Showing posts with label Slow Heart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Slow Heart. Show all posts

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.
For regular readers, it's no secret that I have a borderline sexual crush on the band Ice Dragon, their pure, no-bullshit artistry, their work ethic and their beards.  Read on and you'll understand that their approach to being a band is just about as "pure" and "no-bullshit" as it gets.  No long preambles here, let's just get started ...


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!



  1. Spirits of Fire (Year of the Goat / Angels' Necropolis) 2012
  2. Ogre's Lullaby (Death SS / The Darkest Night) 2013
  3. Death March (The Gates of Slumber / Storm Crow EP) 2013
  4. Flower King of Flies (The Nice / The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack) 1967
  5. Wizard of War (Orchid / Wizard of War EP) 2013
  6. Holy Land (John Gallow) 2013
  7. An Inside Look At Black Sabbath in the studio 2013
  8. Finger Sessions (Dryasdust) 2013
  9. C'mon C'mon C'mon (Black Rainbows) 2013
  10. My Girl The Month of May (The Alan Bown / Outward Bown!) 1968
  11. The Rebel (Black Sabbath / acetate) 1969
  12. Alone and Red (Slow Heart / Dead Friends and Angry Lovers) 2012
  13. Of Death (Chains / Of Death) 2012

Sunday, 10 February 2013

The Alchemical Mixture - Chains, Nonsun & Slow Heart (album review)

CHAINS - 'Of Death'
Highlights include: "Anticosmic Void" and "Necromantic 
Force".  From: Slovenia.  Rating: 4.5/5
"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.

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.

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
Nønsun's 4-track demo EP 'Good Old Evil', creates the sludge metal equivalent of the clinical yet insect and parasite infested worlds of early Ridley Scott or James Cameron films.  They allow the listener a running headstart on "Jesus' Age", capture him on "Rain Have Mercy" strip the listener of all hope and human dignity on the straight drone of "Message Of Nihil Carried By The Waves Of The Big Bang" and ultimately leave the  listener tied naked to a chair with a shotgun in his face on organ-driven closer "Forgotten Is What Never Was".  A lonely refrigerator hum closes the album out, and the listener knows their tormentor won't be coming back, they'll be left that way, til the end.  Hopeless.

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 feeling carries over into the music of Slow Heart, only this band does it differently.  Where Nønsun's Bohdan Goatooth's vocals are deep, raw and guttural, Ron's from Slow Heart are vastly subdued.  It appears to be a giant effort just to sing at all through the overwhelming dark mood.  There is a heavy tone here in the instruments, but the lasting impression is the mood of the album.  Dredging the depths of darkness and despair, the title of the album describes the music well, but doesn't say it all.  The lyrical content and the subdued tone of voice go a long way towards weaving that mood and interlocks with the relentless drone of the instruments.  Everyday's the same and it always rains, mercilessly.

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 - FROM BEYOND (The Color Out of Space EP) - Houston, Texas space / doom trio From Beyond's second EP of their rookie year isn't a complete departure from their first, but it does reveal them as a restless and ambitious band, never content to sit on a sound and ever ready to explore new ground.  Four great songs, each different in texture and style.  'The Color Out of Space' is an advancement from 'One Year' and it leaves me incredibly excited about the future of this band.  I was particularly fond of my recent review of this EP, and so were the band.  You can read it here.  Get it here.  Highlights include "The Dead Still Ride" and "The Color Out of Space".  Rating 5/5

December 2 - Mother Gun (Human EP)

December 6 - MOTHERSLOTH (Hazy Blur of Life) - Madrid, Spain based quartet Mothersloth play a very metallic style of sludge and doom.  Their four song EP is full of chunking and squealing heavy metal guitar, big throaty vocals and the heavy-hitting stylings of their drummer, the wonderfully-named, Gog. Get it here.  Highlights include "Pile of Fortune" and "Goliath".  Rating 3.5/5

December 7 - YEAR OF THE GOAT (Angels' Necropolis) - "Here we go again.  Yet another Swedish retro rock band."  Wrong.  Year of the Goat is a retro band with a difference.  They pay their fair share of homage to times past without slavishly attempting to recreate specific eras.  Rather, they are collageists who take a bit from here, take a bit from there and add their own flame to the fire.  The end result is eight terrific songs, a sweeping album full of excellent performances.  Find it here.  Highlights include "Spirit of Fire" and "I'll Die For You".  Rating 4/5 (full review coming soon)

December 12 - Enos (All Too Human)

December 13 - GEEZER (Handmade Heavy Blues) - Geezer don't lie.  Just look at the album title and that should give you your best clue as to what you might find on this fine 10 song collection.  Fans of Five Horse Johnson or Heavy Eyes will find a lot to love from this New York power trio, but fans of Robert Johnson, Son House, Willie Brown, etc. might love it even more.  Get it here.  Highlights include "Pony" and "I'm Coming Home".  Rating 4/5

December 13 - HELLRYDE INC. (Hellryde Incorporated) - I'm hearing this more and more and I like it.  Monterrey, Mexico's four piece Hellryde Inc play metal with groove and stoner elements.  The guitars squeal, the drums thrash, the bass is distorted to near inaudibility, but the songs and the riffs are built on a stoner foundation.  Check it out, this is high class stuff.  Highlights include "Piss Me Off" and "Insomnia".  Rating 4/5

December 13 - Stonebringer (Ocean of the Brave)

December 14 - THE HEAVY EYES (Maera) - After releasing one of the best albums of 2011, what do Memphis blues heavyweights The Heavy Eyes do for an encore?  They've thickened up their sound, the riffs are bigger, the grooves are filthier, the songs are tighter, the hooks are more memorable.  Simply put, The Heavy Eyes have unleashed a monster of an album, one of the year's best.  "These Men Are Wolves", "Parado", "Lately" and No. 1 hit "Levantado" are just a sampling of the abundance of standout material.  Read my review.  Get it here.  Highlights include "Lately" and "Levantado".  , Rating 5/5

December 18 - SLOW HEART (Dead Friends and Angry Lovers) - The latest incarnation of Ice Dragon and its multiple personae, Slow Heart is a goth / drone rock exorcism.  This project seems to be an expansion of certain moods and sounds found on Ice Dragon's 'Greyblackfalconhawk' album.  Get it here.  Highlights include "We Want The Night" and "Never Trust a Woman (Dressed in Black)".  Rating 4/5

December 19 - OWL (Christmas Mixtape 2012) - Owl's Christmas mixtape is a collection of free ballin' jams and outtakes, but it's no simple throwaway shit collage.  It's a 44-minute noise fest featuring some really good moments.  I don't think this stuff was recorded with the intention of release so some of it can sound rather poorly, but I listen to a lot of scratchy delta blues records from the 30s and psychedelic underground acetates of the 60s so unmastered de-studiofied recording are alright by me.  And who doesn't love tapes?  I was a diehard tape guy before I was a diehard CD guy.  It wasn't until about '98 when labels stopped making tapes that I finally switched over to CDs ...  Get your gift here.  Highlights include "Chromatose" and "The Demon is Born".  Rating There's something very inherently wrong with 'rating' a Christmas mixtape.

December 21 - 1000mods (Valley of Sand EP)

December 21 - WHEELFALL / A VERY OLD GHOST BEHIND THE FARM split - Heavy, heavy stuff from France.  Wheelfall's still warm on the table album 'Interzone' album has been a critical hit.  This is the first new music AVOGBTF has released in two full years, whose album 'Primary Septagon' is a real favorite at PH.  The wait was worth it.  Crushing doom.  Get crushed here.  Highlights include "Hangman's Laugh" and "Navigating on the Seas of Dementia".  Rating 4.5/5

December 22 - PALACE IN THUNDERLAND (Stars, Dreams, Seas) - This three song demo from New England supergroup Palace in Thunderland is the first release from the group since splitting up in 2007.  Back then they weren't a supergroup, they were just a group.  'Stars, Dreams, Seas' shows some different sides but mostly fits into the stoner / space rock genres.  Get it here.  Highlights include "Beyond The Stars" and "Awakened Dream".  Rating 4.5/5

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




  1. Greet Death (Destroyer of Light / ST) 2012 Brand New Video!!
  2. Hollow (Alice in Chains / TBA) 2013 Brand New Song!!
  3. Snowblind (Black Sabbath / Vol. 4) 1972
  4. Secular Haze (Ghost / Infestissumam) 2013 Brand New Song!!
  5. Twin Obscenities (Spider Kitten / Cougar Club) 2013
  6. Time Out For Time In (Them / Time Out! Time In For Them) 1968
  7. Moon Queen (Lord Fowl / Moon Queen) 2012
  8. Perfect Monkey (Cube / ST) 2012
  9. Drawing Flies (Soundgarden / Badmotorfinger) 1991
  10. vier (Mount Fuji / ST) 2012
  11. Desert Sun (The Shooters / Planet of the Black Sun) 2012
  12. No Better No Worse (Manfred Mann / Mighty Garvey) 1968
  13. We Want The Night (Slow Heart / Dead Friends and Angry Lovers) 2012 Brand New Song from the guys in Ice Dragon!!!
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