By now, you probably know that YOB were hand-picked to open for apparently-revived progressive metallers Tool — who are also supposedly going to have a new album out this year — on Tool‘s upcoming winter tour. If you hadn’t heard, no worries, the info’s here. Just a bit ago, YOB announced a string of headlining dates around the run of shows, some of which will also include a solo set from frontman Mike Scheidt, whose acoustic debut is also set to be released in 2012. Look forward to that, but in the meantime, here’s the poster with the info. Click to enlarge, as always:

This news was kicking around the forum and Thee Facebooks yesterday, but the official release came in on the PR wire last night, so it seemed only appropriate to post it here. Congratulations to Eugene, Oregon, space doomers YOB, who just happened to release my favorite album of 2011, on landing an opening spot for Tool‘s upcoming North American dates. I’m not sure how I actually feel about it, as I hadn’t really planned on seeing Tool (ever) again but don’t think I can let a YOB gig pass unattended, but whether or not I show up, it’s well-deserved on the band’s part. No argument from me there.

Here’s the press release:

Oh, what a year it has been for the mighty doom metallers YOB! First they release one of the most highly respected albums in recent memory with Atma via Profound Lore. Now the band is happy to announce that they will be direct support to TOOL on the progressive titans’ upcoming Jan/Feb North American tour. With two behemoths such as this, fans can expect one of the most impressive tours of the year!

The following dates have been announced with more to be unveiled in the coming days.

01/28 TD Garden Boston, MA
01/29 Susquehanna Bank Center Camden, NJ
01/31 Mohegan Sun Arena Uncasville, CT
02/01 Izod Center East Rutherford, NJ
02/03 TBA
02/04 Bojangles’ Coliseum Charlotte, NC
02/06 Bank Atlantic Center Sunrise, FL
02/07 UCF Arena Orlando, FL
02/08 Gwinnett Center Arena Duluth, GA

The Profound Lore debut from Arkansas doom outfit Pallbearer is called Sorrow and Extinction, and it’s due out Feb. 21, 2012. I guess it was a couple weeks ago, as I started putting together the post for the 2011 readers poll, that I started thinking more about 2012 releases and what was to come, rather than looking back on the year that this one has been. And today, I got to hear this album from Pallbearer for the first time, and yesterday, I got to review the Orange Goblin record, and I feel like things are going to be pretty good going into next year.

What works most for me about “An Offering of Grief,” which is the track you can play above if you haven’t yet, is that it matches blow for blow with 40 Watt Sun as regards emotionality, but marries that side of doom with thickened, almost specifically American modern doom tonality. The spaced-out nooding after the 5:20 mark as well is bizarrely intricate, and it speaks to the individuality of the album as a whole, into which I’m looking forward to digging deeper.

That’s a while off, yet. This coming week, I’ll have reviews of the new live Rotor and several other albums, as well as new music from Lantlôs and (I hope) my interview with Eric Wagner, formerly of Trouble and currently of Blackfinger, as well as the returned Six Dumb Questions with German stoner rockers Wight, who, if you didn’t catch it yet, were also featured in the latest podcast, which went up yesterday. I downloaded the six-hour version today at work, and have been making my way through it ever since. So far, if I do say so myself, it rules.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, the Saint Vitus-centric interview with Tony Reed is definitely worth a look, and a special thanks to everyone who checked out and commented on the several live reviews this week and the 290 people so far who liked the Top 20 of 2011 post. I can’t wait to compile the results of everyone’s lists and get that up, but I guess we have a couple weeks. Thanks also to everyone who has submitted a list already. If you haven’t the link is above or in the sidebar.

Good stuff. Thanks for checking in this week, either way. Hope you have a great and safe weekend leading up to the holidays this coming week, and I hope to see you on the forum and back here Monday for more silliness.

…Sort of. They’re not exactly sharing a van — or, if they are, it has escape pods out the sides or something (which would rule). What seems to be the case for this run of shows is that The Atlas Moth have two-weeks booked across the US and Kowloon Walled City and Batillus are meeting up with them along the way. It’s a killer package if you have to live somewhere where you can catch all three, but even if not, any of the above makes for some pretty solid destruction.

This came in on the PR wire:

The Atlas Moth have released the album of their careers with An Ache for the Distance, their Profound Lore debut, and Batillus kicked off the year in rare form with their visceral effort Furnace. These bands are undoubtedly some of the most ferocious in today’s metal scene and now they have joined forces for a tour that is sure to leave your city devastated this fall. Joined by Kowloon Walled City, the trek will be one of the most impressive live attacks of the year and you will not want to miss the epic performances of this trio.

The Atlas Moth, Batillus & Kowloon Walled City:
11/09 Minneapolis, MN 7th Street Entry NO KWC
11/10 Fargo, ND The New Direction NO KWC
11/12 Portland, OR East End No Batillus
11/13 Seattle, WA Highline No Batillus
11/14 Boise, ID The Shredder No Batillus
11/15 Las Vegas, NV Yayo Tacos No Batillus
11/16 Phoenix, AZ Yucca Tap Room No Batillus
11/17 Capistrano Beach, CA Coconuts 
11/18 Los Angeles, CA Bow & Sparrow 
11/19 San Francisco, CA Hemlock Tavern No Batillus
11/20 Salt Lake City, UT Burt’s Tiki Lounge NO KWC
11/21 Denver, CO Moe’s NO KWC
11/22 Kansas City, MO Riot Room NO KWC
11/23 Chicago, IL Subterranean NO KWC

Batillus Off Dates:
10/26 Brooklyn, NY Acheron w/ Inter Arma, Belus
11/07 Indianapolis, IN The Vollrath w/ Late August, Chinaski
11/08 Madison, WI Wisco
11/12 Seattle, WA Highline w/ Natür
11/13 Portland, OR The Know w/ Diesto, Natür
11/15 Eugene, OR or Chico, CA TBA
11/16 San Francisco, CA Elbo Room w/ Prizehog
11/19 Las Vegas, NV Yayo Taco

The above clip of trad doomers Apostle of Solitude playing the ultra-melancholy “December Drives Me to Tears” from their 2010 album Last Sunrise was filmed by Steve Janiak of fellow Indianapolis rockers Devil to Pay and mixed with audio captured by Michael Lindenauer, a noted taper who also happens to manage Iron Man. Pretty good draw for Apostle of Solitude there, and like they were at SHoD (where both Lindenauer and Janiak also put in an appearance; the latter on guitar), they’re spot on in their performance of the song.

It’s not exactly doom season yet around here — I tend to focus more on this kind of stuff when it’s cold out, and I’ve got the air conditioning on full blast as I type this — but it’s been awfully riff-rocky around here lately, and I thought some good doom might mix things up. Wouldn’t you know my head went right to Apostle of Solitude when I thought of the words “good doom.” Go figure.

Next week I’ll be posting my interview with John Garcia of Kyuss (Lives!), so look out for that. We’ll have another installment of the Orange Goblin studio update series, and the dudes in Wizard’s Beard also turned in their Six Dumb Questions emailer, so hopefully that will be up as well. Also, if all goes according to plan, reviews of Lord, Dixie Witch and others. Weedeater is playing in Brooklyn tomorrow night if you’re around. I’ve got my niece tomorrow, so I won’t be at the show, but if you go, hope it’s a blast. I think Oxbow is playing too. Heavy.

Speaking of heavy shows in Brooklyn, don’t forget that Sept. 20, The Obelisk and BrooklynVegan are teaming up to bring you a night Sept. 20 at Union Pool with three of Small Stone Records‘ finest acts: Suplecs, The Brought Low and Lo-Pan. More info on that here and here. I’ve been thinking of it as an unofficial advance party for New Yorkers ahead of the Small Stone showcase in Philly that weekend.

Wherever you end up tomorrow or beyond, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. I have some news I need to catch up on putting on the forum, so I’ll see you there and back here Monday.

Where Despond — the Profound Lore debut from Nashville, Tennessee, four-piece Loss – departs from most of the funeral doom genre is in its near-absolute lack of hope. Generally, there’s something in a funeral doom record that brings some element of beauty to its otherwise emotionally destroyed approach, an acoustic part, pretty interlude, whatever. Something for the listener to hang onto and have some feeling like it isn’t just all blackness and despair. Loss, on the other hand, are pure(st) misery. Even on the two-minute piano interlude title-track which comes on Despond’s second half, the notes are low and underscored by depressive drones. Even the ending of “Silent and Completely Overcome,” which features the only non-growled vocals on the record, is depressed beyond reproach. Listening to Loss is like being opened wide and having all your self-inflicted wretchedness stare you in the face. For just under 67 minutes straight. Maybe there’s something beautiful in that, in the rawness of it, the reality, but that doesn’t at all make it a pleasant experience.

And of course, that’s the point. You’re not supposed to put on Despond when you’re looking for windows-down-driving music. It’s not the soundtrack to your next sunny barbecue. Hell, I’m pretty sure if you played “Open Veins to a Curtain Closed,” which follows a brief spoken/guitar intro – also depressing – on a sunny day, even the sun would want to kill itself. I’m exaggerating the point, but guitarist/vocalist Mike Meacham’s low-gurgling death growl sits atop riffing so melancholic and slow that if you don’t ask yourself what the point of living is at least once over the course of the album, you might be a sociopath. There are breaks periodically from the titanic undulating of the guitar, but they offer little respite in terms of mood when, in the case of “Open Veins to a Curtain Closed,” they lead to a black metal-esque faster section, playing one side of the genre off another. Loss’ darkness is complete, and though it’s titled like a punk song, “Cut Up, Depressed and Alone” takes the striking lead lines of earlier Opeth and infects them with a bleakness that almost makes you forget the song is mid-paced and not the same grueling speed as its predecessor. As Despond progresses, it’s not so much engaging as it is overwhelming. Meacham – joined by guitarist Tim Lewis, bassist John Anderson and drummer Jay LeMaire – sticks to his growling even in the quiet part of “Cut Up, Depressed and Alone,” and the effect on the listener is the same as ever. Painful.

“Deprived of the Void” is three minutes of ultra-distorted noise that serves as a lead-in for “An Ill Body Seats My Sinking Sight,” which at 7:43 follows a similar course to some of the earlier material but features more prominent drumming from LeMaire. The tonal thickness purveyed by Anderson, Lewis and Meacham should go without saying in this genre, but as Despond progresses, the encompassing tonal weight of it plays a huge part in carrying across the emotional affect. “An Ill Body Seats My Sinking Sight” doesn’t take the same kind of break as a song like “Open Veins to a Curtain Closed,” which approaches the musing air of ‘90s European death/doom while also cutting out all the dramatic elements thereof, instead slowing to a crashing pace that would do Buried at Sea proud. As “Despond” opens the second half of the record, the temptation sinks in to take Loss in pieces, to break it up into multiple sessions, but I think that’s a testament to the band having accomplished what they set out to do. Despond isn’t supposed to be easy to listen to. It’s supposed to be hard, and miserable. Life is hard and miserable. If you want escapism, go listen to whatever pretty girl the pop overlords are exploiting this week. “Shallow Pulse,” which returns Despond to its woeful course has subtle pulsations from Anderson underlying the riffing of Lewis and Meacham. They stay deep in the mix, but show something of an experimental edge to Loss they haven’t yet displayed. Easy to miss the first time around, but interesting enough to keep an ear out for.

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This past weekend, I made my way south to Philadelphia to catch the current YOB/Dark Castle tour. I’d already seen the two bands as they stomped Manhattan into the ground earlier in the week, but the prospect of another show within a meager two hours’ drive, on a Saturday, was too much to resist. When I got to the Kung Fu Necktie and saw it was basically a small bar with a stage area in back, I was all the more thrilled at the chance to witness YOB‘s powerful live sound in such a confined space. It was gonna rule, I assured myself.

I assume because Kung Fu Necktie is in a residential neighborhood and they’ve had noise complaints, the show had an 11PM curfew. When irono-post-punkers Psychic Teens finished at 9PM or so and neither Dark Castle nor YOB were to be found in the venue, it was immediately apparent something was up. As it turned out, they’d been stuck for however long in traffic coming from their Canadian show the night before. They were rushing to get to Philly, but for the crowd standing there, we didn’t know if or when they’d arrive.

And if they’d canceled the show, saying that they wouldn’t have enough time to play and get done by the curfew, well, shit happens, that’s life. But they didn’t. YOB and Dark Castle rolled in a bit after 9:45, immediately set up their gear and got to work kicking ass. Even Rob Shaffer — Dark Castle‘s drummer pulling double-duty filling in for Travis Foster in YOB — breaking his bass drum pedal didn’t curb the momentum. Curfew was extended till 11:30PM, YOB got to play four songs in 40 minutes, and peace and doom reigned in the City of Brotherly Love.

What was most striking about it, though — aside from the fact that they did it — was that before their set started, YOB guitarist, vocalist, principle songwriter and, on this tour, sole founding member Mike Scheidt told the crowd, “We’ve got 40 minutes and we’re going to give it everything we have. We are YOB” (or something thereabouts), before launching into the most righteous rendition of “Quantum Mystic” from 2005′s The Unreal Never Lived that I’ve ever heard. By the time they finished playing, the delay didn’t matter, the lost songs didn’t matter. There was nothing that was going to stop that crowd from loving every minute of YOB‘s performance. Damn what could have been, we were there for what was, and Scheidt, Shaffer and bassist Aaron Reiseberg kept true to his word.

YOB‘s second album for Profound Lore, called Atma, will see release Aug. 16. The record, as Scheidt explains in the interview to follow, takes its name from the spiritual concept of the self as being a part of an underlying current of selves, all joined in one essential experience. Where Western tradition has gummed this into theistic dogma, the notion of “atma” is more obscure and thus even more universal: The self as connection to everything around it. As I stood in Kung Fu Necktie and watched the crowd around me get absorbed into Atma opener “Prepare the Ground,” it was hard not to feel some understanding of what Scheidt was talking about. They were transcendentally heavy.

We spoke at the beginning of the tour, via phone, as the two bands ran errands in Iowa, and I’ll say flat out it’s the best interview I’ve done in a long time. The guitarist’s openness, honesty and genuine nature is apparent in his every answer, and his discussion late in the conversation of the nature of ambition and how it relates to YOB presents an awareness of perspective that, much like his musical approach, is entirely his own.

I won’t delay it further. Please find enclosed the 5,700-word Q&A transcription of my interview with Mike Scheidt of YOB, and enjoy.

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I can’t remember the last time I felt so glad to be in the city. With Batillus opening for them (who I unfortunately missed) at Le Poisson Rouge on the venerated and expensive Village stretch of Bleecker Street, YOB and Dark Castle each stormed through a monstrously doomed set of riff-based communion. The sharing of drummer Rob Shaffer only added to the sense of camaraderie and community, and though it was some of the heaviest, darkest, thickest tonality I’ve heard in a live setting this year, I couldn’t help but smile, and by no means was I the only one.

Hard to know what to say about this kind of night without getting bogged down in hyperbole, because even the next afternoon, I still feel charged up from it — and while we’re talking about after effects, my ears are also still ringing (or at least the left one; the right doesn’t so much do that anymore) — but it was like everything came together. Dark Castle have already released one of 2011′s most complex albums, and YOB‘s Atma has yet to leave my CD player since going in. Both bands have an obvious and spiritual connection to their music, and last night, it was like they stood on stage and held their arms out and invited everyone else in. Who wouldn’t go?

Le Poisson Rouge is a medium-size room. Not a bar (though there is one), but not a bigger venue. Short ceiling, but I knew from seeing Shrinebuilder there in 2009 that that would only mean the sound had no choice but to pummel your skull. I’d never seen Dark Castle before, which is kind of hard to believe considering how much they tour, but I knew enough from hearing Surrender to all Life Beyond Form that I didn’t want to miss them now. Following a sushi dinner with The Patient Mrs., I made my way to Bleecker and got in a bit before they went on.

One thing about Dark Castle — and I consider it an admirable thing about them — is it’s just the two of them on stage. The recently-interviewed Stevie Floyd on guitar and vocals and double-duty trooper of the night Rob Shaffer on drums. Where on Surrender to all Life Beyond Form, the songs are filled out by the synth/Moog/noise contributions of producer Sanford Parker and several guest vocalists, including YOB‘s own Mike Scheidt, that kind of thing just can’t be replicated in a live setting without excessive sampling or time spent in front of a laptop and not actually playing the songs.

I won’t say one approach is better or worse than the other, because when it came down to the material itself last night, Dark Castle killed it. The sound may not have been as full as on the record, but “Surrender to all Life Beyond Form” was one of the highlights of the show, and the rawer feel was a big part of why. That Floyd and Shaffer would be on the same page in their presence isn’t necessarily surprising — because, again, they tour all the time — but the power in their delivery was readily apparent and picked up most if not all of the slack in the noise department. Even without YOB following, it would have been well worth the trip for their set alone.

But YOB was following, and having seen them before at the Planet Caravan fest in North Carolina, I had some idea of what to expect. I parked myself up front while they were setting up and stayed there for most of their show, which — and I say this with all the nerdy glee I can muster — was amazing. It’s not that you listen to those records and think to yourself, “Wow, I bet this band sucks live,” but until you actually see it, until you actually feel the rumble of Scheidt‘s guitar and of Aaron Reiseberg‘s bass. Scheidt played with a full stack of Emperor cabs behind him and neither Reiseberg nor Shaffer (filling the role of Travis Foster for the tour) were lacking in volume or presence. It being YOB‘s first time in New York in more than half a decade — oh, the story I could tell you about the show they did at the Pyramid way back when — as a fan, I wanted everything to sound perfect, and it did.

They opened with “Quantum Mystic” from The Unreal Never Lived, an album the influence of which is only beginning to be felt six years after its release. Immediately, the crowd was on board, fists were raised, toasts were made, and heads — including my own — banged with abandon for the neck stiffness that might ensue this morning. I pulled my earplugs out. Worth it. “Quantum Mystic” led into “Prepare the Ground,” the opener from Atma, and that in turn to “Burning the Altar” from 2009′s The Great Cessation. One imagines that with a couple more albums under their belt, YOB will be able to do a full set of nothing but the killer tracks they start their records with. Certainly it was a welcome opening trio and a half-hour well spent. The crowd pressed and shifted and stumbled and loved it and I did likewise. I haven’t seen a set with that kind of impact since Neurosis at Roadburn.

Their ethereal space elements showed up in “The Great Cessation,” the titular closer of the album, which followed Atma‘s title cut — a little more complicated than the opener and thus not as immediately grasped by the audience who doesn’t have the record yet — and YOB shifted the tone of the show from planetary aural crush to dark matter drift. That album was my favorite of 2009, but I still feel like I got a new appreciation for “The Great Cessation” hearing it live. Reiseberg and Shaffer ran into some trouble during one of its drawn-out, patient instrumental passages, but were able to recovery swiftly enough. I don’t think anyone was about to complain, anyway.

For a finale, Scheidt called Floyd up to the stage for a scathing rendition of “Grasping Air” from The Unreal Never Lived, and (if I remember correctly; I might have this order wrong and if I do, I hope someone will correct me) rounded out the night with “Ball of Molten Lead” from 2004′s The Illusion of Motion. Considering the mass of pulp that YOB had by then beaten Le Poisson Rouge into, I can’t think of a more fitting conclusion. Like the rest of the show, I was just really, really glad to have been there to see it.

It’s a rare performance that pulls you out of everything else, that commands not only full attention, but a kind of dedication to it. When YOB finished, I felt like I’d been to the end of the universe and back. I don’t want to make it more than it was, because what it was was enough. If you were there, you know, and if not, hopefully next time you’ll find out.

More pics after the jump. As always, click any photo to enlarge.

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Tonight I was supposed to go to the ball game in hopes of seeing a certain shortstop get his 3,000th hit (being a numbers guy myself, I can appreciate that), but it got rained out. My backup was to catch Sourvein and Kings Destroy in Brooklyn, but by the time I’d driven back to Jersey from The Bronx, well, I’d already driven to The Bronx and back, and Brooklyn‘s even harder to get to, so my motivation was pretty much dead. I’ve no doubt all parties will survive and the show will go/has gone on despite my absence. If you went, I hope you had a good time. I hung around the house and failed at several endeavors in succession. Most you lose. Some you win.

I wanted to close out this week with something modern, melodically satisfying and heavy as all hell, and the 17-minute “We Can” from Grayceon‘s All We Destroy fits all those bills perfectly. In the interest of honesty, I’ll confess that I’m not listening to it as I write this — as is my usual habit — instead streaming the new Sungrazer album for the umpteenth time on the Dutch 3voor12 site, which you might recognize as being where all those Roadburn audio links lead.

Yesterday I talked with guitarist/vocalist Mike Scheidt from YOB — whose new album, Atma, was reviewed Wednesday — for about 50 minutes, from which I’ll put a Q&A together hopefully in the next week or two. The plan is to take pictures at their NYC show Tuesday and use them with the feature, but you never know, a piano might fall on my head. If one does, the interview’s done anyway. It was killer.

Next week, I’ll have a review of that show, plus new albums from Ramesses and Borgo Pass, among others. Next Friday is also the Truckfighters gig at the Cake Shop in NYC where if you tell them you read The Obelisk, you get in for free. More info on that is here, but the short version is it’s a pretty sweet deal, and I hope one you’ll take advantage of if you’re in the area. Next week I’m also going to go back and revisit the top albums list from last year and see how it holds up. That’ll be fun. Maybe just for me, but fun all the same.

Alright, now the Sungrazer‘s over and I’m listening to Grayceon. No regrets. Wherever you are, have a great and safe weekend. See you on the forum and back here Monday with a track from The Brought Low‘s new EP and other goodies.

YOB’s 2009 return, The Great Cessation, was fueled by a seething anger so visceral it practically stabbed its way out of the speakers. The Eugene, Oregon, trio’s first release for Profound Lore following a breakup after 2005’s landmark The Unreal Never Lived and the ensuing unsuccessful legal battle for frontman Mike Scheidt over the name of his subsequent project, Middian, its vitriol was well justified, but in the wake of the full-length’s release, YOB ascended, more or less, to the fore of their generation of doomers. Scheidt, then-new bassist Aaron Reiseberg and drummer Travis Foster were able to capitalize on a reception left for dead after The Unreal Never Lived and earned near-universal acclaim from fellow artists, critics and listeners at large.

That leaves Atma, the new follow-up to The Great Cessation and second Profound Lore offering, in a curious position. For the first time in their career, YOB are coming into an album as an established act with a widespread reputation and an expectation placed on their sound. Whether that played consciously or not into the writing process for these five tracks, I don’t know, but there exists on Atma a delicate balance of familiar elements and stylistic progressions that hints to a growing self-awareness on the part of the band.

All the more appropriate is the title, then, which refers to the Buddhist concept of the complete, spiritual self. This is lyrical ground that Scheidt – as YOB’s principal songwriter, guitarist and vocalist – has tread going back to the band’s beginnings in 2002’s Elaborations of Carbon or 2003’s Catharsis, but there’s a maturity of approach on Atma that speaks to the musical and personal growth they’ve undertaken since then. That self-awareness is pervasive, and one gets the sense from opener “Prepare the Ground” that Scheidt, who seems to pepper in grunts timed just to when the song’s several builds are paying off (the exclamation “Prepare!” at 6:43 that leads into the final movement being especially satisfying, though there’s still another “oogh” to come), and who also produced Atma, knows the effect each move the band is making will have.

What this essentially means is that the processes of figuring out how to be heavy, and of deciding what YOB should be on the most basic level, appear to be over. Atma signals the beginning of the refinement of those processes, and of their mastery.

I should say at this point (actually, I probably should have said already) that when it comes to YOB, I can’t even pretend at impartiality. I’m a fan of this band, having found them around Catharsis and nerded out at every step of their progression since then. Simply put, I think they’re one of the best acts of their generation, and I’ve long held the belief that their influence will be felt for a long time to come. One could argue it can already be seen in YOB’s peers, and Atma – the anticipation for which you could turn into bricks and build a skyscraper – has managed to meet every expectation I had for it. Scheidt’s production is (predictably) rawer than was Sanford Parker’s for The Great Cessation, but the songs here prove that YOB are unrelenting in their creative drive.

Conceptually, that’s even more respectable than the now-characteristic riffs and pulsating kick of “Prepare the Ground,” but when it comes to actually listening, it’s hard not to be engulfed by the sheer heaviness of Atma’s launch and leave all other contextual concerns behind. YOB started The Great Cessation with one of its strongest cuts as well – that being “Burning the Altar” – and “Prepare the Ground” has shades of that track in terms of methodology. From Scheidt’s contrasting growls and spacey wailing to Reiseberg’s huge-sounding low end and Foster’s groove-setting tom runs, it is YOB at their most YOBian and some of the most memorable material Atma has on offer. Beginning with a barely-audible exclamation and launching immediately into a series of chugging hits that sounds like it’s never going to end, the song gradually unfolds to a flowing monstrosity that, nonetheless, is underscored by a contemplative edge present on much of Atma – all the more fitting an opener.

Also evident in “Prepare the Ground” is an increase in melodic awareness on the part of Scheidt, and while that’s usually code for “They’re not as heavy as they used to be,” YOB avoid that trap entirely. Rather, the clean vocals of the verse and chorus complement the sway in the guitars and bass, and the song as a whole sounds that much heavier leading into the title track, which is both more lumbering musically and more tortured in its vocals. Mournful, semi-spoken cries and held chords take hold after an intro of a sampled storm, and “Atma” feels all-around more plodding than was “Prepare the Ground,” less outwardly riff-based.

That said, Atma’s title cut also has the honor of playing host to the chugging guitar triplets that have been a staple of YOB’s sound since they were so effectively put to use on The Unreal Never Lived closer, “The Mental Tyrant.” It was “Burning the Altar” on The Great Cessation, and like that song, the bass and drums drop out initially while Scheidt introduces the movement on guitar, but where “Atma” proves different is that instead of launching right into an über-groove and giving Atma an early apex, they sustain a complex pattern of off-time hits behind a sampled speech that explains the concept of atman as the spiritual self, complete self. In the song’s final moments, deathly growls lie under canned-sounding (there’s a name for that effect) vocals, providing a glimpse of YOB at their most tectonic that echoes into a couple seconds of silence before centerpiece “Before We Dreamed of Two” kicks in with an Eastern-scaled solo from Scheidt – perhaps some reciprocating influence from Dark Castle there – and more lowly-mixed samples topping one of Reiseberg’s most effective bass lines.

At 16 minutes, “Before We Dreamed of Two” is Atma’s longest track. This is a distinction usually reserved for the closer – see “The Great Cessation,” “The Mental Tyrant,” “The Illusion of Motion” from the 2004 Metal Blade debut of the same name, or the title-track from Catharsis – but the break from the pattern is welcome and more than justified by the song itself, which features one of Atma’s two guest appearances from Neurosis guitarist/vocalist Scott Kelly and is an indisputable high point of this stage in YOB’s tenure. In thinking back to the many ambient stretches that have cropped up in songs throughout their catalog, I can’t pull a match for it in terms of atmosphere, and when the build of the prior seven minutes comes to an excruciatingly slow close and the song drops to a sort of minimalist run of guitar lines, you just know something’s coming.

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Four years later, I remember getting Dark Castle‘s Flight of the Pegasus demo in the mail after hitting them up via MySpace to review it. The disc was a labeled CDR that came packaged between two taped-together pieces of cardboard. Its front cover was a sticker by guitarist/lead vocalist Stevie Floyd with the band’s logo on top and the name of the EP below. And the music was a live-recorded half-hour that boasted a Led Zeppelin cover and raw sounds that only gave the faintest hint of what was to come.

And when Dark Castle released Spirited Migration on At a Loss in 2009, the Floridian duo outdid themselves in terms of growth over the course of their time together. Floyd and drummer, sampler and vocalist Rob Shaffer arrived with a coherent vision of what they wanted their band to be, incorporating influences from world music and managing to balance the varying elements in their approach in such a way as to maximize both the aural brutality and atmospheric weight.

They toured hard for Spirited Migration, and that work is evident in their 2011 Profound Lore label debut, Surrender to all Life Beyond Form. It’s a record densely-packed with turns and musical twists — this second doomed to the point of cruelty and the next embroiled in ritualistic chanting or industrial beats — but what’s most staggering about it is Dark Castle has managed to take all of these things and turn them into one coherent statement of purpose. Teamed with Sanford Parker and seamlessly incorporating guest appearances from next-gen-heavy luminaries such as Nate Hall (U.S. Christmas), Mike Scheidt (YOB) and Blake Judd (Nachtmystium), Floyd and Shaffer proved able to maintain consistency in the face of a devastating creative scope.

Away in the mountains from her new home in the Pacific Northwest, when I talked to Floyd for the interview that follows, she was working on several art projects, including a Dark Castle shirt and finalizing the cover art for the new YOB record. Nonetheless, she took time out to discuss the breadth of Surrender to all Life Beyond Form, working closely with Parker in the studio, some of the musical concepts behind the writing for the album and a lot more. Her passion and existential connection to her work shone through in her honesty and openness regarding these processes, and I hope you get a sense of that reading.

Full 3,750-word Q&A is after the jump. Please enjoy.

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It’s short at just a bit under 34 minutes, but in that time, Floridian duo Dark Castle’s second full-length, Surrender to all Life Beyond Form, demonstrates dense atmospherics and a leap in creative expanse from their last offering, 2009’s Spirited Migration. That’s not to discount the progressive mindset of the debut (even their 2007 demo EP, Flight of the Pegasus showed their potential for covering a wide breadth), but even if you compare the titles of the two LPs, it’s clear Dark Castle were going for something farther reaching with their latest, which also serves as their Profound Lore debut. To aid them in the cause, guitarist/vocalist Stevie Floyd (also bass and piano on the record) and drummer/vocalist Rob Shaffer (also guitar and bass on the record) enlisted the help of producer Sanford Parker, who contributes Moog, synth and samples throughout Surrender to all Life Beyond Form and a formidable trio of guest vocalists in Nate Hall (U.S. Christmas), Blake Judd (Nachtmystium) and Mike Scheidt (YOB).

With such a slew of appearances across its tracks, one might expect Surrender to all Life Beyond Form to come off choppy or like a haphazard song-collection rather than a complete album idea, but nothing could be farther from reality. Surrender to all Life Beyond Form is so much an album that it’s easy to lose track of which cut you’re in at any given moment, and the appearances, be it from Parker, Hall, Judd or Scheidt, are so seamlessly interwoven with Floyd and Shaffer’s sound that one might miss them altogether if disinclined to explore the liner booklet to see Floyd’s visual artwork (Relapse Records artist-in-residence Orion Landau also contributed to the layout) or the lyrics to the songs and find the names listed there. Dark Castle’s sound on Surrender to all Life Beyond Form is as inclusive as it is expansive, touching on industrial elements, misanthropic drone metal and Eastern scales, Floyd’s guitar still finding room to work in memorable riffs amid her also-developing vocal style on the album’s opening title-track. Where Spirited Migration felt comprised mostly of growls vocally, even in the song “Surrender to all Life Beyond Form,” Floyd displays the fruits of Dark Castle’s hard road labor in cleaner, still vaguely tortured moans and wails, enhancing the bleak atmospherics of the track while also floating above them. The affect isn’t wholly unlike what Laura Pleasants sometimes brings to Kylesa (the crunch of the opener’s riff aids that comparison), but Dark Castle is altogether more doomed and lumbering sonically.

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Highly-stringed Salt Lake City five-piece SubRosa released their Strega full-length debut in 2008 on I Hate Records. Making the jump to Profound Lore for the 2011 follow-up, the band, which includes two violinists, guitar, bass and drums, now unveils No Help for the Mighty Ones, a varied 59 minutes of melancholic doom that, despite its inherent drama and “extra” instrumentation (I put “extra” in quotes there because the violins don’t actually feel extraneous or tacked onto the surrounding music), remains definitively American. No Help for the Mighty Ones was recorded by Andy Patterson (Iota, etc.), and though the structures are mostly open, SubRosa culls together a couple genuinely memorable moments throughout the eight tracks, the vocals of guitarist Rebecca Vernon having a haunting quality, backed by both violinists Kim Pack and Sarah Pendleton, and prove capable of more than the kind of post-metal sub-melodic monotony so many experimental outfits seem willing to settle for.

Drummer Zach Hatsis starts off album opener “Borrowed Time, Borrowed Eyes” with a war stomp and is soon joined by Vernon’s guitar. The song, which according to the liner notes is based lyrically on Cormac McCarthy’s novel 2006 The Road, is among the shorter of No Help for the Mighty Ones’ tracks at 5:51 (only “Whippoorwill” and “House Carpenter” are shorter), but still serves as a decent introduction to the wide breadth of the album. Aside from its “Hey, we read books” appeal, the rich tonality and textured feel of its ending movement is the first show of SubRosa’s melodic prowess. As the track leads directly into the brown-note bass intro of “Beneath the Crown,” handled by Dave Jones, it’s readily apparent SubRosa are casting a wide sonic net. It’s not so much a gradual build as a lull into soon-smashed security, but the band pulls it off well anyhow, Hatsis driving the move into faster revelations about three minutes in capped by frantic violin work and combined clean singing and screams. Magnus “Devo” Andersson, who also mixed Strega, does an excellent job balancing clarity among the instrumentation (not easy with some of the effects that come up) and the creation of an overall aural wash. The linear path “Beneath the Crown” follows is well worth following.

Structure, which has been alluded to already, is more of an issue when it comes to the track order itself than it is within the individual songs. No Help for the Mighty Ones peaks early with its most memorable and hardest-hitting cut, the 11:44 “Stonecarver,” which immediately follows “Beneath the Crown.” The five-piece do a good job using noise to bridge the gaps between songs, but Subrosa’s most effective build just arrives too soon, the track starting off with eerie half-whispered foreign-language spoken word over ringing out guitar and gradually moving from a darkened folk feel to a driving rhythm (if every album has to have its “Stones From the Sky” moment, this is it for SubRosa), the delivery of the title line, and an apex that’s no less exciting for how outwardly engaging it is. I’m not saying it needed to be the last track on No Help for the Mighty Ones, but even “The Inheritance,” which is probably better at least as far as the vocal melody and guitar line goes, is a comedown in terms of energy, and I find in listening I’m more inclined to long for what just passed than focus on what’s still coming.

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It was four years ago, so you’ll have to forgive me if I can’t remember just what it was that struck me as so problematic about cello-laden San Francisco three-piece Grayceon’s 2007 self-titled first album. I vaguely recall thinking the band were too smart for their own good, taking the tropes of doom and exploiting them while also somehow pretentiously positioning themselves above them intellectually. Or maybe I’m making that up and I just thought the songs sucked. I really don’t know. Whatever it was, it was enough to keep me away from 2008’s This Grand Show (released, like the first record, on Vendlus), and as Grayceon make their Profound Lore label debut with All We Destroy, and I revisit the trio’s sound – obviously developed some in the intervening time – it’s a mixture both intriguing and tight-knit. The cello of Jackie Perez Gratz (who has guested for Agalloch, Neurosis and Cattle Decapitation, and who also plays in Giant Squid) features heavily, counterbalanced by the guitar of Max Doyle and drums of Zack Farwell, both also of the thrash outfit Walken.

Gratz and Doyle contribute vocals to All We Destroy, though mostly the former, and Grayceon moves into and through different modes of heaviness as the six tracks play out. Second cut “Shellmounds” finds Farwell ripping through black metal blastbeats (cleverly mixed so as to not dominate Gratz’s overlying vocals), and opener “Dreamer Deceived” takes churning post-metal riffage and puts the onus on a vocal narrative and the varying atmosphere of the cello to stand Grayceon out, which, to the band’s credit, it does. Short cuts to quiet passages, interludes or whatever you’d want to call them, provide some respite from the crash, but there’s a tension in “Dreamer Deceived” that sets the tone for much of All We Destroy, and as Gratz and Doyle’s voices come together for combined semi-melodic chants, the experience is less that of a song than a performance. The diverse structures of the material – chorus-based but not necessarily chorus-dependent – feed that idea as well. Some background screaming (another black metal element to go with the drumming on “Shellmounds”) adds a glimpse of extremity, and the overall impression of the first two tracks is that while Grayceon have their feet in a variety of sounds, they feel no need to commit to one over the other. If you’re looking to pigeonhole them – as perhaps I was when I encountered their debut – they don’t make it easy.

“Shellmounds” has a satisfying linear build, made all the more effective by Doyle’s angular riff-work, but there’s no question that the meat of All We Destroy comes on with the staggering 17-minute “We Can.” Though it meanders some (how could it not?) with the metallic guitar at around eight minutes in, it’s Gratz’s most memorable vocal – the lines “As I live and breathe/You can’t save me” being especially chilling – and the point on All We Destroy where the band’s dynamic range most shines. An interplay of screams past the 10-minute mark reminds some of earlier Kylesa, but here, Grayceon are in territory all their own, and two minutes later, when they return to the huge central figure riff – the massive fucking plod of it – it’s as satisfying as the album gets, outshining the even-slower section that follows, Gratz running counter to Doyle and adding, true to the nature of her instrument, a melancholy and thoughtful feel to the song’s close. Honestly, “We Can” probably could have been the album itself and I’d still feel like I got my listen’s worth.

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Inhale deep before you glance at the title of the new album from the Josh Graham-fronted outfit A Storm of Light, because I’m pretty sure that even just reading the name As the Valley of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade is enough to make you short of breath. Me anyway, but I’m really out of shape.

The real news here, aside from the fact that A Storm of Light has a new record coming out May 17 (their last one was pretty good), and that it includes a slew of guest appearances from badasses like Carla Kihlstedt and Kim Thayil, is that said new record is coming out on Profound Lore and not Neurot Recordings. Gasp! In these confusing times, we can only turn to the PR wire for information:

A Storm of Light frontman Josh Graham is a jack of all trades. Whether he is handling visuals for Neurosis, doing artwork for Soundgarden’s latest album, doing music videos for The Dillinger Escape Plan, Underoath, Chiodos and more or focusing in on his own musical endeavors with A Storm of Light, the man is quite busy. In the midst of this busy schedule, A Storm of Light has been able to create their most well-rounded and brilliant album yet. Now partnered with Profound Lore Records, A Storm of Light is now set to release As the Valley of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade on May 17.

As the Valley of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade was co-produced by Graham and Joel Hamilton (who lends keyboards to the record as well) and features several guests that are sure to have the metal world talking. Lead guitarist from Soundgarden Kim Thayil appears on two tracks, as does Jarboe (Swans). There are also appearances from Carla Kihlstedt (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), Kris Force (Amber Asylum), Matthias Bossi (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Skeleton Key) and longtime collaborator Nerissa Campbell.

As the Valley of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade tracklisting:
1. Missing (feat. Kim Thayil and Nerissa Campbell)
2. Collapse (feat. Jarboe)
3. Black Wolves (feat. Kim Thayil and Nerissa Campbell)
4. Destroyer (feat. Carla Kihlstedt)
5. Wretched Valley
6. Silver
7. Leave No Wounds
8. Death’s Head (feat. Jarboe)
9. Wasteland (feat. Kris Force, Matthias Bossi and Nerissa Campbell)

A Storm of Light is:
Josh Graham (vocals/guitar/keyboards)
Domenic Seita (bass/backing vocals)
Billy Graves (drums/percussion)
Joel Hamilton (modular synths/wurlitzer)