…

…

Echoes From Forgotten Hearts releases February 24th via Geertruida on cassette and digital formats — pre-orders and pre-saves are open starting today, and anyone placing a pre-order is automatically entered into a giveaway for a cassette version of the band’s last EP, For Farewell of Nostalgia.

Vision Eternel adds the following information about Echoes From Forgotten Hearts:

The release contains 23 songs. In addition to the 7-song Extended Play Version, the release includes the unheard 6-song Soundtrack Version and 10 rare studio demos, outtakes, and alternate mixes. Carl Saff remastered all of the material at Saff Mastering. A new cover artwork was painted by Michael Koelsch at Koelsch Studios, and the release features additional paintings and photography by Rain Frances at Rain Frances Art. The Deluxe Compact Cassette Edition is split over two colored tapes in a factory-numbered boxed set. It comes with an exclusive postcard and an 80-page novella containing rare pictures and a detailed recounting of the extended play’s making, from its origin as a soundtrack, through its delays, cancellations, and limited releases over the years.

All pre-orders placed directly through Geertruida between now and February 13, 2024, are automatically entered into a giveaway for a free compact cassette of Vision Eternel’s previous extended play, For Farewell Of Nostalgia (also released by Geertruida). The winner’s free tape will ship bundled with Echoes From Forgotten Hearts in February 2024. The Deluxe Compact Cassette Edition can be pre-ordered from Geertruida’s website. Deluxe Digital Edition pre-saves are found here. Anyone purchasing a physical edition will automatically receive a free digital edition.

Their latest EP Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico (released on 3rd November via Fat Dracula Records) pushes even further into conceptual strangeness – one eighteen-minute long track, split into six unpredictable parts. It’s the second collection on the bounce (following 2021 debut album The Live Long After) on which Sugar Horse have taken an intriguing u-turn. 2022’s Waterloo Teeth was another EP with a unique conceptual hook – each of the four tracks featured a litany of guest musicians, including members of Conjurer, Heriot and Biffy Clyro and many others.

We caught up with Sugar Horse vocalist/guitarist Ashley Tubb and guitarist Jake Healy to talk their unique aesthetic approach, Bristolian origins and, erm, U2.

…

…

First up, because I’ve heard you’re all fans, can you explain why everyone is wrong and U2 are actually great?

Ashley Tubb: Ah man, we’re not claiming that every U2 record is great, we’re not psychopaths. Achtung Baby is probably where I stop, I dunno about Jake.

Jake Healy: Pop for me. They go downhill after that (laughs).

Ash: The Edge’s guitar playing, whether people like it or not, is some of the most influential, beautiful guitar playing ever. They also just had these huge, undeniable songs. Some people are really annoyed by Bono, but he doesn’t annoy me that much. 

I feel like a surprising amount of eighties pop creeps into your music. For example, the vocals on the opening track of this EP remind me of Simple Minds. What is it about that sound that you’re into?

Jake: A lot of those bands U2, Simple Minds, Big Country just have these huge sounds and great songs.

Ash: In comparison to a lot of bands in our sphere, that write around riffs, our songs are more based around the music as a whole, rather than parts. Because of that, they tend to be quite simple. We try to strip everything away and focus on what’s immediate. That sounds weird because we’ve written an eighteen-minute long song (laughs). 

I love the term ‘doomgaze’. I know it’s tongue-in-cheek, but it fits you well. What other acts would you place in the doomgaze pantheon?

Ash: It’s a useful descriptive term, but I don’t think we always sound like that. Jesu would be associated with the term, that’s got to be up there. My friend Tom in Planning For Burial, they sound like that. Also Have A Nice Life, they’ve been labeled that.

Jake: I’m trusting Jake with this. There’s probably more shoegaze bands that we like, in terms of what we listen to.

Ash: As a band, I wouldn’t say any of us are metalheads. We all like some heavy bands, but none of us are focused on that stuff.

That’s interesting. I recently spoke to Takiya from Divide & Dissolve and she straight-up said “I don’t listen to metal” and her music is super heavy.

Ash: You can hear that. There’s loads of heavy-sounding indie rock from the last twenty years that, in my opinion, sounds way heavier than a lot of metal. For me, My Bloody Valentine’s “Slow” or Mogwai’s “Like Herod” are unbelievably heavy, but I don’t think anyone would call them metal.

Jake: It’s about how you contextualize something. If you don’t expect something to be heavy then sometimes it gets heavier. A lot of metal tries to get it across and fails.

For overseas readers, can you talk a bit about how Bristol and its scene helped create the conditions for your band?

Ash: I think the cool thing about Bristol is that it’s not the particularly done thing to start a band that starts like another band. There’s a healthy competition where everyone’s forced to come up with their own slant on something. 

Jake: We’re lucky that there’s so many venues and people putting things on. It can get overwhelming, in a good way. It means that bands can just develop. Everyone here’s pretty open-minded and they trust you to do something that’s creative.

It felt like you guys emerged pretty fully-formed in the post-lockdown period. When did you properly form?

Ash: The band first came together in 2015, but we fucked around for ages and didn’t do anything of merit. Jake joined in 2019 and in that period there was a lot of planning – a lot of ideas of what we wanted to do and what we didn’t want to do. We don’t do it so much now, but we used to have a lot of rules about what we could or couldn’t play. Limitations force you to work things out.

I love your track titles, are they nonsensical placeholders or is there some absurdist logic to them?

Ash: The songs normally get a name before the lyrics are fully written. Often it’ll cause some offshoot that’s used in the lyrics. Again, it’s a limitation that forces you into writing about something.

In terms of limitations, the quote in the press release about this new EP was that it’s an ‘exploration of the note A in all its forms’. I get that it’s also tongue-in-cheek, but is that an example of these limitations? 

Ash: Definitely, yeah. That note A thing comes from when we first started playing shows. Because of how simple the songs are, people used to take the piss saying ‘I can’t believe you just play the note A for ten minutes’. I like the idea of taking something that’s a joke at your expense and using it to create something.

One thing I really like about you guys is how you smash together opposites. Whether it’s heavy and gentle or ironic and sincere. It’s almost metamodern and just feels really new.

Ash: Some sort of weird middle ground where no one knows what’s going on (laughs).

Jake: We get some confused reactions. People ask why do you have funny song titles for such apparently serious music. But like you said, it’s fun to play around with the lines between sincere and ironic.  

I feel like your music is formally funny. It’s not that there’s jokes, but there’s something witty about the unusual way it moves and is shaped.

Ash: I laugh all the time at how ridiculous music is. Me and Jake love The Fall. People who don’t fully know that band will think that it’s avant-garde, serious poetry when it’s full of jokes and stupid shit. They did a live album once where they walked off half-way through the set and they tracklisted the walking off on the album.

Your previous release was a huge undertaking, with a ton of great guest musicians. I wanted to ask if you could explain a bit about how you put that one together?

Ash: The original idea came during lockdown. We were having video calls with people about making long-distance records together. Lots of people do split records or collabs with two artists, but we said why don’t we make life incredibly difficult for ourselves and have four different guest musicians on every song (laughs).

We thought, because our songs are simple, people could come in and do things over them and it wouldn’t feel like a mess. It was simple, but as we got closer to the deadline it was a bit like herding cats. It was fun, but I probably wouldn’t do it again (laughs).

Jake: It was fun having people from different genres. We all listen to a broad scope of music, so it was fun getting people from different worlds in and seeing what they could do. We just gave them total freedom. 

Ash: We pre-warned people that they have total freedom, but we also have freedom to edit them out.

Last thing I wanted to ask – if you could do a dream collaboration track with three musicians who would they be. You can say U2 if you want.

Jake: (Laughs) Well we wouldn’t need Bono, so yeah the other three from U2 would be fine.

Ash: I’d say maybe Kevin Shields, but I wouldn’t want it to take fifteen years.

…

Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico is out now via Fat Dracula Records. Get it here.

…

…

Things get really spacey elsewhere on the record (Bruce Lamont shows up!) but this particular track is slow, guitar-led rock, and could perhaps be interpreted as post-punk if one sped it up about 200%. Intense, yet not focused, Altars of the Moon fills sonic space like gas in a vacuum with musing guitar lines, beefy drums, and half-snarled sentiments. Alan Cassidy of The Black Dahlia Murder takes up drum duties on this record, and uses the opportunity to get weird with it, intermingling clever and low-key timekeeping with blistering, snappy fills. Heath Rave’s (Lotus Thrones) vocals are essentially another texture in the greater picture, painting a scene of dereliction and despondency.

Rave adds:

Some mornings I awake from the most beautiful of fever dreams thinking my molecules have been completely dissolved then rebuilt into a form I don’t understand from inter dimensional, faster than light space travel. I roll over in my 0 thread count sheets that warm my rotting blood bag and take the pills that return me to the lobotomy of existing on Earth. I can’t wait to sleep again.

…

The Colossus and the Widow releases November 17th through Disorder Recordings.

Post-black metal/shoegaze group So Hideous return with standalone single “Bright Black Beach” as a follow up to their 2021 album None But a Pure Heart Can Sing –- an album that we covered in one of our roundups that year. The New Yorkers’ new track starts off slowly with lightly brushed drums and tremolo picked riffs off in the distance and a heavy Western vibe before kicking into gear about two minutes in; the brushes trade out with heavy sticks and raw aggression and emotion, evoking the sounds of shoegaze and black metal in unison. It makes for both a beautiful and uncompromising listen.

Drummer Michael Kadnar (also of Downfall of Gaia) comments about the use of brushes and blast beats:

It’s been very interesting and challenging to create the textures I want in So Hideous. I studied jazz in college, so bringing that influence to the band has opened a lot of doors and definitely created a cool dichotomy between blast beats and more emotional brush work.

Today we are premiering two videos for the song: one that was an AI-generated dreamscape of sorts and the other being a drum playthrough of the same track. Plus, check out tour dates below – there are two. dates in the tri-state area bookending their Japan tour.

…

…

…

So Hideous Tour Dates:
June 17 – Garwood, NJ @ Crossroads w/ The Postman Syndrome
July 6 – Osaka, Japan @ Hokage w/ Seek
July 7 – Nagoya, Japan @ Huck Finn w/ Seek
July 8 – Tachikawa, Tokyo, Japan @ Cosmic Hall w/ Seek
July 9 – Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan @ Antiknock w/ Seek
July 31 – Brooklyn, NY @ Saint Vitus w/ Rosetta, SOM

These days, Chicago’s underground metal scene is vast enough to have an underground of its own, and that’s where Dead Sun Rising emerges from: a so-far well-kept secret lurking on the occasional show flyer or Bandcamp recommendation page. Though lineup shifts have kept the group, continuously helmed by guitarist/vocalist Eric Carley, from fully settling into their groove, both their first Hallowed EP and follow-up full-length As Above So Below are fascinating albums needing no further evolution, exploring the interesting territory between post-metal, shoegaze, and rock in fairly different ways.

Their upcoming A Soft Decay EP continues this inquisitive venture, in some ways departing even farther from what might traditionally be called metal, but growing darker and more pessimistic in the process. Post-metal can be bleak, sure, but Dead Sun Rising isn’t simply expressing detachment or hopelessness. A Soft Decay feels like a reaction, a sprouting, spreading bloom of discontent. When I first heard the EP, I felt that it was mournful–and contemplative in its grief–but further listening revealed a simmering undercurrent: yes, this record mourns, but not peacefully.

Below, you’ll find the album’s first single “Constellations,” which might have some of the, er, riffiest riffs on the EP, chuggy and delivered with a martial bent. That suits its subject matter well, as the first lyrics confirm: “We saw the signs / calling for your blood.”

Listen to the track and read an interview with Carley below, in which we discussed the new EP, “Constellations,” and the band’s path up until now.

…

…

What’s the story behind the upcoming EP’s title, A Soft Decay?

Yeah, so we had a show at Metal Monkey [Brewing], early last year, and I put out a call for a flyer on DIY Chicago to see if anybody had any artwork. This local artist Natalie Sustaita hit me up with a pretty cool design, a skull ice cream thing that’s pretty sweet. So I followed her. And then at some point in time, she posted that some other artist based in Sweden [Art of Maquenda] had this really awesome hare design, like the decomposing rabbit skull with the fungus growing on it, which I thought was really cool. It kind of grabbed me as soon as I saw it, I was like, “I definitely need to use that”. So I got it, and I popped it into the program I use to do layouts for the album covers and stuff like that. For whatever reason, the phrase “a soft decay” popped in my head, which is a line from the song “Cudgel” on the Hallowed EP, the first thing we ever recorded, but it just seemed to fit. When something like that happens, I tend to not question it. I just went with it, so it stuck.

Is there any theme behind this album, or particular topics you wanted to explore?

I’ve noticed that over the course of my songwriting… career, if you want to call it a career, I’ve tended to sort of go more outward. I still do a lot of like inward stuff, but now I’m kind of like, writing about things that I see that are filtered through my own personal thought processes and distortions. So yeah, this one has a lot to do with things that have been in the news recently, a lot of fucked up things that have been happening in the world in general, that I’m kind of trying to come to grips with. Music, for me, has always been more of a way to deal with unpleasant things than to deal with things that make me happy. I just, you know, I sit down by myself and I’m writing lyrics or whatever, I tend to focus on things that are negative and kind of use songwriting as a bit of a cathartic way to get them out and somehow feel better about them. I guess. I’m not sure if that actually works, but that’s the thought.

We’re premiering the track “Constellations” – can you tell me more about the song?

Yeah, “Constellations” – I mean, the actual lyrics are just about a tribe of people that are reading the stars in the sky as a sign to go murder a bunch of other people. It’s kind of like a questioning of religion. I’m fairly anti religious in general, I don’t like organized religion, and that comes out a lot in my songs. To me, the concept of living in a world where there’s so many people that are so engrossed by religion and use it as a means to sort of ignore facts of the world really blows my mind. That is a constant source of frustration for me and it comes out a lot in my lyrics. So yeah, “Constellations” is just about a bunch of idiots that see stars in the sky and interpret it as a message to go kill a bunch of other people and that they did the right thing by doing so. It’s sort of a tribal view of religion, but it questions the whole concept overall, really.

Dead Sun Rising’s releases have taken a sort of trajectory out of strictly post-metal into something a little bit wider – do you feel like you’re changing your sound or getting closer to your original goal?

I kind of don’t know how to answer that question, necessarily. We’re not trying to do anything, I suppose. You know, I think that I listen to a lot more Shiner than, you know, Metallica, even though I do listen to a shitload of Metallica. I came of age, musically, in the 90s with a lot of like math rock bands, and you know, Shiner, The Promise Ring, Jawbreaker, Jets to Brazil, Jawbox… Failure was another huge one for me. So those are the kinds of bands that I really sank my teeth into and still listen to very heavily to this day. If I had to compare it, the first Hallowed EP, was, in a lot of ways–I was listening to a ton of ISIS, and I think that that really comes through on that.

Strata was the single we did during quarantine. And that was the first thing that I just played bass and guitar on, and there’s actually some Theremin on it. But basically, I just had a friend play drums, and that was it. I was kind of leery about putting that out, because I felt like it was a pretty significant departure. My joke was it was Jade Tree metal, because it sounds like some shit from Jade Tree, but like a metal version of it. But I really liked it. It’s kind of funny, there’s a lot of people who tell me that that’s their favorite song of ours. Which is weird.

We’re always very democratic about it, though. We’ve had a personnel change on every single record that we’ve put out. The Hallowed EP, the drummer quit immediately after that, to move to Oakland. And then we did Strata, which was just a friend of mine, who was technically the drummer in the band for a little while, but we never played a show together–he kind of joined right before quarantine and left shortly after. And then the third thing we did [As Above So Below], we had Pete Nocito come in on drums, and we also added a new bass player at that point in time, Nick. So, we’re very democratic, I tend to write the all of the songs, like the ideas I start with, but then we bring it to practice, and we workshop it together. It’s a super democratic process, everybody’s allowed to, you know, form their own parts. And, you know, we make a lot of decisions in the group as far as like, how many times we’re going to do this, do we need to go back to this, does this suck, you know, and I’ll even show different guitar parts like, “Alright, I’ve got three different guitar parts in this one thing, which one should I do?”

Just by nature, then, with different people coming in, things sound differently from recording to recording. So it’s not like we’re necessarily looking at something, it’s just that we kind of have the “if it sounds cool, let’s do it” approach, which every person I’ve had in the band has had that same attitude. We’re not trying to do anything specific, we’re just trying to do something that sounds, you know, coherent. So we don’t want to go too far in either direction. But we’ve always just been cool with fucking around with the formula and seeing what comes out. That’s always like the most fun for me, when an idea that I write doesn’t quite end up the way that I thought it would. That’s just more interesting to me personally, right? Because it’s got somebody else’s fingerprints on it versus me just doing something that I kind of know that whole story from beginning to end. It’s nice to have some twists and turns thrown in there by other people. That’s what makes music interesting to me at least.

…

…

You and I talked just a few days ago, and you mentioned you’re the primary songwriter for Dead Sun Rising. Can you tell me about how songs come to be within the band?

Sometimes I have a song kind of sketched out, like the beginning, the middle, and the end. I think another thing that has happened with our songs is there have been less parts thrown in there. Whereas, we used to maybe have seven different parts on the song, we’ve condensed that down to like maybe having four now. I don’t know, I don’t count these things, but it feels like they’re getting more simple anyway. But yeah, sometimes we’ll just bring it into practice and say, “Alright, this is what I’ve got.” To be honest with you, we don’t have a very set means of working it into a song. Sometimes we’ll just workshop one riff over and over again. Once we’ve gotten that down I’ll change to a different riff and people try to catch up, or sometimes we just really, really slow it down, and go through it meticulously, like one riff at a time.

People have opinions on it, right? That part should just go away, or we should do that at the end instead of now, or we should do that part for longer, or that should actually be like, the verse part. There’s also a lot of where do I sing versus not singing and letting it be an instrumental passage. It’s not necessarily consciously what I’m striving for, but I don’t sing as much as a lot of people do. Like, there’s not as many vocals on our songs as a lot of people’s songs. It’s definitely like a conscious choice, but I also kind of step back and say, like, alright, is adding a vocal here gonna really add anything, or should I just not sing. About half the time, based on our songs, I decide that it’s better without vocals and I’m gonna leave it at that. Or sometimes, I have a vocal idea that I’m trying to pull off and it’s just not coming together, and I’ll just say, alright, rather than have a shitty vocal part. I’d rather have no vocals on this part. So we just go with that. But yeah, it’s all super democratic. That makes it fun.

A Soft Decay is an EP, following up your last full-length from 2021, As Above So Below. What made the EP format make sense for your next release?

We just got to a point where we were itching to record. I really like to put something out every year, or at least record something every year. I just get very antsy to record something. And, you know, every time we’ve made a record, we had to start again with at least one new member at the end of that process. It just took a while to get the old songs together. Some bands write new stuff and record old stuff at the same time, and we do that as well, but for this one, we really just started with the new stuff, and we’re like, let’s just work these songs up really quickly to get ’em together. We made that shift shortly after Jeff joined, which was like late 2021, and then we started getting these these six tracks up and running.

We actually wrote “Fleeting” two days before we went to the studio. We practiced on Thursday, and we introduced that song, and then we recorded it on Saturday when we went into Electrical. But the other five we had worked up, we were really confident and we decided to kind of cap it. Maybe around September, we said all right, we’re not going to write anything more; let’s just focus on really nailing down these five songs. Then of course, we broke our rule by adding “Fleeting” in at the last minute, but we had the other five done well enough. It didn’t seem like we could do it, but it actually worked out really well. That song is a really fun listen, for me. I really like the way it turned out.

A Soft Decay was recorded at Electrical Audio. How was that experience?

Oh, man, it’s awesome. That place is so fucking cool. So that’s a bucket list item for me. It always has been. I’ve just always been really enthralled by that place. We used to practice just on the opposite side of the block from it. There was a place on Fletcher that I will not name–worst practice space I’ve ever had, I hated it. It was right by Electrical and so I’d always drive by Electrical.

Also, there’s so many of my like favorite albums were made there. That I’ve just it’s always been in it. I think it’s really really fucking cool that they keep it affordable. Like that’s really awesome that like they keep it affordable so that just any schmuck with a job can walk in there and fucking record an album or an EP with them, which is really cool. But yeah, we did it with Greg Norman, who was a super sweet guy to work with. He was really fun to work with. He’s a super nice guy. It was a really enjoyable experience overall. You walk in, and we did Studio B, which is the big giant stairwell. So you walk in and he’s setting up and they have like this bookshelf that’s all these little gray boxes with handles on them. And I’m like, “Ehat are those, are those direct boxes?” And he’s like, “No, those are just power supplies for all these really old tube lights we have and those are all like in this big like, dresser thing sitting next to it, but it’s just awesome. He’s putting these weird ass mics on the floor that look like just big like long wands. And he just puts one on the floor like facing the wall. And then he puts another one on the floor, under a chair facing the doorway at a 45 degree angle. Those catch all the reverberations. So there’s a song that we did called “Slow Waves”, and “Slow Waves” is pretty much all just those room mics, catching all the reverberations off the stairwell, which is really cool.

But it was super sweet. It’s super, super nice in there. Everyone’s really, really nice. It’s very cool. It’s awesome. Like if you you know, if you feel like doing it, and you can swing it, I couldn’t recommend that more. It was fucking awesome

What’s next for Dead Sun Rising? Any shows on the horizon? Merch?!

Yeah, I really liked the hare design that we got. So when I bought it for use on the album from the artist, I asked her if it was cool if we use it for a T-shirt design later on down the road. And she was like, yeah, if you can figure out how to put that on shirt, go for it. So we’re talking about possibly doing that. As far as shows are concerned, we don’t have anything right now just because true to format, unfortunately, immediately after we recorded, Nick Willis, our bass player informed us that he was quitting. So we got a new bassist, pretty quickly, actually, his name is Michael Klayman. And he actually is the bassist for another Chicago band, Numerical Control Society, who is recording and mixing right now as we speak, with I think Pete Grossman, which is fucking awesome because Pete’s cool as shit.

So he’s joined us and it’s going really smoothly so far. But we still need to spend some time getting up to speed on the old songs and we’re actually already working on new stuff. Just because, you know, anytime we get a new member, it’s always nice to work on something new so that they can write their own part and at least have that. Although, nobody is beholden to the old material, as far as keeping it exactly the way it was recorded or the way the other person played it–everyone’s allowed to make it their own. We do need to do a little work as far as getting up to speed, so we were contemplating holding on to the album until we had a release show scheduled and then I decided that was a little too much pressure that I didn’t want, so we decided to put the album out sooner than later and then we’ll play a show when we get there. We’re working on it; hopefully around March or April we’ll be able to play a show, but you know, no, we’re not going to be too pressured about it.

…

A Soft Decay releases February 10th independently via Bandcamp.

A certain section of the death metal community has always ignored what other people think. In 1980s Los Angeles, it was Sadistic Intent playing their hearts out to crowds that would “horseshoe” around the stage to avoid seeming like they were watching Sadistic Intent play. In 1990s Mexico, it was The Chasm giving up on shows altogether for a time because of a lack of interest in the local scene. Timeless and forever, these are the works of art that live in our hearts as special monuments in the genre. California death metal tyrants Deathevokation perhaps put it best on the back sleeve of their album, The Chalice of Ages–”Music that doesn’t follow trends is meant for the ages.”

In their heart of hearts, San Diego dreamers Tideless know that sentiment to be true and put everything they have into their singularly unique music. Their debut album Adrift in Grief is sentimental in a way that’s obvious from the album title but has an execution that belies most of the comparisons fans make to bands like The Chasm or StarGazer. Instead of being a nostalgic return to the death metal of old, Tideless is something new altogether, a beautiful cascade of shoegaze that intermarries gloriously with black metal melodies, death/doom, and, yes, maybe some riffs that would make you think of StarGazer or The Chasm.

Though that sounds like a combination that should not work–and indeed, other attempts at fusing shoegaze and death metal that I’ve heard have all been absolutely awful–Tideless has the deep understanding of both genres that it takes to make them seamlessly flow together and make it work. Droning melodies stir up images of the pushing and pulling water, gorgeous soundscapes intertwining with mean snarled vocals and heavy, pulsing drums; the complexity of the music is matched only by how natural it feels, equal parts psyched out jam and diligently constructed machine. The production is rougher than might be expected by the sound but it works, letting everything wash together in such a way that it takes repeated listens and focus for the many layers on Adrift in Grief to reveal themselves, and the result is pure magic.

Read below for an interview with Tideless guitarist and songwriter Carlos Gautan and give Adrift in Grief a listen.

…

…

When starting this band, was the unusual stylistic approach ever something that felt like it could be a roadblock for fans and labels?

Kyle and I used to joke in the start about how by the time Tideless got any recognition we would probably be in our 50s. So it was always in the back of my mind. Just from experience alone I had always known that the road I was taking would never be the easiest. But carving out my own path was the only option when it came to my music. Even if it went over people’s heads, I had to be able to express myself completely and freely. As a teenager I remember watching a Chasm interview with Daniel and, to paraphrase poorly, he said, “music must come from the heart.” As a teen that really shocked me, it had never crossed my mind that one was even “allowed” to do that in metal. So for the last 10 years everything from finding a stable line-up to even getting added to a bill let alone any type of label supporter has been sparse.

Do you feel like things have changed at all with the release of Adrift in Grief versus the earlier years of the band?

It has been night and day to be completely honest. After the last EP , Zane moved and I
lost motivation. We had just done a tour up the west coast and I was burnt out so I took
some time off. At the time Kyle was going hard at school so I figured it was the right time.
Some time later Kyle came back from Montana and was like let’s start it up again so we
did. The only new song I had to write for the album was Vast and Empty all the other
songs we had right up to the “break.” Adrift in Grief was recorded at our 10’x10′ lockout with almost zero hope of anyone one giving it a chance, purely based on the production
of the album. But things eventually caught on from getting shows to eventually it being
released on an actual label instead of just on Bandcamp. Probably one of the proudest
moments for me and also Kyle was Oscar from Cenotaph hitting us up for the eventual
release on Triangle Circle Records/Chaos Records. But on top of everything it feels like
people are more open to the music than in the past. Back when we released the Sea of
Tears demo the simple fact that it had shoegaze tagged on to it made it a target of
ridicule. Fortunately six plus years later people are starting to recognize that the merging
of those influences aren’t that bad.

Is that feeling of validation and support inspiring? Would you be able to keep it going the way you have without it?

As a band it has been amazing. Keep in mind that we all have careers and have extremely busy lives. Tideless is something we do for fun and getting the feedback we have has been clutch. We recently finished recording our second album and already putting together the third. Without the current support we for sure won’t play live as much as we have in the last year. Without it we would keep at it but maybe at a slower pace.

At what point did the idea first come together for a band blending shoegaze and the more emotional side of death metal?

I would say that the idea was always there but it wasn’t fully implemented until I switched from playing drums to guitar. To understand that you would have had to deal with people that were open to the metal aspects but really didn’t get the shoegaze side of things. Which was pretty much how my previous project Ruminations played out. Once I made the switch, I was able to fully realize what I heard in my head all along. A depressing marriage of death/doom with shoegaze.

Does a feel for percussion from your drumming experience help with putting together song ideas?

There are aspects where it comes in handy to know a thing or too. Though as a drummer
I know that getting told what beat to play can get old in a creative setting. At the start of
Tideless it was just me and Zane so at first I was trying to do everything but eventually I
learned to trust the process. By the time Kyle took over the drums I was committed to
allowing him to do what he wished. Apart from maybe a transition here and there the
songs flow best when there is no set perimeter.

Are you writing stuff mostly in the room with Kyle these days? How has your songwriting process changed over the years, if at all?

First I take a ten dollar acoustic I have in the closet and whenever I have some free time I play. As soon as I have a skeleton of a song (3-5 riffs) then I’ll hit him up. We jam it and it eventually becomes a song, at least a very simple version. In the past I would have been pretty strict about counts and such but Kyle and I have such a great chemistry. We get in there and just jam. Which is partially why the second album is so damn long. At the same time I’ll show Aaron what I’m doing since he typically plays all the base riffs.

By this point I will start to write the second guitar and from that Javier figures out what he needs to do so the song sounds right. While I still write the bulk of the songs I can’t give the other guys enough credit for their contributions and work. Aaron added two riffs in the new album and everyone had full artistic freedom. The vocals have always been Kyle’s domain, one take and that’s it. Some overdubs here and there but he gets those done himself in no time. Hopefully we can have Diego do his thing on the third one.

There is just one rule and that it is:

Sad riffs only, Make America Sad Again.

In faster sections on songs like “Cascading Flesh” I hear melodies that remind me of black metal bands like Volahn. Is black metal part of your stew of influences?

Would have gone with the far superior Arizmenda. But yes, black metal is an influence for sure. I will say that apart from the HOTFL, CW, and BTC bands I tend to stick with bands from the 90s. Tons of east block bands, Bethlehem, Fleurety, Ved Buens Ende, the list goes on.

Outside of death/doom, black metal, and shoegaze (as if those aren’t enough!) are there any influences that might surprise people in the Tideless mix?

Might not be that big of a shocker but Prog, but I’m only talking about old shit like King
Crimson, Magma, and Yes. I can say that the same goes for Kyle his a big fan of Eloy and
Mahavishnu Orchestra. As for the more “out there stuff” anything that’s beautiful and
lush sounding. There is a lot of Dream Pop that I’ll go like “you know some growls would
take it to another level”. Cocteau Twins is a big one, if I could take those song and just
add a bit of metal elements there would be no new for me writing any music. Bands like
Beach House, Difference Engine, Alison’s Halo, Crumb, Astrobrite, Starflyer 59, Yawning
Men, Stella Luna, and many more make up the bulk of my listening time nowadays.

…

Adrift in Grief released April 23rd, 2021 independently via Bandcamp.

Aside from a select few artists, this idea of “metalgaze” or “doomgaze” fizzled out in the late 2000s. Make no mistake, this isn’t like post-metal or post-rock or shoegaze in an explicit sense. Metalgaze (or doomgaze if you feel like venturing into the more specific) is quite literally metal’s answer to rock music’s shoegaze style. This means lots of effects pedals, riffing, and heavy-handed atmospheres, but in a distinctly heavier (and in doomgaze Ammothea‘s case, slower) sense.

Terminal Burrow, Ammothea’s debut full-length album, looks to doom metal as a backbone and builds upon it in the same way My Bloody Valentine erects kingdoms over jangling indie rock. In this sense, Ammothea is heavy, but more in an overwhelming type of way. There are elements of deliberation in the way songwriter Ammothea and drummer Sean Beaty lock into glacial grooves and pummeling metalisms, but a lot goes into the randomness that comes with additional effects. Harmonic chains buckle, melodies decay, and volume increases exponentially. This is a loud album, but it is meant to be all-encompassing. Finding solace in the trail blazed by The Angelic Process and Nadja, Ammothea’s entry into the doomgaze and metalgaze book is a powerful tribute to a niche style, bringing it into a new decade.

…

…

Terminal Burrow releases today on Realm and Ritual, with tapes to follow soon.

On their last album, the critically acclaimed Jord, the Denmark blackgaze collective Møl showcased a dichotomy of chaotic black metal juxtaposed with the wondrous atmosphere commonly associated with shoegaze. The songs on the band’s latest release Diorama, their first for metal powerhouse Nuclear Blast, are no different, though this time completely fleshed out and totally beautiful in their complexity.

Listening to Møl weave in and out of chaos and elegance is completely engrossing; an absolutely breathtaking display of balance that the band clearly has fine-tuned over the course of a few years. If there was any fat on Jord, then Diorama is totally svelte and ready to take you on an emotionally stirring exercise, one that 2021 could use: a chaotically tragic experience without equal. Vocalist Kim Song Sternkopf mixes his spoken sections and black metal rasps between passages while his rhythm section bounces back and forth between My Bloody Valentine-styled wall of guitar sound to tremolo-picked barrages. It keeps the listener guessing throughout the relatively short run time, offering unexpectedly grand scale.

We sat down with guitarist Nicolai Hansen to discuss the state of touring, some of the band’s biggest influences, what makes their two albums different from one another, recent band favorites, and their favorite tour mates, among other things.

…

…

So how is everybody doing with the world in a state of flux?

Pretty good. Our lives are in a state of flux as well so we kind of fit the world theme. Also “Flux” by Bloc Party is amazing.

What has the time between releasing Jord and recording Diorama been like for the band?

It’s been very busy with the band in terms of touring and playing shows as well as in our personal lives. But it’s always exciting to enter an album cycle, so many awesome things to do and people to meet, so it’s quite the adventure.

What are some of the band’s biggest influences?

In writing this album I drew on a lot of different inspirations. I listened to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins, Alcest, and, one of my all time favourite bands from Denmark, Mew. Other bands include Gojira, Oathbreaker, and Mastodon.

Why the combination of shoegaze and black metal?

Because I think the work so well together. Although I wouldn’t necessarily say that we are inspired by black metal. I draw on a lot of different styles of metal when composing. But black metal is definitely capable of great beauty and I think that’s probably why I tend to gravitate towards that as opposed to other styles of metal.

What are some of your favorite 2021 releases?

Hushed and Grim by Mastodon gets a lot of playtime right now.

What do you have planned as band going forward after this album drops?

We have a lot of shows planned both in Denmark and abroad so we will spend a lot of time on that. Hopefully there will also be time for composing new music.

What differentiates Jord from Diorama?

In my opinion Diorama is a natural extension of JORD. It’s a progression and evolution from that record. Everything is accentuated more. The aggressiveness of JORD is more aggressive on Diorama. The same goes for the clean and ethereal parts.

Is the band’s sound a fluid situation? Or are you planning on staying consistent for future endeavors?

I Think evolution and change is a good thing and also necessary to stay relevant as a musician. Obviously it’s important that the music we are creating is something that is undeniably MØL. I definitely think we achieved this with the new record: both being able to change but also maintain what is MØL.

Where would you guys like to tour that you haven’t before?

We would love to tour the states and also down under.

Who are your favorite bands to tour with?

The Ghost Bath tour was super fun. They’re a great bunch of dudes and I hope we can do something with them again. I also really like the guys from Orbit Culture and Rivers of Nihil. Good guys all around.

…

Diorama released November 5th via Nuclear Blast.

The transitory realm between doom metal and post-metal is a magical one, full of the enchanting possibilities begat by splashing an extra dose of doom into a genre already inspired by it: the only thing better than heavy riffs arrayed into emotional, dynamic arcs is getting more riffs as part of the bargain. Chicago’s Dead Sun Rising started life in this mid-space, with their 2019 Hallowed EP interspersing bloodthirsty sludge riffs with shoegaze-y explorative sections and quiet-to-loud song structures built to shatter cathedrals. With their upcoming album As Above, So Below set to release early next year, it seems like Hallowed was a transitional step in itself to an even more interwoven future. As Above, So Below practices the same alchemy of fusing crushing power with bitter introspection, but it integrates its heavier side more seamlessly, stirring the remorseless morsels into its fluid, emotionally-charged appeal. As the track we’re premiering here, “Under a Diamond Sky,” efficiently demonstrates, the band’s top-notch riff-crafting is only a single facet of the glittering heaviness within.

…

…

While the initial guitar assault sets the tone for the track, it’s the rhythmic backbone of “Under a Diamond Sky” that keeps the grim energy flowing forward: a driving bassline and thumping drums let the guitars dabble in overlapping melodies and complex multi-part sludge riffery without losing violent momentum. While other tracks on As Above, So Below are notably less aggressive than this one, this dynamic is essentially a constant: come for the riffs, stay for the hypnotizing rhythm.

Dead Sun Rising’s nuanced, musing approach to “doomgaze” (as they’ve aptly tagged it on Bandcamp) sonically takes notes from doom and sludge metal in a lot of places, keeping the drums thick, tucking its vocals just a bit underneath the guitars, and leaning on a meaty bass tone. However, they put these pieces together with their own interpretations of post-rock, shoegaze, and more in a way that immediately stands out as being something markedly different. Sometimes mournful, sometimes aspirational, and never obvious, As Above, So Below is an intriguing mystery to unravel.

Guitarist/vocalist Eric Carley comments:

“Under a Diamond Sky” is actually a very old song for us that predates both Pete and Nick. It’s a weird one for me, in that it’s got a very specific subject matter that, for once, is not my personal existential bullshit.

It’s not a nice story. The first part is from the perspective of Vikings showing up to wreck shop on some new soil. It then shifts to the perspective of a young girl being married off to one of these guys as political alliance / payment, so she slits her wrists instead. As she’s dying she’s having a revenge fantasy about emerging from her arteries as a ghost and eviscerating all of these assholes, then just kind of taking a minute to hover there and gloat over their corpses. Or, if you want a happier version, maybe she really does manifest as a vengeful spirit and fuck their worlds up.

…

As Above, So Below releases January 7th, 2022 independently via Bandcamp.