Kudos to San Diego retro prog weirdos Astra for going with an orange color scheme. The Frippertastic mellotron-loving five-piece will release their new album, The Black Chord, on March 27 via Rise Above/Metal Blade, and have made available the new track “Quake Meat” for high-def YouTube streaming. Check it out, followed by a little hot PR wire lovin’:

The new track from The Black Chord, “Quake Meat,” can be heard now over at metalblade.com/astra. The Black Chord will be available in North America on March 27. Astra will be hosting an album release show in San Diego on March 16. The show will be at The Casbah with Dead Meadow, The Loons and Joy. The show will also feature visuals by Operation: Mindblown. For more info, check out astratheband.com.

At its heart, the approach of Dutch occult rockers The Devil’s Blood comes down to two words: “Hail Satan.” It’s a rallying cry of contradiction, the basis for their musical and lyrical perspective, and what lies at the very heart of their influence. In everything they do, it remains the calm center around which they swirl their storm.

Founded by guitarist/songwriter Selim Lemouchi and his sister, the powerful vocalist Farida Lemouchi, the Eindhoven-based band were subject to fervent reactions almost immediately. Following a 2007 demo and the 2008 single, The Graveyard Shuffle, their Come, Reap EP was a blatantly devilish call to arms that stood in stark musical contrast with the thematic conventions of extreme metal with which it was toying. On their first full-length, 2009′s The Time of No Time Evermore (review here), The Devil’s Blood set about offsetting classic rock with ethereal psychedelic washes, and on their latest album, The Thousandfold Epicentre (review here), they’ve mastered their form.

With a massive, 74-minute sprawl, The Thousandfold Epicentre makes no attempt to hide its grandiosity or self-indulgence, instead celebrating its blatant atmospherics while also maintaining a strong core of songcraft that can be heard on the flagrant hooks in “Die the Death” or the centerpiece “She.” Through it all, Farida keeps supreme hold of her charisma, and Selim‘s instrumental melodicism behind her makes for one of the underground’s most intriguing pairings. The Devil’s Blood owe more to Coven‘s “Black Sabbath” than Black Sabbath‘s “Black Sabbath,” but as Selim hints in the interview that follows, the band revels in doing what’s unexpected.

And since in order to hold onto an element of Satanic mysticism one must be vague in discussing processes, the word “hints” is all the more appropriate. Nonetheless, Selim, who often goes by the initials SL, was open in acknowledging his band’s theatricality and his own classic pop and heavy rock influences, from The Beatles and Thin Lizzy to Roky Erickson and Black Widow. If you make it that far, a particularly fascinating moment came near the end, in talking about touring and playing high-profile festivals (The Devil’s Blood will be on the Decibel magazine North American tour with Watain, In Solitude and Behemoth this spring; dates included below) as opposed to club shows. Just something to watch out for, if you’re interested.

Please find the enclosed Q&A with Selim Lemouchi after the jump, and enjoy.

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Issued in 2011 in Europe via German imprint Ván Records, mysterious Dutch outfit The Devil’s Blood release their second full-length, The Thousandfold Epicentre, via Metal Blade in North America. Their 2010 debut, The Time of No Time Evermore (review here), was put out by Profound Lore, and if anything, the amount of people who’ve gotten behind The Devil’s Blood shows the kind of dedication their cult rock inspires. With a penchant traditional witchy melody – bands like Coven and Black Widow are appropriate points of reference – taken to the Satanic extremes of European black metal (the band has close ties with Swedish outfit Watain, among others), the core brother/sister duo behind The Devil’s Blood, guitarist/songwriter Selim and vocalist Farida Lemouchi, have been able to hammer out a sound that is at once foreboding and unashamedly accessible. In light of the aforementioned early ‘70s cult folkies, this isn’t such a contrast, but given the avenues of heaviness and extremity in which such themes are more prevalent today, The Devil’s Blood stands out. At the same time, they belong to a growing league of bands – Ghost, Sabbath Assembly and even, to a more distinctly doomed extent, the latest incarnation of The Wounded Kings – who’ve been able to successfully blend that school of classic melodic thought with modern Satanic or occult ritualizing. Farida’s vocals, however, along with Selim’s apparently growing fascination with darkened psychedelia, give The Thousandfold Epicentre a strong individual feel even within this burgeoning context. It is a powerful and creative work.

It’s also really, really long. At 74-plus minutes, The Thousandfold Epicentre is beyond what might usually qualify as expansive, but the atmosphere of ritual it creates – one can almost smell the dry-ice fog coming through the speakers – more than accounts for and justifies that expanse. Where The Time of No Time Evermore took the (in hindsight) formative elements of 2008’s Come, Reap EP in a more traditionally metal direction, The Thousandfold Epicentre seems bent in highlighting melodic grandeur. Following the intro “Unending Singularity” that builds to it, “On the Wings of Gloria” is resplendent. Farida’s vocals echo above a rocking riff from Selim and thudding drums. Among the varied approaches The Devil’s Blood take on the album’s 11 tracks, “On the Wings of Gloria” stands among the most effective combinations of the elements that make their sound their own, breaking after a ripping guitar solo into a vocal-led ritualistic invocation that in turn gives way to a wash of chanting and psychedelic noise, all anchored and given structure by drums and an overall forward movement. The duo of cuts that follows, “Die the Death” and “Within the Charnel House of Love,” are shorter and more geared toward highlighting Farida’s prowess as a frontwoman, while “Cruel Lover” takes rhythmic cues from ‘80s metal (as did a decent portion of the last record) and is less pop-based. Talk of possession and “tongues of fire” allures and adds sexualized danger without feeling outwardly exploitative, and the music behind chugs with a clear sense of structure without being as predictable as either “Die the Death” or “Within the Charnel House of Love.” Nonetheless, indulgence prevails.

As well it should for a band like The Devil’s Blood. They move from a long bridge back to the verse in “Cruel Lover” and end with the central riff, moving briskly onto centerpiece “She,” an immediate highlight. Layers of Farida’s vocals weave between each other to make The Thousandfold Epicentre’s most memorable chorus, while the verse singing has more clarity and make use of her range, which has impressed since the band’s beginnings. Sandwiched between “Cruel Lover” and the title-track, “She” is both a worthy single and a deep cut, adding to the atmosphere of the record without sacrificing the quality of songwriting or structural crispness. A final chorus stomps its way into the cerebral cortex and the song gives way to mellotron and keys that set the stage for “The Thousandfold Epicentre,” which tops nine minutes and is the longest song apart from 15-minute closer “Feverdance.” Like the album itself, the title-track does well with the time it’s so purposefully taking. Gone is the immediacy of hook that drove “She,” but instead, The Devil’s Blood begin to immerse the listener in the ambience that will typify the album’s back end and still have room for catchy delivery of the chorus line, “I call your name/Devil of a thousand faces,” though it doesn’t arrive until more than three minutes in. Like the opener and like the closer still to come, though, the build is what makes it work. Selim skillfully incorporates acoustics and gives a fullness to do more than just complement his sister’s vocals, and breaks into one of The Thousandfold Epicentre’s most impressive guitar solos just after 6:30. They named the album after the right song – pretty much every accomplishment of the whole is summed up in some way on the title-track.

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Two full decades of doing anything is impressive, and what separates British doom mainstays Cathedral’s 20-year tenure from that of many others is that they never really stopped. Until now. The 2CD live album Anniversary – their first live record in all that time, released through frontman Lee Dorian’s own Rise Above Records (Metal Blade in North America) – captures a special show they did to mark 20 years on Dec. 3, 2010, at the 02 Academy Islington in London, and it’s part of the band tying up the loose ends of their existence, which they reportedly plan to end in 2012 with a final studio offering to be called The Last Spire and another London show Dec. 3, 2011. The Last Spire will be Cathedral’s 10th full-length, and though their catalog has had its ups and downs as far as fan reception, their stamp on the genre of doom is cast if only in the fact that when they started out, there was hardly a genre to speak of. As time passed and their catalog grew, landmark releases like 1993’s The Ethereal Mirror and 1995’s The Carnival Bizarre helped not only grow the band’s legacy, but that of doom at large, and through his work with Rise Above, Dorian in particular has been placed at the fore of tastemakers when it comes to what the term “doom” means and can be expanded to incorporate. That has little to do with the sound of Anniversary, but is relevant for context if nothing else.

The Anniversary show itself saw Cathedral basically play two concerts. The first, captured on the first disc here, brought back the original two-guitar lineup for a full front-to-back performance of their 1991 classic, Forest of Equilibrium. The second was Cathedral’s current incarnation – Dorian and guitarist Garry “Gaz” Jennings being the remaining founding members – doing a selection from the rest of the band’s discography. Disc one is an hour and disc two is just under 80 minutes, so the sheer amount of material on Anniversary is staggering, and for someone unfamiliar with the band, probably too intimidating to take on completely blind – but one doesn’t release something like Anniversary for the casual fan. Anniversary is for those who’ve stuck with the band through the highs and lows, or for the late comers whose appreciation for Cathedral is seen in the band’s influence on doom both British and worldwide. And as much as they’ve come to personify the band over the years, to hear Dorian and Jennings joined by guitarist Adam Lehan, bassist Mark Griffiths and drummer Mike Smail for a full run-through of Forest of Equilibrium is a fitting way to celebrate Cathedral’s time together, though the sound between the studio versions and their late-2010 live interpretations is more than a little different. Dorian’s vocals – though he’s obviously performed much of this material all along – have developed considerably since 1991, and though he’s always been more of a frontman than a technically-minded singer, his range and use of cleaner vocals can easily be heard progressing from album to album. Forest of Equilibrium was never going to be what it is on the record itself, but whether it’s “Commiserating the Celebration (of Life)” or the show highlights “Serpent Eve” and “Equilibrium,” Cathedral as They Were do the album justice and leave a high mark for Cathedral as They Are to live up to.

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On the player above is the track “Carry Me Home” by British doomers 40 Watt Sun, whom I should’ve driven to see tonight in Brooklyn. Being obliged to head out to Long Island tomorrow morning, tired from work, intrigued at the notion of spending some time (and that’s not euphemism, though that also would have been nice) with The Patient Mrs., I flaked on the show and came back to the valley after the day at the office and dinner out, from which I’d otherwise have gone into the city.

My evening thus far has consistent of two-thirds of a bottle of wine, watching the Yankees succumb to the invincible pitching of the Blue Jays and having said spouse with whom I stayed home to spend time fall asleep roughly an hour ago at 10PM. Some you win, some you lose. At least I’ll have probably another four hours awake to fester in it.

The flipside of the coin — to borrow a phrase from the recently-interviewed John Garcia — is that if I’m a miserable bastard here, I’d be a miserable bastard in Brooklyn, and at least being here doesn’t require wearing anything other than pajamas in the name of public decency. See? To every cloud… something or other.

Maybe if I’m feeling crazy enough, I’ll drive to Philly and catch 40 Watt Sun tomorrow with Batillus and Sadgiqacea at Kung Fu Necktie. Why not? I’m already heading to Philly next week for both Kyuss Lives! on Wednesday and the Small Stone Records showcase Friday and Saturday (skipping Kyuss Lives! in NYC because I want to see Freedom Hawk, Infernal Overdrive and the rest at The M-Room and because, well, it’s apparently worth the extra hour to me not to have to be in Manhattan).

More likely I’ll just wait and catch 40 Watt Sun at Roadburn next Spring, where they will join a pants-shittingly good lineup that so far includes Sleep, The Obsessed, Voivod and Om, among others. If you’re ever going to see a band, you’re never going to see them be better than they’ll be there anyway, so screw it.

I’ll be in Brooklyn next Tuesday (Sept. 20) anyway to catch Lo-Pan, The Brought Low and the almighty Suplecs at Union Pool for the show The Obelisk is co-presenting thanks to the generosity of BrooklynVegan. Please go. More info here, and I’ve also included the flyer at the bottom of this post, both because it’s informational and because I think it’s cool looking.

Hope you have a great and safe weekend. And if you don’t, I hope you put the forum to good use and get to bitching about it. I know I will.

Here’s that flyer:

More even than the heavy tones and slow pacing, what’s most striking about The Inside Room, the 2011 full-length debut from cleverly-named UK trio 40 Watt Sun, is the emotionality. Released by Cyclone Empire in European territories and Metal Blade in North America, the album finds former Warning guitarist/vocalist Patrick Walker regrouping with drummer Christian Leitch (also of The River) and newfound bassist William Spong for a collection of five tracks whose breadth isn’t so much the central focus as is the seemingly genuine feelings behind them. That is to say, The Inside Room, despite the inclusion of acoustic guitar layers here and there, doesn’t distinguish itself by the varied nature of its material as it does by the conviction with which the songs are performed. Formidable (both in runtime and effectiveness) opening duo “Restless” and “Open My Eyes” tap into a rare well of sadness that, while some British doom acts push into more dramatic territory, 40 Watt Sun manage excellently to balance with the force of the music.

The Inside Room is nonetheless in the British tradition, but greatly helped by Walker’s vocals, which are stronger and more melodically capable than those one might find on albums from typically-thought-of UK acts like My Dying Bride or Paradise Lost. Mostly what 40 Watt Sun would have in common with either of those bands is the willingness to convey a certain wistfulness or regret through songs, but it feels like much less of a performance on “Open My Eyes,” and I’m inclined to believe the morose stomp of that song comes from an authentic place. Both that song and “Restless” before it hover around 10:45 in length (the opener one second more and “Open My Eyes” one less), and likewise, they follow a similar pacing and structure, typified by slow, distorted riffs, strong but not hooky choruses and acoustic endings. With the shorter “Between Times” (6:55), Spong makes his presence more felt with liquid bass lines accented by Leitch’s prominent hi-hat and snare. Like the rest of The Inside Room, “Between Times” isn’t likely to be a radio hit, but Walker’s vocals rest easily over the music and the song’s tonality satisfies some of the same contemplative melancholy as Alcest – albeit in a different musical context.

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I don’t know whatever happened to Last Days Here, the documentary about Bobby Liebling, but the When the Screams Come DVD that Metal Blade is putting out at the end of the month isn’t it. It’s Pentagram‘s performance at the 2010 Maryland Death Fest, which has an appeal all its own, but I was looking forward to seeing that doc and hope it makes its way out soon in one form or another.

This was posted on the forum earlier today, but here it is with the DVD cover too:

Metal Blade Records is proud to release the first ever Pentagram DVD in the 40-year history of the band! When The Screams Come features a full Pentagram show, recorded on May 30, 2010, at the tail end of the Liebling / Griffin reunion dates at Sonar in Baltimore, Maryland, during Maryland Deathfest VIII! There is also exclusive interview footage with vocalist Bobby Liebling!

When the Screams Come track listing:
1. Day of Reckoning
2. Forever My Queen
3. Ask No More
4. Run My Course
5. You’re Lost, I’m Free
6. Review Your Choices
7. Relentless
8. All Your Sins
9. 20 Buck Spin
10. Sign of the Wolf
11. When the Screams Come

When the Screams Come will be released in North America on Aug. 30. Clips from the DVD as well as music from the band’s latest album, Last Rites, can be seen and heard now on metalblade.com/pentagram. Several pre-order bundles are available with Last Rites vinyl, an exclusive t-shirt and more. Fans can also purchase limited colored vinyl European imports of Last Rites all exclusively on Metal Blade‘s Indiemerch webstore HERE.

More than 20 years into their career, Irish metallers Primordial are riding the crest of their greatest successes yet. Their 2007 full-length, To the Nameless Dead was the best album of that year and brought them not only their highest sales, but also the opportunity to tour North America for the first time as one of the head acts on the PaganFest, effectively placing them in a leadership role of the pagan metal movement. And deservedly so. Rooted in black metal (Metal Blade has reissued their earlier albums for anyone wishing to explore their formative works), Primordial’s sound is folk metal without the silliness or the costuming. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of drama in Primordial, but it comes from the music itself and the performance of frontman Alan “Nemtheanga” Averill, not from the antlers strewn about the stage. As I recall from seeing them on that tour, a trenchcoat and an Irish flag on one of the several guitar stacks was about as far as they went.

On that level, some of the material on their latest offering, Redemption at the Puritan’s Hand (also Metal Blade) could be seen as “playing it up.” Indeed, even the title lends itself to being taken as a reference to the band’s relatively newfound success on American shores – the US being the “puritan” in question – after so long toiling in obscurity. And with several of the earlier tracks especially featuring direct address from Averill to his audience in the lyrics – “Rise my brothers/Rise from your graves/No grave is deep enough/To keep us in chains” from memorable opener “No Grave Deep Enough” – and “I’ve told you once/I’ve told you a thousand times/No regrets/No remorse” from “Bloodied Yet Unbowed,” which is perhaps Primordial’s most explicit exploration of their own circumstances to date, one might call Redemption at the Puritan’s Hand their most crowd-conscious work yet. In the chorus of “No Grave Deep Enough” comes a genuine folk metal progression, which isn’t something they’ve actually done before (they’ve always been more Bathory than Skyclad), however much they’ve been saddled with that genre designation in reviews. I won’t call it a capitulation, because I don’t believe a band goes 20-plus years doing whatever the fuck they want and then gets a taste of mainstream metal success and suddenly abandons the ethic that got them there, but Primordial are a smart enough act to know what works for them, and on Redemption at the Puritan’s Hand, that’s exactly what they’re playing to. In a way, it’s meeting expectation in the songwriting, but there’s no question that Primordial are still engaging their followers on their own terms.

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The Pentagram story is as long as the story of heavy metal itself. In 2011, vocalist Bobby Liebling marks 40 years since the inception of the seminal Washington D.C. (it’s the “Doom Capitol” for a reason) outfit, and with the much-anticipated release of Pentagram’s Last Rites – a title they’ve been tossing around since this latest inception of the band got going in 2009 – the start of their fifth decade could legitimately be a new beginning for them. Liebling, who has a legacy of drug abuse trumped only by his band’s influence, is reportedly clean and staying that way. Now married with a daughter (of doom), he’s also reunited once more with guitarist Victor Griffin (also of Place of Skulls and Death Row), whose mere presence goes a long way in making the difference between Last Rites being Pentagram, the band, and The Bobby Liebling Show. Together with bassist Greg Turley (also Place of Skulls and Griffin’s nephew) and Place of Skulls drummer Tim Tomaselli, Pentagram 2011 present the first new studio album under the moniker in seven years, and easily the best batch of new material they’ve had in more than a decade.

Of course, Last Rites isn’t all new material. Catchy single “Into the Ground” and hard-hitting closer “Nothing Left” date back to Liebling’s pre-Pentagram band, Stone Bunny’s 1970 album, Nothing Left, “Call the Man” dates back to demo tapes from 1971, and Last Rites highlights “Walk in Blue Light” and “Everything’s Turning to Night” were available in rougher versions on Relapse Records’ First Daze Here (2002) and First Daze Here Too (2006) collections of vintage ‘70s-era material. That still leaves six of the 11 total tracks unaccounted for in Liebling’s vast and sometimes murky catalog, and though a song like “Treat Me Right” has that classic Pentagram feel, it’s easy to hear the modernity on songs like “8,” “Windmills and Chimes,” “American Dream” (on which Griffin takes the lead vocal with Liebling backing during the chorus), “Horseman” and “Death in First Person,” which, while definitely still riff-based and in line with what one might expect from Pentagram, have more complexity to them – especially in Griffin’s guitar – than the older, more rudimentary material. I’ll add also that my estimation of what’s new and what’s not (apart from what can be found on prior releases) is speculative on my part and just based on what I’m hearing in the music. In a career as long and

The effect that mix of old and new has is that Last Rites comes across as a healthily varied collection of songs. “8” is perhaps the most satisfying of the new-sounding cuts, and the record as a whole isn’t without its missteps, but taken in the context of both the Pentagram history and 2004’s disappointing Show ‘em How outing, it’s hard to think of Last Rites as anything but a net victory both for the band and longtime fans. They make the right move opening with “Treat Me Right” and Griffin’s signature (and fucking excellent) guitar tone ringing out like a beacon letting you know this is, in fact, a Pentagram record you’ve just put on. The song is short, repetitive of its title line, and as I already noted, vintage Pentagram. I’d say it’s definitely older, but can’t find it on any previous release, so can’t be sure. In any case, it’s an excellent show of what this version of the band – over the years, more people have been in and out of Pentagram than almost any other of the Doom Capitol bands – can do. To be fair, they’ve had something to prove all along since Liebling got the band going again, and it’s obvious the intent behind starting Last Rites with “Treat Me Right” was in shutting up the better part of the doubters out there among both critics and the general listening public. There’s no arguing with it.

Second track “Call the Man” has, like most of the songs, an excellent solo from Griffin, but also a classic stomp in its central riff that seems to go further than the mere 3:49 it lasts. Liebling is one of the rare vocalists in metal who can give a sense of his showmanship on a studio album and not fall completely flat, and that’s clearly at play here, but when it comes right down to it, the lyrics leave me wanting and there are other cuts on Last Rites I think might have worked better to back up “Treat Me Right.” To the credit of the band as a whole, Turley doesn’t get lost in the melee of leads and crash hits, and the material across the board sounds thick and heavy. There’s something to be said for striking that balance, and even though there are some less than landmark moments throughout, the sound of Last Rites in general is perfect for what Pentagram should be doing after 40 years. They’re neither trying to ape their ‘70s sound (as many are), nor affecting some bizarre and wrongly interpreted take on “today’s metal.” The vision of Last Rites is that of an accomplished doom band claiming their due. As the album proceeds, they seem more and more likely to get it.

It’s the first of the two Stone Bunny inclusions and Pentagram played it on their most recent live shows, and sure enough, “Into the Ground” proves a high point of Last Rites as well. It’s an excellent balance of doomed atmosphere, classic heavy rock and Griffin’s added ringing notes to the chorus do well to blend it in among the newer of the songs. Liebling seems to relax a bit on the vocals as compares to “Call the Man,” and as he double-tracks the chorus, his voice seems to be in the best shape it’s been in, in a long time, and it doesn’t sound like studio trickery. Last Rites is unquestionably a modern production, and there are liberal effects put on Liebling’s voice, but the underlying performance is there to start with, as it has to be for him to be able to pull off the material. “Into the Ground” leads almost directly into “8,” which starts with Griffin playing subdued notes over Tomaselli’s tom work before launching into one of Last Rites’ most effective riffs. The verses return to that quieter feel, and Liebling plays to that, but a driving chorus ups the energy, and as the longest song on the album at 5:02, it’s also a highlight among the newer-seeming pieces. Griffin shows personality in his encompassing layers of guitar, and though it’s moodier than “Treat Me Right” or even “Into the Ground,” the lyrical chronicle of Liebling’s dark times feels heartfelt and is all the more compelling for it.

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No sense in delaying this one, the headline pretty much says it all. The Last Rites, the new album from doom legends Pentagram, is due out April 12 on Metal Blade.

The PR wire speaks:

Pentagram, who has been churning out widely admired hard rock/doom metal for over four decades, has just revealed the tracklisting and artwork to their highly anticipated full-length album, Last Rites. Last Rites, out on April 12 via Metal Blade Records, contains 11 new tracks of behemoth tunes that fans have been clamoring for since the last Liebling/Griffin masterpiece was released in 1994 (Be Forewarned).

Last Rites tracklisting:
1. Treat Me Right
2. Call the Man
3. Into the Ground
4. 8
5. Everything’s Turning to Night
6. Windmills and Chimes
7. American Dream
8. Walk in Blue Light
9. Horseman
10. Death in 1st Person
11. Nothing Left

Cover art for Last Rites was handled by Mo Moussa (website here) who is best known for his work with Marvel & DC Comics. Mo Moussa‘s other credentials include New Line Cinema, Nickelodeon as well as the four major TV networks. A Philly native and a huge fan of underground music, his work also graces the covers of several of his favorite local bands including Total Fucking Destruction.

This one speaks for itself. Or at least the PR wire speaks for it:

Canadian stoner metallers Bison B.C., who were scheduled to play a special one-off show at Seattle‘s El Corazon this past weekend with NOLA sludge heathens Eyehategod, were unable to cross the border and thus, did not play the gig.

Comments guitarist/vocalist James Farwell of the ordeal: “Due to our vicious plot to undermine the American economy and to destroy the citizens of the United States of America‘s belief in freedom and baseball or whatever, we weren’t allowed to cross that fascinating imaginary line. More likely due to a fucking clerical error somewhere in Corporate America, the fine people at Homeland Security had no choice but to keep Americans secure from us dirty fucking Canadians. But fear not my fellow poser Canadians, we will get our fucking paper work in order soon enough and be down destroying things before you can say, ‘Does Celine Dion shit in the fucking woods?!,’ — and yes indeed she does. Peace on Earth.”

Legendary American doom guitarist Victor Griffin — of Death Row, Place of Skulls and Pentagram — and I spoke over the course of two consecutive nights. When I called the first night for the interview, he was in the car, listening to an early mix of Last Rites, the new album by Pentagram — whom he rejoined earlier this year — and though that wasn’t the intended topic of the discussion, it was bound to take up some of the time.

What instigated the conversation was the newest record by Place of Skulls — Griffin‘s priority band. Dubbed As a Dog Returns, the album is unquestionably a reboot for the trio of Griffin, bassist Lee Abney (also of Death Row, who reunited for this year’s Roadburn festival in The Netherlands) and drummer Tim Tomaselli. In addition to getting back to their doomed roots, As a Dog Returns also revitalizes Griffin‘s lyrical explorations of his Christian faith, songs like “Breath of Life” and “He’s God” as open and honest in their subject matter as I found Griffin to be in our talk.

The second night of the interview, Griffin was in his studio working on some solo overdubs for Last Rites, and as we moved from Place of Skulls and his beliefs to his return to Pentagram and working once again with vocalist Bobby Liebling, whose sobriety has been discussed here in the past, Griffin took a step back to take a look at both bands’ overall place in doom, and his as well, opining on why in its 30-plus years as a genre, doom has never really hit the mainstream in the way of some other styles, and whether or not he’d even want it to.

Fact of the matter is this: I could go on and on about what Victor Griffin said or whatever, but what it rounds out to is this is one of the best interviews I’ve ever done. For The Obelisk or any other outlet. Victor Griffin was more sincere in his answering my questions than I could have possibly asked, and at the end of the second phone call, I felt like I genuinely knew more about his perspectives on life, music, and God. I hope that as you read through the 7,400-word exchange (with a centered photo to differentiate between the two days), that comes across more than anything else.

Q&A is after the jump. Please enjoy.

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Hey, it’s Friday. You want to let off a little steam at the office. All of a sudden, here comes your favorite stoner blog The Obelisk with two tracks from Bison B.C.‘s awesome Dark Ages, and next thing you know, you’ve got your little computer speakers turned up all the way, your shirt ripped open and you’re swinging your work chair around like a lion tamer to fend off security as they try to escort your wild-eyed ass out of the building. So it goes, my friends.

Dark Ages was released earlier this year on Metal Blade, and to support it, the Canuck four-piece has already toured with High on Fire, Black Cobra and Helmet, and on Sunday, they start a month-long European run with Coliseum that’s bound to be a blast. In honor of the tour and just because the record rules and needs sweet love, I’ve been authorized to stream the songs below. Dig ‘em and try not to get too violent.

Bison B.C., “Stressed Elephant” from Dark Ages

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Bison B.C., “Melody, This is for You” from Dark Ages

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Want more info? Well, there’s a review here and an interview here. Have at it.

…Of course, they’re taking the scenic route, on a tour that will go up and down the West Coast and into Canada for a couple dates. I can only imagine good times will be had by all and that Bison B.C. will demolish audiences are they are apt to do.

As you peruse the PR wire info and tour dates below, make sure you get a look at the description of Helmet‘s sound. I never thought of them as being particularly Zeppelin-esque. Am I wrong on that one? Check it out:

The Vancouver-based band Bison B.C. have just confirmed a two-week plus tour with legendary alternative metal band Helmet, who are known for fusing Zeppelin-esque riffing with a vehement post-hardcore precision, augmented by dense chords and offbeat time signatures. Bison B.C. will join Helmet when the tour kicks off on Wednesday September 8th in Sacramento, CA at Harlow’s Night Club. The tour finishes up on Sunday September 26th at BriXton in Redondo Beach, CA.

Guitarist and vocalist James Farwell comments, “I first started listening to Helmet when I was doing bonelesses and acid drops wasted in back alleys with big pants and small wheels; a long fucking time ago. Now my body is a jerk, but I still think of them when I drop tune — it is a fucking god damn honor to tour with Helmet.”

Sept. 8 Sacramento, CA Harlow’s Night Club
Sept. 10 Oakland, CA The Uptown
Sept. 11 San Jose, CA The Blank Club
Sept. 13 Portland, OR Dante’s
Sept. 14 Seattle, WA Showbox at The Market
Sept. 16 Vancouver, BC Venue
Sept. 18 Edmonton, AB The Starlite Room
Sept. 19 Calgary, AB Dickens Pub
Sept. 21 Casper, WY Downtown Grill & Venue
Sept. 23 Tempe, AZ The Clubhouse
Sept. 24 Santa Ana, CA Galaxy Theatre
Sept. 25 San Diego, CA The Casbah
Sept. 26 Redondo Beach, CA BriXton

Dublin, Ireland‘s Primordial are nothing if they’re not hard to classify. The band, formed in 1987, could have been called black metal in their earliest work, but have long since transcended such easy genre-tagging. Because the lyrics of frontman Alan Averill come from a specifically Irish perspective and Ciáran MacUiliam (he and bassist Pól “Paul” MacAmlaigh are the remaining founding members of the band) has never been shy about incorporating Celtic influences, Primordial saw a major profile upgrade as part of the folk metal explosion in 2006-2008. In 2009, they toured the US for the first time as part of PaganFest.

Like many Americans, my first exposure to the band was 2005′s The Gathering Wilderness, which was their fifth album overall but first for Metal Blade Records, who also released To the Nameless Dead in 2007. By my judgment, To the Nameless Dead was the best album that came out that year, and though it would be two more years before I was able to catch the band live, I was still thrilled to do so. Likewise, now that Primordial have issued their first live DVD, All Empires Fall, I was equally excited to interview Alan Averill.

Averill is known for his opinions on a range of topics both music-related and not almost as much as his brash stage persona, and though All Empires Fall was the impetus for the conversation, there was more I wanted to get a sense of his feelings on social issues in his home country, where the Catholic church had at the time of our discussion just been in the news following more reports of sexual abuse by priests, and, by Averill‘s account, society has more or less collapsed.

To quote Marty DiBergi, “I got that. I got more. A lot more.” In the following Q&A, Alan Averill talks about the state of Ireland, his feelings on nationalism, economic hardships and rails against venues in the US for taking a percentage of merch sales from bands (which I’d never heard of before), through it all showing every ounce of the passion he carries with him into shows and onto albums.

Please enjoy the interview after the jump.

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