- Palm Reader (Castles / Fiction or Truth?) 2013
- Sweet Remain (Vista Chino / Peace) 2013
- Prophet (Truckfighters / Universe) 2014
- Blood Like Cream (Red Fang / Whales & Leeches) 2013
- Tango Decadence (Kamchatka / single) 2013
- Harmonomicon (Intronaut / Habitual Levitations) 2013
- CЯEATURA (Black Majik Acid / Sermons of the Dead split w/ Merlin) 2013
- The Only Truth (Bretus / ST EP) 2009
- Am I Alone (Slow Heart / TBA) 2013
- Totality (Sheavy / Moons in Penumbra) 2014
- Rhetoric of No (Indian / From All Purity) 2014
- Triumph and Power (Grand Magus / Triumph and Power) 2014
Showing posts with label Slow Heart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Slow Heart. Show all posts
Saturday, 14 December 2013
Hour of Power 12/14/13
Wednesday, 5 June 2013
INTERVIEW WITH RON ROCHONDO (Ice Dragon, Tentacle, et al.)
![]() |
| Live at Scion Rock Fest @ Club 152, Memphis, Tennessee.
That's Ron on the mic. The being composed entirely of light in the
back is new drummer, Brad.
|
Hey
Ron, it’s nice to chat with you.
Recently you played the Scion Rock Fest in Memphis with the likes of The
Obsessed, The Gates of Slumber, Pallbearer, Subrosa and Inter Arma. That was an amazing line-up. So of course I’d like to know if you got to
hang out with Wino, and is it an experience you’d like to repeat, playing festival
shows or traveling other places?
AHOY
MATEY! Indeed, we just had an amazing experience down in Memphis, TN. The
line-up at 152 (the club we played at) was KILLER. Wino was around but I
actually didn’t get to talk to him. Sigh. Maybe next time. Most of these dudes
just chill out and hide somewhere until it’s go time. I spent very little time
in the “green room”/band area too, so I’m sure that has a lot to do with it. I
like chillin in the bar with the people, mixing it up a bit you see, like the
common folk. haha. I was talking to these real nice people at one point in the
night and they needed a few signatures to round out a band’s record they bought
so I told them I would walk them up to the band area and they could ask. They
were really stoked about that, I got them some free beers too and they were
even more stoked. I got to talk to Reed Mullin in the hotel bar at like 2 in
the morning, he was incredibly cool. I was insanely drunk and more than likely
made a huge ass out of myself. I remember I kept telling him that I used to
listen to CoC while doing my paper route. I don’t think he really understood the
significance of it, haha. They were one of the bands that had a huge influence
on me, and listening on my paper route means I listened to them for like an
hour and half or so every morning 7 days a week. That’s what I meant, but it
probably just came out like “I UESED TO JAYM TO U DUDEZ ON MY PAPEUR ROUTE MAN!
I LOVE YOU! BURRRP”. You win some you lose some. I’d do it all over again in a
second.
Haha, Isn't that what anyone would do in that situation? Okay,
now the interrogation begins … what were you up to before Ice Dragon? Mostly just reading comics and biding your time before world domination? ...
My favorite comics growing up were mostly Marvel stuff,
like X-Men and Wolverine. I do remember being overly into the The Infinity
Gauntlet series and Thanos though. I love Thanos. The other big one would be
Lobo for sure. My brother is 6 years older than me and he always had cooler
comics like Lobo laying around, so I got to steal them. Adolescent Radioactive
Black Belt Hamsters. I used to make a ton of electronic music, not like techno
dancy stuff, more like idm and shit. I was addicted to videogames for most of
my early life and now I don’t own a single one. Haven’t since I was about 22-23
or so I think.
I like comics. Tell
me a bit about the formation of Ice Dragon and what, if anything, was the
original mission statement of the band.
How has that changed in the meantime?
It
started off as just Carter and I doing weird stupid shitty music together in
his living room. Then we were like “we should maybe get some other musicians so
this doesn’t sound so weird stupid and shitty”. Then we got a drummer and
bassist and turned it into a real band. All growns up. I think we still pretty
much keep to the original idea though, which was to be weird and make music we
could be happy about. Not just make music in a certain scene or genre. You know
how some guys are like “we should start a doom band man”. We didn’t do that, it
just sort of mutated into something sort of like that, and we aren’t very doomy
even now I think. We just wanted to make music together and I think we still do
a good job of that. I hope we do anyway.
What
if anything precipitated the rapid acceleration of releases from the end of
2011 through to today? From what I
understand the band kind of stopped giving a shit about playing live and
started focusing on jamming and recording at home all the time. What led to the decision?
Basically
it all came from getting together every Friday night. It’s more of just a
buddies night kinda thing, drink beers with your friends and make some music in
between arguments over outer space and which 70’s band has a better bassist or
something. Carter only drinks Corona, Joe and I drink Miller Lite usually. We
get subs. So yeah, if you hang out every Friday and turn on a recorder you’re
bound to end up with something I guess. Playing live around town mostly blows,
so we got really bored of that really fast. Recording is where it’s at.
You
recruited a new member (drummer Brad) in order to do the Memphis show. Is he a permanent fixture now? How many goats were sacrificed during his
initiation? How has his presence changed
the dynamics of the band in regards to writing and recording?
Brad
is good friends with the dudes in Pilgrim, so we got to know him through them.
He’s a ridiculously good drummer and a nice guy to hang out with, which is VERY
important to us. We hope he hangs out for a good long while. Having an actual
“drummer” is very nice indeed. It makes everything much more of a band sound,
ya know? Less studio-y. So we’re gonna roll with that from here on out and try
and make some killer new albums. Possibly even play a few more shows too. Me
and him shared a room in Memphis and I got hammered and started running around
the hotel trying to outwit the security guards at like 3am, going up and down
the elevators you see, they go up...you go down. So I lost track of him and
went into the room eventually but I locked the door and he couldn’t get in. I
wound up with a text message the next day from 3:33am that just said “I HATE
YOU”. Haha. Eventually I woke up and let him in though, the baby. It was only
like an hour he was out in the hall.
| 'Dream Dragon' |
I
wonder, looking back in hindsight, what the difference is between an album such
as ‘Dream Dragon’ and a side-project such as Slow Heart. In other words, was an album like ‘Dream
Dragon’ simply a case of exercising a wild hair while a side-project like Slow
Heart is more a case of getting out some long-term inspiration? Or was it simply a matter of one thing
sounding so unlike Ice Dragon that it needed its own name? Or something else?
| Slow Heart |
Yeah
I think you hit the nail on the head there. We were going to just change our
name to “Dream Dragon” when we made that album and then only make soft dreamy
music. That would have been kinda funny. Looking back now we probably should
have just had Slow Heart be an Ice Dragon album too, but c’est la vie. It was
drastically different than everything we were doing at the time, so figured
we’d make a side project. We all thought it was going to be the biggest thing
ever but no one seemed to really be all that into it except for the reviewers.
Oh well. We thought everyone would hate Dream Dragon and that is about ready to
pass The Burl in downloads from the Bandcamp. Shows how much we know.
Typically,
do you plan your next move, such as “okay, now we’re going to work on a new
Tentacle album. Next month it’s Slow
Heart time …” and so on, or do you fly by the seats of your collective pants
letting the muse dictate the direction of the band?
We
do a bit of both really. It usually starts with one or two tracks that we just
happen to stumble upon through jamming and then that dictates what we’re going
to do for the next few months. Once we get a good idea of what the feel or
concept for the album is going to be, then it gets fun. We love that part, and
that’s why it usually happens real fast from there on out.
What’s
next for the band(s)? Any upcoming
releases you’d like to tease or give release dates for? ;) Are you personally looking to get more into
the film/video side of things in the future?
We
are very very much looking forward to getting back into our usually recording
cycle. We’ve been just practicing for the Scion gig the last few months.
There’s definitely an album’s worth of tracks nearing completion though, which
is odd, but who knows if all of them will make it through the final editing
process. I think the next one will be more of the heavy psych vibe, long and
weird tracks with super fuzzed out guitars. I’ve been getting really bored with
mixing things the same old way so I’ve been trying to do some odd stuff. We’ll
see what happens. No dates or names for anything yet. Sorry. I’ve always been
very into film and making videos and things, but I’m poor, and they usually
don’t go hand in hand. I had a pretty decent setup going for a while but then
the camera broke on me and I couldn’t afford a new one for a long time.
Recently my wife used some birthday money to get a new hd camera, so I’ve been
getting back into it pretty heavy. Definitely want to do more and more, and I
have the ideas, just have to find time. I work 9-5 m-f, so that doesn’t come by
so easy.
Thanks
for taking the time to do this, I really appreciate it.
Thank
you very much man. Your blog is awesome and you are a great writer. Glad to be
a part of it.
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Here's a buttload of links to chew on:
And me babbling on about what these guys get up to on the weekend:
Ice Dragon
Tentacle
The Mangled Dead
Slow Heart
Sunday, 17 February 2013
Hour of Power 02/16/13 (playlist)
Every weekend I post a new Hour of Power and every time I think it's the best one yet. This week, brand new and great looking official video clips from Year of the Goat, Death SS and Gates of Slumber kick things off in terrific doom-y fashion. All new songs by Orchid, John Gallow and Black Rainbows highlight the 'middle set' of videos and highlights from the week's (regretfully few) posts close out the affair, including an excellent fan made video for Slow Heart. Interspersed throughout are clips from The Nice, The Alan Bown! of sixties infamy plus Chains and the Black Sabbath "The Rebel" acetate demo. Also on the Black Sabbath front and placed carefully somewhere in the middle of the playlist is a three-minute teaser clip of Black Sabbath talking about the new album '13' in the studio. It makes for an interesting change of pace and goes together beautifully with a brand new clip of Finnish soon-to-be giants, Dryasdust in the studio. Enjoy!
- Spirits of Fire (Year of the Goat / Angels' Necropolis) 2012
- Ogre's Lullaby (Death SS / The Darkest Night) 2013
- Death March (The Gates of Slumber / Storm Crow EP) 2013
- Flower King of Flies (The Nice / The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack) 1967
- Wizard of War (Orchid / Wizard of War EP) 2013
- Holy Land (John Gallow) 2013
- An Inside Look At Black Sabbath in the studio 2013
- Finger Sessions (Dryasdust) 2013
- C'mon C'mon C'mon (Black Rainbows) 2013
- My Girl The Month of May (The Alan Bown / Outward Bown!) 1968
- The Rebel (Black Sabbath / acetate) 1969
- Alone and Red (Slow Heart / Dead Friends and Angry Lovers) 2012
- Of Death (Chains / Of Death) 2012
Sunday, 10 February 2013
The Alchemical Mixture - Chains, Nonsun & Slow Heart (album review)
"Chains was born under the black mark in the Samhain night of anno MMXI. The goal of this project is to make a Hypnotic Ritualistic Music in order to spread the verb of our master Satan.
CHAINS - 'Of Death'Highlights include: "Anticosmic Void" and "NecromanticForce". From: Slovenia. Rating: 4.5/5
The making of this kind of ritual is a kind of transcendent hypnosis trance who is channeling all the spiritual essence of the black flame into music form. Chains is strongly linked to 3 senses; vision, hearing and smell; because the experience must be accompanied by hearing music with the visions of all the conceptual artworks and spiced with incense and so all the chants are a mixture of lyrics mixed with a phonetically language transformed in mantras." - From Chains' official blog, Chains Hypnotic Ritual Music.
It's not often that a band invokes the sense of smell but the genre of drone sludge might be the most appropriate venue for one to do so. All three of these bands emit their own olfactory effulgence in their own inimitable ways. The ritualistic incense of Chains is offset by Nønsun's animal musk and the rotten decay of the body in the trash bin heard on Slow Heart's debut effort 'Dead Friends and Angry Lovers', a title that could easily refer to my year from mid 2010 to mid 2011 and believe me, it was an awful, awful stretch.
Why review three albums together? When I'm not at work or doing music reviews I write supernatural horror. This is my fuel. There are different moods for different scenes, but when I need to really feel the desolate despairs and desperate terrors of my creations I throw on these albums to set my mind right. The quote above is quite accurate in that, this is all-encompassing music. Sounds that have a physical presence, or at least a physical manifestation of electrification and hairs standing on end. Each of these albums brings out their own specific mood, for Chains it's the presence of evil just behind you, for Nønsun it's the sense of lurking danger and for Slow Heart, it's the bleakness of hopeless self-defeating thoughts.
Why review three albums together? When I'm not at work or doing music reviews I write supernatural horror. This is my fuel. There are different moods for different scenes, but when I need to really feel the desolate despairs and desperate terrors of my creations I throw on these albums to set my mind right. The quote above is quite accurate in that, this is all-encompassing music. Sounds that have a physical presence, or at least a physical manifestation of electrification and hairs standing on end. Each of these albums brings out their own specific mood, for Chains it's the presence of evil just behind you, for Nønsun it's the sense of lurking danger and for Slow Heart, it's the bleakness of hopeless self-defeating thoughts.
But the way in which these three diverse albums achieve these effects is by the same method, the heavy drone. Heavy sludge drone that, again, has a physical presence, a sheer weight, that makes the summer heat heavier, it makes the winter chill colder and makes positive action impossible.
| NONSUN - 'Good Old Evil'
Highlights include: "Jesus' Age" and "Forgotten Is What
Never Was". From: Lviv, Ukraine. Rating: 4/5 |
The overall vibe of Nønsun is to crush down all hope. There are 'hopeful' passages in "Jesus' Age" that are trampled almost as soon as they appear from the rubble, hopeful weeds pushing their way, improbably from the hard pavement only the be crushed down for their tremendous efforts.
There is a sheer light at the end of the tunnel of "Rain Have Mercy", with a bright riff and uptempo beat but it leads directly into the nearly seven minute static drone of "Message Of Nihil Carried By The Waves Of The Big Bang". The victim escapes the killer's shack in the woods, looks over a shoulder momentarily ... and wakes up half-conscious back in the shack under tighter bonds.
'Good Old Evil''s merciless vibe and filth-spewing sludge tone are crushing and brutal, an unflattering tattoo, a slow drive past a car wrapped around a pole before emergency crews arrive. The haunting image that cuts past the unaffected and the urbane facade and leaves the inner self gutted.
| SLOW HEART - 'Dead Friends & Angry Lovers'
Highlights include: "We Want The Night" and "Never
Trust a Woman (Dressed in Black)". From: Boston, Mass.
Rating: 3/5 |
The most 'uplifting' moment is the anthemic opening track "We Want The Night". Featuring a shambling corpse like tempo and frustratingly obscured pinpoints of light via guitar, it isn't exactly 'Singin' in the Rain'. As 'God Old Evil' is a shimmering black album 'Dead Friends and Angry Lovers' is a matte gray album. The perfect musical equivalent of a dense fog. If Chains' music is set in a black draped, skull-decorated, candle-lit parlor, Slow Heart play the national anthems of Limbo. Underpinning the entire project is a monomaniacal vision of futility and again hopelessness, achieved by the relentless repetition of musical phrases and tempos that rarely change. Even the length of the compositions is consistent with four of the five tracks over five minutes and under six.
Slow Heart is the musical step-child of David Lynch babysat by Nick Cave. Chains is the sound of static given form and substance. It's the white noise in your ears in the silent room as you try to sleep, amplified. One finds oneself on a sparse rocky landscape with a hazy yellow and unbreathable atmosphere. Everything is spare save the choking sludgy drone, as a whole bottle of ketchup drowns a small serving of mac and cheese. Drums pound low in the mix like the death throes of some giant Lovecraftian millipede far off in the distance. Disembodied voices pierce the veil and moan dark nothings. The occasional melodic element grows out of the void like a plant in timelapse photography and is quickly choked off and left to wither.
Chains' music is like a reset button for the mind, it's the perfect soundtrack to dark mental meanderings. It puts the listener in the right frame of mind to imagine, be creative and focus thoughts. It's unobtrusive without being background music. It won't distract the listener from a train of thought because it is an active participant in the process. It is a vehicle for creativity and in that regard the duo of Chains (Chad Davis along with E. Chains) are quite successful in accomplishing their goals.
In the extremely limited and now sold out CD version of 'Of Death' a 'lyrics' booklet is comprised of song titles in psychedelic font with pictures in lieu of words which are not only excellent graphic artwork (the entire package is) but give form to the ideas present on this release. "Of Death" features a wild eyed mummified corpse turning in a tight coffin, "Anticosmic Void" shows an hourglass with bat wings emerging from a spinning disc, "All The Colors Of The Dark" reveals a skull-littered cave of torture, "Fireborn" displays a skeletal fetus emerging from flames. "Necromantic Force" depicts the approach of a skinned horse whose head is framed by a black moon, "Electric Doom"'s totem is a cloaked and hooded wraith and the horned, ragged, saw toothed demon is finally made manifest in the artwork for "Spiritual Evocation".
Three albums of bottled inspiration. No, this isn't party music, this isn't the kind of thing to throw on when buddies are over for beer, unless of course those beer swilling buddies are travelers down the left hand path. For this writer, this is utilitarian music, it's useful music, but it wouldn't be so if it weren't also enjoyable music. Pitiless drone for those morbid moods or when it's simply time for a change of pace. We can't all listen to Red Fang all day or whatever. That's the great thing about underground music, it doesn't just all lead you in One Direction, so to speak. Bands like Nønsun, Slow Heart and Chains are from vastly different backgrounds and take the listener to some chilling and eerie places. The adventurous, the spiritual, the thoughtful will go along for the journey and some will return the favor.
Genre: Drone, Sludge, Doom.
Release Date: October 5, 2012 (Chains); December 12, 2012 (Nønsun); December 18, 2012 (Slow Heart)
Suggested listening activity for fellow non-stoners: Writing. Or waiting at the river's edge for the boatman to return
Better Reviews:
Sludgelord Nonsun review
Heavy Planet Nonsun review
Temple of Perdition Slow Heart review
Sunday, 30 December 2012
2012 Chronicle (Year in review) part 12 - Best of December
December 2 - Mother Gun (Human EP)
December 12 - Enos (All Too Human)
December 13 - Stonebringer (Ocean of the Brave)
December 21 - 1000mods (Valley of Sand EP)
December 25 - Balam - New Song [No Vocals] Preproduction 2013
December 26 - Deaf Flow (Songs From The Dark Side of Uranus)
Best Album From December 2012:
'Maera' by THE HEAVY EYES
Best Song From December 2012:
"The Dead Still Ride" by FROM BEYOND
Saturday, 22 December 2012
Hour of Power 12/22/12 (playlist)
Highlights from the week of 12/16/12 - 12/22/12
- Greet Death (Destroyer of Light / ST) 2012 Brand New Video!!
- Hollow (Alice in Chains / TBA) 2013 Brand New Song!!
- Snowblind (Black Sabbath / Vol. 4) 1972
- Secular Haze (Ghost / Infestissumam) 2013 Brand New Song!!
- Twin Obscenities (Spider Kitten / Cougar Club) 2013
- Time Out For Time In (Them / Time Out! Time In For Them) 1968
- Moon Queen (Lord Fowl / Moon Queen) 2012
- Perfect Monkey (Cube / ST) 2012
- Drawing Flies (Soundgarden / Badmotorfinger) 1991
- vier (Mount Fuji / ST) 2012
- Desert Sun (The Shooters / Planet of the Black Sun) 2012
- No Better No Worse (Manfred Mann / Mighty Garvey) 1968
- We Want The Night (Slow Heart / Dead Friends and Angry Lovers) 2012 Brand New Song from the guys in Ice Dragon!!!
Labels:
Alice in Chains,
Black Sabbath,
Cube,
Destroyer of Light,
Ghost,
Hour of Power,
Ice Dragon,
Lord Fowl,
Manfred Mann,
Mount Fuji,
Slow Heart,
Soundgarden,
Spider Kitten,
The Shooters,
Them
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