really cool. So I asked him because, for one, I love him as a person, and because I love his guitar playing. To me, he’s one of the best guitar players around, period. Ever. Scott is also a friend. I love his singing. His voice is amazing. He just happened to be in town when I was over at Toshi’s house recording. I called him up and asked him if he wanted to sing on some stuff, so I went over and picked him up and that worked our perfectly. And Dale. Dale lives like five minutes from my house. So we were over there hanging out, I asked him if he wanted to do something. It was me, Toshi and Dale just hanging out, drinking, so we ended up doing it right here. Dale ended up using a headphone jack. Like a regular headphoner? Toshi plugged a quarter-inch from the headphone into a little recorder, and actually recorded Dale using a headphone as a microphone. (Laughs) It was great. It was really, really cool. It was kind of spontaneous. The only one it was planned was the Brent thing. I’d planned to ask him for a long time, so that ended up happening. We sent the files to Bill Kelliher, and Bill recorded Brent and then sent it back. It was perfect. It’s awesome. And Brent’s solo on “Waning Divine” is insane. Just amazing.

That track has so much going on with it. It’s a great way to cap the record.

It’s the last song that was written for the record. I really like it. I really dig the direction it’s going.

Along those lines, is that something you’d want to build on for future writing? Do you have a direction in mind for the band, or is it like you said before, what comes out?

I have an idea of what I want the next one to be like. I have actually two ideas. One is, I have a ton of acoustic songs. They’re not acoustic like singer-songwriter acoustic. They’re acoustic like Zeppelin II, with drums and bass and guitar. I have a bunch of those songs already written, and then the other one, I want to see if I can find a keyboard player to play parts and make it a little more ethereal. But that’s a direction that I haven’t really written for yet, but that I see we could progress to. Ethereal in a Pink Floyd kind of way. Like Meddle or later Pink Floyd, around the time of Live at Pompeii, or something like that. That kind of stuff. Love that era of Pink Floyd. I love every era, but that, artistically, is what I’m looking at. I’ll see if it happens (laughs).

In the meantime, do you know what you’re doing after this tour?

No plans right now. We’re trying to get a European tour together in November. We’re not sure if it’s going to come to fruition or not. It depends on the promoters, if they’re going to offer anything. If that doesn’t happen, we’re going to try to do a tour in the States before the end of the year again. Maybe look for some support slots and see what happens.

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At a Loss Recordings

My positive first impressions the night before were confirmed when the bartender, instead of pretending to have never seen me before after a moment of recognition (as is the custom in the city), asked me, “Weren’t you here last night?” I said I was and a pleasant conversation ensued. Imagine human interaction. Very cool.

When Pigs got going, I made my way past Totimoshi‘s merch — in my mind saying, “I don’t need to buy the record right now,” as if it wasn’t inevitable — through the curtain and into the back room to watch their set. The trio is made up of guitarist/vocalist Dave Curran (Unsane, Players Club), drummer Jim Paradise (Players Club) and bassist/vocalist Andrew Schneider (Slughog, also producer for The Brought Low and countless others in and around NYC and beyond); all three Brooklyn locals. The sound was probably what you’d expect if you ever heard Players Club, resting on the spectrum between that band’s riffier, somewhat melodic take and Unsane‘s flat-out noise aggression.

They’ve been around for a bit, but it was my first time seeing them (quite a weekend of firsts I had), and I was eager to do so. The occasional interplay between Curran and Schneider on vocals did a lot to offset the visceral screams from the former alone, and Paradise proved to be yet third in the line of excellent drummers I saw this weekend at Saint Vitus — I’d soon add Chris Fugitt from Totimoshi to complete the list — and though the changes in approach between the songs were subtle, I got a sense of them just from hearing the songs live once through, which makes me suspect the material comes across even more diverse on record. As all three members of Pigs (plus Unsane‘s Chris Spencer, who was also at the show) are behind Coextinction Recordings, the avenue for hearing recorded versions seems obvious.

Last time I saw Totimoshi was circa 2008 at the now-kaput basement Club Midway in Manhattan. Like Pearls and Brass the night before, they’re a band I’ve been a fan of for years on top of years who’ve been largely underappreciated by those outside a limited critical circle. Unlike Pearls and Brass, though, Totimoshi never stopped. I did wind up buying a copy of Avenger, the new album, before they went on, and regretted it not for one moment after their set got going, as it’s where most of what they played was taken from.

Set-wise, they went no further back than 2006′s Ladrón — “Viva Zapata” and “The Dance of Snakes” were highlights — and of the newer cuts, “Mainline” proved the most immediately recognizable. As a special surprise, they included a cover of the Hendrix classic “Are You Experienced?” that set the song’s original swagger against Totimoshi‘s desert-inflected tonality. Guitarist/vocalist Anthony “Tonymoshi” Aguilar (no one calls him that that I know of, but being a fan of portmanteau, I’m trying to start the trend) convincingly delivered both the lines and blissed out leads of that song and of Avenger closer “Waning Divine,” cutting the song somewhat short at the end, but still giving enough of an impression for the crowd to get a sense of what Mastodon‘s Brent Hinds contributes to the album.

Bassist Meg Castellanos and aforementioned drummer Fugitt both contributed vocals to “The Fool” — the latter through a headset microphone that made him look a little bit like a motivational speaker — which proved even catchier in person than on disc. The body of Castellanos‘ Rickenbacker was roughly the size of her own torso, but she wielded it expertly nonetheless, her tone melding with Aguilar‘s own and her stage presence complementing his sometimes frenetic or spastic energy with a kind of subdued confidence as the trio plowed through the instrumental “Calling all Curs.”

For his part, Fugitt looked like a consummate professional. The drumming gloves might have helped, but in watching him play (and as I say, I’d already had a dose of killer drumming to compare), it’s not that he lacked conviction, but that he looked like you could have put any style of music in front of him and he’d have been able to play it just as well. I don’t know his history in terms of projects he’s been involved in, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he’s done session work. His style was creative and his playing so solid that it seemed like he’d have no trouble sitting down with anyone’s song, know it front to back in five minutes and play it with the abandon of a kid in the garage who thinks no one’s around.

As the third in the three-piece with founders Aguilar and Castellanos, he was more than good company to keep. Totimoshi‘s set seemed short (they cut the title track from Ladrón from their written setlist), but was wholly satisfying anyway, and for the second night in a row, I felt happy to have made the trip into Brooklyn. I don’t know when I’ll get back to Saint Vitus — I was a little tempted to show up on Sunday, just for the hell of it — but whenever it is, I’ll be glad to be there.

A couple extra Totimoshi pics after the jump.

Totimoshi

The latter two show up on the stylistically out-there closer “Waning Divine,” which is Totimoshi’s most experimental excursion to date, trading in the comparatively straightforward and almost punk-ish drive of earlier cuts like the opening title-track (which follows a brief intro) or its chorus-centric follow up, “The Foot,” for a solid six-and-a-half-minute build capped by a solo from Hinds that’s well placed as the payoff for the whole of Avenger. All told, the record is just 42 minutes, but in that time, Totimoshi manage to work in a variety of moods. The aforementioned “Avenger” is about as pure as Melvins-worship can get (the two bands have toured together extensively over the years, and Aguilar techs for Buzz Osborne, so it’s an influence they come by honestly), and as Aguilar delivers the lines, “I have punch/I have kick/I will slash and wear your skin/I will teach you not to look at me” and threatens a feast of hemlock tea and strychnine meat in his characteristic snarl, the aggression is well met by his guitar work, Castellanos’ bass and Fugitt’s drumming. Immediately, Avenger presents the intensity of Totimoshi at their best – which is perhaps the element most absent from Milagrosa and the source of any comparison to the band’s older material – and from there, the band is able to capitalize on that momentum however they see fit.

Over the years, Aguilar has managed to turn his aforementioned snarl into a bona fide melodic approach, and one of the most effective aspects of Avenger is the balance it strikes between songwriting and its wheels-about-to-come-off feel. Fugitt is most at home in that element of Totimoshi’s sound – his fills on “The Fool” feel as though they could completely undo the song at any moment, but he’s never out of control. That song also shows the band’s grown capacity for melody and structure both in and out of its layered chorus, which sets up the punkish cabaret stomp of “Mainline” all the more effectively. Commencing with Avenger’s dirtiest riff and drunken bluesy sway, it moves into a solo to match, but then Fugitt steps it up on the drums and the half-minute delivers the title line with handclaps and one of Avenger’s most memorable flashes. “Calling all Curs” begins with Castellanos’ considerably-toned lead in and jams out a solid riff as the album’s only instrumental, but in the context of the record as a whole, it’s hard to see it as more than a cool groove and a stepping stone to side A closer “Rose.”

It’s among the shorter tracks at 3:52 (only the intro and “Calling all Curs” take less time), and “Waning Divine” has the high-profile guest spots, but there’s no question that “Rose” is Avenger’s crowning achievement. Aguilar has said it’s “about fucking,” and sure enough, it’s sex in the classic Hendrixian fashion, finding its climax in its last minute build, the interplay of Aguilar and Castellanos on vocals brilliantly backed by Fugitt’s snare making the scenario complete. It’s a hallmark of Totimoshi’s catalog that each album has a definitive standout, and “Rose” is it for Avenger, but as the record is only half over, Totimoshi use the space on side B to get more adventurous, beginning with the freakout guitar work on the heavily-percussed “Opus” (I think that’s where the Crover guest appearance is, but don’t have confirmation of that at this point). They’re toying with desert rock’s echoes here, transitioning from a call and response between the drums and guitar in the chorus to the extended solo that feels as though it could consume the whole rest of the track but ultimately doesn’t, giving way to melodic vocals that transition smoothly into the more subdued “Leaves.” Totimoshi have always borrowed from the dirtier end of ‘90s noise, and “Leaves” maintains that, but the reverb on the guitar early in the song and the laid back vocals adds a chic moodiness that Avenger has thus far left untouched, flowing into a more angular second half that reminds of the opening duo and sounds like it could’ve been on a more realized version of 2002’s excellent Monoli.

“Snag” creeps open with a near-waltz guitar-led rhythm and unfolds into an engaging chorus. Like many of Avenger’s tracks, it’s about playing one side of Totimoshi’s sound off another. Songs do this, then they do that, but there’s always movement within them, and so sometimes it’s harder to get a handle on what the band is trying to accomplish on a first listen. With “Snag,” it’s not so much a dip in quality – because there isn’t one – as it is a shift in methodology. Fugitt is charged with keeping the song grounded, and he does so well, punctuating Aguilar’s noisy solo with consistent bass drumming that subtly both opens and closes. There are about 30 seconds of silence before “Waning Divine” starts, which is a surprising move given how much emphasis Totimoshi put on momentum otherwise on Avenger, but once the track actually begins – instant swirl – it’s clear why they would want it separate and standing apart from the other material. Both in terms of its structure and execution, it’s different from everything else on the album, Aguilar and Scott Kelly’s vocals meshing together following a chugging instrumental build that only gets larger as the verses play out. If “Waning Divine” has anything in common with the rest of Avenger, it’s that the guitar lead acts as the apex of the song, only this time it’s Brent Hinds providing the fleetness of finger, concluding the album with a performance that’s equal parts surprising and stellar.

The temptation with a band like Totimoshi, who seem to release album after album of high-quality songs and tour ceaselessly to support them, is to hope loudly that this is the record that “gets them their due,” whatever that means. That’s not to say Avenger isn’t a more than respectable outing or that Totimoshi, over the course of their studio work and extensive touring, hasn’t grown into one of the heavy undergrounds most individual bands, just that when you accomplish all that and earn a position near the fore of your creative generation, the admiration of your peers, critics and fans – however underappreciated your records still might be in relation to how good they are – I’m not sure what’s left. Headlining, I guess, and Avenger is already letting Totimoshi do that too on their latest tour, so there you go. They’ve always been a band rooted in appealing to a certain kind of listener, and Avenger is no different in its marriage of contradictions. It’s dissonant but melodic, dirty and clean, noisy but engaging, structured but open. If there’s a word to encompass the existence these varied ideas within a singular space that’s better fitting than the name of the band, I don’t know what it is, so I’ll just say that. It’s Totimoshi.

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At a Loss Recordings

From the start of “So On,” which opens the record, Moab has a bizarre kind of cinematic feel to their songwriting. Guitarist/vocalist Andrew Giacumakis keeps mostly to a high register in his singing without veering into metallic silliness, and as Ab Ovo runs its course, his methods increasingly create their own context. The foundation of Moab‘s style — heavy riffs, hard-landing rhythms — is familiar enough throughout the ultra-Sabbathian verses of “Dimensioner,” but stylistic miles are traveled by the time “Lugh”‘s seafaring crunch or the bombast of “Fembot” take hold.

You could sit for days and trace the roots of the grooving swagger behind “Sated” or the unrepentantly wretched “More Love,” but Giacumakis — also Moab‘s principle songwriter and joined in the band by drummer Erik Herzog and bassist Casey Barclay — has Ab Ovo set with a definite progression in mind, and honestly, it’s more fun to follow it than analyze the footprints it leaves behind.

Giacumakis and Herzog are both former members of late-’90s indie outfit Buellton, and in the interview that follows, the guitarist explains his shift to a heavier aesthetic and discusses the recording and studio-building process that went into making Ab Ovo, what he learned about engineering from Matthias Schneeberger (who helmed Moab‘s demo, from which the cowbell-centric track “Dimensioner” is taken), the way the album crash lands into the two-part beast “Staring Wall,” and much more. Basically I thought the record was cool and figured a feature would be a good way to introduce people to the band.

Full Q&A is after the jump. Hope you dig it:

Give me some background on how the band got going.

The drummer and I have been making music together for quite a while in different bands, as far back as the late ‘90s. Not necessarily metal. We were in an indie rock band called Buellton going back a ways, and we just kept having recording projects together. I’m a recording engineer by trade, too, and we, over the years, kept making music together, and around 2007, something like that, we decided we wanted to make heavy tunes and we starting recording these heavy songs, just for ourselves. I played it for another friend who I work with, Casey, who ended up being our bass player, and he ended up saying, “Hey, we should make a real band and play some of these songs live.” Casey and another guy I worked with had heard some of the recordings me and the drummer had done, and said we could make a real recording out of this, and we did, and we started playing shows in and around L.A., and it went from there.

How did you end up signing to Kemado?

That was actually Slim, from True Widow, kind of stoked us out. He was friends with our bass player, Casey. We recorded the record ourselves at our practice studio, because I have quite a bit of recording gear. We did the record ourselves and had it mastered and had it done and tried shopping it to labels. We had been pushing it around to different labels, and we were friends with True Widow, and we asked them, “Hey, could you give this to Kemado?” and they said, “Sure!” And they did, and something went wrong with the download or something, and Keith [Abrahamsson] couldn’t listen to it, so another two months went by, and then Slim from True Widow called Keith again and said, “Hey, did you ever listen to that band?” He said, “No, send it to me again,” so he sent it again, he listened to it and loved it, and it went from there.

It’s the worst when that email doesn’t go through.

That was a good six months after we had finished the record, and you know, we had been shopping it. We sent it to Kemado ourselves, but I don’t think it ever got listened to. We sent the record out to a bunch of different indie labels, and it’s just hard to get a record listened to, so we owe True Widow for that.

You said you had been playing in indie bands and things that. What prompted the stylistic shift on your part?

We’d been playing in bands – I wasn’t really the main guy in those bands. I wasn’t the songwriter or the singer. I was just the guitar player/utility guy, and at the time, indie rock was more bands like Pavement and Grandaddy. On the West Coast, that was kind of the hip thing, but I grew up on metal, so around that time, bands like Sleep and all that stuff was happening, and I was like, “Whoa, this is really cool, I wish I could do something like that,” but I couldn’t. I didn’t have an outlet for it. I didn’t even know I could sing. At the time, I hadn’t even tried singing. So when that band broke up, the drummer and I started writing riffs together, but we were looking for a vocalist, and he said, “Why don’t you try to sing?” so I tried and kind of had to learn and teach myself what my strengths were singing-wise. It was a process, but eventually I arrived somewhere.

How does recording yourself fit into that process? Is it different for you hearing those strengths as an engineer?

Absolutely, yeah. Thinking your voice sounds powerful or good at a certain register, and then hearing it recorded, are two different things. I kind of had to learn where my strengths were, and it turned out that I can sing high pretty well, and so that’s where I go with it. But yeah, being a recording engineer has even more to do with songwriting. Songs that sound good in the room as you’re jamming might be that entertaining of a listen. I think the years of doing that, years of recording, helped with songwriting too.

How did doing the song with Matthias Schneeberger come about?

There’s a guy in L.A. who books a lot of shows called Martin De Pedro, and we were first introduced to him, I think it was 2009. We’d played a couple shows live, and at the time, we were a new entity and we only had maybe five songs written. We were playing our originals, but we were playing a bunch of Pentagram covers and we played a Witchcraft cover or something like that. He heard us and was like, “I know this guy Matthias, you should record with. He’ll give you a bro deal, just go record with him.” Originally, Matthias wanted to do an album with us, and we knew we didn’t have an album’s worth of material ready, so we just decided, “Hey, let’s make it a quick demo with him,” and we went and recorded a few songs. Of those songs we recorded, only the one song made it on the record, because the other three songs – one was a Pentagram cover, and we couldn’t put that out – and the other two songs just weren’t strong. I learned a lot from watching how Matthias recorded drums and stuff, and at the time, we had just gotten a new warehouse facility, and the warehouse sort of had a similar vibe to Matthias’ drum room, so I figured I could spend a little bit of money on gear and probably get close to a similar drum sound. That’s half the battle of making good-sounding records, is getting the drums to sound right. Not that our drums are perfect, but I think we got a pretty good… a lot of people can’t tell that that song’s recorded any differently than any of the others.

It doesn’t really stand out when you listen to it.

The reason at the time I pushed for doing that was because it’s really hard to be nitpicky with mixes and stuff like that — and I generally get nitpicky with mixes – when you have to schedule somebody or pay this person on an hourly basis, or a daily rate or whatever you’re trying to do, but more scheduling than anything. It’s hard to get stuff done, and I think we figured if we want to get the album perfect, just how we want it, every little detail and we can get as hung up on minutia as we want to, recording ourselves was the way to go. I like that process. I hope I can keep doing it. It’s a lot of work, though. It’s a lot of work to wear all those hats, to be the engineer, mixer and songwriter, writing lyrics.

It’s a lot to put on yourself at that point.

(Laughs) Yeah. Not that the other guys in the band don’t do anything, but a lot of time, my availability for mixing and working on songs, to do vocals and do guitars – basically, the drums are done and the bass is done usually in a day – but then there’s all these details with how much guitar gets laid down. I ended up doing a lot of that on my own in the middle of the night, and it got pretty lonely. I was always appreciative when my bandmates were there to record with me. The drummer, Erik, has a lot to do with the production on the recordings. He’s like a genius with production ideas and stuff like that, and he’s instrumental in that part of it.

Tell me about the process of building the studio. I’m assuming a warehouse space has high ceilings, and I think you can hear that space in the drums, but was there specific equipment you wanted to use?

I would love to get even better equipment. I was really just using what I have. I have some good stuff, but not a lot. I have three good preamps, but I don’t have 12 good preamps, which I could use. Our recordings could get better as we get better gear, but over the years, I’ve just collected mics and preamps. …Don’t tell anybody, but we recorded it on a computer (laughs). And we actually built, in the warehouse itself — we have a friend who’s a construction guy who helped us build a control room, soundproof. We actually practice in there too, it’s kind of a control/practice room, but then we have the whole outer warehouse to do drums, a drum room that has a lot of reverb in it. We actually built a room within a room to practice in, and that helps with keeping our practices at a reasonable level for our neighbors, but yeah, we built the room within a room with a friend of ours who’s a construction dude, and the recording gear was stuff I’ve collected over the years.

And what about your writing for the record? How did everything come together, song-wise?

Pretty much our writing process is, I come up with a verse/chorus-type thing, or a riff. I have a little recorder with me all the time, and I forget all the riffs on there, but it’s really handy to have one of those, because I can’t write music out with a pen, so I figure having one of those little recorders, every riff that pops into your head, you can jot it down. But generally I take an idea, a riff or a verse and a chorus combo thing into the band and we usually jam it out, and arrange the song. Sometimes I have songs totally written, sometimes I don’t, but usually when I take it to the band and we flesh it out and maybe add a bridge or decide that it doesn’t need this, we usually decide this as a unit.

How did “Staring Wall I & II” come together? You have “Sated” before that, and it’s all rock and roll swagger, and then “Staring Wall I” hits and it’s darker.

“Part I” was actually supposed to be another song, and the other song wasn’t quite working, and I suggested, because the songs were in the same tuning and ballpark, that, well, we should make this, on the record, we should cut the song – that whole “Staring Wall Part I” was part of another song that was supposed to have vocals and everything, and we decided to cut that whole part of the song out and make it sort of this weird instrumental thing. It turned out to be, I think, what the record needed. You get hit with some accessible tunes right off the bat, and then I wanted to take the listener on a different trip and not have the record be the whole same thing. We basically knew that that song was in the same tuning, and same ballpark, as “Staring Wall Part II,” which was actually just “Staring Wall” at the time, and decided, “Hey, we should make this sort of an epic thing.” That’s what happened.

It sets you up that, for the end of the record, you don’t really know what to expect after that.

Right, and I’m not sure how critics are gonna take it, but I did fear that the album was going to be perceived as un-cohesive, because there’s so many stylistic sort of heavy rock/metal things going on. That was when we were assembling the songs, I thought that. I didn’t know if we had a cohesive record on our hands, but when we put all the songs together how we wanted and we heard it, and we listened, we were like, “No, this works.” It works as a unit, and it reminds me of a Beatles record. If you listen to Sgt. Pepper’s or Abbey Road, they’re stylistically all over the place. I think that’s our strength too, in songwriting. We like to be varied and do different things – and not that I don’t appreciate bands that do the other thing and have a record that’s a mood all the way through – I think True Widow does that and they do it really well, where it’s just a mood the whole way. Black Cobra does that. It’s just a really good mood all the way through the record, and that’s a strength and I appreciate that strength in bands, but I think our strength is writing hooks and that kind of thing.

Do you know what you’re going to be doing show-wise? Are you going to tour?

I don’t know what we’re going to be doing. Two of us have families and mortgages and career jobs, so we can tour, but it would have to be limited to six weeks or something like that, whatever we can get off work. If the demand got greater, we’d deal with it at the time. Everything’s hit kind of fast lately. I put the question to Kemado, and that was Keith’s first statement to me, was, “You guys can do what you want to do. You don’t have to tour. You can if you want, but we want to put the record out.” They kind of opened it, so we couldn’t say no. I do want to support the record. I need to get in touch with a booking agent and something like that, and I just don’t know where to start with that.

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Kemado Records