Proffering heady mostly-instrumental psychedelic jams in what I’m quickly coming to think of as the neo-European tradition, Spanish trio Domo set out on a wandering journey across the seven tracks of their self-titled Radix Records debut. In that the song are mostly named for concepts out of Hindu/Buddhist theology – the one exception is “Eta Carinae,” named for a nebulous star system – one might draw an immediate comparison to My Sleeping Karma, although Domo’s arrangements are simpler and less pointed in terms of structure. The three-piece of guitarist Samuel Riviere, bassist/vocalist Óscar Soler and drummer Paco García inject some vaguely “Eastern” elements into their sound, as the scales of “Asura” show, but mostly staving of a generic feel throughout Domo’s 64 minutes is the interplay between the members of the band. The music feels natural in the recording and spontaneous where it goes, but Domo seem nonetheless aware that they’re making an album and not just jamming out or playing a live show. The shorter, acoustic-led “Pretas,” which comes after the first three extended cuts, speaks to that, as does the 1:59 synth interlude “Eta Carinae” that sets up sprawling closer “Samsara.” These tracks offer a respite from the depths to which Domo plummet (or, alternately, the heights in the atmosphere they ascend) on the more sprawling voyages

“Yamantaka,” which rests between the two breaks (“Pretas” and “Eta Carinae”) affects a more spacious bluesiness. Riviere is in the lead on guitar and until about five and a half minutes in, it seems like he’s just going where his fingers take him until Soler and García pick up the rhythm and lead into a section that alternates between Hendrix and Hawkwind on its way to interstellar oblivion. When the guitar cuts out momentarily, one finds one can breathe and better appreciate Soler’s bass tone, which is subtly fuzzed and warm enough to engage. Earlier on the album, it opened the first track, “Nadi,” but with so much between then and “Yamantaka,” it was easy to lose it in the mix – plus, Riviere is almost an entity unto himself within the band, soloing atop the rhythm section and only occasionally meeting with it – that one tends to follow him and wonder where that groove is coming from. Soler and García both prove worth the extra attention throughout Domo, although the latter does more to keep the pace and keep the material grounded than he does to add flash to the songs or show off with fills or complex beats. The task set upon him is difficult enough, but he does as able a job as anyone could, and when Domo let go and really take off – “Samsara,” for example – it’s because they want to, not because they’re out of control. “Samsara” and “Prana,” the second offering, are the only cuts on Domo to feature Soler’s vocals, which aren’t out of place in the music but aren’t really present enough to anchor it anyway. “Prana” in particular begins with such a morass of noise before García kicks in on drums that even if Domo went full verse/chorus/verse on it after that, it would still be more exploratory than not.

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The last couple years have seen the rise of a new school in European heavy psychedelia. Taking influence as much from acts like Colour Haze, Dozer and 35007 as they took in turn from Kyuss and their desert ilk, bands like Samsara Blues Experiment and Sungrazer have been able to forge a new wave of heavy jamming that relies just as much on spontaneous-sounding interplay between band members as it does on warm, Orange-hued low end and fuzzy stoner rock riffs. The effect is often hypnotic and engaging, and with their Nasoni Records debut, Beats of Olarizu, Spanish outfit Arenna join the forerunners of the style. The two-guitar five-piece formed in 2005 and recorded Beats of Olarizu over the course of four days (two in May, two in September) last year, resulting in a CD that stretches 68 minutes and a double vinyl that’s even longer – three more tracks – of Billy Anderson-mastered psychedelic expanse. Information is minimal on who does what, but the band is comprised of Guille, Javi, Txus, Kike (that’s a listed name, no offense intended in its use here) and R. Ruiz with several guests throughout contributing synth and Hammond on later cuts like “The Strangest of Lives,” “Eclipse” and the sprawling CD closer “Metamorphosis in Ic (0.9168 g/cm³).”

Four out of the six CD tracks also feature guest vocals from Jony Moreno of fellow Spanish rockers The Soulbreaker Company, but as the first three of Beats of Olarizu’s cuts are more straightforward structurally, the album really is one that unfolds gradually as you listen to it. Opener “Morning Light” is longer than the two songs that follow, “Receiving the Liquid Writings” and “Fall of the Crosses,” but its slow amplifier hum intro and lead nonetheless into an upfront verse/chorus that reminds vocally a bit of an accented Goatsnake in the verses. “Morning Light” appropriately sets the tone of Arenna’s methodology to come over the subsequent material, but more even than that, it shows one of the band’s great strengths immediately to be in its rhythm section. The guitars are fuzzed out and the vocals are melodic – and, with the addition of Moreno, more intricately arranged than one might initially think – but the bass and drums are driving the song almost as soon as it kicks in. That holds true on “Receiving the Liquid Writings” as well, but perhaps most of all on the bouncy “Fall of the Crosses,” which is the shortest cut here at 5:26 and finds the bass taking lead setting a funky rhythm that III-era The Atomic Bitchwax might have concocted had they been so inclined. It’s a classic rock shuffle, and after the more directly riff-led “Receiving the Liquid Writings,” one of Beats of Olarizu’s refreshing changes of pace.

And while that’s true, there’s no question that the more individualized material on Beats of Olarizu comes in the second half of the album’s track list. “Eclipse” develops slowly with sampled nature sounds, acoustic guitar and Hammond organ, the electric guitars beginning to subtly wind their way into the mix only after three of the total near-12 minutes, taking the hold just before the four-minute mark. Even then, the song has a confidence in its open feel that I didn’t get from “Fall of the Crosses” or “Morning Light,” that Arenna are comfortable as a unit to ride out the bass line and let the synth fill out their sound, the guitars adding echoing notes here and there to highlight the sparseness. Rightly, “Eclipse” relegates vocals to almost an afterthought; they arrive with a chorus after six minutes in and soon enough are swallowed up for another three minutes of solid riff-led jamming before making another appearance with the aforementioned chorus lines, which in turn give way again to the guitars and the close of the song. Without knowing how the tracks are arranged across the two LPs of the vinyl edition, I’ll say “Eclipse” feels like an apex of Beats of Olarizu and could easily carry the responsibility of capping off a side and/or disc on its own.

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With three massively varied full-lengths already under their collective belt, be-robed Andalusian doom trio Orthodox return with the follow-up to 2009’s Sentencia in the form of Baal. Baal, released like its predecessor through Spanish imprint Alone Records, is comprised of five tracks that follow the band’s charted course of morose exploration, but find them bringing some crunch into their dirges. Where Sentencia had a medieval, blackly-plagued vibe to it, Baal is more directly doomed, though you might not know it from the near-six-minute instrumental opener, “Alto Padre,” which sets a tone of the kind of free jazz ethic Orthodox has been incorporating into their sound since their 2006 debut, Gran Poder. What remains most consistent about Orthodox on Baal is the band’s ability to affect a mood and their truly open creative sensibility. As much as they’re within the doom genre, they’re almost never limited by it, and from bassist Marco Serrato Gallardo’s victorious vocal warble on “Taurus” to the recklessly rhythmic drive of “Hanin Ba’al,” it seems Orthodox could go anywhere at any moment and be able to pull something coherent out of it.

That’s no easy feat when you’re working with this kind of sonic breadth. With just three members in the band – Gallardo is joined as ever by guitarist Ricardo Jimenez Gómez and drummer Borja Diaz Vera – Orthodox manage to completely set an atmosphere both expansive and encompassing, despite a traditionally doomed, spacious feel in the songs. Gómez’s layers of guitar on “Alto Padre” strum and ring freely while Vera rolls on his toms behind, leaving Gallardo to thicken and fill out the song on bass. It’s hard to tell from there where Orthodox might be going with Baal – at least hard to tell correctly – and it’s as though they’re leading from Sentencia directly into this newer material, leaving it up to the first track here to provide the transition from one to the next. If we take “Taurus,” then as the beginning of Baal proper, it’s a lumbering and thoroughly doom face that Orthodox are presenting on their latest work. Gallardo would seem to lead the charge with open bass notes ringing through the breaks and vocals that march as much as they do anything else, but Gómez soon injects one of Baal’s several killer solos and makes his presence known that way. Over time, the members of Orthodox have clearly gotten more comfortable with each other as players, and their interaction is the key to making Baal a success. They never sacrifice artistry or dumb down their playing style to highlight a riff, but neither do they fail to pay homage to the heaviness that was doubtless the impetus behind forming the band in the first place.

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There’s no telling where the sludge is going to come from next. Andalusian three-piece Monkeypriest got together in 2006 and are now releasing their debut full-length, The Psalm, on heavy Spanish imprint Féretro Records. The album is seven songs, four of which are 6:45-7:00 minutes long, and though that might make it seem like Monkeypriest are working well within a formula, the other tracks – an instrumental opener called “Hanuman’s Dance,” a cover of Cerebral Fix’s “Feast of the Fools” and 10-minute closer “Our Kingdom (Involution Pt. II)” – are enough to break up the proceedings, and combined with the elements of metallic extremity the trio incorporate, The Psalm comes across more varied than one might think. It’s probably not going to blow any minds when it comes to sludge – shades of Eyehategod and Crowbar underscore much of the riffing from guitarist Marco Álvarez – but they have enough different about them to keep the tracks interesting.

Part of that includes a militant kind of nature-based spiritualism and activist sense. Lyrics like “Listen to the sound of nature/I have to follow your work/My protector, my Lord/I need your powerful words” from the title-track sound more like they should be coming from some swoopy-haired Christian deathcore, but Monkeypriest elevate environmentalism to a religious level and use it as the central theme of The Psalm. One might have a hard time figuring that out through the growls and screams of bassist Pedro Román, backed periodically by Álvarez, but the words are right in the liner notes for anyone who wants to explore the album on that level. Even through song titles like “The Word of the Priest” and “Involution,” though, it should be clear from the outset that Monkeypriest have a message they’re trying to deliver. For lack of a better word, call it preaching. It’s also worth noting that each member of the trio uses a numerical stage name. Álvarez is Monkeypriest #1, Román is Monkeypriest #2, and drummer Julio Moreno (who replaced Rafael García sometime before the album was recorded) is Monkeypriest #4. I thought for the purposes of this review that real names would make it easier to distinguish who was doing what.

“The Word of the Priest,” which follows “Hanuman’s Dance,” is more or less a mission statement for The Psalm lyrically and musically. The pacing is on the slower end of middle, and that seems to be where Monkeypriest are most comfortable. Moreno begins the track with heavy thuds and keeps that ethic moving well into “The Psalm,” which follows, enacting builds and subtle tempo changes skillfully. It being sludge, the riffs are central, but the dry-throated rasp of the vocals to “The Psalm” will also make it a standout to those who appreciate screams over their doom. The groove the band follows the riff into proves worthy of naming the album after, but the real surprise follows a Román-led bass break, when the band launch into black metal-style blastbeats and a guitar line that could have come off any of the last several Satyricon records. It’s a unique moment on The Psalm, but hardly Monkeypriest’s only foray into the more extreme end of metal. There’s still that Cerebral Fix cover to come. They do well blending those elements into their sound, though, and it gives The Psalm a sense of being more than just another screamy sludge outing.

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Whereas much of the movement in the last several years of heavy psychedelic rock has been toward the more freeform, jamming style of bands like Earthless and Naam, the Vitoria-Gasteiz collective The Soulbreaker Company from the north of Spain present an incredibly tight-wound vision of what space-leaning psych can be on their second Alone Records full-length, Itaca. The six-piece (plus guests) band run through a wide array of sonic motifs, from the jazzy synth-prog of opener “It’s Dirt,” to the Doors-y feel of the ending movement of “Sandstorm,” always maintaining control, always sounding full. Never a hair out of place, so to speak. It’s an accomplishment mostly in the complexity of the song arrangements – I know of plenty two-piece bands who can’t get to the point of togetherness The Soulbreaker Company have with up to eight or nine people on a single track.

Part of that credit has to go to Chris Fielding, who produced Itaca at Foel Studios in Wales (Obiat, Conan, Porcupine Tree) along with the band. The sounds here are crisp but not unnatural, and there’s a remarkable balance between the separation in the instruments and their meshing. The already-noted opener earns kudos not only for its creative breadth, but for being the longest cut on Itaca at 9:38 (I’m almost always a sucker for a band who opens with their longest song instead of tacking it at the end), and cuts like “Oh! Warsaw,” the catchy “Sow the Roses” and the later, piano- and horn-driven “Take a Seat on the Moon” only reinforce the album’s primary statement, that The Soulbreaker Company are a band for whom the limits are few and far between. They have the will (and the personnel) to take listeners on a genuine journey, and the more of Itaca I dig into, the farther-ranging I’m finding it to be. While the classic rock approach of vocalist/guitarist Jony Moreno (backed occasionally by Layla Seville and/or Joanne Deacon) does a lot of the tying together of the different-sounding tracks, there’s also a tonal consistency to the material on Itaca that serves to heighten the drama of the songs while it helps the flow one to the next. Fans of Hypnos 69 will swoon over the guitar work of Daniel Triñanes and Asier Fernandez on “Colours of the Fire” and the sax-playing of Kike Guzman (who might want to think about adopting a nom de guerre) on “It’s Dirt” and “No Way Back Home,” on which the Hammond of Oscar Gil also provides an album highlight.

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Fresh off last year’s three-way split with Lords of Bukkake and Sons of Bronson and single-track Lords of the Cave Worm full-length, Barcelona crushers Warchetype make their latest offering with the album Ancestral Cult of Divinity. Released, like their first two LPs, on Alone Records, the six-cut Ancestral Cult of Divinity showcases the kind of self-awareness you might expect in modern traditional doom, owing much of its sound to a darker interpretation of The Obsessed with nods to Trouble, Candlemass, Saint Vitus and Black Sabbath along the way, but Warchetype don’t shy away from displaying a heavier, death metal influence. This is a big part of what distinguishes them from the legends by whom they’re inspired, and given a long European history for pioneering death/doom, the five-piece is by no means out of line with a slew of preceding acts.

Led by the snail’s pace riffage of guitarists David Bruguera and Jordi Boluda and fronted by the versatile Iban Arrieta, Warchetype cast an effective balance of new school and traditional doom, their roots showing through in the structure and tempo changes of their songs – three of which on Ancestral Cult of Divinity cross the 11-minute mark – and the freshness with which they approach the sound providing that new school feel. Where a lot of trad-doomers feel reinterpreted Sabbath riffs are enough, Warchetype repurposes “Snowblind” into closer “Doom Brotherhood,” a song well aware of the tribute it’s paying and all the more effective for wearing its influence on its sleeve. Likewise, the Wino-style vocal cadence in the verses of “Bastards” makes no bones about its origins.

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Though it follows an intro with the closest thing to the guitar sound on Clutch’s now-classic Elephant Riders I’ve ever heard without actually listening to that album, that turns out to be just one of the many sonic avenues explored on the Spanish trio Cuzo’s second album for Alone Records, Otros Mundos. Taking ‘70s prog jam excursions and roughing them up tonally to achieve a kind of garage jazz, the three-piece has undergone several changes in the time since their debut, Amor y Muerte en la Tercera Fase, most notably exchanging bassist Iván Román for Alvaro Gallego, bringing the number of shared members between Cuzo and doomers Warchetype down a third to just drummer Pep Cervantes. Cervantes and guitarist Jaume Pantaleon explored a variety of instrumental personalities on the first album, and joined here by Gallego, is as though they’re even freer to pursue whatever the moment offers.

On the already-alluded “Astroratas,” that means Clutch groove. On every other track, it means something completely different. “Coche Imaginario” has a strict jam build, but even that’s offset by synth quirk so that in listening you never quite know which way the song will turn. “Del Más Allá” is driven more laterally by Pantaleon’s guitar, but as Cuzo begins to develop an underlying persona beneath these explorations, it’s by no means just about one player. Gallego and Cervantes both play an essential role in making Otros Mundos sound as vitalized and fresh as it does. “Ni Vivos Ni Muertos” feels like a companion piece for “Del Más Allá” because of their relative closeness time-wise, but the two actually don’t share any more in common than either track does with the rest of Otros Mundos.

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Spanish instrumentalists Reznik formed in 2005, and since the movie The Machinist was released in Spain in December 2004, it’s entirely possible the band — initially a four-piece, now a duo — took their name from Christian Bale’s character in that film, Trevor Reznik. Whether or not that’s the case, I don’t know, but the dates work out and I thought that movie kicked ass, so I’m going to run with it. If I’m incorrect and there’s some other significance to the band’s moniker, I’ll leave it up to the vast knowledge of the intertubes to correct my erroneous thinking.

Wherever they got their name, Didi (guitarra) and Lolo (batería) offer a ‘90s-influenced mix of noise rock and stoner groove, occasionally hitting a reference point of Fatso Jetson or some others from the Palm Desert scene, but usually relying on more grit than fuzz sonically. Of the 15 tracks on their first LP, El Mal (Alone), which follows two demos and a number of splits, not one of them is over three minutes long, which is probably for the best. What makes El Mal work is that it never really has time to get mired down in its sameyness. If Reznik were just jamming endlessly on the same riff for six or seven minutes, it might get tired really quick, but by the time a riff has worn out its welcome, à la later cut “Octiembre,” the song is over. It’s not a bad system they have worked out.

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It’s a well-known fact that when you begin a sentence with “When you think about it…” whatever you say afterwards is immediately lent credence. Someone out there is going to say, “You know, that’s right.” So:

When you think about it, doom and free jazz really aren’t all that different, are they?

That’s the question Sevilla trio Orthodox try to answer as they bridge the gap between the seemingly disparate sonics on their latest full-length, Sentencia (Alone Records). Comprised of a religiously-themed trinity of tracks — “Marcha de la Santa Sangre,” “Ascensión,” and “…Y la Muerte no Tendrá Dominio” — the record also runs a solid 33 minutes, so we see the theme of threes (threme?) works on multiple levels right from the start.

Of the three songs, “Marcha de la Santa Sangre” might be the most straightforward, as well as being the shortest at 2:41. Both it and “…Y la Muerte no Tendrá Dominio” are essentially frame pieces for the mammoth “Ascensión,” which towers above its companions at 26:28, but “Marcha de la Santa Sangre” has fuzz bass care of Marco Serrato Gallardo (who also handles vocals, but not yet) and Ricardo Jimenez Gómez’s guitar in addition to its trumpet and the funeral marching snare Borja Diaz Vera, and on that level isn’t so far off from the material on either of Orthodox’s last two albums, both of which had a marked jazz influence. What really separates Sentencia from 2006’s Gran Poder and 2007’s Amanecer en Puerta Oscura (both issued in the US via Southern Lord) is the atmosphere of “Ascensión,” which comes to represent that of the album as a whole.

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If you haven’t heard it yet, and if you’ve got 12 minutes to kill and a hankering for a drum solo complemented by flamenco claps — and you know you do — Spanish trio Viaje a 800 have a new demo track posted over on their MySpace page that’s definitely worth checking out. If you’ve never heard the band before, their last album, 2007′s Estampida de Trombones, was frickin’ great, and I’d recommend that as a starting point for sure.

There’s a lot going on in the new song, which is called “Oculi Ómnium in Te Spérant, Dómine,” from laid back stoner grooves à la Monster Magnet to far out guitar-led psychedelic jamming well suited to their free-form style. I don’t know if “Oculi Ómnium in Te Spérant, Dómine” is set to be included on an upcoming album or what, but it rules, so we can only hope it makes it onto plastic in one form or another. For now, free digital listening isn’t a bad way to go.

There are still a bunch of bands to be announced, but the lineup for the Psych Frog III festival in El Castell de Guadalest is shaping up quite nicely, with the likes of Electric Wizard, Comus, Naam (they’re everywhere these days) and Magnus Pelander of Witchcraft on the bill. If, like me, you know nothing about the Spanish town of El Castell de Guadalest (Guadalest, for short) check out its Wikipedia page and consider your travel plans for the summer. Meantime, here’s the lineup so far for Psych Frog III:

Psych Frog III Festival de rock & psicodelia de El Castell de Guadalest
July 29th, 30th, 31st, 2010

The Groundhogs
Orthodox
Graveyard
Naam
Magnus Pelander
The Wounded Kings
Diagonal
Comus
Electric Wizard

Released late last year, Spanish outfit Positiva’s sophomore outing for Odio Sonoro, the cleverly-titled Prodigal Songs, is classic riff rock through and through. It’s the kind of record you put on while you’re driving and all of a sudden you instantly know everyone else on the road is a sucker because, whatever they’re listening to, there’s no way it’s possibly as cool as the guitar lick you just heard. It’s the kind of record that turns you into “dude rocking out in his car,” and man, if everyone else had better taste in music, they’d all be rocking out too, so you go ahead and groove as you will. Positiva don’t seem to mind. If they did, they probably wouldn’t rock so damn much.

For the most part, Prodigal Songs stays well within the realm of revivalist ‘70s-style guitar-led rock. Guitarist/vocalist Miguel Moral is a former member of Bilbao crushers Rhino, though if anyone comes into Positiva expecting that same kind of metal destruction, they’re going to be in for a big surprise. The vibes are immediately, well, positive, with opening cuts “Brother Eagle” and “Undying Shore” losing none of their rock edge for the good times they incite. When the band delves into Grand Funkery, they earn a comparison to Blood of the Sun or Firebird, but the double guitars of Moral and guitarist/vocalist Julio Ruiz set them apart from their American and British sonic compatriots. Still, there’s a good amount of rock and roll shuffling going on through “Waiting in Vain,” “Catch the Fire,” and “Groupiedom,” and that’s got to come from somewhere.

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If we happened to live in a dimension in which there was one phrase to cover the entirety of what Barcelona instrumentalists Cuzo are doing on their Alone Records debut, Amor y Muerte en la Tercera Fase, that phrase might be something like “vague rock.” The experimental trio comprised of bassist Iv?n Rom?n, drummer Pep Cervante (both of doomers Warchetype) and guitarist/noisemaker Jaime L. Pantale?n run through seven mostly-interconnected tracks of instru-prog, like what Stinking Lizaveta might try if they decided they weren’t a jazz band or a more organic, less keyboard-driven Zombi.

The personality of the album varies almost entirely on each song, with opener “Medium” being mostly an ambient/noisy intro with a high-pitched frequency throughout most of it that cuts into the eardrum in a way that makes you think you’re in for something way less pleasant from Amor y Muerte en la Tercera Fase than you actually are. Almost immediately, “Escalera Roja” establishes Cuzo as a semi-technical band capable of switching and bending moods to their will, but still focused more on expression than structure. Riffs repeat and come and go but Cuzo don’t sound rigid in their execution at all, which is a big part of why the album has such a consistent flow despite the array of approaches within.

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An album on which everything right down to the artwork reeks of desolation and loneliness, the self-titled debut from Barcelona‘s Lords of Bukkake (Odio Sonoro/Gaia Records) is the ideal companion for those evenings when, left to your own devices in a world of infinite possibilities, you choose to sit around in your underwear, drink by yourself and hate at a major league level. Full of visceral anger directed whichever way the speakers are facing, it is slicing and grating, painful, hurtful doom lashing out irredeemable remorse and churning violence. It is the kind of music that makes you feel like there are bugs crawling on you.

Lords of Bukkake opens with its longest track, “Black Lung” — by all accounts an affliction with which bassist/vocalist Toni L?pez is familiar. His biting rasp reminds of Alan Dubin fronting a less minimalist Khanate, while the occasional drawling stoner rock solo from guitarist Jaume L. Pantale?n (also of Cuzo) sets Lords of Bukkake apart from those drone magnates. Still, at 18:47, “Black Lung” is a fierce slab of darkened sludge, chopping up the corpse of a desperate riff and leaving the body up in the Torre de Collserola for the tourists to find.

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Spanish space rock trio B?iruth coincidentally came to my attention only a few short days after I happened upon a copy of Fooz‘s Space is Dark…it is so Endless at El Suprimo Records in Baltimore. I note the coincidence because two-thirds of B?iruth — namely bassist Jes?s Arn?iz and guitarist Juan ?ngel G?mez — cut their teeth in the underground folkish stoner outfit. By comparison one to the other, B?iruth is far more eager to shirk convention, as the instrumental band’s debut, Horizonte de Sucesos (Alone Records), clearly demonstrates.

Broken up into four individual pieces, three of which circle around 20 minutes and the shorter “Alamut,” which is a synth-driven — both Arn?iz and G?mez, as well as drummer Carlos “Charlie” Segura, contribute synths — interlude that follows opener “Penumbra Difusa,” the album shows that not only are B?iruth looking to stand out from the poppy retro psychers of the day, but also that their sound owes much to the European eletronica breeding ground that was the Krautrock scene. Though “Alamut” is the most synthesized of the four tracks, there is no shortage of noise and ambience in the other three. There’d almost have to be or they’d fall flat on postured minimalism and parts of Horizonte de Sucesos would have no sound at all.

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