Released periodically on three of 2024’s full moons – April 23rd’s Pink Moon, July 21st’s Buck Moon and October 17th’s Hunter Moon – the three-album cycle, “Triptych”, is (Steve Von Till from Neurosis) Harvestman’s most ambitious undertaking yet.

Guest musicians including Al Cisneros of Sleep / OM who plays bass on one track for each LP, of which he will also mix a dub version on the B-Side of each LP. Dave French of Yob, Sanford Parker and Wayne from Petbrick all make appearances.

It’s a dream diary narrating a passage through Summer Isle where Flying Saucer Attack are wafting out of a window, a distant Fairport Convention are being remixed by dub master Adrian Sherwood, celestial scanners Tangerine Dream are trying to drown out Bert Jansch and Hawkwind are playing Steeleye Span covers, all prised out of time yet bound to its singularity.

TRACK LISTING

Psilosynth
Give Your Heart To The Hawk
Coma
Psilosynth (harvest Dub)
How To Purify Mercury
Nocturnal Field Song
Mare And Foal

GRAILS don’t mince words. Awesomely communicative but entirely instrumental, this dynamic band’s violin, guitars, piano, and drums collide with sober melodies and massive emotion. At alternate moments, Grails can sound vaguely classical, Eastern European, Irish, like the lost tapes of Pauline Oliveros, and, you know, rock. They’re not really like anything else on the Neurot roster, but they’ve got something in common with all the Neurot bands: a commitment to intense music that forges new paths and, yeah, communicates in the most real way possible.

Grails have their fair share of ambient noise - shivery violins, a trickle of a high-hat, the amplified scrape of a guitar string - but their music is based on strong, narrative melodies that resonate in the heart. At times it sounds delicate, but they never cower; Grails ROAR, even when they’re being quiet. The Burden of Hope is the debut LP, following a pair of self-released, eponymous ep’s in 2000 and 2002. The LP is the culmination of a year’s worth of recordings, including a reinterpretation of Sun City Girls’ classic “Space Prophet Dogon.”

Grails are gathered in Portland, Oregon from Baltimore, Little Rock, Louisville, Chapel Hill, and Reno. As an ensemble, their respective backgrounds in hardcore, classical, folk, and rock blend seamlessly. Formed in late 2000 to execute live the bedroom recordings of guitarist Alex Hall, the oncetentatively-assembled group found unexpected success with both audiences and local press. Originally formed under the moniker Laurel Canyon, the name of the group was changed to Grails to coincide with the release of The Burden of Hope in October, 2003.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. The Burden Of Hope
2. Lord I Hate Your Day
3. The Deed
4. In The Beginning
5. Invocation
6. Space Prophet Dogon
Side B
7. The March
8. Broken Ballad
9. White Flag
10. Canyon Hymn

Read any article or comment thread about the Seattle noise-rock outfit GREAT FALLS and you're likely to see descriptors like cathartic, heavy, crushing, and unhinged. Maybe even psychotic. And sure, those are all apt: For over a decade, vocalist/guitarist Demian Johnston and bassist Shane Mehling (who also played together in the early-2000s noisecore band PLAYING ENEMY and the experimental duo HEMINGWAY) have honed their sludgy, overwhelmingly intense brand of heaviness, punctuated by delectably discordant riffs, terrifyingly low, thwacking bass lines, and mesmerizingly tight percussion. In the live setting, too, they’re notorious for a stage presence that is so aggressively confrontational and menacing that Mehling once broke his own arm mid-set.

But the most striking aspect of GREAT FALLS, setting them apart from the murky sea of sludge metal and AmRep-inspired noise-rock bands, is their ability to paint a deeply, utterly human story through an all-out assault on the senses: an art the band has perfected on their fourth full-length album OBJECTS WITHOUT PAIN, out September 15 via NEUROT RECORDINGS.

The album is not only their NEUROT debut, but also the first LP featuring drummer Nickolis Parks (GAYTHEIST, BASTARD FEAST), who joined the band prior to the release of their exhilarating, cacophonous 2023 EP,FUNNY WHAT SURVIVES.

OBJECTS WITHOUT PAIN takes us on a bleak, purgative journey through a separation–a snapshot of the turmoil and indecision that occurs after the initial realization of someone's misery, and before the ultimate decision to end a decades-long partnership. From the foreboding intro riffs of “DRAGGED HOME ALIVE” to the end of the 13-minute closer “THROWN AGAINST THE WAVES,” its eight tracks explore the thoughts that come up when a person is staring down the barrel of blowing up their life: How did this happen? Is it too late for a new life? Will the kid be OK? What will make me happier: familiar torment or unknown freedom?

TRACK LISTING

A
1. Dragged Home Alive
2. Trap Feeding
B
3. Born As An Argument
4. Old Words Worn Thin
C
5. Spill Into The Aisle
6. Ceilings Inch Closer
7.The Starveling
D
8. Thrown Against The Waves

Italian alchemists and power trio Ufomammut return with their ninth studio album, Fenice via Neurot Recordings. But not as we’ve heard them before, now “more intimate, more free.”

For over 20 years, the band has combined the heaviness and majesty of dynamic riff worship with a nuanced understanding of psychedelic tradition and history in music, creating a cosmic, futuristic, and technicolor sound destined for absolute immersion.

Fenice (meaning Phoenix in Italian) symbolically represents endless rebirth and the ability to start again after everything seems doomed. The album is the first recording with new drummer Levre, and truly marks a new chapter in Ufomammut history.

“I think we lost our spontaneity, album after album,” says Urlo. “We tried to make more complicated songs and albums, but I think at some point we just ended up repeating ourselves. With Fenice, we were ready to start from zero, we had no past anymore - so we just wanted to be reborn and rise from the ashes..”

While the band are well-known for their psychedelic travels into the far reaches of the cosmos, Fenice is a much more introspective listening experience. Fenice was conceived as a single concept track, divided in six facets of this inward-facing focus. Sonic experimentations abound in the exploration of this central theme; synths and experimental vocal effects are featured more prominently than ever before as the band push themselves ever further into the uncharted territory of their very identity.

The towering synths on the opening track ‘Duat’ evoke an almighty machine rising from the depths of primordial ooze. There’s a shift to a frenetic garage-psych pace before mellowing out into a more familiar doomy stomp. ‘Kepherer’ is a respite, albeit a slight one, returning to the pulsing rhythms of the album’s intro before plunging the listener into the menacing build and release of ‘Psychostasia’ next. Each oscillation of this extraordinary album feels inevitable - Ufomammut are after all, masters of their craft, and when it comes to creating enveloping sonic journeys into the unknown, it’s their uninhibited sense of exploration that breaches new sonic ground.

Fenice is the sound of a band whose very essence has been rejuvenated, and are welcoming the chance to create music in the way they know best; by unfolding carefully and attentively, by melding those extreme dynamics which render Fenice as a living and breathing creature - and by writing gargantuan riffs that herald their very rebirth. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Duat
2. Kheperer
3. Psychostasia
4. Metamorphoenix
5. Pyramind
6. Empyros

Ruins, monuments, and ancient sites of worship are multi-sensory experiences – at once residues of the sacred, the parchment on which the passage of time has been inscribed and templates for imaginative reconstruction, spaces in which to invest and immerse, to trade your bearings for an inexhaustible state of transition.

Over the course of three albums, Steve Von Till has, under the guise of Harvestman, provided the sonic analogue, casting his net for what might have been and yet still be. Both a personal meditation and a tuning fork for the most ancient and enduring of resonances, his latest album, Music For Megaliths, further expands his journeys along the sonic ley lines that run between folk, drone, psychedelia, the ‘kosmische’ outposts of krautrock and noise: not as an act of eclecticism, but of divination, giving voice to an underlying continuity that binds them all.

Recorded over a period of several years in the dawn hours of creation, Music For Megaliths is an aggregation of moments and recordings that have allowed themselves to spell out a greater whole. Utilizing repetition, manipulation and modulation, it’s a hallowed frequency dial that ranges across the pulse-regulated drone of The Forest Is Our Temple, revving up like a generator powered by arcane currents, the blissful gaze of Ring Of Sentinels, Sundown’s ominous waves of interference and White Horse’s rite of dissolution and regeneration, nomadic and devout. Music For Megaliths is a crossing over, whose multiple routes are testament to a singular and sensuously dilated vision.

Over the collective’s past ten albums, Neurosis have invited listeners to join them on the path their music carved. Going beyond the remarkable, neurosis became unforgettable.

This year finds neurosis taking their most dominant step yet with their eleventh full-length, 'Fires Within Fires'. Three decades in the making, 'Fires Within Fires' is a testament both to the history and future of Neurosis. Striking the band's signature balance between light and dark, beauty and repulsion, 'Fires Within Fires' gives due to its predecessors while progressing forward into the unfamiliar and formidable.

For members Scott Kelly, Steve Von Till, Jason Roeder, Noah Landis, and Dave Edwardson, the album is a welcomed companion to what’s now been a 30-year-long trek into the infiniteness of sound and sight coalescing into consciousness. An all-encompassing reminder that transfiguration in sound remains their most commanding and inimitable strength, 'Fires Within Fires' is the next powerful step towards a destination that has long been and continues to be the very heart of "becoming" for the mighty Neurosis.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Toeing the line between metal and drone, Neurosis have had a long history of fantastic releases themselves, and on their label, Neurot recordings. Crushing sustained riffage and pummeling slow-core drumfoolery bring to mind post-metal / drone legends Isis or Pelican whilst still retaining their own imitable sound. Von Till's vocals are as present as ever, riding the torrential waves like a shirty but skilled jockey. 'Fires Within Fires' is characteristically confident and impeccably measured, just what we'd expect from Neurosis.

TRACK LISTING

1. Bending Light
2. A Shadow Memory
3. Fire Is The End Lesson
4. Broken Ground
5. Reach

Scott Kelly (Neurosis) and producer/engineer/sonic warlord Sanford Parker (Buried At Sea) are restless. This inquietude has culminated in another collaboration. The two work together in Corrections House, a project that also features the talents of Mike IX Williams of Eyehategod, and Bruce Lamont of Yakuza. While Corrections House seem hell-bent on impersonal bludgeon and unfettered terror, the pair’s latest project, Mirrors For Psychic Warfare by comparison – is far more restrained.

The band’s haunting self-titled debut is the sonic manifestation of insomnia, complete with the tossing, the turning, and the perennial dread that comes with facing another shabby daylight. The five songs lurch and pulsate across a desolate landscape with an almost curious obsessiveness. While Mirrors For Psychic Warfare may remind some of the best work on the classic Cold Meat Industry label, there is enough familiar Kelly/Parker-isms scattered throughout to keep the album stimulating. It is a work with more in common with a fever or a fitful wraith than a record.

The return of the legendary Tad Doyle of TAD, Hog Molly & Sub Pop fame.

Keeping up a long-held tradition of bringing forth some of the heaviest music from the darkness of the Pacific NW, Seattle’s legendary Tad Doyle (formerly of TAD, Hog Molly), delivers his strongest songwriting and playing to date with his newest band Brothers Of The Sonic Cloth.

This powerful trio of musicians, with Tad on guitar/vocals, veteran bass player Peggy Doyle and drummer Dave French (the Annunaki) release their long-awaited debut LP on Neurosis’ own Neurot Recordings. Brothers Of The Sonic Cloth bring together the collective and extensive rock histories and experience of the three members in the worlds of punk, hard rock and metal.

Recorded at Robert Lang Studios and Tad Doyles’ own Witch Ape Studio in Seattle and mixed by Billy Anderson, Brothers Of The Sonic Cloth’s self-titled full length consists of five immense songs, with two bonus tracks on the CD. The record begins with an ominous eruption of riffs forged from deep within the earth, with “Lava”, and continues on this path throughout; a mammoth, relentless spirit on a timeless journey. This album is as much a persistent thudding body punch of sonic destructive force as it is a thoughtful statement of awareness and the inescapable raw condition of life.

Chord is Trevor de Brauw (of Chicago instrumentalists Pelican), Kyle Benjamin (guitarist for Chicago's Unfortunaut), Jason Hoffman (a.k.a. darkwave composer Anatole), and Phil Dole (of uber-dronists X-Bax). Chord devised an outline that lived for many months in the realm of conversation. With a shared appreciation for the works of Tony Conrad and Glenn Branca the group formulated a collective vision: exploit and explore the sonic depth of a single chord. Chord performances consist of each player being assigned one note from a pre-selected chord. They are then expected to consider all ranges of flexibility concerning octave, rhythm, playing style and effect treatments. The overall effect Chord generates is that of a single note being rendered into an unsolvable riddle - a harmonic Gordian knot that creates an almost pastoral feel of being blinded by the sun. The rejection of melody and structure in favour of sweeping and epic tones inspires a sense of rousing apprehension.

Brooklyn's A Storm of Light are back with their second full length "Forgive Us Our Trespasses", the record is the follow up to 2008's "And We Wept The Black Ocean Within". The album finds its power through a dense bringing together of melodies, moods and textures, ensuring that while things are as heavy and cataclysmic as fans would expect, the devastating effects rely on interwoven melodies and graceful shifts in timbre, instead of a stream of identikit riffs. Comprised of Josh Graham, Domenic Seita, Andy Rice and Joel Hamilton, Storm is joined by a host of carefully-chosen collaborators including vocalist Nerissa Campbell (Primitive North), the unique talents of Jarboe (Swans, World Of Skin, J2), the otherworldly spoken word segues of singer, poet and author Lydia Lunch and the mournful strings of Carla Kihlstedt (Book Of Knots, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, 2 Foot Yard) and Marika Hughes (2 Foot Yard).

Debut release from Brooklyn, NY trio A Storm Of Light featuring Josh Graham (Neurosis, Blood And Time, Battle Of Mice and formerly Red Sparowes). Graham is joined on the album by bassist/vocalist Domenic Seita (ex-Tombs, ex-Asea) and drummer Pete Angevine of Satanized. Since this recording, rhythmic pugilist extraordinaire Vincent Signorelli (Unsane, ex-Swans) has signed on as second drummer. As you'd guess by the pedigree, A Storm Of Light is brutally hard-hitting. However, the group's haunting harmonic drone meshing guitar, vocals and subtle keyboard layers gives listeners a sense of slow suffocation in waves of noise rather than straightforward pummelling. Aided by master engineer Joel Hamilton (Book Of Knots, Battle Of Mice), Graham's slack-tuned guitar rumbles and groans while subtle keyboard lines and Seita's bass slither throughout the lowest ranges of the musical scale. Angevine's lunging rhythms add crashing and propulsive heft. The vocals sound as intricately layered as the other instruments, often sounding unclear how many voices are adding to the harmony... guitar notes, voices, synth chords all blur into a wash that quite suitably evokes a sense of deep sea water pressure.

"Elixirs" is Guapo's third full-length album. Vocal contributions on the album include Swans chanteuse Jarboe and dark experimental folk artist Alexander Tucker. "Elixirs" transcends any musical antecedents that Guapo have been acknowledged for in the past. Instead, the music here explores the outer-most regions of psychedelic composition. Flickers of Popol Vuh, This Heat, Magma, Third Ear Band, Moondog and early 70s Miles Davis are present here as over-arching themes are morphed and mined through serpentine asymmetrical structures. Chiming rounds and canons swim through a sapphirine ocean of polyrhythmic mantra. All sullenly overcast with compositions so mercurial, the paths you can take are infinite. The dense orchestration and finespun virtuosity (seamlessly captured by engineer / producer Antti Uusimaki) create a richness previously hinted at but never fully realized until now.

Melbourne, Australia based trio Grey Daturas draw sonic influence from a vast ocean of musical styles including free jazz, the avant garde, psychedelic rock, punk, metal, industrial and noise, Grey Daturas have developed a blend of harsh and dark psychedelia unmistakably their own. From their more nihilistic, sheer noise based beginnings improvising sound tracks to silent horror classics and sixties physics animations, Grey Daturas have over the course of the last six years morphed into a surreal auditory nightmare, blending dark pulsating drones, slow low-end sludge riffs, crushing percussion, and walls of ear torturing noise. As with all follow up releases comparisons to the predecessor are inevitable. Between "Dead In The Woods" and "Return To Disruption" the most obvious difference is the improved production values. Where "Dead In The Woods" took a modest month to complete on 8-track tape, "Return To Disruption" spanned a lengthy 18 months on 24-track tape.

MGR is the solo project of Mike Gallagher from Isis. "Nova Lox" is a sonic narrative of post-rock splendor underscored by barely perceptible shifts in the aural firmament, the perpetual inertia of ringing notes, and the low hum of inevitablity. The five ominious and untitled instrumental passages contained within are headphone music for the drone damaged; the stirring, vaguely sinister murmurs of a half remembered occurrence.